Night's Master

by Tanith Lee

  “You are brave, blind soul, and truthful as you say. Do you also dare to enter my slender-towered city and sing there for me?”

  “Gladly will I sing for you. But I shall ask a fee,” said Kazir.

  Azhrarn laughed. Was ever such a laughter heard by a man’s soul in sleep?

  “Bold, blind hero,” said the Prince, “your fee may be too high. Ask it now, and I shall see.”

  “A woman weeps in your city. Her tears are in this collar of blood. She is a flower and craves the sun. My fee is her freedom to roam in the lands of men.”

  Azhrarn did not answer for a long while. Only the harness of the demon horses sounded. The blind poet stood still, leaning on his staff.

  “I will make a bargain with you,” said Azhrarn then, suddenly. “Come to my halls, and I will ask you one question, and you shall sing me your answer in one song, and if the song is true and the answer the right one, you shall have Ferazhin, and Ferazhin shall have the sun. But if you fail, I will chain your soul in the blackest deep of the Underearth and there my hounds shall tear you until your body is dust on the earth above, and longer than that. Now, either accept my bargain, or go. And I will let you go without pursuit, for you have entertained me.”

  “There is no road back for me alone, Dark Lord,” Kazir returned. “Lead me into your city and ask me your question, and I will sing my answer as best I can.”

  So Kazir entered Druhim Vanashta, where mortals did not generally come.

  Everywhere strange music played and strange incenses perfumed the air. They led him, the Vazdru, till he stood in the wide hall of Azhrarn.

  Azhrarn was very courteous. He had laid before his visitor delicious foods and mysterious wines, and he pointed out to him how this goblet was made of malachite with rubies, how this plate was finest glass, how many candles in silver sconces burned around him, and the color of every drape and the subject of all the mosaics on the floor. He spoke too of the princely Vazdru, the worshipping Eshva, the handsome demon men, how they were beautiful and how they were subtle; he described the princesses and the hand maidens, the lovely shapes of their breasts, the fragrance of their hair and limbs.

  Then he conducted Kazir through his palace, and, standing on high places, instructed him what towers glittered north or south, and what parks unrolled their carpets east and west. He told him, too, the numberless subjects of his city, the countless horses in his yards, the impossible extent of his power and his mage-craft and his knowledge. This took a great while, and when he was finished, Azhrarn said gently:

  “All this I have, poet’s soul. And more of the same I might have, if I wished it. Now I will ask my question and you shall answer with your song.”

  “I am ready,” said Kazir, and he heard the rustling all about of the Vazdru and the Eshva as they waited.

  “Do you suppose,” said Azhrarn, “there is anything, which, having all this about me, still I cannot do without?”

  The Vazdru applauded, the Eshva sighed. They saw no possible answer to the Prince’s question. But Kazir bowed his head a moment, and then, lifting it, began to sing his answer as Azhrarn had said he must.

  This was the substance of Kazir’s reply: For all Azhrarn’s supernatural riches, for all his eternal kingdom under the earth, one thing he needed. That thing was human-kind. “We are your plaything, your amusement,” Kazir told him. “Always you return to us, to throw down our glories, to laugh your dark laughter when you have tricked us. Without man on the earth, the time of demons and the time of the Demon Lord would hang heavy indeed.”

  When they heard this, the Vazdru cried out scornfully though Azhrarn kept silent. But Kazir’s song was not ended.

  He sang a cold dream to the demons.

  He sang of how a plague came from the edges of the world and erased from it all mortal life. Not a man or a woman remained, not a child, not a baby. No crones creaked over their potions, no princes rode on heroic quests, no armies made war, no fair maidens looked out from their towers, and no infants cried in their cradles. Only the desolate wind moaned over the earth, only the grasses stirred. The sun rose and set on emptiness. And he sang of how the Prince of Demons flew by in the form of a night eagle, over the noiseless cities and the deserted lands. Not a light burned in a single window, not a single sail moved on the seas. And the Prince looked for men. But not one high heart was left to corrupt, not one rapacious jeweler to make mischief with. And on all the wide earth, not one tongue remained to whisper in reverence and terror the name of Azhrarn.

