Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4

by Tanith Lee

  As a man sometimes will, when unnerved, the prince spoke aloud to his companion.

  “This highway is unorthodox. No doubt some weird plan of demonkind to discommode the pilgrim. I think we shall return to the road’s beginning and take our bearings.” And when there came no speechless answer, Lak grinned and said, “What? Already swooning, dearest?” And he put up his hand to pet the die. His fingers found nothing.

  Many conclusions might have gone through the brain of Lak Hezoor at this discovery. He might have thought the gem had somehow loosened and fallen and been lost, or that one of the wafting emanations had stolen it, or even that its own fright had pushed it back into the world above. But actually, the magician thought none of these things. One may conclude, then, he was at least sage enough to know he had been duped.

  He had less than a minute to revel in the knowledge.

  At last the chaste and windless air began to convey to him a sound. No sooner did Lak hear it than he understood it. It held every motive for his mounting fear. It was composed of a succession of belling notes, decipherable to one who had hunted, the noise of dogs that have the scent of their quarry in their nostrils. However, those that tell of it remark that it was more like the baying of starving wolves—yet worse, much worse. The fortunate would wake from sleep at its echo, screeching. The unfortunate did not wake, but turned and ran, and the sound ran with them, growing always louder and more near. It was the cry of the hounds of the Vazdru.

  Lak Hezoor, magician-prince of a city of earth, stood on the road and spoke swiftly but faultlessly the charm which would remove him from that spot. And the charm failed him. It failed him totally. Not a fraction of his plight was altered. Here he still lingered in the Underearth, the belling of the hounds ringing on every column around, and within the hollow of his soul’s own psychic skull. And peering along the forward vista of the road, it appeared to him now there was a cloud there, black and winking silver at its apex, brilliant and bloody below, and the cloud raced to reach him.

  Then Lak Hezoor the magician also turned and ran. He fled along the road toward the groves and the flax-framed river. He fled howling, emptied of sorcery, filled to the brim with horror and despair. And fly as he would, the road was endless. It went on and on before him, as at his back. He could not, would not reach the river. And the cry of the hounds was so loud now it seemed already ahead of him and to both sides, and though he dared not turn to see, he felt a blast like fire on his heels—the panting of glad murderers.

  But finally, the road did come to its beginning, and Lak beheld the River of Sleep, his nightmare’s border, on the edge of distance. He flung himself forward, but as his feet touched the sweet sooty grasses, warm weights slammed hard against his shoulders, and long bodies, curiously textured as if smoothly scaled, tumbled and flowed over him.

  The red dogs pulled him down among the willows. There they rolled him and tore at him, and through the abstract blindness of his suffering and screaming, he saw their scarlet eyes and teeth scarlet with his astral blood. The color of blood they were, and soon they dripped with their color. The torment did not abate. Over and over the unbearable was borne, the mawling of a death which did not kill.

  Eventually only a demented bundle of rags flopped back and forth shrieking among the hounds. Till some signal was given and they were called, and slunk aside, like sinuous shadows, to the caressing hands of their masters.

  One came forward then, and stood over the physical soul of Lak Hezoor, or all that was left of it (it was not very much). The deranged vision of the hunted creature could discern but little, yet this single object it did see with utter clarity. A man, slim and tall, clad in night itself, with hair that was night, and night in his eyes. And the dreadful beauty of him was like another torture added to what had gone before, like acid sprinkled into gaping wounds. Lak screamed with greater wildness at it, at the piercing embrace of the acid, but Azhrarn the Prince of Demons raised his hand, and Lak could scream no more.

  “What thing is this?” said Azhrarn. There was no cruelty in his voice which was in its contrasting turn so beautiful it even soothed the victim, momentarily. “This is only a man. I was deceived.” And yet, the voice which had no cruelty in it was all cruelty. It smote against the soul’s broken core and the soul longed for death. “You may inform your brothers,” said Azhrarn, “you met with the Vazdru under the earth.” And that said, he moved away; he vanished.

