by Tanith Lee
“This one is my shining jewel,” said Lak presently to the mother of Oloru, and he stroked Oloru’s thigh, so the widow could have no doubt that not only did the jewel shine in mirth and song, but between the sheets, too.
“How a palace dulls one,” said Lak Hezoor. “What a delight is this simple life.” And he shouted for another jar of wine.
Outside, the courtiers held their own revel, not in any way restrained by the pretense of civility. They encouraged their horses to foul the courtyard, and so did they. Household items, when come on, were broken from sheer bad-fellowship. They had pilfered the yard tree for a fire, and eased nature in the well.
Above it all, even in decline, the sun went down into the forest, leaving behind it only one rose-red cloud. The evening star lifted in the east like a frozen silver firework.
“Well, madam,” said Lak Hezoor to the widow, “I am very weary. Where is my sleeping chamber?”
The widow told him meekly.
“I hope,” said the prince, “I shall not be left lonely there for very long.”
The widow put her hands to her mouth. Lak removed himself with a flourish; at the sisters he did not glance.
“The passages are gloomy,” said Oloru. “I will guide you, dear lord.”
So they went up through the house together, Lak walking, as ever, lighter than dark dust, and—let it be said—Oloru no more heavily. They reached a door, which Oloru opened. It was the great bedchamber of the house. The tall-posted bed nearly touched the ceiling.
“Now,” said Lak Hezoor, “you know that if your sisters do not come to me inside the hour, I will go to find them. Or I will work a spell to bring them here, mindless, and unable to object.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Oloru. “But where is the sport in that? Is it not greater fun to force, to rape, to the accompaniment of screams of agony? Or on the other hand, to have one who is willing and screams in her delight? Both so loud, their mother hears in an adjacent room?”
“He knows me,” said Lak. “Well, then?”
“My lord, I can persuade the elder to lascivious compliance, for she is hot under her coldness. And the younger I can assist you with so no sorcery is needed that will take off her edge and leave her only a limp doll. She shall struggle and wail. You will have a feast of desire and a feast of terror.”
“And in return, what do you want? What have you been wanting all along, sweetheart, that you brought me here and tempted me with such alluring relatives?”
“He knows me,” said Oloru. “Well, then.” And he told Lak Hezoor what he wanted.
Lak Hezoor considered. He seemed not to think it any enormous thing, this notion of Oloru’s, picking over it only as a man does a meat bone, to be sure nothing tasty is missed.
“And so you sang of Kazir,” he said. “What put such a stroke in your mind?”
“The demon by your tent. Talking of demons, as we have done.”
“But you are not brave, my love. Do you not quake at such an adventure?”
“How should I fear? I shall have your lordship’s protection.”
“You suppose me a match for Azhrarn?”
Oloru smiled most demurely. “Someone may be listening,” he said. Then he went to Lake Hezoor and whispered in his ear, “Yes.”
The magician was well pleased. It was his weakness to suppose himself a sort of earthly Azhrarn, a demon prince as well as a temporal one. Dark of hair and eye and cat-footed, with abnormal powers, and surrounded on all sides by those who feared them, and addicted, moreover, to artistic sadisms . . . it seemed to Lak his credentials were sound. And how frequently he had called this pretty plaything of his Sivesh or Simmu or by some other name belonging to one of Azhrarn’s male or ambigendered consorts. Now, full of wine, and of himself, as ever, and slow and eager both with anticipation, Lak was disposed to try this perilous scheme. Perhaps he would, one day or night, have thought of it himself. He might then have rejected it, too. For something in the winsome whispering of Oloru drove him on. Thus Lak, imagining himself seduced, not driven, into granting a crazy boon, complied.
“Do as you promised with the women, and I will undertake your venture. Only I believe you will faint away with fright and miss all the marvels. Do not reproach me after, if that is so. Nor must you regret the fate of your sisters. It may be,” and here he stretched himself and yawned, “a stormy time for them.”
“Oh,” said Oloru, “they are due for that.”
He left the room as his lord was reclining himself upon the great bed.
No, Oloru did not walk heavily. He blew like a blond paper through the house, by the windows from which he might look out and see—and hear—the drunken wretches of the magician’s court involved in nasty play about the widow’s yard, and on through a passage where the widow’s servant sat with a stick grasped in his hand, prepared for the defense of his mistresses—the whole might of his old worn body and a length of wood against Lak’s power and sorcery. (He regarded Oloru as the young man silently passed, and gave a kind of snarl, but did not otherwise move.) And so Oloru arrived at the doorway of the pillared, spidered hall. It was full night now, and only three poor candles burned there. It was not therefore surprising the widow and her daughters did not see him as he stood on the threshold before them. They sat in their places, white-faced but immobile, with all the dignity of the condemned who will not remonstrate.
Then Oloru spoke. It was only a word or two. He had learned them from the magician’s books. These words took effect instantly.
A composite soft sighing winged over the hall. Along the passage, there came the clatter of a dropped stick.
Soon, Oloru scratched on the door of his guest’s bedchamber. “What shall be first, my lord, to rape or to roister?”
“Bring in all there is,” said Lak.
Then through the door, and into the low-lit room, came three shadows, one urging the other two before him. And there was the glimmer of pale hair and white flesh, and a sable stirring and a flicker of flame on eyes and teeth, and some sobbing and pleas, and next some wild screaming that seared through the house, but whether the outcry of agony or ecstasy there was no telling at all.
The three candles were almost consumed when the sisters and the mother of Oloru opened their eyes, and looked about them. It seemed they had sunk deep asleep. That was strange in itself, for they had been in nervous dread. Stranger still it was that none had come rudely and violently to waken them. And it was very late. Even the rioters outside had fallen quiet.
At length the mother said, “What can have happened? Can Oloru have persuaded him to clemency?”
“I do not suppose so,” said the elder girl. “Nor do I suppose Oloru would attempt it.”
“Hush,” said the mother. She got up from her chair and lit three new candles. The meager light revived and touched fresh pallor into their faces. And then the younger sister cried in a wild broken voice: “Mother—look there by your feet—and here, by mine!”
“Oh, what is it?” asked the mother, and she looked with her heart in her mouth. But all she saw on the floor by her feet was her own shadow cast away from the candles. Then, looking down at the feet of her younger daughter, she saw there was no shadow there at all, the floor stretched empty.
“Merciful gods protect you,” gasped the widow.
“Then let them protect me also,” said the elder girl, “for my shadow too has left me.”
And it was so. Turn about and about as the two sisters would, however the candles described them, the light made no shadows for them anywhere.
Now a shadow was and is only this, a portion cut from the passage of a light by that which stands between the light and all else it would shine on. In some lands of the flat earth, it is true, a shadow stood as cipher for the soul, or at least for the physical soul which resembled, so exactly, the body which had spawned it. Elsewhere, a shadow was just a shadow. Yet, there is this to be considered. One who can no longer cast shade has surely lost some part of herself, some elem
ent which makes for opacity and substance—or else how does the light pass directly through her? To lose one’s shadow, then or now, was and would be cause for some concern.
The sisters ran to their mother for solace, and she tended them as best she might.
Eventually it was the elder sister who drew away, and said, “This is our brother’s doing. Some new treat he has devised for his lord.” She dried her eyes and put back her hair. She said, “Sorrow gives way to anger. I will go up and ask them what they mean by it.”
“Oh no—do not, for all our sakes.”
“Yes but I will. To damage and debase the flesh is wicked enough. But to meddle with the psychic parts is beyond enduring. The gods will take note, Mother, of our righteous distress, and come to my assistance.” In this pious belief she was, of course, quite mistaken (since in those days the gods cared nothing for mankind). But the mistake sustained her and she rushed from the hall. Along the passage she went, where the servant was snoring still, and up through the house to the room they had allotted the magician. Here she rapped on the door before her valor should desert her, and called out: “Let me enter at once!” No one replied.
“I will come in!” exclaimed the girl. And she thrust wide the door and ran through.
How odd the familiar room looked in its guttering prodigality of candles. But more than light, it was a darkness there that had changed it. For the space seemed full of a living dimness, an invisible, swirling, murmuring something—she did not know it for what it was, the ambience of a weighty spell, but it turned her cold, so she would soon have run out again. Then she beheld, through the fog of the sorcery, the magician lying there on the quilts, heavy as lead, seeming not to breathe, locked up in such a closed prison of sleep that it instantly suggested death. And this sight, though it was more terrifying than anything else, also stayed her.
Just then, a whiteness that had seemed to hang like steam over the cushions on the floor rose up.
Now the elder sister was surely transfixed. She stood in horrified wonder, all eyes. Two pale and ghostly girls poised before her, their long bright hair spilling around them. Both were naked, both were known. One was the younger sister, one other the elder sister—herself. Neither did these two possess, either of them, a shadow, and it was clearly to be seen how the candlelight passed straight through each.
“Do not be afraid,” said the ghost of the elder sister to the reality. “Oloru brought me forth from you and Oloru left me power to tell you of it.”
“Say what you are,” trembled the girl.
“Your shadow, or that which enables you to cast one—some of your substance, yet not your self. With me, and with this other”—here the ghost indicated the ghost of the younger sister—“the monster Lak had his wishes. To him it seemed he ravished and rent and mastered flesh, but he did not. Nor is it anything to us what he did with us. Neither, when we presently return to you, will you think anything more of it than we.”
“But you are my immortal essence,” cried the girl in a worse dismay than ever. “He has done all these things to my soul and the soul of my sister.”
“No, we are not your souls. Your souls are not of this fashion. Only colored air are we. Let me come back to you, and you will know at once all is well with you.”
“Come back then,” said the girl, and she braced herself for pain or lunacy. But the ghost drifted to her like a moonbeam and glided over and through her, and was one with her. And with great happiness the girl saw her shadow appear immediately on the wall, like an omen of perfect good.
“Now go, and bring here to me the one to whom I belong,” said the second ghost in a petulant susurrus of the second sister’s voice.
“But he—’’ said the girl, recalling Lak slumbering like the dead not ten paces from her.
“He has other business.”
“Where then is Oloru my brother?” demanded the elder sister; relief had made her bold. But the ghost did not respond, merely folded its hands patiently, just as the younger girl did when she was exasperated.
The elder sister felt she had no choice but to hurry below and tell the glad tidings. As for Oloru, she blessed him, and her tears fell warmly, for she knew herself whole, as the ghost had assured her she would, and her rescue was all his doing. And in that way she forgot he had also been the cause of her peril.
4
AND FOR WHAT curious reward had Oloru gone to so much trouble? What had he bought from the magician-prince with a delusion of white bodies and screaming? What indeed, Oloru having proved himself such a competent mage, did he require from Lak Hezoor that he himself could not manage alone?
Down, down, down; miles down beneath the country of men and the comprehension of men: the Underearth, the demons’ kingdom.
At the kingdom’s very boundary wandered Sleep River, sluggish as a blackish treacle, between the high tasseled heads of the white flax that grew there. Here on the river’s flaxy shores, with blood-red hounds, the Vazdru hunted, not lion or deer, but the souls of men asleep, which ran shrieking before them. Though it was only the souls of those near death, or the insane, which the dogs were able to catch and tear. Even these were allowed to escape in the end—it was merely a sport to the demons. Besides, there had been no hunting a long while now, as there had been little of anything—music, gaming, intrigue, love, the immemorial pastimes of Druhim Vanashta and its lords. Nor did the hammers of the Drin, the demon metalsmiths, often sound. Nor did the creatures of that underworld frequently fly or sing, or the flowers extravagantly bloom, or the waters magnetically glitter, as once they had. That pall of Azhrarn’s rage and grief hung over everything.
Nevertheless, it might be considered still a place of wonders worth seeing. Centuries before, Kazir had come here by witchcraft, passing through the River of Sleep, as generally men did solely inadvertently. Kazir had had a mission to perform. But Lak’s poet, Oloru, had begged that he too might go sightseeing through the treacherous underland, in the protective company of Lak. What songs, opined Oloru, should be made of this excursion after! (And of the bravura and cunning of the magician.)
Now, in order to go down into Underearth, without notation and the spells of the demons themselves to free the way, the one means was to travel incorporeally—as Kazir did in the story.
It was therefore the soul which must be the traveler, that is to say, the physical or astral soul, that elemental greater than mere shadowplay, though formed in the likeness of the body; equipped also with that body’s talents and learning, whatever they might be.
There were in that era several towering sorcerers abroad on the earth. Interesting, perhaps, so few of them made this trip below. It would seem to indicate some excellent reason for even the most wily to keep out. . . . However, Oloru had inspired his lord to the knowledge that he need have no qualms. That he, Lak, was a match for the Vazdru, eons ripe in all things uncanny. In fact, no less than a rival of Azhrarn. Madness.
So, the orgy completed, the women left lying like thrown-off clothes, Lak—with scarcely any preparation, full of drink and meat, lethargic and satisfied—set about the business of astral descent. “But,” had said Oloru encouragingly, “do not expose me to them, my poor shivering soul. Carry me with you as Azhrarn carried Sivesh—he an eagle, and Sivesh one feather on his breast. You a lord of lords, and I . . . some small ornament upon your person.”
It is not recorded, the actual caliber of Lak’s magery, but he was mage enough for this, it seems.
In a space, the breath of magic filled the chamber and the magician’s body slumped in its trance—the soul had gone. While of Oloru, surprisingly, nothing at all remained. No, not so much as an eyelash on the pillow.
The tide of Sleep River swarmed with faces and forms and mental wanderings. It took some guile and cerebral purpose to get through the wash without succumbing. Through it they got, nevertheless, Lak and his loving friend, and arrived on the shore.
Here they stood, gazing out across the ebony landscape, in the sheen of the my
stic jewelry light.
Lak seemed only himself, a dark soul princely dressed. Of the soul of Oloru there was no sign, no trace. Not one? Yes, after all, one trace. On the breast of Lak Hezoor there hung a little nugget of polished topaz, somewhat reminiscent of an unmarked die. Oloru? Oloru.
It was said to be possible to glimpse the demon city from the banks of the River, on a clear day. But no days were ever unclear in the Underearth, nor were they “days.” It would seem then that something, perhaps only the vision of the arrival, hid or revealed Druhim Vanashta. If Lak made out the distant architecture is debatable. But be sure the yellow gem upon his breast, common example of the dice species though it was, saw everything.
Maybe it communicated also with the magician, urging and cajoling. For certain, Prince Lak began to walk in a definite direction, through the fragile groves of ivory and silver and between the black willows that trailed down their tendrils like unstrung harps. There was no hesitation in his step. Once or twice, when some vaporous thing seemed to flutter at him out of the air (such emanations abounded here), he brushed it aside with a potent phrase or mantra, as a man waves away a gnat.
They, the lord and his topaz, reached in a while a wide road. It was paved with marble, lined by columns. This was the path to the city, and conceivably Lak paused a moment on the brink of it. But there must have been rendered then more persuasion and praise. In a moment, Lak Hezoor stepped upon the marble road.
Almost at once a peculiar feeling fixed on him. It was not a feeling he was intimate with, though he had often been its author in others: fear. Now it might be supposed even Lak should experience some misgiving simply at getting quiddity in this place, yet so far, patently, he had not. Nor did there seem any pronounced cause for the emotion to strike at him this instant. The air was still, no threatening noise disturbed it, and no agitation was visible anywhere—except the glint of the city at the road’s end, if he even saw it. So Lak resumed his walk boldly, and the clutch of fear grew stronger, nor could he control it. With every stride it grew worse, until he halted again. This time, having looked carefully ahead, and all around, Lak looked over his shoulder. So he noticed an oddity. The marble road, of which he had only traversed a brief length, extended for a mile or more behind him. Such elongation did not console Lak Hezoor.
