by Tanith Lee
All day, Nemdur watched them climbing toward him, and as the sun set, a low river of flame to the west, the second queen of Sheve was carried into the upper sky.
The stars came out like splashes of quicksilver. The evening wind soared over Baybhelu and the darkness bloomed grape-black, and the moon commenced to rise.
The Queen of Sheve stood very still to watch the moon, and she was not alone. The soldiers and the beasts on the tier below were transfixed in a strange silence. Nemdur’s court hushed and pointed. A little bell flickered in the silence somewhere, a woman’s anklet or the bridle of a horse; only these things were heard. Aloft, the hopeless slaves craned from their ominous skeleton of scaffolding, and the white radiance of the rising disc limned their gaunt bodies even as it limned the troughs of bricks, the struts of bones. All now in utter soundlessness.
And then a sound began. It was like smoke and lifted like smoke. It was the voice of Nemdur’s dark and second weeping queen. It curled into the sky, dark as she, dark as the sky, the voice of her sorrow and her beseeching.
“O moon who governs the tides of the sea, the tides of the wombs of women, the tides of the brain’s madness, carry my message with you to the door of the gods. By your pallor I swear I fear them, and by your brilliance I plead for their clemency. Take away madness from the Lord of Sheve. My soul bows down and my heart sinks upon its knees, and my mind humbles itself. My blood is water and my flesh is dust.”
“What does she say?” Nemdur demanded of one of his sorcerers.
“My lord, I do not understand you,” gasped the sorcerer.
And Nemdur reviled the man for speaking in a foreign tongue.
And then the moon brimmed over the improbable length of Baybhelu and the feather of the gods’ Will brushed it.
Recall then that terrible law—the lowly shall be exalted, the ambitious shall be cast down. Conjure the last vision of Baybhelu, for now it passes away.
The Tower was so tall, truly it had at no time any warranty to stand. Maybe all that had kept the Tower upright indeed had been the frantic aspiration of Nemdur, the Tower being the channel into which he had poured all his strengths, those energies of life, of sex, of power.
Now, quite suddenly, the whole edifice vibrated, as if it were a string stretched taut between heaven and earth, that had been elusively plucked by a master’s hand.
The vibration was gentle, harmonious, soaking through the core of the Tower, until it reached the ground. There it became a deep sullen rumble. The rumble flowed into the arteries of the desert. And then the earth shook.
The earth shook itself like an animal on whose back a predator has lodged. It spasmed, curvetted, tossed and writhed, to throw that malignity from its shoulders. Enormous fissures cracked and gaped. The sands spouted like jets of water or steam into the throbbing air. Then the noise of tearing cloth, the fabric of the Tower’s foundations dividing. The cracks in the ground ran on and up the framework of the lowermost tier. Its bricks shot out, the joints and bars of palm wood arched themselves like bows and fired off splinters at the stars.
Abruptly that whole tremendous base glided apart from itself. Away into the dark on every side the huge walls rushed as if on wheels, and into the chasm thus provided, falling like an inward-gushing fountain, cascaded Baybhelu.
On the upper three tiers, the stable, the court, the tier as yet unfinished, the ultimate madness fastened. Beasts, swept into the moment of panic, flung themselves forward and leapt into space. The scaffolding of the slaves utterly collapsed, hurling its human cargo to the levels below. The cracks which spread like a tide from step to step, from tier to tier, were all at once negated when the central floors of each terrace began to give. Partly hollow, even as it gushed down the Tower dropped inwards upon itself, yet casting as it did so its outer skin away in bricks, in mortar, in screaming whirling figures, flying hair and limbs.
Such a dew then was sprinkled upon the desert, and far and wide, over the night-waste, the shuttered city, twenty villages. Into courtyards as among the dunes, into the cradles of trees, upon the killing beds of roofs, through apertures, into wells and dry canals, across the air like shooting stars, all over the board of the night. Bricks, bodies, jeweled ornaments; flowers from the hanging garden spun like a bridal offering. Broken swords, vessels of religion and magic, horses affixed to chariots, a woman’s hand with a bangle sparkling on its wrist, a parchment which read: I, Nemdur of Sheve, shall conquer the gods. Who now shall unremember the name of Nemdur?
