Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (39 page)

The lord raised his arms, spoke a word of power, and caught the
slave in his grasp. To any but a magician it was a feat impossible. But to a
magician, nothing so very much. He did not even stagger, nor shift from one
silk-clad foot to another. He put the slave down upon the way, uninjured and
gazing at him. The rabble were moved to unapproving impressed applause. The
lord took no note of this, and little of the slave, beyond a nod. The fine
green head was turned again to the gate of Azhriaz, and in another minute he
had returned to it and entered the courtyard of the house. Azhriaz had come
out on a balcony and looked down on him.

He bowed gracefully as a thief.

“Madam,” said he, “may I come in?”

Azhriaz said nothing, but the door opened and stood wide.

8
The Story of Tavir’s Dream

“I
AM TAVIR, a prince of Tirzom Jum. Because our high caste is so uniform in
coloring and so symmetrical of physiognomy, to an alien we are often indistinguishable
from each other. You will not remember me.”

“Indeed that is true, that I do not remember you. But the lapse is
due solely to my uninterest in the ways of your kind. You are, however,
doubtless an intimate of your king. We shall not discuss my notion to holiday
outside his domain.”

Prince Tavir smiled. In his green locks were woven the blackest
agates; on his black fingers and in the lobes of his well-shaped black ears
burned the greenest agates. His shirt was vermilion, which was not the vogue at
all.

“I had heard,” he said, “the entertainment in this house was
lavish.”

Azhriaz clapped her hands. Stringed instruments rilled, incenses
uncoiled from sudden lamps, pitchers of wine came sailing through the air.

Azhriaz clapped her hands again. All vanished.

“You will be entertained better,” said Azhriaz, “by your king. Why
are you here?”

“If you will indulge me, I will speak first of a dream I have had
continually since childhood.”

“Speak on,” said Azhriaz, “my indulgence being immaterial.”

But Tavir gazed at her and spoke seriously, as to a respected
equal. And Azhriaz sparred with him no further.

Thus, he told her of his dream, which was this:

That he, a creature able to breathe both water and air, had
drowned. There he stood, his lungs bulging with saline liquid and drawing
neither in or out, and his skull seeming flooded too, yet not his brain. His
mind worked on in a dreamy way. And it came to him he was a statue, fossilized
to limestone, which had endured there in the depths for centuries, and was,
moreover, one of a company. Like a crowd of petrified ghosts they were, feet
planted in an old mosaic, and dimly, on the shores of sight (for the eyes of
these statues did not move), were vistas of a wrecked palace. The ocean bustled
in and around, and went off again, and with it fish, and long cold sea serpents.
Sometimes some wandering aquamite would pause among the statues, and make its
home in a convenient crevice—the dip between a woman’s breasts, a fold of rocky
robe or hair, or the cupped palm of a hand forever open. But even these
slithery nomads did not remain. Altogether, the statue-Tavir concluded, this
was no life for an adventurous spirit.

At last, the sense that he should leave his jail became so
insistent that he made as if to run away. And in that instant he did run, and
found himself at large and at liberty. At first this surprised him. Then he
came to see that it was some mental or astral part which had slipped the leash.
The stony body stayed behind, blank-faced, and would not look at him. He was
glad to be rid of it. It was so good to move about after the endless years, and
he darted through the sea, losing all awareness of place or time, or even of
self, flighty as a fish.

How long this spree lasted he could not be sure. But after a while,
he began to take note of things and to reason again, and he grew once more
dissatisfied, and yearned for the expression, and the limits, of a fleshly
container.

How to get one? He might invade the physique of some other, but
who could guess what battle would ensue? To find some corpse and occupy that
was not to be relished. Another means occurred to him.

He came on a city soon, and that city was Tirzom Jum upon its
cliff, beneath its dome—though at the hour he did not know its name, nor care.

Invisible and weightless, he skimmed about the place, and when he
wished to, seeped in through the dome itself, and blew around the upper
streets.

Now it seemed to Tavir, who in the dream was not Tavir, that he
had been formerly a prince, handsome, and schooled in sorcery. Therefore he
concluded he must be again a prince, handsome and a sorcerer, for old habits
die hard. And to excuse this sameness he remarked to himself that he could be
all that again and do differently with it—as before, let it be whispered low, had
he not rather wasted his gifts?

Presently Tavir-not-yet-Tavir beheld a gorgeous girl carried in a
litter. Black as night she looked to him, with reseda hair. Such a mold could
only make handsome sons—

He followed the girl. He dared even, intellectual air current that
he was, to sit in her lap and murmur
Oh, dear Mother!
to
her from time to time. Then, however, the litter came to a mansion, and the
girl was borne in. Who should greet her in an inner chamber but a stooped
fellow, princely black and green as she, but missing most of his teeth and
those remaining as black as his hide, while his hair was streaked by white.
Worse, he looked on the girl and said: “Good day, Wife. I have been reading in
my library—which is, as you know, my only pleasure—and the sage says this: ‘How
privileged the bride that her husband has not deflowered.’ Are you not then
gratified that I have laid not one finger on you, and that you will stay a
virgin all your years?”

“Whatever you will,” said the girl, listlessly.

But Tavir—and so he shall henceforth be called, for so he had now
determined to be—Tavir flew up in the air like a wax bung out of a shaken
bottle, and hitting the chamber roof, exclaimed: “Never, on my life!”

The aged pedant sucked his un-nice teeth and squinted at the
ceiling. He was a sorcerer, naturally, and had detected something amiss.

“Can some air-inhaling fish have got in?” inquired he.

