Night's Master

by Tanith Lee

  The Demon Prince had caused illimitable pain and loss there, war and sorrow, rage and death. The Vazdru, hearing the cry of humanity ring in the bell-like psychic cavity of their inner ears—Azhrarn destroys us!—looked to see their prince smiling. But Azhrarn never smiled. He strode between the jade palaces and the iron; he mounted a horse of black oil and blue steam; he rode through the three gates. And riding away from the earth’s center and its volcanoes, he saw new volcanoes exploding their fire across the length and breadth of earth, and where they did not burn, the cities were burning in their stead. And he saw Plague go by, and Famine, and Death walking on the horizon. The seas he saw too, in different places, drowning the land, and the broken towers poking up, and the bloated corpses floating, and where the new land had pushed from the waters he saw armies struggle ashore and begin again to fight among the sea pools and the sea wrack. And above, the bloody moon gave relentless light that he might see it all and miss nothing.

  Azhrarn reined in the demon horse upon a jagged cliff top. He gazed to east and west, to north and south, and the face of Azhrarn, it is truly said, had become white. Long he looked, and long his pallor increased. A mortal man could not grow so pale and live.

  A memory had found Azhrarn, of the warning of Kazir, the blind poet. How, when the Demon Lord had told him all he possessed and asked him if there were anything he yet needed that he could not do without, the poet had quietly answered him: “Mankind.”

  And the cold song of Kazir had come back to him, which related how all men had perished and the world was empty, and the sun rose and set on emptiness. But then Azhrarn flew in the form of an eagle over the noiseless cities, the sailless oceans, searching for men. But not one was left to fill the days of the Demon with joy and wickedness, not one was left to whisper the name of Azhrarn.

  Cold fear had fallen then upon the heart of Azhrarn like winter snow. Cold fear came now. Even the dark star cannot live without the sky to hold him; there is no foothold in the bottomless abyss.

  Yes, Azhrarn, Lord of Fear, was afraid. He foretold the death of humanity, he observed Hate like a black moon rising in the sky, and read human destruction in it. With such eyes as his, he could see the very shape of Hate, which had no shape, and he smelled the smell of it, of acid eating at metal, eating at the life of the world. And Azhrarn fled the earth, fled into his city underground, into a deep room of his palace, and there he shuddered, locked in and alone that none should witness his terror. Yes, terror; Azhrarn, Lord of Terrors, terrified.

  Terrified.

  A silent horror cloaked the demon city of Druhim Vanashta. No Vazdru mocked or sang, there came no chord of harp nor ring of dice nor baying of hounds. The Eshva wept, and did not know why they wept. By the black lake, the hammers of the Drin were still, and the red forges sank to ashes.

  Then Azhrarn appeared, his face like a handsome effigy cut from stone, his eyes blazing. He summoned the Drin. He gave them a task. They were to build for him a ship with wings, a flying ship, powerful enough to pierce the highest sky and penetrate where neither mortals nor birds could go, the rare country of the Upperearth, the domain of the gods themselves.

  The Drin labored with fright in their murky little hearts. They took much silver and white metal and a small portion of gold, the unloved stuff of demons, and blue steel and red bronze. And as the Drin worked, the Vazdru glided in and out of Azhrarn’s palace, and there they took his hands or fell on their knees before him and urged him not to leave them. But Azhrarn put them aside, and sat in stony speechlessness, tapping his ringed fingers upon an ivory book, from impatience.

  Presently, the ship was ready. The sides of it glinted and gleamed from the many bands of metal there, blue and grey and yellow and red. It had a canopy of smoke, and a silver sail woven of winds, and the tiller was the thigh bone of a dragon. The wings of the ship were like the strong white wings of swans, but the plumage of them was made from the demon flax that grew on the margins of Sleep River, and steeped in the dreams of men.

  Azhrarn came to the ship, and praised it, and the ugly Drin blushed and simpered foolishly. Azhrarn entered the ship, and spoke to it and took the tiller, and the ship rose through the three gates, through the vent of the one quiet volcano left in the world, and the Vazdru shivered.