  With him, restraint vanished. The mawled soul began to scream more terribly, and in the midst of its screaming it was hurled down into the River of Sleep.

  And where was Oloru, instigator of this? And what was Oloru, that he had been able to escape it? It would seem that, like Kazir in the story, this poet also had a mission in the Underearth. For some bizarre reason he could not enter by himself, so Lak must bring him, but being in, Oloru was at liberty to journey and to busy himself as he desired.

  Oloru had no soul, astral or otherwise. He had that within him which passed for and was the equivalent of a soul. It is possible, if not certain, he might under slightly dissimilar circumstances have penetrated the kingdom of the demons, but then he must have done so in his actual form. And in such guise, the whole place would have felt him as an oyster feels the twinge of grit. Decidedly it was the hint of Oloru’s presence that had disrupted and alerted the brooding inactivity of Azhrarn, and brought him forth pitiless, a hunter on the road. Which carnage had provided an opportune diversion.

  Once the topaz die removed itself from Lak Hezoor, it had spun away in an opposite direction to that towered pile of steel and shattered stars, Druhim Vanashta. The demon city was not its destination. As it went, the image of a die went, too. The article which was the atypical essence of Oloru turned to a slender rod of yellow radiation, vaguely purplishly limned.

  Hours it ran, months, years, or half a minute. By which unabsolute time it was dashing over a transparent landlocked sea. In the sea were islands, some small, some treed, some high as the sky-which-was-not-a-sky, and all throbbing stained-glass reflections in the water. And then there was another isle, in a fog.

  The rod of amber and amethyst jumped into the fog and out the other side of it. Where, a mite disheveled, it dropped at the feet of an Eshva handmaiden who had been waiting—though for what?—on the shore.

  Something oblique had befallen the collective Eshva exiled on this island. Demons, they had as a rule a preference for beauteous mortal form, in which garb they took to the earth and overwhelmed humanity. But, precisely because both Vazdru and Eshva were capable of a multitude of shapes, their intrinsic nature was obviously not any one of them. The Eshva on the island, who had started as pale-skinned exquisite males and females, with eyes of darkness and long black hair that domiciled silver snakes, had pined and faded away to basics. She—or it—at the feet (they were not feet) of whom or which Oloru had thrown himself was now only a slim vertical of effulgent lapis lazuli.

  Nevertheless, when the radiant rod brushed against this effulgent vertical, a reaction occurred.

  Firstly, the vertical swayed, bending down. Secondly, the rod was raised in what became, gradually, two slender hands. Lastly, from the gaseousness an alabaster face emerged, with eyes.

  “It lives,” said the Eshva, of the rod. She did not speak in any way recognizably. Her eyes and a motion of her fingers said the words. But Oloru heard her. In her almost existent hands he shone, and shivered. So she clasped him to her, enthralled at the sensations he imparted.

  Anything out of the ordinary was a novelty on the island. No wonder the Eshva was quickened. No astonishment either that, handmaiden as she was, she next, her find most lovingly clasped, began to make her way toward the hollow cliff where dwelled her Vazdru mistress.

  Azhrarn’s daughter was lying, as so often, in her sleep of negative unbeing, on the bed with pillars of red jade. And as she did this, let it be stressed, she looked most fabulously and startlingly beautiful. So much ran in the family, you could say.

  The worl
dly version of what then took place, goes as follows: A delicious waiting-woman bursts into the mansion of her gorgeous lady and cries: “See, princess. I found this fascinating artifact on the beach. Do pray examine it for yourself.” But, contrary to anticipation, the lady does not stir. She lies prone on crimson, her eyes fast shut. And in a little while the delicious maid droops, losing her own interest in all things.

  There the Eshva hovered then, once more an upright translucency, before she disappeared altogether, to resume a melancholy vigil for nothing on the shore. The radiant rod was left lying by the bed.

  He is alone now, alone with the one he came seeking.

  No other is near. No demon dreams mischief is running amok here in the land’s very womb. Even Azhrarn does not dream it, as he rides in chase, his hounds and court around him, after the illusory wraith of Lak Hezoor—mistaken for another’s taint, or burnish.

