Dreams of the Compass Rose

  Nadir was a mysterious warrior from a strange faraway land, the personal bodyguard of Egiras. He stood higher-ranking than any servant, and yet was always kind to her. It always puzzled Yaro why his name meant “the lowest of the low.”

  Yaro hurried through her chores, through the bustle of other servants all preparing the Princess’s feast. When the afternoon sun started to incline to the West, she took a small moment of rest, filled her old wooden bowl with soup, and carried it to the tiny room in the servants'

  quarters where her old mother lay in their shared pallet-bed.

  “Yaro, child of dust,” chided her mother, frail as a stick, as she turned her sunken face to the slit of light that came through the doorway.

  “Here, I have brought you dinner,” said Yaro, and she propped her mother up with a second pillow and proceeded to spoon-feed the old woman.

  “Will you go to the Carnival tonight?” said her mother between swallows.

  “I might,” replied Yaro. “If the mistress wants me to be at her side, I might. But if there are more chores. . . .”

  “Do not go!” said the old woman. “The Lord of Illusion stirs the air. I have a bad feeling about this night. The moons might come.”

  “Ah, the moons never come, mother,” said Yaro.

  “And so they say. . . .”

  Yaro laughed. She then wiped her mother’s lips with a bit of rag, wiped her own tired brow, picked up the empty old wooden bowl, and headed back to the kitchens.

  “If you go, be sure to wear the mask, you hear?” came her mother’s faint cry in her wake.

  “What is this ridiculous thing?” said Princess Egiras, a beauty with delicate yellow porcelain skin, slanted eyes, and floor-length raven hair. With hands like swan-necks bound in collarbracelets of gold, she picked up an ornate mask from a silver tray offered to her. “The sun is setting, the Carnival lights are being ignited, and I have nothing to wear outside. Do you expect me to put on this monstrosity?”

  “Your Brightness,” said the blanching servant, “this was the best mask that the merchant Riho had to offer. . . . Behold, it has three layers of braided pearls on a rim of lapis, and the gold surface is polished to shine brighter than the Thousand Moons! The eyepieces are the finest amber stones—”

  “No need to describe to me what is obvious,” said Egiras. “It is nevertheless ugly in all its glory, and I will not have it. Take it back. And then bring me another mask. Something to match this lavender silk.”

  “But Your Brightness! The stores are closing! Where are we to find this other mask for you, when the best mask seller’s most expensive work does not please you?”

  In reply, Egiras turned her back on him, and moved coldly to stand by the window and watch the sunset.

  The servant fled in terror, knowing without being told, her answer.

  “Yaro! Yaro, you are quick, you can run faster than anyone,” commanded the head servant breathlessly, wiping a sweating brow. “The Princess must have another mask for the festivities, and you must run to Riho’s or to the jeweler Vael and see if they can make you something fast!

  Tell them the price is not an issue, the Princess will pay them handsomely—”

  “This is madness,” said Yaro tartly, unable to hold back. “Surely, time is an issue. Who can make a mask worthy of Egiras in half an hour?”

  “Don’t be smart, girl,” said the head servant. “Do what you are told, or I will personally throw your sickly hag of a mother out onto the street. Go and do this thing now, and be quick about it! Remember, you will not be allowed back into the house without the mask!”

  Yaro bit her lips, and then bowed her head.

  “Hurry now! There is no time!”

  In reply, Yaro fled.

  * * *

  A thousand moons will come tonight

  Their radiance will be cold and bright

  They say it is a frightful sight

  Come, silver fire!

  The evening sky was rich ebony with a fringe of fading rust at the horizon, and the Night of a Thousand Moons stood over the bowl of the city. A million fiery eyes opened that were Carnival lights, and they winked endlessly.

  Yaro snaked her way through the crowds of faceless revelers, though streets hung in gaudy paper lanterns showing all phases of the crescent, and moon-orbs like bunches of grapes. She was returning from the stores of Vael the jeweler and other establishments famous for extravagant masks. At last, she carried a mask wrapped in silk.

