Delusion's Master by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Epic, Fiction
ISBN: 9781607620945
Google: EfxppwAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Norilana Books
Published: 1981-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

There was a woman in the village, the reed-cutter’s wife. A little more than two years before, she had gone to bathe and to cut reeds herself at the pool. There the mage’s foul servant had sprung out on her and she had stabbed him in the thigh. Presently, as she cooked her man’s supper, the magician’s messenger-bird had come to chide her, and her husband had stood between her and the messenger and given back a stern reply to the magician. When the bird meekly withdrew, the woman had gone to her husband and embraced him. “How brave and clever you are!” she had extolled him, and they had let the supper she was cooking burn, and lain down together instead. When the comet appeared over the village, they, with all their neighbors, had fled. But though the woman was with child, she was not one of those who had miscarried. She took care, however, that none of the supernatural rays touched her, and later on, resumed her life in the village with the rest of the people. At the allotted time she bore a healthy girl-child, declared by everybody who saw it, to be of superlative attraction. As indeed, then and now, most new children are declared to be.

A morning came that the woman was at the pool once more, cutting reeds there, and her child nearby lying safe in a basket, or so she believed. The weather was hot, and the woman worked at her task slowly, singing to herself the while to match the harmonies of the waterfall. And her mind began to dwell on the wonder of that fall and how it made music, and on all the wonders that had accrued in the land, and the rhythm of her knife partly hypnotized her, cutting and cutting at the gray-green stems. . . . The child, meanwhile, had contrived to roll from its nest. In among the reeds, then, which to its unfocused gaze were a senseless jungle, it began to crawl. Up on their reed pillars, spiders like green marzipan stared down at it from many mulberry eyes which they wore like caps of jewels on their heads. Smart armored beetles scattered before its soft hands noisily, clattering their long horns.

The mother, pausing to rest a moment, glanced up, and caught her breath in horror. Some fifty feet away, her child was tottering drunkenly at the brink of the pool. Before she could prevent herself, the woman uttered a loud cry of alarm. The child started, and lost its balance. The water gave way like treacle to receive it. Then the surface knitted over, nor did it unravel to show the child again.

The reed-cutter’s wife began to scream, and would have thrown herself directly into the pool, but in a moment more a man had dashed from among the reeds, and dived deep in the water. Without speech, in that mutual telepathy of human passion which will sometimes occur, the woman knew this stranger must have seen her child in the instant of its fall, and had rushed to help it.

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