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

again to his staff, and moving into a dagger of westering
light, he became one with it, and vanished.
    After the sun had gone,
and nightingales sang in the walnut grove which stood always, cot or palace,
beneath the house wall, Sovaz left the arms of her lover. She paced about in a
gallery of columns open on one side to the night. How intently the stars gazed
at her over the tree-tops. How wildly the nightingales sang, as if something
had disquieted them, with ecstasy or fear. Presently, silently, Sovaz called
her lover back to her. She put her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes said, There
is no rest for me. Let us walk out in the darkness.
    So they wandered through
the woods, where the black foxes came to play about them, and the night flowers
glowed and sent up their perfume. And sometimes, by starlight, the two
wanderers cast five shadows. But later, three of the shadows vanished, though
there went a faint sound through the branches, like wings.
    Coming at length into an
avenue of ancient trees, Sovaz and Oloru saw a town spread below and before
them, out of the wood.
    “We will go down. We
will see what humankind does with itself in the last hours before dawn.”
    Oloru smiled chidingly.
( Humankind?) But then there was only a
ghostly jackal which ran at her heels, grinning. Sovaz paid no heed, nor did
she assume herself any feral form. Her own skin was too unfamiliar to exchange
itself for others.
    The barricades of the
town were shut, but there was a herders’ gate which Sovaz breathed upon, and it
opened itself.
    Down the streets, then,
the woman walked, with a jackal loping after her. She had sorcerously re-formed
her apparel—or maybe she had only put on fresh apparel in the ordinary way—to
the garb of a young man, soft boots on her feet, her hair wound in a cloth, a
long knife at her belt. It was Oloru who, when he should choose to resume human
shape, would be found in an embroidered robe and pearl- fringed slippers.
    The lamps burned low in
the town or were put out. Here and there a sleepless window, or the inflamed
eye of a tavern.
    I might, Sovaz considered, float upward like a leaf and look in at all these
sleepers. I might slip in under doors, between the narrowest lattices, revel in
their sins, virtues, absurdities—and be gone like the night breeze. Or I might
take the being of a nightmare, and cause them to wake screaming. Or seduce, or
thieve, or kill. More, the whole town I might stir to havoc and panic, to
madness—and then he would forget himself, my beloved, and remember himself, and
help me at the work.
    Overhead the stars
massed thickly. So many had come out tonight to look on Sovaz, the Demon’s
daughter, with their concentrated stare.
    But why, thought she, why do it? Is the
only challenge in the world to be greed and viciousness? Is the only satisfying
power the power of the ascent over men, the only dream, ambition? And must the
alternative to greed, evil, ambition—be only sluggishness?
    At which she felt a gloved hand smooth her cheek.
“Sluggishness? Is that the name you call our love?”
    “Our love,” she said aloud to Chuz, who for a second in the
person of Oloru walked at her side, “our love rocks the world. Yet what a
little event is our love.”
    Chuz laughed, like a jackal barking. Oloru said plaintively,
“You will smash my heart in fragments.”
    “You shall be shaken
then, and what a pretty sound you will make, like a temple sistrum.”
    And at this point they
reached a wineshop door and Sovaz walked in there, as if it had been all along
their destination.
    The guests who remained
were mostly sleeping, their heads on their arms, or their feet on the tables.
    Sovaz seated herself in
a dark corner, and Oloru with her. A wine server approached them sullenly. “Wine,
young . . . sir?” he asked Sovaz.
    “The wine here,” said
Oloru melodiously, and loudly, “is fit only as a purgative for pigs.”
    “True,” said the server.
“But do you wish it or