The wagon master raised his cudgel, and his men their blades and staves, even those who had roistered in Jhardamorjh.
The third mystic stepped forward. He said, “She has been chosen . . . not by us . . . but by that of which we never speak. That has chosen her. And if, to that, she is beautiful, then beautiful she is. Let us see.”
Above the head and behind the back of her guardian, Ezail parted the hide flaps of the wagon. There she stood. She was so little and humped, that mostly the crowd could not make her out, yet they detected the gleam of sun upon her hair, and called and cheered. Nearer, men’s jaws slackened. The council gaped as if in terror. And the wagon master, looking round at her, had the countenance of terror, too, but his was fear for her.
The third mystic alone looked on Ezail with eyes that seemed to see, and it was indeed into his eyes that she looked in return.
“It is the moon before sunrise,” said the third mystic, in his carrying tone, and in the antique tongue of the rite, “It is the dragonfly within the chrysalis and the rose under the ice. It is beauty enclosed—Oh, such beauty that only such a shape could keep it in. This is the one. The chosen. The Exalted. This.”
And it was so strange that it took hold of them. They saw Ezail, and they saw Ezail, for there she was, the light in the lamp, the rose under the ice. They saw her and acclaimed her. Even the wagon master in a sudden weakness, between horror and tenderness (as at the very first when he had seen her on the causeway), even he knew that destiny had staked its claim, that they were in the net, and to struggle was no use. For Ezail, surely, she did not seem much to mind. She kissed her guardian, and the whey-faced maid. She allowed the council and the citizens to take her away, toward the holy city. She did not once look over her distorted shoulder. Not a word of pleading or doubt was spoken. Not a word of farewell.
• • •
You could not find a gate in the wall because there was none. Every seven years artisans came and broke in the wall at a location decreed by horse head tosses and eagle flaps and similar omened things. When a hole of sufficient size had been achieved, the Exalted went into it and through it, to the foot of the wooded terraces of the hill. And swiftly then, as if in abject alarm, the artisans walled up the way again with bricks and stones and ready-mixed mortar, and the sweat bursting from them and their eyes on stalks. For after all, did the barrier not enclose a spot which, at some point, must stab through into another world? But one did not speak of that. One only shut the wall again as fast as could be, and came away from there with an easy heart, to rejoice another seven years.
• • •
Ezail, walled in, did not linger at the foot of the hill. Perhaps some sorcery of habit had been created there, by countless maidens who could not wait, for whoever entered now must quickly begin to climb, up and up, toward . . . the summit.
Myriad paths twined about the hill. All snaked toward its top. No sooner did you take one than the thick groves of the hill closed on you their curtains. Climbing upward, though the city was sometimes discernible as it sank away below, the views were distorted by patterns of foliage, by the spray of fountains, by a kind of glowing haze that may only have lain in the eyes of the beholder.
The afternoon sun had also come up upon the hill. He was not to be kept out of anywhere so pleasant. Once, he had had a garden of his own on the earth, had he not? But that was millennia ago.
The little hunched dwarf-maiden climbed steadily, with a strength she had always had, and with her accustomed delicacy, scarcely disturbing the grass and plants beside the path.
Perhaps she noticed that no birds sang in the trees, that no insects were busy there. Not a frog or lizard basked among the basins of the fountains. The only snakes were the paths.
On a turning, a bright pavilion sprang into sight. It had columns of white gold ringed with red gold, and a yellow gold roof, and it shone as if about to catch fire. It was a shrine, but to whom?
Not troubling, Ezail went on. And not long after, she came upon another such shrine, also of gold in many forms, and burning bright.
The terraces of the hill had blurred with the years, and with the undergrowth, but old steps of stone were still to be found in them at junctures, to facilitate the ascent. Ezail’s path now brought her to one such stair. A streamlet ran down beside it, and on the green moss under the heavy trees, a strange object was standing.
