Night's Master (22 page)

Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, one of the Lords of Darkness, went through
that delicate chill region like a black reality. He walked towards those
mountains that might never be reached, and, after many mortal days, he came to
a huge floor of chequers that stretched from horizon to horizon. And the
chequers were of two colors that were never seen on earth or under it, one the
color of profound solitude and the other the color of complete indifference,
and here some of the gods were to be found. A few were walking slowly about,
but most stood motionless. Not an eyelid flickered, not a limb twitched, they
neither spoke nor breathed.

They had the appearance of humanity, or rather, the appearance that
humanity had had in the beginning, for these gods had made men. In those days,
when the earth was flat, gods were permitted such eccentricities. But how
fragile the gods were, how ethereal. Their hair was so pallid a gold it was
almost silver, their flesh was transparent, showing that they had no bones,
only the faintest of faint violet ichors that swam in the transparency without
the need of arteries or veins. Their eyes were polished mirrors that reflected
nothing. When they grew excited (which was rarely), at some astonishing
metaphysical revelation within themselves, tissue-fine butterflies would
flutter from their crystalline robes, and dissolve like bubbles in the blue,
blue air.

When Azhrarn came among them, the gods stirred vaguely, like grasses in a
light breeze.

Azhrarn said: “The earth is dying. Man, your creation, is dying. Did you
not hear of this?”

But the gods did not answer, or look at him, or seem to see him.

Then Azhrarn told them how the earth split and burned, and men slew each
other under the goad of a sorcerous enduring hatred that fed and grew more
vital on destruction. He told them everything and spared no word.

And the gods did not answer, or look at him, or seem to see him.

Then Azhrarn went to a single god, or, as it might be, a goddess, for it
was difficult to ascertain if the gods had two sexes or one or several or none
at all. And Azhrarn kissed the god on the lips, and the eyelids of the god
flickered, and butterflies rose from his garments.

“Men you made,” Azhrarn said, “but me you did not make, and I will have
an answer.”

So the god spoke to Azhrarn at last, though not by means of voice or
tongue or language, in fact it is not known how he spoke, but speak he did. And
he said this: “Mankind is nothing to us, and the earth is nothing to us. Man is
a mistake we made. Even gods are entitled to one mistake. But we will not
perpetrate another by saving him. Let him vanish from the earth, and earth
vanish from the state of Being. You are the Demon, and humanity is your beloved
toy, but we have graduated from such trivia. If you wish man to be saved, then
you must save him, for we shall not.”

Azhrarn did not reply, or demand another syllable from the gods. He only
gazed at them, and where his gaze lingered, the edges of their crystalline
garments shrivelled like paper in a fire. But no more could Azhrarn do, for
gods are gods.

Thus Azhrarn returned over the blue cold Upperearth, his back to the
unreachable mountains now, and he came to the Well of Immortality, and he spat
in it. And such was the nature of Azhrarn, that the leaden water roiled, and
for a moment grew clear and bright, before the greyness overcame it once again.
But the Guardians merely snored on their bench, and Azhrarn entered into the
winged ship, and left the Upperearth behind him.

6. The Sun
and the Wind

The Demon
stood on the flax grown banks of Sleep River; before him flowed its heavy iron
waters with a dismal sound, behind him lay the winged ship, like a dead swan.
The heart of a darkness can become no darker. Yet, in the person of Azhrarn had
always flamed an occult brilliancy which now was gone. And his face was bitter
and terrible as he stood shrouded in hollow fear upon the river bank. Here,
where he had so often pitilessly hunted the souls of men asleep, strange
fancies hunted the inner creature of Azhrarn.

And as he brooded there, a translucent image, like wafer-thin ivory, rose
from the waters. Not the soul of a sleeping man this, few enough slept deeply
in those terrifying cataclysmic days of earth to let their souls go wandering
so far. This was the soul of one dead.