  The demons had fallen very still. As the last of the poet’s words drifted down among them, they seemed frozen in ice.

  Kazir stood in the hall of the Prince through that long quiet. Then Azhrarn said: “I am answered.” No more, no less, and maybe only the poet, with his sensitive ear, heard in that acknowledgment how the voice of Azhrarn was chilled and changed—as if with pain, or even fear.

  But the bargain had been made, and shortly out from the palace sped one of the Eshva, and found Ferazhin walking in some shadowy garden.

  She entered Azhrarn’s hall meekly, dolefully, in her cloudy veil, her face hidden.

  Azhrarn beckoned her near, and said:

  “A mortal has bought your freedom with a tomb-cold song. His soul must go back through sleep river, but some bird of night shall carry you to the soil of earth from which you came.”

  Ferazhin looked up.

  “And shall I see the sun?” she asked.

  “Till you are sick of it,” answered Azhrarn. “And he also, your rescuer, you shall see, for you are to be his.”

  But although he spoke low, Kazir heard him, and he called out:

  “No, Lord Prince. She has been too long the property of others. I do not claim her. I bargained with you only to set her free.”

  “Yet you love her,” said Azhrarn, “or else you would not have come.”

  “Since I encountered her tears set in the collar of silver, I have loved Ferazhin,” said Kazir calmly, “and now, sensing her near me, I love her more deeply. But she knows nothing of me.”

  However, Ferazhin had turned to look at him, for his voice had the color of the sun. She gazed at his face, his form, his hair, his eyes, and going up to him, she saw that he was blind. He had risked flesh and spirit for her, and asked nothing in return. She loved him at once; how could she not?

  “I will come to you gladly,” she said, “and love you for as long as you will wish it.” Then she went back to Azhrarn, and she said softly:

  “Yon grew me from a flower, and I was immortal while I lived in your dark kingdom. When Kazir grows old, as all men do, let me also grow old beside him, for I do not want to be other than he is, and when he dies as all men do, let me also die, for I do not want to be parted from him.”

  “When you leave my land and go to walk the earth, you will be subject to earth’s laws,” said Azhrarn. “You will grow old and you will die, and I wish you joy in so doing.”

  “And after death, shall I be with Kazir?” asked Ferazhin.

  “Ask the gods,” said Azhrarn. “All things of earth have souls, even the flowers that grow there, but you may lose each other in the mists at the threshold of death.”

  “Then let me die in the moment that Kazir dies, so we may go hand in hand.”

  Azhrarn’s coals of eyes grew blackly bright, but Ferazhin, her own eyes dazzled by her dreams, did not see it.

  “Then let that be my gift to you,” said Azhrarn. “In the instant you know Kazir is dead, you shall die also.”

  Ferazhin thanked him. The hall filled with a beating of wings. One starry bird carried Ferazhin away, up through the bewitched gates, out of the mountain, to the hills and valleys of the world, while another bore Kazir back to the river of sleep through which he must return in order to regain his body.

  Azhrarn meanwhile stood on a high tower, the collar of Vayi in his fingers. The Prince of Demons looked to north and east, to west and south, turning over in his mind the treasures of his realm, but the v
oice of Kazir came to haunt him even there, singing of the empty earth and its desolation, singing of how the Prince of Princes, without humankind, would be only a nameless mole beneath the ground. And presently Azhrarn crushed the collar in his hands to a shapeless molten thing, and hurled it down into the streets of Druhim Vanashta like a curse.

  Kazir woke in the witch’s house near dawn.

  “You have slept many days and many nights,” said she, “though, no doubt it seemed but an hour or so you were in the Underearth.”

  All this while she had kept him safe and preserved his body in its sleep by means of her spells. Now, as he rose and shook off that prolonged slumber, the woman stood watching at the open door.

  Up sailed the sun, the sky ignited like a lamp, and along the plateau a slender figure came walking with blowing hair the color of that sky.

  “I see a girl with wheat-yellow hair,” said the witch, “and a flower face.”

  Kazir went out at once and waited before the house, and Ferazhin came running toward him with her arms outstretched, laughing with happiness.

