Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Death did not glance up, but he answered softly—though Yolsippa heard him—“I do not knock at any gate.”

  The voice struck cold, even on Yolsippa.

  Yolsippa shouted down: “State your business and your name.”

  It has been suggested Death laughed at that, but Death did not laugh, it was not in his nature, even in his nature as now it was. “Fetch your king, I will speak with him,” was what Death said.

  “Ah now. The Lord Simmu, who is like a son to me, is not at the beck and call of all comers.”

  Death said no more; Yolsippa said a deal more. But somehow, it was borne in upon Yolsippa that Simmu must be brought, and so eventually Yolsippa left the gates and went to seek him.

  • • •

  Simmu had been reading. For almost five years he had done little else. He crammed himself with books to ease the hollowness inside him. Yet he felt crowded. Even the sparse crowd of the beautiful and the wise in Simmurad crowded him. He, who had once wandered freely, who, by his deed, had become responsible for others.

  Simmu had fallen asleep across a book. The candles had burned out in their sockets. Simmu’s hair spilled across the pages. His eyelids moved with dreams.

  Yolsippa, the rogue, finding the library doors locked, picked the locks and went in. He roused Simmu with no subtlety, shaking his shoulder. Simmu started awake. His eyes flashed.

  “Why did you wake me?”

  He could speak fluently and often as any man now. He could sound petulant too, as a child. Yolsippa had broken into more than the room, he had broken into Simmu’s dream. And there had been weird sweetness to the dream, which concerned dusk in a grove, a companion with dark hair, both he and Simmu children. . . .

  “At the gate is a strange apparition. Part of your destiny of heroism doubtless.”

  Simmu had risen. He paced the floor, lion in a cage.

  The dawn light caught him. He was rare, but not as he had been.

  “Yolsippa, I would I could make you vomit back that drop you stole in the desert, your immortality.”

  “Life is good,” said Yolsippa, but he sighed. Dully, he missed something in his life, the sourness and the fear that had added paradoxical zest.

  “Tell me again who is at the gate,” said Simmu. “This time, make it clear.”

  “Not a demon,” said Yolsippa, “yet curiously, he put me in mind of a certain great lord. . . . But this one is clad in white. Now here I will confess, I did not take to him. Indeed, he had the appearance of some personage I had met before, or rather, seen in the distance and avoided. And his hands were black—”

  Simmu shouted, with no words. Flames seemed to leap in his hair and his flesh. He crackled with them.

  “Five years,” he said. “The old raven is slow. And did you not recognize him?”

  Yolsippa grimaced and held up his palms wardingly.

  “Never tell me,” said he. “I am prudent, even in my persisting condition. I do not pull the tails of wolves.”

  “Here is the moment,” said Simmu, turning from Yolsippa, forgetting him. “Now I shall learn if I have sold myself to bondage for nothing, or if my triumph will repay me. Death,” he added, striking his open hand upon the open book, “stay for me.”

  Then he snatched up his outer robe from the chair where he had cast it, belted it on. It was patterned with silver, Kassafeh his wife had woven it with skills her mother had taught her in the silk merchant’s house. Simmu did not remember it was of Kassafeh’s weaving.

  Somewhere a woman sang from a high tower in Simmurad. The song was melancholy. No other stirred in the city or crossed the path of Simmu as he went out into the morning.

  Light-footed he still was. And on a green lawn of the citadel a leopard stalked a short space by his side, acknowledging vague kinship. But Simmu came alone from the marble streets to the gates of Simmurad, and worked their mechanism.

  The heart of Simmu pounded and even his eyes were paler. He stepped out on to the mountain plateau.

  The Lord Uhlume raised his head, and looked.

  Once, in Narasen’s chill tomb, he had spared this crying child.

  Simmu looked back.

  Once, in Narasen’s chill tomb, Simmu had confronted this threat and felt the cold of its passing and its promise.

  “Well, black man,” said Simmu, “you have been some years in getting here. You would have been my terminus, but I am yours. I have been reading, about the world and all the wonders in it, all the lands there are for the taking, and the laws for the making. One day (and I have endless days, you will agree, black man), one day I will lead an army from this stronghold, and we will conquer the world and set it free of you.”

