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

by Tanith Lee

  2

  WHAT WAS it, of course, but mere politeness when calling on a relative, to journey in family resemblance and name?

  She had called down from the hills her mount, the winged lion with the philosopher’s face. Then rode upon it to some spot deep or high. And there she drew upon herself the persona of Azhriaz, and she stamped her foot—or some say she pulled up a tall gray weed which grew there—and the earth cracked, it parted. And again mounting the lion, she spoke to it, and bound it by safeguards, and even by a garland of her own hair.

  Then like a flung spear they descended.

  Down, down, through galleries of rock and soil, through veins of water, mineral arteries, and the grass roots of all the world. Down, down, through a shadow and a sheen, through a sluggish cold lava flow which might have been a deadly languorous river—and which was—down, down, through the last strands of ordinary matter, bursting the final links with day or time or the mundanely beating heart of life—

  And made landfall as a spear would, hitting firm upon a surface ground, in Innerearth, the sphere of mortal death—if only in ignorant parlance.

  Innerearth was the way it always was and had always been. Nothing new, or seldom, was ever said of its general landscaping. There is sometimes virtue in repetition.

  Atmeh-Azhriaz stood upon a plain, and about the plain were rolling hills with, here and there, another plain beyond, and on the left hand a range of cliffs. The color of this land was gray; the plain was a desert of gray dust, the cliffs were lead, and the hills stone, and where their shadows fell they were black. Above, the sky of Innerearth was dull white and might be described also as comfortless—though none of the prospect was remotely cozy. No sun or moon or stars were lit here. The sky did not change, only occasionally a cloud blew over it like a handful of cinders. And though, through the deaf blankness, there sometimes sounded thundering wind, it had barely the strength to push these clouds before it.

  Now, the winged lion, whatever it actually was, remained a creation of the earth above, and so it was a sort of inverted ghost in the deathland. It cast no shadow, and its step could disturb none of the gray mosses or dull pebbles underfoot. It seemed, too, disinclined to fly, as if it doubted the miserable sky could keep it up, and certainly there were no air currents sturdy enough to fill its wings.

  Atmeh spoke soothingly to the lion, and it set about a walk, she riding its back, cross-legged between the folded wings. And she, being what she was, cast a shadow, as the cliffs and hills did, long, slender, and pitch-black upon the ground.

  They walked a long while. The sky did not alter, there was no specific time.

  They roamed between the cliff shades, and over the stony hills, and by a sky-white river on whose edges grew petrified poppy husks, depressingly gray as all the rest.

  But eventually, having followed the river a whileless while, there began to be visible on the horizon a bank of dark cloud, which was not cloud at all, nor stone, nor shadow. But a forest, and of full-blown trees.

  Illusion was previously rife down here. It had been the key and the clue to survival for those living corpses who were the guests of Lord Death. From thin air might be constructed anything. Yet to one such as Atmeh it was amply evident that neither illusion, delusion, nor delirium of any kind had made the forest. It had seeded. It had matured. It lived.

  Lion and lady entered the trees.

  There were black pines, whose quills bore the faintest blush of blueness, cedars denser black, but vaguely bloomed with viridian. Silver-gilt and prone to clink, yet they were cones that hung on the boughs or littered the ground, where a dark moss grew that budded swarthily.

  Among the live thickets too were stirrings. Birds showed themselves that did not fly, but stalked along the branches. They were like ravens, but their beaks were flushed, their eyes prisms. And where the trees thinned, you came on pools of sea-green water—and from the basins pairs of leopards were drinking, in coats of black spotted by broken rings of gold. They raised their canine masks at the lion, which growled, then lowered them to drink again. In their ears were precious drops the color of the water. And once a peacock crossed the forest floor before the rider and her mount, with eyes of polished turquoise in his tail. They were the immortal animals of Simmurad, maybe. Had Uhlume not presented them to Naras, when he razed the city?

