Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  As with the site of the second well, the exact site of the mountain city is not perfectly to be expressed. But eastwards it lay and, as the architect related, somewhere near the world’s edge. Though maybe to place it near the world’s edge is simply metaphor. For how much nearer the edge could mankind get than to obtain Immortality?

  Whatever else, the city was surely built, by men and by demons, all at a whim of Azhrarn’s. Azhrarn, who had not even spoken to Simmu since that night they learned together from the blue witch the secret of the second well. Or had perhaps Azhrarn watched the young man without in turn being noted? Seen no longer a pliable Eshva youth or hermaphrodite maiden, but a hero, looking irrefutably masculine and of the earth? Once or twice, possibly, some demon mouth had whispered in the sleeping ear of Simmu: “Eastward still.” But not the mouth of Azhrarn.

  Not much befell the hero and heroine on their road east. For one thing, after the sojourn in the desert, they had a wild unique appearance, more animal than human, and so humanity put a distance between itself and them. Sometimes dogs were sent to chase them from a village. (Simmu would charm the dogs, or Kassafeh would, for she was clever now at this art.) Sometimes, thinking them of a nomadic religious order, men and women would bring offerings of bread and wine, and beg for healing or prophecy. Simmu would remember, on these occasions, the temple of his childhood, a journey among the villages, and some disaster would haunt him he could not properly recall, and the shadow of a companion he could not put a face to or even a name. But Simmu was no healer, then or now. And though he carried a cure-all at his belt, he hoarded it, gave not a drop away. Indeed, he saw men dying, flies thick on them and despair thicker, and not for a moment did he pause. The thought had taken hold: Only the best must survive, not a hierarchy of riff-raff. Gods, who had such power of life or death as he, must choose carefully. And one day he would have to choose: Shall I immortalize this one, or this? But not yet. Everything was very clear cut. He did not torment himself with such puzzles as: Had I saved that beggar there in the gutter, would he have become some great philosopher or magician, using eternity to good advantage? Nor did Simmu ask himself what would become of his own self. He was too young. His life had not yet begun to show its limits to him when he abolished them. He had been aware of death simply as a violent act of murder perpetrated in the midst of living, what he had confronted in poisoned Merh. He had taken up arms against death, but really he did not fully know what he had done.

  The lands they went through, Simmu and Kassafeh, began to have an emptiness, not merely of peoples and of beasts, but of all familiar things. Woods and forests grew there, it is true, flowers bloomed, rivers ran, but each with a kind of lifelessness. Wherever men have once walked, a type of mark is left, a footprint of intent. This footprint is the thing which other men interpret as life. A tree on which no human eye had ever fallen, a hill where no human voice had ever whispered, shouted or sung, they had, of course, their own animation and being, but not properly discernible to a man, who could not and cannot help but recognize things by their innate relation to himself.

  It may be that they reached, at the very last, the wide shore in the dawn. It seems nearly always to have been dawn there, for the city was erected in dawn’s actual gate, and had the colors of a dawn, alabaster, rose, and red. Did they happen on it, or were they led the final miles by some sort of instinct, or even by a demon—most probably in animal shape, cat, fox, serpent or black dove? And when they got there, did they climb up the steep stairway at once, that stairway now ornamented by columns with capitals of gleaming silver, or did they linger by the ocean, ignoring the entrance to the city, or ignorant of it?

  This much is positive. They had departed in every way from their own kind and they were ready, primed for a wonder. Even Simmu, who during Yolsippa’s preaching of responsibility and heroism had flinched at his own chains, even Simmu was ready, was primed. The blood of kings was in him somewhere, after all, come down from Narasen, the only gift she gave him apart from his birth.

  So they wandered up the steep stair, in at the gateway now hung with gates of brass, into a new winding, terraced country of stone and marble and metal. The city looked, in the morning colored like itself, as if it might, in a moment, take wing into the sky. That was the fundamental appearance of it, like something poised but not static: a bird about to fly. And as it lifted itself, pausing but ever on the brink of soaring from the roseate rock, it caught both their hearts, the youth’s and the maiden’s, for it was like a beautiful virgin, and they the first with their love. Connubial staleness would come later.

