Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (61 page)

REMEMBER THIS: ALL THESE YOU MAY HAVE BEEN,

OR MAY BE.

REMEMBER THIS: IN EACH AND ALL

THERE BURNS THE FLAME.

They
said she had made the temple, or inspired it, the ancient seeress of the
snakes.

Or perhaps she had only chanced upon the temple, and been prompted
to remain.

Or some said she dreamed it, and her dream laid the foundation,
but she was then a child in a distant land.

Whatever the truth, it was to the old woman they went, the
pilgrims, for consolation, after they had worshiped their own image in the
halls below.

The sun had set; there was nothing new in that.

The stars came out and crowned the mountain. Nothing new in that,
either.

The moon sailed up in the east. This had happened before.

Down in the valley, where the poplars grew along the road leading
to and from the city, there came a tapping sound.
Tap-tap,
tap-tap.
The cattle had been driven home. The travelers had found their
lodgings. The troupes of players, the journeymen—all these had made their camps
in the grassy meadows, under trees. And the native citizens were indoors.
Tap-tap.
Even the brigands did not lie in wait upon that thoroughfare, out of respect
for the temple in which they too, and their hungers, were represented.
Tap tap-tap.
Who
could it be, making along the night-time road, where the moon cast the shadows
of the poplars down in stripes? Along the road, toward the temple, steady and
intent.
Tap.

After dark, the temple too was dark; only a lamp hung here and
there. But one lamp was on the outer porch above the gate, and a young priest
would sit there, to watch through the night, to look at the stars, to think,
and in case someone might have some need or trouble.

He saw then, the young man before the Temple of Man, a hunched
inky figure, formless as a blot upon the air, inching up onto the slope of the
mountain like a black snail. And it leaned upon a staff and it tapped with the
staff. And for some reason, the hair shivered on the priest’s scalp. He stood
and watched the tapping snail crawling up the slope, around the turns and
curves of the mountain, all the while getting nearer. The priest shuddered and
was amazed. He said to himself,
There have been night visitors before.
True, it is not quite canny. But there is nothing bad in it, surely. Besides, I
never saw one of them, and now I shall. And besides again, whatever it is, I am
human and will live forever. Even if a dragon comes and tears me in pieces, the
fire of my life it cannot quench. Let me be easy therefore, and brave.

Finally the black being had tapped all the way to the temple gate.

There it raised its head, and the lamplight showed a seamed face,
and lizard-lidded eyes. An old, old man, nearly old as the seeress, maybe.

“Good evening, sir,” said the young priest, mastering himself with
difficulty, for to the sense of fear had now been added a curious awe. But the
old man nodded, and leaned on his staff. From under his hood strayed charcoal
locks. One gnarled hand gripped the staff’s neck, but the fingers of the other
tapped on, upon the staffs head, which was in the shape of a black dog, long in
the muzzle, pointed in the ears, with two black jewels for eyes. Just so were
the eyes of the ancient, also, when he widened them at the priest, black and
brilliant. In like manner, the eyes of the seeress had stayed bright in her
ravaged face.
For
sure, this is another of her kindred,
thought the priest. And he
trembled.

“I am informed,” said the old man, “there is a prophetess here.
Atmeh, she is named.”

Then the priest sighed. The voice of the old man was so beautiful,
so full of music and power, yet so full of darkness, too. The very sound of it
swept through the young man, like water through a channel, like a drug through
the veins.

“Just so,” stammered the priest, “you will be welcome to go in,
doubtless. As are the rest of her family.”

“Her family?” said the old man. “Who might they be?”

“Well, she is aged, aged as trees and hills, sir. But it would
seem, late in life—or through some magical means—she bore three sons, and by
three different fathers—three kings, they say. But I have never seen them—” And
the priest grew silent, faintly ashamed to have disclosed so much, and to one
who presumably knew it already.

But the old man pondered. He said, “You must tell me more of
this.”

And it seemed to the young priest that very definitely, he had no
choice in the matter.

So, he told the story, as he had often heard it, from those who
had witnessed the priestess’s three night callers. They did not, it appeared,
ever arrive together. Nor were they at all alike.

Except that each was handsome, and each was rich—what could it be
but that, in her extensive life, Atmeh had conceived and borne them? And that
their fathers were kings, who could doubt it from their wealth and their
demeanor? Apparently they thought it best to travel incognito here, and steal
up the mountain alone, to pay their respects to their mother.

One wore clothes the color of a sunset, orange and gold, and his
skin was brown as a nut. He was the most dutiful son, and had stopped by the
most often. Sometimes even he was early, and several pilgrims had beheld him in
the westering light, sitting on a rock at the wayside. And these declared he
was then dressed as a beggar, the further to mask his regal person. The second
son was less dutiful and had not been seen so frequently. He was blond of hair
and complexion, wore magenta and diamonds, and his beauty upset the evening
birds, who would begin to bleat like sheep. (And there were other things when
he was about—doors opening in unexpected directions, milk fermenting to
alcohol, the hair of girls plaiting itself.) An odd one, the second son. The
third son, he wore pure white raiment, and patently he had been fathered by a
lord of the black races. In the beginning he had never once called on his
mother, being the least dutiful of the three. Yet, in recent months, he was
noted often. “He is trying to make it up to her,” they said.

The old man in black, when he had heard this recital, gave a
laugh. It was melodious, but not good to hear, somehow. “And I,” he then said.
“What do you suppose I am? The lady’s father, perhaps?”

“No, honored sir,” said the priest, “since you are not old
enough.”

“Nevertheless,” said the old man, “I will go in.”

“Nevertheless,” said the priest, “I am not inclined to prevent
you.”

