Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Simmu came to the temple. Gold it looked, gold it was not, but a couple of centuries had imbued it (like the garden) with its own particular resonance. On the threshold, despite herself, Simmu was moved to an inner holding of the breath. She stole in, catfooted, her eyes gleaming on the gold basin and the stopper of bone which marked, with no doubt, the well. And then she heard a high wild singing behind her, out in a dusky garden. Eight girl voices raised in a song or a hymn.

  Generally the virgins came to the temple at sunset to make their ceremony and their vows before the god, to strew their fruit and flowers. Tonight, as sometimes occurred as the years went by and the initial ardor slackened, they were a fraction later than sunset.

  Simmu, hearing sixteen girl-feet on the path to the temple door, sprang into the nearest shelter, the wide embrasure of a window. And here she lowered herself to her belly, leopardess-like, and watched through glinting slits.

  A kind of new golden dusk entered the temple.

  Partly it was due to a golden lamp burning with an incense smell, which the first maiden set on a hook in the wall. Partly the temple itself, glowing in the lamp’s light. Partly the shimmering golden raiment and ornaments with which the virgins were hung. Partly their loveliness, which seemed a golden thing.

  They were all sixteen now, these eight girls (Simmu puzzled for a minute why there were only eight, not nine, the prescribed number), sixteen, and ripened in the garden to a passionate flowering without appeasement. And they had been chosen in the beginning for their unblemished beauty.

  And now, in the gold dusk, they began goldenly to dance.

  They had black grapes and green, scarlet poppies, sheaves of white lilies, hyacinths and roses, peaches and palm fronds, for everything bloomed continuously and at once in the garden. And these things they laid against the central basin as they passed, but first they would press the fruit to their lips, trickle the flowers across their bodies and through their hair. And as the dance, which seemed to have started a sort of soundless music playing in accompaniment grew frenzied—for frenzied it did grow—they used the fronds to lash themselves. And then their garments began to loosen and were unwound and trailed aside. The garments seemed all layers of gold, now opaque, now less opaque. And under those layers which showed the white hint of flesh, the dark bud of a breast’s tip, the arch of a foot, a limb, were layers which clad the bodies of the eight maidens only as smoke clothes fire.

  This dancing was lascivious, but meant only for the god. Eight virgins, who were denied the sight of men, danced to fantasies of the brain. And their eyes were burning but heavy-lidded, and their red mouths had opened enough to show the white teeth and the warm cave beyond the palisade of the teeth. And they unveiled themselves to the ultimate smoky veiling, and offered, with naive abandon, their velvet bodies to the basin of the stoppered well. Till eventually they flung themselves upon it and rubbed themselves against the metal and each panted and sobbed and moaned through her flying hair as she clutched the bone stopper: “Behold, I am sealed even as the sacred well is sealed, and by my purity I will keep pure the holy place of the god, and may I perish—oh, perish, perish!—before I break faith with him.”

  Simmu, hidden in the window, was meantime experiencing some difficulty. Triggered by the stimulus of the eight virgins and their dance, Simmu’s masculinity almost instantly attempted to assert itself in vehement spasms. Try as she—he—would to combat the onslaught, it was impossible. And even when, though not wishing to look away from the maidens’ antics, Simmu had in desperation done so, the gasps and whispers and small groans were still enough to discompose her and presently him. And so, at length, irresistibly, Simmu the man lay upon the window ledge in the most definite state of masculine readiness possible. And with blazing eyes and gritted teeth and a hammering pulse, and some grim amusement at his own plight, he saw the dance out, and next how the exhausted virgins gathered their veiling and themselves from the floor, forgot their lamp, and stumbled into the night to become little girls again—or else to seek the erotic thing in the bubbling crystal.

  After that, Simmu kept quiet on the ledge, preparing, by stringent discipline, to reverse his sex yet again. But as he was stretched out thus, a ninth virgin entered the temple, alone.