Had Ezail ever seen such a thing before, to know now what it was? Probably, for she was well-traveled. But in such a stance, such a condition; that was doubtful.
One hand was raised to the head, the other cast outward as if to seek balance. Moss had grown over the feet, and here and there, in the strands of a garment whose metal sequins had preserved it against total eradication by time and weather, ivy now mingled. On the head a tiara of dim pearls, all lopsided, but caught there some colorless stuff that flowed in the breeze. It was the skeleton of a girl. Some fluke had struck it there, upright and hard and fixed as a thin brown tree.
Another, taking this path, coming on this thing, what would that other have thought or done? Would she have credited, even, the marks of death and misfortune on this upland of sanctity?
Or, if she had taken a different path, would she have seen nothing untoward, and continued her exalting journey without qualms?
It must be said that, on any path the ascending maiden had selected, she was very likely to come on such relics, for the hill was littered, and this Ezail discovered, climbing on, looking only in her tranquil way, barely hesitating.
Each image was like the first, not in its mannerisms, not even all of them upright, for some were down headlong, with asphodel making vases of their eye-sockets. But they were, all of them, rigid. It was this rigidity which, when they became what now they were in a standing posture, had kept them standing, for a great many decades. And though, in death, the normal process had worn off their flesh, the bones stayed locked as at death’s initial instant, bones like stones, as if the bones had turned to stone.
To have gone about over the hill and counted them, would have been to tally all the maidens of the Exaltation, from its inception two centuries or more in the past.
But Ezail only climbed onward, upward, between the shrines and the fountains and the skeletons of young girls.
A million miles away, the city now. The world well lost?
The sun was westering in a brazen cloud when the trees opened on the slope of the highest terrace.
The path which Ezail had taken ended with the trees. Ahead lay a smooth lawn, cropped as if by a multitude of sheep. In the lawn was a pool in a bank of marble. It was an old pool, stagnant and muddy, black for the cut glass of the falling waters lower on the hill. But on the marble rim of the muddy pond were the perfect effigies of a flock of geese, all in gold. And just beyond, a golden goat leaned its head to a golden flower. Higher up the slope, three fruit trees, overblown and bowed to the earth with age, and barren, held in their branches fruits of silver. Was it not bizarre?
But to Ezail, gifted with acceptance, it was only another facet of the riotous marvel of the earth. For all was marvelous there, was and is still, but humanity becomes inured to repetitive amazements—that the sun may rise, that a tiny seed may become a tree or a man, that life, coming from nowhere, sets us to moving like clockwork, and going out again leaves us to sleep. Or else, as then, takes us away with it, who knows? But we are used to it all, dawn and growth, living and dying. It takes a dragon on the house-roof to wake us up now—and then, too. But to Ezail, all was wonder and no single item more than another: Dawns and dragons were one.
Above the lawn with the golden goat, the golden goose pond and the trees of silver fruit, there rose a building. Its roof had tiles of crystal, and rested on white pillars ringed round and round with the yellow gold, like the arms of a princess, but every bangle was as great as a mill grindstone. In the polished walls were huge golden doors. The s
lanting sunlight tinctured them with red, and showed that they stood partly ajar.
The shadows were lengthening, too, from the effigies of the geese, the goat, the old bowed trees. And from three thin figures of bone which were transfixed at various distances over the slope.
From the vast house, if such it was, the shadow poured east like a black liquid. And the red of sunset ran down the golden doors.
Ezail went over the lawn, and up the hill toward the golden house and the shadow.
Presently it seemed that she detected how, although the last sun lay on the doors, it could not get between them. Something impenetrable and black was there, far blacker than the shadow, or the shade of coming night. And then, high up between the parted doors, there was a blink of light, once, and again once.
Then the doors, with a faint groaning, began to open outward, and between them there came all the black core of all-shadow, tall as those doors, nearly as wide as they, black as black, with eyes of fire, with a bending of a fearsome head, and a rake of colossal talons shaking the roots of the hill—
And so Ezail beheld that which was the essence of the choosing, the Exalting, and the mystery, the jhardamorjh itself, for which the city was named.
