Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (12 page)

Then, they
were no longer alone. One other was with them.

Initially, it
appeared to be the figure of a man who came walking toward them across the
floorless floor of night. Almost all recognized the rogue storyteller, he of
the eagle-winged cloak, for almost everyone had seen that man on the journey to
Bhelsheved.

When he was
three or four feet from them, the man halted, muffled in the cloak. For the
interim of a heartbeat he stayed so.

And then—

An inky wind
swirled, hiding the stars, swirled and became a pillar of smoke, whirling,
devilish; condensed and became a stormcloud, heavy blue and shot with spangles,
split by a tremendous lightning flash. And out of the lightning flew a black
gull on blade-like wings, and flying, the gull became an eagle with two of the
stars seemingly in the sockets of its eyes, and the eagle grasped the night in
its talons, its pinions shrilled and it was a dragon, dwarfing the dark, black
as burned fire, mouth full of fire, of magma, a volcano. And then the flames
sank and a black wolf with fiery eyes became instead a black dog, which reared
upward and became that dog of cats, the panther, and after the panther, a
jaguar, which in turn reared up, standing on its hind limbs, grew the slim
waist and rounded hips of an amphora, the full breasts of a courtesan, a
woman’s face lovely beyond reckoning, with smiling lips, and an ocean of black
hair. And then she too transmuted, and each one who stood, or kneeled or cowered
before the metamorphosing force, beheld someone familiar to himself, a wife, a
brother, a neighbor or a child. So exact the likeness, some few were moved to
speak to the apparition, to call it by name in amazement. But then this shape
was also gone.

And now he
evolved before them in his masculine shape, after which, it was sometimes said,
all other men were shadows of a shadow, all other men, and all women, too, as
if they were unfinished statues, and he the only perfect creation, but if so,
who could have created him?

They saw him
as a Lord. A Lord of Darkness. A Prince. As his own people saw him.

The black mail
which clung to his body ran with blue dynamics. And even as it was mail and
metal, so his armoring was also of velvet. His cloak was not any kind of
material, but a waterfall of jewels, blacks and blackest greens and brazen,
too, as if washed in a stream of molten stuff. A collar of improbable weight,
of dragons’ skull-plates, rested on his breast, lanterned with rubies and
intricately chased with a pure demonic silver, almost like pearl but hard as
steel—Drin work, and no mistake. His boots were made of the skins of men, and
no mistaking that, either, skins dyed black, for even the sombrous wholesome
flesh of black men is not black as black really was, or is, and to demons,
blackness was a sort of light. These boots were also chased with silver, but
all the while the pictures on them changed, shimmering like snakes. An actual
snake was coiled about his left arm, a cobra, its hood spread, hissing. His
face was like a fine carving, set amid curtains of black hair to which no other
hair was comparable. His face burned and blinded, like the stars, and like
them, without pain. His face may not be described, just as, then or now, it
might not, may not, be represented. In the total truth of his form, he was so
handsome that by the appearance of his face alone he could have injured or
even, like Chuz, Prince Madness, have rendered insane those who looked on him.
(Not only the sun could destroy.) And yet, how marvelous he was, how marvelous
beyond all the marvel of man or woman or any earthly thing.

His fingers
were ringed with jasper, jade and jet. His eyes were jewels more brilliant and
more black than sun or sunlessness.

Tall, vital,
breathtaking and immobile, so he stood over them, each one of them. Azhrarn,
most rightly, and most inadequately, called The Beautiful.

Each felt a
terror then that was not exactly terror, a pleasure that was not at all
pleasure. Each shrank. Each, in his way, did homage. But homage was not
precisely what he had wished from them. Besides, it was too late.

Finally, he
smiled. His smile was cruel, and therefore full of a wonderful tenderness.
Vazdru as he was, he was an artist in his vengeance, an aristocrat in his modes
of irony.

“You may ask,”
he said to them, to each and every one, “a single boon of me, since I am here.”

