by Tanith Lee
“He is a Lord of Darkness,” she said to them gravely. “He is named Azhrarn.”
There followed a dreadful absence of all sound.
But after a long, long while there started up a last voice, which said quaveringly to her: “Can you be so poisonous, so damnable? Do you not loathe this thing you have consorted with to the shame of all humanity?”
And to that she might have said so very much. She might have recited the litany of love, she might have grown proud, or tragic, or even doubted herself, perhaps, with the face of her own kind turned against her utterly. It was also noon, night far away. He could in no way come to her. She might have implored their mercy. But Dunizel did none of these things. She looked upon the two hundred men, their aversion and their might. And gently she said to them: “The lord Azhrarn is the reason for my life.”
It was as if she had flung fire into their midst.
The seventy men who had come from the desert, moving oddly over the dunes and along the ridges, were quite unlike those two hundred men within the heart-temple, those two hundred dressed in finery, oiled and combed and perfumed and ornamented, who now screeched prayers and imprecations, who beat their hands on the floor, who presently sent for servants, guards, slaves to bind the human demoness in their midst, bind her with cords of silk, and all the while in dread of night and he who might return to save her then.
No, truly, the seventy from the desert were unlike those.
For they wore humble garments. Some were clean and some stank, but none were oiled or perfumed. Most bizarre, too, was their mode of advance, which in each case was hesitant, although hesitant in a remarkably purposeful manner.
Now one would stop. He would circle round something. Now another would stop. He would make a sign, he would kneel down. He would kiss a thing upon the sand. What could it be? A stone. He had trodden on it, and now he kissed it, murmuring. And the murmur? This way: “Oh exalted one, forgive my vile heel, which has bruised you.”
At the head of the straggling erratic band walked an elderly leader with a sterner and yet more eccentric tread, for he had mastered, long before the followers of his sect, an almost empathic awareness of what pebbles might lie before him, and he was generally able to avoid them all. His face was savagely introspective, and vainglorious as that of a great king. It was the venerable philosopher, he who had debated with Azhrarn (unknown) on the nature of the gods, he who had later become convinced that the gods were in the stones. And they who mooched and circumnavigated behind were his converts.
“And why do you travel to Bhelsheved?” they had had demanded of them. “Is it to revere the supernal child and its mother?”
“There is no god save a stone,” intoned the philosopher and his companions.
They were going to Bhelsheved to see if the supernal child was made of, or in any way related to, stone. If it was, then it was the child of heaven. If not, they would denounce it.
As they had slept, sprawled on the powder and debris of all those stones which, over centuries, had become the desert itself, the hour before dawn approached them, and with it a figure clad in a damson mantle, who had stolen about their recumbent forms. They would have been insulted to know Madness felt quite comfortable with them.
When the aged and venerable philosopher who led them woke, he found lying by his hand a most beautiful and uncommon stone. It was made of mauve quartz, and was four-sided. If he had not been obsessed by the idea of gods, he might have thought of dice, and guessed this to be an abnormal die.
“See,” the philosopher instructed his waking acolytes, “it is a sign from our celestial masters. Here is their representative, one of their more lovely messengers.”
And everybody praised the die of Chuz, and adored it, and the philosopher placed it in a leather bag about his neck—in which previously he had stupidly carried a golden curio. They had already, all of them, a large collection of shards and quartzes.
That day, about noon, the band of fanatics advanced upon Bhelsheved, and in the groves at the foot of her walls they came on a young woman, who squatted in the dust under the leafless trees, and who, on their arrival, rose up and distressed them with her hideous appearance.
She held herself like a huge winged toad, her legs thrust out, and her arms. Her toes and her fingers, besides, were rigidly clawed, her eyes screwed up tightly as if she wished to see nothing of the world. Her mouth stretched wide in a ghastly rictus. A vague bitter scent came from her rags and from her ragged hair.
