Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (45 page)

An hour before the sun should rise, Hazrond returned to the
world’s center, and thence under the earth. Through a gate of agate he passed,
and a gate of steel, and a gate of black fire. He strode into Druhim Vanashta,
and taking out a pipe shaped like the thighbone of a cat, he blew on it. At
once a demon horse came galloping and Hazrond leaped on its back and rode,
faster than any wind of the wide wild world, to his palace. There, lying
supplicatingly across a mighty doorsill, Hazrond found a little Drin.

“Mercy, glorious one!” said the Drin.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing, yet, alas. For my mere existence I crave your pardon.”

“I do not grant it. Why are you here?”

“It seems to me,” warbled the Drin, “I have lain in the earth
hereabouts, in the garden, and been a worm. I did worm deeds. I had fifty worm
wives, all of whom bore me worm sons, which was of interest to me, since as a
demon I am infertile. Then the one who set me there as a worm—to punish
me—forgot me. Or only, perhaps, forgot himself. And then there came a curious
hesitation in the whole of Being, as if life herself caught her breath—and so I
was sprung, and here I am.”

“Your name is Bakvi. You stole a necklace of tears,” said Hazrond,
musingly.

“I do not remember that,” said Bakvi with caution. “But I remember
my fifty wives and my five thousand sons. This garden is well worm-tilled,
lord, on account of my efforts.”

“Who am I?” said Hazrond.

“A Vazdru, shining brighter and better than any light of the earth.”

“What more?”

Bakvi licked his lips. If Azhrarn had forgotten Azhrarn, and if
this one came like a burnished storm through the door of the palace—

“The Prince of Demons,” submitted Bakvi.

Hazrond smiled, and petted the Drin, who palpitated with ecstasy.
But it seemed to Bakvi he did not palpitate quite as much as he would have done
if another had petted him—

Presently Hazrond, the Eagle-Winged, the Beautiful, (Night’s
Master?), went on into his somber house.

Bakvi skittered away through the garden. He had got used to the
garden, let it be said. Used to tunneling through it, fornicating in it, to all
manner of items which, in demon shape, he would never have dared. Meanwhile his
forge beside the lake would have been invaded long since by some miscreant. So
Bakvi loitered, and now and then, askance, he would lie on the dark grass and
woo the lady worms he sensed were gliding there, lovely as water, through the
undercountry of the soil.

After a time, Bakvi came down the terraces between the cedars of
silver trunks, restraining himself continually from diving for shelter from the
winged fish in the boughs—which, as a worm, had been no more than sensible—and
reached the garden’s center. Here Bakvi paused, perplexed.

There had played on this spot, formerly—and always—a fountain of
heatless unilluminating red flame. Now there was a mound of earth, fissured
here and there, and the fissures smoldered like rubies.

Bakvi sat on the grass and looked at the mound. When he had been
there an hour, a black worm poked its snout out of the ground and Bakvi caught
hold of it.

“Pause a moment, my son,” said Bakvi.

But the worm wriggled unhappily. “You are not as I recall, Daddy.”

“Never mind that. Do you see that heap there?”

“My sight is poor. But I do see it. It glows.”

“Go fetch the rest of your brothers.”

The worm remonstrated. Bakvi threatened. The worm cringed and went
away and returned shortly with ninety-nine other worms. In Bakvi’s worm day he
had taught his family to respect him.

“Sons,” said Bakvi, “you see I am not as I was.” The worms said
that they did, and asked if they should mourn. “Only get under that mound,”
said Bakvi, “and bring me up a good huge piece of the red glowing stuff which
is in it.” The worms were unwilling. “It will not burn you,” said Bakvi. “It
may do something worse, but that is no longer my affair,” he added to himself.
“Have I not,” he inquired of the garden, “presented you with five thousand
gardeners? A hundred of them will not be missed.”

The obedient worms now wriggled into the mound and delved about.
Shortly, for they had been lessoned to be
most
respectful in Bakvi’s worm days, they all came out again, lugging in their
midst a large incarnadine clod.

