Night's Master (12 page)

“It is well known,” he therefore murmured, after a moment or so, “that
demon-kind will make bargains. Should you decide to leave your ingenious roof
closed and permit me to return to my kingdom, I could offer you vast power,
enough to suit even your splendid nature.”

Zorayas smiled, though the iron mouth did not.

“My armies, O Prince, are legendary, and avoided over the whole earth.
Already I rule seventeen lands. In another year I could rule double that number
if I wished. As for my other powers, you yourself are tasting them, are you
not?”

“Indeed, wise maiden. I see my error. Nor is it any use to offer you the
riches of the mines,” Azhrarn said lingeringly, “the rubies and diamonds and
emeralds at the earth’s core?”

“I have jewels enough,” said Zorayas. “You see,
I
wear none. But
if I wished, I have so many slaves that in a year I could triple the number of
gems in my treasury. Look up, at the costly brilliants you mistook for stars, O
Prince.”

“Indeed, insurpassable maiden. There is no bargain I can make with you
after all. You have everything mortals yearn for—power, sorcery, wealth. Though
why you do not yourself wear jewels puzzles me, and also this habit of masking
your face and hands—” and at this, Azhrarn saw Zorayas stiffen in her chair and
her grasp tightened on the cord. “One request,” said Azhrarn. “At least, O fair
and noble one, let me look on the face of my vanquisher. Such beauty you must
have that it will outshine the very sun you threaten me with, as even your
beautiful eyes do now.”

Zorayas gave a cry; it was full of pain and anger. Azhrarn needed no
more; he stretched out his hand and the iron mask cracked right across and fell
in pieces. Zorayas shivered, and with her free hand she hid her misshapen face.

Azhrarn laughed. Even in that extreme moment, the workings of the mind of
the Prince were far from simple. No longer did he feel any animosity towards
the poor grovelling dangerous creature on the throne. He was agreeably provoked
by her learning, her cunning, her daring; he saw too, in a woman of such power
and warlike thoughts, a way to make some delightful trouble in the world.

“O best of women,” said Azhrarn in his most musical and endearing tone,
“I note there is, after all, a bargain I might make with you. Open the roof
now, and I, perhaps, may perish and you may be revenged, and will then live out
the rest of your short life emptily, shut forever in your mask. Men will bow
before you and fight in your armies and tell how you belittled Azhrarn, one of
the Lords of Darkness, and all your days neither man nor woman will tremble
with desire for you, kiss your lips, sing of your love. You will remain cold as
ice till the tomb eats you and the worm takes his pleasure where you have had
none.” When he said this, the girl shivered again, though her hand on the
velvet cord did not falter. “There is another way,” said Azhrarn softly, coming
nearer. “No magic in the world can remedy your ugliness, but I, and I alone,
have the power to make you beautiful. More beautiful indeed than you have ever
dreamed, more beautiful than any other woman of earth, before or to be. I can
make you so lovely that whoever looks at you will ache for you; men will
happily die if they can lie one hour with you. You will no longer have need of
armies or slaves for cities will open their gates in order to worship this face
which now you dare not show. Kings and princes themselves will toil in the
mines of earth to lay treasures at your feet in the hope of one touch of your
mouth.”

Zorayas stared at the Demon for many minutes, and eventually whispered:

“If you can do this, I will let you go.”

Then Azhrarn went round the chamber, avoiding the arrow of the sun, and
he took Zorayas’ crippled hands, and the gloves burst open and a scalding
needle ran through her flesh and into her whole body, and when she looked down,
her arms were straight and free of pain and white and smooth as ivory, and her
hands as graceful as doves, and her breasts like flowers. Next he laid his
palms against her face. The fire that seemed to come from them was so awful it
made her scream out, her skin was like a land shaken by earthquake. Then the
fire died, and she saw the Demon stand smiling at her in a way he had not
smiled before, a smile almost of an awesome and indecipherable tenderness. She
put her own hands to her cheeks, and felt the difference there.

“Go and find a glass,” said Azhrarn.

And she obeyed him, for what the Prince of Demons promised, he abided by,
and the bargain had been made.

Beyond the pavilion in the garden there was a little pool, and going
there, holding aside the reeds with her white hands, Zorayas looked at her face
as she had looked only once before, in the forest. What she saw was a beauty
surpassing the gorgeousness of the leopard, more poignant than the plumage of
the spring, like the moon, the sun, a beauty only a Demon could invent, a
beauty to cast down the world. And she rose up, throwing aside her iron
garments, clothed only in this miracle, and went back into the pavilion and
closed the door on the daylight.

