Tanith Lee - Delerium' Mistress

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

Concerning those other histories referred to in Delirium's Mistress:

The stories of Zhirek the Magician, and of Simmu who stole Immortality from the gods, and of the

city Simmurad, are to be found in Death's Master. As are the stories of Narasen and her pact with

Death, and of Kassafeh and hers. And of the dealings of Lylas, too.

The stories of Shezael the Half-Souled, of the poet Kazir and Ferazhin Flower-Born, of Sivesh, of

Zorayas the witch-queen, and of Bakvi the Drin (and, too, of Azhrarn's first meeting with the sun)

are told in Night's Master.

Dunizel's story, and that of her mother, are contained in Delusion's Master, along with the

account of the building— and fall—of the great Tower, Baybhelu.

FOREWORD

IT HAS BEEN recounted* how, in the days of the earth's flatness, Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons,

Night's Master, one of the Lords of Darkness, loved the maiden Doonis-Ezael or Dunizel (Moon's

Soul), a priestess of the holy city Bhelsheved. And that because of the value he set on her (but

mostly, let it be said, to make mischief in those lands, which had angered him), he got her

sorcerously with child.

When this child, a daughter, was born, Dunizel was condemned by her people, who greatly feared,

yet did not fully comprehend, the powers of Azhram. And despite the safeguards her demon lover had

left her, she perished.

Now, her death seemed due to a trick played by another of the Lords of Darkness, Prince Chuz,

whose other name is Madness, Delusion's Master. Therefore Azhrarn, meeting with Chuz, swore they

should thenceforth be enemies, and that, no matter where he might hide himself, Chuz should be

hunted down and the vengeance of the Demon completed on him. Such a thing was very terrible

indeed, that any of the immortal and mighty Lords of Darkness should wage war with each other. "Do

you think I shake at you?" inquired Chuz. Yet it is possible he was not quite sanguine at the

development, for all that.

Dunizel alone had Azhrarn loved; for the child, she had never been more than a game piece to him.

However, he had noted the speculative eye of Chuz upon her. In anguish and fury, then, Azhrarn

bore her to his city of Druhim Vanashta, underground.

^Delusion's Master.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE:

BOOK TWO:

BOOK THREE:

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness II

Part One—Night Hunting 13

Part Two—Lovers 70

Part Three—Fair Is Not Fair 91

Azhriaz: The Goddess 161

Part One—Matters of Stone 163 Part Two—The War with Sea

and Sky 207

Part Three—Under the Earth 299

Atmeh: The Search for Life 315

Part One—Lessons 317

Part Two—Uncle Death 371

Part Three—The Lotus 392

EPILOGUE:

Three Handsome Sons

407

BOOK ———————————————

ONE Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

PART ONE

f%/tf Hunting

•IT WAS DUSK, and for a while the young man seated on the high roof gazed up into the great

sloping dome of sky. Then he read aloud from his book: "Blue as the dark blue eyes of my beloved,

the twilight fills all heaven. The stars put on their silver dresses and they are fair, but none

as fair as she." His companions lay on their elbows and looked at him, quizzically. He shut the

book and said, "Love, too, is simple madness." At which they made wild gestures of dismissal,

"Love does not exist. 'Love' is the name women, and rheir wretched old fathers, put on the trap of

a ring." "Love is lust. Why make songs about an itch?" The first young man smiled. He was

unusually handsome, pale, very fair, with beautiful eyes the color of low-burning lampshine. In

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repose, there was a sweetness to him. With sweet melancholy, he sighed.

"Ah, poor thing," they said. "What troubles him this evening, our Oloru?"

Oloru said, "An answer, which has no question." "A riddle!" cried the other young men. They

grinned and shouted: "Make us laugh, Oloru."

And all at once the eyes of Oloru glittered like the eyes of a night-hunting fox. He sprang to his

feet, curled over, next dropped in a ball, next lifted his whole body straight in the air,

supporting himself by one hand, palm down, on the roof. Then he began, on this one hand, to hop

about, crying out all the while in a raucous irritated voice: "Oh, how tiresome this is. You would

think by now the gods could have invented a better way for a man to travel."

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

The companions, duly diverted, laughed, applauded, and called the entertainer names. Oloru went on

hopping, though one of his fine silk gloves was by now probably quite ruined. He hopped to the

western parapet, and here his slim upside-down body wavered, so the stars seemed juggled between

his feet. "Behold," said Oloru, "here the sun fell over." And he toppled sideways through blue

dusk and stars, and right across the parapet, and vanished.

The remaining young men on the tavern roof leapt to their feet with yells of horror, upsetting

wine jars and other paraphernalia. Oloru was a favorite of their lord, one of the magician-princes

of this city. To take this powerful man the tale of said Oloru, smashed on the cobbles seven

stories below, was not a charming notion.

But rushing to the parapet and leaning over, they could be sure of nothing in the narrow alley but

the gathering of darkness.

