by Tanith Lee
Amid these curiosities, Qebba began to learn strange arts, and Great Kaschak was his tutor. The manner of the teaching was bizarre, involving fast, fire, solitude and blood. Qebba’s brain, slow in all else, moved swiftly at these lessons. And at his growing powers, a thrill ran through him. Yet always he looked to the magician for guidance, called him “master,” kissed his ruby ring and was grateful. He was the child, Kaschak the father. This pleased Kaschak. He foresaw innumerable possibilities in this apt pupil, without danger to himself. The gifts of Qebba, coupled with his ingenuous dullness and malleability, made him the most perfect and most useful aid and servant. He did whatever Kaschak asked, all but one thing.
“Go, pluck a golden fruit in the avenue,” said Kaschak.
Qebba answered: “You told me I must not.”
And Kaschak laughed.
But even the wise are foolish.
It was the third time Qebba had heard mention of the golden fruits. Once he had been young and happy and quick of mind. Now some buried thought stirred in him. That night he dreamed he plucked golden fruit galore, and it rained down upon him, and, as each fruit touched him, it felt like the warm kisses of a lovely girl, and the glow of gold was like the glow of her hair in lamplight.
Qebba woke with a cry, and, barely knowing what he did, he ran into the night-time garden, into the avenue of black trees, and reached up one hand and grasped what grew there glittering.
At once a snake appeared, wound in the branches, a spotted snake of crimson and green, which seized Qebba’s hand in its jaws. But Qebba knew by now a spell to defeat beasts and flying things and reptiles, and this he spoke, and the snake withered and shrank into a twisted cord of green and red silk, and slid into the bushes.
Then Qebba grasped the fruit again, but this time it became as hot as fire and scorched him and he could not keep hold of it. But Qebba had learned a spell of cooling, and this he spoke and the fruit was cold once more.
Then Qebba took it in both hands, and tugged it, but the fruit would not come away from the tree. So Qebba spoke a spell of loosening, and the fruit fell.
Qebba examined the fruit as it lay on the blue grass of the lawn. He did not know what to do with it now it was picked. But after a moment he heard a rustle inside the fruit as if something moved there, and presently a sort of scratching as if something would come out.
Qebba became alarmed, but stronger than alarm now was a sense of urgency. Lamps were floating from the magician’s house, floating in the air with no man to hold them up, and close behind, Kaschak would be walking, come to see what went on at midnight in his garden.
So Qebba spoke a spell of opening, and the golden fruit broke in two pieces, and from within them drifted a gauzy smoke.
Who would dare invite such a smoke? To some it might be healing, but to others, bane. Breathed in at the nostrils, it seemed to fill the eyes and ears and brain. To a man who knew many things, it would reveal many more, to a man who knew little it would reveal too much. Its name was self-knowledge.
Qebba breathed in this potion and staggered up, dropping the two pieces of the broken fruit, clutching at his skull. He had remembered everything—his past, his name, his youth, his love, his loss, his direful sojourn in the hills of rock—and he had reasoned that a hundred years were gone, that all he cared for had passed from the earth. He was alone, and cheated. He had borne the brunt of supernatural malice, without guilt. Men had mocked and reviled him, beaten, burned and cursed him. And now, even here, one sought to make a dolt of him. He had put aside Kaschak’s justice, mislayed how he had reverenced him and felt calm in his presence as a frightened child found by its father. He thought simply that he had been duped once more. He knew himself, and he was brimmed with anger, hatred and a thirst to inflict hurt upon the world, as the world and its denizens had hurt him, poor Qebba, who would not own his former name even though he recalled it at last, poor Qebba weeping in the magician’s garden.
The magician had come. His shadow fell slanting from the light of the floating lamps across the back of Qebba—one more burden that he would not bear.
Qebba started up, throwing off the shadow.
“You sought to cheat me,” Qebba cried. “You have made me a worm, and laughed at me behind your sleeve. Once too often you mocked my foolishness. See, I have discovered it all. I am clever; you were careless to teach me so well. I am a magician too.”
