Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) Read Free

walls of Sheve. She did not see the
pictures there of beasts and flowers. She ran out through the broad gate whose
shadow was like black death. She ran into the desert.
    About a
hundred paces from the walls, where there was a well, clustered an encampment
of wandering people. Jasrin walked boldly among the tents, and none challenged
her since she was a woman, and in those parts they did not fear women much, or
did not suppose they did.
    At last Jasrin
came on a group of several young children and babies sleeping or sleepily
playing together in the shadow of a tent. Nearby a pair of large hunting dogs
reclined, their tawny masks upon their paws.
    Now Jasrin was
beyond reason almost, but not quite. It seemed to her that she might leave her
child here undetected, among so many others. And when the mothers came and
found an extra child, no doubt they would take it in, concluding themselves
repaid by the golden ring about its ankle. Once noon was done, the camp would be disbanded, for such nomads rarely stayed long in any place, let alone beside
the cities of the desert country, which they considered devilish and decadent.
By nightfall, then, if not sooner, Jasrin would be free of the thing which had,
so guiltlessly, robbed her of all happiness.
    As she was
standing there musing feverishly on these things, one of the dogs raised its
head, snuffing the air, and growled softly at her. Plainly, these animals had
been set to guard the children, and would guard hers as well when she was gone.
Yet the dog’s merciless eyes filled Jasrin with sudden alarm. In a frenzy she
put the bundle of the child from her and let it fall gently on the sand, beside
the other infants. It had not cried; perhaps instinctively it had known her for
its mother, while unable instinctively to guess her purpose.
    The dog surged
abruptly to its four slim feet, and now its eyes were hard charred glasses,
fired by the relentless desert sun. Jasrin turned and fled, expecting the dog’s
fangs to fasten any moment in her robe or her flesh, but its growling only died
behind her, though over it she heard all the sleepy children wake and begin to
wail and shriek, as if accusing her, and thus she ran the faster, from the camp
and back through the city gateway. Up the streets, wide and narrow, she ran, and
near the palace she checked, and threw the nurse’s robe on the ground. The
guards, seeing her reenter, stared, for she was the Queen of Sheve and she had
come in without attendants from the streets; but they did not question her.
    She went to
her apartments and sat down there. Her head ached, her very mind ached.
    Nemdur would
come to her and say: “Our son has disappeared, none can discover him. Do you
think the woman who was his nurse killed him?”
    And Jasrin
would answer: “Spare her, my lord. She is demented. She is jealous that she has
no child of her own, for her own child died. . . .”
    Noon had come, and afternoon,
and then the time of redness, the blood-red splashed on the walls, the scarlet
aftermath of the sun changing swiftly to magenta and to indigo, and the stars
appeared, the lamps of the cities of heaven. Jasrin had heard no outcry and no
search through the palace. Nemdur had not come to her.
    And then he
came.
    He stepped
quickly into the unlit chamber, and for once he did not light the room with his
presence, nor did he speak as she had anticipated.
    “Jasrin, my
wife,” said Nemdur, “I have heard three stories. The first is that someone
thieved the robe of a woman as she slept in the garden shade. The second that
this same woman, muffled in her robe against the heat, stole out into the city,
but that she never returned. The third story is that Jasrin, the Queen of
Sheve, came back from the city unescorted, though none had seen her go there.”
    Jasrin’s
aching cloven brain could not deal with this.
    “These are all
lies!” she cried. “You should whip such liars.”
    But Nemdur
said gently to her: “There is a fourth story.