  A foreign craftsman had provided her with this mask for a great sum that the Princess would have to pay the next day. He had been gone in the back room for some time, so that Yaro was breathless with fear of being late, but finally he had come forward and laid a thing of utter whiteness upon the silken countertop.

  It was a block of candle wax. As white and luminous it was as Yaro’s skin was black and dull.

  Yaro stared at it, then back at the man.

  “I can make your Princess Egiras a mask that has no rival, a mask that she will fall in love with.” he said in his foreign accent. “However, I will need your face for the mold.”

  “But—” said Yaro.

  But he had already brought out the tools of his trade and begun a fire in the work-bowl. Yaro stared in superstitious awe, seeing the man’s hands move like magic over the flames, and possibly seeing the surface of his palms grow luminescent.

  “You are a sorcerer . . .” she whispered.

  He did not reply, but took the block of wax and now held it over the flames and began molding it with his fingers. In seconds the wax became a formless white lump, and then started to glow.

  He turned to her then, and said, “This will hurt. Are you willing to endure pain for your Mistress? Your skin may burn, and your eyes will water endlessly, blurring your vision from the pain. It will be so bad that when you look up at the sky you will see several moons where there is only one.”

  My vision is already blurred, and I see a trio of moons every night, smirked Yaro in her thoughts, while inside her a cold resolve built. “Since I must come back with a mask, or not at all, none of this will matter. Therefore proceed, sorcerer.”

  “Well then. Close your eyes, and do not move, no matter what.”

  Yaro obeyed, drawing a single breath and holding it, while the incandescent lump was placed against her face.

  Searing white agony.

  Lightning.

  The world was falling from under her, and her skin was lifted and replaced with liquid fire. . . .

  It was no more than ten seconds of pressure against her face, but when the wax was lifted Yaro had aged ten years on the inside. It would not matter how she looked now, she could feel herself an old woman, drained.

  “Do not open your eyes yet. Here, wash your face to soothe the pain,” said the man, putting her hands upon another bowl containing cool liquid.

  Yaro obeyed blindly, reeling. She placed her hands in the bowl, and cupping her palms washed her burning skinless flesh with something that must have been a salve—cool like the illusion of wind, and soothing—because her pain eased, and soon her dripping eyelids lifted of their own accord, miraculously free of any injury.

  Outside the store she could hear singers on the street howling familiar verses and crescent drums beginning to pound for the processions that would last all night. A thousand moons engulf the night,

  All things of darkness come to light

  Illusion falters from things bright,

  Come, silver fire!

  And then Yaro looked before her, blinking, and through her teary vision she saw the man holding a white wax mask.

  It was like a lump of the moon. Plain, unadorned by any pattern, and with a surface dull and matte as sugar powder or ground chalk.

  It was perfectly beautiful.

  And, in the place where the two eyepieces were, it had two great convex agates. Pupil-less eyes of the blind.

  Yaro sucked in her breath, whether from the beauty or from terror. . . .

&
nbsp; “It is done,” said the man. “Take this to your mistress, and send me payment tomorrow. Only—be sure to give this to her yourself. Let no other hands touch this mask, for then its charm will be dispelled and I can no longer guarantee her pleasure.”

  Yaro nodded wordlessly, and took the waxen thing wrapped in silk, and bore it close to her shallow breast. Without looking back at him who had made the mask she came running out into the fire-swept night.

  Princess Egiras stood at the balcony of her house, watching the tumultuous street below. Moonjewels of the Carnival lights tumbled in the darkness, and songs of abandon pounded through the roar of the crowds.

  The sky was ebony, lit with stars only, and the moon had not yet crested the horizon. She stared, and for a moment saw the dislocated shadow of a man fill the sky. They said the Lord of Illusion made this night his own. She blinked in indifference, knowing him intimately, having seen him many times during other nights, and the shadow was no longer. Egiras wore no mask. Behind her, like a leopard ready to pounce at the smallest danger, stood a silent tall man wearing a simple black wrap over his face. And farther back cringed variously masked servants.

