Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (29 page)

One twilight just before the dawn, Dathanja took up a golden fruit
from the earth, and, at the warmth of his hand, a butterfly straightaway
hatched itself. It flew up to sit upon his shoulder.

Soon the sky bloomed and there came the notes of a reed, and
singing. Into the grove, preceded by a piper, strolled three youths of great
attraction, who nodded to Dathanja and passed by him to the altar. “Here,
heavenly Goddess,” said one, “is the blood of a man who died in a tiger’s jaws
because I asked it of him.” “And here,” said the second, “the blood of a girl
who paid me to kill her since I cared for her no more.” “And here,” said the
third, “the tears of a fool who weeps on my feet as I caress my new friend.”
Then they linked arms, and struck the piper to make him resume the song. And so
they lilted, singing, away.

Then at once came three young women in garlands of poppies and
orchids, and they poured out the contents of a single phial between them,
gaudily large as a bucket. “Behold, O Goddess of goddesses,” said one, “here
are the mingled tears and gore of those who have worshiped at
our
shrine through the dark, and whom we scored with our nails and our knives.”
Then they kissed the altar and each other, and two coupled like lionesses under
Dathanja’s very eyes, while the third watched him, but her face was shut like a
fan. And then the three of them went away.

The butterflies which had hatched in the grove lifted in a
spangled spray and settled on the shrine.

All but the butterfly which had hatched in Dathanja’s palm, and
this crept into his hair and hid itself.

When the others had done feeding, they blackened as usual, and
flew up to hang like thunder under the trees. Then the one butterfly which had
not fed left its shelter and fluttered out among them. The black butterflies,
seeing its difference, turned on it and tore it in pieces, for they had claws
in their mouths.

The fragments of the butterfly lay in a bright heap beneath the
fern, but when the black butterflies flopped down, the fragments, also, began
to issue gold, and by nightfall, a fruit lay where the one bright butterfly had
lain, as with all the rest.

Dawn returned; the golden fruit opened and the butterflies flew
and played about the grove. Then there arrived young men and maidens, who made
joyous and foul confession at the altar, and the stone was given its libation.
But when the butterflies settled there to feed, three flew another way, to the
spot where the man sat watching them, and they gathered instead on his robe,
and he sheltered them. So bright they burned, like little papers written by the
sun. But later, when the other butterflies rose from their feast, black as if
burnt, the bright butterflies flew among them and were ripped to bits. When
these bits were on the ground, they issued gold, and turned to golden fruits.

And this happened day after day, for seven days, or nine, or more.
But each day more butterflies abstained from the nectar of tears and blood,
although they were then slaughtered by those which had not.

One morning, a handful of minutes before the dawn, as Dathanja sat
in the grove of olives, and the butterflies were just beginning to break free
of the fruit, a girl stole into the grove alone, and stood at the man’s left
shoulder.

She was a poor girl, dressed in rags, and with neither a precious
stone nor a garland on her hair, but only a mean cloth to hide it and muffle
her face. Dathanja had seen many destitutes in the City. Generally they
stretched dead in gutters, having brought themselves to ruin with excess in
pleasure, sadism, or ill-conceived magic. None would help them; it was not
religious. Nor did they entreat. This girl might be one such, on her descent to
the crematory pits. But still she murmured to Dathanja in a low dulcet voice,
“Why do you stay here, lord, to watch butterflies, when there are so many
marvels in the City?” Since he did not answer, she continued, “Today there is a
celebration. Mages will fly with wings and women will dance themselves to
death. Eastward, a new palace has been erected. The casements are of colored
rain, but it has, too, its own tame sun, that lives in a cupola of cedar
wood—which every day will be incinerated by the heat, and so will have to be
replaced every day. Westward there is a bull of electrum that has trapped a
moon between its horns; it speaks awesome prophecies. And south there is a
garden grown from one seed. It is only seven yards in length or breadth, but
whosoever enters is lost among its walks and arbors for days on end. And north
there is to be a marriage between a virgin and a statue
of
chalcedony.
And there are other matters. Why sit here and stare at butterflies?”