At that, the old man drew close to the young one, and putting out
his elderly claw, he touched the priest upon the breast, once. This touch was
gentle as a kiss, yet from it such a rush of ecstasy ran through his body that
the priest fell to the earth. And reaching sightlessly, he caught the hem of
the black mantle to his lips. “Oh supreme master, you are surely a god, a
loving god, you warm me like wine, like love itself. The sun by night—you are
that sun—” But there seemed under his mouth and fingers only a fierce beating
like colossal wings—

Coming back to himself, the priest gazed around him. No one was
by. The gate was shut. The lamp burned placidly, and all the motionless stars.

“Did I dream it?”

The night wind, browsing in the grasses, answered
Yes.

“Yes,” agreed the young man. “A dream.”

The
priestess-seeress was sitting within the shrine. By day, it was the color of
the sky, but by night pale, like a smoky moon. Inside the shrine, the vapors
floated and the pillars stood still, both substances with a liquid glimmering
on them. Between, on a ledge, was Atmeh.

Her robe was blue and fresh in the light of the little dishes of
oil which burned there. Yet she was bent nearly double, she had shrunk and
withered, her skin to parchment, her hair to gauze. Only her eyes blazed on,
as if the flame of life itself directly kindled them. They were keen, her eyes.
A snake, which if it had stood up on its tail would have knocked the high roof
with its skull, lay about Atmeh like a coil of costly rope, its head quiescent
on her lap. Atmeh said now to the snake, “See, beloved. Here is one you must
bow down to. Or he may change you into a cat.”

The snake obediently looked, then, where Atmeh looked—into the
shadows—and lifting itself, the snake let itself down again to the floor in a
fluid obeisance. That done, it swam away across the shrine, and twined itself
about a pillar, seeming to sleep, open-eyed in the fashion of its race.

A man walked from the shadows then. He was marvelously handsome,
with hair that shone like blue-black fire, and clothed in all the magnificence
of night. If any from the temple, or the city, any pilgrims or passersby had
seen him, they would have exclaimed: “Why, we had supposed the seeress had
three handsome sons, but here is a fourth!”

But there again, the faces of the three sons formerly noted had
had a similarity of expression. They were enigmatic, perhaps, but benign. What
expression did this fourth prince convey, so pale, so black of hair, in his
mantle of black that seemed to hold the light of a thousand black-blue
lightnings? Expressionless, this one, yet surely not benign.

“Lord of lords,” said Atmeh, firmly, softly, “pardon me if I do
not, as the serpent did, render you the correct homage. But it is a mortal
failing, this stiffness. My spirit bows down to you, even if my frame may not.
Will that do?”

“Mortal,”
he
said. “There you are.”

Atmeh replied, “And here also are you, my father.”

Azhrarn’s face assumed an expression then. It was one of blasting
contempt, or repugnance. But, after a pause, he spoke to her again.

“The Drin,” he said, “take pride in their ugliness, for beside the
unsurpassable glamour of the Vazdru and the Eshva, what is there left for them
but to be hideous—a paltry comeliness would not suffice. The Drin, nevertheless,
convey their rejected beauties by what they make, and everything they make,
from the most complex artifact to a tiny pin, everything is exquisite. Yet when
a Drin makes anything that fails to please him, which—to his mind—is imperfect,
he destroys it instantly. It is a habit indeed with all demonkind to eradicate
a fault. And you,” said Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, “you, who were made by
me, from sable shade and clear nocturnal light, you, carried in the flawless
vessel of Dunizel—I regard you now. To this abjection you have brought
yourself. What should I do, confronted by that fact?”

“My death is near,” said Atmeh. “You need only wait.”

“Yes, he will have told you so, that third ‘son’ of yours, Uhlume.
He is readying a tender stony cup for you. But the end I might present you with
would bring you pain, I think.”

“If that is your wish,” said Atmeh, “to cause me to die in agony,
then do it. I will not struggle or deny you.”

Azhrarn’s face altered. It was not friendlier, only different.

He said, “With such words, your mother came to me, at the first.”

“She loved you from the first.”

“Love,” he said. “Why pretend you have invented it?”

“Was I not,” she said, “a demon, once? And did not the demons
invent love?”

“Not the love you mean.”

“Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung
from a single root. The body’s love will teach the spirit how to love. The
spasm of the body’s carnal pleasure, forgetting all things but ecstasy itself,
teaches the body to remember the ecstasy of the soul, forgetting all but
itself, the moments of oneness, and freedom. The love a man
feels
only for one other in all the world will teach him, at length, love of all
others, of all the world. A cry of joy, whatever its cause, is the one true
memory of those wonders the flesh has banished. A cry of love is always a cry
of
love.”

Then Azhrarn’s face truly and utterly altered. He looked at her,
and though he was the dark incarnate, yet darkness fell away from him.

“Little girl,” he said, “I would have killed you seven times over,
each death a death more vile. Humanity is my plaything no longer, only a toy
for those that are mine under the earth. But you, you are
her
child. You are hers. You are Dunizel. Not mine. Never mine. Though I made you
to be my curse upon the world. Though I made you to be myself. You are Dunizel,
that I loved, Dunizel who was the moon and sun together. Your mother’s
daughter. I could no more hurt you than I would tear the stars from the sky.”

Then Atmeh got to her feet, old and bowed and withered in her
robe of sunny blue, and she went down to him, across the floor, peculiarly
graceful, as a crumpled dying leaf has grace. When she stood by him, Azhrarn
kneeled before her on the ground. He bowed his head, and she set her hands upon
it, upon that midnight ocean of hair, that case of ivory bone beneath that held
the firmament of his brain.