Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

Angela killing herself.

There is nothing he has seen in any paper, since leaving England, that refers to Serena or himself.

Nick considers the merits of suicide. He finds it difficult to sleep now, although he is continually tired. To die, therefore, to sleep… But this is only a thought, almost academic. He assumes, vaguely, the obscene and ludicrous coincidences that have beset him, none of them having any reason or logic behind them, have exhausted him. He will just wait it out, whatever it is. It will pass. Then he may feel as he had done.

But then again, how had he ever felt? The light had gone out, or deadly dimmed, so long ago. He had admitted it to himself in Greece. But even the admission, the perhaps educative glimpse he had gained of his condition, now seems unimportant. He feels what certain others have reported on entering a valley surrounded by colossal mountains, or when staring up into the limitless vista of the starry night of space - diminished, insignificant, meaningless, forgotten. Yet he does not put the meaning into words. It too - means nothing.

Last night, after he had walked through Mont Martre and eaten a meal in some restaurant, and crossed and re-crossed the Seine, and looked at illuminated bâtons-mouches, and the acid green of leaves against street lamps, and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - last night, standing looking out into the lit dark of the city, with a single light burning behind him by the hard, sausage-bolstered bed, Nick had seen a strange image reflected in the window-glass. The hotel room had appeared to be full of stacked canvasses, oil paintings, and sketches in ink and watercolour, also a sidelong bookcase with a line of books.

Nick, while conscious this was an optical illusion, caught the impression both the art and the books were his own. For a few seconds he was shifted in time and place. It was another room he saw, and looking back at his own reflection, another version of himself. This other Nick was perhaps a little older, if not by much. He was a little thicker in build, his hair a little longer and cut a different way.

A doppelganger again - this time his own? What did it want to tell him - that he might have been another man had his life taken other routes, or had he forged for himself a separate path? A cliché then. To cap all the meaningless coincidences, and the sodden aftertaste of loss, a brainless truism. A platitude. Or maybe this triumph of creation was to come. Christ, he would have to work night and day to build up such a plethora of finished works. And he never worked now. He did not bother with any notebooks. He did not, if it came to that, respond to any woman. The girl in Athens - what had been her name? - was the last. And even she had had nothing to do with his other vocation.

Angle his head, widen or narrow his eyes, he could not make out the subject of any of the paintings, nor any title on a single book.

Some cars ran down the afternoon road below. He returns into the present. Soon, he thinks, it will be time to go out for an aperitif, for dinner if he can be bothered. Does he need to change? Perhaps he should change. Or why not stay as he is.

As he steps into the corridor, for some reason he thinks of the first piece of ivory, the tiny whitish counter about twenty millimetres square, which he had found in that drawer left in the foyer of the flats. The ivory about which he lied to Laurence. The curious thing is, quite suddenly he is utterly convinced he had not found it in the drawer at all. If not, where had it come from? But then he is clear of the room, and walking down the stony stairs of his hotel. Beyond the main door the sky is deepening; lamps are beginning to come on. Nick leaves his key at the desk, and goes out of the doorway into the forgetting dusk.

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Also by Tanith Lee

Birthgrave

The Birthgrave (1975)

Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1977) (aka Shadowfire)

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Novels Of Vis

The Storm Lord (1976)

Anackire (1983)

The White Serpent (1988)

Four-BEE

Don’t Bite the Sun (1976)

Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

Silver Metal Lover

The Silver Metal Lover (1981)

Metallic Love (2005)

Tanaquil

Black Unicorn (1989)

Gold Unicorn (1994)

Red Unicorn (1997)

Blood Opera

Dark Dance (1992)

Personal Darkness (1993)

Darkness, I (1994)

Lionwolf

Cast a Bright Shadow (2004)

Here in Cold Hell (2005)

No Flame But Mine (2007)

Other Novels

Volkhavaar (1977)

Electric Forest (1979)

Day by Night (1980)

Lycanthia (1981) (aka The Children of Wolves)

Sung in Shadow (1983)

Days of Grass (1985)

A Heroine of the World (1989)

The Blood of Roses (1990)

Heart-Beast (1992)

Elephantasm (1993)

Eva Fairdeath (1994)

Vivia (1995)

When the Lights Go Out (1995)

Reigning Cats and Dogs (1995)

White as Snow (2000)

L’Amber (2006)

Greyglass (2011)

Collections

Cyrion (1982)

Tamastara (1984) (aka The Indian Nights)

The Gorgon: And Other Beastly Tales (1985)

Women as Demons (1985)

Dreams of Dark and Light (1986)

Forests of the Night (1989)

Nightshades: Thirteen Journeys into Shadow (1993)

Tanith Lee (1947 – )

Tanith Lee was born in London in 1947. She is the author of more than 70 novels and almost 300 short stories, and has also written radio plays for the BBC and two scripts for the cult television series Blake’s 7. Her first short story, ‘Eustace’, was published in 1968, and her first children’s novel The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971. In 1975 her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave was published to international acclaim, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing. She has twice won the World