“It seems to us,” said the eldest of the worms, “that the fire in
the dirt, though heatless and nonilluminative, has properties.”

“You shall all be kings,” said Bakvi. “Now, follow me.”

And so saying Bakvi waddled away toward the region of the lake,
where the Drin metalsmiths hammered. As they went the hundred worms, made
drunken by contact with the fountain fire, began to sing unseemly songs (taught
them by Bakvi in his worm days).

Now Bakvi, if any had asked him, could not have said precisely why
he did as he did. Indeed, as he came to the lake, and along the rocky banks
where the forges rang and the fumes puffed, and scores of Drin out-peered and
asked where he went and what murky lantern that was, Bakvi invented stories,
and lied, and still he did not know exactly what truth he hid.

At length he located a dingy little vacant cave, and here he
crawled in and the worms crawled after, chanting and hiccuping, with the ball
of light which gave no light. One last nosy Drin cried in after them: “What is
that you have?” “Only a dull coal to ignite my brazier,” said Bakvi, again. “It
is a magic I experiment with, combusting a pat of centipede excreta.”

Having got in the cave, Bakvi further instructed his sons, and
sent them belchily forth again. In a state of euphoria they coiled in all
directions, and entering the workshops of those Drin who slept or were absent,
appropriated implements, and took them to their father.

Soon enough, even as waking or home-wended Drin might be heard
screaming
“Thief!”
and
throttling various neighbors, Bakvi set to, rigging a bench, starting a
brazier, calling up old spells, while the worm sons sat admiringly inebriate
all about.

From time to time, fellow Drin would plod to the cave entry,
insatiably curious.

“Who is there?”

“It is Ikki.”

“Ikki? It seemed to me I knew your voice. Yet Ikki was not the
name that tallies with it—”

“I am Ikki, and my mistress is a scorpion whose sting discommodes
for a mortal year, particularly in the riding position.”

“Blessings on you, Ikki, and farewell.”

And later yet, now and then: “Is that you, Ikki?”

“It is I.”

“How is your mistress?”

“Stingful.”

“Good luck attend you, Ikki, and again farewell.”

Bakvi toiled. He made, as the Drin were accustomed to make, an
artifact, and duly glamoured it. It was a stoppered vase of silver, in the
shape of a bird. Next Bakvi took up the clod of earth and fire, and thrust it
down into the bird’s neck, and so into its body, and then bunged in the head.
Then he turned a key of corundum and the bird flew around and around.

“There, it is done,” said Bakvi. And so saying, he fell over an
enormous roll of black carpet. This turned out to be the eldest of his worm
sons, grown (unnoticed, for the Drin, when intent upon smithing, seldom saw
anything else) to prodigious length and girth. As had all the other ninety-nine
that had carried the fountain fire.

“Do not be alarmed, little Father,” said the eldest worm, a smooth
dragon of blazing eyes. “We thank you for keeping your promise, and making us
kings. Now we will take you on your journey.”

“Wh—wh—what journey?” inquired Bakvi, trying to fit himself into a
crevice, unsuccessfully.

“The supernatural dirt has made us uncommonly wise. We know the
way. Come, take the bird of silver and get up on my back.”

“Um,” said Bakvi. “I have a pressing appointment.” But in the end
he was loaded by the other worms upon the eldest worm, which sprawled away over
the rocks in such speedy liquid humpings, Bakvi shrieked with horror.

“Ah, there goes that Ikki, calling and showing off to us,” said
the Drin. “What is that monster he rides? And where is that scorpion mistress
of his?”

“Behind you!” wailed Bakvi, with parting malice, and the worm
rippled him away with it, he knew not where.

But
they came to a stream where opals swam and leapt like salmon and above the
stream was a black hill.

“Now I know why I was afraid,” said Bakvi. But he did not, truly.

The worm put him off with the barest courtesy. The other worms,
which had accompanied them, lay on the ground like some giant’s silken ropes.
But all their eyes gazed upon Bakvi, and all their eyes indicated he must go up
the hill, with only the silver bird of fire to aid him.

“Now why,” said Bakvi, “did the earth catch her breath? And why
could she not have done so without sloughing me? Azhrarn’s punishment of me was
no trouble. But this I do not like.”

There was a path worn up from the stream to a cave mouth in the
hill. The path softly shone. Bakvi thumping up it, the shine muddied over.

Bakvi reached the membrane of Time’s Absence, and the scent of it
made him sneeze. It was an uncouth and noisy sneeze. The membrane, offended,
tore. Bakvi, knock-kneed, tooth-chattering, bird-clutching Bakvi, padded in.

He could see nothing, or very little. A statue, slim and dark,
stood nearby, two others farther off, and on a slab of rock, a figure, bright
as a fallen moon, blacker than the blood of night, close as a bone, distant as
heaven, a stranger, and familiar.

Bakvi fell to his face and gibbered, and the bird fluttered from
his grasp and he did not see where it went.

Then a voice spoke to Bakvi. It was gentle, and very terrible.
Yet, at the sound of it, the demon ichor in his veins came all alive.

“I gave you only severity. Why do you do this for me?”

Then Bakvi said, “Pile acrimony on me. What does that matter? Love
is love.”

And Bakvi thought to himself,
I am possessed and speak like a
fool.
But he said again: “Love is love. She cannot be seen because she
is everything. We fight her. We turn her away. But we can no more do it than
throw off our own life. In the end, love alone remains. In the end, love will
inherit the world. But that is not yet.”

“Not yet, for sure,” said the voice, so wondrous, so awful, Bakvi
nearly perished, immortal that he was. “Tell me the reward you would have.”

Then Bakvi twittered with cravenness.

“Let me be a worm again. Let me be a
big
worm, like my sons. Let me be the king of the worms of the demon country.”

And then he jumped up to abscond—and what was he, Bakvi, but a
huge nigrescent perfect worm. And going out and down the hill, he crossed the
stream like a river and slid upon his willful sons, and dwarfed them.

“Who am I?” said Bakvi, the worm.

“Our respected daddy,” said the worms, respectfully.

“Go beneath,” said Bakvi, “and tell your mother, and all my wives,
to
grow.
And
then, to make ready.”

Under
windows of sultry sapphire, Hazrond paced to and fro. He had been out hunting,
had Hazrond, chasing with his horses and hounds the strayed souls of madmen
asleep. But there had been something wanting in the sport. They had not
screamed enough, maybe, those souls, or they had screamed with laughter in the
nightmare’s jaws.

The earth had caught her breath, or the nature of life had done
so. With his Vazdru awareness, Hazrond knew of it, unknowingly. Knew, also, he
had somehow missed it. The moon had stumbled and the stars exclaimed. One
instant. Then all was rectified. Why should it concern him? Was he not Prince
Wickedness, mankind’s tormentor?

Hazrond seated himself, and drank from a cup of glass a wine more
transparent.

A lamp lighted itself across the chamber, and with a deep ruby
ray. Hazrond looked at the lamp. Though alight, it gave none.

Hazrond pointed at the lamp, which went out. Looking down, he
found a serpent at his foot, with ruby eyes. Hazrond kicked it from him—it was
already gone.

Then in the middle of the air, a bird of silver circled. Hazrond
tossed a dagger at it and all at once its head shot off—it burst into
fragments, and only a flame flowered there, flickering and twisting, giving no
heat, illuminating nothing.

Hazrond reclined in his chair, and took another sip from his cup.
He was different now. Softer, more vivid. “Oh, are you about?” he said. “You
have slept late, wherever you have been sleeping. Have you come to offer me
your service? A handsome page to bring me sweetmeats, or a minstrel to pipe me
tunes? Which is it to be, Azhrarn?”

Then the flame stretched near. Hazrond sat in his chair and
finished his wine. Into the empty goblet the flame ran, and filled it. Hazrond
threw the cup away with a negligent gesture. The cup whirled; the flame gushed
from it, vanished. The cup smashed against a pillar, and the voice of Azhrarn
spoke behind Hazrond’s left shoulder: “When the night returns to the earth
above, I shall return to Druhim Vanashta, my city, which you borrowed without
my leave.”