  “Where is my mask?” said Egiras, her back to them. “I will start counting. If I count to three and still there is no mask, then three of you will be blinded in one eye tomorrow at dawn. And, if I continue counting, every third of you will lose one eye until there is none left in this room with more than a single eye. I will hire new servants tomorrow. The rest of the house will be beaten.”

  The man standing behind her shifted his weight, then spoke softly, “My Lady . . . Why not merely take away their masks? Leave their eyes, and let them face the moons naked. On the morrow, their fear will have punished them plenty, if they survive this night.”

  Egiras turned, and a smirk marred her perfect face, painted by the shadows and lights from below.

  “Ah, Nadir,” she said. “You are wise as always. I believe I will do just that. One!”

  The servants drew in a collective gasp.

  “Two!”

  “Stop, my lady!”

  From the back came a commotion as a thin black-skinned girl came running—girl or woman, Egiras could not tell. She carried in her hands a thing wrapped in silk.

  “Your mask, Your Brightness!” the girl panted, wiping her brow, and Egiras noted the strange seared sheen of her face, as though her skin were appended to her flesh by means of nothing more than a good word.

  Everywhere, gasps of relief.

  “Finally,” said the Princess. “Bring it to me. What is your name, girl?”

  “Yaro . . .” replied the skinny thing, and proffered the silken bundle. Egiras took the silk, and unwrapped . . . a piece of the moon.

  Within the span of an indrawn breath, she was enchanted. The smooth moon-pallor was reflected into her eyes, and her vision convulsed with a pang of involuntary heart-rending agony. But—only for a moment.

  “This is . . . perfection,” breathed Princess Egiras. She stared, then put on the pale mask over her eyes, and tied it at the back with a hastily provided ribbon of gold. And with that the room let out another sigh of relief.

  “Now,” said Egiras, “I go to celebrate the Night of a Thousand Moons.”

  * * *

  A thousand moons spill fiery light

  A thousand hearts convulse in fright,

  As judgment rains from heaven’s might

  Come, silver fire!

  The first singer finished on a rising note and rolled his crescent drum while crowds of faceless ones roared approval. The second singer was a young woman, and she danced ahead of the procession, wearing nothing but ropes of spun-gold—or surely an illusion of such, thought Yaro. Yaro trudged tiredly behind the chair of her mistress that was being carried in the parade. Princess Egiras rode high, like the moon herself, covered by a pale luminous simple mask that momentarily seemed to shimmer like mother of pearl and at other times seemed merely dull, like a wax candle.

  “Look!” suddenly came cries from everywhere. “The moon! It rises!”

  For a moment the harsh sounds of the Carnival came to a lull as all eyes turned to the horizon in momentary terror.

  But the moon was only one. She sailed slowly, like Princess Egiras’s mask, rising gently in the heavens.

  Relief was universal.

  This was not to be the fateful night in a thousand. For, even in the wildest pleasures of their revelry, none would forget the real reason for marking this night. All would tighten the laces of their masks, rearrange silk, wood, leather or metal closer against their skin. Yaro had her own simple mask on, and its friction caused searing pain against the raw surface of her face. She had a great urge to remove it, moons or not. But to do that could mean inviting occult dangers. Even if the moons did not come that night, traditional superstition was strong. Thus one must cover the face till the new sunrise.

  The procession moved through the crowds, twisting like a snake along convoluted streets, pausing at various city landmarks. At one point, near Tsaveh Dahnem, the popular tavern belonging to Belta Digh, a beggar child ran forward and slipped and fell at the feet of the chairbearers of Princess Egiras. As the small boy stumbled, his poor excuse for a mask, made of bits of rags, slipped off his face. It was immediately pounded into the ground by the feet of the dancers and the rest of those who walked before Egiras.

  The boy rolled away like an eel, barely escaping the feet of the mob himself. After they passed, Yaro watched him run forward onto the street, and crawl around in the dirt, touching the bits of his mask. With her nearsighted eyes she barely saw him begin to cry, skinny shoulders trembling, tiny silent sobs lost in the clamor of the crowd.

  Yaro dropped back from the procession and made her way to the child’s side. Without thinking, she took off her own simple goatskin contraption, and said, “Here, you take this.”

