Night's Master (23 page)

“The world dishonors Azhrarn,” the Vazdru princesses cried.

“Let us go above ground,” the princes of the Vazdru shouted, “and make
the accursed ones burn with shame.”

Then, by night, the Vazdru visited the innocent new earth. They passed
like phantoms along the sea shores and through the tall standing corn, they
crossed the highways of men, and in the cities the lamps glittered on their
ochre garments and their beautiful distraught faces. And they smote stringed
instruments as they passed, and shook the sistrum, and called loudly: “Azhrarn
is dead! Azhrarn is dead!” And they cast black blossoms before them, and
scratched with briars of black iron on the doors.

The dogs began bowling and the nightingale was quiet.

The people said: “Who is it they speak of? Azhrarn is a name we do not
know. But surely he must be some great lord or king to be so mourned.” And they
bowed respectfully to the Vazdru, and offered them wine or money, not knowing
they were demons. And the Vazdru had no heart for wickedness with their Prince
dead, and they went off crying into the darkness.

There was also an Eshva woman who came to the earth by night, but she
came more quietly. It was none other than Jaseve, the demoness Azhrarn had
poured from a ewer to be the solace of Drezaem. Primroses no longer grew in her
hair, the silver snakes were back in it. Her eyes were dry, for she had thought
unaccountably of a curious place, half in the world. half out, where a tree of
blue-purple flowers sprang from a barren mountain top.

A long while Jaseve searched, several years. She went to the world’s four
corners and returned from them. At length she found the curious place, and the
way into it. She walked where Hate had died, no longer over mountains, for they
had been shaken down, no longer through a blackened wood, for it had put forth
leaves, copying the fertile world. The moon had risen. It showed a terrible
scar in the very sky itself, puckered and luminous—the wound where Hate’s mouth
had been torn out of it. Beneath that scar stood a tree, as in the dream of
Jaseve, though its flowers were not the shade of loving now, but grey as ashes.

Jaseve ran to the tree. She kissed its narrow stem and dug in the rubble
of the mountain to free it. Her hands bled, and her blood fell on the roots of
the tree and they seemed to struggle up towards her. Then it was loosened, and
Jaseve drew it from the stones and put it on her back, for it weighed very
little. She carried the tree from that ground on to the earth, but there she
must set it down, for she was weary. At once the tree thrust its roots into the
fruitful soil. Jaseve became aware they were in a forest, the tree and herself,
a forest thick and close and ancient, one spot which had escaped upheaval.
Here, with the boughs knotted so intense and dark above, and the trunks massed
round about like sentinels, no speck of sunlight could get in, even at high
noon. Jaseve observed this and smiled dreamily. She lay down beneath the tree
caressing its grey bark with her hand.

At the edge
of the ancient forest was a highway, and by the highway a farm of many fields,
orchards and vineyards.

Now the farmer had seven daughters, the youngest being fourteen and the
eldest twenty, for each had been born within a year of the other, and though
all seven were lovely, all seven were virgins, for this was an age of
innocence. However, they lacked a mother’s guidance, she being dead, and small
wonder. From the eldest down, the meanings of their names were as follows:
Fleet, Flame, Foam, Fan, Fountain, Favour and Fair.

Now it happened that these seven sisters were not as modest, lacking a
mother’s guidance, as they might have been. Their father, a bluff insensitive
man, had not seen his girls tricked out as they should have liked, while in the
town nearby was a sly silk merchant, who had said to each of them, at one time
or another: “Your magnolia flesh would look far better in a gown of silk than
in that homespun. Come and visit me one night, and I will see what can be
done.” None of the seven maidens had gone to him as yet. They did not like to,
for they had noted, ignorant though they were, that his fat yellow fingers had
a tendency to roam over them as much as over the bolts of silk, while the
youngest had declared he housed an animal in his britches that pushed them out
in a most peculiar way whenever she bent over him to admire the new silk
samples, as he constantly invited her to do.

Still, the old villain kept on at them, and they kept on thinking of the
silk, and one night the seven agreed upon a plan.

