Death's Master Read online

  “Now tell me everything, elder sister,” said the witch, “for you have travelled some distance to find me.”

  So Narasen steeled herself. She ignored the blue dog, which ridiculously champed upon a blue porcelain bone in the corner with apparent relish; she ignored the silver flesh of the witch winking at her from the veil of hair. Narasen spoke of her trouble, of Issak and the lust of his mentor, and of the curse and the plague and the barren death of Merh, of how Merh could not bear fruit again till she herself, who had no wish for it, bore a child.

  “But then, you will have lain with men in order to procure the child,” said the witch.

  “I have indeed, though I am no lover of the arms of male animals. I have given myself to the man-bull and the goat-man, to the wayside oaf, the stinking robber—all I have lain down with, and not spared myself. But I am barren still. For the scorpion’s tail of the curse was this: that my womb shall never quicken from the seed of any man living.”

  “Why,” said the witch, “that is a clever curse. To show the road, and then to bar the way to it. But curses are curses, and the curse of such a magician as this Issak would be hard to break. Why seek me, O queen?”

  Narasen saw, despite the words of the witch, a sly glint in her eyes. She thinks as I do, Narasen said to herself. And to the witch she said: “I sought you because I heard that the lady in the House of the Blue Dog had converse sometimes with a mighty personage, one of the Lords of Darkness, no less.”

  “And if I do, what help is that to Narasen of Merh?”

  “This help: It has come to me that, since to save Merh for myself I must be got with child, I must lie again with a man. But that it need be only for one single time and with one solitary man. Providing merely that he is not living.”

  For a while the witch did not speak, but again she smiled.

  “The queen of Merh is also wise,” said the witch eventually. She got to her feet and put back her hair, and revealed to Narasen the entire pale loveliness which had hidden in that hair, and showed, too, that round her waist was a girdle of little white finger bones strung on a chain of gold. “Now,” said the witch, “I acknowledge I may entreat a Lord of Darkness, one who could aid you, if he wills. I can entreat, and he may come, or he may not come, for he is not at the beck and call of me, I am no greater than his servant. Yet, he might come. If he does, be prepared for your own fear, for those who are far from him generally fear him. It is no tiny thing that he should be invited in and that he should comply. Also, as you will suppose, there must be a bargain struck.”

  “I have heard something of it,” said Narasen.

  “You may refuse,” said the witch, “even to his face you may refuse him. He forces no one. But, even so, it is not easy to refuse. Do you wish me to call him still?”

  “I wish it,” said Narasen.

  Then the witch trembled, whether with terror or joy was not clear, maybe with both or neither. She whistled and the dog ran away and the fires sank in the lamps. Then she went to a table and opened an ivory box which stood there. Inside the box was a drum, as small as the drum a baby might play with. But the drum was made of bone and the skin that was stretched over it had been taken from the body of a beautiful dead virgin girl.

  The witch seated herself once more at the feet of Narasen, and she began to tap in quick little patterings on the girl-skin of the drum. This was how Narasen noticed, as she had not till now, that the third finger of the witch’s left hand had been severed at its top joint. And Narasen remembered the finger bones about the waist of the witch, but exactly then the fires went out in all the lamps.

  What came down was more than darkness in a house. It was the darkness of a vast black shell within the earth, a hollow dark. And it rang with hollow whispers, with breaths and sighs and with the relentless tapping of the witch’s drum.

  • • •

  It was sunset, and in the red light of it, Uhlume stood beside the door of a hovel, and a young woman curtsied to him.

  “Please make free of my home,” said she. But there was not much there for any to make free of. A wretched hole it was, and on one patchwork bed sat several infants, solemn as owls. On the other bed lay a female child about three or four. “I sent my man for a doctor,” said the young woman, “but my man has not returned. Did you come on ahead, sir?”

  “I did,” said Uhlume as he crossed the threshold. He seemed to bring a huge quiet with him. It fell upon the sick child, and the lids of her eyes relaxed. But the mother shivered.

  “I regret,” she said, “we have nothing to pay you with. But I promise you all the money from the sale of the piglets, when they are sloughed from our sow.”

  Uhlume bent above the sick child. The stale and pitiable room was full of a sort of chill ambience, like gray twilight, but the sky through the door was red.

  “Wait,” said the mother. “Tell me, sir, who are you?”

  “You know,” said Uhlume.

  The mother clasped her hands.

  “I thought you were the doctor. I was mistaken,” said she. “I beg you to go.”

  “But you do not,” said Uhlume. “For these three nights you have prayed that you be relieved of one at least of these several mouths which must be fed, and these several miniature bodies which must be clothed and warmed.”

  “So I did,” murmured the mother. “The gods will destroy me for my wickedness.”

  But she wept and hid her face. And Uhlume leaned close to the child on the bed, and he lightly touched her heart and turned away. And as he left the hovel, two passionless icy tears fell from his white lashes on the wild flowers that grew beside the door, and the wild flowers died.

  But most of the children chattered to each other, for it seemed to them the evening wind had come into the room and gone more cold than it came. The sick child was silent.

