Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (14 page)

Meanwhile Sovaz followed
the mad, mindless animal that had been her own lord and lover, sometimes losing
the trail.

Her purpose set but also
grew dull. He had abandoned her, like others. It was a perverted adventure for
him, to be tortured in this way. He had preferred Azhrarn’s justice to her
love.

But it seemed there was
nothing else left to her, but to follow. Her powers were vast—she knew them
without much trial of them. It might be she could negate Azhrarn’s malice. Or
would Chuz, reveling in punishment, deny the healing spell?

There was, it is true, a
tradition for such a wandering search. The legends had several examples—for
instance, how Shezael the Half-Souled had gone to search for the insane hero
Drezaem, in whose body dwelled the other half of her spirit. How Simmu, when a
girl, had followed her lover Zhirek—before he became a mage, when he was only a
priest, exiled and tormented, and mad with anguish. After various trials and
tribulations, Shezael and Drezaem had been united. Simmu and Zhirek also, for a
little while, till Fate, and the demons, parted them. Though long after, they
met again. Simmu (who could be man or woman, now a man) had stolen a draft of
Immortality, and so incommoded Uhlume, Lord Death. Thereafter, Simmu came to
rule in a demon-built city of immortals at the earth’s easternmost corner.
Here, Zhirek came back to him, but no longer as a lover or a friend. And
Simmu’s city, Simmurad, of rosy stone and jade and silver, Simmurad lay under the
sea, now.

Very likely, these
memories attended on Sovaz in her long walk.

While following the
crazy mindless thing, she came into the murkier regions of the earth, prone to
unreasonable happenings.

The romantic sheltering forests lay far behind. There
were hills, and mountains, where only the passing cumulus gave shade. She could
outface the sun, the Demon’s daughter, and sometimes, at sunbirth or sundeath,
she could fall in love with the solar disk. Yet there were days the sun beat
upon Sovaz, and then she suffered in hidden, deep-rooted ways. And she came to
travel much by night, through the tall lands, under the moon for a white sun,
and all the tears of it, the stars, her motionless continual companions. Nor
did she journey always on foot along the ground. She dared all her abilities,
and sometimes she walked in the very air, laving her feet in its coolness. Or
sometimes she rode on sorcerous carpets, or called black birds from their rocky
sentry posts to carry her. And once, discovering a stone lion carved from the
hill, the marker of some forgotten tomb, Sovaz made the beast rise up, and she
rode on its back three nights and the days between, before she returned it to
the dead.

It was a deserted
district. None saw.

Only madness had gone
before. She noted the evidence of that progress. There was little to be seen,
much to be felt. Then she had walked up into the highest terraces of the high
mountains, and emerging onto a deep balcony of granite as the dawn began, she
found the land fell away before her, the jagged walls of the mountains leveling
to a blanched barren plain. This spread to the horizon.

As she stood in the
mountain balcony, some people, clad like destitutes, appeared along the
neighboring ledges, out of caves and holes there.

“Maiden,” they called to
her, one after the other. There was something annoying to their voices. And
then, an elderly man stepped forward. On the breast of his wretched robe he
wore a pectoral of gold, and a circlet of gold around his head held his dusty
hair from his colorless face. He pointed a thin finger at her, on which a heavy
ring took fire.

“Maiden,” said he,
“travel no further. Do not seek the plain. It is a wicked zone, and accursed.
Beyond, by the river—which is now a canal of foulness—lies a city which is a
city no more, but a sewer. Turn back. Or, if you are weary, rest a space with
us.”

“You are too kind,” said
Sovaz. “But maybe you are also untruthful, the city beauteous and
wholesome—which, being the outcasts of it, plainly, you revile to strangers.”
The spokesman sighed and frowned.

“Truly, we are outcasts.
Hesitate among us, and I will tell you the cause.”

“Again, you are too
kind. I am uninterested in your city, or your tales of it.”