  Now, the voices of the others had died away, and Simmu, setting discipline on the side, could hardly help but think to himself that here was a unique opportunity.

  But then his intellect dispelled his senses, for he realized that this maiden was not like the others. For one thing, she was more beautiful, if such could be possible. For another, she was far less beautifully garbed, in plain and rather ragged dress, as if the opulent illusions of the garden somehow had no effect on her. For the third thing, she shouted into the temple in a fierce parody of the former chant: “Behold, oh god, I too am sealed. And would I were not, and your accursed well were not!” And then she bolted into the darkness.

  Astonished, in the window embrasure, Simmu came to see he had been given the answer to that vital heroic problem of his. Now he knew exactly how to crack the cistern of Upperearth and let the water of Immortality into the second well beneath.

  8

  Eight of the nine virgins were at their evening feast in their palace of marble. They reclined on embroidered cushions in the scented candle glow, toying with roasted meats, crystallized lotus shoots, candied figs and like stuff. Bright birds, perching on plinths, sang in endless harmonies, a black panther or two, a lioness, a cheetah, lay with their sculptured masks in jeweled laps, petted by jeweled fingers.

  The virgins chattered and mused, rested after their religious frenzy in the temple. True to the witch’s prediction, they spoke quite an amount of nonsense, but there was no one to disagree, and consequently they imagined themselves wise.

  “I have a theory,” remarked one, “that the moon is really a flower, whose petals are shed throughout the month till nothing is left. Then the new moon buds from the black soil of the night sky.”

  “How original,” said one of the other virgins. They were not envious of each other’s genius, having nothing to compete for.

  “Yes, I have thought about it a great deal,” said the original virgin, “and now I begin to wonder if the sun is not a burning fire which each sunset is quenched in wine. . . .”

  “Or possibly it is a hole in the fabric of the ether, revealing the flaming world of the Upperearth,” said a third virgin daringly, “the world of our god and master.”

  “How foolish is Kassafeh,” said a fourth virgin, “to avoid us. What she would learn in our company!”

  In this much, human taste had been inadvertently catered for; an enemy stood ready to hand: the ninth virgin.

  “Now what is that I hear at the window?” asked the fifth virgin, who had very sharp ears decorated with pearls.

  “At the window? Nothing.”

  “Yes. I thought I heard a laugh. Can it have been Kassafeh, spying on us?”

  “Perhaps,” said the original virgin, lapsing once more in thought, “it is starlight falling, and breaking on the ground.”

  “There,” cried the sixth virgin, “I hear it too, at this window now. I shall go and see,” and she ran to the window, and stared out and noted a slender female figure among the shadows. “For shame, sister,” said the sixth virgin.

  “Alas,” murmured the figure mournfully, “I am regretful of my sins, and my heart is weighted with lead.”

  “It is Kassafeh for sure,” shouted the sixth virgin to her fellows. “She says she is regretful of her sins, and her heart is weighted with lead.” But when the sixth virgin looked out again, Kassafeh had vanished. “I do not entirely understand it,” admitted the sixth virgin. “She has never repented of anything before. Besides, it seemed to me she had somehow grown taller, and her hair was not as pale as it usually is. And her voice, though she talked very low, still, it was not quite Kassafeh’s voice. . . .”

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nbsp; “Yet it can have been no one but Kassafeh, for none save we nine are here.” And the eight virgins omnipotently agreed on this.

  • • •

  The first virgin, she of the flower-moon, lay dreaming on her couch of swinging on an ivory swing suspended from this same flowering moon. Up in the starry sky she sailed, back and forth—and then the petals fell from the moon and the swing fell and the virgin fell and she was about to shriek when someone caught her.

  She opened her eyes in pitch dark. The lamp was out and the draperies pulled over the window. Then she felt a soft movement at her side. She thought a lioness lay there, but a woman’s hand caught hers.

  A whisper: “It is I, Kassafeh.”

  “You do not—sound like Kassafeh,” replied the flower-moon virgin vaguely.

