Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (24 page)

“My dear, you
are purring,” said Azhrarn, and again he laughed.

To this day,
no cat can bear to be laughed at, even in love.

However, sure
enough, the animal, legged, eared and furry, was an enormous success on the
earth. Men were pleased by his grace and elegance, admired his cool blood and
wicked self-command. And when he grew sometimes peeved, forgot himself, and
hissed—they did not remember the snake, but remarked: “There is the cat,
hissing.” Nor did they notice how both the cat and the snake slew mice, or
enjoyed milk, though both became the pets of sorcerers. And men never would
credit that if you overlooked the fur and held flat the two pointed ears of the
cat, then and now, you might and may see still the wedge-shaped demon head and
the sharp teeth of the serpent, poised there, under your hand.

When Dunizel
had told the story, she could sense the embryo’s interest in it. It was a
childish, satisfying legend, or maybe true. But it was inevitable Dunizel would
think of her lover in this way, while others spoke exclusively of the bloodshed
and viciousness of his deeds among men.

The story
finished, Dunizel sank into a sort of dream, the sky-blue window light drifting
over her. She imagined she and her baby rode on the back of a winged lion.
Possibly, probably, the unborn baby shared in this fantasy. She was not like
other unborn infants.

Several hours
passed before Dunizel lifted her head at an enormous shout that seemed to rock
Bhelsheved.

It had
happened that sages and philosophers had already been traveling to the city,
and had therefore been intercepted by the messengers sent off to summon them.
Some of these wise men had intended to chastise the previous crowd for
irreligiously going there at the wrong time. Some had been intrigued by abnormal
portents. An astrologer or two had read mysteries in the positions of various
stars. One way or another, Bhelsheved had magnetized them. The messengers
conducted them across the sands, over the echoing roads—which did not echo for
there were too few treading on them, on this occasion, to produce more than the
dullest of concussions. In at the solitary open gate they went. Up to the
priests and priestesses they went. And the priests and priestesses fluttered
anxiously as pigeons.

“We beg your
pardon and the pardon of heaven,” said the sages.

“Are you
uncognisant of the miracle that has chanced here by divine will?” grumbled a
number of seers—added to the testimony of the messengers, the portents had
tumbled into place. (Each seer was quick to claim he had predicted an Event
first.)

“Where?”
howled the astrologer, a more basic fellow. “Where? Where?”

The priesthood
cowered. How frail and foolish they appeared.

No woman among
them looked a candidate for heaven’s visitation, and not a single girdle on a
single slender frame had lifted by so much as a quarter inch.

“Where?”
howled the astrologer once more. His fingers plucked the atmosphere as if eager
to pluck open robes and bellies, and gaze within.

A reverend
philosopher stepped hurriedly forward.

“My friend desires
to know, as indeed do we all, where the favored maiden is to be found.”

Some of the
priesthood began to cry.

A voice spoke
from somewhere in the throng. The throng made way. An old man leaning on a
staff emerged. The priesthood glanced at him in new terror, obviously not
recalling that here was one of their erstwhile teachers from the antique tower,
the building in which they had proved themselves capable of undergoing all
manner of ordeals—except, demonstrably, that of holding conversation with men save
in the form of ritual.

The crowd,
however, knew the old man.

He stared
about with merciless eyes. The immaturity and silliness of his students clearly
caused him acute disgust. Yet, had there not been one student, who, even as
these now offended him, had once caused him to rejoice?

“Be still,”
said this old man, and the crowd fell quiet. “Attend to me. I will bring to
your minds a girl of superlative beauty, of extraordinary holiness and occult
vision. One, who for her demeanor and her looks, was named Soul-of-the-Moon. . . .”

Just as these
words were spoken, Dunizel felt the grip of fate brutally fasten on her. No
doubt she herself had foretold what must come, the unspoken wish behind
Azhrarn’s use of her. Yet to be used by one who loves you is infinitely
forgivable.

Along the
walls of this little temple where she had lingered were writings, for the
priests would often inscribe spiritual graffiti there about the gods. She might
read such sentences as:
The law of heaven is eternity
. Or,
When I
think of you, O Masters of the Firmament, my soul arises like the sun
.

Dunizel now
took up a pen and dipped it in the silvery golden ink, and she wrote this:

The
bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy
last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become
merely habit.

Then she laid
her hand over her body, above the vessel in which her child waited out its
term, as if she warmed her hand at that dark fire.

Next moment,
she was aware of a vast, concerted tread, the feet of many people, moving
toward her along the pastel roads. Still she was not afraid. She felt pity, for
all of them, and for the child. Even for Azhrarn—Chuz had prophesied she would
be mad enough to pity the Prince of Demons.

For herself
she felt loss; the end of joy.

The multiple
tread drew near, resembling an incoming tide, or a wind blowing through the
city. At the door of the little temple, the noise ceased. And then the door was
flung wide.

Winter
sunlight streamed in, cold and very hard, like an edge of broken glass.

An old man
walked slowly out of the light, leaning on a staff.

He, and those
that pressed in after him, and those who could proceed no further than the door
(for the entrance way was narrow), beheld the mirage of a girl, all whiteness,
tinted by the blue sheen of a window at her back. Her beauty was supernal.
Their quest being what it had become, she was the only acceptable thing for
them to come in and find. (And how had they found her? Perhaps one of her order
had noted her enter the temple, and relayed the information. Or had she left
some sort of supernatural trail behind her?)

She faced
them. If she had denied the truth, they would not have listened. The way she
was, the way she appeared to be, only the gods would have recognized, in that
second, that she was not one of themselves.