And saying this, Sovaz
went on along the shelves of the mountain, not attempting to go down to the
plain, but only seeking still for him she sought.

Behind her, the refugees
from the city muttered and lamented.

The risen sun kissed
Sovaz viciously. She was weary and sick at heart.

Close to noon, she
entered a cave for relief and rest.

It seemed to her Chuz
had spent an hour or so in the cave. It was filled by an unseen noiseless
scentless awfulness, and in the softer rock ragged nails had gouged a pattern.
A little water ran down there, and Sovaz drank from it, as a human drinks who
is thirsty. For some needs are not needful, yet they are.

Later, she slept. And
she dreamed, but in the general way of the Vazdru, abstract fabulous dreams,
though, waking up as the sun began to go down, she dreamed for one half second
as a woman might have done, and she saw Oloru-who-was-Chuz, handsome, strong,
and cunning, and her beloved. But then he was gone.
Forever
I may go after and never catch up to him. Is that Azhrarn’s punishment of me,
also, for my birth that now he regrets?

There framed in the cave
mouth the sun burned out on the plain. And there were, too, several other
smaller suns which did not set: torches. The destitutes who had stayed her
earlier had come and found her here, and sat in the cave’s entrance. The man
with the insignia of gold was seated across from her, glaring. Sovaz noticed
they had bound her while she slept with thick cords. There was some raw but
effective magic on the cords, for she had not been aware of the binding, and
she knew at once it would take some powers of hers to break the knots. She did
not immediately perform the feat.

“And now,” said the man, “you will listen, insolent
girl.”

“Then,” said Sovaz, “I will listen. Take care not to
be tedious with this story you insist I must hear.”

But the man only went on
with his glaring.

“Out there,” he said,
“miles off, where the sun perishes, lies the river, and by the river the city
which is called Shudm, though that was not always its name. Tiered and darkly
gilded is Shudm, and six masters rule it, and three mistresses. But it is my
class which was wont to make the governors there. Now, like a vulture, I sit up
in the caves and watch the city in my mind’s distance, and warn from it those
travelers I may. But all I inform of the history of new-named Shudm—which means
the Portioned One.” Sovaz yawned behind her white hand, and with a slight
gesture broke one of the binding cords in two. If the man saw was not certain.
It was black now, but for the torchfire, and he leaned nearer. “What do you
seek in Shudm?”

Sovaz said: “You try my
patience. Go on with your story or have done.”

But she thought,
My goal is lost to me. I may as well be here as
anywhere. My summer of love is ended. Winter arrives.

But
the man said, all-importantly, “We call the tale
Liliu,
or
Apples of Fire.
”

After which he told it
her, in much detail, so her own life seemed to withdraw into the shadows.

2
The Story of Liliu

THERE HAD lived then, in the tiered city by the river,
in the days before it was known as Shudm, a rich merchant-lord. He had one son,
his heir, by name Jadrid. For this son the merchant would, as they said, have
plucked apples of fire—he loved him so much and could refuse him so little.

In due course, a
marriage was to be arranged. But none of the prospective damsels satisfied the
ideals of this young man, though he was shown several portraits, and was even,
in some cases, permitted to gaze through curtains and hedges upon the hopeful
candidates. The merchant was at his wits’ end, for riches and power must pass
on.

One day, near sunfall, a
man came to the gate. Despite his lack of attendants, the stranger was finely
dressed and bore himself like someone of consequence. He was accordingly
admitted. On entering the presence of father and son, who had happened to be
playing chess together, the visitor spoke in this way: “Sirs, I hear that this
house requires a bride for its heir, but that to be fit for him she must be
both highly accomplished and of surpassing beauty. Know then, that I serve a
mighty master, and that his daughter is of just such a sort. He whose
mouthpiece I am has therefore sent me to tell you that should the lordly heir
venture this very night to follow me, he shall secretly be shown the girl, and
may make judgment whether I have offered truth or lie.”