  “Oh, but I am. Who could it be but I? Oh, do not send me away. You are so sagacious and philosophical. You must advise me how I must expiate my sacrilege in ignoring the god.”

  Faced with the challenge of this, the feather-headed first virgin lost herself in contemplation. While she did so, Kassafeh—or was it Kassafeh?—slid nearer.

  “Your very proximity is an inspiration,” whispered Kassafeh—it was not Kassafeh.

  Now the first virgin was certain her unexpected bed-mate was a woman. A girl’s breast had brushed her arm, a smooth cheek had been presented to hers. And yet, suddenly, the first virgin began to tremble with an unspecified alarm.

  “Do not fear me, blasphemous wretch that I am,” mourned “Kassafeh” in a still stranger voice, as if floods of tears—or gales of laughter—were being repressed. And then the first virgin’s bed-mate set a gentle two or three fingers on her neck. Light as grasses were these two or three fingers. Light as grasses they fluttered over the hollow of her throat, the slope of her breast. And on the breast of the first virgin, the light grasses changed into a rhythmic cupping circling thing, a thing which discovered a piercing sweetness at its center, or the center of the breast of the first virgin, like a note of music. And the music leapt, or something like a fish leapt in the loins of the first virgin, surprising her no end. And even as she twisted, or her body twisted of its own will, to follow the leaping of this fish (and the other fish, scores of them, which leapt after it), a mouth came down on hers, and the kisses of this mouth were like no other kisses she had ever known.

  “Ah, but Kassafeh—” feebly protested the first virgin, hoarse with a curious hoarseness, into this wonderful kissing mouth. But Kassafeh did not answer. And when the arms of the first virgin rose of their own accord to cling to and to explore the exquisite pressure of flesh which now lay over her, positively it did not have the feel of Kassafeh. A burnished singular feel had this body, hard, though flexibly muscled—the body of a lioness? But the first virgin, for all her brilliant philosophy, could not really fathom any of it. She was like a door, opening inch by inch, to let in a divine revelation. Perhaps the god was sending her, through this peculiar ritual, some mystery.

  Simmu, especially cunning with women since he could also be one, was adept with this yielding girl. By deft touches, lingerings, moldings, strokings, by use of mouth and teeth and tongue, of hand, fingers, the nails of the fingers, even by most skillful and intuitive use of other parts of himself, he transmuted this flower-moon child into a being of yearning and violent desire, who thrashed beneath him, urging him mutely on his path, without actually guessing where the path would lead. And when he had grown to his utmost and she to her most welcoming, he held her firmly and entered this second garden door to that most intimate and pleasing of gardens. And though the gate was broken, as at the first even in the lushest and most eager garden it must be, and though the maiden—virgin no longer—gave a cry of pain, and another cry of greater pain, soon her cries were different.

  Outside in the valley, not a sound. Not a sound to mark the double rape, rape of the garden by the entry of a man, rape of the first virgin, more willing than the garden.

  “Oh, Kassafeh, did I dream this thing—”

  But Simmu, demon lover, sang in her ear, and she sank asleep. He stole out into the night-washed palace and, man-shape quickly resuming woman-shape, stalked the marble corridors where only illusory female beast foot and slender real girl foot had trodden for two centuries and longer. And shortly another drapery folded aside, another lamp doused, another girl waking to find repentant Kassafeh beside her. Kassafeh who quickly changed into a dream of lust, better than the bubbling crystal, better, far better. And here too, a cry of pain, a cry of joy. And here too, demon song. And here a stealing out. And later still, in the black hour which is close kin to dawn, another chamber, another Kassafeh, another breaking and entering, cry and cry, song, and stealing out.

  Three that night. Three virgins robbed of their sacred seals in the soot black. And the garden silent, making no sign, threatening no punishment. And the sky clear. Not even a rain drop, not even a crashing star.

  But the weave of the witch’s magic all coming undone. Her sympathetic magic. Simmu had picked up the key to it. And now he turned the key in thorough fast turnings. Heroes did not wait.

