“Warn me, then,” said Azhriaz.
“In one direction, the sea,” said Kheshmet. “In another, the sky. Though you may conquer all the world, the seas have their own masters, who may be your equals. And the ether is the floor of others who, stepping there, begin to notice you.”
Azhriaz looked at Fate with some attention.
“I beheld the building of Baybhelu Tower,” said Kheshmet. “Few saw me, so circumspectly did I comport myself, and such florid cousins there were about besides, Lords of Darkness thick on the ground as beetles when a stone has been disturbed. Nevertheless, the Tower rose, to breach heaven, and heaven bethought itself, and stirred, only as a feather stirs on a pigeon’s back when it sleeps. But because of that feather, Baybhelu fell down with a crash that rocked the world.”
“I,” said Azhriaz, “do not build so high. I excavate rottenness, digging downward.” Her face expressed disgust as she said this.
Kheshmet said, “You are a goddess, and adored as such, and you have the powers of what you claim to be. What will the gods think of that?”
But, musingly, she said, “In the east, Simmurad . . .”
Kheshmet came close. “Not east, but in your eyes, I was wont to see Chuz like an amber figurine. Now I see Zhirek who is Dathanja, like a figurine of black basalt. When will the blue come clear again in your blue eyes, Goddess-on-Earth, Soveh-Sovaz?”
But Azhriaz reached out, and with a laugh she plucked the tiny chameleon from Kheshmet’s sceptered staff. It came to her a furiously growling orange, then lay upon her palm white as a dove, making a purring noise.
Kheshmet smiled; he allowed her to fondle the lizard. He was an uncle of sorts to her, after all, and the rest of the family did not seem to have been too familial with her.
In a while they went up, King Fate, Night’s Daughter, and the chameleon, to observe sunrise at Az-Nennafir.
The sun rose like a bud unfurling.
Fate snapped his fingers, and against its disk, the glory of the great nightmare of a City crumbled, and only its skeleton remained, the heights smashed, like Baybhelu, the tall temples and mansions roofless, and gaunt dragons moved over the desolation, and carrion birds with dusty eyes blew out of a desert that had been parks and palaces.
“Where the gods shall walk,” said Kheshmet, “perhaps metaphorically. But at each footfall, another tower falls.” Then he moved his hand across the scene, and the City returned, quite whole.
“It seemed to me once,” said Azhriaz, “that I might one day die.”
“Ah, Soveh-Sovaz,” said Kheshmet, taking the lizard up onto his staff in the moment before he vanished, “for more centuries than you could ever dream of, so, it has seemed to me, shall I.”
PART TWO: The War with Sea and Sky
1
AS USUAL, it was a clear winter morning in Upperearth.
Nothing ever changed there, or very little. The ground of heaven was sky, and the sky of heaven was sky, and time, like the sky, hung everywhere and did not move and did not stay still. Tomorrow might be yesterday, and next year three mortal centuries ago. But to the gods this gave no cause for concern—and men never came there, or would never come there, perhaps. . . . Thin blue morning, lit crisp-to-brittle by an unseen sun which neither rose nor set, never shifted, yet shone from all sides. Not cold, nor hot, that endless day. It described the Well of glass, containing the fluid of Immortality, which Simmu once had contrived to borrow from, and in which, once, Azhrarn had spat—making the leaden liquid sparkling and beautiful for a second or so. Against the Well, the two fearsome one-eyed Guardians slept, in their gray cloaks. The story went there had been long before, or would be long in the future, three Guardians. The third had been, would be, lost, in some curious maneuver, defending the Well (unnecessary), or falling in the Well (unlikely), or falling through the floor of heaven (less likely), or by incurring the displeasure of the gods: unthinkable.
For the gods were far off—both in their unphysical physicality and in their supernal spirit-minds.
