Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (3 page)

“Pick up the sword, dear
heart. Pick it up.”

“I beg you—”

“Pick it up. Why
should it be said I kill my friends unarmed?”

“Then I will leave it
lying—”

“Then I will kill you
defenseless after all.”

Oloru covered his
face with his hands. Under the torches he, like the glassware, seemed made of
pale precious gold, and of tears, too.

“Forgive me, oh forgive
me—” he cried.

Lak Hezoor
grinned, pulled down Oloru’s hands, and pointed to the sword lying in the
grass.

“Look at that, pick up
that, and die with it.”

Oloru looked one
long last minute at the sword, and then he dropped down in the grass beside it
and lay there, in a dead faint, at the feet of Lak Hezoor.

At this, the
magician did laugh. He flung one glance across his silent court. It cut them
with such contempt and indifference, and under that with such implicit threat,
it was as if he had sliced at each of them with the blade he held. Then the
blade vanished, and with it the other in the grass; all about the hands of the
prince’s minions left their knives. Lak Hezoor lifted Oloru in his arms and
walked away with him and into the sable pavilion, out of their sight.

Out of sight of
any but his prince then, Oloru the jester and poet presently revived. He came
to himself on the magician’s silks, his face turned on the magician’s embroidered
pillows, the weight of Lak Hezoor already upon him.

“You, my
treasure, who dare insult me as no other does,” murmured Lak Hezoor, resting
his face also down on the pillow, so his black eyes glared into the amber eyes
of Oloru and their lips almost met at each word. “But I forgive you. For you
know you lied.”

“O my soul, my
body’s watchman, you were absent when this citadel was invaded,” said Oloru.
Lak Hezoor smiled cruelly at him, for this was very true.

“Tell me of
demons,” said Lak Hezoor, as his sinuous body stirred and curved, heavy as a
python, upon and within his third prey of the night. “Tell me of Azhrarn,
Night’s Master, the Bringer of Anguish.”

Oloru
spoke softly, sometimes without breath.

“They say a king’s
daughter, a sorceress, called to him by means of a token Azhrarn once gave his
lover, a beautiful boy, Sivesh, or as some say, Simmu. And when the Demon came
to her, this sorceress, it was in a pavilion with a ceiling of blackness and
jeweled stars, where winds and clouds moved, but only by mage-craft. Azhrarn
mistook the pavilion’s roof for the sky, as he was intended to, and thought he
should gain fair warning of sunrise, for the sun slays demons, they say. They
say—” (Here Oloru broke off. But: “Say on, my Sivesh, my Simmu,” insisted Lak
Hezoor.) “Then—trapped by the witch, the sun having risen unseen beyond the
pavilion’s false night, Azhrarn must deal with her and grant her all she
wished: power, riches, beauty beyond all beauty—
beauty
—”
(And here Oloru could say no more, only cling to the pillows, his spine arched,
and his throat, and through his golden lashes the tears running like silver
ribbons.)

But when the python lay
quiet on him and the heavy silken darkness of the tent returned from out of
blood-red thunder, Oloru said, “Yet, if she was so great a sorceress, why did
she not grant herself these things, why did she not make herself so beautiful?
Ah, then, because the genius of her sorcery was built on rage, and rage does
not make beauty. And her yearning was for love, so that only love could work
miracles upon her, even his love, Azhrarn, that Prince of Demons. And besides,
it is not certain any such token could summon him if truly he would not be
summoned. Nor must he definitely grant wishes at the summons. Nor could such as
he be made a fool of by a ceiling of jewel stars and illusory winds. Unless he
had desired the novelty, desired dangers and a snare to befall him. Madness,
Lak Hezoor,” said Oloru, “is no respecter of persons. We perceive even the
mighty Prince Azhrarn has been its gull. But a short while since, he was mad of
love, for love is simple madness. A girl with moon hair and twilight eyes. Love
and death and time sweep over all events. And madness sings on top of the
dunghill, to the accompanying music of an ass’s jawbones.”

