Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (29 page)

An eye came up
at that. The philosopher started, he was not certain why. Was the eye
bizarre . . . or was it ordinary?

“My dear,”
said Chuz, “you are under the curse of my beloved un-brother, who maddened you
in simple childish spite. But there. You have, I am afraid, something of mine,
which I should wish returned.”

Taken aback,
the philosopher avowed: “I am sure you are mistaken in that.”

“Not so. This
morning I chanced by your camp in the desert. Unfortunately a possession must
have slipped from my cloak, by accident. I think that you picked up this thing,
and have it now in that bag about your neck.”

The philosopher
touched the bag involuntarily.

“I have here a
violet stone, a messenger of heaven, which I found beside my hand as I woke.”

“Just so,”
said Chuz affably. “A die of mine, of which I am foolishly fond. Return it, if
you would be so kind.”

The philosopher
instantly reviewed his earlier opinion of the young man. He was not charming,
or spiritual. Also it almost seemed the left side of his face might be
disfigured. . . .

“Do you imply
that this elect being, resident in the violet stone, is nothing more than a
gambler’s toy?”

“How you
enervate me,” said Chuz. “Give me what belongs to me, or I will strike you, old
man.”

At this,
within all the uproar of the crowd, a unique and separated pocket of uproar
broke out. For the philosopher’s sect had been listening to Chuz’s discussion
with their master, and now that Chuz resorted to insults and threats, these
wild stone-worshippers spat at him and fell on him with their fists and feet.
Was it not dreadful enough to learn of the holy city’s confusion, without having
their leader attacked on the premises?

Now Chuz, as a
target for blows and projected saliva, proved unsatisfactory. Mostly, he seemed
not to be there, so that a sound kick landed on nothing, save perhaps the shin
of a brother acolyte, and a punch to the jaw resounded only upon the material
of the purple mantle—which stung like wasp stings, being decorated with smashed
vitreous. Then again, an ass’s skull sometimes appeared and brayed in their
faces, and one was almost brained by a brass rattle brought down smartly upon
his crown. Three or four acolytes tumbled in the lake. All about, the rest of
the crowd, having nothing to do with this fight, became nevertheless very
excited and disturbed by it, being unsure what went on, and fearing it to be
some evocation of gods or demons.

And then,
quite suddenly, the insolent young man—who had been getting much the better of
them all—apparently attempted to flee. As he did so, his sting-sewn mantle
seemed to come to pieces, and out of it shot a myriad of small objects, which
whirled and bounced among the crowd, to the crowd’s further consternation. Most
of these objects were beyond analysis, though a quantity called up the idea of
accessories to astrology or calculus, though some it is true also put one in
mind of strange insects which had been petrified in the act of changing from
one thing to another—a beetle into a fish for example. These latter were not
very encouraging to gaze upon. But a great many of the spilled items were dice,
of all colors, weights and markings.

“What is
happening?” the crowd shrieked at itself.

The
philosopher and his followers were looking for Chuz, who had vanished. They
began to cry out to their stone gods in perturbation, and the people round
about them caught their cry.

“They are
speaking of stones.”

“It was
stones, then, which were thrown at us?”

The final
deduction was inevitable. None of them rendered it aloud, but their heads,
their faces, their eyes, reverted to the bridge where the girl stood helplessly
in her bindings.

While the objects
from Chuz’s cloak still rolled and skittered over the mosaic, the notion took
hold. The fight had been no fight, the exploding of objects had been a series
of miscasts. Men were flinging stones at the harlot. She was being stoned.

The shepherd.
The leader. The one to walk before.

They dropped
to their knees, scrabbling. They found flints, scatterings of cracked pots;
Chuz’s dice they found, illusory or real; they used their knives and their
nails to pry up lumps of the mosaic itself. And straightening, they hurled
these missiles up across the bridge. Then, seeing they were too far off, rushed
nearer, crammed on to the bridges over the lake, and their hands flapped and
opened like mouths. Pebbles and stone chips plopped in the lake. Portions of
tiles and fragments of wood hit the gold-scaled walls, the temple’s four faces.

The maiden’s
guard poured off the bridges. Some dived into the lake and swam for shore.

The crowd
could not see if its offerings struck her. She did not stagger, did not fall.
To some it seemed her garments were torn, others saw a trace of blood, like a
delicate scarlet embroidery, sew itself down her throat. But it was not
sufficient. They wanted to hurt her, wanted to hear her screams, for they
themselves might be made to scream for this deed. So they scrabbled and cast,
again and again.

The
philosopher cried tears of anger. He denounced their blasphemy in so polluting
the stones. Sickening his very soul, certain of his own band, waxing hysterical
and recalling the words of the ghastly woman-thing at the gate, were throwing
their own talismans at the girl.
Let fly the gods
. He cried also for
that, as for the death of innocence.

Yet, was she
not unharmed, or scarcely harmed? (A faint blue bruise on her shoulder, a flint
caught in her hair like a brackish jewel.) The safeguards Azhrarn had set on
her, even by day, must have protected her.

And yet.

Nothing scores
the diamond save another diamond.

Azhrarn had
safeguarded her, this girl he loved, and perhaps nothing could get by those
safeguards. Only he, then, could have negated them. Only Azhrarn. Or some thing
which was Azhrarn’s. Was
of
Azhrarn.