Azhrarn gazed at the soul, and the soul at him. The eyes of the soul were
two blue fragments of an evening, the hair amber, and about its wrist and on
its shoulder lay tendrils of deep ocean weed.

“Do you know me, my Lord of all Lords,” asked the soul, “or do you forget
me as easily as you slew me? I am Sivesh who drowned in the green seas of
morning because you hated me, who gave you only love. My bones are rotted away
on the floor of that sea, but I have lingered in this parody of my human shape,
for even at the amorphous gate beyond life, I loved you still, who disowned and
destroyed me, and my love has bound me to the world.”

Azhrarn looked at the soul of his dead lover, and what he thought no man
knows, but he said: “Many thousand mortal years have passed since I parted from
you. Why do you seek me now?”

“The world is ending,” said the soul. “But of all things, the world you
love. I have come to see if you will save the world or let her die, For in the
world’s death is the death of Azhrarn. Though you should live two million times
a million years, without the earth yet are you dead, and you will wander as I
do, and you will be as dead as I, and as purposeless.”

Then the soul drew close, and through its body you could see the far
shore, and the dark river going by. And it kissed the hand of Azhrarn, but the
touch of it was like the touch of cool smoke only. It faded like ice in the
sun.

Hate lay upon
the earth, penetrated her to her deepest caves, her most secluded valleys. Hate
raped the earth, and the children of Hate burst forth. And Hate, ultimate
victory, had taken at last a form, a form like a huge head, or rather, a mouth.
No man could perceive this apparition, which devoured him. But no man, if he
had deciphered the calamity, and seen Hate as its root, could have come up
against it, as a hero would go to confront a dragon, for no man could have
endured this presence. For all the little wickednesses in men, in the vicinity
of such concentrated malignancy the bravest or the worst of them would falter,
scorch, crumble.

Only one could meet that entity which had been Qebba’s Hate, only one
could see, smell, find or match it. For hate, to Azhrarn, had been a familiar,
a beautiful harp which might be played, a skill, a jest.

Where the location was of Hate’s core, this form it had assumed, is not
remembered, nor might it be written down, much as water cannot be chewed. It
was supposedly some part-abstract place, neither in the world nor out of it. At
any rate, the landscape was somewhat like the earth’s, a range of bleak crags,
their lower terraces black with burned trees, and burnished thick cloud ringing
the upper pinnacles, shining with a curious brownish leaden light. When dawn
broke on the tortured world, the sun would also rise upon this scene, but now
it was night on earth, and night here also, and here and there a red star
glittered like a drop of blood through the unwholesome haze.

Somewhere in the cloud and the haze, the head and the mouth and the core
of Hate was writhing its brown bulbous lips. It could see, too, through its
mouth, kept open at all times, though its sight was in no way like a mortal’s.
And now it “saw” a darkness on the slopes below, and the darkness took on the
shape of a tall and handsome man, black of hair and eyes, and swathed in a
black cloak that made him seem winged, like an eagle.

Never before had anything found Hate out, reached its citadel and stood
looking at it. And Hate sensed in the figure below a powerful maleficence
comparable to its own, yet imperceptibly different, a feast of evil Hate could
neither feed on nor influence.

Then Hate spoke. That is to say, it communicated. Its voice was a kind of
odor, like cinders from a volcano, and the language it used was like an
impulse, a twitching in the joints, nerves rasped unpleasantly, an ache that
did not quite ache.

“I came from a man’s brain,” said Hate. “That began me. Though I have
forgotten him, his human vindictiveness was my father. But you are not a man.
Why are you here? What do you want?”

The figure on the slope, Azhrarn, did not answer, but instead began to
climb towards the pinnacle above which the bulbous brown lips might be
distinguished. He passed through one ring of dully shining cloud, then through
a second. The pinnacle itself was a spike of raw grey rock. Here Azhrarn
presently halted.

“There is much wickedness in you,” said the lips of Hate, and they
silkily slavered. “I would devour you if I could. Trade with me. Give me your
wickedness, and you shall be a Lord of the world through all her final and
tumultuous days.”

