“Get out of my sight!” cried Egiras. “But first, guards, have her flogged for her insolence!”
Urge of madness. . . .
Yaro felt a burning sensation.
It began like a tingling over the surface of her face, replacing momentarily the dull pain. It spread and radiated suddenly, so that the guards who began to move toward her paused, and she could almost feel their stares through the macabre faceless masks. . . . Yaro brought her hands up to her cheeks, and saw whiteness on her palms. Whiteness of reflected light. Truth or Illusion?
Am I doing this? It cannot be!
Yaro’s face was glowing.
And then there was an inhuman scream. Several feet away, in her high chair, Princess Egiras felt a burning terrible sensation along her skin, like fire, and when she touched her pale beautiful mask in reflex her fingers were scalded, and she had to let go in agony. The wax of the mask was suddenly incandescent, radiant, burning moon-white. The mask itself was burning.
No, I am not doing this! Yaro’s thoughts raced.
Egiras continued screaming, and then, feeling her skin burn in flames, she ripped off the mask, wailing, tossing it down and putting her hands over her face, while her retainers and servants surrounded her.
But the mask did not fall.
Instead, while the crowd hushed, staring in terror, the mask began to rise in the air. Like a piece of the moon.
The sky above was a coverlet of dark velvet, and stars were scattered like servants around their queen luminary. The mask rose quickly, like a bird in flight. And the higher it climbed the more it resembled the moon in shape and demeanor, until finally it had grown tiny and distant. When it reached the real moon, there was one bright explosive flash of silver light. The whole city held its breath, and then the whole city screamed.
Yaro alone stood silently, calmly, her glowing face turned to the heavens, while overhead a miracle took place.
The moon split asunder. And in its place there were two moons, like twins. The next second, in the blink of an eye, the two moons also split in half, rounded, and each one in turn gave birth to a twin. Then the four moons multiplied into eight. And the eight into sixteen. . . .
With each progression, the night grew visibly brighter, as the amount of light increased madly.
There was panic. Screaming masked humans ran madly for cover, and the chair-bearers dropped their mistress smack in the middle of the street. Others fell down on the ground and covered their faces, despite the protection of the masks against the supernatural light. Egiras fell moaning, covering herself, covering her face. Even when turned earthward, her now blinded eyes continued to see moons imprinted upon her retina. . . . At her side knelt the gentle great figure of a man. He was an island, poised, oddly unaffected by the glare of impossible light. Nadir reached forward, calling her name in his steady voice, taking her with his strong unyielding hands. . . .
The moons continued multiplying. It was now as bright as day. Yaro had lost count of them, seeing a whirling mass of orbs floating like lily-white grapes in a pale silver day-sky. And then, in seconds, there was no more sky left.
There were only the moons.
There was so much light now that it was impossible to look and see anything. Yaro closed her eyes, but she could see the moons through her eyelids.
And then all the sounds of the world receded, and she heard a voice. Yaro. Yaro, child of dust. Open your eyes and see what you have done. Compelled, she opened her eyes, and stared at the alien lightscape that was now the world. And for some reason her eyes could endure the brightness.
Before her stood a fluctuating dark silhouette, a dislocated night shadow against the mad light. For a moment he seemed to be a man, mysterious like the craftsman who had made her the mask. And the next he shrank into the little boy child for whom she had given up her own mask. Yaro, he said, you must stop this now. You are doing all this, you know. I have given you the ability to make your own free choices, and now you have taken the Night and made it into its opposite. Return the Night to me, Yaro.
“I?” she whispered. “I have done this? Who are you?”
I am the one who rules it.
“How can that be? How have I done this? I am nobody. And you are Lord of the Night!”
You have done this, and none other. The Night of a Thousand Moons is a Night of Illusion. Look again, look closely. And tell me what you really see.
Yaro closed her eyes, and when next she opened them there was only soothing darkness. High above, in a bed of the heavens, in velvet darkness, rode one single white moon. She stared, and suddenly realized that no longer did the moon seem blurred around the edges, nor tripled in her poor vision. For the first time in her life it was crisp and perfect and round.
And it was perfectly alone.
All the other moons had gone. But the shadow form before Yaro was still there, still real. Stop your Illusion, he said. You willed the moons to be. It is over now, it is enough. The real world is dark.
And there was a feeling of completion within Yaro. A soothing calm. And yet something continued to burn, just at the edges of her consciousness.
“Lord of the Night, or whoever you are. I don’t believe you,” she said. “If this is indeed an Illusion, then I have no power over it. However, it is obvious that you need something of me, and thus you attempt to deceive me. In truth, the Illusion is this darkness. You want me to believe in my own self-importance, to believe that I, a nobody, might have power over the world, out of nothing.
“I am not sure why you want this from me. Maybe because each new soul that forgets its place in the great scheme of the world forgets also humility, becomes misguided, and thus falls under your rule?”
Yaro laughed to herself then. “Yes! You test me now because my soul has come to a new boundary of experience—I am weak, a nothing, and yet I aspire to something more. I am thus most vulnerable to Illusion! One such as Nadir you can never have because his humility is his strength. And one such as the Princess Egiras is already yours, and so you do not tempt her with choices, only mollify her emptiness with delusion.”
