Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (60 page)

The lion purrs as Atmeh sings in its ear. Then Atmeh claps her
hands, and with a flaunt of great pinions, the lion tips itself up into the
ether, soars, becomes a tiny daylight star, and is gone.

Atmeh sits down upon the earth to plait a garland of yellow
flowers.

A tree nearby opens, and lets out Chuz, a poetic warrior captain
mailed and purple-fringed. But the sword in the scabbard at his side is a
mauve-eyed serpent waiting only to be drawn to terrify bystanders.

Chuz kneels by Atmeh. He is so handsome, so unlike himself as
legends have him to be, you are not entirely sure it is not, after all, Oloru
come back again. Yet he is certainly too fabulous for Oloru. Too absolute.
Mortals never have this look, of flashing fire made cool and everlasting.

“Where have you sent your lion?” Chuz asked, as the girl set upon
his golden hair the golden garland.

“Where it wishes. We have said farewell.”

Chuz reclined. He lay down, and his head rested upon her lap. He
looked up at her. No mortal woman, with such a lover by her, could have said
farewell in turn to him. Atmeh was not yet mortal.

“Tell me,” she said, as she gazed down upon him, “what I desire to
be told.”

“And what is that?”

“You know it.”

“And did you,” he said, “facilitate my return to you, only in
order to get from me the information?”

Atmeh gazed upon him.

“Oh, tell me,” she said.

“That you may grow old and die, and this exquisite skin, this
hair, these bones, your eyes that are the sun twice over if the sun became the
sky—that all this may decay, end, feed soil, and slugs. For that? My reward for
telling you, to see you ruined as your mother was?”

“You did not,” said Atmeh, “slay my mother. That I know. I knew
when I forgot to hate her. When I loved her again, then I knew. But not how it
came to be.”

“I will tell you that,” he said. “If you wish.”

“Be wary,” said Atmeh, “for if you do tell me that, you confirm
the means to my own mortality. You note, I am already aware of it.”

They had dressed as humans. Like two humans they rested together
in the meadow, mountains about, heaven above, and earth below.

But how did he describe for her the death of her mother and his
portion of it, and his guiltlessness—when for that guilty crime Azhrarn had
insisted Chuz be punished? Not in words, surely. In a glance. By a method of
silent speech even the Vazdru and the Eshva had not coined. Those that came
after, however, had only words, nor now the words of the flat earth. Be
patient, be attentive, the storyteller cries. Never more needful, these
virtues, than now.

In the era of Bhelsheved, it had happened Azhrarn’s blood had
spilled in the desert there, three drops. Chuz had come on them, or sought
them, and taken them up and hidden them. Out of motives of mischief or
admiration or vindictiveness or all of these, and yet other promptings. For if
the intellect of such as Azhrarn is awkward to gauge, how much more alien the
brain of Madness.

But there is also this. By removing those three polished obsidian
drops of unearthly ichor, Chuz kept them from the grasp and plots of men.

Now presently Chuz stood on the lake of Bhelsheved, and offered to
Dunizel, in a courtly way, an amethyst die, which Azhrarn refused on her
behalf. And after that, the die, one of a pair of dice, maybe, had been found
by an insane sect who worshiped stones. And then the die—acclaimed as a radiant
stone—was put into a leather bag about an old man’s neck, and venerated as a
god. But presently again, when Dunizel had been brought out before the angry
people as the harlot of demons, and they debated on how to execute her, and if
they dared, Chuz had tried to retrieve the amethyst. A scuffle ensued. Dice,
pebbles, and other objects dashed from the robe of Chuz. A shout went up that
stones were being thrown at the accursed woman, and so other stones were
thrown, with lethal intent. Under Azhrarn’s protections, nothing harmed her
until, along with all the debris, someone chanced to pick up and cast at her
one of the drops of Azhrarn’s blood. And that being the only item which could pierce
his safeguards on her, it killed her outright.