The philosopher halted in dismay. Even his faith and his narrow-mindedness were shaken by such a visitation. Behind him, sympathetic to his whims—for surely all he did was inspired and theological—the sixty-nine followers also came to a halt.
Each gazed at the hideous woman.
“By the protecting majesty of the gods everywhere about us on the ground,” declared the philosopher at last, “why do you stand in our way?”
And then a voice burst from the throat of the woman, so incongruous and unpleasant that some were seized by panic. It was a voice indeed which gave the impression that if the woman’s throat were being utilized, whatever used it was not herself, but some possession—a weird harsh shout without expression of any kind.
“I come to demonstrate,” this awful voice howled, “how the gods punish those who worship falsely. Behold my condition, and be warned.”
“And what is that to us?” the philosopher demanded, “who worship in perfect enlightenment.”
“The gods brook no evasion,” roared the frightful woman.
The philosopher, wishing to regain his sense of personal command, stepped forward and grasped the creature by her arm—it was as stiff as a board.
“The stones are gods.”
The maniacal face let out another rush of noise. “So they are, for gods can kill. A crystal god mounted on a pin, driven through the eye of a man, will kill him. A flint god, set in a sling, whirled about and thrown, will also kill.”
“I will not countenance such blasphemous talk. The gods are not to be thought of in this way.”
“Only veritable gods may dismiss the false god. Let fly the gods. Fling them against the harlot of Bhelsheved.”
“I will not put up with this,” said the philosopher.
He thrust the woman from his path. Rather to his distaste, she toppled to the earth and lay still as one dead, her stiff limbs pointing in four directions. She did not seem to breathe, nor had she all the while he had conversed with her.
The followers of the sect filed after him, and, as they passed the corpselike body, they caressed and patted those stones they bore about with them as talismans.
Presently, they passed into the city, and so into chaos. For such the city had become. And of the chaos, the philosopher and his sect inquired what had happened.
A great shock and horror was sweeping that spangled and commercial congregation, the reaction to Dunizel’s confession, for the gist of it had spread quickly. Indubitably, mixed with the general sense of disaster, were feelings of nervous guilt for individual and particular crimes and impieties. Added to these, doubtless, the old prohibition was reviewed. They should not have ventured to invade the city at the wrong season. And some were actually soon in flight from the area, in their turn dragging out the dire news with them. The bride of the god was a slut who had birthed a beast with blue eyes and the shape of a small female child. But only recall, she had been born with teeth and hair and nails! Ah, was it their sins which had induced this event? How else could evil have entered Bhelsheved.
The soldiers who had been the guard of the chosen woman were now her jailors. They looked at her with loathing, and with caution at the silk cords, tight as wires, causing her wrists and ankles to bleed. Were these bonds tight enough? Could she break free by use of subterranean magic? No, for the Demon could only venture to her side by night.
She had been taken out, and the ends of her bonds secured to the ornate carving of the west-facing bridge leading from the golden temple.
More than this they had not done. Nor had they done anything at all to the child, which Dunizel herself had put from her lap and settled quietly in the tall chair within the temple. From this position the child had not shifted, and none had laid a hand on her. For how were they to destroy the progeny of the Demon? And the woman herself, how might they chastise her? For if he could not come to her aid by day, night must return, and he with it.
Already they had attempted to find one who would lash her. No one would accept the task. Not the highest noble or the lowliest seller of comfits.
So, the child was left in the temple; Dunizel was bound on the bridge, a white and gilt butterfly in the spider’s web. That was how matters stood, with the crowd roiling and squealing on the four broad streets where animals had been permitted to foul the mosaic, and fringed robes had been pawed by beggars and pickpockets.
The overcast sun had crossed noon’s threshold, and now, barely discernible, began to descend from the zenith. The lour of the distant storm was deepening, dyeing the air with tints of purple.
