Night's Sorceries

by Tanith Lee

  One morning (at least, it was morning upstairs in the world), the egg fissured—exploded! Shards flew off it in all directions, and the Drin were snagged and snipped by them and dived under the platinum benches squawking.

  When the last sounds of falling eggshell ceased, the Drin crawled out again. The Prince Hazrond stood in the doorway. His eyes were wide.

  The Drin, with many misgivings, looked where he did.

  Despite the eruption, half the eggshell remained entire in the harness, and out of this had just emerged a creature no bigger than a kitten. It was a miniature, the tiniest of baby foals, perfect in all ways—yet with a silver film across its eyes for, like any newborn horse, it was still blind. On its back, resembling the downy stubs of a hatched chick, two wet little wings.

  Hazrond smiled. His smile came into the pagoda like moonlight, or music.

  The Drin ran and caught up the prodigy on a cushion, and took it to Hazrond. He smoothed it with one finger. The creature shivered, a strange unseen radiance flowed from its body. It was vibrantly warm to the awareness of the demon. Much gratified, through the ranks of fawning Drin, he went away.

  As the Drin nursemaids were bathing this infant then, in a silver bowl, twittering over it, too, like proud parents, they heard an eerie scratching behind them from the area of the half eggshell.

  “Something lingers inside.”

  “Can it be there are two? A dual thrill for the princely Hazrond.”

  They pounded to see.

  And saw—this: There in the bottom of the broken shell, partly submerged under shattered bits, struggled an awful little nightmare. She had borne twins, the black horse. They were not alike. The first was that which Hazrond had wished on her. The second, a grisly descant the body of the mare had played upon that wish.

  Its blackness was its only claim to beauty. It, too, was an infant, a black beast. A sort of tailless horse, that had four clawed and feathered legs, the legs more of a fowl than of an eagle. But an eagle’s head it had and a beak which, opening, let out a bleating tiny neigh—

  Affronted, the Drin jumped back. They were ugly enough to find hideousness extremely offensive.

  “Shall we kill it, before he sees?”

  Hazrond was handsome enough to find hideousness almost as offensive as they did.

  “Nothing dies here. Impossible.”

  “Turn it out then. Throw it away down some chasm.”

  They agreed, and drew lots to see to whom this annoying task should fall. Then there was a fight, as the loser disputed. Eventually one of their number stepped forward and picked up, between finger and thumb, the bleating abomination, shoved it, ignoring its cries, into a pouch, and hurried away to be rid of it.

  This was accomplished somewhere outside the city of Druhim Vanashta, in an old quarry where the Drin had sometimes come to hack for diamonds.

  In a finished working the horror was tipped, and left mewing and feebly scraping the stone with its beak and claws.

  • • •

  Time went by then, underground, and in the secret yards of Hazrond the winged horse grew. It had no gender, for such as it was—magic, unnatural—it served the function of unreal things, having no requirement to reproduce itself. Yet so sorcerously fair it was that its aura seeped out of the house of Hazrond. And sometimes there would be heard there, out of some invisible cloud, a noise of a thousand feathers high in the skyless sky.

  But in the quarry beyond the demon city, the other beast, the second twin of the egg, dwelled unknown. It ate the stone-dust for its food, and drank the stone’s moistures. All that country being enchanted, these nourished it sufficiently. But it did not grow. Its heart had withered and stopped that. It had no social life. Once a glittering insect alighted, but discovering a monster was watching it, hastened off again.

  It happened that some of the Drindra came to that place, for what reason is obscure, and perhaps for no reason, for the Drindra, the lowest of the Drin, were generally always unreasonable. Bumbling through the quarry they chanced on the little black beast.

  “Why,” said the Drindra, lashing their tails and peering from dog’s or frog’s eyes, “it is of our sort.” For they took the form of chimaeric mixtures of this and that animal, not excluding humankind. Accordingly they grabbed the monster—which had tried to run away, afraid of them—and rummaged it over, poking and fondling it until it was almost dead of distress. Then, since they were going aloft to the world to make a nuisance of themselves in the thrall of a magician, they carried their find with them.

