Work Text:
As told by Lyselos Maratis, transcribed and translated from Lysene into the Common Tongue by Maester Colton of the Citadel
Excerpt from- "Tales of the Perverse from the Free Cities" by Maester Colton
Foreword:
I will begin by apologising for the crude nature of this tale. As is often the case with stories from Lys, the descriptions provided are of a foul and blunt nature. I suspect it is a necessary part of the storytellers' duty in that particular city to shock his audience as much as can be done, lest they grow bored and seek greater excitement elsewhere. Unfortunately, I must include Maratis' account of the so-called Corpse Siren, for it is a disturbingly vivid rendition of a now ubiquitous Lysene legend. The Siren cannot be ignored and Maratis's own supposed encounter with the ghost only adds to the popularity of his version. Thus, for better or for worse, I have elected to present the tale.
In Lys there are many legends about beautiful women, more than in any land in the known world. We Lysene love them so, and they in turn have loved many Lyseni. Love is given more freely in Lys than in the Seven Kingdoms and there is no shame in having a paramour or two. In fact, it is a respectable position in the manses and manors of the great people of Lys and even women are permitted their lovers. Marriage is, after all, a bargain or trade. Desire is desire; it is not to be denied or moderated. Such is the way of Lys and it is perhaps for this reason that the Lysene understand the value of the affection of a beautiful woman far more than any other people. If it is squandered, ruin is bound to soon follow. This tale concerns a certain beauty of her day, whose true name is long since lost to us. But she is widely remembered, and now feared, as the Siren. The Siren was a courtesan beyond compare. With her voice alone, travelling through the night air of Lys' pleasure district, she could lure men to her bed. Her songs promised nights of passion and pleasure and those who could afford her company were never disappointed. Her beauty was without equal, although just like her name, none can provide a true description. Some say she possessed the features of Old Valyria, regal and proud. Others say she had dark skin and black hair and that her songs came from the Summer Islands. I have seen her depicted as a woman of the Sunset Kingdoms and as a lost scion of Qartheen nobility. The Siren is beauty itself, with all its forms and features.
To this day, many in Lys try to replicate the Siren's technique, but few can even begin to perform an ample tribute to the woman that inspired them. She exists as a legend and an inspiration among courtesans in Lys and they love her just as the Westerosi love their knights.
Such was her wealth and beauty that she had her own townhouse, staffed by her own apprentices and guards. Where she had come from was unknown and whether she had once lived in humbler surroundings will forever be a mystery. Most believe she arrived fully formed- a perfect woman placed in Lys by the gods themselves. The Siren was the equal of the masters of Lys' pleasurehouses in all but name and no offers they made could ever sway her from her freedom. Archons and Kings and even the Dragonlords of Valyria fell in love with her song.
For many years, she sang each night and continued to amass her fortune and those who lay with her treasured her beauty. The Siren was the guest of all the great people of Lys and she would sing in the courts of the city's masters and even for the common people on the holy days. She shared her wealth generously with her apprentices, many of whom have ancestors who still live to this day, worthy courtesans in their own right. It is through their songs and their plays that the story of the Siren survives. They themselves will admit their voices are no equal to the Siren, for her song was a gift from the gods. It is said that she once lulled a dragon to sleep with her voice, a feat achieved only otherwise by those who possess a deep bond with such a beast. But there was one man, a Commander of the city garrison, who wanted more than just a night with the Siren. He would make her his wife and her song would only be for his ears. Each offer from the commander did the Siren reject, but each rejection only furthered his passions- "The Siren will be mine" he swore to his men one night, deep in his cups. Perhaps emboldened by the drink, he marched to the Siren's townhouse with his soldiers and seized her, even as her servants all fought and screamed to prevent the abduction. Most were killed in the process and their efforts proved to be in vain. The Commander took his prize, hands red from fingers to wrists with the blood of the fallen girls. And these bloody hands did carry the Siren back to the Commander's manse, where he bade his own servants prepare her for the night that he so desired to spend with her at last.
But while the Commander bathed before he retired to bed, the Siren crept into the chamber, picked up the sword that poked out of the bundle of clothes beside the bath and then, without a second thought, brought the blade down on the Commander again and again and again.
When soldiers arrived to investigate the sounds of screaming coming from the baths, they found the chamber more full of blood than water. And lying amidst what remained of his bathwater was the Commander, more meat than man. What remained of his face was locked in a ceaseless scream, eyes and mouth stretched wide beyond natural means.
The Siren might have chosen to escape, but instead she remained at the centre of her bloody deed. She greeted the guard with a curtsey, as practised and elegant as ever and then said: "Fear not, you all shall have your night with me yet."
