Night's Master (5 page)

“Cease weeping,” murmured Azhrarn, darkening the glass, and the Vazdru brushed
the drops from their damask cheeks though the Eshva woman wore her tears like
opals, and the two Drin continued to snivel from fear. “Now,” said Azhrarn, “I
know that Vayi made the collar and Bakvi stole it. How shall I punish him?”

Bakvi gibbered, and Vayi cried:

“Boil him in the venom of the snake who is his mistress, boil him for ten
human centuries. And then boil him in lava for another ten. And then give him
to me.”

“Be still, little greedy one,” said Azhrarn, and Vayi paled. “I alone
mete out justice in Druhim Vanashta. I see that, though one is a thief, the
other is ambitious, boastful, impetuous, and loud. Bad little Drin. Bakvi must
crawl on his belly and be a worm and turn the soil of my garden until I
remember him, for thieves cannot be tempted when there is nothing to steal,”
and next minute Bakvi had shrunk and thinned and fallen down and slipped away a
little black worm into the ground. “As for Vayi; I decline his gift, since its
value has been lost in wrangling. Bad little Drin, you are too proud of your
cleverness. I will send your collar to the world of men and there great
mischief will come of it, which will please you, and who will doubt that a Drin
made it, but they will never learn your name and you shall get no credit for
your work, no kings will keep you in state, or make you velvet boxes in which
to hide by day.”

Then Vayi bowed his head, seeing Azhrarn read all his dreams.

“I am punished,” he said, “and rewarded too. You are just, as ever,
Master of the city. Only let me kiss the grass where the sole of your foot has
most recently rested, and I will go.”

And this he did, and trotted away, and lay in his cave by the lake,
thinking of Azhrarn the beautiful, and of Bakvi the worm tunneling in the
garden, and of the silver collar with the seven tears in it lost in the wide
world of men.

5.  A
Collar of Silver

The secret in
the collar was quite simple: being magic, a thing of the Underearth, it was
attractive to men and to mortal things in a way no earthly adornment could ever
be. More than its beauty, it was a lure. Whoever saw it coveted it, and
besides, it was wonderfully made—even Azhrarn had received it with pleasure, at
the first. Lastly, the seven gems set in the mesh of the collar were tears, and
cast on it their own pale sorcery. A collar constructed in ambition and pride
and jeweled with sorrow could only stir up greed and smiling fury, and bring
weeping after.

One of the Eshva brought the collar to earth. In the form of a slim dark
young man, he wandered dreamily from place to place through the night, glancing
in at lighted windows, calling the night things, the badgers and panthers, to
play on the forest lawns, and staring through moonwashed pools at his own
reflection. In the lavender twilight before dawn, the Eshva crossed the market
place of a vast city and found a beggar asleep on the steps of a fountain. The
Eshva laughed softly with his eyes, and fastened Vayi’s collar about the
beggar’s neck. Then, leaping in the air, fled away toward earth’s center like a
dark star.

After a time the sun rose and the market stirred. Pigeons flew to the
fountain to drink and women came with their water jars to gossip. The beggar
got up and stretched himself in his rags, picked up his begging bowl and set
off for his day’s work, but he had not gone far before a voice bawled out to
ask him what it was he wore about his neck. The beggar paused, and felt the
collar. No sooner had his hand encountered the smooth hardness of silver and
his eye the cool brightness of jewels, however, than a huge crowd came pressing
around him clamoring.

“Good sirs,” cried the beggar, “I am surprised you are so interested in
this cheap bauble—it is only a talisman I bought from an old witch to keep me
safe from the plague. But, alas,” he added, “I fear it has done me no good,”
and he exhibited a few spots and sores he had previously painted on himself for
begging purposes. The crowd uncertainly drew off a little and the beggar ducked
through and rushed down a side street, but in a moment the mob were after him,
yelling. Into a jeweler’s shop he flew, and flung himself down before the
jeweler. “Succour! Aid me, sweet sir!” screamed the beggar. “Only rescue me,
and I will shower on you the riches of the world.”

“You?” inquired the jeweler scornfully, but he wanted no trouble, and
hearing the crowd coming, he thrust the beggar into a chest, slammed down the
lid, and went and stood in the doorway as if waiting casually for business.
Presently the crowd came cramming into the street, and implored him to tell if
he had seen a beggar run that way.

“I?”
asked the jeweler loftily. “I have better things to look out
for.”

The crowd debated noisily and then began to break up in confusion, some
running on down the street, others back up it, and shortly the way was empty.

 “Now,” said the jeweler, throwing open the chest, “be off as fast as you
can.”

“A thousand thanks,” said the beggar, stepping out, “but before I leave
you, regard this necklet, and tell me how much you would give me for it.”

Immediately the jeweler’s face altered. His eyes and mouth narrowed and
his nose twitched. Be sure he wanted the collar more than anything. but it
seemed to him quite silly to pay a beggar for it.
Such creatures are not
used to coins,
he thought. If I pay him what the collar is worth he will
only get into trouble with the money. So he said cautiously: “Just give me the
trinket and let me examine it a moment.”

The beggar did as he was asked, but no sooner did the jeweler have the
collar in his hand than he shouted: “Ah! I hear the mob coming back. Quick,
into the chest again. Make no sound whatever happens, and I will try to save
you.”

The beggar in fright jumped straight back in: the jeweler banged down the
lid, and this time secured the clasps. Then, hiding the collar in his robe, he
went out into the street and called over two porters who were idling near the
wineshop.

“Here is a gold coin each,” said he, “if you will only take this wretched
old chest off my hands. It has been cluttering up my place of business for
days, and no one will help me get rid of it, since it is so heavy. But you two
strong fellows should make light work of such a job. Just carry it down the
street and tip it off the bridge into the river.”

This the two porters gladly did. The unfortunate beggar kept quiet all
the while as the jeweler had instructed him, and indeed, was never heard much
of again.

No doubt the jeweler had intended to make his fortune with the collar of
silver, selling it to some rich lord or lady, perhaps even to the king of the
city. But as he lovingly examined it, the thought of parting with the collar at
all became horrible to him. Presently he found an ivory box lined with velvet,
laid the collar inside, shut the box and locked it. Next he went stealthily up
to the top of the house and put the ivory box inside a box of cedarwood, and
this cedarwood box inside a larger box of iron, and finally all three boxes
into a great old chest, very like the one in which he had imprisoned the
ill-starred beggar. Last of all he lugged the chest into a tiny room where the
odds and ends of the household were kept, hurried out and locked the door. Then
he took the key of the door and hid it up the chimney. Such was his condition
since acquiring the collar of Vayi.

As he sat mopping his brow after his exertion, the jeweler’s wife came in
and stared at him.

“Why, husband, how hot you are. Do you know, I just saw two men tipping a
chest, remarkably like our own below in the shop, into the river, and when I
stopped and asked what they were at, they laughed and said some old idiot had
given them a gold coin apiece to do it.”

“Be silent!” roared the jeweler, starting up. “Say no more about it or I
will turn you out of doors.”

The jeweler’s wife was greatly puzzled, for her husband had always been a
very moderate man until now. Accordingly, she began to keep a careful watch on
him. Imagine her surprise and alarm therefore, when, in the dead of night, the
man, quite obsessed with his treasure and thinking her sound asleep—which she
had pretended to be—stole out of bed and went creeping about. She was quick to
follow, however, so she saw exactly how he behaved, first taking a key from the
chimney, then using it on the room above, going in the room and securely
locking the door again from the inside. Not amazingly, the jeweler’s wife
kneeled down and applied her eye to the keyhole; but she could see very little,
only a great many boxes being opened, and her husband crouching over something
and crooning, and when a mouse ran across the floor, he hissed at it
frenziedly: “Ssh! Ssh!”

The jeweler’s wife got up and went quietly back to bed. but her husband
did not return for three or four hours.

Whatever can he have up there?
wondered his wife, remembering
certain street criers’ tales of invisible sprites and certain titillating arts
they would practice in return for human blood or souls.

The next night it was the same and the next, and the lady became quite
beside herself with anxiety and interest.

“Well, well,” said she to her husband on the fourth day, “I think I will
turn out that room at the top of the house.”

“No!” shouted the jeweler, “I forbid you to go near the room. Dare lay
one finger on it and I will have you whipped through the streets.”

“Please yourself,” said the wife. But she determined to see whatever it
was that made the man so foolish.

That very day, as it happened, the jeweler had to go out on business.

“Shut the door, and let no one in till I get back,” he said, “and mind
you stay down here and do your work and refrain from snooping.”

“Of course, O best of husbands,” murmured the jeweler’s wife. But as soon
as he was off, so was she; first to the chimney, then up the stairs, into the
room, into the chest, into the boxes, and—

“Ah!” cried the jeweler’s wife.

Before long the jeweler’s wife fell to thinking as she held the collar in
her hands:
A man or a woman could equally well wear this necklet, and it
will therefore look very nice on me. But if my husband returns and finds what I
have done, he will never let me wear it; he will whip me or worse.
So, and
it seemed quite natural to her, she ran down to the river wharves where there
was a little dark hovel, and here she purchased a certain medicine and ran back
home again with it.

