Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth)

by Tanith Lee

  She had always been obedient, and gentle. She had always been loving, attentive and calm. She had been strong, too, and oddly knowing, but they had missed that, confusing one thing with another. Yet now she said to them, softly, carefully, “I do not desire to marry. My answer to each and every one is ‘no.’”

  Dumbfounded, the father. He was not a stern man, but anger began to brew in him. When he could not get another answer from her, he commenced to rant and rave. “You must,” he said, “You shall.” But, “No,” she said, in a voice like a water drop falling on a stone, the same drop splashing minute by minute, year by year. “I will give you ‘no’!” quoth he, and he shut her in the house and would not let her out. He made her sit among the clay pots by the hearth. And when she still said “no” to him, he let the woman give her only bread to eat, and water to drink. He became unlike himself, for he could not understand. His wife wept nervously, and begged her daughter to see reason. Sunlight stole through the door and touched the girl on the foot, the ankle, the wrist, and said: Say yes, and be at liberty, and we will play together. Or the scent of flowers entered and said: Say yes, and be at liberty, and I will garland you. Or birds sang to the girl, and their song said: Each of us is mated, and joyful in the mating. Say yes, say yes. But still she said “no.’”

  After a week, the father came to his senses. He walked into the house, and lifted his daughter in his arms. He put an orange into one of her hands, and a mug of wine into the other.

  “I have been stupid,” he said, “not to respect a young girl’s temerity. You must forgive me.” Then he slipped a thick gold ring on to her thumb. “I should not have left you to choose. I have realized my error and chosen for you. Here is the vow-ring of the landowner’s son. In a month, you will go with him before the elder, and be wed.”

  Then he paused, observing his daughter as if he anticipated some tantrum or other. But she only raised her turquoise eyes, and looked full at him, a look without reproach or hysteria.

  “You believe,” she said, “that you have acted for the best. I regret you have not.”

  At her absolute authority, at the color of her eyes, the anger in the reed-cutter ignited. He flung up his fist to strike her across the head, but his wife caught his fist and hung on it.

  “Only think,” she cried, “how it would look. Our girl unveiled at her wedding, with a gold ring round her finger and a black ring round her eye!”

  She could not know her curious birth, this moonflame of a girl. How could she? Who had there been to tell her of it, once she was old enough to reason? And surely she did not know, for the stars did not call to her, or the sun, as these cosmic things had called to her true mother. She had lived among men, had the Comet’s child, grown among them. She had never protested or eschewed her fortune. Until now, she had never refused a single proper thing.

  What then motivated her? Some secret intuitive grasp of her nature? She was the flower within the crystal. Of what were her mind and spirit fashioned?

  It is perhaps a fact, that to the truly good, life, and the ways of men, and goodness itself, are very simple things. What to others appeared as her virtuousness, was to her merely her state of being. She did not set out to be good. She was good naturally, as another breathed. Hate and bitterness and envy and despair, those four envenomed serpents gnawing the livers of mankind, could not get in at her. But to herself she was nothing special; only herself to herself. And her sense of unexplained waiting, which was total, of inexplicable purpose, which was utter, these were as much a part of her as all else. She did not protest to the reed-cutter, though she never once agreed with his plan. Nor did she protest to the women who came to make her wedding garments, or to the neighbors who brought her gifts. When one or two of the young men who had lost out on the bargain hung about the house with wild looks, she went to them, and, as in the past, was able, curiously and obliquely, to console them. And when the landowner’s son arrived, his handsome face pale with romance, she was courteous to him, nor did she refuse his token kiss. Only when he swaggered and said to her: “I think you will not mourn, being wed to me. You wish it too,” did she quietly reply, “I do not wish it.”

  At this a small scene ensued. The reed-cutter pacified the prospective bridegroom. The prospective bridegroom’s haughty servant was heard to remark that the landowner did not wish the marriage, either, and had only given in for fear the young man would otherwise slay himself.

