Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (20 page)

That night
there was a full moon over the earth.

The blossoms
were long finished in Bhelsheved, and the leaves of the garden hung heavily as
bronze. White pillars in the walks were like the teeth of bone combs tangled in
the hair of the darkness.

There was no
sound anywhere. No wind to stir the trees, or the water, or to blow the husks
of flowers or the little drifts of dust along the colonnades like whispers.

In their bare
blanched cells, the priests and priestesses dreamed, waking or sleeping, of
religious ecstasy, and the gods, their fair hair washing around them like some
silver overflow from their brains. Here and there in a fane, a sacred lamp was
burning, some priest or other standing tranced beneath. In the heart temple of Bhelsheved, poised above its lake, vague glimmers came and went, the leftovers of
magic and reverence, lingering after the fact, like footprints in sand. Till
another sorcery quenched them.

At the heart
of the heart of Bhelsheved, a black fire burned and went out.

Azhrarn looked
about him silently. There was nothing readable in his face or manner. Only he
himself was apparent.

He walked the
length of the temple, past its stupendous altar mounted on the backs of the two
gigantic beasts of gold. He did not, demon that he was, care for the gold of
the temple. (He had manifested upward, from beneath the lake, rather than
through the golden walls of this building.) Yet he paused by the beasts, for
seated between the paws of one of them was Dunizel.

Before her on
the ground was a sheet of parchment, and sometimes she would trace particular
symbols over it with her fingers. But she too was tranced, far off within or
without herself, in some esthetic kingdom of the mind.

Azhrarn walked
closer, but he kept his shadow at his back so it should not fall on her. His
step was noiseless. He was visible—yet invisible. Only the glamour of what he
was might have been detected, like a sound just beyond the level of human
hearing.

He stood near
to her, and he gazed into her brain.

She might have
imagined herself abandoned by him. She might have turned her reveries,
therefore, to other things, to her gods, indeed, as was expected of her. That
would have been pardonable, though he would never have pardoned her for putting
him aside more than a moment, even in her dreams.

So he stared
through white hair, and whiter skin, and whitest bone, through the metaphysical
casings of thought, and saw with her inner eye.

A great
stillness came upon Azhrarn then, almost a quiescence.

It was for him
like looking into a mirror, looking into the mind of Dunizel, for there he was,
drawn in the colors of darkness, on the panels of her dream.

For though she
saw the gods—each of them was Azhrarn. Some were female and some male, some
exquisite children, some exotic animals, but each was Azhrarn, each and all.
And if she saw a sky it, also, was Azhrarn. And the seas were Azhrarn, and the
earth.

He himself,
looking at other things, had suspended his belief in them. But she believed and
saw, clearly and merely through the medium of Azhrarn. He had made all things
real for her, by imbuing the nature of all things. He had become for her all
things, the life, the essence of the world.

Perhaps, if
her meditation had been apart from him, or simply anguished, or—worse—trivial,
he might after all have avoided her, punishing her for failing him. She had not
failed him. She had made him God.

So he put out
his hand and laid it softly on her beautiful head which had become his temple.

When the pilgrims
came to Bhelsheved, and walked the gleaming, sorcerously sandless roads that
led into it out of the desert, the city sang to them. This was because hollow
chambers lay under the roads, which the reverberations of so many footfalls
above stirred up into echoes, a silver thunder. Only at the perimeter of the
city did these chambers end, and coming onto the last stretch, the echo-sound
ceased, adding to the amazement of the crowd. But the touch of Azhrarn sent its
resonance through the body of the girl, a note which did not die, but woke new
echoes, echo upon echo, song upon song.

She came from
her trance gently, as if from summer water to a summer lawn. Her eyes fixed on
Azhrarn, and she smiled at him.

He took his
hand from her head, but looked at her still a long while, unspeaking.

At last she
said to him: “Do you wish me to bow down to you? Or do you understand my homage
goes beyond obeisance?”

“Do not,” he
said, “bow down to me.” And then he said, “I have been from you some time, by
mortal reckoning. Did you suppose I would not return?”

“But,” she
said, “you never left me.”

He knew it was
as she said, both for Dunizel, since she had retained his image in her soul,
and for himself. When in the Underearth, yet truly, he had been with her.

He leaned and
lifted her to her feet. All humankind responded to his caress, but he was
attentive, seeing her response to it, as if he beheld his own influence for the
first.

“There is
something I shall say to you,” he said, “but not yet. I will take you traveling
tonight. Do not be afraid.”

“If I am with
you,” she said, “I shall fear nothing.”

“Like all your
priesthood, you are a magician. Yet you are more than that. Shall I show you
what you are?” (He had always known, or he had swiftly discovered, her
genesis.)

“Will this
fresh knowledge alter me?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you wish
me altered?”

“No.”

“Do not tell
me, then, or show me. Show me only what will keep me as you desire me to be.”

Azhrarn was
amused, disturbed, maybe, at this abjection which was not abject. Demons
relished flattery and service, and knew their weakness.

“You will
negate and deny yourself,” he said, “if you seek only to please me.”

“I am more
than my body and brain and ego and spirit,” she said. “I am my love for you.
Nor will I negate and deny my love.”

Azhrarn did
not reply to this, but he wrapped her, as if it were in a swirling of the
starry night, and they were drawn down into the lake under the floor of the
temple—and he was a black fish with meteor eyes, and she a silver scale upon
his forehead. And then the fish leapt upward. He was a black eagle, that
familiar shape of his. And she was a light upon his breast—no white feather,
but a white flame.

She saw, even
as a burning flame, even knowing what he had become and what he had made her,
and she felt joy at his power, and her joy made her brilliancy more brilliant,
a fire that seemed to have flowered from his heart. Possibly it even hurt him,
this sun-related moon-ember held fast against his flesh.

The night sky
burst about them, as the water of the lake had burst. Currents and streamers of
starlight, wind, and the intangible ether, parted and poured by. The moon had
gained the peak of heaven. The world shone below like a heap of somber
crystals.

Mile on mile
he carried Dunizel as a white fire. She saw lands and waters come and go
beneath them, living cities in their spider webs of light, ruined cities that
slept in their draperies of shadow. In a forest built of the night, he came
briefly to rest above a bending and ancient tree. And in this tree, a rose-colored
bird, luminous as an afterglow, perched quietly on a bough, and now and then it
raised its head, and uttered a single note of song that was like the striking
of a beautiful clock. And later, as the moon began to descend, the black eagle
carried Dunizel over the quilted surface of a sea, and settled on the mast of a
phantom ship. Two hundred oars churned the water, and the sails of fine
membranous fabric turned themselves to the wind, and the wheel also carefully
turned this way and that, as if some hand guided it, but no one was aboard, no
man, no ghost even that was discernible. He took her also to a remote
sarcophagus, and flying in through a high-up opening, dropped down to where
there stood a wonderful jewel, between five and six feet in height, and in
color blue-purple. At first there seemed no form to this jewel, but gradually
you might discover it was a statue which depicted a young man and woman
embracing. Their long hair mingled, and their garments, and their arms were
wrapped fast about each other with a wild fierce tenderness. Underneath the
statue was a tablet of marble, engraved with two names, and beneath, the words:

These
lovers, due to die at the hands of enemies, and being both magicians,
transmuted themselves, by the arts of magic, and of love, into this jewel,
which is the shade of love. Pity them. Or be envious.

And when the
moon was setting, the eagle glided to a vast meadow where night-blooming
flowers grew taller than a tall man. In the dark the flowers were gray, but
their scent was like the sweetest and most costly incense.

Here, Azhrarn
put on again his masculine shape and restored Dunziel to her human form. And
here they walked together, not speaking, between the slender stems.

At last the
stars lowered the wicks in their lamps, the tides of night began to ebb away
along the beaches of the morning. It was that hour before the dawn when each
thing seemed to hold its breath. And overhead the gray flowers closed their
wings like sleeping birds, and even their scent grew silent.

Azhrarn spoke,
at length, in that silence.

“At our first
meeting, I wounded you, and healed you with my own blood. Do you remember
this?”

Smiling, she
said, “Did you think I should forget?”

“I have never
lain with you in love, Dunizel. Do you understand that, for demonkind, carnal
love requires no excuse? It is our pleasure, skill, recreation, nothing less,
or more. We quicken no living thing from congress. Procreation, with us,
necessitates more thought, and greater intent.”

She gazed at
him, and she said, “How, then, are your kind begun?”

“By several
means,” he said. “But among the Vazdru, it is a device of blood. My blood,” he
said, “has mingled with yours. I lay one night upon you, and thereby fixed my
image within you as surely as the seal-ring leaves its impression in wax. If I
willed it now, but only if I willed it, you might carry my child, and bear my
child. But if I leave the last sorcery unmade, what I have prepared in you
remains dormant. It will neither harm nor benefit you. You will only know of it
because I have told you it is so.”

“And do you
tell me,” she said, “because you do not will that I bear your child?”

“I tell you
that you yourself may decide whether or not you would carry and bring forth a
procreation of mine. Let me inform you of the whole of the matter. The child
will be female, for you are the mold in which she is cast, since you possess a
womb, as mortal women do. But though she will resemble you, in herself she will
be the feminine principle of Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, Night’s Master, one of
the Lords of Darkness. And what I am, in great measure must she be. Consider
this. For though you will render her your light, her genetic substance will be
darkness. Can you house such an image in your body, Dunizel? And bring it
forth? And rock the creature in your arms? I did not and do not choose you
randomly for this act. But neither will I impose it on you.”

“Why,” she
said, “would you father a child at this time?”

“To father
also mischief in the world. And pain, no doubt, and misery.”

His face was
cold and cruel.

“My beloved,”
she said to him, “yon are mighty beyond mightiness. You must not listen to what
fractious small men say of you, and believe it.”

“Do not,” he
said, “anger me again. I would not wish to be angry with you.”

“I do not credit
your wickedness,” she said. “You have millennia before you. It is the malice of
your infancy on you now. Your infancy that is wiser than any wisdom of the
earth. But you will come to other things. While they live, all trees must
grow.”

“Be silent,”
he said to her, and the flowing away of night seemed halted, foundered, and the
shut wings of the flowers sizzled inaudibly, as if before lightning. And the
grass beneath the feet of Azhrarn curled about itself, shrinking from him.
Azhrarn lowered his eyes that were like black suns, to look at the grass that
curled and shrank from him, and his lashes, that were long and straight like
splinters of the night, hid the thought behind the eyes. As he watched the
grass, or appeared to watch the grass, and as the air flickered in terror about
him, he said to her, “You do not comprehend the stasis of immortality. Only
men, who die, foretell their future.”

And perhaps,
or perhaps not, she saw in him then, faint and far away, some glint of a
curious fear. All creation, now and then, had feared Azhrarn. Why should he
not, once in twenty centuries, fear himself?

And because
she saw his fear, maybe, she went to him, and kneeled to him, as if it were she
herself who was afraid. But in truth, if he had killed her in that instant, she
could not have feared him; love had left her no room for fear.