Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (12 page)

After the sun had gone,
and nightingales sang in the walnut grove which stood always, cot or palace,
beneath the house wall, Sovaz left the arms of her lover. She paced about in a
gallery of columns open on one side to the night. How intently the stars gazed
at her over the tree-tops. How wildly the nightingales sang, as if something
had disquieted them, with ecstasy or fear. Presently, silently, Sovaz called
her lover back to her. She put her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes said, There
is no rest for me. Let us walk out in the darkness.

So they wandered through
the woods, where the black foxes came to play about them, and the night flowers
glowed and sent up their perfume. And sometimes, by starlight, the two
wanderers cast five shadows. But later, three of the shadows vanished, though
there went a faint sound through the branches, like wings.

Coming at length into an
avenue of ancient trees, Sovaz and Oloru saw a town spread below and before
them, out of the wood.

“We will go down. We
will see what humankind does with itself in the last hours before dawn.”

Oloru smiled chidingly.
(
Humankind?)
But then there was only a
ghostly jackal which ran at her heels, grinning. Sovaz paid no heed, nor did
she assume herself any feral form. Her own skin was too unfamiliar to exchange
itself for others.

The barricades of the
town were shut, but there was a herders’ gate which Sovaz breathed upon, and it
opened itself.

Down the streets, then,
the woman walked, with a jackal loping after her. She had sorcerously re-formed
her apparel—or maybe she had only put on fresh apparel in the ordinary way—to
the garb of a young man, soft boots on her feet, her hair wound in a cloth, a
long knife at her belt. It was Oloru who, when he should choose to resume human
shape, would be found in an embroidered robe and pearl- fringed slippers.

The lamps burned low in
the town or were put out. Here and there a sleepless window, or the inflamed
eye of a tavern.

I
might,
Sovaz considered,
float upward like a leaf and look in at all these
sleepers. I might slip in under doors, between the narrowest lattices, revel in
their sins, virtues, absurdities—and be gone like the night breeze. Or I might
take the being of a nightmare, and cause them to wake screaming. Or seduce, or
thieve, or kill. More, the whole town I might stir to havoc and panic, to
madness—and then he would forget himself, my beloved, and remember himself, and
help me at the work.

Overhead the stars
massed thickly. So many had come out tonight to look on Sovaz, the Demon’s
daughter, with their concentrated stare.

But why,
thought she,
why do it? Is the
only challenge in the world to be greed and viciousness? Is the only satisfying
power the power of the ascent over men, the only dream, ambition? And must the
alternative to greed, evil, ambition—be only sluggishness?

At which she felt a gloved hand smooth her cheek.
“Sluggishness? Is that the name you call our love?”

“Our love,” she said aloud to Chuz, who for a second in the
person of Oloru walked at her side, “our love rocks the world. Yet what a
little event is our love.”

Chuz laughed, like a jackal barking. Oloru said plaintively,
“You will smash my heart in fragments.”

“You shall be shaken
then, and what a pretty sound you will make, like a temple sistrum.”

And at this point they
reached a wineshop door and Sovaz walked in there, as if it had been all along
their destination.

The guests who remained
were mostly sleeping, their heads on their arms, or their feet on the tables.

Sovaz seated herself in
a dark corner, and Oloru with her. A wine server approached them sullenly. “Wine,
young . . . sir?” he asked Sovaz.

“The wine here,” said
Oloru melodiously, and loudly, “is fit only as a purgative for pigs.”

“True,” said the server.
“But do you wish it or not?”

“However,” continued
Oloru, more loudly still, “there is logic to that. Since all these slobbering
swine in here seem due a spewing.”

This caused some
reaction throughout the room. The server backed away and scurried out of an
inner door.

“Who calls me slobbering
swine?” demanded a burly villain.

“Not I,” said Oloru,
with winning grace. “I doubt I should dare. But someone more truthful than I is
sure to have done it.”

And standing up again he
drew from his sleeve the lyre, and strummed it lightly.