  Did Uhlume recall the tone of Narasen?

  Uhlume said: “You will live forever, but you will do nothing. Your youth has crystallized, and your ambition with it and your very soul. Now I see this, and I inform you of it. Will you dream of snaring all men in such a trap as you are in?”

  Simmu relapsed in silence, the foundering inexpressive silence of a man. Then he collected himself.

  “You teach me excellently. I will bear your lesson in mind. I admit, I have been idle too long. But answer me this, my lord. Do you fear what I have done?”

  Tonelessly, Death replied:

  “I fear it.”

  “And you will do battle with me?”

  “I will do battle with you.”

  Simmu smiled.

  He walked slowly nearer and more near to Death. When he came to the slain men, he glanced at them, without disgust or compassion. Simmu came to the exact vicinity of Death. Simmu put out his hand and touched the mouth of Death. Simmu shivered and his eyes flickered, but he mastered himself again.

  “My fear is ended as yours begins,” he said.

  “Fear is not the greatest evil granted men.”

  Simmu spat on the hem of the cloak of Death.

  “Now hurt me,” Simmu whispered, “destroy me.”

  Something—expressionless, awesome, untranslatable—formed and vanished on the face of Death. A single scarlet drop of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, but he raised his sleeve, and the blood was gone.

  Simmu, fascinated, trembled. He struck Death across the cheek, and the blow seemed to shatter Simmu’s spine, but yet he stood and breathed and was whole.

  “Fight me now,” Simmu murmured. “I am anxious to enjoy the fight.”

  Death put back his cowl. His ghastly beauty seemed to fill the mountain and to crack it. He laid his own hand upon Simmu’s breast, and stained it with blood. His touch was gentle, terrible. His touch stopped the hearts of men, but not the heart of Simmu. Then there was a white swirling and Death was gone.

  Simmu blazed with fury.

  “Is that then all? Come back, black crow. Return and fight me.”

  Then it was that the dead man who had lain uppermost at the feet of Death, raised himself, and said to Simmu. “Be patient. He will return. Anticipate him.” And crashed backward, an empty corpse once more.

  And with a grim joy, shaking and grinning, Simmu re-entered the city of Simmurad and searched for his wife, to lie with her. That night Simmu toasted Death in the rose-red wine. He hung about his neck the green Eshva gem he had not worn for years. You could see Narasen in his face, like flame through a lamp.

  • • •

  What Death did then was a ritual thing, like the steps of a dance. Indeed, he did what was expected of him. He called his minions, or rather, those beings which were not his minions but which were affiliated to him in the brains of men.

  He called Plague from some hole in a yellow landscape of crippled trees and swamp, and sent her to Simmurad. She drifted in and out, and some fell sick, but the sickness fled from them. The human Immortals were not invulnerable, but half a day’s fever left them laughing at the novelty.

&nb
sp; Then Death called Famine. Famine was also laughed from the gates of Simmurad. Death called Dissent. Dissent crept by night into Simmurad. They fell to blows there, but Dissent was quick to notice, huddled in his greenish robe, that they fought gladly. Dissent also was a diversion. And when, duelling in the marble thoroughfares, a man’s hand was shorn from his arm, a masterful surgeon, who had gained his bit of eternity in the city for his skills, sewed the hand to the arm with silver thread. And since each part was immortal, neither the hand nor the arm mortified, and presently worked in unison as before.

  Death sent a snake of corruption through the walks of Simmurad, and they played with it, decked it with undying flowers and trinkets. It wound itself about a tree of fruit and sulked there in its dark enamels.

  “Come, Lord of Bones,” Simmu whispered, “you can do better.”

  Kassafeh sat at a loom of bronze—in memory of the demons, there was no golden thing in Simmurad, gold being the unloved metal of the Underearth. Kassafeh’s chameleon eyes, these days, were uniformly cloudy and obscure, the colors of deep dungeons or the floors of lakes. She was bored. Boredom was the tragedy of Simmurad. Simmu was the only star in her sky, but the star was distant. She no longer loved him, had not been able to retain her love in the face of his indifference. She had become at once more shallow and more supernal, the two parts of her dividing to her origin. She ate boxes of sweets ensorcelled from the harems of kings, she dressed herself in the clothes ensorcelled from empresses’ backs. At other times she charmed birds from the air—though not often, for seldom did birds visit Simmurad. She would gaze at the clouds, dreaming. She did not understand Simmu’s war with death, had never arrived at an understanding of Simmu. She brooded on her wedding, a whole temple of priests kidnapped by the demons to see to the business, as a joke. Even as her veil was lifted, she had been aware of demon amusement, and of some dark suggestion more interesting to Simmu than herself—Azhrarn, who never visibly entered Simmurad, or Death, who threatened it. Kassafeh yawned, left the loom, ate sweet gelatine, her somber eyes brimming with tears.

  “I shall grow fat, and you will hate me,” she said to Simmu.

  She knew he did not care enough to hate her.

  Simmu did not even hear her. He was looking for Death, who did not fight him.

  • • •

  The ritual was completed, useless.

  Death roamed the world.

  Men would come on him, seated upon a hillside, his white cloak flapping in the winds of earth, a white vulture. He was no longer merciful with that compassionless compassion of former days. Where he strode, sometimes the earth smoked, and little things crawled from their burrows and died. Where he passed, children slumped at their play. Phantoms, attracted to his wake like birds to the plough-riven furrows, swarmed at his back, the nightmares and symbols of human panic, given shape.

  He was seeking, as a man scours an attic for some valuable relic he knows is there, whose features he cannot recall and cannot put his hand to. He walked the earth, and the long strides were years.

  One night, when he stood on the bank of a shallow river, Uhlume beheld his own reflection, but negative and reversed, in the water. He looked up and saw Azhrarn on the farther bank, regarding him.

  “What news, un-cousin?” asked Azhrarn. “Three places now you cannot wander, Upperearth, Simmurad, and Druhim Vanashta of the demons.”

  There was this between Lords of Darkness, these two, and any others that there were, a sort of allergic yet loving rivalry, a sort of unliking affection, a scornful unease, xenophobia and family feeling.

  “Your game,” said Uhlume.

  “Truly, mine, un-cousin. But I have grown somewhat tired of it. Its significance eludes me. Humans are graceless and cannot sustain the artistry of the Vazdru. Did you admire the city of Simmurad?”

  “I have not observed the inside,” said Uhlume.

  “You must try to. Indeed, un-cousin, you must.”

  They stood and watched each other, one pale as marble, black-haired, clad in black; one black as that black, white haired, clothed like a black tree in snow.

  “Who would have thought,” said Azhrarn, “Immortality grasped by mortals could become so static? Perhaps the war is between us, un-cousin, you and I. Though, if it were, I should decline it.”

  Azhrarn raised his hand above the shallow river. Something fell from his fingers and burst there. A picture evolved.

  Demons were the friends of men only for as long as men entertained them. Simmu had shrivelled in the remembrance of Azhrarn like an autumn leaf. Yet the Vazdru, who could un-remember anything, forgot nothing.

  Uhlume beheld a man in the picture of the river’s surface. He wore a scarlet robe fringed with gold, a scarab of inky jewels hung on his breast. His countenance was young and handsome, dark bearded, and his hair also dark. His eyes were lined and cruel, they showed him as he was. His eyes hurt and despised and mourned and sank back into a mind like a cauldron of snakes. His eyes were explicitly sane with a profound madness. Blue-green they were. Eyes to quench thirst.

  In the picture, cool as stones, these eyes watched a man who died before them, writhing and slate-lipped from some intricate poison. As this unfortunate twitched to stillness, another was dragged forward. He screamed out. “Spare me, mighty Zhirek! I have done you no wrong.” But to no avail. A cup was thrust against his mouth and he was forced to sip, and presently he died in a fit at the bare feet of the one he had named “Zhirek.” This Zhirek leaned back in his chair, he took the cup of poison and drained it. He let the cup fall negligently. He sighed, half shut those eyes of his. The poison, which had dispatched so vehemently, did not harm him.