The silk merchant was in the back room of his shop, doctoring his books
to deceive the king’s tax collectors, when a delicate scratching came upon the
door.

“Who is there?” demanded the merchant nervously. Though there were few
robbers in those days. he—being one himself—was ever conscious of their
existence, and invested the night with them. “Beware my sixteen servants and my
mad dog.”

But a sweet voice called through the keyhole: “It is I, dear merchant,
Fair, the farmer’s seventh daughter. But if there is a mad dog—”

However, the merchant had leapt up, overjoyed at his luck, and flung open
the door.

“Enter my unworthy shop,” he cried, leading Fair inside.

“There are none here but I,” he added, “you misheard me. Mad dog! What
nonsense! Do not be so timorous but come closer, and then I will see about the
silk for a dress. Of course,” he assured her winningly, “I cannot fit you when
you are clothed; you must remove your garments.”

Fair promptly did as he suggested. The merchant licked his lips and
rolled his eyes, and Fair noted that the strange animal was about him again.

“And now,” said the merchant, “just stand by the wall there, and I will
measure you.”

Fair demurely obeyed, and the merchant, unable to restrain himself
further, flung himself at her.

“But is this quite necessary?” inquired Fair, as he covered her with
repulsive slobberings and kisses.

“Indeed, yes,” avowed the merchant, undoing his britches and preparing
once more to advance.

“No, but I do not think so,” said Fair, and, raising her voice screamed
for her sisters. At once all six, who had been attentively waiting outside,
rushed in, brandishing various household items, with which they set about the
merchant.

“This is I, Fleet, the farmer’s first daughter,” yelled Fleet, cracking
him on the left shin with a huge meat-hook.

“And this is Flame,” yelled Flame, cracking the other shin with a small
griddle.

“And this Foam,” a blow on the buttocks.

“And this Fan,” a blow on the back.

“While I am Fountain,” announced Fountain, appropriately pouring a jar of
cold oil over him.

“And I, Favour,” added Favour, hitting him about the head with some
tongs.

The merchant roared and skipped and soon slipped over in the oil and fell
on the ground. Here the seven daughters beat him unmercifully till he entreated
them to take all the silk they could carry, and let him alone. This turned out
more generous than he had intended, for the seven had prudently brought their
father’s oxen and cart with them, and loaded it high. The merchant wailed and
wrung his hands.

“And now,” said Fleet, “you will tell no one we have been here.”

“You must say robbers attacked you,” advised Flame.

“If you do not,” said Foam,

“And if you accuse us,” said Fan,

“Of
anything,
” said Fountain,

“We will also tell how you made our little sister stand naked against the
wall of your shop,” went on Favour,

“And meant to take a vicious wild animal, probably your mad dog, out of
your trousers and set it on me,” finished Fair indignantly.

The merchant accordingly roused the town with cries of twenty gigantic
black-bearded robbers toting clubs of iron, while the sisters rode home along
the highway with a cart full of silk.

But, as the laden vehicle came up to the farm where it stood against the
black curtain of the ancient forest, the sisters beheld, in the moonlight, a
most beautiful lady waiting in the road.

“Why,” said Fleet, “she must be very rich. See, she has silver snakes in
her hair, so cunningly wrought they seem alive.”

“But look,” said Fair, “her hands have been bleeding.”

“What can she want with us?” said Fan.

When the woman came nearer, the oxen sighed and halted, and shut their
large eyes. She walked three times about the cart, studying every sister in
turn, and then she walked away up the road and aside from it into the dark
forest.

“She must be a sprite,” said Foam.

“Or a deranged princess,” said Flame.

Fountain and Favour sniffed haughtily.

Jaseve meantime, who had been attracted, as were the demons ever, by the
scent of this little wickedness of theirs, returned to the grey-flowered tree,
and embraced it. Next, on the flat mossy lawn between the close knit trunks,
Jaseve began to dance.

A wild dance it was, a dance to wake the night and the air, to call
creatures and things. A black hare came first, and sat to gape at her with
round pale eyes, then foxes who did not even seem to notice the hare, and after
them two stags with daggered horns, and owls on wings like banners, and a lion,
pale as smoke with age. Even water beasts stole up, drawn from the deep pools
of the forest and the swamps there by the silent irresistible dancing of the
Eshva woman. At last even the wind came from the east to the forest, pulled by
her magic.

