by Tanith Lee
“I have tried,” Issak groaned. “It has availed me nothing.”
“Come, do not weep,” said Narasen. Compassion and contempt were mingled in her, and she had forgotten danger. She went to him and laid her hand on his shoulder in a brotherly fashion. Too late, she saw his tears were suddenly dry, and in that instant he seized her.
Narasen was no weakling, and she was limber, but the youth was exceedingly strong. He bore her to the ground. His face was changed, infused with blood, inflamed as a drunkard’s or a madman’s face, and through the clear eyes there seemed to glare the eyes of another.
With one iron hand he held her, and with the other hand he ripped the garments from her as if they had been paper. And now he panted like a dog and his saliva dripped upon her breasts.
But Narasen had not been as innocent at the cabinet of wines as she had appeared to be, for inside the cabinet she kept a sharp little knife with which she would break the seals of the wine jars. And, as the young man lurched upon her body, striving to gain access into her, Narasen altered herself as if she had melted.
“Ah, but I like you better so,” said she, “not whimpering but masterful. Come, master me, my darling. Only let go my hands and I will help you to the gate.”
However, Issak freed only her left hand, holding the other fast. Then she kissed his face and caressed him, so that presently he forgot to keep hold of her. At that, she drew the knife from her sleeve, and she stabbed him through the ear.
Screaming in agony, he tumbled aside from her, but Narasen had no mercy now. Running to the wall, she snatched one of her hunting spears, and this she plunged into his heart with such force that the point ran through his body into the floor beneath.
He did not die outright. Instead, an unpleasant alteration overcame him. He grew withered and carious, and his handsomeness ran away like water from a broken vessel. This was what his mentor had reduced him to; only the cunning spells Issak had learned had kept for him the semblance of the youth and beauty which should have been his by right. And now that he was vile to look at, the vile nature of that other seemed to possess him entirely. As if he had no pain, he grinned and he crowed at Narasen:
“So, my three wretched years end on your palace floor. You are an unkind dealer of fate. And now I will tell your own fate, Narasen of Merh, for I have just the strength to put my curse on you, and you may not silence me. You do not like to lie with men, and great joy that aversion shall bring you. Indeed, inside the year, the land of Merh shall know many joys. First shall come the storm winds and into Merh they shall blow the three droughts humanity fears the most; drought of the waters, drought of the milk of the herds and drought of the womb’s richness in every female thing. An infertile place shall this be then, starved and dry, its rivers gone to mud and the yellow dust upon the lips and in the eyes, and no child born and no beast born. Barren as the womb of the queen shall Merh become. Famine and plague shall sit dicing in the streets for mortal lives. The people will cry for omens, cry to the gods to relieve them, to instruct them on how they may avert the ailments that beset them, to tell them when the blight will end. And the oracle will answer them: Merh shall be Narasen. When Narasen the fair brings forth a child. When Narasen ceases to be arid, so shall the land become lubricous. When Narasen is fruitful, then shall the land bear fruit. And then, O queen, they will come and hammer on the palace gates and demand that you lie with men. And then, O queen, to your humiliation and your shame and your disgust you will lie beneath all the men, you will give yourself, in your desperation, as a whore does, to any man, the prince, the commoner, the drover of swine, the stranger passing. All will come to your door and enter there, but leave no token. For here is the sting in the tail of this curse. Your reluctant womb will never quicken from the seed of any man living. Barren you shall stay, and barren shall the land stay with you. Never from the seed of any man alive shall you bear fruit, and your kingdom shall perish. Merh shall be Narasen. And if your people do not slay you, then you will wander an outcast over the earth. And, as you wander, think of Issak.”
Then he seemed to sink backward into the floor itself, and in his eyes there stirred an unexpected bitterness, and he whispered: “Yet it was my old teacher’s venom made me curse you. Issak alone would never have cursed you, beloved, even with your spear in his heart.”
At that, blood ran from his lips instead of words, and his life after it.
