Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (9 page)

Now, she was Vazdru,
Sovaz, the Demon’s child, and she had drawn her genius about her. As the wild
hunt dazzled along the avenue of trees, the glade winked out like a flame in
water, because she willed it to. How strong, how confident her sorcery. Azhrarn
himself, riding with his folk about him, did not spy what she had hidden,
though he turned his dark head as they pelted by, maybe unsure, considering—but
even the blaze of her eyes she sheathed from him.
I
am not here, Azhrarn, Prince of Princes. And he is not, that other prince you
seek.

Then, like storm-wrack,
they were gone, and the wail of the dogs died like the sting of a numbing blow,
away through the forest, away through the world, and out of it.

Soon Sovaz returned to
the pool. She stood looking down at Oloru, who had called her Evening Star.

“Yes, just as he
promised, he is hunting you. He knows you have dared his lands, idiot and mad
thing that you are. He came very close to you. Do you fear him then, this demon
unbrother of yours? Well. I did not betray you. It seems we are to be friends.”
And she kneeled by him.

“What?”
said Oloru, opening his amber eyes slowly.

“Fool,” said Sovaz.
“Yes, it is a canny disguise, not to know yourself. Maybe he will never find
you in it. But now, gentle guardian—” And before Oloru could prevent it, she
seized both his gloved hands, and tore from them the jeweled silken gloves, and
flung them away.

Oloru
stared at his hands.

The
left was well shaped but gray as river clay; it trembled, and he saw the long
nails were red like lacquer, and its palm was black. He let it down hastily in
the grass and would not look at it. There remained the right hand, then. The
right hand of Oloru was constructed of brass, but the four fingers of it were
four brazen serpents that snapped and hissed. The thumb was a fly of dark-blue
stone, which, released from the glove, quickly spread its wings of wire and
clicked its mandibles frantically together.

Oloru screamed.
He erupted to his feet and fled, trying to elude the monstrous hand. But of
course the hand ran with him, irrevocably attached, and the snakes waking and
fuming and spitting, and the fly rattling its wings and jaws and feelers
irritably.

Away through the
forest, insane with terror and shock, Oloru sprang.

Sovaz did not
wait, she went after him, running as lightly as he, and as fast. In less than a
minute, perhaps, she caught him, by his sleeve and by his shining hair. Oloru
slumped against a tree, shivering and shedding tears, white as death, calling
to the gods piteously.

“The gods?” inquired Sovaz. “You know they have no
care for men. For yourself, what do you need with gods?”

“Is this some bane you have thrown on me?” asked
Oloru. “Oh, let me free of it.”

“Bane? Look at
this
bane.
Do you not, even for the moment of
a moment, remember its inventor?”

Oloru looked. He
looked at the lively snakes and the blue fly. Then he closed his long-lashed
eyes and sank, senses vanquished (ever Oloru), to the earth.

She laughed a
whole instant, did Sovaz. But then her laughter was done. Some other emotion
rushed now over the first. Unlike herself, it had no name for her. It filled
her with inexplicable excitement and hurt.

Again, she knelt
beside him. She held him to her so her supernatural warmth should come between
him and the skin of the world that was to all supernatural things, always, a
lure, a lover’s embrace, the snare of an enemy. In that second of confusion,
she nearly understood her father. But this passed.

Once, then, there was a young aristocrat, most
handsome but most poor, who lived with his widowed mother and his virgin
sisters beside a fey black forest. And here he went hunting, scorning
superstition, taking with him the only servant left to the house. And here too,
one day, he was lost by this servant, who spent many hours in trying to refind
him. But he was not found. No, not till he returned himself at sunset, out of
the depths of a wood which was famed for the egress of things irregular.

The young hunter’s name
had been Oloru. Had been, for he claimed it no more. Another claimed it.
Another became it, growing over and through it like a vine.

It was this way.

He was not cruel, the
first Oloru, to the beasts of the forest. He hunted only for food, and that
since his family had always one extra at their table, Lady Hunger, who sat
there with them and gnawed her own knuckles, glaring at their plates the while
from under her famished eyebrows.