And suddenly the bright impossible light of a thousand moons struck Yaro once again with all its fierceness.
And the shadow man screamed, howled in anger, and he began to fade then, under the thousand sources of killing light.
“Good riddance, you flea-ridden monkey of a god! I knew you were the Lord of Illusion, I knew it!” gasped Yaro as she fell down on the stone of the street, shielding her eyes from the very real, very terrible light. “You planned this elaborate setup just to lure me, another mortal, to your power—taking advantage of my natural willfulness and of the coincidental wonders that you knew would come to pass. How many others like me have you conspired to deceive tonight?”
And then, lying on the ground, she chuckled softly, mumbling to herself, “Well, not this Yaro, child of dust! I knew, because you could not have given me free choice. It has been mine all along. But, most of all, I knew because for that one moment you let me, a blind woman, see the moon with perfect eyesight! Do you think I am an idiot?”
Thus Yaro laughed, shoulders quaking, at the Lord of Illusion, until she thought suddenly of free choices and of what had been done, of her old mother who would now be thrown out on the streets.
And, mid-laughter, she began to weep.
* * *
The Night of a Thousand Moons fades from memory with the new dawn. Wonders cease, and the world returns to its normal routine. Once in a millennium it happens, and every time afterward it is forgotten that there is no danger at all, only wonder. No judgment, only glory. No destruction, only light.
The only thing that must be feared is the Lord of Illusion.
He is forgotten also. And yet he is the only reason to take care, for he harvests us mortals like the wind of night. On that night, only wisdom will prevail against him. And it will not matter if you wear a mask.
DREAM TWELVE
THE CUP
It is no
t an easy thing, serving a self-imposed blind woman who has eyes and yet refuses to use them. It is three times as difficult to serve one who is also a Princess, a shrew, and very possibly a madwoman.
And when that creature happens to be the Princess Egiras, the one who has gone mad after seeing a Thousand Moons in the night sky, the task is nearly superhuman. I am Nadir, and I took that task of servitude upon myself a long time ago. For I had committed a single act of dishonor against her kin. And to atone for it I, a foolish child, had made a single promise.
The gods heard me, and from that moment on my life became intertwined with the life of this woman—a mortal, yet on some other level an occult being bound to Illusion. As a result, I too was indirectly bound to the Lord of Illusion against my very nature and my ardent heart.
Thus I am a self-imposed fool.
* * *
When the desert gale winds ceased to blow after the storm season and the grains of sand settled down in uniform whiteness upon the dunes, a small caravan left the city, traveling East. The caravan bore no merchant but a wealthy Princess of foreign extraction who was returning home to her distant land of birth.
Her homeland lay somewhere toward the rising sun, beyond the mirage-rim of the horizon. And the caravan moved forward guided only by the great light in the sky as it traversed the upturned celestial bowl.
For the Princess whom it carried was blind to the world. She was unable to describe their destination, despite having two beautiful unblemished eyes slanted like almonds, with pupils that were darkness itself, without movement or bottom, and with a thick short fringe of lashes over unusual twin folds of her eyelids. Only the tall dark-skinned man with coarse hair and large pliant features, who was ever at the side of the Princess was rumored to know the way, having been once to the distant land.
Even in secret, the servants who accompanied the silent blind woman called her only by her true name, Egiras, and had no other nickname to give their mistress behind her back. And they feared her, as one would fear the night.
Three handmaidens came with her on this journey. There were also menservants, all of whom were skilled men-at-arms in addition to being members of the household. Finally there were the hired guards.
The black-skinned man who was always near the Princess Egiras—her henchman or bodyguard—was called Nadir. It was whispered among the servants that he could singlehandedly defend their Princess from harm, if such a need arose. They said he was like a great ebony panther that was the minion of the deity of night—a beast which, when unleashed in anger, could wreak extraordinary destruction.
Supposedly he had absorbed the mysterious powers of night from having spent time with savage wise men in the hidden holy places of the Princess’s distant homeland. He had come forth out of that land a priest of the most occult terror. And to cross him in any manner meant being exposed to this terrifying unknown.
They spoke many other absurd things about him, tongues wagging eagerly. Ironically, the meaning of his name was rarely discussed or questioned. It meant “the bottom,” the “lowest of the low.”
Nadir, the lowest one.
Despite all the fearsome rumors, no one could remember the last time when Nadir had lost his temper. No one observed him lashing out in violence or imposing his will unreasonably upon any of the household. On the contrary, he was like the wind moving grains of sand, a constant shadow sound that one stops hearing after a while in the desert.
Such was Nadir’s presence, a safe constant. Even before the Princess had become as helpless as she was now, he would walk behind her unobtrusively, remaining in her vicinity. He protected her with his being like a wall of stone. Wherever she would go, he came after, more intimate than a shadow. For unlike a shadow he was there both in darkness and in light. All the while Egiras abused him with unreasonable commands and a harsh tone. Even his name was pronounced with derision, as she constantly provoked him to react with anger—the one thing he never did.