“Lord,” they
stammered, “master—” They were uncertain who he was, and like others before
them, decided him to be a god. They fell flat at his manskin boots. And then
each asked in a whisper for some cherished thing. And each thing, though
different in each, was a wicked thing, or at best, a selfish thoughtless thing.
Maidens asked him for the enslavement of men they wished to love them, and
young men for girls to be put where they might come at and lie with them,
whether willing or no. Others, young and old, required the demises or crippling
of rich relations or enemies. Some asked for wealth, some for power, and many,
very many, asked for their own revenges. Even the children requested bad
things. Some of their requests were the nastiest of all.

In that entire
crowd, who might have asked in several cases for a renewal of strength or
health, or of youth, or of the knack of loving those that loved them, or of
help for those they loved, not one was prompted to ask for such a thing. He had
brought their worst qualities into instant flower, as leaven inspires bread.

And having
heard them, to each one he said: “I will put the opportunity into your own
hands. Do with it as you desire.”

And so he did,
later. And in some glass of Underearth presumably he watched them then seize
these opportunities to force and to enslave, to utilize the smothering pillow
or the poisoned meat, or the unguarded confidence or somebody’s ill-luck. But
that was to come.

Having reduced
them to the vilest part of themselves, he wrapped his cloak of armored jewels
about him, and as he did so, the whole of that night sky in the tier was
wrapped about him, and he and it were folded from sight, and black nothing
engulfed the humans who had worshipped him.

When they
roused, they were in the camp again, that camp outside Bhelsheved. Everyone
supposed then he had dreamed, and that only he had gone after the Eshva
thieves, trodden on lilies and through stained glass trees, scaled up the black
ghost tower and met there a god of the dark, and gained a gift from him.

And only some
who went out early saw the peculiar upheaval of the sands, as if an army had
tramped eastward and then tramped back. And they refrained from comment. The
tower itself, naturally, disappeared before dawn could wither it.

It was only
years after, when the results of death and mayhem had come home to roost on
this unhappy people, that they admitted to each other their dreams of that
night, and compared them, and grew cold. By then their religion was corrupt,
and their faith a sham, and when they went to Bhelsheved it was habit and greed
and holiday and nothing else. The sweet fruit of religion and faith had soured,
had rotted. The sweet fruit was no more.

There were,
naturally, a handful who did not travel to the phantom tower that night. Of
these, one was a young murderer, later found by his two brothers, hanged from a
tree in the groves by the length of a whip. And one was a tan-haired girl,
turning a pin in her fingers, who, deep in the reverie of a demon lover, missed
the demons who had stolen the Relic, and so had not cared to run after the
robbers. And thirdly were a philosopher and his followers, who were busy
worshipping stones.

As for the
Relic itself, like the three dark gems formed from the blood of Azhrarn when
the whip cut open his palm, it lay hidden under the robe of the desert. Unlike
the three gems of blood, the shards of the Relic were never located.

PART TWO

Soul-of-the-Moon

CHAPTER 1

A Sacrifice

He had demoralized the
pilgrims. He had yet to deal with Bhelsheved’s priesthood. Eradication, the
sigil of demonkind in matters of requital. Not one brick to be left whole. Not
one lamp alight.

The people had
gone in their thousands, plague-carriers of disillusion and gray mischief, away
from the white shrine in the desert. Gone with their burned-out torches,
treading heavily, dreaming harsh dreams. And the holy city closed its four
gates of ivory and steel and polished stones. Thus shut up, its water held
within, it could have withstood an interminable siege. As well. Though none had
yet attempted to sack this treasure house, there might now come a time when
some would attempt it. But that was for the darkening future. For this while,
serene, unearthly, the snow-hill of Bhelsheved slept under a dying moon.

And, under
that wisp of moon, a panther prowled around the walls. Around and around.
Passing the gleaming gates, the mountain sides of glazed blocks, passing under
the veil of trees and through the groves, where petals were dashed on its pelt.
Around and around Bhelsheved the panther circled, seven times seven times.

