Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (8 page)

The glory of a
thousand mornings in that sunrise for her, then. And the colors of the earth
blinded her and made her weep. She could endure the day as could no other demon
thing. Yet half her atoms shrank from the view that the other half of her atoms
loved, and were kindred of. She was doomed equally to search out and to eschew
the sun.

She had taken the
topaz from her mouth and left it lying on a boulder. She sought the shadow of a
rock.

They say the
waters of her blue eyes turned to sapphires as they met the soil of earth; she
wept corundum. But perhaps after all she only wept tears.

Oloru came to her then,
and now he wore a damson mantle, into which he gathered her. He kissed her eyes
again, wet with tears or sapphires.

“Here in the
world, my own gifts are rapidly leaving me,” he said. “But for now—”

The mantle flared
its wings with the sun caught in one of them, and, as it seemed, a horde of
stars.

And the hillside was
vacant.

5

THE SAME SUN it was which rose behind the widow’s
house. The scene it gilded there was less impassioned, to begin with.

Out in the
courtyard lay the rioters, in all the attitudes of riot’s aftermath. In the
forest over the way, the birds woke and sang, but those who woke in the yard
were not inclined to copy them. They held their heads or their bellies, called
for medicine or for more drink. Some had the temerity to call also for their
lord, Lak Hezoor. When none vouchsafed a reply, these noble courtiers began to
beat on the house doors and windows. They croaked or bellowed that they feared
their patron had come to some harm, injuring himself in scaling, maybe, the
obdurate icy breast of a virgin.

Now it seemed to
them that they had every excuse—the security of their prince—for breaking into
the house. Already they were cheered by the prospect. Then came a new burst of
singing.

The song was
alien to the morning, yet age-old as the tribulations of men.

The courtiers
dropped back when they heard it. They clutched each other and asked: “What can
that be?” Though they knew very surely it was one demented, who shrieked and
moaned. So accordingly they said, “It is just that Oloru, trying to unsettle
us.”

Just then the shutters
of an upper room flew open.

A man appeared
there in the window. For some seconds they did not, any of them, know him. His
countenance was twisted, his eyes showed only the white balls, his mouth gaped
and blood ran from it where the tongue had been bitten. His whole body seemed
streaked by bloody hurts, and as they watched appalled, he clawed and scrabbled
at himself, causing fresh injuries with his nails, or turning to bite himself
on the shoulders or arms. They were loath to recognize this beast. It was only
the sable hair, though he tore it out in handfuls, that told them this was Lak
Hezoor.

Gray-faced, the
men in the courtyard one by one took note, and stepped away backward. Some ran
to their horses and bolted almost at once. The others shook in their shoes and
stuttered. One dared to call again his master’s name—at which the apparition in
the window screeched more raucously, and, hauling and wrenching itself
through, commenced to crawl toward the courtyard down the stones of the wall.

At this every man
there turned tail. Lak had gone mad, and plainly, if he caught hold of any one
of them, he would pull him in bits.

Cacophonously as
they had arrived, therefore, Lak’s court departed, trampling each other
underhoof.

Somewhere along
the city road, though it is not recounted where, those that could held
conference together, and decided what story to offer in the city. They had
determined by then that Oloru and his family were mighty sorcerers, mightier
far than Lak, demonstrably, since they had dealt with him as had been
witnessed. It would thus be preferable not to refer to Oloru’s house, to Oloru,
or to Oloru’s relations. What could mere mortals do against them? (For there
was another thing, which they had not properly grasped in the panic, but
recollected now—those especial servitors and guards that Lak had kept about
him, not one had gone to his aid. Rather, they had stayed like
statues. . . .) If such as these had not been able to assist, it
was best for ordinary men to leave well alone.

For Lak himself,
one last rider swore he had seen his erstwhile prince, foaming at the lips and
tearing himself, proceed into the forest at a lurching run. What else should
they say, then, in the city, than that they had lost their lord in the woods
where fearsome things were known to reside, and whose numbers it seemed he had
gone to swell?

“What can we do?”
said they, limping home. “We are only ordinary men.”

By which they
meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be
saved at all costs.

In the stone
house, alarmed by the besieging courtiers, the women and their servant had run
down to one of the smaller rooms, an old cellar under the hall, and bolted the
door. There they remained, and when the awful awakening cries of Lak Hezoor
penetrated their sanctuary, they were very thankful to have chosen it.

In the end, all
grew peaceful. Presently, the elder sister and the servant, with a stick
apiece, went up to see.

A great deal of
mess lay about. But of the visitors—not a whisker.

They searched the
house then, and even inquired aloud. But the place had been vacated. Only the
sun came in, and set a bright marigold on every edge and rim. Beyond the wall,
the birds sang. The forest and its inhabitants doubtless understood how a man,
already some quarters insane with his own vanity and sadistic designs, could
meet the Vazdru under the earth one night, and give up to them what sense he
had.

Only in the
courtyard was there something a touch worrying. Some little hard stony lumps,
for all the world like tall men of granite, who had melted. (Lak’s blank-faced
servants?)

“So he has
deserted us again,” said the widow, dabbing her eyes. “My son, my Oloru. Ridden
off with his lord, and not a word of farewell.”

“Yet he saved us
from Lak’s cruelties,” said the elder sister. “I will never speak slightingly
of my brother again.”

“He is not a bad
son,” said the widow. “Look at these jewels and rich garments Prince Lak left
us in payment. We shall live well again, as we have not done for years. That
would be Oloru’s doing. The rest is just his weakness. Oh, but I wish he had
stayed here with us. I would have forgone the jewels and the comfort they will
buy, just to have him at our fireside. That life is not for him.”

