by Tanith Lee
Then the great anger of one who suffers and can only suffer alone, despite all anyone might do for him, burst in Dhur. And he thrust up his hands and ripped and wrenched the veil and shredded it, until it dropped down in bits upon the carpet of the ferns. And there: Her lover’s face.
Marsineh gazed at him. She took both his hands and gazed at him still. She said, “It is a terrible burden for you to bear. But believe me, you are visible to me, within the eyes of this poor beast, and I know you are still my own beloved lord, you are Dhur, behind the mask of the ass. And for your sake I love them, too, this long mouth and these round eyes and tall ears. And that voice, though it is not yours, I love that also, for your sake.” And she took the garland from her hair and set it on his head and kissed him, the ass forehead and its hairy cheeks. And Dhur would have said to her, “You are the best of women, and I have been blind and stupid for mislaying you, and it is fitting this blind stupid ass’s head that now I must wear. If I had ever been wise, I would have valued you from the first. If I were a man again, I would love you.” But the ass said to her only eeh-orrh! And then tears rolled from its eyes, the tears of Dhur, his shame and despair.
What then was to be done? Neither of these two had access to sorcery. The demons, having attended the vengeance of their lord, Azhrarn, had vacated the dawning forest. Even Kolchash (at this moment canoodling in his bothy with Yezade) was no mage.
Yet a shadow fell just then within that part of the wood. It was not the shadow of Dhur’s disgrace. With it came a rummaging and crashing, and the screams of birds that fired themselves away from it, and the clatter of hoofed things that did likewise.
Dhur and Marsineh looked about them, for a moment distracted from their own ills. A cold yet fevered wind seemed to blow into the glade, and something awful charged in its wake, rushing down on them.
Dhur drew his hunting knife. He would defend the girl—as best he could. He wished to instruct her to climb a tree, but words were not accessible to him. So he stood before her, looking with one eye, the better to see what approached.
A silence had doused the forest now. From the void of it the crashing arrival came like a wave on to a shore, and broke, in smashed twigs and leaves and the feathers of birds—exploding into the glade, seeming to fill and crack the air, the trees. Then it stopped still, so the shaken world settled about it like salt in a jar.
Why, it was only a man. Yes, only that. A poor lunatic or hermit of the woods, clothes in tatters, flesh bruised and bloody. Yet round his head an aureole of hair like gold, and in his face, which seemed to lose and twist its shape like wax, two golden eyes.
The eyes fixed on them, the human girl loved by a demon in a dream, the human man transformed by demon malice. And the golden eyes seemed to burn up and smolder down, like light in a lamp.
Two supernatural lovers have dwelled somewhere in the forest, so ran the tale. He is fair, all golden, summer day. She is black and white, white rose, black hyacinth by night. . . . That pair of lovers, said the Vazdru, are due to be parted—
He might have been beautiful, the madman. One might glimpse it through the insane ugliness, the mindless drive that had propelled him here and would shortly whirl him away. Yet did he not have about him the ghost of a damson-colored mantle, and in one hand two jaw-bones—which clacked open suddenly and pointlessly exclaimed: “Love is love.”
And at that Dhur felt a pain in his neck as if some enemy had tried to twist it from him like a cork from a bottle, and first a wash of cold water over his head and then a flash of fire. And then he found his mouth was full of grass—which, turning, he spat out, and wiped his lips—and found he had lips, a human mouth and teeth, to do the service for. And flinging his hands over his face, recovered it—his face—the bones and skin, flesh and eyes, nose and chin and cheeks, forehead, hair—of Dhur.
(For there had been the luck that one magician, of a kind, yet remained in the woods. His name was once Prince Chuz, Lord Madness. But he was on another errand, now.)
For Dhur, he barely saw his savior depart. He was absorbed, staring in a mirror, which was the countenance of Marsineh.
Presently, ungratefully, if maybe not wrongly, he said to her, “It is your love cured me.”
And he took her into his arms, his heart, and, soon enough—though by a devious process of falsehoods and explanations, and the dowry of a remarkable jeweled dress—into the state of wife.
• • •
And, as those two lovers embraced, the whole forest unraveled itself and seemed to fall back into place.
Men of the retinue of Kolchash, scrambling about in a daze, found one another and recollected themselves. It appeared to them a marriage had gone on, and a bridal night, and in a way this was correct. As, discovering their master, they saw the old man—or the evil tyrant, depending on whether or not they were in on his secret—posted by a stream with a succulent girl, whose odd disarray was quickly put to rights out of the wedding chests.
About noon, the procession rode off through the wood, he on his coal-black horse, she in the litter, and passed en route a disappointed hunting party whose quarry was a strange animal they called a dhur. The wedding procession, having regretted not seeing such a beast, went on by easy stages homeward to the mansion of Kolchash.
Here there began a new reign, that of the mistress of the house. She was a witch it would seem, a prophetess to equal her own mother—of which mother she constantly boasted.
Her husband, who lost his taste for books at first, anon prudently regained it and left the witch to her own devices. She was an exacting wife, Yezade. And after a reasonable time, odd stories were told of her. That she had ordered a cloak made of the woven hair of deceased young men, that she had teeth not only in her mouth but in another area which it was unwise to mention. And when it rained now and then in the villages they said, “’Ware! Yezade is emptying her slops on us.”
Whether she was happy with her evil repute and her riches and her cowed spouse may only be speculated upon. As the ever after happiness of Dhur and Marsineh is also a thing of supposition.
But one there was who reveled in the result of those three nights and days in the wood. This was the riding-ass.
For it came to be that, even with its proper grass-eating ass head upon its ass body, it somehow kept something of the persona of Dhur the hunter (though best hasten to add, that was not the case, in reverse, with Dhur).
But the ass, as it frisked about the forest, noted that the wild-cats and the wolves, meeting its eyes, ran away. And for that reason it lived, the ass, to a great age, its back free of the weight of humanity, its belly full of verdure and flowers, its heart full of the smugness of the manumitted slave. So sometimes it would give vent to philosophical cadences: Eeh-orrh—EEEH-orrrh! And the birds scattered and the sloths growled in their sleep and the lynxes cringed, and men, passing on the tracks, said to themselves, “By heaven, what a foul and idiotic noise is that!”
And the ass smiled in its inner person and thought, in the tongue of its kind, “Perhaps even the gods listen to the wisdom of my song.” Though the gods, of course, did not.
And after she was parted from Chuz, Sovaz roamed bitterly over the earth.
The Prodigal
1. Flung to the East
BABIES ARE BORN knowing how to cry, but not how to laugh. In the world, however, they quickly get the knack of laughter. This is so now, and was so then, in the time of the earth’s flatness. And perhaps each of these facts—the instinctive equipment with grief, the swift acceptance of pleasure—says at once very much concerning the school of life.
The rich man for sure, hearing his new-born son howling and lamenting, exclaimed to himself. “He will soon change his tune.” Thinking of all the good things which would immediately come the boy’s way.
And truly, the boy’s way they did come. He existed in a mansion where he was waited on by scores of servants. As a
child, one entire large chamber was required to house his toys and amusements. As he grew, a great suite of rooms came to belong to him. If he wanted anything, it was instantly fetched. As he inclined to adulthood, white horses awaited him in the stable, and nearby white hounds, and falcons with silver bells. If he hungered for a particular dish or wine or fruit, it was sought and delivered him. To assuage his other hungers, there stole to him in the dusk beautiful women whose hair was scented with cedarwood. He was educated no worse than a prince.
The rich man was not often at home. But as he came and went about his business, he would glance upon the growing boy, whose name was Jyresh, and say to himself, “Well, I have given him the very best of everything.” And the father imagined that the son loved him for it and was grateful. Nevertheless, this was not the case. For the boy, lacking for nothing, had begun to have about him an indefinable awareness of bereavement, as if there were some other thing which he could not identify and which was accordingly withheld from him. In this way he grew resentful and indolent, a disappointed creature. His manner was restless, he could not be still. He sensed the magic bird—the unknown real desire of his life—continually flying away from him. In efforts to pursue it, he threw extravagant supper-parties, from which it might take him two days to recover, or he bought up whole libraries of books with which he closeted himself two or three weeks. He bet upon chariot races and horse races and games of dice and did not win. He went hunting after unlikely animals and was gone a month or more. Twice or thrice he fell in love with the wives of other men and seduced them or was himself seduced, and then wearied of such joys and fell in love instead with women of the basest crudest sort, who bled him of money, just as did his other base and cruel companions, his supper friends and racing acquaintances, the cunning hunters and merchants.
One afternoon, the father of Jyresh called the young man to him.
“My son,” said the father, “I have been looking into your affairs and am not much delighted. Do you have anything to say for yourself on the matter?”
At these words Jyresh only stared at him boldly and failed to keep a yawn behind a pale silk glove.
The rich man frowned. He resumed.
“It is plain to me you have been squandering the wealth of this house, making inroads on a fortune which it has taken three generations to accumulate. You must understand, though you spend it freely, not a coin of it is your own, until my demise. Which event, I trust, you do not hanker after.”
At this, Jyresh lowered his eyes. His father took the expression as a mark of shame—which in a way it was, since the young man was actually embarrassed to find himself indifferent to his father’s death. The rich man continued: “I have decided that your loose living and luxuriousness must be curbed, and have hit on the means, in which my knowledge of old stories and legends has guided me. This is my plan. Your folly springs from my generosity to you. You are quite ignorant of anything but the condition of riches. I therefore propose to send you away to the house of a friend, a business associate of mine. He will accept you into his household as a servant, one who has learned no skill in such work and is thus of the lowest servile ranks. By day you will labor at whatever tasks this man, or his steward, sets you, which may be to sweep the floors or to empty slops. At night you will take your food from the common bowl and sleep on the floor of the kitchens. When dawn breaks you will rise again to resume your duties. After nine months have passed, if you have served him diligently, my friend will pay you a fitting wage and send you home. But if you have failed to please he will, on my orders, have you beaten severely. Thereafter you must serve him another nine months without hope of any wage, and during this time you will sleep on the bare ground and have to eat only what you can beg, or steal from the beasts of the estate.”
Having pronounced sentence, the rich man folded his hands upon his stomach. He expected that his softly-reared son, whom he did not know well, would throw himself down and plead for mercy.
Jyresh, however, who could hardly speak for rage, at length got out this: “Sir, if that is your wish, to fling me forth, I only ask When shall I leave?”
The rich man was somewhat taken aback. It must be said at this point that he had anticipated any reply but that which he had just received. He had made no plans to send the boy off, but now, roused in turn to fury, announced: “You shall have three days’ grace.”
“I will not burden you. I will set out tomorrow,” cried Jyresh. “Where is the fellow’s residence?”
“Directions shall be given you at sunrise,” said the rich man. “Together with a donkey on which to make the trek.”
“I will travel on foot,” declared the son.
“It is a good way off.”
“Then,” said Jyresh, “I will go tonight.”
In something of a flurry therefore did the rich man next sit down with his scribe and compose a letter to a suitable former business partner, who lived some six days distant to the east.
• • •
The evening star was only just taking her leave of heaven when Jyresh set out from his father’s house. The porter, thinking him off on another junket, saluted him dubiously, seeing the young man had with him neither horse nor attendant. Eastward Jyresh strode, toward the ascending moon. (She looked upon him coldly, for that night she was a perfect round, and full of pride as he.)
Now Jyresh, although he had lived in luxury, was accustomed to exercise—the chariot-racing and the month-long hunt are not to be forgotten. In fact a journey of six days, on foot, did not daunt him. Besides, he had his rage as a heartening companion. There was, too, another thing. As he walked through the countryside by night under the moon, some vague intimation of it came to him, now and then, like strains of muffled music.
