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

by Tanith Lee

  One was by, and vital enough.

  Chuz, Prince Madness, had been some while wandering the earth. His last meeting with Azhrarn may or may not have discomposed him, but doubtless it gave him to think, in his own obscure fashion. Dunizel, beloved of the Prince of Demons, had died through Chuz’s fault; the evidence of the matter could show nothing else. But whether it had been a deliberate fault, an error in judgment, or a mad impulse—who was absolutely sure? For the mind of such as Chuz inclined to be unfathomable. Notwithstanding that, he had incurred the wrath of Azhrarn, who spoke of retribution. Would Chuz fear that? He had powers and to spare, there was not a Lord of Darkness who was without powers of many and awe-inspiring sort. And by very reason of this, such a duel could hardly be taken lightly. There was once an occasion when Azhrarn himself, finding he was on the borders of an ultimate disagreement with another of his peers, Uhlume, King Death, had approached Uhlume and placated him, giving him even a tactful clue as to how their game might be won. It is to be concluded Chuz now sought some tactful means of appeasement.

  At one time it had been supposed all Lords of Darkness avoided the earthly sun, which would scorch them, or reduce them to ashes. This, however, was only true of one—Azhrarn, by virtue of his demon origins. Nevertheless, every one of those other four Dark Lords had a definite penchant for the night, and for night games and shadowplay, and shadowy places. In this way it came about that Chuz was at large in the somber forest, enjoying the feel of its sorcerousness, no doubt, as another would enjoy the scent of flowers, at the moment of the first Oloru’s transformation. Doubtless too, Chuz was instantly drawn to the spot, the surge of magic like the call of some fascinating bird. Once there, he made his decision, having perceived what had occurred. Having also formed some attendant plans, he poured his fluid unconscionable self suddenly into the metaphysical mold, settled, hardened within it invisibly, and at last stepped forth, stunned, into the day’s ending.

  As a disguise, it was a unique one. In the way of transforming the humanoid aspect of Chuz, Chuz being yet Chuz, it did not utterly succeed. Prince Madness, or most of one side of him, had always been fair to look on. And he was besides apt at that time to be translated to overall good looks; had been practicing them in Bhelsheved. Thus, where the form of Oloru was fair enough, never had it been as fair as the influx of Chuz now made it. Nor had the first Oloru been as poetical, or as lunatic, as the second Oloru, which was of course only fitting. So, in the effect of appearance, the ruse was no more than theater, and easily undermined. However. The steely root of the disguise lay in another direction. Chuz, reborn Oloru, became Oloru. Chuz forgot he was Chuz.

  Before, the passage of Chuz’s footstep two thousand miles off might have tingled the perceptions of Azhrarn, for each Lord of Darkness exuded the glamour of his ego from every nonearthly pore. But now, only Oloru was there, who knew he was only Oloru.

  It was a fact, time and again the second Oloru had brushed by demonkind in the dark of the world’s nights. Sometimes they had even been attracted to him, sensing something. But when they came close, there was only a handsome crack-wit larking or jeering or shaking with frayed nerves. Oloru’s essence cried loudly: Youth, maleness, self-conscious sexual ambiguity, charm, brinkmanship, neurasthenia. And such were the notices of mortals. And the demons, maybe briefly puzzled, withdrew again and left him alone.

  This then, the gracious obeisance Chuz extended to Azhrarn: See how I honor you and value your wrath, unbrother. I am hiding in earnest.

  Azhrarn’s anguished lethargy had had its uses, too. It had provided the margin for Chuz to indulge in wandering experiment, and, once the second Oloru came from the wood, the space to explore and develop his role.

  Not until Chuz’s invasion of Underearth had Azhrarn turned his head to listen, and his inclination again to the format of revenge. Even there, the pursuers were mistaken. Hapless Prince Lak, with all his long life of wrongdoing bright before him, took the brunt as ingenuous decoy. The razor-bite perfume of Chuz had been all over him, while Chuz himself, die and rod, was singularly lacking in it. For even in such guise, he still believed himself only Oloru, to begin with.