“Lovesome pig,

Bold and big,

All
the poets will vie

In
creating a shy

Little
ode, by and by,

To your charms
in the sty
—

So
be patient, since I

Think
it wrong

To
make song

To
a pig.”

Drawing out a notched cleaver, the subject of this
fancy now rolled from his table toward Oloru, who, naturally, shrank away.

It was Sovaz who stepped
between them and said:

“What is your quarrel?”

“Off the path,
stripling. The other stripling has earned himself a taste of my instrument
here.”

“Why? Because he called
you ‘pig’? Are you not then,” said Sovaz, in a silver voice, “exactly what he
called you?”

At this the villain
shouted and raised his murder weapon in the air—but the shout became a
mysterious grunt before it finished, and the knife clattered on the floor.
There, standing upright on its back legs and waving its fore trotters madly,
was a bristling and most angry male pig—nor, alas, was it even a boar, but of
the farmyard sort, lacking now the use not only of one weapon, but of two.

Upon this cue, even the
weariest sleepers in the tavern awoke or were awakened.

“
Sorcery!
” came the cry on all sides, and over went
the jars and cups and down rained the candles, and every man stampeded from the
place. With no surprise, let it be added, only with a kind of smug fright. Had
it not said for months, this area, that there were supernatural creatures in
its woods?

Only the pig remained
stamping about the wineshop, furious but already forgetting why, and questing
for something to eat among the spillages of exodus.

“Too apt,” said Oloru
with some pleasure, admiring the pig. “Let it go home now, and donate its bacon
to its doxy.”

“Better than that,” said
Sovaz, “let it go home and get into bed with the doxy, and see how they both
like it.” And she pointed at the pig, which gave her an unwilling glance. “Do
then as I bid it, you. And when the sun rises, be a man again, if you ever knew
how.”

The pig ran out, looking
irate.

Oloru sighed. “Too
lenient. Wait. I know a jackal who will chase that pig all through the town—”

Yet, “Hush,” said Sovaz
suddenly. “Look there. One who did not run away. Now why is that?”

Then Oloru was hushed,
pale as ice. He looked, as she looked, into another deep corner of the tavern.
For it seemed indeed one sat there, all muffled up in smoke and shade. Cloaked
and cowled in black, only a hand showing white on the table, toying idly with
some little figurines that glimmered in the upset light. And on his fingers
many rings smoldered.

“Now,” said Oloru, “if I
were a man, I would howl to the gods to protect me.”

“But you are not a man,”
said the voice from the corner. “And you know better.”

Oloru gazed at Sovaz.
His eyes enlarged with tears. He said softly, “Let us fly to some other spot.”

“Do it,” said the voice
from the corner. “I will be there to greet you.”

It was a voice so fine
the atmosphere was already charged by it and grew electric, as if before a
storm. It was so fine, even the mice who lived in the walls, and the spiders
who wove in the rafter boughs above, crept out to listen and to see, then froze
there, between dream and dread.

Then Sovaz remarked,
“The night has found the power of speech.”

The voice did not answer
her. But one of the little game pieces the hand had toyed with fell abruptly to
the floor and broke in bits. It had been the figure of a fair-haired damsel
robed in white.

Sovaz laid her hand
against Oloru’s breast. “My companion,” she said to the corner, “is not alone.”

But at that moment, an
ass brayed rackingly, once, twice, thrice, so all the mice and spiders fled
swooning and squeaking and trailing droppings and gossamer.

“Oh, are you there then,
after all,” said Sovaz.

And she left Oloru where
he stood, and kicking aside the shattered winecups, she walked to the corner
and sat down on a bench facing the one in black, only the trestle between them.

He raised his head. At
first there came only the black flame of two eyes, until he put back the cowl.
Then there was the face of her father, Azhrarn, sculpted and pitiless and
immeasurable, and empty. She had not properly seen him some while. Perhaps not
since that hour he had first taken her to his kingdom and abandoned her. She
had sighted him since only once, in a forest, hunting, but far off, and not for
her. Always it seemed to have been this way, distance and uninterest. He was no
father, no prince, no friend to her. She owed him nothing save the inspiration
of life, if she should even be grateful for such a gift.

They looked at each
other, and finally she said, in a small voice no longer silver but iron, “And
do you behold in me my mother?”

He said, “She would not
have looked at me with such impertinence, or such hate.”

“She had no cause, it
seems.”

“Every cause. But she
was the honeycomb. You, conversely, are my child, through and through.
Unforgiving, arrogant, and proud; the wicked callousness men worship when they
say my name, all is in you. But your wings of malice are not yet hardened. When
you are able to take the skies with them, then we shall see what you can do.
Dunizel’s daughter? No, you are only mine.” And he smiled most gorgeously upon
her.

When he did so, Sovaz
spat at him like a snake. But the spark of demon spit altered instantly to a
silver flower. He caught it in his hand and held it out to her, still smiling.
Sovaz rose to her feet and turned and walked three paces away. No longer
looking at him, she said, “Women you may woo, but not this one. You have told
me, I am yourself. In vain then your blandishments or threats.”

“Do you suppose I could
not destroy you in a second?”

Sovaz looked over her
shoulder at him. “Do it.”

Azhrarn let the flower
fall on the table. It was gone. “You forget,” he said, “you are my puppet that
I made and mean to use. I have said, Let us wait until you harden in the mold.
When the paint is dry on you, you will come to me, and show me the virtuous
respect a daughter should.”

“Then,” said Sovaz, “may
all the seas be fires.”

Seated cross-legged on a
nearby table, a handsome young man in a purple robe observed, “Alas, I am
forgotten.”

“Not so,” said Azhrarn.
“Be flattered, Chuz, I came seeking you. The woman is not much to me, which she
sees, as we note from her rage. You, I have taken trouble to close upon. You I
have pursued like your lover.”

“Yes,” admitted
Chuz-Oloru from the adjacent table, “I am distinguished enough now to tempt
even your palate. But it would not be politic, Azhrarn, for two Lords of
Darkness to couple, as it would not be sensible for them to engage in enmity.
These are joys we must forgo.”

“Must we. I promised you
war, Chuz. My promises I keep.”

Chuz said indolently,
“One blow shared between us will obliterate the town. If we duel, how much of
the earth may be damaged before one of us bests the other? And the earth is
dear to you, I believe. Besides, can you slaughter me? I, too, must be reborn.
While there is madness, there I am.”

Azhrarn in turn rose. As
he moved from the corner, all the blackness of it seemed to come out with him
and to leap simultaneously into lights. Firmaments and whirlwinds were caught
about him, in his black hair, the wings of the cloak which restlessly beat.
Stars crashed in every ring on his hands, and in his eyes worlds ended and
began and ended. To this apocalyptic background, he gently said, “I mean to pay
you out. It will be done. You harmed what was dear to me and under my
protection.”

“I have said before,”
said Chuz, yet perched on his table, yet almost like a man, “it was no fault of
mine. Blame that other one, he whose murmurings seem to have driven us here,
Lord Fate. Blame yourself. Blame Dunizel for her destiny as a sacrifice. Blame
everyone but me. What am I? Only the world’s servant.” Then Chuz himself raised
his golden head. The face was still flawless, still Oloru’s. But no longer
Oloru’s at all. And out of the eyes looked some appalling red-black thing. “But
I lie,” said Chuz. “You know I lie. It is my homage to you, as was my careful
disguise, and my frantic running away all this time. Yes, conceivably her death
may be seen as my fault. If so, I do not know why I should have wanted it, for
she was lovely, innocent, and wise. But insanity does nothing by the book.
Guilty then, unbrother, as you wish.” And Chuz came from the table and went to
Azhrarn. And standing there, meeting his terrible eyes with eyes equally as
terrible, Chuz said this: “You may not eradicate me. You would be as foolish to
fight with me as I would be fighting with you. But see, I offer myself before
you and will accept any penance you decree, provided it may be compassed. Such
an offer is madness, therefore fitting. Take your vengeance then, chastise me.
But, Azhrarn, you do it by my agreement only.”