  She placed the mask into the little grubby hands of the child, who stared at her with round terrified eyes, black and pupil-less in the darkness, and then took the mask from her in awe.

  “Put it on now, child,” said Yaro sternly. “The night is not over yet, and, who knows, the moons might still come.”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you, great lady!” cried the beggar boy, using the slightly insincere tone of someone whose daily litany is to thank for alms.

  But Yaro didn’t mind his half-duplicity. She turned to go, feeling her bare face burn with the night wind, free of any protective covering but also free of pain. She was unmasked and unprotected under the ebony sky of this Night of a Thousand Moons.

  * * *

  Through amber-filtered wondrous light,

  An ancient magic you invite

  To fill you with the moon’s delight.

  Come, silver fire!

  “Where is your mask, Yaro?”

  Yaro had come up slowly behind the entourage of her mistress, and surprisingly here was Nadir at her side, like a dark looming ghost in the crowd of the Princess’s retinue. And, though she was too nearsighted to see his expression, she heard a note of concern in his quiet voice.

  The next instant he was removing his own mask and thrusting it into her hands.

  “Oh, no!” she retorted. “Please, my Lord, it is not necessary. I need none—”

  “Then I don’t need one either,” said he calmly. “As you wish, but I will not wear mine. Either you take it or I toss it aside.”

  For once Yaro really wished she could see his eyes, to see if he was laughing at her or if this was real.

  “Why, my Lord Nadir?”

  His voice smiled. Really, it did.

  “It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.” And with that he was gone back to their mistress’s side. His mask remained in Yaro’s fingers.

  In moments there was a commotion. Yaro heard the voice of Princess Egiras raised in petulant anger, saying, “What is the meaning of this?” And then she heard Nadir’s low protesting reply.

  “Wouldn’t be fair, my foot!” mumbled Yaro to herself,
then moved forward in determination, and paused before her mistress’s chair.

  “Here is your mask, Lord Nadir I believe you dropped it,” she said smartly, and offered his own mask back to him.

  In her high chair, the Princess turned. The moon-wax eyeless face of Egiras greeted Yaro. All around, feathered masks of beasts and demons and gods stared at her, blurring into a kaleidoscope in her poor vision, as the whole household of the Princess witnessed this incident.

  “You are indeed the mask-bearer for us all tonight, girl,” said Egiras then, and motioned to Nadir. “Take what is yours.”

  “I am afraid I cannot do that,” said the dark man. “This girl, this mask-bearer for us all, has no mask of her own. I did not drop the mask. I gave it to her.”

  “You are insolent!” said Egiras to Nadir. “And you, girl, why is it that you have no mask?

  Do you disdain this festival?”

  “I have no mask,” said Yaro, “because I want none.”

  “Have you no fear of the moons?”

  “Not in particular, Your Brightness.”

  “What?”

  A pause of silence.

  Egiras raised her hand and the chair-bearers stopped. The dancers and the singers paused, and the drummers grew silent. The street crowd hushed.

  “Then do you imply that I am afraid? That I might need a mask? How dare you?” said the voice of the Princess from beyond a waxen white thing of chalk.

  Yaro’s mouth parted in surprise. “Your Brightness,” she said as humbly as she could, “I beg your forgiveness, for I truly mean no such thing! I merely gave my mask to a poor child, and now I hardly miss it at all. . . .”

  “Foolish girl! If you had not given me this perfect mask I would have thrown you out of my house and service this instant. Get you a mask like all the others, and walk in the back of the line!”

  Yaro stared, and the pale lump of wax stared back.

  Overhead, the solitary moon rode high.

  Urge of madness. . . .

  “I will not,” she said then, suddenly. “I will not walk in the back of the line. And I will not wear a mask, because my face is already a mask. My skin is singed and the flesh underneath is wailing out in pain because of that very thing you now wear! I have given my skin up for you, Mistress, but I will not give up my free choice. Be it as you will—I leave your house and your service, and take my old mother onto the streets, and may the gods watch over all of us!”