Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (31 page)

For the gods were far off—both in their unphysical physicality and
in their supernal spirit-minds.

To that limited number of beings, of whom Azhrarn was one, who had
walked the Upperearth, it was a formless and mostly markerless country. It had
its Well, and here and there some evidence of possession might be descried by
those with exceptional vision—the harpstring dwellings of the gods, for
example, eons abandoned, the various esoteric intellectual exercises, such as
checkered squares of unknown colors, pavilions of indescribable structure, a
flight of steps, waterfall or archway that neither word nor pen would or can
award any idea of. Distantly on the horizon were mountains, or the frozen souls
of mountains, the shade of the sky, outlined by delicate snows of impervious
adamant. Even should you walk toward these mountains for seven years, you would
not reach them. They remained always that exact distance on the horizon as
before. To the gods, however, these inaccessible crags were easily to be
gained.

Awhile then, in this region, some of the gods had been
congregated. Since the location was otherwise never entered, it can only be
conjectured upon. But there they were, the lords of Upperearth, who had all
genders and none, transparently robed, translucent of flesh and aflow with the
palest violet ichors. In high excitement, glassy flutterings would sometimes
erupt from their garments, hair, or brains—and now continuously did so. For the
gods, this was a most savage clamor. But their polished eyes gave away nothing.
And they were voiceless as Eshva, more so. Yet it has to be supposed, as on
other occasions it has had to be, that the gods did communicate with each
other, and that a dialogue was in progress. Which, to render it in sentences
and phrases, went somewhat like this.

“Ages past,” a portion of the gods stated, “we were volatile. We
dressed ourselves in heavy skins, and descended to the earth, and there
indulged in uncouth adventures, and left behind a selection of legends, and
even, in some instances, progeny. Which last were counted as heroes or
monsters by mankind. And indeed, it was in those foolish eras of our extremist
youth we first made man, to amuse us, and for a little space he did. But later
we grew out of him, and out of ourselves, and, purged of all such nonsense, we
retreated to our upperworld to spend the rest of time, as time is now reckoned,
in contemplations, and other astral athletics. Let us, therefore, only continue
as we are, ceaselessly purifying our purity. And let the world also go on until
it destroys itself by its gross randomness. The earth is no longer any concern
of ours. And as for man, he is a mistake we made. And if we notice him, he will
naturally offend us, as one’s mistakes always do.”

“But,” intoned another portion of the gods, “though for the most
part the doings of man have no bearing upon us, yet sometimes his willful
innovations strike a discordant echo even here. And this is one such, their
new religion. A human thing, even one of their sorcerers, investing himself
with godhead is only ridiculous. But this woman, being ab-human, has vast
powers, and may, through their stupidity—in which state all men perpetually
are—be taken undeniably for a god. It is true, when we roved upon the earth in
our adolescence, we behaved quite often in such ways, and the legends we left
support the woman’s claim. And this resonance of our past, and this affront to
our present (though neither past nor present any longer trouble us), is a
hindrance to our inward seeking. Therefore we may not ignore the discord. It
must be silenced.”

Then a solitary god speechlessly spoke, and said this:

“One ascended to our country and walked here. He was no mortal,
for such cannot ascend or enter. He was of an immortal race men call
demons,
and
these we did not make, and therefore they may not be bound by us. And this
demon, who was their prince, is a magician beyond all imagining. And when he
had talked insolently to us, he kissed me, and I remember still the kiss.” And
the god lowered his head (or her head, or its head), and flying crystals sped
from every fold and pore and hair. “It is a fact,” continued the god presently,
“that this woman mankind call a goddess is none other than the offspring of
that demon prince. Such an adversary may be said to be worthy of our attention,
and deserving of a supreme conflict, and we, inescapably, must offer war to
such.”