But Azhrarn seated himself on the pinnacle and said nothing.

“You have slain many,” whispered the mouth of Hate greedily. “Slay
others. I will give you a whole army to slay—they will rush at you screaming
and their teeth will flash in the red moonlight, and you will stretch forth
your arms and they will expire, and I shall be fed. Come, I will find you
beautiful women and you shall cut their pearl flesh with a jeweled knife and
find rubies under the skin. I know a vault where men have buried a beautiful
boy alive; I will let you see him. His flesh is like alabaster and his hair
like spilled white wine. To the north of the world a great many mountains have
exploded in fire. The magma runs down like golden snakes upon the cities below.
To the south, the seas are running over the land like silver dogs. Come, I will
give you a sea and a mountain. Come.”

Azhrarn said nothing, but he took a pipe of fine bronze from his sleeve,
and he began to make music with it. When the music played, the clouds ringed
about the mountains started to break up, and soon they changed to cloudy shapes
that danced and embraced to the rhythm of the pipe. And the bare rock of the
mountains hummed and trembled gently as if the bones of them were dancing too.

The brown mouth of Hate was dry.

“Do not treat me so,” said Hate. “There is no profit in this.”

Then Azhrarn took a small silver box from his cloak, and out of it he
sprinkled a spangled powder, and this gave a wonderfully sweet perfume.

The brown mouth of Hate twisted.

“Ah, do not do this,” it said, “these things are offensive to me. You are
not tender by nature, for I believe you are a demon. Yes, I am assured you are
a demon. Come, be a demon, be extravagantly cruel, and please me. I cannot hurt
you. We should be comrades, you and I. For, in a far past, you planted the seed
which began me.”

But Azhrarn took from his belt a single flower he had found still growing
on the earth. It was blue-purple, the shade the sages classified as the color
of love, and when Azhrarn set it on the naked pinnacle of the mountain, the
flower sank its roots in the unpromising rock, and in a minute it had sprung up
into a beautiful tree, whose flowery branches brushed the low sky.

“Now,” said the brown mouth of Hate, withdrawing slightly, for the color
and the scent of flowers inclined it to nausea, “you are unmannerly, my demon visitor.
But I shall not have to suffer you much longer. Look in the east, and you will
notice you must soon be leaving.”

Azhrarn turned, and looked as the mouth of Hate suggested.

There, through the turgid haze, one dim yellow sword had struck—the first
omen of the dawn.

No demon could remain above ground once the sun came there, this was well
known, and even Hate knew it. Azhrarn had put aside the bronze pipe and the
silver box, and leaned his back on the flowering tree.

“You have said much,” Azhrarn murmured, “now it is my turn. None could
meet you save I, for who does not recall the cunning, the wisdom of demons?
None but I, my vile companion, could destroy you.”

Then Hate opened wide its brown lips, and showed the cavern that yawned
behind them, a gigantic maw, without teeth or tongue or throat, a pit that
could never be filled.

“Destruction is my prerogative,” Hate said. Then its lips drew in again,
and it said. “The light is stronger. You had better be gone.”

But Azhrarn took his ease, leaning against the tree as if on cushions of
silk. And he watched the glow in the east, where two rose swords were lifted
now on either side the yellow. And Azhrarn’s eyes were half lidded over as he
gazed, and he smiled, though his lips were white.

The mouth in the sky grew abruptly pale also, ugly pale as something
diseased.

“Come,” it said, “you should be going. A demon may not face the sun.”

But Azhrarn made no move, and now there were ten swords in the east,
seven of silver and three of gold.

