Death's Master

by Tanith Lee

  Zhirek became the bond-servant of the Lord Uhlume.

  In the morning, the old house was already empty, though it would be half a year before any dared explore its vacancy.

  • • •

  In the sea, the skull of Hhabhezur, thrown at last to the waves, bobbed slothfully, unclaimed. Hhabaid lay with some blue-haired lord, the new king of Sabhel, her husband, and Zhirek was only a scar upon her heart. Her father (headless, haphazard coral in the hall of stone) was even less.

  Eventually, the skull progressed to the floor of a shallow reef. Fish lived in it, barnacles covered it. After many seasons, a trailing net entangled it and brought it into the boat of a fisherman, amidst the catch.

  “Why,” said he, “here is the head, or all that is left of it, of my poor father who was decapitated by pirates and cast overboard, thirty years ago at this very spot. Surely it has come to me for burial.”

  And, being a dutiful descendant, he bore the skull home, and went without food that he might have built for it an expensive tomb just beyond the village. The tomb was the wonder of the district, and pointed out by parents to their children as the deed of a good son.

  Then, one morning, as chance would have it, the skull of the real father was washed up in the cove below the village. But, not recognizing it and reckoning it unlucky, the fisher folk threw it down a dry well, and shoveled in dirt to obscure it, avoiding the area thenceforth.

  Part Four

  In Simmurad

  1

  YOLSIPPA THE ROGUE, gate-keeper of Simmurad, woke from a dream of cross-eyed maidens, to the familiar yet comparatively infrequent sound of blows on the brass gates.

  Yolsippa opened the trick portal and glared out, bleary-eyed.

  “Who is that?” he shouted. For some while he had dispensed with the rest of the rigmarole.

  Outside the gates, it was not quite dawn. The dark was surreptitiously slipping from the mountains, the sky heightening but not yet brightening.

  “I say again, who is that?”

  From below, out of the shadow, a voice called:

  “One who would enter.”

  Yolsippa sighed, poured and drank a goblet of wine.

  “All and sundry cannot enter here. This is Simmurad, City of the Immortals. What can you do? What are you good at? Do we need your skill that we should let you in?”

  “I am the magician, Zhirek,” said the voice, “and I can do this—” At which a lightning ripped the shadows, battered the gates, showing up a handsome black-haired, black-bearded man in a yellow robe, with gold rings on his hands and a black jeweled scarab on his breast. “Another such bolt,” said he, “and your gates will crumble.”

  “Contain yourself,” said Yolsippa. “You shall come in.”

  The mechanism of the gates was activated and Zhirek advanced through them. He was barefoot. Descending hurriedly to intercept him, Yolsippa beheld, however, that the magician’s robe was heavy with gold and his forearms with bands of electrum and orichalc. A collar of gold set with sea-colored gems folded over his shoulders and his breast beneath the scarab.

  “Alas, honored magnificence,” said Yolsippa, “the lord of Simmurad, Simmu (who is like a son to me) permits neither woman nor man to bring gold into the city, out of respect for a certain prince who might be expected to visit here, and does not care for the metal.”

  “Azhrarn must avoid me then,” said the magician. “My gold enters with me.”

  Yolsippa deemed it prudent to remonstrate no further.

  They had come together, the two of them, inside the inner court of the wall, where great trees grew, partly obscuring the city.

  “Behold,” said Yolsippa, directing Zhirek with pride and trepidation through the trees, so he might note Simmurad spread before him, the marmoreal rose red and milk white just now beginning to take color from the sky, though here and there lamps scorched in the towers and colonnades. “I will conduct you personally to the court of Simmu.”

  Beautiful Simmurad was. Beautiful, but strange. It moved Zhirek for a moment, as generally only natural things had come to have the power to move him. With Yolsippa at his elbow, in the pre-dawn glimmer, he walked up and down the levels of the city. And even Yolsippa, stumbling, belching, fat and gaudy in his greasy, jewel-encrusted garments, could not detract from the aura of Simmurad.

