Night's Sorceries

by Tanith Lee

  The demon Vazdru were susceptible to flattery. This one, no exception, smiled and said, “Your foolish mortal good-sense has spared you many torments tonight, Kolchash the Unmagician. But I must warn you. The Prince of princes, Azhrarn the Beautiful, is due to call upon this wood in anger. There must be no marriages, there must be no tender human lovers. Or, if you wish, it is my whim so to interpret the great quarrel between my lord and one or two others.”

  “It is no use to go against the demon princes,” said Kolchash.

  “None whatsoever. Be resigned then.”

  And at these words Kolchash lay down upon the floor. No sooner had he done so, than the tent and everything in it flashed out, and a whirlwind descended on the wood. Kolchash held fast to the earth, though the wind tried to prize him from it. Things fell about his ears—branches, stones, lamp-poles and saddles—and the air was full of neighing and outcry.

  When the upheaval ceased, Kolchash found himself bivouacked in the glade with only two of his guard. These were somewhat bemused, saying they had seen men and horses carried away right over the tallest trees and heard them roaring after, but not been able to find them. And of those who had remained and gone seeking, not one had returned.

  So the three spent the rest of the night on the ground. And in the morning, Kolchash had permitted the two guards to make a search of the surrounding woods, but always scratching a mark upon the trees as they went, in order to find the way back.

  At noon one man returned, saying he had heard others calling and vigorously swearing in the wood, but had not been able to come to them nor they to him. The forest was perhaps sorcerous, or only very tangled.

  The second man returned at sunset, and he had stranger news.

  “My Lord Kolchash, you may not believe my story, but I vow to you that, about midday, coming on a break in the trees, I looked down and saw a company riding by below. And these seemed your men, about half who rode out with us, indeed fellows that I have known three years and more. And in the midst were the carts with the bridal gifts, and the litter for the bride. And no one led this procession, but on it went as if spelled. And when I shouted, not one man looked or answered. And it seemed to me, though it was daylight, that they moved yet in the night.”

  “Since when,” said Kolchash, “we have kept meekly here in the forest, in order not to annoy the demons. My men built for me this shelter and here, the second night, I had a dream which I think to have been a true one, sent me by the Vazdru prince, either in scorn or irony. For I beheld the procession of my men in a town, and a marriage was going on there. And a veiled girl was wedded to a thing which was exactly the replica of myself when I am dressed in my worst. Now I am a scholar, and I have read how the lower demons of the Underearth can make marvelous clockwork dolls, real as life, and these lower caste demons (who are called the Drin) are even able to work the metal gold, which the higher castes abhor. So now I suppose a demon-doll of a Kolchash has wedded the fair girl betrothed to me. And the gods alone know what has become of her. Or will become of that half of my retainers, doubtless scattered again once the mischief was done. Or, for that, what will become of me—for though I did not properly comprehend the ghost’s plan, obviously I must have failed in my part of it, and she will credit none of this. I shall be held responsible and haunted and howled at till my dying hour.”

  Then Yezade lowered her eyes.

  “My lord,” said she, “I will inform you now of what befell your rightful and proper bride.”

  5. The Third Night

  The sky powdered her cheeks with rouge, and the forest was mantled in crimson. Then the face of the sky altered, became that of a beautiful black damsel having no wish for rouge, but only for a net of stars and a piece of silver moon to hang on her forehead. And the forest mantled in sable, whispering with waters and the lyres of the grasshopper, and with the turning pages of leaves, and the unheard footsteps of unseen things.

  And Dhur, following his sylph from her pool, walked as silently as he could, but in the blackness, lost her. And so he paused, scenting wild honey on the forest’s sweet breath—and in that moment another met him, there in the dark.

  Perhaps it was his coming to a belief in supernatural beings which made Dhur instantly conscious that here was another such. Or possibly the aura of this other brooked no denial.

  Dhur had not seen the marvel of the Vazdru, save in sleep; this was revealed to his open eyes. He was kin to the princes of the dream, this night-born walker, himself less than such a prince, but so much more than any mortal.

  So Dhur stood in silence.

  And as he did this, or rather did nothing, the Eshva looked back at him, smiling a fraction as at some secret jest. And the night-black eyes of the Eshva—member of that separately shining sect of dream-burned, wandering children of shade—he read Dhur like some book whose irrelevant meaning can be grasped in one slow heartbeat. All of it, the Eshva saw, the human life of sunlit trivia and—worse—trivia moonlit. The lust of a human man for a beautiful girl he had taken for a sprite—the girl who was in fact this demon’s lover. And one other thing the Eshva saw, for to his gaze it showed quite plainly. There on the human’s forehead, the invisible kiss of the Vazdru, flaming like a silver rose. And for this the Eshva smiled, in a sensuous jealousy, a surreal contempt, in the prologue to a satin-soft caress of retribution. . . . Only a minute before, the Eshva had come upon the riding-ass, which had lain down at the Eshva’s feet. And the Eshva had garlanded the ass with ivy. Now the Eshva read upon the brain of Dhur that memory of an unmeant wish: Grant me the ability to change places with the brute. Then I should feel those hands about my neck, those lips—

  From your own heart, said the Eshva though he did not speak the words, this I will give you.

  Dhur flinched away, feeling a curious cold and heat about his head. It was a reflex of his frame, since his mind had not at all caught up with instinct. Nor was it of any use.

  The Eshva laughed sharply and with cruel delight— and with his eyes alone—and then he gleamed like one of the turning leaves and went out, was gone.

  Dhur, in a sudden onset of outrage, called abruptly into the darkness after him. And from the jaws of Dhur there came a sound that he had heard before, but never from his own lips.

  Eeh-orrh! brayed Dhur, so the forest rang at it.

  EEEH-orrrh!

  • • •

  Never had Marsineh, who had forgotten that she was Marsineh, been as happy. Her happiness transcended all comfort, and all pleasure. It could not last, for human flesh was not made, then or now, to endure such transports ceaselessly. Only the soul could compass them, and then, differently. And dimly, somewhere within herself, this Marsineh knew quite well. She had already condoned the end of joy. It seemed she trusted her demon paramour to free her from its bitterness. Somewhere in the dance of love, speechless, he must have promised her forgetfulness also of this.

  But for that night, her third in the forest, her second in the forest of desire’s fulfillment, ecstasy was her familiar.

  The demons had invented love. There needs to be said no more.

  An hour before the dawn, or maybe in a space of time that was timeless, the Eshva lover of Marsineh murmured, in a language of gesture, hair and eyes, and perhaps of thought, that some great argument had now been resolved elsewhere in the wood. Lovers had been parted at the decree of the lord the Eshva served and worshipped. Now he and she, too, would part. Marsineh wept, and the Eshva wept in the peerless, depthless, heartless lamenting of his kind.

  Then he drew her up from her despair, out of the well of it, so she walked as lightly as did he. And there before them were two crouching, simpering creatures, dwarfs, whose ugliness was so unbelievable Marsineh scarcely saw it. And these presented her, at the instruction of the Eshva, with a robe.

  The dwarfs were Drin metalsmiths and artificers of the Underearth, and along with the capability to make
dolls, they could make almost anything that was surpassingly beautiful. Apparel they laid before the girl which had been spider-spun by many thousands of those furry spinsters, lemans of the Drin. And being what they were, and the denizens of that country under the earth, the fabric of the costume was a film of silver, like Stardust, and in it had been trapped a quantity of jewels—the somber jades and yellow and green jaspers found on the shores of an underground lake, the aquamarine pearls and peacock opals fished from the waters of the world’s seas. And over all of it the Drin had laid magic that the sun of day should not wither the work, and because of this, here and there, a thread of reddest gold winked in the fabric, from which the Eshva turned his eyes, though it was his parting gift of love to her.

  Next he drove the Drin away; they were ogling Marsineh. Then he embraced her and bade her put on the garment. Still in her trance she obeyed him, and clasped her narrow waist with its belt of aqueous gems. She was dazzled then by her own light. And he a little repulsed by it, the gold in it.