Elsewhere, the city spread around them under the sky, its terraces pearl-strung with lamps, its

towers bright-eyed with lit windows. Nowhere in that city could they be safe if they once angered

their prince, Lak Hezoor. While close at hand rose the palace of this very lord, each of its

spires made into a somber candle by the cresset ablaze on its roof, and each cresset seeming now

to glare over at them intently.

Consternation. Some ran onto the stair, meaning to descend and search the street on foot. Others

were already making up excuses for a violent death that had nothing whatever to do with them. In

the midst of this, suddenly Oloru stepped out of a climbing fruit tree that spread its branches

along the eastern parapet.

"Yes, love is madness," said Oloru. "As all things are madness. Piety, wickedness, pleasure,

sorrow—every one an insanity. Indeed, to live at all—"

"Oloru!" cried the young men. Two of them ran forward as if to thrash him.

Oloru shrank back against the tree. He lifted both hands in their gemmed gloves, to shield

himself. "No—forgive me, my friends—what have I done to anger you?"

The friends gathered menacingly. Oloru was at all times the veriest coward. They knew he would be

terrified by a

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

threat or a raised fist. So they berated him, and he grew paler and paler and shrank back into the

slender arms of the fruit tree. He explained, stammering somewhat, that he had caught the

stonework under the parapet and thus eased himself along the side of the building, unseen, to the

tree. Here he had clambered once more to safety. He had not meant to annoy them, only to amuse.

They allowed him to go on and on, enjoying his faltering musical voice, his eyes swimming and full

of tears of anxiety. In the end, when they had squeezed him sufficiently, and it seemed only the

fragile tree kept him on his feet, they relented, flung their arms around him, kissed him and

smoothed his golden hair, swearing they forgave him anything, he was so dear to them. Then he

tremblingly laughed. He thanked them. When they asked, he took up a lyre of gilded wood and sang

for them exquisitely. His voice was so beautiful, in fact, that here and there round about

shutters opened quietly. Lovers and losers together leaned into the night, to catch the flavor of

Oloru's song.

' 'In the lyre-land, string and chord, Bring me music in a word. Bring me magic in a look; For

your eyes are like a sword, And your smile is like a bird Singing from an ancient book. ..."

And "How you flatter me, Oloru," someone said. "But you always do flatter better than any other,

and perfectly in key."

Lak Hezoor the magician-prince, clad in dark finery, and with two guards behind him, had come up

on the roof very silently. He and his minions could move most quietly, when they wished, and such

noiseless arrivals were a habit of his. In this way he often happened on his courtiers at their

various and more intimate games. All had grown careful, even in the most frenzied acts of the

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flesh, to think, and if necessary to speak, well of their lord. Shadowy as his raiment was his

long curled hair, and on the gloved hands of Lak Hezoor jewels burned dark as the night had now

become. Two great leashed hounds, by

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

contrast blond as Oloru, stared about them, quivering with abstract eagerness for things to chase

and rend.

The young men had all obeised themselves. But it was Oloru the magician-prince raised in his arms

and kissed on the lips, without haste.

"We are going hunting tonight," said Lak Hezoor.

Those on the roof who had had other plans for the evening quickly dismissed them from their minds.

Only Oloru was heard to say plaintively, "My lord, I hate to see anything killed—"

"Then, sweetheart," said Lak Hezoor, "at the supreme moments of the death you may hide your face

in my mantle, and not look."

The moon was rising in the hour the hunt set out. It was a full moon that night, and certain

exhalations and smokes of the sorcerously tempered city made her appear unusually large, so she

dwarfed the towers as she hung above them. She blushed, too, standing there over that place, and

drew a cloud around herself. But her feverish light burned through, and laved the black horses and

the black or white hounds of Lak Hezoor, and flashed on the loudly blowing horns, the knives and

jewels, and in all the host of eyes.

The city disgorged the hunt, its gates flying wide before it without a command needing to be

given. Beyond, a long paved road opened through the plain. To either side of the road ran lush

fields and groves and vineyards, but off to the west was hill country and a forest many centuries

older. Strange stories were told of the forest. Men wandered in there and were never seen again,

or other things, not men at all, wandered out of it, sometimes having human shape, and sometimes

not. But the magician-masters of the city found the forest tempted them from time to time.

Particularly it tempted Lak Hezoor, who was intellectually obsessed by night and all dark things,

just as his flesh was inflamed equally by examples of exceptional paleness.

It was a time of harvesting, and now and then the hunt, riding hard and savagely as if already in

pursuit of the quarry, passed by some firelit camp of people, or some village set near the road.

Then all the lowly folk gathered

there would rush forward to the road's edge, calling aloud praises on the magician-princes, and on

Lak Hezoor in person if they recognized him. It would not have been sensible to do otherwise.

