Read Online Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 by Tanith Lee - Free Book Online Page B

should
they say, then, in the city, than that they had lost their lord in the woods
where fearsome things were known to reside, and whose numbers it seemed he had
gone to swell?
    “What can we do?”
said they, limping home. “We are only ordinary men.”
    By which they
meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be
saved at all costs.
    In the stone
house, alarmed by the besieging courtiers, the women and their servant had run
down to one of the smaller rooms, an old cellar under the hall, and bolted the
door. There they remained, and when the awful awakening cries of Lak Hezoor
penetrated their sanctuary, they were very thankful to have chosen it.
    In the end, all
grew peaceful. Presently, the elder sister and the servant, with a stick
apiece, went up to see.
    A great deal of
mess lay about. But of the visitors—not a whisker.
    They searched the
house then, and even inquired aloud. But the place had been vacated. Only the
sun came in, and set a bright marigold on every edge and rim. Beyond the wall,
the birds sang. The forest and its inhabitants doubtless understood how a man,
already some quarters insane with his own vanity and sadistic designs, could
meet the Vazdru under the earth one night, and give up to them what sense he
had.
    Only in the
courtyard was there something a touch worrying. Some little hard stony lumps,
for all the world like tall men of granite, who had melted. (Lak’s blank-faced
servants?)
    “So he has
deserted us again,” said the widow, dabbing her eyes. “My son, my Oloru. Ridden
off with his lord, and not a word of farewell.”
    “Yet he saved us
from Lak’s cruelties,” said the elder sister. “I will never speak slightingly
of my brother again.”
    “He is not a bad
son,” said the widow. “Look at these jewels and rich garments Prince Lak left
us in payment. We shall live well again, as we have not done for years. That
would be Oloru’s doing. The rest is just his weakness. Oh, but I wish he had
stayed here with us. I would have forgone the jewels and the comfort they will
buy, just to have him at our fireside. That life is not for him.”
    “Who knows,” said
the younger sister wistfully.”He may one day tire of that life.”
     
    6
     
    IT MAY have been the forest of Lak’s hunting, or quite
another forest, wherein the glade was situate. Certainly the place was ancient
and somewhat sorcerous, and very dark. By day, the sunlight hung there in rare
tinted drifts, or broke and scattered everywhere like golden rain. By night, at
moonrise, there fell a rain of opals.
    For the creature
of dawn and dusk, seeking and turning from the sun, an ideal habitat.
     
    Sunset: and a rain of
coral.
    The blue-eyed
demoness was seated on a bank where swarthy lilies grew, staring down at her
reflection, as the lilies did at reflections of lilies, in a pool. A spring fed
the pool, and made it always unstill. She could not be sure of herself in this
unsettled mirror. Only those eyes of hers shone out at her. It came to the
demoness they had been paler and harder in her childhood, and cooler. Bathos, then, has deepened them. “Bathos”—for she
was almost shamed now by her quiescence in exile.
    Across the pool,
he lay on one elbow, her guardian, the prince who had kissed her awake, and
carried her on the last stage of their journey over earth and air, folded in
his mantle. But the mantle was absent now, and some of his presence with the
mantle. It was just an exceptionally toothsome young man who reclined there.
Her child’s memory, her intuitive knowledge, both were well honed, or she too
might have doubted, or forgotten.
    They had not
conferred for hours, or even days, these two escapees of Underearth. Until she
said to him, carelessly: “Dear guardian, grant me a name.”
    But he only
bowed, charming eccentric Oloru, and replied, “Who are you that I should know how to name you?”
    “You knew me, and told
me of it.”
    “Did I? In some dream—”
    “And now