Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (4 page)

Strange things
happened in Sheve about this time. Lamps would come alight and burn with no oil
in them; butchers told of severed heads which spoke, reprimanding the
slaughterers. Sometimes a woman would powder her face with pearly powder, and
it would turn black as soot, or a kid would be born with five legs, or hens
would lay wooden eggs, or doors which had always opened inwards would open
outwards, and water that ran from a public fountain would suddenly flow upward
into the air. Such events were, of course, due to the presence of Chuz.
Additionally, the citizens of Sheve became generally unlike themselves,
over-industrious where they had been lazy, lackadaisical where they had been
busy, snappish, waspish, prone to stupid mirth, quarrels and fits of weeping.

For Nemdur
himself, he too was not quite as he had been. His second wife did not conceive,
but she laughed her dark laughter at him. His other women were fanciful and
spoke of spirits, ghosts and demons. He was uneasy with bones. He thought of
the stone tower one mile to the west, of the tomb of his son, and of his own
tomb. He thought of Simmu, the fire-haired youth who sometimes, it was said,
had also been a maiden. The Well in Upperearth, (the country of the gods), had
a cistern made of glass, which, due to the sorcery Simmu worked on it, had
cracked. Drops of the fluid of Immortality had rained to earth and become the
property of Simmu. The end of the story—the failure of Simmu’s
enterprise—Nemdur had forgotten. Uhlume, Master of Death, Simmu, Death’s
Master, and Sheve buried nameless in a sea of sand, these were the fancies of
Nemdur.

In the dark
before dawn, he sat alone in his chamber and he called for wine. The servitors
came, three of them, simply to pour the wine of the king for him. One laid a
silk napkin, the second set down a bowl of polished crystal with a stem of
gold, the third uncorked a flagon of black ceramic. The wine was poured into
the cup, Nemdur raised the cup to his lips, but when he made to drink, no wine
would run from the cup into his mouth.

The three
servants stood petrified. Nemdur himself upended the cup to see if the wine
would run out that way, but though the drink roiled in the crystal, it would
not leave the bowl. Then the cup spoke to Nemdur.

“Kindly
replace me on my foot,” said the cup.

Nemdur was
struck as immobile as his servants.

“You are
uncivil,” said the cup clearly. “Would
you
, when wine had been poured
into you, disgorge it in the mouth of the first wretch that set his lips to
yours? No, I will retain the liquor and become tipsy.” Here the cup belched, at
which Nemdur, with an oath, let it fall. The crystal smashed on the paved floor
into countless pieces, and from each of them came a dreadful crying, and the
wine spilled like blood.

At this, the
fourth servitor (the fourth?) made a swirling motion of his mantle. The bits of
crystal instantly became one with other bits of glass upon his cloak, and the
crying ceased.

No longer
heeding Nemdur, and wailing, three servants fled. The fourth servant, who was
Chuz, raised a white gloved hand. Nothing of his face was visible. The hand
pointed at Nemdur.

“What?”
demanded Nemdur in trepidation.

Chuz did not
speak. He swung his gloved hand toward the wide window. Behind the drapery,
which all at once drew itself open on its rings, the night had begun to lose
its darkness. The stars were dull as wax, and a fringe of red had appeared on
the hem of the sky.

Nemdur rose
automatically, and as the peculiar muffled figure beckoned, Nemdur walked to
the window. Without moving then, the figure was at Nemdur’s side.

Oddly, as the
light began to come, the figure grew more solidly and impenetrably dark. Oddly,
Nemdur conceived the notion it was a priest, cowled and folded in deepest
purple, one who might guide him.

“This
business,” said the priest, “which troubles you, this problem of death and an
unremembered name. The answer is straightforward.”

The sun filled
the sky and the dawn wind unbound its hair. Great measures of sand were stirred
into the air, and Nemdur beheld a mirage.

“What is that
tower?” said Nemdur.

How huge it
was. It stood some miles to the east, yet it had blotted out the sun. The base
seemed broad as the city itself, and from this base it rose in many tiers, each
a little less broad, but rising upward, upward on each other, out of sight,
into the very topmost regions of the ether—and so disappeared.

“Do you see a
tower?” inquired Chuz the priest.

“A tower of
several tiers, so tall it pierces heaven.”

“Here is your
oracle,” said the priest. He extended to the king the jawbones of an ass.
Nemdur foolishly accepted them, and instantly the jawbones cried aloud, just as
the wine cup had cried, but with different words.

“The cistern
of Upperearth may not be relied upon a second time to crack. So, if a man
wishes to gain a draught of Immortality from the well of the gods, let him
build a high tower, the highest the world has ever known, its base on the
earth, its summit in the sky. Let new tiers be added until the top of the tower
thrusts through into Upperearth itself. Then let the armies of the king scale
the tower. Let him make war on heaven, raid the gods, seize by force the thing
they will not grant to prayer. That done, Nemdur may live forever. Nor need he
fear that any will forget his name, for who has forgotten the name of Simmu,
and how much greater than Simmu shall be Nemdur, who takes by might rather than
stealth.”

Nemdur grinned,
and as he did so, the mirage of the gigantic tower faded. No matter, he had
seen it.

Then he turned
and saw another thing.

Chuz was at
the king’s side, face-on to him, uncowled, uncloaked, his horrid duality quite
plain. Nemdur stared, his eyes fixed, his mouth wide. In answer, the eyes of
Chuz stared back and his lips parted. Quietly, Chuz retrieved the jawbones from
Nemdur’s grasp, and then he drew off the white leather glove from his right
hand. The right hand of Chuz was constructed of brass, but the four fingers of
it were four brazen serpents that snapped and hissed. The thumb was a fly of
dark blue stone, which, released from the glove, slowly spread its wings of
azure wire and clicked its mandibles together noisily.

Nemdur fell
back with a cry and covered his face. When he looked again, he was alone.
Nemdur grimaced and trembled—till he recollected the colossal purpose he might
accomplish. Then he roused the palace with his shouts, and next all Sheve was
made to listen.

From
throughout the land of Sheve, men were summoned. First summoned, presently
enslaved and dragged in chains. The soldiers of Sheve pressed far into the
deserts. They took captive the nomad peoples, the wanderers, the inhabitants of
tiny villages. Sheve made war on neighboring kingdoms, brief holy wars. Many
thousands were brought to a place seven miles east of Nemdur’s city, and here
they were set to labor, day and night, under sun, under moon and under no moon,
through storm and drought, and leaden heat and biting cold. Their labor was to
build a monstrous edifice, a pyramid of steps to touch the sky, the world’s
roof, and beyond.

Nemdur’s dark
queen came to him at dusk with all her most subtle allurements, but Nemdur was
like a child. There was no longer anything lusty in him, his spirit now was
fever.

“My lord,”
said the woman, “why will you waste yourself on this blasphemy? I long to bear
you a son. There is another tower you might raise, better than that thing of
brick and wickedness in the desert. Raise me the tower of your love, my lord,
and forget the other.”

But though
Nemdur heard her voice, her words were like gibberish. It was to him as if she
spoke in another tongue.

And when his
councillors ventured to persuade him from his madness, they too spoke in this
alien tongue, or another tongue even more alien. And when Nemdur’s people ran
to him as he rode through Sheve and out of the gate and over the dunes toward
the Tower, when they sobbed and begged him to be merciful, not to send their
men to die from the harsh unremitting labor, to consider the times of planting
and harvesting which in the desert must be observed particularly, Nemdur paid
no heed. It was like a howling of dogs, growling of lions, screeching of wild
birds.

And the Tower
grew. Three tiers it raised, and then a further three. Its base, they say, was
almost a mile square and a tenth of a mile high—only its base. In that season,
to ask how high might be the sky was no idle question. The base of the Tower
was of sun-baked clay on a frame of stone and palm wood. Three score oases lost their trees to support that base. Those kingdoms Sheve had recently conquered
must send tribute of wood and stone to Nemdur.