The land beside the road was for the most part cultivated, containing fields, orchards and the terraces of vines. On the horizon the moon-gilded hills stretched quietly sleeping. Though he had often passed along the way before, he had been heedless then. Now he smelled the fruit and heard the nightingales. When the moon sank he, too, lay down under a wild fig tree to slumber. Dawn woke him like a kiss. He rose, and bathed in a little pool, and plucked the figs from the tree to eat—for so vexed was he, he had brought no provisions from his father’s house.
All that morning he journeyed, only resting in the day’s heat by a well. Here others sat, and taking Jyresh for a wanderer like themselves, they spoke to him of the state of trade, the habits of dogs and camels, and the whims of the wenches at the inns. Jyresh, pretending to brotherhood, enjoyed these spurious debates, and spun yarns perhaps only a touch less true. In the afternoon, he walked on, but near sunset a caravan passed him on the road, and from a swaying carriage draped in silks a veiled woman sent her servant back to him. “My mistress asks you what you sell?”
“Tell her: Nothing,” replied Jyresh.
The servant returned to his lady, but presently came back again to Jyresh. “Then, says my generous mistress, take this ring of silver.”
Jyresh laughed. How strangely light was his heart as he answered, “Tell your kind lady I am bound to accept no rich gift or token. I have been flung, like an unwanted shoe, to the east, and am on a journey of expiation.”
The servant scowled, for he knew his mistress’s mind when she was thwarted, but back to her he must go, perforce, with Jyresh’s words. The carriage curtains snapped to at once, and soon the caravan went out of sight.
That evening, after the sun had set, Jyresh entered an inn and sold the gold buckle of his belt for a good dinner. The buckle had been a present given him by a woman half a year ago; his father’s money had not bought it. Later Jyresh left the inn and went away to sleep on the open ground, among the fragrance of the trees, under the cool sky and the stars.
Another four days this outcast son continued along the roads, going east. He saw sights new to him and sights he had seen before, but even these looked fresh and altered
. On the third night, gazing down a sky dyed red with sunfall, he beheld the lamps of a city where he had quite often been to dice and drink and make love, but now, knowing he would not go there, it had a different look. It was mysterious and holy, the pure darkness rising from its heart and, as it seemed, a revel and a feast in all its ruby windows.
Jyresh dined on wild fruits and shared the bread of travelers at the wayside. He drank from the fountains that sprang out of the earth for all men, or he was given milk at a farm, and a cup of wine when he met, one evening, the procession of a happy bridegroom.
On the fifth day Jyresh left the roads and stepped aside into rocky uplands where there were woods. He climbed all day among the hanging garlands of the trees, and bright-colored birds started at his approach, and once a shy doe gazed at him from the thickets. As the sun began to decline, the air turned golden and the silver stars came out, and breaking through the wood, Jyresh saw a track before him which led down into a valley. There, on an eminence, stood a great stone palace among old dark trees. His heart sank at it. Here was journey’s end, for this could be nothing but the mansion of his father’s friend, some stern and prissy crony of the rich man’s turn of mind.
Well, I have had my taste of freedom, thought Jyresh. Now for my stint as a slave. And he began to make his way toward the stone pile.
In size and architectural grandeur, the palace dwarfed the house of Jyresh’s father, and even the mansions of such lords as Jyresh had seen. Towers tapered up from it and roofs were set one over another. Above a long flight of steps enormous columns upheld the portico. About half a mile from the palace, the track became a paved way, and on either side stood tall marble pillars surmounted by beasts and birds of marble—lions and ibises, cranes and monkeys—which glimmered ghostly in the dying light. Beyond ran gardens of a somber magnificence, plumed with heavy trees, and here and there combed over by waterfalls. These caught the last languid gold of the sunset, but lights also paraded up and down the lawns where golden peacocks walked, flaunting ormolu fans. Yet in the palace itself not a lamp showed.