• • •
Briskly Chavir walked from prison.
“I have done what you wanted,” said he. “Until sunset I have inhabited the dungeon, and taught the pretty rats a new song or two.”
A soldier barred his way.
“Where now? You are still intent on mischief.”
“How true, dear pig.”
The soldier shied away: “Would you transform me to a swine?”
“My name is Chavir; I am not numbered among the magicians. Besides, there is quite a resemblance already, what further transformation is needed?”
The captain alone dared to put out his hand to stay their guest.
“But where next, Chavir?”
“I have a great yearning to admire once more that wooded hill beyond that gateless wall.”
The captain felt the touch of Fate upon his shoulder. He replied, “Well, go then. The wall is gateless again, as you say.”
In the ruby sky a crescent moon was riding. On earth, the darkness, and the moods of night.
Chavir walked among the basalt peaks, to the square with the fountain of steps. (Tonight the square was frilled with leavings—husks and broken flowers, spangles, the tines of fans, indecipherable marks of tears and anxiety. Over this space the golden girl-who-danced-with-a-tabor had run, in a madness of spoilt hope. To Chavir, in some unintelligible way, the imprint of her running feet shone clear as fire on the paving.)
In the wall, the signs of recent bricklaying were visible enough to any who might look for them.
Chavir did so.
Then he looked up the height of the wall, up to the somber bestial shoulder of the hill. All now was dusk. Even sound had darkened there; not a hint of leaves or water.
Chavir put his foot against the wall, at a foolish angle, the sole flat on the stonework and the bricks.
Then he put the second foot there.
First one foot, then the other foot, in their shoes of blanched leather.
To see him, it appeared so simple, you would quite believe it. His robe hung back, his hyacinthine hair, that, too. He moved in an exact horizontal. He held his arms straightly to his sides. Like a fly, Chavir walked up the wall.
(If any did see, they closed their shutters and their eyes.)
• • •
The maidens who had gone on to the hill expecting all manner of unusual delights had died, every one, of terror. They had been petrified with fear, so their muscles turned to stone, their bones to rock, their blood to rain, and their hearts were stopped.
The jhardamorjh came like nightfall at sunset or in the yellow hour of noon. It was so black, so huge, so terrible. It had the body of a giant horse, four legs that were the struts of giant eagles, it had gigantically an eagle’s head, with a beak of basalt. Its hide was like pitch and its feathers like pitchy wire, its eyes molten. Cruel and mindless, it towered there, and the shadows fled from it and left it a composite of shadows and blackness, without equal.
The sacrifices did not cry out Where is the glorious and beautiful reward? Where is fulfillment, where delight? They only died. Which said it all.
But Ezail, the last sacrifice, stood and gazed up at the living tower of the beast. Perhaps without knowing why she did say something. She said this:
“You were meant for me. You are mine.”
It was no less than a fact.
Those centuries ago when the demon Prince Hazrond had wooed the daughter of Azhrarn, Azhriaz the Goddess—what had he done, Hazrond? He had mated a mare to an eagle, and from the mare’s egg bred up the mare’s first child, a horse with wings, to tempt the lady to his suit. But that gift Azhriaz had refused, for she refused Hazrond. The second being in the egg, however, the mare’s second child, the little horse with the eagle’s legs and head, cast out on the world above, became the pet of a blind girl, her house-bird, set to guard her. And guard her it had, and found thereby the means to swell itself into such a creature that men fled in fear.
But the blind girl grew old. She became an old blind woman, and at length she died.
