THE FALL OF THE KINGS

Prologue:

A splatter of red on a discarded boot. Milky blue glass lying shattered in a pool of water. Garlands of greenery swirling everywhere, with little eddies of leaves torn loose from them. And everywhere the sheets, torrents of white fabric lying in fantastic patterns, twisted and ruched, almost spinning, creating lines dipped in and out of shadow, now black, now white, following the logic of the candles placed above them, interrupted here and there by the crosshatching of random streaks of harsh, dull red.

The sheets spilled over the edge of a platform; in front of it, a naked man, streaked in the same red, his long hair matted in it, but clotted also with bits of ochre and vermilion, burnt sienna and indigo.

The woman watching him from across the room was silent. She was dressed from neck to ankle in a plain white smock, smeared in places with the same colors. Her hair was bound up with a twisted scarf, leaving her face a clear and perfect oval.

"Theron," she said. "You moved. I have particularly asked you not to do that."

With one hand he tore a sheet from the platform, sending spatters of paint flying in every direction. "What will you paint, then," he shouted, "the aftermath, the destruction you have wrought?"

"I have wrought? I'm not the one who's just torn the studio apart. Now, would you please take up the pose again?"

He froze, staring at her. "You have no heart."

"I told you that, ages ago." She dipped her finger in the paint of her canvas and sketched his lines into it. "You should listen to me. I said this would be the last painting I wanted you for-- Stand still, I'm not done with you yet. I'm using you for the murderer as well as for the king. It makes a nice effect."

Incredulous, he almost laughed. "You want me to pose killing myself."

"I want you to put your body in some interesting positions--"

The laugh burst out. "Oh - haven't I been satisfying you that way, either?"

"Theron." Still sketching with naked fingers, she talked. "You have satisfied me entirely. I've got maybe twenty-five finished canvases, and dozens of studies. You have been satisfying in every sense. But I've run out of things for you to do. I've told you all along, no one can hold me forever. I can't find any more ways to enjoy you."

A year ago, he would have shown her one or two on the spot. Now, he said, "Ysaud. Please."

She shook her head, as though the noise were a distraction.

"Paint what you like, who you like - I don't care. But don't send me away."

"I don't want you if I'm not painting you."

"You're mad."

"You've just wasted a lot of my materials, Theron." She crossed the floor to take a dab of ochre from his chest with one finger.

"Don't do this to me. I love you."

"Please hold still."

He lifted a hand to his chest. Where her finger had run over his collar bone, there lay exposed a careful pattern of vines and leaves. It had been etched into his skin with ink.

"You can't take this back," he said, "nor what it means. It marks me forever yours."

"No," she said. "It's the paintings that mark you forever mine." She returned to her canvas. "My vision of you will be alive when your pretty skin is turned to dust. That should make you happy."

"Stop," he said. "Stop painting and look at me."

Now it was she who laughed. "All I've done is look at you. If you can't stop talking, then put on your clothes and go." He followed her, breaking an unspoken law of the studio, treading on forbidden ground, a space he entered only with her permission. The artist glared at him. Then, with a hiss of exasperation, she stepped back and let him go around the easel to see what stood there.

Coming alive in the candlelight was an image of death: a pale man splayed out on the bed, one hand lying open as if in invitation, the other still clutching a deerskin across his chest. Theron recognized himself, his own body in the languor after sex. The deerskin and bedsheets were speckled with blood. Standing by them, she had begun another figure. His dark hair was a waterfall of grief spilling between the hands he pressed to his face with bloody fingers. There was a shadow of horns on the wall behind them, as if a phantom stag had lifted its head.

"This is different," Theron said, "from the others."

"Yes." She observed the canvas and the man together. "This is the last of them; it has to be, you see, because it's heading off in a new direction. That's how I know the series is over."

"I could be a new direction for you."

"No, you can't." Ysaud pressed his chest gently with the brush's tip. "Not you. Not for me. Go be a new direction for someone else, will you?"