  The trees soon divulged a road of grape-dusk marble, which spilled into a valley beyond. Pylons towered by the road, obelisks of smooth translucent black, and on either side, and throughout the valley, such standing stones arose, some in groups, others isolate, and between and around twisted marble avenues. The valley otherwise was all lawn, a turf of blackest green, like ivy. Black mansions clustered about on it, where the pylons did not. It might be a town of the dead. At the valley’s farther end, up under the mindless sky, was a sable palace with inky columns braceleted by gold, and slashed in lizardine windows and windows salamander. Albino poplars ranked like white feathers by the walls. There were gardens blotted by scarlet plants, and trees whose fruit looked poisonous. Before the high portico a three-legged stand of silver held a bowl of fire, which streamed up smut, ceaselessly and seemingly without purpose.

  In the stories, Death’s domicile had been a simple affair. But in the stories of Naras, neither had her palace been this way. For she recreated the substance of her earthly life here, or had meant to, they said. Possibly the essential nature of Innerearth had corrupted her work. Or had she grown enamored of the new state over the old?

  Naras had outstayed her thousand years, so much was positive. Naras, Queen Death—what was the modest title Narasen of Merh, to that?

  Atmeh paused above the valley. A tributary of the blanched river ran before the palace, and the palace reflected in it, and the fire-smut, the windows, the poplars. Nothing moved about the house, nor in the town. If all the prior guests had departed, no more had been garnered.

  Atmeh urged the lion on, down the marble road.

  As they passed, not a grass blade shifted.

  At the river, Atmeh dismounted. She tethered the lion by sorcery to the limb of a venomous damson tree. As she walked on alone, the insolent fruits of these trees fell into her very hands, to tempt her, but she only let them go. She crossed the river by walking on the water, and when she did so, two or three of the poplars bowed down to her. The liquid itself smoldered at her footsteps. Conversely, the smoking fire at the door went out.

  Ebony inlaid with ivory, the doors. They swung inward, and Atmeh entered the silent hall of her un-uncle, King Uhlume, Master of the Dead, one of the Lords of Darkness.

  Yes, there would seem to have been a compromise. The hall was this way: Grim stone hung with the pelts of things which could not die (somehow), banners from wars unfought (surely?), burnished weapons, carpets and draperies that delicate fingers of earth had woven and embroidered, their dyes oddly altered, their patterns changeable—

  The floor, like the doors, was inlaid with ivory, but this was the internal scaffolding of men and beasts and fishes, tibias, ribs, pelvises, craniums, the last with gems in their eyes.

  Between pillars girdled gold, the court of Death, men and women young and antique together, posed to gaze at the one who now came in—but through the bodies of these courtiers, as through the floor, you might see—not to a skeleton, but to an emptiness. They were phantoms, these lingerers. Souls and flesh, both were gone, and the psychic residue had worn thin as old gloves.

  However, at the hall’s far end, a quarter of a mile perhaps from the door, rose two mighty chairs of whitest bone. Bone-white hounds lay at their carven feet, and black hounds, and one hound that was pastel blue.

  In one chair sat a woman, and in the other a man. She wore a gown the color milk would be, if it were blue. Her skin was black as black would be, if black were blue. Her eyes were lighter blue, but that was the whites of them, and at their centers shrilled infernos of yellow. On her grape-purple hair—like the marbles and windows—was a queen’s diadem, and like the pillars
she was ringed by gold, save her right hand, which was as much a skeleton as anything sunk in the floor. This then, Naras, Queen Death.

  But in the other chair was a man of the blackest skin, the whitest hair, clad in white and unjeweled. His eyes were two tears, two openings into bright fog, two nothingnesses—

  “Lordly Uncle,” said Atmeh, “I extend my homage.”

  “Despite your misapprehension of our relationship,” said Uhlume, “you are well-mannered. You did not learn it from the Vazdru.”

  “No,” said Atmeh. And she bowed (another slender poplar), in parentheses as it were, to Naras. But Naras only glared.

  “What do you want?” said Death.

  “Has no one told you, lordly un-Uncle-who-is-not? I have confessed freely. I would become one of your subjects.”

  The Lord Uhlume, King Death, or alternately King Uhlume, Lord Death, rested his black chin upon his black hand, and looked upon her beautifully and with an icy endless majesty. (In the other chair, Naras snapped her bone fingers, once. When she did so, every one of the hunting dogs disappeared, save for the hound of chilliest blue. This dog, a bitch, she fondled. But that was all she did.)