The floor was broken wide, and there Azhrarn stood with his passage to
the Underearth safely before him, yet he, even he, had stayed for one last look
at her.

And Zorayas gazed at him, and kneeled before him and said:

“Now kill me, my Lord, and I will die adoring you, and beyond death I
will tell them, if they listen in the mists that wrap the world, that you are
King of all the kings, my beloved and my master, whose curse to me is sweeter
than the song of the nightingale.”

Then Azhrarn raised her in his arms and laid his mouth on hers, smiling
still that what he had created seduced him.

“You have seen yourself, daughter of beauty. Do you imagine that I would
destroy anything I had made which was so fair?”

And thus the flesh of Zorayas, which had known only the hurt of old
wounds, a lash, a rape, the rasp of iron, knew loveliness in itself, and the
embrace of Azhrarn upon itself and within, the seal of dark night upon her
morning.

PART TWO

4. Diamonds

Two brothers
sat at chess in a high palace tower, while beyond the jasper lattice of the
window, a vermilion sun went down.

The sun dyed everything with a soft blush, the crags and dunes of the
desert country, the shining river with its tree-tasselled banks, the walls and
high towers of the palace. Even the faces of the two young men were painted
with its color, lending them a superficial likeness. For, though brothers, they
were dissimilar, Jurim, the younger, being fair and yellow haired, the elder,
Mirrash, of a stern and smoky darkness. Nor were their temperaments matched.
Jurim was a poet and a dreamer, Mirrash a strategist who did not trust the
world. Their father, an aristocrat of ancient family, had died and left his
lands jointly to both sons, that each might contribute, from his opposite
values, a complementary whole, since, differences apart, they loved each other
well. Into their joint keeping also he had put the astounding hoard of diamonds
which had been the source of his fame and wealth; half the hoard to each of
them.

These diamonds. They were everywhere in evidence about the palace; upon
the handles of chests and doors, inlaid in the mosaic paving. The cornices of
the roof were set with diamonds, and the eyes of the twenty amber lions that
mounted up the stairs between the cedars, and diamonds as small as peas flashed
in the fountains, brighter than the water.

Indeed, it was a curious sight, to come from the barren desert to the
shining river, and see reflected there and going up beyond the bank, an equally
shining house of many towers, sparkling with gold and priceless jewels, night
behind it and its face to the sinking sun.

Tempting to robbers, one might suppose, such a house in the midst of the
wilderness. Not so. The diamonds, renowned for their flawless beauty, also
possessed a curse. Whosoever stole them would perish. It was this simple. The
thief would discover the gem burning his pocket, his pouch, his coffer, his
hand. The fine white daggers of its radiance would alter to the murky hue of
old blood. In the night, the thief would feel strangling fingers at his throat,
the gripe of poison in his belly, a stabbing like a blade in his heart. He
would die with a blue face and many regrets. So the story ran. A few had
disbelieved it, put it to the test, wished they had not, and were buried. Only
as a sincere gift might the diamonds be received in safety and enjoyed.

Jurim had pondered sometimes on the gift of diamonds he would hang upon
his bride, when he found her. There had been many beautiful girls, round
breasts, antelope eyes, heavy silken tresses, but for a wife he would have one
who was, to these wayside lilies, an orchid. He had heard a name whispered, he
had not dared think of it too long. She was a queen, ruler of twenty lands,
more lovely than loveliness, who paved her road with the broken hearts and
bones of men—Zorayas, who, they said, had lain with a Demon in a starry
pavilion. Zorayas, who could not be as maleficent as men asserted, for men’s
pictures of women were always too much of one thing, too little of another.
Jurim, mere prince of a desert estate, could not aspire to an empress-queen,
but to think of her, it amused and pleasantly pained him, like the dreams
forgotten with dawn that left, nevertheless, their shadows behind upon his
brain.

The sun was almost gone, a pink glimmer at the edge of a blue night. Then
it seemed to be rising again.

“Look,” said Jurim to his brother Mirrash, “either the day is coming
back, or those are the lights of a caravan.”

“A caravan which has lost the way, then,” said Mirrash.

Soon enough, they heard the music, the silver bells, saw the fringed
swinging canopies, the flower decked beasts drawing the chariots, the warm
lamps glowing in the dust, and they smelled the rising scent of incense and
jasmin.

“It is more like a bridal procession than a caravan,” said Jurim
wonderingly, and his heart beat fast remembering his dream.

Presently the unusual caravan reached the gates. The servants and guards
there seemed struck with amazement. A man ran into the tower, bowed low and
cried:

“My lords, a strange thing. It is a lady from a far city. Her entourage
has lost the road and begs for shelter until morning.”

Jurim stood in silence, but Mirrash frowned.

“Who is she, this lady from the desert?”

“She prefers you do not ask her name,” the servant said.

“And have you seen her face?”

“No, lord. She is veiled in a milky gauze down to her knees, but her robe
is fringed with lapis lazuli and gold and her hands have emeralds on them, and
she speaks as a lady does, as if she had silver in her mouth. Truly she is
neither a robber nor a lewd.”

“I think I guess what she is,” said Mirrash. “For some while I have been
expecting her. I wish we might turn her away, but she is cunning and a
sorceress. No, let her in. Give her royal chambers and find food, but, for your
own sake, avoid her eyes. For my brother and myself, we are away on business,
you understand, and cannot greet the lady.”

The servant went out, plainly afraid.

Jurim said; “Forbid yourself if you like, my brother, but not me. I am
intrigued by her veil. What can she be hiding? Perhaps she is ugly and deserves
our kindness.”

“Once she was ugly, if the legend is true,” answered Mirrash. “Now, few
may look at her and keep a whole mind. She is Zorayas, the witch queen of
Zojad, the doxy of demons and a scourge of men. No doubt she has heard of
diamonds, too.”

“Zorayas,” murmured Jurim, and he paled.

He knew it fruitless to argue further, but in the quick soil of the
romantic, his brother’s warning put down no root. Zorayas and the dream were
already in blossom there. In Jurim’s life there had come, so far, no huge
calamity, no accident which would have shown him the nature of evil, and that
Mirrash was wiser than he.

The lights and pipes of the entourage poured into the palace. A harp
began to play a wistful melody in a chamber hung with silks that had diamonds
stitched upon them. Here a veiled woman sat, all in white. toying with a rosy
pomegranate and a golden knife.

Jurim entered the chamber, bowed low, and sent the servants out. He
smelled the scent of sandalwood, jasmin and musk. He trembled, explained who he
was, tried to see through the veil. The stranger laughed. One white arm
appeared, its bones and flesh seeming sheathed in a skin of velvet. A gold
bangle sang as it struck another of jade. Above was a white shoulder, burnished
and succulent as a fruit, its pallor emphasized by one serpent of dark copper
hair that slid back and forth. sometimes dipping again within the veil.

“Come and sit by me, lord prince,” said the woman. “Should you like me to
unveil? I will, if you desire it.”

Jurim sat by her and requested that she would, and the woman brushed off
the veil like smoke from her face and body.

Such a vision seared out upon Jurim, it was like lightning shattering a
cloud. The blood drained from his heart and left him half dead and barely
sensible. Her beauty was like death. It ate him away and filled him with
itself. He could think of nothing but her beauty, see nothing else.

She touched his lips with hers. He tried to seize her. She pushed his
hands gently away, and he could not resist her.

“I am Zorayas,” she said, “and you are very handsome. But if we are to be
friends, you must give me a gift.”

“Anything I possess is yours,” he said.

“The diamonds in this room,” she said, “I counted them, there are fifty.
Give me those.”

Jurim ran to the walls. He tore the diamonds from the silks and heaped
them in her lap. She drew his head to her breasts and caressed him, and
presently she kissed his burning forehead, and she sighed: “How I love your
hair, which is like gold, and your body which is strong like a stag’s. How
eager you are, but first, will you give me the diamonds that hang like grapes
from the ceiling of the hall?”

Jurim ran to the hall. He was blind and deaf to all but her, could only
smell the scent of her, feel the cool rounded litheness of her. He cut the
diamonds from the ceiling, and brought them to her. He let them fall about her
in a rain and buried his face in her hair.

She drew him down. He arrowed through the torrent of her, foundered in
the deep sea-cave of her loins. But there was no end to the lure, no depth to
the cave. The tide returned him to the mouth of Zorayas like flotsam.

Mirrash, meantime, had looked for him and found him gone.

At the stroke of midnight, Mirrash went down silently and listened at the
door of the stranger’s chamber. And there he heard the voice of Jurim, pleading
and promising. And every so often another would whisper, and then at length
Jurim groaned with pleasure and could not keep back a cry like a woman’s.

Mirrash waited in the shadow. After a while, the chamber doors were
opened, and Jurim and Zorayas came out, walking softly as lovers. The face of
Jurim was white, and his eyes swam in blue hollows. But Mirrash averted his
head quickly, so that he should not see the appalling beauty of the woman’s
face.

They went about the darkened rooms as if about a market, and Zorayas
selected what she would have, diamonds large as cups, and little faceted
diamonds that blazed even in the shade, and Jurim would tear and dig them from
their places and put them in the apron she had made of her skirt, and they
would laugh as if at some childish game. Eventually they reached a room where
the diamonds were clustered thick as bees.

Mirrash stood outside the doors.

“Brother,” he called, “remember. The hoard is only half yours. You cannot
take my half without my consent, and your treasury is almost empty.”

Jurim started, like a man waking from a dream.

Zorayas called sharply:

“Who is that scratching at the threshold? Is it a pet dog or cat that dares
not come in? If it be a man, let him put terror aside. I am only a woman and
will do him no hurt.”

But Mirrash knew the danger too well, and kept out.

“Your pardon, lady, I cannot stay. I seek only to remind my brother that
any gem he gives you that is not his to give will carry the curse to you as
surely as if you had stolen it. And now, goodnight.”

“These are sensible words,” said Zorayas, though her voice was cold.
“Pray keep tally, Jurim. I dislike the diamond curse. Give me nothing that is
not yours.”

Mirrash went to the great library, and puzzled there over books of
sorcery and ancient writings, to no avail. He heard Zorayas’ laughter like
bright birds in the palace. And near dawn another of those despairing cries of
sensuality that filled his heart with angry dread.

Dawn rose
from the desert and turned the river to wine.

Zorayas stood upon the balcony and summoned a shadow from the air which
gathered up her store of diamonds and bore them away in a curl of fire.

“Your gifts to me will soon be safe in Zojad, and I must follow them at
once,” Zorayas said to Jurim, stroking his hair. “Give me a lock of this gold
too to take with me. I shall not want to forget you too quickly.”

“And I cannot bear it if you forget me,” Jurim said. “Stay with me. For
one more day, if no longer. Just one day. What is a day to you that means so
much to me? One day and one night.” And he embraced her.

“Ah, no,” said Zorayas, “I must return to my city. I fear I have wearied
you too long.”

“No, No—” cried Jurim, holding her fast with a look of anguish.

“Yes and yes,” said Zorayas. “Besides, I am unwelcome. Your brother is in
a rage and spurns me. He denies you access to his share of the diamonds, and
all yours are gone.”

“I will entreat them from him. He will not refuse.”

“Go, then, entreat him, my golden stag. But be hasty.”

Jurim ran to Mirrash’s chamber; he flung himself on his knees before
Mirrash.

“Loan me a portion of your store of jewels, my brother, or she will leave
me.”

A look of loathing and distaste passed across the face of Mirrash, but he
put the look aside.

“She will leave you in any event. Let her go, and thank the gods for her
departure. She is a demon.”

“I cannot bear that she should go.”

“She has unmanned you,” Mirrash said. “But, in truth, it is her common
practice. You are no worse than the rest, Oh, my brother,” he said, raising
Jurim to his feet, “tell her to be gone. The wound will heal. She is slow
poison, lady death—”

Jurim said: “You refuse me then? It is your right. Only say.”

“Yes, for your life I refuse you.”

Zorayas only smiled when she heard.

“Well, I have half the prize. If you would see me again, sweet, you must
send me all of it. And my kisses will be the dearer for delay.”

She stood upon the parapet and a gilded chariot appeared from behind the
sun, drawn by black dogs with wings. The sorceress stepped in the chariot and
was borne away, and her entourage after her.

The grief that took Jurim then was terrible to see. He grew, in less than
a month, pale and thin, a shrivelled grasshopper, who had been handsome and
strong. He could not eat or sleep or rest, but paced about the palace all day
and all night, and leaned on the pillars and walls from weakness and wept. He
did not reproach Mirrash for withholding his share of their father’s treasure,
but Mirrash felt his brother’s despair and illness as though they had been his
own, and finally his resolve broke down.

“Come then, my poor brother, take all I have and all the palace has and
give it to her, and ask her to come back to you.” But his heart was cold iron
in his breast, for he knew she had no pity, and her favor would only last a
little while.

It did not even last so long.

Jurim went with a great caravan to Zojad; Zorayas took the gift from his
hands, three hundred diamonds of many sizes. Then she bade him return to his
desert, she would visit him presently. Jurim pleaded with her and she grew
angry. She said he was not as she remembered but shrunken and ugly. Her
soldiers were set upon him. He came home beaten and bloody upon a bier and,
catching hold of Mirrash’s hand at the gate, he gasped: “Is she here before
me?” and later, as he lay on his bed: “will she never come?”