  Up through the black and vulpine air of earth the ship thrust its way, upward, till the land lay far below like seething pitch picked out by burning lights of fire and wreck. The wind sail blew and turned. The ship passed the congested moon that glared huge and awful in the dark. Through the roots of the starry gardens the ship passed, through the world’s roof. Its wings made great semi-circular beats. It flew where no ship of man had ever sailed or wayward bird had ever flown, in at the wide, invisible, half-nonexistent gate of Upperearth.

  There was always light in Upperearth, undying light of enormous clarity, like and unlike the constant illumination of the demon place. For the light of Upperearth resembled that of a clear and icy winter dawn, though no sun shone, and sky and land were all one.

  A cold blue country was Upperearth, a cold blue which symbolized the passionless celestial things that dwelt there.

  There was no geography as such, simply this razor-edged blueness everywhere, and in the far distance, a dim suggestion of knife-edged blue mountains, capped with adamantine snow, though these mountains seemed to have no bases, and indeed remained eternally distant and unreachable: even should you walk towards them for seven years. Occasionally there might come in view the isolated mansions of the gods themselves, each far removed from each. Such structures bore no relation to the buildings of earth or to the palaces of Druhim Vanashta. Rather they were like immense harps, or the strings of harps, slender shafts of pure gold radiance that vibrated slightly in a soundless music.

  Near the invisible, half-nonexistent gateway, where the ship had come to rest, stood the Sacred Well, from which might be drawn up draughts of Immortality. But the Well was a paradox, no doubt pleasing to the gods, for they themselves did not need to drink these waters, being already immortal, while men, who craved such a drink, could never hope to reach the spot. (Once, possibly, there had formed a tiny crack in this Well—which was made of glass—through which a drop or two of the precious elixir might have spilled. Or, time being as it was in Upperearth, possibly the tiny crack had yet to come about.) Since the Well was made of glass, the water of Immortality was freely to be seen in it. It was of a leaden grey, this water, perhaps a warning. Close by, on a bench of thinnest platinum, sat two bowed grey-cloaked figures, the Well’s Guardians.

  Azhrarn stepped from the winged ship, and the Guardians raised their heads at once. Neither had a face, only one huge swivelling and ever-attentive eye, and they spoke from an unlikely area in their breasts.

  “You may not drink,” said the first Guardian to Azhrarn, regarding him with this pitiless fearsome eye.

  “Indeed you may not,” said the other, regarding him also.

  “I am not here to drink,” said Azhrarn. “Do you not know me?”

  “It is futile to know anything,” said the first Guardian, “since all things below pass, alter, decline and perish, and all things here above are unchanging.”

  “Humankind know me,” said Azhrarn.

  “Humankind,” said the second Guardian. “What are they that we should be interested in their knowledge?”

  Azhrarn folded his cloak about him, and went by them. They, seeing he did not mean to attempt drinking, bowed their heads again and appeared to sleep beside the leaden water of Eternal Life.

  Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, one of the Lords of Darkness, went through that delicate chill region like a black reality. He walked towards those mountains that might never be reached, and, after many mortal days, he came to a huge floor of chequers that stretched from horizon to horizon. And the chequers were of two colors that were never seen on earth or under it, one the color of profound solitude and the other the color of complete indifference, and here some of the gods were to be found
. A few were walking slowly about, but most stood motionless. Not an eyelid flickered, not a limb twitched, they neither spoke nor breathed.

  They had the appearance of humanity, or rather, the appearance that humanity had had in the beginning, for these gods had made men. In those days, when the earth was flat, gods were permitted such eccentricities. But how fragile the gods were, how ethereal. Their hair was so pallid a gold it was almost silver, their flesh was transparent, showing that they had no bones, only the faintest of faint violet ichors that swam in the transparency without the need of arteries or veins. Their eyes were polished mirrors that reflected nothing. When they grew excited (which was rarely), at some astonishing metaphysical revelation within themselves, tissue-fine butterflies would flutter from their crystalline robes, and dissolve like bubbles in the blue, blue air.

  When Azhrarn came among them, the gods stirred vaguely, like grasses in a light breeze.