  Lie down again, he said, lie down on the velvet moss among the roses. She did so, in her finery looking like a maiden flung from the stars. Close your eyes, he said. No longer gaze at me. She did this, too, and the tears spilled on her cheeks. And then he leaned to her, and with some balm or flower of the Underworld, purple in color, he brushed her brow and her eyelids. And at this she fell asleep, and sleeping, his image left her as he must have promised her it would. There she lay upon her bank of vines and eglantine, lovely as loveliness, but no demon lover near her any more.

  Close by, two others wandered in the wood, one peacefully grazing and a little out of sorts with a new incompetence it discovered in itself in the matter of eating grass, and one clutching at itself in terror and sometimes hoarsely upbraiding heaven in a voice it did not like to call its own.

  As the night’s last smokes were stealing between the trees, a tawny lynx came down the byways of the forest, looking for an early breakfast and believing that he smelled it.

  There before him, a domestic ass was busy with the grass.

  What luck! thought the lynx, in the lynx tongue. And he began to circle round the ass, to freeze it with his olivine eyes.

  But as the lynx came round the ass, snarling and purring to himself, the ass turned its head. And it was the lynx that froze, flat to the earth, and his tufted ears flat to his skull, and his whiskers stuck out stiff as the quills of a porcupine, and his tail going swish-swash in the fern.

  For staring inanely at the lynx from the ass’s forequarters was the head and face of a handsome young man, with a mouthful of grazing. And though clearly enough the brain within the head had stayed that of a riding-ass, the face was yet that of one who had no fear of lynxes, who indeed had hunted them. And thus, while the mouth chewed inaccurately at the grass, and the fine eyes had a look in them of surprise that chewing grass should be so difficult, there was something all told to the mien which cried to the lynx Arrow-flight! Spear-flight! Run for your lair or I will wear you on my shoulders!

  And so the lynx bethought himself of an urgent matter he had left undone at home, and with a yowl he turned tail and ran off full pelt to attend to it.

  6. The Wisdom of the Ass

  A hunt tore through the morning woods in the sun’s first rays. A band of young men, well-dressed and with equipment of the nicest, shouting and hallooing, and whistling, and calling over and over one name.

  “Dhur! Dhur!”

  “Where can he be? By the gods, we should never have let him linger at sunset alone. I thought it was some girl he meant to meet among the trees, some peasant. Or that he had a fancy for that messenger youth.”

  “But the weird stories of this forest must be coming true—for our friend has hunted and adventured here since boyhood. How can Dhur be lost?”

  “His father will rave.”

  “His mother will perish of dismay.”

  “We shall get the blame.”

  “Dhur! Dhur! Dhur!”

  And the hunt careered away, not thinking, as how should it, that the quarry just then was concealing himself inside a hollow tree, his strong long limbs drawn in, and his face, that for sure, buried in his arms and all the darkness there was left.

  • • •

  As the day opened out her fan, and only the birds dashed through the forest’s upper boughs with the green and scarlet clash of wings, and the sloths hung asleep there like brown fur bags, Dhur came from his hiding place. Beside the path, the dainty tree-rats sat up and gazed at him as he went by; the deer started for the coverts. Wild bees, anxious about a clog of honey high above, came down to stare at Dhur and spin away.

  He saw none of them, and nothing. He saw only black horror, which clung about his eyes and mind and heart.

  To say he knew what had been done to him is simple. He knew—he could not know. It was impossible, therefore it was not. And yet—it was. So he must fly, he must hide, he must blunder on. And his thoughts were of death, there in the brain of the man behind the head of the beast. And his thoughts came in words, too, though when he tried to bring them out, that terrible sound spasmed forth instead. Then he knew himself mad and reckoned himself dead, and he would run and throw himself on the earth, trying to entreat he knew not what to save him—from himself.

