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

by Tanith Lee

  It might have been he had hibernated, or even flown to some warmer clime. Or he had only sat out the interim. Who could divine what retributive angels did in the cold months, the will of the gods being so loose upon them?

  Dathanja had left the house and stood before the doorpost. Atmeh went to him. “It is,” she said, “today that I will go from here.”

  “Yes, it is today.”

  They looked at each other.

  She took up his hand and kissed it.

  “Wise healer,” she said, “gentle priest. We may never meet again.”

  “One day, far off, maybe we shall.”

  “Will you know me then?”

  “Do we not,” he said, “always remember, through all our several lives, old friends and former kindred, however we, or they, are altered?” He held her to him, and stroked her hair, long, black, demoniac. “There is the angel,” he said.

  “I shall meet him. The gods are conscious, surely, I am no longer a god.”

  “You do not know for sure your road,” he said. “But you will find it.”

  “So I shall. Dear love,” she said, “farewell.”

  “Farewell,” he said. “Dear love.”

  Then moving from him in the rays of the early sun, Atmeh went along the bank and left the house behind her.

  The hippos paused in their jousting to see her go. The white ibis raised their ebony heads. All the winter lotuses crumbled away to smoke.

  But for Dathanja, his face was not to be read, nor the dark eyes of it. He watched, or seemed to watch her, for some while. But then he turned to the tree at the top of the bank.

  The little crowd which was already there saw him approaching, and cried out to him thankfully. He smiled at them, at each group of features, each healthy or diseased body, for in every one there burned the flame of life, in all of them, and in him. And in the girl, even if by another mode, in the manner of immortals, that flame yet burned. They were, near or far, all one. All things were one. All men were gods. And love was enough.

  Atmeh walked toward the mountains. She walked as a lovely human girl would do, gracefully, through the contact of her soles with the ground. Before the mountains she would reach the hill, there, westward, where the Malukhim opened and shut his wings.

  She had, the girl, the woman, all her memory. Yet she had been reborn into childhood, and known it, then left it—lacking only the growing pains of an adolescence. The world was therefore very fascinating to her, known and new, seen equally at dawn and at noon. By this means she had come to recognize the helpful power, the actual lesson of birth, death, and rebirth. It seemed to her that her soul had itself lived bodily, often, before it had been summoned to the child in Dunizel’s womb. For though Azhrarn believed he had invented true life, could even he do so? The humblest peasant could create a child, and so could the least sensible of men. Azhrarn, too, formed a fleshly case, though his method had not been the same (the carnal act being art and pleasure to demons, but never procreative). Nevertheless, could he, any more than the peasant or random lackwit, who by a spillage of semen got life on a woman, create the soul itself? By the variation of the lives—and deaths—Atmeh had clearly undergone in this existence, she had detected the others that had made and unmade her, in the past. And now an immortal, the question came to her, was there not more to be learned through a diversity of lives, through the confusion of genders, temperaments, creeds, wishes—through the very and natural unknowing of the infant, through the continuous relearning even of the same lesson—for was it not, in point of fact, on each occasion learned in a different way?

  And thinking these thoughts, she traveled through the brown land, day by day, sleeping by night at the edges of the budding fields, or under some spreading tree at the roadside. Supposing her a wandering holy woman, goatherds gave her milk from their flocks. She did not require sustenance, yet accepted it. Sometimes, when it was needful, she performed acts of healing or mending, as she had seen Dathanja do, and rather in his character, with some uncomplex paraphernalia to offset marvel.

  After a palmful of days (how many fit inside a palm, a woman’s palm—seven then), she came to the feet of the hills, baked as cakes in the morning light, and behind stood the mountains westward. But between the two, Ebriel, awaiting her, and with sword drawn—for she saw its glitter like one glaring sliver of ice the winter had left behind.

  So she climbed toward the angel. She climbed through midday, and all one afternoon, and when the sun was westering, she came over a ridge, and there the angel was, with the sun behind him like a ball of gold. He showed black on the brightness, and this struck her—again—how dark might become light, since pallor could be black as ink.