• • •
When first the bane was spoken, Narasen was chilled through. But soon enough she buried the recollection of the curse within her, as the corpse of Issak was soon buried in the earth. That was an unmarked grave, in a plot beyond the city walls where the bodies of felons were thrown. But the burial of the curse in the soul of Narasen had its markers, some part of her did not forget, and presently she had good reason to remember.
In a month the wild winds arrived, garbed in the ochre dust of the plains, and the city of Merh became a little hell. And after the winds, the drought drank up the river, and the herds could not be watered there, and the udders of the female beasts became slack. And next, the women could not give milk to their newborn, and then there were no longer any to need the milk, for all that were delivered were still-births, and after these, no woman grew round bellied in the length and breadth of Merh. Nor was there any rain. The heat of the year swelled and the crops failed. Famine entered, and plague danced in Merh, now in her red robe, now in her black.
The people entreated their gods, as Issak had foretold. And as he had foretold, the gods appeared to answer, but maybe it was only the instinctive divination of the priests. Eventually the oracles spoke from their caves of smoulder or from the dry wells, where once the water had run, green and sinuous. The oracles said: “Merh shall be Narasen. When once the queen of Merh brings forth a child, the blight shall end. When Narasen is fruitful, then shall the land have fruit, but while she is dry, dry as a bone the land shall be, and drier than a bone.”
So the people hammered on the gates of the palace, and their faces were like hot stones, and they bared their teeth like wolves.
It was a curious thing, some part of the malediction itself, perhaps, that the punishment must be exactly as Issak—or the entity which had possessed him—had predicted. She must do it all. Partly, she believed some chink remained in the curse if she could only find it out, some tiny flaw by means of which she might deliver herself from the death of her land and the hatred of her people. For if she loved anything, it was to be the queen of Merh. If she must be shamed in order to hold Merh, she would be shamed, and not be shamed by that shame.
Narasen opened her doors. No giants stood at the portal now to guard her person. A line of men stood there, some striplings, some in their prime, and some were abashed and some were bold and looked her over as the bull looks at the cow. Fit punishment indeed, but she would not meditate on it. She nodded to them courteously. Each had a reputation of a singular sort. She led them in, and into the room they came and into Narasen they came. She suffered it, and her people praised her, and when she did not conceive, they sent from among themselves their most potent and their best to serve her. Later, strangers were admitted.
The year scorched to a yellow husk. And Narasen, twisted in the flame of that year, grew also scorched and wizened. But only her soul was burnt. Her beauty stayed; she chained it to her. How could she entice the seed of men without her beauty? And her pride remained. She was proud, though in far lands now they spoke of her, the Harlot of Merh—for none believed she did not revel in her task, or at least take payment. The pains which had torn her faded. She was made of bronze. She clothed her bronze in black for it was like shadow from an unrelenting sun. “Beware,” the travelers said, “when you pass through Merh, or the Harlot will eat your phallus. It is well known,” they said, “she is always hungry, and the land starves too.”
Winter came. It was a brown hard winter. The country all about seemed like the wreck of some los
t place, cast up by a sea of fire and left behind. The snow lay high upon the mountains, but the snow turned black. Even the winter fell sick in Merh.
Narasen walked on the highlands. She lay with the shepherds and the men of the herder-folk. When she stood bare before them, her honey flesh and her rose-red hair entranced them. They imagined a goddess had come to call, and dreamed of sons made in her loins. There were no sons, but they did not know it. She lay with robbers. One cut her with his knife, and she slew him. It did her some good to be revenged on this solitary man. No women in her bed now, no leopards on her spear. Men in her bed, she the leopard to their spears. She felt nothing of them. She lived in a trance. She was only this: pride, beauty, the shameless bearing of shame. But also she was barren, and the land died.
Winter left Merh, and glad to go. The spring was storms, the summer yellow dust. Plague, who had slept a little, put on a dress of yellow fever and walked up and down the streets, knocking on the doors.
And then it was one day, for no reason that she knew, that Narasen woke from the trance which had bound her. She stared from her windows at the horror Merh had become, and she thought: Everything I have done is nothing. I might have kept my body to myself for all the good it has achieved to lease it out. I have been the quarry, now I must go hunting. And she looked plague in the face, and she thought: What must I do to be rid of you? And plague said: “You know, but cannot do it.” At which Narasen slammed close the shutters on the dust and stench of Merh.
And she did so, she heard a woman begin to cry and shriek somewhere within the palace: “Oh, my beloved is dead of the fever! My beloved is dead!”
When she heard this, Narasen felt bruise her the sharp bright fragments of what she had been, and she clenched her fists, for she had seen at last the chink through which she might pass.
2
By night, the Lord Uhlume strode across a battlefield. It was mostly a quiet place, the battle long concluded (as all games, even the best, must finally be), the victors ridden northward with their spoils, only the dead left behind. Mostly quiet. After the battle had come the rear guard; in the dusk the crows had mustered. Now the jackals ran to begin their own war among the heaps and dunes and the piled mountains of speechless and unmoving flesh. Here and there a little patch of fire lit up the blackness, but these haphazard lanterns were dying too. Only the stars gave their fixed, seldom varying shine. Thick were the stars upon the plain of night, and still, and silent. As if, up there too, there had been a battle and the corpses lay about, save that these corpses were beautiful, and they glowed.
It was the stars showed the battlefield to the Lord Uhlume, and revealed him also, if any were left to see.
He was black, was Uhlume, satin black like panther skin, or polished black like a burnished black gem. And from very blackness he seemed carved, to the shape of a tall and slender man. But his hair was long and white as ivory, and his clothes were ivory, and his white hair and his white cloak furled and flickered behind his blackness as he strode, like smoke behind a thin black flame. His face was rare, inexplicable and desolate. His eyes, which were the color of a gleaming nothingness, were desolate. Men looked in his desolate face, and could not afterward remember it. It slipped from their minds like water through the fingers, like surf from a beach at the tide’s turning. Yet whoever saw him, not remembering, somehow remembered there was something they had forgotten. The Lord Uhlume.
On the battlefield there was a place where a shallow stream wandered. Here some of the wounded had crawled to drink before they died, and lay now with their faces and their hands in the water, and the stream was dark with the blood they had spilled in it. A few feet from the stream one warrior lay who was not dead. It had been his goal to reach the water and to drink, but he had not the strength. Glimpsing, through the blur of his pain, Uhlume’s tall shadow pass between him and the stars, this warrior called out. His voice was more slight than any noise of the plain, yet Uhlume turned aside at it.
The last warrior was very young; his sight had been guttering but he seemed to see Uhlume well and clearly. The young warrior whispered his entreaty, and Uhlume bent close to hear.
“If you are compassionate, bring me water.”
“I am not necessarily compassionate,” answered Uhlume. “Besides, the water of the stream is foul.”
“Is it some kindred of yours you search for?” whispered the youth. “The women will come in the morning, weeping, and search among us. Our enemies will allow them then. My mother will come, and my sisters. They will take up what the jackals have left of me and bear it home. I shall not live to see the harvest.”
“The harvest is here,” said Uhlume. His great eyes were melancholy, their pale brightness was like a well of unshed tears.
“Bring me water,” said the youth, “or any drink, sweet or bitter.”
“I have one drink I may give you,” said Uhlume gently, “but it would not perhaps be to your liking. Only think. Maybe you will live till morning.”
“The night is cold and I am thirsty.”
“Well, then,” said Uhlume. From within his cloak he took a flask and a cup of yellow-white smooth bone. Into the cup he poured a drink. It had no color and no smell, nor any definite taste. Uhlume rested the young man’s head on his arm, and he showed him the cup. “In three hours,” said Uhlume, “it will be morning.”
“The beasts would find me,” said the youth, “and I cannot endure this thirst.”
“Drink then,” said Uhlume, and he set the cup against the young man’s lip.
He drank, the warrior. He said, “It has the taste of summer grass.” And then he said, “I am not thirsty now.” And he shut his eyes forever.
As Uhlume was walking on, a small band of women came over a hill. They carried no lamps, for they had stolen out early, in fear of the northern enemy and in despite of his decree. They had huddled the darkness round them like their cloaks, and when they saw Uhlume they shrank together, moaning. But, as he went by, one woman lost her terror, and she cried after him: “I know you, you jackal!” And she spat on the ground where he had passed.