  In all his life his problems had been few and slender. He was not armed to deal with this enormity. The sun had smiled on him and now there was only winter and he naked in the storm of it. Reason, that traitor, was every moment on the point of deserting him.

  Somewhere amid the forest tracks he came, in due course, on a woman’s veil. It was rent and muddied, yet still thick with beads—it was the bridal veil which Yezade had inadvertently snatched away with her in her escape of the first night—then heedlessly dropped. Now Dhur took up the veil and wound his nightmare’s mask in it, so it should not be seen even by the birds and squirrels, sloths and bees. His eyes, set sideways now, confused them with their views. He did not care that the swathing veil clouded his vision further.

  So he stumbled on, a sight that was as fearful and fantastic as before, yet occluded a little.

  And as all the travelers in that place, going in a circle, he came to a glade that had in it the dais of a bank, rich with moss and starred with flowers. And he smelled the wild honey, as before, that the Eshva had stolen from the bees, and the agate grapes and the roses.

  There on the bank reclined a maiden whose amber hair was crowned by vines, and who was dressed as an empress, and eating a honeycomb. A noise broke from Dhur’s alien jaws before he could prevent it.

  Startled, the maiden raised her eyes. She saw—him.

  And even as he turned himself to flounder away, she stayed him with a glad cry: “Dhur! My lord!”

  Then he could only stand like a stone thing and gawp at her. She was the sylph of his yesterday’s day-dream. More, she was a girl of his town. Of his father’s neighbor’s house. Her name was Marsineh; had she not been wedded to some other? Dhur panted with bewilderment—the ass’s muzzle let out a sawing neigh. Dhur forgot all details and questions. He merely stood confronting beauty and wished he had put an end to himself an hour before.

  But Marsineh shone for his gloom.

  She had wakened remembering nothing, yet with a sense of well-being and delight. And finding herself garbed in silver tissue and jewels had laughed aloud, but not become unnerved, or even dubious. She had learned many lessons, though perhaps the greatest—or least—had been removed from her memory. . . . So she only twined herself a fresh garland, pondering the enchanting dreams she had had and could not recall, and ate the honeycomb and the grapes laid beside her. And then, looking up, saw her true love, Dhur, that she did still know she had followed into the forest in order to avoid wedding another man. She recognized Dhur by his garments, though he was disheveled, by his athletic grace of build—if not presently of movement. By his hands and the rings on them
. Her response to the swathing of his face and head was at once sympathetic and intuitive. She had lived awhile with unhuman values. It was not in her any more to say: Why are you swathed? Or to say: What is the matter? But she felt a stab of pity, realizing some dreadful thing had befallen him. And, having been returned into her love of him, she loved him more for his trouble and the way he lurked there before her, graceless and brutish.

  “Dear lord,” said Marsineh, “are you hungry? Are you thirsty? This honeycomb is of the best, and the grapes are like wine.”

  But as she approached him, Dhur pushed himself away. Only his impaired vision prevented his immediate flight.

  Next instant her fingers were on his sleeve.

  “Do not shun me,” she said, and looked up into one of his veiled sideways eyes. “I will help you, if you permit. But if not, let me stay beside you. For I am lost in this forest—” Here she laughed again, prettily, for to be lost was no more a worry to her, “and you must protect me.”

  Then Dhur let out a ghastly bray of anguish. It said: How can I protect you? I have been destroyed. I am only a husk. Let me go away and die somewhere, for I am mostly dead already of terror and shame.

  And this Marsineh seemed to decipher. But she only took his hand, and led him to the bank of flowers and moss, and he had not the will or heart to resist.

  They sat down together, and Dhur hung the head that was no longer his own.

  “If you are hungry and desire to eat the fruit and honey,” said Marsineh then, “and if you do not wish me to see you eat them, I will go off a little way. And you shall call to me, when I may return.”

  Dhur groaned in agony. It sounded raucous, humorous, in translation.

  “My lord,” said Marsineh, “I love you dearly, and if it is not modest to tell you so, then you must forgive me. Whatever misfortune has come to you, loving you as I do, I can willingly and eagerly share.”