Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (23 page)

Zharet beheld
clearly, the others as if through soft smoke, a thing that was like a whirlpool
of stars. There had been a garden, but the garden seemed to have become a part
of space itself.

“Shall we go
nearer?” inquired Chuz, politely.

They went
nearer. Beyond an indefinable limit, they could not go. Something like a filmy
curtain contained the garden. It was not that they were unable to force a way
past this curtain, more as if, reaching it, they had no desire to pass beyond
it. And yet they did desire to.

Inside, was
the youth of the summer. Trees bloomed and had put out blossom, the grass was
thick with flowers. Another sky, a sky of summer night, lambent with colossal
star-bursts, shone overhead. A few stars had fallen to earth and become
flame-colored lamps. And though the filmy curtain held this summer inside, the
winter out, yet gleams, and snatches of music, and elusive wafts of incense,
penetrated the outer world.

The
murderesses clung about the vision, flies trapped on a web.

They beheld
figures moving like the lights. A maiden reminiscent of a pale taper, with
silverwork in her cloud of ebony hair, stroked notes from an ivory frame and
strings of crystal. A young man, pale and dark as she, poured a glittering
drink into bowls of phantasmal jade.

There was
another curtain beyond the curtain. It obscured, yet did not obscure. They
perceived Azhrarn, prince and lord, and shining night creature, through this
gauze, and at his side they perceived a woman white as the stars. Inside the
second curtain was another earth. On this earth, which was the private universe
of love’s obsession, the two unique inhabitants dwelled, and knew only each other.
Here he had woven her into the tapestry of his magic. Here he had set sorcerous
protections on her, here, in all ways but one, he had made her a part of
himself, and she had responded by becoming that part, their growing together
like a marriage of vines, twined, indistinguishable.

All these
things the maidens saw who stared through the two curtains which had separated
love from the yearning for love. And each of them knew, in trance, or in
waking, that here was the god, and here was his chosen. And not one of them was
she.

Perhaps
because sixteen were stupefied, it was Zharet who first turned away. She walked
along the mosaic brim of the lake some twenty-odd paces before she stopped, her
hands pressed hard against her side, as if she had been wounded.

Chuz, like a
coil of mist, went after her.

She did not
berate him for the unforgivable sin—that of revealing the truth to her. She
only said, “How shall I bear it? To have everything taken from me, who was
promised so much.”

“And how
will
you bear it?” he asked her.

“I shall not.
Let them hang me tomorrow. I do not mind it now.”

“I offered you
freedom,” he said.

“I do not want
freedom. I can never be free. Winter has touched me. I am tired as a dead leaf
left on the tree. Tomorrow they will cut me from the bough. I am glad to die. I
could die without their help. I could close my eyes and die as the leaves fall.
Winter has touched me.”

Then Chuz took
her in his arms, and she sobbed on his breast, as long, long ago mad Jasrin had
sobbed, not many miles away.

Maybe he
required her sorrow, a sort of food or wine. Or maybe he was compassionate and
kind to those who became his subjects.

But desolation
tended to follow in his wake.

At last, he
said to her: “Other than to die, what is the wish of your heart?”

“To kill him,”
she said. She did not properly know what type of “god” Azhrarn might be, and
might therefore be excused the foolishness of uttering threats against him.
“Though, since he is an immortal, I suppose he is not to be slain.”

“Less and more
than an immortal, beloved,” said Chuz. “But certainly you cannot thrust a pin
through
his
remarkable skull, nor harm him at all. Save in one, not
illogical, fashion.”

The murderess
nestled against the shoulder of Prince Madness.

“Tell it me.”

“There is only
a single thing more precious,” said Chuz, thoughtfully, “than a drop of Vazdru
ichor. That is a Vazdru tear. For they are very rare. To the Eshva, weeping is
a song. But the Vazdru smile when their hearts break, knowing demon hearts are
mended by human blood. Yet Azhrarn has sometimes commanded his whole country to
weep.”

