Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4

by Tanith Lee

  Now it seemed to them that they had every excuse—the security of their prince—for breaking into the house. Already they were cheered by the prospect. Then came a new burst of singing.

  The song was alien to the morning, yet age-old as the tribulations of men.

  The courtiers dropped back when they heard it. They clutched each other and asked: “What can that be?” Though they knew very surely it was one demented, who shrieked and moaned. So accordingly they said, “It is just that Oloru, trying to unsettle us.”

  Just then the shutters of an upper room flew open.

  A man appeared there in the window. For some seconds they did not, any of them, know him. His countenance was twisted, his eyes showed only the white balls, his mouth gaped and blood ran from it where the tongue had been bitten. His whole body seemed streaked by bloody hurts, and as they watched appalled, he clawed and scrabbled at himself, causing fresh injuries with his nails, or turning to bite himself on the shoulders or arms. They were loath to recognize this beast. It was only the sable hair, though he tore it out in handfuls, that told them this was Lak Hezoor.

  Gray-faced, the men in the courtyard one by one took note, and stepped away backward. Some ran to their horses and bolted almost at once. The others shook in their shoes and stuttered. One dared to call again his master’s name—at which the apparition in the window screeched more raucously, and, hauling and wrenching itself through, commenced to crawl toward the courtyard down the stones of the wall.

  At this every man there turned tail. Lak had gone mad, and plainly, if he caught hold of any one of them, he would pull him in bits.

  Cacophonously as they had arrived, therefore, Lak’s court departed, trampling each other underhoof.

  Somewhere along the city road, though it is not recounted where, those that could held conference together, and decided what story to offer in the city. They had determined by then that Oloru and his family were mighty sorcerers, mightier far than Lak, demonstrably, since they had dealt with him as had been witnessed. It would thus be preferable not to refer to Oloru’s house, to Oloru, or to Oloru’s relations. What could mere mortals do against them? (For there was another thing, which they had not properly grasped in the panic, but recollected now—those especial servitors and guards that Lak had kept about him, not one had gone to his aid. Rather, they had stayed like statues. . . .) If such as these had not been able to assist, it was best for ordinary men to leave well alone.

  For Lak himself, one last rider swore he had seen his erstwhile prince, foaming at the lips and tearing himself, proceed into the forest at a lurching run. What else should they say, then, in the city, than that they had lost their lord in the woods where fearsome things were known to reside, and whose numbers it seemed he had gone to swell?

  “What can we do?” said they, limping home. “We are only ordinary men.”

  By which they meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be saved at all costs.

  In the stone house, alarmed by the besieging courtiers, the women and their servant had run down to one of the smaller rooms, an old cellar under the hall, and bolted the door. There they remained, and when the awful awakening cries of Lak Hezoor penetrated their sanctuary, they were very thankful to have chosen it.

  In the end, all grew peaceful. Presently, the elder sister and the servant, with a stick apiece, went up to see.

  A great deal of mess lay about. But of the visitors—not a whisker.

  They searched the house then, and even inquired aloud. But the place had been vacated. Only the sun came in, and set a bright marigold on every edge and rim. Beyond the wall, the birds sang. The forest and its inhabitants doubtless understood how a man, already some quarters insane with his own vanity and sadistic designs, could meet the Vazdru under the earth one night, and give up to them what sense he had.

  Only in the courtyard was there something a touch worrying. Some little hard stony lumps, for all the world like tall men of granite, who had melted. (Lak’s blank-faced servants?)

  “So he has deserted us again,” said the widow, dabbing her eyes. “My son, my Oloru. Ridden off with his lord, and not a word of farewell.”

  “Yet he saved us from Lak’s cruelties,” said the elder sister. “I will never speak slightingly of my brother again.”

  “He is not a bad son,” said the widow. “Look at these jewels and rich garments Prince Lak left us in payment. We shall live well again, as we have not done for years. That would be Oloru’s doing. The rest is just his weakness. Oh, but I wish he had stayed here with us. I would have forgone the jewels and the comfort they will buy, just to have him at our fireside. That life is not for him.”