By then, there were stories of her, and of her guardian beast. So humankind came and made offerings. And over the years they built her a tomb of marble with golden doors, and planted groves and quarried waters and put up golden effigies and shrines, and hid there offerings also. But the beast which roamed the hill, that they avoided. “It is a god, and she was its priestess. We must appease them.” In time, though, the beast was never seen below the hill; they walled it in, for gods are best kept behind some fence, an altar, or the sky, or bars. In time, too, a city spread from the hill’s foot, for it was reckoned a place of power. But the tradition of some mighty thing, which must be honored and which must be avoided—that remained. And at length, in the fashion of myth, they gave the god every seventh year a bride. They dedicated all their women to the dream of this, and their whole city to the forgotten truth. The entire area became a votive offering. Living there about the hill, they worshipped by every deed and word, since by every deed and word the hill was invoked—through not being looked at, through not being spoken of. And since they prospered, and since the marvels of the city were renowned, they knew they had done well. While all day long, the black beasts of stone at the city gates made their hourly hymn, heard far and wide. And the visitors said, “What is that hill?” Or they said, “What is the Exaltation?”
But the maidens given to the god, seeing the jhardamorjh, they petrified and their hearts stopped. Therefore what would have become of them otherwise goes unknown. Or what the beast itself thought when it came on them, and witnessed their extremity. For was the beast not still the pet of the little blind girl, none other than “Birdy,” the mare’s second child, who had stayed to guard the house?
Do you spurn my gift? had said Hazrond. It is you I spurn, said Azhriaz. But now the soul of Azhriaz resided in the body of the dwarf girl, Ezail, and Ezail said to the forgotten second portion of the gift: I accept you. You are mine.
And Birdy lowered that benighted head of wiry bitumen feathers, and sighed a burning sigh. It beat back the leaves upon the trees, and ruffled up the goose pond where once real geese had sipped and pecked.
Then Ezail seated herself on the lawn, and taking off her necklace of amethysts began to play with it.
A colossal shadow, the jhardamorjh approached her. It stood at her side and bent its head to see. Ezail raised the beads and rubbed them on the hard beak, gently. Ezail leaned on one of the great legs, with the splayed talons about her, while the beast mouthed the beads carefully, letting each one fall back into her hand.
This was how Chavir found them, when he came walking up through the groves in the ni
ght, with the rising moon on his shoulder like a lyre.
“Now,” said Chavir, “in the stories, the hero must slay the monster and rescue from death the maiden.” Chavir frowned. “But I have neither sword nor dagger.” He plucked a branch from the ancient trees. “This must do.” And going to the jhardamorjh, Chavir touched it lightly with the branch at the throat and on the side. (The eyes of the jhardamorjh only smoldered. It did nothing, but let the last bead from its beak into Ezail’s palm.) “That seen to,” said Chavir, seating himself close to the dwarf girl, and leaning on another leg of the jhardamorjh, “it comes to me I have my own story to tell.”
Yet some while they only sat there, he and she, with the beast at their backs, and the three looked up into the sky where all the stars hung on the vine of night.
Then Chavir did tell her.
“It seems that once I was some other, but in order that this moment might be, I allowed myself to go down into the womb of a woman, and to wake there the unborn rose of her child. And in that rose of flesh I was carried out into the world of men, and there I grew and was Chavir, who wears your colors of blue and black, as you wear mine, my marigold girl.”
Then Ezail answered Chavir, and she did not speak by any means as ever she had spoken before.
“But, dear friend, you have not slain the beast. And should the maiden perhaps be beauteous?”
“Oh, you are beauteous,” said he. “As a crone you were beautiful to me, and I, in the old double guise, the two-faced foul one, was to you a handsome lover. Is that not so?”
“No doubt. But it was my will to live as I have lived, to be as I am. And also to exist without your love, for I am due this deprivation, after the other.”
“Beloved,” said he, “grant me a boon.”
“No.”
“Grant me that you will allow me to free you, for this one life only. To be with me.”
“No,” she said again.
“We shall be mortals. We must die. What harm? Our days are short.”
“Beloved,” said she, “do not distract me from my course.”