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

by Tanith Lee

  Where would she go? Her brain murmured to the lion’s mind. And its owl-eagle wings, white-tipped, powerful as winds, bore them up into the sky, and left the delta and all that country far below and miles behind.

  Dreams. Where would she go but to Bhelsheved?

  6

  A FEW YEARS had passed, not many, since that night they said pieces of the moon crashed on the earth: the night Dunizel died, and Azhrarn declared his war on Chuz, and confiscated the blue-eyed child. Yet in this brief time, the white flower had withered in the desert.

  Holy Bhelsheved, the gods’ jar, had had a darkening future from that instant Azhrarn first took against the place. The city was uninhabited when one came on it now, in the twilight dawn, as the last stars put out their tapers, and only the queen-star blazed on in the east. Bhelsheved’s flower-towers were empty hives. Sand piled in gusts along the marble streets, and no sorcerous mechanism anymore brushed it away. It was the same with the singing roads which had led there over the dunes (they sang no more), and in the groves outside the trees had died or been chopped down, and the statues were rubble, or filched. The very gates had been broken and stolen from for their richness, and the sky-colored windows of the fanes broken or taken, too. No treasure was left. Nothing had stayed sacrosanct. The heart-temple was despoiled with the rest, even the golden altar furniture had been carted off. Various persons had muttered that such a robbery would invite a divine curse, but they were already under it: the curse being of Azhrarn’s making. Its ruin was not epic, only utter. A cracked jar now, useless.

  Yet, in the pale gateway, King Kheshmet sat in a vivid robe, playing on a pipe.

  Something crossed between the morning star and the earth. It was the winged lion speeding over. It alighted a short stretch from the gateway, and Sovaz glided from its back. King Kheshmet, however, did not raise his eyes. The shrill of the pipe went on. And Sovaz, standing near enough her shadow touched his robe’s orange edge, recited:

  ‘Here the sun shuns,

  Unsheathes the wind her claws.

  Yet in the gate is one:

  Fate remains alone.

  Fate with fire-eyes broods at the double doors,

  Playing a pipe of bone.

  Fate with brown hands unwraps each day,

  And casts the husk away,

  When each waste night is gone.”

  At which Kheshmet, Lord Fate, left off playing and observed, “The doors, double or otherwise, are absent. Nor is the pipe of bone.”

  “Fourth Lord of Darkness,” said Sovaz, “why are you here?”

  “The exalted shall be flung down and the lowly raised on high. That is fate’s law. Behold Bhelsheved, flung down. I am obliged to call from time to time, for form’s sake.”

  “Why at this hour?”

  “You,” said Kheshmet placidly, “have come here to seek your own fate. And here you will find it. Or partly do so.”

  “What is my fate?”

  “Do not challenge me, Sovaz-Azhriaz, Azhrarn’s daughter. I do not know your fate, I merely represent it.”

  And getting up, putting away the pipe (which was of pastel jade), he offered his arm courteously to guide her into the city.

  “Permit me,” said Kheshmet, “to show you your mother’s tomb.”

  “No,” said Sovaz, and drew back, while the lion snarled and padded closer.

  “Follow then,” said Kheshmet. “Or not.” And he turned mildly in at the gateway, and onto one of the four roads of the city. “I have a mind to go there myself. She too, Doonis-Ezael, Moon’s Soul, was a pupil of mine. Indeed, she had an allegiance to three of us: to madness—it ran in the family; her own mother was an idiot until the comet cured her—to destiny, and to death. Only wickedness had nothing to do with Dunizel. So, of course, she became the mistress of Wickedness.”

  Presently, Sovaz entered the gateway after Kheshmet, and did follow him along the road between the temples and shrines. The lion trotted at her heels, pausing occasionally to preen its wings.

  Here Sovaz had been born. Here she had been carried about and shown to the people, who believed her, then, to be a god’s progeny, and her mother the Chosen of that god. The faintest of remembrances lingered, or returned. Her time in the Underearth, and the throes of sudden physical growth, had wiped away the pictures and deeds of her beginnings, till only emotion, bitter, bemused, hurtful, was left.

  The sun rose, and blue lights shot from the smashed windows that nearly matched the eyes of Sovaz.

  Kheshmet walked before, and now and then he took up again and played a trill on the jade pipe. When this happened, the ghosts or memories of Bhelsheved’s white pigeons transparently poured down from the tower tops to circle his hands and shaven head. (The lion stared and licked its jaws.)

  They reached the gardens of blossom trees beside the heart-lake of the city. The gardens were a wilderness; only groves of stumps stood there now, as outside. The water of the lake was unblue, unbright. Probably no fish remained in it.

  “Here is the grave,” said Fate, pointing to the turf beside the lake.

  There was no sign, nothing to show that the ground contained anything, but Sovaz knew Fate did not lie. Dunizel’s body had found an unmarked bed; Azhrarn had disdained to cover the beautiful flesh which had betrayed him for death, or else he could not bring himself to throw over it the black soil. Some cautious scholar or some simpleton who had pity, or only a sense of tidiness, saw to it.

  Sovaz regarded the turf, then she turned from it, and then turned back. She sat down by the spot, and laid her hand on the bare earth a moment. Today she was dressed, or seemed to be, as a young woman, but for traveling, and she had a knife in her belt, which next she took out. With the knife Sovaz cut some of her long hair, the way hair was sometimes shorn in mourning in those lands, and others. Sovaz sprinkled these black curling tresses over the markerless grave. Soon, black hyacinths began to rise where the hair had fallen, but Sovaz did not stay to see. She had got up again, and walked away around the lake.

  “Here she came to him, living,” Sovaz murmured aloud as she walked, “and here she came to him, dead. Here they spoke and here they loved and here he swore to destroy the country and here she dissuaded him.” Then Sovaz stood still and looked down deep into the lake. The four bridges reflected in it, and the temple at their meeting—everything wrecked and robbed though it was. Then the lion reflected in it, having flown up in the air after the ghost birds. And then Fate, who had come to stand beside her. At this, Sovaz saw her own reflection, and that of Kheshmet in his vivid garment. Yet the images trembled and changed. They seemed to be not those of a girl and a man, or one who took on a man’s form—but first a white column and a column of yellow-red, thereafter a white flame and a copper flame—but then two young men shone upward from the water. They were not distinct, but the hair of one was the color of apricots, and of the other, black.

  By whatever means, Sovaz knew them from their stories—Simmu, who stole immortality from the gods, and Zhirek the Magician, one of the greatest of his kind, for he had learned the magic of the sea peoples, a thing not often achieved.

  “Do you see as I see?” inquired Sovaz.

  “Perhaps not,” said Fate. “Yet if something unusual has appeared, it will be to do with me. I am its harbinger. “

  When he spoke, the image of Simmu faded, and only the reflection of Kheshmet rippled in the water. But that of Zhirek continued before Sovaz.

  “The fate of Zhirek the Magician,” she said then. “What was it?”

  “He had been blessed or cursed with invulnerability, but immortality he spurned. He would have taken service with your father, but Azhrarn refused him, for reasons only speculated upon. Eventually Zhirek, who could not die as he then much wished to do, took contrary service instead with Uhlume, Lord Death.”

  “The tale is an ancient one. Surely, though invulnerable and long-lived, Zhirek will by now be ended?”

  “It seems to me,” said Fate, musingly, “that though Zhirek is dea
d in all ways, of intellect, heart, and mind, his invulnerable health and vitality have not yet surrendered him. Somewhere, he does live, or rather, does exist. And he is mad, naturally. The awful punishment of Simmu, whom Zhirek always loved and distrusted and so hated, made sure of it. It is the insanity of Zhirek, maybe, which attracts the idea of him to you. Some nuance of your lover’s?”

  Sovaz picked up a pebble immediately and threw it in the lake, and the indistinct image of Zhirek vanished.

  “But you speak to me of my own fate, Kheshmet. Where is it?”

  At that, the image of Kheshmet in the lake also vanished, and Kheshmet with it.

  Sovaz smiled in anger. They were all tricksters and wraiths and gaudy showmen, these male part unrelatives of hers.

  Up in the sky, the winged lion wheeled fantastically, catching bird ghosts in its mouth—which tasted of sugary smoke, but always somehow evaded swallowing.

  Sovaz wandered about the desert city. But she was careful to avoid those sites which it seemed to her she had visited with her mother, nor did she go back to Dunizel’s grave.

  In the heat of the day, Sovaz lay down in a temple court, under a porch, and slept. She dreamed Zhirek stood before her in a priest’s robe, with a collar of jewels. The stories made much of his eyes, which had been the color of blue water in a green shade, or green water under a sky of dusk. But his eyes were darker now, all shadow. He said to her coldly, “It was in my nature to do good, but I gained an evil reputation, and justly. I did much wickedness. Forget the voice of your mother, who told you Azhrarn was the darling of the world, who formed the first cats for a jest, and invented love. Go and do wickedness as I did. No one can escape destiny. It runs behind and before. It is in the breath and the blood.”

  “And where now,” Sovaz asked of him in the dream (a human enough dream, no Vazdru abstraction), “where now do you dwell, diligently performing wickedness to please your conception of destiny?”

  “I do nothing now, I am nothing now. Neither wicked nor virtuous. And I have no look of who I was, no powers, and no name.”

  “How is it that you know of me.”

  “I do not. It is you who know of me.”

  When Sovaz woke, the sun was setting. She called the winged lion, and they sped up into the sunset, which turned their paleness blood-red, and made the hair of Sovaz a storm cloud. And they flew over the desert and over all those lands, toward a far-off shore where two seas ran together and were one.

  She had announced to him she would never seek him, never obey or pay homage, until seas were fires, winds seas, the earth glass, “and the gods come down on ladders to lick the feet of men.” And Azhrarn had said no more.

  Now Sovaz stood on the seas’ shore and she summoned illusion to her, and illusion hurried to attend.

  Inside an hour, a terrible sight was to be seen in that area. The two seas which joined had become an ocean of raging arson over which lightnings flashed and crackled. While from the east and north had flown two winds, and they were salt waters, and waves curled through them, and they swept against the land in breakers, roaring, with thin green fish whirled in their midst. And the land itself chipped and splintered, for it was glass, and under the surface you might see through the mineral trenches to laval pits and the bones of beasts and men some centuries old, all caught as if in crystal resin. Last of all, in the center of the frantic scene, a glowing ladder seemed to uncoil between the lightning and the tempest, and drop down until it touched the glass of the earth. Here stood some ragged dirty savage men with their mouths open in astonishment, and out of the heavens came flitting beings neither male nor female, shining facsimiles of the gods. And the pretend-gods, reaching the make-believe men, bowed low and busily lapped their filthy toes.

  Near moonrise, though the moon was not to be seen in the confusion, a dark smolder might be espied rushing upward through the crystal ground. Sovaz kneeled, crossed her hands on her breast, and bowed her head, in the attitude of an extreme docility.

  Suddenly some of the glass shattered, and a pillar of black fire burst out. For a moment it towered there against the flames and torrent of sky and sea, and then it died down and a man had filled its place, folded in a black cloak. He glanced about him some minutes.

  “I acknowledge your joke,” he said. “You are truly Vazdru. You will go to any length, however sumptuous or cataclysmic, in order solely to avoid the words: It appears I am at fault.”

  Sovaz, kneeling, hands crossed, head bowed, said clearly, “It appears I am at fault.”

  Azhrarn snapped his fingers, and the winds let go their water on the ocean, which was quenched to sea again. Freed, the winds sped away to the north and east corners of the world. The earth grew solid and dense. It put on sands and grasses and rock. The figures of gods and humans disappeared, and the heavenly ladder became a silver necklace wound in the veil of the rising moon.

  Sovaz still kneeled, her head still bowed.

  “You were clever enough to engage my attention,” said Azhrarn. “What do you want?”

  “I will do your bidding,” velvetly said Sovaz. “I will atone for my insults. I will revere and adore you. I am your slave.”

  “Changed heart,” velvetly said Azhrarn, “tell me why.”

  At that Sovaz looked up and gazed at him, but not into his face, with unvelvet pride and unfriendliness. “There is no escape,” she said. “You made me for your purpose. I will fulfill your purpose.”

  “You have grown to hate mankind.”

  “Those I would love or hate are beyond my love or hate. I hate none, and I love none. But I am respectful. I am a dutiful daughter. I cut my hair and left flowers on my mother’s grave. And I kneel to you.”

