Death's Master Read online

  When Simmu called Shell was ten, another entered the courts of the children, a year older than he, and this boy had been sent here by his father, one of the nomadic kings of a far desert country to the south.

  The boy’s name was Zhirem, and he was the king’s son by his most favored wife, but there had been discord over him.

  They were a brown people, the nomads, with clay-colored hair and russet eyes, but the boy the woman birthed was dark haired, dark as the shadow of early night, and his eyes were the color of green water reflecting a blue sky.

  “Now what is this?” roared the king, striding about his scarlet tent. He thought his woman had been playing games with a foreigner, but she had not, and told him as much, and besides asked her husband if he had ever seen such a foreigner in those parts. “My mother was dark,” said she, “and my grandmother had such eyes.”

  “Am I to believe a male child is nothing but a patchwork of his mother’s female ancestors?” demanded the king.

  “Well, at least,” said the woman humbly, “he is handsome, as his father is.”

  The king relented somewhat at that, and said no more on the matter, not then. And the child was a handsome child for sure, and became more handsome. The women of the tents loved him for his rarity and for a certain grave sweetness in his manner, and for his beautiful green-blue-water eyes. But the old men avoided glancing at him. “Such darkness is unlucky,” they said. “The dark haired ones are marked, as a goat bears the brand of the king to set him apart from other herds; marked and branded and already promised to demon-kind and to the Black Jackal, the Master of Night.” When they spoke this way they spat afterward to clear the words from their mouths. The one they called Black Jackal and Master of Night had many names and titles, and the more abstract and less familiar the naming, the better. His true name they did not speak though they knew it, Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, a Lord of Darkness.

  The king’s favorite wife, however, loved her son, the king’s youngest, fiercely, and as he grew older and more fair, so she grew more afraid.

  “On all sides are enemies,” she whispered to herself in her heart. “The young men envy him already, and the old men hate him. Well, we know that demons roam by night, but does my son roam? What is there in him but goodness and innocence? And presently the young men will take him hunting with them, and they will lead him where lions are, and leave him without spears, and he will be slain. Or else someone will cut open his veins when he sleeps in the palm shade at noon. Or else he will wed some bitch, and her brothers will hiss in her ears that she has coupled with evil and she will put poison in his cup.” Then the woman wept, but she could tell no one and ask help from no one, and even her husband looked unlovingly at Zhirem.

  • • •

  One day, when Zhirem was five years old, the men were away hunting and a weird crone came into the place of tents. She was dressed in stinking pelts and her matted hair was tangled with metal rings and polished bones. But around her arm was twined a living golden snake, and her eyes were keen and clear as a girl’s.

  The women were afraid and would not approach her, but the king’s favorite wife, who had too much trouble to take on fear as well, went out to her and asked her what she wanted.

  “To sit in the shade and drink cool water,” said the crone. Then she caught sight of the boy child Zhirem, and she said, “And there are both.”

  The king’s wife frowned. She brought the hag into her own tent and sat her down. With her own hands she gave her food and liquor, the best from the king’s store, and a dish of milk for the snake. Then the king’s wife went to a chest of red sandstone and brought out her earrings of turquoise, her bracelets of gold and her anklets of amber, and an onyx bird which had been her mother’s, and three great pearls, and she put them beside the crone.

  “Very pretty,” said the crone, blinking her clever youthful eyes.

  “Take them,” said the king’s wife.

  The crone smiled with the nine black teeth she had left. “There is nothing for nothing in this world,” said she. “And what is it you want?”

  “The safety of my son and his life,” said the king’s wife, Zhirem’s mother, and she poured out her story as she had poured out the jewels.

  When the story was finished, the hag said: “You think me a witch, and you think cleverly. I will do what I can for your boy, but he may not thank me as you do, for there is no benefit which has not a sister in misfortune. When it is dusk, bring your child, and go with him to the far purple ridge and wait there. One shall come for you and conduct you to me.”