Then the gods stared, or did what amounted to that action, but
there is no source which reveals what that might be. This one god had now
(unvocally) uttered the very concepts of their youth. So there came a pause,
which undoubtedly lasted many mortal years. After which the gods affirmed that
this one of their fraternity should take on for them the onus of retribution.
He should do all—and it did seem that he was now masculine, though how it
seemed so is not told, nor was it probably by any straightforward means. And
in this way, too, the rest of the gods punished him, for the vestiges on him of
outgrown things, not to mention for having been kissed by a demon.

Thus, the god—who carried within himself all the gods, though a
rogue member; they were at heart intrinsically a single entity—thus,
he
set
forth. And crossing Upperearth he arrived at a place like every other, but here
he grasped the invisible substance of the air and wrenched it free and molded
it, invisibly, between his hands—then cast it from him, where it broke
invisibly into three shards.

These the god breathed upon, one after the other, and next
gathered them up again, though still they were not to be seen.

He
spoke
then, or he made some positive, audible sound. It was a phonetic the like of
which no sorcerer of the world had ever compassed, nor, let it be admitted, any
demon magician-prince under the ground.

And the blue of Upperearth split, a small vent, and through it,
miles away and a little below, was a raging thing, like many million furnaces
melded into one, from which rays and streamers and breakers of flame reeled and
exploded. Then the god, who had breathed his divine breath into the three
invisible shards of the fabric of heaven, flung them down yet again, one upon
the other, into the core of the sun.

The
first shard struck the sun. The second shard struck it. And the third. At each
impact there came a surge of light and heat more dreadful than those which the
sun already shot and flailed about itself. But when the third fire spasm
guttered and died, there was only the flaming mass of the sun disk, terrible
enough, but not more terrible than it had ever been.

And then. With a violence that caused the upper airs to judder in
a skyquake, the sun
disgorged.
Once, twice, thrice, a torrent of scalding matter reared upward and soared over
heaven in a roaring arc, led by a dot of brilliance unbearable to look on, if
any had looked, a shooting star of cosmic arson—which, ending its flight
suddenly in mid-ether, stopped still and hung there, slowly cooling moment by
moment to a stab of diamond. Until:

They stood high up, between earth and heaven, like three stooping
hawks, their feet upon the winds and their wide wings spread. They were the
Malukhim, the Sun-Created. They were made to be the scourge of men, the
warrior-priests of the gods, their messengers and envoys, the shining
sheathless blade of that which had outgrown battle.

The first who sprang from the solar fire was Ebriel. He stood on
the right hand, and he had been calcined to yellow-gold. His skin was the metal
of a king’s goblet, and his eyes like topaz, and his hair was a lion’s mane of
the hue of the tasseled wheat in the field. His garments were of that pale
creaminess of the asphodel, and the sheen of his flesh shone through with a
golden radiation. His breastplate was hammered gold gazing with blond citrines.
His wings were whitely gold as those of a young eagle. He was like the spring
sun at noon.

The second who sprang from the fire was Yabael, and he stood on
the left hand, and he had been seethed for a greater while, and his was a gold
dark as darkest bronze. So the metal of his skin, but his eyes were like tawny
amethysts, and his hair a stallion’s mane the hue of the scorched rufous leaves
of autumn oaks. His garments were fulvous, like honey in beer, and the burnish
of his flesh burned through with a somber radiation. His breastplate was of
hammered brazen gold wounded with copper zircons. His wings were shadowed gilt
as those of a vulture. He was like the late-summer sun in thunder.

But foremost, and nearest to the world, with the solar disk behind
his head, there stood Melqar, who had stayed within the fire until it seared
him white. His skin was the fairest gold, the metal of a sacred chalice, and
his eyes were kindled lamps, and his hair a sunburst. His garments dazzled
white as all white things, the newborn snows, the bones within a child, and the
sunshine of his bright golden flesh soaked through with the radiation of a
torch. His breastplate of hammered white gold was sunned with golden beryls.
His wings were white as a swan’s, yet golden white, a swan that flew always at
the day’s rise. And Melqar was like the sun of midsummer dawning.

