by Tanith Lee
All night long the three strangers went through Az-Nennafir, and some beheld them, and some attempted to detain them. But a great heat played about them, and those who caught the sleeves of their garments felt a touch like a desert wind, and those who plucked their flesh seemed to have dipped their fingers in scalding sand. And though they were seen in several parts of that gigantic metropolis, both on its mountainous heights and in the chasmic lanes between, they did what no mortal could do, traversing the whole City in that single night.
Near dawn, they came to an inn on the river bank. It rose story upon story, like a coiled dragon, with windows of primrose green. And in the court, which was strewn with the petals of bruised white myrtles of unusual size, there posed a statue of chalcedony, a man in form, that held clasped close a beautiful dead girl whose hair streamed to the ground. Her body did not mortify; she too was altering to a chalcedon. At their feet was a message written in silver, which read: Such is love.
The three strangers approached the inn door, which, like the gates, gaped wide. The hall within was loud and busy with carouse, despite the weary hour. Caged fires enlightened riches and riot, in the middle of which a chained beast crouched, that had the face of a wolf, the hind legs of an enormous hare, the figure of a serpent, the breasts and tresses of a woman.
The white-cloaked stranger tossed down a last pebble, among the couches. The pebble chinked and grated, bounced against a winepot, and spun to stillness. There was no other sound anymore in that room. Every man and every woman stood or leaned or sat or lay in the attitude adopted at the instant of the pebble’s flight. Some had their arms raised aloft in dramatic gesturings, others humped in crazy positions, suspended in the fiercest performances of lust. But the fires in the cages were also motionless, every flame glistening like a dagger. And a number of cups had been spilled, and hung in air, with the wine half splashed from them like beads of tinted glass.
The composite beast alone was not affected. Nevertheless, it deemed it prudent to cower down and howl, and when the three travelers moved by it, it crawled away until its chain groaned and creaked and suddenly snapped. And then it crawled on into the dark beyond the door.
Upward through the motionless inn the travelers took their way. Over every formerly vociferous floor they wended, and were gone. In the top tier, at the very peak of the new silence, they sat down, and under their cloaks stirred an uncanny restlessness, as great wings were folded.
It happened that a magnet began to exert its influence in the City of the Witch-Goddess.
They were drawn, the citizens, they could not help it. Sometimes there was a dream they could not remember, or explain. Or it was only a mute desire. Sometimes they did not even wish to go—there. But there they went. They left their comforts, mageries, and their studied wrongdoings. Worship and sacrifice they left also. They abandoned the luxury trades of Az-Nennafir that had made them wealthy, and its debaucheries that slowly killed them. They left off even ritual murder and suicide. They trooped along the wide roads, steered along the river, under the blued sky. They came to a building, once an inn. But the inn had become peculiar, putting out oddly graceful protuberances, galleries, spires . . . growing like a heavenly vegetable. Within this inn’s radius, which seemed to increase with every hour, the winds came by and did not move the grasses of the lawn or the leaves of the myrtle shrubs. Flowers lay on the ground and did not fade.
In the courtyard, a chalcedony statue had toppled over and broken into chunks, none of which had been pilfered. A clean female skeleton was mingled with these.
Mostly, the bemused arrivals sat down about the inn and wondered and murmured. As days and nights wore, some would fall silent, and presently get up again and hurry away. These might subsequently be seen dashing through the City toward one of the several gates—a journey of weeks, or months. But others lay down and slept, and did not waken, though the whole area sighed with their concerted regular breathing.
A few ascended through the inn. From the top tier of it, which now resembled a gorgeous diadem of filigreed lettuce, a quantity of these, in a short while, threw themselves off. Others came down by the stairs, and yet others did not come down.
“What is there?”
“I . . . cannot say.”
“Or will not? Is it some fresh magic of the Astonishing One, Azhriaz? She has been unseen by us a long while.”
“No. No.”
One man stood in the courtyard and said, “The sun waits three times over in the upper room. Six-winged is the sun, with golden feet and hair of fire. Evacuate this kingdom, or die here.”