But at that instant the sky lightened and there was a noise of
bells and tabors. The butterflies rippled on the ferns. Youths and maidens ran
between the olives and poured their libations at the altar, relating what they
had done, then laughingly went away.

Presently every butterfly in the grove fluttered upward, and came
to rest about Dathanja, and some to sit upon his shoulders and his hands. Every
butterfly—but one. And this one butterfly rushed to the altar and fed on the
blood and tears, and turned black, and then it soared about the grove and
alighted on the bough of a tree. Here it folded its wings, and trembled, for it
seemed to see at last it was alone.

For a while, this stasis. Then the one black butterfly shot into
the air, and thrust itself upward through the leaves, and battered itself and
mangled itself, and floated down dead to the earth. And where it fell, gold
spilled and hardened and rounded and became a fruit, all in a few moments. And
then the fruit burst wide and from it came the butterfly like a paper the sun
had written. And when this had happened, the butterflies flew in ones or twos,
or scores, upward into the trees, and left the grove behind. They vanished into
the sky like a trail of sparks. But the last butterfly came to Dathanja and
looked into his eyes with its own that were like jeweled pins, before it sped
away.

“I see it is a parable,” said the poor girl to Dathanja. “But I
cannot read it.”

“Azhriaz,” said Dathanja, “put off your silly disguise.”

And sure enough the delusion dropped from her like a veil. There
she stood, Night’s Daughter, and she said, “But still I cannot read the
parable.”

“I am not priest or teacher or magician any longer.”

“All three you are,” she said, “and will ever be.”

He sighed. He said, “Each finds his own symbols, and can therefore
read them. But to another they are the language of a foreign country. So with
this grove.”

“I have said to you,” said Azhriaz, “‘Be a prince in my kingdom,’
and you have spurned the role. What next, Dathanja?”

“I shall leave your City,” he said.

“Will you? Do I permit it?”

“Yes,” he said.

Azhriaz said, “I have not told you so. But if I did, where would
you go?”

“Where I am able.”

“To wander, like all madmen.”

Azhriaz went to the altar of her shrine. She looked at the liquors
there. She spoke a word, and the shrine split. Out of it sprang a bush, which
lashed and spat, for every twig of it was a serpent. “Let them offer here now,”
she said.

Dathanja laughed. It had a bitter sound, before the laugh and the
bitterness both faded. He got to his feet and he walked from the grove. Azhriaz
stood in his path, before him, though she had been at his back.

“Him
you
would have served,” she said. “Serve me. Azhrarn’s murky ichor is mingled in my
blood. There is not a man or woman in these lands,” she said, “who would not
give their lives for three hours’ such service as I propose to you.”

But he looked at her at last with his blackened eyes. “No,” he
said.

“I can bewitch you,” she said. “Your magic you have renounced, and
in any case, I doubt it would match my own.”

“You can,” he said, “bewitch the world. Where then is the victory
in bewitching me?”

“It is true,” she said. “Go, wherever you will.”

5

IF
IT WAS the room of wattle, how it had changed. Perhaps the luxury was illusion,
or illusion had been the poverty before. There were fountains there that were
cascades, of scent not water. There were rugs that were lawns of flowers,
draperies that were midnight sky. . . . In the midst a dragon
lay asleep. It was a couch, and on the cushions of it, Azhriaz lay in turn,
awake, while her maidens combed through her long, long hair with combs of
silver. Entirely lovely, these maidens. They were Eshva. And Eshva played music
on the moonlit hills of this room, such music, like starshine rippling over
glass. Nightbirds came to the opened casements of the valley which was a
chamber, insomniac owls, dumbfounded nightingales. The moons of the City passed
and repassed the windows like pale lost ships.