Nevertheless, in the way
of hunting, Oloru brought down the youthful deer with spears, laid traps for
the cinnamon hares, overfeathered the wings of wild ducks with arrows.

The forest was
bewitched. Who did not agree? Only Oloru paid no heed to the rumors. And he was
there so often, and his dwelling so close. How could the composite entity of
the forest fail to learn his name and his person by rote?

So one morning the first
Oloru rose early and went with his servant into the forest after game. The
young man walked singing, for he saw no wrong in what he did, nor thought any
other would see wrong in it. Turning then under an arch of trees, Oloru felt an
unexpected chill, as if the dew had changed to snow. Looking around to comment
on this phenomenon to his servant, he found the servant gone. And then the
whole of the forest seemed to run together in a wall. Oloru was in a little
space, no bigger than he could pace around in three circling steps. The rest
was a black towering—trees—or something older, more intense, of which the
growths of the forest had been only a residue, till some arcane magic called it
forth again.

Oloru was afraid, but,
unlike the later model of himself, no blissful coward; ready to fight. He
shouted at the forest, for justice. Justice came.

It began with a raging
thirst that fastened on him abruptly, without warning. And it continued with a
stream of water plashing at his feet. He had never drunk the waters of the
forest, never needed to. But this water he must have, and though some instinct,
against his own skepticism, called to him to beware, he did not heed, nor could
not. He lay on the ground and lapped the stream. There was no pang, not even a
discomfort. None of the fruitless battle he had thought to offer. He lay down
to drink a man. He rose up a yellow jackal, which feinted and danced with its
shadow, barked and howled at nothing at all, and ran away into the wood. All
human rites of intellect or body were null, gone between one sip of water and
the next. To Oloru, no longer Oloru, there was no punishment. He dawdled and
bounded deep into the trees, he sought his own current kind, who accepted and
were fond of him. He lived as a good jackal should, until in the fullness of
years he died one. And then his soul recovered itself with some startlement.

Yet, unpunished, he
hunted no more. And unpunished was he punished, Oloru, who had been born a
human man.

Now. In those days, or
in these, when the smallest pebble was or is dug up from the soil, it leaves an
impression behind itself, the size and shape of itself, though empty. And in
those days, so too with all things of being. There had been a young man in the
forest, but the forest had changed him to a yellow jackal. That digging up from
the soil of existence left an impression behind it surely enough, a kind of
cast or mold, into which some other, if he were sufficiently vital, could pour
his fluid form and
set,
flesh-hard, to an
exact replicate of Oloru the mortal and the no more.

One was by, and vital
enough.

Chuz, Prince Madness,
had been some while wandering the earth. His last meeting with Azhrarn may or
may not have discomposed him, but doubtless it gave him to think, in his own
obscure fashion. Dunizel, beloved of the Prince of Demons, had died through
Chuz’s fault; the evidence of the matter could show nothing else. But whether
it had been a deliberate fault, an error in judgment, or a mad impulse—who was
absolutely sure? For the mind of such as Chuz inclined to be unfathomable.
Notwithstanding that, he had incurred the wrath of Azhrarn, who spoke of
retribution. Would Chuz fear that? He had powers and to spare, there was not a
Lord of Darkness who was without powers of many and awe-inspiring sort. And by
very reason of this, such a duel could hardly be taken lightly. There was once
an occasion when Azhrarn himself, finding he was on the borders of an ultimate
disagreement with another of his peers, Uhlume, King Death, had approached
Uhlume and placated him, giving him even a tactful clue as to how their game
might be won. It is to be concluded Chuz now sought some tactful means of
appeasement.

