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

the moon in the pool now, dropped the weapon at once.
    “Pick it up,”
said Lak Hezoor. “Pick up the sword, my child, and we will dally a while. Then
I will cut you up for chops for my dogs, an inch at a time.”
    “My—lord—”
whispered Oloru, standing shaking above the fallen sword, “it was a jest, and
I—”
    “And you shall
die for your jest. For it did not make me laugh, my Oloru, so something else is
needed to entertain me.
    “Oh gracious lord—”
    “Pick up the sword, dear
heart. Pick it up.”
    “I beg you—”
    “Pick it up. Why
should it be said I kill my friends unarmed?”
    “Then I will leave it
lying—”
    “Then I will kill you
defenseless after all.”
    Oloru covered his
face with his hands. Under the torches he, like the glassware, seemed made of
pale precious gold, and of tears, too.
    “Forgive me, oh forgive
me—” he cried.
    Lak Hezoor
grinned, pulled down Oloru’s hands, and pointed to the sword lying in the
grass.
    “Look at that, pick up
that, and die with it.”
    Oloru looked one
long last minute at the sword, and then he dropped down in the grass beside it
and lay there, in a dead faint, at the feet of Lak Hezoor.
    At this, the
magician did laugh. He flung one glance across his silent court. It cut them
with such contempt and indifference, and under that with such implicit threat,
it was as if he had sliced at each of them with the blade he held. Then the
blade vanished, and with it the other in the grass; all about the hands of the
prince’s minions left their knives. Lak Hezoor lifted Oloru in his arms and
walked away with him and into the sable pavilion, out of their sight.
    Out of sight of
any but his prince then, Oloru the jester and poet presently revived. He came
to himself on the magician’s silks, his face turned on the magician’s embroidered
pillows, the weight of Lak Hezoor already upon him.
    “You, my
treasure, who dare insult me as no other does,” murmured Lak Hezoor, resting
his face also down on the pillow, so his black eyes glared into the amber eyes
of Oloru and their lips almost met at each word. “But I forgive you. For you
know you lied.”
    “O my soul, my
body’s watchman, you were absent when this citadel was invaded,” said Oloru.
Lak Hezoor smiled cruelly at him, for this was very true.
    “Tell me of
demons,” said Lak Hezoor, as his sinuous body stirred and curved, heavy as a
python, upon and within his third prey of the night. “Tell me of Azhrarn,
Night’s Master, the Bringer of Anguish.”
    Oloru
spoke softly, sometimes without breath.
    “They say a king’s
daughter, a sorceress, called to him by means of a token Azhrarn once gave his
lover, a beautiful boy, Sivesh, or as some say, Simmu. And when the Demon came
to her, this sorceress, it was in a pavilion with a ceiling of blackness and
jeweled stars, where winds and clouds moved, but only by mage-craft. Azhrarn
mistook the pavilion’s roof for the sky, as he was intended to, and thought he
should gain fair warning of sunrise, for the sun slays demons, they say. They
say—” (Here Oloru broke off. But: “Say on, my Sivesh, my Simmu,” insisted Lak
Hezoor.) “Then—trapped by the witch, the sun having risen unseen beyond the
pavilion’s false night, Azhrarn must deal with her and grant her all she
wished: power, riches, beauty beyond all beauty— beauty —”
(And here Oloru could say no more, only cling to the pillows, his spine arched,
and his throat, and through his golden lashes the tears running like silver
ribbons.)
    But when the python lay
quiet on him and the heavy silken darkness of the tent returned from out of
blood-red thunder, Oloru said, “Yet, if she was so great a sorceress, why did
she not grant herself these things, why did she not make herself so beautiful?
Ah, then, because the genius of her sorcery was built on rage, and rage does
not make beauty. And her yearning was for love, so that only love could work
miracles upon her, even his love, Azhrarn,