  For a year then, Kazir and Ferazhin were together, and their days make no story, for they were good and joyful and without event. They had no wealth, it is true, and wandered together from land to land as the poet had always done, earning their food, he by his singing, she by dancing, for she found she could dance, like a flower in a field in the gentle summer wind. They had no palace of crystal and gold, yet their hall was wide enough, with its blue roof, its floors of grass embroidered with asphodel and its great pillars of trees. Both loved the world, each loved the other. She would tell him all she saw, he would tell her all the history of things which he could divine by touch, in a stone or a ruined wall. They coupled thirstily, as do the young to whom love is an uncharted river. They knew the perfection of content.

  Then, one dusk at the year’s end, a boy met them on the road.

  He was very young, this boy, and handsome, with large dark piercing eyes. He came up slowly, as if uncertain. Then he said:

  “Can it be that you are Kazir, the blind poet, whose voice cures sickness?”

  “I am Kazir,” Kazir answered. “For the rest, it is not my boast.”

  But the boy kneeled down on the roadway, and caught at the hem of Ferazhin’s dress.

  “Lady, I beg you to help me. My father is lying ill in our house and will let no one come near him—only Kazir he calls for night and day. He says there was a prophecy in his childhood that he should fall ill and die unless blind Kazir should make him well with a song. Therefore, persuade the poet to come to him and save him.”

  Kazir frowned. The boy’s words troubled him. But he said: “I will come with you if you wish.”

  The boy leaped up and darted on ahead, leading them. Presently the road ran by a fine house with open gates of iron. In the outer court a fountain played, and by the fountain sat a slim black dog.

  “Now, if you will, you must come in alone.” the boy said to Kazir, “and the lady must wait in the court. My father will let no one in the house but myself, and even I am not permitted to enter the room where he lies.

  “Very well,” said Kazir, though somehow he liked this notion very little. Ferazhin, however, sat by the fountain serenely, and stretched out her hand to pet the black dog, but it was apparently shy, and ran into the house with the boy.

  Inside, there were many steps, and a door.

  “Father,” the boy called out, “I have found Kazir.” When no one answered, the boy muttered: “He is very weak. Go in and sing to him, and make him whole if you can, and we will bless you forever.”

  So Kazir stepped into the room. Yet he did not sing. It seemed to him that the place was empty, he sensed no invalid lying near, and suddenly the air was full of a dark strange incense. It reminded him of other scents that he had known only once before—when his soul walked through the streets of Druhim Vanashta.

  At once Kazir turned about to leave the room, but something ran against his legs—it had the form of a dog but, touching it, Kazir knew it for what it was—demon flesh. Next moment a ringing nothingness came rushing into Kazir’s brain as the shadowy drug filled his lungs. In vain he tried to beat it off, to reach the door, to cry to Ferazhin and warn her. Eagles of night smothered him. He sank down and lay as if he were dead.

  Ferazhin started up in the court. There had been no sound to alarm her, yet abruptly she was afraid. Just then, out of the house came the young boy, the dog at his heels.

  “Ferazhin,” said the youth, “Kazir is dead.”

  And the black dog barked.

  Immediately she knew them—one of the Vazdru in the form of a boy: while the inky dog—she stared into its coals of eyes and glimpsed Azhrarn. And the house was wavering all about her, like smoke. Now everything was gone, house, court, fountain and the two figures with it. She stood on a hill slope by a little stream, cold under the stars, and before her lay Kazir.

  She ran to him. She did not stop to reason. She took up his icy hands, brushed with her fingers his closed lids. She felt no heartbeat, heard no breathing. “Now I know you are dead,” Ferazhin whispered, and as Azhrarn had promised her, she felt her own hands grow stony, her own heart stop and her breath; her lids fell shut and she too lay dead beside Kazir.

  But Kazir was not dead. He still lived, as the Demon Lord intended. Gradually the drug of Underearth left him, he stirred and woke. Then he felt the open hillside, the starlight. Remembering what had gone before, he called Ferazhin’s name. She did not answer him. The blind man sat up and stretched out his hand, and so he found her. He held her in his arms and discovered at once how all the life was gone out of her.