When Jaseve heard it shaking the leaves on the trees, she loosed her sash
and the wind swirled into it, billowing there as if in a sail. And Jaseve
swiftly knotted the sash together so the wind could not get free, for such
things demons had power to do. Then she stopped dancing. The animals ran away.
The wind struggled and complained in the sash as Jaseve tied it securely among
the boughs of the grey-flowered tree.

The seven
daughters of the farmer made for themselves dresses of silk, but did not dare
wear them by day for fear of discovery. Then somehow they got the notion to
dress up at night, and steal out to the edge of the ancient forest. Here they
would flounce up and down, pretending they were princesses, and discussing the
weather, as they had heard princesses exclusively did, since everything else
was within their jurisdiction, and therefore, bored them.

“How strange it is,” said Fleet, “that there is no east wind tonight.”

“There has been none for days,” said Flame.

“The ships are becalmed at sea,” said Foam.

“And the windmills must be turned by teams of men,” said Fan.

“As for the buzzards and other floating birds,” said Fountain, “they sit
on the fences and grumble, unable to sail the air currents.”

“And the scarecrow stays still, and does not scare off the pigeons,” said
Favour.

“Yet,” added Fair, “the foul smell from the midden no longer blows into
the vineyard at dawn.”

Just then, the seven sisters glimpsed a figure standing before them among
the trees. It was none other than the beautiful lady they had come across on
the night of the robbery.

“What does she want?” the sisters asked each other. “Now she is beckoning
us to go with her. But we must not follow,” they said, finding they already
were. The forest was ebon and mysterious, yet they were not afraid. The woman
led them deeper and deeper into the gloom, and somehow they did not wish to
turn back. Finally they came to a tree unlike the other trees, a tree of
flowers, but they were grey, and in its branches was a sash that blew about by
itself.

As they were looking at it, Jaseve began a second time to dance. But on
this occasion none came near, for the dance was for the tree and for the wind
bound in the branches and for the seven virgin sisters. And suddenly the
sisters began dancing also, unafraid and unwondering, as if it were only
natural that they, clad in silk, hand in hand and led by a woman with snakes in
her hair, should circle round and round a grey-flowered tree in an archaic
forest at midnight.

They danced till a marvelous sensuous weariness overcame them, and then
the seven virgin sisters sank down in a ring about the trunk, and their heads
fell back on the springy moss, and their eyes were glazed by dreams. Jaseve
stole by them and, reaching up, she swiftly loosed the knot in the sash and
shook forth the wild east wind. Furious to be free, the wind was. It lashed the
tree so all the grey flowers were violently tossed in it, and from their petals
the greyness flew off in a thick cloud. It was actually ash that had turned
them ash-grey; and now the ash was sucked up into the wind as it flew about the
tree, and next, as the wind raced in a circle, the ash scattered from it. It
settled upon the seven maidens beneath the tree and, as it did so, each one
moaned and twisted as if some invisible force of pleasure had seized her. And
then each cried out aloud several times, and lay quiet. The ash had vanished
and the wind had fled. Jaseve sighed, and she too went away, patiently to wait.

Seven girls woke in the morning, woke in the ancient forest dressed in
silk. Seven girls remembered an unusual experience and seven girls blushed.
Over their heads a tree of blue-purple flowers was not as they recalled.

Bemused, whispering, giggling, they crept home and took off their silk,
and hid themselves virtuously in their beds.

Some months later, there was no hiding anything.

“Oh my daughters!” bellowed the farmer. “All seven deflowered. All seven
with child.”

It was true enough, no mistaking the signs. Seven lovely girls with high
round bellies, lowering their demure eyes.

“Who is the wretch—the wretches?” bawled the farmer.

“A dream,” murmured Fleet.

“A dream of a tree,” murmured Flame.

“A flower from a tree,” murmured Foam.

“No, the wind,” murmured Fan.