Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) Page 6

  Or could it be that this Lord of Fear had committed, for whatever selfish reason, an act of unique and total love, and some part of him had expected to be loved for it? And now he discovered he was not. Discovered that he was laughed at. Discovered, more terrible than anything, his own unrealized, erroneous expectation.

  Several bands of young men went searching through the campment for the blasphemer. They carried staves and sticks, and some had knives ready, and one or two had the long bull-hide whips they had brought with them on this journey to alarm lions and men alike.

  “How shall it be,” they had said to each other, “that we should gain the holy city with this wretch walking free in our midst? Does the city not sing a welcome as men approach it? And surely will it not groan with anger if this devil goes near? Let us hurry after him and beat him.”

  So they searched up and down and round and about, causing a great commotion, overturning cooking pots and the fragile supports of tents, blundering among the goats and the sheep, frightening the children and the young girls, and all the time uttering furious oaths and threats.

  At first, there was not a sign of the stranger. He might have dissolved into the air or been changed into sand. Then they began to catch glimpses of him—at this turning, or that; among the shadows between two pavilions; crossing through a pen of animals, not disturbing them any more than the passage of night itself. Yet, whenever the pursuers pursued, the stranger was no more to be seen.

  There were three brothers, full of wine and religion and with a whip apiece, and soon they lost patience with their fellows and broke away to hunt on their own.

  “I believe,” said the youngest, “the old venerable philosopher could get us some special relic of Bhelsheved from the priests, some gold talisman, perhaps, if we bring this villain to justice.”

  “Very unlikely,” said the middle brother. “But who knows what blessings the gods themselves will heap on the heads of whoever champions them?”

  “One thing,” said the oldest brother, twitching the whip he carried, “I have a suspicion the blasphemer is also a mage, and a shape-changer. How else has he eluded us so long?”

  Just at this moment, they entered an open unfrequented place between the tents. There in the starlight, on the charcoal darkness of the sand, stood the one they sought.

  At sight of him, the youngest brother immediately uncoiled and lashed out with his whip. As if it were a falling scarf, the stranger raised one hand and caught the whip’s savage tongue, and so held it.

  The young man was astounded. No shout of pain had attended the stranger’s weird action, and now another astonishment was in progress. A cool wild light had sprung from the stranger’s grip, and began to glide, pulsating, down the length of the whip. The youngest brother glared at this light, perceived its direction, which was toward himself, and made to let go the whip’s handle, at which he found he could not. Learning this, he was the one to yell aloud, but no sooner had he yelled than the thread of light ran into the handle. Intuitively he braced himself for pain, for the glow along the whip resembled a sort of stilly pouring lightning. But then the force of the light passed into his hand, and at once he knew it to be no pain at all, but an exquisite pleasure. Through knuckles, wrist and forearm, elbow joint and upper arm the sensation raced like silver wires, so into breast and torso, into limbs and loins and spine and skull. With a moan, the youngest brother fell to the earth, and presently his ecstasy caused him to faint.

  At that, Azhrarn let go the end of the whip and the light died in it.

  The two older brothers, gaping, now at their swooning kindred, now at the magician, declined any further aggressive moves, and lowered their arms, so the lengths of hide straggled in the sand.

  “You observe,” said Azhrarn eventually, “that I have returned you delight for injury.”

  “We observe,” said the oldest brother, “that you are a sorcerer.”

  “Oh, how you flatter me,” said Azhrarn. His voice was cold, too cold for them to understand how cold it was, seeming warmer than it was, just as ice can burn.

  “A magician would travel in state,” protested the middle brother stupidly, “with his servants and his riches. Or come riding through the sky on a black horse winged like a raven.”

  On the sand, the fainting brother revived, and murmured, “He is not a magician, but a god.”

  Such are the credentials of pleasure.

  But Azhrarn turned his shoulder, and walked through the fabric of the evening as if through a narrow door, and was gone again.

  The oldest brother went to the spot where the Prince of Demons had disappeared, and, looking down, he saw three dark glowing gems lying on the earth. Like the blackest of rubies they lay there, already harder than obsidian, and he, with an embarrassed terror he could not explain, hastily kicked sand over them, burying them. He could not have said what these jewels were, yet surely some part of him had known they were no less than three drops of precious Vazdru blood spilled from the fingers of Azhrarn. For when he reached and caught the whip, he who could have shielded himself from any weapon or force, save that one sheer force that was the sun itself—by which he had once died to save the world—had not shielded himself, but taken the ringing blow, cutting as any knife, across his palm.

  It was a symbol, possibly, his token to the earth that she herself had cut at him. Truly, truly, he had been wounded that night, and not alone in the hand.

  CHAPTER 2

  All About Bhelsheved

  The sweet and succulent fruit of faith:

  From east and west, from north and south, once a year the peoples came, and gathered all about Bhelsheved. The old had seen it many times, the very young recognized it from hearsay. Ancient Sheve, which lay beneath it, had been called The Jar, for its sources of water. Bhelsheved was “The city the gods made from a jar.” Yet some also named it Moon City, for it was white as the moon.