  “Suppose I cannot do it?”

  “Then neither can I do anything,” said the hag, and she got up, creaking in her joints. The king’s wife pointed to her jewels and the witch said: “I want none of those. I will tell you my price tonight.”

  When the king and his warriors returned, his favorite wife went to him and kissed him, and she said: “My lord, pardon me if I do not stay here with you tonight, but all day my head has pained me and I crave to lie down alone in my tent in the silence of night.”

  The king was lenient with her, for he still liked her well. So she took Zhirem secretly to her tent, and when the dusk came down she stole away with him through the grove of palms which stood there, and they ran together to the far purple ridge, the boy laughing, for he thought it was a game.

  They had not been there long, and the horizon was yet green from the afterglow, when a cloud blew out of the west though there was no wind. This cloud fell down from the sky and covered Zhirem and his mother. The woman was alarmed and clutched her child to her, but next moment all was motion and the moment after all stillness, and the cloud had faded. The woman and her son found themselves in another spot altogether and did not guess how they had come there.

  It was a garden of sorts. High stone walls showed nothing but the sky, which was darkened with starless black. Fine green sand lay underfoot and four brass lamps were lit at the garden’s four corners, exaggerating the trees of black wood with orange fruit and the shrubs which gave off a strange scent, and highlighting too a well of stone in the garden’s center. Nervous though she was, the woman felt drawn to look into the well. But fire rather than water seemed to glow deep down in it. Just then the witch appeared through a narrow door in the wall and closing it carefully behind her, she came up to the king’s wife.

  “Well, here you are,” said the witch. “Now I will tell you a few things. Down in the well where you were staring is an old fire of earth. Should you leap into the fire you would burn to a cinder, and so would any but a little child, for this fire burns strongest when it has knowledge and wickedness to feed on, and we soon learn to be cunning and to be cruel in this world. But a child does not know much and is not very wicked usually. And the younger the child the better. Now the virtue of the fire is that it makes proof what burns in it against all harm. No weapon and no ailment can damage what has once endured the fire. Only age and natural death can take, and then they come slowly. One who rises from this fire may live two hundred years, or longer.”

  The king’s wife listened, her eyes wide and her face pale. The witch said: “I will say this, your boy is four or five years. It would have been better if he had been less, a baby newly born. As he is, the fire will pain him. Can you bear to hear his screams when he is in the well, in order that he emerge invulnerable and never to be hurt again?”

  The king’s wife trembled. She clasped her child tight, and he, not understanding what was said, gazed round the garden, surprised at everything.

  “I can bear it,” said the king’s wife, “but if you trick me and he does not benefit, I will kill you.”

  “Oh, kill me, will you?” cackled the hag, vastly amused.

  “Yes, despite your magic and everything you may do. I will tear you apart with my bare hands and rip out your throat with my teeth.”

  The hag grinned.

 
“No tricks,” she said, “but I am glad you mentioned your teeth.” She sidled up to Zhirem’s mother, and the witch’s luminous eyes shone brightly. “See here,” she said, pointing at the eyes. “My sight failed me, because I was a crone, so I bought a new pair of eyes with a spell. These eyes belonged a young man who was to die, and, in order to be free, he gave them me. ‘Better be blind and live,’ he said. ‘Quite so,’ affirmed I. Now behold how beautiful my eyes are. But oh, my wretched teeth, which ache and turn black and fall from my mouth. Your teeth, I note, are sharp and white and sound. Sharp, white and sound enough to tear out a poor old woman’s throat, indeed. Give me your lovely teeth. That is my price for this service to your son.”

  The king’s wife shuddered. But she glanced down at Zhirem and kissed his face and said: “Agreed. Such a charge must mean fair dealing.”

  Instantly the witch snatched the child. She tied a cord into his dark curling hair, and she lifted him up on to the lip of the well. Zhirem turned round desperately in fright, but before he could escape, the witch, keeping fast hold of the cord, pushed him over the well’s brink. Thus, holding the cord which bound the hair of Zhirem, she dangled him into the terrible fire of invulnerability, for every part of him must be laved in the flames.

