Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (25 page)

No effort of
her own body was necessary, or so it seemed. The child was already eagerly
seeking an exit from her. At first this may have puzzled Dunizel, yet
intuitively she must soon have realized that the Eshva, who could charm a fox
from its earth or rain from the clouds, were charming the child, hypnotically
though speechlessly calling it forth.

Neither blood
nor any other liquors attended the passage of the child. It had been altered in
itself, becoming strangely amorphous and flowing, changing—yet unchanged. Had
it been perceivable as it evicted itself from the chambers of the maiden’s
body, the process would have been revealed as quite unnormal. Narrow and
sinuously flexible, the baby negotiated the way, causing no harm either to
itself or to what had contained it. Presently, suddenly, it emerged,
unnaturally legs first, which in its case was perfectly natural, rather as a
cat will fall upon its feet. As the lower limbs came from the body of the
mother, they assumed reality and acceptable contours. Next a torso, bland and
unblemished. The arms were upheld, in the position of a swimmer poised to dive,
the head thrown back. No stain disfigured the child. No natal cord connected
it, just as no placenta had contained it in the womb—there would be no
afterbirth. It dropped neatly into the hands of the Eshva women, who sighed
over it, so that the perfume of their breath was the first—misleading—flavor it
knew of the outer world.

The child was
white of skin, and long-haired, the hair being the burnished black of midnight oceans and skies; the hair of Azhrarn. Nails, tiny and unflawed, were evident on
its hands and feet. Teeth, whiter than salt, glinted between its parted lips.
Not having employed the natal cord, it could acquire no navel, its belly was as
smooth as a pane of alabaster. It would not, in any event, have looked exactly
mortal, the child. The closed lids, heavily fringed, were an astounding molten
blue from the eyes which waited beneath. It had turned out to have something,
after all, of its mother.

Dunizel, as
she hung in the air above herself, examined the child, unstartled but surprised
by it, pleased by it, and ineffably sad. It was lovely; it was not human.

It had not
cried, nor did it ask to be fed. Maternal milk was unessential to it, and
Dunizel had known these fluids of nourishment had not gathered in her breasts.
But now the child was to be offered its initial sustenance.

A silken rope,
a snake, wound itself about the arm of one of the Eshva women. It lowered its
head, kissing her, and where its head rose up, it left a printing in the flesh,
the mark its two long teeth had made. Dark as ink, demon blood welled from the
two little wounds.

The demon
woman put the wounds against the lips of the child. Not opening its violet
lids, silently, the child drank blood.

Oblique though
she was, surely through the heart of Dunizel then, there might have shivered,
like a falling leaf, some intimation of the alien, the unconscionable. Not
lessening her emotion, becoming part of her emotion, as sadness itself had come
to be. She the jar of her god, (as Bhelsheved was the jar of gods), the elected
citadel for this ultimate magecraft, this witchery. But she herself as far from
the core of it as now she seemed from her own fleshly frame. The jar does not
need to credit or comprehend the wine which is stored in it.

But now the
magic flax soothed even her detached soul asleep. She saw the child had been
laid down in the midst of the flax’s burning, illumined, at peace, her long
hair, black as jet and loosely curling as a fleece, poured through the
mysterious flames.

No longer the
child of Dunizel, to which she had related stories. His child now, and only
his, of whom he had said: “Do not think I will have regard for this creature. I
will make her strong and terrible, and then I am done with her.”

CHAPTER 3

The Aloe

It was a scene without
compromise. The rocks fell sheerly from both sides into the gully of a
long-dead watercourse. Sand ran in the gully, in tactless imitation of water.
Once a pool had spread, which now was a dry cracked paving. In the paving,
bitterly there grew a bitter aloe bush. Some moisture, or memory of moisture,
had sustained it, and though the winter had stripped it of fruit and leaves, it
huddled over itself and grimly lived.

The bush, the
gully, the rocks, the desert beyond, all had their story to tell, quickly and
totally and without words. It was possible to survive in such a place, but the
price of survival was very high.

There was
nothing gentle there. Even the wind scraped the face.

There was
nothing gentle there, certainly not she who dwelled there now, in the lee of
the rocks.

Her tan hair
was whitened by dust, and her face, which was young, scored by dust and the
winds, and other inner unkindnesses, looked old.

She had been
in the region less than a month, but already she had become a part of the area.
She might have been there centuries. Might have been born there.

In the
morning, she would climb the rocks on the north side, and go up into the
desert. A thin muddy spring persisted half a mile from the gully. Here she
would drink, unless on that day the sands had choked the hole. If she could not
clear the hole again with her fingers, as was sometimes the case, she did not
drink. A miniature lizard might be sighted. She had grown skilled with a sling
made from her girdle, and using the sharp flints she had found on the gully’s
bed, she would kill the lizard and afterward eat it. Such meals were
unappetizing, and frequently she did not bother with them. The small deaths
angered her, too, for she had killed a man with a crystal pin, and killing
anything reminded her of that deed and its uselessness.

During the
day, Zharet sat beside the aloe bush, or if strong winds blew, she crept among
the broad cracks in the rocks. The days passed with speed, for she spent them
in brooding on how things might have been if the promise had been fulfilled; on
how things were since it had not. Occasionally she revisualized that glimpse of
the dark garden, the woman who was not herself, the knowledge of choice and
love and the bearing of a divine child. Or she would recall the dream of
rapture when the god had possessed her. Then she would lift her head and scream
at the sky, many, many times.

Now and then,
she received a visitor.

“Good day,”
said Chuz. “Are you happy to be free?”

“Why do you
mock me?” Zharet cried. “What do you want of me?”

“I am unsure.
I think I have gone mad,” said Prince Madness, and threw dice in the air like a
delighted small boy.

The aloe
definitely went mad, and began to put forth leaves, which the wind eradicated.

When Zharet
slew one of the lizards, then Chuz might appear, seated like a piece of murky
twilight on the ground, or walking over the horizon. He seemed to admire her
aptitude with the sling.

“I explained,”
he said. “You must be patient.”

“I am
patient,” she said, tearing her garments with her teeth.

“I will make
music and you shall dance,” said Chuz. He shook a brass rattle which sounded
like a sistrum. Zharet danced, against her will yet frenziedly. And the
graceless idiotic display made her feel better. At length she fell on the sand
in the gully floor.

“What do you
wish?” inquired Chuz.

Zharet did not
speak, did not need to, for an ass’s jawbones had now appeared and brayingly
spoke for her, her innermost desires.

“I would wish
to chain him and lash him with seven instruments each of which had tails of
white-hot steel. I would bind him to a wheel which rolled across the sky and
through the blazing emissions of the stars. I would rip out his heart and show
it him.”

“You shall,”
Chuz said.

At that,
Zharet did speak.

“That cannot
be, since he is a god.”

“It is a fact,
you may not harm his body. It is his psychic frame which shall be chained and
lashed and bound to a wheel and scalded, and his psychic heart which shall be
ripped out. But he is not a god,” said Chuz. “Have you not yet fathomed who he
is, that lord of tricks and lies?”

Zharet raised
her head. She stared in the face of Chuz. Both sides of it were being shown to
her, the ultimate mask of insanity, and she did not blink, her eyes like those
of the lizards she killed.

“Who, then?”

“Azhrarn. Do
you recall? The monster from the sewer under the earth.”

Zharet was
outraged. She would not have been misled by
that
, have suffered ecstasy
at the urging of—
that
.

“No,” she
said.

“Come now,”
said Chuz, “all the lands of Bhelsheved have been deceived. He is a powerful
demon. Do you suppose he cannot put on a handsome shape when he requires to?
Only consider,” said Chuz, stroking Zharet’s hair tenderly, “would the true and
actual god have chosen another than yourself?”

Zharet now
stared through the face of Chuz. She pondered.

“All Bhelsheved
is in error,” said Chuz, “yet already there are doubts. The child has been
born.”

Zharet
started.

“Is he fair?”

“Just so. But
not a boy-child, a daughter.”

Zharet
frowned. It had seemed to her the child of a god would be a son, one who should
be a hero and king of the earth. Among her people, women were taught to regard
themselves as something less than men. How could a god choose to manifest his
holy seed in female progeny?

“Bhelsheved,”
said Chuz, “is troubled as you are, by the gender of the baby. Also troubled by
other matters. A dream of the last festival of worship, of a dark tower jeweled
with lights, a shadow-shape that granted certain aspirations. Strange
goings-on,” said Chuz. “Young women violated, unable to identify their
attackers. Rich men dying abruptly and in quantities, leaving their fortunes to
their heirs. Men bellowing their love of plain or ugly or repulsive but always
simpering girls. Sicknesses and cripplings. These things, in and out of the
white city. Azhrarn has been busy.”

Zharet rose to
her feet.

“Go to
Bhelsheved,” said Chuz. “Be a seeress. Tell them what you know. Warn them, the
hapless dolts, squirming in his net. Recollect the story: How the Prince of
Demons sought to destroy the world, but the gods sent him packing. Be a servant
of the gods, my tan-haired dear. Send him packing also, this monstrosity who so
beguiled you and made you wretched.”

Zharet began
to walk, steadily up the rocks, almost thoughtlessly forward, unerringly in the
direction of the city.

Chuz laughed
softly. His awful eyes were fixed on her back. The jawbones spoke to him.

“Azhrarn
should not have refused the gift to his child. Azhrarn should not have set
himself against me.”

Chuz drew the
mantle over the foul side of his face; he gazed at the sand, lowering his eyes.
He was now beautiful. He himself murmured: “Sweet Azhrarn, who plays at
usurping my title, I have no quarrel with you, I make exchange. Barter is not
war. Be then yourself Delusion’s Master. And Chuz shall be the Bringer of
Anguish, the Jackal, the Evil One.”

Enter Bhelsheved now. One
might not have recognized it. There were crowds everywhere, within and without.
Men in fine garments, wealthy women in litters, paraded up and down with their
pets on gemmed leashes and their ungemmed slaves. It was no longer blasphemous
but fashionable to be seen here at the proscribed time. Vendors had crept in
surreptitiously and currently sold fruit and wine and sweetmeats, and sometimes
little dolls of carved wood representing the holy mother and her child. (Most
of these carvings had had to be altered. Prepared in advance, they had each
depicted the child as male.) Fresh caravans constantly arrived. Travelers from
a long way off had come to see the miracle. Camels bawled through the groves,
donkeys vociferated. Such animals were bought and sold. Bhelsheved had become a
marketplace. Papers, rinds and dried dung rattled over the pastel streets where
only sand or leaves or blossoms had formerly wended. The sorcerous winds of the
city failed to blow these items away, perhaps not distinguishing them. The
smoke of roasting pastries and chickens had stained the white walls of the
fanes. Fish were being trapped in the lake and put into transparent bladders
full of water to carry home as souvenirs. The poor gambled in the porches of
temples. They begged the gods’ pardon at every throw. It gave them a strange
pleasure. Some asked the opulent ladies or philosophers for money: beggars.

The priesthood
generally were seldom seen. They had gone to ground, rather, to heaven, locking
themselves in their cells, pining and starving and sinking into long deathlike
swoons of disillusion. Only tradition had kept the city inviolate. Tradition
was a chameleon. It had not needed an army of enemies or thieves to destroy
Bhelsheved. Or at least, not yet.

In the
heart-temple above the lake, Dunizel would come to sit in a tall golden chair
that had been made for her, between the golden beasts before the altar. She
came there often, since she was called for often. Whenever she was absent, a
clamor gradually went up. They yelled for her and for her child, a passionate
demand. When she and the child appeared, they were worshipped. The child was
very quiet, scarcely moving on Dunizel’s knees. A guard had been marshalled to
keep back the mob which strove always to touch her. These soldiers lost their
footing on the heaps of gifts on the floor, skidding in grapes, bangles, the
broken eggs of rare birds.