Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (46 page)

“You will be welcome,” said Hazrond, “if any remember you.”

But the demon city was trembling around him, like a bride in joy
and anxiety, and the very hearts of demonkind might be heard, starting like
hares—for there was not a brick or a leaf or an intellect that did not in some
habitual form answer him. Even Hazrond leaned toward the voice, his eyes half
closing, though the rings cut into his hands where he had clenched them.

“I am lord here now,” said Hazrond.

“As much as you ever were,” said the voice of Azhrarn out of the
shadow. “Which was not much.”

“We shall see. I await you with pleasure.”

“Do so,” said Azhrarn. “Your pleasure will be brief enough when
once we meet.”

The
day dropped out of the world. In the country underground, which knew neither
day nor dark, night nevertheless was always realized. A great stillness was
already there, in the city. Not a note of music, not a mechanical bird, not a
voice. Yet in their porticos and on their towers, the Vazdru stood, and nearby
the Eshva, as if to wait on them. Even the Drin had sidled in and crouched behind
the window panes, the walls of gardens, squinting through eyelets, unable to
keep away, full of misgiving. As night lay down upon the earth above, one bell
of bronze gave tongue through Druhim Vanashta.

They had betrayed him, nearly every one of his race. Either in
jealous rage deliberately, or by acquiescence. Not one had resisted a new order
or a usurper’s rule. They had said,
He is dead to us.
They had resumed their artistic feasts and gamings, and when Hazrond passed by
them, they adored him. Now, while the Eshva shivered and shook with sensuous
emotions, and the Drin squintily hid, the Vazdru waited, simply that, immobile
as the reeds when no wind blows. The pale faces, white as the flowers of night,
those benighted eyes, were profoundly composed. Though the city silently
drummed with the uproar of every heart that was in it.

Then the bell rang out one more time—and was riven in bits. Not an
ear that did not catch the commotion. The eyes of the demons turned all in one
direction.

He re-entered his city, Azhrarn, without ceremony or state. He
came neither mounted on horseback nor in a chariot; he was on foot. And there
was no one with him, courtier or guard. And he was clad in black, only that.
And as he moved there, the very air unfurled like a blossoming rose, the very
mosaics blushed, the pillars quivered like the strings of harps. He
was
the
city, and the city knew itself. And every one of those therein, they knew it
also.

But they were dignified, the upper echelons of demon-kind. They
did not cast themselves down before him, the Vazdru, and though the Eshva hung
in a frozen melting faint, neither did they obeise themselves. (And the Drin
stayed from sight.)

So he walked, in silence, along the silent avenues, followed only
by dark eyes, and came at length to the black palace where, for numberless
generations of the earth and timeless moments of the Underearth, he had been a
prince and a lord. When he was half a mile away, the doors, of their own
volition, opened wide. You might hear the hounds eagerly panting in the courts,
but nothing else. When Azhrarn reached the palace and the opened doors, Hazrond
was in the doorway.

Now Hazrond was the most handsome of the Vazdru, and the most
spectacular. He had put on mail and jewels and very flames indeed. But Azhrarn
had returned to Druhim Vanashta clad only in black, and one saw that Hazrond,
beside Azhrarn, was as the great sea is, to the endless, depthless, inimitable
sky.

“Well, you are here,” said Hazrond.

“I am here,” said Azhrarn.

“I trust you are well.”

“I am sick, and the disease must be torn out.
Hazrond
is
the name of it.”

“I will come down into the street,” said Hazrond. “Do you wish to
brawl there with me?”

“Come down,” said Azhrarn, “and see.”

Hazrond came down, and set his hand on Azhrarn’s shoulder.

“They will be envious of us,” he murmured, “that we touch one
another.”

“Oh, Hazrond,” said Azhrarn, looking into his eyes, “do you
imagine so?” And in that gaze, Hazrond turned pale enough you saw the skull
beneath his skin. Then a force came from Azhrarn, sparkling, and flung Hazrond
onto the marble flags before the palace.