  When the guests were gone, the reed-cutter stormed about the countryside, convinced he would beat his daughter if he remained indoors.

  But, unimpeded, the day of the wedding presented itself.

  The women came with songs and flowers, and escorted the girl to the elder’s house. And here, clad in her embroidered raiment, she was married to the landowner’s son, who then lifted her veil and tore it in two pieces, as a symbol of the breaking of her maidenhead.

  In a carriage drawn by dove-white mares, the bride and groom were carried to the landowner’s estate, and here, with all the village, they feasted, amid the tamarisk trees, the olives and the tame peacocks.

  Afternoon expired, the sun politely took its leave, and dusk wandered reluctantly after. But the eating and drinking and dancing went on, and soon the stars came out to see. They missed the bride, for she had just gone in, led by her new attendants, who took her to a chamber lit with scented lamps and hung with silken drapes. Here they unclothed her, perfuming her as the lamps were perfumed, dressing her in draperies of silk as the bed and the walls were dressed. And as they did this, so the handmaidens marveled aloud at her extreme pulchritude, for it was etiquette to do so. Thus, so intent were they on the protocol of these compliments, that they missed the evidence that everything they said was correct. She was indeed slender and supple as a lotus stem, her breasts, truly, were like the bells of honeyflowers. Her loins and her limbs were, for sure, a delight to eye and hand and every sense; her hair a fountain of starshine, her eyes like the holy lake of Bhelsheved. For once, all they said was no more than factual, but the women scarcely noticed. If you had asked them afterwards, was the girl fair, they would have answered: “Pretty enough.” Yet she was like the new moon gleaming upon the sea. She was like the morning of the morning.

  It was possibly this look of her, burning softly through her robe of silk, the glistering fall of her hair, that checked the young man when he came in to her. He was hot with drink and desire, yet maybe he was not entirely certain, either.

  “My father at last agrees,” he announced, however, “your lack of dowry is amply compensated by your loveliness.”

  Then he went to her, and embraced her. He did this with artistry. Love was an occupation in which he was well-versed, and he had learned the trade diligently. He caressed and kissed his bride, seeking out in her those responses to which he had become accustomed. But gradually there stole in on him one awesome new knowledge.

  It was not that she was cold to him, for she was now, as in all else, tender and gentle. But she neither fired at his touch nor shrank in timidity. She seemed cognisant of all he could do, yet indifferent, or rather, removed from it. It was the crystal shell he made love to, then, not the flower. He could not come at her. Finding this, a terrific fury might have overtaken him. He might have forced her, lust not to be denied. But he felt no fury, and soon he felt no lust. The urge sank, and slept within him, and he was neither discomforted nor distressed. He found himself to be only puzzled.

  “Is this some spell you weave?” he said at length. “A spell to make me impotent?” But he did not really believe such a thing, had suffered no foreboding.

  “Your manhood is assured with others,” she said. “But I am not for you, nor for any man, I think.”

  At this he paled, and he whispered, “Is it the gods themselves who have kept you from this?”

  “I do not know.”

  Then he sat a long tune drinking wine, and finally he laughed and told her they were foolish, and he would lie with her after all. She stretched out wi
th him, without demur, but things went as before, painlessly and nonproductively. And even now the impulse to rape or wrath or fear did not enter the young man’s head, though a deep sadness came into his heart.

  Eventually he fell asleep in her arms, which were a virgin’s still, and that was their wedding night.

  In the morning he was ashamed, but she reasoned with him with great care, untangling the strands of his anxiety till his self-esteem was in order again.

  When at last the rich father came in to congratulate and tease them, and the women to mark the evidence of the wedding sheet, (or, if necessary, to falsify the drops of initial blood), they discovered the couple composedly seated at a board game.

  Disconcerted, but seeing his son to be the tutor, the girl the pupil, in this activity, the father assumed that here was a cypher for the night’s love-ritual.

  “And does your wife take your instruction well, my son?”