  By day, in the distance, across the tawny sand and against the blue of the ether, the whiteness of Bhelsheved was like a glorious omission of color, so children, seeing it for the first, sometimes inquired, “Who has torn the sky?” By night, burning like a cliff of salt, across the dunes, the city seemed to emit its own radiance. Only those who approached it from the west, the true moon rising behind it, saw Bhelsheved darker, as if in eclipse, yet even this was the darkness of pure silver.

  Being approached and used by men only at one brief season of the year, the few days of the festival of worship, the city had never been soiled. The smokes that rose there, of incense and holy fire, were not enough to smirch it. Even during the ingathering, none entered the city to profane it with the common practices of living. Instead, the camps of humanity were spread out in vast and multitudinous disorder, each and all terminating no less than a hundred paces from the outer walls. The gates stood open then at all hours of day and night, but those who came through them came as guests merely, calling on the gods in their home, bringing gifts and compliments. Never overstaying their welcome. The feastings and sports and contests that took place were conducted always outside, always one hundred paces or more from Bhelsheved’s whiteness. She was so lovely, and so choice, that city, they never argued against the ban. And she repaid them, in her way. Every year, when they returned to her, it seemed she had grown lovelier.

  About a mile from the city paths welled like water out of the desert. These paths were broad, all alike, and all paved with curious stones, regular, smooth and glistening. Sand blew now and then across these paths, but always it cleared itself again. No path which led to the city was ever buried in the drifts, nor even partially obscured for more than a moment. Half a mile from the city, lines of trees, perfectly shaped and manicured, sprang up beside the paths, so that suddenly those worshippers who traveled in the bald heat of the day progressed along avenues of green and liquid shade. A quarter of a mile from the city, little fountains appeared at the wayside, and little cisterns, in the forms of dainty indigenous animals or peculiar beasts out of myth, an
d all carved from the milk-white stone of Bhelsheved itself.

  By now, the city’s walls dominated the horizon. The slopes of a mountain covered with snow, such was the impression the walls gave. At their feet, luxuriant groves of trees, at this season all in blossom, nearly as white as the walls. Above the walls, the cones and steeples seemed to tremble like white towers of hibiscus, white hyacinths, and the white birds streamed from tower to tower, like bees in search of nectar.

  There were four great gates, facing to the four quarters of the world. These gates were each of three shades of whiteness: the harsh white of steel, set with panels the gentle sallow white of ivory, and studded with enormous polished pallid zircons.

  As the people approached, the city sang to them. Initially, in the distance, a faint, faint sound which, as they drew nearer and nearer, grew louder and louder, swelling to greet them. The song was a melodious yet uncanny thrumming—a thunder which whispered, the buzzing of a thousand wasps in a hive of glass—

  The processions poured in across the shining sandless paths to Bhelsheved, and the extraordinary hymn foamed from the pristine cauldron of the city. When they reached their hundred paces of proximity, the hymn dissipated in the sky.

  They stood in wonder, the visitors, a wonder which was never decreased, listening to the quiet which followed the song, beneath the unmelting hill of desert snow, birds flashing over the hibiscus minarets.

  “It is like a city of the gods,” men declared, unaware the gods possessed no cities, nor wished to possess them.

  And those who reached Bhelsheved by night also heard the song unfold from the city into the sky, like a pillar of invisible, audible steam. And by night, the domes were lit, great ghostly pearls, and the night flowers bloomed in the groves, and the air surged with perfumes, which came and went like spirits.

  Thus, the exterior of Bhelsheved.

  Within, it was this way:

  Entering at one of the four tall gates, the worshipper found himself on a wide straight concourse, paved on this occasion in mosaics of the most pastel marbles, none of which depicted either scene or pattern, but nebulous swirlings, like those of vapors or clouds. Such an ethereal road led from each of the four gates, toward the heart of the city. And on all sides of the four roads stood temples pressed close to each other, as in a mortal city houses would have pressed close. Some of the buildings were massive, pouring up their flowerlike snow domes into the sky, shot with windows internally lit and of a heavenly blue glass, each window itself set in the form of a flower or a leaf or some abstract shape that hinted at supernal reveries. Some of the buildings were delicate and small, alabaster figurines, crystal pinnacles. Pleated stairways went up and down like the keys of strange instruments. Colonnades led in and out, their pillars carved like women or like trees. Trees which were real blossomed inside the city as out. If a wind blew, a snowstorm of petals fell.

  At the core of the sacred city, the four roads ended on the rim of the miraculous lake, that turquoise of water which had seemed the seal of the gods’ approval. And up over the turquoise arched four white bows of bridges, making ovals with their white reflections below. The four white bridges met in a diadem of light, the central fane of Belsheved, which was not of white stone, but plated over, like a fabulous lizard, with scales of palest gold. The rich kernel of the sweet fruit of faith.

  Men declared: “See, it is like the mansion of a god.”

  But it was not, for the mansions of the gods were shafts of psychic material which probably no man could have seen, even had he been able to enter the Upperearth and gaze thereon.