At one time it had been
supposed all Lords of Darkness avoided the earthly sun, which would scorch
them, or reduce them to ashes. This, however, was only true of one—Azhrarn, by
virtue of his demon origins. Nevertheless, every one of those other four Dark
Lords had a definite penchant for the night, and for night games and
shadowplay, and shadowy places. In this way it came about that Chuz was at
large in the somber forest, enjoying the feel of its sorcerousness, no doubt,
as another would enjoy the scent of flowers, at the moment of the first Oloru’s
transformation. Doubtless too, Chuz was instantly drawn to the spot, the surge
of magic like the call of some fascinating bird. Once there, he made his
decision, having perceived what had occurred. Having also formed some attendant
plans, he poured his fluid unconscionable self suddenly into the metaphysical
mold, settled, hardened within it invisibly, and at last stepped forth,
stunned, into the day’s ending.

As a disguise, it was a
unique one. In the way of transforming the humanoid aspect of Chuz, Chuz being
yet Chuz, it did not utterly succeed. Prince Madness, or most of one side of
him, had always been fair to look on. And he was besides apt at that time to be
translated to overall good looks; had been practicing them in Bhelsheved. Thus,
where the form of Oloru was fair enough, never had it been as fair as the influx
of Chuz now made it. Nor had the first Oloru been as poetical, or as lunatic,
as the second Oloru, which was of course only fitting. So, in the effect of
appearance, the ruse was no more than theater, and easily undermined. However.
The steely root of the disguise lay in another direction. Chuz, reborn Oloru,
became
Oloru. Chuz forgot he was Chuz.

Before, the passage of
Chuz’s footstep two thousand miles off might have tingled the perceptions of
Azhrarn, for each Lord of Darkness exuded the glamour of his ego from every
nonearthly pore. But now, only Oloru was there, who knew he was only Oloru.

It was a fact, time and
again the second Oloru had brushed by demonkind in the dark of the world’s
nights. Sometimes they had even been attracted to him, sensing
something.
But when they came close, there was only
a handsome crack-wit larking or jeering or shaking with frayed nerves. Oloru’s
essence cried loudly: Youth, maleness, self-conscious sexual ambiguity, charm,
brinkmanship, neurasthenia. And such were the notices of mortals. And the
demons, maybe briefly puzzled, withdrew again and left him alone.

This then, the gracious
obeisance Chuz extended to Azhrarn: See how I honor you and value your wrath,
unbrother. I am hiding in earnest.

Azhrarn’s anguished lethargy
had had its uses, too. It had provided the margin for Chuz to indulge in
wandering experiment, and, once the second Oloru came from the wood, the space
to explore and develop his role.

Not until Chuz’s
invasion of Underearth had Azhrarn turned his head to listen, and his
inclination again to the format of revenge. Even there, the pursuers were mistaken.
Hapless Prince Lak, with all his long life of wrongdoing bright before him,
took the brunt as ingenuous decoy. The razor-bite perfume of Chuz had been all
over him, while Chuz himself, die and rod, was singularly lacking in it. For
even in such guise, he still believed himself only Oloru, to begin with.

Chuz, as himself, could
have worked Lak’s magic of astral descent, and magics far superior, with scarcely
a thought. But as Oloru, he was not able. Chuz as himself would never have
dared (probably) to enter the Underearth; it was an act of unnegotiable
hostility. But Oloru was simply a poet seeking forbidden thrills.

When the spell took
hold, the entire package, Chuz-Oloru, life force and flesh, went down below
ground in the topaz. An immortal, Chuz had no soul, or else he was completely a
sort of soul, pure demonic energy, if no demon.

All the actions of
Oloru, to the very point of crossing the sea-lake and alighting on the island,
had been apparently random insane high jinks. Naturally, they were not. More
than a year before, in the seconds of his decision to become Oloru, Chuz had
implanted certain impulses in his own secret brain that would come not to know
itself. To seek a magician master from whom he could steal handy provisional
magics, next to entice and wheedle him into a trek below. There to fly off at a
tangent, and happen by intuition on the being last seen, though not recalled,
as a tiny child; Azhrarn’s progeny. Dunizel’s daughter.

In truth, though he had
not realized it, she was all the goal of Oloru’s second life. To find her out,
to steal her away.