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

you do not know
me.”
    “Only that I
found you as Kazir found Ferazhin, a flower grown in the shade. The rest—I
unremember.”
    “Why?” said she,
and now her eyes were paler, harder and more
cold. Like spearpoints of turquoise, as he should have recalled them, having
seen them so previously, in the temple of holy Bhelsheved, the day after her
mother’s death.
    But Oloru did not
recall. He shrugged most gracefully. “Why?” he said. “Why not? Pardon me, I am
partly mad. Everyone says so.”
    “Yes,” she said, “it
is politic to forget yourself. You who destroyed my mother by your trickery.
Should I not detest and be revenged on you for that, as my father means to be?
He will hunt you over the edges of the earth. I heard him promise as much to
your face. That two-faced face which once was yours and will be yours again.
One promise of Azhrarn given you, and then a promise to me, and he took me
below with him. But he put me aside and forgot me, I was of such little worth
there. Or here.” The demoness who was also a human girl put out her hand and
touched one of the lilies. “My loving parents,” said she, and the lily
shriveled and rotted from its stalk. “That night Dunizel died and left me
comfortless, she sought out Azhrarn. Her spirit came to him, and put on flesh for him, and they were lovers together. What was I to
either of them in those long moments? Nothing. He made me for that promised
complex game he planned, but has since discarded. And she—she held me in her
belly and brought me forth only to gratify him. When I was a child,” said the
girl who was also a demon, “Dunizel told me stories. In the womb I heard her
voice, my mother’s, sweeter than the songs of the stars. But I was nothing to
her but something of his, while he hated me
always.”
    “Your eyes, they scald
me,” whispered Oloru.
    “Be scalded then,
court jester,” she answered angrily. “Play your silly part and see if I do not
betray you.” But then she went on softly, dangerously, with her former theme. “He named me Azhriaz, to mark me as his. But I am not his. She named me by her own first-given name, Moon’s Fire— Soveh. Though I disown my mother, I would rather be hers than his. I will resume that
name.”
    “Your eyes,”
whispered the young man, “are burning the marrow from my bones. Are killing
me.”
    “Die then, as if you
could.”
    “When I am dead
ashes at your feet, consider only this. You are a sorceress, and whatever name
you take, it must bear the symbol of your calling.”
    She looked at
him. She said, “Good. Her name is better altered. Not, then, Soveh, but Sovaz the
witch. I will be Sovaz.”* Note to Vera: Following text to be footnote * As
with the K that concludes a masculine name to denote the magician, so the
symbols which translate as AS or AZ in the female—at the end or very
occasionally within, the name—denote a sorceress. End Footnote
    “Sovaz, you are
fair,” said Oloru. “You are the evening star, the hyacinth that shades all
heaven with its dye, the silver taper that lights the moon.”
    “Is she so, this
Sovaz,” said Sovaz, unsmiling. “But I see now what you play at being.”
    After that she
fell silent. Silence was yet her métier, speech only a new fad that might be
relinquished at any moment.
    Merely, she let
down her hyacinthine hair into the pool. The lilies rustled, stretching their
stems like thirsty swans, to dip their petals in the water her hair had spiced.
    A short while
later, perhaps only six or seven hours, the lilies and the hyacinth lifted
their heads from their reflections at a sudden sound. It was a noise which has
already been described in some detail. A belling of hounds, but not mortal, nor
far off.
    She who was now Sovaz
glanced first at her traveling companion. Innocently, beautifully, Oloru slept.
Neither did the uproar rouse him, though psychic and horrible and limitless, it
seemed to rape the forest, to rip down branches and uproot the grass.