by Tanith Lee
Zorayas thrust at the case of blue metal and it slammed shut. She took up her mantle, and fled from the tower of brass.
Three days and almost three nights passed before Zorayas returned to the tower. During those three days and nights she did many of the things which it had become her practice to do. She rode with her hounds—she hunted men rather than beasts, slaves foolish enough to offend her—she travelled her gardens and her pleasure rooms, pausing to caress a gemmed book, a jewelled wrist. She called together the scholars and astrologers of Zojad, and argued and debated with them. She had actors perform a play for her, and one who amused her she lay with and another whom she did not like so well she hung from a rafter by his ears and his tongue.
She had grown cruel and luxurious. Hardship had taught her, a Demon’s couching had ensured the rest.
She purchased eighty flamingoes to clothe the pools of her garden. She ordered a feast at which every course was a different color, the red baked meat of crabs and rosy fish and red wine in ruby goblets, white meats with almonds and white wine in porcelain cups, green cakes of angelica, grapes and candied cucumbers and green sherbets in emerald thimbles. And one course for her enemies, a blue course of poisonous cyanose wafers and undiluted indigo in drinking vessels shaped like sapphire skulls.
But all the while she did these evil and exotic things, she was remembering the closed mirror in the tower. The memory skimmed across her brain like a bird, crawled in and out there like a serpent. She inspired, in those three days and nights, no beauty to equal what she had seen in the glass, nor did she inspire quite such fear, not with all her games, as the fear that had clutched her vitals as she fled her own image.
On the third night, she called musicians to play for her. The song reminded her of a woman’s body gracefully dancing. White peacocks walked in the garden, their whiteness recalled another whiteness of flesh. Zorayas clapped her hands. Her collection of beasts was brought. She went to the huge gilded cages. Spotted panthers with eyes of green bronze, tigers of cinnabar with eyes of orichalcum. And in the eyes of each, a tiny reflection.
It was a terrible craving in her she must satisfy, to look once more in that tall glass. Maybe her fancy, her own magic, had invested it with qualities it did not possess. Yes, no doubt, that was it. If she visited the tower of brass, opened the case of blue metal, she would see simply a large and lustrous mirror, flattery to her exquisite beauty, but no more.
The moon had set. She climbed the stair of the tower in darkness, went in at the door of the sorcerous room in the dark. The case of the great mirror glowed like a still blue lightning. Zorayas crossed to it, freed the clasps, stood back to let it swing open.
She did not need a lamp. The mirror shimmered, glimmered. Something wondrous looked out at her.
Zorayas smiled, she could not help herself. The image in the mirror smiled.
Zorayas caught her breath, the image likewise.
Irresistibly drawn, Zorayas took three steps towards the image; the image took three steps towards Zorayas. They gazed, lips parted, eyes wide. The hands of the image slid downward, and parted the fastenings of the golden dress. Two white moons rose from the golden silk. The image in the mirror whispered: “Come nearer, beloved. Come nearer.”
Zorayas stared, at the image, at her own hands still by her sides; her own breasts—covered by the silk. The image had done something she had not. The image had spoken.
“Who are you?” Zorayas cried, “and what are you?”
“Yourself,” whispered the image. “Come to me, my beloved. I seethe and pine and ache for you, beloved of beloveds.”
Zorayas trembled. Her eyes filled, she could not breathe. Before she knew it, she had run half the distance toward the mirror, her arms outstretched. A few steps more, and she could press herself again to those familiar valleys and hills, that fragrant landscape which she knew better than any land she had conquered, better than any lover she had ever lain with. But she forced herself to a halt, before the hands which reached out to her could touch her own.
Zorayas ran again from the sorcerous tower, and locked the door behind her. She wept. It was with a sense of desolation rather than of escape or fear that she descended the stairs.
She flung the key of the tower door into a deep well.
Mirrash had made the glass, made it especially for Zorayas. It had been forged in cold fires and shaped with burning words. Mirrash had become a sorcerer, letting the ancient books teach him, dedicating himself to his task. It was not so much vengeance he sought, as to rid the world of the wickedness of Zorayas. Jurim was dead, but there would be other Jurims that Zorayas would prey on, if she remained. He had puzzled some while over the tale the story-teller had recounted, puzzled too if the story-teller were really some phantom messenger, broken loose from the limbo of souls in order to warn and advise, or merely a wise man, cunning and well informed.
At any rate, the tale had been apt—beauty abusing what worshipped it, beauty seduced by its own vision. bringing itself to death.
As the snakess had come on an image which exactly resembled herself, so Zorayas should come on one, in a mirror. And the mirror would not be mortal. The mirror would draw life from what looked there, the mirror would live, in its own way, and would desire, love, yearn for, plead with, compel the object of its life.
On the night she had come to him, he had predicted Zorayas’ behaviour and so outwitted her, but now he was not certain he could guess her mind. He did not know how long he must wait. Zorayas was strong-willed and powerful, perhaps she could resist the mirror’s spell.
The palace in the desert fell into decay. The shining river was clogged with weeds and shone no more.
Perhaps Zorayas would exercise her spite upon the giver of the gift—
But Zorayas had forgotten Mirrash. She had forgotten everything but one thing. Her actions had become those of a doll on strings, yet she did much. She conquered five more lands, riding at the head of her armies. She had built for herself enormous citadels, mansions and statues. She turned from human lovers and lay with beasts. A third of a year a lion was her lord; his mane was plaited with jewels; in his eyes as he mounted her, she saw reflections.
One night, she wished Azhrarn would come to her. She burned rare smokes, and spoke certain words. She dared not summon now, could only cajole. Perhaps he would have come, the Prince of Demons, if he had been aware of her beseeching. But he had turned from her to other things, turned from her perhaps for a few days, a few months of Underearth—a mortal’s lifetime—and looking back, he found her gone.
Time wearied Zorayas. Though she had the face and body of her youth, she felt an old woman, exhausted and bored by the world. It seemed there was nothing she could not do, and nothing indeed she had not done. No enemy could withstand her, no lover deny her, no kingdom defeat her. Perpetual success beat her to her knees. Now the small voice of uncertainty within her did not cry for victories to salve its hurt; it murmured: “What worth was all this labor, that has not eased me?”
She had no love for life, had never truly had any. In fact, she would have been happier with less, striving and sadness had made her strong where power had sated her.
The last flickerings of her determination to survive died in orgiastic banquetings, in sorcerous madnesses that dyed the night sky green or the blue hills red, and grew the tails of monkeys upon the rumps of men, in strange excursions overland on a ship with wheels, or across the sea in a big-sailed chariot drawn by dolphins.
At length the ultimate ennui descended on her.
She lay like one already dead. Seven days she lay on her couch. And then one memory quickened her.
Zorayas called three giant men, her slaves. She took them to the tower of brass and instructed them to break in for her the locked door.
It did not take long, she had always realized it would not. The act of throwing the key into the well had been a gesture.
When the door gaped, Zorayas sent the slaves away, and went up alone into the
room.
The mirror opened. There could be no doubt. The image stood naked, wrapped in its dark red hair, motionless. The eyes of the image were closed. It made no sign, no movement. It looked like a marvelous icon, as though it were dead.
“I am here,” Zorayas said. “You are all I seek, and all I wish for.”
She unfastened her mantle and stepped from it, naked now as the image.
The lids of the image raised themselves slowly. A dawn broke upon the magical face. It raised its arms, the arms of Zorayas: “Come to me then.”
Not running this time, nor holding back, Zorayas walked towards the mirror until breast met breast, limb met limb, palm touched palm. For an instant she felt the cool resistance of glass, then the glass seemed warmed and melting. Warm eager hands encircled her, squeezing her more closely to a warm breathing form. Her own hands swam and fiercely clasped a smooth slenderness. Mouth fused with mouth and thigh with thigh. Zorayas abandoned herself to an ultimate truth of matchless ecstasy that dissolved her in its fire—
The slaves in the garden turned at the weird glare in the sky. A rose-colored sun was being born inside the upper room of the tower of brass. It swelled and brightened, became an intolerable whiteness that pained the eyes of all who saw it. A shattering explosion followed.
After the thunder and terrible light had faded, those who crept to the tower of brass found only a stump of charred metal. Nothing else remained. Not a tile, not an amulet; not even a fragment of glass, of bone, or of woman’s hair.
Mirrash came to the palace where formerly had ruled the queen of Zojad, now so mysteriously vanished from the earth. Some said she had been carried off by the Drin, others that she had abandoned her wickedness to become a traveling holy woman.
There was bickering in the city and in the palace. The kings of many lands were on the march once more, anxious to break the yoke beneath which Zorayas had held them. There was some further trouble too, for in the night a lord, who had appropriated one of the large diamonds which Zorayas had won from Jurim, had been found horribly dead.
As the ministers squabbled on the steps of the tall throne, where once they would have drawn their very breath in anxiety of the woman who sat there, a dark stern man entered the hall. How he got by the guards no one knew, but discipline was lax, and the soldiers were deserting in squadrons.
“I am Mirrash,” the stranger said. “I hear someone has died already of the diamond curse. You will have more deaths unless you listen to me.” And he reminded them of the bane the diamonds carried, that only those to whom the jewels had been sincerely given might enjoy them in safety.
“My brother gave the diamonds to Zorayas, but she has gone away. If any of you to whom they were not given should attempt to keep them, they will kill you, one by one.”
As always, somebody scoffed and said he scorned the curse, and took a diamond collar and put it around his neck. Mirrash shrugged, and soon the man was discovered, blue in the face and unequivocally deceased.
Then they were in a hurry to give the gems back to their rightful owner. Diamonds poured into the casks and boxes Mirrash had brought with him, the casks and boxes were loaded into carts, and mules and outriders attached to them.
Presently Mirrash, with all his family’s hoard of treasure restored, got on to his new horse, which Zorayas’ steward had insisted he take, and rode away towards the desert, grimly smiling, with his back to the setting sun.
BOOK THREE:
The World’s Lure
PART ONE
1. Honey-Sweet
She was so beautiful, and so gentle that they called her Honey-Sweet—though her name was Bisuneh. Her hair grew to the ground; it was the pale delicate greenish-yellow of primroses. She was the daughter of a poor scholar, and they lived in a city by the sea. Honey-Sweet Bisuneh was soon to be married, to the handsome son of another poor scholar. While the fathers had muttered in the library over antique volumes, the daughter and the son had wandered in the shady garden among the roses and beneath the burnished leaves of the ancient fig tree, and first their hands had touched, and next their lips and their young bodies, and presently their hearts and minds. There followed various promises and pledgings, various exchanges of gifts. Since weddings were expensive, foxy prostitutions of art took place—one old scholar composing a lament on the death of a lord which brought tears to the eyes, and considerable silver; another old scholar dedicating his translation of some long dead poet to a prince in a white palace, which brought gold. Both the scholars’ wives were dead. They looked at their children fondly, this invasion of youth and passion in their dry houses scented only with the dust of books.
It was a month before the wedding.
Beautiful Bisuneh and two pretty friends sat in the twilight garden, under the ancient fig tree. Overhead the stars grew bright, and far below the sea rippled like the back of a dusky, slowly swimming crocodile.
“I know a spell,” said one pretty friend. “It will show how many children you will have.” The other friend was afraid, did not like spells. “Oh, it is a simple thing. A few words, a lock of Bisuneh’s hair, a pebble thrown.”
Still the friend was reluctant, but Bisuneh was curious. She wanted, she declared, three tall sons, and three slender daughters. No more, no less.
So, under the dapple of the fig leaves and the stars between, they made their magic. It was such a small one. Generally it would have gone unnoticed. But to a demon, the slightest whiff of magic was like a lure.