  But in the well, he screamed, as the witch had said, and his cries were worse than the foretelling. The king’s wife covered her ears and she screamed too, till her throat was raw, for every agony of her child seemed to pierce her.

  And then at last the awful noises stopped, and the witch drew up by the cord, out of the well, a burnt and blackened, unrecognizable thing, and laid it on the green sand of the garden.

  When she saw it, the king’s wife snarled like a beast and ran at the witch. But the witch only laughed. “You have no fangs now to bite me with,” and she showed how her mouth was abruptly full of white teeth, and the king’s wife checked, finding her own mouth whole but empty. “A moment’s patience,” said the witch. And, just as she spoke, the burned thing on the ground began to twitch and wriggle, and the blackness of it flaked off like dirt from an ivory vessel. And presently the ivory vessel of the child lay entire and unburned there on the sand, and only the lustrous dark hair was left of the blackness, and the black lashes of the eyes. There was, too, a sort of glow about him, a kind of sheen like light on gold.

  “Is he dead?” whispered the mother, for the boy was motionless.

  “Dead!” crowed the witch. “Look where he breathes.” She took the king’s wife close to her son, and suddenly the witch drew a knife and plunged it, with all her strength, in Zhirem’s heart.

  Zhirem’s mother shrieked.

  “What a fool you are,” said the witch, showing the king’s wife how the blade of the knife had buckled and broken as if on a wall of steel, and how there was no wound in the invulnerable flesh of Zhirem.

  • • •

  She had been very careful, the mother of Zhirem, in leaving the camp of the scarlet tents. But, as they said among the desert people, there is no jar so closely sealed that a single grain of sand cannot enter. The king had other wives and these wives other sons. One of these sons had gone out from supper to make water up against a palm tree, and while he was doing his deed, he caught sight of Zhirem’s mother slipping by in the dusk with her child. There was a deal of jealousy between the wives and between the sons of the king, and this boy was no exception. He therefore took it on himself to keep a watch, and dallied near the woman’s tent, and about midnight he saw her come back, and the look of her scared him. Her face was white and her hair ragged, and she hurried along with Zhirem in her arms, apparently asleep. And as she hurried she breathed through her mouth, and it seemed to the spying boy there were no longer any teeth in her gums. No sooner was she inside her tent than he ran to tell the tale to his own mother, and this wife made haste to tell the king this: That Zhirem’s dam went out to sport with demons in the evening, and carried with her her demon son, and she sold her teeth for spells.

  The king was made uneasy. He feared witchcraft at once, for he had never been happy about dark-haired Zhirem. The king paced about, and when the dawn swept night from the desert, he went to the tent of his favorite wife.

  There he spoke harshly, accusing her with what he had heard, and when he had finished, he said he would see the inside of her mouth.

  Zhirem’s mother realized no lie could save her, nor the truth, but she mixed them together swiftly, and to give herself a little time to do it, she wept.

  “My lord,” she said, “I am afraid to say what I have done, but I see I was stupid to imagine I might hide anything from your wisdom. Be merciful to me. When I complained to you I suffered from a pain in my head, it was in fact a dreadful aching of all my teeth. I have had this affliction some while, and striven to keep it secret, and begged the gods to relieve me of it, but it was no use. At length a woman came here who was intelligent with herbs, and I let her know my anguish. And this woman said there was no help for me unless all my teeth were drawn, for, though they appeared sound, they were diseased at the roots and would eventually poison my whole body. Thus, my lord, I stole out covertly in my shame to this same woman, and let her do her work, and your son I took with me, as my only comfort in the night. And now you will cast me off because I am ugly, and I shall die of misery.”

  The king was moved with pity, and believed everything. He assured his favorite wife that he would love her still, that her beauty was not only her teeth. He chided her gently for thinking to outwit him and for risking herself and the child alone in the desert. Later, he sent for his spying son and thrashed him, and the wife who had told him the tale he gave to another king as a token of friendship between them, but adding as a proviso: “Beware this vixen’s mouth, which has both teeth and falsehood in it.”

  • • •

  Five years passed, for years will always pass, no matter what else remains. The people of the tents moved across the desert, feeding their herds at the green places, and journeying on when the green withered. Sometimes there was a dry lean season and they prayed for the rains, and sometimes the rains came in abundance, and the arid slender rivers of the desert swelled and overflowed their banks, and it was a season of plenty, for a while.

  Zhirem, who had been the king’s youngest son, was ten and no longer quite the youngest, though the favorite wife had borne no more. Truth to tell, she was not the favorite wife any more. A woman had been married to the king; her eyes were like rufous amber and she knew several arts and bore several sons, and she was now the favored one. But the king had no son to rival the looks of Zhirem.

  The old men had given over saying his darkness was a brand of night and Night’s Master, the Demon. They even talked to the boy. They were getting senile. Yet, behind their faces, there was still a shadow, something unsaid but ready, a rusty knife that could be cleaned.

  Among the man children of the king mulled envy and dislike for Zhirem, also unvoiced, also ready. One who had been thrashed was fifteen now, and he went hunting. “Let this young cub come hunting too,” he said, caressing the hair of Zhirem. “We will take care of him. He is too often with women, and he has never seen lions.”

  Zhirem was solitary, a dreamer. Once, five years before, his mother had rocked him and her tears had fallen on him. “What do you remember, beloved?” she had asked. “Do not remember anything. No fire, no pain, no garden of green sand. And even if you think of it, say nothing, nothing.”

  It was her sorcery that she made him forget. He had this dim memory, less than a memory, more an illusion of scalding light and scalding agony. It was a nightmare of his babyhood. He had sloughed it. Yet, impossibly, he knew it had left its mark on him, it set him apart more than his coloring, more than his beauty—of which he was not aware. He understood himself as different, and did not question why, for he supposed no answer existed. He dwelt in a country where all were strangers. He met those who named themselves his brothers and his
kin, but he met no one there who was like himself or who spoke the language of his soul. And so the villainies and inconsistencies of those about him did not unnerve him or even really distress him. He anticipated nothing else in this alien land.

  They went to hunt lions, three of the king’s sons, their three friends, and Zhirem.

  Up in the rocky hills the lions were lying, golden-eyed, their bodies the color of the dust in the afternoon sun. Four of them there were, three she-cats, and a male whose mane was black as if the heat of the day had singed it. They had tasted men, all this pride, and when they smelled him on the wind, their nostrils curved open and their eyes narrowed and they rose and lashed with their tails.

  What had happened was this.

  The hunters had come to a spot in the rocks where a fig tree leaned by a pool of water. They knew lions were near, since this was a run for lions.

  “Now you go that way with the dogs,” said the thrashed son of the king, whose mother had been given to another king as his slave. He was speaking to the three friends, and he directed them off to the north. The three king’s sons next pondered together. “It is a pity,” said the thrashed son, “that we do not have a nice tender baby goat, a yearling, to tempt the lions this way.” He and his two brothers bemoaned their lack and smote their brows at their own foolishness in not providing one. And then they seemed to have an idea. “How would this be,” they said, “if we took young Zhirem here and left him where the lions would notice him? Succulent and pretty as any yearling is our darling Zhirem. Come, you would not mind it, would you, brother Zhirem? We should be close by with our spears.”

  Zhirem only gazed at them. The brothers laughed, and conducted him up the rocky paths.

  “Now,” they said, “you shall not be sad to be bound to this stone, dear little brother Zhirem?” And they bound him fast and left him there, and went to watch from a safe distance high among the rocks.

  Presently four pale golden shadows crept down the hills. The lions were coming with their lashing tails and their thin hot eyes.