  “You are the daughter of Azhrarn,” said Death at length. “And his demon blood it is which has made you an immortal. This is within the present order of things. You are no concern of mine.”

  “You are Death. Tell me how I may learn to die.”

  “Why do you yearn to?” said Death, leaning yet his sculpted chin upon his ringless hand.

  “To liberate my soul from my body. That my spirit may inhabit many lives and be lessoned in these, and so join the adventure all human souls have as their right.”

  “Men do not consider in this way,” said Uhlume. “Men shun bodily death with terror, and envy those who do not perish.”

  “That is only the safeguard of forgetfulness. Enhance your reputation by it,” said Atmeh. “Make me mortal and perishable. Greater even than your overthrow of Simmu, Immortality’s Thief—called also, sometimes, Death’s Master—to bring down a demon’s child to the clay.”

  “You are hungry for endings.”

  “Not at all,” said Atmeh, with a very melodious laugh. “I shall live long. I shall learn much, even as I am. But it is not enough. Metamorphosis is necessary. Will you grant the favor?”

  “Atmeh-Azhriaz,” said Death, “it is not within my jurisdiction.”

  “You refuse then.”

  “I do not,” said Death, Lord of Darkness, potentate of earth’s core, “have the power to do so.”

  Then Atmeh turned to Naras.

  “Lady,” said Atmeh, “do you suppose he lies?”

  It was, apparently, the part of Naras now to laugh. She did so. The laugh, nearly inaudible, had a frozen heat in it. Then she spoke in a low voice that was, one might say, of the tonal value of her hair.

  “You mention metamorphosis. Here is one. There has been a truce between us, he and I. We do not exchange chit-chat, but as you note, we present ourselves as joint rulers of this muck heap. And in the world, they tell often now of me. Death, they say, she walks on the battlefield. Death, they say, I met her in the marketplace. Behold,” said Naras, stooping forward a little, “I might have left this stony midden centuries ago, to partake of that adventure you hanker for, that savage flight of souls through witless birth-and-death and birth-and-death-and-birth. But I was cheated of the life I valued, my life as Narasen. And now I have assumed it here, and here I will live it and queen it, till sated—which shall not be for a while yet. As for him, this one, this uncrowned Master of Death, you will find he has lost interest in grave matters. He skirts the plague ships and the war zones, he rests on silken beds, not all inanimate, avoiding tombs. Is that not so, O black vulture?”

  Uhlume glanced at her. Then his eyes returned to Atmeh. Now, they were like opals. They had sight and might be seen. There were, most oddly, dreams of color in them. Changeable. (Like Kassafeh’s?)

  “It is so,” he said.

  Atmeh looked at Death.

  “You say you will not or cannot aid me. But you yourself—”

  “No more,” said Uhlume, gently. “You perceive, if I abdicate, I leave a worthy and practiced successor behind me.”

  Now, it was a bizarre conversation, this, if it is to be credited (be sure, it is credited). But there is this to be assessed. If the state of death were only interim, and men, spiritually eternal, never died save in the flesh, Death, even his symbol, had ultimately no function. Why should he not, bored and wearied by those deadly millennia, take up other pursuits?

  “Then, Uncle,” said Atmeh, “I will wish you joy of your new life. And go elsewhere to seek mine.”

  But Uhlume stretched out his shapely hand, and Atmeh, an immortal still, was able to take his hand in conscientious farewell. A mortal, naturally, would have died of it instantly.

  Atmeh therefore vacated the hall of the palace of Queen Death, where Uhlume had thought fit to receive her. And as the phantoms of Uhlume’s long-departed courtiers fluttered about her, Atmeh brushed them off like cobwebs.

  No sooner was she outside under the bleak sky than something came bodily yelping and rushing after her. It was the blue hound. It ran to Atmeh, and ingratiatingly panted. Then it cried in a young girl’s voice: “Do not abandon me, O mistress of astonishments—deliverance!”

  “Can it be?” said Atmeh, questioningly.

