Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Generally Yolsippa was not a sensual man, but there was one thing and one thing alone which could stir him instantaneously and irrepressibly to amorous frenzy. This singular thing was a member of either sex who happened to be cross-eyed. Now the reason for this is a matter of conjecture. Possibly Yolsippa, in his tender years, had been nursed by a woman with just such a feature, who had toyed indelicately with him, so that ever after, the erection of his weapon became associated with the strabismus of his nurse. Now and again Yolsippa had taken himself into a brothel and there lain down with straight-gazing harlots, in an effort to be rid of the ridiculous taint. But it was no use, the perversion remained, indeed, many afflicted by the squint had been most grateful for it. However, the cross-eyed being that Yolsippa had suddenly caught sight of in the desert border town was none other than the local prize-fighter, a man near seven feet high with a prodigious girth, the belly of a boar and the thews of an ox.

  Yolsippa completely comprehended the unwisdom of his passion, but no sooner had the two bloodshot, squinting eyes been fixed on him, than he began shuddering in a seizure of profound desire. Nor was it any use to seek his own medicine for dispelling such emotion, since it was made of water, spirit and mule’s urine.

  Thus, shutting up his wares in his cart, Yolsippa stole down the street to the tavern, whence the prize-fighter had retired. Sidling along the bench, Yolsippa sat intimately beside the object of his amor and murmured in shaking tones:

  “Awesome sir, I am wondering if you could suggest to me any place in which I might repose tonight?”

  “Attempt the doss house,” grunted the prize-fighter.

  “I was wondering,” whispered Yolsippa, “whether I might share your own chamber—I will remunerate you, naturally, but lodging is scarce hereabouts.”

  “How much?” demanded the prize-fighter, who did not consider his bed sacrosanct and had not had a well-paid fight for a month. Yolsippa, quivering from heel to pate, named a figure. The prize-fighter named another. Yolsippa, sacrificing avarice to love, complied.

  Never was bridegroom so impatient. At length it grew dark, and Yolsippa directed his steps to the room of the prizefighter—to find him not yet home. Which was all to the good, seeing he would return muzzy with drink.

  A few heartbeats after midnight, the prize-fighter came blundering up the stairs, barged drunkenly in, and crashed upon the bed. Yolsippa, however, dared not permit those seductive eyes to close. He playfully reached out a hand and caressed the prize-fighter intimately, and when the prizefighter merely grunted bleary encouragements, Yolsippa presently crawled aloft his bulk and with moans of urgency made ready to effect an entry.

  The prize-fighter had been thinking all this while that it was one of the tavern wenches, and now learned that it was not. With a gruesome roar, sloughing at once covers, a degree of drunkenness and Yolsippa from him, he arose.

  Despite prayers and protestations of respect, Yolsippa was seized by the scruff of his patchwork robe, also by hair and beard, and whirled up in the prize-fighter’s far-from-yielding grasp.

  Then, indecision overtook the prize-fighter. Growling, he strode about the chamber with Yolsippa tucked beneath one arm. First the prize-fighter thought to castrate his assailant, and seized a hooked blade from a rafter in which it had been sticking, to accompanying cries from his victim. But the pleasure of this notion palled, and the prize-fighter now considered garroting and began to loosen his belt. But no sooner was it off than the satisfaction of this intent also faded. Then he sought the narrow window and tried to cram Yolsippa through it, meaning to throw him into the open sewer two or three floors below, but Yolsippa was too stout to achieve the free air, and presently the prize-fighter hauled him back and with a bellow of wrath, charged from the room with Yolsippa yet beneath his arm.

  Down the stairs they thudded, Yolsippa screaming for help and the prize-fighter trumpeting oaths, amid entreaties for silence from the adjoining apartments.

  Reaching the street the prize-fighter betook himself and his burden to the door of a stable, and knocking assertively, the prize-fighter yelled that the mad horse be brought out. At which Yolsippa, demolished by abbreviated lust and terror, swooned.

