Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

Probably Chuz was learning the voice by ear, in
order to add it to his other sweeter vocalisms.
    “This desert,”
said Azhrarn, “is strewn with dead. Your doing, un-brother?”
    “Yes,” said
Chuz, in his nicest current voice, be it admitted, nearly as fair as Azhrarn’s.
“And no.”
    “But if no,
then what are you doing here, un-brother?” inquired Azhrarn, with a display of
most chillingly ironic ingenuousness.
    “I might ask
the same,” murmured Chuz, Prince Madness.
    Now Azhrarn,
and all demonkind, came often to earth by night. But what had drawn them to
that exact spot and in that exact hour, could only have been Baybhelu. Maybe
the odor of the Tower’s peculiarity had enticed them for a long while, and
maybe they had been regularly in the vicinity, intrigued and titillated, as
ever, by the self-destructiveness of men. Watch and proximity might support the
idea of the black eagle who had rescued Nemdur’s second wife. On the other
hand, the eagle could have been coincidence or a phantasm of another type. It
is conceivable the demons had not involved themselves in the Tower of Baybhelu until this very night, had not even learned of it, their genius concerned
with unrelated evils. It might be that they had only come up here from
Underearth now in the investigating manner of tenants in the basement who had
heard a prodigious bang on the floor above.
    “My business
is my own,” said Azhrarn. “Yours seems somewhat broadcast.” And he nodded to a
bloodstained brick not two paces from his horse’s silver hooves.
    Chuz tossed
his dice, and caught them. They were gray by this moonlight.
    “Madness
called me. Madness I brought. Men wished to invade the apartments of the gods.
The gods threw them down.”
    “The gods?”
said Azhrarn. A couple of the Vazdru spat upon the sand, and the sand shone
like fire for a second where they had spit. “The gods are stale.”
    “Stale or not,
the story of this night will linger. You shall see new altars raised and new
temples built and much reverence offered in panic to the stale gods, after this
night. Shall you be jealous, un-brother Azhrarn?”
    “What is a
mortal century to our Lord of Lords?” called out one of the Vazdru scornfully,
but still not quite looking at Chuz. “In the blink of a long-lashed eye in
Druhim Vanashta, that century is gone.”
    “In a
century,” said Chuz, “humanity may forget—many things.”
    “What is
keeping you, Chuz?” said Azhrarn. “You must be irked, being from home so long.
I will not detain you further.”
    “Nor will you
dismiss me,” said Chuz. “Even you, my dear, have had, or will have, a taste or
two of me.”
    Then Chuz
vanished.
    The Vazdru
maintained a distraught quietness, awaiting, disturbed, their Lord’s reaction.
But after a little, Azhrarn said softly: “The stink of madness is unsubtle
here. Let us be going.”
    And like a
stormy dream, the Vazdru also disappeared, leaving the desert empty, but not
empty enough, under the cruel moon, forever above and never below the scope of
men.
     
    PART ONE
    The Souring of the Fruit
     
    CHAPTER 1
    Storytellers
     
    There was strong music in
the sky: the music of sunset. In the west, a wall of clear red amber through
which the sun went blazing down. The remainder of the sky was smoky rose, a
color like a perfume—musk. The earth had given up its tinctures. Heights and
depths and long dunes were melting into the air. But there was another music on
the earth, a music of drums, tabors, bells and pipes, a music of voices and
shouts, the churn of wheels and the stamp of feet. And presently, too, as the
limitless lamp of the sky burned low, the small yellow lamps burned up on the
plains beneath, a swarm of fireflies, all moving, and all one way. The music of
the setting sun and the music of men flowed together into the west.
    “Where are you
going?” they had asked on the broad roads, the slender tracks, at the gates of
oases and by village fences. “Where are you