“What is
Azhrarn?” murmured Zharet “Is he not a monstrous devil that lives in a sewer
underground?”

Chuz kept his
face straight, but the ass’s jawbones guffawed. The girl shivered, and she
plucked at Chuz’s mantle.

“I have not
forgotten you,” said Chuz.

At that
moment, the awful screaming began. Zharet turned, and saw her sixteen murderess
companions had roused, and were running about. Truly demented—less interesting
to Chuz for being so obviously and wholly his?—they tore their hair and skin.
Their shrieks were of betrayal. Their shrieks were of a virgin mother of gods,
who was not themselves, for, sorcerously sensitized, they had, of course,
understood her condition. None know the color of the cloth better than those
not permitted to wear it.

The glamour in
the garden had already vanished. Not a trace remained, either of the Prince of
Demons, or of his mortal lover. It is conceivable it may all, in any case, have
been a delusion conjured by Chuz himself, though faithfully copied from an
original.

“Come,” said
Chuz again to Zharet. “We will go into the desert. You must learn to wait for
what you want. Being my subject, patience may come easily to you.”

“I am cold,”
she said.

“I will warm
you. Are you not warmed already?”

“Perhaps. . . .”

Alerted by the
cries from within Bhelsheved, and by the probable retraction of Chuz’s spell,
the crowd outside the walls was coming to itself. Already some had found the
murderesses escaped.

Others had
noticed one of the gates stood open.

Chuz and the
seventeenth murderess slipped out of the gate, two vague shadows, as three
hundred and eighty-three persons began to shamble in at it.

An unsure
glimmering was in the eastern sky. A sense of confusion was everywhere, and many
looked at this light in fear, before recognising it as the preamble of the
dawn.

“We will not
leave the city,” the men declared, “until this matter is settled.”

They stood on
the mosaic roads, about the lake, along the white bridges, at the doors of the
heart temple. No, they would not move. This holy sanctuary, which had been
denied to men save at one season, was now choked and blotted by them. It seemed
they might never go away. They demanded information, and they demanded action.
The unworldly priests, who had scattered out like frightened birds at the
shouts beneath their windows, wheeled aimlessly in fluttering groups. Hysteria,
for the first time, had quickened them. The proximity of these uninvited ones,
over whom they now had no control, and whom the gods had failed to keep out,
was like a violation, a rape.

Another
handful of messengers had ridden off. Elders and important men had been sent
for, those versed in religious ethic. For now neither side, priests or laity,
knew what to do. And neither side would shift to aid or accommodate the other.

The sixteen
murderesses—one had mysteriously disappeared, likely having wandered into the
lion-mauled, winter-hungry desert—had not been hanged. They had been tied up to
a leafless tree on the lake shore. They no longer screeched, having worn
themselves out. Nor did they seek to evade death, which now, ironically, was
refused them. Some had attempted to drown themselves in the lake, but the ropes
would not reach far enough to facilitate submersion. In frustration, they gazed
at the ground. “What have you seen?” they had been asked. They had told, in
vast detail. Their loss and humiliation; a maiden with child; the god’s wife.

No wonder the
crowd refused to go away. No wonder elders and philosophers had been sent for.

CHAPTER 2

Mother and Daughter

Dunizel stood in a little
temple on the north side of wintry Bhelsheved. She had not heard the shouting,
or, if she had, had heard it in a psychic manner. She sensed the breath of
human intention hot on her heels. She was not afraid. Yet she felt a familiar
sadness. It was a portion of her love, as happiness was a portion of it.

By day the
demon jewelry he had given her grew pale. It was wrapped with safeguards, and
yet she guessed his protective magics attended her less strongly when the sun
filled the sky. The pallor of metal and gems was an omen of this. The child
within her, however, seemed stronger by day, as if it answered the light,
challenged it, strove with it.

