Night's Master

by Tanith Lee

  A crack sprang open in the roof of cunning glass, and through it a solitary golden beam shot like an arrow into the golden floor below. Azhrarn stood still and stared at it, and his cloak beat about him of its own volition like a terrified bird.

  “I have learned,” said Zorayas softly, “that to a demon, even to the Prince of Demons, the light of the sun is Death. I have learned too that even though he may travel as fast as the lightning flash to his domain, the rays of the sun will still strike him as he passes, and that, even if he wrench up the ground itself, to pass to the lands below in that way, gold is not a metal to his liking, and will take him longer to disperse. Thus, should he attempt to open the earth in this pavilion, he must work slowly because of the gold bricks in the floor, while I can open the roof wide with another tug of the cord, and let in the sun like rain to cover him.”

  No one knows then what Azhrarn said or did. Perhaps it was so fearful that even writing it down, the words would scorch holes through the paper and those who read them go blind. No doubt he threatened Zorayas with all manner of horrors, and no doubt Zorayas assured him that even should he slay her she would still drag open the glass with her last strength.

  At length Azhrarn grew very still, and stood in the darkest half of the chamber. While the sun arrow pierced the floor before him. He was at her mercy, the mercy of a woman of earth; the thought obliquely fascinated rather than angered him. He saw in it, too, possible avenues of escape. Besides, she had not yet opened the glass roof, this moment was the enjoyment of her pride, and the pride of mortals often destroys them.

  After a while, Azhrarn said to her, in his most gentle and thrilling tone:

  “You told me, daughter of Zorashad, that you had regained many of those things which your father’s death lost you, all but one thing which you could not alter. What can it be, brave and intelligent maiden, which your vast power could not encompass?”

  But Zorayas did not answer, only played with the velvet cord. Azhrarn smiled to himself. He knew very well that his voice, flattering and praising her, was the sweetest sound she had ever heard, and that, for all her ideas of vengeance, she could not bear to silence it just yet.

  “It is well known,” he therefore murmured, after a moment or so, “that demon-kind will make bargains. Should you decide to leave your ingenious roof closed and permit me to return to my kingdom, I could offer you vast power, enough to suit even your splendid nature.”

  Zorayas smiled, though the iron mouth did not.

  “My armies, O Prince, are legendary, and avoided over the whole earth. Already I rule seventeen lands. In another year I could rule double that number if I wished. As for my other powers, you yourself are tasting them, are you not?”

  “Indeed, wise maiden. I see my error. Nor is it any use to offer you the riches of the mines,” Azhrarn said lingeringly, “the rubies and diamonds and emeralds at the earth’s core?”

  “I have jewels enough,” said Zorayas. “You see, I wear none. But if I wished, I have so many slaves that in a year I could triple the number of gems in my treasury. Look up, at the costly brilliants you mistook for stars, O Prince.”

  “Indeed, insurpassable maiden. There is no bargain I can make with you after all. You have everything mortals yearn for—power, sorcery, wealth. Though why you do not yourself wear jewels puzzles me, and also this habit of masking your face and hands—” and at this, Azhrarn saw Zorayas stiffen in her chair and her grasp tightened on the cord. “One request,” said Azhrarn. “At least, O fair and noble one, let me look on the face of my vanquisher. Such beauty you must have that it will outshine the very sun you threaten me with, as even your beautiful eyes do now.”

  Zorayas gave a cry; it was full of pain and anger. Azhrarn needed no more; he stretched out his hand and the iron mask cracked right across and fell in pieces. Zorayas shivered, and with her free hand she hid her misshapen face.

  Azhrarn laughed. Even in that extreme moment, the workings of the mind of the Prince were far from simple. No longer did he feel any animosity towards the poor grovelling dangerous creature on the throne. He was agreeably provoked by her learning, her cunning, her daring; he saw too, in a woman of such power and warlike thoughts, a way to make some delightful trouble in the world.