“A punishment of the gods? Then we are honored by their attention.”
“We are nothing to the gods, as we are told. It is for the Goddess they cast their shining net.”
Then the aesthetics marveled. Did the gods seek to upbraid one of their own?
Still, some went home and got their goods together in a rush, and soon were to be seen, like the others who had done so, dashing for the exit points of Az-Nennafir. But the majority stayed where they were, and the streets around the erstwhile inn, and the river bank and the river, were thick with them, while far and near whole sectors of the city were deserted. Yet, so populous was that huge place, it teemed on around each vacuum. And there were plenty of persons so stupid, or so erudite, they never felt the magnetic force laid upon them.
3
AZHRIAZ the Goddess was walking westward, by the river. It was traditional, when she roamed abroad about her own business, for the vicinity to be emptied by her soldiers, a duty they cherished. The living and the corpses then removed, no human thing was there to annoy her. Only peacocks spread their fans along the avenues and uttered their soulless scream, and the ibis and the crane lowered their long necks to drink from garden pools. While two cats of white stone turned their heads with an unnerving rasp to watch their mistress going by.
The Goddess-on-Earth went down in the sunset to the harbor basin, where once, more than three decades ago, the merchant ships had ordinarily come and gone. Now only one vessel lay there. The bark of Azhriaz.
It was not that half-delusory ship in which she had first plied upriver from the west. This was a seagoing galley, resting on mighty chains at the center of the river. A man-made ship, or mostly, with enamels blazoned upon her, and bannered with furled sail. She had three terraces of decks, and when once her ports should open to let out the oars, they would quill her like a porcupine.
Solid, the ship, if nameless. And not quite natural. Those that had seen her assured you she could vanish—like her lady—at a word. Only those who had toiled to make her truly knew of her—shipwrights, joiners—who had been struck dumb for the duration. And, too, certain unnormal bipeds summoned generally by night. Although the demons had not been called on, not even those genius metal-smiths the Drin. Azhriaz had not, it seemed, wished to inform the Underearth of this venture, despite the fact that she would know nothing could be kept from Azhrarn her father should he look about for it. Maybe she had become assured of his uninterest.
Now Azhriaz, having observed her fine galley, stepped on the water. She walked over the river, past the sun as it sank, and lifted in the air to attain the highest deck, under the great rolled clouds of sail.
What was the ship for? Why, the sea. And why the sea, then? Standing on the deck, Azhriaz traced, for momentary amusement, a name on the air in watery letters. Simmurad.
But immediately, the letters died. Now she poised like an orphaned child, this fabulous woman-girl, dwarfed by the stature of a mere ship, her long-lashed eyes downcast.
Was there not a futility in everything? Why then attempt anything?
But she must rein back these thoughts. There was all time, and she damned with it. Best not to dwell on the centuries, or the minutes.
Just then it seemed to her she heard a strange music, or some other stranger sound, reverberating from the depths of her City. Had she perhaps heard it before? Attuned to the auras, notes, nuances of the thousand spel
ls that went on here, she had paid this oddity slight heed. Yet, it did not harmonize, it was discordant.
The sun had set behind the sapphire lens; the afterglow lay along the mirror of the river. Azhriaz raised her eyes, and saw three golden stars fly up the sky.
No sooner did she see them than extraordinary feelings welled in her. She was not accustomed to excitement, for her powers had, inevitably, deadened her emotional senses. So, for a moment, joy clawed at her heart. Yellow gold and russet gold and gold that was white, the three stars sliced through the firmament. Could she not, putting on such wings, too, soar upward and meet with them in confrontation?
Yet all about a weird moaning began from every side, the lapping of the river—a moan, the rushes moaning at the water’s edge. The very chains that held the ship groaned as they rubbed against each other, and the boards of the young vessel groaned as if they ached. No fish surfaced from the water. The glowing flies that came to the luminous night flowers of the garden and made love to them in error—thinking the flowers to be flies—put out their lights. An assembly of cranes took the air and flew low along the river and away, away. What perfume was this? A soft attar of fear.