To that limited number of beings, of whom Azhrarn was one, who had walked the Upperearth, it was a formless and mostly markerless country. It had its Well, and here and there some evidence of possession might be descried by those with exceptional vision—the harpstring dwellings of the gods, for example, eons abandoned, the various esoteric intellectual exercises, such as checkered squares of unknown colors, pavilions of indescribable structure, a flight of steps, waterfall or archway that neither word nor pen would or can award any idea of. Distantly on the horizon were mountains, or the frozen souls of mountains, the shade of the sky, outlined by delicate snows of impervious adamant. Even should you walk toward these mountains for seven years, you would not reach them. They remained always that exact distance on the horizon as before. To the gods, however, these inaccessible crags were easily to be gained.
Awhile then, in this region, some of the gods had been congregated. Since the location was otherwise never entered, it can only be conjectured upon. But there they were, the lords of Upperearth, who had all genders and none, transparently robed, translucent of flesh and aflow with the palest violet ichors. In high excitement, glassy flutterings would sometimes erupt from their garments, hair, or brains—and now continuously did so. For the gods, this was a most savage clamor. But their polished eyes gave away nothing. And they were voiceless as Eshva, more so. Yet it has to be supposed, as on other occasions it has had to be, that the gods did communicate with each other, and that a dialogue was in progress. Which, to render it in sentences and phrases, went somewhat like this.
“Ages past,” a portion of the gods stated, “we were volatile. We dressed ourselves in heavy skins, and descended to the earth, and there indulged in uncouth adventures, and left behind a selection of legends, and even, in some instances, progeny. Which last were counted as heroes or monsters by mankind. And indeed, it was in those foolish eras of our extremist youth we first made man, to amuse us, and for a little space he did. But later we grew out of him, and out of ourselves, and, purged of all such nonsense, we retreated to our upperworld to spend the rest of time, as time is now reckoned, in contemplations, and other astral athletics. Let us, therefore, only continue as we are, ceaselessly purifying our purity. And let the world also go on until it destroys itself by its gross randomness. The earth is no longer any concern of ours. And as for man, he is a mistake we made. And if we notice him, he will naturally offend us, as one’s mistakes always do.”
“But,” intoned another portion of the gods, “though for the most part the doings of man have no bearing upon us, yet sometimes his willful innovations strike a discordant echo even here. And this is one such, their new religion. A human thing, even one of their sorcerers, investing himself with godhead is only ridiculous. But this woman, being ab-human, has vast powers, and may, through their stupidity—in which state all men perpetually are—be taken undeniably for a god. It is true, when we roved upon the earth in our adolescence, we behaved quite often in such ways, and the legends we left support the woman’s claim. And this resonance of our past, and this affront to our present (though neither past nor present any longer trouble us), is a hindrance to our inward seeking. Therefore we may not ignore the discord. It must be silenced.”
Then a solitary god speechlessly spoke, and said this:
“One ascended to our country and walked here. He was no mortal, for such cannot ascend or enter. He was of an immortal race men call demons, and these we did not make, and therefore they may not be bound by us. And this demon, who was their prince, is a magician beyond all imagining. And when he had talked insolently to us, he kissed me, and I remember still the kiss.” And the god lowered his head (or her head, or its head), and flying crystals sped from every fold and pore and hair. “It is a fact,” continued the god presently, “that this woman mankind call a goddess is none other than the offspring of that demon prince. Such an adversary may be said to be worthy of our attention, and deserving of a supreme conflict, and we, inesc
apably, must offer war to such.”
Then the gods stared, or did what amounted to that action, but there is no source which reveals what that might be. This one god had now (unvocally) uttered the very concepts of their youth. So there came a pause, which undoubtedly lasted many mortal years. After which the gods affirmed that this one of their fraternity should take on for them the onus of retribution. He should do all—and it did seem that he was now masculine, though how it seemed so is not told, nor was it probably by any straightforward means. And in this way, too, the rest of the gods punished him, for the vestiges on him of outgrown things, not to mention for having been kissed by a demon.
Thus, the god—who carried within himself all the gods, though a rogue member; they were at heart intrinsically a single entity—thus, he set forth. And crossing Upperearth he arrived at a place like every other, but here he grasped the invisible substance of the air and wrenched it free and molded it, invisibly, between his hands—then cast it from him, where it broke invisibly into three shards.