  “O best of women,” said Azhrarn in his most musical and endearing tone, “I note there is, after all, a bargain I might make with you. Open the roof now, and I, perhaps, may perish and you may be revenged, and will then live out the rest of your short life emptily, shut forever in your mask. Men will bow before you and fight in your armies and tell how you belittled Azhrarn, one of the Lords of Darkness, and all your days neither man nor woman will tremble with desire for you, kiss your lips, sing of your love. You will remain cold as ice till the tomb eats you and the worm takes his pleasure where you have had none.” When he said this, the girl shivered again, though her hand on the velvet cord did not falter. “There is another way,” said Azhrarn softly, coming nearer. “No magic in the world can remedy your ugliness, but I, and I alone, have the power to make you beautiful. More beautiful indeed than you have ever dreamed, more beautiful than any other woman of earth, before or to be. I can make you so lovely that whoever looks at you will ache for you; men will happily die if they can lie one hour with you. You will no longer have need of armies or slaves for cities will open their gates in order to worship this face which now you dare not show. Kings and princes themselves will toil in the mines of earth to lay treasures at your feet in the hope of one touch of your mouth.”

  Zorayas stared at the Demon for many minutes, and eventually whispered:

  “If you can do this, I will let you go.”

  Then Azhrarn went round the chamber, avoiding the arrow of the sun, and he took Zorayas’ crippled hands, and the gloves burst open and a scalding needle ran through her flesh and into her whole body, and when she looked down, her arms were straight and free of pain and white and smooth as ivory, and her hands as graceful as doves, and her breasts like flowers. Next he laid his palms against her face. The fire that seemed to come from them was so awful it made her scream out, her skin was like a land shaken by earthquake. Then the fire died, and she saw the Demon stand smiling at her in a way he had not smiled before, a smile almost of an awesome and indecipherable tenderness. She put her own hands to her cheeks, and felt the difference there.

  “Go and find a glass,” said Azhrarn.

  And she obeyed him, for what the Prince of Demons promised, he abided by, and the bargain had been made.

  Beyond the pavilion in the garden there was a little pool, and going there, holding aside the reeds with her white hands, Zorayas looked at her face as she had looked only once before, in the forest. What she saw was a beauty surpassing the gorgeousness of the leopard, more poignant than the plumage of the spring, like the moon, the sun, a beauty only a Demon could invent, a beauty to cast down the world. And she rose up, throwing aside her iron garments, clothed only in this miracle, and went back into the pavilion and closed the door on the daylight.

  The floor was broken wide, and there Azhrarn stood with his passage to the Underearth safely before him, yet he, even he, had stayed for one last look at her.

  And Zorayas gazed at him, and kneeled before him and said:

  “Now kill me, my Lord, and I will die adoring you, and beyond death I will tell them, if they listen in the mists that wrap the world, that you are King of all the kings, my beloved and my master, whose curse to me is sweeter than the song of the nightingale.”

  Then Azhrarn raised her in his arms and laid his mouth on hers, smiling still that what he had created seduced him.

  “You have seen yourself, daughter of beauty. Do you imagine that I would destroy anything I had made which was so fair?”

  And thus the flesh of Zorayas, which had known only the hurt of old wounds, a lash, a rape, the rasp of iron, knew loveliness in itself, and the embrace of Azhrarn upon itself and within, the seal of dark night upon her morning.

  PART T
WO

  4. Diamonds

  Two brothers sat at chess in a high palace tower, while beyond the jasper lattice of the window, a vermilion sun went down.

  The sun dyed everything with a soft blush, the crags and dunes of the desert country, the shining river with its tree-tasselled banks, the walls and high towers of the palace. Even the faces of the two young men were painted with its color, lending them a superficial likeness. For, though brothers, they were dissimilar, Jurim, the younger, being fair and yellow haired, the elder, Mirrash, of a stern and smoky darkness. Nor were their temperaments matched. Jurim was a poet and a dreamer, Mirrash a strategist who did not trust the world. Their father, an aristocrat of ancient family, had died and left his lands jointly to both sons, that each might contribute, from his opposite values, a complementary whole, since, differences apart, they loved each other well. Into their joint keeping also he had put the astounding hoard of diamonds which had been the source of his fame and wealth; half the hoard to each of them.

