Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) Read online

  When Nemdur’s dark wife came, walking with white gauze upon her fragrant somber skin, Nemdur said to her: “Here is a book which has the story of the hero Simmu in it. It is a trifle, to delight your femininity. No doubt you believe that there is a well in the sky, with a water of Immortality in it.”

  “No doubt I do,” acquiesced the woman with a sable laugh.

  But when Nemdur lay with her in bed, the glimmer of the lamp made her lovely face into an ebony skull.

  Soon the harsh yellow winds of the winter season swept over the desert. The sands blew against Sheve, and the cold frost dripped by night upon her walls and minarets. One came to Nemdur as he was sleeping.

  “In a hundred years, Sheve will lie beneath the sands of the desert. In a hundred years, who will remember the name of Nemdur?”

  When morning returned over the edge of the world, Nemdur stood at his high window, gazing across his city. He had lost his color, and his hands were clenched with anger. He recalled his dream, how Sheve had been buried under the nomadic sands as if drowned beneath the sea. He had observed his own ghost wandering the world, and many were spoken of, but no one spoke of Nemdur.

  There came a sharp sound from the terrace below, like two dice striking the pavement. Nemdur stared down. No one was there. But now, when Nemdur ate a roast fowl, he brooded over the bones.

  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.

  And now a madman built a Tower intended to shatter the floor of Upperearth, and he planned to lead an army into it. The Guardians of the Cistern of Life he meant to overwhelm, he meant to steal the Elixir from the Cistern. And worse, he would cause men, horses, chariots, humanness to trample through the icy tranquility of that celestial country. Sweat and blood and shouting on the frigid blue pastures, horse dung about the harpstring palaces.

  Was such an event even likely? It is debatable. Few traveled to Upperearth, and they by curious methods. Once Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, had come there, or would come there, in a winged ship. Uhlume, Lord Death, had never visited, for then the gods did not die. The way into Upperearth, besides, was obscure, oblique. Higher than the moon, beyond the sun. A door that was not a door, an entrance that did not properly exist. . . . Could Nemdur ever have breached heaven in such a forthright logical fashion as a Tower tall as the sky?

  And yet. Perhaps the rude blast of mere intent troubled the gods, like the blowing of a foul wind. Even a man may kill a gnat that has not stung him.

  The gods appeared ineffectual in their effete beauty, but they were not. Their indifference had, to a great extent, saved men from their supernal abilities. Now, they did not exchange a word or a glance. Did one lift his head, or several? Or did the impulse simply flow jointly from all their pure and bloodless intellects?

  Their Will, so minuscule a speck a grain of sand would hold it, so vast it could engulf the world, seeped from the nowhere-otherwhere of Upperearth, and drifted like a feather to the Tower of Baybhelu.

  By now, the journey from the base of the Tower to its temporary summit required most of a day.

  Upon the topmost tier, beneath the scaffolding that portended the next topmost, King Nemdur had encamped his court, and one tier down from them, the chariots, the animals, the soldiery also camped.

  The tier where the court rested was perhaps seven hundred feet square, and a movable garden had been laid out on it to enrich the slender atmosphere. Huge tanks of water or soil had been borne to the place, hauled by groaning camels, wretched horses. Green showerings of foliage sprang from these tanks, and
vines, fruits, blossoms and grasses overhung the lip of the tier that the beasts tethered below might feed on them. In their upper shade were erected Nemdur’s dark tents, embroidered with crimson and hung with medallions of gold. From their looped-back portals, Nemdur’s women peeped out prettily, but they were sallow and uneasy. In a green bower, beneath a parasol, itself like a giant flower, Nemdur sat in a carved-bone chair. (His story is packed with bones—of children, fowls, asses, slaves.) About him his sorcerers crowded and his priests, divining endlessly, but their hands quivering, their eyes bulbous. They had difficulty understanding each other now, just as Nemdur had difficulty in understanding them. Indeed, each who perched on Baybhelu had begun to lack comprehension of all others. Only on the scaffolding did this not matter. There the overseers lashed with their toothed whips, the slaves strained at their tasks like automata. They had never understood each other; nothing was changed. But yet, everywhere the thin air was thick with blurted sentences without meaning, and the shutting of deaf ears, such items veiled by magicians’ smokes, scents of roses and palm oil, and faltering musics. While now and then, above, a shriek, as another slave plummeted from his precarious vantage. As they tumbled, hideous joke, they passed the dark Queen of Sheve who was ascending the long stairs to her lord.

  She wore a gold crescent moon in her smolder of hair—Nemdur had ordered that she wear it, for soon, he shouted, the Tower would stand as high as the moon itself, and her white face would burn against the brickwork bright as day. Later, the Tower would stand higher than the moon. The moon would lie below like a round dish of milk.

  Gold was also painted on the lids and nails of the queen, and rubies were wound over her smooth black skin, but diamonds trickled from her eyes.

  Nemdur saw her coming from far off. Gradually her retinue emerged from the mist that was the land, and grew visible as tiny figures winding up a steep mountain. Now her chariot climbed through a ring of eagles. Now she could look down and see the eagles bank and float on their serrated wings a quarter of a mile beneath her feet. Then she would climb, hidden for a moment, through a ring of cloud like an unraveling gauze. Sometimes the entourage would pause on the broad terraces to breathe.