Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (11 page)

Nearer and
nearer the mass loomed, cloud, or mountain, or ghost or tower. For an hour, or
rather more or rather less, the people came on, stumbling now, holding their
sides, breath and torches panting. And every eye staring. And if one said to
another: “What is that I see?” the other might not reply. Or might answer: “I
cannot say for sure.” Or: “Do you behold it, too?”

But when they
were three miles from the place where Baybhelu had been razed, full dark had
filled the interstices of sky and land, and whatever had risen from the earth,
or not, was hidden by that dark. Only in spots did certain familiar patterns of
stars seem absent, as if some bulk had come in front of them.

Yet the
mysterious, snakelike track wove on. The forefront of the crowd, staggering
with fatigue, fists loosening, mouths slack, peered at it with hatred, and
pressed onward too.

Two miles
farther, with no warning, the track vanished.

They searched
about, swinging their lamps, finding no clue.

“The thieves
have flown up in the air,” said one.

“Or sunk into
the ground,” another.

At both
fancies, the spines of many shivered.

Then a lamp
caught a gleam across the dunes. A man ran forward, stooped, arose, cried out
gladly, waving something aloft.

“They have
dropped the Relic! We have recovered the sacred bone!”

The cry ran
through the throng and new uproar ensued.

In the midst
of the uproar, a light flashed in the sky, bright yet pale as sunrise, or so it
looked, as if an enormous flint had been struck, and hovering, applied itself
to some gigantic pitch-black candle.

And the candle
flared up—

Screams flared
from the crowd, prayers, imprecations, the acrid breath of terror.

There had been
a tower, no doubting it now, and still there was a tower. Baybhelu of the
multitudinous tiers, a stepway ascending up into heaven, out of sight in the
high roof of the sky. But Baybhelu jet black, and on this jet blackness ten
million lights. As if its head had pierced the gardens of the stars and shaken
them down to cover it. Garlands and skeins and nets and necklaces of stars, all
glittering and blazing, sheens and glows, the cold green of limes, the tropic
pallor of aquamarines, galvanic primroses and incandescent purples, and drops
of the purest hottest blood. The vast crowd fell on its knees, or made to run
away, and faltered. Gradually, voice by voice, its clamor ceased. The weird
beauty of the black tower of colored stars laid its hand upon them, and held
them still.

Then they
began to hear the soft alluring sounds that came to them across the mile of
distance.

Bhelsheved
sang to its pilgrims as they approached along the paths of shining stone, a hum
of silver wasps. The black tower sang a swarm of musics that mingled and were
one and blew like a gentle wind over the dunes.

And then, with
the music, the aromas and the perfumes began to come. They were like spices,
like flowers, like wines, they were like drugs and delicious forbidden things.

The melody and
the scent of the tower, and the glory of its lamps, were all one glamorous
beckoning.

In groups, in
battalions, the crowd rose, and began to wander with great eyes toward this
sorcery.

And where some
would have hung back, the onward motion of the crowd pushed them unroughly but
irresistibly forward, until they too could no longer resist. And where some
would have argued with the spectacle, the delicacy of the music made nonsense
of their words, the balm drenched their lips and tongues, and their heads
reeled, and they moved after the others.

As they came
nearer, fresh marvels greeted them.

From half a
mile away, the being of the sand was altered. It had become a field of plants,
thick upon the ground, as if each grain of sand had changed into a thing of
leaves and petals. Jasmine and hyacinths bloomed by night, lilies twined with
roses, myrtle and clematis coiled between. Treading on them, they were not crushed.
They exuded their fragrances at every footfall, and sprang straight again.
Moths with fluttering wings like panes of thin crystal soared over these
meadows. Tinselly chimings and harmonics came from their horned eyes, like
stamens, which gave you to believe they were nothing but flying musical boxes.

From a quarter
of a mile away, you became aware that there was much activity on the levels of
the tower, much coming and going, and wide-pinioned creatures flew round it.
Also, at this point on the ground, a forest had sprung up, and as they went on,
magnetized toward the tower, the people passed into the forest. The trees were
tall, but not of bark or leaves. The stems were of crimson glass and magenta
glass and glass the tint of an emerald, and all lit within. And the foliage of
the trees was in each case cluster on cluster of phosphorescent birds whose
mauve eyes blinked and dazzled, and whose leafy wings stirred the strings of
silver harps that lay between the boughs, causing strange whirring glissandi.

Coming from
the forest, the tower lay only a hundred paces away, and automatically the
crowd, trained to observe such a margin, hesitated, piling up on itself like
water behind a dam.

As they
paused, they saw the uncountable windows and the countless doorways of the
edifice dripping out their glows. They saw fountains of colored liquids which
arced down the tiers. They saw the nature of the traffic which flew about the
tower. There were horses black as ink with manes and wings of milky blue, there
were lions black as coal with manes like chrysanthemums and wings like furnace
blasts. There were slender dragons with scales of bronze. And nearer the earth,
perhaps some twelve or fourteen feet in the air, there was suspended a broad
carpet of crimson and silver weave, and on the carpet white shapes flickered,
as though the wind blew them.

The tower,
which was like Baybhelu, which was also like Bhelsheved, which was unlike and
surpassing both, continued to compel. Presently, the crowd spilled over the
invisible dam, and poured to the foot of the tower, to the area where the first
gargantuan tier sheered up. There they stood gaping, conscious of sin or
bewitchment, unable to go away or even to repent.

The first
carpet sailed by, and after this carpet, others. Tassels cascaded, silks
flowed. White women danced slowly to the beat of the many musics. Their bodies
were now masked, and now revealed, through curtains of beads like rain. They
lifted their arms, which were swans’ necks, which were serpents. Their burnished
limbs rubbed and brushed and stroked together. The black grape-curls of their
hair were wound with sinuous silver ornaments. Their long nails were like
crescent moons. The tips of their breasts were like rosebuds.

