by Tanith Lee
Azhrarn stretched out his hand, empty of anything, and let the point of the sword impale his wrist. But it did not, for the sword had disintegrated, and was gone.
And then Hazrond became sheer light. It was the essence of him, the pure dynamic that underlay the beautiful male shape in which a Vazdru prince was wont to adorn himself—sulfurously blue, the vitality of Hazrond, like moonlight seen through fever and indigo. And it dashed itself against Azhrarn. It embraced him, bore upon him.
Where Azhrarn had stood a black fire blazed in its turn, and the fire beat and fanned itself, and heightened to a deep cold red. The energy of Azhrarn, the psychic essence of him, scarlet as the fountain of the garden—it overtopped, it wrapped the blue fire of Hazrond. It struggled with it, but then there came another change.
For the red fire scalded colder, hotter, to an incandescence: white. And the white fire in its turn began to throb and to make a color that was like a soundless ringing.
And Druhim Vanashta, watching, would have averted its eyes, would have cried out. For the color of this fire was gold. It was gold as gold is, and golden things, and it was like the sun. Yes, even like the sun of the earth, that to demons was the one true death. Like the sun, Azhrarn seared there, his vital energy, and it burned out the essence of Hazrond the way acid would eat a paper. Until only a thin dust sifted and drifted, and was no more. And Hazrond . . . no more was Hazrond.
Not a noise. Not a cry. Not one eye averted.
So they saw him come back, Azhrarn, their prince, a Lord of Darkness, Night’s Master. He was a man clothed in gold and made of gold, his flesh and hair, all gold, and his eyes were golden suns. He stood there upon the streets of Night’s own kingdom, and was day. Then the golden scream of his glory transposed. It was all blackness, all coolness. Not morning, but evening.
And without a glance, without a phrase, Azhrarn walked into his palace, and the doors shut softly as two sleeping eyelids.
Say now, city and people, who is your prince, and what is he?
2
DEMONS did not die. At least, they did not remain dead. (They were like mortals in that.) And the Underearth could countenance no absolute ending. The Lord Uhlume had never entered there. And so, as Azhrarn moved through his dark palace like a darker thought, refinding it, the ashes of Hazrond, borne by a sudden breeze, made their exit from the city and blew away over the landscape of the underworld.
They were not even ashes, these ashes, but a substance thinner than air—blasted so fine as to be invisible. They were, indeed, actually, nothing. And this settled in a hollow place, in the black grass, and as they or it lay there, three Vazdru princes rode by. These laughed together, and spoke proudly and cruelly, as if they had recently woken from refreshing sleep. They were the three who had stayed loyal to Azhrarn, and guarded him in the hill. They made now toward the city, anticipating generous welcome, rightly.
“But this,” said one of them, “let us be rid of it. For it is a memory of despair.” And he threw away the silver cup which they had dipped in the living stream, and with which they had attempted to moisten the lips of their lord—but which had failed to restore him.
The cup jumped over the grasses and fell into the hollow where, for want of much better words, Hazrond’s ashes lay.
There was a hint of water still in the bowl of the cup, which spilled. More, the cup came charged with Vazdru sorcery, that prayer within the hill, that will to revivify. Besides, it had touched the mouth of Azhrarn, like a lover.
The clear unlit light of Underearth lapped everything like a balm, and the dust of Hazrond with the rest.
In the world of men above, perhaps a few days came and went. Below, a few beats of bells and hearts. The ashes, sprinkled with dews of water and prayer, wove together like moss, hardened like clay in a potter’s oven. To die in Underearth was a very different matter to a death above.
Hazrond, handsome and splendored, though pale now as one dead, and weak now as one newly born, lay on his back with scarcely the strength to take up and kiss the silver cup which had come to rest under his hand. Then, in a while, he sat, and leaning one palm on the ground from strengthlessness, he drew forth the silver pipe like a cat’s thighbone, and sounded it. And presently a demon mare came galloping through the grass. But when Hazrond had mounted her, and turned her head toward the city, she too paled. Her blackness turned the color of ashes, and she trod slowly.