One of the Eshva was not far off, adventuring on the night time earth, idling by the dark waves of the shore. He scented the spell like a well remembered flower. The Eshva were the most oblique of all the echelons of the Underearth, and the most inclined to dream and to romance, and this one no different.
In his male shape he climbed the shore road, clothed in the gathering night, now floating in the air. He reached the wall of the garden, looked through a crack a bird could scarcely have found.
He observed two pretty girls, one radiant girl.
A pebble leaped and rang on the stone paving.
“Why,” said the first pretty girl, “there are no children here at all. And yet, wait—yes. One child. A daughter!”
“Only one,” wailed the other pretty girl. “Can it mean Bisuneh will die? Or her husband will die?”
The first girl slapped her angrily.
“Silence, fool! It means the charm has failed. What is this talk of death?”
But Bisuneh solemnly shook her head. “I do not fear. It is just a silly game. Three days ago I visited the wise-woman who lives on the Street of the Silk Weavers. She told me neither I nor my husband should die till we were very old, unless the sun should sink in the east, which is surely to say nothing can harm us, for who can suppose the sun will ever do that?”
Then the two friends laughed, kissed Bisuneh, and put white flowers into her hair. Another laughed also, beyond the wall, silently. But no one was there, only a smooth black cat running away along the shore road, with a flash of silver eyes.
The Eshva entered a room of black jade, threw himself down before a shadow there, kissed its feet, and the kiss bloomed like a violet flame in the shade.
The Eshva raised his glowing eyes. Azhrarn read this within them: A walk in the dream of the earth, the world of men, and a shape there formed like a maiden. Her skin was like the white heart of an apple, her hair a fountain of primroses.
Azhrarn fondled the Eshva’s brow and neck. He himself had been a long time from the earth, many months, perhaps a mortal century.
“What else is she like?”
The Eshva sighed at the touch of Azhrarn’s fingers. The sigh said this: Like a white moth at dusk, a night-blooming lily. Like music played by the reflection of a swan as it passes over the strings of a moonlit lake.
“I will go and see,” said Azhrarn.
The Eshva smiled and shut his eyes.
Azhrarn went through the three gates, black fire, blue steel, chill agate. As an eagle, he
flew across the purple plain of the night sky; a smear of dead crimson marked where the sun had long since fallen. He came to a city by the sea, to the small garden of a small house. The black eagle settled himself upon the roof. He watched with his brilliant sideways bird’s eyes, now one, now another.
An old scholar drank wine under a fig tree. He called: “Bisuneh!” A girl stepped out. The scholar patted her hand, showed her an entry he made in a huge old book, at a place where the page was sign-posted by a pressed papery flower. Light from a window spun the color of green limes in the girl’s fair hair. The eagle watched motionless, beak like a curved blade.
“See, here is your mother’s name, and mine,” said the scholar. “And here is your name and his, the man you are to wed, who shall be my son.”
The wings of the eagle softly stirred, no more sound than the breeze made in the leaves of the fig tree.
Presently the old man and the girl went in. A lamp began to glow in a window near the roof, and then went out. The girl disrobed, clad only in her hair, lay down in her narrow bed and slept.
In her sleep, a wonderful scent drifted to her. She heard tapping far off on an open shutter, a noise like leaves walking. A voice sang into her ear, pleasant as velvet. Bisuneh started awake. She stole to her window and looked out.
A dark man stood below in the garden; she could not make him out. Wrapped in her hair, in the shadow of her window, he seemed to her also a shadow. Only his eyes, catching some mysterious light, gleamed.
“Come down, Bisuneh,” he called softly. His voice was like no other she had ever heard. She almost leaned out to him, almost turned to seek the door and the stair and the way into the garden—but a cold drop fell into her brain which said: Beware. “Come, Bisuneh,” said the stranger below. “I have loved you a long while, I have traveled many miles to find you. One glance of your eyes is all I ask, maybe one compassionate chaste kiss from your maiden’s mouth.”