Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 Read Free

paleness.
    It was a time of
harvesting, and now and then the hunt, riding hard and savagely as if already
in pursuit of the quarry, passed by some firelit camp of people, or some
village set near the road. Then all the lowly folk gathered there would rush
forward to the road’s edge, calling aloud praises on the magician-princes, and
on Lak Hezoor in person if they recognized him. It would not have been sensible
to do otherwise. Seldom, however, did Lak Hezoor pay any attention. It
happened, though, when the upswept black walls of the forest were less than a
mile ahead, that the sorcerer lord did spy something that checked him. There in
a meadow a tallow lamp had been hung from a pole, with a kneeling man under it.
Close by a girl was tied to a tree. In the faint lamplight, she shone pale as a
pearl, and her long ash-brown hair, woven with white flowers, was her only
garment.
    When Lak Hezoor
drew rein, his company with him, the man ran up and kneeled again on the road.
    “Speak,” said Lak
Hezoor.
    “She is my
sister’s daughter, just fifteen years of age, a virgin.”
    Lak Hezoor sat
his horse and looked over at the girl, while his courtiers slyly and fawningly
smiled at him and at each other.
    “Once,” said the
lord Lak, “maidens were left in this way to entice dragons. Are you expecting
any dragons?”
    “No—oh, no, mighty Hezoor. It is just the wish of the
girl’s heart to give you a moment’s diversion, that is all.”
    Lak Hezoor
dismounted. He walked away over the meadow to the tree where the girl hung as
if half-dead of terror. For a second more the magician was visible, leaning to
his dragon’s prey. Then a fan of blackness spread there, occluding both of
them. While in the blackness a dull reddish snake of fire seemed to twist, and
sparks burst, hurting the eyes of any who still peered in that direction. Once,
twice, a sharp scream pierced the sorcerous veil, but nothing else of sight or
sound.
    The man who had
brought the lord his niece waited patiently, eyes lowered. The courtiers sipped
wine from golden flasks, petted their horses, discussed fashions and gambling.
    Lak was not long
over his transaction. Quite abruptly he returned through the black screen, calm
and undisheveled as if he had paused to taste some fruit from a wayside bush.
The sorcerous screen began to die at once behind him. There showed now
something pallid flung on the ground, motionless, amid torn hair and broken
flowers.
    “What did you hope from
me?” asked Lak Hezoor of the patiently waiting uncle. “Not anything much, I
trust, for she was very disappointing.”
    “No—oh, no. Nothing but to please you, lord.”
    “Well, I was not greatly pleased. But you meant for
the best. I will not chastise you. Are you content with that?”
    “Mighty lord, I am your generosity’s slave.”
    As they galloped away, a
backward glance revealed the man bending over the paleness in the grass, which
did not answer him even when he gave it blows.
    “Now, my Oloru,” said the magician-prince as they rode
up to the tall gates of the forest, “you seem downcast.”
    “I?” said Oloru. “I was only devising a poem to honor
you.”
    “Ah,” said Lak Hezoor.
“That is well. Later you shall tell it me.”
     
    The depths of the forest, then. Not its heart; it was
so old, so labyrinthine, the forest—who could enter the heart of it, save some
lost traveler in one of the sinister tales? Or else, perhaps, the forest had
many hearts, each slowly and mesmerically beating, its rhythm growing a
fraction slower and an iota more strong for every passing century.
    Certainly, there were
portions of the forest where its atmosphere seemed especially and profoundly
charged. In one of these spots there was a pool of unknown deepness where the
animals of the forest, whatever they might be, would steal to drink. Although
it was said that any man who drank the waters of the forest would be changed at
once into just such an animal himself—a deer, a