  “Ebriel,” said Atmeh. (She knew his name. There was little she could not know of the earth, and its adjacent environs.) “Ebriel, look at me, and consider me. I do not challenge heaven, now. If ever I did. Say then what must be between us.”

  The angel did not reply, not by word, nor any action.

  Now, she had been tended by Eshva. And that unspeaking speech of theirs was still second to her nature. It is not properly said—which in itself is a sort of pun—how the unspeaking speech was spoken, or heard. It was not exactly a mind-language, telepathic. Nor entirely corporeal, though the breath, the eyes, and movements of the hands, limbs, and torso, even of the hair, contributed. A language possessed of symbolism, certainly. Whatever it was, and however exercised, the inspiration came to Atmeh to employ it with the angel. And so she spoke to him again, by this tongue. She said, “You have heard my words, and you have read me clear as still water. But we cannot stand here forever, you and I. Nor go on as we have done, flying and flown after, hesitating and always overlooked.”

  “Forever,” said the angel. “What is that but the eternal state of all things? Why should we not?”

  And he too used the Eshva speech, or an approximation of it, which seemed also natural to him.

  “Your masters are the gods,” said Atmeh.

  “That is so.”

  “What do the gods instruct you to do?”

  “I have their instruction. The first and only motivation given me, as to my brothers.”

  “The gods, if they still concern themselves, which I suspect they do not, realize I am no longer any nuisance to them.”

  “That has no place in the scheme of me, or of my being.”

  It was true. Automaton that he had remained, this Ebriel, his first command was the sum of him. He had cast down a city and a worlddom because of it. And here the very cause of the command confronted him.

  “But,” said Atmeh, “I have been left unmolested by you.”

  “You slept,” said the angel. His eyes burned out of the silhouette of him, each a savage topaz, and each not like the eyes of an eagle—but like the eagle itself. “Now you waken, and come here, as is right, that we may meet in combat. And so, at your awakening, I perceived you would.”

  “To fight is an emblem,” said Atmeh. “Must you have it, Sun-Born? Must you?”

  “Behold. The sword is from the scabbard,” he said. “When I have sheathed it, the matter will be done. Until that hour, then.”

  “I am an immortal,” she said. “And you, I think. We may transmute, but not perish.”

  “All lives are so. It has been discussed before. Such things do not obviate our combat.”

  “Impoverished Ebriel,” said Atmeh, with the flash of dark and anger in her eyes, or perhaps just the last flash of the sinking sun, “you are only a fool.”

  As the evening moved over the hill to meet the coal-blue wall of the mountains, it found two warriors there. An angel, the sun-holding citrines of his breastplate, golden hair and sword. And Atmeh become Sovaz again, or Azhriaz, in mail the color of the mountain’s face, night hair, sword of metal like a pale twilight. And the evening glimmered across them, then passed on. But they stayed, and they fought.

  How they fought.

  It was related that, from a hundred miles off, men saw the ig
nition of those blows a quarter of the way up the night sky. It was related, that when the swords smote each other, an arc of brilliance tore out. And sometimes the hill itself was struck, or the air, and lava burst from the one and boiling steam from the second. And then again the sword of each of them might strike home into the body of the opponent. At this, the atmosphere itself must have caught its breath with agony. But they, one an elemental thing, the other scarcely less, agonized or otherwise, healed in an instant, or did not need medicine. It was like the former fight in many ways, that between Azhrarn and Melqar, save for the mutual woundings, but then these two were younger. As with that former conflict, it is nearly useless to describe it. It was inexplicable, it was an affront to every mortal warrior who ever dueled. An emblem, as she said.

  Midnight passed over the hill in the wake of evening and mere night.

  Atmeh fell back, and leaned on her sword. Though she might fight until daybreak, all day till sunset, all night till dawn (forever, as he had said), yet she allowed herself to be weary, almost to sink with weariness—of the soul if not the body.

  “If you would rest,” said Ebriel, in the Eshva speech, “do so.”

