Songs of Love & Death

Cecelia Holland is one of the world’s most highly acclaimed and respected historical novelists, ranked by many alongside other giants in that field such as Mary Renault and Larry McMurtry. Over the span of her thirty-year career, she’s written almost thirty historical novels, including The Firedrake, Rakóssy, Two Ravens, Ghost on the Steppe, The Death of Attila, Hammer for Princes, The King’s Road, Pillar of the Sky, The Lords of Vaumartin, Pacific Street, The Sea Beggars, The Earl, The Kings in Winter, The Belt of Gold, and more than a dozen others. She also wrote the well-known science fiction novel Floating Worlds, which was nominated for a Locus Award in 1975, and of late has been working on a series of fantasy novels, including The Soul Thief, The Witches’ Kitchen, The Serpent Dreamer, and Varanger. Her most recent books are the novels The High City and Kings of the North.

Demon Lover

She slept, and in the dark it came on her, heavy and sweaty, its weight all along her body. Its mouth quested greedily after hers and she rolled her head away, sick. She felt its nakedness prodding and poking against her thighs. Her body roused; even as she fought it, a gritty, shameful lust to submit coursed through her blood. Deep inside some ancient itch woke, longing for penetration. Her hips rolled, arching upward, her knees parting, and she heard its horrible, triumphant laugh.

She jolted awake, drenched with sweat. In the dark room around her, the other girls were still sleeping. None of them made outcries. None of them moaned in her dream. Fioretta slid quietly up off the pallet, her nightdress sticking to her, her long hair dripping down her shoulders. One tress had wrapped itself around her neck. She fumbled her way to the water basin, and washed her face; she felt dirty, all over.

The day was coming. Light began to filter into the room. Behind her now the others were waking. She kept her back to them. She did not want to see them, to know their faces. They bustled around her, whispering and yawning; without asking, they peeled off the damp nightdress, they brought her a clean shift, a fresh gown. They murmured around her like a crowd of bees. She did not look at them, afraid they would see the dream in her eyes. Afraid of what she would see in their eyes.

They hated her. She had felt that at once, behind their cooing, their simpering words, “my lady this, my lady that,” and their rigid smiles. They pulled and slapped at her, dressing her, yanking on the brush as they did her hair, tugged the necklace into her skin when they clasped it. One pinched her so hard she jumped. They slid golden slippers on her feet, and in their midst she went down to court.

They left the room on a cold stone stair, but as they went down the step smoothed under her feet, the space widened, the swelling light struck on burnished walls. The girls around her began to laugh and giggle. Ahead of them were tall white doors figured with gold, and as they approached the doors burst open and on a rising excitement they swept through into the brilliant, merry bustle of the court.

The room was full of young and beautiful people, in satin and lace, their faces smooth as silk. As she came in, they swooped toward her and bowed. Their eyes glittered, eager—or desperate. She went through them toward the throne at the far end, lifting her skirts in her hands; and the wizard-king stood up, his hand out. Tall and lean, he was dressed head to foot in a straight plain white gown, his hair hidden under a cap. His beard was a narrow dark fringe, his face with its long eyes and straight narrow nose chiseled as if from walnut.

He said, “Ah, my beauty. My darling one, today I shall call you Marguerite, for you are a pearl.” She could not speak; her breath choked in her throat, her skin creeping. He looked so well, but she knew now. Her eyes downcast, she went up the steps to the chair beside his. He laughed, as he had in the dream, triumphant.

FROM THE BEGINNING she had known there would be a cost.