Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Jornadesh reclined in the innermost chamber, drinking much wine. His back, clothed in scarlet, was to the door, and hearing a soft footstep, he peevishly moaned: “Know this, girl, I summoned you to soothe me under the unjust threat of these foul dreams, which continually disturb my rest. Therefore soothe me, or you shall be slain, I promise you. If I am not to count my life safe, I am persuaded that you shall not. Hasten now, disrobe and pleasure me.”

  But Narasen trod noiselessly over the rugs, and going up to Jornadesh from behind, she raked his back with her corpse-long nails, which rent his robe and his flesh under it, so he screamed. And screaming, he rotated himself ponderously about, and thus he learned the exact meaning and the exact instant of the prophecy.

  Jornadesh’s mood at this encounter with Nemesis was quite indescribable, and no description has survived it. Most probably he grovelled on the floor, shed tears and evinced other symptoms of utter terror, such as are common to all men, then and now.

  But “Hush,” whispered Narasen. “This is no show with which to welcome your queen and prince, the ruler of Merh. Get up, put on your jewels and tokens of office. Tonight I will sit with you in the great hall of the palace. Tonight I will be your guest, and you shall give over to me the royal chair you stole from me. You shall bring poets to extol me, and women to rejoice me, all those women you have nauseated by your flabby hams. Now. Do as I say, or must I convince you further of my rights?”

  And Jornadesh, insane with horror, obeyed her in everything. Although, when they went down into the hall, no one remained, for word of the supernatural had sped there before Narasen. The whole palace indeed was empty. Only a distant wailing and a confusion of many lights indicated the direction the general flight had taken.

  So Narasen sat companionless in that great hall where she had sat in the days of her living kingship. And she gazed about her at the alabaster lamps and the silver tableware, and at the bowls of wine and the plates of bread and meat which could no longer nourish her. On the wall hung leopard skins, the coats of beasts she had hunted, and above the royal chair hung a banner of silk which her father had captured from a mighty prince in war, and at her feet was a footstool with pearls crusted over it, the gift of another mighty prince whom Narasen had once spared her sword.

  As she gazed, the eyes of Narasen grew heavy with grief and venom. And soon she chanced to see, with those dreadful eyes of hers, the distortion of a random shadow which happened to have formed beside the chair, and the appearance of this shadow was like a child, a baby, and when the candles shimmered in the lamps, the baby seemed to kick and wave its limbs.

  “And you—” muttered Narasen in her unwholesome reverie—“can it be that you are breathing yet while I am dead? You, you brat without whose assistance no murderer should have bested me. I remember your mewling in the tomb, but I believe you are free of tombs now, and in the world where I cannot stay. Ah, would you were but here with me, beloved son, I should repay your kindness, and with interest.”

  Hearing her whispering there, her eyes unfixed, Jornadesh crawled away, and she did not detain him. He tottered to his stable and hauled himself upon a scrawny little horse—the first which would be docile with him—and he rode from Merh with his life. But he did not get far with it.

  3

  For a day, Simmu had wandered through the lawless lands about the lake of salt weeping with the sky for Zhirem. It was another legacy the Eshva had left Simmu, their flawless vats of emotion—which they could afford, since their memories were short and their lives unending. Yet Simmu, wandering blind with tears and mindless with unhappiness and loss, would perhaps have gone on in this hopeless limbo for months—or till his strength failed and life with it.

  When the light began again to ebb, more by chance than plan, he entered a cave, fringed by the black plants of the region. And here he slept exhaustedly, though even in sleep his dreams were of Zhirem, and the tears poured from Simmu’s eyes without waking him.

  Then something happened in the cave. What thing? A sheaf of smoke with no flame, and yet somehow a sort of fire in it. And out of this—smoke, fire—stepped a man. The cave was too shadowy to see him, should any have been awake to stare. But he was dark, darker than the darkness, and cloaked almost it seemed with jet black wings. The radiance of his eyes came and went, catching some gleam that did not exist in the cave, and his black hair caught the same nonexistent gleam, so that his invisible face seemed rayed about with sheens and stars.

