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On A Dark God Laughing, the first book in the series:

A Dark God Laughing is the intriguing debut volume of Fiona McGavin's A Dream and a Lie trilogy, offering readers a vividly imagined world filled with violent religious strife, gender-shifting characters and an engaging hint of decadence. I look forward to reading more as the story continues to unfold!

– Jacqueline Carey
Author,
Kushiel's Legacy

Wintertide
by Fiona McGavin

Note: This story was written a fews years before the novels were completed, so while its loosely set in the same world, its not entirely consistent with it.

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It’s the cold I remember most clearly from the time before. The way it crept into my basement and froze the water in the pipes. Icicles hung like daggers and snow fell softly over the city, and I could find no pleasure in any of it anymore. It had all blurred into one — autumn, winter, summer — and I was only passing my days waiting hopelessly for oblivion. So you may find it strange that it is a story of love and hope that I have to tell.

But it is, for I fell in love in this cold, winter city at the end of the world where they burn witches on Wintertide’s Eve.

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For too long, I had been walking alone through icy streets that stank of the foul pollution the factories and refineries belched out. For centuries, I had been deadening my yearning for companionship with red wine so sweet and thick it clung to the sides of the glass. I had been alone for so long, I had forgotten how to behave with other people, and I had become afraid of the shadows that stretched across the narrow, twisting alleyways and fell monstrously across the wide city square. Most days, I lay in bed and my house was so cold, ice patterns bloomed on the window panes and began to stretch across the window ledge and down the walls and over my rumpled sheets. I dreamed longingly of becoming encased in ice.

But on Wintertide’s Eve, I ventured out of doors, not to watch the frenetic insanity of the burnings, but to attend a ball at Josiah Capharael’s tall house on Cathedral Hill. I took some care over my appearance. I wore my best black and silver, painted some colour into my face and braided silver thread into my hair. I may be mad, and I may be afraid of my own shadow, but I have always been able to keep up appearances.

It was difficult to leave the house, especially as I could hear the crowds chanting for the death of the witches in the square not far from my destination. I stood in the doorway reaching for the handle and then snatching my hand back again and again until I found the strength to turn the handle and step outside into the frozen air.

I walked swiftly, wishing for sunlight and warm, clean air instead of smoky darkness and poison to breathe. When I am out of doors, I think too much about the soot in the air and how it finds its way into my lungs. Last time I was outside, I became so sure that my lungs were filling up with smoke, I tried to carry on without breathing. It was Josiah Capharael, my host for this evening’s revelries, who took me home in his carriage, blue faced and choking.

But I am a fashionable guest for my appearances are scarce enough to be something of a novelty. I dress well enough to look good on anyone’s arm and sometimes I say something outrageous enough to buy me a fleeting popularity.

It was in the alleyway that runs behind Jezriel’s house that I saw Ember for the first time. I was going in the back way, through the servants’ quarters because a shyness had taken hold of me. I would have gone home if it had not meant passing the crowds gathering in the square. I had no desire to witness the burnings. I do not enjoy death, despite what others may think of me.

The alleyway was dark. Tall houses lined one side and on the other was a wall of red bricks that smoke had turned black over the years. It was so long since I had tasted anything but sickly red wine, that I barely noticed the scent of blood in the air. I recognised it but in an abstract way that was completely devoid of desire.

I carried on walking with the scent of blood and another sweeter scent in my nostrils. And then I came upon them — two figures struggling in the darkness, one clad in white and the other in black. I watched them struggle, the air around me full of the coppery scent of blood, until the dark figure crumpled and fell and the other straightened up, ethereal and pale in the darkness. I stood back, watching as he neatened his clothes, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then spun round, searching for me in the darkness as he sensed my presence. Too late, for I could easily have destroyed him by now had I wished to. His scent filled the air, fresh, clean and innocent, like summertime.

It was like a knife twisting through my heart, that feeling of recognition. They say there’s no such thing as love at first sight, but in that alleyway with a concerto of witches screaming in the background, I fell so much in love that I still hear his footsteps, though he walks on the other side of the world.

He looked at me and I saw the same recognition on his face. A wide grin spread across his delicate, heart-shaped face, lighting his eyes. In this light, his thigh long hair looked like gossamer. Beneath the warm light of Josiah’s chandeliers, it sparkled white-gold as we walked in together, our arms linked although we had not yet spoken. I could smell blood and alcohol on his breath and his bones felt so fine and delicate beneath my hands that I was afraid I might break them by accident.

“Ah, you two,” Josiah cried when he saw us together. “I knew you were right for one another.”

My companion smiled and leaned forward to embrace Josiah and to thank him for the invitation.

“Everyone is here,” Josiah said, “and you can see the burnings from the balcony.”