  He recovered himself about a mile from the town and into the outer plains of the desert. On all sides thorny plants stabbed upward and quite a few into the hide of Yolsippa. At first it was the land which seemed in heady upheaval, but after a moment Yolsippa ascertained that it was not the land but himself being pulled over the land by a piece of thick rope extravagantly in motion. And from this deduction, Yolsippa next arrived at the understanding that the rope was tied to the tail of a galloping horse. Whether it had been mad in the beginning was not certain, but for sure it was highly incommoded now, and striving to vent its spleen on what had been attached to it. Yolsippa shrieked for mercy, and the horse responded by galloping with increased energy. Definitely Yolsippa would have perished in a few minutes more had not the kinder face of luck been briefly turned toward him. The prize-fighter, in his incompletely sobered drunkenness, had not thought to search out or remove the large knife in Yolsippa’s belt, and this knife Yolsippa abruptly recalled. Then, rolling and painfully dragged through all types of hard floral obstacle, Yolsippa hacked and sawed with the knife till the rope parted, and flung him sprawling into a dead bush. The horse, fortunately not whirling about to kick or chew him, dashed on and was soon lost to view. Yolsippa lay in the bush, crying from minor injury and despised passion, and whining in the coldness of the night.

  Absolutely, Yolsippa had not the vaguest idea in which direction the town lay. All around yawned the unlovely outskirts of the desert, and here Yolsippa shortly began to stagger, now this way, now another way.

  At first he felt relief when the sun came up, but not for long. In an hour or less, the heat sent him crawling into the shelter of a rock, and there he spent the whole day, growing parched and desperate. And when the sun sank, he felt again a momentary respite at the cool, which inevitably turned to misery as the frost formed.

  “And what have I done,” Yolsippa interrogated the gods, “to deserve death in such a place? It is you who cursed me with my sexual foible, and here I am because of it. It is not just.”

  The night thickened and then started to retreat. Yolsippa, having dozed wretchedly, stumbled up and resumed his abstract wanderings.

  “I reiterate,” he hoarsely ranted, as the sky began to prize up the eastern lid of its vault to let out again the fierce lion sun to maul him, “I reiterate, it is not just to let me die here. What sin have I committed, beyond a simple indiscretion—you should have smitten me when I robbed the judge’s house, or when I stabbed the tax collector in the buttock—but not now, not merely for a thing I may not help!”

  And perhaps the gods, for once, heard the accusation of a man.

  Mostly on his hands and knees, Yolsippa pulled himself on to the derelict road, pawed off sand, and with a feeble shout stood up. Thinking the road led somewhere, he negotiated it in a series of the swerving floundering dance steps a man executes just before he drops senseless. Actually the road did lead somewhere.

  Yolsippa came on the sleeping couple, girl and young man, below the rock and beside the ashes of a fire. Yolsippa, untroubled by squints, was able to ignore their sensual posture. No food or drink was visible, and Yolsippa, dehydrated to the edge of insanity, groaned in despair. Then noticed the vessel set on the ground a pace from the sleeping couple.

  Very ordinary the vessel appeared, small and made of clay, and with a bit of plaited stuff bound about it, no doubt for carrying purposes. But it might contain a drink of some sort, in fact, it must.

  Yolsippa, with demented caution, crept forward, gripped the vessel, yanked at the stopper, caught a glint of liquid and, with a sigh of ecstasy, raised the pot to his lips to drain it.

  Two seconds later, Yolsippa felt the vessel seized from his hands with a violent unexpectedness
that sent him sprawling on his back. And as he lay there gasping, he stared up to see the very wide-awake young man crouched over him, oddly reminiscent of cat or hunting dog, and with the most terrible enigmatic sort of dangerousness burning from his eyes.

  “I did not mean—” attempted Yolsippa.

  “Did you drink?” asked the young man, and it was like the hiss of a snake.

  “I? Drink? Never. I am not thirsty.”

  “You drank,” said the young man. He stoppered the vessel.

  “It was but a drop.”

  “One drop is enough,” said Simmu.

  It was.

  Thus Yolsippa the rogue became the third of the earth’s immortals.

  3

  “Pray do not walk so fast,” shouted Yolsippa. “If you do, how am I to keep pace with you?”

  “Perhaps,” called back Kassafeh, “we do not mean you to keep pace with us.”