The magician Kaschak said a word that should have bound Qebba more tightly than rope, but Qebba writhed and spoke another word, and the spell slipped aside. Then Kaschak paled, and gnawed upon the large ruby in his ring. For sure, Qebba had learned excellently. Kaschak saw, belatedly, that he had been too certain the beast was tame.
“Come,” said Kaschak in an easy winning tone, “your prowess pleases me. You were my servant, but shall be my brother. I saved you from a living death, do not be rash. This may turn out for the best.”
But Qebba grimaced, showing his teeth. There was yet some wolf in him.
“One deceived me before. He came by night, as you do, but him I did not see. I do not want the lying kindness and the gifts of men, nor of other than men. I am armed now.” And he turned and strode away across the garden.
At that Kaschak was afraid, as he had not been afraid for a score of years. And, summoning his power, Kaschak flung a thunderbolt after his rogue apprentice, to slay him. But the smoke of self-knowledge had greatly heightened Qebba’s abilities. He heard the thunderbolt and, spinning about, he flung one of his own, so the two met in the air and exploded with a blue flash. Qebba laughed. “Now I know you fear me,” said he, and he ran from the garden.
A single lion stood by the cliff gate, lashing with its tail and snarling. Qebba struck the lion dead with a shining lance he fashioned of air, and passed through the gate and on to the gravel beach. Despite his new-found skill, he had no power over the ocean, for the seas were of another kingdom than the earth, and had their own rulers and their own laws. But Qebba took from his belt a shaving of wood he had picked up, and tore a scrap of cloth from his sleeve, and said the applicable words, and threw them on the water. The cloth and the wood became a little ship and Qebba stepped into it and sailed away from the island.
And Kaschak watched him go in the magic window behind the lacquer doors, and his heart was full of anger and unquiet.
Qebba sailed seven days until he came on a rock in the sea, about the length of four men lying head to heel, and about the breadth of three men in the same attitude. Here, because beauty and comfort were forever soured for him, Qebba set up his home, sheltered by the point of the rock and certain arrangements of stone and cloth. For food he gnawed the sea wrack that grew there and fish that the tides washed up. When he thirsted he made rain fall from the sky into his cupped hands.
Then began a grim and deadly battle of two intent wills and two inventive minds. The strength of Kaschak lay in his mage-craft, but Qebba’s ultimate strength lay in his unremitting, senseless, steely hate. As a man struck by misfortune will blindly turn and strike a chair or some other object to hand, so Qebba, unable to strike back across the years at what had truly injured him, now struck at his former master.
At first, Kaschak sought only to defend himself. The acts of Qebba were childish yet unpleasant. It rained black frogs upon Kaschak’s garden, or red mud; tornadoes smashed against the cliffs, the sky grew dark from swarms of insects, flocks of ravenous predatory birds. But all these things Kaschak turned aside and made harmless, and nothing he sent back against his tormentor. Then there came a plague in the garden, an invisible worm that ate the pink willow trees from within, blighted the exquisite roses, clotted the wine pools with disgusting scum. Kaschak restored his garden and drove out the invisible worm. He put seals and safeguards next over every inch of ground. Not a mote of dust could enter now. Kaschak sat before the magic window in his workroom, and he found in it the island where Qebba lay brooding. The face of Qebba had become greenish with hate, and his eyes had sunk back in hollows lik
e two malevolent animals into their caves. His teeth were yellow and sharp from gnawing seaweed and the bones of fish, yellow and sharp as when he had had the head of a wolf. One of his legs too had become paralyzed, from lack of exercise on the narrow isle and the dank weather. And he dragged the leg while he moved, as once he had dragged the lizard’s tail. But his heart, like the heart of the boar, was tough and lasting.
Kaschak tried many ways to be rid of his enemy, He sent storms to overwhelm the rock, but Qebba thrust them back. Kaschak sent a phantom woman who bared her loins and shook out her ruddy hair, but all lusts but one were dead in Qebba; he flung stones till she vanished. Kaschak sent a levin-bolt of enormous magnitude, which split the toy island in two. But Qebba reappeared on the larger part of it, grinning.
