by Tanith Lee
At midnight there came an alteration. Hard to define that change—he felt it like the turning of a tide. Kazir touched the tree and found a dream struggling and swaying inside its bark.
“One flower,” Kazir murmured to the tree, “only one.”
He did not see it, but he knew, the swelling of the silver thing upon its stem, the splitting of that silver, the violet cup within that folded back, petal upon petal, until the heart lay open.
She had come to a dim pallid place. It was a place of ghosts, the threshold of death and life. Why mysteries teemed there she could hardly tell. Souls, half-formed, clamoring to be born, souls, wild with fright or anger, bursting up like gray fires to their freedom from existence.
Ferazhin stood quite still in the floating mists, and called for Kazir. He did not answer her. No hand grasped hers, no voice of sunlight lit up the shadows. Only the shades fluttered about her like bats.
“Kazir, Kazir,” Ferazhin cried, but only the bat-wing voices sounded:
“On, on,” they whistled, “follow us on this great and terrible journey!”
And others, dark souls still cramped by diseased bodies or cruel lives, hissed:
“Come, you cannot linger here. Here is No Place. Here you will forget everything, all you were and all you might be. Here your thoughts will die as your earthly brain has done already. Forget, forget, no one remembers you, and come.”
But Ferazhin only wandered through the mists, entreating Kazir to find her.
No time passed in such a spot, yet a sort of time passed. Ferazhin did not fly upwards with the other travelers who rushed through that gate. She searched until she was all search, she called a name until she was all one calling cry, like a bird in the desert. She despaired and became despair. She did indeed forget everything. Forgot herself, forgot the way from the threshold, forgot, at last, even Kazir.
Then, into limbo, pierced an invisible thread like silken wire, which wound about her heart so that she recollected she had one. Slowly, yet inexorably, the thread began to tug at her, to pull her back toward that monstrous shifting door by which she had entered. Little by little, fragment by fragment, the thread drew her. It seemed she heard music and saw light, and she loved them, though she did not remember what they were.
Then came a great agony, and fear and joy. They overwhelmed her, drowned her, bore her away with them. She tumbled through seas of fire and flames of pain, she put on flesh like a scalding garment, and knives tore wide her eyes to a sky of black radiance.
She stood in the cup of a vast flower, as once before. She saw a man, as once before. Seeing him, finding him, she recalled everything.
Kazir put his arms about her, and lifted her down to him. They clung together as the stem of the tree clung to the earth. What they said and what they promised in that moment who needs to be told?
But somewhere perhaps some dark door slammed like thunder in a city underground.
BOOK TWO:
Tricksters
PART ONE
1. The Chair of Uncertainty
There was a king in the east, in the city of Zojad; his name was Zorashad. He liked to raise armies, he had a talent for it. He seemed indeed to grow armies, as a field grows weeds. And strong weeds they were, of bronze and iron, and terrifying they looked when the sun flashed on their brazen marching and on their machines of war and the clouds of dust that rose before and behind. And terrifying they sounded when the clash of their metal was heard, the tramp of feet and rumble of wheels, and the bellow of bulls’ horns and trumpets. The bravest kings and princes and their staunchest captains felt their battle-anger dilute to confusion in the vicinity. And certainly, Zorashad did not lose one battle, and sometimes had no need to fight at all. Great lords would genuflect before him in surrender without a blow exchanged. Not merely the armies, but he himself seemed to carry with him a huge sense of mastery—he was impervious and ruthless. Those who knelt at once he spared and took as vassals; those who resisted he would mercilessly overcome, and then he would put entire families to the sword, burn the royal palaces, raze the cities and lay waste to the land. He was like a dragon in his fury, rending and unreasonable. His passion was vainglory, but he was also rumored to be a magician.