  Uhlume followed the sun, moving after it as it sank. His was not always the hour of darkness, despite his dominion and his lordship. Fast he strode, faster than a man. His strides ate up the land, so the sun was forever sinking before him, forever going down, red as henna, on the world’s brink, but not quite gone. Yet, the earth being at that time flat, in the end, though after a long while, the sun outdistanced him, and fell beyond sight.

  Uhlume paused, as the night gathered from the corners of the earth. And as the night reached him, a sound evolved from it, a soft scattering of sound, now like beads of rain tossed upon sun-baked ground, now like a moth’s wings clapping together in flight—a sound too faint for mortal ears, yet Uhlume heard it. But now the sound was like two thumbs and seven fingers fluttering on a drum-skin.

  Uhlume stood considering. His eyes, with their store of emotionless tears, turned eastward. You could read nothing from his face. He had no expressions. His whole person, rather, expressed his mood, his role. The gods perhaps had made him, once, long ago in the days of unformed things and chaos. Or perhaps he had only come to be since there was a need for him, or for his name. Yet here he was, and he stood there on the world’s back, listening to that which pleaded, considering.

  • • •

  The young witch caught her breath, but she did not stop her work upon the drum. Round her narrow waist the bones began to click upon their chain. Then, into the lightless hollow that the House of the Blue Dog had become, poured a shadow-glow which lit up everything, but which warmed nothing.

  At the chamber’s farthest end stood a lean pallid dog, in color bluish-white. So Narasen beheld what the mansion was really called for.

  The witch set by her drum. She rose, and the bones rattled at her waist. She kneeled to the dog, and her hair spread on the floor.

  “My Lord,” she said, “forgive your handmaiden that she asked for you.”

  The dog padded close. It was noble but ghastly. Some had met this hound and been afraid, but Narasen did not fear it. Then it was gone, and in its place was a man more beautiful
than any man Narasen had ever seen, and stranger than any man, wrapped in a white cloak, white haired but black skinned and with eyes like phosphorus. And Narasen grew afraid. Not of the man, not specifically of him. Nor was the fear like another. It was like the dreary sadness that comes in the ebb hours of the night, fear that was rather despair; an abyss, unavoidable, all-pervasive, painless.

  He did not glance at Narasen, he gazed down into the face of the witch. Somehow he had a blind look. He said in a quiet, quiet voice:

  “I am here.”

  “My Lord,” said the witch, gazing back at him, “I have one in this room who has a need to make herself supplicant to you.”

  “Bring her,” he said.

  The witch got up again. She beckoned to Narasen, and Narasen left her seat and went forward until she was very near to the man in the white cloak. And then she stared at him boldly even though his bottomless eyes, settling on her, seemed to draw her and drink her in.

  “As you perceive, sir,” said Narasen, “I do not cower at confronting you, for in the end, there is none who can avoid you. Honor and greetings, Lord Death.”

  Death—whose seldom-spoken name was Uhlume—one of the Lords of Darkness, said merely: “Tell me what you want.”

  Narasen told him: “To keep my land and crown, I must bear a child. I have been cursed, I can conceive the child of no man living. I must conceive from the embrace of a dead man. And the dead are your folk, my Lord.”

  The witch clapped her hands once. A chair of stone appeared, draped with white velvet. The arm-rests were of gold, and where the hands lay grinned two dogs’ skulls, but they were gold too, with pearls in the eye sockets. Death sat in this chair. He seemed to reflect on what Narasen had told him.

  Presently he said: “It can be done. But can you endure such a couching?”

  “To lie with any man is abhorrent to me,” said Narasen. (She said this even though Death was formed in the shape of a man.) “To lie with a dead one makes no odds, and may be better.”

  “And do you know the price?”

  “That when I die, I must become, for a space, your slave. I had believed the whole of humanity fared thus.”

  “No,” said Death, the Lord Uhlume. “I am the king of an empty kingdom. But I will show you as much. This you shall learn immediately: That you must remain with me a thousand mortal years. I ask no more, and no less.”

  Narasen paled, and she was pale already. But she said grimly:

  “That is indeed some little while. And what is it that you want me for, that a thousand years are required to satisfy you?” Death looked at her. The heart of Narasen shrank, but she was not actually afraid of him—though her fear was absolute. “Well,” she said, “pray do not be reluctant, my Lord, to inform me.”

  Something went over the face of Uhlume, Lord Death; not an expression, not a shadow, yet something.

  “Life has not trampled you,” said Uhlume. “Most who seek me are the victims of their life, and yield to anguish before they will yield to me. But you have burned up through the dirt and harm that was cast upon your fire. I should be glad of your companionship. For that is what you sell me, woman, for my thousand years. Not your flesh. Your flesh is mine in any case, once you are dead. It belongs to me, your flesh, and in the earth it lies till it becomes the earth. Nor do I want your womanhood, for I love neither man nor woman. Death does not couch, Death does not couple. Think, lady, of the jest there would be in that if Death were to spawn out procreative seed. No. It is your soul I would keep, your soul I would hold back in your body, and retain the two with me for my thousand years. And when the thousand years are done, your soul is free to leave me.”