  “I am Lylas,” whined the bitch-hound, “once an enchantress, now ignominiously bound and kenneled here by that woman, who, for all my pains on her behalf, continually ensorcels me into this image, to tickle her sadistic whim.”

  “From what I have heard of you,” said Atmeh, “might that not be just?”

  “Like all great ones,” snapped the hound, “you are a dolt. Too feebleminded in your pride to see that if you were to help me, I might be of use to you. I might tell you the answer to your riddle. For I am cunning Lylas still, I am winsome and witty and pretty and myself.”

  “I commiserate, but will promise you no help. For yours to me, you have already given it immeasurably—for by your very words I discover some answer does exist, which I had come to doubt.”

  At that Lylas leapt and pawed at Atmeh’s skirt, and licked her wrists, until the lion, still detained at the damson tree, growled and beat its wings.

  “Let me give you all the answer! It is such an easy task. There are mirrors here which show everything of the world, what passes there, who does what. Sometimes I glimpse in them, and I am so astute, learn much in a second.” So whimpered poor Lylas, dropping away. “Let me be useful. Then reward me.”

  Atmeh laid her hand upon the blue bitch’s anxious brow.

  “I can allow neither. Your path is not mine. Your punishments and rewards not mine to render.”

  “Cruel foulness,” said Lylas, trying now, regardless of the lion, to take off Atmeh’s fingers, and unable. “Your filthy sun-damned race were tricksters ever. And you are mad besides. Be accursed with them, all madmen and demons.” And hurrying to the silver tripod, where the fire had begun to smoke again, Lylas boyishly lifted her leg against it. She had always been something of a slut. This attended to, she loped back indoors to fawn upon her tormentor, Naras.

  But Atmeh, having untied the lion, remained to walk the empty town of the dead, in thought.

  She hesitated at last on a garden slope where poppies flamed, and after a little, she plucked one. For she had heard there was an answer to the riddle of immortality’s ending, that the task was easy, and she—mad.

  3

  SHE COULD know almost anything, Atmeh, but not all. Her very quarrel with her condition was that she knew too much to learn as the innocent may, or the infant, or the sagacious one who sees he is a fool. Yet, by some law of the earth’s, or the gods’, when they had bothered to make them, the library of a sorceress’s mind, or a demon’s, lacked here and there a vital volume. The way to rebirth she must find out.

  But for the other business, it was child�
�s play.

  One evening therefore, as the stars were coming out, there entered an impoverished little village between some hills a starry maiden riding on a lion with wings.

  “Look! Look!” outcried the populace of the village. “It is the king’s youngest wife.”

  “Or perhaps it is a demon,” ventured a few of the poorest and silliest inhabitants, and were immediately ridiculed and put to merciless scorn.

  Atmeh rode down the street of the village, between the sad huts. A sick dog lay by the muddy well. It had assisted the village in hunting, but now it ailed they had decided it must be killed and cut up for its meat—but no one had yet had the heart to do it. Atmeh made a graceful pass above the dog with her white hands. The dog sprang barking to its feet. It was strong and healthy, and would live for a hundred years.

  “A sorceress,” said the villagers, as one, and came toward her warily.

  But Atmeh spoke a word or two to the village, its stones and mud bricks, and the well, and the fields beyond. To the yards she spoke, where the pots were stacked, and to the spaceful larders, and the orchards, and the three goats, and the very air. Once she had turned cheeses to jewels to content Azhrarn. She knew better now. Every store overflowed, every field wildly burgeoned, every flaw and hole was sealed, new shirts, new roofs, new shoes . . . or, that is to say, the old ones, as they had been, before years of wear wore them. The goats were friskily getting under the billy, and the billy obligingly filling each with baby goat inside the hour. The well had water sweet as wine. The jars of sour wine indoors were fit for the king, and too good for him, indeed. While in the air hung a fragrance and a balm. It would come to be, in the rescued dog’s twenty-fifth year, that this place would be famous in the region for its curative properties, and sufficiently prosperous it had lent money to the king’s sons, so that—in the dog’s thirty-fifth year—a man of the village would himself be made the king.