For sure, his name would be remembered, and used—to frighten children with and warn them from the dangerous path of pride.
When the thunder and the crying ended, the silence came again, snowing down in huge soft flakes upon the wounded land.
Nemdur was dead, buried by flesh and clay and stones and bones. They were all dead, all but one, Nemdur’s dark queen who had abased herself before the gods. But it is doubtful whether the gods, impartial and vaguely, almost absentmindedly ruthless as they had revealed themselves, would have reacted to her supplication, or saved her because of it.
As the Tower fell, and Nemdur’s second wife fell with it, an eagle came flying straight into the turmoil and bore her away with it to the west. Now there were eagles in plenty in that region, circling the Tower by day. Perhaps this eagle spied the jewels of the Queen of Sheve, the rubies, the golden crescent, flashing on her somberness. Then again, she was lovely, most lovely, and it is said that as she was, so the eagle was: black. And for amusement, sometimes, there was one who would take on him the shape of a black eagle. Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, one of the Lords of Darkness.
Whether or not it was he is unknown. The selective rescue, certainly, was more like the prank of an Eshva, the unspeaking, dreaming, lesser demons, servants of the Vazdru—of which Vazdru Azhrarn was one. Nevertheless, someone or thing bore the black woman to safety, or to a kind of safety.
Near midnight, stumbling alone and dazed across the sand, and occasionally over terrible debris loosed on the sand, Nemdur’s second wife came to an oasis whose palm trees were yet standing, and in the middle of them, a yet-standing tower. It was the prison of mad Jasrin she had reached.
However, no one any longer guarded the door. Since Prince Madness had entered the walls, there had been bizarre events. A weird mooning love affair had occurred between the captain of the guard and Jasrin’s girl attendant. The elder attendant had browbeaten four of the guard and they had grown like babies, sniveling when she berated them, cavorting idiotically to please her. The sixth guard had perished by drowning in the pool. After staring interminably at a torch which, though lying under the water, continued to burn, he declared: “If a torch may burn under water, may I not live under it, as the sea people do?” At which he jumped in and stretched himself on the bottom and breathed the water and died. After this, the pool being fouled, the inhabitants of the tower had been able to drink only wine, which had sent them madder than they were to begin with.
At the awful thunder of falling Baybhelu eight miles away, and the hail of ghastly remnants which followed, the five guards and the two attendants fled into the desert uttering an extraordinary clamor.
The insane former Queen of Sheve, Jasrin, who by that time was the least insane of all the persons in the stone tower, remained companionless in her chamber, dumbfounded with fear.
When she heard a step upon the stair, a distorted ghostly memory of a blond prince or a rust-haired devil stole over her. Her fear took another direction at the thought, but she was unsure whether to defend herself or to plead his friendship. Altogether her memory was unreliable. She had almost forgotten her husband since Chuz had promised her Nemdur’s destruction. Possibly she had not wished to suffer further guilt. Most definitely she did not rock a bone anymore in her arms. She had become for herself a woman with misery in her past, but all amorphous, nameless. She had never wed, never been delivered of a child, never conspired with a Lord of Darkness.
In much the same way, Nemdur’s second wif
e had also erased the shock and horror of the collapse of Baybhelu. Something had happened in the desert—what? A sharp pain in her soul warned her not to search it out. The vile objects which lay about the desert she avoided with feet and eye and reverie. The flight of the eagle had faded to a rushing of stars. If Azhrarn had taken her or consoled her or done with her anything at all, he had removed her knowledge of the event.
So she entered the stone tower, climbed the stairs, because, after Baybhelu, climbing up stairs had become the most normal of activities to her, and found Jasrin in her chamber.
Both were startled, both exclaimed. Nemdur had inconvenienced them both in greater or slighter ways. They were, in a curious fashion, bound. And in their abject state, mortal restraint dismissed, they presently ran together and sadly comforted each other. In that embrace, their tears mingling, one who had been sane lost a fraction of sanity’s burden, one who had been a maniac grew calm.