  The young man raised his sad, calm face and answered: “Alas, she is not my wife. Nor may she be.”

  The women had by now discovered the pristine bed, empty of all proper stainings of any sort, and stood about twisting their hands.

  “Is there some impediment?” the father demanded, although, looking at the girl, he could fathom none—only some horrible concealed thing could be the cause. But again his son spoke softly to him.

  “The impediment is the will of the gods. It is they who will have her. She can belong to no other than heaven.”

  The altercation which then broke out is easy to imagine and repetitious to set down, since it was thereafter repeated both in the house of the village’s elder, and in the houses of most of the villagers, especially the home of the reed-cutter. Nor did this occur one or two times, but many. The landowner’s son, a young man of great character, stood beside his wife through all these displays of amazement and abuse, himself receiving, on the whole, more insult than she, and that of a very obvious nature. But he did not shift from his assertion that not he, but the gods, must have her. After some months of celibacy and debate, he began to be credited.

  Now every twenty years, or thereabouts, certain elders of certain of the villages, and rich men, and others in positions of authority, would be drawn by lot. And they would make a journey through all the lands that held Bhelsheved as their religious center, and they would select from the children, and very occasionally from the youths and maidens, those that they thought fit to serve the gods in the white moon city in the desert. These young persons were then conducted to a separate establishment quite close to Bhelsheved. Here they were subjected to tests and particular trials, to determine which of them the gods preferred. Some consequently returned home, having been judged unworthy. Some remained and became the gracious and unworldly priesthood of the holy city.

  The season for such another choosing was yet six or seven years off, but the problem of the reed-cutter’s daughter gave evidence that a unique case had arisen. As anger and argument fell away, some new format was required to take their place. Religion flooded like water into a hollow. Then, at last, they looked at the girl with fresh eyes, and saw her, with astonishment, for the first time. How glowingly pale she was, how silver her hair, and such a lake-blue gaze... Yes, in her form, she was fashioned for Bhelsheved.

  Important men visited the village. An air of self-importance visited the village in their wake. Even the reed-cutter began to smile again. One pride was to be salvaged by another. Anyone’s daughter could make a decent marriage. But to be chosen by the gods themselves... Had he not always expressed doubts about her wedding, even shutting her in the house to make sure she considered properly whether she really wanted to wed?

  She was examined, Moonflame Soveh, who was no longer known by such names. She was questioned. She had stayed serene through all the trouble, and serene she still was as cold-eyed women probed her body to ascertain its chastity, as frowning officious men probed her brain for promiscuity of thought, promiscuity sexual or intellectual, for evil meditation, or one solitary impure dream.

  But she was like a flower to these also. Turned inside out, she was wholesome, delicious, and much more. For as their interrogation went on, they found they could not scathe her, or smear her, even by their words. So, and only so, they perceived she was within the crystal. And they interpreted that crystal as a thing of holy device, a glass jar the gods had put her in, and which they had stoppered by divine will.

  The village wept when she was borne away to the desert, to the penultimate building a mile from the gates of Bhelsheved. But as they wept, they rejoiced in her. Her father rejoiced. Her mother. Those who had loved her as children and as adults. All of them. All save the landowner’s son, who did not weep or rejoice. He lay instead with a girl, real, imperfect and marvelous as a rose, lay with her in love amid the pastel shade of the olive trees. And only when their bliss was achieved and ended, did he experience, once more, that empty cell within his heart, no larger than a drop of rain, or a single tear. Such a small emptiness. Such a tiny room in the palace of his emotions and his appetites. It would never again cause him any great grief. And never, never would it be filled.

  The place of testing and preparation, one mile from Bhelsheved. It was none other than that earlier tower of Sheve, Jasrin’s tower, where she had played with the bone of her child; where Chuz, Prince Madness, that master of delusion and dismay, had come to call. But centuries had gone by. The old tower was bolstered by new brickwork, and by a cluster of courts and attendant buildings. The pool, where a torch had burned under the water, was now rimmed by a cistern, and partly veiled by twining plants. The palms were taller, though one had died and its great trunk had been made into a wooden column which stood at the centre of the interviewing chamber.

