Read Online Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) by Tanith Lee - Free Book Online Page B

they
lost patience with their fellows and broke away to hunt on their own.
    “I believe,”
said the youngest, “the old venerable philosopher could get us some special
relic of Bhelsheved from the priests, some gold talisman, perhaps, if we bring
this villain to justice.”
    “Very
unlikely,” said the middle brother. “But who knows what blessings the gods
themselves will heap on the heads of whoever champions them?”
    “One thing,”
said the oldest brother, twitching the whip he carried, “I have a suspicion the
blasphemer is also a mage, and a shape-changer. How else has he eluded us so
long?”
    Just at this
moment, they entered an open unfrequented place between the tents. There in the
starlight, on the charcoal darkness of the sand, stood the one they sought.
    At sight of
him, the youngest brother immediately uncoiled and lashed out with his whip. As
if it were a falling scarf, the stranger raised one hand and caught the whip’s
savage tongue, and so held it.
    The young man
was astounded. No shout of pain had attended the stranger’s weird action, and
now another astonishment was in progress. A cool wild light had sprung from the
stranger’s grip, and began to glide, pulsating, down the length of the whip.
The youngest brother glared at this light, perceived its direction, which was
toward himself, and made to let go the whip’s handle, at which he found he
could not. Learning this, he was the one to yell aloud, but no sooner had he
yelled than the thread of light ran into the handle. Intuitively he braced
himself for pain, for the glow along the whip resembled a sort of stilly
pouring lightning. But then the force of the light passed into his hand, and at
once he knew it to be no pain at all, but an exquisite pleasure. Through
knuckles, wrist and forearm, elbow joint and upper arm the sensation raced like
silver wires, so into breast and torso, into limbs and loins and spine and
skull. With a moan, the youngest brother fell to the earth, and presently his
ecstasy caused him to faint.
    At that,
Azhrarn let go the end of the whip and the light died in it.
    The two older
brothers, gaping, now at their swooning kindred, now at the magician, declined
any further aggressive moves, and lowered their arms, so the lengths of hide
straggled in the sand.
    “You observe,”
said Azhrarn eventually, “that I have returned you delight for injury.”
    “We observe,”
said the oldest brother, “that you are a sorcerer.”
    “Oh, how you
flatter me,” said Azhrarn. His voice was cold, too cold for them to understand
how cold it was, seeming warmer than it was, just as ice can burn.
    “A magician
would travel in state,” protested the middle brother stupidly, “with his
servants and his riches. Or come riding through the sky on a black horse winged
like a raven.”
    On the sand,
the fainting brother revived, and murmured, “He is not a magician, but a god.”
    Such are the
credentials of pleasure.
    But Azhrarn
turned his shoulder, and walked through the fabric of the evening as if through
a narrow door, and was gone again.
    The oldest
brother went to the spot where the Prince of Demons had disappeared, and,
looking down, he saw three dark glowing gems lying on the earth. Like the
blackest of rubies they lay there, already harder than obsidian, and he, with
an embarrassed terror he could not explain, hastily kicked sand over them,
burying them. He could not have said what these jewels were, yet surely some
part of him had known they were no less than three drops of precious Vazdru
blood spilled from the fingers of Azhrarn. For when he reached and caught the
whip, he who could have shielded himself from any weapon or force, save that
one sheer force that was the sun itself—by which he had once died to save the
world—had not shielded himself, but taken the ringing blow, cutting as any
knife, across his palm.
    It was a
symbol, possibly, his token to the earth that she herself had cut at him.
Truly, truly, he had