  Many palaces there were, and all of them appeared empty, save here and there was the isolated wink of a colored window lit by a lamp. The lawns were smooth with grass that never died—and never seeded. The trees rang with leaves that never fell—or freshened. These eternal static manifestations were the work of magicians already in the city, or of the demons years back. Nature had been made to imitate the Immortal men.

  The animals in the city were young, but were eternal too, each infected by a drop of the Drink of Life. The leopards sipping by the pool had an oddly doll-like look; even in movement, they were somehow immovable. Yolsippa had something of this quality himself. And when they crossed a garden, brushed by the sun’s first rays, there were men and women there, strolling under the trees, and they gave that exact impression of puppets or elegant waxworks. They stared after Zhirek and mocked Yolsippa, but their eyes might have been made of glass. It was as if, without knowing or being troubled by it, they were slowly calcifying, the calcification beginning with the topmost layer of the skin, creeping inward till it reached the organs and the mind.

  The citadel ascended into the morning. Yolsippa paused at the obelisk of green marble, that Zhirek might read the inscription.

  I AM THE CITY OF SIMMU, SIMMURAD, AND

  HEREIN MEN SHALL LIVE THAT LIVE FOREVER . . .

  “Is this place then, a prison for Immortals?” Zhirek inquired.

  “It is a gift,” said Yolsippa. “I was present at its inception. A marvelous prince—”

  “Azhrarn.”

  “I should not presume—”

  Zhirek was already striding away, approaching the doors of the palace, going through them.

  Dawn began to brim over into the citadel, tinting everything through ranks of crystal windows.

  “You will wait here, my lord. It is no less than custom,” Yolsippa attempted. Zhirek, to Yolsippa’s relief, complied.

  They had entered a hall with a domed ceiling that soared upward over their heads, and a floor set with silver discs. No guards, no servants stole about through the splendor, and no slaves, yet all was clean and tended—by the spells of the geniuses who had been permitted to exist here. Yet, so uninhabited it was, it might have been some ruin suddenly come on in the desert or the midst of the sea.

  Zhirek seated himself. He appeared composed, actually terrible, should you get close enough to see the shapes of cruelty drawn about his eyes. Yet a turmoil had begun within him, something he observed analytically, almost with fascination. It was only the pulse and the belly stirred by a memory. The brain was cool. He waited for Simmu as if waiting to taste again a wine he had once been drunk on, which had made him sick, which now he meant only to taste and then to pour away, and afterward, uproot and burn the vine.

  An hour passed. The extended dawn still irradiated the hall. Then Simmu came, but not alone.

  Like a king, for he was a king here, Simmu walked into the hall attended by his court, or a portion of it. The women, with their hair plaited with everlasting flowers, their exotic clothes in the modes of many lands; the men, warriors, sorcerers, sages, old and young, ageless now. Each was like the other, like those Zhirek had already witnessed—figures of wax.

  And Simmu himself, he also had the taint. Yet it was Simmu, Simmu correct to the smallest detail, lynx-green of eye, amber haired, the narrow beard like parings of that amber; the nervous, cat-like, graceful demeanor—much of a girl there in him; however, a man. He seemed no older than in the past, indeed, he had not physically aged, or barely. His phase as hero had brought certain alterati
ons, but these Zhirek bypassed. It was the other alteration which caught him. The thing which made this Simmu, though recognizable in all ways, quite unrecognizable—another. Zhirek was unsure how the revelation affected him, though he was undoubtedly affected by it. All his emotions, which had deserted him when he came from the sea, seemed to have gathered here in Simmurad to hammer on his lungs and heart. (Zhirek gave no sign of his reverie or its disturbance.)

  At Simmu’s side, one final discord, Zhirek paid heed to a sullen beautiful girl with glittering fair hair.

  Yolsippa emerged. He bowed ridiculously to Simmu and to Zhirek.

  Zhirek arose. He had perceived the face of Simmu also betrayed no sign of knowledge. Simmu gazed at Zhirek blankly.

  “Does he feign, or has he forgotten? Where did the girl hide herself, who hung on me by the lake of salt? Simmu the maiden . . . Shell.” Then he noticed that Simmu frowned, almost foolishly, as if recollection had been jolted.

  Now will he insult me further, Zhirek wondered, by pretense that he can just now call me to mind?

  But Simmu did not speak. It was Yolsippa who blared out in his showman’s yap:

  “Zhirek, who claims himself a magician, of which I have seen evidence, presents himself as suppliant to Simmurad’s lord.”

  How often had this scene, or its sisters, been enacted? As many times as Simmu had subjects in his kingdom. If any retained an interest in the ritual, it was not obvious. But they congregated in the hall to vet those who came begging for Immortality, as if the affair were important.

  Simmu spoke then. Still frowning slightly, he spoke to Zhirek:

  “You are a magician? We have magicians and to spare.”

  “Rejoice, then,” Zhirek said. He found he could not quite bring himself to use the name “Simmu”—the name he had first learned from Simmu’s female voice beside the lake of salt. “I do not mean to add myself to your folk. This loudmouth mistakes my purpose.”

  Simmu’s court murmured, more interested than before.

  “What, then, is your purpose?” Simmu asked.

  “To see this township which mortal men refer to as the City of Living Dead.”

  The murmur swelled, extinguished itself.

  “Your jest—” Simmu began.

  “No jest, to live forever, your lives worthless, spent in goalless atrophy. The rat in the cage, running from one corner to another and back again, lives better.”

  Simmu had whitened, pallor under pallor.

  “Now you mistake us, magician. We bide our time before our plans are put into force—and we have the time to bide.”

  One of the men, Simmu’s courtier, cried: “Let this gentleman demonstrate his sorcery. I, for one, think him a simpleton.”

  Zhirek glanced at the man.

  “You should be careful of me,” he said, “for whatever I might choose to do to you, you must live with till time’s ending.”

  “Beware of me,” the other retorted. “I, too, am a magician.” And he pointed at Zhirek and the pointing finger shot forth a tongue of fire. Zhirek ignored the fire which could not hurt him. He stood in the midst of it, and said: “Fire is a dangerous toy for you to play with.” At once, the flames went out. Simmu’s court whispered. The cunning surgeon who had gained his eternity in Simmurad on his physician’s merit, stepped forward.

  “You must not think, sir,” he said, “that because we are vulnerable we can be destroyed. True, fire would disfigure, but it would not burn us quite away. I have made a silver foot for a lady who was burned—it masks her own damaged flesh, but she has no discomfort with it. Indeed, I will go further, since I convict you of attempts to undermine our fortitude. I have made a medical study of the phenomenon of Immortality. I will tell you this; even should you cut out the heart of a man in Simmurad, you could not kill him. He would be as if sleeping, and I should come at once and construct for him a heart of silver. This would proceed on a clockwork principle—for I have procured many occult skills from commerce with the dwarfs of the Underearth. And my clever silver heart would work as well for the man whose fleshly heart you had despoiled as his own, and better. Another item—I have actually removed and repaired a damaged eye, and re-attached it in the head of a man, where it immediately commenced its work as if no trouble had befallen it.”

  “And now inform me,” said Zhirek, “how many children have been born in Simmurad.”

  The surgeon folded his hands.

  “I have observed that procreation and birth are spontaneous extensions of the fear of death. A warrior, on the night prior to battle, may quicken the wombs of several women. In a famine usually many children will be born. Thus, having in Simmurad no terror of death, we are less responsive to the sensual urge, and perhaps, infertile. It is not necessarily a misfortune, since it leaves us the more space for other pursuits.”

  “The pursuit of what?” Zhirek inquired.

  This time, Simmu answered.

  “I have a modest plan to subdue the earth, choosing therefrom those of high value, and conferring on them Immortality.”

  “A scheme to intrigue your master, Azhrarn,” said Zhirek, “war and savagery everywhere. But after the conquest, what? A sedentary world of clockwork immortals. I do not think he will favor that, your black jackal of Druhim Vanashta.”

  Simmu reddened, a curiously bloodless rush of blood to his face, the flush of the wax figure. But he came to Zhirek, raising his hand to strike the magician. Zhirek reached and caught his hand, and at the contact, both checked.