Father and son were each
taken aback.

“Who is he then, this
mighty one you serve?” demanded the merchant.

“That I may not, at this
juncture, tell you. You will readily understand, in the unlikely event of your
son’s refusing her, my master does not want his daughter or his house
dishonored, and there is slight chance of this in anonymity.”

The merchant did not
seem inclined to smile on these words. But already the young man felt a curious
excitement and desire to try the adventure—and turned to murmur to his father.
Apples of fire—

Perhaps half an hour
later, as the fire-apple of the sun itself lay red and low on the river, Jadrid
was walking along behind the stranger-servant. Who had advised him thus: “Keep
always some seven paces at my back. Utter no word to me, nor to any other,
neither let any distract you from our course.”

Indeed, they were not
two streets’ distance from the merchant’s doors when some friends of the young
man’s were seen approaching with garlands and torches, en route to an
entertainment. Noting Jadrid, they called to him to join them. But he, faithful
to his quest, shook his head gravely and moved on without stopping.

A while after, as he and
his guide were turning into the narrower byways near the dock, a beggar woman
lying in an arcade cried out softly to Jadrid for alms. It was in his mind to
give her some coins, but in the dark red dimming of the light, he thought he
saw the servant make a sharp gesture of remonstrance. So Jadrid ignored the
beggar, and left her maligning him.

The next minute, a group
of priests from one of the temples appeared on the narrow way, ringing bells
and chanting. As they drew close, Jadrid stepped aside perforce to let them by,
but one of the priests turned to clasp his arm, saying urgently: “The body is
only dust; why then do you seek to joy the body? It is the ever-living soul
which should be your care—” And a ready theosophical retort sprang to the lips
of Jadrid, and he crushed it down and dumbly, if politely, disengaged himself,
before hurrying on in the wake of the mysterious servant.

Shortly after this, the
sun sank altogether.

Jadrid found that he had
by now followed his guide into the oldest quarter of the city. Soon they came
on a deserted boulevard between high walls, above which rose the tops of many
great mansions, but all unlit. The night was everywhere, and dark, but strung
with stars, which made their white music of silence. Not a sound was to be
heard from the city’s heart; only sometimes there would be a rustling in the
trees which overhung the walls. Jadrid, who had persuaded his father, now began
to suspect villainy, and put his hand to the long dagger at his belt. But the
servant had paused beside a small door, and unlocking it, intimated that the
young man should pass through alone.

With some caution,
Jadrid did go to the door, and peered inside. What lay beyond the wall was only
a garden, rather overgrown, but with a variety of sweet-smelling blossoming
trees. Even as he hesitated, a light bloomed out in the midst of them, and
there came the lilt of a long-necked harp, most skillfully played.

“Why do you wait?”
whispered the servant to Jadrid. “Each evening my master’s daughter plays in
the arbor. Go only as far as those three peach trees, and you can view as
much.”

Just then, there came
winging through the air the notes of a female voice, exquisitely singing. And
as if enchanted, Jadrid stole forward to the peach trees and looked between
them.

There in a little
pavilion burned three round lamps that flashed with jewels. But under the lamps
there burned the brightest light and jewel of all.

It seemed to Jadrid he
had never seen such fair beauty in any mortal thing, and probably he had not.
Trellised with golden ornaments, her hair was the same dark red color the dying
sun had been, and it splashed in a cascade across her shoulders, and shone all
gold too where the lamps burnished it. Her skin, ringed with gold, was paler
than the finest white paper. As she played her song to the stars, the gems on
her slender fingers dazzled Jadrid. But her eyes, which did not see him, smote
him almost blind.

For some while she sang,
and surely never did a maiden sing so perfectly. Jadrid stood rooted to the
spot. At length the girl set the harp aside, rose on tiptoe to blow out the
lamps, and almost slew the watcher with her grace. Then she stole away toward
the house, and vanished in darkness.