  “But only attend one instant,” croaked Yolsippa, catching up to Simmu and Kassafeh as they paused to rest in the shade of a gaunt but living tree at noon. “I am like an orphan among men. You, by your carelessness—if what you tell me is fact—have made me an outcast and pariah. What kin do I possess save you? Immortal—am I so?”

  “Yes, and be off,” said Kassafeh, tossing her head.

  “No, you misread me,” panted Yolsippa as they clambered over rocks in the afternoon—Simmu in the lead, Kassafeh a stride or two behind, Yolsippa trailing valiantly in the rear.

  “Listen,” said Yolsippa, kneeling by Kassafeh as she split open one of the thorny plants for moisture, and presently—inaccurately—copying her, “I may be useful.”

  In the dusk, still on the plain but in a greener, milder stretch, Simmu went foraging, and Yolsippa stole up on Kassafeh as she combed with her fingers her pastel hair beside the fire.

  “What is a hero?” demanded Yolsippa, striking a fancy shyster’s attitude.

  “He is a hero,” asserted the maiden.

  “Indubitably. And, as a hero, he has a duty to the earth of behaving in a heroic manner, of acting out heroic acts. What does a hero do? Does your young man know? He must be a fiery example for all men, but is he conscious of this?”

  Kassafeh narrowed her chameleon eyes, and in them, somewhere, Yolsippa glimpsed a merchant’s daughter evaluating his words.

  “A hero,” elaborated Yolsippa. “Ah, did I but have with me the fabulous antique books of legend, illustrated in extinct dyes and set about with jewels, which belonged in my stores. But alas, my stores were stolen in a town of thieves and deceivers. . . . But do I know enough of heroes, steeped as I am in arcane lore, to instruct your young man in his part? What, for example, is he doing idling here? He should be engaged in the slaughter of monsters, the foundation of a great and magnificent city, the redemption of the world.”

  Simmu returned as the stars returned. Simmu had an armful of roots and some figs from a tree he had found growing.

  “What, no meat?” Yolsippa demanded.

  “I do not eat dead flesh,” said Simmu.

  “Pah,” said Yolsippa, who was losing his awe of Simmu fast, “but he eats dead figs, murderously torn from the branch. Champ, champ, and the fig perhaps yet half alive and screaming in its unheard fig-voice.”

  “I do not eat men, who walk. Neither beasts, who walk. I never yet saw a fig tree walking.”

  “They may learn,” said Yolsippa. “They may learn to run away from you.”

  “I see you are a visionary,” said Simmu. “But understand me. It is not from pity I spare the beast and the man. I would give nothing to Death. Consider this killed fig; only scatter a seed from it upon the ground and a new fig tree may spring therefrom. But scatter the bones of the eaten deer, and does a new deer spring from them? Or does a child bud from the bones of a dead man? I willingly give to the black lord nothing that may not be replaced.”

  Yolsippa gnawed upon a root.

  “I note it is truly a hero, after all. Fight Death then? Yes, most heroic. But you must have a citadel, a fortress wherein Death may not creep.”

  “Men shall become the fortress. Immortal men.”

  “Ah, but how will you portion out the drops of Immortality? Come,” said Yolsippa, “would you have chosen me, if you had had a choice, to be a part of your brotherhood? No. You must be discriminating. Only the best must live forever. Who desires a hierarchy of riff-raff?”

  Simmu, his meager supper done with, had produced the slim wooden pipe and began playing it. The sound was a strange and almost eerie thread in that place, more color than noise, woven through the red sheen of the fire, the dark vault of the night with its relentless staring lights—lights that made Yolsippa recall an old tale that not only did men study stars to read their fates, but that the stars studied the earth to read their own fates from the movements of men.

  Kassafeh gazed at Simmu, drowning herself in him.

  Yolsippa, reluctant to let go this one absurd good turn luck had done him, began to recite to the tempo of the pipe, as any showman must be able to do, a vision of Simmu’s citadel.

  Tall towers, tall as aspiration, gates of gold through which only the elected few might pass, roofs to touch the sky, to tempt the high-stepping gods to tread them, or else to mock the gods. And all in an elevated place, a region of rarity, a country where eagles came rather than doves. Indeed, a kingdom of heaven on earth. And before getting into it some test, some proving, some ordeal must be undergone. Only the best for Simmu’s High City. “Learn by me,” said Yolsippa with low cunning, “I am a mistake. But by our mistakes are we educated.” (He had never learnt by a mistake; he was aware how useful it would have been if he had.)

