by Tanith Lee
Each supposed she was the chosen of the god, her fellow murderesses mistaken. But still each had sympathy for her fellows, understanding the motivation of a deed which she, too, (the positively chosen), had acted out.
Exalted and venomous, the seventeen murderesses stood among the leafless groves outside Bhelsheved, and the crowd of their accusers, unable to get a divine answer, muttered, at a loss. Their discontent swelled, and was not only connected to the closed western gate.
None of them had ever seen the area at this season. Early summer was the time of pilgrimage; during the winter they kept at home. Now they perceived Bhelsheved in its nakedness, pallor frigid, gardens bare, sand like mummy-dust, creeping along the walls. It is not always pleasing to peer behind the facade of things.
The night came on in heavy, darkening breaths, and the biting, snapping cold of the frost descended. The moon appeared and gazed down at them from blue eye-sockets, until the very fires they lit seemed cold. Flames and faith withered together. They held council where once they had feasted.
“We shall get no help from Bhelsheved. We must decide this matter ourselves.”
“For sure, the gods would have spoken by now—if truly they had ordered our daughters to do such terrible things.”
“Your daughters are wild cats. I have a dead son to prove it. Your daughters must be punished. Here and now. We need no gods to tell us how to tie a cord to a tree.”
“The gods are, in any event, obviously indifferent. They do not wish to be bothered with us.”
There were tears shed, wringing of hands, some altercation and many oaths. A few exchanged blows. Eventually, the decision, taken by some with fierce approval, by others with despairing regret. At first light, the seventeen maidens should be strung from the trees a hundred paces from the city, and hanged until dead. And that this might be a kind of profanation of a holy spot either did not suggest itself to them, or else it brought them bitter satisfaction.
The murderesses, crouching now by their own meager fire, still tethered, lifted their heads as fire-eyed men strode up to them.
A girl with tan hair brighter than the flames, stared boldly back into the unloving stare of her slain husband’s father.
“Well, now,” said she, “what news?”
“Good news, Zharet,” he said at once. “You are to die at sunrise.”
Sixteen girls began to sob and bemoan their destiny.
Tan-haired Zharet smiled like a wolf.
“Kill us, and be accursed. Though I alone was chosen of the god, these others acted in the belief of his favor, and he will revenge us all upon you.”
“You demented slut,” cried the man, “you have gone mad with your filthy dreams. I see you now as I saw you last, your fingers painted with the blood of my son. And tomorrow I will see you dance from a tree.”
Then she sprang up, and she shouted at him: “I will dance in paradise when you squirm and shriek on the blades of fiends.”
At which he struck her, and as she lay on the ground she said to him, “And for that, the god will shear off both your hands.”
The men turned and walked away. Their steps were quickened, as if they wished to run.
In the midst of the night, as the moon went down in the bare trees, Zharet woke because someone gently combed her hair.
The sensation was soothing, and at first she did not question it. But then she felt again the bruise of her father-in-law’s fist. She remembered what she had done and what was to be done to her, and that none were likely to comb her hair. She started up.
“Hush, beloved,” said a caressing voice. “It is only I.”
Zharet’s eyes widened, for an ass’s jawbones rested by her face, cheek to cheek with her, and it seemed they had spoken. Then she turned a little, and saw Chuz, seated gracefully cross-legged on the frozen sand beside her.
The moon was obscured, and the pathetic fire had died. There was scarcely any light to see by, save for the weird luminescence of the frost itself. Nor did she know of Chuz, who, like others, was poorly chronicled in the region. For a moment she took him for her god, but only for a moment. The gleam of his hair was pale, his right profile, though unusually handsome, did not charm or reassure her. She had got the glimpse of a most unenchanting eye—
“Since you are to die at tomorrow’s dawn,” remarked Chuz conversationally, “why waste the night in slumber?”
The girl shivered. She noticed he had combed her hair with a broad ivory fish bone. A fish from the holy lake?
