Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (32 page)

‘
Oh
kind is she in her unkindliness,

And lovely in her evil.

Let us be worthy of your hatred,

Azhriaz! Azhriaz!’

Yet,
whole kingdoms’ lengths of streets and concourses away, three strangers now
stood at one of the large gates of the City.

It gaped always open, night and day, the gate. The leaves of it,
in any event, were made of glass.

When the three strangers passed beneath, galvanics scored the
atmosphere. But only a sick man lying in the gateway noticed this.

They were cowled and cloaked, the strangers, one in singed cloth
that took shadow, and one in blond cloth that took light, and the third in
blanched cloth that sang on the eye.

Fools,
thought the failing one under the gate. (He had been a magus once, exalted and
proud, and stayed arrogant though he perished of hunger and disease.) “Oh, wise
masters,” he cried aloud, “give alms to a wretched destitute.” He did this to
see if they were idiotic—and irreligious—enough to do it. And at his words, to
his surprise, contempt, and hope, the traveler in the blond cloak turned and
cast down to him something that gleamed. The sick magus scrabbled for it
eagerly, then cursed, for it was only another pebble, and besides, it had
burned his palm. Then, from the burn, there flowed through him a frightening
sensation—it was health and vigor leaping back on him like two rabid tigers.
Soon he got up and ran away in horror, leaving the pebble to blacken in the
gate.

All night long the three strangers went through Az-Nennafir, and
some beheld them, and some attempted to detain them. But a great heat played
about them, and those who caught the sleeves of their garments felt a touch
like a desert wind, and those who plucked their flesh seemed to have dipped
their fingers in scalding sand. And though they were seen in several parts of
that gigantic metropolis, both on its mountainous heights and in the chasmic
lanes between, they did what no mortal could do, traversing the whole City in
that single night.

Near dawn, they came to an inn on the river bank. It rose story
upon story, like a coiled dragon, with windows of primrose green. And in the
court, which was strewn with the petals of bruised white myrtles of unusual
size, there posed a statue of chalcedony, a man in form, that held clasped
close a beautiful dead girl whose hair streamed to the ground. Her body did not
mortify; she too was altering to a chalcedon. At their feet was a message
written in silver, which read:
Such is love.

The three strangers approached the inn door, which, like the
gates, gaped wide. The hall within was loud and busy with carouse, despite the
weary hour. Caged fires enlightened riches and riot, in the middle of which a
chained beast crouched, that had the face of a wolf, the hind legs of an
enormous hare, the figure of a serpent, the breasts and tresses of a woman.

The white-cloaked stranger tossed down a last pebble, among the
couches. The pebble chinked and grated, bounced against a winepot, and spun to
stillness. There was no other sound anymore in that room. Every man and every
woman stood or leaned or sat or lay in the attitude adopted at the instant of
the pebble’s flight. Some had their arms raised aloft in dramatic gesturings,
others humped in crazy positions, suspended in the fiercest performances of
lust. But the fires in the cages were also motionless, every flame glistening
like a dagger. And a number of cups had been spilled, and hung in air, with the
wine half splashed from them like beads of tinted glass.

The composite beast alone was not affected. Nevertheless, it
deemed it prudent to cower down and howl, and when the three travelers moved by
it, it crawled away until its chain groaned and creaked and suddenly snapped.
And then it crawled on into the dark beyond the door.

Upward through the motionless inn the travelers took their way.
Over every formerly vociferous floor they wended, and were gone. In the top
tier, at the very peak of the new silence, they sat down, and under their
cloaks stirred an uncanny restlessness, as great wings were folded.

It
happened that a magnet began to exert its influence in the City of the
Witch-Goddess.

They were drawn, the citizens, they could not help it. Sometimes
there was a dream they could not remember, or explain. Or it was only a mute
desire. Sometimes they did not even wish to go—
there.
But
there they went. They left their comforts, mageries, and their studied
wrongdoings. Worship and sacrifice they left also. They abandoned the luxury
trades of Az-Nennafir that had made them wealthy, and its debaucheries that
slowly killed them. They left off even ritual murder and suicide. They trooped
along the wide roads, steered along the river, under the blued sky. They came
to a building, once an inn. But the inn had become peculiar, putting out oddly
graceful protuberances, galleries, spires . . . growing like a heavenly vegetable.
Within this inn’s radius, which seemed to increase with every hour, the winds
came by and did not move the grasses of the lawn or the leaves of the myrtle
shrubs. Flowers lay on the ground and did not fade.

In the courtyard, a chalcedony statue had toppled over and broken
into chunks, none of which had been pilfered. A clean female skeleton was
mingled with these.

Mostly, the bemused arrivals sat down about the inn and wondered
and murmured. As days and nights wore, some would fall silent, and presently
get up again and hurry away. These might subsequently be seen dashing through
the City toward one of the several gates—a journey of weeks, or months. But
others lay down and slept, and did not waken, though the whole area sighed with
their concerted regular breathing.

A few ascended through the inn. From the top tier of it, which now
resembled a gorgeous diadem of filigreed lettuce, a quantity of these, in a
short while, threw themselves off. Others came down by the stairs, and yet
others did not come down.

“What is
there?”

“I . . . cannot say.”

“Or will not? Is it some fresh magic of the Astonishing One,
Azhriaz? She has been unseen by us a long while.”

“No.
No.”

One man stood in the courtyard and said, “The sun waits three
times over in the upper room. Six-winged is the sun, with golden feet and hair
of fire. Evacuate this kingdom, or die here.”

“A punishment of the gods? Then we are honored by their
attention.”

“We are nothing to the gods, as we are told. It is for the Goddess
they cast their shining net.”

