Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 Read Online Free PDF Page A

aware of it, she
did not know what she was. How then could she
express anything?
    She lay on her
royal bed in the Underearth, three days away, or three thousand years away,
from Druhim Vanashta. Perhaps she even felt, like the dim echo of some gigantic
exploding star, the resonance of Azhrarn’s mourning. But if she did, it gave
her nothing, it asked nothing, it turned its face from her.
    And so she was—or so she
was not.
     
    3
     
    “HE IS NOT a bad son,” said the widow. She wrung her
hands and paced up and down. “Those that speak of him, speak well. But then
they were afraid of the master he serves. They will not speak ill of my son for
fear it should seem they speak ill of Prince Lak. But they look askance. Do you
hear much from your Oloru, they say, and their eyes say, He is a cheat and a
deceiver, a buffoon of the court who practices all its vices.” She sat down in
a chair. Her elder daughter, who had heard her mother pacing and come in to
comfort her, now took the widow’s hand. “But I say this,” said the widow, “it
is a weakness in him. Only a weakness. Do we blame a man who is born without
sight, or a man whose leg is broken and who walks crookedly thereafter? Why
then blame a boy whose spirit is unable to see and whose nature has been
warped? Can he help it any more than the poor blind man or the unlucky
cripple?”
    “There, there,
Mother,” said the daughter, who was young and fair and golden, somewhat like
Oloru himself.
    “You are a good
girl,” said the mother. “Both good girls. But oh, my son.”
    In the window the
sky was black and many-starred though the moon had gone down. It would not be
dawn for two hours or more. Away beyond the walls of the old house, the ancient
forest (the same in which Prince Lak now hunted) could be seen raising its
spears and plumes to the sky. Nearby, a ribbon of road turned against the trees
toward the city. Along that very road a year since, Oloru had traveled.
Wellborn though poor, he meant, he said, to find some great lord who would be
his patron. And he had found one. He had found Lak, whose vile hungers and
bestial unkindnesses overtopped the misdeeds of all his fellow princes put
together.
    “Oloru should have
stayed at home with us,” said the mother. “He was happy with us.”
    “Perhaps he is
also happy now,” said the elder daughter, sadly.
    His letters had
given them to think so. He did not mention what he did at the court of the
magician, but only the rich food and fine clothes, and always he sent extravagant
presents.
    “It was the
forest,” said the mother in a whisper now. “The forest is to blame.”
    The elder
daughter glanced at the window and made a little sign against evil enchantment.
    It was a fact, a
month before Oloru had undertaken to seek his fortune in the city, there had
been a strange incident, though not a rare one for those who lived in the
periphery of the forest. Even by day, the wise did not venture there, but
Oloru, the widow’s only son, had always scorned such superstition. Now and
then he would hunt these woods himself, and bring back game, for which the
house was grateful enough. Then came an afternoon when their servant, the only
retainer left to them, hastened home alone. Oloru had gone out with him at
sunrise, but somehow they had been separated in the trees. Then the servant had
searched all morning, and long past noon, but could not discover the young man
or any trace of him. At last the servant returned to his mistress the widow, in
trepidation.
    A few terrible
hours then passed in the worst perplexity and distress. Though she dared not
venture into the forest, the mother stood at her gate, and the two fair
daughters and the servant with her. There they stayed, praying or weeping or
silent, or trying to reassure each other, or calling Oloru’s name vainly,
shading their eyes against the westering sun and gazing at the trees as if by
desperation alone they could draw him forth again. The sun began to go