Azhrarn was seated in a hall, beneath windows like a lion’s blood. He had been reading from books of ivory, but now he rested one hand upon them, and the other on the carved arm of his chair. He listened and heard, beyond the songs and silences of Druhim Vanashta, beyond all the enchanting audibles currently put forth to placate and enamor him, the sorry hoofbeats on the flags, and then the doors opening one by one, and the footsteps, symmetrically stumbling.
Hazrond entered. Azhrarn said nothing; Hazrond came on. He crossed the whole length of the hall, while the windows laved him in a dead sunset, and reaching the feet of Azhrarn, Hazrond kneeled there. But, with his swimming, burning eyes, he stared into the eyes of Azhrarn.
“Ask me only this,” said Hazrond. “Why I took this city from you in your absence.”
“Why,” said Azhrarn, “should your answer interest me?”
“Because you fought with a sky-being, and some power of the sun is also yours at last, Azhrarn, together with the might which was yours always. And we—we are less than grass, Azhrarn, and you are everything we may not be. Even the greatest of us. You have nothing to fear. Not even from Hazrond who is at your feet.”
“Who told you,” said Azhrarn, “I feared Hazrond at any time?”
“Oh,” said Hazrond, smiling, “will you not fear me a little, when I have done so much for you? For I kept you in their memory, exhorting them, by every word and glance of mine, to forgetfulness of you.”
“Stand,” said Azhrarn.
“I cannot. Your strength crushes me.”
“Lie on your face then,” said Azhrarn. “And tell me why you took the city.”
“Because I loved you enough to hate you. I loved you enough, when you removed yourself, to fill the gaping void the only way I might—by myself becoming Azhrarn. Or as much of Azhrarn as any could. And there are not many, my prince, who were ever nearer than I. And you do fear me, Lord of lords, because you see in me your own self. You are the black sun, and I am the dark which was before. I am your childhood. And some long night, I have come to believe, I shall be all of you again, and forever, as forever may then be reckoned.”
“Riddles,” said Azhrarn. But he rested his chin upon his hand and he gazed at Hazrond, and it was evident that, though no other did or might, Azhrarn had understood each sentence; it was no riddle at all to him.
“What now, then?” said Hazrond.
Azhrarn struck him.
It was such a blow that it dashed Hazrond away, and stunned him. But when he had recovered from it, he was toughened and energized, and rose to his feet. “That is not much for punishment,” he said.
“Your punishment I gave you before,” said Azhrarn. “That was my forgiveness.”
Then Hazrond laughed out loud. Such a laugh it was—musical, and like the cry of some rare animal of great beauty, that softly kills all it sees. Oh, it was the laugh of Azhrarn. Yes, it was his.
“I am done with mankind,” said Azhrarn to Hazrond. “There are other games, or I will invent them.”
“Let mankind go,” said Hazrond. “Let it rot. They learn nothing. They worship the gods still, though the world was scarred by what the gods have done to it. And that woman you gave sway over humanity, they worship her yet as a god, though she is a god no longer, and even her worship they misremember, entreating her for pity, and calling her loving names, praising her kindness and care for them.” And Hazrond, standing by Azhrarn, looked to see how these words would be received, this reminiscence of the girl Azhriaz, his child by a human female.
But Azhrarn said only: “She is an immortal and
she lives. If I owe her that, let her live then.”
“And I?” said Hazrond, leaning close, that his mouth might brush the hair of Azhrarn. “May I live also? Or must I die again? Only tell me. I will do it gladly. I will die for you, I will endure agony for you. I am yourself, that part of you which loves you best. Only notice me. Here I wait at your side.”
Azhrarn, putting out his hand, drew Hazrond down, so he lay across the chair, and so that their bodies pressed one against the other.
“Wait no more.”
Druhim Vanashta, that moon-star of cities, filled by her enchanted love whispers, her placatory cajolements, Druhim Vanashta felt that lovemaking, and was made love to, all the vast jewel box of her, and every one of the demons—they felt the caresses of that love, the fierceness of it, and the concourses moaned and the towers stretched themselves in ecstasy—for by that love he returned himself to them. He noticed them. He was theirs, once again, body, soul—which in him were one.