Some had hurried into the countless little fanes, regardless of their purpose, entreating for an omen, or merely for rescue. Most milled about the lake, staring at the enwebbed butterfly on the bridge. Their allergy intensified as they looked at her, she seemed so fragile, so far beyond them. They interpreted her marvel as damnation, and, more perversely, her patient silence as a leering arrogance.
Occasionally a priest or priestess wandered or poised transfixed in the body of the crowd. They were grabbed at, stroked, gripped, badgered for intervention. As ever, these ethereal ones scarcely understood. Where able, they retreated. But in their cells now, also, the crowd pursued them, hammering on the doors and mewling: “Save us!”
And some had seen the seeress Zharet, or her phantom, all twisted, her face held in the semblance of a fit, and she had told them that this was how the gods had punished her for her long belief that the Demon was a God. And how much worse, she said, their punishment must be when it came, since they had cherished the error longer than she, and still would not avenge it. These words were not conducive of comfort or good cheer, and like most such words were widely reported and leant credence.
This their dilemma, then: To be revenged on Dunizel would most probably draw down on them in turn the retribution of her atrocious lover. Not to be revenged on her would be to incite the retribution of heaven.
Yet surely the gods were more powerful than the disgusting one from the pit? Surely the gods would save their people if Dunizel were slain?
But no one could decide this weighty point. They wavered. Who dared take responsibility either way? None of them. Not sage, not fruit-seller, nor prince, nor whore. Let another move first. Let another show them the way. Let there be a portent, or a herder to step out at the head of the herd, or to drive them before him.
And Dunizel stood, butterfly-winged by her gemmed garments that the edges of the storm winds softly blew, and her hair, misted by the dull sun as it descended from the zenith. And the purple hints and tints of the storm fluttered like ravens back and forth over the city. They knew, if no other knew, and had gathered as ravens did, when death was imminent.
But Dunizel, so calm, clear as glass, did she know?
Her mother had been translated gradually into golden flame by the comet’s touch. Dunizel, once called Flame, called afterward Moon’s Soul, she too seemed turned into a fire, the pale blue-silver fire of stars, or of that particular queen-star of dawn, or of dusk. As she waited on the bridge, she appeared to be metamorphosing into pure light. As if, knowing she was near to death, she prepared for it by melting away her physical form, allowing her soul to burn through.
Azhrarn could not come to her, that she knew. Not while the sun, however tarnished, was in the sky. And his protections of her must be weaker under that sun. And the human hate about her was like a distant sound of breaking things, which grew steadily nearer. Oh yes, for sure she guessed she must die. And what had she had of life, to wait there in such uncomplaining peace? And what fulfillment had she had of love to wait there without weeping?
The old philosopher, his amethyst die-god hanging from his neck in its bag, his acolytes pushing to make the way for him, had reached the foot of the western-facing bridge, and now he glared at the maiden tied there.
“Is that she?” the acolytes asked of each other.
“Yes, it is the great harlot, the trull of the monster,” replied voices from the crowd, with shiverings and sobs and curses.
“She does not to me,” announced the philosopher, “suggest a trull, but rather a virgin.”
“Oh,” one muttered close by, “she remained virgin since the child was not got in the wholesome fashion. It was implanted via the adjacent entrance, and carried in her bowel, thereafter dislodged in the manner of excrement.”
At these sentences, the elderly philosopher, who had come to venerate stones, felt a stab of the utmost rage. Something in the maiden’s beauty, which even from the foot of the bridge, and with his fading eyes, he yet saw adequately—as the light of a star is normally visible to all—caused him to feel disgust at the mood of the crowd. What did such fools, who trod on stones, comprehend of anything? The philosopher would have struck out at the man, but could not be certain who it was. So he said, partly to locate him, “I am convinced some marks of her defilement would besmirch her, and they do not. Even if she has committed sin inadvertently, I think her blameless. She shines with her innocence.”
