The Black Throne

"I don't believe you!" I cried, and I drew away from him. Turning, I rushed back toward the cliff.

"Perry!" he called after me. "Come back! It's no use! I do not know what will happen to me if something ill befalls you!"

"She's not there!" I shouted back. "She can't be!"

I was descending, scraping my arms, tearing my garments.

"Perry! Perry!" he wailed.

I saved my breath, half-sliding, half-falling the rest of the way to the sand. Immediately, I was on my feet, fighting heavy winds and knee-high waves as I crossed to the shining monument. I could still hear Poe before the burning tree on high. I could distinguish no words, but only a baying sound now.

I caught hold of the black iron gate, lifted its latch, flung it open, and entered. I crossed its murky length, black water swirling about my ankles. A stone sarcophagus lay upon a ledge before me.

It was empty. I wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously. Instead I lurched to the entrance, where I cried,

"Poe! Poe! You're wrong! She's not here! Poe! Poe!"

A great dark wave came rushing toward me and it smote me back into the tomb.

I awoke upon the stateroom floor, though I recalled having cast myself the previous evening across the big bunk which had been Seabright Ellison's. I did not recall having fallen from it, nor any means by which my garments could have become soaked and torn. There was sand in my shoes and a series of tracks led back from where I lay to a location near the center of the room, where they seemed to begin. I rotated a knuckle in my right eye then sat up. On removing the ruined russet shirt I discovered a number of abrasions on my forearms. Then I recalled the storm, the mausoleum, the wailing form of Poe beneath the burning tree.

I hunted up fresh garments in the sea chest, changing into them as I reflected upon the experience. I hoped that Poe was all right. I had been unsettled as much by the seeming strain of madness which had taken hold of him as by the bizarre course of events itself. I had somehow, long ago, realized our strange encounters to constitute both a reality and something partaking simultaneously of the realm of symbol, sign, or portent. I could, in this fashion, understand the matter of the empty tomb if A

I wondered. Prior to his departure, Ellison had introduced me to the large-eyed, raven-haired lady, Ligeia, a woman of such fascinating beauty as slowed the cadence of my thinking to at least half its normal pace. Yet, it was not entirely her appearance which, I realized after a minute or so, was doing this to me. It was some other element about her person which was producing an actual physical effect.

Immediately I realized this, I stepped back a pace and took a deep breath. The sensation vanished. The lady smiled.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance," she'd stated as Ellison named me, her voice low, hypnotic, accented in the ma

"This is the man of whom I was speaking earlier—"

"I know," she stated.

"—and he has agreed to manage the business to which I referred."

"I know," she repeated.

"So I would appreciate your placing our special resources at his service."

She nodded.

"Of course."

"However, he has had an extremely filled day," he went on, "and I feel that any farther excitement would not be in his best interest. So I suggest we postpone his introduction to your charge until tomorrow. He is already aware that Monsieur Valdemar is able to obtain us information from places beyond this version of reality."

"I understand," she said.

"I don't," I said, "but I'll take your word for it."

"I will obtain sailing information and relay it to Captain Guy before my departure," he said.

"Very good," I replied. "In which case—"

"—you may retire," he finished for me, "and I'll bid you farewell and good luck as well as good night."

He clasped my hand with a firm grip.

"All right," I said. "Good-bye and good night."

I nodded to Ligeia. "I'll see you tomorrow," I told her.

"I know," she said.

I headed back to the stateroom, where I cast myself face downwards across the big bed. I was asleep almost immediately, later going away to our kingdom by the sea. And now... .

Sufficient light streamed from the ports for me to shave by, drawing fresh water from a large tank at the alchemical end of my quarters, emptying my basin out the nearest port when I had done with it. When I had finished grooming myself I went in search of breakfast. In the mess I was told that I might be served in my stateroom and instructed in the system of signaling for service. Since I was already in the saloon, however, I elected to remain, while eggs and onions, toast and halibut were prepared for my refreshment. The night's shadowy farrago of dreams and bewilderments, puzzles and fears, was washed from my spirit by several cups of excellent coffee, the final of which I took with me on deck, to sip as I beheld the icy, sun-spotted waves, a few benign-looking clouds drifting like white islands in the placid blue overhead. The sun was still low in its corner of the heavens, and taking my bearings therefrom I sought in what I thought must be a shoreward direction for signs of the coast we had departed, but my gaze met land neither in that direction nor any other. A trail of gulls rode the winds behind us, dipping into and rising out of our wake. When the cook—a one-eyed Spaniard named Domingo—called something loudly (whether curses or snatches of song, I am uncertain) and dumped the morning's slops, they answered him and fell quickly to feasting in the churning waters. I moved forward then, seeking for some time in that direction after any sign of the great dark vessel Evening Star. But, it too, lay beyond the blue edges of my world.

I shivered and gulped more of the steaming coffee. I resolved to wear something warmer the next time I was above deck this early in the day. Turning to head below and return my cup to the galley on the way to Ligeia's cabin, I encountered a gri

I gave him a smile and a nod and returned, "Good morning, Mister Peters."

" 'Dirk' will do," he responded. "Lovely day now, ain't it?"

"Indeed," I agreed.

"And how does it feel, bein' in charge?" he continued.

"Hard to say," I replied. "I haven't given any orders yet."

He shrugged.

"No need, so far as I understand," he said. "'Less some emergency comes along. Mr. Ellison should've taken care of all the orderin' for a time."

"That's how I understand it, too," I said.

"You much of a seaman?" he asked.

"I was abroad, as a child. I don't remember getting seasick, if that's what you mean."

"Good," he observed, as a dark shape fell from the rigging, to bound across the deck and come up beside him. He reached out to clasp the hirsute shoulder of his ape, Emerson. The beast responded in kind, and I could not help but note that they resembled each other more than slightly. I say this not to disparage the man who came to my aid in a time of need—for I agree that it is more pardonable to trespass against truth than beauty—but because the very ugliness of his physiognomy was, in some wise, a thing of far greater fascination than those paragons of handsomeness the artists favor. His lips were thin, his teeth, ever-visible, long and protruding. He might almost give the impression of amusement were one to pay him but a casual glance. On return regard, however, one might liken it more to the merriment of a demon. In fact, his face was twisted, as if convulsed with laughter, and of paler pigmentation in patches between some of these creases than others, leading me to wonder whether some areas of his face might not be formed entirely of scar tissue. It was a frightening face, especially when one realized that its transition from seeming jollity to ferociousness was entirely a matter of one's own deepening perception rather than of any action on the man's part—as if reaching after a jewel beheld in some shadowy recess, one realized it to be embedded in the head of a serpent. "Good."