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

Listen, I will tell it you.
Nomads pitched their tents by the walls of Sheve, in order to draw water from
the well outside the gate, and to sell produce of theirs in the market. But a
woman came and left a child lying among the children of the tents.”
    “It was the
nurse,” Jasrin blurted.
    “No,” said
Nemdur, “for she was that very hour searching for our child, mine and yours,
and she has witnesses to her search.”
    “They are all
liars!” cried Jasrin once more.
    “There is only
one liar.”
    Immediately
Jasrin’s strength went from her like blood from a mortal wound.
    “I confess
it,” she said. “The child took away your regard for me. I would send away the child
instead. Do not blame me. I could not help myself.”
    “I do not
blame you,” said Nemdur. His voice remained quiet, she could not see his face
in the dark.
    “And has the
child been returned to you?” muttered Jasrin.
    “Returned,”
said Nemdur, and then he shouted across the chamber: “Bring in my son.” The
doors opened again, and certain servants entered, and one carried a burning
torch, and another a bundle. “Set him down,” said the king, “and let this poor
madwoman behold the fruit of her planting.”
    So they placed
the bundle before the Queen of Sheve and unwrapped it in the torchlight.
    For a while
she stared, and then she screamed, and the two parts of her brain shattered in
a hundred fragments.
    The people of
the tents had known the infant by his gold anklet, and out of respect for
Nemdur and out of horror, they had brought home to him, risking his vengeance,
what was left of his son. For the dogs had torn the child in pieces. Generally,
such dogs would not have harmed a baby, but they were hunting hounds, and they
had scented lion the moment the woman approached. When she had dropped the
child in the sand, wrapped in the lion skin, the dogs had rushed to it. As
Jasrin fled, the dogs had fallen on the skin and coincidentally on the baby
inside the skin. Truly, Jasrin was rid of her son, truly she had conquered her
enemy.
    Nemdur showed
none of his grief or his revulsion, nor did he sentence his wife to any
punishment. He put her aside merely, and had her locked in a lavish pavillion
adjoining the palace. He went on sending her gifts, costly hangings, succulent
meats and ripe fruit, jewels. He was good to her, his tolerance was wondered
at. In fact, he would have been less cruel if he had given her instantly to the
executioner. Instead, It was a living death he shut her in, worse, far worse,
than the scourge, the fire, the clean stroke of a sword.
    In the third
month of her imprisonment, the month when the king was to be married again,
somehow Jasrin escaped. She was so mad by then that she half believed she was a
bride, that this was the water country, and Nemdur, the bridegroom, was about
to receive her and unveil her for the first time. The notion had obsessed her,
however, that she would be barren, unless she could find a particular magic
token, the promise of the gods to her that she should bear a son. This token
was none other than the body of her child. So she reached the tombyard and
wandered about there, and at length she came upon a gardener. He, knowing her
and seeing no help near, took pity and led her to her son’s tomb, and let her
go in. Finally, those who pursued her came on the scene, and perceived her
sitting in the twilight of the tomb, with the poor body, all gone to bones, in
her arms. In her fragmented mind, she believed she had found the key and symbol
of her security and future joy. But in some wellspring of herself no doubt she
knew it was her frightful guilt she rocked, and her guilt she would not be
sundered from. Repeatedly, those who had come after her attempted to prize the
dead from her grasp. Eventually she had relinquished everything save one bone,
and this they could not get away, try as they would.
    So Jasrin and
her bone were removed altogether, to a stone tower in the desert one mile