by Tanith Lee
“And pray do not instruct me,” snapped Kassafeh. “You are too stupid to effect our retreat, and I have been trained to nothing useful and cannot do it either.” Kassafeh stood by the door of the gate-house on the topmost stair, the water two or three steps below, and the indifferent sky of pitilessly watching stars and moon above. “Neither will you send me any help,” she accused them.
And then she saw a pale-winged gull which was cruising between her and the stars.
The upheaval of this sea upon some distant shore had roused the gull. In an unnatural world of tidal rising and displacement, it too felt moved to unnaturalness and flew by night. That iridescent fish leaped in the sea had also attracted it, and perhaps too, the aura of oceanic sorcery. Now it felt a new force lure it.
Kassafeh stared at the gull, and by the Eshva charm Simmu had taught her, she drew the gull down to her. But having grasped its thickly feathered sides, she gazed at its wicked profile, and wondered—what now? Her speechless entreaty penetrated its skull, but where might she send it for aid, and who would understand a message of raucous beak and wings? The gull, regaining mastery of itself as Kassafeh faltered, slashed at her hand and shot upward into the air. But her cry for rescue was blazoned on it as if in luminous dye, for any psychic or unearthly enough to read it.
Kassafeh did not know her heritage, the sky-being’s kiss which had begun her in her mother’s body. Neither did the angry gull know anything of it as it flung itself aloft. While for the wandering elementals of Lower Upperearth, mankind was a species of movable clay, which very rarely, and generally by accident, became interesting.
Certain of these sky persons were bathing in moonlight pools on some plain of the ether invisible to men, when the gull burst through the midst of them. Now on its sides they immediately noted, with dim, drowsy surprise, Kassafeh’s plea most plainly marked. And though, with pale golden sighs, they might have dismissed it, a drop of blood from the ferocious beak of the gull fell on the transparent skin of a bather. He—for while sexless, they somehow yet resembled the male rather than the female—regarded the drop and said: “This vital fluid is that of one immortal. Besides, though crimson rather than violet, the ichor of our kind is mingled in it.”
Then they were intrigued and, sinking in a spangled drift downward, soon viewed the upheaval of a sea, and Kassafeh up to her knees now in the water, cursing the sky, while Yolsippa, in his turn, reprimanded the masters of Upperearth.
The elementals slipped closer. They leaned out from their blowing cloaks.
“Do not blaspheme,” they admonished with limpid rancor, for they had always been sweet on the gods.
“Then save us!” Kassafeh cried, seizing a pair of fragile feet, demented and uncaring as to their race or nature.
The elementals saw her bloody fingers and her extreme beauty, and recognized her as a poor relation of themselves.
“Possibly we will save you,” they said, caressing her long hair vaguely. “But we have no inclination to deal with the other.”
The “other,” Yolsippa, bowed low into the water.
“Even now coral forms about my knees,” he said. “I am resigned to living death. I would simply presume to inform you that this maiden greatly relies on me, and would suffer at our parting.”
And when Yolsippa said this, Kassafeh remembered all at once how she had parted from Simmu, and suddenly her slow tears flowed as fast as if she had become the sea itself, and so she realized she had wept for Simmu all this while without owning it.
“You notice,” said Yolsippa modestly, “how the maiden is distressed at the mere mention of leaving me.”
Two of the elementals dipped abruptly and lifted Kassafeh by the waist. Despite her banquets of sweetmeats, she was slim and light to carry, almost as if her bones had been hollow as those of her ethereal kinfolk. She rose in their delicate grip, and with their free hands, they brushed the drops from her cheeks.
“Do not weep. Your gross and revolting companion shall be saved.”
But she thought of Simmu in the thrall of Uhlume, and did not cease weeping as they bore her away.
The water had encircled Yolsippa’s large chest and fish were nibbling at him, and coral, obedient to Zhirek’s summons, crusted, as Yolsippa had reported, on his feet and calves, a painful process.