While the
thousands of mortals gazed, a sudden tremor raced over the ground.

The people
found that the world was rising up into the atmosphere. There was again some
shouting, some collapsing on the knees, but by now they were mesmerized. These
protestations of terror were no longer genuine, but mere habit, for to be
afraid in such a situation was surely human etiquette, the done thing.

As they had
abruptly come to understand, the fields of flowers, the forest of stained
glass, that entire half mile of land which made the radius about the tower, and
on which the mass of the people were now standing, was nothing except one more
flying carpet. A carpet with a hole at its center, through which the tower
protruded. And now the carpet ascended smoothly and quite leisurely up the
tower, as a ring is drawn up a finger.

As the carpet
caught up to them, the dancing women—who were, of course, not women, but
demonesses—alighted on it. Similarly, the flying beasts settled among the
flowers with claps of their wings. They browsed the jasmine and the asphodel.
They stalked among the people, who drew aside with anguished sighings,
mechanical creatures, or else illusions, those demon dream artifacts which the
sun’s rays could destroy.

The man who
had retrieved the golden bone relic from the sand still clutched it, when one
of the beasts, a lion, came to him, and stared in his face with topaz eyes.
Perhaps this lion at least was one of the Vazdru themselves, in other form,
because the lion spoke to the man in hypnotic accents.

“That bone,”
said the beast, “is neither from the skeleton of Nemdur’s black queen nor from
the skeleton of anyone of importance. Give it therefore to me. It amuses me to
collect trivia.”

And the man,
shivering, extended the sacred relic he had gone such a distance to recover,
and the lion took it in its jaws. There was a terrible crunch; pieces of fine
gold and brown ivory were spat on the hyacinths under paw. The lion then
departed, its eyes shut as if in revulsion, Probably it
was
a demon, for
the touch of gold, reminiscent to Vazdru and Eshva alike, of the sun, filled
them with allergy. Only the Drin would sometimes work it, being less sensitive
than the aristocrats of Druhim Vanashta. (Revulsion, no doubt, was the cause of
the Eshva who stole the relic being seen continually passing the bone from hand
to hand, each taking a fair share of the golden discomfort to spare his
fellows.)

Upward, the
ring of the carpet flew. As once Nemdur’s court had careered up the long
flights of steps, the people were borne toward the topmost tier.

For sure, they
went on with their polite, habitual expressions of alarm. If this work of
night, this tower, were tall as Baybhelu, might it, too, anger the gods, who
would then cast it down? Yet something in them comprehended, a dim memory
carried in their racial cells, that even the gods could not cast down the power
of Azhrarn, or if they thought they could, they had never thought to try it.

Did the people
then realize they were on their way into his presence, into the presence of an
Azhrarn without disguise, an Azhrarn in the full aura of his princedom? That
one who, they had always been told, was hideous, shambling, evil in his looks
as in his deeds.

Perhaps
already the vistas and the harmonies and the drug-smokes had taught them that
wickedness did not always have an ugly shape.

The carpet
continued upward. Through the fountains which seemed not to be of fluid but of
heatless combustion. Past windows of sumptuous colors, behind which exotic
jigsaws of activity went on, never completely viewed or explicable. By
black-haired revelers who danced or embraced, or leaned out over balconies,
languidly.

The topmost
tier was suddenly reached. It was a lightless box, with doorways all around,
each one of black lacquer. The stars seemed close enough to wound with a
spear-cast, yet their silken glare did not alleviate this midnight peak, and the moon was old.

Now, the
topmost tier, like that of Nemdur’s original model, was the smallest of all the
tiers, as it had to be. True, it was a massive structure, but even so, not huge
enough to accommodate some several thousands of persons all at once.
Accordingly, what next came about was perhaps an illusion. Or else Azhrarn,
Master of Night and of so much more besides, had made a way into some second
dimension, into that place, maybe, sometimes known as Otherearth. And here (or
there) it was that he then entertained the multitude.

But whatever
he did, this is how it seemed and how later it was recounted by each man, each
woman and each child that had been raised that night into the sky about the
black tower.

The glamorous
music ended all at once, and only the winds that played about the tower-top
were heard. Then, all the lacquer doors slapped open, and one by one, as if
they had been instructed beforehand, the thousands proceeded in through these
doors.

Inside the
topmost tier was only night sky. A limitless sphere of black, scattered with
stars and the dusts of stars, over which, now and then, a comet or a meteorite
would unravel its ribbons, or through which some cosmic body might drop like a
great coin. Indeed, certain children reached out and caught hold of products of
this astral hail. One child told after of snatching and retaining a moment a
star large as a cartwheel, which weighed no more than a small rock. But the
star was burning, and holding it, the child saw the red wine in its own hands
against the light, and then, though it felt no pain, its hands blistered a
little, and it prudently let go of the star, which fell away, and under its
feet, down and down, until it was no longer visible. A girl also spoke of
catching a star by its trailing roots, the point at which it had snapped off
the parent tree or vine on which it had been growing. But she too discarded it,
when she felt her face grow tight as if with too much sun. All were later agreed
that they had balanced on nothing at all, for all this heavenly debris passed
them and away below them. Yet somehow they were not in fear, and the air they
stood on felt solid as a floor. Whatever else, they knew they were much higher
in the ether than the top of the tower had been, and therefore nearer to the
gods. Yet, the gods they did not see, nor even their lesser cousins, the
elementals of the uppermost sky.

Strangest of
all, maybe, was that, as each entered this realm of savage space, he discovered
himself alone, or seemed to. Even at that, they felt no panic.