by Tanith Lee
An hour before the sun should rise, Hazrond returned to the world’s center, and thence under the earth. Through a gate of agate he passed, and a gate of steel, and a gate of black fire. He strode into Druhim Vanashta, and taking out a pipe shaped like the thighbone of a cat, he blew on it. At once a demon horse came galloping and Hazrond leaped on its back and rode, faster than any wind of the wide wild world, to his palace. There, lying supplicatingly across a mighty doorsill, Hazrond found a little Drin.
“Mercy, glorious one!” said the Drin.
“What have you done?”
“Nothing, yet, alas. For my mere existence I crave your pardon.”
“I do not grant it. Why are you here?”
“It seems to me,” warbled the Drin, “I have lain in the earth hereabouts, in the garden, and been a worm. I did worm deeds. I had fifty worm wives, all of whom bore me worm sons, which was of interest to me, since as a demon I am infertile. Then the one who set me there as a worm—to punish me—forgot me. Or only, perhaps, forgot himself. And then there came a curious hesitation in the whole of Being, as if life herself caught her breath—and so I was sprung, and here I am.”
“Your name is Bakvi. You stole a necklace of tears,” said Hazrond, musingly.
“I do not remember that,” said Bakvi with caution. “But I remember my fifty wives and my five thousand sons. This garden is well worm-tilled, lord, on account of my efforts.”
“Who am I?” said Hazrond.
“A Vazdru, shining brighter and better than any light of the earth.”
“What more?”
Bakvi licked his lips. If Azhrarn had forgotten Azhrarn, and if this one came like a burnished storm through the door of the palace—
“The Prince of Demons,” submitted Bakvi.
Hazrond smiled, and petted the Drin, who palpitated with ecstasy. But it seemed to Bakvi he did not palpitate quite as much as he would have done if another had petted him—
Presently Hazrond, the Eagle-Winged, the Beautiful, (Night’s Master?), went on into his somber house.
Bakvi skittered away through the garden. He had got used to the garden, let it be said. Used to tunneling through it, fornicating in it, to all manner of items which, in demon shape, he would never have dared. Meanwhile his forge beside the lake would have been invaded long since by some miscreant. So Bakvi loitered, and now and then, askance, he would lie on the dark grass and woo the lady worms he sensed were gliding there, lovely as water, through the undercountry of the soil.
After a time, Bakvi came down the terraces between the cedars of silver trunks, restraining himself continually from diving for shelter from the winged fish in the boughs—which, as a worm, had been no more than sensible—and reached the garden’s center. Here Bakvi paused, perplexed.
There had played on this spot, formerly—and always—a fountain of heatless unilluminating red flame. Now there was a mound of earth, fissured here and there, and the fissures smoldered like rubies.
Bakvi sat on the grass and looked at the mound. When he had been there an hour, a black worm poked its snout out of the ground and Bakvi caught hold of it.
“Pause a moment, my son,” said Bakvi.
But the worm wriggled unhappily. “You are not as I recall, Daddy.”
“Never mind that. Do you see that heap there?”
“My sight is poor. But I do see it. It glows.”
“Go fetch the rest of your brothers.”
The worm remonstrated. Bakvi threatened. The worm cringed and went away and returned shortly with ninety-nine other worms. In Bakvi’s worm day he had taught his family to respect him.
“Sons,” said Bakvi, “you see I am not as I was.” The worms said that they did, and asked if they should mourn. “Only get under that mound,” said Bakvi, “and bring me up a good huge piece of the red glowing stuff which is in it.” The worms were unwilling. “It will not burn you,” said Bakvi. “It may do something worse, but that is no longer my affair,” he added to himself. “Have I not,” he inquired of the garden, “presented you with five thousand gardeners? A hundred of them will not be missed.”
The obedient worms now wriggled into the mound and delved about. Shortly, for they had been lessoned to be most respectful in Bakvi’s worm days, they all came out again, lugging in their midst a large incarnadine clod.
“It seems to us,” said the eldest of the worms, “that the fire in the dirt, though heatless and nonilluminative, has properties.”