When the jeweler came in at the door, there was his loving wife waiting
for him with a brimming goblet.

“How I have missed you!” she cried. “And see, I have mixed you a cup of
spiced wine.”

The jeweler drank and promptly fell dead, for his lady had added the
medicine to the liquor.

What lamentation there was then, and the neighbors ran to comfort the
poor widow, never suspecting anything. But no sooner was the jeweler in the
ground than his wife sold up his shop and all his wares, and moved to a fine
house where she kept peacocks to walk on the lawns, wore black velvet, and the
magical collar always glittering on her breast.

The king of
the city also had a few wives, and one of these was his queen. She wore a veil
of golden threads sewn with emeralds, and each day she would ride through the
city in her chariot drawn by leopards. Her slaves would walk behind, beside and
before the chariot, crying: “Bow down to the king’s first wife, queen of the
city,” and everyone would bow down at once, or if they did not, the slaves
would seize them and cut off their hands or their feet, whichever most took the
queen’s fancy that day.

One afternoon as the queen went riding, she saw something shining up on a
balcony.

“Go, fourth slave on my right,” said she, “and fetch me whatever it is
that glitters there.”

The selected slave hurried away, and quickly returned dragging a
terrified woman, who was no other than the jeweler’s wife with the silver
collar round her neck.

“O Imperial Mistress, this jewelry is what your beauteousness saw
gleaming, but the woman refuses to give it up, and see, she has bitten and
scratched me when I tried to take it.”

“Strike off her head then,” said the queen, “for I will not abide
meanness in my husband’s city.”

This was at once done, the collar washed free of blood in scented water
(which was always carried for just this purpose, the hands and feet the queen
ordered subtracted frequently having ornaments on them), dried on a silken
cloth, and handed up to her. With sparkling eyes, the queen placed the collar
round her own throat.

Soon the sun sank, and the queen came into the banquet that every night
the king her husband gave in his hall. All there marveled at the collar, and
many gazed at it with hungry eyes, forgetting the food on their plates. The
king himself reached out to toy with the seven jewels.

“What a necklet, my dove. Where did you come by it? It looks very fair on
your whiteness, but think how magnificent it would seem about the neck of a
man, for surely it is too heavy for your delicate throat and you mean to give
it to me?”

“Not at all,” said the queen.

“But you will loan it me?” wheedled the king. “Loan it me, and I will
give you a certain turquoise I have, larger than the palm of my hand.”

“Nonsense,” said the queen. “I have seen the turquoise in question, and
it is no bigger than your thumb.”

“Well then, I will give you five sapphires bluer than sadness. Or a
casket of rare wood filled with pearls, each from a different shore.”

“No,” said she. “I am content with what I have.”

So the king chafed in his skin, and grew very angry, but he did not show
it. When the feast was done, he went out secretly into the night and up to a
high place in the palace gardens. Here, by starlight, he turned east, north,
south and west and uttered certain incantations which he had learned from a
magician in his youth. At first all was still, but presently there came a noise
like a winter wind beating over the sky, the crests of the garden trees combed
the moon, and a wide shadow was cast like a net across the ground. The king
trembled but stood firm. A fearsome dark bird had settled on the turf, greater
than three eagles, with a cruel curved beak, talons like hooks of bronze, and
ruby eyes as hot as fire.

“Speak,” said this terrible Bird, “for you have brought me, with your
little spell, from a feast high in the crags of my home.”

The king shuddered, but he said: “My first wife has a necklet she will
not give me, though I am her husband and have a right to it. Seize her and fly
up with her into the sky. When she screams for clemency, make her render you
the necklet, and then bring it here to me.”

“And she?” said the Bird.

“I care nothing for her,” said the king, “and care nothing for what you
do, so long as I have that necklet, and am clear of blame.”

“Then, because you have called me by the spell, I must act as you say.”

It was not a demon, the Bird, but an earth thing, one of the monstrous
creations left over like fragments from the first garment of time. It really
belonged nowhere, neither on the world nor under it, a bit of chaos that had
taken on a shape and roamed at large, sulky and evil, for men to call, if they
dared, but mostly for men to dislike and avoid.

It spread its huge wings like vast fans of palm leaves, and soared up to
the saffron window where the queen sat before her glass, caressing the collar.

“Beloved,” the Bird called softly, “beloved, beloved, second moon of the
night, come out and show your beauty to the shadows.”

And the queen came to the window, wondering and haughty, and the Bird
grasped her suddenly in its awful talons, and bore her shrieking into the vault
of the night.