  “Get up,” said Azhrarn.

  And he turned from her and beckoned to the air, and out of it came the winged lion. It had taken refuge from the maelstrom of illusions so high up in the ether, its ruff and tail and wings were trickled by tinkling essences of the stars. Or else sky elementals had thrown these collected essences over it, like a bucket of slops, in order to chase the big cat out of their yards. It made landfall beside Sovaz, and regarded her with its grave wise eyes.

  Then a chariot came, up from the earth. The edge of the sea seemed to catch alight again at its coming. Of bronze the chariot was, but inlaid all over with silver, with pearls set in and stones of clearest blue, thickest black. Three horses drew it, and they were jet-black with a blue streaming frost on them of manes and tails, and the bits, and the reins and shafts, and the chariot-pole, all ran with silver things and things of diamond, with moonstones and colorless beryls like ice. A Vazdru held the skittish team, making them prance, and then making them grow still as stone. He did this with panache, flaunting his skill. And when once the horses were stones, he looked long at Sovaz, marveling and startled, charmed and irritated. Then, having rendered Azhrarn extreme obeisance, he tendered the woman an exquisite bow. She had seen not much of this upper caste of the demons, her own kin. But the Vazdru, all of them, loved beauty, and were envious of anything favored by their lord.

  Azhrarn entered and stood in his chariot; it could be no one else’s.

  He said to Sovaz, “Though you have no power over the sea, you have pressed an illusion on it which might convince the credulous that you had. The sea-folk may be incensed at this. Also that you seemed to fill the air with their waves and fishes. It is prudent to go far off.”

  “Does my lordly father, then, fear the sea people?”

  “Salt water,” he said, “has done me a service now and then.”

  And far out on the moon-spun ocean it seemed for an instant phantoms rode, a youth on a midnight horse, and these ghosts pursued in turn another opalescent ghost like a ship—but the images dissolved.

  “I have heard that story in the taverns of men,” said Sovaz. “Sivesh, and the fading of his dream. A lover you tired of and destroyed. It would appear that those who win your love are greatly unfortunate.”

  “Do not let it trouble you,” sa
id Azhrarn. “The misfortune is not yours.”

  There came the flicker of a diamond whip. The chariot sprang away and aloft—tower-high from the earth, horses and wheels, the Vazdru prince and his Prince—and was lost in the night.

  But Sovaz sprang upon her lion. “Follow.”

  They ran then, one behind the other, some hours. A wild sight for those who saw, a racing chariot above the trees and a winged lion going after.

  The moon, which had been rising, completed her climb and turned her pale smoky mask toward the world’s western limit. What did the moon spy there, over the brink? Chaos claimed her with every descent, yet chaos did not harm the moon, or the sun, only enriched them so they came up from its arms like brides.

  Certain aspirations of the winds, too, bounded after the lion and Sovaz between its wings, like puppies eager to resume the earlier play with water and fish. But eventually these zephyrs tired and fell back. Then a nightingale sang below in the gray-purple shadow of a lilac tree, and another from an ilex all black jade. Many nightingales were passed by beneath, singing, or silent in perplexity, and many geographies were crossed over, both magnificent and pestiferous, many, many miles.

  And sometimes (it is said) he called to her and bade her be dutiful as she had vowed, and there was a village or a town, or some temple, or camp of malcontents, and she should work some wonder on it to amuse him, submissive daughter that she claimed to be.

  And so that night (they said) was riddled with roofs turned to porridge and cheeses to topaz, with owls which cried in human speech, and men who made noises like owls, or donkeys. With, too, a dread voice that whispered in sleepers’ ears: “Beware, for I know your terrible secret, and it shall be told to all.” And at the phrases of this soft, awful voice, a thousand hearts missing a beat, and a thousand men and women scrambling up in horror. And everywhere lamps lit, and shouts raised, and screams and blasphemies, and servants running and horses fetched, and some at prayer and some at a gallop with torches to fly the spot, and some taking up the means of suicide, and some sneaking out to kill their neighbors. While, in a very small number of dwellings, a very few turned over and slept again, muttering in surprise to themselves or others, “But what terrible secret is this? I have none.”