by Tanith Lee
“Death,” said Zhirek. “There is a joke in that you will never know.”
Then his eyes smote hers, and she let go his foot and fell on her side. And thus she lay a considerable time in the rain, till her attendants dared go and bring her in.
In the market place of the city, they were hanging a murderer. Zhirek paused to watch the procedure, and when the felon danced on the rope, Zhirek himself grew white, though none witnessed it, being too afraid to observe his face.
But as he stood there, one spoke behind him, saying his name not exactly as it was. The magician turned swiftly, but no man was there, none who might have called Zhirem.
2
Years before—more than five years, less than ten—Zhirem had woken in the valley of death, beneath the broken-boughed tree, the cord still round his neck with which he had tried to hang himself when other means failed. The rain yet fell in that part, but it was some days and some nights, he did not grasp how many, since he had come there. Zhirem lay on his back in the rain, remembering dimly a shadow which had touched his brow, and brought him the relief of a sort of pseudo-death, all of death he might achieve for centuries; unconsciousness.
Zhirem had meant to die, but death was not to be had. Zhirem had meant to serve the Master of Night Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, but neither was his service accepted. Zhirem’s nature, like a water of melancholy, washed him under. Everything now had been taken from him, his striving after goodness, his hopes, his pride, even that human revenge upon fate—to destroy his own life—for he was invulnerable. A terrible predicament he was in, to be utterly suicidal, and unable to perish.
At length he got up, quite aimless, and sat on a rock by the venomous river. Here eventually, he recollected a companion, Simmu, who had become for him a woman. He recalled how Simmu had followed, pursued him, how she had danced, binding the unicorns with her Eshva spell of sorcery and sex, and binding also Zhirem. She had augmented the shame of Zhirem and his sense of nullity and despair by the pleasure she gave him. Yet now he grew hungry, with that dismal itch to lie with her again.
But Simmu the maiden did not seek him. And when, after a long while, Zhirem crawled and dragged himself from the inner valley to its upper bowl, and from there shambled out again into the lawless black lands, and to the very salt lake where he and Simmu had dwelled with their green fire and their green and piercing lust, he did not find her nor any trace of her.
The urn of the rain ran dry, and the sky cleared. It was dusk by then, the lake of salt luminous and uncanny in the tween-light. Zhirem wandered back and forth there, thinking of the old man, the sorcerer, who had rejected Zhirem’s service on Azhrarn’s behalf, but who had drawn closer and ever closer to the shining-haired girl who was Simmu, while she seemed to dissolve to a femininity, sweeter, deeper, wilder than that which she had assumed for Zhirem.
The holy men of the desert of his childhood had taught Zhirem to fear himself and his own joy; the holy priests of the yellow temple had inadvertently taught him to scorn the gods. Humanity instructed him in its faithlessness. Azhrarn dismissed him, Death shunned him. Left with less than nothing, yet Simmu might have tendered him, once more, love. And at this season, for this hour, love might have been after all enough, at least enough to stop the bleeding of his soul. But Simmu was gone, youth or maiden, he or she had renounced Zhirem, or so it appeared. (How could Zhirem guess that day and night of all-encompassing weeping Eshva grief which had been Simmu’s? Nor the darkness and Azhrarn stepping from the darkness to cast a demon spell of forgetting? Or that, in despite of that spell, Simmu still did half remember the image of a companion, a second self?)
For Zhirem, night spread its blackness like the blackness within him. He walked across the lawless lands, going in no particular direction, and his mind was like a mound of dust.
• • •
Months he journeyed, living off the country where he could, starving when he could not, both processes of equal indifference to him, so that he tore up and ate berries and roots from habit merely. Here and there a beast sought to slay him, and could not and slunk away. Here and there he met men, or women. In a village a hundred miles from the lawless lands, he was mistaken for what he had once been, a priest. A group of women had come to him and one had an ailing baby, but he turned from them in loathing, and when the mother flew after him, he struck her. It was his first naked brush with the cruelty within himself. It made him feel, this cruelty, almost alive, as once compassion and gentleness toward the sick had made him feel.
Zhirem did not really notice how the landscape altered. Weather, day and night, uphill and down were all one pointless similarity. He might as well have sat on the ground in one place and not moved, but the active nature of his youth was not yet to be sloughed, he walked as instinctively as Simmu would have wandered in the Eshva fashion. Then, one sunrise in a forest of huge and bladed leaves, Zhirem roused from the ferns on which he had dropped down haphazardly in weariness the midnight before, and beheld a man seated close by.
This man was soberly dressed in a mode that suggested a true and actual priest. His face was tucked into neat, nearly motionless lines, that implied calm, confidence and unquenchable complacence.
“Good day, my son,” said he, from two controlled pink lips which widened just so far and felt no need to widen farther.
Zhirem sighed, and lay back on the turf, for he was exhausted.
Overhead, the cavernous arches of the forest, set with panes of early light, briefly soothed his eyes and heart. But the man continued talking.
“You are in a poor state, my son. Although it seems to me, from the remnants of your apparel, that it may once have been a sacred robe, and that you, therefore, may be as I am, a traveling priest. Now is this so?”
“Not so,” murmured Zhirem, and tears formed between his lids, he could not have said why.
The placid priest took no note of this.
“I think, my son, that I shall accompany you, for I believe you might profit by company. But I had better apprise you of one item. I am a very pious man, indeed, I have dedicated my life to piety, both in worshipping the gods and in succoring mankind. And for this, many years ago, a certain beneficence was bestowed on me, at the gods’ direction, or through some other powerful agency. The beneficence is this—that all harm, wherever possible, shall avoid me. The lightning shall not strike the place where I am situated, the sea shall not overwhelm the bark wherein I sail, the savage beast shall eschew eating me. Now is this not a fine thing?” Zhirem said nothing, and so the priest elaborated. “You may imagine,” said he, “I am in demand wherever there is a feast. Frequently I am invited to the festivities of strangers, for they know that while I am present the house is safe, even in the roughest climate. For the same reason, ships clamor to carry me as their passenger, gratis, for whatever ship bears me may not sink. Unfortunately,” added the priest, tucking his face a little closer together than before, “there is this proviso. Should I be in the proximity of only one other, and if some danger should threaten us, it will choose him in my stead. But I pray you not to be daunted by this fact, for I am sure I can aid you in your search for your soul’s true desires.”
“No, you cannot,” asserted Zhirem, rising and striding away.
The priest instantly also rose and hastened after him.
“I am not accustomed to this attitude,” declared the priest. “There is much you may learn from me.”
“Only learn this from me,” said Zhirem, halting and staring in the priest’s face. “No harm of any sort can come to me, and I wish for no companion.”
“Come, come,” cried the priest, “such arrogance is unbecoming of your youth. The gods—”
“The gods are dead, or sleeping.”
“Heaven forgive you!” screamed the priest, the tucks of his face coming altogether undone. “But woe and alas, oh misguided man, I see heaven has not.”
This last w
as a reference to a huge cat, a tiger of simmering eyes, which just then trotted out of the trees toward them.
“I will pray for you, my son,” promised the priest, “while you endure your agony.”
Now Zhirem had been some while without happiness, and nearly as long without impulse. His torpor left him suddenly in a burst of racking amusement, so he laughed aloud.
“You had better run instead, priest,” said Zhirem.
Just then, the tiger tensed itself and sprang at him. A short space from his breast something spun the tiger sideways, and it rolled, spitting and snarling in the fern.
The priest’s jaw dropped.
The tiger collected itself, and began to pad about Zhirem, raking the air futilely, till finally it drew aside and contemplated instead the priest. Patently the tiger meant to devour one of the two men, and though the priest was protected by a beneficence of sky spirits, or whoever had extended it, no alternative flesh was to be had. This being the case, the tiger plainly decided to ignore the beneficence.
“I will accept my doom quietly,” opined the priest as the tiger raced at him. Alas, it was not quite possible, and Zhirem stumbled away into the forest, stopping his ears against the shrieks. Later he sank down under a tree, shaking with horror and with a terrible madman’s laughter that came to him in the stead of tears or pity.
Evening had fallen when he emerged from the forest at the outskirts of a prosperous town. No sooner was he on the road than people hurried to welcome him with lamps and garlands.
“Come to our feast!” they shouted. “The wine merchant’s daughter is wedded, but last year there was an earthquake here. Come and sit in the house and keep us safe.”
Zhirem realized they had got rumors of the priest with the beneficence and mistook their man. He tried to undeceive the throng, and while they debated, another crowd surged up.
“Come to our feast!” they shouted. “The corn merchant’s son is home from the sea, but there is the usual fear of earthquake and you will keep us safe.”
Then the two groups began to quarrel with each other over who deserved the priest’s protection, and next came to blows. Zhirem evaded them and went away into the town, and through the town into the night country beyond.
Near midnight he heard the sea, whose voice there is no mistaking, and he smelled the salt perfume of it. Coming to a headland, he gazed down and saw another town ablaze with lights, and a harbor where ships lay as if asleep under a thin blue moon. Beyond the harbor, the ocean stretched out, a folded restless dark.
To Zhirem, the beauty of the world was new, he had discovered it through pain and outlawed solitude, one consolation given when all other pleasure seemed past. Thus, he seated himself on the land’s brink high above the town, to watch the sea, forever changing and unchanged. And a profound stillness overcame him so that when a man’s hand fell roughly on his shoulder, Zhirem cried out and leapt to his feet, almost ready to kill what had shocked him.
“I meant no offense, Father,” declared the man, rough as his hand had been, and backing away. “Were you communing with the gods? I beg pardon, I thought you dozed, and I said to myself, said I, this sacrosanct gentleman should not have to doze here on the cold night cliffs, when there is a fine lodging already prepared for him aboard our vessel.”
Zhirem perceived he had been mistaken again for the lucky priest.
“I am not the one you seek,” said Zhirem.
“Yes, but you are,” asserted the man stubbornly. “I guess your reluctance. You have heard we are a band of pirates, but this is not just. Perhaps we are somewhat ready with our knives and here and there may have gained a bad reputation. We need your virtuous presence all the more.”
“The fellow you hoped for,” said Zhirem, “was devoured by a tiger in the forest. This I can swear to, for I witnessed it.”
“Now, Father,” quoth the man, “it should be beneath you to tell lies. Perchance you have already bound yourself to another ship? Forget the rogues. We sail at dawn and you shall be with us.”
Zhirem was about to turn aside, when six other mariners stepped up the slope, obviously prepared for violence, should Zhirem further resist. And, although they could not have injured him in the slightest, their intent and fevered desperation to take him—and he the wrong man—moved him once more to that bitter, part-insane humorousness which now haunted him. He therefore agreed to go with them, and was conducted with stealthy speed, through the back alleys of the town, to the quay and a disreputable ship.
“I will do your vessel no good,” Zhirem assured the sailors, “and I hazard you merit no good to be done you, so it is well enough.”
The sailors ushered him aboard and into the cabin, and went off muttering. Presently a drunken captain entered, who treated Zhirem most courteously, though bolting the door on him from the outside whenever he had occasion to go on deck. This man also consistently titled him “Father,” though the captain possessed three times Zhirem’s number of years.
Accordingly, the ship left dock at sunrise with Zhirem aboard.
Now the sailors, pirates or otherwise, had particular reasons for desiring whatever protection they could lay hold of. The sea beyond this coast was fair and calm, and not given to tempest save at the changing of the seasons. However, two or three days’ journey eastwards of the land a belt of sharp rocks extruded from the water, and on these many ships had been wrecked. This, in itself, was mysterious, for the rocks were clearly to be observed and easily navigable, save in storm or fog. Yet survivors had returned from that spot with supernatural tales, of mists and gleams, freak lightning and unhuman voices, and of bells sounding deep in the hollow of the ocean.
The first day of the voyage, Zhirem sat, bolted in the cabin, while an inefficient bustle of activity went on outside, not to mention several brawls and a whipping. The first night, confident in the talisman of the priest, the sailors drank riotously, which was followed by further brawlings. The second day, discipline was excessively lax, and the second night, the riot resumed. On this night indeed, the captain, drunker than the rest of the crew, begged Zhirem, in his capacity of priest, to come and bless the assemblage.
“Oh, I decline,” said Zhirem. “They are blessed enough in you.”
The captain was flattered, and commenced toying with Zhirem’s hair, but Zhirem struck his hand aside and the captain made elaborate apology.
“It is,” explained the captain, “the singular darkness of your locks which intrigues me.”
Zhirem cursed him for this, in memory of the old notion of dark hair and the demons which had dogged him in the mouths of men; which had, it currently seemed to him, set him on the road to hell. And to a hell, indeed, which had rejected him.
The captain accepted Zhirem’s oaths, unsurprised apparently at a swearing priest. He slumped belchingly asleep, but Zhirem remained insomniac, though uninterested in the stale cabin, the rowdy deck or in anything much. The motion of the ship did not precisely nauseate him, but disorientated, and depressed his spirits beyond even their low ebb.
Dawn broke, and it was the third day.
At noon, the jagged rocks were sighted, and an hour later the ship began to pass between them. No sooner was she fairly in, however, than the sky grew strangely somber, not overcast with cloud, but rather as if a smoked glass had been set between heaven and earth. Then, as the light faded, a mist, in color lavender, began to rise as it seemed from the ocean itself. The sun swam in this mist like a huge silver ghost, the sea was veiled in the mist, and the tops of the masts; the rocks vanished alongside, before and behind. The captain gave the order to put down anchor till the fume should disperse. He had continued optimistic, seeing he carried the lucky priest. The sails hung heavy with not a breath of wind.
“Now what is that noise?” demanded one man of another.
“The anchor has caught on a rock.”
“No, it is a fish, swimming
about the chain.”
Three went to look over the side, and in a minute, all three uttered a wild cry.
They fled back across the deck, and shouted at their fellows:
“There is a monster in the sea!”
“It is green, but has the shape of a woman!”
“Its hair is like the sea-wrack and its lips like malachite. It rattles the chain and grins at us.”
“And in the water it thrashes with its lower half, which is that of a smooth gray whale.”
The captain was called from his cabin. He entreated Zhirem, on this occasion, to come with him on deck, and took Zhirem’s arm.
“See, nothing ill can befall us, the priest being aboard.” The sailors clutched Zhirem’s rags, kissed his feet.
Zhirem looked beyond them all, into the mist, unspeaking, awaiting their fate and his, pitiless of both.
The lavender mist shrouded the ship now from bow to stern. And through the mist began to pierce pale lights. Like phosphorus they were, but gliding here and there they took on the aspect of malignant life. Then came a dim booming from the depth of the sea.
“It is the bell,” despaired the sailors.
“Whatever it is,” said the captain, swigging mightily from a leather bottle, “no harm can come to us.” Hard on his words, a lightning hit the yard, which splintered at its top into a wreath of fire. “No!” cried the captain, waving aloft at heaven, showing Zhirem to the invisible sky. “Behold, great gods, we are protected—you must not hurt us—”
The second lightning struck the captain himself, as if in answer. Zhirem, naturally, was uninjured.
The sailors screamed at this phenomenon. The bell tolled in the sea and the lights came and went vigorously.
“Save us!” entreated the ship’s crew of Zhirem.
“Save yourselves,” Zhirem replied. (His second naked brush with his own cruelty, his basic aversion to mankind.)
In a panic, the mariners next decided to weigh anchor and turn about, to procure an exit from the region, which was obviously accursed.