Finally, when the child—Azhriaz—was alone in the fane, Chuz
appeared again and proffered her, infant that she was, the amethyst, the very
clue, it seemed, to her mother’s murder. And Azhriaz did not accept the jewel.
Not until Azhrarn had had his revenge on Chuz, not till she was a woman and
alone, did Dunizel’s daughter take the amethyst from that lotus in the swamps
by the river delta. And then ever after she wore it in a little cage of silver
at her throat.

She had begun to guess, or knew all of it. Chuz told her freshly,
and for the first, in the silent incomprehensible speech, or by a glance, or by
nothing save his agreement that she learn.

Perhaps he had cared for Dunizel, or for Azhrarn. Perhaps he had
been proud, and not liked mankind to get power over a fellow prince. Or it had
been just the madman’s pernickety wish for tidiness. Chuz, finding them, kept
safe the drops of blood. He stored them
inside the die of amethyst.
It
was an eccentric jest, then, to offer Azhrarn’s own property to Azhrarn,
through Azhrarn’s lover, and to be refused, spurned, put off. Then, as the
storm gathered over Bhelsheved, Chuz, madly forcing the issue, bringing down
the roof on Azhrarn’s schemes, even mistrusting himself (well advised), gave
the fateful jewel away. He gave it to the stone-worshiping madmen, his
subjects. And the old man stowed the amethyst in a leather bag, from which he
never would have allowed it to be taken for any base use. But, oh, Fate—if not
Kheshmet, his essence, the happenstance from which Kheshmet had evolved. Prior
to the jewel, the old philosopher had kept in his leather bag an amulet of
gold. Gold, that was inimical to the demons, and to demon tissue.

The echo, the ghost of the gold, in such naked proximity, worked
upon the drops of Vazdru blood. They began to move inside the die, to seek an
exit. And Chuz, sensing that, in turn tried to regain the amethyst, and was
unable. By the moment the die was scattered with other objects in the fray, a
single demoniac drop had broken free from its prison. A nameless hand seized
it, and flung it for a pebble. It did the very thing Chuz had not meant it to.
And Dunizel, though not the soul of Dunizel, perished.

Two drops of blood remained inside the die. They had stayed there,
and were there to this minute, protected by silver, about the neck of Azhrarn’s
daughter.

“By which you confirm,” said Atmeh now, “that they are also the
means to my death. As with my mother. That power laboring against itself, diamond
cutting diamond. If I absorb that immortal energy changed to black stone, it
will wear away
my
immortality. I will live long, and grow old at length, and finish. And thus I
shall be free.”

“But as you also know,” said Chuz, “I sealed the amethyst. Only my
will can give those drops of death to you.”

“Or,” she said, “the mere action of gold.”

And
she raised the collar of electrum with the lotus set
in
it. Under that, in the hollow of her throat, lay a golden acorn on a chain of
gold. The gold had silvered; she had worn it some while.

“The die is here, within the gold. I believe it has already
completed its task. But I was always half mortal. It was necessary to me, to
learn from you and from no one and nothing else, that you did not kill my
mother.”

“Throw the bauble away,” said Chuz. “Perhaps I lied.”

“Azhrarn warred with you for a deed of which you were blameless. I
too must be given my right to savage foolishness, the glory of self-denial.”

And Atmeh tapped the acorn. It cracked in bits. Into her palm
sprinkled brilliant lavender dust, all that was left of the die, ground between
the struggle of the gold and two drops of ichor. These last appeared too in
Atmeh’s palm, black and boiling, sudden as meteors. Her hand flew to her lips.
She took those drops of death within her mouth, on her tongue. She swallowed
them.

Chuz sprang to his feet. Like a young man whose wife or sister has
abruptly eaten poison.

All around, the birds had stopped singin
g.
The flowers wilted. A shadow masked the sun.

“It is done,” said Atmeh, looking up at him. She said it quietly,
with compassion. “Now I shall live.”

Prince Madness stood staring at her.

“You are Dunizel,” he said. “She betrayed
him
with death. Now you do it to me.”