  Up on to the earth it traveled, in a roar of sorcerous steams—and here, on a hillside, as they were jabbering by, the Drindra dropped it.

  It fell among the towering thorns of the world, the mare’s second child. The moon smote it like a sword. It lay in a valley of shadow, among huge pebbles. An owl went over the night like the white rim of a wave. The monster hid itself.

  The quarter moon was garishly bright and all night the white owls hunted until the moon set. Then the sky became transparent. The sun burned through. Hawks filled heaven.

  The stones of the world were not nourishing and the thorns gave only a crabbed drink.

  In the end the sky was congested and the light and the hawks went away.

  The monster came out from between the thorns. The landscape was so enormous it meant nothing at all, yet a dream of water was on the air. Now the sky was black. Dew dripped into the dry little beak.

  An owl hung low, but swung aside, judging the small blundering thing not good enough for its guts. In a thicket, a fox snapped, then averted its muzzle fastidiously: Not tasty enough for supper, this chicken tainted by horses.

  It found, the monster, a pond like an ocean. As it put in its beak, a black carp rose to the surface and goggled at it. Along the bank of the pool some grains lay in the mud. The monster ate them.

  Lying in a daze, it did not consider contentment or the lack. It had no philosophy.

  In the morning, the brown geese trooped down to the pond and stood and looked at the mare’s child.

  “What kind of duck is that?”

  “It is not a duck. It cannot join this worshipful company.”

  “Peck it! Chase it off!”

  Just then the blind girl who owned the geese came with her pannier to feed them.

  “Hush! What a squabbling. Are you not ashamed?”

  The geese were not ashamed, but they pretended to be, for politeness’s sake. By this time they understood a great deal of human speech, having heard it all their days, but they knew very well their blind mistress scarcely grasped a word they uttered. However, she fed them.

  “Now what can this be? What have you found?”

  And the blind girl kneeled and put her hands around the mare’s child before it could get away.

  “It is a bird, a strange bird—it has no wings. Oh, poor bird.”

  In fact the blind girl had never seen a bird, nor anything of the world, for she had been born without sight. But her father and mother, before they died, had explained as much as they could to her and she knew a great many things by their description. For example, if she had been allowed to explore an elephant with her hands, she would soon have told you it was an elephant. Because she was blind and not rich and only a plain homely maiden besides, she had not married, but her parents had left her provided with a roof and a bed, with three fruit trees, an herb garden, a goat, and the goose-pond.

  “Poor bird. What a strange bird you are,” said the blind girl, lifting the monster in her arms and stroking the little body in its coat of felt, and the soft feathery head. The sharp little claws lay meek on her palm and did not scratch her, and the horn beak only parted to let out its silly little neigh. “And what a curious song you have!” But she took the mare’s child into the house and made it a nest of dry rushes by the hearth, and fed it goose-food in warm milk. “You shall
be my house-bird, and guard me,” said she, for she was full of fly jokes and affection. “You shall sleep on my pillow, but if you are not mannerly with your claws, we shall have words. And I will call you ‘Birdy.’”

  So it was arranged between them, and so the mare’s monster child became Birdy, and the house-bird, and slept on the blind girl’s pillow, and puttered after her about the cot, and followed her when she fed the geese or milked the goat, so it became acceptable, and even the geese said, “There is Birdy,” and did not hiss at it any more.

  And thus things continued for some months.

  The land was turning toward winter by then; the cold winds blew and frost chewed the leaves from the trees. The geese skidded over the frozen pond, landed prow down and bow uppermost, and made out they had meant to do it, until the girl went to break the ice. One morning, as she did this, a man came sneaking up on the cot.

  He was an itinerant, but he had got word in those parts of a blind woman who lived alone, and he thought he could make something of this.

  In that way, he was already in the cot, taking a look round, when the girl came in again with Birdy at her heels.

  “Who is there?” said she.