3
Five miles to the east of the city of Merh was a wall of mountains; to travel over them took seven days. Beyond lay an infertile valley and, at the valley’s end, a forest of ancient dead cedars. This part of the journey took two days. Beyond the forest opened a feral country, where many things grew, but out of control and out of a pure determination to be born. Here the huge-thorned roses bloomed spotted as cats on the briars, the apples were salt, and the fruit of the quince tree was like wormwood. Bright birds lived in the thickets, but they had no song. The native beasts were savage, but they did not often hunt men, for men did not often come there to oblige them. Three miles eastward into these parts, there was an orchard of wild pomegranates. The fruit was toxic, and had the hectic color of red poison, and in the midst of the orchard stood a blue house. This dwelling, which was known as the House of the Blue Dog, was a witch’s mansion.
Narasen, seeking particularized knowledge, had questioned her own sorcerers and any of that profession who entered her city. Her people had lost patience with her. They, too, had begun to name her the Harlot. “She cannot conceive because her lusts have burnt out the ability of her womb.” Some ran like hyena packs in the streets of Merh, some printed her name up in foul slogans. Some broke into the palace by night and tried to slay her. But Narasen took up her sword and slew them instead. At length, when she saw she must seek outside the city, she went disguised and by obscure routes, taking a guard only of ten men, the rest left behind to keep order in Merh and to hold the palace secure. With her small escort, she crossed the mountains, the valley of stone, and rode through the petrified cedar forest and into the riotous country beyond. On the eleventh day of their journey they reached the meadows that bordered on the orchard. At this spot, Narasen dismounted, and went on alone. She walked half a mile over the rank grass and through
the pomegranate trees till she came to the witch’s mansion.
Although it was the afternoon, the orchard was dim with shade. The House of the Blue Dog rose suddenly from this gloom, as if it had been sleeping there. Two pillars of indigo fronted a brazen door, before which burned a tall lamp of blue glass with a pink fire in it.
Narasen went to the door and knocked with her riding crop. At once the door opened. There in the doorway stood a dog. Seven hands high, the dog was, and made of blue enamel. It opened its jaws and barked at her, but its bark was speech.
“Who are you?” barked the dog.
“One who has need of your mistress,” answered Narasen.
“That is self-evident. But I deal in names.”
“Deal in this one, then. I am Narasen, the queen of Merh.”
“Those that lie here, sometimes die here,” snarled the dog.
“Then tell no lies and live,” snapped Narasen. “Come, bring me to your witch-mistress. I will not be questioned by a cur.”
At that the dog wagged its tail as if her hauteur pleased it, and it licked her hand with a tongue like dry hot glass.
“Pray follow,” said the dog, and scampered into the house.
All was blue inside. Up a stairway of azure stone the dog led Narasen, and into a room of many blue lamps with pink fire in them.
“Be seated,” the dog said. “Shall I bring refreshment?”
“I will eat nothing here and I will drink nothing,” said Narasen. “Those that mention your mistress say she is so wise that few dare to enter her house. But more enter than come out of it.”
The dog laughed at this, an odd noise to be sure, like ceramic bricks rattling in a chimney. Just then a piece of drapery blew aside, and into the room came the witch herself.
Now Narasen had spoken to many concerning the lady of the blue mansion, for many knew of her, but rarely had any seen her. One said she took on the form of a basilisk and her eyes were flints, another said she was a crone a thousand years old and older. But this was what Narasen saw: a young maiden of fifteen or less, slender as a silken rope, and clad only in her malt-brown hair which fell to her ankles, though occasionally, as it must, a slim white arm would appear from this veil of hair, or a white foot or thigh, or two breasts like the buds of a water flower. And though Narasen understood that this might only be a spell she was seeing, yet she was stirred despite herself. And the young witch crossed the chamber and sat down at the feet of Narasen, and gazed up at her, smiling, with a mouth like the first rose ray of dawn.