He danced back again to his feet, this Vazdru prince who had been
Prince of the princes, carelessly, as if nothing had hurt him, it was his jest
to be flung and to fall. As he rose, he drew his sword of blackest bluest
steel, and springing forward, he thrust the blade toward the breast of Azhrarn.

They were immortals. What were swords to them, and strokes that
men used to bring death? Emblems,
language.
Oh
surely he had known, Hazrond, in the second Azhrarn spoke to him behind his
chair, and maybe even in the second he himself usurped that chair, that he was
to be the loser?

Azhrarn stretched out his hand, empty of anything, and let the
point of the sword impale his wrist. But it did not, for the sword had
disintegrated, and was gone.

And then Hazrond became sheer light. It was the essence of him,
the pure dynamic that underlay the beautiful male shape in which a Vazdru
prince was wont to adorn himself—sulfurously blue, the vitality of Hazrond,
like moonlight seen through fever and indigo. And it dashed itself against
Azhrarn. It embraced him, bore upon him.

Where Azhrarn had stood a black fire blazed in its turn, and the
fire beat and fanned itself, and heightened to a deep cold red. The energy of
Azhrarn, the psychic essence of him, scarlet as the fountain of the garden—it
overtopped, it wrapped the blue fire of Hazrond. It struggled with it, but
then there came another change.

For the red fire scalded colder, hotter, to an incandescence:
white. And the white fire in its turn began to throb and to make a color that
was like a soundless ringing.

And Druhim Vanashta, watching, would have averted its eyes, would
have cried out. For the color of this fire was gold. It was gold as gold is, and
golden things,
and
it was like the sun.
Yes, even like the sun of the earth, that to demons was the one
true death. Like the sun, Azhrarn seared there, his vital energy, and it burned
out the essence of Hazrond the way acid would eat a paper. Until only a thin
dust sifted and drifted, and was no more. And Hazrond . . . no more was
Hazrond.

Not a noise. Not a cry. Not one eye averted.

So they saw him come back, Azhrarn, their prince, a Lord of
Darkness, Night’s Master. He was a man clothed in gold and made of gold, his
flesh and hair, all gold, and his eyes were golden suns. He stood there upon
the streets of Night’s own kingdom, and was
day.
Then the golden scream of his glory transposed. It was all blackness, all
coolness. Not morning, but evening.

And without a glance, without a phrase, Azhrarn walked into his
palace, and the doors shut softly as two sleeping eyelids.

Say now, city and people, who is your prince, and
what
is
he?

2

DEMONS
did not die. At least, they did not remain dead. (They were like mortals in
that.) And the Underearth could countenance no absolute ending. The Lord Uhlume
had never entered there. And so, as Azhrarn moved through his dark palace like
a darker thought, refinding it, the ashes of Hazrond, borne by a sudden breeze,
made their exit from the city and blew away over the landscape of the
underworld.

They were not even ashes, these ashes, but a substance thinner
than air—blasted so fine as to be invisible. They were, indeed, actually,
nothing. And this settled in a hollow place, in the black grass, and as they or
it lay there, three Vazdru princes rode by. These laughed together, and spoke
proudly and cruelly, as if they had recently woken from refreshing sleep. They
were the three who had stayed loyal to Azhrarn, and guarded him in the hill.
They made now toward the city, anticipating generous welcome, rightly.

“But this,” said one of them, “let us be rid of it. For it is a
memory of despair.” And he threw away the silver cup which they had dipped in
the living stream, and with which they had attempted to moisten the lips of
their lord—but which had failed to restore him.

The cup jumped over the grasses and fell into the hollow where,
for want of much better words, Hazrond’s
ashes
lay.

There was a hint of water still in the bowl of the cup, which
spilled. More, the cup came charged with Vazdru sorcery, that prayer within the
hill, that will to revivify. Besides, it had touched the mouth of Azhrarn, like
a lover.

The clear unlit light of Underearth lapped everything like a balm,
and the dust of Hazrond with the rest.