  “Only I,” he said.

  The girl started. She had before heard only one man’s voice in the house, and that was her father’s. This man had no sound of him.

  “What do you want here?” she asked.

  “Well, that depends,” he said, “upon what you will give me.”

  “I have very little, but if you are in need—”

  “Yes, so I am. I have already drunk all your milk, I am so needy. But I have kept the cheese and bread in my bag here, against my further need. I do not care for apples and quinces, those you may keep. But best and most of all, I have a need for a nice friendly girl. I know you cannot see, but I am a spry fellow. I have had prettier wenches than you, but you will do me for now.”

  The frost of the day seemed to fill the girl so her heart stopped beating. But she had no weapon by, not even a pair of eyes to aid her. She knew quite well he could do as he wanted, and that, should she attempt resistance, he might maim or kill her besides. She made a small sound she could not help, and her terror and anger ran all through her with it, so the air about her seemed to singe.

  “What is that by your feet?” said he, as he undid his belt, “some black hen? I have a dislike for poultry save on a plate. Send it off. I shall take a goose or two instead, when I leave you. Now, on your bed you get.”

  “Not on the bed,” said she, and her blind eyes shed tears. “My father built it and my mother died in it. If you must, here on the floor, then.” And she lay down, and though she did not need to, she turned her head away. It was then she heard a sudden curse, a cry—

  She lay, and listened to him, for he was panting and mumbling far off from her.

  “What is it?” she said. “If you must rape me, do it now.”

  But only the gulping and panting went on, and then she smelled a raw hot fiery odor, which seemed to saturate the cot and shake it. And then a loud clack, like iron striking the floor. And then— And then she heard such an unearthly raucous screech—like a stallion’s trumpeting, the shriek of an embattled eagle—that she flung herself away into the chimney corner and crouched there.

  But for the visitor, he was off. Shouting and gibbering by turns, leaving behind his bag, his belt and his breeches, he was tearing over the icy mud, under the fruit trees, scattering the geese without a look, fleeing away and away, his naked yellow buttocks winking.

  While the geese, and the goat, these huddled back to the pond, and looked, not in that direction, but up at the house.

  Is that Birdy?

  For there, framed in the door of the cot which was now too small for it, stood a great and terrible thing, a black horse some nineteen hands high on the legs of two black giant eagles, and with the head of one giant eagle, set with furnaces for eyes. It glared upon them, and from its beak hung a hank of male hair—the thief’s—which now it neatly spat into a puddle.

  And then the light and the shade furled over in the door. The fearsome thing was gone. There was only Birdy, trotting across the floor of the cot.

  It had found its own sorcery, the mare’s second child. Its shriveled heart had bloomed. It could grow, but all in a moment—great, then small again.

  It rubbed its little feathered head against the blind girl’s hand. She drew it on her lap and wept on its back. It suffered this, though its claws clicked reproachfully on her skirt: Why weep? I saved you.

  But, “What can have happened?” she asked Birdy, the room, the world. “Some protection left me by my father? Can it be? Or the compassion of the gods?”

  Birdy made a nest for itself of the skirt, and tucking its head under one non-existent wing, full of good works, slept.

  2. Go Nowhere On A Horse With Wings

  Over the City of the Goddess-on-Earth, the sun was setting. It was, there, a blue sun, the sunset a lilac and not a rose. Then, the seven moons of the City lifted, and began to make their chiming patterns on the ether.

  An eighth moon, a silver wheel, had already rolled to its nocturnal place above the tallest tower of the palace of Azhriaz the Goddess. From the wheel hung a tiny figure, which screamed, thinly, over and over. These cries were heard so often, even the citizens had come to mistake them for the lamenting of a night bird.

  For Azhriaz, she sat on the tower roof in a chair of cut glass, guarded either side by a white stone cat, both of which moved, and one of which was now washing itself.

  Adjacent, stood sentinels of the Goddess’s guard, members of her court, and fantastic beings that might not be real.