  He had known perfect happiness for a year, now he knew perfect sorrow. He understood the trick, no doubt; perhaps he thought again of the river of sleep and a journey to Azhrarn’s palace, but then he rejected it, for Azhrarn would demonstrate no leniency now, since this was his revenge on them. Kazir imagined the soul of Ferazhin, her flower soul, lost on the foggy threshold of death, wandering alone, searching and calling out in vain for his. Full of pain as he was, he shuddered at what her pain and fear and loss must be.

  There was a village over the hill, and presently men came along the slope, going home that way. When they saw the fair blind stranger holding the fair dead girl in his arms, they were touched with pity and distress. Before the moon rose, they had dug, by the little stream, a grave for Ferazhin and laid her gently in it and covered her up, and over her body their priest had spoken such words of consolation and prayer as he knew. Then they entreated Kazir to go back with them; any one of them would have been glad to house him and take care of him, but he would not leave the place of earth where she lay. When they begged him, he began to sing of his love for her and her love for him, of the perfect year and the despair that followed it. The notes overflowed his throat like tears, yet he did not weep, his sorrow was too cruel for weeping. Only the villagers wept and, understanding, left him to mourn alone in silence.

  All night he sat by her grave. A nightingale perched in a tree and made music, but he did not hear.

  Near dawn, he drifted into sleep.

  He dreamed.

  He dreamed of the sorceress he had met, who had sent him down into the Underearth to claim Ferazhin, the old woman with the ring.

  “Well, so Azhrarn has outwitted you,” said she, “and your wheat-haired woman lies in the earth. Come, where else shall a flower lie when its season is done? The Prince of Demons has his magic, so have you, the magic of your songs. You spent a year with Ferazhin, now wait by her grave a year, if you have the patience. Bring water from the stream and sprinkle it over the spot, clear away the weeds that grow there. Best of all, each day sing to her death-mound how you valued her. Be faithful in this, and who knows how your garden will grow.”

  Kazir woke again as the sun was coloring the sky; he felt it on his face, like the touch of a kind warm hand.

  The villagers, concerned for him, had left a little bread and som
e milk in a crock. Kazir emptied out the milk—perhaps he drank it, perhaps only poured it on the ground. He made his way, guiding himself as always with his staff, to the lip of the stream. There he filled the crock and, carrying it to the grave, he spilled it, as one would water a flower. Then, sitting down beside the place, he began to sing again, the first of many songs to Ferazhin beneath the earth.

  “He is sick, the blind one,” the people in the village said.

  “His grief has made him crazy. He will not stir from the grave. He fetches water to it each morning, twice when it is hot, He has worn a track to the stream from all his passing to and fro. He has built himself a little hut of clay and leaves. He sings once every dawn, and once every midnight, to the dead.”

  Yet they had not forgotten the power of his music, which had made them weep for him. A man had an infant daughter who fell ill and would not eat, and he approached Kazir in the cool of the day, and pleaded that he come and cheer her with a story or a song. Kazir went. Kazir sang: the child laughed and became well inside the hour. After that, they often asked Kazir to help them. Mad he might be, but poet and healer he was, too. They grew very fond of him, and at times of plenty would have heaped him with gifts, but he would accept nothing, only a small amount of food, and the right to tend the grave of Ferazhin.

  Months passed. At noon, a shepherd going by the hut with his woolly school all about him, called to Kazir: “Something is growing where your lady lies.”

  Kazir reached out and touched the shoot softly.

  “Ah, Ferazhin, my blind world’s sun. . . .”

  Soon the villagers began to talk afresh.

  “There is a young tree pushing up on her grave. A tree all silvery leaves. It looks a tree for flowers, but there are none.”

  Months added themselves to months. Winds came and went, warm winds or cold, shaking the leaves of the flowerless tree, stirring the pale hair of the poet who sang beneath it. The year was woven on the loom, finished and folded away upon the pile of other years in the tall chests of Time.

  That night the poet did not bring water to the tree. He wept there and the tears fell down to nourish its roots as his songs had fallen to nourish them.