The Mammoth Book of Angels & Demons (Mammoth Books)

by Paula Guran

  Thereafter the moon-pebble was in Jaqir’s pocket.

  What a time they had been on their travels. Even as the carpet flopped, wearily and bumpily now, toward the Earth, a blossoming of rose pink appeared in the east.

  This pretty sight, of course, greatly upset Yulba, for demons feared the Sun, and with good reason, it could burn them to ashes.

  “Down, down, make haste accursed fleabag of a carpet!” ranted he, and so they rapidly fell, and next landed with a splashy thump in a swamp, from which green monkeys and red parakeets erupted at their arrival.

  “I shall return at dusk. Remember what I have risked for you!” growled Yulba.

  “It is graven on my brain.”

  Then the Drin vanished into the ground, taking with him the carpet. The Sun rose, and the amazing Moon, now once more far away, faded and set like a dying lamp.

  By midday, Jaqir had forced a path from the swamp. He sat beneath a mango tree and ate some of the ripe fruit, and stared at the moon-pebble.

  It shone, even in the daylight, like a milky flame. “You are more wonderful than anything I have ever thieved. But still I do not see how I can rob the sky of that other jewel, the Moon.”

  Then he considered, for one rash moment, running away. And the safeguarding bonds of the king’s magicians twanged around his skeleton.

  Jaqir desisted, and lay back to sleep.

  In sleep, a troop of tormenters paraded.

  The cast-off mistress who had betrayed him slapped his face with a wet fish. Yulba strutted, seeming hopeful. Next came men who cried, “Of what worth is this stupid Jaqir, who has claimed he can steal an egg from beneath a sleeping bird.”

  Affronted in his slumber, Jaqir truthfully replied that he had done that very thing. But the mockers were gone.

  In the dream then Jaqir sat up, and looked once more at the shining pebble lying in his hand.

  “Although I might steal a million eggs from beneath a million birds, what use to try for this? I am doomed and shall give in.”

  Just then something fluttered from the mango tree, which was also there in the dream. It was a small gray parrot. Flying down, it settled directly upon the opalescent stone in Jaqir’s palm and put out its light.

  “Well, my fine bird, this is no egg for you to hatch.”

  The parrot spoke. “Think, Jaqir, what you see, and what you say.”

  Jaqir thought. “Is it possible?”

  And at that he woke a second time.

  The Sun was high above, and over and over across it and the sky, birds flew about, distinct as black writing on the blue.

  “No bird of the air can fly so high as the Moon,” said Jaqir. He added, “But the Drin have a mythic knack with magical artifacts and clockworks.”

  Later, the Sun lowered itself and went down. Yulba came bouncing from the ground, coyly clad in extra rubies, with a garland of lotuses in his hair.

  “Now, now,” commenced Yulba, lurching forward.

  Sternly spoke Jaqir, “I am not yet at liberty, as you are aware. However, I have a scheme. And knowing your unassailable wisdom and authority, only you, the mighty Yulba, best and first among Drin, can manage it.”

  In Underearth it was an exquisite dusk. It was always dusk there, or a form of dusk. As clear as day in the upper world, it was said, yet more radiantly somber. Sunless, naturally, for the reasons given above.

  Druhim Vanashta, the peerless city of demonkind, stretched in a noose of shimmering nonsolar brilliance, out of which pierced, like needles, chiseled towers of burnished steel and polished corundum, domes of faceted crystal. While about the gem-paved streets and sable parks strolled or paced or strode or lingered the demons. Night-black of hair and eye, snowfrozen-white of complexion, the high-caste Vazdru and their mystic servants, the Eshva. All of whom were so painfully beautiful, it amounted to an insult.

  Presently, along an avenue, there passed Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, riding a black horse, whose mane and tail were hyacinth blue. And if the beauty of the Eshva and Vazdru amounted to an insult, that of Azhrarn was like the stroke of death.

  He seemed himself idle enough, Azhrarn. He seemed too musing on something as he slowly rode, oblivious, it appeared, to those who bowed to the pavement at his approach, whose eyes had spilled, at sight of him, looks of adoration. They were all in love with Azhrarn.

  A voice spoke from nowhere at all.

  “Azhrarn, Lord Wickedness, you gave up the world, but the world does not give up you. Oh Azhrarn, Master of Night, what are the Drin doing by their turgid lake, hammering and hammering?”

  Azhrarn had reined in the demon horse. He glanced leisurely about.

  Minutes elapsed. He too spoke, and his vocality was like the rest of him.

  “The Drin do hammer at things. That is how the Drin pass most of eternity.”

  “Yet how,” said the voice, “do you pass eternity, Lord Wickedness?”

  “Who speaks to me?” softly said Azhrarn.

  The voice replied, “Perhaps merely yourself, the part of you that you discard, the part of you which yearns after the world.”

  “Oh,” said Azhrarn. “The world.”

  The voice did not pronounce another syllable, but along an adjacent wall a slight mark appeared, rather like a scorch.

  Azhrarn rode on. The avenue ended at a park, where willows of liquid amber let down their watery resinous hair, to a mercury pool. Black peacocks with seeing eyes of turquoise and emerald in their tails, turned their heads and all their feathers to gaze at him.

  From between the trees came three Eshva, who obeised themselves.

  “What,” said Azhrarn, “are the Drin making by their lake?”

  The Eshva sighed voluptuously. The sighs said (for the Eshva never used ordinary speech), “The Drin are making metal birds.”

  “Why?” said Azhrarn.

  The Eshva grew downcast; they did not know. Melancholy enfolded them among the tall black grasses of the lawn, and then one of the Vazdru princes came walking through the garden.

  “Yes?” said Azhrarn.

  “My Prince, there is a Drin who was to fashion for me a ring, which he has neglected,” said the Vazdru. “He is at some labor for a human man he is partial to. They are all at this labor.”

  Azhrarn, interested, was, for a moment, more truly revealed. The garden waxed dangerously brighter, the mercury in the pool boiled. The amber hardened and the peacocks shut every one of their 450 eyes.

  “Yes?” Azhrarn murmured again.

  “The Drin, who is called Yulba, has lied to them all. He has told them you yourself, my matchless lord, require a million clockwork birds that can fly as high as the Earth’s Moon. Because of this, they work ceaselessly. This Yulba is a nuisance. When he is found out, they will savage him, then bury him in some cavern, walling it up with rocks, leaving him there a million years for his million birds. And so I shall not receive my ring.”

  Azhrarn smiled. Cut by the smile, as if by the slice of a sword, leaves scattered from the trees. It was suddenly autumn in the garden. When autumn stopped, Azhrarn had gone away.

  Chang-thrang went the Drin hammers by the lake outside Druhim

  Vanashta. Whirr and pling went the uncanny mechanisms of half-formed sorcerous birds of cinnabar, bronze and iron. Already-finished sorcerous birds hopped and flapped about the lakeshore, frightening the beetles and snakes. Mechanical birds flew over in curious formations, like demented swallows, darkening the Underearth’s gleaming day-dusk, now and then letting fall droppings of a peculiar sort.

  Eshva came and went, drifting on Vazdru errands. Speechless enquiries wafted to the Drin caves: Where is the necklace of rain vowed for the Princess Vasht? Where is the singing book reserved for the Prince Hazrond?

  “We are busy elsewhere at Azhrarn’s order,” chirped the Drin.

  They were all dwarfs, all hideous, and each one lethal, ridiculous and a genius. Yulba strode among them, criticizing their work, so now and then there was also a fight for the flying omnipresent
birds to unburden their bowels upon.

  How had Yulba fooled the Drin? He was no more Azhrarn’s favorite than any of them. All the Drin boasted as Yulba had. Perhaps it was only this: turning his shoulder to the world of mankind, Azhrarn had forced the jilted world to pursue him underground. In ways both graphic and insidious, the rejected one permeated Underearth. Are you tired of me? moaned the world to Azhrarn. Do you hate me? Do I bore you? See how inventive I am. See how I can still ensnare you fast.

  But Azhrarn did not go to the noisy lake. He did not summon Yulba. And Yulba, puffed with his own cleverness, obsessively eager to hold Jaqir to his bargain, had forgotten all accounts have a reckoning. Chung-clungk went the hammers. Brakk went the thick heads of the Drin, banged together by critical, unwise Yulba.

