Tanith Lee - Tales from the Flat Earth 04 by Delerium's Mistress

Author:Delerium's Mistress
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:44+00:00

THEY HAD neither mind nor soul, the Malukhim. They had no heart. They had spiritual will and purpose, but these came from the gods’ own. Though they were beautiful, so are fires and leopards.

Some nine days they were, falling to earth, so leisurely and so fraught with meaning their descent.

The passage may have been heeded, but, closing with the vapors of the world, they had shuttered their brightness. Those golden feet, naked as swords, touched initially the bare shoulder of a mountaintop. An emblem, the choice of landing. The most high to the highmost. And three days they paused upon the mountain and from miles off might be glimpsed there, glinting like jeweler’s work.

But none saw it save some animals thereabouts, or envious ravens.

Below the mountain lay purple deserts with rocks of quartz and gullies veined by costly minerals, and here and there a long-armed tree that turned to flint.

The warrior-messengers came down from the mountain. It was emblematic also that they should walk a short way, that they should inhale the air and tread the back of the world. For they scarcely needed to.

At sunset, they paused again on a high place, and looked down, and Az-Nennafir lay before them, the City wide as an ocean, twinkling with the first buds of its lights.

Gods do not soil themselves with deeds. That requires angels.

Yabael took up a pebble, and hurled it toward the City.

213

214

DELIRIUM’S MISTRESS

Azhriaz: The Goddess

215

It flew so fast for so far, it caught alight, and a sparkling tail went after it. Over the City, over the river of the City, it raced, and crashed through a tall window of glass that had still the blush of dying sun upon it. Below, among pillars of incense, a multitude started and shouted.

But the pebble flashed into the midst of them and tore downward through the body of a man, from cranium to instep, and buried itself in the floor beneath. The slain man burst in flames, and fell across the altar. He was a priest of Azhriaz. He had been offering the thirteenth human victim of the evening, it having been thought proper to give thanks, since the lifting of the storm. Now the worshipers wailed in their temple, blessing Azhriez for her disdain. They believed, of course, the thunderbolt was her doing.

“Oh kind is she in her unkindliness, And lovely in her evil. Let us be worthy of your hatred, Azhriaz! Azhriaz!”

Yet, whole kingdoms! lengths of streets and concourses away, three strangers now stood at one of the large gates of the City.

It gaped always open, night and day, the gate. The leaves of it, in any event, were made of glass.

When the three strangers passed beneath, galvanics scored the atmosphere. But only a sick man lying in the gateway noticed this.

They were cowled and cloaked, the strangers, one in singed cloth that took shadow, and one in blond cloth that took light, and the third in blanched cloth that sang on the eye.

Fools, thought the failing one under the gate.

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