“Even though I die,” she announced, “I shall proceed in spirit to the arms of my betrothed.”
“And who is this fortunate one?”
“The dark god of Bhelsheved.”
“Your faith is admirable. Your sisters do not appear to share it.”
He indicated, with a white gloved hand, the tumbled sixteen girls who lay about on the ground. Even in exhausted sleep, their restlessness conveyed apprehension, and several groaned at their nightmares.
“He will comfort these, too, no doubt,” said Zharet loftily. “Although they presumptuously mistook the summons he offered me as being also for themselves.”
The jawbones of the ass laughed. Melodiously, for once.
Chuz tossed a pair of dice on the sand.
Gaunt with her ordeal, Zharet nevertheless took offense.
“It is not seemly that you dice here.”
“Dice with me then.”
“Less seemly still.”
“Tomorrow you will dice with lord Death.”
Zharet covered her face with her hands. In the dark of that self-embrace, she beheld her husband’s body, with the crystal knob of the pin protruding neatly from his eye, and she giggled. Chuz seldom came where he was not wanted, where indeed his aspect had not come before him. When she re-emerged from her hands, she could make out a little more of his face, or of his two faces. They did not alarm her.
“Very well,” she said. “We will play at dice. And will you help me to evade hanging if I win?”
“More. I will let you walk in Bhelsheved, despite the shut gates. And you shall see a wonder there.”
“Shall I?” she cried. He excited her. Madness recognizing itself, feeling itself at home. “But your dice have no markings.”
At which she began to see markings on the dice.
“Call,” said Chuz.
For a while they played then, and it seemed quite normal to her. But her luck was not good. The dice seldom fell as she wished.
“No matter,” Chuz said at length. “I will allow you to win. Provided you kiss me.”
The girl laughed scornfully, propriety forgotten, and leaned forward.
“Not,” said Chuz, “on the lips. On my left cheek.” And turning himself, he presented to her that cranky left side of his, husk-dry, the seamed skin like gray parchment, the rusty, bloody hair hanging down like worms. Zharet checked a moment, then she shrugged. She kissed him firmly and without reservation. While she did so, though she did not witness it, Chuz slipped off the glove from his right hand. A forefinger that was a writhing serpent gnawed through the length of rope that bound her to another captive not far off. As the rope fell between them, this second maiden, who up till now had not stirred, did so. But Chuz said two or three words to her, whose syllables remain unspecified, and she slumped back in a stupor.
All around, the camp was likewise vanquished. Two men, who had formerly stood sentry, leaned upon a tree, snoring in unison. Only the noises of sleep came and went. She did not know, the murderess, elated by her rescue, if her companion had caused this unwakefulness to prevail. Surely the gods had sent him to her. She had half looked to be plucked from the noose itself, before the gaze of all, by stormy sprites, amid fanfares and lightnings. This method was less spectacular than she might have hoped, yet also less hypothetical.
“Come,” said Chuz. He was standing ten paces away. A fire which still burned had caught the edge of his mantle. A perverse reaction was taking place, for the material seemed
to be burning the fire to ashes, rather than the other way about.
Zharet walked dutifully forward, and Chuz moved ahead of her, between the empty stalks of the groves. But hearing a soft stumbling, Zharet glanced back. Her sixteen companions, their tethers still intact (groups now of three and three, and four and six), were fumbling after her, and after Chuz, their eyes barely open—tranced.
Chuz came to the great western gate of Bhelsheved, closed and secured from within. Chuz murmured to the gate, tapping its panels with his re-gloved fingers.
“Who dared leave you ajar, mighty gate?” asked Chuz.
The gate did not speak, yet all who were near knew it replied. It said, though it did not say: “None left me ajar. I am bolted and barred from within.”
“I regret you are mistaken,” said Chuz. “I have only to press lightly against you to come in.”
“It is not true,” did-not-say-said the gate. “Not true. You lie.”
“I shall push against you. You will fly open.”
“Never.”
“Without doubt.”
“You are mad, thinking you can get in.”