But Lak Hezoor
slept. He lay deep in sleep as if drowning in a muddy river. So he did not
see, nor feel, Oloru begin to ease from under him. Nor did he witness, the
mighty magician-prince, what finally emerged from the couch, jumped to the
floor, and paused there an instant, in the murk of the dying candles.

Men who drank
from the waters of the forest might be altered—to animal or elemental, or to
monster. But Oloru had drunk only the best wine. It was not the crystal ichor
of the forest, then, which worked this change in him.

Outside, the
magician’s courtiers slept. The servants slept or stood tranced, lacking his
bidding. So none started when there stole out from the tent a yellow jackal
with dry embers for eyes. It looked about, its mouth agape as if it laughed,
then turned and trotted away among the black robes of the trees.

2

NIGHT ON the earth, every inch of it, for the earth
was flat and up in that domed ceiling of heaven the lamp of day was out. Not a
forest of earth then that was not black, not a sea that was not black and
ribbed with silver by the moon; not a mountain that was not crowned by stars.
But down below, held in the inverted underdome beneath the earth, it was not
night, nor was it ever night, there.

Underearth, the
demon country, bloomed in the endless changeless glow that exhaled from its very
air. That light, they say, radiant as the sun, subtle as the moon, lovelier
than either. And in that light, stretched the landscape of a dark impassioned
dream. And, seemingly made of that light, a city rose into the lambency of an
indescribable and nonexistent sky.

The city of the
demons was ultimately also changeless. There it glimmered and gleamed and
sparkled, putting the marvels of the world to shame. And yet, Druhim Vanashta
(whose very name means, if approximately, Who Shines Without the Sun, and More
Brightly), Druhim Vanashta had about it a strange shadow, which had nothing to
do with the glowing shade of Underearth. It was rather the pall of a desolate
and grinding and relentless—and
silent
—lament: the mourning of Azhrarn.

Some time had
passed on the earth. Years, perhaps. And under it, too, time had passed, the
time of demonkind which was not of the same order, though time still. But it
was the curse and glory of the Vazdru, that highest caste of the demons, of
whom Azhrarn was one, that in time or out of it nothing might ever be
forgotten. Not the greatest sweetness. Not the most tearing agony or grief. And
the adage ran that the wounded hearts of demons could be salved only by human
blood.

However, he had
taken no revenge, Azhrarn, exacted no penalty.

It is seldom
disputed that, of all his many and various loves, he had loved her best,
Dunizel, Soul of the Moon. White-haired, blue-eyed as early evening, in whose
body he had grown, like a wondrous flower, his child. It is suggested there
should be no surprise in the delay or absence of retribution. She had been so
gentle, so compassionate. She had taken even that means away from him, for a
little while. To think of her and plan deeds of blood was not easy, maybe. No,
it was his heart which bled. And his pain which clouded the city.

Nor did he seek
solace in his daughter. It had been his contention from the start, forming the
child for wickedness as he had meant to do, that this offspring—though carried
in Dunizel’s womb—was all his and only his, the female principle of Azhrarn,
whose role and aims were cruelty and maleficence and lies. Therefore it seems
he could not bear to look at her now. Could not bear also, conceivably, to look
in her eyes, blue as blueness, that were the eyes of her mother.

Thus he had
brought her to his country but sent her far off from his haunts. And left her
there, far off.

There was a vast tidal lake, or a small inland
sea—either or both. It lay, in a man’s reckoning, three days’ journey from the
demon city, yet of course in demonic parlance three days have no meaning at
all. It was as near, or as distant, as will could make it.

In the crystal
air of the Underearth, the waters of the lake, too, were like crystal. So clear
they were, it was possible to see right to their floor, which looked to be a
long way down. Here shapes moved, seeming weeds and sands, and winged fish
flying. But though the water was transparent, the passage of the tide made
vision uncertain. How there came to be a tide was itself unsure. The water obeyed,
perhaps, the drag of the hidden moon of earth so many miles overhead; or else
the drag of some other hidden moon
beneath,
in the substance of chaos which flowed beyond and about all things, earth or
Upperearth, or the subterrain.