With that, she drew the Commander's blade across her neck and added her own blood to the lake at her feet.
Not a word of what happened at the manse escaped the house that night, for the Soldiers, terrified still of the Siren's parting words, dared not let the story spread beyond that room. Her body was cast off a cliff into the sea, and those servants who cleaned the baths did so with the knowledge that they would be struck down if the truth of the Commander's death spread across Lys. So the story went that he had been felled by an assassin, an agent of a rival either in Lys or sent from another of the Free Cities. He was celebrated and mourned as a hero who died in defense of the city, while the Siren, now lost, was grieved for only by those who she had cared for. Her customers soon forgot and sought their pleasures elsewhere.
As winter reached Lys, the nights grew long and dark. An unusual chill took the city and most stayed home when the Sun descended, to best withstand the cold. But many men still faced the frost, seeking to have their nightly appetites for flesh quenched. Among them were many of the late Commander's Guards, whose doubled pay had left them greedy and easily bored. They searched the streets, looking for a new girl to entertain them that night. Yet one by one, something quite different from the usual glimpse of skin at a window lured them away towards a particular alley. That night, there was a song on the air.
It was a sweet and seductive melody, as beautiful there ever was to grace the air of Lys and no man who heard it could pull away from its blissful allure. So the Guards of the Late Commander, one after the other, found themselves at the former townhouse of the Siren, now quite dead and abandoned with not a candle's flame to suggest an occupant. Yet from within came a voice just as beautiful as the long dead Siren.
Had that Song not possessed a quality of magic sinister, those soldiers might have kept their wits and realised where they were headed. But they were enthralled and each entered and met their end. They were found weeks later, for the stench of their corpses had prompted an investigation. Each man, in a different room in the house was found strung up and gelded with an expression of pure horror upon their face, stretched beyond what should have been possible. Their killer was sought but never found and certain servants from a certain manse began to spread tales of who had truly killed the Commander… and his guards as well. The Siren, who might well have been forgotten, was saved from obscurity by her former servants and apprentices, who sang of her deeds in life and in death.
Since then, a particular song is sometimes heard in the pleasure districts of Lys. And it is said that a particular friend or acquaintance to the teller of a tale or two would hear this song and wander off, only to be found dead some weeks later in the same gruesome state as those Guards were many years ago. The Siren was not forgotten, for her legend grew only stronger with her bloody deeds. Lys soon learned to mourn the songs she had performed in life.
I, Lyselos Maratis, too have heard the song of the Siren and yet I have lived to tell this tale. My reasons for survival are simple, but I will leave them to the end, for I must first explain what sort of vengeful spirit possesses all of Lys.
Many years ago, when I was a much younger man, I was a friend of a particular Magister. Now this Magister, I will admit, was a friend largely out of his generosity when it came to food and drink. He was an easy sort to persuade and flatter and I used my mastery of words to great effect. But this Magister was a cruel sort when it came to paramours and courtesans, and he treated such women as a glutton might treat a plate of snails or a leg of meat. He devoured, quite greedily and I was seldom his companion whenever he visited a pleasurehouse. But his coffers were never empty and so he could not be turned away.
One night, as the two of us drank, quite to excess I will plainly admit, this Magister insisted on taking me out to visit a particular woman he wished to share with me. Drunk as I was, and far from home, I could not help but be pulled along and so I prayed for a means to escape the impending horrors that I would be forced to witness and, gods forbid, participate in.
It was just as we were about to reach the particular house we were headed for when a beautiful, truly seductive song filled the air. All at once, the Magister abandoned his plan and instead he pulled me along to find the singer. He was already quite enraptured, insisting that whoever the songstress was, he would have her as soon as he laid eyes upon her. I too, I must confess, was bound by the song and so I could do little but follow along.
The singing took us to an old street, practically hidden away and half-abandoned, lost among newer alleys and taller neighbouring buildings. In spite of these strange and disconcerting surroundings, we carried on and pushed open the rotted doors of an ancient townhouse. As we did so, the singing stopped and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The townhouse was long abandoned, covered in dust and decay and surely inhabited only by spiders and their prey. I might have turned to leave at that moment, not content to be subject to a joke of elaborate design, but the singing resumed and I turned towards its source.
Walking down the stairs towards us was a beauty to match the blessed voice. But try as I might, I cannot describe her more than that. It was like looking at the sun, yet the sensation on the eye was soothing rather than painful. The Magister rushed forward and I raced to catch up to him. I was a nimbler man for certain, and rightly should have reached her first, but something forced him along at a pace I have rarely seen in a man so drunk. He took this singer by the hands and kissed them, over and over, between bouts of adoring words. I rushed forward to push him aside when I looked away for a second, trying to better examine this beauty beyond compare and description.