“You shall all be kings,” said Bakvi. “Now, follow me.”
And so saying Bakvi waddled away toward the region of the lake, where the Drin metalsmiths hammered. As they went the hundred worms, made drunken by contact with the fountain fire, began to sing unseemly songs (taught them by Bakvi in his worm days).
Now Bakvi, if any had asked him, could not have said precisely why he did as he did. Indeed, as he came to the lake, and along the rocky banks where the forges rang and the fumes puffed, and scores of Drin out-peered and asked where he went and what murky lantern that was, Bakvi invented stories, and lied, and still he did not know exactly what truth he hid.
At length he located a dingy little vacant cave, and here he crawled in and the worms crawled after, chanting and hiccuping, with the ball of light which gave no light. One last nosy Drin cried in after them: “What is that you have?” “Only a dull coal to ignite my brazier,” said Bakvi, again. “It is a magic I experiment with, combusting a pat of centipede excreta.”
Having got in the cave, Bakvi further instructed his sons, and sent them belchily forth again. In a state of euphoria they coiled in all directions, and entering the workshops of those Drin who slept or were absent, appropriated implements, and took them to their father.
Soon enough, even as waking or home-wended Drin might be heard screaming “Thief!” and throttling various neighbors, Bakvi set to, rigging a bench, starting a brazier, calling up old spells, while the worm sons sat admiringly inebriate all about.
From time to time, fellow Drin would plod to the cave entry, insatiably curious.
“Who is there?”
“It is Ikki.”
“Ikki? It seemed to me I knew your voice. Yet Ikki was not the name that tallies with it—”
“I am Ikki, and my mistress is a scorpion whose sting discommodes for a mortal year, particularly in the riding position.”
“Blessings on you, Ikki, and farewell.”
And later yet, now and then: “Is that you, Ikki?”
“It is I.”
“How is your mistress?”
“Stingful.”
“Good luck attend you, Ikki, and again farewell.”
Bakvi toiled. He made, as the Drin were accustomed to make, an artifact, and duly glamoured it. It was a stoppered vase of silver, in the shape of a bird. Next Bakvi took up the clod of earth and fire, and thrust it down into the bird’s neck, and so into its body, and then bunged in the head. Then he turned a key of corundum and the bird flew around and around.
“There, it is done,” said Bakvi. And so saying, he fell over an enormous roll of black carpet. This turned out to be the eldest of his worm sons, grown (unnoticed, for the Drin, when intent upon smithing, seldom saw anything else) to prodigious length and girth. As had all the other ninety-nine that had carried the fountain fire.
“Do not be alarmed, little Father,” said the eldest worm, a smooth dragon of blazing eyes. “We thank you for keeping your promise, and making us kings. Now we will take you on your journey.”
“Wh—wh—what journey?” inquired Bakvi, trying to fit himself into a crevice, unsuccessfully.
“The supernatural dirt has made us uncommonly wise. We know the way. Come, take the bird of silver and get up on my back.”
“Um,” said Bakvi. “I have a pressing appointment.” But in the end he was loaded by the other worms upon the eldest worm, which sprawled away over the rocks in such speedy liquid humpings, Bakvi shrieked with horror.
“Ah, there goes that Ikki, callin
g and showing off to us,” said the Drin. “What is that monster he rides? And where is that scorpion mistress of his?”
“Behind you!” wailed Bakvi, with parting malice, and the worm rippled him away with it, he knew not where.
But they came to a stream where opals swam and leapt like salmon and above the stream was a black hill.
“Now I know why I was afraid,” said Bakvi. But he did not, truly.
The worm put him off with the barest courtesy. The other worms, which had accompanied them, lay on the ground like some giant’s silken ropes. But all their eyes gazed upon Bakvi, and all their eyes indicated he must go up the hill, with only the silver bird of fire to aid him.
“Now why,” said Bakvi, “did the earth catch her breath? And why could she not have done so without sloughing me? Azhrarn’s punishment of me was no trouble. But this I do not like.”
There was a path worn up from the stream to a cave mouth in the hill. The path softly shone. Bakvi thumping up it, the shine muddied over.
