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

Not one
live thing, natural or un, could ignore the cry. That Oloru slept on was his
great wisdom. She despised and respected him for it. Also, she thought, It is not for me Azhrarn comes hunting. Even to hunt me
has no value for Azhrarn. Can it be he even guesses I am gone from prison? What
loss if I am? No. It is this other he seeks.
    And she spurned the
“other” lightly with her foot as she went to the brink of the glade, to see.
    Now, she was Vazdru,
Sovaz, the Demon’s child, and she had drawn her genius about her. As the wild
hunt dazzled along the avenue of trees, the glade winked out like a flame in
water, because she willed it to. How strong, how confident her sorcery. Azhrarn
himself, riding with his folk about him, did not spy what she had hidden,
though he turned his dark head as they pelted by, maybe unsure, considering—but
even the blaze of her eyes she sheathed from him. I
am not here, Azhrarn, Prince of Princes. And he is not, that other prince you
seek.
    Then, like storm-wrack,
they were gone, and the wail of the dogs died like the sting of a numbing blow,
away through the forest, away through the world, and out of it.
    Soon Sovaz returned to
the pool. She stood looking down at Oloru, who had called her Evening Star.
    “Yes, just as he
promised, he is hunting you. He knows you have dared his lands, idiot and mad
thing that you are. He came very close to you. Do you fear him then, this demon
unbrother of yours? Well. I did not betray you. It seems we are to be friends.”
And she kneeled by him.
    “What?”
said Oloru, opening his amber eyes slowly.
    “Fool,” said Sovaz.
“Yes, it is a canny disguise, not to know yourself. Maybe he will never find
you in it. But now, gentle guardian—” And before Oloru could prevent it, she
seized both his gloved hands, and tore from them the jeweled silken gloves, and
flung them away.
    Oloru
stared at his hands.
    The
left was well shaped but gray as river clay; it trembled, and he saw the long
nails were red like lacquer, and its palm was black. He let it down hastily in
the grass and would not look at it. There remained the right hand, then. The
right hand of Oloru was constructed of brass, but the four fingers of it were
four brazen serpents that snapped and hissed. The thumb was a fly of dark-blue
stone, which, released from the glove, quickly spread its wings of wire and
clicked its mandibles frantically together.
    Oloru screamed.
He erupted to his feet and fled, trying to elude the monstrous hand. But of
course the hand ran with him, irrevocably attached, and the snakes waking and
fuming and spitting, and the fly rattling its wings and jaws and feelers
irritably.
    Away through the
forest, insane with terror and shock, Oloru sprang.
    Sovaz did not
wait, she went after him, running as lightly as he, and as fast. In less than a
minute, perhaps, she caught him, by his sleeve and by his shining hair. Oloru
slumped against a tree, shivering and shedding tears, white as death, calling
to the gods piteously.
    “The gods?” inquired Sovaz. “You know they have no
care for men. For yourself, what do you need with gods?”
    “Is this some bane you have thrown on me?” asked
Oloru. “Oh, let me free of it.”
    “Bane? Look at
this bane. Do you not, even for the moment of
a moment, remember its inventor?”
    Oloru looked. He
looked at the lively snakes and the blue fly. Then he closed his long-lashed
eyes and sank, senses vanquished (ever Oloru), to the earth.
    She laughed a
whole instant, did Sovaz. But then her laughter was done. Some other emotion
rushed now over the first. Unlike herself, it had no name for her. It filled
her with inexplicable excitement and hurt.
    Again, she knelt
beside him. She held him to her so her supernatural warmth should come between
him and the skin of the world that was to all supernatural things, always, a
lure, a lover’s embrace, the snare of an enemy. In that second of confusion,
she nearly understood her father. But this