by Tanith Lee
She gazed at him, and she said, “How, then, are your kind begun?”
“By several means,” he said. “But among the Vazdru, it is a device of blood. My blood,” he said, “has mingled with yours. I lay one night upon you, and thereby fixed my image within you as surely as the seal-ring leaves its impression in wax. If I willed it now, but only if I willed it, you might carry my child, and bear my child. But if I leave the last sorcery unmade, what I have prepared in you remains dormant. It will neither harm nor benefit you. You will only know of it because I have told you it is so.”
“And do you tell me,” she said, “because you do not will that I bear your child?”
“I tell you that you yourself may decide whether or not you would carry and bring forth a procreation of mine. Let me inform you of the whole of the matter. The child will be female, for you are the mold in which she is cast, since you possess a womb, as mortal women do. But though she will resemble you, in herself she will be the feminine principle of Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, Night’s Master, one of the Lords of Darkness. And what I am, in great measure must she be. Consider this. For though you will render her your light, her genetic substance will be darkness. Can you house such an image in your body, Dunizel? And bring it forth? And rock the creature in your arms? I did not and do not choose you randomly for this act. But neither will I impose it on you.”
“Why,” she said, “would you father a child at this time?”
“To father also mischief in the world. And pain, no doubt, and misery.”
His face was cold and cruel.
“My beloved,” she said to him, “yon are mighty beyond mightiness. You must not listen to what fractious small men say of you, and believe it.”
“Do not,” he said, “anger me again. I would not wish to be angry with you.”
“I do not credit your wickedness,” she said. “You have millennia before you. It is the malice of your infancy on you now. Your infancy that is wiser than any wisdom of the earth. But you will come to other things. While they live, all trees must grow.”
“Be silent,” he said to her, and the flowing away of night seemed halted, foundered, and the shut wings of the flowers sizzled inaudibly, as if before lightning. And the grass beneath the feet of Azhrarn curled about itself, shrinking from him. Azhrarn lowered his eyes that were like black suns, to look at the grass that curled and shrank from him, and his lashes, that were long and straight like splinters of the night, hid the thought behind the eyes. As he watched the grass, or appeared to watch the grass, and as the air flickered in terror about him, he said to her, “You do not comprehend the stasis of immortality. Only men, who die, foretell their future.”
And perhaps, or perhaps not, she saw in him then, faint and far away, some glint of a curious fear. All creation, now and then, had feared Azhrarn. Why should he not, once in twenty centuries, fear himself?
And because she saw his fear, maybe, she went to him, and kneeled to him, as if it were she herself who was afraid. But in truth, if he had killed her in that instant, she could not have feared him; love had left her no room for fear.
Presently he raised her to her feet and held her before him.
“You have not told me,” he said, “if you consent.”
“I have told you,” she said. “You do not need to ask.”
“If the sun became the moon,” he said, “that is you.”
And then he spoke a phrase to the sky, in one of the magic tongues of Underearth, and the sky, already fading from darkness, paled further, but only in one place that seemed, from below, about the size and structure the round moon had been. And this loosened piece of the night fell slowly down toward the meadow, revolving a little as it came. Yet, as it fell, it grew neither larger nor smaller. Into Azhrarn’s outstretched palm it fell. It was no bigger than a plate, and of a thin, translucent blackness. The night, in itself, was not and could not be palpable—yet Azhrarn, by his sorcery, had somehow made it so. And now he fashioned it, deftly, delicately, until a figurine composed only of shadow stood in his hands. It had a female shape, a woman’s shape, full-grown and perfect, but all tiny as a doll.
He said no word to her, but as if inadvertently, Dunizel lifted her hands to take the shadow shape from his. As her fingers touched the shape, a soft light began to come from it. It was like moonlight, yet unlike. Like starlight, yet unlike. It was like the light of the Underearth itself, the subluminescence of Druhim Vanashta, city of Demons.