We watched him disappear into the crowds, gaudy in his fashionable red and gold silks. I felt dull in my dusty black — a moth at the butterfly ball — and I would have been lonely and awkward had it not been for my new friend.

“Shall we dance?” he asked and I nodded and let him lead me onto the dance floor where other couples spun and whirled in the flickering candlelight. We leaned close to one another, our fingers entwined, his head resting against my chest where my heart beat in perfect time with his.

“Vampire,” he whispered.

I did not deny it. With him it stopped being a shameful thing and became normal. This polluted, northern city on the edge of the Wilderness breeds monsters in the dark, twisting alleyways and shadowed tenements, and we were only one kind of monster.

As we danced, he told me a little about himself. He lived with friends in a large, sparsely furnished house near the cathedral. His friends did not understand him and he had begun to grow hungry for their blood. They did not know his real name and called him Ember for the flashes of gold in his pale hair and green eyes. He spoke of them in a detached, disinterested way, all his attention fixed on me.

Later, Josiah told us that the young priest who had signed the death warrants for the witches was at the party. He pointed out a young man dressed in midnight blue and green with long hair of such a dark red it was almost black, as if it had been washed in blood. I thought he looked like a demon, although he was also rather beautiful — blue-eyed, pale skinned and little more than a spoilt child. As I said, this city breeds many kinds of monster.

“I will have his blood before this night is out,” Ember said, “and next year you and I will save the witches from the pyre.”

I watched him drift away from me through the crowds towards the priest, so frail and ethereal in his pale clothes.

I went out onto the balcony where a small crowd watched the pyres burn down to ash in the square. The cathedral was a dark silhouette above the city and my heart began to beat too fast with panic. The people on the balcony talked about the nature of good and evil. They thought their conversation was terribly daring, but they would have killed me if they had known what I was.

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Later that night, Ember and I followed the young priest home and pounced on him outside his tall, white house. But his blood tasted bitter, like poison, and we left him half finished in the gutter and ran home to my house to laugh over our wickedness like naughty children.

After that, Ember stayed with me. He threw open the windows to let out the mustiness and the city smell of smoke and chemicals drifted in. While I lay on the bed, too afraid to go out, he walked through the city and brought back young girls for me to drink from.

“Come with me,” he begged but I kept thinking of witches burning in the city square and was afraid. There was no need to risk everything and go outside. Now that we had one another, we did not need anything else. But he went out alone and I lay waiting anxiously for his first footfall on the step, imagining that they had caught him and put a stake through his heart and left him screaming for me to help him. And I did not know if I would. That was the worst of it. I did not know if I would ever leave the house again, even to save him.

I began to wonder at his need to go out for it seemed as mad a thing as my need to hide. To go out and risk discovery, to walk, talk and laugh with other people and then drink them dry, seemed insane to me. I began to think of bricking over the doorway and all the windows so that neither of us could go outside. I thought of the long days and nights we would spend together, our bodies taut with desire, our limbs entangled as he lay in my arms, tied up in the lengths of my hair. But when I spoke of it, he shook his head. He said he needed to go out, he’d die without blood and sunlight.

“You’ll dry up and wither away,” he taunted me.

He was younger than I and still reckless and impetuous, but I thought he only really wanted what I wanted, so I ordered the bricks and mortar anyway, and I was pleased when he lay lazily on the bed and watched as I bricked over the windows.

“You’re mad,” he said and stood up. He went to the mirror and began to paint his face, his hair floating around his body as if it were alive. I stood at the bricked up window and watched as he braided it.

“You’re going out,” I said flatly.

“Yes,” he said. “Just a few drinks with friends. Come with me.”

I thought of the immorality of having friends whose blood you later drank and shook my head. He sighed and suddenly embraced me, pulling me tight against him so that I could feel the fine bones that made up his perfect body, the silken skin that held him together.

“I love you,” I said and kissed him, biting his bottom lip and tasting his blood.

“I know,” he said. “I have to go. They’re waiting for me.”

I watched him go and I think I knew, for I ran after him to the door and called his name, watching as he turned round in the street, the oil lamps making the tears on his face glitter.

“You’ll come back,” I said, “won’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll come back.”

I finished the windows and began bricking up the doorway. I left a space only big enough for him to come through, but he didn’t come. I waited all night and the next and the next. I am still waiting now in my almost bricked up room. I wait even although ten Wintertide’s Eves have passed and neither of us have rescued any witches.

But I know he’ll come back when he’s older and wiser and this city and its monsters begin to creep into his dreams. He’ll realise that only I can wash his nightmares clean. We will close up the door and live together in perfect blackness, our bodies touching, our hair, our limbs, our very heartstrings tangling into one. Ice and cobwebs will cover us over and neither one of will never need to move again.

I hear his heart beating on the other side of the world and it still beats in perfect time with mine. That’s how I know he’ll come back.