Bakvi reached the membrane of Time’s Absence, and the scent of it made him sneeze. It was an uncouth and noisy sneeze. The membrane, offended, tore. Bakvi, knock-kneed, tooth-chattering, bird-clutching Bakvi, padded in.
He could see nothing, or very little. A statue, slim and dark, stood nearby, two others farther off, and on a slab of rock, a figure, bright as a fallen moon, blacker than the blood of night, close as a bone, distant as heaven, a stranger, and familiar.
Bakvi fell to his face and gibbered, and the bird fluttered from his grasp and he did not see where it went.
Then a voice spoke to Bakvi. It was gentle, and very terrible. Yet, at the sound of it, the demon ichor in his veins came all alive.
“I gave you only severity. Why do you do this for me?”
Then Bakvi said, “Pile acrimony on me. What does that matter? Love is love.”
And Bakvi thought to himself, I am possessed and speak like a fool. But he said again: “Love is love. She cannot be seen because she is everything. We fight her. We turn her away. But we can no more do it than throw off our own life. In the end, love alone remains. In the end, love will inherit the world. But that is not yet.”
“Not yet, for sure,” said the voice, so wondrous, so awful, Bakvi nearly perished, immortal that he was. “Tell me the reward you would have.”
Then Bakvi twittered with cravenness.
“Let me be a worm again. Let me be a big worm, like my sons. Let me be the king of the worms of the demon country.”
And then he jumped up to abscond—and what was he, Bakvi, but a huge nigrescent perfect worm. And going out and down the hill, he crossed the stream like a river and slid upon his willful sons, and dwarfed them.
“Who am I?” said Bakvi, the worm.
“Our respected daddy,” said the worms, respectfully.
“Go beneath,” said Bakvi, “and tell your mother, and all my wives, to grow. And then, to make ready.”
Under windows of sultry sapphire, Hazrond paced to and fro. He had been out hunting, had Hazrond, chasing with his horses and hounds the strayed souls of madmen asleep. But there had been something wanting in the sport. They had not screamed enough, maybe, those souls, or they had screamed with laughter in the nightmare’s jaws.
The earth had caught her breath, or the nature of life had done so. With his Vazdru awareness, Hazrond knew of it, unknowingly. Knew, also, he had somehow missed it. The moon had stumbled and the stars exclaimed. One instant. Then all was rectified. Why should it concern him? Was he not Prince Wickedness, mankind’s tormentor?
Hazrond seated himself, and drank from a cup of glass a wine more transparent.
A lamp lighted itself across the chamber, and with a deep ruby ray. Hazrond looked at the lamp. Though alight, it gave none.
Hazrond pointed at the lamp, which went out. Looking down, he found a serpent at his foot, with ruby eyes. Hazrond kicked it from him—it was already gone.
Then in the middle of the air, a bird of silver circled. Hazrond tossed a dagger at it and all at once its head shot off—it burst into fragments, and only a flame flowered there, flickering and twisting, giving no heat, illuminating nothing.
Hazrond reclined in his chair, and took another sip from his cup. He was different now. Softer, more vivid. “Oh, are you about?” he said. “You have slept late, wherever you have been sleeping. Have you come to offer me your service? A handsome page to bring me sweetmeats, or a minstrel to pipe me tunes? Which is it to be, Azhrarn?”
Then the flame stretched near. Hazrond sat in his chair and finished his wine. Into the empty goblet the flame ran, and filled it. Hazrond threw the cup away with a negligent gesture. The cup whirled; the flame gushed from it, vanished. The cup smashed against a pillar, and the voice of Azhrarn spoke behind Hazrond’s left shoulder: “When the night returns to the earth above, I shall return to Druhim Vanashta, my city, which you borrowed without my leave.”
“You will be welcome,” said Hazrond, “if any remember you.”
But the demon city was trembling around him, like a bride in joy and anxiety, and the very hearts of demonkind might be heard, starting like hares—for there was not a brick or a leaf or an intellect that did not in some habitual form answer him. Even Hazrond leaned toward the voice, his eyes half closing, though the rings cut into his hands where he had clenched them.
