She took the rose and lifted it. It had a strange hot smell in the cold of the cave. It brushed her mouth and broke. She felt the burning blood go over her lips and down her chin. It had no taste, and yet… She raised her hand, in the cup of which all the blood had gathered and drank it down. No more than water. Yet water in thirst. It was not water, but fruit. It was wine. She must have more… 'There will be more,' he said.
Tanith Lee was writing grimdark fantasy even before it was known as a genre. Gritty, savage and darkly erotic, Vivia is one of the author's darkest - and finest - works. Immanion Press is proud to bring it back into print with this second edition.
Vivia, the neglected daughter of a vicious warlord, discovers strange, lightless caverns deep beneath her father's castle. Here she finds an entity she believes is a living god and, in her loneliness, seeks its favour. After war and disease devastate her father's lands, Vivia is taken captive by the hedonistic Prince Zulgaris. Kept as his concubine, Vivia intrigues the cruel, eccentric prince. He sees in her aloof indifference something to match the darkness of his own soul, unaware of what she once invoked and how it changed her. She drinks blood and feeds without remorse upon the young girls that Zulgaris brings to her.
In the great city of Starzion, Vivia begins to understand her own nature. To Zulgaris she is a plaything, treasured like the bizarre contraptions he keeps in hidden workrooms and the unspeakable mutations of human flesh he conceals beneath his palace. But in this callous, barbaric land, where life means very little, and the spectre of the plague haunts the alleys and markets of even the greatest city, circumstances can change very quickly. No life is safe, and treachery abounds. Perhaps, in such a brutal world, only remote pitiless creatures like Vivia can survive unscathed. But at what cost?