From the crystal
sea-lake rose islands. Many were slender, of a circumference only big enough a
bird might try to perch there, had there been birds. Several were the size of
earthly ships, and masted and sailed with heavy midnight trees that drooped
down into the water, but not reflecting in it, since it was so clear. Then
again, in places smooth tall pillars of rock went up, thousands of feet high,
like windowless towers. In all of them, the little rocks and the great, burning
colors pulsed and faded, swelled and went out and ignited again. And the
sea-lake did mirror these colors, so it seemed stained here with wine, and here
with a flickering dark lamplight, and there with translucent heliotrope, like
the blood of the gods themselves.

Somewhere in the
midst of the water and the fantastic rocks, one island lay which was of larger
horizontal scope and different appearance. It did not throb with colors; only a
mist normally surrounded it, so it seemed like a phantom, not entirely present
in the lake, as, indeed, maybe it was not.

To view this
island, one must pass within the mist, which had never been done. Those that
dwelled there had preceded the fashioning of the mist. No one had visited the
island, or come away from it, since then.

She lived inside a
hollow stone, the daughter of Azhrarn.

That the stone
was beautiful in its cold pure way did not much concern her, if at all. It was
a cliff of quartz galleried and windowed and staired apparently by random
erosions, pierced by a hundred caves. The light which never altered gamboled
and slid about the cliff, and winked from each of its facets. The pearly mist
stole in from the sea and threaded through the openings, so the whole edifice
seemed to float. And sometimes a wind fluttered in and out, and then the cliff
played weird chiming, thrumming notes, as if the structure were one huge
instrument of strings and pipes.

Two of the
greater caves had become rooms. They were furnished—at the order of Azhrarn,
probably, how else? Yet if it was his doing, he had not come to look at the
results. Draperies hung there and carpets, and silks lay thick on the ground,
and lamps rested in the air which would light themselves at a whim, not to give
illumination, but to tint and highlight something or other. These rooms had
windowpanes of painted glass that showed pictures which occasionally altered,
telling stories, if any had observed them.

In an annex there
was a crimson bed with columns of deep-red jade, and filmy curtains.

Here lay a doll
on its back, all white in a dress of white tissue, save the black hair blacker
than blackness, that curled around her and down onto the floor, and the open
eyes so blue they seemed half blinded by their own color. Did she, looking
through those sapphire lenses, see a world shaded by them also to blue? Who
could tell? Who would ask? Certainly she would not say. For she had never
spoken, no, not even when in the world with her mother. Vazdru child, yet she
had had that way of the demon Eshva, the servants, the handmaidens of the
Vazdru. The Eshva did not communicate save with eyes, with touch, with the
rhythm of their breathing—yet having such intensity in this mode that they
might be said to have spoken. Those few mortals who spent childhood in their
company (Sivesh, the lover of Azhrarn, for example; Simmu, who once mastered
Death) were heard after to refer to Eshva
voices. .
. .
But it was a figure of speech, it seems. For the daughter of
Azhrarn, she too had known Eshva. They had attended her birth. They had given
her demon blood to drink, and steeped her in an enchanted smoke. Brought here
to the island and the hollow cliff, a band of Eshva had come with her, to serve
and tend her. But these Eshva pined. Far from Azhrarn, whom they loved beyond
all things, far from the burning dream of the world that was their dancing
floor, they moved like shadows, and their tears fell. Their tears which said:
I
despair.
They entered a sort of living death,
these immortal beings. The singing cliff seemed full of sad songs.

Sometimes the
girl looked at them as if she pitied them. She did not want slaves by her, yet
they might not leave. But who would guess if she pitied them? And she would not
say.

She entered
Underearth as a tiny child, though seeming already older and more formed than a
human infant. Exposed to the aura of Azhrarn’s kingdom, she fell for a while
into a kind of daze, and then years came upon her like whirlwinds, twisting and
pulling at her, speeding her growth so rapidly that sometimes her skin itself
was torn by her bones, and her dark blood—
demon’s
blood
—ran and gushed on the ground. When it happened, she cried out, she
screamed, for she had a voice to use for this. In the length of seventeen
mortal days—hours, moments, in the Underearth—she grew to be some seventeen
years.