The two magicians had reached an impasse. Kaschak spoke to Qebba through the magic window: “Let us cease this wrangling. What do you want from me?”
“Your life,” said Qebba. His sunken eyes gleamed with his hate. “Your life and the life of the world. My powers are expanding. I will see to it. None shall be happy, for I was never happy. None shall live, for I never had a chance at life. None shall love, save in the grave, for that is where my lover couches.”
Then Kaschak saw it was no use. Kaschak was angry, but his anger was not like the hating grinning anger of Qebba. Kaschak’s anger was leaden, and he was also afraid.
Kaschak called four gales, and from the four hems of the four vast garments of them, he made a supernatural net of interwoven boiling strands. Next, Kaschak, by his arts, asked a parley with one of the lords of the sea. How the lord came is not recorded, but perhaps he was blue-skinned and his hair was a stream of salt water, and his company like him, and perhaps they rode chariots of coral drawn by teams of the huge black and white sharks, the killers of men. Maybe their eyes were circles of gold about a horizontal blue pupil, as with certain creatures of the deep, and maybe they grew impatient, finding the air of earth stifled them, and their slender scaled fingers, bright with jewels spilled from drowned human ships, fidgeted with the chains of little glass bowls in which gemmy fish, their pet canaries, flitted and sang in voices only the sea-folk could hear.
At any rate, a bargain was struck. A ring of oceanic magic was made to surround Qebba’s minuscule rock, and no escape or sending could get by it, as it could not get by the net of gales aloft. And in return for this service, Kaschak would throw a fine jewel into the sea each year, on a certain day. And as long as Kaschak kept his part of the bargain, the sea lord would keep his.
Thus, for the second time in his wretched existence, Qebba was imprisoned. His spells were impotent, his rage turned in upon itself.
To begin with, he ranted and screamed at the insubstantial yet impervious walls of the trap, but the scream of the gales was louder. He also tried to make a bargain with the ocean’s people, but in that he had no hope, having no resources, nothing to offer, and the ocean stayed dumb. At last he was weary and lay down on his face on the slimy rock among the sea wrack, and did not move again.
Only his brain worked. It gnawed inward, like a rat. His brain was all hate. Hate devoured him. It reached his heart and soul. His hate had nowhere to travel now, it could not escape. So, like any large force contained, it began to ferment, to seethe.
Time passed. Kaschak lived to a prodigious age. He performed many wonders, and was much esteemed. And every year, on a certain day, he would cast a jewel into the sea. He never forgot. Then one night, in his twentieth decade, Kaschak smiled, bored at length with living, and died. And that year no jewel was sent to the sea lord, and the sea lord accepted the pact as finished, and the magic fence about Qebba’s rock dispersed.
But surely Qebba had not lived so long, devoid of nourishment, of space, of activity. The pseudo immortality, the life the monster’s skin had lent him, had been amputated with the skin itself. No, Qebba could not live still, and did not. Indeed, his very flesh had vanished from the rock, his bones had even blended with it, were no more.
Yet something remained, something which would not die. The thing which had seethed, bubbled and intensified here in its prison: Qebba’s unmitigated, deathless, starving hate.
Which could now get free.
5. A Ship with Wings
Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.
The hate of Qebba drifted from the rock and across the sea in the early darkness of night. It had as yet no form, but it had a faint smell, as of metal corroding in acid. It needed food, this entity, till now it had fed upon itself. But the earth was a granary, well stocked, the doors open.
Rough weather began. A hurricane rent the sky and spooned up the ocean. Qebba’s Hate came by a foundered vessel. Her sails were torn like the sky, and her lower deck awash. In her belly her rowers shrieked and cursed in their shackles, above, a little boat was being lowered, and men were fighting for a place in it, and as soon as one had slain another, a third man came and slew him. At this spot, the Hate of Qebba supped and dined, and a new strength flooded into it.