“Did you not say to me, once, there is all time for us to meet
again? And there is this life yet. With me, it has not been a piercing weapon
cast—it will be mild, and slow. I shall live a few days longer, some hundreds
of years.”

“You will be a hag,” said Chuz. His face was pale and serious.
“You will die. You will come back to the earth in disguise, beautiless, ugly,
diseased, witless, a woman or a man. Unrecognizable. This you wanted? To see my
shoulder turned to you? To see the foul side of me, and that hand which sends
men shrieking to the mind’s brink?”

“Chuz,” she said, “are you not the symbol of everything—the fair
and the vile, together? And you, the dealer in lunacy, a pitying father, a
rescuer, the kind physician who binds the bruises of life. The spirit of poets,
and prophets, the lord of frenzies, religions, music, magic, love, and wine.
You are the master of the key to the inner mystery. You are the breaker of
chains. I am your subject, my lord, as I am your lover. Always. And you will
know me, till the last star blooms and fades. You will know me beyond the
ending of the earth.”

Then Chuz kneeled once more beside her. Like two humans, they
clung together, and the cloud left the sun and showed them there. The flowers
lifted their heads. The birds exchanged their singing gossip. What was the world
but passing things? What is it now?

“What will you do, Atmeh, as a woman?”

“What I have learned to do. But I shall love you always.”

“Love is everywhere,” said Chuz gently, stroking her hair, “and
the death of love. And time, which is built of the histories of death and love.
Death and time I had always conceded, and acknowledged. And now I see plainly
what love is. Not in you, pretty, mortal child. But in my arms that comfort you
for wounding me, in my hands which soothe you for it, in my words which say to
you, in despite of me, Do whatever you must. This lesson I will not remember.
Nor shall I ever forget.”

And Chuz lowered his eyes, his matchless eyes. He, magnificent, a
Lord of Darkness, held in his arms now a mortal woman. As Azhrarn had
discovered, that was like clasping the tides of the sea, the winds of heaven.
How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The
sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand
has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on.

EPILOGUE:
Three Handsome Sons

MANY
THOUSANDS had come to consult the seeress, over the years. She was kind, and
partial, but most significant, she was clever. She sat inside a shrine of
sky-blue marble, far back in the throat of it, where the vapors rose out of the
mountain. Perhaps these vapors were conducive to prophecy. Huge serpents
dwelled, or had come to dwell, in the mountain, and these were the attendants
of the seeress, smooth pythons and patterned anacondas. They did no harm,
except sometimes to scare the unwary. It seemed the seeress-priestess had an
affinity with snakes.

How old she was, the woman. Some said two centuries, or three.
Others said she was a young girl of exceptional acumen, who had given herself the
appearance of age in order not to tempt or anger gods and men. Certainly she
had been in that place a very great time, for grandfathers and grandmothers
remembered that their own grandsires had related how
their
grandsires spoke of her.

She had previously traveled the world, to its four corners. To
its deeps, its elevations. Even under the sea, they said, she had gone. And it
seemed she had married, or been loved, also, but this was normally only
murmured of: She was beyond weddings and couchings now. Now she was here, a
blown grain of sand come to rest.

A city ripened in the valley under the mountain. A temple
blossomed from the mountain’s side. When strangers stayed there, they asked,
“To which of the gods is this fine temple dedicated?” But the temple was not
dedicated to the gods. It was dedicated to man. And man was worshiped there. In
all his stages—as a seed within a womb, as a baby, and as an infant. As a
female and a male child next, then as youth and maiden, woman and man, father
and mother, stoop-back and crone. And in the inner cloisters mankind was shown
in beauty, or ugliness, as prince and beggar, as the leper and the strong,
being crippled or upright. One found icons of the artisan and the warrior, the
scholar and the slave, the king, the priest, the sage. And, cut from polished
stone, effigies of the enraged and drunken, the mad, the stupid, the sly, the
genius, the artist, the murderer, the savior, the innocent. All these, and
more. And chiseled in the pillars here and there, or in the marble of the
floor, these words: