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

by Tanith Lee

  He had shriveled and shrunk and become a rock. Rebirthed, he had again the youthful physical being of a man, but though this was a handsome man enough, still the beauty of his first life was gone, with the green-blue of the eyes.

  “I did none of those things you speak of,” said the man, perhaps truthfully, sitting up in the net of rushes, cleaving water to breathe air. His thick wet hair streaked him now like ink, and water drops flickered on his lashes. But his eyes were hard stones, well tutored how to be. He was, ironically, of the racial coloring of the demons he had once attempted to serve. But as unlike demonkind, even in his handsomeness, as dead coal is unlike the lit volcano.

  “Then, if you are not who I say, say who you are,” mockingly prompted Azhriaz.

  At that he smiled, though he did not look at her.

  “I am the one who is stone-born,” he said. “And unwillingly.”

  “So be it,” she said. “Then who am I?”

  “Some woman,” said he, “from that king’s house I see upstream.

  “You have been a long while out of the world in your pillar,” said Azhriaz. “Tomorrow you shall meet with the king of this city. Do not seek to evade the honor.”

  “Everything is nothing to me,” he said. And now his open eyes also appeared closed. “I shall not evade, I shall not seek.”

  Then Azhriaz burned brighter than a moon—and was gone into thin air.

  But he, who had named himself, in one of the seventy tongues of men, Dathanja, waded up from the river to the bank, where the flowers overtopped him and the trees flared thousands of feet toward stars that danced in patterns. And paying no heed to any of it, he sat down there and bowed his head, as if meaning to stay so for many years. But that was not to be.

  4

  AT DAWN, a detachment of the soldiery of the Goddess came to the flower gardens by the river. They were clad in the blackest mail, every scale of it limned by white-gold. In the helm of every man was set a precious stone, and great plumes poured upward as if from the war-smoke of their brains. Their eyes glittered also from that fire, furiously empty. Like the black horses, the manes and tails of which were dyed to red, puce, white, and bronze, they had been bred for combat and for little else. They waited, in their lofty barracks, day and night, for the summons to go out and take another third of the world. They told each other how it would be, who should be killed, what cities would fall. Now they rode down on the naked man in the garden, and grinned at him and gathered him up among the plumes, caparisons, weapons.

  They carried Dathanja along the banks where pilgrims and tribute-bringers—such tribute came endlessly—stared in awe, or failed to notice. Some were imbibing the water of the river, thinking it a cure-all, which sometimes it was, or it gave strange abilities, or hallucinations, or sent men witless. Or it did nothing to them, and then they sulked.

  At the sapphire stair by the temple-palace there were priests, who progressed with the soldiers up onto the golden terrace, and around it, and so to a ramp of pocked and pitted marble which slid up into the sky along with the palace roofs.

  At the foot of this ramp, the priests stopped still and chanted. (The naked man seemed to frown contemptuously a moment, before both the frown and the contempt faded.)

  Then the soldiery made a dead set at the ramp and cantered up it, the brass-shod hoofs of their horses screeching and striking fire. In the midst of the charge one of these men was unsaddled. He whirled to his death on the golden pavement far below without a sound, his arms opened wide as if to embrace fate. The pitting of the marble ramp had been occasioned by countless rushes of this kind, and many warriors died, both ascending and going down. This was one of their means of sacrifice to Azhriaz, when battle was unavailable.

  At the top of the ramp, high above the City, there was a platform laid with alternating blocks of ebony, malachite, and orange jasper. And about this checkerboard there waited human and bestial examples of the countries of the conquered. The men and women were of surpassing beauty, fair, or copper color, or black, and arrayed like princes. And there were leashed animals of unusual sort, camels white as milk and having three humps, two-headed lizards, winged serpents, turtles carapaced with shields fit for giants, and older than the oldest hills. Braziers burned with scented fire—to which the winged serpents were sometimes taken to drink. Damsels plucked music from instruments like sickle moons.

  Walking their war-steeds through this living forest, the soldiers who bore the naked man came at long last—for it took most of an hour to cross the platform—to a pavilion made of polished bones. Within it was a chair of cut glass, smooth as water, and guarded by two adamant wolves, having each three golden living darting eyes.

  In the glass chair sat Azhriaz the Goddess.

  Her robe was scarlet, and spinels burned in her hair. Gold was strewn on her like fallen blossom, and she was gloved in gold. It had been noticed long since, curious phenomenon, that the gold worn by the Goddess, however, would insidiously alter over a period of time, becoming harder, cooler, more like silver.

  The soldiers gazed long at her, then staggered away, drunk on the sight. Some ran across the platform and flung themselves down, falling between the sky-scraping towers with cries of satisfaction. They had left Dathanja at her feet.

  “Look up, Dathanja, O Unwilling Birth of the Stone,” said Azhriaz. “Look up, and see the woman from the king’s palace.”

  Dathanja looked up.

  “Guess now,” said Azhriaz, “who is king here.”

  And she raised her hand in its golden glove—already silvered as if with the faintest frost—and all the slaves, human or creature, fell prone to reverence her. And to the sudden stillness of that high place came drifting the praise song of all the thousands of priests of all the countless temples of that metropolis, even from a hundred miles off.

  Dathanja looked at her for a great while. There was a quality to his look that demonstrated a firm concentration of the mind. The glamour of what he gazed on did not distract him. And seated before her now on the rugs of the pavilion, naked as he had come from the pillar, he neither vaunted nor sought to conceal his body. He wore it as a garment.

  Eventually, he said: “They call you a goddess. But you are not of the generation of Upperearth, I think. You have about you the quality of another race whose land lies in the opposite direction. Yet they shun daylight, and here you sit, blue-eyed under the sun.”

  “How wise you are, Dathanja,” said Azhriaz. “Do you hear the name my priests are crying?”

  “Yes,” said Dathanja. “By your name then, I know you are his child.”

  “How wise, how wise,” said Azhriaz.

  “He got you on a mortal, or you could not endure the day.”

  “Oh, a blue-eyed mortal, with day in her very flesh and soul. But now,” said Azhriaz, “enough of she that I am. Tell me of him you are.”

  “I have told you. I am a newborn infant. I am an unmarked stone sloughed by stone.”

  “Zhirek,” said Azhriaz. “The Dark Magician. Invulnerable, terrible. Simmu’s lover and Simmu’s murderer. Zhirek who learned the magic of the sea-folk. Zhirek who offered my father his service. But my father said to him, ‘I need no service of yours.’”

  “That was a former life,” said Dathanja in a low and almost silent voice.

  “Let us see.”

  And removing the silvered golden glove from her left hand, she showed him a dagger, which next she threw into his heart. But the dagger fell broken on the rugs. He was unharmed. Then she took a cup standing by her and gave it him. “Drink this poison.” He took the cup, and drank, and set the cup aside. Azhriaz kicked the goblet, and where the wine in it ran out, a fearsome scorch seared along the ground. But the man was not affected. And then Azhriaz took the glove from her right hand and touched the head of the three-eyed wolf at her right knee. It came alive, every inch of it, and padded to the man and gaped its jaws for his throat. But something pushed the wolf aside, and it rolled away and went back to the chair
and grew instantly rigid again, all but its three eyes.

  “Behold now,” said Azhriaz. “This way Zhirek was, for his mother had him seethed in a sorcerous well. . . . And this way you are. How is that?”

  “Azhriaz,” he said, “it is to me a memory—less visible, far less actual, than the glass of your clever chair. For I am done with Zhirek.”

  “The earth rings yet with tales of his arrogance and wickedness, nevertheless. In remembrance of that, you are well suited to my City and my Empire. And now I am sure of this: Unless you had consented, the soldiers would have had some problem to bring you here. Thus. You were willing.”

  Then Azhriaz rose and clapped her hands.

  The pavilion dazzled into the sky and vanished. The crowds of beasts and humans also disappeared, either spirited elsewhere or canceled, never having existed at all. The checkered platform remained, void, with the smothering gentian sky hung over it, and the City round about too bright to gaze on, and the towers going up as it seemed to very Upperearth, to illustrate how the gods were mocked.

  Then two huge creatures came flying, like doves.

  “They are my slaves, as all things are in this place,” said Azhriaz. “Go with them, if you wish. For if you do not desire it, I will not tussle with you to see if my magic can crush yours—between strong powers such fights are so tiresome,” said Azhriaz, “even Lords of Darkness do not engage in them, as I have witnessed.”

  The dove things alighted, and cooed to Zhirek who was Zhirek no more, gesturing how they would bear him kindly through the air to some wonderful prospect.

  “And if I go with them, what?” he said.

  “You shall be a prince here. You shall enjoy the luxuries of Az-Nennafir; its learning will be at your disposal, and its dower of curiosities.”

  “And by night, the living image of Simmu will be sent to me, perhaps?”

  “If you desire it.”

  “I do not. Simmu is no more, and no more anything to me. But it would be a demon’s trick.”

  “I am no demon,” she said, “but a Goddess-on-Earth.”

  Dathanja, who had been Zhirek, regarded her. He said, “Yes, you are a goddess. So strung with riches and enchantments you might as well be destitute. And so beautiful you might as well be faceless.”

  “You are wise, as I said,” replied Azhriaz. “Do not be too wise.”

  And she was gone, but for a second, a slender dragon filled the whole sky, and the City whispered in its stones.

  Dathanja lived then some months of his new life at Az-Nennafir of the Goddess. He had been once before in a tall, tall city, the prize of a woman, but that was in the former life, and besides, beneath an ocean. It may have seemed to Dathanja that Azhriaz put no watch on him, that he might proceed where and how he wished. But he must know also that since every person and being of the City, its every brick and tile, even the waters and dusts of it, were hers, she might at any time have news of him, if she was inclined. But it was a place of wonders, and some of these he inspected. He walked the thoroughfares like other men, and for weeks wandered far afield on its hills of marble and through its obelisk woods. He spoke to travelers who came there, and no one stayed him. He watched unhindered, and uninvited, the orgies and revels, the sorceries and dramas and festivals that were its daily and nightly fare. The extravagant sacrifices he saw, and how easily death claimed them. He came to be known by sight, himself, for some mark of hers had been left on him, to protect him from annoyance, or only in the way a favorite dog is given a collar. For himself, he remained grave as the stone, and though the lensed sun tanned his skin, no other hue of him was altered. Black of hair and blacker of eye, and in plain clothing of black, this way he went. Yet he walked barefoot as Zhirek had always done.

  None, asking or learning his current name, addressed him by the old one, and perhaps they did not know it. Neither did the determinedly lascivious women and men of Az-Nennafir approach him, nor any tricksters, nor any sage or scholar or poet. And this was not solely the mark of their Goddess on him, but some branding of his own. Dathanja did not entice lust or hate or love, as Zhirek did. No one begged compassion of him, or sought to adore him, or cast him down. And when, rarely and in seeming error, some might speak to him, his calm stony eyes drove them off, as once his invulnerable fearful flesh had driven off the spears and lions.

  There was an avenue of statues, each representing the Witch-Goddess, and to one side of it, high up, was a grove of olive trees, higher themselves than a house of ten or twelve stories, and with leaves like tarnished water. Dark ferns flourished below, whose heads would brush the ears of elephants. Golden fruits scattered the ground that had fallen from no tree, and which, after a space, hatched out butterflies.

  At the center of the grove had been built a shrine to the Goddess, where every dawn young women and young men would come to pour, from vials, the blood or tears of those they had injured during the night. The butterflies fed on these substances, and immediately turned black, and flew awhile, then drifted down and died. But from the little corpses would presently spread a golden stain that, as the day wore on, hardened and rounded, until by night it had become once more a fruit of gold.

  To this grove Dathanja found his way, and here he came to sit, day after day, and sometimes to sleep on the grass under the ferns. He watched the eternal circle, how the fruit hatched, how the butterflies flew about, how the blood and tears were splashed on the shrine of Azhriaz and the butterflies fed and blackened and fell down. How there came to be again golden fruit, and again the fruit hatched butterflies. On and on, the cycle toiled, around and around, and never ended.

  One twilight just before the dawn, Dathanja took up a golden fruit from the earth, and, at the warmth of his hand, a butterfly straightaway hatched itself. It flew up to sit upon his shoulder.

  Soon the sky bloomed and there came the notes of a reed, and singing. Into the grove, preceded by a piper, strolled three youths of great attraction, who nodded to Dathanja and passed by him to the altar. “Here, heavenly Goddess,” said one, “is the blood of a man who died in a tiger’s jaws because I asked it of him.” “And here,” said the second, “the blood of a girl who paid me to kill her since I cared for her no more.” “And here,” said the third, “the tears of a fool who weeps on my feet as I caress my new friend.” Then they linked arms, and struck the piper to make him resume the song. And so they lilted, singing, away.

  Then at once came three young women in garlands of poppies and orchids, and they poured out the contents of a single phial between them, gaudily large as a bucket. “Behold, O Goddess of goddesses,” said one, “here are the mingled tears and gore of those who have worshiped at our shrine through the dark, and whom we scored with our nails and our knives.” Then they kissed the altar and each other, and two coupled like lionesses under Dathanja’s very eyes, while the third watched him, but her face was shut like a fan. And then the three of them went away.

  The butterflies which had hatched in the grove lifted in a spangled spray and settled on the shrine.

  All but the butterfly which had hatched in Dathanja’s palm, and this crept into his hair and hid itself.

  When the others had done feeding, they blackened as usual, and flew up to hang like thunder under the trees. Then the one butterfly which had not fed left its shelter and fluttered out among them. The black butterflies, seeing its difference, turned on it and tore it in pieces, for they had claws in their mouths.

  The fragments of the butterfly lay in a bright heap beneath the fern, but when the black butterflies flopped down, the fragments, also, began to issue gold, and by nightfall, a fruit lay where the one bright butterfly had lain, as with all the rest.

  Dawn returned; the golden fruit opened and the butterflies flew and played about the grove. Then there arrived young men and maidens, who made joyous and foul confession at the altar, and the stone was given its libation. But when the butterflies settled there to feed, three flew another way, to the spot where the man sat watching t
hem, and they gathered instead on his robe, and he sheltered them. So bright they burned, like little papers written by the sun. But later, when the other butterflies rose from their feast, black as if burnt, the bright butterflies flew among them and were ripped to bits. When these bits were on the ground, they issued gold, and turned to golden fruits.

  And this happened day after day, for seven days, or nine, or more. But each day more butterflies abstained from the nectar of tears and blood, although they were then slaughtered by those which had not.

  One morning, a handful of minutes before the dawn, as Dathanja sat in the grove of olives, and the butterflies were just beginning to break free of the fruit, a girl stole into the grove alone, and stood at the man’s left shoulder.

  She was a poor girl, dressed in rags, and with neither a precious stone nor a garland on her hair, but only a mean cloth to hide it and muffle her face. Dathanja had seen many destitutes in the City. Generally they stretched dead in gutters, having brought themselves to ruin with excess in pleasure, sadism, or ill-conceived magic. None would help them; it was not religious. Nor did they entreat. This girl might be one such, on her descent to the crematory pits. But still she murmured to Dathanja in a low dulcet voice, “Why do you stay here, lord, to watch butterflies, when there are so many marvels in the City?” Since he did not answer, she continued, “Today there is a celebration. Mages will fly with wings and women will dance themselves to death. Eastward, a new palace has been erected. The casements are of colored rain, but it has, too, its own tame sun, that lives in a cupola of cedar wood—which every day will be incinerated by the heat, and so will have to be replaced every day. Westward there is a bull of electrum that has trapped a moon between its horns; it speaks awesome prophecies. And south there is a garden grown from one seed. It is only seven yards in length or breadth, but whosoever enters is lost among its walks and arbors for days on end. And north there is to be a marriage between a virgin and a statue of chalcedony. And there are other matters. Why sit here and stare at butterflies?”