In the world of men above, perhaps a few days came and went.
Below, a few beats of bells and hearts. The ashes, sprinkled with dews of water
and prayer, wove together like moss, hardened like clay in a potter’s oven. To
die in Underearth was a very different matter to a death above.

Hazrond, handsome and splendored, though pale now as one dead, and
weak now as one newly born, lay on his back with scarcely the strength to take
up and kiss the silver cup which had come to rest under his hand. Then, in a
while, he sat, and leaning one palm on the ground from strengthlessness, he
drew forth the silver pipe like a cat’s thighbone, and sounded it. And
presently a demon mare came galloping through the grass. But when Hazrond had
mounted her, and turned her head toward the city, she too paled. Her blackness
turned the color of ashes, and she trod slowly.

Azhrarn was seated in a hall, beneath windows like a lion’s blood.
He had been reading from books of ivory, but now he rested one hand upon them,
and the other on the carved arm of his chair. He listened and heard, beyond the
songs and silences of Druhim Vanashta, beyond all the enchanting audibles
currently put forth to placate and enamor him, the sorry hoofbeats on the flags,
and then the doors opening one by one, and the footsteps, symmetrically
stumbling.

Hazrond entered. Azhrarn said nothing; Hazrond came on. He crossed
the whole length of the hall, while the windows laved him in a dead sunset, and
reaching the feet of Azhrarn, Hazrond kneeled there. But, with his swimming,
burning eyes, he stared into the eyes of Azhrarn.

“Ask me only this,” said Hazrond. “Why I took this city from you
in your absence.”

“Why,” said Azhrarn, “should your answer interest me?”

“Because you fought with a sky-being, and some power of the sun is
also yours at last, Azhrarn, together with the might which was yours always.
And we—we are less than grass, Azhrarn, and you are everything we may not be.
Even the greatest of us. You have nothing to fear. Not even from Hazrond who is
at your feet.”

“Who told you,” said Azhrarn, “I feared Hazrond at any time?”

“Oh,” said Hazrond, smiling, “will you not fear me a little, when
I have done so much for you? For I kept you in their memory, exhorting them, by
every word and glance of mine, to forgetfulness of you.”

“Stand,” said Azhrarn.

“I cannot. Your strength crushes me.”

“Lie on your face then,” said Azhrarn. “And tell me why you took
the city.”

“Because I loved you enough to hate you. I loved you enough, when
you removed yourself, to fill the gaping void the only way I might—by myself
becoming Azhrarn. Or as much of Azhrarn as any could. And there are not many,
my prince, who were ever nearer than I. And you do fear me, Lord of lords,
because you see in me your own self. You are the black sun, and I am the dark
which was before. I am your childhood. And some long night, I have come to
believe, I shall be all of you again, and forever, as forever may then be
reckoned.”

“Riddles,” said Azhrarn. But he rested his chin upon his hand and
he gazed at Hazrond, and it was evident that, though no other did or might,
Azhrarn had understood each sentence; it was no riddle at all to him.

“What now, then?” said Hazrond.

Azhrarn struck him.

It was such a blow that it dashed Hazrond away, and stunned him.
But when he had recovered from it, he was toughened and energized, and rose to
his feet. “That is not much for punishment,” he said.

“Your punishment I gave you before,” said Azhrarn. “That was my
forgiveness.”

Then Hazrond laughed out loud. Such a laugh it was—musical, and
like the cry of some rare animal of great beauty, that softly kills all it
sees. Oh, it was the laugh of Azhrarn. Yes, it was his.

“I am done with mankind,” said Azhrarn to Hazrond. “There are
other games, or I will invent them.”

“Let mankind go,” said Hazrond. “Let it rot. They learn nothing.
They worship the gods still, though the world was scarred by what the gods have
done to it. And that woman you gave sway over humanity, they worship her yet as
a god, though she is a god no longer, and even her worship they misremember,
entreating her for pity, and calling her loving names, praising her kindness
and care for them.” And Hazrond, standing by Azhrarn, looked to see how these
words would be received, this reminiscence of the girl Azhriaz, his child by a
human female.