That blending, more than duty accomplished, drove punctilious Prince Chuz from the vandalized kingdom of Sheve.
But just as Chuz, one of the Lords of Darkness, was departing from that place into whatever incomprehensible place he meant to go, he met another in the midnight desert. And by the moon’s cool torch, Chuz perceived that other to be also a Lord, one of his un-kindred.
Uhlume, Lord Death, Chuz might have anticipated, but not necessarily Azhrarn.
Neither was Azhrarn solitary. Behind him, ranged on the dark powder of the sand, were some of the princes of the demon Vazdru. The moon lit perfectly their pale and marvelous faces, the black-burning coals of their hair and eyes. They rode, as frequently, on the macabre elegant horses of the Underearth, of Druhim Vanashta, black horses with manes and tails like clear blue gas, and everything, of horse and rider, aclink and aglitter with gems and silver. These were demons, artisans of wickedness, yet they held their handsome features a touch aslant from Chuz, Prince Madness. They were being careful, even they, how they glanced at him, lest they see more than they desired. But as they did it, they pretended they had other reasons for the angle of their heads and eyes, toying with their rings, petting their steeds, perusing the sky. For these were demons whose pride was such that mortal pride beside it was like a blade of grass beside a cedar tree.
Only Azhrarn himself, Prince of the princes, looked directly at the hooded blond half-face of Chuz, directly in the uncanny single eye. Azhrarn the Beautiful (and beautiful he was, beautiful being a poor description) was one of the few who dared outstare Chuz; and come to that, Chuz was one of the few who dared outstare Azhrarn. Their stares were, nevertheless, wary, contemptuous, interested and enigmatic. So Lords of Darkness responded to one another. Somewhat attracted to, rather offended by, each other’s existence.
Presently, Azhrarn the Beautiful (beautiful being a poor description, but the wondrous words of the flat, four-cornered earth, that did him, even so, the barest justice, are no more), presently Azhrarn spoke. He spoke in a voice that lay like dark music on the air. Chuz smiled, mouth courteously closed in Azhrarn’s presence, at the sound of it. Probably Chuz was learning the voice by ear, in order to add it to his other sweeter vocalisms.
“This desert,” said Azhrarn, “is strewn with dead. Your doing, un-brother?”
“Yes,” said Chuz, in his nicest current voice, be it admitted, nearly as fair as Azhrarn’s. “And no.”
“But if no, then what are you doing here, un-brother?” inquired Azhrarn, with a display of most chillingly ironic ingenuousness.
“I might ask the same,” murmured Chuz, Prince Madness.
Now Azhrarn, and all demonkind, came often to earth by night. But what had drawn them to that exact spot and in that exact hour, could only have been Baybhelu. Maybe the odor of the Tower’s peculiarity had enticed them for a long while, and maybe they had been regularly in the vicinity, intrigued and titillated, as ever, by the self-destructiveness of men. Watch and proximity might support the idea of the black eagle who had rescued Nemdur’s second wife. On the other hand, the eagle could have been coincidence or a phantasm of another type. It is conceivable the demons had not involved themselves in the Tower of Baybhelu until this very night, had not even learned of it, their genius concerned with unrelated evils. It might be that they had only come up here from Underearth now in the investigating manner of tenants in the basement who had heard a prodigious bang on the floor above.
“My business is my own,” said Azhrarn. “Yours seems somewhat broadcast.” And he nodded to a bloodstained brick not two paces from his horse’s silver hooves.
Chuz tossed his dice, and caught them. They were gray by this moonlight.
“Madness called me. Madness I brought. Men wished to invade the apartments of the gods. The gods threw them down.”
“The gods?” said Azhrarn. A couple of the Vazdru spat upon the sand, and the sand shone like fire for a second where they had spit. “The gods are stale.”