This rumor was because of a mysterious amulet. No one knew how Zorashad had come by it; some said he found it in the desert in the desolate hall of a ruin beneath a fallen column, some that he got it from a spirit by means of a trick, others that one night, many years before, he had come across a dead animal on a lonely road, a creature that was like no other beast ever seen on earth and, guided by some instinct or prophecy, he had slit open the monster’s gall bladder and found there the amulet, in the form of a blue stone, smooth and hard as jade. Whatever its source, however, the king took to wearing the amulet about his neck, and who could deny its efficacy? He was presently the ruler of seventeen lands, an empire stretching hither and thither, this way and that, till it reached on all sides the blue acres of the sea. It was related that even the lion would step out of his way.
As Zorashad grew in years, so his vainglory grew, and perhaps, weighted down by it, he became also a little mad. He levied massive tribute from his vassals, and had built for himself a temple, and here all his subjects were obliged to come and worship him as a god.
Golden statues of Zorashad were erected in Zojad and in every one of the conquered cities, and inscriptions in gold set in panels of snow-white marble beneath them. This is what the inscriptions said: “Behold with terror Zorashad, Mightiest of the Mighty, Ruler of Men and Brother of the Gods, whose equal is not to be found under Heaven.”
The people marveled at this, and trembled, expecting any moment for the gods to strike the cities with plague or thunderbolt because of this blasphemy. But the gods, in those days, regarded the deeds of men much as men have always regarded the antics of very small children. So there was little danger from the serene country of Upperearth, where sublime indifference no doubt continued. Danger there was, but it had another shape.
It had become a whim of Zorashad’s, when he sat and feasted at night with his lords, to have brought in and set facing him at the table, a tall chair carved from bone. This he called the Chair of Uncertainty. Anyone might sit in it, rich man, prince or beggar, freeman or slave, even the murderer and the thief might sit down at the king’s table, eat the choicest fare off plates of gold and drink the finest of wines from crystal cups, and no one could restrain them or bring them to justice. That was Zorashad’s decree. But at the end of the feast Zorashad would do to them whatever he wished—either good or evil, according to his mood; for this resembled, Zorashad declared, the uncertainty that the gods visited on man during his life, not to know whether pleasure or hurt, humiliation or triumph or annihilation was his lot. Some who sat in the bone chair might be fortunate; the god-king would give them precious metal or gems to take away. They would go out blessing him, glad they had risked their luck. A few Zorashad might have sewn up in the skin of a wild ass and driven braying through the streets under the lash till dawn. Others he would condemn to the axe. It made no difference what the guest’s status might be, or his deserts. Sometimes the high-born or the virtuous died horribly while the murderer ran off laughing, with a cap full of emeralds. It was a chair to gamble in, and most of the gamblers were desperate men, who considered anything better than life as they were forced under their circumstances to live it. Yet occasionally, a sage would come, thinking he could outwit the king and so grow famous in the land. Several were the heads they left behind, spiked on his gate. Generally, it may be supposed, the chair of bone stood empty.
One evening, just after sunset, a stranger entered the city of Zojad, a tall man, shrouded in a black cloak. He passed as quietly as a shadow through the streets, but when he came to the doors of the palace where the guards stood with crossed spears, the king’s hounds began to howl from their kennels, the horses to stamp and whinny in the stables and the falcons to screech in the mews. The guards, alarmed, glanced abo
ut them hurriedly; when they looked back at the street, the stranger had vanished.
He was in Zorashad’s splendid hall. The brilliance of two thousand candles played over his cloak and could not pierce it. He came up the room, and the minstrel girls fell quiet to watch him pass, even the gorgeous birds in their cages of gold stopped singing: they put their heads under their wings as if they felt the approach of winter. The stranger halted before King Zorashad’s table.
“I ask a boon, O king,” said he. “To sit in the Uncertain Chair.”
Zorashad laughed. He was pleased at this unexpected diversion.
“Sit and welcome,” he said. And he called for basins of rosewater for the guest to dip his hands, and for the best roasts and vegetables to be given him, and for wines like ruby or topaz to be poured in his goblet.