He was
considering, Night’s Master, the interesting flavor of retribution. And
considering too, perhaps, the smart of that strange wound they had given him.
For it is worth repeating that they must, astonishingly, have hurt him a great
deal, and that in oblique fashion he was vulnerable to humankind. His involved
acts of vengeance, his complex acts of evil—could it be possible?—were like
those elegant flourishes and underlinings with which insecure men bolstered up
their signatures on parchment.

After the
forty-ninth circuit, the night swallowed the great cat.

Three seconds
after, Azhrarn stood on the pastel shore of the heart-lake at the core of
Bhelsheved.

In the
moonlight, the golden temple was silver, the turquoise water was a sheet of
tumbled black sky, reflecting the four curving bridges in its mirror. A garden
ran down here, to the mosaic rim above the lake, and the trees exuded their
scent and had sprinkled the sugar of their blossoms everywhere. Somewhere a
nocturnal bird was singing. It did not guess who listened, or it might have
fallen quiet.

An hour or
more he stood there, brooding. A mortal hour, which to him might have been only
a moment. As he mused, occasional images formed in the water near his feet, the
representations of what his brain devised, altering as his musings altered. And
some of these depictions were not good to see.

The deadly
moon rested on her elbow overhead.

A strand of
whiteness moving in the water, brighter than the moon, might have seemed at
first the passage of a swan, then of a flame. Yet, tracing its origin to the
farther shore, you saw it was neither of these.

A female
figure walked about the lake, following the winding of its bank, the pallor of
her garments and her hair copied faithfully in the water. In her right hand she
carried a little lamp, the greenish color of a firefly.

Azhrarn waited
in the shadow under the trees. Perhaps he smiled. Perhaps he recalled the
innocent beast which, going after him into the desert, had met a lion.

Certainly, she
would not guess that anyone was here, save her own kindred of the temples,
chaste and modest and simpleminded creatures she might accost without
misgiving.

Like these,
too, she would be comely. The priests were selected for their charms.

Slender as a
wand she was, her waist looked narrow enough to be snapped in the hands, yet
supple as willow. Her feet picked their way like small white birds. Her walk
was music. Her hair which, in most of her calling, by the temple law, was
bleached and tinted to enhance its pallid glisten, seemed altogether too fine,
too pale, too starry to be anything but natural. And very long her hair was; in
repose it would robe her, the tips of it touching the ground. But as she moved,
so featherlike and sheer it was, it lifted, blowing behind her like white
wings.

Her dress was
a gown of the temple, gauzy stuff with iridescent fringes. Tiny blue
scintillants, which in the moonlight flashed like igniting flints, were
embroidered on her bodice. Each breast, the cup of a flower, stirred softly
beneath.

He had
discerned her beauty from across the lake. Yet her beauty drew nearer to him as
she did, like an approaching song.

She walked
through the broadcast blossoms, her white wings at her back, the green gem of
light in her hand. The loveliness of her face opened before him as a door
opens.

Demons were
beautiful. Rarely did mortals rival such beauty as was the commonplace of
Druhim Vanashta. Azhrarn had known and toyed with and corrupted and broken most
of the mortal beauty that there was. One woman he had himself made beautiful,
who had been thereafter, in her time, a wonder of the earth.

But this white
beauty was new to Azhrarn. He could not fathom it, nor find its floor, could
not measure or dismiss it, could not deduce of what order it had come. Be sure
then, it intrigued him.

So utterly
motionless he had grown, she would, by no means available to men, have seen him
or told that any was there. Yet, unerringly she came forward, and when she was
within ten paces of him, she stopped. She looked between the trees at the area
of ground he occupied. Her eyes were wide, and slanted a fraction upward at
their outer corners. In color they were the turquoise of the lake, and like the
lake by night they had turned dark and held reflections.