The second
tier of the Tower was also of wood and brick. For this, two score oases gave up their shade.

The third tier
was reinforced with the bones of men. There were sufficient by then, those who
had died during the building, their hearts burst, their blood thinned or dashed
out of them when they fell. Sometimes, in their dizziness and sickness, men
fell like rain from the tiers of the Tower.

Three tiers, a
further three, a further three upon those three and three.

And further
tiers, and further. Until there is no knowing the count of the tiers of the Tower of Nemdur.

To begin with,
Nemdur would walk up the broad zigzag of the stairs which made ladders on the
Tower, now slanting from left to right, and now from right to left. But
deliberately these stairways were formed wide enough to accommodate chariots
and horses, camels and carriages, elephants if need be, and possibly even
creatures that were not of the natural order. Mounted, Nemdur would race up the
steps of the Tower, heedless of the drop that gaped below now on his left hand,
now on his right. And the king’s household must follow him, in litters and in
wheeled vehicles drawn by toiling horses.

As they went
up, the desert sank away. The desert became a tawny chart, where features were
marked in blots and smudges, here the charcoal line of a road, there the bright
dab of water, and there the mosaic of the city, poured to the horizon. But
ascending higher, the horizon extended itself to contain the city. Blue-rimmed
the sand, as if the sky had stained its edges. And now the air was more
immediate than the earth.

How high now,
on the mountain of the Tower? High enough that eagles soared level with the
heads of the nervous horses. Looking up, to the levels above, men might see a
cloud or two braceleting with amber those levels. The land was like a mist
below, the land looked insubstantial as once the sky had looked. And the sky
was hard and solid.

The atmosphere
changed, was thin and rare. Men panted and felt drunken. The horses crept,
blood beaded their nostrils. Sometimes, a horse crashed over in the shafts.
Once or twice a chariot, losing balance, tilted over the side of the mountain,
riding the thin air to death.

The color of
the Tower, faced with clay brick, was the color of the desert sand. The sun
struck on it and it seemed to glare and to glow like molten gold.

And now the
scaffolding rose ahead. Here the king’s party would pause beneath canopies,
wine would be sipped and stringed instruments would play haltingly, as the
slaves teemed, small as beetles, over the architectural embryo above.

By night, the
stars shone large and blinding. At length the Tower must thrust up through
those star gardens, tearing the silver roots. At last the Tower must penetrate
the sacred sphere of heaven. Rape.

“When will
this be?” Nemdur would ask of his sorcerers.

And they,
shuddering, would shake their rattles and cast their horoscopes.

“Soon, oh
king.”

But they spoke
in another language to Nemdur. Only certain words could he understand: Today.
Now. Victory. Conquest.

In all the
lands about they knew of Nemdur’s scheme, and they were afraid. The Tower had a
name. It was called Baybhelu, that is: The Gate to the Gods.

What were the gods doing
all this while? Did they perceive or guess the work of Nemdur and his madness?
Were they at all apprehensive about his ambition?

Pale and
nearly transparent as glass, fragile as the most delicate sticks of the most
enduring steel, awash with the blanched violet ichors that swam about in the
veinless petals of their genderless bodies, cold-eyed, self-absorbed,
introspective, (almost mindless) the gods had gone on in their timeless,
inanimate contemplation of infinity. But, they had noticed. At some hour in the
Future, or in that timelessness of Upperearth, the Past, these ethereal beings
would consign the whole of the world to death, vowing man was nothing to them.
And truly, they were indifferent to him, to his deeds and his prayers, his
hopes and his anguish. And yet, once before (or in years to come) they had
grown irritated and had opened the valves that held back the rain. They had
drowned the earth in a flood, either because the earth had utterly forgotten
them, or because she had remembered them too much. So it is to be seen, the
gods were not entirely as aloof as they might claim.