The figurine then enlarged. It soared to cover Dunizel from head to heel, next shimmering and drawing in, conforming to her every contour, her every bone and strand of hair. Even the lashes of her eyes it seemed to approximate. For a few seconds, Dunizel was held within a second skin, like black water. And then the water sank inwards, in through her flesh, and she in turn was the skin which held the shadow. And dimly, through her skin that was so diaphanously white, you almost saw the twilight glimmer of that shadow, like pale black fire behind alabaster.
In the east there was a blueish sheen, evoking that of a polished knife.
The meadow of flowers was empty.
In Bhelsheved, among the trees that overlooked the lake, night returned unexpectedly: Azhrarn. And Dunizel a star caught up in that night.
There were only minutes before dawn would slit the horizon with her gilded nails. Time enough, perhaps, to say some secretive, profound thing. Yet even as he and she evolved on the edge of the darkness, Azhrarn beheld another was before them, a figure which poised on the water of the lake itself. It seemed most like an insect, a mantis, possibly, compactly yet vaguely folded in the cloudy mauve vanes of its wing-like cloak.
Dunizel turned to gaze at this apparition, but Azhrarn guided her head against him, away from sight of the creature.
Yet he himself stared across the water straight at it, and now the wing-tissue cloak stirred a fraction, and a head was lifted, and half a face came visible in a cowl.
“Why, good morning, handsome un-brother,” called a melodious voice over the lake. “You are out late, are you not? The sun is almost up. Whatever can you be thinking of?”
“That need not concern you. For yourself, I assume it is Bhelsheved’s madness which has brought you here.”
“Hardly Bhelsheved’s madness. That is a dull item indeed. But there is something much more delectable.”
“Perhaps you are in error,” said Azhrarn. “Let me suggest that you are.”
Prince Madness, Delusion’s Master, laughed. It was a noise reminiscent of rusty pots scraped together. He shook out his damson cloak. He smiled, or that half of the face which was visible smiled, its eye downcast.
“Azhrarn the Beautiful,” said Chuz lovingly, “it is your beautiful madness I have come to see.”
Azhrarn, shielding Dunizel both by his body and by his magic from this visitation of Chuz—unaware, or unwilling to recall she had already met with him on a previous occasion—shot a blasting glare of cold rage at the insectile being balanced on the lake. The Lords of Darkness seldom, if ever, went to war with one another. Such a notion was alarming maybe even to themselves. The warlike games they played against each other, therefore, adhered to certain rules. What rule was here in operation is difficult to conjecture. Nevertheless, Chuz stayed in the lake and did not advance or unveil his double aspect. Nevertheless also, the eastern sky was warming, the sun burning through—Azhrarn’s limitations were more definite, and not of his own devising.
“Say what you want,” Azhrarn said to Chuz. He spoke contemptuously, politely. He gave no hint of his agitation, but it was self-evident. He could not face the sun. In a minute or less, he must abandon the girl—or take her with him underground, an act not without complexity, seeing she was adult and psychically unprepared for such a descent.
“I have said what I want,” said Chuz, “I am deliriously content.”
“This maiden is mine,” said Azhrarn. “You knew that?”
“Oh, trust me, my dear. I do indeed know. I have overheard your wh
isperings, I have watched you lying in each other’s arms, still as the blue-purple jewel in the tomb. The madness of love. I have been entertained, since I am partly responsible. I brought about Nemdur’s madness. His madness brought about Baybhelu. And Baybhelu brought about Bhelsheved. And Bhelsheved enticed you from the cellar. And now here you are, and here is a mortal woman who will bear you a daughter. A madness of extreme and magnificent proportions. Actually, un-brother,” said Chuz, swaying a little, like a poisonous water-plant over the lake, “I came to stand uncle to your unborn child. And to offer her a gift.”
In the east a gate began to open. Birds sang frenziedly in the trees—it might have been a cry of fright as much as of gladness. A freckle of palest yellow started in the lake—but it was only a fish, leaping.
“My lord,” Dunizel said to Azhrarn, “I do not fear him. He means me no ill, for once he told me so and was courteous to me. The sun is near. Leave me, I shall be safe.”
“He may be courteous,” said Azhrarn in an acid tone, “but he has two sides to him. What gift?” he inquired of Chuz off-handedly.
“What else but something dear to me? Let me approach,” wheedled Chuz, smiling and smiling over his writhing mauve reflection in the water.
“You,” said Azhrarn, “can render nothing I may not render. In certain lands, your title and mine are mingled. I too am a master of delusions.”
“And I,” said Chuz, sweetly, musically, “have sometimes been called, as you are called: The Beautiful. Though only by those who saw me from the right side.”
Suddenly he raised his left hand—black palm, red nails—and flung something over the water to the land. It fell with a brief bright sound at the feet of Dunizel. It was a single die, and seemed made of amethyst, strangely marked in black.
Azhrarn bent swiftly and took up this thing. No sooner had he taken hold of it than he hurled it back into the lake. But Chuz reached out and caught it just before it broke the water. Smiling still, he kissed the die Azhrarn had momentarily held.
“I have also,” said Chuz, “three drops of rare Vazdru ichor, hard as adamant, which I discovered among the dunes about Bhelsheved. They say these drops are the blood of Azhrarn. Do you remember the young man with the whip? Do you remember grasping the tongue of the whip and how the blood spilled? The price of telling parables is high. You will not be the last to find that out.”
Chuz turned suavely, and began to walk away over the lake, under the arched bridges which supported the temple. As he did so, a small horrid thing happened: scores of fish, brushed by insanity, flopped out upon the shore, convinced they might live in the air, and drowned in it at the margins of the colonnades and gardens.
As Chuz vanished, the east opened like a fan.
Azhrarn drew his black cloak over and about himself. Looking after Chuz, his eyes shone malevolently, but the foretaste of the sun, like fear of fire to one already burned, drove him down into the earth. He was storm, then smoke, and thereafter gone, without the space to say to her one commonplace word.
Dunizel stood alone. On her hand she found he had set, she did not know when, a ring of silver lit by a gray-green gem. On her wrist was a bracelet like a silver snake with eyes of sapphire, and from her ears hung silver filigrees that softly chimed to her as she moved—demon jewelry, Drin work, of surpassing fineness, and wondrous, too, in the unobtrusive manner of the giving.
But as the sun filled the east, in her womb Dunizel felt a slight but unmistakable twisting.
She wept then.
The sun made her tears golden. It combed her hair with gold. It clothed her and shone through her. She was perhaps even lovelier by daylight, and Azhrarn, save in some blurred mage-glass, could never see her as now she was.
Her tears ended quickly. She walked under the shade of the trees and the columns, mindful of what grew within her.
PART THREE
The Bitterness of Joy
CHAPTER 1
Seventeen Murderesses
It was winter in the desert. By day terrible winds blew back and forth, the shrunken sun was netted in sand. At night, rime armored inches thick along dunes. The reeds by the waters were brittle as green sugar. The palms took on a sulky iron hue. The trees in Bhelsheved had lost everything now, blossom, leaves and birds. The strewn dust grated over the mosaic tiles, before their tidal magics swept it away. The lake had a myopic look, like a beautiful eye which went blind. It was a harsh winter, dry, acrid, the old-age of seasons.
The priestly servants of Heaven walked dreamily about in the dust and frost, bound in their contemplation of the gods. They had been trained to ignore bodily discomfort, indeed to incorporate it as a part of their religious pleasure. With this tunnel vision of the senses they missed a lot. They almost missed the dire miracle which was occurring in their midst.
She had carried his child now into the seventh month. Truth to tell, she had not grown big, her supernatural pregnancy was barely obvious: she resembled, in that seventh month, a woman in the third month. Nor was there any heaviness to her, any laxity or sluggishness. Dunizel glided, her swan-white hair drifting about her. The bright shadow of Azhrarn’s child shone from within her—but none of them might have noticed. She did not speak. She moved as ever about the shrines. Some nights she wandered in the gardens of the holy city. Once or twice or three times, some priest, mooning in the twilight over the gods, glanced up and saw a black cloud rush from the sky on black wings. At midnight, certain of the groves seemed haunted by strange intensities, perfumes, and hints of melody. At noon, Dunizel walked in the shade. Where the winter sun fell in stingy bars, she turned aside. When alone, she did not seem alone. When she worshipped in company with many others, she seemed quite alone. But they did not really see. They were in love with heaven. What else could she be in love with? The watchful yet mindless sorceries of the place confirmed her a virgin still. Her celibacy, her innocence, her loveliness, were all unchanged, or enhanced.
They almost missed the marvel Dunizel had to show them.
Or maybe, such a marvel could not, by the laws of the miraculous, ultimately be missed.
One day, an hour after sunrise, there came a susurration, as if feet passed over the echo chambers beneath the desert roads leading to Bhelsheved. When the susurration ended, there came a furious knocking on the western gate, as if hands smote there.
It was not the time of year for any to visit, certainly not the time for any to be admitted. The priesthood gazed uncomprehendingly at each other, the rocking gate, the silent fanes. Soon they flitted away, paying no heed to the external uproar.
Voices began to cry on the far side of the gate, over the howl of the winds: “Let us come in. We demand judgment and justice. We demand an answer of heaven.”
To those priests who heard the cry, it must have seemed gibberish. Nothing was ever demanded of the gods.
The gates were not opened.
The knocking grew quiet.
Wind-driven skeletons of hag-like leaves hurried down the city walks after the priests.
Outside the walls of Bhelsheved, the crowd straggled, disconsolate and sullen, aside from the gate. There were in all some ninety-eight persons, and of these, seven were young women who walked or stood all together, and perforce, since each was roped to another by her left wrist. Their hair unbound, their eyes reddened from the winter winds, from lamenting and from rage, they murmured viciously to their neighbours, or to themselves.
The rest of the crowd conferred. Presently, as at times of festival, they drew off and pitched a haphazard campment a hundred paces from Bhelsheved’s walls.
Later in the day, another crowd appeared, from the south. Its aspect was not dissimilar. Three girls were roped in its midst. Seeing the first crowd, the second crowd joined it. Voices again were raised, but now no one knocked at the gate.
In the height of the afternoon, two other bands arrived.
All told, there were now four hundred people bivouacked outside the city, and seventeen were young women in group
s of seven, four, three and three, every one roped by the wrist.
It was a fact, it had been agreed to meet at this place on this day. Messengers had gone about through the lands. The burden of the message, in every case, had been this: That particular maidens, on their wedding night, had slain their bridegrooms. Some by use of a knife, or a botched-up nasty poison, most by the application of a long-stemmed hairpin driven through the skull at the doorway of an eye. And these murderesses, standing over their husbands’ corpses, had violently proclaimed that the gods of Bhelsheved had told them to do it. That one of the gods himself had instructed them, promising that, as a reward for their faith, he would take them to wife instead. But the god had apparently not kept his promise. “It is your fault!” wailed the murderess-maidens, waving their bloodied weapons or their poison-vials at fathers, fathers-in-law, wedding guests. “You have interrupted. You have spoiled everything.”
There was already a strange, gray doubt about the gods. About their care and their validity. Also an obscured and tantalizing dream, a shadowy magnificence, which had promised something to each and all—but this, as yet, was not discussed.
Some story had long ago circulated about a maiden in one of the villages who had refused marriage, and being wed, obstructed consummation, and that the gods had recognized her; Dunizel’s history, somewhat tarnished. The outraged and horrified kindred of the murdering brides did not, therefore, seek temporal justice. They roped up their daughters, nieces, sisters, and drove them back to the holy city like little herds of goats for sacrifice. Even those whose sons and brothers had been killed at the slim fair hands of these women, made no complaint, simply prowled behind the new procession, their eyes narrowed against grit and hatred alike.
But the women were proud, stepping proudly, shaking their unbound hair.