She loved his
child, and as her own mother had spoken to Dunizel in the womb, so Dunizel
would speak to her own unborn daughter.

In the center
of Bhelsheved the crowd roared and confounded itself. In the small northern
temple, seated quietly under a blue window, the memory of the touch of
Azhrarn’s mouth, which was half a world’s craving, upon her own—still vital,
always so—Dunizel told the embryonic child a story of its demon father.

“In the
beginning, my dear, there were in the world all beasts but one.”

So it had
been, they said, a million years before the flood, that giant precursor of
Baybhelu, had shown the gods’ hand to be evident only when cruel.

“Swans swam,”
said Dunizel, “and fish in the waters. Deer ran upon the plains and dogs barked
at a moon so young she scarcely knew what she was. Birds ruled the air, and man
made pretense that he ruled the land, though he fought for every inch of it,
with the wild ox, the bear, and the dragon.”

There were
demons also. Always, perhaps, there had been such. Though it was related that
at the commencement, they had had no lord. But, for the purposes of the
story. . . .

The best loved
beast of Underearth was nothing other than the serpent. Down below in the
bright shadows, he was admired for his grace and elegance, and for his cool
blood and wicked self-command. Presently the demons, innocent then, or merely
extremely cynical, brought the snake up to the earth, supposing thereby to make
men also fall in love with him. But men took against the snake, scenting his
demoniacal origins, mistrusting his lack of legs and ears, his smart teeth and
implacable garment. Indeed, they turned on the snake, threw him out of doors
when he came in, brained him with mallets when they were able and cursed him
and spat on him when they were not.

The Eshva
mourned for the serpent, for they loved him best of all. The Vazdru said to
each other: “Let us trick mankind into adoration of the snake.” And this they
did by various means, causing him here and there to be elected a god and
worshipped, or venerated as useful in magic.

But one of the
day-nights in Druhim Vanashta, certain Vazdru princes began to bet with each
other that they could persuade men to like the snake for himself. And this they
tried, and this they failed at.

At last the
vexatious problem came to the notice of Azhrarn. And accordingly Azhrarn went
by night to the world to listen to men’s opinion of the snake. “How we abhor
his cold scales,” they complained. “And his teeth, which are sometimes
venomous, and his forked tongue, which might be. And how allergic we are to his
leglessness. He is all tail, and the sound of his hiss causes our hair to rise
up like bristles.”

Then Azhrarn
smiled, and he went back to Druhim Vanashta. There he took up a snake and he
inquired of it, “Would it be worth while to you, in order to win the affection
of mankind, to be a little changed?”

“Of what good
is mankind’s affection?” asked the snake.

“Those they
love,” said Azhrarn, “fare well. And those they hate they harm.”

The snake had
heard reports from his cousins concerning mallets, and after some thought, he
agreed.

Then Azhrarn
conducted the snake to the Drin, and the Drin made for the snake particular
extras, which had all to do with what men had said they disliked about him.
First the Drin made him four muscular little legs with four round little paws
on the ends of them. And then they made him two little pointed ears to stand up
on top of his head. Then they bulked out his body with a cunning device, and
straightened his tongue with another—but it remained in fact a thin tongue, and
in fact a great deal of tail remained to him at the back. Next they made him an
overcoat of long soft black grasses, and decorated his face—which was now very
pretty—with ornaments of fine silver wire. His jewel-like eyes, which had
always been quite wonderful, they had need to alter only a jot. Lastly, to
compensate for removing his venom, (although they left the shape of his teeth
alone), they presented him with some sharp slivers of steel to wear in his
round feet for purposes of self-defense.

When Azhrarn
beheld the result, he laughed, and ran his hand over the new animal’s spine. At
which all was transmuted into flesh and muscle, and the coat of grass into
luxuriant, velvety hair. And at the touch of Azhrarn also, the new animal made
a strange sound, not a hiss, but—