  Azhrarn said: “The earth is dying. Man, your creation, is dying. Did you not hear of this?”

  But the gods did not answer, or look at him, or seem to see him.

  Then Azhrarn told them how the earth split and burned, and men slew each other under the goad of a sorcerous enduring hatred that fed and grew more vital on destruction. He told them everything and spared no word.

  And the gods did not answer, or look at him, or seem to see him.

  Then Azhrarn went to a single god, or, as it might be, a goddess, for it was difficult to ascertain if the gods had two sexes or one or several or none at all. And Azhrarn kissed the god on the lips, and the eyelids of the god flickered, and butterflies rose from his garments.

  “Men you made,” Azhrarn said, “but me you did not make, and I will have an answer.”

  So the god spoke to Azhrarn at last, though not by means of voice or tongue or language, in fact it is not known how he spoke, but speak he did. And he said this: “Mankind is nothing to us, and the earth is nothing to us. Man is a mistake we made. Even gods are entitled to one mistake. But we will not perpetrate another by saving him. Let him vanish from the earth, and earth vanish from the state of Being. You are the Demon, and humanity is your beloved toy, but we have graduated from such trivia. If you wish man to be saved, then you must save him, for we shall not.”

  Azhrarn did not reply, or demand another syllable from the gods. He only gazed at them, and where his gaze lingered, the edges of their crystalline garments shrivelled like paper in a fire. But no more could Azhrarn do, for gods are gods.

  Thus Azhrarn returned over the blue cold Upperearth, his back to the unreachable mountains now, and he came to the Well of Immortality, and he spat in it. And such was the nature of Azhrarn, that the leaden water roiled, and for a moment grew clear and bright, before the greyness overcame it once again. But the Guardians merely snored on their bench, and Azhrarn entered into the winged ship, and left the Upperearth behind him.

  6. The Sun and the Wind

  The Demon stood on the flax grown banks of Sleep River; before him flowed its heavy iron waters with a dismal sound, behind him lay the winged ship, like a dead swan. The heart of a darkness can become no darker. Yet, in the person of Azhrarn had always flamed an occult brilliancy which now was gone. And his face was bitter and terrible as he stood shrouded in hollow fear upon the river bank. Here, where he had so often pitilessly hunted the souls of men asleep, strange fancies hunted the inner creature of Azhrarn.

  And as he brooded there, a translucent image, like wafer-thin ivory, rose from the waters. Not the soul of a sleeping man this, few enough slept deeply in those terrifying cataclysmic days of earth to let their souls go wandering so far. This was the soul of one dead.

  Azhrarn gazed at the soul, and the soul at him. The eyes of the soul were two blue fragments of an evening, the hair amber, and about its wrist and on its shoulder lay tendrils of deep ocean weed.

  “Do you know me, my Lord of all Lords,” asked the soul, “or do you forget me as easily as you slew me? I am Sivesh who drowned in the green seas of morning because you hated me, who gave you only love. My bones are rotted away on the floor of that sea, but I have lingered in this parody of my human shape, for even at the amorphous gate beyond life, I loved you still, who disowned and destroyed me, and my love has bound me to the world.”

  Azhrarn looked at the soul of his dead lover, and what he thought no man knows, but he said: “Many thousand mortal years have passed since I parted from you. Why do you seek me now?”

  “The world is ending,” said the soul. “But of all things, the world you love. I have come to see if you will save the world or let her die, For in the world’s death is the death of Azhrarn. Though you should live two million times a million years, without the earth yet are you dead, and you will wander as I do, and you will be as dead as I, and as purposeless.”

  Then the soul drew close, and through its body you could see the far shore, and the dark river going by. And it kissed the hand of Azhrarn, but the touch of it was like the touch of cool smoke only. It faded like ice in the sun.

  Hate lay upon the earth, penetrated her to her deepest caves, her most secluded valleys. Hate raped the earth, and the children of Hate burst forth. And Hate, ultimate victory, had taken at last a form, a form like a huge head, or rather, a mouth. No man could perceive this apparition, which devoured him. But no man, if he had deciphered the calamity, and seen Hate as its root, could have come up against it, as a hero would go to confront a dragon, for no man could have endured this presence. For all the little wickednesses in men, in the vicinity of such concentrated malignancy the bravest or the worst of them would falter, scorch, crumble.

