Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Abruptly a figure rushed from the trees on the other side of the pool. It appeared very nearly noiselessly, doubly startling because, known as it was, it gave no sign of knowing. Shell, confronting Zhirem, regarded him with wide open eyes that had no sight in them. Zhirem got up, the mantle of self briefly dropping from him. “What is it?” Zhirem asked. As with the sick ones in the villages, this air of helpless panic moved him. Shell, who had always been real to him, became more real. “What is it, my brother?” said Zhirem gently.

  “Death,” said Shell. The word shattered some vessel within him. He put his hands over his face and screamed.

  This was not Shell. The aura of Shell had been always one of volatility, or of an unhuman introspection, sufficiently remote it could not weep or despair or rend itself.

  Zhirem went around the pool.

  “After all,” he said, “perhaps there are demons abroad tonight.”

  Shell took his hands from his eyes. He wept, in everything else, as the Eshva wept, even now with their sensuous surrender. Instinctively Shell sensed how he was gliding toward some goal; he let the tears continue and did not speak.

  “You say death,” Zhirem said. “Whose death?”

  “Death is everywhere,” said Shell. He approached Zhirem and rested his head on the shoulder of Zhirem, among the dark curling hair which, as it had the desert people, had reminded Shell from the first of demon kind. Even now, the presence of Zhirem consoled Shell. He felt terror let him go, felt Death withdraw with the swirling of a substance like white wings. Here was life. Shell put his arms about Zhirem. The contact of their bodies, similar in their male construction, was familiar to each without familiarity.

  Zhirem did not embrace him. They had seldom touched, when they had the touches had been Shell’s, generally the Eshva caress of eyes or breath. To Zhirem, this sensation of flesh on flesh was a threat and only that. He had touched the ill ones more readily. They had not seduced, were not able to. He had been safe with them. He thought of the woman, the flesh of Shell seemed to become her flesh, and nails of cold or heat shot through him.

  “Enough,” Zhirem said, and drew away. “Am I a vine-stock for you to hang on? Will you tell me who scared you, or will you not?”

  Shell blinked. Recognition was back in his eyes, and more than that.

  “I will tell you—later,” Shell said. He turned. He walked toward the trees again. “Wait for me,” he said. He vanished between the shadows. Zhirem would wait, waiting as he was, perpetually, for his own soul to find him.

  Among the trees, Shell ran. He leaped and stretched himself. Death and fear had become subsidiary. He was brimmed with a wonderful insanity of life and of knowing. He knew he had reached a brink of magic, of marvel. He had only to fling himself forward and he must tumble into it. Forward he flung himself then. He ran, and he caught up with the Eshva among the olive trees, caught up with their wraiths and the months he had spent with them. Caught up, as Zhirem had not, with himself.

  • • •

  The figure clung to the tree. Spring was in the tree and in the clinging figure. The bark was wet from tears the figure had shed, for there had been pain this time, after so long, pain in the changing, yet pleasure too.

  Gradually, sighing, the figure unwound itself from the tree.

  The moon was down, yet the stars gave light.

  Hair the color of apricots, the eyes of cats, they were the same. The young beard had shed itself in a pollen of fine gold. The face was smooth now, smooth as if without pores. The hands dipped, alighted, slid across the silver skin. Different now, this body. Not the body of a youth. The loins were indrawn and passive, the torso, rising from the slender indentation of the waist, had flowered into the shallow beautiful high breasts of a maiden. A girl’s body and a girl’s face.

  The girl bent and took up the yellow priest’s garment she had discarded as a man, and folded herself into it like the white tongue in the flame’s heart.

  It was spring, and Simmu had remembered.

  • • •

  Hours had elapsed. Zhirem slept between the roots of the trees beside the pool, and when the soft wind blew, the green-white flowers rained also on him. He was accustomed to sleep out of doors. Among the tents, and with Shell, he had rarely done otherwise. Accustomed he was, too, to the light step of Shell, for Shell came and went in the night as did the others who were night creatures. So, Zhirem did not wake.

