Free Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) by Tanith Lee

been wounded that night, and not alone in the hand.
    CHAPTER 2
    All About Bhelsheved
     
     
    The sweet and succulent
fruit of faith:
    From east and
west, from north and south, once a year the peoples came, and gathered all
about Bhelsheved. The old had seen it many times, the very young recognized it
from hearsay. Ancient Sheve, which lay beneath it, had been called The Jar, for
its sources of water. Bhelsheved was “The city the gods made from a jar.” Yet
some also named it Moon City, for it was white as the moon.
    By day, in the
distance, across the tawny sand and against the blue of the ether, the
whiteness of Bhelsheved was like a glorious omission of color, so children,
seeing it for the first, sometimes inquired, “Who has torn the sky?” By night,
burning like a cliff of salt, across the dunes, the city seemed to emit its own
radiance. Only those who approached it from the west, the true moon rising
behind it, saw Bhelsheved darker, as if in eclipse, yet even this was the
darkness of pure silver.
    Being
approached and used by men only at one brief season of the year, the few days
of the festival of worship, the city had never been soiled. The smokes that
rose there, of incense and holy fire, were not enough to smirch it. Even during
the ingathering, none entered the city to profane it with the common practices
of living. Instead, the camps of humanity were spread out in vast and
multitudinous disorder, each and all terminating no less than a hundred paces
from the outer walls. The gates stood open then at all hours of day and night,
but those who came through them came as guests merely, calling on the gods in
their home, bringing gifts and compliments. Never overstaying their welcome.
The feastings and sports and contests that took place were conducted always
outside, always one hundred paces or more from Bhelsheved’s whiteness. She was
so lovely, and so choice, that city, they never argued against the ban. And she
repaid them, in her way. Every year, when they returned to her, it seemed she
had grown lovelier.
    About a mile
from the city paths welled like water out of the desert. These paths were
broad, all alike, and all paved with curious stones, regular, smooth and
glistening. Sand blew now and then across these paths, but always it cleared
itself again. No path which led to the city was ever buried in the drifts, nor
even partially obscured for more than a moment. Half a mile from the city,
lines of trees, perfectly shaped and manicured, sprang up beside the paths, so
that suddenly those worshippers who traveled in the bald heat of the day
progressed along avenues of green and liquid shade. A quarter of a mile from
the city, little fountains appeared at the wayside, and little cisterns, in the
forms of dainty indigenous animals or peculiar beasts out of myth, and all
carved from the milk-white stone of Bhelsheved itself.
    By now, the
city’s walls dominated the horizon. The slopes of a mountain covered with snow,
such was the impression the walls gave. At their feet, luxuriant groves of
trees, at this season all in blossom, nearly as white as the walls. Above the
walls, the cones and steeples seemed to tremble like white towers of hibiscus,
white hyacinths, and the white birds streamed from tower to tower, like bees in
search of nectar.
    There were
four great gates, facing to the four quarters of the world. These gates were
each of three shades of whiteness: the harsh white of steel, set with panels
the gentle sallow white of ivory, and studded with enormous polished pallid
zircons.
    As the people
approached, the city sang to them. Initially, in the distance, a faint, faint
sound which, as they drew nearer and nearer, grew louder and louder, swelling
to greet them. The song was a melodious yet uncanny thrumming—a thunder which
whispered, the buzzing of a thousand wasps in a hive of glass—
    The
processions poured in across the shining sandless paths to Bhelsheved, and the
extraordinary hymn foamed from