Night's Master (15 page)

She went to her tower of brass. She ringed it within and without with
spells and talismans and occult symbols. She burned aromatics and sprinkled the
floor with wine and blood, and drew there the signs of power. She purified her
body, bathed and anointed herself, and spoke words of protection. She stood
naked, the beautiful sorceress, her long hair empty of jewels, falling about
her like a burning briar.

She eased the hinges of the blue metal case with oil, she slid a slender
knife between the case and what lay behind it. She freed the clasps.

She moved back, and let the tall mirror, the height of a man and as
broad, containing an Ultimate Truth, fold open. Unblinking, arrogant, she
stared into the cold sheen of glass.

And saw—

Merely her reflection.

Zorayas’ mouth whitened, she clenched her hands. She snarled.

She had been
cheated
.

Then, despite her rage, something caught her eye. What caught it was the
pure miraculous loveliness of the image in the mirror, her own. Zorayas
hesitated. Her hands slackened, and she let out her pent breath in a slow sigh.
How beautiful, how beautiful she was. She had never fully seen before her own
perfection. There had been the silver mirrors, highly polished, showing her
enough to marvel at, there were the crystal pools where she might lean to
glimpse her glorious face between the gold reeds and the alabaster flowers, as
once before, at the first, she had leaned to glimpse it. And yet, not one of
those reflections could compare with this, not one had shown her so much. Her
whole self, clad in visual music, a mirage of flame and ice, metal and silk.

Zorayas laughed, stretching forward, her anger quite forgotten. No glass
had ever been this clear or this accurate. Eyes laughed back at her like dark
flowers against a sunrise, a mouth laughed like a rose. Her body, an orchid on
its slender dual stem, the hollows flushed with a glow as if of candleshine,
the penciled line between limbs and torso, the round brush strokes of the
pelvis, the fox that crouched at her groin, and above, the white innocence of
the breasts with their twin citadels of knowledge.

Ah, the gift of Azhrarn the beautiful, this feast of beauty. Zorayas
seemed to fall towards the outstretched arms of the creature before her, which
silently beckoned and received. Her palms touched the palms in the mirror, her
belly melded to the form of the white pelvis, her breasts flew to the mirror
breasts, a meeting of doves. She pressed her mouth to the glass and, for a
moment, felt a warm vibrant texture against her body, a mouth that hungrily
offered itself to hers.

With a cry, Zorayas threw herself back.

An ultimate truth? Perhaps she had discovered it. That she loved herself,
if none other. And then she perceived a new thing. That the mirror, which
reflected her so well, reflected nothing else of the chamber, not a ray, not a
shadow, not a hanging, not the symbols on the floor nor the smoke-wreathed
sigils of the walls. Only Zorayas did the mirror show. Only she.

Zorayas thrust at the case of blue metal and it slammed shut. She took up
her mantle, and fled from the tower of brass.

Three days
and almost three nights passed before Zorayas returned to the tower. During
those three days and nights she did many of the things which it had become her
practice to do. She rode with her hounds—she hunted men rather than beasts,
slaves foolish enough to offend her—she travelled her gardens and her pleasure
rooms, pausing to caress a gemmed book, a jewelled wrist. She called together
the scholars and astrologers of Zojad, and argued and debated with them. She
had actors perform a play for her, and one who amused her she lay with and
another whom she did not like so well she hung from a rafter by his ears and
his tongue.

She had grown cruel and luxurious. Hardship had taught her, a Demon’s
couching had ensured the rest.

She purchased eighty flamingoes to clothe the pools of her garden. She
ordered a feast at which every course was a different color, the red baked meat
of crabs and rosy fish and red wine in ruby goblets, white meats with almonds
and white wine in porcelain cups, green cakes of angelica, grapes and candied
cucumbers and green sherbets in emerald thimbles. And one course for her
enemies, a blue course of poisonous cyanose wafers and undiluted indigo in
drinking vessels shaped like sapphire skulls.