“Ah, but this is foolish,” said Hate, quivering, “you are acting out a
symbol of self-sacrifice—but what is the world to you? Let the world go. There
shall be others. See. How bright the sun is growing. You have only an instant
or so more. Once the sun rises—only think of it. The agony of that light, the
light that fades the things of the demon country and turns its folk to dust.
Oh, Azhrarn, Azhrarn!” howled the mouth of Hate, recognizing him suddenly,
shuddering and contorting, causing the clouds to swirl and the crags to rumble,
“nothing is worth such hurting. Run, Azhrarn, fly, Azhrarn. The Underearth is
cool and shadowy. You cannot love the earth so much that you will sacrifice
eternal life for her.”

There were twenty swords now in the east; five were silver, twelve were
gold, three were of white steel. Azhrarn rose and stood beneath the tree. All
about the sky and the land were rocked by the convulsions of Hate as it strove
to move him. But Azhrarn was motionless as the rock and the sky had been. He
stared straight in the direction of the sun, as does the eagle still, in memory
of that stare of his.

Every sword was white now, and beneath, the rim of a whiteness that was
not of white but of blindness—black. The sun rose.

Two slender nails pierced the eyes of Azhrarn, two more his breast and
three his loins. Dark glowing blood ran from the corners of his mouth and from
his nostrils and his fingertips. He did not, the Prince of Demons, cry aloud at
the agony that blasted him, though it seemed to linger many centuries, and
every moment it grew harder to suffer, the sweet, needle-threaded singing pain,
the roaring oxen of pain that trampled beneath. And then at length came a
golden pain, worse than all the rest, and at that he must have cried out, even
Azhrarn, the Prince of Demons, but in that second he was turned to smoke and to
dust and to silence.

These, the ashes of Azhrarn, were blown across the face of Hate.

Hate could not bear it. Hate fed on hate, and now perforce it fed on
love, and love choked it. Even the love of Azhrarn, the wickedest of all the
wicked, the love of the Demon for earth that no god, gods being above such
things, any longer cared for. There was an explosion of many lights and
thunderings as the love of the Demon for the earth destroyed the earth’s Hate,
as the sun had destroyed Azhrarn.

Hate was
dead, and the Demon was dead. Nothing could follow but an age of absolute
Innocence.

The face of earth was much altered, seas now where continents had been,
mountains fallen or upraised, forests withered, new forest springing from rank,
haphazard seed. The race of mankind had survived, due to the intervention of
Azhrarn. Now, puzzled, it gazed about. Without a ruling Hate, the small hate
that remained in men had shrunk, and not for several ages would it grow again
to its old, honest, filthy and natural proportions. This day, all men were
brothers. They fell on each other’s necks and sobbed, and led each other from
the fallen ruins into the bright new day. And there they built altars, and
blessed the aloof gods, who never noticed, and in three centuries, or less, the
name of Azhrarn was forgotten, as they forgot the night at the coming of the
day.

It was a unique time in the world, then, and no mistaking it. Kings who
were just, few thieves and fewer murderers. The scars healed, and the soil of
the lands was bathed in flowers and grain, and tall trees mantled the shoulders
of the hills, and the fires of mountains slept in their high blue towers. It is
said that tigers would follow a young girl like dogs and never harm her, and
unicorns would act out mock battle with their golden horns in broad daylight,
and that every fortieth fruit of the orange tree contained a wish, and the cats
learned how to sing and did it most charmingly.

That was the earth. But below the earth there was no singing. Three
centuries had passed, but little had passed with them. What the earth forgot,
the Underearth had cause to remember.

Druhim Vanashta mourned. The Drin by their cold furnaces, among their
neglected rusting heaps of metal, cried and sniveled, and their tears raised
the level of the black lake on whose shores their forges stood. The Eshva wept,
and the snakes that coiled in their long tresses wept too, tears of polished
serpentine. But it was the Vazdru who railed and cursed mankind for its
forgetfulness. The Vazdru did not weep easily, yet the water ran from their
eyes. They put on mourning robes—yellow, for the sun which had slain their
beloved Lord—and they tore their hair and bared their breasts, both male and
female. and scourged themselves with whips of jade.