Later, Hate drifted to shore. In a wood of pines, five robbers had caught and were knifing a traveler. Presently they cheated each other of their shares of the robbery, and fell to blows. Hate fed. In a town of many lamps, a husband mounted his wife and took his rights of her; how she loathed him and wished him in his tomb. In a yard, a woman whipped her child-slave; the slave lay huddled on the cold stone and dreamed of gouging out her eyes as the whip sliced his back with the vehemence of the woman’s fury. In a cheerful tavern, two poor men plotted to murder a rich man, for they were envious of his wealth. In a tower, a girl on a velvet bed stuck pins into the heart of a wax image of her lover who had deserted her. Under a bridge, two youths fought for the favor of a third, who laughed at and despised them. On the highway, a leper was beaten to death.
Hate, fed, Hate feasted. Hate moved swiftly onward, and feasted again.
The world was wide, a great banquet-table. The dishes were various: hate which slew, hot as fire, hate which whispered and spoke lies, cold as ice, hate which merely hated, the strongest hate of all, the hate which, turned in upon itself, gained power and resonance, hate as black as a pit. All these delicacies the Hate of Qebba gorged upon. It grew vigorous, vital. It swelled and burgeoned.
Soon it could itself, by a projection of its aura, inspire hatred on the earth. Where it passed, adrift like a cloud, dislike altered to a wild gnashing thing. The girl who had tired of her sister’s chat, seized a dagger and plunged it in her breast, the servant who coveted his master’s goods bought poison. All caught the sickness. Presently, the prince, enraged by petty grievances, made war upon his brother’s land.
Then came a new era over the earth, the time of Hatred.
City marched against city, kingdom rose in arms against kingdom. The little individual murders by man of man were followed swiftly by greater murders, as nation tore out the throat of nation. Everywhere was blood and fire and the clashing of steel. Everywhere the air was loud with lament and maledictions.
The seed is very small; it will become a tree when nourished by good soil. Qebba’s Hate had been also very small, but it had moved, a catalyst, in the soil of mankind, absorbing, growing. Now the tree covered the world with its shadow. It had taken many years, but years are of no consequence to such an entity. While it could feed, it could not die, and there were rations in plenty. Time was on its side.
And the works of Hate were not done. The earth itself, bearing these struggles on her back, began to writhe and groan with malice. Her beautiful places became battlefields, crows flapped on the corpse of her land among her burned woods and among the ruins of each vast metropolis that had been her jewel. Now the ground split with earthquake, mountains spewed up fire and the seas boiled over like cauldrons.
By day the face of the sun was livid, and by night the moon was red. Plague rose from the swamps in her robes of yellow and black, Famine walked both behind and before, gnawing her own knuckles for hunger. Death was everywhere, b
ut maybe even he, who was another of those Lords of Darkness, even Death, maybe, beheld this harvest with unease, his baskets being overloaded.
Men cried to their gods. In the morning they would slay each other; by night, fresh from the battlefield, they raved before unreplying altars. So they came to hate even the gods, and smashed their images and defiled their sanctums. “There are no gods!” they cried. “Then who has done this thing to us?” In the light of the riven mountains, on the shores of the wailing oceans, they did not see the shadow cast on them, the shade of the tree of Hate they had fed. “It is the worker of all evil,” a woman cried in one land, a man in another, “the Master of Night, Bringer of Anguish, the Eagle-Winged, the Unspeakable. He has done this.”
So, as towers fell, they would scream it; when the earth opened and swallowed them down, they would choke out his name. They no longer feared him. They had other things to fear.
“Azhrarn has done this to us. The Prince of Demons means to destroy the world.”
He was innocent. An irony that he, creator of black deeds, had had no hand in this, save at its remotest beginning, unknowing.
He had been at some sport or game of the Underearth, had Azhrarn, something that had kept him from the world a year or two, four hundred mortal years or more. It was some beautiful boy, some fabulous woman, another Sivesh, another Zorayas, or someone he had created for himself; like Ferazhin, or one who had consented, unlike Bisuneh, and he, in his turn, had not tired of them, down below ground in the wondrous city of Druhim Vanashta, where he must have taken them. While he had lain with cool flesh, or walked beneath the black trees of his garden, or dreamed some dream exclusive to a demon’s brain, a dream too strange and of too great magnitude that it be guessed at—while he had done that, Hate had chewed at the world, and the world begun to shrivel and to die.