Then the aesthetics marveled. Did the gods seek to upbraid one of
their own?

Still, some went home and got their goods together in a rush, and
soon were to be seen, like the others who had done so, dashing for the exit
points of Az-Nennafir. But the majority stayed where they were, and the streets
around the erstwhile inn, and the river bank and the river, were thick with
them, while far and near whole sectors of the city were deserted. Yet, so
populous was that huge place, it teemed on around each vacuum. And there were
plenty of persons so stupid, or so erudite, they never felt the magnetic force
laid upon them.

3

AZHRIAZ
the Goddess was walking westward, by the river. It was traditional, when she
roamed abroad about her own business, for the vicinity to be emptied by her
soldiers, a duty they cherished. The living and the corpses then removed, no
human thing was there to annoy her. Only peacocks spread their fans along the
avenues and uttered their soulless scream, and the ibis and the crane lowered
their long necks to drink from garden pools. While two cats of white stone
turned their heads with an unnerving rasp to watch their mistress going by.

The Goddess-on-Earth went down in the sunset to the harbor basin,
where once, more than three decades ago, the merchant ships had ordinarily come
and gone. Now only one vessel lay there. The bark of Azhriaz.

It was not that half-delusory ship in which she had first plied
upriver from the west. This was a seagoing galley, resting on mighty chains at
the center of the river. A man-made ship, or mostly, with enamels blazoned upon
her, and bannered with furled sail. She had three terraces of decks, and when
once her ports should open to let out the oars, they would quill her like a
porcupine.

Solid, the ship, if nameless. And not quite natural. Those that
had seen her assured you she could vanish—like her lady—at a word. Only those
who had toiled to make her truly knew of her—shipwrights, joiners—who had been
struck dumb for the duration. And, too, certain unnormal bipeds summoned
generally by night. Although the demons had not been called on, not even those
genius metal-smiths the Drin. Azhriaz had not, it seemed, wished to inform the
Underearth of this venture, despite the fact that she would know nothing could
be kept from Azhrarn her father should he look about for it. Maybe she had
become assured of his uninterest.

Now Azhriaz, having observed her fine galley, stepped on the
water. She walked over the river, past the sun as it sank, and lifted in the
air to attain the highest deck, under the great rolled clouds of sail.

What was the ship for? Why, the sea. And
why
the
sea, then? Standing on the deck, Azhriaz traced, for momentary amusement, a
name on the air in watery letters.
Simmurad.

But immediately, the letters died. Now she poised like an orphaned
child, this fabulous woman-girl, dwarfed by the stature of a mere ship, her
long-lashed eyes downcast.

Was there not a futility in everything? Why then attempt anything?

But she must rein back these thoughts. There was all time, and she
damned with it. Best not to dwell on the centuries, or the minutes.

Just then it seemed to her she heard a strange music, or some
other stranger sound, reverberating from the depths of her City. Had she
perhaps heard it before? Attuned to the auras, notes, nuances of the thousand
spells that went on here, she had paid this oddity slight heed. Yet, it did not
harmonize, it was discordant.

The sun had set behind the sapphire lens; the afterglow lay along
the mirror of the river. Azhriaz raised her eyes, and saw three golden stars
fly up the sky.

No sooner did she see them than extraordinary feelings welled in
her. She was not accustomed to excitement, for her powers had, inevitably,
deadened her emotional senses. So, for a moment, joy clawed at her heart.
Yellow gold and russet gold and gold that was white, the three stars sliced
through the firmament. Could she not, putting on such wings, too, soar upward
and meet with them in confrontation?

Yet all about a weird moaning began from every side, the lapping
of the river—a moan, the rushes moaning at the water’s edge. The very chains
that held the ship groaned as they rubbed against each other, and the boards of
the young vessel groaned as if they ached. No fish surfaced from the water. The
glowing flies that came to the luminous night flowers of the garden and made
love to them in error—thinking the flowers to be flies—put out their lights. An
assembly of cranes took the air and flew low along the river and away,
away.
What perfume was this? A soft attar of fear.

Then Azhriaz was angry. Not in the manner of men, or women either,
in the Vazdru way, flawless clutterless rage, with a razor’s edge. Her lips
parted to speak words like drops of bane. But a hand, light as a pane of the
darkness, was set upon her head.

“No,” said the voice, black catspaw silk, out of the night where
nothing had been.

“You have made me a goddess,” she said, as silken. “Is there then
something a goddess dare not do?”

“It may be so,” said Azhrarn. “Wait, and be still.”

And so they waited, shut in under the umbra of the sails, while
the flaming stars quartered the sky on their wings, then drew away together
inland, over the river.

“There is after all a novelty in my City,” said Azhriaz at length.

“Do not be charmed by it, little girl. I did not make you to be
spoiled in fire.”

Azhriaz turned, and so beheld her father, the Prince of Demons,
and even she for a moment took breath at his magnificence. He had come there as
prince and lord indeed, clothed in the armorings of midnight, a mail
glass-black as dragon plates, girt with battle ornaments of bone and jewel and
staring silver. Even a sword at his side cased in black and itself all
blackness, with a blue tongue running on it. About each arm there twined
serpents with bodies black-armored as his own, eyes like curses, teeth for
swords. Behind him and the halo of his clarified light were seven of the
Vazdru, dressed after his fashion, their faces masks, their hands wicked on the
gracious hilts of blades. But his face was like the sword stroke, so beautiful
it was, so steeled, so sovereign.

“Which fire is that?” said Azhriaz. She spoke haughtily, and upon
her the raiment of a queen began to bloom. She did not like to be humble in
such company.