Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (33 page)

Azhrarn told her which fire; of the angels with their flaming
swords hanging high up like three thoughts of golden death burst from the
brains of the gods.

They say he knew by having watched in one of the magical looking
glasses of the Underearth. But they said, also, that perhaps a ghost passed
over some lawn before his palace, and glimpsing it, he went to find such a
glass.

Azhriaz may now have said to him, “I am nothing to you. Why come
to me with this? I have had a warning. My darling un-uncle, King Fate, brought
it some months ago.” Azhrarn would then have answered, “I am not here to warn
you. I will do more than that. I have told you endlessly, as I told another,
you are mine, and what is mine will be chastised only by me.”

“So you have come here armed to fight?” she said. Neither he nor
those who followed him replied.

In a second, Azhriaz was clad not only as an empress-queen, but
like a prince.

“I will fight too,” she said. “It is my Empire, my godhood at
stake. Those gifts you gave me that I hold so dear.”

Azhrarn ignored her irony. He said, “They are sun-birthed. Their
strengths flourish best by day, and the stamina of my kind by night. The sun
is down. You, meanwhile, go to the river shore and wait.”

“No, I will fight.”

“Did I say it was a matter for war? Do as I bid you.”

“Oh inimitable Father, and lordly Lord of lords, what name shall I
get in the works of men if I hide myself?” The face of Azhrarn had not changed.
It was the countenance he had put on, with the battlegarb, to come here, and
he would not alter it.

“Azhriaz,” he said, “not only shall you hide, you shall fly the
City. You flatter me by your estimation of my power. But the gods are the
gods.” And saying that, he turned his head and spat in the river, and the water
spangled as if fireworks raced from end to end, then went black. “Chuz would
not duel with me,” said Azhrarn. “Have you forgotten so soon? And heaven is not
to be fought with. It is a gesture, on all sides. But by these gestures,
mountains are tumbled and landmasses sunk in the sea.”

Azhriaz turned from him.

‘‘You are too young and have not learned to be afraid,” he said.

Startled then, she looked at him once more. ‘‘And do you fear?”

But he awarded her only a terrible smile. The night opened, and
the Vazdru were gone, Azhrarn before them.

Azhriaz frowned, but her heart, which had the tissue of mortals
also in it, quickly beat. She flickered out in one place and re-evolved amid
the rushes of the bank.

And does he fear? Why then take the risk, why begin it? In order
to sample the fear in its due season
?

The atmosphere was electric. Not an awareness in Az-Nennafir that
did not feel it, even to the beetles under the stones, even to the
stones.

And suddenly there came a wild blunder of wings, and a torrential
scurrying—the birds, the lizards, the rats, coming forth into the night,
running away through it. And the sleek pet beasts, those leashed and caged,
these might be heard tricking and wheedling their ways to freedom, and next
running too. Pads and talons on the streets, the walls, tails and wings, feather
and fur and leather and scale. And in the river the fish winging west toward
the sea, as the birds did through the sky between the mindless dancing of the
sorcerous stars and moons—

Then the dark was slashed open again, and out of it poured an army
of undersized and hideous monstrosities, on whose swart unlovely limbs
incredible adornments coiled. The Drin, who—passing by—licked the ground about
Azhriaz, then fell upon her ship, the sea galley. And it seemed they tore it
asunder.

“Now,” she said, and tapped her foot.

One of the Drin approached her, crawling. “Mistress of Fevers and
Fantasies, Lady of Constellations, Moon Queen—”

“I am
his
daughter,” she said. “One compliment at a time will do. But speak of the ship.”

“It is to be made worthy of you, Black Dream of the Night.”

“So it was, worthy.”

“To be made safe. And wondrous, Mistress of Delusions.”

“How?”

“Let me go, and you shall see, Ebony Honey from the Silvermost
Wasp of the Gardens of Druhim Vanashta.”

Azhriaz kicked him lightly away. And the Drin bounded and squeaked
as if he had been fondled. Then hurtled down toward the disintegrating ship.

I
have no power. Helpless as a falling star am I,
thought
Azhriaz as she stood on the river bank.
When has it been otherwise
?
And she too spat in the
river, and spangled lilies rose which the Drin hastily plucked, biting and
punching each other for possession, as they ripped apart the galley of the
Goddess-on-Earth.

Night
ranged black above a filigreed comber, the metamorphosed inn. It was like a
jade mountain where it reflected in the river. No fish rose there, and in the
reeds no frogs crackled, the crickets did not harp.

Black night on the roof, then, piercing its openwork fans. And
night black in the room beneath, Night, armored, mailed, jeweled—the Vazdru.
And there, before them, merely three cloaked figures, three pilgrims from some
other land.

Nothing said. Time stopped.

Then, to the challenge of darkness, three cloaks unfolded, curved
upward, and were wings, and a fount of light flooded the chamber. Some of the
Vazdru turned their heads a little aside at it. Not Azhrarn. He stared straight
upon this nocturnal sunrise, at Ebriel the eagle, and Yabael the vulture, but
hardest he stared at swan-winged Melqar that the sun had seared white, and
behind whose sunburst hair the solar disk seemed yet to stand.

“The gods,” said Azhrarn, “are the gods. I say nothing of them.
They are not here. But the rabble of the lower skies, it seems, has some
quarrel with me.” Long, long since, Azhrarn outstared the sun. It had duly
blasted him. Now the twin suns of the eyes of the angel bored into the black
and oceanic eyes of the Demon. One could not dry up the other, nor the other
quench that one. “Who am I?” said Azhrarn. “Can it be my modest name is known
to you?”

The Malukhim did not speak. But the eyes spoke in their own way.
And the golden hand, the sword of bleached flame. And in the hand of Azhrarn,
black-gloved, the sword of indigo.

“But you,” said Azhrarn. “The sun has sweated off three drops. And
there you are. The foul orb of day was ever my enemy.”

At which the points of the swords touched each other, nearly
delicate, as if they kissed.

But brilliance shattered through the room and into the sky, and
broke the clockwork stars so they rained on Az-Nennafir below.

When
the first concussion divided the sky, the Drin gibbered, but did not cease
their labors. They went at them more swiftly. It had been a while since they
had had much heart to make anything. The magnitude of this assignment
frightened them, filling them with creative delight and doubt.

They had one night to do it. The task should be impossible. Yet
demon-time was on their side. They could not shift the framework of darkness,
nor keep the sun down in chaos for a second more than it was habitually kept.
Yet, within the bounds of the night, the scope of time—or its scope for
them—might be a little rearranged. So, they accomplished complex feats.

The galley, only slightly supernatural, had boiled and bubbled,
and sorcery gushed in. By the hour the heavens began to ignite and roar, and
splintered stardust showered, a curious
thing
lay in the harbor,
with the Drin swarming over it.

They must have plumbed the shelves of the seas, to get the model
right. Or they had gone out by moonlight and attracted the blue-skinned
dolphins and the umber whales. Or maybe some had plummeted amid the reefs,
popping out to scare polyps and to become amorous with reserved females of many
legs, and wish to court them in their shells, and not have the space, and so
come back above the sea bulging with information and unsatisfied
longings. . .

Some great fish had been the inspiration of design. Quite
properly, for where such fishes swam, there this ship would go swimming,
presently.

It was said to be glamorous, and more so than the original galley
which had vanished somehow into it. For the revolting Drin could make nothing
that was not wonderful.

But there was scarcely a means of regarding the new ship at this
juncture, what with the river now in spate, and with the sky every now and then
exploding. It must suffice to say that there it was.

Azhriaz, standing upon the bank, was no longer clad as empress or
warrior-prince, but plainly, in black. And but for her beauty she seemed slight
and small, unfit for a world of such drama.

Finally one of the Drin came to her, and lying on his face, put
the tip of a finger to her ankle.

The girl looked down.

“Supreme Mistress, we have done all he told us to do. The
sorceries are gelled, without and within. The rivets closed. All secure. Come
now, board the vessel, I entreat you. There is only half a glassful of the
lovesome darkness left.”

“But,” she said, and glanced about her, “who is to be with me?”

“None is needed.”

“The City—” said Azhriaz.

“Let go the City. He will hang cities on your white brow like
pearls.”

“A vast quantity of lives,” said Azhriaz. Her face was white
indeed.

The Drin, puzzled, gobbled politely at the bank. What should she
care for human lives, the Demon’s daughter? Though, even
he,
once—

“Beloved of Glooms and Shades,” said the Drin at last, “we seek
only to serve you and so
him.
Come aboard.”

Then, Azhriaz glanced at the sky, where the lightnings came and
went and all the clockworks had perished.

“What causes that?”

“The Great Quarrel, Mistress of Delirium.”

“Whose?” she said, childlike.

“Oh come aboard,” pleaded the Drin. “Have pity on us.”

“
You
?
Have pity on you, but on no mortal? And he is embattled with sun-creatures? Not
for my sake,” said Azhriaz, beginning to drift toward the metal fish in the
river. “It is his game, of course, and he does not like to lose.”

There was, in the fish-vessel’s side, a round high door. Azhriaz
the Goddess went up to the door through the scalded air, and the Drin
chittered. But at the doorway she said, “And where is Chuz?” Not loudly enough
that they, who were deaf in any case from all the millennia of hammerings,
could hear. “And my mother? Where is she? And cold Dathanja, that priest from a
womb-temple of rock—where? I am alone.”

Then she went inside the mysterious ship. The mysterious door
shut tight.

It
is not to be thought they contended as men who are skilled with swords. They
fought in the way of what they were, dark and light, earth and ether, though
something too in the way of dragons, and something in the way of a tempest
turned upon itself.

The first blows, even if they slew stars, were foreplay. They
danced, as lovers do, along the edge of death, Azhrarn the Demon, Melqar the
angel. And the strokes of the black sword were lilting, nearly tender, and the
Sun-Created—who had no soul, no purpose but the will of the gods—seemed induced
by the presence of this adversary to copy and to match him. So the Malukhim
also played, and the sword of golden whiteness teased, tempted, and the last
agonized stellar objects shivered to bits nearby.

And somewhere in this terrifying prologue, the inn roof fell away
or was destroyed, and then they moved in the sky an instant, and then they
passed into some place within the night, or beside it, a second dimension as
close to the world as the skin to the skull. And close enough certainly that
the incendiaries of conflict tore through and cracked the moons, now, like
plates.

There is this to be borne in mind. Azhrarn had announced:
I say nothing of
the gods. They are not here.

And in this way, by this pious formality, he made pretense he did
not know it was against the gods he fought. Such then the gods, as he had said,
that even Azhrarn was politic. But yet again the Malukhim, though not in
precise terms his equals, yet they were sufficiently puissant. And they were
sun-beings, while the substance of demon stuff could not endure the sun—

The first and second angels, Ebriel, Yabael, had risen and gone up
the sky, sentinel now on two precipices of masonry, one westward and one to the
east. They waited there, and did nothing. Only they gazed inward behind their
eyes, after the dueling of their fellow. For the Vazdru, they also stood high
up, their mailed feet on black air. They kept between the two angels and the
fabric of the other dimension, guarding the gate in absolute if inexplicable
ways. They were pale as dead men, the Vazdru. They had not been among those in
the underlands who put on yellow discontent. When Azhrarn called them, they
galloped after him on their steeds of night, without one word.