The fragments,
flints and pebbles hurtled through the air, and Dunizel stood in the rain of
them. Her lids were shut; she could not lift her hands to cover her eyes or her
face. And now and then the rain slackened briefly as the people dug about for
more detritus to hurl, and squabbled over it. And the dice and toys of Chuz,
also picked up and thrown—these were less lethal than anything else, since they
tended to dissolve in the air, to become petals, or resins or flakes of charred
snow. However. With those dice, out of the mantle of Chuz had been dashed one
other thing, a thing he had come on and thereafter taken about with him, for it
was rare. Very small, it was, this keepsake, yet darkly lambent, and
extravagantly hard. It was the black pearl of Vazdru ichor that Chuz had
disinterred from the dunes, along with two other identical drops, currently
hidden elsewhere. Each of them the blood of Azhrarn,

It was simply
a question of chance and time before someone, picking frenziedly at the ground,
should snatch up this appallingly significant commodity, snatch it up
disregardingly also, since it was so minute, seemed so ineffectual, and then,
with a fistful of weightier stuff, fling it at the witch-demoness, at her pale
radiance that was like a star.

Who,
unwitting, cast her death? It is not recollected. Nor is it fitting that it
should be recollected. It was, in the end, like lightning or the sea, a murderer
without clemency, or knowledge.

The adamantine
drop spun and flew. It pierced her just beneath the breast and tore upward,
lodging in her heart. There was a kind of terrible rightness in that. She
dropped down at once, not crying out, not even changing her expression or
opening her eyes. It was very swift, very complete. It has been said, it may
not even have been pain for her, to be pierced by his blood, but pleasure, like
a sorcerous kiss which kills. Or maybe the pain was unbearable, as if he had
himself come to her and slain her. But it was suddenly done, suddenly over.

She lay on her
wings of hair. She looked only asleep. No blood of her own had spread from that
awesome, tiny wound. But the jewels and the silverwork he had given her, which
had shielded her from everything but that one thing they could not keep out,
some or any particle of himself, those magical things grew murky, and their
colors and their sheens extinguished, and then they were no more than brittle
papers or dead leaves lying on her, and they shriveled, and the flickering wind
blew them away.

The ardor of
the mob came to an end in much the same fashion. The yelling and the flying of
hands and stones.

They were too
afraid, too stunned at their own achievement, to go near and see how wonderful
she remained, to see the throwing away of this wonder, like a flower torn up by
the roots.

Only the sun
looked in her face as it slowly declined, and the sun drew the storm cloud over
its head. Even the sun, it seemed, could not bear such waste.

CHAPTER 5

Love and Death and Time

One other beheld her, but
not in the world, or from the sky. From beneath the earth’s crust, from the
hollows of the earth’s inner lands. By staring in a sorcerous glass, smoky,
troubled and faulted by the light of day.

They said the
glass shattered in a million fragments, like grains of salt. They said that,
for aeons after, such fragments, getting under the skins of men, drove them
into otherwise unaccountable paroxysms of grief and rage, so they would slay
others or themselves. They said that true despair had not been created until
that instant of the mirror’s shattering.

It was so
quiet in Druhim Vanashta underground that you might hear the faint chime of a
leaf falling on the black grass, until all leaves failed to fall.

No demon
prince or princess of the Vazdru stirred. They stood among their playthings,
their music, their horses and hounds, struck as if to marble and jade. The
Eshva froze like winter reeds. The crafty artisan Drin, having crawled beneath
their work-benches or behind their braziers, gave up making anything. No fish
flew, no bird swam, no dog barked or horse shook its head, and no snake danced.
Not even the foliage of the dark trees whispered. Not even the flames of the
fountain of red fire in the garden of his palace trembled. No breeze blew. The
starless starlight of Underearth itself congealed, and for a moment lost its
beauty, like a gorgeous face turning sallow with unimaginable fear.

Druhim
Vanashta, which had always been, or which had become, the heart of Azhrarn, had
ceased to beat.

It seems he
had been awaiting calamity, for surely every time he attempted to persuade her
to come away with him, the foreshadow of her danger must have prompted and
goaded him. Yet he had not credited it, her death. She was a part of him, and
he immortal. He would, no doubt, have wished to immortalize her, though the
paths to human immortality were perilous. In his mind, perhaps, he thought of
her as already immortal, invulnerable, eternal. And she being more of the soul
than most of humankind, the illusion persisted. If truly he had reckoned on her
death, he must have taken her from Bhelsheved, with her consent or without it.
And yet again, to ignore her will, which in everything else had surrendered
itself joyfully and supremely and with such dignity to his—that, too, would
have been a sort of blow against her life. Maybe he could not do it.

Whatever the
cause or the premonition or the disbelief, she had remained, and they had
killed her. And he, powerless for once, had witnessed it.

A second of
his time, far less. But time appeared to have stopped in Druhim Vanashta.

He stood above
the last few grains of the shattered mirror—the mass of them had swirled away.
The ruby windows of his palace bled on him, and the emerald windows wept, and
the windows of blackest sapphire bathed him in a shade that was not a color but
a dirge.

As if one must
not speak of him and how he was, it is only the silence of his city, the
shattered mirror, the blood and mourning of the window glass that are
mentioned. Those were the expressions, and he quite expressionless. (Where his
fingers brushed the inlaid surface of the table on which the mirror had rested,
white smolderings came from the wood.) Expressionless he was, and his dry eyes,
like the depth of space wrung of all its stars and glimmerings, might have
turned a world to stone.

Then, he drew
in one breath, and the breeze stirred again through the city, and the demons
stirred with it, and the plants and waters and fires of it. They came to life
and felt what he felt, like blades in their sides. And none dared cry aloud.

And when he
came from his palace, riding one of the black demon horses, its blue hair
furled about him like smoke, none dared call to him, or even kneel to him. His
passing was like the passage of death, though Uhlume, Lord Death, had never
entered Druhim Vanashta.

Azhrarn rode
to the limits of his city, and left its spires and pinnacles behind, that were
now like rent swords and long bone needles and splinters, and all seethed in
the calcified glare that the magic sublight had become, greenish, sickly,
aching, the hues of pain.