Mazirian the Magician (6 page)

It was a sight to excite the brain: the beautiful twins, wearing the same white waist-high breeches, with the same intense eyes and careless hair, the same slim pale bodies, the one wearing on her face hate for every atom of the universe, the other a gay exuberance.

T'sais found her voice.

“How is this, witch? You bear my semblance, yet you are not me. Or has the boon of madness come at last to dim my sight of the world?”

T'sain shook her head. “I am T'sain. You are my twin, T'sais, my sister. For this I must love you and you must love me.”

“Love? I love nothing! I will kill you and so make the world better by one less evil.” She raised her sword again.

“No!” cried T'sain in anguish. “Why do you wish to harm me? I have done no wrong!”

“You do wrong by existing, and you offend me by coming to mock my own hideous mold.”

T'sain laughed. “Hideous? No. I am beautiful, for Turjan says so. Therefore you are beautiful, too.”

T'sais' face was like marble.

“You make sport of me.”

“Never. You are indeed very beautiful.”

T'sais dropped the point of her sword to the ground. Her face relaxed into thought.

“Beauty! What is beauty? Can it be that I am blind, that a fiend distorts my vision? Tell me, how does one see beauty?”

“I don't know,” said T'sain. “It seems very plain to me. Is not the play of colors across the sky beautiful?”

T'sais looked up in astonishment. “The harsh glarings? They are either angry or dreary, in either case detestable.”

“See how delicate are the flowers, fragile and charming.”

“They are parasites, they smell vilely.”

T'sain was puzzled. “I do not know how to explain beauty. You seem to find joy in nothing. Does nothing give you satisfaction?”

“Only killing and destruction. So then these must be beautiful.”

T'sain frowned. “I would term these evil concepts.”

“Do you believe so?”

“I am sure of it.”

T'sais considered. “How can I know how to act? I have been certain, and now you tell me that I do evil!”

T'sain shrugged. “I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life. Turjan could explain to you easily.”

“Who is Turjan?” inquired T'sais.

“He is a very good man,” replied T'sain, “and I love him greatly. Soon we go to Earth, where the sky is vast and deep and of dark blue.”

“Earth … If I went to Earth, could I also find beauty and love?”

“That may be, for you have a brain to understand beauty, and beauty of your own to attract love.”

“Then I kill no more, regardless of what wickedness I see. I will ask Pandelume to send me to Earth.”

T'sain stepped forward, put her arms around T'sais, and kissed her.

“You are my sister and I will love you.”

T'sais' face froze. Rend, stab, bite, said her brain, but a deeper surge welled up from her flowing blood, from every cell of her body, to suffuse her with a sudden flush of pleasure. She smiled.

“Then — I love you, my sister. I kill no more, and I will find and know beauty on Earth or die.”

T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.

T'sain stood in the doorway, watching her sister ride off through the colors. Behind her came a shout, and Turjan approached.

“T'sain! Has that frenzied witch harmed you?” He did not wait for a reply. “Enough! I kill her with a spell, that she may wreak no more pain.”

He turned to voice a terrible charm of fire, but T'sain put her hand to his mouth.

“No, Turjan, you must not. She has promised to kill no more. She goes to Earth seeking what she may not find in Embelyon.”

So Turjan and T'sain watched T'sais disappear across the many-colored meadow.

“Turjan,” spoke T'sain.

“What is your wish?”

“When we come to Earth, will you find me a black horse like that of T'sais?”

“Indeed,” said Turjan, laughing, as they started back to the house of Pandelume.

III
T'sais

T'sais came riding from the grove. She checked her horse at the verge as if in indecision, and sat looking across the shimmering pastel meadow toward the river … She stirred her knees and the horse proceeded across the turf.

She rode deep in thought, and overhead the sky rippled and cross-rippled, like a vast expanse of windy water, in tremendous shadows from horizon to horizon. Light from above, worked and refracted, flooded the land with a thousand colors, and thus, as T'sais rode, first a green beam flashed on her, then ultramarine, and topaz and ruby red, and the landscape changed in similar tintings and subtlety.

T'sais closed her eyes to the shifting lights. They rasped her nerves, confused her vision. The red glared, the green stifled, the blues and purples hinted at mysteries beyond knowledge. It was as if the entire universe had been expressly designed with an eye to jarring her, provoking her to fury … A butterfly with wings patterned like a precious rug flitted by, and T'sais made to strike at it with her rapier. She restrained herself with great effort; for T'sais was of a passionate nature and not given to restraint. She looked down at the flowers below her horse's feet — pale daisies, blue-bells, Judas-creeper, orange sunbursts. No more would she stamp them to pulp, rend them from their roots. It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself. Swallowing her vast enmity toward the butterfly and the flowers and the changing lights of the sky, she continued across the meadow.

A bank of dark trees rose above her, and beyond were clumps of rushes and the gleam of water, all changing in hue as the light changed in the sky. She turned and followed the river bank to the long low manse.

She dismounted, walked slowly to the door of black smoky wood, which bore the image of a sardonic face. She pulled at the tongue and inside a bell tolled.

There was no reply.

“Pandelume!” she called.

Presently there was a muffled answer: “Enter.”

She pushed open the door and came into a high-ceilinged room, bare except for a padded settee, a dim tapestry.

“What is your wish?” The voice, mellow and of an illimitable melancholy, came from beyond the wall.

“Pandelume, today I have learned that killing is evil, and further that my eyes trick me, and that beauty is where I see only harsh light and evil forms.”

For a period Pandelume maintained a silence; then the muffled voice came, replying to the implicit plea for knowledge.

“That is, for the most part, true. Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft … As for the other, the fault is not with you. Beauty lies everywhere free to be seen by all — by all except you. For this I feel sorrow, for I created you. I built your primal cell; I stamped the strings of life with the pattern of your body and brain. And in spite of my craft I erred, so that when you climbed from the vat, I found that I had molded a flaw into your brain; that you saw ugliness in beauty, evil in good. True ugliness, true evil you have never seen, for in Embelyon there is nothing wicked or foul … Should you be so unfortunate to encounter these, I fear for your brain.”

“Cannot you change me?” cried T'sais. “You are a magician. Must I live my life out blind to joy?”

The shadow of a sigh penetrated the wall.

“I am a magician indeed, with knowledge of every spell yet devised, the sleight of runes, incantations, designs, exorcisms, talismans. I am Master Mathematician, the first since Phandaal, yet I can do nothing to your brain without destroying your intelligence, your personality, your soul — for I am no god. A god may will things to existence; I must rely on magic, the spells which vibrate and twist space.”

Hope faded from T'sais' eyes. “I wish to go to Earth,” she said presently. “The sky of Earth is a steady blue, and a red sun moves over the horizons. I tire of Embelyon where there is no voice but yours.”

“Earth,” mused Pandelume. “A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time … Earth is dying and in its twilight …” he paused.

T'sais said doubtfully: “Yet I have heard Earth is a place of beauty, and I would know beauty, even though I die.”

“How will you know beauty when you see it?”

“All human beings know beauty … Am I not human?”

“Of course.”

“Then I will find beauty, and perhaps even —” T'sais faltered over the word, so alien was it to her mind, yet so full of disturbing implication.

Pandelume was silent. At last:

“You shall go if you wish. I will aid you as I may. I will give you runes to ward you from magic; I will strike life into your sword; and I will give you advice, which is this: Beware of men, for men loot beauty to sate their lust. Permit intimacy to none … I will give you a bag of jewels, which are riches on Earth. With these you may attain much. Yet, again, show them nowhere, for certain men will slay for a copper bit.”

A heavy silence came, a weight was gone from the air.

“Pandelume,” called T'sais softly. There was no reply.

After a moment Pandelume returned, and the sense of his presence reached to her mind.

“In a moment,” he said, “you may enter this room.”

T'sais waited a period; then, as she was bid, entered the next room.

“On the bench to the left,” came Pandelume's voice, “you will find an amulet and a little sack of gems. Clasp this amulet upon your wrist; it will reflect magic intended evilly against him who utters the spell. This is a most powerful rune; guard it well.”

T'sais obeyed, and tied the jewels inside her sash.

“Lay your sword upon this bench, stand upon the rune in the floor and close your eyes tightly. I must enter the room. I charge you, do not attempt to see me — for there are terrible consequences.”

T'sais discarded her sword, stood upon the metal rune, locked her eyes. She heard a slow step, heard the clink of metal, then a high intense shrilling, dying slowly.

“Your sword lives,” said Pandelume, and his voice sounded strangely loud, coming from so near. “It will kill your enemies with intelligence. Reach your hand and take it.”

T'sais sheathed her slim rapier, now warm and quivering.

“Where on Earth will you go?” asked Pandelume. “To the land of men, or to the great ruined wildernesses?”

“To Ascolais,” said T'sais, for the one who had told her of beauty had spoken of this land.

“As you wish,” said Pandelume. “Now hark! If you ever seek to return to Embelyon —”

“No,” said T'sais. “I would rather die.”

“Please yourself in that regard.”

T'sais remained silent.

“Now I will touch you. You will be dizzy a moment — and then you will open your eyes on Earth. It is almost night, and terrible things rove the dark. So seek shelter quickly.”

In high excitement T'sais felt the touch of Pandelume. There was a wavering in her brain, a swift unthinkable flight … Strange soil was under her feet, strange air at her face with a sharper tang. She opened her eyes.

The landscape was strange and new. There was a dark blue sky, an ancient sun. She stood in a meadow, encircled by tall gloomy trees. These trees were unlike the calm giants of Embelyon; these were dense and brooding, and the shadows were enigmatic. Nothing in sight, nothing of Earth was raw or harsh — the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich, and invested every object of the land, the rocks, the trees, the quiet grasses and flowers, with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.

A hundred paces distant rose the mossy ruins of a long tumbled castelry. The stones were blackened now by lichens, by smoke, by age; grass grew rank through the rubble — the whole a weird picture in the long light of sunset.

T'sais slowly approached. Some of the walls yet were standing, stone on weathered stone, the mortar long since dissolved. She moved wonderingly around a great effigy, mouldered, chipped, cracked, almost entirely buried; puzzled a moment at the characters carved in the base. Wide-eyed she stared at what remained of the visage — cruel eyes, sneering mouth, a nose broken off. T'sais shuddered faintly. There was nothing here for her; she turned to go.

A laugh, high-pitched, gleeful, rang across the clearing. T'sais, mindful of Pandelume's warnings, waited in a dark recess. Movement flickered between the trees; and a man and a woman lurched into the failing sunlight; then came a young man treading light as air, singing and whistling. He held a light sword, which he used to prod the two, who were bound.