  But Simmu’s eyes were blind to him. Were the ears deaf? Yolsippa could not tell if his counsel took hold. Indeed, this unusual youth had the slightest look of one who feels chains tightening on his limbs, a millstone being fastened on his neck.

  “It is no use,” chided Yolsippa, when the pipe stopped and the fire sank and the stars stared yet more unblinkingly, “no use stealing Immortality and then shirking the responsibility of what you have done. Or maybe it is only muddy water in that pot.”

  For an instant, Simmu’s eyes spoke to Yolsippa.

  The eyes seemed almost to whisper, traitors to the brain behind them: Would it were.

  • • •

  Near midnight, Yolsippa awoke, grumbling with chill. The fire was out, and of Simmu and Kassafeh there was no sign—they had gone elsewhere to enjoy their love. Yolsippa wondered if they had then gone farther and abandoned him, and sitting up with a grunt of unease, he beheld a thin black dog standing on the other side of the cold fire.

  Yolsippa had an aversion to dogs. Frequently, dogs had seen him off various premises. Yolsippa took up a stone and prepared to fling it.

  But something in the demeanor of the dog checked Yolsippa. Somehow, he did not quite desire to throw a stone at it. Slowly but undeniably, the hair rose on Yolsippa’s neck.

  And then, from behind him, came a little stirring, and Yolsippa whirled about in alarm. And there he saw a woman particularly to his taste; large of breast and hip, narrow of waist, and clad only in a revealing transparency, above which beamed a smiling, welcoming mouth, and a pair of astoundingly, and completely crossed, eyes.

  Yolsippa, in a tumult of unnerved lust, lumbered to his feet and advanced on this, to him, most seductive of females. And the woman beckoned with great urgency, and Yolsippa began to run with his lust somewhat ahead of him—and collided suddenly with a dead tree.

  “What is this?” cried Yolsippa, much aggrieved, for the woman had vanished—or become the tree, or been the tree from the first. A moment after, Yolsippa ascertained that the sinister black dog had also vanished, and by the cold fire there now stood a tall cloaked man. Very black of hair was this man, and clothed in a sort of electric blackness, and his face was somehow in sh
adow, even though the stars shone bright.

  Now Yolsippa knew enough to guess who was standing on the other side of the fire. So Yolsippa prudently kneeled down, and rubbed his face in the dirt and uttered certain pleas for leniency, as it seemed wise to do, adding: “Not far off you will find a beautiful youth and a beautiful maiden, doubtless more pleasing to your lordly eyes than my graceless self.”

  “Be at ease,” said the dark man. “It is you I require.”

  Which, rather than easing Yolsippa, prostrated him yet further into a burrowing posture.

  But the dark man appeared not to notice, and seating himself casually by the ashes, he snapped his fingers and there sprang up a garish though warming blaze.

  “You and I,” said the dark man, “are of like mind.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” moaned the abject Yolsippa, “never compare my dross to the black, many-faceted diamond of your incomparable brain.”

  The dark man laughed a dark laughter. The sound thrilled Yolsippa even as it convulsed him with fright.

  “This theory of a High City,” said the man, “the chosen within, the unchosen clamoring without. . . . Such a scheme is interesting. Men as gods, mortal men grown jealous, kingdoms set on their ears.”

  Yolsippa, hearing a musing tone, ventured to peer up. Still he could not quite see a face. He was sorry and relieved not to see it. He edged nearer the fire, and lifted himself, though ready to obeise himself instantly if the occasion warranted.

  He would never have dared voice his thought, would Yolsippa, which thought could in any event have been read by the entity across the fire, had he been desirous of reading it. Yolsippa’s thought was this: The Prince of Demons has only one terror: boredom. He will risk chaos for mankind to alleviate his ennui. Yolsippa was a shrewd fool.

  “If I may serve you, Prince of Princes,” offered Yolsippa aloud.

  “You shall build a city to rival my own of Druhim Vanashta,” said Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons.