Free Night's Master by Tanith Lee Page A

sang, and the witch listened. His music loosened the stiffness
in her joints, undid the knots in her hands, and a little of her youth stole
back to her like a bird flying in at the window. When the songs were done she
said:
    “In the Underearth, at the borders of Azhrarn’s kingdom, winds a river
with waters heavy as iron and the color of iron, and white flax grows on the
banks. The river of sleep that river is, and on the shores of it sometimes
stray the souls of slumbering men. There the demon princes hunt those souls
with hounds. If you dare it, I can mix you a drink that will send you fast down
into the pit of sleep and wash up your soul on those shores. It is a place of
snares, but if you can escape its dangers and the running hounds of the Vazdru,
and cross the plains, you will reach the City of the Demons and confront, if you
will, Azhrarn. Then ask him for your girl created from a flower. If Azhrarn
grants your request—and he may, for who can guess his mood on that day—he
himself will speed you and her safely back to the world of men. But if he is
merciless and cruel at the hour when you find him, then you are lost, and the
gods know what torment or what pain he will send you to.”
    Kazir only reached for the witch’s hand, and holding it in a steady grip
he said:
    “The child may fear to be born and the mother to give birth, yet neither
can choose otherwise when the time is come. Neither have I a choice. This is my
only path. Therefore, mix your drink, kind sorceress, and let me go down my
road tonight.”
     
    Kazir passed
through the house of sleep as all pass there, unknowing, and woke by the shores
of the great river.
    Sometimes, sleeping, the blind might see, if they had seen much in life
before their blindness, and who could doubt all souls can see when once forever
free of the body. But the body of Kazir still lived and had seen little before
his sight was taken. Therefore his soul also, stirring on that cold bleak
shore, was blind as was his earthly shape. In fact, the soul resembled exactly
the flesh of Kazir, had his clear eyes, wore his garments even, and held in its
hand the ghost of his blind-man’s staff.
    So he stood on the banks of Sleep River where the white flax grew, and he
smelled the icy smell of the water and heard the iron sound of it, and away
from him stretched the black lands with their trees of ivory and gilded wire,
though he did not see them.
    Then Kazir kneeled and placed his hand on a pebble lying on the bank.
    “Which way lies the City of the Demons?” asked Kazir. And he felt the
pebble warm very slightly on one side, and so he rose and went on in that
direction, striking away from the river, and feeling before him with his staff.
    He walked for a long stretch, yet sometimes he would reach out and touch
the metallic bark of a tree, and know from that which path he must take and how
far the City was. There was no sound all this while save the wind of
Underearth. But suddenly he felt a presence, swirling like smoke, and a voice
murmured:
    “Mortal, you have come far in your dream. I am Forgetfulness, the slave
of sleep. Do you seek me? Let me wind my arms about you and drink all your
memories from your brain’s cup, so that when you wake men will ask your name
and you will not recall. Think what peace I offer you—no past crimes or shames
to cloud your mind, free as the air of earth, casting off your old life like a
garment.”
    But there were no crimes or shames in Kazir’s past which he needed to
forget.
    “No, I do not seek you,” Kazir said, “I seek Azhrarn, the Prince.”
    “Go then,” said the smoky thing. “If you are to be his, you must not be
mine.”
    So Kazir went on, but later there came another presence, sweeter and more
persuasive than the first:
    “Mortal, you have come farther than far in your dream. I am Fantasy, the
child of sleep. Do you seek me? Let me wind my hair about you, and fill your
brain cup with dancers and palaces, so that you beg me