Seldom, however, did Lak Hezoor pay any attention. It happened, though, when the upswept black

walls of the forest were less than a mile ahead, that the sorcerer lord did spy something that

checked him. There in a meadow a tallow lamp had been hung from a pole, with a kneeling man under

it. Close by a girl was tied to a tree. In the faint lamplight, she shone pale as a pearl, and her

long ash-brown hair, woven with white flowers, was her only garment.

When Lak Hezoor drew rein, his company with him, the man ran up and kneeled again on the road.

"Speak," said Lak Hezoor.

"She is my sister's daughter, just fifteen years of age, a virgin."

Lak Hezoor sat his horse and looked over at the girl, while his courtiers slyly and fawnirigly

smiled at him and at each other.

"Once," said the lord Lak, "maidens were left in this way to entice dragons. Are you expecting any

dragons?"

"No—oh, no, mighty Hezoor. It is just the wish of the girl's heart to give you a moment's

diversion, that is all."

Lak Hezoor dismounted. He walked away over the meadow to the tree where the girl hung as if half-

dead of terror. For a second more the magician was visible, leaning to his dragon's prey. Then a

fan of blackness spread there, occluding both of them. While in the blackness a dull reddish snake

of fire seemed to twist, and sparks burst, hurting the eyes of any who still peered in that

direction. Once, twice, a sharp scream pierced the sorcer-ous veil, but nothing else of sight or

sound.

The man who had brought the lord his niece waited patiently, eyes lowered. The courtiers sipped

wine from golden flasks, petted their horses, discussed fashions and gambling.

Lak was not long over his transaction. Quite abruptly he returned through the black screen, calm

and undisheveled as if he had paused to taste some fruit from a wayside bush. The sorcerous screen

began to die at once behind

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DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

him. There showed now something pallid flung on the ground, motionless, amid torn hair and broken

flowers.

"What did you hope from me?" asked Lak Hezoor of the patiently waiting uncle. "Not anything much,

I trust, for she was very disappointing."

"No—oh, no. Nothing but to please you, lord."

"Well, I was not greatly pleased. But you meant for the best. I will not chastise you. Are you

content with that?"

"Mighty lord, I am your generosity's slave."

As they galloped away, a backward glance revealed the man bending over the paleness in the grass,

which did not answer him even when he gave it blows.

"Now, my Oloru," said the magician-prince as they rode up to the tall gates of the forest, "you

seem downcast."

"I?" said Oloru. "I was only devising a poem to honor you."

"Ah," said Lak Hezoor. "That is well. Later you shall tell it me."

The depths of the forest, then. Not its heart; it was so old, so labyrinthine, the forest—who

could enter the heart of it, save some lost traveler in one of the sinister tales? Or else,

perhaps, the forest had many hearts, each slowly and mesmerically beating, its rhythm growing a

fraction slower and an iota more strong for every passing century.

Certainly, there were portions of the forest where its atmosphere seemed especially and profoundly

charged. In one of these spots there was a pool of unknown deepness where the animals of the

forest, whatever they might be, would steal to drink. Although it was said that any man who drank

the waters of the forest would be changed at once into just such an animal himself—a deer, a wolf,

a sprite, or some monstrous creature that had no name.

All about the pool was blackness, but through the colossal roofbeams of the trees there showed the

rim of the moon. She was no longer blushing but cold now, and her snowy fire turned the mysterious

water to a solid white mirror one might think to walk on.

Thrice, Lak Hezoor's men had started deer. Pale as ghosts they sprang away, and the hunt madly

pursued them. Torchlight crackled through the boughs. Shouting

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness 19

and whooping tore the curtains of leafy air. Sometimes the noise and tumbling speed and spilling

lights disturbed curious birds—or winged things of some sort—which rose away into the higher tiers

of the branches. On occasion disembodied eyes were lit, and as quickly extinguished. As for the

quarry, twice it vanished without trace. But when the third deer broke from cover, Lak Hezoor cast

a shining ray about it like a net. Try as it would then, bolt and swerve and seem to fly, the deer

could not break free of his magic. Loudly it panted, and groaned like a woman in childbirth, so

the hair of the magician's courtiers bristled on their necks. But at length the deer stumbled and

the torrent of the hounds swept over it.

Though a female, it was a huge beast, this deer. So the hunting party was satisfied, for the

moment, and made their way into the clearing, to the pool like solid mirror, and dared each other

to taste of the water, but none of them did. Instead they lolled on the rugs and bolsters the

servants of Lak Hezoor put down for them, and drank wine in glass goblets that the fires turned to

golden tears.

Lak Hezoor himself oversaw the gutting of the deer, and now and then himself threw portions of its

entrails to his favorites among the shivering dogs. Nearby, Oloru leaned on a tree, his face

averted, and his gloved hand lightly over his nose and mouth.

"Come, be my hound, beloved, and I will throw you a piece of its liver," said Lak Hezoor.

Oloru shuddered, looked at his lord under long lashes, and away.

When Lak Hezoor lost interest in the bloody work, he went to sit among the cushions and fires. He

beckoned Oloru to follow him.

"Now sing for me the song you were making in my honor," said Lak Hezoor.

"It is not finished," said Oloru, in an offhand way.

Lak Hezoor turned one of the rings on his left hand. It dazzled a searing ray—it was this very

ring which had cast the net about the deer and so weakened and killed it. The ring had done as

much for men.

"I give Oloru," said Lak Hezoor, "three of his own

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

heartbeats to complete the song. And since his heart now beats very fast, I think the time is

already up."

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Oloru lowered his eyes that were like smoky amber. He sang, sweetly, swiftly, and with utmost

clarity:

"Our lord found a girl in afield,

Not with cash but with malice he bought her.

He took her behind a black shield,

But one fact he has surely revealed:

He makes love as another makes water."

For a troupe so loud, the assemblage now proved itself capable of a vast silence. With their eyes

and mouths open, men stared at Oloru, goblets halfway to their lips and frozen. By the pavilion of

sable satin, the servitors of the magician-prince, which some said were themselves not quite

human, stood blank-visaged as ever, yet every hand now rested on the hilt of a long knife.

Having recited, Oloru looked into the face of his lord, smiling a little, and Lak Hezoor looked

back at him with the same smile exactly. Then Lak Hezoor stood up, and Oloru also arose. Lak

Hezoor snapped his fingers, and out of the air itself appeared his sword, and slid into his grasp.

Lak Hezoor extended the cruel bright blade until the tip of it touched Oloru on the breast.

"Now I shall kill you," said Lak Hezoor. "It will be thorough but slow. Indeed, you shall fight me

for your death. You will have to earn it."

And Lak Hezoor spoke a sorcerous word and a second blazing sword fell into the hand of Oloru, who,

whiter than the moon in the pool now, dropped the weapon at once.

"Pick it up," said Lak Hezoor. "Pick up the sword, my child, and we will dally a while. Then I

will cut you up for chops for my dogs, an inch at a time."

"My—lord—" whispered Oloru, standing shaking above the fallen sword, "it was a jest, and I—"

"And you shall die for your jest. For it did not make me laugh, my Oloru, so something else is

needed to entertain me."

"Oh gracious lord—"

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

"Pick up the sword, dear heart. Pick it up."

"I beg you—"

"Pick it up. Why should it be said I kill my friends unarmed?"

"Then I will leave it lying—"

."Then I will kill you defenseless after all."

Oloru covered his face with his hands. Under the torches he. like the glassware, seemed made of

pale precious gold, and of tears, too.

"Forgive me, oh forgive me—" he cried.

Lak Hezoor grinned, pulled down Oloru's hands, and pointed to the sword lying in the grass.

"Look at that, pick up that, and die with it."

Oloru looked one long last minute at the sword, and Lnen he dropped down in the grass beside it

and lay there, : r. a dead faint, at the feet of Lak Hezoor.

At this, the magician did laugh. He flung one glance across his silent court. It cut them with

such contempt and indifference, and under that with such implicit threat, it was as if he had

sliced at each of them with the blade he held. Then the blade vanished, and with it the other in

the grass; all about the hands of the prince's minions left their knives. Lak Hezoor lifted Oloru

in his arms and walked away with him and into the sable pavilion, out of their -:jht.

Out of sight of any but his prince then, Oloru the jester and poet presently revived. He came to

himself on the magician's silks, his face turned on the magician's embroidered pillows, the weight

of Lak Hezoor already upon ":m.

"You, my treasure, who dare insult me as no other does," murmured Lak Hezoor, resting his face

also down on the pillow, so his black eyes glared into the amber eyes of Oloru and their lips

almost met at each word. "But I forgive you. For you know you lied."

"O my soul, my body's watchman, you were absent when this citadel was invaded," said Oloru. Lak

Hezoor smiled cruelly at him, for this was very true.

"Tell me of demons," said Lak Hezoor, as his sinuous body stirred and curved, heavy as a python,

upon and within

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

his third prey of the night. "Tell me of Azhrarn, Night's Master, the Bringer of Anguish."

Oloru spoke softly, sometimes without breath.

"They saw a king's daughter, a sorceress, called to him by means of a token Azhrarn once gave his

lover, a beautiful boy, Sivesh, or as some say, Simmu. And when the Demon came to her, this

sorceress, it was in a pavilion with a ceiling of blackness and jeweled stars, where winds and

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clouds moved, but only by mage-craft. Azhrarn mistook the pavilion's roof for the sky, as he was

intended to, and thought he should gain fair warning of sunrise, for the sun slays demons, they

say. They saw—" (Here Oloru broke off. But: "Say on, my Sivesh, my Simmu," insisted Lak Hezoor.)

"Then—trapped by the witch, the sun having risen unseen beyond the pavilion's false night, Azhrarn

must deal with her and grant her all she wished: power, riches, beauty beyond all beauty—beauty—"

(And here Oloru could say no more, only cling to the pillows, his spine arched, and his throat,

and through his golden lashes the tears running like silver ribbons.)

But when the python lay quiet on him and the heavy silken darkness of the tent returned from out

of blood-red thunder, Oloru said, "Yet, if she was so great a sorceress, why did she not grant

herself these things, why did she not make herself so beautiful? Ah, then, because the genius of

her sorcery was built on rage, and rage does not make beauty. And her yearning was for love, so

that only love could work miracles upon her, even his love, Azhrarn, that Prince of Demons. And

besides, it is not certain any such token could summon him if truly he would not be summoned. Nor

must he definitely grant wishes at the summons. Nor could such as he be made a fool of by a

ceiling of jewel stars and illusory winds. Unless he had desired the novelty, desired dangers and

a snare to befall him. Madness, Lak Hezoor," said Oloru, "is no respecter of persons. We perceive

even the mighty Prince Azhrarn has been its gull. But a short while since, he was mad of love, for

love is simple madness. A girl with moon hair and twilight eyes. Love and death and time sweep

over all events. And madness sings on top of the dunghill, to the accompanying music of an ass's

jawbones."

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

But Lak Hezoor slept. He lay deep in sleep as if drowning in a muddy river. So he did not see, nor

feel, Oloru begin to ease from under him. Nor did he witness, the mighty magician-prince, what

finally emerged from the couch, jumped to the floor, and paused there an instant, in the murk of

the dying candles.

Men who drank from the waters of the forest might be altered—to animal or elemental, or to

monster. But Oloru had drunk only the best wine. It was not the crystal ichor of the forest, then,

which worked this change in him.

Outside, the magician's courtiers slept. The servants slept or stood tranced, lacking his bidding.

So none started when there stole out from the tent a yellow jackal with dry embers for eyes. It

looked about, its mouth agape as if it laughed, then turned and trotted away among the black robes

of the trees.

NIGHT ON the earth, every inch of it, for the earth was flat and up in that domed ceiling of

heaven the lamp of day was out. Not a forest of earth then that was not black, not a sea that was

not black and ribbed with silver by the moon; not a mountain that was not crowned by stars. But

down below, held in the inverted underdome beneath the earth, it was not night, nor was it ever

night, there.

Underearth, the demon country, bloomed in the endless changeless glow that exhaled from its very

air. That light, they say, radiant as the sun, subtle as the moon, lovelier than either. And in

that light, stretched the landscape of a dark impassioned dream. And, seemingly made of that

DELKIUM-S Morass

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

light, a city rose into the lambency of an indescribable and nonexistent sky.

The city of the demons was ultimately also changeless. There it glimmered and gleamed and

sparkled, putting the marvels of the world to shame. And yet, Druhim Vanashta (whose very name

means, if approximately. Who Shines Without the Sun, and More Brightly), Druhim Vanashta had about

it a strange shadow, which had nothing to do with the glowing shade of Underearth. It was rather

the pall of a desolate and grinding and relentless—and silent— lament: the mourning of Azhrarn.

Some time had passed on the earth. Years, perhaps. And under it, too, time had passed, the time of

demonkind which was not of the same order, though time still. But it was the curse and glory of

the Vazdru, that highest caste of the demons, of whom Azhrarn was one, that in time or out of it

nothing might ever be forgotten. Not the greatest sweetness. Not the most tearing agony or grief.

And the adage ran that the wounded hearts of demon could be salved only by human blood.

However, he had taken no revenge, Azhrarn, exacted no penalty.

It is seldom disputed that, of all his many and various loves, he had loved her best, Dunizel,

Soul of the Moon. White-haired, blue-eyed as early evening, in whose body he had grown, like a

wondrous flower, his child. It is suggested there should be no surprise in the delay or absence of

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retribution. She had been so gentle, so compassionate. She had taken even that means away from

him, for a little while. To think of her and plan deeds of blood was not easy, maybe. No, it was

his heart which bled. And his pain which clouded the city.

Nor did he seek solace in his daughter. It had been his contention from the start, forming the

child for wickedness as he had meant to do, that this offspring—though carried in Dunizel's

womb—was all his and only his, the female principle of Azhrarn, whose role and aims were cruelty

and maleficence and lies. Therefore it seems he could not bear to look at her now. Could not bear

also, conceivably, to look in her eyes, blue as blueness, that were the eyes of her mother.

Thus he had brought her to his country but sent her far off from his haunts. And left her there,

far off.

There was a vast tidal lake, or a small inland sea—either or both. It lay, in a man's reckoning,

three days' journey from the demon city, yet of course in demonic parlance three days have no

meaning at all. It was as near, or as distant, as will could make it.

In the crystal air of the Underearth, the waters of the lake, too, were like crystal. So clear

they were, it was possible to see right to their floor, which looked to be a long way down. Here

shapes moved, seeming weeds and sands, and winged fish flying. But though the water was

transparent, the passage of the tide made vision uncertain. How there came to be a tide was itself

unsure. The water obeyed, perhaps, the drag of the hidden moon of earth so many miles overhead; or

else the drag of some other hidden moon beneath, in the substance of chaos which flowed beyond and

about all things, earth or Upperearth, or the subterrain.