  He woke, disturbed yet lulled, when a cool mouth came to drink at his.

  Then a second waking dawned upon the first. Zhirem lifted himself to his elbow and stared. A girl lay naked beside him, also on her elbow, gazing back at him. A girl made out of silk and summer grass and polished ivory, but a girl with eyes and hair that belonged to another. Zhirem was afraid. Yet he was stirred, she had stirred him before he woke—his flesh asked for her even as his mind denied. And now she set her hand lightly on his ribs, a touch unmoving and almost guileless, but it sprang through him like a spear.

  “I am a dream,” said the girl, in a girl’s clear voice. “I am your dream. How can I be otherwise, seeing I am the youth, Shell, and also a maiden. Seeing I come to you as the woman did, yet I am not she. Thus, then, Zhirem, take what is yours. Men cannot order their dreams. The gods do not blame you. You cannot sin with a dream, there is no evil.”

  Then she lay back, and lowered her lids and said no more, nor touched him again.

  Zhirem could not look away. He had been parched and now here was drink. One of the green flowers drifted over them and settled on her breast. Zhirem put out his hand to brush the flower aside, but his hand lay presently where the flower had lain. He saw she was Shell and also a maiden, and he felt the beat of her heart beneath his hand, and it spoke his name to him and called to him. So he knew she was a dream, and he put from himself all the dry counsel and the warnings, and he set his mouth on hers.

  And the maiden circled his waist with her arms, and drew him down.

  8

  In his distraction and fright, Beyash had lurched quite a way toward the village, before he thought better of it.

  The shrine was no longer a sanctuary to Beyash, Beyash who had coupled with an unclean woman, Beyash who had slain that woman. Beyash, whose deeds—worse than all—had been witnessed.

  However, Beyash reasoned with himself, there had been one witness and no more, and that witness the oblique and much mistrusted youth, Shell.

  Beyash had found it effortless to kill the woman; natural, almost. He had struck her with a sense of righteousness and power, silencing her puny threats. He had never before realized that he was capable of such swift decision, such unhesitating ruthless action. He wondered what it would be like to kill Shell. After all, Zhirem had not been with him, and was probably not very near. And Shell wandered aimlessly about in the night. Yes, it was expedient and the gods were counselling Beyash. Find and slay Shell—a fragile strengthless boy he looked, and nothing but a pest, good riddance—then maybe conceal the body. Tomorrow, with Shell gone and the harlot dead, the conclusion would be obvious to all. Shell had lain with the bitch and slaughtered her and then fled.

  Thus, Beyash retraced his steps.

  Some while he searched, unavailingly. Then, in the moist earth beyond the well, he made out the mark of Shell’s bare foot pointing northeast. Now Shell could not have returned to the village, or he would have passed Beyash. Therefore, Shell had run up the hill among the wild olives. Beyash accordingly started that way, as noiselessly as he was able.

  It was the starlit gleaming of the pool which made him look. More than the pool he saw. Yet he saw from a distance, and distance hid a great deal from him. Change it hid, and the impossible. Beyash crouched among the trees, imagining he spied on Zhirem and Shell, and thought Shell was no longer alone and convenient prey, yet he was very vulnerable. It took only a few moments for Beyash to reorganize his plan. He liked the second plan better, h
e considered it was more subtle.

  Presently Beyash hurried down to the sleeping village, and into the wagon where the clerk of the tally was snoring, who had once sinned with his sister.

  • • •

  When Zhirem woke, it was with a sense of consolation and of ease. The pale new sun rayed green and greenly gold between the olive boughs, the world smelled fragrant. At first Zhirem did not remember his dream. But the dream came drifting to him, from the morning rather than his own brain. Remembering, he sat upright, his eyes wide, a kind of nausea overcoming him. Yet it had been a dream and simply that, of this much the bizarre details of the dream—which had seemed so real—assured him. And no one, not even Shell, lay beside him now. Beautiful the earth was, and fresh and perfect. Superstitiously, his soul told Zhirem that if he had broken all his vows in the night, some blemish would have shown itself to him in the landscape, on the spring air.