  A short while he stood above Simmu as he slept and cried in his sleep. And then the man who had come from the darkness stretched out his hand. A net—stars, sheens, smokes, and fireless-fire—appeared to weave from his hand over Simmu. And Simmu’s eyes grew dry.

  Then the man kneeled, and he ran the same sorcerous hand lightly over Simmu’s body. And the body of Simmu, still in sleep, briefly responded to this tracery of touch, beginning to rearrange itself, to flower into breasts, to withdraw the blade of its maleness, while the young beard deserted the jaw, and the jaw assumed in moments the smooth-pored narrowness of a female chin.

  The Demon—it was he, it was Azhrarn, and who else but?—laughed softly, for the Vazdru had vocal organs as the Eshva did not, or appeared not to have. He stroked back the hair of Simmu, and he sang in Simmu’s ear in the way of Demonkind. The song may not be transposed. But somehow the song, or the fingers, conveyed the idea of languor and of forgetfulness, that Zhirem should disappear from Simmu’s brain, that Merh might evolve there, and the consideration that the western roads to Merh would be entertaining.

  Outside, a nightingale began its own music. Its notes were laced with a nervous brilliance, for it guessed who was near.

  But Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, for once went as harmlessly away as he had arrived, into the dark.

  Simmu, the caress fading from her skin, returned to masculinity.

  He roused at sunrise, partly because the nightingale, unbalanced by its experience, was continuing dementedly to sing.

  Simmu rose, and moved out from the cave, and gazed into the sky. It was as if he had lain down the night before in agony with some wound or illness, and woken mended. He cast about him, trying—a human habit he had picked up—to recover what had hurt him. Someone had gone away, one he had valued—perhaps that was it. Yet now it did not matter, this absence of old stale love. And westward—westward lay a city that somehow, inexplicably, he knew belonged to him. A sudden elation blazed up in Simmu’s mind. Merh—Merh, which was his. True, he did not covet a kingdom, did not grasp the notion of temporal power, rule and riches. He could not really have explained to himself what attracted him in the notion of Merh. . . . Azhrarn, who had induced the mirage, had clad it in his own rare glamour, and that was what drew Simmu, without his realizing it.

  Soon, freed from pain, Zhirem extinguished from his thoughts, mesmerized by the tug of a goal, Simmu took his Eshva-wandering westward.

  • • •

  And even the black bizarre lands took on beauty that day. The sun gilded them and gilded their peculiar waters, and flowers were found in the thickets, and unusual fruits. Creatures jumped into the sunlight, sometimes running after Simmu, attracted by his demon-aura, confused at its presence the wrong side of night. Westward, too, the lawless wilderness began to melt. Tracts of green showed some miles farther on where the country descended. And the sun itself walked behind Simmu, and then overhead and eventually before him, indicating courteously the way he must go, till at last it dropped from sight beyond the green places.

  The dusk was cold, but Simmu, always at ease with the whims of night and without Zhirem’s human reminder, made no fire. He settled to slumber in the hollow ribs of a rock, swathed only in the herdsman’s shapeless raiment which now did for either sex of his, and blanketed by hair.

  About midnight, Simmu opened his eyes on a slim black dog which was seated before the rock. The dog regarded him with clear and luminous eyes, then it
got up and padded away, and Simmu was irresistibly motivated to follow.

  The dog (Azhrarn was capable of many forms, even that of elderly gray-headed men who might haunt the shores of salt lakes) bounded along in a glib and elegant way till it vanished into some trees. Pushing through these trees, Simmu emerged on an ancient earthen road. The road ran westward, folding itself downward with the land, while overhead burned countless stars, and everywhere around drifted the mysterious ambience of night. Simmu accepted the road and the night, and started to move along with them. The dog did not come back, but presently Simmu detected another who walked behind him.

  Simmu turned, with no unease, but with a marvelous slow, swirling excitement.