And for Hazrond, the vessel into which this light and darkness entered, this night sea, midnight sky, black wine, red fire, the intimation of sun and of death, the sensations of it passed through him and into the stones of the city, and into the flesh of those that were there, or perhaps even he could not have borne the pleasure of it.
As chaos had touched all things, so this piercing harmonic shot through and through the Underearth. It was an ultimate possession. Druhim Vanashta, borne upward on a wave, poised in the liquid silver of three seconds lasting longer than all time, then released, flowing down, sinking, one ambient sigh.
And when the sigh was sighed out, a green butterfly might be seen, among the cedars of Azhrarn’s garden. Vasht, reborn by orgasmic psychic quake out of the paving where Azhrarn’s heel had formerly compressed her.
How fresh the wings of the butterfly. Azhrarn had renounced mankind. He was the beloved, as in the past. He was the Prince of Demons, theirs. No other’s.
There will come an hour, quite soon as soon is thought of there, when Vasht also will be noticed. The green wings, at his glance, will be a robe of silvered green upon the pearl form of a Vazdru princess. His touch, loosing the clasps of the robe, will turn it black as night—
BOOK THREE:
ATMEH: The Search for Life
PART ONE: Lessons
1
DOWN THE mountain road walked a man clothed in black, and close behind him another man, more advanced in years and more inventive in dress, this being robes of ocher scarfed with rubric, tasseled with purple, bordered and trimmed and dimpled with gold. Gray-headed, this one, under a plumy diadem, lugging a staff, and with, beneath the other arm, a silken bundle, egg-shaped. . . . Perhaps a quarter of a mile behind these two, a third person made his way. He was hooded in a blond mantle, but the noon sun lit ceaselessly upon him, so he seemed to shine, brighter even than the plumed one with all his gold.
“Now say what you will,” said the revived sage-mage to Dathanja, who had, for a great while, said entirely nothing. “That night in the first wretched flea-bitten village, I was aroused near daybreak, aware of an enormous occurrence. And resorting to sorcerous exercise, I divined a change had come about. Yet what it was the spell would not divulge. Being practiced, as I am, in all sorts of occult mathematic, I made calculations. Which informed me that chaos itself had been breached, and, in securing itself, had violently brushed the world of organized matter—an impact felt not only in the narrow confine of the event, but throughout, and to all four quarters. Such a marvel must have consequences. And how else should this cataclysm have occurred but through an action of the entity we glimpsed, tearing eastward under the sea? What was its purpose? Is it destroyed? Meanwhile, that other heavenly bore goes on following us, day and night. A whole month it has dogged us. My wizardrous researches—though not you—have told me what the creature is. But it returns no word to my questions or expostulations. It merely, unmannerly brute that it is, shines upon me.”
Dathanja had paused, as if to listen. The angel, a quarter of a mile away, paused also. The mage-sage shook his magician’s staff at the angel, and prepared to harangue one and all.
Having left the ocean brink above drowned Simmurad, they had gone south westward. Or, Dathanja had done so and the mage, attaching himself, had done so too, while Ebriel, for unrevealed motives, followed. They kept to the crags, though the roseate shadings of the sea-mouthed eastern reaches were soon bled out. More ordinary, these dry uplands, and here and there were isolate human habitations. Dathanja took his way among them quietly, asking nothing but often given, nevertheless, food, or what shelter there might be. They were innocent, these wayside people, seeming young as the land, with large eyes cloudless as the eyes of loved children. They would bring Dathanja water or milk in a stone jar or rough clay dipper, sit to watch him, and sometimes then usher up to him their infants, and Dathanja would put his hands on them a moment, as if to bless. In one place, there was a baby with sore skin. Dathanja took it from its mother, unasked, unasking, undenied. He patted the baby with the fawn dust, all over, and then carried it to the stream and washed off the dust and the sore skin with it, and there the baby lay, gurgling and brand-new, quite cured. The mage took huge exception to this and berated Dathanja—who, since he no longer recognized the name of Zhirek, the sage would call by no name at all. “You, look how you debase the brotherhood of magicians. Could you not, you who have sunk Simmurad, have healed the brat by the touch of one finger—by a single utterance? Why this quack’s preamble?” Dathanja said, “A parable is sometimes necessary.” “Errant rubbish!” warbled the sage-mage. “Why,” said Dathanja, “do you put on clothing when the sun is so hot?” Missing the point willfully, the mage-sage lectured Dathanja for five miles—they had by now left that particular village far behind—on the merits of voguish attire, especially when it was created by illusion, and so toned the sorcerous muscles.