“Stale or not, the story of this night will linger. You shall see new altars raised and new temples built and much reverence offered in panic to the stale gods, after this night. Shall you be jealous, un-brother Azhrarn?”
“What is a mortal century to our Lord of Lords?” called out one of the Vazdru scornfully, but still not quite looking at Chuz. “In the blink of a long-lashed eye in Druhim Vanashta, that century is gone.”
“In a century,” said Chuz, “humanity may forget—many things.”
“What is keeping you, Chuz?” said Azhrarn. “You must be irked, being from home so long. I will not detain you further.”
“Nor will you dismiss me,” said Chuz. “Even you, my dear, have had, or will have, a taste or two of me.”
Then Chuz vanished.
The Vazdru maintained a distraught quietness, awaiting, disturbed, their Lord’s reaction. But after a little, Azhrarn said softly: “The stink of madness is unsubtle here. Let us be going.”
And like a stormy dream, the Vazdru also disappeared, leaving the desert empty, but not empty enough, under the cruel moon, forever above and never below the scope of men.
PART ONE
The Souring of the Fruit
CHAPTER 1
Storytellers
There was strong music in the sky: the music of sunset. In the west, a wall of clear red amber through which the sun went blazing down. The remainder of the sky was smoky rose, a color like a perfume—musk. The earth had given up its tinctures. Heights and depths and long dunes were melting into the air. But there was another music on the earth, a music of drums, tabors, bells and pipes, a music of voices and shouts, the churn of wheels and the stamp of feet. And presently, too, as the limitless lamp of the sky burned low, the small yellow lamps burned up on the plains beneath, a swarm of fireflies, all moving, and all one way. The music of the setting sun and the music of men flowed together into the west.
“Where are you going?” they had asked on the broad roads, the slender tracks, at the gates of oases and by village fences. “Where are you going with so much song?” And the answer was returned with the song: “We are going to Bhelsheved, to worship the gods!”
And the question, being as much a tradition as the answer, was the signal in the places by the way. The people here put aside their buying and selling, their husbandry, their toil, gave over their quarrelling and their deeds of love, and followed the procession, adding to it their own music, with the flames of new lamps in their hands. On this route alone, seven thousand went dancing, to the beat of drums, over the desert to mystical Bhelsheved.
When the sun was gone, the seven thousand halted, though the sound of their music intermittently continued. To such an accompaniment, a sprawling campment was made, and fires were kindled, scattering the sands, as if droplets had rained from the falling sun. The scents of roasting meat and baking bread rose with the melodies and the lights. But there was scarcely any order in that camp, and scarcely any watch was kept. What need? Religious fervor was the motivation of this people who danced across the desert. The cold of the night
could not harm them, nor the predatory roaming of wild beasts. No thieves or villains of any sort could linger in such a company. No hint of deceit or wickedness.
And the sky faded, became a pale glimmering blue, like the ashes of a flower. The stars appeared from behind the sky. And from the desert, a man, tall and slim, came walking like a panther among the tents and fires.
A girl was kneeling in the pool of the dusk, feeding three or four black sheep. She raised her head, and looked after the man as he passed. When her tan-haired sister came from the tent, the girl pointed. “See, Zharet, he is here again.”
“Indeed, one cannot mistake him, even from the back,” said the second girl, and her eyes shone like still flames. “He walks like a king.”
“But he has no servant with him, and no guard.”
“Perhaps he has no need of them, being his own state.”
“But who,” whispered the first girl, “has ever seen him pass among us by day?” Tan-haired Zharet thought, I should be happy enough to see him by night. She was to be married to a cousin she had scarcely met. She pictured the stranger as her bridegroom, and closed her eyes.
But by now, the stranger, in his inky cloak, had disappeared from their view, though others saw him, looked at him, whispered similarly, dreamily:
“Who is he?”
“Who has seen him under the sun?”
“I saw him by moonlight.”
“Was he a ghost, or a spirit?”
“Only if they are very handsome, for he is so.”
Others were less pensive.
“There goes that dark one. On such a journey as ours, there should be no malcontents, but he is bent on mischief, I believe.”