From the crystal sea-lake rose islands. Many were slender, of a circumference only big enough a

bird might try to perch there, had there been birds. Several were the size of earthly ships, and

masted and sailed with heavy midnight trees that drooped down into the water, but not reflecting

in it, since it was so clear. Then again, in places smooth tall pillars of rock went up, thousands

of feet high, like windowless towers. In all of them, the little rocks and the great, burning

colors pulsed and faded, swelled and went out and ignited again. And the sea-lake did mirror these

colors, so it seemed stained here with wine, and here with a flickering dark lamplight, and there

with translucent heliotrope, like the blood of the gods themselves.

Somewhere in the midst of the water and the fantastic rocks, one island lay which was of larger

horizontal scope and different appearance. It did not throb with colors; only a mist normally

surrounded it, so it seemed like a phantom, not entirely present in the lake, as, indeed, maybe it

was not.

To view this island, one must pass within the mist, which had never been done. Those that dwelled

there had

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

preceded the fashioning of the mist. No one had visited the island, or come away from it, since

then.

She lived inside a hollow stone, the daughter of Azhrarn.

That the stone was beautiful in its cold pure way did not much concern her, if at all. It was a

cliff of quartz galler-ied and windowed and staired apparently by random erosions, pierced by a

hundred caves. The light which never altered gamboled and slid about the cliff, and winked from

each of its facets. The pearly mist stole in from the sea and threaded through the openings, so

the whole edifice seemed to float. And sometimes a wind fluttered in and out, and then the cliff

played weird chiming, thrumming notes, as if the structure were one huge instrument of strings and

pipes.

Two of the greater caves had become rooms. They were furnished—at the order of Azhrarn, probably,

how else? Yet if it was his doing, he had not come to look at the results. Draperies hung there

and carpets, and silks lay thick on the ground, and lamps rested in the air which would light

themselves at a whim, not to give illumination, but to tint and highlight something or other.

These rooms had windowpanes of painted glass that showed pictures which occasionally altered,

telling stories, if any had observed them.

In an annex there was a crimson bed with columns of deep-red jade, and filmy curtains.

Here lay a doll on its back, all white in a dress of white tissue, save the black hair blacker

than blackness, that curled around her and down onto the floor, and the open eyes so blue they

seemed half blinded by their own color. Did she, looking through those sapphire lenses, see a

world shaded by them also to blue? Who could tell? Who would ask? Certainly she would not say. For

she had never spoken, no, not even when in the world with her mother. Vazdru child, yet she had

had that way of the demon Eshva, the servants, the handmaidens of the Vazdru. The Eshva did not

communicate save with eyes, with touch, with the rhythm of their breathing—yet having such

intensity in this mode that they might be said to have spoken. Those few mortals who spent

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childhood in their company

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

(Sivesh, the lover of Azhrarn, for example; Simmu, who once mastered Death) were heard after to

refer to Eshva voices. . . . But it was a figure of speech, it seems. For the daughter of Azhrarn,

she too had known Eshva. They had attended her birth. They had given her demon blood to drink, and

steeped her in an enchanted smoke. Brought here to the island and the hollow cliff, a band of

Eshva had come with her, to serve and tend her. But these Eshva pined. Far from Azhrarn, whom they

loved beyond all things, far from the burning dream of the world that was their dancing floor,

they moved like shadows, and their tears fell. Their tears which said: / despair. They entered a

sort of living death, these immortal beings. The singing cliff seemed full of sad songs.

Sometimes the girl looked at them as if she pitied them. She did not want slaves by her, yet they

might not leave. But who would guess if she pitied them? And she would not say.

She entered Underearth as a tiny child, though seeming already older and more formed than a human

infant. Exposed to the aura of Azhrarn's kingdom, she fell for a while into a kind of daze, and

then years came upon her like whirlwinds, twisting and pulling at her, speeding her growth so

rapidly that sometimes her skin itself was torn by her bones, and her dark blood—demon's blood—ran

and gushed on the ground. When it happened, she cried out, she screamed, for she had a voice to

use for this. In the length of seventeen mortal days—hours, moments, in the Underearth—she grew to

be some seventeen years.

At this time, the Eshva had attempted to console her. They had soothed her, caressed her, brushing

her with their hair, drugging her with their perfumed sighs. When the terrible process stopped,

accomplished, and did not resume, still for a while they seemed to wish to divert her. But she

became an icon then, awake yet sleeping. A closed door. And gradually the Eshva dropped away from

her like moths with broken wings.

They wandered the island, her servitors, her fellow prisoners and exiles. Their noiseless ennui

and wretchedness soon embued every valley and height of it. She was, after all, Vazdru, a

princess. The leaden nothingness she had

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

succumbed to bruised and damaged them. They paled, they faded.

She, too, sometimes traversed the island. But even as she walked, she slept. Somnambulist, she

would hesitate on the brink of some precipice, from which, being what she was, no doubt in any

case she could not fall. Or, hearing the music of her cliff in the distance, she might turn her

head. But when the mist about the island thinned a little, and the Eshva would creep gracefully

down to the shore and stand there, gazing to the sea beyond, she did not stir.

No doubt, too, she had learned many things without any tutor, had been born, even, with knowledge

denied to humankind. No doubt too and too, she did not know what knowledge was, or its value. Nor

what she herself was or might be. That she remembered her beginning, the mother who had told

stories to her while she was yet in the womb, the awful death of that mother, her own first

abandonment to men, her second to the island, so much is unarguable. Yet even these memories did

not seem to move her to any expression. Even if she was aware of it, she did not know what she

was. How then could she express anything?

She lay on her royal bed in the Underearth, three days away, or three thousand years away, from

Druhim Vanashta. Perhaps she even felt, like the dim echo of some gigantic exploding star, the

resonance of Azhrarn's mourning. But if she did, it gave her nothing, it asked nothing, it turned

its face from her.

And so she was—or so she was not.

"HE IS NOT a bad son," said the widow. She wrung her hands and paced up and down. "Those that

speak of him, speak well. But then they were afraid of the master he serves. They will not speak

ill of my son for fear it should seem they speak ill of Prince Lak. But they look askance. Do you

hear much from your Oloru, they say, and their eyes say, He is a cheat and a deceiver, a buffoon

of the court who practices all its vices." She sat down in a chair. Her elder daughter, who had

heard her mother pacing and come in to comfort her, now took the widow's hand. "But I say this,"

said the widow, "it is a weakness in him. Only a weakness. Do we blame a man who is born without

sight, or a man whose leg is broken and who walks crookedly thereafter? Why then blame a boy whose

spirit is unable to see and whose nature has been warped? Can he help it any more than the poor

blind man or the unlucky cripple?"

"There, there, Mother," said the daughter, who was young and fair and golden, somewhat like Oloru

himself.

"You are a good girl," said the mother. "Both good girls. But oh, my son."

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In the window the sky was black and many-starred though the moon had gone down. It would not be

dawn for two hours or more. Away beyond the walls of the old house, the ancient forest (the same

in which Prince Lak now hunted) could be seen raising its spears and plumes to the sky. Nearby, a

ribbon of road turned against the trees toward the city. Along that very road a year since, Oloru

had traveled. Wellborn though poor, he meant, he said, to

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

find some great lord who would be his patron. And he had found one. He had found Lak, whose vile

hungers and bestial unkindnesses overtopped the misdeeds of all his fellow princes put together.

"Oloru should have stayed at home with us," said the mother. "He was happy with us."

"Perhaps he is also happy now," said the elder daughter, sadly.

His letters had given them to think so. He did not mention what he did at the court of the

magician, but only the rich food and fine clothes, and always he sent extravagant presents.

"It was the forest," said the mother in a whisper now. "The forest is to blame."

The elder daughter glanced at the window and made a little sign against evil enchantment.

It was a fact, a month before Oloru had undertaken to seek his fortune in the city, there had been

a strange incident, though not a rare one for those who lived in the periphery of the forest. Even

by day, the wise did not venture there, but Oloru, the widow's only son, had always scorned such

superstition. Now and then he would hunt these woods himself, and bring back game, for which the

house was grateful enough. Then came an afternoon when their servant, the only retainer left to

them, hastened home alone. Oloru had gone out with him at sunrise, but somehow they had been

separated in the trees. Then the servant had searched all morning, and long past noon, but could

not discover the young man or any trace of him. At last the servant returned to his mistress the

widow, in trepidation.

A few terrible hours then passed in the worst perplexity and distress. Though she dared not

venture into the forest, the mother stood at her gate, and the two fair daughters and the servant

with her. There they stayed, praying or weeping or silent, or trying to reassure each other, or

calling Oloru's name vainly, shading their eyes against the westering sun and gazing at the trees

as if by desperation alone they could draw him forth again. The sun began to go down in a curdle

of fire, the road, the house, the waiting figures, all were dyed red, and the trees all black

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

with their tops seeming to burn. Suddenly something moved out from the blackness into the redness.

There on the road, walking toward them, was a fifth figure, that of a young man. Oloru.

The household flew toward him, laughing and crying at once. And he too began to run toward them,

his arms outstretched.

Then, there seemed to come a curious check. The widow and her daughters faltered and stopped

still; the servant drew up with a muttered oath. For himself, Oloru also halted. He lowered his

eyes and next his head with a modest shyness.

The mother stared at him. What was it? Was this her son?—yes, yes, who else but he? Her own Oloru

that she had thought lost to her. Although— She looked and looked, and her heart beat loudly

enough to deafen her and to muddy her eyes, so in the end she thought it was only that. Then she

ran forward again and embraced him and he in turn embraced her, and said, "Mother, pardon me for

alarming you so. I mistook my way. But as you see, I regained a path and have come back to you."

And while he spoke his bright hair brushed her cheek and it seemed to her she knew him, of course

she did, he was her son.

Yet to the sisters also, and to the servant, there had at first seemed something not right,

something bizarre. Later, the elder girl had a dream, and in the dream the left side of her

brother's face, as he returned out of the forest, was covered by a half-mask of enamel, and when

he drew it off, his own face under it had changed to that .of a decaying and horrific male devil.

The younger sister also had a dream in which the eyes of her brother had become like the sunset,

black and red, and she woke up shrieking. But these dreams were soon forgotten, for there was

nothing amiss with Oloru, it was only their troubled fancy. He was as he had always been, golden

and handsome, and full of jokes and poetic reveries.

It seemed to them they loved him more than ever in that month, after thinking they had lost him.

And then he left them for the city and the magician-lords, and was lost to them in truth.

Presently it was the mother's turn for nightmares, and

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

often she would rise and pace about, and if her daughters heard her they would come in to comfort

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her. And she would say, "He is not bad." She would say, "It is a weakness." And she would say, "It

is the forest's fault. The forest is to blame."

Now the elder daughter rose and said, "I will light another candle; this one is almost out. Let us

be as cheerful as we can. Who knows, he may tire of that other life."

The mother sighed deeply.

Oloru's elder sister went to fetch a second candle. As she did so she passed the window, and

happening to look out she gave a sharp cry

"What is it?" exclaimed the mother.

"There—by the well—a great pale animal with ghastly eyes—''

The mother hastened to look. Huddled in the window, the two women stared down at the courtyard.

The gate was locked at night, and surely nothing could get in. Nevertheless, there beyond the

stone curb of the well, something moved.

"Even by starshine I saw it," said the girl. "As if it glowed of itself.''

"Lift up the candle," said the mother. "Let us see this thing and be sure."

So the feeble candle was lifted, and a little more light fell into the yard. Around the well at

once and out of the shadow of a tree which grew there something swiftly came, and the girl parted

her lips to scream.

But, "Oh, the blessed gods," the widow said. "What were you thinking of? It is your brother."

And there under their window stood Oloru, looking himself like a prince, his eyes fixed on them,

more beautiful than all the jewels with which he was dressed.

Soon the whole house was roused and down in the antique pillared hall with Oloru. It was a sad

place, this hall, for there were not enough servants now to keep it as it should be kept, and all

the best things had been sold years since. But a good wine was lugged up from the cellar, and a

host of candles fired.

"I cannot stay with you long," said Oloru. "But I will return shortly. Then Tie will be with me."

Sovaz: Mistress of Madness

"What can you mean?" cried the widow in horror.

"What you think I mean. I intend to bring Lak Hezoor the magician home with me, to be our guest.

He will sit here and we will dance attendance on him. He will see my two sisters and lust after

both of them."

The sisters shrank. The elder said, uncertainly, "Do you jest with us, brother?" But the widow

cried, "He has gone mad!"

Oloru laughed at that. He flung up his arms, and looked some while at the spiders' webs in the

rafters. "Do you not trust me, dear Mother? I, your only son?"

A cold breath seemed then to blow through the hall. The candles felt it and sank. The women felt

it and they trembled. But then Oloru brought his gaze down from the rafters and he said gently,

"It is perilous, this enterprise, but I must do it. Once it might have been done another way,

easier, and more gaudy. But as things are now, I require such means as you."

"What are you saying?" asked the widow.

Oloru seemed puzzled. "I hardly know. But this I will promise—no harm shall come to any of you, I

swear. What shall I swear on?"

The three women eyed him in dismay and fascination.

At last the mother said, "Swear on your life."

"My life? No, on something better than that. I will swear it by the power of love."

The candles straightened up. The coldness went away as if it had heard enough.

"What are we saying?" asked the mother. "This is all nonsense."

"No, Mother. Never was a fact more sure." And he sprang to his feet. "Now I leave you. By

midmorning we shall be here, I with that monster, and all the parasites who cling about the

monster, and the dangerous fiends that wait on him. Be ready." And he darted out of the hall

through the door into the courtyard. When they hurried after him he was nowhere to be seen. The

elder sister stole to the opened gate. "What is that creature which runs into the trees?" But the

night and the forest were very black. It might have been nothing at all.

DELIRIUM'S MISTRESS

Lak Hezoor the magician-prince woke from his stupor and turned about on the cushions. There in the

entry to the tent stood a shape, pale and dark, whose eyes seemed cast from far millennia of

nights and stars. Lak Hezoor spoke at once a word of power, to detain this visitor, for he sensed

a supernatural quality. But even in that instant it was gone.

"A demon," said Lak Hezoor. "One of Azhrarn's tribe. Or did I dream it?"

"A dream," said a charming voice. "What would demons be doing here?"

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