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

by Tanith Lee

  There instead, plastered and flickering like a muddy fire all about the dome, was a type of burning meteor dashed from heaven. So huge it was, so ravenously ablaze, for some while you did not tell it had the body of a man—a giant man, all burned himself to bloodiest bronze, with darkly blazoned wings that beat, like ten hundred vultures, with hair like the many-rayed comet, his mindlessly beautiful and savage face pressed so nearly upon the encapsulated city, just as a pitiless child presses and stares upon a jar of ants. Oh what a face it was, alight itself with the great eyes of a storm. But worse than all, upraised through the sea, a red flame, blistering and sizzling, reflecting bloodstained glare upon the street and all the streets of Tirzom Jum: the swollen sword of the giant-grown Yabael, second of the Malukhim, a sword of blood and smoke coming down like screaming thunder on the city.

  10

  FIRE IN the air, fire in the sea. The earth cratered by it. The gods were angry. Or had been. Or had felt that they ought to be. A sword in the world’s heart—

  Deeper than the earth, however, deeper than the sea, and a little deeper yet, down into the shady demon country—what swords are glittering there?

  See, like a sword, a male body in the black velvet sheath of a hill.

  The eyes of Azhrarn were open, like two pools that had no floor. They mirrored, but did nothing else. The lids, the lashes, they never stirred. He breathed, so slowly, depthlessly, it was not evident. The pulses of demons, detectable by their own kind, were not detected by those three that guarded him still.

  Once or twice, in what would have been the space of a day, an evening day of Underearth, one of these three would go out of the deep cave, from its recess of velure moss, through the curtains of creeper. Descending through the trees that clad the hill, the Vazdru warrior came to a stream where opals blushed and sang and sprang in the current like fish. Taking some of this water in a silver cup, the demon would return again up the hill, into the cave, and rest the cup against the mouth of Azhrarn. Perhaps, though liquid was not essential to demon life, the waters of Underearth were, to its inhabitants, restorative. Or possibly the act of moistening the lips, or of accepting the drink—had he done so—was a necessary symbol. But Azhrarn did not seem to drink, as he did not seem to breathe or to live.

  They had brought him here, those three princes who stayed loyal to him in the face almost of the sun itself. At the gates of this land, summoning the black-blue horses, they had lifted him and carried him—and the skin of Azhrarn burned them. He had touched the sun-thing, the Malukhim. He had touched sunlight in a morning sky and fallen from heaven like a severed star—

  As they neared Druhim Vanashta, its slender spires on the horizon, a presence blew upward in their path.

  The horses shied. The Vazdru clenched their brows in maddened anger, for they had cause enough already to be desperate. The apparition was pallid, with eyes like cornflowers through a mist, and its golden hair hung down its back. If it was masculine, or a female, is unresolved. Some say it was the ghost of Sivesh, or of another youth who had been the beloved of Azhrarn. Or yet that it was a woman, one he had destroyed or ruined, who spoke in vengeful satisfaction. Others named it for Dunizel. Others said it was all of these persons, and more. To the frenzied demon princes, doubtless it took a form, perhaps out of history or the future. Or it may have been only a safeguard of Azhrarn’s magic, autonomously alerted, in a shape of energy—shapeless.

  It said: “Do not go on to Druhim Vanashta. Azhrarn’s city is his city no more. They have said of him: He is dead. And now they say, Let him be dead. Others of the Vazdru have usurped him. Go elsewhere, wherever you will, but do not go on to Druhim Vanashta. His moon has set.”

  At this message, the three princes of the Vazdru looked at Azhrarn, where he lay, to see him wake at once in coldest ferocity. But he did not wake. So they rode away from Druhim Vanashta, and into the dark countryside. They passed by the River of Sleep, where the leaden flax grew. Through meadows they went where crystal flowers brushed the stirrups, and over water where horses’ hoofs struck like bright bells.

  After much traveling, they selected a place which seemed to them suitable.

  They laid Azhrarn inside the velvet cave, on a slab of rock they found there.

  They stood guard thereafter, the three princes, one at the couch of Azhrarn, and one just within the cave mouth, both with drawn sword; while the third worked magic, a ritual which, with mankind, would have amounted only to a prayer. And at certain junctures, he that guarded the couch would take his turn at constructing this magic, or he at the cave’s mouth would do it. And once or twice each twilit un-day, one of them would go to the stream where the opals sprang, and come back with water. . . . And so time passed, a great deal of it. Time in the Underearth, time on the earth above, and nothing altered in or about the hill. Till time herself grew weary of making no impression there, and even she stopped calling on them. Not even the winds of the underworld blew by. And then at last even the three Vazdru ceased to do anything. They let ritual fail. They did not go out to the stream, and the cup was left on the ground by the creeper, and only the dew fell in it with an occasional silver chink. One stood at the head of the couch, and one at its foot. One stood just within the mouth of the cave. They leaned upon their swords and bowed their heads. Like icons they became, the Vazdru.

  And nothing moved then. The blades of the grass, the foliage of the trees, each was static. There came to be a kind of substance which grew together over the cave’s entrance, like a membrane.

  Only the stream ran on below, with the opals prancing in it.

  Once a cup was dipped in me, sang the stream, a cup which had touched the lips of a young god. For the stream, being untutored, did not seem to know the difference between the lords of its own country and the lords of heaven, nor between youth and immortality.

  Who had dared take Azhrarn’s princedom from him? Long long ago, when he had become cinders, they left the chair vacant, and lamented him the earth over. But he had loved them then; his cleaving to mankind was just a fad. Now, lovers unloved, they grew vicious, which condition was an art among the Vazdru.

  He was of the princes of Druhim Vanashta, and he had dressed in yellow. And later, with eyes of cold yellow hate, he was a lion and clawed the soil of Azhrarn’s garden, and cast in on the fire fountain there the first clod of dirt that smoored it.

  This Vazdru lion sat now in his man’s form, beautiful as night’s morning at the heart of Azhrarn’s palace, which was iron without, marble within.

  His name was Hazrond. On his hands stared black rubies. No longer did he dress in the color of the abhorred sun, but in the sable beloved of demonkind. Yet the sable was slashed across the breast with one band of yellow silk, heavily fringed and embroidered with yellow jewels and metals (all but loathsome gold), topaz and amber and bleached bronze.

  “Play,” said Hazrond. And some of the Eshva came into the courts and smote the satin tongues of their seven-stringed harps. The songs were wonderful, and sad, as befitted the aftermath of a lord’s demise. The Eshva wept continually and exquisitely. No one stayed them. Many Eshva did not come anymore into the city, but wandered the outer places, lost in somber dreaming, their wild hair harp-strung with silver snakes. They were the servants of the Vazdru, but Hazrond let them be. “They will return in due course,” he said. His voice was so musical, the flowers which were dying, or attempting to die, in the gardens, craned their stems toward its notes, and started inadvertently to live again. The Eshva too raised their pale and flowerlike faces from their harps. Even far off, on the hills as they wandered, they caught the distant melody of that voice. In due course, they must, they would return.

  The Vazdru were marvelous to look on, nothing in that. But of them all, Hazrond was of the most marvelous. Perfection perfected. They said, and it is not sensible to disbelieve them, that of all his caste, after Azhrarn, Hazrond was the strongest, the most gifted, the most fair. Like Azhrarn, maybe, as Azhrarn had been in the adolescence of eter
nity.

  Thus Hazrond sat in the chair of Azhrarn, and paced about Azhrarn’s halls under the caustic windows. He rested his long-lashed eyes, and tapped his long ringed fingers, did Hazrond, upon the books and adornments of the palace. He reviewed the hounds and horses in its yards. He waited high up in the needle’s eyes of the towers, and gazed over the city like an eagle.

  Now there is this to be mentioned too, of Hazrond, that he stalks out suddenly from among the Vazdru, into the mansion of Azhrarn, and assumes the palace and the city. But until then, nothing is said of Hazrond. Perhaps it was he that Azhrarn spoke to in the ruby street, pausing in the chariot to remark that no man saw love and no demon, either. And perhaps he had been often, this one, with Azhrarn, his charioteer even on the very night the Demon claimed back his daughter from the earth. And it is possible that when the yellow was donned in Druhim Vanashta, Hazrond had sought an audience with Azhrarn and stood before him slightingly. And Azhrarn, preoccupied, had dismissed Hazrond without comment. And there is one tale, told with hindsight, that when Azhrarn called the Vazdru to him, before he fought the angel at Az-Nennafir, Hazrond sent to Azhrarn a finely wrought sword budded with clear jewels, Drin work, and the sword itself had said: “Hazrond dispatches me to you and bids you look upon me as your defender, for he himself is engaged elsewhere.” At which Azhrarn had cursed. And the sword had said: “Hazrond bids me say that he learned this tactic from his lord, Prince Azhrarn, who rules Druhim Vanashta in image only, his heart and mind being engaged elsewhere.”

  Yet one black flame from a black fire, Hazrond appears at once and there he is, upon the tower, his black hair streaming, looking about him like an eagle.

  No other of the demons had opposed him. His method was simple. He walked into the palace and sat down there, and—word getting around—when his fellows came he nodded, and smiled upon them, as if never another had owned the house. Until there had been the whisper—What of Azhrarn? To that Hazrond had replied: “Of whom do you speak?”

  Had they resigned themselves that the angel had vanquished their lord? Unarguably, no search was made for him through the Underearth, or above.

  Slow but sure, the sad songs flowed away, and the wandering Eshva on the hills drifted toward the city. While, down by their sluggish lake, the Drin forges began to flare hotter than for a great time, and now and then the noise of squeaks and quarrelings arose there, as they made glorious presents to lay at the new lord’s feet, Hazrond’s feet, and then stole the items from each other.

  And as for the uncouth Drindra, they were in a turmoil, for, enslaved by Azhriaz and summoned to her, they had not dared tell that her father, whose aid she invoked, was fallen farther than she. For Hazrond, doubtless he knew her straitened circumstances in the sea, and that the god-primed Malukhim had tracked her there. Had he wooed her once, and been rejected? Or did he only hate her as Azhrarn’s child, a debased demon, partly mortal? (Mortal hatred being the fashion now, below.)

  Certainly Hazrond did not trouble himself at the perils of Azhriaz.

  “Play,” said Hazrond, and the Eshva performed their voiceless songs, like nightingales of snow. And with the black wings of his cloak folded about him, Hazrond looked down from the towers of the palace.

  11

  THE SWORD of the angel Yabael crashed upon Tirzom Jum.

  To those beneath it was apparent as a scarlet blast that smashed equally both ground and air. The buildings of that city tottered and went down. But the dome itself, its glass and sorcery riven, exploding, spewed up the world of atmosphere into the world of sea, amid a million pyrotechnics.

  Azhriaz was cast upward too in a plume of black water, green fire, red steam, and debris of all sorts. Her instinct had been immediately to mesh herself within a bubble of breathable air. This she succeeded in doing, and in maintaining, despite the tumult, and presently she located herself inside it still, and Tavir with her, for a gallant impulse had caused him to seize hold of her, the moment the Malukhim struck.

  For a minute or more, nothing was to be seen, or at least to be deciphered by either of them, beyond each other’s outlines and the margin of the air bubble.

  The ocean was in ferment. It rocked and collapsed and upheaved itself exactly as the city had done. Arrow flights of fish tore by, slabs of architecture, but mostly bloodied smokes. While beyond it all, the creature of destruction showed only as a dull red glare, where even the water burned.

  The concussion had tossed them far away, Azhriaz, Tavir, that was the inadvertent helpfulness of it. And by this fluke of nemesis, many escaped. The angel itself, mindless golem that it was, stood over the blasted mousehole in a long interlude of triumph, and so the mouse it sought, the demon goddess of all mice, rode in the upsurge farther and farther to safety. They had been hunting, it would seem, the Malukhim, at least two of them. Who knows how this one—Yabael the blood-sworded, the vulture, the second scorched—how he learned to pierce the sea for her, but learn he did. And, worse than at Nennafir, unreasoning, he took a cleaver to a mote of light, missed it, and decimated all the other life around.

  They swung now in the bubble, high up amid the greenest water, over which one might tell the distant earthly dawn was spreading her mantle. Their arms had stayed about each other, even their hair had coiled and clung, the magician-prince Tavir, the Goddess Azhriaz, for it was a fearsome thing they had experienced.

  The bubble bobbed them into the top fringes of a wood of weed, and here, the sea quietening somewhat, they were able to rest. They looked back toward the city and its cliff, but neither was any longer to be found. Instead, the sea was full of unnatural scenes. Half a mile away there sailed by, like a strange ship, the upper tiers and cupola of a tower, seemingly unscathed, and in the cage of its long windows, Tirzomite sorcerers and scholars were soundlessly railing against fate. A mile off, whole storeys spun slowly through the water, on the stairways and roofs of which, or what portions of these remained, lords and slaves alike scrambled about in fright. Nearer there passed a succession of islandlike gardens, or the treed walks of the city, coming unraveled, the great roots alone like trees. Among them three or four octopuses were forcing a way, darkening the sea with a panic of ink. And nearer yet came floating a princely bed with painted curtains, and lying on it like a black statue, tethered by her long yellow tresses, a dead beautiful half-breed, who had not possessed either the gills or the spells to survive immersion.

  “Oh, alas,” said Tavir, staring after her in grief.

  “Blame me for it,” said Azhriaz, sullen as a child. “1 am the reason. The sun-thing lunged at me, and your city was only in the way.”

  “You are not the reason. The gods, as ever, are to blame.”

  “I am a god.”

  Tavir shook his green-haired head, and from his lustrous eyes, tears fell. Then Azhriaz wept also. They wept together in their little globe of air, which neither needed, while all around those they despaired for meandered by, some dead, some live and weeping too, for Tirzom Jum, nostalgic for the earth, had never lost the knack of tears. But the sea, itself all tears, the story went, the tears the gods shed eons ago at the evil of mankind, the sea scorned Tirzomite crying and drank their tears and filled their eyes again with its own.

  As for Yabael, seen from the cover of the weed, he was just visible, for his giant height and girth seemed to have been lessened—voluntarily, or in the expending of power. There he loomed over a heap of clinker and glass, above a plain of broken spotted shells, and the smokes and seaborne ruins revolved around him, and his wings rose flightlessly behind his fiery head, his soulless eyes saw nothing.

  “Let me be gone,” said Azhriaz, “before he wakes out of his dream of death-lust, and his masters tell him the stroke missed.”

  “Your sea vessel is exactly here,” said Tavir. “Fate was on your side, for the disaster threw you down in this wood, close by.”

  “Yes, Fate is kin to me,” said Azhriaz. “One may anticipate an occasional favor. Blessings on you, dear un-uncle,” add
ed she, with some venom. And then she whistled, like a silver pipe. And by some means not normal, the genies of her ship heard her.

  It had been captive all this time, here in the wood of weed, and had never granted access, or a hint of its secrets, to Tirzom Jum. But flee it could not, nor come to the demoness, until, at the chime of destruction, the guards themselves, and all their magical accessories and provisos with them, fled cityward, or away to more secure climes. Now, released, and ever sensitive to the mistress it served, the ship came quick as a pulse through the weeds.

  “I shall accompany you,” said Tavir.

  “Once the way is open, I believe I cannot prevent you.”

  So they swam to the porelike door the ship now offered, and in a few moments were inside the belly of it, among the fragrances and breathing carvings.

  And while the angel still stood over the city’s ruins, the great fish flashed away.

  In less than an hour, some countless areas of distance lay between Azhriaz and Tirzom.

  Tavir sat on a couch and grieved. Azhriaz would grieve no more. Men are fools, she thought, and their magicians worse, and demons and gods more stupid than the stupid. Had I warred with them from the ship, I might have harmed the city, or their city done some ill to me. But I would soon have gone from it, and so the hunter would not have wrecked it for my sake. The thing that wished me slain slew them and liberated me.

  The genies had appeared in large numbers, as if to greet Azhriaz, or inspect her. She marshaled them to create soft music and to serve wines and dishes for a feast, all to tempt Tavir. But Tavir brushed the genies aside, and turned from the food and drink.

  “These are no illusion,” said Azhriaz. “Here, all is real. Or so we must suppose it.”

  “How can I drink, or lie listening to songs, when some thousands of my brothers are dead or dispossessed?”