  So then.

  Shortly there begins to be a rearrangement of molecules. The amber and amethyst blaze up and go out, and from the void of extinguishment springs a young man, expensively dressed and with silk gloves; with silk gold hair, low-burning burning eyes, and handsome, oh indeed, enough to scorch the island. And this glamorous gentleman stares a long moment at the loveliness asleep, or negated, on the coverlet. (He saw her last when she was a child. The promise of her infancy now fulfilled seems to take his breath away.) Then he leans down to her and his beautiful hair brushes her beautiful throat. He sets his lips gently to the lids of her eyes, through which, even closed, the irises reveal themselves in a glaze of rapturous blue. But then he places his lips more gently and more firmly upon her own. He kisses her. At his kiss, the whole tuned cliff lets forth a strain of melody, as if the pent-up singing of years has passed through it.

  And she, of course, opens her eyes.

  “Pretty and beauteous and amazing maiden,” said Oloru, in a voice so low he might hardly be said to speak, “your father hates you and neglects you. But I am your guardian, and maybe you remember me.”

  The blue eyes (what a foolish word is “blue”—oh for an adjective of the old first earth to describe them) looked back and through and deeply into the amber eyes of Oloru. She said nothing. But as with an Eshva, her eyes said, “No, I do not remember. But you may attempt to remind me.”

  “Yes. But not here or now. Here or now I am at risk. I leapt most happily into danger for your sake. Pity me. Make me safe.”

  He had taken both her hands in his gloved ones. She did not resist. She lay there looking at him. She, that her mother had named Soveh (Flame), and her father, in an instant’s mocking unkind correspondence, Azhriaz.

  Then she did speak. One word. “How?”

  Oloru now kissed both her hands. And she, very quietly as he did so, brushed his hair with her mouth. To be abandoned, then to be claimed—what other explanation is required?

  Oloru felt that lightest butterfly kiss, and raised his head to gaze at her again. He told her how easy it was for her, and for himself if with her, to escape—not just the island, but from Underearth. And when she smiled, No, not so, he said, “Only think. He is Azhrarn. But what are you? Azhrarn’s daughter.” And it seems this caused her to think in truth.

  She left the crimson bed. Her hair swept the earth. She looked up at Oloru where he stood beside her. She kept one of his hands, the right, relinquished the other. Like children they ran down the stairways of the lacework cliff, down the slopes of the island, and came to the shore.

  There, some way off, the debodied Eshva still waited. Azhrarn’s daughter murmured something, and the Eshva drifted obediently, listlessly away.

  Seaward of the shore, only mist was visible. Azhrarn’s daughter, Oloru’s ward, cupped her hands about her mouth, and she whistled. It was not a human, nor even a fleshly demoniac note. It was the shrill of a silver pipe shaped like the thighbone of a hare. She had heard it once, when first her father brought her underground, and could mimic it exactly. It summoned transport.

  Sure enough, in seven heartbeats, a darkness hurtled through the mist, bringing with it the spray of the sea-lake over which it had run. A demon horse, black, and azure-maned, which stopped beside them but yet pawed the ground to be off again.

  The daughter of Azhrarn looked at Oloru: “I am equipped to leave. You?”

  “You are able, if you will, to picture how I came here. The rest is yours to decide. I am at your mercy, but there is no other state in which I could wish to be.”

  “O flatterer of demons,” said she aloud. Then she snapped her fingers. Doubtless she felt intimations of her power in that moment. For he, and he was someone to be reckoned with, was gone, came back otherwise, and fell into her hand a topaz die. Flirtatiously then she placed the die in her mouth, under her tongue for safekeeping.

  She mounted the demon horse. Her impulse told it where it should go.

  It broke out again through the island’s mist, trailing streamers of that veil, and sped over the water to the farther shore.

  All this time, and she had never thought to do such a thing, or that she could. To be abandoned, to be claimed, what other explanation is required?

  Across demon lands, then, past the shining city, grazing its walls with the winged wind of their passage. None knew her, or what she did. But everything knew it. As she rode, black lightning under her and a jewel in her mouth, Azhrarn’s daughter felt the soul of that wicked kingdom gather itself in incoherent outrage. Through the diamond air came spoor of hatching storms. The waters of pools and fountains ruffled and roared. Forests of trees like spangled bones stretched out their hands to catch her flying hair, but she struck them aside.

  The entrance-exit of Underearth she recollected. Three gates, the innermost of black fire, the secondmost of blue steel, the outermost of agate. Beyond these, the scoured vein of a dead volcano opening to a country of lit volcanoes—the earth’s magmatic center.

  She came to the first inner gate.

  Before her father, the ruler there, all three gates had flung themselves wide. But before Azhrarn’s daughter they did nothing. And the horse, reined in, snorted, and raked the ground, now with one forefoot, now with the other. She sensed too, this fleeing girl who was so much more than any fleeing girl, the gathering of the thunder at her back. What now?

  Under her tongue, the die tickled her like juice from a lemon.

  It reminded her of something so obvious that she shook her hair, being unable to open her mouth and laugh. For though the Demon was her father, her mother had been mortal, and something besides, the child of a solar comet.

  The sun.

  She said it, the fleeing girl, with her brain only. But the authority of this inimical symbol, to which she had such rights, and which no other here would ever seemingly conjure, was like a blow. It crashed against the gate of black fire, searing a hole in it, and through this hole she forced the horse to go, though it did not like to. The gate of steel was next, and to this gate also Azhrarn’s daughter displayed the image in her mind, and the gate recoiled, withered, and she plunged through it. The gate of agate, a diplomat, had already prudently unlocked itself and let her ride by without fuss.

  Above her now the funnel of the volcano, showing no light, nor suspicion of anything.

  The horse was spent. She slipped from it and let it trot away, head hanging, back through the gates before they could heal themselves.

  No longer needing to ask questions, Azhrarn’s daughter lifted her arms and touched the cool air in the volcanic chimney. And into it she summoned a volcanic wind, a smoldering sail fringed with great embers. It whirled down about her and bore her aloft, up and up and up, through the funnel, up and up and out into the sky of earth.

  Earth’s was a sky of darkness, too, underlit by the furnaces of the burning mountains. Yet in the east miles off one mountain burned that was not a mountain. (Dawn.)

  The wind, her slave, carried her some way before, robbed of its fire-born impetus, it sank. On the hillside where it left her, she stood and watc
hed the dawn, Azhrarn’s daughter. She watched alone and jealously, for she had been, it seemed to her, a thousand years denied this sight.

  The glory of a thousand mornings in that sunrise for her, then. And the colors of the earth blinded her and made her weep. She could endure the day as could no other demon thing. Yet half her atoms shrank from the view that the other half of her atoms loved, and were kindred of. She was doomed equally to search out and to eschew the sun.

  She had taken the topaz from her mouth and left it lying on a boulder. She sought the shadow of a rock.

  They say the waters of her blue eyes turned to sapphires as they met the soil of earth; she wept corundum. But perhaps after all she only wept tears.

  Oloru came to her then, and now he wore a damson mantle, into which he gathered her. He kissed her eyes again, wet with tears or sapphires.

  “Here in the world, my own gifts are rapidly leaving me,” he said. “But for now—”

  The mantle flared its wings with the sun caught in one of them, and, as it seemed, a horde of stars.

  And the hillside was vacant.

  5

  THE SAME SUN it was which rose behind the widow’s house. The scene it gilded there was less impassioned, to begin with.

  Out in the courtyard lay the rioters, in all the attitudes of riot’s aftermath. In the forest over the way, the birds woke and sang, but those who woke in the yard were not inclined to copy them. They held their heads or their bellies, called for medicine or for more drink. Some had the temerity to call also for their lord, Lak Hezoor. When none vouchsafed a reply, these noble courtiers began to beat on the house doors and windows. They croaked or bellowed that they feared their patron had come to some harm, injuring himself in scaling, maybe, the obdurate icy breast of a virgin.