The elementals flitted about his head, disdaining to touch him till the last moment. When the sea filled his complaining mouth, they dragged him up by portions of his clothing, hair and beard. They were far stronger than they appeared, though some ten or twelve of them were essential to his elevation. Thus, upside down, silly with shock and alarm, and alternately blessing and reviling them, Yolsippa also was conducted from Simmurad.
In this manner, Kassafeh and Yolsippa evaded the fate of the city. But whether they evaded Uhlume is another matter.
• • •
How Zhirek left Simmurad is unknown. Whether by way of air or sea, his pace was swift, and Simmu was borne with him. And Simmu, rigid in the mesmeric trance, was yet capable of sight, so that the final vision his unblinking eyes received of Simmurad was that of shining towers beneath no less shining water. If he was perversely glad or sorry, or if he had emotion to spare at all for the drowning of that place, is hard to say.
Dawn came, at their backs, and the conveyance Zhirek had used was grounded in a valley, far westwards of the flooded city. No trace of water was here in any sort. It was a bowl of rock, gilded by the sun, rouged by shadow and voiced by winds, and nothing but sun and shadow or the wind had ever entered it till then.
Zhirek touched the forehead of Simmu with a ring of electrum, and his lips with another of green stone.
Simmu’s paralysis dissolved. He shut his eyes against the light.
Quietly, Zhirek said: “Because you have survived your court, you must not anticipate compassion from me. I mean to destroy you, and am bound to it. You have heard my words on the subject. Nothing is altered, or will ever be.”
Simmu’s face was white and his gestures enervated.
“If you mean to learn if I fear you,” he said, “I do. Yet, coupled with the fear is this sense of familiarity in your company. Since you are my destiny, perhaps it is only that. How will you destroy me?”
“You will discover shortly.”
“So I shall. But in Simmurad you claimed me for a debt I owed you.”
“To remind you of it serves no purpose. Rest assured, you will pay it.”
“I might escape you.”
“Never.”
Zhirek left Simmu in the shade of the rock and went away about a hundred paces.
Simmu lay where he was, obedient through weakness and bewilderment, his instincts of self-preservation long gone. He looked at Zhirek, about whom a smoke quickly clouded up. Some enchantment was in progress. Zhirek kept no watch on his captive, yet Simmu judged an invisible tether of some kind kept him bound, or would do if he attempted flight.
The sun became a golden furnace above the valley. It wore Simmu into a sick and feverish doze.
He dreamed he sat on a hillside, playing a pipe made from a reed. The sweet thin notes of it brought all types of animals to his feet, but eventually a young man came, a young priest clad in a yellow robe, barefoot and dark of hair. It was Zhirem, recalled in the dream as he would be forgotten on waking. He seated himself beside Simmu on the hill, and, in the dream, Simmu found himself instantly and painlessly metamorphosed into a woman.
The physical body of the Simmu who dreamed this dream did not, however, change, or even attempt the change. Suddenly, there was no ability left in him to effect it. He had finally been deserted by that one bizarre sorcery of his own flesh, which, at this hour, might have proved his salvation. Perhaps Zhirek’s mood itself had robbed Simmu, perhaps his returning anguish at Death. Whatever the thief, it had burgled him totally.
Sleeping, half-smiling at an unremembered love,
Simmu did not know his loss.
Part Five
Burning
1
IT WAS A GARDEN of sorts. High stone walls showed nothing but the sky, which was darkened with starless black. Fine green sand lay underfoot and four brass lamps were lit at the garden’s four corners, exaggerating the trees of black wood with orange fruit and the shrubs which gave off a strange scent, and highlighting too a well of stone in the garden’s center, but fire rather than water seemed to glow deep down in it.
Beneath one of the lamps was seated a woman. Her face was not beautiful, but it was young and smooth, and it had a pair of eyes amazingly lustrous and flawless teeth whiter than salt, while her head was crowned by long brown hair, which might have been a glory to her, had it not been matted and tangled with metal rings and pieces of bone. However, there were other oddities about this woman, for her hands were extremely thin and wrinkled and the shade of tanned leather, and her feet likewise, where they poked out from her garment that was made of filthy pelts. Moreover, she was milking the venom from a golden snake that lay upon her lap, and as the jar filled up, she cackled to herself, and her voice was that of a crone.
There was no apparent occurrence in the garden or in the black beyond, but suddenly the witch-woman raised her head and shot a glance about her.
“Who is at my door?” rasped she in her crone’s voice.
“One who has used it in the past,” came the answer out of the air. After which a smoky cloud appeared against the sand, unfurled and took the form of a man. He was dark of robe and hair, his arms were crossed on his breast which glinted with gold, and he watched her with the coldest eyes that this witch had ever met.
But: “Well, well,” said she, staunchly sharp, “you must be the father of magicians to force an entrance to my garden, for there are such safeguards on the place no other has ever come in before, unless with my connivance. Yes, you must be wiser than the night is black, and your powers extraordinary.”
“I do not deny it,” said Zhirek the magician.
“What then does the mighty one desire of me?”
“To test the strength of the well, a second time.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the witch, “now I remember a child of four or five years, shadow-haired and beautiful, and his eyes like cool water—which now resemble two splinters of ice from the winter of the world.”
“I, too, remember,” Zhirek said. “It was told me once, and has come back to me in some detail.”
“Now,” said the witch, “do not blame me for your discontent. I warned your mother when she entreated me to render you invulnerable, but she would have it so.”
“And sold you her white teeth in payment,” said Zhirek.
“Such things are always my fee. I have gained several advantages through the years—this hair from the head of a prince, no less, and the skin of one fair maiden and the features of another not so fair, but she was young. And if you were of a more friendly disposition, I could reveal to you a hidden item I have purchased from one who had renounced love, though she was well fashioned for it. That is how I keep myself immortal, by my patchwork dealings, and I pay no forfeit to the gods’ law of balance. Though you are very wise, my lord, concerning that balance, maybe in that I am the wiser.”
“You are a hag,” he answered, but without vehemence. “Is the fire still hot in the well?”
“While the earth is flat, that fire will burn. It is an old fire, but enduring. Do you remember all of it? That only a child may survive these flames and be proofed by them, for they feed on wickedness and knowledge. Is there such an infant you would bathe therein?”
“First I would learn this,” he said. “If one, already made invulnerable by the fire, were to throw himself again into the well, what then?”
“Ah,” repeated the witch savoringly. Her face grew sly. “That is your theme, is it? The reply is swiftly given. Leap into the fire and you will return unscathed. Indeed, it will vomit you up in a moment without a hair singed. Even such destruction cannot harm you, who were once laved in it. Your span is armored on you, honored magician; you cannot slip the fetters.” And she grinned a hag’s grin with his own dead mother’s teeth.
The face of Zhirek showed nothing.
“As I thought,” he said. “And how many others have you lowered into hell this way?”
“Enough,” she said, “but never one who came back to berate me. I will add that, if you are considering my murder, you may save your energy. The fire conveys various protections on those who are its guardians.”
“Then you are invulnerable too?”
“Through my guardianship, I am. There are rules to survival, so as not to tip the scales of life and death, good and ill. I have the trick of it.”
Zhirek turned from her. With his hands he made a sign of power and spoke words that had no sound. Another figure began to harden out of the air. The witch stared with her wide girl’s stare. Presently, she saw a young man standing in the garden. He was slender and handsome, with curious hair, and eyes the green of the strange gem about his neck. He wore the robe of a king, but his face was colorless and his expression was of hopeless fear. He made no move, nor did he speak or fasten his attention either on Zhirek or the witch.
“Now mark me carefully,” said the witch, “if this is he you would set within the fire, it will consume him utterly.”
“That is conceivable,” Zhirek said. “Yet maybe the fire cannot quite consume him, for he has partaken of a certain drink that makes men live forever.”
The witch took a step back.
“You shall not do it,” she said.
“I will do it,” Zhirek said, “and in doing it, I will put a stop to this particular trade of yours. Till the end of time Simmu shall lie screaming in the Fire of Invulnerability, forever burning, but never quite burned away. And none will dare the fire then, old woman, not even at your urging.”
“You must detest this gentleman very much,” said the witch. “What vile crime did he commit against you to inspire such hate?”
“Not hatred,” said Zhirek. “It is love. That is my predestination, to work kindness out of hate, evil out of love.” Then Zhirek went to Simmu and kissed his forehead, but Simmu did not move, or speak, or fix his eyes on anything. “You are the only wound I am able to give myself,” Zhirek said to Simmu. “Your terror and your agony will dwell with me through all the years which are to come. I shall run from this spot. I will seal my ears against the memory of your cries, I will writhe and sweat in horror at what I have done to you. So I shall live.”
Having spoken, Zhirek laid his arm over the shoulders of Simmu, and gently guided him forward.
“Again I say—” began the witch.
“And again I say,” Zhirek forestalled her, “that I will do this thing. Consider my powers. Respect them and be silent.”
At that the witch crouched down in a corner of the garden. She doused the lamp there, and wound the gold snake about her waist. And she put her two hands over her mouth to remind herself she must not challenge Zhirek again, for she knew how terrible he was, as one who has often seen a certain house recognizes its shape even by night.
They reached the edge of the well, Zhirek and Simmu.
Far below its stony lip, a vast swell of light was coming and going. Here the child Zhirem had fallen, held only by the cord tied into his hair. Deep in the unimaginable holocaust he had swung, till all jeopardy and all delight were scalded from him.
Simmu turned then at last, and he looked into the eyes of Zhirek. Simmu had renounced or mislaid, once more, the faculty of human speech. Nor, despite his terrified face, did his eyes question or plead or even deny what was about to happen. The eyes of Zhirek were equally unequivocal. It was their last communion together, and something actually seemed to pass between them, but it had no name, nor could they have named it.
To the crouching witch,
they were a symbol, dark and light, the candle and the shadow, two aspects of one whole. Through her clamping palms she muttered her own magic to shield her from the sight of their baleful disintegration.
Zhirek now indicated that Simmu must step on to the well’s lip and Simmu obeyed him. The glow deep in the well flared, as if primed. The well was not so high as Zhirek had thought—he had been, of course, a small child when he saw it formerly.
“Simmu,” said Zhirek, “if ever you gain means, punish me for this and take your revenge on me.”
Simmu shivered, and swayed above the fire as though he would cast himself into it.
At that, Zhirek struck him from behind.
The blow toppled Simmu instantly from the lip. He vanished into the well.
The flame-glare dazzled. The whole garden was caught in a single tremendous brilliance, which then sank away. But there was no outcry from within.
“What is this?” Zhirek said as he stood by the well. “I recall my own voice howling in that pit, yet no voice comes from it now.”
The witch ungagged her mouth.
“The fire has already incapacitated both tongue and throat,” she said. “He would scream if he could. You must not expect too much.”
Zhirek said to her: “I cannot be assured of his eternal pain.”
“Then glance into the well, if you must, and see.”
Zhirek leaned forward and did as she suggested. Minutes dragged by as he prolonged the vigil. But when eventually he straightened and came about, written on his countenance and in his eyes was the picture the well had given him.
As he had predicted, he fled the spot, though wrapped in the magician’s cloud which had borne him there.
The witch, beneath her unlit lamp, clawed runes in the green sand for her own reassurance. Fear and madness still hovered simpering and whispering in the starless sky. The fruit of the trees gave off a bitter smell.
• • •
There was a desert place, where even the powders and the dusts had ground away to nothing. This was the site Zhirek chose for himself, his exile.