These the god breathed upon, one after the other, and next gathered them up again, though still they were not to be seen.
He spoke then, or he made some positive, audible sound. It was a phonetic the like of which no sorcerer of the world had ever compassed, nor, let it be admitted, any demon magician-prince under the ground.
And the blue of Upperearth split, a small vent, and through it, miles away and a little below, was a raging thing, like many million furnaces melded into one, from which rays and streamers and breakers of flame reeled and exploded. Then the god, who had breathed his divine breath into the three invisible shards of the fabric of heaven, flung them down yet again, one upon the other, into the core of the sun.
The first shard struck the sun. The second shard struck it. And the third. At each impact there came a surge of light and heat more dreadful than those which the sun already shot and flailed about itself. But when the third fire spasm guttered and died, there was only the flaming mass of the sun disk, terrible enough, but not more terrible than it had ever been.
And then. With a violence that caused the upper airs to judder in a skyquake, the sun disgorged. Once, twice, thrice, a torrent of scalding matter reared upward and soared over heaven in a roaring arc, led by a dot of brilliance unbearable to look on, if any had looked, a shooting star of cosmic arson—which, ending its flight suddenly in mid-ether, stopped still and hung there, slowly cooling moment by moment to a stab of diamond. Until:
They stood high up, between earth and heaven, like three stooping hawks, their feet upon the winds and their wide wings spread. They were the Malukhim, the Sun-Created. They were made to be the scourge of men, the warrior-priests of the gods, their messengers and envoys, the shining sheathless blade of that which had outgrown battle.
The first who sprang from the solar fire was Ebriel. He stood on the right hand, and he had been calcined to yellow-gold. His skin was the metal of a king’s goblet, and his eyes like topaz, and his hair was a lion’s mane of the hue of the tasseled wheat in the field. His garments were of that pale creaminess of the asphodel, and the sheen of his flesh shone through with a golden radiation. His breastplate was hammered gold gazing with blond citrines. His wings were whitely gold as those of a young eagle. He was like the spring sun at noon.
The second who sprang from the fire was Yabael, and he stood on the left hand, and he had been seethed for a greater while, and his was a gold dark as darkest bronze. So the metal of his skin, but his eyes were like tawny amethysts, and his hair a stallion’s mane the hue of the scorched rufous leaves of autumn oaks. His garments were fulvous, like honey in beer, and the burnish of his flesh burned through with a somber radiation. His breastplate was of hammered brazen gold wounded with copper zircons. His wings were shadowed gilt as those of a vulture. He was like the late-summer sun in thunder.
But foremost, and nearest to the world, with the solar disk behind his head, there stood Melqar, who had stayed within the fire until it seared him white. His skin was the fairest gold, the metal of a sacred chalice, and his eyes were kindled lamps, and his hair a sunburst. His garments dazzled white as all white things, the newborn snows, the bones within a child, and the sunshine of his bright golden flesh soaked through with the radiation of a torch. His breastplate of hammered white gold was sunned with golden beryls. His wings were white as a swan’s, yet golden white, a swan that flew always at the day’s rise. And Melqar was like the sun of midsummer dawning.
But the sky itself turned black. Dismayed by the ethereal disturbance, storms formed in every quarter. Shocks tolled, and the clouds ran in like tidal waves upon a beach. The whole roof of heaven was blotted out; only the sun spiked through like the tip of a white-hot spear. Night closed on the day. And in every land of the world, down in the flat earth’s dish, they saw it. Men trembled, and sages and mages forecast dooms. Priests offered to the gods, guessing, almost accurately, that they were angry. But in the third of the earth where the Goddess was worshiped, they would do nothing, for they knew the gods to be indifferent, or hating. “They will smite us anyway,” men said there. And so slew themselves for fear of worse, or ran to hide in cellars, or else performed the most hideous villainies of their lives, frenziedly and rapidly, in order to get everything done before annihilation swept them up.
