by Tanith Lee
The steward therefore went down through the house, crossed into the vineyard, and set himself in the road.
“Hold still,” declared the steward. “You are expected. You will follow me at once into the presence of my master, the Merchant Sharaq, and there you will obeise yourself in gratitude at his notice.”
The sun fell full upon the path and wove there a kind of haze, and in the haze the approaching youth seemed to gleam and glow, to come and go, as if he were not altogether solid.
Then he passed through the haze into the shadow of a vine-stock, and there halted, looking at the steward.
The steward felt a strange unease.
“It will be no good for you, taking that stance, here. You are Jyresh, a wastrel son, and your father has sent you to this house that your prideful ways may be corrected. You see, I know it all. Therefore begin now to be humble, or you will suffer.”
“Shall I so?” inquired the youth. And oh, what a voice had he. It was soft as down, as fine as silk, and more dangerous than a viper under a stone.
“Come,” said the steward, “follow. Or the dogs shall be put on you.”
The youth gave a low malign small laugh that scraped up all the hairs along the steward’s skin. Nevertheless, when he turned toward the house, after him the white-clad boy came sidling, lithe and silent as a cat. The steward’s spine prickled him like a hedgehog’s; he could make nothing of this Jyresh, whose mane was so unlucky black and whose eyes were so blue you could hardly bear to look at them.
When they had gone into the merchant’s house and up to the proper chamber, Sharaq lay arranged on cushions, and drank wine, and twitched in his fingers the letter, gazing only at that. For some while he made the visitor wait. And the visitor waited like a post—if was the steward who shifted his feet.
At length, “Here is a pretty thing,” said Sharaq. “For the offspring so to distemper its sire. Your disappointed father tells me I am to take you on as the lowest of my unskilled slaves. Your disappointed father says I am to work you hard and, at the end of nine months, beat you, if in turn you disappoint me. What have you to say?”
“I say,” said the youth, “you do not know my father.”
Now the way in which he said this caused the steward to let go his staff, which clattered on the floor. More, it caused the two birds that sang in a cage by the window to cease singing and hide together behind their water bowl. Not a sound was to be heard there in the room. One might have caught the noise of a wisp of fluff trailing along the floor. Even Sharaq was moved to glance up.
How handsome the boy is, he thought in startlement. Indeed, he is beautiful. One might take him for a girl, were it not for his clothing, his aggravatingly noble bearing, and the arrogant look in his eyes.
“It is true I have not seen your father for many years,” rejoined Sharaq presently, averting his gaze as if offended. “But here is his letter, and here you are. You are Jyresh the prodigal. You shall not leave this house until a severe lesson has been learned.”
“So be it.”
And at these words, the two song-birds jumped into their water bowl, and the wine cup in Sharaq’s hand burst itself, so his elegant robe was stained.
“Go with my steward there!” shouted Sharaq, in dismay. “Away to menial and degrading tasks. Out of my sight.”
And so dismissed, in error, Azhriaz-Sovaz, the Prince of Demons’ daughter.
• • •
After the anguish of her parting from her lover, Sovaz roamed many lands, searching in anger and sorrow, but in bitterness most of all. Yet, too, she was fey, and her moods, though they might resemble those of a woman, were never exactly like them. Several tales are told of those wanderings.
She had happened upon the estate of Sharaq by chance, for Fate was a close relation of hers. Her thoughts were elsewhere but there, among the dusty vines. Then, arrested as another, and being what she was, she cast over herself in answer a type of sorcerous veil, which made her seem that much more a young man and a mortal thing. It was her whim, for she was not immune to impulse any more than was her real father—Azhrarn, Prince Wickedness. Which, if you will, says everything that needs to be said. She was Wickedness’s child, a demoness, and now she had been told she must serve as a menial in a merchant’s house. And that she would be beaten if she failed to please.
• • •
The steward, who feared the newcomer, quickly abandoned him in the lower house. Among the hearty murderous cooks, the jealous maids and vicious urchins of the great kitchen and its world, he gave up Jyresh. The denizens of that subterrain pounced upon him. What prey! A handsome boy, a well-born better who had fallen. He seemed impervious to the circling of the clever rabble which lived there, under the rich merchant’s home. They were the cogs of its wheels, nothing could move without them. They were the rats who ate its leavings, stole from the very sustenance they had helped create.
“Out, out with the fancy lad!” they cried, much as Sharaq had done over their heads, in paradise, where the good things were enjoyed which they only invented. (Oh, but they spat in the merchant’s pies, they murmured banes before dawn as they worked the dough for his bread. And under the star-torn sky of night that Sharaq seemed also to own, they coupled in his vines, and so made him new servants who would hate him as faithfully as did they.)
Laughing in the door, they showed the clean and handsome young man, flung from heaven to their underworld, a yard awash with the blood and muck of recent butchering. “Clean it!” they advised. “Be careful not to get your nice boots dirty.”
But the young man walked out into the yard, and all at once a vast silence formed, like a block of liquid glass from the sky. Everything hardened in the silence. Even the butchery blood did so. The yard was paved with red-amber tiles that shone. The slabs were decoratively striped with hard glistening lacquers. And clean, clean, all of it. And there, this Jyresh, in his spotless white, not having raised a finger.
A magician? They came quicker to belief than their master. They slipped away from the alien. And, as in their spite they had laughed and been happy, now they were chill and sly with cautious dread.
“What next?” said Jyresh.
“The steward says—”
“The steward told us you must—”
“What?”
They pointed, toward the privies. What jewels would he make there?
But Jyresh only turned and blinked once, with sapphire eyes, at the noxious spot. A sudden smell of roses was on the air . . . it came from thence.
• • •
They scattered before him back into the kitchens. The floors were swept, though no one had picked up a broom. More, the floors were made of colored stones, in marvelous pictures—at which the urchins gawped—and when a pinch of dirt was walked in, or let drip there, the dirt vanished. On the tables, ready for Sharaq’s noon repast, reposed a waiting banquet that had not come from the ovens, pans or griddles.
“Take him that,” said the magician, cool as you please. “Tell him to eat it. Do not touch it yourselves. You shall have another feast.”
Then, as dazzled, squinting servers went by with the loaded platters, an exquisite perfume passed across every one—it was the magician’s breath, he had breathed on them. And they stood transfixed, afraid to drop the dishes. For each now was clean all over, scented deliciously, crowned with flowers, and dressed and jeweled like a prince.
“Blessings on you, master,” they wailed, with wild mad eyes, between joy and horror, and in a sort of rage, too, because to be gifted like this was something unnatural to them, an imposition. But—“Blessings, a thousand blessings!” wailed the others, clustering near, begging to be blown on also, like too-hot sauce, and get their share of this ridiculous bounty. And got it in a trice. There they all stood, a collection of grandees, screeching.
Sharaq was prowling the upper chamber, ill-at-ease without yet
knowing a reason, when in they burst in a riot. They were drunk on caprice, and on the lovesome breath of a demon. They careered to their work, setting out the food for their merchant master with whoops and gibbers. He stared in astonishment, just recognizing them in the shimmer and scent.
Finally, he bellowed.
“What does this mean?”
“We do not know!” shrieked a glittery boy, who had formerly slouched and cowered with the bread trenchers. And a slut, never noted before away from her pans of sugar, now a princess from an emperor’s court, flounced before Sharaq, twirling a diamond: “The wastrel gave us this, and you that, there. Eat, master.”
At which they all, in insane chorus, barked: “Eat! Eat!” and turning, gamboled out of the doors, leaving him to think, but for the spilled petals and gold-dust, that he too had gone mad.
Sharaq sat there, and dumbfounded, knowing nothing better to do, reached out for the wine pitcher—
Ah, horrors! It stank—it was full of rotten ten-year-old grapes and slush. And the bread was collapsing into mildew, and the curds running rancidly—all the beautiful food was erupting. Whole mice burst from the pie as the crust imploded, seeds, husks, and gorged caterpillars dribbled from the fruit bowl, while the roast caught alight.
Hearing their master’s outcry the servants, who had lingered or gathered in the passages, came slinking to see. They peered around the doors and hugged themselves. Tittering, they rushed below, as the steward went running by.
Their own noon meal had been laid for them in the sparkling kitchen of mosaics and marble. They looked askance, but when they tried the food, it was sound. (Above their master’s roars, the steward’s commiserations still resounded.) Perhaps the servants’ fare would poison them, sorcerous as it must be—too late to stay the teeth and tongue, the gulping throat and growling stomach. Never in their lives had they known such a meal. Worth dying for, as hunger and thieving rarely were.
And as they gnawed and golluped, and burped and sighed, the neglected pots boiled over and cleansed themselves, the spits turned of their own will and the meat did not spoil. In the cubbies and by the hearth, where they had been wont to sleep, were piled mattresses and velvet pillows. The fire would not go out, it would need no fuel. The lamps of silver would trim themselves. It would be light by night and cool in the heat and warm in the cold, in that kitchen. Joints would appear by magic, fruit and oil, wine and cakes. Heaven was in the kitchen now. For how long? Who cared, how long was life? And the reckoning. . . . That to that.
As for Sharaq, their dear master, he was busy.
For through the day, the night, the days and nights which came after, they visited him when he summoned them, and spied on him when he did not. And they saw wonderful things happen to Sharaq and the upper house, just as to themselves.
The hangings fell to bits up there, the chairs and the furnishings, the great bed, they collapsed. Out of the frames leapt frogs and toads, lice and mice, rats and weasels, that darted and nipped. The clothes shredded on Sharaq’s very body. Moths rose from him in clouds. His metals liquefied. He ranted and howled all day and night and took to lying on the bare boards. Sometimes, later, he would wander to the kitchen and stare in. He would demand to be fed and they would hurry extravagantly to tend him. But the viands of heaven would turn to rot and muck in Sharaq’s grip. Then he would scream and beat his head on the walls. His servants looked at him in wondrous pity. How they adored to be pitying him.
The steward, having defected to their midst, had not gained cloth-of-gold, nor a single gem, which every other stray servant had acquired simply by passing over the kitchen threshold. Yet the steward was permitted, by the kitchen’s sorcery, to eat and drink, providing always he begged on his knees.
“Where is the magician?” he faltered, kneeling to a purple-clad pot-scourer for a morsel of meat.
They were always polite to the steward, and to his incoherent lord, more so than they had ever been—for now they were gracious. “We suppose he is gone, sir steward.”
“Gone? For sure?”
It must be so, for day after day, night after night, now, Sharaq roared through the house, armed with a rusty sword, thin as a rake and crazed with hunger, and from devouring, perforce, vermin and decay, searching for vengeance and not finding it, while all about him, the last of the tapestries came undone, and the last gold poured to slag. The roofs began to fall inward on Sharaq and his wrath, until he stood squealing one night under that piece of the sky of stars he had once been led to believe he owned.
Where was time? What was it doing? It had all run together. How long had he lived in this way, haunting a ruin in rags, his empty guts clinging to his backbone, and the noise of feasts forever far, far below, unreachable, even if reached?
“A month, no more,” said someone. “Does it seem to you, then, longer?”
Sharaq’s eyes took fire.
“Where are you, boy?” he coaxed. “Come near, come near.”
And there, obligingly, was the beauteous youth, his black hair hanging free, more like a girl than ever. And Sharaq, quite mad, raised his sword—and it shattered in twenty parts and cut him, falling, so that he gave in to tears of fury and despair.
“You will drive me from my house. But who will take me in? A rich man under such a curse has no friends. No wonder that monster—your father—sent you to me.”
“Eight months more I am bound to serve you here,” said Jyresh, dimly and gorgeously visible in the lightless corridor. “Then, if I have failed to please, you must beat me.” And there came again that terrible small laugh.
“Mercy!” exclaimed Sharaq. “Name your price for my reprieve from this.”
“Mercy? What is that! You yourself pronounced your fate. A severe lesson would be learned, said you.”
“Oh, I have learned it,” moaned Sharaq, throwing himself on his face.
“You tire me, you bore me with your antics,” said the magician-youth. “Doubtless your little trouble has seemed to endure nine years, let alone nine months. Very well. It ends. When the sun rises, it will rinse off your misery.”
“Let me kiss the hem of your robe, wise, gentle Jyresh.”
But the handsome apparition was gone. Gone in truth, at last, to take up her own journey and her own trouble.
Night-long Sharaq the merchant lay on his face there, praying to the gods that the promise of release would be kept.
• • •
The sun rose. Sharaq with the sun, off his face, in the hideous wreck of the upper house.
And behold, a wreck no more. It was a mansion again, of the utmost wealth. The naked day streamed in and embraced the rainbow hangings, the floral carpets; the sun sunned itself upon the gold.
Sharaq, babbling somewhat, rambled from room to room. He fingered the ornaments as if they were another man’s; like an outcast, he gazed upon the place, and like a beggar hovered in the entrance of a salon, and eyed the food laid there. Until ravening hunger drove him forward. He sank his teeth in the white bread like a famished dog—and bread it was, and the roast was savory, and the confections mellifluous— All was as it had been. Yes, even to his own person, for as he lay there, half fainting with relaxedness, Sharaq grew aware he was fresh from some bath, clothed in finery, and his rings, which had scalded him as they melted from his fingers, were firmly on his hands once more.
And so, raising one of these sparkling and languid hands, Sharaq took up a little silver bell and rang it. It was the signal at which a certain servant, who had waited always in an ante-chamber, had been used to come running.
Now, only silence came, and absence.
Sharaq lifted his heavy lids. After all the door was opening. There stood the erstwhile slave. He wore crimson, gold at his wrists and ankles, jasmine in his hair. He gazed long at Sharaq, with such hauteur, something in the heart of the merchant shriveled, died. And then the menial bowed, as only a gre
at lord would bow in dreadful mockery.
“Yes, O Master?”
“To your knees, you thing. You shall be beaten.”
The servant laughed. He knelt. “We say in the kitchen,” he said, as another might remark We say in my country, “the rods and whips of this house turn to nosegays when they strike us. Do you know why? O Master, paradise is in the kitchen, a spell that enfolds us. Strike me now.”
And Sharaq flew at him and struck him. The servant beamed, and spoke of sprays of water and summer grass.
And then Sharaq tried to kill the servant. But all he did—to strangle, to stab)—left the boy unharmed. Worse, it left him merry and entranced. At length Sharaq fell back gasping. “Go from my sight,” he said.
Bowing yet more low, the servant obeyed him. And presently from beneath in the house, music and song ascended like a level of water at high tide.
“Damned be the magician,” said Sharaq. “I am demeaned forever.” And he did not quite know why he was demeaned, or how to be rid of the condition. But when he thought of his servants in their unassailable pleasures and riches, and of their lording it in his mansion, he could think of nothing but having been demeaned. Till he thought again of vengeance. The son I may not have. It is the father is to blame. That villain who has dared to use me so, sending off his devil by inflicting him on me, causing me to enrage him and so ruining my peace, knowing I could not curb him or anything he did.
And after this, Sharaq grew quiet, and he sat on his couch and did not move.
He called for no more service, no food or drink, nothing. He only sat there, as the shadows shortened, paused, and began again to grow long, so the room lost the light. As if his mind cast out its darkness on the walls and floor.