And with no comment, Ebriel paced slowly after them.
In other villages, and at occasional lonely huts, many small wonders were performed by Dathanja. He proceeded with the modicum of show, yet generally by means of a symbol, as with the baby. A woman who wept because the well was dry was told to weep into the well—and water filled it, salt at first, then sweet. A missing copper pot was located by arranging the other copper implements of the house by the doorstep, and presently, out of some brambles, along came bowling the pot to join their meeting. Everything was performed with care and gentleness. Dathanja made no exhibitions of passionate tenderness, and none of aversion. If it pleased him to heal the sick, if it brought him joy to help his fellow men, you could not have said. He did these things as a man might sweep his yard, a needful, simple incident, neither onerous nor fabulous, important only in omission. (Everything the angel watched also, from his distance, stilly.) And the ingenuous ones of the mountain lands, they received the benison from Dathanja as it was given, thanking him without the word, smiling, not shouting.
But the sage-mage shouted. His exclamations rattled along the goat paths and the roads made only by the treading of feet. He had established for himself a title, compound of his former name and that of the sea prince he had been in Tirzom. Tavrosharak, that was he. And he toted the heavy egg his chicken-carpet had laid in witless fright, always grumbling at its weight, but, “One does not leave such significant deposits lying. No, no, some priceless gadget will be hatched, no doubt. For this reason, too, I must keep it against my person every hour, to warm it.” At night, amid the blank bare peaks, Tavrosharak fashioned a bed with posts and canopy, and slept with the silk-packed egg held close. And now and then he rolled on it in sleep and awakened unpeacefully. Sometimes Dathanja would depart during the night, and the Malukhim, Ebriel, apparently more intent upon Dathanja than upon the mage-sage, would also go by like a straight pale flame. Roused by this, the magician would aggravatedly tramp after, or, summoning up some conveyance from thin air, whirl upon them out of the skies. For days at a stretch Tavrosharak rode in a chariot pulled by dragons, and bea
ring down on Ebriel was always dissatisfied that the blond figure would neither get out of his way nor stay in it, being somehow one second before the chariot and then behind it, not a sublime (hidden) feather ruffled.
“What is it that you want?” demanded Tavrosharak, diving upon the angel time and again. “Is it some message from the gods you must deliver? It is too bad,” added Tavrosharak, jouncing along in his car beside Dathanja, the dragons hissing and cavorting. “Why will the thing not speak to me?” And, wishing to lecture Dathanja, and finding charioteering incommodious for the purpose, he would slough the chariot. “So much bouncing,” he averred, “may curdle this egg.”
Thus they progressed. Then came the noon they stepped onto a road which men had made not with their feet, but with their hands. Walking along it, Tavrosharak complained about chaos and Ebriel, and Dathanja paused, and Ebriel paused, as if to listen.
But it was not to listen.
A mountain rose on the near horizon, higher than its brothers. Azure it was, half submerged in the sky, but near the pinnacle there was a glistening disturbance, and now and then a shaft of light streamed from it, and tore across heaven like a wide-shot star.
“As I have said,” declared Tavrosharak, but at this instant, the glistening on the mountain caught also his eye.
“I am,” said Tavrosharak, “bound to go near, and to investigate. There may be a miracle or a treasure.” He gazed at Dathanja. “But you,” said Tavrosharak, winningly, “bold sorcerer, fearless—as the earth knows, even of Lord Wickedness and Lord Death. . . . Should it not be you who will climb the mountain first?”
Dathanja spoke to Tavrosharak. “I saw enough of miracles and treasures long past. You are starved of them, perhaps. The mountain does not itself lure me.”
“Ah, now, excellent Dathanja—” began Tavrosharak. Just then a stunning light, like a second sunrise, opened at their backs, ascended, fanned over their heads with a hurricane rush of wings. The Malukhim, unmantled, a flying flambeau, sped up the mountain.