But in a far country, where the grim teaching of the Goddess had not yet gone, there was a scholar who watched the stars through a mighty lens large as a palace dome, mounted upon four sculpted tortoises of brass. And this man, though his vertebrae rattled with terror, stayed to see. Many hours later, the sky began after all to clear. It was midnight, and a moon rose in the east, a slender bow, yet fever-flushed. Then the scholar-astrologer was summoned to the house of his king, who asked questions.
“My lord, I can only say this. That I saw three arrows of light fired out of the sun, and from these lights came three winged men, one gold, one brazen gold, one white as gold that is molten. They stood in heaven, and the darkness followed, but yet they blazed bright, and rode upon the clouds like great and awful birds. And then it appeared that he who stood to the right of the sky drew a sword with a blade which sizzled like yellow lightning, and he in the left of the sky drew a sword which dripped red, like blood. But he that stood foremost with the sun behind his head, he drew a sword like white flame, and he raised it high, yet with its edge down-pointing to the earth.
“And I would venture to suggest,” added the scholar-astrologer, “that this bodes no good for us.”
2
THEY HAD neither mind nor soul, the Malukhim. They had no heart. They had spiritual will and purpose, but these came from the gods’ own. Though they were beautiful, so are fires and leopards.
Some nine days they were, falling to earth, so leisurely and so fraught with meaning their descent.
The passage may have been heeded, but, closing with the vapors of the world, they had shuttered their brightness. Those golden feet, naked as swords, touched initially the bare shoulder of a mountaintop. An emblem, the choice of landing. The most high to the highmost. And three days they paused upon the mountain and from miles off might be glimpsed there, glinting like jeweler’s work. But none saw it save some animals thereabouts, or envious ravens.
Below the mountain lay purple deserts with rocks of quartz and gullies veined by costly minerals, and here and there a long-armed tree that turned to flint.
The warrior-messengers came down from the mountain. It was emblematic also that they should walk a short way, that they should inhale the air and tread the back of the world. For they scarcely needed to.
At sunset, they paused again on a high place, and looked down, and Az-Nennafir lay before them, the City wide as an ocean, twinkling with the first buds of its lights.
Gods do not soil themselves with deeds. That requires angels.
Yabael took up a pebble, and hurled it toward the City.
It flew so fast for so far, it caught alight, and a sparkling tail went after it. Over
the City, over the river of the City, it raced, and crashed through a tall window of glass that had still the blush of dying sun upon it. Below, among pillars of incense, a multitude started and shouted. But the pebble flashed into the midst of them and tore downward through the body of a man, from cranium to instep, and buried itself in the floor beneath. The slain man burst in flames, and fell across the altar. He was a priest of Azhriaz. He had been offering the thirteenth human victim of the evening, it having been thought proper to give thanks, since the lifting of the storm. Now the worshipers wailed in their temple, blessing Azhriaz for her disdain. They believed, of course, the thunderbolt was her doing.
‘Oh kind is she in her unkindliness,
And lovely in her evil.
Let us be worthy of your hatred,
Azhriaz! Azhriaz!’
Yet, whole kingdoms’ lengths of streets and concourses away, three strangers now stood at one of the large gates of the City.
It gaped always open, night and day, the gate. The leaves of it, in any event, were made of glass.
When the three strangers passed beneath, galvanics scored the atmosphere. But only a sick man lying in the gateway noticed this.
They were cowled and cloaked, the strangers, one in singed cloth that took shadow, and one in blond cloth that took light, and the third in blanched cloth that sang on the eye.
Fools, thought the failing one under the gate. (He had been a magus once, exalted and proud, and stayed arrogant though he perished of hunger and disease.) “Oh, wise masters,” he cried aloud, “give alms to a wretched destitute.” He did this to see if they were idiotic—and irreligious—enough to do it. And at his words, to his surprise, contempt, and hope, the traveler in the blond cloak turned and cast down to him something that gleamed. The sick magus scrabbled for it eagerly, then cursed, for it was only another pebble, and besides, it had burned his palm. Then, from the burn, there flowed through him a frightening sensation—it was health and vigor leaping back on him like two rabid tigers. Soon he got up and ran away in horror, leaving the pebble to blacken in the gate.