But all the while she did these evil and exotic things, she was
remembering the closed mirror in the tower. The memory skimmed across her brain
like a bird, crawled in and out there like a serpent. She inspired, in those
three days and nights, no beauty to equal what she had seen in the glass, nor
did she inspire quite such fear, not with all her games, as the fear that had
clutched her vitals as she fled her own image.

On the third night, she called musicians to play for her. The song
reminded her of a woman’s body gracefully dancing. White peacocks walked in the
garden, their whiteness recalled another whiteness of flesh. Zorayas clapped
her hands. Her collection of beasts was brought. She went to the huge gilded
cages. Spotted panthers with eyes of green bronze, tigers of cinnabar with eyes
of orichalcum. And in the eyes of each, a tiny reflection.

It was a terrible craving in her she must satisfy, to look once more in
that tall glass. Maybe her fancy, her own magic, had invested it with qualities
it did not possess. Yes, no doubt, that was it. If she visited the tower of
brass, opened the case of blue metal, she would see simply a large and lustrous
mirror, flattery to her exquisite beauty, but no more.

The moon had set. She climbed the stair of the tower in darkness, went in
at the door of the sorcerous room in the dark. The case of the great mirror
glowed like a still blue lightning. Zorayas crossed to it, freed the clasps,
stood back to let it swing open.

She did not need a lamp. The mirror shimmered, glimmered. Something
wondrous looked out at her.

Zorayas smiled, she could not help herself. The image in the mirror
smiled.

Zorayas caught her breath, the image likewise.

Irresistibly drawn, Zorayas took three steps towards the image; the image
took three steps towards Zorayas. They gazed, lips parted, eyes wide. The hands
of the image slid downward, and parted the fastenings of the golden dress. Two
white moons rose from the golden silk. The image in the mirror whispered: “Come
nearer, beloved. Come nearer.”

Zorayas stared, at the image, at her own hands still by her sides; her
own breasts—covered by the silk. The image had done something she had not. The
image had spoken.

“Who are you?” Zorayas cried, “and what are you?”

“Yourself,” whispered the image. “Come to me, my beloved. I seethe and
pine and ache for you, beloved of beloveds.”

Zorayas trembled. Her eyes filled, she could not breathe. Before she knew
it, she had run half the distance toward the mirror, her arms outstretched. A
few steps more, and she could press herself again to those familiar valleys and
hills, that fragrant landscape which she knew better than any land she had
conquered, better than any lover she had ever lain with. But she forced herself
to a halt, before the hands which reached out to her could touch her own.

Zorayas ran again from the sorcerous tower, and locked the door behind her.
She wept. It was with a sense of desolation rather than of escape or fear that
she descended the stairs.

She flung the key of the tower door into a deep well.

Mirrash had
made the glass, made it especially for Zorayas. It had been forged in cold
fires and shaped with burning words. Mirrash had become a sorcerer, letting the
ancient books teach him, dedicating himself to his task. It was not so much
vengeance he sought, as to rid the world of the wickedness of Zorayas. Jurim
was dead, but there would be other Jurims that Zorayas would prey on, if she
remained. He had puzzled some while over the tale the story-teller had
recounted, puzzled too if the story-teller were really some phantom messenger,
broken loose from the limbo of souls in order to warn and advise, or merely a
wise man, cunning and well informed.

At any rate, the tale had been apt—beauty abusing what worshipped it,
beauty seduced by its own vision. bringing itself to death.

As the snakess had come on an image which exactly resembled herself, so
Zorayas should come on one, in a mirror. And the mirror would not be mortal.
The mirror would draw life from what looked there, the mirror would live, in
its own way, and would desire, love, yearn for, plead with, compel the object
of its life.

On the night she had come to him, he had predicted Zorayas’ behaviour and
so outwitted her, but now he was not certain he could guess her mind. He did
not know how long he must wait. Zorayas was strong-willed and powerful, perhaps
she could resist the mirror’s spell.

The palace in the desert fell into decay. The shining river was clogged
with weeds and shone no more.