  Standing on the bridges, which were ornately carved, the golden architecture before them, the shining orb of water beneath, those who came to worship presently beheld white robed figures moving, like sprites, through the misty interior of the fane.

  While the people lived elsewhere, returning to this, the fount of their religion, once only in a year, some few dwelled always in Bhelsheved, to tend it, and to keep alive the flames which burned there, and to nurture the flowers which bloomed there, to the glory of the gods, and to see to all the other esthetic tasks of the city.

  They were chosen, these few, from a certain type. Somehow, some idea of the physical appearance of the gods was already current, and had been tailored to mortal standards. All who served the city were good to look upon, very slender of build, and of a pale translucence of skin which was perpetuated by the rigorous fasts, diets and medications of their order. Their hair, both male and female, was of a general hue, a gold blanched almost to platinum.

  Their characteristics were select, their glances obscure, their gestures flowing. They seemed sublimely unaware, removed from the roughness, the sheer red meat of humanity.

  Yet, it was from among the people that they were chosen, those elevated ones. Although the people deliberately forgot the origin of their priests and priestesses, just as they forgot that the city had been built by their own wealth, designed by their own mathematicians and scholars, and imbued with sorceries by their own mages.

  When the priestly servants of heaven approached them, they bowed and trembled pleasantly with respect and awe.

  At the heart of the golden temple, mounted on the backs of two vast golden beasts that had the heads of hawks, the fore-bodies of lions and the tails of gigantic fish, was an altar of translucent sky-colored crystal, in which opaline clouds and constellations seemed to float. When the temple had been filled with people, the doors were closed, and in the honey gloom, the astrological altar began to blaze. The servants of heaven sang in sweet thin voices as they stood fearlessly between the paws of the two beasts, which would then suddenly open their beaks and cry, in a brazen resonance: Who loves the gods shall know everlasting joy!

  Then a second sun would seem to explode slowly outward from the altar, a glare which must surely blind, yet did not, for in the midst of it were seen visitations which came and went. None after could describe what they had witnessed. Some spoke of the forms of the gods themselves passing luminously to and fro in a sort of gorgeous fog. Others spoke of scenes of happiness from their own lives reenacted, or prophecies of good things to come. Some coyly mentioned glimpses of a paradise, or visions of other worlds. Many wept and many laughed aloud, and a few collapsed on the mosaic floor where the tightness of the crowd permitted.

  But when the great brilliancy faded, they gathered themselves, moved dazedly to the reopened doors, and filed away meekly to offer blood or precious gems or wine in the glittering temples that stood everywhere about the lake. And through filigree screens, to half-seen confessors beyond, they would recite their sins and their apprehensions—which, in those moments seemed unmomentous, easy both of telling and of future avoidance. For it appeared to them their souls had been washed clean and sponged with glorious elixirs. So they sawed through the throats of little lambs and burnt their flesh on blue fires, sobbing at their luck, that they, and all things, were in the care of the merciful and gentle gods.

  The dunes of day drifted over the sky and were blown beyond the edge of the western earth. The darker sands of night piled up on the threshold of the sunset, and eventually buried it.

  A young man came walking slyly, with an oddly hesitant yet urgent step, between the clusters of the tents. Fires and lamps and stars were blooming on the dusk, and the pale ghost of the city, like the sail of some anchored ship, rested over the many-ringed campments. The young man, a youngest brother, had come far from his own camping place, across the makeshift byways, and far around the city walls, though keeping always the prescribed one hundred paces out from them. A cloak was folded around him, though the night was warm.

  Presently he reached a grove of scented trees, where some girls were drawing water from one of the ornamental troughs.

  One by one, these girls caught sight of the youngest brother far from his own camp. They saw him to be a stranger, and one or two, for the barest instant, held their breath, for there had been another stranger who sometimes walked about the cam
ps by night, but he had been cloaked as if with inky wings. . . . This one was no one of importance, his manner diffident, his face muffled, and the maidens began to giggle at him somewhat behind their sleeves.

  At length, the young man beckoned to one of the girls, and when she approached him, said: “Pardon my interruption of your duties, but I am searching for the tent of the satchel-maker.”

  “Would that be Grizzle-Beard the satchel-maker that you mean? Or the other, with the limp?”

  “Or,” chimed in another of the girls boldly, “do you mean old Twisty-Nose, whose wife resembles a goat?”

  The young man lowered his eyes, and pulled his cloak yet more tightly around him. He seemed to be carrying something beneath the cloak, perhaps a satchel that required mending.

  “I think it must be he you call Twisty-Nose,” said the young man. “If he dwells at the edge of the camp, nearest to the desert.”

  “There is no satchel-maker there,” declared another girl.

  “Then I have mistaken—” began the young man anxiously, and broke off as another girl interrupted.

  “He is looking for the limping one who pitched his tent farther out yesterday, saying our noise disturbed his religious meditations. I doubt,” she added, “he will do any satchel business with you, he wishes to think only pious thoughts.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the young man, “may I ask you to guide me to the spot?”

  The girls tossed their hair at him like a pride of lionesses.

  “It is not so far. Can you not find your own way, a big strong ox like yourself?”