“You are madder than I, thinking you can keep me out.”
“None can enter.”
“One can and does.”
“Who?”
“The moon comes and goes as she fancies.”
“Yes,” said-did-not the gate. “I have been concerned about that.”
“I shall enter now,” said Chuz.
“No, no. I will lock myself up against you.” And there came the sound of large mechanisms and valves as the gate frantically moved its bolts the only way left to them to go—and unlocked itself in error.
Chuz pushed at the gate and it swung wide.
“Now I cannot get in,” said Chuz.
“Ahhh,” did-not-sigh-sighed the gate.
Chuz walked into Bhelsheved, and the seventeen murderesses went after him, sleepwalking, all but Zharet, who stalked at their head.
The fanes were like tombs in the cold darkness, though here and there a watch-fire blew, ghost-white. The lake was dull and opaque, its surface matted by the dissolving of leaves.
Clearly, the gods did not winter here. The gods had gone away, or did not exist
Chuz halted.
“Listen.”
Wake, or tranced, the seventeen murderesses listened.
They heard a noise like silver tinsel, like silver beads, and then a song like the path a snake makes through fine powder.
“Look,” said Chuz.
Zharet beheld clearly, the others as if through soft smoke, a thing that was like a whirlpool of stars. There had been a garden, but the garden seemed to have become a part of space itself.
“Shall we go nearer?” inquired Chuz, politely.
They went nearer. Beyond an indefinable limit, they could not go. Something like a filmy curtain contained the garden. It was not that they were unable to force a way past this curtain, more as if, reaching it, they had no desire to pass beyond it. And yet they did desire to.
Inside, was the youth of the summer. Trees bloomed and had put out blossom, the grass was thick with flowers. Another sky, a sky of summer night, lambent with colossal star-bursts, shone overhead. A few stars had fallen to earth and become flame-colored lamps. And though the filmy curtain held this summer inside, the winter out, yet gleams, and snatches of music, and elusive wafts of incense, penetrated the outer world.
The murderesses clung about the vision, flies trapped on a web.
They beheld figures moving like the lights. A maiden reminiscent of a pale taper, with silverwork in her cloud of ebony hair, stroked notes from an ivory frame and strings of crystal. A young man, pale and dark as she, poured a glittering drink into bowls of phantasmal jade.
There was another curtain beyond the curtain. It obscured, yet did not obscure. They perceived Azhrarn, prince and lord, and shining night creature, through this gauze, and at his side they perceived a woman white as the stars. Inside the second curtain was another earth. On this earth, which was the private universe of love’s obsession, the two unique inhabitants dwelled, and knew only each other. Here he had woven her into the tapestry of his magic. Here he had set sorcerous protections on her, here, in all ways but one, he had made her a part of himself, and she had responded by becoming that part, their growing together like a marriage of vines, twined, indistinguishable.
All these things the maidens saw who stared through the two curtains which had separated love from the yearning for love. And each of them knew, in trance, or in waking, that here was the god, and here was his chosen. And not one of them was she.
Perhaps because sixteen were stupefied, it was Zharet who first turned away. She walked along the mosaic brim of the lake some twenty-odd paces before she stopped, her hands pressed hard against her side, as if she had been wounded.
Chuz, like a coil of mist, went after her.
She did not berate him for the unforgivable sin—that of revealing the truth to her. She only said, “How shall I bear it? To have everything taken from me, who was promised so much.”
“And how will you bear it?” he asked her.
“I shall not. Let them hang me tomorrow. I do not mind it now.”
“I offered you freedom,” he said.
“I do not want freedom. I can never be free. Winter has touched me. I am tired as a dead leaf left on the tree. Tomorrow they will cut me from the bough. I am glad to die. I could die without their help. I could close my eyes and die as the leaves fall. Winter has touched me.”
Then Chuz took her in his arms, and she sobbed on his breast, as long, long ago mad Jasrin had sobbed, not many miles away.