  The streets, the thoroughfares, the squares and colonnades and parks, all seemed deserted. Nothing moved but the heads of trees, the clouds, the shadows of trees and clouds, and the sun up the sky.

  “Who dwells here?” Kassafeh murmured. “Some great emperor that the world has forgotten?”

  They went softly down and up and down. Windows shone with glass pictures, fountains crystallized, shattered, crystallized, the wind brought the sough of tree and cool air, but no noises, no scents of men. Kassafeh, strangely, was not reminded of the Garden of the Golden Daughters. The city at least was completely real, not an illusion.

  They slipped through the avenues and along the walks, ran up staircases, across courts. They came to the citadel with its domes of mosaic, and before the huge doors reared an obelisk of green marble. Cut in the obelisk, in letters of silver, were these words as follows:

  I AM THE CITY OF SIMMU, SIMMURAD,

  AND HEREIN MEN SHALL LIVE THAT LIVE

  FOREVER, BUT ELSEWHERE SHALL MEN

  RISE AND BLOW AWAY AGAIN LIKE DUST.

  “Who wrote these words?” asked Kassafeh.

  But Simmu stared silently. He was like a bridegroom on his wedding day, longing to be bound, afraid to be bound, and no escape either from fear or longing. In the net.

  And when Yolsippa materialized, suddenly, from the palace door, bowing absurdly, clad in real velvet with real metal in his ear and nostril, Simmu began to laugh. And as he laughed, his eyes were full of the tears of that utter panic-stricken loneliness a man feels who knows he will never be alone again.

  5

  Lylas the witch had forgotten she was dead. She turned luxuriously in her slumber and stretched out a languid hand to seize the collar of her blue dog. Her hand closed on air. She opened her eyes.

  She lay on leaden ground, and all about stone pylons rose, a-drip with stony moss. A tumultuous wind raged in gusts, but it was not chilly in that place. Neither cold nor heat ever came there.

  The witch put her hand on her waist and felt, not the girdle of bones, but an awful jagged join in her own flesh. The witch opened wide her mouth and screwed tight her eyes, and clenched her fists and contemplated a wail of terror. She had now remembered everything.

  After the devil-being had snapped her in two pieces, Lord Death himself, as was his wont, had come to fetch her down to the Innerearth. In the shocked condition of one recently slain, she scarcely noticed this, and sank into a coma, a common lapse of the newly dead. The coma lasted no time at all, or at least, no time in the Innerearth. Months passed in the world overhead, a year, more. (Simmu breached the Garden of the Well, broke the divine shaft of glass by sympathetic magic, stole the draught of Immortality, wandered the desert. The city of the eastern corner, rose-red Simmurad, was built by demons and abducted men, and Simmu entered it with Kassafeh and was greeted there by obsequious Yolsippa. . . . All this while the witch lay comatose on the floor of Death’s country.) Maybe she willed it so. There were certain problems she would have to face on waking.

  And now she had woken.

  Presently, though, Lylas shut her mouth, relaxed her body, darted a glance or two about. The Innerearth’s miserable aspect did not depress her, she was generally impervious to such influences as sight and sound. However, she noticed the landscape appeared empty, and it occurred to her that though she
had probably remained here unaware some while, none had come to disturb her, a fact she found encouraging.

  She was not sure who she feared the most, Lord Death, whose trust she had abused and whose secret she had inadvertently betrayed, or Narasen of Merh, whose murder she had abetted. For sure, both must be confronted. There was this added confusion that perhaps neither Lord Death nor the woman had yet discovered Lylas’ deeds.

  But Lylas’ principal virtue was her opportunist and optimistic nature. It took only a little cogitation in this latter vein to return much of her confidence to her. Soon she rose to her feet, shook out her multitude of hair and smoothed her smooth cheeks with her palms. Then she wrought, from thin air, a golden girdle to hide the scar in her otherwise creamy perfection of a skin. These items attended to, she stepped from the shelter of the stone tree-pylons—and came face to face with the striding figure of Death.

  No brave resolve was after all possible. Besides, there was something in the aspect of Death which was quite overwhelming should iron control once give way. The witch fell on her face. As he came nearer, she dissolved into shudderings and moans, but when the white cloak swept over her, she seized its edge convulsively.

  “Your handmaiden beseeches you,” cried Lylas.

  Uhlume, Lord Death, stopped and looked down at her. His face was such a beautiful clarity of nothing it took her breath away and left her panting. She could say no word and was glad, for it seemed to her she had been about to confess her fault to him, and maybe he did not know her fault.

  “You recall that you have died?” Uhlume inquired.

  The witch gasped and managed speech.

  “I attempted a foolish spell, but somebody, a greater magician than I, reversed its effect upon me. Forgive my silliness, Lord of Lords.”

  It came to her then, quite unexpectedly as she lay at his feet, that Death, having made her his agent, should have made her also invulnerable to such a peril as had overtaken her. He had no agent now, on earth above. Or did he have one, one he favored and protected more efficiently than she? Lylas realized she had risked and lost her life in Uhlume’s service, and he did not seem to care. She felt cheated, and a deal of her apprehension left her.

  “I will assume, Lord of Lords,” said she, “that, as your servant, I am still bound by your law, and may not return to live above.”

  “You may not return,” said he. He did not speak cruelly but he was implacable.

  “Shall I serve you here?”

  “Your service is done.”

  “Give me leave then,” said the witch, “to sit here awhile and resign myself.”

  “You are free to do as you choose,” said Death. And, from standing over her, he was suddenly half a mile away.

  The witch stared after him with startling rancor. Having passed into Death’s country, she had curiously—or perhaps logically—lost some of her awe of him. And with her awe and fear went her adoration. She began to feel cunning and clever again. She began to think of Narasen and all she remembered of her. If Death had remained in ignorance, and plainly he had, of the witch’s mistaken plots, Narasen certainly knew nothing.

  A second time, the witch arose. From the illusory air she formed a flagon of wine, and took a good swig of it. The illusion made her tipsy in a most satisfying and swift fashion, and thus fortified, Lylas selected a certain direction and began to walk in it. She had decided to seek Narasen out, and either by her arts or by the power of divination open to all in that nether region, she had located Narasen’s position instantly.

  After some hours or minutes of effortless walking, the witch came to the bank of a dull white river. Here, on a tall rock, sat a dark blue woman.

  The witch had not anticipated Narasen in this form, all colored with the poison, and the effect made worse by that extended sojourn of hers in Merh. Her skin was an indigo almost black, within the indigo face, indigo eyes with two bits of blazing gold inlay (irises) in them; Narasen’s hair was purple and the nails of her left hand, which rested on her left knee, were purple too, and as long as the hand they grew from. The right hand, resting on the right knee, was pure white, a skeleton hand of bone—Azhrarn’s doing.

  The witch checked. Narasen presented an aspect so terrible and so exotic, even Lylas could not ignore it. Awhile Lylas stared, and Narasen paid her no heed. Narasen was brooding. She had a look of her brooding, like venom fermenting in a vat. Lylas crept close at last, affecting a fear she did not feel, and concealing the other fear she did.

  She threw herself flat before Narasen and kissed her indigo foot.

  Narasen raised her lids, looked at her.

  Lylas whispered:

  “Are you, awful majesty, the lady Narasen, queen of Merh?”

  Narasen did not answer, but her black mouth curled a little at its edge, downward.

  “By your beauty and your state,” Lylas moaned, “so I recognize you as she. But truly, how regal and fearsome you have become. I should name you Queen Death.”

  Narasen reached out her hand—the bone one—and lifted the witch’s chin. Lylas shivered the length of herself. It was not all play-acting.

  “I am Narasen,” said Narasen. “What there is left of her.”

  The witch crawled on to her knees. She took the bone hand in hers and kissed that. Narasen laughed, unpleasantly. “You are ever the harlot you were,” she said. “Go seek your master, and practice your wiles on him. Or do you love him less now you are his prisoner?”

  “Death is death,” said Lylas. “Do not send me away. Tell me what troubles you, elder sister.”

  Narasen spat on the gray land. That was her answer.

  Her fires were cold now. Not only her skin had darkened, not only her hand had gone to a bone. She had taken death to heart. She had sat here a mortal year, longer, musing on Azhrarn, musing on her son, who had destroyed her. Maybe she had even had a thought or two upon the matter of blueness and the blue witch and the poison in the cup, but that would seem a leaf in the wind now. It was Simmu who haunted her. All she could see was his brightness which mocked her dark. To be dead was a state which played odd tricks on dreams of vengeance.

  “Oh my elder sister,” whispered the witch, laying her head in the lap of Narasen, “why sit in this bleak country with no illusion to sustain you?”

  “I have sworn,” said Narasen.

  The witch smiled, and hid her smile in a fold of Narasen’s black dress. “I have not,” said Lylas. Then she built about the two of them a palace very like the palace at Merh, or as the palace at Merh had been. Hot sunlight shafted between the pillars, the pelts of leopards lay under Narasen’s feet. Narasen sneered, but her eyes were brighter.

  “Given the means, I might erect a palace here, quarried from the foul stone of the place itself. The treasures of some king’s tomb could ornament it.” Such a thought had never occurred to her previously, but Lylas had touched off her dry powder. “However,” Narasen added, “for now I will permit this make-believe, seeing no road to the other. But if Uhlume comes by, dismantle the picture. I would not have him think I weaken.”

  Lylas grinned in the black fold of the dress. She had heard a secret ambition, seen a secret vulnerability. Narasen and she were conspirators.

  “My weakness, not yours, elder sister. The weakness of my longing to please you. Count me your handmaiden.”

  Narasen drew up a handful of the witch’s hair in her fleshed fingers, let it pour away like water, drew up more.

  Lylas suffered the game to go on and on.

  6

  Lylas began this thing, seeking only to be clever and to make soft the hard bed on which she found herself. But Lylas disliked men, and now resented Death. She pretended, in order to escape the wrath of Narasen, that she admired her; Lylas strove to please Narasen. She made the illusions which Narasen, under the yoke of her enduring oath, would not. Only one time had Narasen consented to make illu
sion, recounting her re-visiting of Merh to Uhlume, which had been part of that supernatural bargain. Only that one time, and she had not shown him everything, only how she had walked the streets of her city till no living thing drew breath there—Uhlume had watched, expressionless as ever. He had not been shown the confrontation between Narasen and Azhrarn, when Simmu had escaped her, when Azhrarn had punished her insolence, gentle in the way of the demons and terrible in their way. Lord Death received less than his due, but asked no more. He did not appear to notice the right hand of Narasen, all bone. Perhaps Death was unobservant. And after she had paid her reduced fee, Narasen had sat down to brood, and brooded till the long-haired witch came to her.

  Narasen, seeing the witch fawn on her, even in pure knowledge of the reasons for and the falseness of Lylas’ demonstration, was nevertheless succored by this food. Narasen sneered at Lylas, looking through her with those dreadful blue and yellow lizard eyes. Narasen appreciated the glints of genuine terror that showed themselves in Lylas’ demeanor. Was not her whole act of fawning prompted by terror? Narasen the queen had once been accustomed to such abasement and, on occasion, such fear from her subjects. Accustomed too to those charms of surrounding that her pride had denied her in the Innerearth, which now Lylas fashioned extravagantly from the air to please her. With Lylas, taking no responsibility for it, Narasen could stroll once more the golden rooms of a palace, ride once more across the golden plains where the leopards shone in the shadows. And when the illusory night came down to fill the illusory windows with illusory stars, Lylas, a supple, sly and beauteous child of fifteen, slunk to Narasen’s knee and laid her head, with its quantity of hair, thereon. Narasen would stroke the hair and, at the touch of fleshly fingers, Lylas would smile and shut her eyes, and at the touch of the bone fingers, Lylas would shiver and shut her eyes more tightly. The truth of the matter was, some portion of Lylas delighted to be afraid, though only of one she felt she might, by subtle wiles, keep tame. And so she found joy in this fear with Narasen. And, from acting adoration, adoration stole over Lylas. And, from acting a seduction, she was seduced.