  “I am invulnerable. Do not strike out at me, you will wound yourself,” Zhirek said.

  Simmu seemed bewildered. His eyes searched the countenance of Zhirek, seeking a clue to the sensation which had flooded him. But memory lay trapped under a slab of demon-sorcery, circumstance, and the years themselves. Nevertheless, the touch of Zhirek’s fingers about his wrist was like a blow in itself, and a mortal one.

  “Who are you?” Simmu said.

  “You have my name.”

  “We have spoken previously. I do not remember the occasion.”

  Zhirek let go of Simmu. He recalled ironically the unvocal Eshva communicating of Shell. The magic of Simmu, vividly perceptible and attractive to all who met him for the first time in Simmurad, was wasted on Zhirek, who had been ensnared by the positive, un-human, total magic of Simmu’s childhood and youth.

  The court stirred uneasily. The girl with the fair hair stared at Simmu and at Zhirek with eyes that seemed to have changed color.

  “No matter,” Simmu said. “You do not understand us, Zhirek. Come, I will show you the treasures of this city. I will explain to you my plans so you may properly comprehend my ambition.”

  • • •

  Simmu led Zhirek through the palace. Simmu, as if deliberately to contrast himself to what he had been, debated at length with all Zhirek had said. Sometimes, at the turn of a stairway or hesitating to indicate some ornament of metal or stone, sunlight or shadow lending originality, Simmu revealed himself as Shell. These visions, which came seldom enough, wrenched at Zhirek but, perched above his own tumult, aloof from it, Zhirek lost none of his equilibrium. Simmu, however, grew progressively more feverish and at a loss. He had dismissed his courtiers, Yolsippa, the staring girl who was his wife. His hands shook as he opened the doors of Simmurad. He began to take on the look of a beast in a snare.

  They entered eventually a lofty chamber, whose whole central expanse was put to the use of a marble platform, and on the platform, a vast war-game of the sort an emperor might play with. The huge board counterfeited the earth, seas of blue glass scales, land masses cut from the polished wood of many trees, with mountains upraised and here and there pasted with crystal snows. Cities were modeled on the board top, miniature but marvelous, while ships the size of beetles sailed the glass oceans. And there were armies, the toy figures constructed from ivory and exquisitely painted, t
heir swords splinters of steel, and their machinery of war running on minuscule oiled wheels. It was a bellicose toy, but a toy nevertheless.

  “I have learned a lot in this room,” Simmu said. “My library is well stocked with all manner of books—I read of conflict and here I practice it. When the army of Simmurad is formed, no legion of the earth shall be able to withstand it, so finely drilled and so excellently equipped it will be.”

  But, having said this, his face closed on itself.

  Simmu leaned upon the board, scattering the ivory armies where his hands descended.

  “But I have this stumbling block to overcome, Zhirek. I must fight this war, for as a hero I am bound to it—yet no one must be slain, for I would gift no one to Lord Death. How is it possible?”

  Zhirek did not reply. He stood at Simmu’s back, and the impulse stole over the magician to lay his hand upon the fiery hair of Simmu, to comfort, or to be comforted. Zhirek did not obey the impulse.

  “Death,” Simmu said then, further scattering the toy armies with deft malicious battings of his hand. “Death came to Simmurad. I confronted him—or did I dream it only, as I have dreamed it all, my life, the demons—No,” he smiled, half turning, so Zhirek saw the green gem he had lifted from within the neck of his robe and twisted between his fingers. “No, each wonder is real. Yet, if Death were enraged against me, why does he not return? I offered myself to oppose him, but his retaliation was slight and childish. Surely by now he should have found some breach through which he might enter.”

  “He has,” Zhirek said.

  Then, for an instant—but completely—Simmu came alive. Only with his eyes did he ask the question, and waited, as a leopard waits to spring, to hear it answered.

  “Yes,” Zhirek affirmed, “I am the emissary of Lord Death.”

  Simmu laughed; Zhirek was familiar with the laugh, not from the lips of Simmu, but from his own, the insane peremptory noise that had its basis in disgust or confusion but never in mirth.