Maybe he required her sorrow, a sort of food or wine. Or maybe he was compassionate and kind to those who became his subjects.
But desolation tended to follow in his wake.
At last, he said to her: “Other than to die, what is the wish of your heart?”
“To kill him,” she said. She did not properly know what type of “god” Azhrarn might be, and might therefore be excused the foolishness of uttering threats against him. “Though, since he is an immortal, I suppose he is not to be slain.”
“Less and more than an immortal, beloved,” said Chuz. “But certainly you cannot thrust a pin through his remarkable skull, nor harm him at all. Save in one, not illogical, fashion.”
The murderess nestled against the shoulder of Prince Madness.
“Tell it me.”
“There is only a single thing more precious,” said Chuz, thoughtfully, “than a drop of Vazdru ichor. That is a Vazdru tear. For they are very rare. To the Eshva, weeping is a song. But the Vazdru smile when their hearts break, knowing demon hearts are mended by human blood. Yet Azhrarn has sometimes commanded his whole country to weep.”
“What is Azhrarn?” murmured Zharet “Is he not a monstrous devil that lives in a sewer underground?”
Chuz kept his face straight, but the ass’s jawbones guffawed. The girl shivered, and she plucked at Chuz’s mantle.
“I have not forgotten you,” said Chuz.
At that moment, the awful screaming began. Zharet turned, and saw her sixteen murderess companions had roused, and were running about. Truly demented—less interesting to Chuz for being so obviously and wholly his?—they tore their hair and skin. Their shrieks were of betrayal. Their shrieks were of a virgin mother of gods, who was not themselves, for, sorcerously sensitized, they had, of course, understood her condition. None know the color of the cloth better than those not permitted to wear it.
The glamour in the garden had already vanished. Not a trace remained, either of the Prince of Demons, or of his mortal lover. It is conceivable it may all, in any case, have been a delusion conjured by Chuz himself, though faithfully copied from an original.
“Come,” said Chuz again to Zharet. “We will go into the desert. You must learn to wait for what you want. Being my subject, patience may come easily to you.”
“I am
cold,” she said.
“I will warm you. Are you not warmed already?”
“Perhaps. . . .”
Alerted by the cries from within Bhelsheved, and by the probable retraction of Chuz’s spell, the crowd outside the walls was coming to itself. Already some had found the murderesses escaped.
Others had noticed one of the gates stood open.
Chuz and the seventeenth murderess slipped out of the gate, two vague shadows, as three hundred and eighty-three persons began to shamble in at it.
An unsure glimmering was in the eastern sky. A sense of confusion was everywhere, and many looked at this light in fear, before recognising it as the preamble of the dawn.
“We will not leave the city,” the men declared, “until this matter is settled.”
They stood on the mosaic roads, about the lake, along the white bridges, at the doors of the heart temple. No, they would not move. This holy sanctuary, which had been denied to men save at one season, was now choked and blotted by them. It seemed they might never go away. They demanded information, and they demanded action. The unworldly priests, who had scattered out like frightened birds at the shouts beneath their windows, wheeled aimlessly in fluttering groups. Hysteria, for the first time, had quickened them. The proximity of these uninvited ones, over whom they now had no control, and whom the gods had failed to keep out, was like a violation, a rape.
Another handful of messengers had ridden off. Elders and important men had been sent for, those versed in religious ethic. For now neither side, priests or laity, knew what to do. And neither side would shift to aid or accommodate the other.
The sixteen murderesses—one had mysteriously disappeared, likely having wandered into the lion-mauled, winter-hungry desert—had not been hanged. They had been tied up to a leafless tree on the lake shore. They no longer screeched, having worn themselves out. Nor did they seek to evade death, which now, ironically, was refused them. Some had attempted to drown themselves in the lake, but the ropes would not reach far enough to facilitate submersion. In frustration, they gazed at the ground. “What have you seen?” they had been asked. They had told, in vast detail. Their loss and humiliation; a maiden with child; the god’s wife.