Then Azhriaz was angry. Not in the manner of men, or women either, in the Vazdru way, flawless clutterless rage, with a razor’s edge. Her lips parted to speak words like drops of bane. But a hand, light as a pane of the darkness, was set upon her head.
“No,” said the voice, black catspaw silk, out of the night where nothing had been.
“You have made me a goddess,” she said, as silken. “Is there then something a goddess dare not do?”
“It may be so,” said Azhrarn. “Wait, and be still.”
And so they waited, shut in under the umbra of the sails, while the flaming stars quartered the sky on their wings, then drew away together inland, over the river.
“There is after all a novelty in my City,” said Azhriaz at length.
“Do not be charmed by it, little girl. I did not make you to be spoiled in fire.”
Azhriaz turned, and so beheld her father, the Prince of Demons, and even she for a moment took breath at his magnificence. He had come there as prince and lord indeed, clothed in the armorings of midnight, a mail glass-black as dragon plates, girt with battle ornaments of bone and jewel and staring silver. Even a sword at his side cased in black and itself all blackness, with a blue tongue running on it. About each arm there twined serpents with bodies black-armored as his own, eyes like curses, teeth for swords. Behind him and the halo of his clarified light were seven of the Vazdru, dressed after his fashion, their faces masks, their hands wicked on the gracious hilts of blades. But his face was like the sword stroke, so beautiful it was, so steeled, so sovereign.
“Which fire is that?” said Azhriaz. She spoke haughtily, and upon her the raiment of a queen began to bloom. She did not like to be humble in such company.
Azhrarn told her which fire; of the angels with their flaming swords hanging high up like three thoughts of golden death burst from the brains of the gods.
They say he knew by having watched in one of the magical looking glasses of the Underearth. But they said, also, that perhaps a ghost passed over some lawn before his palace, and glimpsing it, he went to find such a glass.
Azhriaz may now have said to him, “I am nothing to you. Why come to me with this? I have had a warning. My darling un-uncle, King Fate, brought it some months ago.” Azhrarn would then have answered, “I am not here to warn you. I will do more than that. I have told you endlessly, as I told another, you are mine, and what is mine will be chastised only by me.”
“So you have come here armed to fight?” she said. Neither he nor those who followed him replied.
In a second, Azhriaz was clad not only as an empress-queen, but like a prince.
“I will fight too,” she said. “It is my Empire, my godhood at stake. Those gifts you gave me that I hold so dear.”
Azhrarn ignored her irony. He said, “They are sun-birthed. Their strengths flourish best by day, and the stamina of my kind by night. The sun is down. You, meanwhile, go to the river shore and wait.”
“No, I will fight.”
“Did I say it was a matter for war? Do as I bid you.”
“Oh inimitable Father, and lordly Lord of lords, what name shall I get in the works of men if I hide myself?” The face of Azhrarn had not changed. It was the countenance he had put on, with the battlegarb, to come here, and he would not alter it.
“Azhriaz,” he said, “not only shall you hide, you shall fly the City. You flatter me by your estimation of my power. But the gods are the gods.” And saying that, he turned his head and spat in the river, and the water spangled as if fireworks raced from end to end, then went black. “Chuz would not duel with me,” said Azhrarn. “Have you forgotten so soon? And heaven is not to be fought with. It is a gesture, on all sides. But by these gestures, mountains are tumbled and landmasses sunk in the sea.”
Azhriaz turned from him.
‘‘You are too young and have not learned to be afraid,” he said.
Startled then, she looked at him once more. ‘‘And do you fear?”
But he awarded her only a terrible smile. The night opened, and the Vazdru were gone, Azhrarn before them.
Azhriaz frowned, but her heart, which had the tissue of mortals also in it, quickly beat. She flickered out in one place and re-evolved amid the rushes of the bank.
And does he fear? Why then take the risk, why begin it? In order to sample the fear in its due season?
