For the first time in e-book format, a gothic tale of werewolves in a remote French village from a master of dark fantasy.
Tanith Lee's classic gothic novel tells a tale of werewolves in a chateau in remote France. Tanith Lee (1947–2015) was a legend in science fiction and fantasy writing. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Awards, a British Fantasy Society Derleth Award, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. Chapter 1
The Arrival
The train, running north under its hammerhead of smoke and steam, had prematurely entered the land of winter, as if through a great, pure, silent door. How cold, how changed, the world was in the white morning, as the still, white light began to come. A world of wet woods, vague hills. And on the horizon’s edge, the pines, blocking in the land with ink. An empty region, apparently. Nothing by the track or visible between the branches, none of those piled towns, sloping villages, none of those shacks, sheds, cottages, farms, that had been interminably visible all yesterday, as the locomotive unfurled itself from the city. Nothing now, till the station appeared, swirling up about the train as if tediously and pointlessly to detain it. There was a remnant of the fall huddled around the station; on a bush, the occasional sodden yellow leaf, on a bough a cherry-red one: refugees.
The air, as he stepped down, was keen as a knife. It immediately pierced to his lungs, and he coughed desultorily, not really noticing he did so. His box and bags were placed around him. He stood with them, a little island of dark in the albino morning, as the train drew away.
Half a mile along the track, it gave a lonely cry, calling farewell to him, heartlessly, over its shoulder.
The station was ramshackle and looked deserted.
When the train was gone, it seemed he had been marooned, shipwrecked in the midst of a wilderness. Christian looked at his baggage hopelessly. There was too much to carry. He did not want to carry it. He had been promised a meeting here, and a conveyance.
He did not want to make any decisions. The thought of doing so, of planning what should happen next, made him feel depressed, bored and exhausted. He sat down on the box. He had not been able to sleep in the train. Something about its eternity of motion, which had drugged him, had also kept him awake. Bareheaded, yet swathed otherwise in the dark astrakhan greatcoat, he imagined himself blending, dissolving into the landscape. Black and white like the winter morning, and the woods. Black hair, black coat; the white face. A young face, except for two fissures carved out under the eyes. The eyes . . . what color were they? Black and white mixed; a gray, luminous but leaden. Curious. (He was picturing himself, now.) Not even the little crimson touches of autumn about him. Till he thought of blood, and all the leaves left clinging on the bushes around the station wall pulsed and burned as if alive, and he felt the terrible mindless disbelieving fear, and then—
And then a man came out of the station building. He was tall and cloaked, a funereal top hat rising like a chimney from his head. He was all clothes, and did not seem to have a face.
“Monsieur?” he asked. “Monsieur Dorse?”
Christian rose, acknowledging his name.
“Yes.”
“The car is below on the road, monsieur. Peton is coming for your luggage.”
“Yes.”
They stood indecisively, the young man, the newcomer in his top hat, like actors smitten with amnesia. What came next?
“I am Sarrette, monsieur.”
The driver. There was nothing else to be done but walk away from his luggage, abandon it, move forward empty-handed into the void.
Sarrette held open two doors for him and then a gate. Steps went down between earth banks. Trees clouded on the far side of a narrow gravel road, where the big car res