Perhaps Zorayas would exercise her spite upon the giver of the gift—

But Zorayas had forgotten Mirrash. She had forgotten everything but one
thing. Her actions had become those of a doll on strings, yet she did much. She
conquered five more lands, riding at the head of her armies. She had built for
herself enormous citadels, mansions and statues. She turned from human lovers
and lay with beasts. A third of a year a lion was her lord; his mane was
plaited with jewels; in his eyes as he mounted her, she saw reflections.

One night, she wished Azhrarn would come to her. She burned rare smokes,
and spoke certain words. She dared not summon now, could only cajole. Perhaps
he would have come, the Prince of Demons, if he had been aware of her
beseeching. But he had turned from her to other things, turned from her perhaps
for a few days, a few months of Underearth—a mortal’s lifetime—and looking
back, he found her gone.

Time wearied Zorayas. Though she had the face and body of her youth, she
felt an old woman, exhausted and bored by the world. It seemed there was
nothing she could not do, and nothing indeed she had not done. No enemy could
withstand her, no lover deny her, no kingdom defeat her. Perpetual success beat
her to her knees. Now the small voice of uncertainty within her did not cry for
victories to salve its hurt; it murmured: “What worth was all this labor, that
has not eased me?”

She had no love for life, had never truly had any. In fact, she would
have been happier with less, striving and sadness had made her strong where
power had sated her.

The last flickerings of her determination to survive died in orgiastic
banquetings, in sorcerous madnesses that dyed the night sky green or the blue
hills red, and grew the tails of monkeys upon the rumps of men, in strange
excursions overland on a ship with wheels, or across the sea in a big-sailed
chariot drawn by dolphins.

At length the ultimate ennui descended on her.

She lay like one already dead. Seven days she lay on her couch. And then
one memory quickened her.

Zorayas called three giant men, her slaves. She took them to the tower of
brass and instructed them to break in for her the locked door.

It did not take long, she had always realized it would not. The act of
throwing the key into the well had been a gesture.

When the door gaped, Zorayas sent the slaves away, and went up alone into
the room.

The mirror opened. There could be no doubt. The image stood naked,
wrapped in its dark red hair, motionless. The eyes of the image were closed. It
made no sign, no movement. It looked like a marvelous icon, as though it were
dead.

“I am here,” Zorayas said. “You are all I seek, and all I wish for.”

She unfastened her mantle and stepped from it, naked now as the image.

The lids of the image raised themselves slowly. A dawn broke upon the
magical face. It raised its arms, the arms of Zorayas: “Come to me then.”

Not running this time, nor holding back, Zorayas walked towards the
mirror until breast met breast, limb met limb, palm touched palm. For an
instant she felt the cool resistance of glass, then the glass seemed warmed and
melting. Warm eager hands encircled her, squeezing her more closely to a warm
breathing form. Her own hands swam and fiercely clasped a smooth slenderness.
Mouth fused with mouth and thigh with thigh. Zorayas abandoned herself to an
ultimate truth of matchless ecstasy that dissolved her in its fire—

The slaves in the garden turned at the weird glare in the sky. A
rose-colored sun was being born inside the upper room of the tower of brass. It
swelled and brightened, became an intolerable whiteness that pained the eyes of
all who saw it. A shattering explosion followed.

After the thunder and terrible light had faded, those who crept to the
tower of brass found only a stump of charred metal. Nothing else remained. Not
a tile, not an amulet; not even a fragment of glass, of bone, or of woman’s
hair.

Mirrash came
to the palace where formerly had ruled the queen of Zojad, now so mysteriously
vanished from the earth. Some said she had been carried off by the Drin, others
that she had abandoned her wickedness to become a traveling holy woman.

There was bickering in the city and in the palace. The kings of many
lands were on the march once more, anxious to break the yoke beneath which
Zorayas had held them. There was some further trouble too, for in the night a
lord, who had appropriated one of the large diamonds which Zorayas had won from
Jurim, had been found horribly dead.

As the ministers squabbled on the steps of the tall throne, where once
they would have drawn their very breath in anxiety of the woman who sat there,
a dark stern man entered the hall. How he got by the guards no one knew, but
discipline was lax, and the soldiers were deserting in squadrons.