Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (25 page)

A month or two then, in this odd environment, unsafe with falling
stars. And then the desert of metal gave onto a desert of blue sand under a
drenched blue sky. Fountains sprang here from boulders of violet quartz. The
water and the blueness refreshed and did no harm—or seemed to do none; who
could be sure? (No man, they said, goes that road and returns as sane as he
went. They were resigned to it, mostly, having no choice.)

Another month or two in the blue deserts, track of time already
being somewhat approximate. And then a white desert, where streams of milk ran
from boulders of alabaster. And next, black pastures running black beer—or
ink; best be careful when drinking. And then pure water, a land of it, a lake
going from the foot’s edge to the horizon, with here and there tangle-haired
water-forests or primeval trees in which fish nested, flopping from out the
lake to tend round eggs like opals, sitting upon them and panting gently, with
solemn wintry eyes. A causeway led over the lake. It stopped at a wall.

The wall had become visible some miles off, and even those who had
heard of it had stared. It was a wall of tiles, enameled with winged beasts or
tailed beasts—it went up and up, and up and up. It seemed to hold off the sky.

The caravans crowded the causeway, piled against the wall. The day
had melted into the lake, and the fish dived from their nests and played,
gleaming, in the water. The moon had come up, unseen beyond the wall, in the
east. She lifted higher and higher until she could crest the wall. When this
happened, the tiles whitened, and a door appeared, unlocked by moonlight
seemingly, gradually gaping wide. The caravans went through, to the last wheel
and pack animal, and the last man. After which, the wall closed itself.

It was pitch dark inside the wall, for the moon had now got over
the top of it and lay outside to please the fish in the lake.

But a glowing road lay on the inner side, a road like golden fire.
They saw it coil and wind away before them. Wearied out, yet obediently they
took this road, and were laved in its flaming aura, which seemed to give no
light above or to either side, but which nourished them furiously. The
exhausted animals pranced and trotted and galloped. The tired men laughed and
cried them on.

So they raced toward the city thirteen kingdoms vast, and entered
it.

There
was an opinion it was not, after all, sorcery, that made Az-Nennafir the way it
was, but rather the fantasies of mankind concerning the place.

Those that returned (not all did so) murmured of size and hue, and
the manner in which things were contrary, and, too, of a beauty which had upset
them, driven them forever insane in little ways. Or huge ways. Dull men
sometimes became poets, or hanged themselves, after Az-Nennafir, but that was
the least of it.

The sun there is blue, they said. It is like shimmering dusk at
midday. This is due, they said, to a canopy of sapphire which overpanes all the
kingdom—the Goddess-dom. Or it is a gargantuan lens set in the sky. Or plain
magic. Here and there a hole has been manufactured in the canopy, lens or
magic, and under this the sun is to be found in an oasis of fiery brightness.

By night, there are seven moons, of various largeness and shade,
and varieties of stars—they are clockwork, or sorcery, or both, and they may be
seen to move, slowly, in wonderful formations, occasionally passing each other,
when—if they touch—they make a melodious chiming.

All growing things excel there. They attain uncanny burgeonings,
and tower in the air. There are rose trees whose roses are so great a girl may
recline in them. The petals are waxy, but they exude a perfume sufficient to
render one unconscious. Cedars there are which reach the height of a hill, or
small mountain, and the lower moons, passing through them at night, scatter
their boughs to the earth, frosted with peculiar incandescence. The buildings,
meanwhile, are as tall, or taller. There are stairways which it requires a
whole morning to ascend. There are spires which vanish from sight into the blue
sunshine—they have stained-glass windows in them which stretch down to the
ground, as broad as three gateways, but above growing narrow as a beaded
thread.

And while the returned travelers speak or write or screech or
babble of this, someone or other, not properly fearful, may ask: “But did you
look upon the Goddess? Did you gaze at Azhriaz, the Daughter of Upperearth?

And one who had returned might answer in this way:

“After we had journeyed some months through the built country of
the City of Az-Nennafir, we came to the bank of a little brown sinuous river.
Oh, it was a good quarter mile across, the river, yet all the things about had
dwarfed it utterly. Nevertheless, on the farther bank, there went up an edifice
which was a temple-palace of the Goddess. The priests came, and we laid down
our tribute. It was weighed and counted, but I hardly heeded what went on. I
stared only at that edifice, which might contain her, she that holds us in
thrall. Now, she is cruel and pitiless and indifferent (which we have learned,
through her teaching, the gods are to mankind—and indeed, have not the lessons
of our lives ceaselessly informed us this was so?). We know she may strike us
dead with a look, or send any one of us to a hideous torture, which has
happened in the past, yes, to those who fear and reverence her. While to ask
her for anything is without point; she will not grant the boon. And as for
pleasing her by prayer or by oblation, the gods take no note, nor any pleasure
in such, though omission they may punish. Yet, she is supernal and she is among
us, and none, I think, stands at the entry to one of her palaces and does not
dream he may catch a glimpse of her.

“Well then. Certain of the towers of the palace soared so high
they dimmed from my view. On others, the blue sunlight trickled like rain.
Three of the white stone cats of the city, big as elephants, prowled on the
farther bank, before a flight of steps more than three hundred in number, and
every tread laid with a mineful of sapphires. And above the sapphire stair was
a golden terrace, and above that were two golden doors—each itself the height
of a king’s house, cellar to roof, out here in the ordinary world. And on the
doors was written her name in symbols so beautiful one could not bear to look
at them.

“By now the crowds on the bank, where the tribute was being
weighed and counted, had swelled to a million persons or more. Suddenly a
trumpet sounded, out of the very ether. Such a silence fell that a man might
think himself deafened, save he hears the tumult of his own heart.

“There came a perfume, then, that all the swooning roses of that
miracle of cities could not rival, and the waters of the river turned to gold
and silver, and fishes of jade sprang up in it, and azure lilies bloomed. The
great doors of gold with the name
Azhriaz
upon
them opened softly as two butterfly wings. And there was a blue fire burning
between them. And out of the fire, she came.

“Perhaps I may find words for all things in the City, but for her
I can find very few. There is needed a new language to describe her. She is
very beautiful, as the statues show her, dark and pale, with eyes of the sky.
But she is the Goddess, and so human words can never be enough. She wore a
silver garment, but it was also gold. Such jewels lay on her breast and arms
and in her ears, upon her feet and fingers, at her waist and in her long hair,
that seeing them, jewels ceased to mean anything at all. She wore a high diadem
of gold, set with diamonds, and from it floated a veil colored like a blush,
sprinkled too with diamonds as if with water drops. Her arms she held outward
from her body; the nails of her hands were long, and white as snow. On the
palms of her hands were gold and silver patterns, or they may have been infant
stars. Her feet did not rest on the ground, not even on those sapphire steps.
She stood in air, and a soft gleaming cloud curled under her soles. Her hair
spread out like rays of a black sun. She was a vast distance from us, yet by
her power she was close enough one saw her blink, and when she did so, there
was a flash of fire, as if her lids struck sparks out of her eyes.

“Then, she spoke. Her voice was low, and sweet as music. I heard
it in my skull, but not in my ears. She said:
‘Do you know me?’
And
falling on our knees and our faces, we cried out that we did, and we worshiped
her. Some thrust knives into their flesh, others slew themselves, or cast
themselves down into the river, where the fish ate them, and we saw it and
applauded. I myself slashed off my left hand—see the stump. That was my first
offering. I felt no pain, only ecstasy. But it was not enough to give her. I
was about to plunge the dagger in my breast when again she spoke. She said:
‘Remember, to the gods you are nothing. To Azhriaz, the Goddess, you are only
grains of dust or sand. You do well, however, to sculpt
our
images from stone, for stone we are, we, the gods—stone that cannot be broken,
stone-hard-handed, stony of eye and mind, having stones for hearts. Yes, the
gods are stones, and you are sand. So it is and always shall be. What then is
your answer to heaven?’ And we loved her and groveled down, and swallowed the
delicious mud of the river bank. That was our answer. And once more I raised
the dagger to give her my life, but I felt her whisper in my soul:
Not that.
And
she told me what it was she desired, without desire, of me. And so, I have
returned and done her bidding. That which I am satisfied she carelessly
required and has forgotten. Go to my house; you will discover there my wife and
children, murdered for a sacrifice.