  To say Azhrarn was handsome is a foolishness, for this mortal expression of a round world lies like a pebble at the gateway of what Azhrarn really was. Advisedly, however, did they name him The Beautiful, and that, too, was not enough, indeed as inadequate as to say: The sea is wet. His hair was blue-black, it was like no other hair, like the hair of some fabulous beast or a piece of starred night sky, transmuted through silk and water. His eyes, which had seen centuries snuffed out almost in a blink, were impossibilities—two things made of light which was black, two searing flames the shade of unmitigated darkness. He wore black too, yet somehow the black seemed full of all types and nuances of color. The eagle-winged cloak appeared to glare and shine with jewels or with conflagrations or with something preposterous and wonderful, yet it did not; or maybe, it did. He walked in a man’s form, but the wolf, the panther, the bird of prey, these also were there. And so subtly he walked, so light, even the earth could not hear him, and Simmu only heard because he had been permitted to hear. And certainly Simmu, who knew him instantly, and still did not know him, (for such was the spell the demons could construct about themselves), Simmu certainly did not question why a thing which was more or less simple wickedness should manifest itself as a god.

  “A fine night for journeying,” said Azhrarn. Believe, his voice matched the rest of him. “But any night is preferable to any day.”

  Simmu was hesitating, inclined to drop down and worship. But Azhrarn, who liked to be admired, in the way of demons, somehow informed Simmu without speech exactly what response he required. And it was only pliancy. Thus Simmu, pliant, stood and waited, silent as any Eshva while a Vazdru Lord talked to him.

  “You will have thought this a dull journey, however,” said Azhrarn. “Should you like to travel more quickly?”

  Simmu (pliant) gazed at him. Azhrarn snapped his fingers and a piece of the night tore open and out of it dashed two demon horses. They were naturally of a very definite blackness, accoutered in brass and silver, with manes like steam or smoke. Simmu had ridden on the backs of lynxes and leopards for fun in his childhood, and once an earth horse had carried him, but the demon horse, when he mounted it, had no likeness to any earth thing.

  Exhilarated, Simmu let the horse bear him as it would. It leapt forward after the mount Azhrarn had chosen. Immediately both seemed to be flying, and possibly they were. For sure, such horses could run over water, erupt in and out of Underearth at the whistle of their masters, and for speed, they would outrace any mortal thing, save tide or sun, over which demons had no influence.

  The ride was wild and thrilling. The night had changed to a racing fluid thing, the stars going at a great rate, or suggesting that they did, dashing over and around the horses like silver streamers or a kind of storm of cosmic rain. And out of this racing stuff, objects burst and slid away. Simmu beheld features of the landscape, such as bell-shaped hills or indigo valleys, diluted with mist, pointing forests and slender mountains, and between these came other phenomena, white-walled palaces and chiselled ceramic towers pencilled up the sky, and the ugly towns of men all flung down the slopes like broken bricks.

  After many hours that had seemed seconds, the horses ended their career on a wooded height.

  “It will soon be dawn,” said Azhrarn, “and that feverish lady and I share nothing. Stay in this wood. Tomorrow night I will take you nearly to the gates of Merh, child of the leopardess. Did you know your father died before he got you on her?” Azhrarn inquired. The youth had finally knelt to him, and Azhrarn caressed his hair. And Simmu listened only to the music of Azhrarn’s voice, not hearing the words, while the caress made delicious nonsense of any logic.

  Azhrarn observed him, idly and pitilessly, but with some pleasure. The macabre conception of Simmu, and his sexual duality, fascinated the Prince, and the beauty of Simmu appealed to him. Simmu’s entreaty beside the lake of salt had been relayed to Azhrarn, but if Azhrarn had answered it and found nothing to intrigue him, it would have gone far worse with Zhirem and with Simmu than it had. Far, far worse.

  In Zhirem, Azhrarn had felt no interest.

  Where humanity foresaw only evil for him, Azhrarn foresaw only a propensity for despair. Demons liked mortals as they liked their horses—slaves to be ridden. Zhirem had none of that. Strength lurked within him, and good, or a struggling wish for goodness. The only hope of wickedness in Zhirem would come from the rejection not acceptance of Azhrarn, and Azhrarn understood as much, and thus turned him away into the night.

  But Simmu. Simmu was to Azhrarn like a new instrument, one he had never played before. He was not sure what melody the strings and the soundbox would produce, but some melody there would be. And the first hand which would pluck the strings would be Merh, which meant kingship and the recurrent disruption of a battle or a murder. Azhrarn had often been a maker and deposer of kings. It was a childish exercise he contemptuously enjoyed on occasion.

  But now a pale writing was in the sky between the trees.

  Azhrarn laid one finger on the Drin gem at Simmu’s neck.

  “Simmu,” said Azhrarn, “Twice Fair; you are well named. Think of Merh.”

  “Only of you,” said Simmu, startlingly aloud and in a girl’s voice. Azhrarn smiled, delighted by these initial notes from the new instrument. Then he and his horses were gone, and the dusky wood began surreptitiously to lighten.

  That day Simmu slept—left to wait and to dream by a demon, as in babyhood. And, true to his word, his dreams were of Azhrarn. The second night, Azhrarn came back like the rising of a dark star. And that second night was like the first for marvel, for the wild ride and the dazzling past of things, and the sensual quality all and everything came to possess.

  Accordingly, Azhrarn brought Simmu to Merh in two nights, a journey of many thousand miles and many many days.

  Where the thick-boled columnar trees grew close about the river, there Azhrarn left the young man in the moments before the second dawn.

  Now Azhrarn had troubled to know nothing of Merh, only of its part in this business of Simmu. However, this second night they had ridden through, fast as flying meteors, had been the exact night of Narasen’s visitation. As the walled palaces and the daggered mountains had whirled by Simmu, Narasen had shuffled like a malignant paper about the streets of Merh. And when Simmu came to earth within sight of the city, the grip of her curse had already seized the place.

  Knowing none of this, yet Azhrarn, whose senses were keener than a razor’s edge, laid his hand on Simmu’s shoulder, and said: “Wait again for me till the sun descends. Do not enter the city till I am with you.”

  Simmu was content enough to be obedient. He climbed into a tree and stretched himself there and slept with the variegation of sun and leaves on his skin. But Simmu had his own form of sensibility, and shortly, though asleep, he came to suspect, through his skin and his hair, that all was not well in Merh.

  It was the tree itself. This tree so broad and vital, a pillar of enduring amber, which had begun, insidiously, to wither. And high above, a flock of birds had come to rest in the amber tree, but not one sang, and when the wind blew, some of these birds cascaded from the branches like blossoms. . . . In the river also, as the day went on, blossoms floated, and the perfu
me of these flowers was not precisely sweet.

  Simmu dreamed of a man hanged from a dead bough, and Simmu woke shivering in the afternoon. Then he saw the traffic in the river and, craning about, he noticed other things.

  Toward Merh, the plains had acquired a strange azure burnish; even the walls of the city had it, under a sky which seemed to have set the fashion with its scalding blue. Nor did any sound come from the city, as no sound came from anywhere about. No animal made noise, no bird and no man.

  The afternoon intensified and wearied and started to fail.

  Eventually Simmu leapt down from the tree, which had such a reverberation of death to it he could no longer bear it.

  Curiosity, the entertainment of demons, the bane of men, curiosity which consisted chiefly of dread, now began to push Simmu in the direction of the city. And at the same minute as he was called, he was repelled, for the scent of his enemy—that enemy he always fled—was everywhere around him.

  In the end, Simmu ventured into the fields that spread out before Merh. So he came on a richly dressed fat man in a scarlet robe, lying over the back of a horse. Both mount and rider had expired; both mount and rider, like the fields, had taken on a bluish tinge. At that moment, another of the bird blossoms plummeted down from the air, and that also was blue.

  Simmu did not know where to run to, since death had encompassed him. The sun was slipping now over the western incline of heaven, but the sunset too promised a horrible purple blueness. And then, along the road from Merh’s gate, came an animate walking figure, yet with more blue terror in it than anything else.