“Old fool!” raved Tavir from above. “I will show you what a fish
it is!” And flapping down he gave the old man a sound blow. And though not
corporeal, his shot had the strength of passion behind it, so the pedant leapt
and clutched his nose. Waving a stick of carved black vitreous from some
submarine lava flow as cooled now as his own, he cried: “A haunt! Some fiend
let loose by others’ careless conjuration. Have I not warned you before, Wife,
that you must curb your witcheries.
I
am the husband and
I
will
work the magic. Go to your apartments in disgrace, and peruse there the
improving books I have sent you!” At which the lovely girl shrank and trembled
and crept from the room. Tavir pursued her, pausing only to inflict upon the
old pedant another savage blow. Leaving him howling, Tavir rose with the
princess up through the house into some demure little chambers of great richness.

“Hush, Sweetheart-Mother,” he consoled the virgin-wife, flitting
affectionately about her. “There are other men in this city.”

He remained concerned at her dejection until, having locked her
doors by both key and charm, the black princess proceeded to arrange a spell
upon the floor. And when the genie of it appeared, she stamped her foot and
railed at it with some spirit. “Did you not promise me a handsome husband and a
handsome son?” screamed she. “Where are they, pray, and how much longer must I
endure this
wait?”
The
genie looked abashed, but Tavir, ever resourceful, dashed into its open mouth,
and by cleverly manipulating the big tongue against the palate and fangs, in
proper rhythm with its attempt to speak otherwise, caused it to announce: “It
shall be done. By tomorrow’s sunset, Fate shall rap the door.”

Then, leaving both genie and princess dumb with amazement, Tavir
dived out again and so through a succession of closed windows, and through the
city to find himself a suitable sire.

This
deed was not so very taxing for Tavir. He merely selected from among the
highest of the high princes of Tirzom Jum the wealthiest, best-looking, and
most accomplished specimen, luckily wifeless. This prince was disposed to walk
in his gardens, and Tavir accompanied him.

“You suppose,” said Tavir, unseen, unheard, invidious, “that you
are happy. But you are not. Here you are, and no one by. Can it be your
scholars and your friends now bore you? That your concubines no longer wake
your pulses? But you are wise. This is safer. Go out into the city, you would
find your heart’s desire.”

Now, though he was a mage, Tavir’s father (and there is no use
denying that is what he would become) was young, and did not always measure
every act or idea. And so, sensing the import of Tavir’s wheedling, the prince
came to believe these fancies sprang from a sort of sorcerous intuition. And
thus this educated and astute young man let himself be led like a bull by the
nose.

Out into the city he therefore went, and so came, in a sea-green
sunset, under the window of Tavir’s mother (and no use denying that, either).

“Do not look up at that casement,” exclaimed Tavir to his princely
father. The prince naturally at once looked up at it. “Beware,” insisted Tavir.
“Your heart’s desire lies in prison within. See her, and you are lost. Best
leave the spot instantly.” Tavir’s father accordingly lingered in the street,
beset by strange emotions.

Tavir then flew up the wall and into the room of the princess. He
found her in the process of tearing to bits and burning the improving
literature given by her spouse. Hastily blowing a white smut or two from her
face, Tavir propelled the lady to the window: “Do not dare look out into the
street. Your fate is below—”

So she reached the window and looked down with a wildly beating
heart, and there she saw the prince looking up in much the same condition.

Soon she puts her hand to her brow. The prince starts forward.
“Madam, are you unwell?”

“Quite well,” she answers. It is a lie. The sword has gone in her
heart. As for him, never was fish more hooked.

Just then a series of appalling crashes, thuds, and yowls shock
through the house. Tavir is about other business, chasing the aged pedant
around his library and hurling books and scrolls at his venerable head, now and
then getting in a hearty bite with incorporeally impassioned teeth.

“Save me!” cries the pedant.

“Madam,” says the prince in the street to the princess in the
window, “you are the moon clad in black pearl, your casement is the east and
you rising in it to give me light. I would say more about this, but I think
your household to be in some trouble—” And so saying, he goes to the house
door and thunders on it.

“Oh, fate,” faintly says the princess.

The pedant’s alarmed servants have already drawn the bolts and let
in the prince, who rushes upstairs to the old fellow’s assistance. Flinging
wide the barriers of the library, the prince strides in.

“It is a conjuration—a fiend—” shrieks the pedant, perched on a
bookshelf and batting volumes with his stick.

The prince utters an admonishing incantation. Tavir, who is not of
course at all affected by it, with a parting kick, desists.

“My rescuer,” says the old man.

“Her father?” asks the young one.

“Whose father?”

Prudently the prince falls silent.

At this moment the princess comes hurrying into the room, having
combed her glorious hair and donned an attar of sea blossoms, to sink in a
helpless swoon in the arms of the young prince.

“She is my wife,” the pedant introduces her.

Much too late.

Mischief-maker
Tavir, soul on the loose looking for harbor. Less to do now the wheel is
rolling of its own volition.

But it is a fact, whenever the prince is from the house, the
pedant is set on. No sooner does the young lord go from the porch than some
servant of the old lord’s must run to call him back. Or a messenger be sent
across the city. At any hour of the day or night, the mad elemental is ready,
to break and burn (even instructional books given one’s wife), to rip and ruin,
to trip and tweak and bonk and bang, and punch and thump and slap. And there
are times when the only escape is for the old man to go out. Yes, out of his
own house, for the persecution ends always at the door, just as so often it
begins there. In the streets and parks, in the mansions of others, there is
safety. When he returns home it is uneasily, and with mixed feelings does he
find his rescuer so frequently already before him.

“I have lain in wait whole hours behind the fifth column in the
annex where it sprang on you with the hot water,” says the prince. “I have gone
into each room, intoned the incantation, and burned rare incenses.” Doubtless
this is why he is so out of breath, and the virgin-wife out of breath for a
similar reason, having dutifully followed him.