“Blessed be heaven, and the Goddess-on-Earth.”

2

THERE
WAS a boy who had traveled with the caravans west to east, and had charge over
the pale stone pillars from the boneyard desert. He came on the journey because
his father, who should have had the mission, died of the fear of it a month
before. The boy was not in happy mood, and worn down himself with fright. It
was not surprising he should often have bad dreams throughout the journey.
However, it seemed to him the dreams were worse when he lay near one particular
stone, and that when he slumbered distantly from it, the dreams were flimsy, or
did not come at all. There was nothing remarkable about the stone, except it
had a black blemish at one end. What then did the boy dream, lying near the
stone pillar with the black blemish? He dreamed someone flung him into a fire,
or else he dreamed that it was he who did the flinging of another, and the
victim was one he loved, though he never saw who it might be, nor, waking, had
he ever loved any with such intensity. Then again, there was one dream where
the pillar stood upright and became a slender dark-faced man, in a robe of
white, who touched the boy, and the boy mourned, for he wished to die and he
could not. And there was also a dream when he beheld a city tinted like swans
and blood, and the sea covered it and turned it to coral.

He was an ill-educated boy; he knew next to nothing of the
legends. The living legend of the Goddess-on-Earth had, let it be said,
somewhat overset the balance in these matters. But if he had known more of the
old tales, he might well have said to himself, “Why do I dream the dreams of
Zhirek the Magician, he that killed Simmu, or meant to do so, and gave Simmu’s
city of Simmurad to the seas of the earth’s eastern corner?” But, unknowing,
the boy only said to himself, “Alas, this journey!” And moved farther away from
the pillars of stone.

So the caravans came in, like wrecked shipping, on the shores of
the marvel of Az-Nennafir.

And at last on the bank of the brown river then, with the gigantic
spectacle of the temple-palace over the water, under the spectral shadows of
seven moons, expecting to be maimed or die in the morning, and all around the
tribute of a hundred lands, and their people—every one of them with much the
same thought as he—the boy climbed up on the supine stack of columns, and slept
that night lying over the very damned stone, from sheer defiance. For what
could a dream do to him worse than Azhriaz the Goddess?

But a dream came which was not like any of the others.

It seemed to the boy he woke, and he lay all alone on the river
bank, under a gentle sky with a single crescent moon and some mild singing
stars. And nearby, through the blue water flowers, a woman walked. She was
veiled, yet she seemed to have a radiance on her. He thought:
It is she.
But
in that moment the woman came up to him, and he looked into the deep clearness
of her eyes, and understood no goddess—for the gods were unloving—would look so
kindly on a human thing.

“Lady,” he said, “what is it you want of me?”

“I will tell you a riddle,” she replied. “You must try to guess
its meaning.”

Then the boy forgot it all, his father’s death, the journey, the
place, and the delirious horror to come. He smiled and sat waiting attentively.

“There is,” said the woman, and her voice was beautiful to hear,
“a casket set with fabulous gems, glittering and hard. And within this casket
is a casket of gold, and within that casket a casket of silver. Open these
three in turn, and you will find a casket of crystal, and inside the casket of
crystal one of pearl, and within the pearl a box of velvet. And within the
velvet an exquisite jewel. But within the jewel, what?”