Then the stranger drew back the fold of the cloak which had concealed his face. There was not one who saw him who did not wonder at his extraordinary handsomeness. His hair was blue-black like the night, his eyes like two black suns. He smiled, but the smile was somehow unpleasing. He lightly caressed the head of the king’s favorite hound and it slunk away and fell down in a corner.
“O king,” he said in his voice that was like dark music, “I had heard men risked their lives to taste the fare of your table. Do you mock me?”
Zorashad reddened angrily, but the cries of his lords made him look down at the plate his servants had set before the stranger. And there, where the roast and the tender shoots had lain, was coiled a sinuous slime-green snake.
Zorashad shouted. A slave snatched up the dish and threw its contents in the brazier; certainly he feared his king more than the venom of the snake. A fresh platter was brought, and the servants once more heaped it with aromatic food. Yet, as the stranger took up his knife, a smoke seemed to drift about the table, and suddenly there on the plate writhed a knot of angry scorpions.
“O king,” murmured the stranger, softly and with reproach, “it is true only desperate men will eat in your chair of bone, knowing death may await them in exchange for their meal, but do I seem so starved that I will relish these vermin, sting and all?”
“There is witchcraft in my palace,” bellowed Zorashad, and his court turned pale, all but the stranger.
Dish after dish was brought, but none would the stranger eat and no man blamed him for that. Al1 manner of horrors sprang from the plates, even the sweetmeats changed to pebbles and wasps. As for the wine, the goblet of yellow, upended, spilled stinking urine, the red was unmistakably blood.
“O king,” said the stranger sorrowfully, “I had thought it your custom to mete out fates impartially, but I see it is your habit rather to slay your guests at the board.”
The king leaped up.
“You have spoiled the food yourself. You are a magician!”
“And you, sir, are a god, or so I was told. Cannot a god defend himself from such silly tricks as any poor traveler might have about him?”
Zorashad, overcome with rage, roared out to his guard:
“Seize the man and kill him!”
But before one brazen foot could take a step, or one bronze-gloved hand could grasp a sword, the stranger said, most gently: “Be still,” and not a man or a woman could move, and all sat in their seats as if their limbs were turned to stone.
A deep silence came down on the hall then, like a gigantic bird folding its wings.
The stranger rose, and going to stand by the king as he sat shrinking yet frozen in his chair, bowed deeply and spoke in a caressing tone the words of the inscription.
“Behold with terror Zorashad, Mightiest of the Mighty, Ruler of Men and Brother of the Gods, whose equal is not to be found under Heaven.”
Only the eyes of the petrified king could move. All through the hall only eyes were moving, darting like frantic jeweled fish as they followed the progress of the fearful stranger. He walked about the table smiling.
“I await, magnificent king,” he said, “the axe of your vengeance. Pray get up and deal me my punishment. Am I so much your inferior that you will not deign to humble me further? Am I to endure forever the shame of your pity? Speak.”
Zorashad found then he had once more the ability to do so. He whispered: “I see I have wronged you, mighty one. Only release me and I will worship you, build you a temple to touch the sky—bring you a ton of incense every dawn and dusk, and sacrifice always in your name.”
“My name is Azhrarn, Prince of Demons,” said the stranger, and at the words, the two thousand candles flickered and went out. “I am not worshipped, only feared, by men who are not gods. Under heaven, on earth or beneath it, I and I alone am without equal.” Zorashad whimpered like a dog. In the dim flare of the braziers, which was all the light left burning in the hall, he saw the Prince’s hand come toward him and felt the magic amulet snatched from breast. “This is your power,” Azhrarn said, holding it in palm, “this, and nothing else. This is what made men dread you, this is what made you love yourself.” Then he spat on the stone and let it fall on the table.
At once a silver dancing flame sprang up where he had spat. The flame gnawed at the amulet; it glowed and seemed to grow white-hot and presently shivered in pieces.
There was uproar in the king’s hall. Men, freed from the spell of stone, leaped to their feet and collided. Only the king lay in his chair like an old man sick with fever.
The stranger of course was gone.