Instead, the anger rebounded back upon her, and she burned with unresolved futility, tormenting him even more cruelly than before. And he endured it all. He remained her loyal minion, even as she mocked his every act and breath. And it was not precisely understood how or why this Nadir, this terrifying and yet humble one, came to serve the petulant Princess, or what secret power she held over him.
It was enough that things had been like this forever, it seemed, and certainly since long before Egiras had seen the Thousand Moons and lost her vision and her mind. Some had called that Night of a Thousand Moons a hallucination, a trick of the Lord of Illusion. But Egiras was evidence, at least to her own intimidated household, that something occult had indeed taken place. For she had become a blind madwoman overnight, a silent remote being who did not respond to anything.
Egiras stared with unblinking eyes, never reacting when a candle flame was brought to linger before her face. Two handmaidens instead of one had to undress her at night and help her with her personal needs, because their now silent mistress seemed incapable of untying knots or adjusting her own clothing. No longer did she bother to make herself presentable, and her long black waterfall of silken hair was tangled from being worn loose and unbrushed. She never noticed it.
Egiras did not sleep at all that first night after the Night of a Thousand Moons. And the next night she slept briefly and fitfully, and came awake like a wild creature. Her eyes were glassy, filled with strange unseeing depths.
She cried out, and Nadir awoke immediately, rising from the chair in the corner where he had stayed with her to guard her sleep. He tried to soothe her with a light touch, but she snarled at him, as though in a waking nightmare, and beat him away with her fingers splayed like claws, scratching his arm bloody with her nails.
Physicians had to restrain her, and gave her a medicinal herbal draft, forcing it down her throat. It served not only to nullify pain but to take away her consciousness, so that the Princess fell back into drugged oblivion. But when she came awake later that morning she was once again a terrified alien thing, unseeing, and incapable of responding to soothing voices. Old servants wept at the sight of their mistress, for though she had been cruel Egiras was still the one they had grown accustomed to serving. They loved not her but the symbol of her household and the security she represented.
“What is to be done, Lord Nadir?” they bemoaned, turning to the man who was her unwavering protector.
And the man who was named the lowest of the low soothed them all, saying, “We must wait.”
Nadir’s words were justified. As days passed, Egiras very tentatively regained a small amount of her senses. She was still fitful at night, and unpredictable; she would still snarl and act like a madwoman. But there were now times when her sarcastic clarity would return, and then a thin, cruel, perfectly rational smile would settle on her lips. Softly she would mutter words that none could hear properly, and which might have been remnants of her long-unused native tongue.
And eventually those muddled words too made sense, and they knew that she was calling for her homeland, asking to be taken back, far from this terrible city, to the place from where she had sprung.
“My Lady, it will be as you wish, and I will take you there,” Nadir said then, in a voice that barely registered, but its softness for some reason had more of an effect on her than loud forcefulness. He added, drawing his face near hers, “What of your eyes? You understand when I speak, yet cannot see. Is that true? What do you see?”
The face of the Princess, with its delicate skin of pale yellow porcelain, remained immobile, and her slanted almonds of eyes did not move from their fixed position, the irises and pupils murky with a colorless dark.
“Moons, burning bright . . .” she muttered. “I see the whole world is burning. It is all around. Oh, take this brightness away! Deliver me!”
“I cannot . . .” whispered Nadir. “Oh, how I wish I could.”
In that moment, for the first time in many days, her small cold hand gripped his strong dark one, find
ing it by touch.
Egiras turned to him, turned without seeing, and her gaze was blind and yet focused on that place that was him.
“Nadir!” she said fiercely, “Nadir, Nadir! Is it you? Speak so that I know it is you.”
“Yes, it is I,” he responded, heartened by her unexpected quickening. “I am here!”
“Why?” said Egiras then, an odd question—odd for it had no mockery and no taunt in it, only a sincere searching quality. “Why are you here with me? After all this time. . . .”
“Where else would I be, my Princess?” he said calmly, while his great hands trembled, betraying him.
But she did not appear to be aware of it, and instead her tone became remote again, abstracted, as she spoke.
“When will we go, Nadir? When will we return to the Kingdom in the Middle?”
“At any moment, we return.”
“Then let us go now!” she exclaimed suddenly, and her greatly dilated eyes glittered. Yet they shed no moisture, not a single tear, although they appeared as though they must.
“Not immediately, my Lady, for we must tell the servants to pack your things, and to sell this House. . . .”
“No! Just . . . leave it. Leave all of it be.”
Nadir frowned. For a moment, the woman before him shimmered and his own sight convulsed, as though a veil of Illusion had gently shifted between them, rippling in place for one instant. And then things came back, and he stared at her, wondering at this latest strangeness. Egiras was still clutching his arm, and her grip had become painful, so that he had to gently extricate himself from her fingers. Where they had pressed his flesh had become a numb, bloodless place.
“We will need supplies as we travel through the desert,” he said rationally. “And to equip a caravan with enough provisions and pack beasts and guards will require money. Because of that, we must sell your House.”