  Only one could meet that entity which had been Qebba’s Hate, only one could see, smell, find or match it. For hate, to Azhrarn, had been a familiar, a beautiful harp which might be played, a skill, a jest.

  Where the location was of Hate’s core, this form it had assumed, is not remembered, nor might it be written down, much as water cannot be chewed. It was supposedly some part-abstract place, neither in the world nor out of it. At any rate, the landscape was somewhat like the earth’s, a range of bleak crags, their lower terraces black with burned trees, and burnished thick cloud ringing the upper pinnacles, shining with a curious brownish leaden light. When dawn broke on the tortured world, the sun would also rise upon this scene, but now it was night on earth, and night here also, and here and there a red star glittered like a drop of blood through the unwholesome haze.

  Somewhere in the cloud and the haze, the head and the mouth and the core of Hate was writhing its brown bulbous lips. It could see, too, through its mouth, kept open at all times, though its sight was in no way like a mortal’s. And now it “saw” a darkness on the slopes below, and the darkness took on the shape of a tall and handsome man, black of hair and eyes, and swathed in a black cloak that made him seem winged, like an eagle.

  Never before had anything found Hate out, reached its citadel and stood looking at it. And Hate sensed in the figure below a powerful maleficence comparable to its own, yet imperceptibly different, a feast of evil Hate could neither feed on nor influence.

  Then Hate spoke. That is to say, it communicated. Its voice was a kind of odor, like cinders from a volcano, and the language it used was like an impulse, a twitching in the joints, nerves rasped unpleasantly, an ache that did not quite ache.

  “I came from a man’s brain,” said Hate. “That began me. Though I have forgotten him, his human vindictiveness was my father. But you are not a man. Why are you here? What do you want?”

  The figure on the slope, Azhrarn, did not answer, but instead began to climb towards the pinnacle above which the bulbous brown lips might be distinguished. He passed through one ring of dully shining cloud, then through a second. The pinnacle itself was a spike of raw grey rock. Here Azhrarn presently halted.

  “There is much wickedness in you,” said the lips of Hate, and they silkily slavered. “I would devour you if I could. Trade with me. Give me your wickedness, and you shall be
a Lord of the world through all her final and tumultuous days.”

  But Azhrarn seated himself on the pinnacle and said nothing.

  “You have slain many,” whispered the mouth of Hate greedily. “Slay others. I will give you a whole army to slay—they will rush at you screaming and their teeth will flash in the red moonlight, and you will stretch forth your arms and they will expire, and I shall be fed. Come, I will find you beautiful women and you shall cut their pearl flesh with a jeweled knife and find rubies under the skin. I know a vault where men have buried a beautiful boy alive; I will let you see him. His flesh is like alabaster and his hair like spilled white wine. To the north of the world a great many mountains have exploded in fire. The magma runs down like golden snakes upon the cities below. To the south, the seas are running over the land like silver dogs. Come, I will give you a sea and a mountain. Come.”

  Azhrarn said nothing, but he took a pipe of fine bronze from his sleeve, and he began to make music with it. When the music played, the clouds ringed about the mountains started to break up, and soon they changed to cloudy shapes that danced and embraced to the rhythm of the pipe. And the bare rock of the mountains hummed and trembled gently as if the bones of them were dancing too.

  The brown mouth of Hate was dry.

  “Do not treat me so,” said Hate. “There is no profit in this.”

  Then Azhrarn took a small silver box from his cloak, and out of it he sprinkled a spangled powder, and this gave a wonderfully sweet perfume.

  The brown mouth of Hate twisted.

  “Ah, do not do this,” it said, “these things are offensive to me. You are not tender by nature, for I believe you are a demon. Yes, I am assured you are a demon. Come, be a demon, be extravagantly cruel, and please me. I cannot hurt you. We should be comrades, you and I. For, in a far past, you planted the seed which began me.”