  The picture winked out.

  “Once he called to me,” Azhrarn said, “but I found his companion more pleasing. Also, to you he called, un-cousin.”

  “I recollect,” said Uhlume.

  The moon rose over a hill.

  Azhrarn was gone, only a black and wide-winged bird, flying.

  Death turned, and vanished too.

  A last nightmare, spilled from Death’s spurious entourage, lowered itself to drink at the river, glimpsed itself, and fled screaming.

  Part Three

  Zhirek, the Dark Magician

  1

  THE MAGICIAN, ZHIREK, walked through the streets of a great city. His robe was the color of beetles’ wings, his hands were ringed with gold, the scarab of black jewels hung on his breast, but he walked barefoot, which was his affectation.

  He was well known by sight, and well feared. His dark hair, his handsomeness. . . . Many a pale girl languished in a window at the look of him. Others turned pale for different reasons. Sometimes Zhirek went hunting. That is, he would go straight up to a man, stare in his eyes, and so bind him. The man would at once abandon whatever he was doing and follow Zhirek mindlessly. In this way, carpenters, masons, clerks, merchants, and fishermen had left off gainful employment, deserted their scattered wares, unprotected and at the mercy of thieves, deserted also their wives and dependents. Even slaves had been taken from their masters. None of these men were seen again. A complaint had gone to the king of the city. He had trembled when he read it. “I will have no dealings with Zhirek,” he croaked. Truth to tell, Zhirek had already had dealings with the king, arriving, unannounced, at the height of some celebration, and mocking him. The king would have had Zhirek seized and chained for his insolence. But Zhirek had done some curious work on the thoughts of the king. The king had, all at once, believed himself a dog. He had bounded into the kennels and champed on bones, and even, it was said, mounted a bitch hound and coupled with her heartily. Recovering his wits, the king had learned a lesson of avoidance. “No dealings with Zhirek,” he repeated. “We must regard him as our trial, our curse. To pray to the gods for deliverance from him is all we may do, and that secretly.”

  Zhirek was altogether avoided, save by those who fell in lov
e with his appearance, and even they were afraid of him somewhat, being not entirely fools. He had a house a short distance from the city. It was old and partly ruinous and overhung the sea beneath. Weird glows played through the roofs of the house by night, along the barnacle-crusted walls, the mossy stone beasts that leered from the stairway. When the magician was from home, the doors of the house were never locked, indeed, they stood wide. Only one robber was ever unwise enough to venture in the place, and he came forth a shambling dribbling idiot, never able to describe what he had met. Zhirek certainly kept no servants beyond those he ensorcelled to do his will. Now and then a fearful storm would blow up from the sea, and rage and smash against the green bastions of the old house. Then those who dared to be abroad would perceive Zhirek on a high tower, regarding the sea, and sometimes he would throw something down from the tower into the waves below, as one might throw a scrap to a starving wild animal. No one doubted Zhirek had some pact with the sea people, that folk whose numerous and diverse kingdoms spread under the ocean, to the interest and consternation of men.

  The storm clouds were gathering in the sky over the city this day that Zhirek walked there. People shrank from him, bowing themselves to the ground. Women snatched their children and ran indoors with them.

  Hard on the jeweled towers of the city pressed the blue-black storm clouds. Rain spotted the hot streets, but not the robe of Zhirek the magician. A gate opened from the courtyard of a rich man’s house, and a white-faced girl stole out and kneeled down in Zhirek’s path.

  “Take me as your slave,” said this girl. “See, I have put on flawless gems to bring you as my gift.”

  Zhirek did not hesitate, nor did he glance at her.

  Yet when he passed by, she caught his ankle.

  Zhirek stopped then, and looked at her. Her hair brushed the street, and behind the eyes of Zhirek many ghosts stirred. But he said quietly to her: “Am I to kill you?”

  The girl raised her head.

  “I will die without your love,” she avowed. “But I think you serve Death himself, you send so many to him.”