  “Fool,” said Atmeh, aloud, in the voice of Azhriaz, “resting and toiling till time’s end. Fool. And I a fool to permit this.” Then she dropped down on the earth, her eyes shut. Her soul was so weary it had drained her body.

  The angel stood nearby, to guard her if the need arose. She was valuable to him. She was his reason, after all, for existence. But presently, as if she had inhaled strength from the hill, Atmeh opened her eyes again. She lay and looked up at the angel in the starlight.

  “Ebriel, bargain with me. There is some kinship between us; we both have sunfire in our veins. Now if I can strike you three times, and not myself be smitten, before the sun returns—the sun who is directly father and mother to you, and indirectly a grandparent to me—if I can do that, will you grant me a boon?”

  Ebriel regarded his adversary. His eyes grew peculiarly lambent, as though he had come to love her. Of course, they were sworn foes; perhaps he had.

  “Since we shall contend forever, it is reasonable that we should be courteous, and play such games as you submit. Smite me three times unsmitten before sunrise, and your boon I will grant, provided it is in my scope.”

  “Oh, believe it,” said Atmeh, and she smiled, for she had heard—at long last—a fallible trace of earthliness in his choice of phrase.

  The strife on the hill then changed its tone, seeing it now had a purpose.

  As a combatant, Atmeh was capricious, cunning, and swift. Perfect coordination and vision were hers—which in themselves made her a peerless swordswoman. The adroitness may have been inherent in her, for the Vazdru sorcerer-princes were sorcerous also in many types of martial skill. And perhaps, in the years of her bored goddesshood, she had had herself, for diversion, trained by her war captains in the crafts of affray public or personal. Yet she did not engage in this fight with a format either female or masculine. Her attitude was not human. Neither, of course, was that of the Malukhim—which doubtless would have slain a human swordsman, and one of uncommon cleverness, inside seven seconds.

  Three hours of darkness were unspent.

  In the first hour, a crescent bow of moon, having cast its quiver of light, went down, and as it did so, Atmeh came close to the Malukhim, and lowered her sword.

  As Ebriel’s moon-outshining blade leaped toward her heart, Atmeh said, “You are beautiful, Sun-Created,” in the voice of Azhriaz, and Ebriel’s stroke was missed—in surprise it would appear: Who would think to say or be so bold as to say such words to an angel? And as he missed the stroke, the blade of the demoness clove through his right arm (not at all wounding it), and she said, “One.”

  The angel drew away. He stared at her, the white eagle of heaven.

  They fought the rest of the hour, then, and by her competence she did not let him touch her. But in the second hour before dawn, she spoke again to him, in the voice of Sovaz. “If you were only a man, Ebriel, there is a way you might overcome me. There is a way you might pierce me, and kill me too, for a little while. Do you know of this way?”

  “Do not attempt to trick me again,” said the angel. His wings opened like towering fans, and Atmeh sprang beneath his sword and clipped the left wing a glancing blow.

  “Two,” said Atmeh. “You trick yourself. I know your kind does not lie down in love. Nor loves in any other posture. Save for this.”

  Then they battled like two hawks that have fallen from the sky, like two lynxes above meat. They battled like a man and a woman finally, in that old battle each sex knows, yet without the flavor of desire.

  And three times, despite her finesse, the angel almost struck her, negating her double assault upon him. Twice, chance saved her, small things—a rock that turned her foot (she who never stumbled) and flung her from the zone of the stroke, or a sudden gust of shale from the hill which, tossed against his sword, deflected it. (Chance? Her Uncle Kheshmet?) But one time she herself spun up in the air to escape, and did Ebriel forget wingless things might also fly?

  In the east, the night wore thin.

  Abruptly the girl drooped, her body, the slim cruel arm, and the weapon of blue metal. “Enough,” she said. “Enough.”

  Ebriel in his turn let down his sword.

  “Let me rest,” said Atmeh, in the voice of the child Soveh. And she sank to the earth and closed her eyes once more. Her body lay boneless as her long hair. There seemed no vitality in her.