The atmosphere was electric. Not an awareness in Az-Nennafir that did not feel it, even to the beetles under the stones, even to the stones.
And suddenly there came a wild blunder of wings, and a torrential scurrying—the birds, the lizards, the rats, coming forth into the night, running away through it. And the sleek pet beasts, those leashed and caged, these might be heard tricking and wheedling their ways to freedom, and next running too. Pads and talons on the streets, the walls, tails and wings, feather and fur and leather and scale. And in the river the fish winging west toward the sea, as the birds did through the sky between the mindless dancing of the sorcerous stars and moons—
Then the dark was slashed open again, and out of it poured an army of undersized and hideous monstrosities, on whose swart unlovely limbs incredible adornments coiled. The Drin, who—passing by—licked the ground about Azhriaz, then fell upon her ship, the sea galley. And it seemed they tore it asunder.
“Now,” she said, and tapped her foot.
One of the Drin approached her, crawling. “Mistress of Fevers and Fantasies, Lady of Constellations, Moon Queen—”
“I am his daughter,” she said. “One compliment at a time will do. But speak of the ship.”
“It is to be made worthy of you, Black Dream of the Night.”
“So it was, worthy.”
“To be made safe. And wondrous, Mistress of Delusions.”
“How?”
“Let me go, and you shall see, Ebony Honey from the Silvermost Wasp of the Gardens of Druhim Vanashta.”
Azhriaz kicked him lightly away. And the Drin bounded and squeaked as if he had been fondled. Then hurtled down toward the disintegrating ship.
I have no power. Helpless as a falling star am I, thought Azhriaz as she stood on the river bank. When has it been otherwise? And she too spat in the river, and spangled lilies rose which the Drin hastily plucked, biting and punching each other for possession, as they ripped apart the galley of the Goddess-on-Earth.
Night ranged black above a filigreed comber, the metamorphosed inn. It was like a jade mountain where it reflected in the river. No fish rose there, and in the reeds no frogs crackled, the crickets did not harp.
Black night on the roof, then, piercing its openwork fans. And night black in the room beneath, Night, armored, mailed, jeweled—the Vazdru. And there, before them, merely three cloaked figures, three pilgrims from some other land.
Nothing said. Time stopped.
Then, to the challenge of darkness, three cloaks unfolded, curved upward, and were wings, and a fount of light flooded the chamber. Some of the Vazdru turned their heads a little aside at it. Not Azhrarn. He stared straight upon this nocturnal sunrise, at Ebriel the eagle, and Yabael the vulture, but hardest he stared at swan-winged Melqar that the sun had seared white, and behind whose sunburst hair the solar disk seemed yet to stand.
“The gods,” said Azhrarn, “are the gods. I say nothing of them. They are not here. But the rabble of the lower skies, it seems, has some quarrel with me.” Long, long since, Azhrarn outstared the sun. It had duly blasted him. Now the twin suns of the eyes of the angel bored into the black and oceanic eyes of the Demon. One could not dry up the other, nor the other quench that one. “Who am I?” said Azhrarn. “Can it be my modest name is known to you?”
The Malukhim did not speak. But the eyes spoke in their own way. And the golden hand, the sword of bleached flame. And in the hand of Azhrarn, black-gloved, the sword of indigo.
“But you,” said Azhrarn. “The sun has sweated off three drops. And there you are. The foul orb of day was ever my enemy.”
At which the points of the swords touched each other, nearly delicate, as if they kissed.
But brilliance shattered through the room and into the sky, and broke the clockwork stars so they rained on Az-Nennafir below.
When the first concussion divided the sky, the Drin gibbered, but did not cease their labors. They went at them more swiftly. It had been a while since they had had much heart to make anything. The magnitude of this assignment frightened them, filling them with creative delight and doubt.
They had one night to do it. The task should be impossible. Yet demon-time was on their side. They could not shift the framework of darkness, nor keep the sun down in chaos for a second more than it was habitually kept. Yet, within the bounds of the night, the scope of time—or its scope for them—might be a little rearranged. So, they accomplished complex feats.