“Who knows,” said
the younger sister wistfully.”He may one day tire of that life.”

6

IT MAY have been the forest of Lak’s hunting, or quite
another forest, wherein the glade was situate. Certainly the place was ancient
and somewhat sorcerous, and very dark. By day, the sunlight hung there in rare
tinted drifts, or broke and scattered everywhere like golden rain. By night, at
moonrise, there fell a rain of opals.

For the creature
of dawn and dusk, seeking and turning from the sun, an ideal habitat.

Sunset: and a rain of
coral.

The blue-eyed
demoness was seated on a bank where swarthy lilies grew, staring down at her
reflection, as the lilies did at reflections of lilies, in a pool. A spring fed
the pool, and made it always unstill. She could not be sure of herself in this
unsettled mirror. Only those eyes of hers shone out at her. It came to the
demoness they had been paler and harder in her childhood, and cooler.
Bathos, then, has deepened them.
“Bathos”—for she
was almost shamed now by her quiescence in exile.

Across the pool,
he lay on one elbow, her guardian, the prince who had kissed her awake, and
carried her on the last stage of their journey over earth and air, folded in
his mantle. But the mantle was absent now, and some of his presence with the
mantle. It was just an exceptionally toothsome young man who reclined there.
Her child’s memory, her intuitive knowledge, both were well honed, or she too
might have doubted, or forgotten.

They had not
conferred for hours, or even days, these two escapees of Underearth. Until she
said to him, carelessly: “Dear guardian, grant me a name.”

But he only
bowed, charming eccentric Oloru, and replied, “Who
are
you that I should know how to name you?”

“You knew me, and told
me of it.”

“Did I? In some dream—”

“And now you do not know
me.”

“Only that I
found you as Kazir found Ferazhin, a flower grown in the shade. The rest—I
unremember.”

“Why?” said she,
and now her eyes
were
paler, harder and more
cold. Like spearpoints of turquoise, as he should have recalled them, having
seen them so previously, in the temple of holy Bhelsheved, the day after her
mother’s death.

But Oloru did not
recall. He shrugged most gracefully. “Why?” he said. “Why not? Pardon me, I am
partly mad. Everyone says so.”

“Yes,” she said, “it
is politic to forget yourself. You who destroyed my mother by your trickery.
Should I not detest and be revenged on you for that, as my father means to be?
He will hunt you over the edges of the earth. I heard him promise as much to
your face. That two-faced face which once was yours and will be yours again.
One promise of Azhrarn given you, and then a promise to me, and he took me
below with him. But he put me aside and forgot me, I was of such little worth
there. Or here.” The demoness who was also a human girl put out her hand and
touched one of the lilies. “My loving parents,” said she, and the lily
shriveled and rotted from its stalk. “That night Dunizel died and left me
comfortless, she sought out Azhrarn. Her spirit came to
him,
and put on flesh for
him,
and they were lovers together. What was I to
either of them in those long moments? Nothing. He made me for that promised
complex game he planned, but has since discarded. And she—she held me in her
belly and brought me forth only to gratify him. When I was a child,” said the
girl who was also a demon, “Dunizel told me stories. In the womb I heard her
voice, my mother’s, sweeter than the songs of the stars. But I was nothing to
her but something of
his,
while he hated me
always.”

“Your eyes, they scald
me,” whispered Oloru.

“Be scalded then,
court jester,” she answered angrily. “Play your silly part and see if I do not
betray you.” But then she went on softly, dangerously, with her former theme.
“He
named me
Azhriaz,
to mark me as his. But I am not his.
She
named me by her own first-given name, Moon’s Fire—
Soveh.
Though I disown my mother, I would rather be hers than his. I will resume that
name.”

“Your eyes,”
whispered the young man, “are burning the marrow from my bones. Are killing
me.”

“Die then, as if you
could.”

“When I am dead
ashes at your feet, consider only this. You are a sorceress, and whatever name
you take, it must bear the symbol of your calling.”

She looked at
him. She said, “Good. Her name is better altered. Not, then, Soveh, but Sovaz the
witch. I will be Sovaz.”*
Note to Vera: Following text to be footnote *
As
with the K that concludes a masculine name to denote the magician, so the
symbols which translate as AS or AZ in the female—at the end or very
occasionally within, the name—denote a sorceress.
End Footnote

“Sovaz, you are
fair,” said Oloru. “You are the evening star, the hyacinth that shades all
heaven with its dye, the silver taper that lights the moon.”

“Is she so, this
Sovaz,” said Sovaz, unsmiling. “But I see now what you play at being.”

After that she
fell silent. Silence was yet her métier, speech only a new fad that might be
relinquished at any moment.

Merely, she let
down her hyacinthine hair into the pool. The lilies rustled, stretching their
stems like thirsty swans, to dip their petals in the water her hair had spiced.

A short while
later, perhaps only six or seven hours, the lilies and the hyacinth lifted
their heads from their reflections at a sudden sound. It was a noise which has
already been described in some detail. A belling of hounds, but not mortal, nor
far off.

She who was now Sovaz
glanced first at her traveling companion. Innocently, beautifully, Oloru slept.
Neither did the uproar rouse him, though psychic and horrible and limitless, it
seemed to rape the forest, to rip down branches and uproot the grass. Not one
live thing, natural or un, could ignore the cry. That Oloru slept on was his
great wisdom. She despised and respected him for it. Also, she thought,
It is not for me Azhrarn comes hunting. Even to hunt me
has no value for Azhrarn. Can it be he even guesses I am gone from prison? What
loss if I am? No. It is this other he seeks.

And she spurned the
“other” lightly with her foot as she went to the brink of the glade, to see.