  Seated or kneeling, or on her feet, in company, or alone, the village girl, whose name had once been Soveh, endured many ordeals, verbal, and of the spirit, beneath this column.

  But sometimes she must go elsewhere. To be shut up in isolation for many hours or days, or in a room where venomous snakes, golden and green, slid up and down, or within a wall of mirrors where she might see nothing but herself, or inside walls of darkness where she might see nothing at all. At such tests, one other always attended, hidden but in earshot. Whoever underwent such a test and could not bear it had only to cry aloud three times to be set free. But after these compassionate freedoms came the kindest of all dismissals. Priests must be of stronger stuff. Or, of stranger stuff. For none of these tests were to gauge force or physical power, but the inner wells, the elasticity of psychic things. For the testing asked, in substance: Who can make equilibrium in himself, from dreams and faith alone? With this in mind, all the trials were just, and accurate.

  And the girl endured. Did not even endure, as such. Strangeness seemed as natural to her as normalcy had been; perhaps more natural. She approached nothing with trepidation. Even certain ordeals that had to do with elements of pain—such as fasting in the guise of starvation—she showed no aversion to. She went to meet each thing alertly, without hesitation, her eyes wide, her heart open.

  The final stages of the testing were the most obscure. They had to do with perception and sensitivity. For example, an apple might be brought and set down before the novice. “What do you see?” would be the question. Some would study the apple and reply: “This is life. Food in the flesh of it, future food in its pips, which may be planted in the ground.” Or some would say: “Here is the emblem of a man—the skin—the flesh; the seeds—which in man are the seeds of his soul.” The girl took the apple and she smiled. She threw it in the air and caught it in her hands. Surprising her earnest questioners into consternation, she lightly said, “Like a ball that children play with.” Surprising her questioners into profound silence, she said, “Round, as one day the world may be, which now is flat.”

  Late in the day, they took her to the roof of the tower. They left her by the parapet: “Keep vigil until the dark has come.”

  The desert was softer in that era
than it had been long ago. The day faded behind leaves and fronds, and the air turned to a sea of blue. Clusters of stars appeared. In the dusk, the girl heard faint music below her, and a woman’s voice murmured, “Soon he will return to me.” It was the voice of Jasrin, out of time, which was heard.

  The girl was not alarmed—never so. All her life, she had been aware of supernatural essences about her. That she now beheld and heard them more clearly, fined by her training in that place, was inevitable.

  Turning, she saw, against the sequined sea-sky, a black woman, young, slender and beautiful, and with her a woman with pale skin and yellow hair. The girl would have recognized them, from the stories, as the two queens of Nemdur. But she knew them also by that infallible recognition which attended a mystic sight. The two women spoke together softly, and walked about the roof. The girl did not catch their words, (or conceivably the language of the area was greatly altered), and when they came to her, they walked through her. She felt their passage like a low summer breeze blowing between her bones and across her blood.

  Not all persons left on the roof witnessed the dark woman and the pale pass by. Only the most responsive did so, and this was all they saw, this brief scene, for some reason indelibly impressed upon the bricks and the aura of the tower—possibly because it was a scene of harmony, out of all those scenes the tower had been party to, of suffering and insanity, of evil and lament. As one happy day will stand out in the memory of a year of sadness.

  But after the ghost women had gone away, the girl who was the comet’s child saw a third figure come walking across the roof.

  To be sure, she did not see him well. There was, in the purpling intensity of the twilight, something cloudy about him. His purple cloak, also, blended with the rising water of night, and curious scintillants on the cloak might have been confused with far, dull stars.

  She did not know this apparition, not even from legend, for hereabouts legends of such as he had grown corrupt and unrepresentative—as Azhrarn himself would learn. Yet, not knowing, still she knew, and at once she lowered her head and shielded her eyes.