On the shore
of the lake, unnoticed, the sixteenth murderess felt a piece of loose mosaic
under her hand. She prised it up, and with it she cut the veins of her wrists.
Dyed with her blood, courteously, she offered the shard to the fifteenth
murderess.

They escorted Dunizel to
the heart-temple. An apartment was made for her behind the opalescent altar and
the two golden beasts. The priesthood were coerced into waiting on her, and
their incompetent ministrations augmented by those of young women of good
birth. The messengers came and went over the winter desert. Cavalcades and
caravans sought Bhelsheved, through the smoke-colored days and the bladed
nights. Gifts were brought, for mother and for child, rare and frequently
obscure. All wished to touch the bride of the god—her forehead, her fingers.
They kneeled, awaiting her blessing. The poor, who could not offer gifts,
milled outside the city, sometimes venturing in, hoping for a glimpse of her.
It was once more a festival of worship. A hushed celebration of
self-congratulatory awe. Not only had a woman been chosen by a god, but in
their
era, at
this
time, which now would ascend into history and myth.

There had been
a hasty burial outside the city: sixteen graves. This, too, had carried a sort
of importance, and they had marked the spot with a stone, hastily scratched to
read:
We who were deceived lie here, to entreat the forgiveness of heaven.

When darkness
came, the fires glittered about Bhelsheved on the frosty plains. Attendants
drew the spangled curtains and closed the doors of Dunizel’s invented
apartment, leaving her alone, bathed, anointed and clothed in silk, as if
prepared for a bridegroom. The god would visit her—nervously and with pride
they scanned the deepening twilight over the city. Some claimed to have seen
him arrive, astride a horse made of stars, his cloak billowing the moon.

Dunizel
remained in her apartment, as was expected of her, though it was unlike either
the cell she had occupied, or the gardens by the lake. It was a chamber of
screens and draperies, built also of the beliefs of others.

It did not
surprise her that Azhrarn did not come to her there. Gold dripped from every
curtain, the metal hated of demons. A miasmic sense of watchfulness was equally
present. How many, scattered in the colonnades or on the paths outside, held
their breath, innocently, inadvertently, trying to catch the rustle of gigantic
wings, or the muted gasp of ethereal love? Love which pierced but did not despoil
virginity.

The seventh
month waned. She felt the child within her stirring, turning in its half-sleep.

By night, the
magic jewels he had given her shone and glowed. Yet he had never given to her
one of those tokens for which, in certain tales, he was renowned—those articles
which would draw him to a mortal’s side. But on this night, experiencing the
child’s movement within her, Dunizel understood quite well that she had only to
say his name to summon him, and this she did.

Between one
moment and the next, he was there, a tall black shape like a furled leaf which
is really a serpent, and in the blackness his eyes blazed.

“Do not
reproach me,” he said to her at once. “For I warned you how I am and how it
would be.”

She turned and
saw him, and his face came gradually into the light, as if some invisible lamp
were burning up.

“Do I reproach
you?” she said. “I think, before sunrise, the child will be born.”

“You will
suffer no pain,” he said to her instantly. His countenance was stony, as if he
no longer cared anything for her, and by this she might have known it was not
so, if she had ever doubted. “And when the child is free of you, I will take
you from this trap. She shall be my legacy to them. I will make her strong and
terrible, and then I am done with her. And you are done with her also,
Dunizel.”

“No,” she
said. “I will not leave your child alone in this, or any place.”

“I intend,” he
said, “to put her callously to work. As I told you, I am the father of
wickedness; do not think I will have regard for this creature I grew within
your womb, not even for your sake. My plan is only this: Since these people so
vehemently adore their gods, I will give them a god to adore at first hand, and
let them discover what it is to be ruled by such. Nor will they enjoy the
lesson.”

“No,” she
said. “You may leave me, I could not prevent you. But the child shall not be
abandoned here.”

“We have never
lain together,” he said. “You do not know love as I can teach it to you. Nor
the world, as I can reveal the world. Even Druhim Vanashta will open its gates
of steel and gem and fire to you, at my will.”

She did not
remonstrate with him further, only looked straight into his eyes with her eyes
that the comet had helped to form. Some fragment of gold in the draperies
reflected in her gaze, and abruptly her eyes, too, were golden. Perhaps he
disliked that reminder of the sun, for he glanced aside from her.

“I will send
the handmaidens of Underearth to you,” he said.

And then he
went about the chamber, tearing the gold from its moorings. Whether the touch
of the metal offended him was not apparent, save that he performed the task
somewhat too meticulously and unswiftly, as if each piece of metal were heavier
and more awkward than it was. And when he flung these items away beyond the draperies,
they fell without a sound, as if he had robbed them of their substance.

When this was
done, he sank again immediately through the temple floor, his face once more in
shadow. Yet, even as he vanished, she felt the brush of his lips upon her own.

Then the Eshva
women began to evolve like slim dark ghosts. She had seen them often, and they
had served her reverently, for what their lord cherished, they too would
cherish utterly. And it is said that even the Eshva marveled at her beauty.
Truly beautiful she must have been, and truly beautiful she was.

They had
brought with them white flax gathered from the margins of Sleep River, that water which flowed by the borders of Azhrarn’s kingdom. And this they stacked on
the floor, where it began, of itself, to burn with a creamy flame.

Before, she
had known no pain. The increasing restlessness of the child merely suggested
coils of sparks were spinning in her womb. Now, at the igniting of the flax, a
dreamy quality descended on her, and next a separateness, so she seemed to
float upward from her body, and hover in the air. In this position, she saw
what happened clearly, as she would observe the actions of another.