  Then at last the noise ended.

  The hammering and clamoring were over.

  Of the few Vazdru who had come to stare at the birds, less than a few remarked that the birds had vanished.

  The Drin were noted skulking about their normal toil again, constructing wondrous jewelry and toys for the upper demons. If they waited breathlessly for Azhrarn to compliment them on their bird-work, they did so in vain. But such omissions had happened in the past, the never-ceasing past-present-future of Underearth.

  Just as they might have pictured him, Azhrarn stood in a high window of Druhim Vanashta, looking at his city of needles and crystals.

  Perhaps it was seven mortal days after the voice had spoken to him.

  Perhaps three months.

  He heard a sound within his mind. It was not from his city, nor was it unreal. Nor actual. Presently he sought a magical glass that would show him the neglected world.

  How ferocious the stars, how huge and cruelly glittering, like daggers.

  How they exalted, unrivaled now.

  * * *

  The young king went one by one to all the windows of his palace. Like Azhrarn miles below (although he did not know it), the young king looked a long while at his city. But mostly he looked up into the awful sky.

  Thirty-three nights had come and gone, without the rising of the Moon.

  In the king’s city there had been at first shouts of bewildered amazement.

  Then prayers. Then, a silence fell which was as loud as screaming.

  If the world had lost the Sun, the world would have perished and died. But losing the Moon, it was as if the soul of this world had been put out.

  Oh those black nights, blacker than blackness, those yowling spikes of stars dancing in their vitriolic glory – which gave so little light.

  What murders and rapes and worser crimes were committed under cover of such a dark? As if a similar darkness had been called up from the mental guts of mankind, like subservient to like. While earth-over, priests offered to the gods, who never noticed.

  The courtiers who had applauded, amused, the judgement of the witty young king now shrank from him. He moved alone through the excessively lamped and benighted palace, wondering if he was now notorious through all the world for his thoughtless error. And so wondering, he entered the room where, on their marble pedestals, perched his angels.

  “What have you done?” said the king.

  Not a feather stirred. Not an eye winked.

  “By the gods – may they forgive me – what? What did you make me do?”

  “You are king,” said the scarlet parrot. “It is your word, not ours, which is law.”

  And the blue parrot said, “We are parrots, why name us angels? We have been taught to speak, that is all. What do you expect?”

  And the jade parrot said, “I forget now what it was you asked of us.” And put its head under its wing.

  Then the king turned to the gray parrot. “What do you have to say? It was your final advice which drove me to demand the Moon be stolen – as if I thought any man might do it.”

  “King,” said the gray parrot, “it was your sport to call four parrots ‘angels’. Your sport to offer a man an impossible task as the alternative to certain death. You have lived as if living is a silly game. But you are mortal, and a king.”

  “You shame me,” said the king.

  “We are, of course,” said the gray parrot, “truly angels, disguised. To shame men is part of our duty.”

  “What must I do?”

  The gray parrot said, “Go down, for Jaqir, Thief of Thieves, has returned to your gate. And he is followed by his shadow.”

  “Are not all men so followed?” asked the king perplexedly.

  The parrot did not speak again.

  Let it be said, Jaqir, who now entered the palace, between the glaring, staring guards of the king, was himself in terrible awe at what he had achieved. Ever since succeeding at his task, he had not left off trembling inwardly. However, outwardly he was all smiles, and in his best attire.

  “See, the wretch’s garments are as fine as a lord’s. His rings are gold. Even his shadow looks well dressed! And this miscreant it is who has stolen the Moon and ruined the world with blackest night.”

  The king stood waiting, with the court about him.

  Jaqir bowed low. But that was all he did, after which he stood waiting, meeting the king’s eyes with his own.

  “Well,” said the king. “It seems you have done what was asked of you.”

  “So it does seem,” said Jaqir calmly.

  “Was it then easy?”

  “As easy,” said Jaqir, “as stealing an egg.”

  “But,” said the king. He paused, and a shudder ran over the hall, a shuddering of men and women, and also of the flames in all the countless lamps.

  “But?” pressed haughty Jaqir.

  “It might be said by some, that the Moon – which is surely not an egg – has disappeared, and another that you may have removed it. After all,” said the king stonily, “if one assumes the Moon may be pilfered at all, how am I to be certain the robber is yourself? Maybe others are capable of it. Or, too, a natural disaster has simply overcome the orb, a coincidence most convenient for you.”

  “Sir,” said Jaqir, “were you not the king, I would answer you in other words that I do. But king you are. And I have proof.”

  And then Jaqir took out from his embroidered shirt the moon-pebble, which even in the light of the lamps blazed with a perfect whiteness. And so like the Moon it was for radiance that many at once shed tears of nostalgia on seeing it. While at Jaqir’s left shoulder, his night-black shadow seemed for an instant also to flicker with fire.

  As for the king, now he trembled too. But like Jaqir, he did not show it.

  “Then,” said the king, “be pardoned of your crimes. You have surmounted the test, and are directly loosed from those psychic bonds my magicians set on you, therefore entirely physically at liberty, and besides, a legendary hero. One last thing . . .”

  “Yes?” asked Jaqir.

  “Where have you put it?”

  “What?” said Jaqir, rather stupidly.

  “That which you stole.”

  “It was not a part of our bargain to tell you this. You have seen by the proof of this stone I have got the Moon. Behold, the sky is black.”

  The king said quietly, “You do not mean to keep it.”

  “Generally I do keep what I take.”

  “I will give you great wealth, Jaqir, which I think anyway you do not need, for they say you are as rich as I. Also, I will give you a title to rival my own. You can have what you wish. Now swear you will return the Moon to the sky.”

  Jaqir lowered his eyes. “I must consider this.”

  “Look,” they whispered, the court of the king, “even his shadow listens to him.”

  Jaqir, too, felt his shadow listening at his shoulder.

  He turned, and found the shadow had eyes.

  Then the shadow spoke, more quietly than the king, and not one in the hall did not hear it. While every flame in every lamp spun like a coin, died, revived and continued burning upside down.

  “King, you are a fool. Jaqir, you are anoth
er fool. And who and what am I?”

  Times had changed. There are always stories, but they are not always memorized. Only the king, and Jaqir the thief, had the understanding to plummet to their knees. And they cried as one, “Azhrarn!”

  “Walk upon the terrace with me,” said Azhrarn. “We will admire the beauty of the leaden night.”

  The king and Jaqir found that they got up, and went on to the terrace, and no one else stirred, not even hand or eye.

  Around the terrace stood some guards like statues. At the terrace’s center stood a chariot that seemed constructed of black and silver lava, and drawn by similarly laval dragons.

  “Here is our conveyance,” said Azhrarn, charmingly. “Get in.”

  In they got, the king and the thief. Azhrarn also sprang up, and took and shook the reins of the dragons, and these great ebony lizards hissed and shook out in turn their wings, which clapped against the black night and seemed to strike off bits from it. Then the chariot dove up into the air, shaking off the Earth entire, and green sparks streamed from the chariot wheels.

  Neither the king nor Jaqir had stamina – or idiocy – enough to question Azhrarn. They waited meekly as two children in the chariot’s back, gaping now at Azhrarn’s black eagle wings of cloak, that every so often buffeted them, almost breaking their ribs, or at the world falling down and down below like something dropped.

  But then, high in the wild, tipsy-making upper air, Jaqir did speak, if not to Azhrarn.

  “King, I tricked you. I did not steal the Moon.”

  “Who then stole it?”

  “No one.”

  “A riddle.”

  At which they saw Azhrarn had partly turned. They glimpsed his profile, and a single eye that seemed more like the night than the night itself was.

  And they shut their mouths.

  On raced the dragons.

  Below raced the world.

  Then everything came to a halt. Combing the sky with claws and wheels, dragons and chariot stood static on the dark.

  Azhrarn let go the jeweled reins.

  All around spangled the stars. These now appeared less certain of themselves. The brighter ones had dimmed their glow, the lesser hid behind the vapors of night. Otherwise, everywhere lay blackness, only that.