  Azhriaz stared up into the curious sky. She was clothed in deep red, and in her beauty. It was enough.

  Suddenly a starburst took place a few feet over the roof. After the white flash a black after-shadow was stamped there, which then began to peel open. If any were amazed, Azhriaz did not appear to be. Remember, she had been wooed by the Vazdru eight times already.

  Hazrond (very nearly peerlessly handsome, and clad in almost all the magnificence of night) stepped out of the air onto the roof. By a rope of silver he led a marvelous beast. It was a horse of exact proportions, black as black satin, with a pouring black water of mane and tail, plaited through with great round pearls and liquid sapphires. At its withers the satin altered into down. Black feathers spread as it walked forward into a pair of fanning, midnight wings.

  Hazrond stood before Azhriaz.

  “The whole world speaks of your loveliness,” he said, “but does not say enough.”

  “You are too kind,” said she.

  “No, I am never kind. But here I am, and there, my gift to you.”

  Azhriaz considered the creature which poised, in equilibrium, on the night sky.

  At last she said, “So you have brought me a bird with the body of a horse.”

  Hazrond smiled.

  “Yes, fairest, nightmost Azhriaz. A bird with the body and head and limbs and hoofs and mane and tail of a horse. Perhaps . . . a horse with wings.” And he turned, and untied the leading-rope. “Rise and fly,” he said to the mare’s first child.

  Then the horse pawed the roof with its delicate steely feet. It rose with a leap and a thrust of its wings, as if lifted by invisible chains from above. It veered overhead, rimmed and tipped by the lights of the moons. It whirled under the silver wheel.

  (“What is that which shrieks there?” inquired Hazrond. “The daughter of he that was king in this land before me,” replied Azhriaz.)

  The winged horse passed and repassed like a dagger thrust, a south wind. It drifted down like a black feather, to the roof.

  “Will you not,” said Hazrond to Azhriaz, “mount the horse and ride the sky?”

  “When I wish for such a journey, I have other means.”

&
nbsp; “Azhriaz,” said Hazrond caressingly, and he had seated himself at her knee, “whatever means you have, they cannot match this horse. For it is a born thing, though one which I created out of my admiration and desire. It has the best of all states and forms, being both earthly and sorcerous. In glamour, it is your complement. Your darkness and your silver pallor would rest upon this shoal of blackness like black and white lilies on a moonlit river. No one has ridden the horse. Not even I. Take you the virgin ride, and make the creature your own.”

  Azhriaz got up. Perfumes drifted from her robe and hair. She went to the horse and touched its muzzle. The jewels in its mane swung to lie in her own tresses as it leaned its head too her brow. “My beauty,” she murmured, “if you were solely of yourself, then you might be mine. But you are his. Therefore, you cannot be mine.”

  Hazrond also got to his feet. The white stone cats growled softly.

  “Madam,” said Hazrond, “can it be you spurn my gift?”

  “It is you I spurn. The rest must follow.”

  Hazrond folded his cloak about him like an inky wave. In his eyes were things best not told. He had so ringed and laved this hour with power and will, the magical horse smoked with it, the night teemed and vibrated. Yet she said No again. His own will, evaded, came back at Hazrond like the edge of a lash.

  “You flirt too seriously,” he said, “I may believe you.”

  “Do so.”

  “How you punish yourself, Azhriaz, to indulge your anger. How you cheat yourself.”

  “I recall an adage which tends something in this way: Go nowhere on a horse with wings, such schemes will betray you.”

  Hazrond frowned. (The rooftop was oddly empty, the stone cats crouched and sparks came from their mouths.)

  “The saying is not as you have it,” said Hazrond.

  “Alas, dark lord, is it not?” said Azhriaz, and now she smiled upon him. It was a smile to put a killing frost upon any blossom of love.

  And then Azhriaz touched the black lily-petal of the ear of the horse with her lips. “Be no one’s.”

  Mocking the Vazdru prince, Azhriaz—a black swan—rose from the roof on effortless wings and flew away across the sky.