Occasionally now Azhriaz allowed the Eshva to soothe her, like a
drug. But the Eshva males who came to her now and then, and whose touches
were—to mortals—a life’s desire, these she turned uncivilly away. Some of the
Vazdru princes had also come to her, every one most profoundly handsome, but
she had laughed at them coldly. She was prejudiced, she said, against her own
race. And coldly smiling in return, they left her, the rings glaring on their
fingers and the daggers in their belts. A number made mischief, but it was
nothing against her powers. Their malices withered at her doors like dying
bouquets. They dared not do much—she was Azhrarn’s daughter, and fulfilled his
wish in the world. There was a sentence spoken in some crystalline darkness
below: Surely she couples with our kind. It is with her lordly father she lies
down. This unnovelty reached the hearing of Azhrarn.

He left his palace and went slowly through his city underground.
He said nothing to any of those extraordinary subjects of his, as they bowed
before him, but a shadow fell, and in the faces of some he looked, and their
Vazdru hearts turned to water. Finally, one of the magnificent princes of the
Vazdru came out and met Azhrarn’s chariot in a thoroughfare of black ruby.

“Lord of lords,” said the prince. “I am told you take exception to
a jest of ours. But you are Wickedness. Why does wickedness perturb you?”

Azhrarn said, “Do you question me?”

The prince said, “By philosophical mortals, who are ants, incest
is not counted a sin, Lord of lords, when willingly performed and inducing no
mishap. Is it that you are ashamed, O Terrible One, to have caused so little
terror lately? Is it the slightness of the sin which angers you?”

Azhrarn leaned from his chariot and set one hand on this prince’s
shoulder. The whole street turned chill as if snow had fallen. “Let mortals,”
said Azhrarn, “err or philosophize as they wish. She that was born of me is
not my lover. I am not the clay of humankind, and their muck does not stick to
me.”

Then the prince said softly, though he shook, “Do not be angry
with one who loves you.”

“Love?” said Azhrarn. “There is no such commodity. There is
carnality, our plaything. There is worship, and there is obsession. Death you
may see walking the world, and Fate, and Delusion, too, in a form I have kindly
lent him. But no man sees love, and no demon sees it.” The prince who had
accosted Azhrarn closed his eyes. Azhrarn took his hand from the prince’s
shoulder, but the prince remained as if turned to ice, there in the ruby
street.

Later Azhrarn came to the shore of an ironine lake where the Drin
forges dully thudded and infrequently chimed. Activity was sluggish. The Drin,
recently disliking the sorrowful climate of Underearth, spent much time abroad
on the earth above, in the employ of the foremost sorcerers, whom they tricked
and wheedled and ultimately wrecked wherever possible. But some Drin came now
and rubbed against the chariot wheels of Azhrarn.

“There is a rumor,” said Azhrarn. “Who began it?”

The Drin squeaked and squabbled. Several made up fantastic lies to
gain his notice only for a perilous moment. But one crept near and touched the
black-and-silver sole of Azhrarn’s boot. “An insect flits about the gardens of
your city, and sometimes it makes a small sound. I can never understand the
voice, but some do, and from this source all kinds of rumors start. The insect
is green in color, and on its wings is the symbol which, in the Vazdru High
Tongue, is the letter V.”

Then Azhrarn went up to his palace again and into a tower like a
silver needle. Standing in the eye of it, he summoned her, and she came. Vasht,
who had been herself his lover once, Vasht blasted to the shape of a tiny
green-winged leaf, at the transmitted memory of that other love of his—by the
one who now said: No man sees love, no demon sees it.

“I discover,” said Azhrarn, Night’s Master, one of the Lords of
Darkness, “that Vasht is green-winged not only through her pain, but also with
jealousy and ignorance.”

The butterfly shimmered in the air.

“Do you still imagine that we may be reconciled in love, Vasht?”
said Azhrarn. It was a fact, his voice had no love in it.

The butterfly started toward him. It paused.

“You love me,” said Azhrarn. “How much?”