  These diamonds. They were everywhere in evidence about the palace; upon the handles of chests and doors, inlaid in the mosaic paving. The cornices of the roof were set with diamonds, and the eyes of the twenty amber lions that mounted up the stairs between the cedars, and diamonds as small as peas flashed in the fountains, brighter than the water.

  Indeed, it was a curious sight, to come from the barren desert to the shining river, and see reflected there and going up beyond the bank, an equally shining house of many towers, sparkling with gold and priceless jewels, night behind it and its face to the sinking sun.

  Tempting to robbers, one might suppose, such a house in the midst of the wilderness. Not so. The diamonds, renowned for their flawless beauty, also possessed a curse. Whosoever stole them would perish. It was this simple. The thief would discover the gem burning his pocket, his pouch, his coffer, his hand. The fine white daggers of its radiance would alter to the murky hue of old blood. In the night, the thief would feel strangling fingers at his throat, the gripe of poison in his belly, a stabbing like a blade in his heart. He would die with a blue face and many regrets. So the story ran. A few had disbelieved it, put it to the test, wished they had not, and were buried. Only as a sincere gift might the diamonds be received in safety and enjoyed.

  Jurim had pondered sometimes on the gift of diamonds he would hang upon his bride, when he found her. There had been many beautiful girls, round breasts, antelope eyes, heavy silken tresses, but for a wife he would have one who was, to these wayside lilies, an orchid. He had heard a name whispered, he had not dared think of it too long. She was a queen, ruler of twenty lands, more lovely than loveliness, who paved her road with the broken hearts and bones of men—Zorayas, who, they said, had lain with a Demon in a starry pavilion. Zorayas, who could not be as maleficent as men asserted, for men’s pictures of women were always too much of one thing, too little of another. Jurim, mere prince of a desert estate, could not aspire to an empress-queen, but to think of her, it amused and pleasantly pained him, like the dreams forgotten with dawn that left, nevertheless, their shadows behind upon his brain.

  The sun was almost gone, a pink glimmer at the edge of a blue night. Then it seemed to be rising again.

  “Look,” said Jurim to his brother Mirrash, “either the day is coming back, or those are the lights of a caravan.”

  “A caravan which has lost the way, then,” said Mirrash.

  Soon enough, they heard the music, the silver bells, saw the fringed swinging canopies, the flower decked beasts drawing the chariots, the warm lamps glowing in the dust, and they smelled the rising scent of incense and jasmin.

  “It is more like a bridal procession than a caravan,” said Jurim wonderingly, and his heart beat fast remembering his dream.

  Presently the unusual caravan reached the gates. The servants and guards there seemed struck with amazement. A man ran into the tower, bowed low and cried:

  “My lords, a strange thing. It is a lady from a far city. Her entourage has lost the road and begs for shelter until morning.”

  Jurim stood in silence, but Mirrash frowned.

  “Who is she, this lady from the desert?”

  “She prefers you do not ask her name,” the servant said.

  “And have you seen her face?”

  “No, lord. She is veiled in a milky gauze down to her knees, but her robe is fringed with lapis lazuli and gold and her hands have emeralds on them, and she speaks as a lady does, as if she had silver in her mouth. Truly she is neither a robber nor a lewd.”

  “I think I guess what she is,” said Mirrash. “For some while I have been expecting her. I wish we might turn her away, but she is cunning and a sorceress. No, let her in. Give her royal chambers and find food, but, for your own sake, avoid her eyes. For my brother and myself, we are away on business, you understand, and cannot greet the lady.”

  The servant went out, plainly afraid.

  Jurim said; “Forbid yourself if you like, my brother, but not me. I am intrigued by her veil. What can she be hiding? Perhaps she is ugly and deserves our kindness.”

  “Once she was ugly, if the legend is true,” answered Mirrash. “Now, few may look at her and keep a whole mind. She is Zorayas, the witch queen of Zojad, the doxy of demons and a scourge of men. No doubt she has heard of diamonds, too.”

  “Zorayas,” murmured Jurim, and he paled.

  He knew it fruitless to argue further, but in the quick soil of the romantic, his brother’s warning put down no root. Zorayas and the dream were already in blossom there. In Jurim’s life there had come, so far, no huge calamity, no accident which would have shown him the nature of evil, and that Mirrash was wiser than he.

  The lights and pipes of the entourage poured into the palace. A harp began to play a wistful melody in a chamber hung with silks that had diamonds stitched upon them. Here a veiled woman sat, all in white. toying with a rosy pomegranate and a golden knife.

  Jurim entered the chamber, bowed low, and sent the servants out. He smelled the scent of sandalwood, jasmin and musk. He trembled, explained who he was, tried to see through the veil. The stranger laughed. One white arm appeared, its bones and flesh seeming sheathed in a skin of velvet. A gold bangle sang as it struck another of jade. Above was a white shoulder, burnished and succulent as a fruit, its pallor emphasized by one serpent of dark copper hair that slid back and forth. sometimes dipping again within the veil.

  “Come and sit by me, lord prince,” said the woman. “Should you like me to unveil? I will, if you desire it.”

  Jurim sat by her and requested that she would, and the woman brushed off the veil like smoke from her face and body.

  Such a vision seared out upon Jurim, it was like lightning shattering a cloud. The blood drained from his heart and left him half dead and barely sensible. Her beauty was like death. It ate him away and filled him with itself. He could think of nothing but her beauty, see nothing else.

  She touched his lips with hers. He tried to seize her. She pushed his hands gently away, and he could not resist her.

  “I am Zorayas,” she said, “and you are very handsome. But if we are to be friends, you must give me a gift.”

  “Anything I possess is yours,” he said.

  “The diamonds in this room,” she said, “I counted them, there are fifty. Give me those.”

  Jurim ran to the walls. He tore the diamonds from the silks and heaped them in her lap. She drew his head to her breasts and caressed him, and presently she kissed his burning forehead, and she sighed: “How I love your hair, which is like gold, and your body which is strong like a stag’s. How eager you are, but first, will you give me the diamonds that hang like grapes from the ceiling of the hall?”

  Jurim ran to the hall. He was blind and deaf to all but her, could only smell the scent of her, feel the cool rounded litheness of her. He cut the diamonds from the ceiling, and brought them to her. He let them fall about her in a rain and buried his face in her hair.

  She drew him down. He ar
rowed through the torrent of her, foundered in the deep sea-cave of her loins. But there was no end to the lure, no depth to the cave. The tide returned him to the mouth of Zorayas like flotsam.

  Mirrash, meantime, had looked for him and found him gone.

  At the stroke of midnight, Mirrash went down silently and listened at the door of the stranger’s chamber. And there he heard the voice of Jurim, pleading and promising. And every so often another would whisper, and then at length Jurim groaned with pleasure and could not keep back a cry like a woman’s.

  Mirrash waited in the shadow. After a while, the chamber doors were opened, and Jurim and Zorayas came out, walking softly as lovers. The face of Jurim was white, and his eyes swam in blue hollows. But Mirrash averted his head quickly, so that he should not see the appalling beauty of the woman’s face.

  They went about the darkened rooms as if about a market, and Zorayas selected what she would have, diamonds large as cups, and little faceted diamonds that blazed even in the shade, and Jurim would tear and dig them from their places and put them in the apron she had made of her skirt, and they would laugh as if at some childish game. Eventually they reached a room where the diamonds were clustered thick as bees.

  Mirrash stood outside the doors.

  “Brother,” he called, “remember. The hoard is only half yours. You cannot take my half without my consent, and your treasury is almost empty.”

  Jurim started, like a man waking from a dream.

  Zorayas called sharply:

  “Who is that scratching at the threshold? Is it a pet dog or cat that dares not come in? If it be a man, let him put terror aside. I am only a woman and will do him no hurt.”

  But Mirrash knew the danger too well, and kept out.

  “Your pardon, lady, I cannot stay. I seek only to remind my brother that any gem he gives you that is not his to give will carry the curse to you as surely as if you had stolen it. And now, goodnight.”

  “These are sensible words,” said Zorayas, though her voice was cold. “Pray keep tally, Jurim. I dislike the diamond curse. Give me nothing that is not yours.”