  Chuz, as himself, could have worked Lak’s magic of astral descent, and magics far superior, with scarcely a thought. But as Oloru, he was not able. Chuz as himself would never have dared (probably) to enter the Underearth; it was an act of unnegotiable hostility. But Oloru was simply a poet seeking forbidden thrills.

  When the spell took hold, the entire package, Chuz-Oloru, life force and flesh, went down below ground in the topaz. An immortal, Chuz had no soul, or else he was completely a sort of soul, pure demonic energy, if no demon.

  All the actions of Oloru, to the very point of crossing the sea-lake and alighting on the island, had been apparently random insane high jinks. Naturally, they were not. More than a year before, in the seconds of his decision to become Oloru, Chuz had implanted certain impulses in his own secret brain that would come not to know itself. To seek a magician master from whom he could steal handy provisional magics, next to entice and wheedle him into a trek below. There to fly off at a tangent, and happen by intuition on the being last seen, though not recalled, as a tiny child; Azhrarn’s progeny. Dunizel’s daughter.

  In truth, though he had not realized it, she was all the goal of Oloru’s second life. To find her out, to steal her away.

  She captured Chuz’s attention from the first. He had looked in at her even as she lay in Dunizel’s womb, and he had said to Dunizel and her demon lover, “I come to stand uncle to your unborn child.” Which suggestion, suspicious in itself, had been so hedged about with admiring taunts and loving insults offered Azhrarn, it had as much hope of success as ice in fire. Perverse, Chuz knew as much. He wanted, did not want, did not know what he wanted, took care as Oloru to forget what he wanted—and then set off to fetch it to him, through levinbolts and brimstone.

  And, sorcerous thing which unavoidably still he was, the proximity of other sorcerous things galvanized him, even in amnesia. Thus the forest had tickled him into employing the shape of Oloru’s own jackal, in the interest of a speedy gallop. Thus Chuz’s own fearsome strength of persuasion came to him to allow him to drive Lak Hezoor to the last organized folly of his life. While the quintessence of Underearth worked on Oloru like a fine chisel, and chipped away the armoring.

  By the moment he stood over her, the mistress of his quest, he had begun to remember himself. His kiss was vibrant with that remembrance, and how could it help but wake her, too?

  The successive escape from exquisite hell, the damson-winged flight across the sunrise, these were the exploits of Chuz. But here in the glade, on the breast of the world again, the inner Chuz ebbed away. Oloru was Oloru once more. Although even that not totally. As smoke cannot be kept in a box, all Chuz could not be kept in human skin. Something was bound to get loose. It turned out to be those worst of all Chuzian attributes, the hands.

  Therefore he lay, a Lord of Darkness brought low by his own intrinsic terror. And who, indeed, has never looked deep within himself but once, and been afraid?

  Now he rested, in her arms, the arms of the demon-child-woman who had been, since her conception, his madman’s goal. She had read the whole history from his unconscious unhuman mind. Aggrieved at desertion by others, she warmed herself now at his psychotic constancy.

  7

  MIDNIGHT: And a rain fell that was merely rain. But the forest dressed itself in the raindrops as if in clusters of zircons.

  Rain bathed the eyelids of Sovaz. She raised them, and saw the eyes of Oloru were also open wide.

  “I have, after all, been dead a little while,” he murmured. He looked very long at her. There was a curious luminescence abroad in the forest; the rain had washed it out from the trunks of the trees, the grasses, and the lilies shone like tongues of shady flame. In this gleam, Sovaz, too, seemed lit by her own soft light. Oloru glanced at himself under the lamp of it. “I dreamed—” said Oloru. He flexed his elegant poet�
��s hands. They were no other than the hands of a poet should be. (Somehow, by her own occult methods, she had overridden his, and made them whole for him.) “I am glad then Lord Death did not keep me as his guest. I ran to him for sanctuary, but had no hope to stay. There are many he does keep, blue-eyed Sovaz, down there in the Innerearth. But they have sold their souls to him for a thousand years. Death,” said Oloru, “may not walk where nothing has died. There are such places. He may not walk the gods’ country. Or in the country of the demons. For even those creatures that seem to die in Azhrarn’s lands undergo only the facsimile of death. Stories that say otherwise are told by liars.”

  “And are you not, then, a liar?” inquired Sovaz, although as softly as the soft light that hung on her.

  “A liar? I?”

  “I think you must be something of the sort,” she said, “for you speak of the demons’ kingdom as if neither of us had ever seen it.”

  Oloru shut his eyes at once. His fingers clenched on the grasses.

  “Do not,” he said, “say these words. They remind me of my dream of fear.” So she beheld that even her own beginnings were now wilfully expunged from his awareness. She did not really mind that, Sovaz. What happiness had there been in her beginnings, after all, that she should wish them celebrated?

  “I concede,” she said. “We will discuss only how we found each other, wandering in this forest. Myself an orphan. You mysteriously bereft of your patron, the magician-prince.”

  “Yes,” said Oloru. And just then his eyes caught fire from an inner glare and were for a moment like the eyes of some cruel rare beast of prey. See, said these wicked molten eyes, how entertaining it will be to play this game together.

  At which her eyes grew darker than the forest’s shimmering dark, so starry space itself might be glimpsed in them. I wonder, said these other eyes, if it will.

  And then she lay down upon him, clasping him under the arms with her slender hands, and clasping the strong calves of his legs with her slender bare feet, and his mouth with her mouth.

  As unlike their first kiss, this second kiss, as earth to air. Not less potent for all that, nor less of a summoning.

  “Most beautiful of mortal women,” lied Oloru.

  “Most beautiful of mortal men,” lied Sovaz.

  And they laughed, shedding their garments like snakes, and brought their bodies together like two clasping hands.

  But it was she who lay still above him, and soon the black fleece of her tresses seemed to become one with the black foliage of the forest, so he was stretched out under a maiden whose hair itself was all the night-time earth and the midnight sky. And her touches and her skin and her moving upon him, these were like the ambience of the world, as if the world lay on him and caressed and found him out, and drew him into itself. Virgin, yet lacking any need to be broken, knowing everything yet innocent of all. And as he pierced to the core of her, her hair and the night and the trees and the sky, her caresses, the air and the world, the very ground under his back, seemed to begin making love to him.

  “No,” Oloru whispered then.

  “No?” she whispered in return, inside his very mouth, her tongue a flame, one of the lily flames that burned in the grass.

  “No, Sovaz, Sovaz, for surely then I will be there before you, and our journey ended.”

  But her eyes held all the oceans and the seas and the rivers, her hands or the hands of the earth stole beneath him and found a fire there, a serpent that dwelled there under the spine, a dragon waking.

  “When you reach the gate,” she said, or her eyes or her rushing body said it, “cry out. And I will come to you at once.”

  At this the dragon woke. The whole forest burst up in a swarm of lights and he with it so that in the strength and vehemence of that arching bow she too was lifted as if on a wave’s high crest. And he did indeed cry out aloud to her, and hearing him she came to him at once as she had told him, her head thrown back, her throat curved like the crescent moon. And her cries, wild as those of a bird that flies a whirlwind, and three in number, split the ceiling of rain and leaves, and struck maybe the floor of very heaven above, the denizens of which abode did not comprehend such crying and were incapable of it.

  But presently, in the stillness, she said to him, “There, too, is death. And there is my omen. One day I shall die. I know it now.”

  “Our kind does not die,” said Oloru, forgetting an instant to forget.

  But she did not answer him.

  PART TWO: Lovers

  1

  AZHRARN—Azhrarn—sang various voices which had no sound, but were so beautiful they made the air seem filled by perfume, melody. Azhrarn!

  It might have been the voiceless all-speaking Eshva, or some spiritual cry of his kingdom, the roots and rocks of it, the scintillant stones of his city, the jewel windows of his house. Or yet some cry from within himself, some part of him he did not recognize, for even with human men, several persons may live together under one name and inside one skin.

  Whatever it was, it had haunted his palace all the dayless days and unnight nights of a mortal year. It was plain to any who had, for a moment, glimpsed him, that this sound offended him. He paced the long rooms up and down, and the tall roofs. He stood and looked away into nothing and everything, and the flying things of the Underearth, sorcerous or mechanical, meeting his sightless gaze, fell down on the black grass of the lawns.

  Azhrarn—

  “I hear you,” he said. “But be still.”

  There was a silence. It was so profound, the whole land seemed to have gone deaf and dumb at once.

  He walked out, in this silence, disdainful of it, into the gardens beyond his palace. In the midnight trees the golden furnaces of burning-colored fish, clustered all together, their wings closed fast. By a pool, a princess of the Vazdru had been plucking green irises. She had become still as a statue; the water drops did not run off her fingers’ ends or from the flowers or from the gems of her bracelets—the water drops did not dare, for in doing it, they might make a noise. No one else had, for a great while, risked venturing so close to Azhrarn’s halls. The Vazdru woman stood and stared at her lord. She was superlatively beautiful, but there was nothing in that; all her caste were so. Azhrarn looked at her. She bowed.

  “Why are you here,” he said, “stealing plants from this garden?”

  “Green iris, the flower of pain,” said she. “A large number grow in your park now, illimitable prince. The blooms I shall weave into a garland, and wear until they fade. The stems I shall plait finely and string a lyre with them. They will make a miserable, lovely music.”

  Azhrarn seemed about to leave her.

  “You have cast down your kingdom,” said the Vazdru. “Pain is your lover, my lord. We must share your agony. The Eshva lament in the living death of ceaseless mourning. But the Vazdru are different. The Vazdru must have artifacts. And all this for a mortal woman, a child of that thing, the sun.”

  “Remind me,” said Azhrarn, “of your name.”

  “Vasht,” said the demoness. And she shook the water drops from her hands and from the flowers. Each drop fell into the pool with a loud crack.

  “Do you hope to be punished, Vasht,” said Azhrarn, “that you dare to chide me, with whom I have loved, and with how I have loved?”

  “You kill us with your grief,” she said. “And since we cannot die, it is a murder and a death that never end. What is one more punishment beside that?”

  “You will anger me,” said Azhrarn. “Do not do it.”

  “Is it possible to anger you? You who vowed war on Chuz Mischief-Maker, and hunted him twice, and returned twice, while he roams the world of men by night and day, laughing at you. And when he wishes other amusement, he lies down with your daughter, that child you made in the womb of your moon-sun girl, your Dunizel. I was your chosen love, once, eons ago by the reckoning of those little crawling worms called men. You caught for me a piece of the starlit earth sky, and gave it me in a ring. You were my belo
ved, Azhrarn, three hundred mortal years. But then mankind grew precious to you, and you adored their foul flesh, liked it better for its very uncleanness. Now, you unremember even my name. You, who gave me the sky.” And she flung the green flowers at his feet. They fell with a crash like swords.

  But Azhrarn only said, “So Chuz and she travel together.”

  “Did you not know it? Has not every reed and blade of grass in the world whispered the story to you? Every cloud scribbled the message over the moon? How he came here by a trick and rescued her from your care. Even the tides sang the song. I have heard it baldly enough.”

  “I knew then. But, as with your name, you have reminded me.”

  He walked on. The demoness followed, her long and lustrous black hair trailing over the black lawns, where it struck sudden sparks.

  “Then,” she said, “what will you do, Azhrarn, Prince of Princes—go back in your dark tower and weep tearless tears of blood?”

  Azhrarn stopped; he turned and beckoned her. She came up to him, apparently without any fear.

  “What do you want from me, Vasht?”

  “To make you again what you were. Though, she has changed you.”

  “Beautiful Vasht,” he said. “I remember you. You were the pleasure of dawn and first light. But the day has advanced.”

  “These terms in your mouth—you hate the sun, the dawn, the day. She taught you such words. And what pleasure then was she, your Dunizel?”

  “I will show you,” he said, “since you are fool enough to ask me.”

  And he kissed Vasht on the lips, and stepped away. Only a moment did she stand before him, the beautiful lover of the forgotten long-ago. In a moment more, she melted into flame paler and less substantial than a mist. The flame itself crumbled, and went out. The dark lawn was burned blond. But out of the ashes, a tiny thing emerged. A butterfly, with wings like green iris. It fluttered for a little space over the burned lawn, then darted into the shade of the great trees, where it vanished. But Azhrarn looked across the architecture of his city, thinking.