  Ebriel stood for a space, looking at her. Then, lifting his eyes, he gazed toward the east, where the first magnificence began. And in that moment, Atmeh cast herself upward, fast as lightning, and she came against him and thrust her sword all its length into him, through the very heart of him, if he had had one. And next minute the sun rose and showed each of their incredible faces, and lit their amazing eyes.

  “Beloved,” said Atmeh, “demons are not to be trusted. And mortals, neither. And I am both. Three, Ebriel. I have won. You owe me my boon.” And she kissed his mouth, briefly, in the way a bird alights upon a bough where it knows it may not linger.

  But Ebriel laughed. He laughed. Aloud, and beautifully. He said to her: “I award it you, then. What must I do?”

  Atmeh said, “We will construct a truce. During this, we will go together and seek your two brothers. Yabael, the Sword of Blood, the Second-Scorched, torment of the ocean. Melqar, the third out of the sun, the Sword of Snow, he that the Prince of Demons strove with.”

  “To this I agree,” said Ebriel.

  And now he spoke, aloud, as a man does, and Atmeh smiled again.

  There rose up the sky then, with the unjealous sun, the Sun-Created on his wings and the demon-created, wingless, in a cloud of hair.

  They knew where to seek Yabael. They could know almost anything. (Though that also may have been true of mankind, and yet may be true.) Thus over the mountain peaks they went, and down the lands beyond where the earth smelled pungent as a spicery, and so from sugar to salt, and to the cup brim of the sea. And here they plunged, and descended from azure to green ember, and from that to dimness. There they found a niche in a mighty cliff and stood waiting, breathing the water, yet circumspect, since the oceans’ laws were different.

  Perhaps a mile below the cliff, a tall city of the sea people lay on the sand, built of shells. Its skies were doved by white whales, that mysteriously sang an endless song, which, by magic alone, under the water, could be heard.

  Soon one of these marvelous pale beings came drifting from the city where their music was prized above the captured gold of men. It came to the niche and gazed in at Atmeh and the angel. Its eyes were small for the size of it, yet huge by any other gauge, and sapphire-blue.

  “Travelers,” said the whale, or rather, it sang these words to them, and politely in a language of earth, that they might understand it better, “as I see you hear me, and as I see you breathe in ocean, I conclude you are great
in magery. But do not go out of the cliff for a while. Shortly, a comet of the sea will journey by. This obliterates whatever comes in its path.”

  “White Lord, we thank you,” said Atmeh, singing, Vazdru that she was, a song to complement his own. “What of the city there, and of your own people?”

  “A magic protects the city, of which our singing is an ingredient.” And having told her this, the whale swam back again among the others, and resumed his portion of the endless song.

  Perhaps one twelfth of an hour later, a vast bloody glow diffused in the sea, and a fearsome noise that was no noise, but the cliff thrummed and rumbled at it, and from the plains beneath spouts of sand sheered up. It moved so quickly, the comet, there was slight warning of its imminence. It came all at once on the stages of its flight, and suddenly it came now on this one. Everything was drowned in redness, and rocked and griped to its roots, and through the sea came a burning fiery sword, shapeless yet awful, and with a lashing tail of flame. This then, Yabael.

  Whatever ability the second of the Malukhim had had to reason—it was gone, as shape was gone. Chaos had blended with Yabael, that compendium of ether and sun, sparking the complementary sprinkle of chaos already in his atoms. And Yabael became a savage little sun that hunted the water for prey it did not remember—and in the event raced by that very prey, Atmeh, and by Ebriel, its kin, and by the city, whose towers rippled—and away on the circling, blind chase.

  As the fires died, the water softened from scarlet to silver, the whales sang on. The shell metropolis stood.

  Atmeh looked into the face of Ebriel. It told her nothing. She spoke, by the Eshva means.

  “Yabael is the first lesson I offer you. It is possible even for the Malukhim to alter, or for change to be forced on them. And, too, it is possible for the Malukhim to continue in a hopeless task, which, like the stricken tree, will bear no fruit.”

  Ebriel’s face told her nothing, but his eyes burned with the fire of the comet, red within gold.

  “You cannot follow him, beloved. You cannot change as he has done. Come. Up to the world again.”