That night there were many wonders. In the palaces of sixteen kings, sixteen omens. Many, lying asleep, woke up with a start to shout for their priests to read a dream. Ten spoke of a huge bird which, flying into their chambers, murmured to them in a musical voice. In five kingdoms a serpent sprang out of the flaming hearth like a coal and called aloud its message. And in the north, a young and very handsome king, walking sleepless in his garden under the moon, met a man in a black cloak, whose bearing was princely and who talked to him like a friend or a brother and kissed him before leaving him, with a touch as fearful and as thrilling as fire. And the substance of all these miracles on the night of the sixteen kings was this: The sorcerous amulet of Zorashad the Tyrant is destroyed, and his power is ended.
Vassalage to Zorashad had not been sweet to them. The heavy tributes had worn them out; their pride ached like an old wound. They banded together and soon fought with Zorashad a colossal battle on an eastern plan. No longer was Zorashad a god. His hand shook, his face was white as paper. His brazen army slunk away and left him and presently he was slain. But his old cruelties were not forgotten. Like vultures the sixteen kings swooped on Zojad and razed it. The palace burned, the treasure chambers were sacked, and the Chair of Uncertainty itself was broken into splinters. The household of Zorashad they put to the sword, as he had put to the sword so many households. Seven sons and twelve daughters and all the wives of Zorashad perished on that night, even his hounds and his horses they slew, even the birds that nested in his trees, such was their hatred and their fear. Afterwards they rejoiced that they had slaughtered every living thing that had belonged to the god-king of Zojad. But one living thing had escaped them.
There was a child born that night, the thirteenth daughter of Zorashad. The mother the soldiers found and slew, but an old woman, a nurse, had snatched up the baby and run out with it. She ran along the great highway which led out of Zojad, between the statues of Zorashad the god. And as she ran, she cursed him. Near dawn her fragile heart cracked inside her and she fell dead. The child dropped from her hands upon the paving of the road. Both its arms were broken at the blow, and its soft face, scarcely formed, was ruined by the sharp stone and the brambles that speared at it as it went rolling down among them. By chance merely, its eyes were spared. It set up a feeble thin scream of agony, but only the wind heard, the wind and the jackals creeping towards the smouldering city.
2. King Zorashad’s Daughter
A man lived in the hills above Zojad. He was a hermit, a priest. His dwelling was a cave, furnished with simple things, woven han
gings of coarse plain cloth and a bed of matting, and some magic too. The people of the villages round about brought him their sick to heal, or came to ask his counsel. Once or twice a year he would travel from place to place to speak words over their crops and pray for rain or sun, whichever they required. In return they gave him such small things as he needed—a bit of rope, an earthenware bowl, and every few days something would be left a little way from his home, a pot of honey or a loaf or a basket of fruit. No one came close to the cave. If they wished to speak to him, they would stand on the slope nearby and call, for, although he was a hermit, he did not live quite alone. Beasts would sometimes share his cave, the wolf, the bear, even the lion. He had no fear of them, the holy man, nor they of him. They came and went as they pleased, and their eyes met often, the golden eye of the creature with the dark quiet eye of the priest.
On the night that Zojad burned, the priest smelled the smoke and heard the distant thunder. He went up to the hilltop and saw the glare on the sky’s edge. The moon was blue from the smoke, and once a large bird flew over it and its wings made a sound like bone-dry laughter in the air.
The priest watched all night on the hill. Near dawn he fell into a kind of dream or trance. He saw the smoke on the long paved road that led to Zojad and heard the jackals barking, and a horrible thin wailing rose up from the thickets at the roadside. The priest came to himself with a shock. He rose and hurried, compelled, down from the hills toward the city,
The sun was rising when he reached the road. It was quite deserted, no one had come from Zojad for a long while, not even the soldiers of the sixteen kings, who had still much business there. Three jackals had found the body of the old woman—but the priest noticed on the pavement beside them a golden anklet which they had discarded, having no use for it. Next he saw a fourth jackal, and this one had in its jaws the tiny body of an infant.