But what I saw was a corpse.
I staggered away and screamed at the horror, somehow not falling down the steps as I descended with mad panic. She might have been a beauty, once and long ago, but now she was a cadaver, half-rotted and logged with water along with gods' know what else. A deep gash on her neck made her head tilt to the side and her face was permanently etched with a tight, stretched smile. Her eyes had long since rotted away, replaced with an inky blackness that seemed almost to leak out of her sockets like tears of mist. Yet calm was she as she held the Magister tight as he whispered into her ear, who was blind to the truth that I could now see. If my awareness of her true form was cause for alarm, she did not show it and looked at me instead with some degree of delight; no other word comes to mind.
With a gentle push, this corpse with the voice of a goddess did push the Magister away and forced him to kneel with just a touch of taut, dead hand to his forehead. That done, she began to walk back up the stairs, still looking right at me and with her came the Magister, seemingly wrapped in the tattered strands of this corpse's gown. He should have broken free owing to his weight but instead the material held him with effortless strength, pulling him up the stairs as if he were but a feather cushion.
I was frozen in place with fear, the terror rendering my thoughts to nothingness. I watched and did nothing, I did not even cry out, even as my companion, now wrapped almost entirely in the impossibly long gown of the corpse, rose from the stairs to float just above me. Some base instinct begged me to move, fearing that his body might suddenly drop and crush me. Yet I could not move, for no thought could my mind summon to rouse me from that stupor.
And not a moment later was I finally enlightened to why I was transfixed in such a way. The cloth began to tighten around my companion, causing him to squirm and wriggle against his confinements. All the while he produced sounds like a man being kissed and caressed by his lover but as the fabric constricted all the more, he began to gasp and choke until this distress snuffed out any sort of pleasure he might once have felt.
Towards the darkness of the roof, now taller and far more expansive than that townhouse had any reason for being, did the Magister rise higher and higher until I could see it all at last. A vast constellation of silken garments were writhing like maggots on the ceiling, squirming with increased ferocity as my companion was now floating just beneath. He was so far from me, and yet I could still see his eyes through the wrappings quite well. They seemed to be bulging out of his skull and yet he somehow managed to look towards me. A terror dwelt within that gaze, calling out to me for some sort of aid as the rest of his body remained quite still against the constant tightening of the garment around him.
As if beckoned to look away, I turned again towards the corpse, her dress stretching up behind her like the trunk of some great pale tree, and she looked down towards me. I thought perhaps that the time had come to join the Magister, but instead she merely bowed her head and raised a finger of more bone than flesh back towards the ceiling.
I caught one last sight of my companion before the silks swallowed him and I screamed to watch all that I had none about the world be torn away from me.
I awoke some hours later, the faintest hints of dawn peaking through the windows of the townhouse, to the sounds of wood creaking above me. My eyes shot open to at once see the Magister, now hanged from the rafter high above me by his own belt. His face was a mask of terror, staring at me with swollen eyes. I considered perhaps cutting him down, but there existed no means by which I could reach him. There was no choice to make but that of leaving and letting some others fools concern themselves with getting his body down.
I half expected to see the Corpse, that Siren that had led a man to his doom, waiting for me in the doorway; yet my path was clear and I saw no reason to hesitate. Leaving the house, I found the way to a street I recognised with remarkable speed and ran all the way home, where I wasted no time barring all the doors and windows. I retreated to my bedroom, knife clutched tight and waited for that ghost to call to me. I vowed that if I heard her voice, I would end my own life and hope the Gods could forgive me for it.
Yet not Siren sang outside my door and soon enough, night returned. I fell asleep like that, and upon waking again, almost slit my own throat by mistake as I had forgotten the knife that was resting on my chest.
As much as I might have desired it, I could not hide away for any longer. I left my house and went to tell my stories near the Temple of Trade as I always did from midday to dusk. Soon enough, as thoughts of the Siren returned to me, I began to tell her tale there in front of the crowd that had gathered. Many knew of the Siren of old, that tragic paramour whose fate was so tragic, but they did not know what she had become; but I had witnessed her, and the magics that undying vengeance had afforded the Siren. So a warning I did raise to all those who wisely listened to my tale, the sun disappearing behind me as they leaned in close to hear it:
"Always be generous and even-handed with paramours and whores, for their vengeance is a power that extends beyond life itself."
This lesson is surely what had saved me and I am certain that by acting within the Lysene creed of desire and affection, all men might escape the song of the Corpse Siren.