by Tanith Lee
Hazrond spoke a curse and the air shrank and flaming hail crashed out of it.
Hazrond snapped his fingers. Together, he and his gift vanished.
The stone cats sat petrified, all but their stony tails, which they wagged with an abrasive noise.
Up in the sky, the king’s daughter on the wheel, self-obsessed, continued thinly to scream.
• • •
There was a land at the edge of the Goddessdom of Azhriaz, and as was the habit of such countries, its nearness to her empire had made it strange. A mountain stood there, the center part of which had slimmed to a stalk; it was narrow enough twenty men with their arms linked might have encircled it—yet this stalk ascended many hundreds of feet. At the summit, the stone of the mountain statically spilled into a great granite sunshade, and the shadow, falling on the ground far below, made it a place chary of summer and innocent of high noon.
At the base of the mountain stalk lay a stone town. It had one wide street, dominated by a blue-painted temple of the Goddess. Night after night, choked by the umbra of the mountaintop, a young priest came to meditate upon the temple roof. He stared at the starless sky of stone above him. “So is the overhanging yet indifferent menace of the gods,” observed the young priest, Pereban, quoting the temple teachings. Then he would peer out at the horizon, under the mountain’s lid: “And thus, the false hope with which men delude themselves,” he dutifully concluded.
Pereban, though mortal, was handsome, and his hair was of the clearest most lunar gold. But in the mental overcast of that town, such things went rigidly unremarked, save through their irrelevance. For life was only a series of pitfalls, not to be enjoyed or celebrated. The gods chastised pleasure just as they ignored suffering.
Finding in himself a profound strain of yearning, Pereban had mistaken it for religion. He entered the temple and dedicated himself to the worship of the Goddess. Thereafter her statue—a roughhewn lump of rock with painted blobs for eyes and black wool for hair—so disappointed him that he kneeled to it, and beat himself regularly, every morning.
But now it was night, and the solitary moon of the earth had just appeared, westering out beyond the mountain’s grim parasol.
“The Goddess in the City,” went on the young priest, who often talked to himself—who else would listen?—“was not her mother the moon? Or, some child of the moon and the sun. . . . Of course, she is more fair than any statue. Perhaps she becomes the moon itself. Perhaps that is her pale face among the stars so far away—Azhriaz in a dark robe, riding the sky on a beast with wings—Ah!” And overcome with contempt at his own intolerable dreams, he flung off his robe and took up a bunch of thorns to beat himself again—when there arrived an interruption.
Hazrond had been passing through some element of interim between the world and the Underearth, when the sharp awareness of his kind overheard, in some psychic way, the words of the priest. They were so apposite and, let it be said, so ironic, they caught Hazrond as if someone had slapped his face. Next second out of interim he pierced. And there he was upon the temple roof under the mountain, like a statue himself but of perfect sculpting, looking upon the speaker of the words with two eyes of brilliant black and baleful fire.
Pereban dropped his flail of thorns, as well he might.
“What did you say?” asked Hazrond, in a voice of the music of murder.
“I—forget—” said the priest, quite truthfully. He sank to his knees and added, “You are one of the gods. You can be nothing else. Doubtless you mean to kill me. I shall die in bliss, having seen you.”
For, though taught to be obtuse, Pereban was by nature astute. And besides, it would require more than mental shade to dull the gleam of a Vazdru.
As for Hazrond, he was not, now, displeased. Susceptible to flattery, and to beauty (as any demon), he looked at the reverent young priest, ivory-naked, with only the golden hair and a few silver stripes of old beatings to cover him, and remarked, “Yes, better forget your words. I see you are a Sivesh, or a Simmu.2 In your unlearning you do not know these names. Never mind it. You think I am a god. I will tell you,” said Hazrond, stroking the golden hair idly, “a she-viper closed her teeth on me just now, and a she-wasp stung me. Are you the medicinal flower to cure these poisoned wounds?” The young priest had closed his eyes at the Vazdru caress. In all his days, religion had never so moved him. But then, “No,” said Hazrond, perhaps a trifle regretfully. “You are not enough, earth born, to heal me. Not you. Again, never mind it. You have rendered a moment’s distraction from the venom’s rage. I shall reward you. What would you have?”
In response to this question, Pereban raised his eyes, lustrous with unqualified emotion, and drowned himself in the gaze of Hazrond. But at that instant the mortal could not speak, could say nothing.
“Very well,” replied Hazrond. “I will gift you with the thing you most wish for and which you do not know you want, and in doing so, with that of which you exclaimed, thereby attracting my attention. A paradox for sure. The gift is dangerous, but you have earned the risk also.”
Then Hazrond stepped aside and only glanced into the dark, and out of it, in a shiver of incandescences, trotted the horse with wings.
“My gift to you,” Hazrond repeated, while the young man stared, now at the prince, now at the sorcerous beast.
Hazrond had not heard—or perhaps he had—her whisper in the creature’s ear: Be no one’s.
Certainly, Pereban had not.
He rose and went forward in a sort of dream. The horse, glitter-made of ebony and embers, allowed it. The horse was gentle, or rather, it had the same sort of purity written all over it that a tiger has. It was above and beyond sin or righteousness, did not know them.
And Pereban turned then to thank and magnify the god who had blessed him. But Hazrond was gone from there, was already miles off—had Pereban realized—under his very feet, in the byways of ever-radiant Druhim Vanashta.
So the priest must make do with a prayer, and a hasty one at that, for he wished immediately to mount the winged horse. It was a madness on him, partly fired by the touch of the Vazdru, and by long unspecified yearning never till now given its chance. Freedom.
As a child, Pereban had sometimes ridden the mules of his father’s farm. He imagined that he had the knack, and having petted and wheedled the horse a minute, seized the jeweled mane, set his foot against the satin flank, and bounded on to its back. There was a momentary awkwardness, for the wings of the horse began where properly a rider would sit. The horse, however, started no argument with him but only stood docilely and helpfully still. Pereban eased himself higher up on the withers. These, due to the big flight muscles which, with the featherdown, extended from this part, were undoubtedly strong enough to support him. He felt them move and slide under his thighs as the wings stirred quietly as two courtly fans.
He roped the neck of the horse with his adoring arms.
“Sweetheart—let us be gone!”
With as little comment as that, finding his unknown want, did Pereban mean to abscond.
The winged horse, catching the ring of truth, obeyed.
Like a bird of black fire, like a spear of lights—up they shot into the air.
Pereban cried out, but he clung on fast to the horse, his fingers knotted in its mane, his legs gripped either side of its neck. But he felt a surge of terror, too, for all he supposed himself the creature’s master, since they were already off the ground to the height of several tall towers piled one on another. And soon enough, the mountaintop itself came close overhead, so Pereban could see into it, its veinings and weird crystals, and below, the town was a dolls’ dwelling. Then he knew only victory.
The horse was propelled by huge wheeling flaps of its eagle wings, so they sped in a sort of whirlwind of their own making. And presently the mountain passed behind, and then they were in the sky.
How huge that was, that s
ky. After the cramped confine of the town, it was to Pereban as if he had died and sloughed all heavy fleshly things, and he and the horse were one, and that one his own soul. Not black then, the sky, but transparent indigo, and full of waves and currents as the sea. Clouds went by, moon-shaped gauzes lit by the moon; each had a different smell, some of rain, some of the lands they had risen from, some of energy, and some of stars. The stars themselves seemed to dash along with the horse, sometimes streaming out like diamond cords, or else they kept pace and yet were still, like water beads on the roof of heaven.
The earth below had been quickly lost. It was mysterious now as generally the sky was, hidden by vapors and the dark. Here and there the lamps of cities cast up a sort of pallor-blush. Here and there an amorphous dragon rippled sullen scales—a mighty ocean thrown about by its tides.
“Ride on, dear love,” shouted Pereban to the horse, drunk now, fearing nothing. “Brush the stars with your wings.”
Obedient, not necessarily compliant, up and up rushed the flying horse, swifter than any beast or bird of the world.
Now they were entering into the portion of heaven over which the moon was then taking her westward path. High above stretched the endless tapestry of the stars, but the moon was nearer the earth than these, and in motion as they were not. She was, too, almost at the full. The disc of her seemed vast, filling a quarter of the upper sky, and burning upon the horse and rider with a white effulgence which also gave off great heat.
Pereban had never thought of the moon as being in any way hot, but cool or cold. In his poetic reverie he had compared her to the delicate face of the Goddess—now he beheld she was a gargantuan orb, and her glow caused his eyes to swim, and her relentless hot pale ray began to work on him oddly.
For as they coursed beneath, the wings of the horse beating faster and more fast in rhythm with the young man’s heart, and the round muscles working in its back and withers and neck under him, another sensation stole upon the rider. And with every heart-wingbeat, as the world fell farther and farther off and the glare of the moon more and more encompassed them, so this sensation swelled. And if he had been in his temple and such had come over him, he would have grasped the flail of thorns, for he had been always strictly chaste. But there was no flail to hand. Only the silken living skin, and the ceaseless fan of the wings—which now and then, soft as a teasing kiss, would light a feathertip upon his shoulders or his spine or side.
So Pereban shifted himself as best he could, and determined he would consider only the wonder of the night and the adventure.
But a Vazdru caress had been set on him, and the moon seared him white and drew the tide of blood in him like the sea, up and down and round and round. And the horse, had he but known it, was so steeped in carnal magics only his naiveté, and the unusual nature of events, had so far protected him from it. And no longer.
And it was useless to gaze at the stars or at the formless earth. Try as he would, he could not but be aware of how the engine of the horse pulsed and strove against him, and how the wings coaxed and skimmed. And for sure there was no way of getting down—miles in the air it seemed, and the stars hurtling by—
And next Pereban could do no more than lie upon the horse’s neck, his hands clenched in the girl’s-hair mane, and sigh and groan and sigh. And soon he trembled and his eyes closed themselves. And not much after that he stretched himself and sang aloud, so the sky might have been astonished.
But in that second the winged horse, bred, never forget by a demon, tigerishly shook itself. It was a fine, a thorough shake.
And still stretched oblivious in the fit of joy, Pereban was flung off into space.
And fell—
3. Cold Shore and Shining City
Falling, he cried out in terror now. But the air was thin, he was stifled. Pereban gave up his senses. Then something struck him such a blow it woke him up again.
He lay gasping, bruised, his bones seeming to rattle in his skin from the jolt. But there was a surface beneath him. It supported him. He no longer fell and did not seem to be dead.
Pereban thought, with a pang of unhappiness: It was all a dream. The god. The winged horse and the flight in sky. And in the dream I sinned. And now he had rolled from his pallet on to the floor. So he opened his eyes and found the floor was staring white and a glare went up from it and shone in a thick and wandering white mist that was everywhere about, and obscured everything. . . . And the floor was besides hot as an oven-stone. Pereban gathered himself and pulled himself to his feet, so he should only scorch his soles. Could it be? Rather than plummet miles down to be broken in pieces on the hills of earth, he had fallen instead a far shorter distance, to the face of the moon. Which meant he must have fallen upward, the moon being therefore in some way magnetic to his flesh or his life.
The young man stood, shifting from one foot to the other to save them, panting from his shock and the inadequate atmosphere, while the ghostly mist drifted continually about him.
Yes, it was the moon and he upon it. He had not perished, but what hope now? Though the disc was after all huge, and permitted him, in discomfort, to remain and bake, surely it was barren of all things? The horse had betrayed him and his formless schemes—doubtless now it cavorted below, due to become some legend of the lands of men. . . . But he had been punished for the fault of carnal delight. He would die, and that slowly, burning, starved, gasping for breath. Better to have been dashed in bits on the bosom of his mother the world.
Nevertheless, since it was impossible to keep still on the cooking-griddle surface, Pereban began to hasten along. He had no marker or idea of direction to guide him, and the mist hid before and behind, and all the outer sky. He might hurry in circles toward his death. And perhaps even some fiend haunted here, some moonthing that would rise suddenly to tackle him—
Pereban checked and stood still to burn his feet. Before him in the mist had risen a shape. It was half his own height and did not itself move, maybe having condensed itself preparatory to a spring.
“Declare yourself,” said Pereban. “I am armed only with hands and feet, but I will use them.”
The shape did not answer.
It came to Pereban, now hopping to and fro, that a faint coolth wafted from the substance of the fiend. Pereban resolved to die and marched forward, and next stubbed his toes on the lowest extremity of the fiend, and so learned it was only a hump jutting up from the white surface. In the top of the hump there was set a plate, translucent as porcelain. And from this plate came a breath of chilled air, so he instinctively threw himself upon it. No sooner had he done so than the plate tipped over and tossed him inward and down. The moon herself had gulped him.
And then he discovered himself drifting in a kind of silvery dusk, borne as if on a buoyant river. Some way off a clear fire shone with an unearthly glow, like a winter sun pale as a narcissus. Below stretched a mirror of onyx, patterned with combers of black and white. But Pereban was so cold now he could not bear it, and slowly revolving and sinking in the air, he froze and perished. And now and then he trusted and prayed it was a dream, and that he would rouse soon and be free of it.
• • •
Yet it was no dream though dreamlike indeed. The air was richer than the outer variety so, but for the cold, the falling adventurer might have breathed without care. Nevertheless, the air had to it this quality of denseness. It allowed him to descend only slowly, also churning him around and turning him over every so often, like a morsel in a stew.
Far away the narcissus of light still shone, but going paler and further off as he went down. The dusk itself had, it seemed to him, a kind of luminescence all its own.
Almost inadvertently in his discomfort and dismay, Pereban took note of these things, and eventually, seeing he was about to fall onto it, of the place below.
Being much closer to it now, he made out what appeared a great sea, moving slowly and as heavy a
s cream. It had two colors, black as ink, white as milk, that came together and drew apart, but never mixed to gray. Long, moody waves of this ink and milk ran in upon a mass of land that was itself all glowing a smoky white, with smoky black shadows especially cast from a range of mountains.
Pereban was looking at these doubtfully, for they seemed to have been carved and planed, so smooth and polished they were, when a rush exactly beneath caused him to stare that way. And there, lifting from the sea depths, was a pearly sea-beast, with two vast lacy fins or wings that fluttered, and a lacy fan of tail which, as the beast sank again, drove up from the water a spray of drops larger than a man’s hand. And they struck Pereban like peculiar soft stones. But in another minute the air had rolled him over again and down—onto a long white shore.
Truly, it was an alien spot. The ground was of a material like the mountains, utterly smooth and only traced here and there with vague runnels where the sea tides, which must come in and go out, had over centuries layered it like worn cameo. For miles this plain extended, to either horizon, the sea on its third side, and the mountains inland on the fourth. The narcissus sun, if such it was, stood now beside them, and lit their crests to a most ethereal pale gold.
Pereban, though, had very little eye for such matters, as he lay freezing on that cold beach. Nor, when more watery stones pummeled him, did he greatly bother that quantities of the whale-beasts were now leaping and diving in the seas of ink and milk, quite close to shore.
But then he heard a long dinning note, in the distance, repeated over and over and growing all the while more loud. And he began to sense a vibration which quickly resolved itself as the beating of several large drums. Pereban dismissed all the sounds as noises in his head due to weakness, or some hallucination of approaching death. And from this notion he passed into a theosophic meditation on whether he might not already be dead and the gods might not have thrust him into this alternate world for punishment. So absorbed was he in his half-fainting debate, that a vast procession, sweeping over the plain toward the shore’s edge, was almost on top of him before he considered it. But the dinning trumpets and reverberant drums of which the procession was the source, clashed abruptly to silence. That attracted Pereban’s attention. He raised his lids, and saw this:
