Night's Master (11 page)

One day, she was sixteen. It was the turn of autumn. Then winter came.

All through the winter, she lived in the cave, Zorashad’s daughter. Even
the beasts did not come to her, they had forgotten the road. Only hurt and loneliness
sat with her, and a sort of rage, inexplicable, deadly.

Each night she lay in the cradle of blackness, and soon a waking dream
began to take her. She saw her father, Zorashad, clad in dark metal, riding
through a vast city, the people falling on their faces before him in terror,
while cressets of fire blazed from the roofs of palaces and temples. Presently
the dream altered a little, slowly, and by degrees. At first she rode at her
father’s side in a royal dress, holding a beautiful porcelain mask before her
own smashed countenance—a mask so thrilling and lifelike that it seemed to
everyone that it was really her face, and she was renowned for her loveliness.
Then, when the cruelest nights of winter came. turning the reeds along the
margin of the pool to spears of jade and vitreous, her dream grew also more
cold, more cruel. Now she rode in Zorashad’s place, dressed in his iron, and
masked in iron, a great diadem on her hair. She ruled Zojad, ruled all sixteen
vassal cities, as he had ruled them; she was the king’s daughter, Zorayas,
queen and empress, and captives tottered after her chariot in chains, among
them the young king who had mocked her. Everyone who saw her now, looking at
the masked face which showed only the fine eyes and clear brow and strong hair,
whispered that it was beauty she kept hidden, not ugliness. Zorayas was so fair
that should she unmask, her wonderful looks would blast them like a lightning
bolt.

One night, tossing beneath this glorious and torturing fantasy, she
sprang up and ran outside and cried aloud in a voice like the cracking ice.
“What shall I do?” she asked herself, and lay on the ground, her ear pressed to
it, as if listening for some answer.

An answer came. Indeed, it seemed to come from the earth, or Underearth perhaps.
She saw before her a row of doorways, fast closed, some with keys waiting to be
turned in their locks, others with the keys lying in a great pile among the
shadows. They were those doors of dark magic of which the priest had bade her
beware, which, until now, she had never thought to enter.

But Zorashad’s daughter put the image aside. She turned her head from it,
she went back into the cave, colder than the cold night.

In the morning, a voice woke her, calling to her from outside the cave,
calling for her help. It was the first voice she had ever heard which cried
specifically to her in this way. Despite her reserve, her heart was lightened.
Someone had learned of her presence here, that she had been the apprentice of
the priest. Someone needed her kindness, entreated for it.

The need to be needed, to be necessary; a gift.

She went out, unsure, balanced on a thread, supposing that this might be
the answer to her question.

A man stood among the frosty trees. He was a pedlar, his cart of goods
close by. A swarthy man, with little bright eyes and a foxy smile. He bowed.
more courtly than a prince.

“What ails you?” Zorashad’s daughter said to him.

“Ah, lady, a snake bit me, back there in the forest—my boot took most of
its teeth—but I think some poison remains. I came on very weak, and my head
spins. But I heard a tale of a priestess here, clever with healing.”

He seemed not to mind the cloth mask, nor to fear the cave, for he
hobbled closer.

“I will help you,” she said.

“You are to be blessed, lady. May I come into the cave?”

She was surprised he did not fear it, but neither did he seem to fear
her. Close to, he was bigger than she had thought, and had a powerful presence,
a kind of male smell and aura. She had been used to the priest, impersonal,
without aggression. This man was not like that. She took him inside, and he
leaned heavily on her shoulder, and slumped down on the mattress by the fire.

She fetched the salves and clean water quickly, and bent near.

“Which foot?”

“This,” he said, and then he grabbed her.

It was too swift and took her wits. He slung her down, and when she
wildly fought with him, he struck her and her head spun as he had told her his
was doing.

“Kind, sweet girl,” he said, pulling loose his belt and tying her hands
with it above her head in a trice, “a snake never bit me in the foot after all,
it bit me here,” and he showed her his groin. “See the swelling? Does it not
grieve your heart? Look how it sticks out, and only you can cure me.” She
floundered and screamed, but he pushed her mask, all crumpled, off her face,
into her mouth. “I do not mind them ugly,” he declared, “though with such a
face, you must be lonely. Did a bear gnaw you? Another bear shall gnaw you
now.” And he ripped open her garment and sank his teeth into the upper mound of
her breast, so she screamed again, at which he struck her a second time, and
all struggle left her.

She lay beneath him in a nightmarish, strengthless swimming of horror,
agony and bewilderment. She could not find her voice, nor any strength to beat
him off. He was heavy and determined, and well-practiced in this art.

He kneaded her flesh with his hands, which were never still, and
scrabbled over her as if he meant to climb a mountain and must grasp for
desperate holds. His mouth hung open and he gasped for air, but his eyes were
in no doubt either of the ascent or of the summit. He slavered on her breasts
and champed his teeth on them and forced his hot tool through the smallness of
her maiden’s gate in three great spasms of wild effort. She could not even
shriek, he made the only noises that attended their sudden haphazard union.
Having broken into her citadel with a bronze-beaked ram, he thundered up and
down in the bloody dark there, and howled as his lust burst from him, and
bucked and kicked, bruising her afresh as his hands clenched on her, till the
last drop was squeezed forth.

He left her, chuckling and well-satisfied at his deed. She lay a long
while, until the yellow light of afternoon muddied the forest. Then she dragged
herself about, cleansing the wounds he had given her, applying the salves. She
did not weep. Later, she walked slowly to watch the jade reeds rattle by the
frozen pool, the obsidian trees fade into a brackish sunset.

Something of her had survived the three icy fires, the cruel scourge, the
desertion through death, the gouging rape. But what had survived was an iron
stick, and frost-bitten harder than the frozen reeds and the cold trees. Though
it had not been what she looked for, she had had her answer. Presently she returned
to the cave.

She cleared
out all the old litter of things, and sorted the items she would require, and
made such preparations as were needful. For a long while, after the moon was
down, she sat and stared into the cup of her own brain, doggedly drawing forth
her will and knowledge.

Two hours before dawn, a clap of thunder sounded in the forest; a rain of
icicles fell down; a wind swirled gibbering among the trunks of the trees.
Zorayas had opened the first black door of sorcery.

One hour before dawn. the pedlar, who lay asleep in an abandoned hut at
the edge of the forest, woke to find a twilit woman at his side. She said, in a
dulcet and winning fashion:

“I hear you have been suffering from a snake bite which caused a
swelling, here.” And she touched him in such a way that the pedlar became very
interested in her. For some reason he did not think to ask her how she had
discovered him, or how she came to know what he had said the previous day to
the idiot girl in the cave. Soon indeed he rolled the stranger on her back and
mounted her, and was entering when something about the gate surprised him, for
it did not feel as it should. The pedlar glanced down, and roared with terror,
He was mounted astride a log of wood, and he had thrust his phallus, this time,
into the grinning jaws of a huge black viper, which now, with a venomous clash,
closed them.

In the lands
all about, things went on as they had always done. The fields were planted, the
herds brought to grass, and in the cities men toiled and took their shares of
misery and pleasure, and kings idled on their silken couches, and fair women
looked in their looking glasses and sighed admiringly. And at the heart of it
all, like the worm in the apple, the beetle in the woodwork, sorcery was
working, eating out the pith: soon the apple would break open, the wooden beam
fall down, and the lands start up in fear.

Perhaps some guessed—the hunter who saw lights flicker above the trees of
the forest; the beggar woman who, going by the old priest’s cave one day at dusk,
witnessed a curl of smoke run in there and take on the form of a peculiar
beast, with the body of a lion and the head of an owl. Stories were told now,
about the masked witch in the cave, the sorceress. She had killed the priest,
they said, and her friends were demons, the little, almost inconsequent demons
of Underearth, the Drin—the dregs of that shadowy hierarchy below, who obeyed
the will of powerful magicians, having no true initiative of their own. With
the help of the demons, this witch had slain a poor pedlar, and in a most awful
manner. What would she do next?

Even in Zojad, possibly, men had word of the witch. Maybe they laughed
about her.

The pedlar had been inadvertently the catalyst. Now Zorayas’ aims were
guided by her dreams. Zorashad’s daughter, the sorceress. She remembered the
young king with his lash, his spiteful tongue, remembered he sat in the royal
chair of her dead father. Her chair. This wrong went deeper than any wrong
which came after, despair or rape; they were done with. The curse of ugliness
and disinheritance remained.

On a night in high summer, when the young king sat at table in Zojad, the
lights in the hall began to dip and dim, and up from its dish sprang the
roasted bird that had just been set before him. It seemed to flap its wings,
its eyes—made of two curving bits of quartz—fixed on the king. He jumped to his
feet and down the bird fell at once. The king, anxious to seem unafraid,
ordered the carver, jestingly, to slice the fowl into portions before it should
fly off altogether, but the minute the knife went through it, out fell a ball
of glass which, rolling from the table, smashed in pieces on the floor. And in
the glass lay a scroll.

The court stood amazed at the miracle, but the king arrogantly bent and
took up the scroll and read it. It said:

“What is one scar more, O king? I will tell you. One scar more to me is
one crown less to you.”

At once the king turned grey as dust, for he remembered immediately,
though why he was not certain, that day a year before when he had lashed the
crippled girl across the face with his whip. A dark horror overcame him. He
scented sorcery as the rabbit scents the hound.

Yet nothing else happened that night, nor for five nights afterwards.

On the seventh night, as the king sat in his gardens, under the stars, a
veiled woman came between the trees. He took her for a servant, until she drew
close and whispered in his ear.

“Here I am,” she said, no more, no less, but at the words the king
trembled violently and cried out for his guard. Swiftly they came running, and
found the king shaking in his chair and the veiled woman standing there beside
him. “One moment,” said she, and made three or four passes in the air with her
gloved hands. Who can say what happened next? It is told that all the guard
fell dead in their tracks, and blue-faced Drin sprang up from the ground in
full armour and with swords, and stood grinning, ready to serve their magician
mistress. Then she cast off her veil, and she too wore armour of black iron
chased with silver, wild beautiful work these demons had made her, and on her
face an iron mask, which had features of its own like those of a fair woman,
and left only her forehead and eyes to be seen, and her torrential hair. With
her iron glove she pointed at the king and what a change she made in him! He
seemed to shrink, to shrivel, to curl up like a dead leaf—presently this was
all that was left of him: a little dry lizard skulking on his chair, which
abruptly darted down and away into the dark garden, and as it darted Zorayas
mashed its tail with her heel.

Zorayas smiled inside her mask, her fiery disfigured smile, but the lips
of iron were implacable and emotionless over her own.

She marched with her guard of Drin into the hall of the Palace, and there
she summoned the court of the king.

“Look well,” she said, “I am your ruler now, and I will rule you as my
father ruled Zojad long ago, for I am Zorayas, thirteenth daughter of Zorashad.
I do not claim to be a god, it is true, but I claim to have more power than any
other in these seventeen lands that stretch every way to the blue acres of the
sea. Serve me, if you wish, and prosper. Defy me, and see, I will replace you
all with these my followers the Drin, the Little Ones of Underearth. Or you can
search out your king in the garden, on four little lizard feet, which I will
give you so you may run as he does now, before his broken tail.” At this the
Drin giggled and applauded, and the white-faced court prudently fell on its
knees to adore her.

Thus Zorayas came to be queen in Zojad, and thus new statues were put up
in the city to replace those which had been melted down by the sixteen kings.
Yet never did she claim to be a goddess; her spells were enough indeed to put
fear into men’s hearts. And before long, armies began growing again like weeds
in Zojad, armies of bronze and iron, and she had won back to herself those
sixteen lands that had been lost when Zorashad’s amulet was destroyed.

3.  The
Starry Pavilion

Many tales
were recounted then of the Iron Princess who rode at the head of her army, and
some were true and some were not. She was a mighty witch, she could take no
wound, demons marched in the ranks behind her; she covered her face because one
look from it would scald with fire or turn to granite or melt as with acid any
who beheld it, though others said she was so beautiful no man could watch her
and not lose his wits, and that one of her smiles could darken the moon and one
frown could kill the sun.

In a year she had regained all that had been snatched from her, and more,
and she sat in her sorcerous tower of brass, or upon the great throne of Zojad
in her mask of iron, and ruled with a hand of iron, and if she was not happy,
neither was she impotent on the earth, and she burned with a flame of pride
that seemed as fierce as any joy.

And then there came a day when everything was done—her empire vast and
unassailable, her fame assured, all her goals reached, her hopes satisfied, and
there was nothing left—save an emptiness which rushed in like a cold sea and
flooded her heart.

So she sat in thought, and out of the cold sea rose one last dream, a
dream so foolhardy, so impossible, it lit up her world again with a brilliant
light.

She had exacted all her vengeances—on the king who had mocked her, on the
sixteen other kings who had slain Zorashad and taken her birthright; only one
being remained who had paid her nothing in recompense for her years of doubt
and humility and her ruined face. That one being, he who had begun it all with
his own casual vengeance—the ruler of the lower lands, master of Vazdru, Eshva,
Drin, one of the Lords of Darkness—Azhrarn, Prince of Demons.

At the impulse, the heart of Zorayas raced. Yet she did not boast aloud
as Zorashad had done. She kept her own counsel, and only went more often to her
tall tower of brass. And there, by the flashes of the blue and lustreless fire,
she passed, night by night, in and out of those doors of Power that now were so
familiar to her.

At last she
stood in the tower and called up those demons who appeared on earth in the form
of strange animals and monsters, the Drindra, the lowest of the Drin, and the
silliest and most mischievous of all. Soon the octagonal room was full of
grunting, whining, chattering things, which skittered away before the
princess’s iron finger.

“Be silent and attend,” said she, “for I wish to ask you questions.”

“We are your slaves, peerless mistress,” fawned the Drindra, dribbling on
her boots and licking the floor at her feet.

“No,” said Zorayas stonily, “you are the slaves of your lord, Azhrarn the
Beautiful, and it is of him I wish to learn.”

At this the Drindra blushed and shivered, for they loved their Prince
passionately and also feared him greatly. Zorayas knew she must be careful
then, for asking lore of Underearth was very difficult since no demon could be
constrained to tell anything freely, only answer truthfully when the
questioner’s guesses were correct, and even then they would, if they could, try
tricks.

“It is known,” she therefore began, “that there are certain special tokens
that will summon demons of the Eshva and Vazdru. Can it be that there are
tokens that will summon even Azhrarn the Beautiful?”

The Drindra chittered together and said:

“No, no, incomparable queen, nothing of that sort can be fashioned by
mortals.”

“Did I say tokens fashioned by mortals? I am thinking of curious pipes of
silver shaped in Underearth as toys for friends and lovers. Are there such, and
can any call Azhrarn?”

“Yes,” hissed the Drindra in mournful voices. “So it is.”

“Then can it be there are any of these pipes on earth?”

“How could it be,” chirruped the demons, “that such pipes should be
allowed to reach the earth?”

“This is not what I asked you,” cried Zorayas, and she struck her iron
fists together, at which a bolt of steely fire sprang out like a whip and made
the Drindra jump and spit.

“Be kind, sweet mistress,” they whimpered, “you are right, and your
wisdom glows like a precious jewel.”

“How many of these pipes exist on earth? Seven?”

The Drindra wailed and would not answer.

“More than seven? Less than seven?”

“Yes.”

“Three?” Zorayas asked, “two?” And then angrily, “only one?” And the
Drindra assented. “Where then does it lie? On land? Under water?”

“Yes!”

“Beneath the Sea?”

“Yes!”

Zorayas gave a shout of derision, and the Drindra cowered.

“Yes indeed,” said she. “I have heard tell of such a pipe—the serpent’s
head your lord gave to a youth who was dear to him, a hundred thousand years
ago—Sivesh, who lies at the ocean’s bottom where Azhrarn drowned him, with the
silver pipe about his delicious neck, which is now all bones.”

The Drindra lashed their tails and whispered: “Yes,” like the steam from
water thrown on hot metal.

Zorayas might have turned herself into a fish and swum down to retrieve
the enchanted pipe, but it was very dangerous for a mortal, even a magician, to
take on an animal form, or any form other than his own, for quite quickly he
would forget his human values and reasoning, and begin to think exactly as the
creature would think whose form he had taken. There were many tales of great
sorcerers who, in order to avoid some calamity or to discover some secret,
changed themselves into beasts, reptiles or birds of the air, and then forgot
all their spells and even who they were, and so remained moving, slithering or
flapping to the end of their days. Therefore Zorayas bound one of the Drindra
by terrible magics, and forced it to fetch her the pipe, which it was very
loath to do.

“Rest assured,” said Zorayas, “I wish only to honor your Prince, not to
anger him, for indirectly he is the cause of my present good fortune.”

So, bound as it was, the Drindra fled down through the waters of the sea
to a place where milk-white bones were lying on the sand. Here the ocean
creatures had gathered in wonder a thousand years before, and the sea-maidens
with their ice-green tresses kissed with their cold lips the colder lips of the
dead youth, touched with their cold pointed tongues the two gems of his chest,
the threefold treasure of his loins. But Sivesh did not stir. Only the currents
combed his hair, as once demon fingers had combed it, and his wide eyes were
full as with tears of tragedy and despair. Eventually the sea folk abandoned
him, and the water erased him and left only his bones—and the serpent pipe
about his neck. This the Drindra snatched off, gibbering, and fled back to
Zorayas’ tower of brass, and cast the pipe down at her feet with the seaweed
still tangled on it.

Zorayas took up the pipe and gazed at it, an hour or more.

She had a curious pavilion built in the great gardens of the palace, with
walls of jet-black granite. There were no windows in these walls, and the floor
was laid with bricks of pure gold, yet the ceiling of the pavilion was
strangest of all. It was made of a dull and inky glass that reflected no light
and through which nothing could be seen, and here and there in it were set pale
diamonds, sapphires, zircons in the exact positions of the stars. So cunning
was the workmanship of this ceiling that, looking up from inside the pavilion,
you would think there was no roof at all, only the night sky with its little
fires overhead. At one end of the chamber, facing the double doors, hung down a
thick cord of velvet.

Here in this pavilion, by this cord, Zorayas sat with the serpent pipe in
her hand, while the moon rose and the bells of Zojad tolled out the hours of
the night. Presently the moon sank, and they rang the last quarter before dawn.
Then Zorayas set the pipe to the little incision in her mask, and blew it.

There was no sound. At least, no sound that could be heard on earth. Then
suddenly the air was full of a brazen thunder, and in through the double doors
burst a lightning. Zorayas reached and twitched the velvet cord to the left and
the doors clanged shut again. The lightning meanwhile resolved itself into a shape
like a huge dragon, with molten lava licking from its mouth like twenty
tongues.

But Zorayas only said:

“Be still, Exalted One. I am protected from your fiery breath by my
spells. Will you not permit me to see you, as did my father Zorashad?”

At this, the dragon seemed to melt and fade, and there in the pavilion
stood a tall and wonderfully handsome man, with a black cloak like wings.

Zorayas looked at him, and her senses were confused at his beauty, as
were all mortal senses, but also her heart leaped with triumph.

“Lord of Shadows,” said she, “forgive your handmaiden that she has
entreated you here. By accident I found this pipe, and knowing from an ancient
fable that it would call you, how could I resist the chance of looking on your
form, O Prince of Princes?”

She knew the vanity of Demons, and had addressed him exactly as she
should. Azhrarn seemed neither grim nor questioning, only a little amused.

“You must also know then,” he said, “that, having summoned me, you may
ask one request of me.”

“All I ask, O Incomparable Magnificence, is to gaze on you and give you
my thanks, and to return you this pipe which is rightly yours.”

And she went down to him and handed him the pipe, which he took, and the
touch of his hand was like a cool flame even through her glove, which made her
poor twisted fingers sing in pain, and every scar on her ruined face throb, and
the scars the pedlar had left upon her breasts and between her thighs were
seethed in fire. And just then she heard the bell sound in Zojad which betokened
the rising of the sun. What a burning gush of fury and joy she felt. She
laughed aloud at it, out of the fire.

Azhrarn had all this while been watching carefully for the dawn lighting
of the sky, but no light fell through the black glass roof which looked
precisely like the sky itself. However, hearing a bell, he said to Zorayas:

“I am intrigued at your courtesy, Iron Lady, but I think the sun is near,
the light of which is to me an abomination. Therefore, I must leave you.”

“Must you?” said she, going back to where hung the velvet cord, and
taking it in her hand. “O Azhrarn,” she murmured in a smiling voice, “my father
Zorashad was a fool and set himself above you, and him you destroyed. I am his
daughter, and in that destruction I lost my birthright and much more besides.
Due to my own skill in magic, I have regained many things, but one thing I
could not alter, and for this one thing I will, after all, exact a boon from
you.”

“Speak then,” said Azhrarn and now he seemed impatient.

“I would see,” said Zorayas, “one of the Lords of Darkness face with his
glory the glory of the earth’s sun.”

Perhaps in her triumphant mockery she mistook, but it seemed to her the
wonderful countenance of Azhrarn grew paler.

“Have I not told you,” he said, “that I abhor the sun.”

“Abhor or
fear,
great Lord? I think you go in terror of its rays,
which, if they should touch you, would reduce you to powder or stone or some
such other lifeless and unlovely thing.”

Then such a look of malign shadow passed over the face of Azhrarn that
even Zorayas held her breath.

“Accursed of all women, do you suppose you will go unpunished for your
insolence? Fear the night, fool, daughter of a fool.”

And turning, he went toward the closed doors.

“Wait!” cried Zorayas, and gave a little twitch of the cord to the right.

A crack sprang open in the roof of cunning glass, and through it a
solitary golden beam shot like an arrow into the golden floor below. Azhrarn
stood still and stared at it, and his cloak beat about him of its own volition
like a terrified bird.

“I have learned,” said Zorayas softly, “that to a demon, even to the
Prince of Demons, the light of the sun is Death. I have learned too that even
though he may travel as fast as the lightning flash to his domain, the rays of
the sun will still strike him as he passes, and that, even if he wrench up the
ground itself, to pass to the lands below in that way, gold is not a metal to
his liking, and will take him longer to disperse. Thus, should he attempt to
open the earth in this pavilion, he must work slowly because of the gold bricks
in the floor, while I can open the roof wide with another tug of the cord, and
let in the sun like rain to cover him.”

No one knows then what Azhrarn said or did. Perhaps it was so fearful
that even writing it down, the words would scorch holes through the paper and
those who read them go blind. No doubt he threatened Zorayas with all manner of
horrors, and no doubt Zorayas assured him that even should he slay her she
would still drag open the glass with her last strength.

At length Azhrarn grew very still, and stood in the darkest half of the
chamber. While the sun arrow pierced the floor before him. He was at her mercy,
the mercy of a woman of earth; the thought obliquely fascinated rather than
angered him. He saw in it, too, possible avenues of escape. Besides, she had
not yet opened the glass roof, this moment was the enjoyment of her pride, and
the pride of mortals often destroys them.

After a while, Azhrarn said to her, in his most gentle and thrilling
tone:

“You told me, daughter of Zorashad, that you had regained many of those
things which your father’s death lost you, all but one thing which you could
not alter. What can it be, brave and intelligent maiden, which your vast power
could not encompass?”

But Zorayas did not answer, only played with the velvet cord. Azhrarn
smiled to himself. He knew very well that his voice, flattering and praising
her, was the sweetest sound she had ever heard, and that, for all her ideas of
vengeance, she could not bear to silence it just yet.