  “Who knows,” said the younger sister wistfully.”He may one day tire of that life.”

  6

  IT MAY have been the forest of Lak’s hunting, or quite another forest, wherein the glade was situate. Certainly the place was ancient and somewhat sorcerous, and very dark. By day, the sunlight hung there in rare tinted drifts, or broke and scattered everywhere like golden rain. By night, at moonrise, there fell a rain of opals.

  For the creature of dawn and dusk, seeking and turning from the sun, an ideal habitat.

  Sunset: and a rain of coral.

  The blue-eyed demoness was seated on a bank where swarthy lilies grew, staring down at her reflection, as the lilies did at reflections of lilies, in a pool. A spring fed the pool, and made it always unstill. She could not be sure of herself in this unsettled mirror. Only those eyes of hers shone out at her. It came to the demoness they had been paler and harder in her childhood, and cooler. Bathos, then, has deepened them. “Bathos”—for she was almost shamed now by her quiescence in exile.

  Across the pool, he lay on one elbow, her guardian, the prince who had kissed her awake, and carried her on the last stage of their journey over earth and air, folded in his mantle. But the mantle was absent now, and some of his presence with the mantle. It was just an exceptionally toothsome young man who reclined there. Her child’s memory, her intuitive knowledge, both were well honed, or she too might have doubted, or forgotten.

  They had not conferred for hours, or even days, these two escapees of Underearth. Until she said to him, carelessly: “Dear guardian, grant me a name.”

  But he only bowed, charming eccentric Oloru, and replied, “Who are you that I should know how to name you?”

  “You knew me, and told me of it.”

  “Did I? In some dream—”

  “And now you do not know me.”

  “Only that I found you as Kazir found Ferazhin, a flower grown in the shade. The rest—I unremember.”

  “Why?” said she, and now her eyes were paler, harder and more cold. Like spearpoints of turquoise, as he should have recalled them, having seen them so previously, in the temple of holy Bhelsheved, the day after her mother’s death.

  But Oloru did not recall. He shrugged most gracefully. “Why?” he said. “Why not? Pardon me, I am partly mad. Everyone says so.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is politic to forget yourself. You who destroyed my mother by your trickery. Should I not detest and be revenged on you for that, as my father means to be? He will hunt you over the edges of the earth. I heard him promise as much to your face. That two-faced face which once was yours and will be yours again. One promise of Azhrarn given you, and then a promise to me, and he took me below with him. But he put me aside and forgot me, I was of such little worth there. Or here.” The demoness who was also a human girl put out her hand and touched one of the lilies. “My loving parents,” said she, and the lily shriveled and rotted from its stalk. “That night Dunizel died and left me comfortless, she sought out Azhrarn. Her spirit came to him, and put on flesh for him, and they were lovers together. What was I to either of them in those long moments? Nothing. He made me for that promised complex game he planned, but has since discarded. And she—she held me in her belly and brought me forth only to gratify him. When I was a child,” said the girl
who was also a demon, “Dunizel told me stories. In the womb I heard her voice, my mother’s, sweeter than the songs of the stars. But I was nothing to her but something of his, while he hated me always.”

  “Your eyes, they scald me,” whispered Oloru.

  “Be scalded then, court jester,” she answered angrily. “Play your silly part and see if I do not betray you.” But then she went on softly, dangerously, with her former theme. “He named me Azhriaz, to mark me as his. But I am not his. She named me by her own first-given name, Moon’s Fire—Soveh. Though I disown my mother, I would rather be hers than his. I will resume that name.”

  “Your eyes,” whispered the young man, “are burning the marrow from my bones. Are killing me.”

  “Die then, as if you could.”

  “When I am dead ashes at your feet, consider only this. You are a sorceress, and whatever name you take, it must bear the symbol of your calling.”

  She looked at him. She said, “Good. Her name is better altered. Not, then, Soveh, but Sovaz the witch. I will be Sovaz.”* Note to Vera: Following text to be footnote *As with the K that concludes a masculine name to denote the magician, so the symbols which translate as AS or AZ in the female—at the end or very occasionally within, the name—denote a sorceress. End Footnote

  “Sovaz, you are fair,” said Oloru. “You are the evening star, the hyacinth that shades all heaven with its dye, the silver taper that lights the moon.”

  “Is she so, this Sovaz,” said Sovaz, unsmiling. “But I see now what you play at being.”

  After that she fell silent. Silence was yet her métier, speech only a new fad that might be relinquished at any moment.

  Merely, she let down her hyacinthine hair into the pool. The lilies rustled, stretching their stems like thirsty swans, to dip their petals in the water her hair had spiced.

  A short while later, perhaps only six or seven hours, the lilies and the hyacinth lifted their heads from their reflections at a sudden sound. It was a noise which has already been described in some detail. A belling of hounds, but not mortal, nor far off.

  She who was now Sovaz glanced first at her traveling companion. Innocently, beautifully, Oloru slept. Neither did the uproar rouse him, though psychic and horrible and limitless, it seemed to rape the forest, to rip down branches and uproot the grass. Not one live thing, natural or un, could ignore the cry. That Oloru slept on was his great wisdom. She despised and respected him for it. Also, she thought, It is not for me Azhrarn comes hunting. Even to hunt me has no value for Azhrarn. Can it be he even guesses I am gone from prison? What loss if I am? No. It is this other he seeks.

  And she spurned the “other” lightly with her foot as she went to the brink of the glade, to see.

  Now, she was Vazdru, Sovaz, the Demon’s child, and she had drawn her genius about her. As the wild hunt dazzled along the avenue of trees, the glade winked out like a flame in water, because she willed it to. How strong, how confident her sorcery. Azhrarn himself, riding with his folk about him, did not spy what she had hidden, though he turned his dark head as they pelted by, maybe unsure, considering—but even the blaze of her eyes she sheathed from him. I am not here, Azhrarn, Prince of Princes. And he is not, that other prince you seek.

  Then, like storm-wrack, they were gone, and the wail of the dogs died like the sting of a numbing blow, away through the forest, away through the world, and out of it.

  Soon Sovaz returned to the pool. She stood looking down at Oloru, who had called her Evening Star.

  “Yes, just as he promised, he is hunting you. He knows you have dared his lands, idiot and mad thing that you are. He came very close to you. Do you fear him then, this demon unbrother of yours? Well. I did not betray you. It seems we are to be friends.” And she kneeled by him.

  “What?” said Oloru, opening his amber eyes slowly.

  “Fool,” said Sovaz. “Yes, it is a canny disguise, not to know yourself. Maybe he will never find you in it. But now, gentle guardian—” And before Oloru could prevent it, she seized both his gloved hands, and tore from them the jeweled silken gloves, and flung them away.

  Oloru stared at his hands.

  The left was well shaped but gray as river clay; it trembled, and he saw the long nails were red like lacquer, and its palm was black. He let it down hastily in the grass and would not look at it. There remained the right hand, then. The right hand of Oloru was constructed of brass, but the four fingers of it were four brazen serpents that snapped and hissed. The thumb was a fly of dark-blue stone, which, released from the glove, quickly spread its wings of wire and clicked its mandibles frantically together.

  Oloru screamed. He erupted to his feet and fled, trying to elude the monstrous hand. But of course the hand ran with him, irrevocably attached, and the snakes waking and fuming and spitting, and the fly rattling its wings and jaws and feelers irritably.

  Away through the forest, insane with terror and shock, Oloru sprang.

  Sovaz did not wait, she went after him, running as lightly as he, and as fast. In less than a minute, perhaps, she caught him, by his sleeve and by his shining hair. Oloru slumped against a tree, shivering and shedding tears, white as death, calling to the gods piteously.

  “The gods?” inquired Sovaz. “You know they have no care for men. For yourself, what do you need with gods?”

  “Is this some bane you have thrown on me?” asked Oloru. “Oh, let me free of it.”

  “Bane? Look at this bane. Do you not, even for the moment of a moment, remember its inventor?”

  Oloru looked. He looked at the lively snakes and the blue fly. Then he closed his long-lashed eyes and sank, senses vanquished (ever Oloru), to the earth.

  She laughed a whole instant, did Sovaz. But then her laughter was done. Some other emotion rushed now over the first. Unlike herself, it had no name for her. It filled her with inexplicable excitement and hurt.

  Again, she knelt beside him. She held him to her so her supernatural warmth should come between him and the skin of the world that was to all supernatural things, always, a lure, a lover’s embrace, the snare of an enemy. In that second of confusion, she nearly understood her father. But this passed.

  Once, then, there was a young aristocrat, most handsome but most poor, who lived with his widowed mother and his virgin sisters beside a fey black forest. And here he went hunting, scorning superstition, taking with him the only servant left to the house. And here too, one day, he was lost by this servant, who spent many hours in trying to refind him. But he was not found. No, not till he returned himself at sunset, out of the depths of a wood which was famed for the egress of things irregular.

  The young hunter’s name had been Oloru. Had been, for he claimed it no more. Another claimed it. Another became it, growing over and through it like a vine.

  It was this way.

  He was not cruel, the first Oloru, to the beasts of the forest. He hunted only for food, and that since his family had always one extra at their table, Lady Hunger, who sat there with them and gnawed her own knuckles, glaring at their plates the while from under her famished eyebrows.

  Nevertheless, in the way of hunting, Oloru brought down the youthful deer with spears, laid traps for the cinnamon hares, overfeathered the wings of wild ducks with arrows.

  The forest was bewitched. Who did not agree? Only Oloru paid no heed to the rumors. And he was there so often, and his dwelling so close. How could the composite entity of the forest fail to learn his name and his person by rote?

  So one morning the first Oloru rose early and went with his servant into the forest after game. The young man walked singing, for he saw no wrong in what he did, nor thought any other would see wrong in it. Turning then under an arch of trees, Oloru felt an unexpected chill, as if the dew had changed to snow. Looking around to comment on this phenomenon to his servant, he found the servant gone. And then the whole of the forest seemed to run together in a wall. Oloru was in a little space, no bigger than he could pace around in three circling steps. The
rest was a black towering—trees—or something older, more intense, of which the growths of the forest had been only a residue, till some arcane magic called it forth again.

  Oloru was afraid, but, unlike the later model of himself, no blissful coward; ready to fight. He shouted at the forest, for justice. Justice came.

  It began with a raging thirst that fastened on him abruptly, without warning. And it continued with a stream of water plashing at his feet. He had never drunk the waters of the forest, never needed to. But this water he must have, and though some instinct, against his own skepticism, called to him to beware, he did not heed, nor could not. He lay on the ground and lapped the stream. There was no pang, not even a discomfort. None of the fruitless battle he had thought to offer. He lay down to drink a man. He rose up a yellow jackal, which feinted and danced with its shadow, barked and howled at nothing at all, and ran away into the wood. All human rites of intellect or body were null, gone between one sip of water and the next. To Oloru, no longer Oloru, there was no punishment. He dawdled and bounded deep into the trees, he sought his own current kind, who accepted and were fond of him. He lived as a good jackal should, until in the fullness of years he died one. And then his soul recovered itself with some startlement.

  Yet, unpunished, he hunted no more. And unpunished was he punished, Oloru, who had been born a human man.

  Now. In those days, or in these, when the smallest pebble was or is dug up from the soil, it leaves an impression behind itself, the size and shape of itself, though empty. And in those days, so too with all things of being. There had been a young man in the forest, but the forest had changed him to a yellow jackal. That digging up from the soil of existence left an impression behind it surely enough, a kind of cast or mold, into which some other, if he were sufficiently vital, could pour his fluid form and set, flesh-hard, to an exact replicate of Oloru the mortal and the no more.