“She is luminous as moonlight,” agreed a subtle voice by the philosopher’s ear—not the voice of the fellow who had previously spoken. The philosopher turned and found a charming young man, muffled in a mantle empurpled by the storm glow, at his side. The young man’s eye—the philosopher saw only his right profile—was modestly cast down. The philosopher was roused, for here seemed a natural aristocrat, a youth of fine feeling and spiritual possibility.
“And do you think this girl has done as they say?” inquired the philosopher.
“I know she has,” said the young man.
“Then you reveal your lack of judgment,” said the philosopher. “My new faith has brought me to conclude there are no such things as demons, save in legend and story.”
A bark of laughter, like the laugh of a fox, escaped the young man. As if to smother it, he raised a white gloved hand to his lips, and still he kept his gaze lowered.
“I see you scan the earth,” said the philosopher. “That is sensible. The gods manifest upon the ground. But tell me, is the child of this girl a stone? Of marble, say, or opal? Have you ever come close enough to tell?”
An eye came up at that. The philosopher started, he was not certain why. Was the eye bizarre . . . or was it ordinary?
“My dear,” said Chuz, “you are under the curse of my beloved un-brother, who maddened you in simple childish spite. But there. You have, I am afraid, something of mine, which I should wish returned.”
Taken aback, the philosopher avowed: “I am sure you are mistaken in that.”
“Not so. This morning I chanced by your camp in the desert. Unfortunately a possession must have slipped from my cloak, by accident. I think that you picked up this thing, and have it now in that bag about your neck.”
The philosopher touched the bag involuntarily.
“I have here a violet stone, a messenger of heaven, which I found beside my hand as I woke.”
“Just so,” said Chuz affably. “A die of mine, of which I am foolishly fond. Return it, if you would be so kind.”
The philosopher instantly reviewed his earlier opinion of the young man. He was not charming, or spiritual. Also it almost seemed the left side of his face might be disfigured. . . .
“Do you imply that this elect being, resident in the violet stone, is nothing more than a gambler’s toy?”
“How you enervate me,” said Chuz. “Give me what belongs to me, or I will strike you, old man.”
At this, within all the uproar of the crowd, a unique and separa
ted pocket of uproar broke out. For the philosopher’s sect had been listening to Chuz’s discussion with their master, and now that Chuz resorted to insults and threats, these wild stone-worshippers spat at him and fell on him with their fists and feet. Was it not dreadful enough to learn of the holy city’s confusion, without having their leader attacked on the premises?
Now Chuz, as a target for blows and projected saliva, proved unsatisfactory. Mostly, he seemed not to be there, so that a sound kick landed on nothing, save perhaps the shin of a brother acolyte, and a punch to the jaw resounded only upon the material of the purple mantle—which stung like wasp stings, being decorated with smashed vitreous. Then again, an ass’s skull sometimes appeared and brayed in their faces, and one was almost brained by a brass rattle brought down smartly upon his crown. Three or four acolytes tumbled in the lake. All about, the rest of the crowd, having nothing to do with this fight, became nevertheless very excited and disturbed by it, being unsure what went on, and fearing it to be some evocation of gods or demons.
And then, quite suddenly, the insolent young man—who had been getting much the better of them all—apparently attempted to flee. As he did so, his sting-sewn mantle seemed to come to pieces, and out of it shot a myriad of small objects, which whirled and bounced among the crowd, to the crowd’s further consternation. Most of these objects were beyond analysis, though a quantity called up the idea of accessories to astrology or calculus, though some it is true also put one in mind of strange insects which had been petrified in the act of changing from one thing to another—a beetle into a fish for example. These latter were not very encouraging to gaze upon. But a great many of the spilled items were dice, of all colors, weights and markings.
“What is happening?” the crowd shrieked at itself.
The philosopher and his followers were looking for Chuz, who had vanished. They began to cry out to their stone gods in perturbation, and the people round about them caught their cry.
“They are speaking of stones.”