  In the morning, six intact virgins, three deflowered virgins; Simmu over the hill, hidden in a tall and blossoming tree. Simmu, lazy and sleeping, resting for a second night’s labor. And the magic of the garden coming undone, and, as it did, undoing an older magic, all the way up in the air.

  Too clever, the witch had been, setting virgins to guard the lower well, directly beneath the Well of Upperearth. Virgins who must stay virgins, and who went to the lower well and vowed there: I am sealed as the well is sealed and as I stay pure so will I keep pure the holy place of the god. Sympathetic magic. By vowing it they had made it so; two centuries and nineteen years had helped. As they had endowed with resonance the temple, so they had endowed with life the well. And as with the lower well, thus with the heavenly well above. Even Upperearth could not be quite impervious to such powerful and persistent sorcery immediately under, and, as the witch had once observed, the cistern in the sky was only made of glass.

  Kassafeh, with her obstinate defiance—Would that both I and the well were unsealed—Kassafeh had given Simmu the answer.

  Crack open the well-shafts of the nine virgin guardians and the well-shaft aloft would spring a complementary crack. Sympathetic magic at its most forthright and effective.

  And if there had not been set nine virgins to guard the lower well, perhaps there never might have been found a way to release the fluid of Immortality.

  • • •

  Kassafeh, the ninth virgin, had her own ceremonies. Here she was at one of them in the early sunlight. Long since she had set up a stone beside a small pool, and plastered the stone with black loam from the bank, and named it “god.” And frequently she would come here and make insulting gestures at the stone. She constantly reviled the god, hoping for some reprisal which would at least prove his existence. Even death seemed preferable to six further years imprisoned in the garden in the service of nothing, but that was only because she had never properly examined death.

  And here she was, seated before the stone, her pastel hair like palest golden rain streaming over her shoulders, her eyes of an iron shade.

  “Come then,” she was saying, “strike me. How I hate you, or I would if you were actual. But you are not.” And she threw some more mud at it.

  Then, slipping from behind a tree, came the first virgin, all timid and blushing, and she hurried to Kassafeh and whispered: “Was last night a dream, dearest Kassafeh? Or can it really have been you?”

  “I?” asked Kassafeh, greatly amazed at being visited.

  “You, dearest Kassafeh, you who blew out my lamp, who begged my help. Oh, I will help you, indeed I will. But I do not understand what took place between us—could you but tell me—or—perhaps demonstrate a second time?” And she slid her arm lovingly about Kassafeh’s waist. Kassafeh seemed not as friendly as she h
ad in the night and certainly she did not feel the same at all in a tactile sense. “Oh Kassafeh, do not think I minded that you wounded me, the little red rose of blood upon the silk—it was blood offered to the god, no doubt—” and the first virgin kissed Kassafeh upon the lips in a way Kassafeh did not take to.

  “Leave me be!” cried Kassafeh, and jumping up, she fled. But just across the next stretch of lawn, who should she meet but the second virgin.

  “Ah, Kassafeh,” said the second virgin, giving her a brazen look, “what can you have been thinking of last night? Sneaking into my chamber with your tales and lying with me in such a wicked fashion! I believe you have damaged me with your impetuosity for I found a red poppy in the bed. But,” she added, running up and seizing Kassafeh eagerly, “no matter. None shall know.”

  Kassafeh struggled. “I have done nothing.”

  “Nothing, is it,” mocked the second virgin, nuzzling Kassafeh’s ear. “Something you did, and you shall do it again, I promise you. I never guessed you so artful, darkening the room and murmuring your tale of needing my solace—only to practice naughty games.” And the second virgin laughed, grasping Kassafeh resolutely by the buttocks. Kassafeh bit the second virgin and once more fled.

  But, no sooner was she from the lawn and into the woodland, than she almost toppled over the third virgin who lay sprawled upon the turf weeping.

  “What is the matter?” faltered Kassafeh nervously.