  “To go where?” asked Narasen, fierce and quick.

  “Do not ask for news of a life-beyond-life from me,” he said.

  Narasen said, “Show me your kingdom, and show me a way to get a child in me, and I will tell you whether or not I agree to your terms.”

  From the shade behind the chair, the voice of the witch hissed out:

  “You are too exacting! Correct yourself.”

  But Uhlume murmured to her some words Narasen did not catch, and the witch sighed and said no more.

  Then Uhlume rose from the chair of stone. His white cloak seemed to billow out like a white wave and Narasen was wrapped in it. The chamber of the witch fell away. Narasen found herself, furled in the white leaf of the cloak of Death, hanging in black air above the earth. The lights of mankind burned below, and the lights of stars above. The cloak of Death was vast. It held her close, yet she had no contact with the person of Death.

  “Where now?” asked Narasen.

  “To the Innerearth,” said Death, “which is my kingdom.”

  Death and his cloak swirled toward the ground. A wide valley lay before them, rushing up in the darkness, and as they plunged, Death stretched out his hand, and the valley parted before him. This much was true, that wherever Death had once been, there he could return, and there he could command. And the whole world was a graveyard, for on every inch of it, at one time or another, something had died, bird or beast, man or woman, or a tree or a flower or a blade of grass. Even in the seas, which had their own laws and rulers, and would not aid, without recompense, the most accomplished magicians of the land, even there things died, the fish of the high ocean levels and the monsters of the deep, and so there also Death could come or go as he pleased, and none gainsay him. Accordingly, the valley obediently gaped and the rock strained wide, and Death sank through with Narasen of Merh folded in his cloak.

  The way was invisible, and partly like the passage into sleep, for faces and illusions floated across the brain of Narasen, though not across her eyes. Yet once, it seemed, the waters of a leaden river roiled about her, and in the water, crowds of phantom creatures swam and jostled each other, but this impression faded, and the cloak of Death bore her farther and farther down, till softly she slid to rest, and there was only silence and no light.

  Narasen’s fear, to which she had almost grown accustomed, lashed out at her and became definite.

  “Is this some tomb I am in?” she cried harshly.

  “Be patient,” said Uhlume, Lord Death. “You will see presently and hear whatever is to be seen and heard in this domain of mine. It is because you enter the place alive that for the moment you are blind to it. As a dead man’s spirit which cannot free itself from the world, goes back to visit the earth and has no substance there, thus here you are a ghost in the world of the dead.”

  At which Narasen regained her sight and that other sense, of hearing. But she could not smell anything, nor feel it with her hands, nor, had she put it in her mouth, would she have tasted. She was, as he said, a living ghost in the dead lands.

  But to Narasen it was enough that she saw and heard, and too much. She shuddered to her heart’s core, she who had held leopards on her spear, she who had fought battles unafraid in the realm of men.

  They stood upon a cliff, and about the cliff were rolling plains and hills, with here and there another cliff, and on the left hand a dim range of mountains. The color of this land was gray; the cliff resembled lead, and from it gray tufts of verdure grew that were not like grass, being thin and brittle as an old woman’s hair, while mosses of a darker gray had risen from crevices. The plain below was a desert of gray dust, the hills were stone, and where their shadows fell they were black. Above, the sky of Innerearth was dull white and comfortless. No sun or moon or stars were lit here. It did not change, only occasionally a cloud blew over it like a handful of cold cinders. That was for sight. For sound, there was a deaf blankness, troubled in fits by a thundering wind. And though the wind thundered and pushed the clouds before it, it had no power, for the clouds went slowly and the grasses never stirred, and even the great cloak of Death hung slack as if its folds were full of weights.

  Seeing her shudder, Death said to Narasen: “This is not your
land. Why fear it?”

  “This is where you would have me come. This is where all humankind must come when they die.”

  “Walk with me through this land,” said Death, “and if you see any man, tell me.”

  Death descended from the cliff and Narasen with him. Death cast a shadow black as pitch, but Narasen did not. They moved across the dismal country, through the dust desert, over the stone hills. A forest appeared on the other side, but the trees were pylons of gray slate. Mosses dripped from them. The wind rattled by, disturbing nothing. They came to a river. It reflected the sky and was white, and Narasen could not see into it, only its surface, but nothing ruffled the surface or agitated the depths.

  They walked a long while. The sky did not alter, there was no specific time. Narasen, a ghost of life, felt no tiredness. Still, they walked a long while, and longer. And everywhere she looked and peered and listened, but she heard no cry of man or animal. The stone trees had no birds. The wind carried no voices. Patently, undeniably, no one dwelt here.

  “One,” said Uhlume, for he had read her thought. “I. Sometimes, others. Others who have made the bargain with me, a thousand years in exchange for some favor only Death can grant.”

  Narasen regarded Death.

  “It is true then that the souls of the dead travel elsewhere, and cannot be constrained. This being so, I pity you,” she said frostily, “for even Merh is not worth this prison to me.”