“I am lord here now,” said Hazrond.
“As much as you ever were,” said the voice of Azhrarn out of the shadow. “Which was not much.”
“We shall see. I await you with pleasure.”
“Do so,” said Azhrarn. “Your pleasure will be brief enough when once we meet.”
The day dropped out of the world. In the country underground, which knew neither day nor dark, night nevertheless was always realized. A great stillness was already there, in the city. Not a note of music, not a mechanical bird, not a voice. Yet in their porticos and on their towers, the Vazdru stood, and nearby the Eshva, as if to wait on them. Even the Drin had sidled in and crouched behind the window panes, the walls of gardens, squinting through eyelets, unable to keep away, full of misgiving. As night lay down upon the earth above, one bell of bronze gave tongue through Druhim Vanashta.
They had betrayed him, nearly every one of his race. Either in jealous rage deliberately, or by acquiescence. Not one had resisted a new order or a usurper’s rule. They had said, He is dead to us. They had resumed their artistic feasts and gamings, and when Hazrond passed by them, they adored him. Now, while the Eshva shivered and shook with sensuous emotions, and the Drin squintily hid, the Vazdru waited, simply that, immobile as the reeds when no wind blows. The pale faces, white as the flowers of night, those benighted eyes, were profoundly composed. Though the city silently drummed with the uproar of every heart that was in it.
Then the bell rang out one more time—and was riven in bits. Not an ear that did not catch the commotion. The eyes of the demons turned all in one direction.
He re-entered his city, Azhrarn, without ceremony or state. He came neither mounted on horseback nor in a chariot; he was on foot. And there was no one with him, courtier or guard. And he was clad in black, only that. And as he moved there, the very air unfurled like a blossoming rose, the very mosaics blushed, the pillars quivered like the strings of harps. He was the city, and the city knew itself. And every one of those therein, they knew it also.
But they were dignified, the upper echelons of demon-kind. They did not cast themselves down before him, the Vazdru, and though the Eshva hung in a frozen melting faint, neither did they obeise themselves. (And the Drin stayed from sight.)
So he walked, in silence, along the silent avenues, followed only by dark eyes, and came at length to the black palace where, for numberless generations of the earth and timeless moments of the Underearth, he had been a prince and a lord. When he was half a mile away, the doors, of their own volition, opened wide. You might hear the hounds eagerly panting in the courts, but nothing else. When Azhrarn reached the
palace and the opened doors, Hazrond was in the doorway.
Now Hazrond was the most handsome of the Vazdru, and the most spectacular. He had put on mail and jewels and very flames indeed. But Azhrarn had returned to Druhim Vanashta clad only in black, and one saw that Hazrond, beside Azhrarn, was as the great sea is, to the endless, depthless, inimitable sky.
“Well, you are here,” said Hazrond.
“I am here,” said Azhrarn.
“I trust you are well.”
“I am sick, and the disease must be torn out. Hazrond is the name of it.”
“I will come down into the street,” said Hazrond. “Do you wish to brawl there with me?”
“Come down,” said Azhrarn, “and see.”
Hazrond came down, and set his hand on Azhrarn’s shoulder.
“They will be envious of us,” he murmured, “that we touch one another.”
“Oh, Hazrond,” said Azhrarn, looking into his eyes, “do you imagine so?” And in that gaze, Hazrond turned pale enough you saw the skull beneath his skin. Then a force came from Azhrarn, sparkling, and flung Hazrond onto the marble flags before the palace.
He danced back again to his feet, this Vazdru prince who had been Prince of the princes, carelessly, as if nothing had hurt him, it was his jest to be flung and to fall. As he rose, he drew his sword of blackest bluest steel, and springing forward, he thrust the blade toward the breast of Azhrarn.
They were immortals. What were swords to them, and strokes that men used to bring death? Emblems, language. Oh surely he had known, Hazrond, in the second Azhrarn spoke to him behind his chair, and maybe even in the second he himself usurped that chair, that he was to be the loser?