  Calmed, yet not entirely himself again, Zhirem set off for the shrine. He did not discover Shell on the way, and partly hoped he would not happen on him. Shell had been the pivot of the dream. Zhirem did not suppose he could meet the eyes of Shell. The shame of self the holy men of the desert had planted in Zhirem had come to flower.

  So Zhirem walked down into the village, and this is what he confronted there in the cool golden morning: a blemish after all.

  The young priests were milling in the street by the shrine gate, and the temple servants who had ridden with them. The villagers were close at hand, their faces sharp and eager and fearful, as if they waited for some miraculous show. At the front of the crowd, in a space on the earth track, stood the clerk who kept account of the gifts presented to the temple by the villages. The clerk shook and shivered and wrung his hands. His eyes were large with sorrow. Not far off, Beyash was conversing with his brother priests, but seeing Zhirem coming, Beyash ceased talking. And the face of Beyash was like the faces of the villagers, eager and afraid. It was another who spoke first, a red-headed young priest a year older than the others, who fancied he should take charge of them, and to whom Beyash had gladly and flatteringly deferred.

  “Zhirem,” called the red-headed priest, “here is a strange thing. An item has been stolen from the wagons of gifts.”

  Zhirem stopped walking. He stood in the street, saying nothing, looking at them.

  “It is well known,” went on the red young priest, “that even the robbers of this pious land reverence the gods and dare not steal from the temple. Who then, Zhirem, do you guess would commit such a blasphemy?”

  Zhirem went on saying nothing. But now, abruptly, he felt a stone at his back, and ropes tying him to the stone, and he smelled lions.

  “He will not answer,” concluded Beyash.

  “The clerk shall speak,” said the red priest.

  The clerk hung his head.

  “Do not tremble,” coaxed Beyash. “It is your duty to the honesty and religious devotion of your family, your aged father and your modest sister. Tell everything.”

  “I,” began the clerk. His gaze flickered over Zhirem, pleading. Then he shut his eyes and blurted: “I woke to see one at the entrance to the wagon where I slept. He had got a silver cup, an offering, and he made away with it. I followed, but timorously kept some paces between us. The man—who was a priest without mistake—went from the village and westward to the old well. A house is there. So I hear since, the house of a woman—a woman who is no better than she ought to be. By the house there was another man, and the two men embraced and kissed each other on the lips, and it was a long kiss. And as they kissed, the light from the woman’s window shone on them, and I beheld one had foxy yellowish hair and the other was dark. Then the dark one knocked, and the woman opened her door and they went inside.”

  “There, be comforted,” murmured Beyash, patting the clerk’s shoulder. “I will tell the rest. This poor man,” said Beyash, “came running to me and recounted what he had seen. And, though I know him to be virtuous and holy, yet I doubted what I heard, and who shall blame me. In great trepidation, not waking another, so vast was my alarm and uncertainty, I let this clerk conduct me to the house of the wicked woman. As we were approaching, we both of us, the clerk and myself, beheld the two youths come out of the house and walk off laughing among the olives on the hill. And to my dread and misery, I recognized each. Yet we tracked them a short space more, the tally clerk and I. And in among the trees we saw—oh, be pitiful to us, lordly gods—that not content with their connection with the woman, these two lay down with each other and undertook the act of congress.”

  A dry rustling breath rose from the villagers.

  “But are you assured of it?” demanded the red priest, skillful as any showman.

  “Alas, quite assured,” moaned Beyash, hiding his eyes, “for they rose and sank together like the wave on the beach till both swooned with their ecstasy and were motionless.”

  “And the names?” cried the red priest.

  “Woe and wretchedness. None but Zhirem and Shell.”

  It had already become noticeable to the watchful eyes of priests and villagers that Zhirem, who had stood impervious as a rock at the beginning, had, toward the end, gone white as bone.

  “What do you say?” shouted the red priest.

  “I say nothing,” said Zhirem. But the slight lines of his youth were suddenly deep and ragged in his face.

  “Where is your fellow, Shell?”

  But Zhirem had said all he would say, and was silent once more.

  “Perhaps,” ventured Beyash, “we should send to the woman’s dwelling and ask her if she knows.”

  So a group of villagers ran, and pounded on the door of the harlot’s house and, getting no reply, they broke in the door and shortly learned she was dead. Despite their harsh comments, many had considered the lady very appetizing and useful, and they did not relish her death. It was all very well if a common man should scrimp and go short in order to get money to lie with a pretty whore—this one would not let a man touch her breasts unless he brought three silver pieces with him. But these priests, vowed to celibacy, thieved their fee from the gods, and then they slew the woman. Jealous and angry, none had any doubts that Zhirem and Shell had been the murderers.

  And when Zhirem would not speak, and Shell would not be found, nor the silver cup of gems, priest and villager alike ceased to have doubts on the matter.

  Even those the sore eyes of whose children had been bathed by Zhirem, came and spat at him. Even the old woman said the pain was in her back again, and cursed him.

  • • •

  And where was Shell?

  Shell-Simmu, a girl, a maiden, had woken in the hour before dawn. She had raised herself to observe the unconscious handsome face of her lover. She had traced with her tongue’s tip the lids of his eyes, where the lashes lay among their shadows, black and long as if a brush had drawn them there. Her joy and her delight in him had become so magnified as she gazed that she no longer needed him to share emotion with her. She had gone away among the trees to revel in her joy alone.

  There was no thought in Simmu, (magic, a female, brought up in her formative years by demons) no thought of logic or the set pattern of things. She had been a youth and a young priest. Well, that was done. She dismissed it all. Later, when she had savored this lonely passion to its full, she would go back to Zhirem and he would go with her, or she with him, wherever it pleased the two of them to go. Instinctively, having remembered her past and her potential, and that she had grown as a baby with those compulsive wanderers, the Eshva, she visualized existence thereafter as a permanent wandering.

  Beyond the wild olives, the slopes gave way to woods of taller, darker trees, where pallid flowers dappled the grass—memory indeed of Eshva haunts. When the sun rose, amused by the other memories of the baby stowed in high branches, Simmu coiled herself up one of these tall trees, lithe as a cat, and hung herself in the black-green ch
ambers above. Here she reclined, musing only on Zhirem, not yet quite ready to return to him, tantalizing herself by her absence from him. At last, recollecting, the sorcery of Eshva-given sleep which had held the child safe from dawn to dusk, stole over Simmu. She had not reckoned on sleeping, but she slept. When Zhirem was opening his eyes, setting aside his misgivings, turning toward the village and its trap, Simmu lay in the arms of the tree, dreaming of love.

  What roused her was the brutal cacophony of a hunt below.

  Simmu responded to the surrounding din as an animal would do; she froze to soundlessness, to immobility, became part of the tree, but a part which watched and listened.

  Several rough men of the village thrust about and swore and went by below. Two remained, leaning on the tree’s trunk.

  “I think it is no use,” said one, “the villain has already escaped. By every account he was strange in his wits. The temple should look to itself, accepting such to serve the gods. I should not be surprised if some divine retribution follows, a famine or a plague.”

  “Oh, hold your noise,” said the other. “We have trouble enough. In any event, the dark one is in safe custody and already on the road to the temple—they say he went meekly. But to lie with a whore indeed, and then slay her—no doubt to keep her mouth fast shut. And if she was no good, they say she was excellent at her trade. What other village had such a fine whore as ours, that rich men would travel seven miles or more to make merry with? And now these two priests have snapped her neck, and the yellow-haired one has got clean away, and the other one, dark as a demon, he will get some penance from the temple—to eat only cakes three days a week or some such—”

  “No, no,” said the first with somber glee. “Because he has lain with a brother priest he will be scourged. And I heard a man who is a temple servant say that since the dark one also killed, it will be a whipping to the death.”