But
the sky itself turned black. Dismayed by the ethereal disturbance, storms
formed in every quarter. Shocks tolled, and the clouds ran in like tidal waves
upon a beach. The whole roof of heaven was blotted out; only the sun spiked
through like the tip of a white-hot spear. Night closed on the day. And in
every land of the world, down in the flat earth’s dish, they saw it. Men
trembled, and sages and mages forecast dooms. Priests offered to the gods,
guessing, almost accurately, that they were angry. But in the third of the
earth where the Goddess was worshiped, they would do nothing, for they knew the
gods to be indifferent, or hating. “They will smite us anyway,” men said there.
And so slew themselves for fear of worse, or ran to hide in cellars, or else
performed the most hideous villainies of their lives, frenziedly and rapidly,
in order to get everything done before annihilation swept them up.

But in a far country, where the grim teaching of the Goddess had
not yet gone, there was a scholar who watched the stars through a mighty lens
large as a palace dome, mounted upon four sculpted tortoises of brass. And this
man, though his vertebrae rattled with terror, stayed to see. Many hours later,
the sky began after all to clear. It was midnight, and a moon rose in the east,
a slender bow, yet fever-flushed. Then the scholar-astrologer was summoned to
the house of his king, who asked questions.

“My lord, I can only say this. That I saw three arrows of light
fired out of the sun, and from these lights came three winged men, one gold,
one brazen gold, one white as gold that is molten. They stood in heaven, and
the darkness followed, but yet
they
blazed bright, and
rode upon the clouds like great and awful birds. And then it appeared that he
who stood to the right of the sky drew a sword with a blade which sizzled like
yellow lightning, and he in the left of the sky drew a sword which dripped red,
like blood. But he that stood foremost with the sun behind his head, he drew a
sword like white flame, and he raised it high, yet with its edge down-pointing
to the earth.

“And I would venture to suggest,” added the scholar-astrologer,
“that this bodes no good for us.”

2

THEY
HAD neither mind nor soul, the Malukhim. They had no heart. They had spiritual
will and purpose, but these came from the gods’ own. Though they were
beautiful, so are fires and leopards.

Some nine days they were, falling to earth, so leisurely and so
fraught with meaning their descent.

The passage may have been heeded, but, closing with the vapors of
the world, they had shuttered their brightness. Those golden feet, naked as
swords, touched initially the bare shoulder of a mountaintop. An emblem, the
choice of landing. The most high to the highmost. And three days they paused
upon the mountain and from miles off might be glimpsed there, glinting like
jeweler’s work. But none saw it save some animals thereabouts, or envious
ravens.

Below
the mountain lay purple deserts with rocks of quartz and gullies veined by
costly minerals, and here and there a long-armed tree that turned to flint.

The warrior-messengers came down from the mountain. It was
emblematic also that they should walk a short way, that they should inhale the
air and tread the back of the world. For they scarcely needed to.

At sunset, they paused again on a high place, and looked down, and
Az-Nennafir lay before them, the City wide as an ocean, twinkling with the
first buds of its lights.

Gods do not soil themselves with deeds. That requires angels.

Yabael took up a pebble, and hurled it toward the City.

It flew so fast for so far, it caught alight, and a sparkling tail
went after it. Over the City, over the river of the City, it raced, and crashed
through a tall window of glass that had still the blush of dying sun upon it.
Below, among pillars of incense, a multitude started and shouted. But the
pebble flashed into the midst of them and tore downward through the body of a
man, from cranium to instep, and buried itself in the floor beneath. The slain
man burst in flames, and fell across the altar. He was a priest of Azhriaz. He
had been offering the thirteenth human victim of the evening, it having been
thought proper to give thanks, since the lifting of the storm. Now the
worshipers wailed in their temple, blessing Azhriaz for her disdain. They
believed, of course, the thunderbolt was her doing.