“What a sad delusion, Yaro—”
“Not a delusion, but truth obscured!” retorted Yaro. “It is obscured in the same manner as it was on that Night of a Thousand Moons when I encountered Him for the first time in the shape of the Lord of Night. For he cast a glamour over my vision, allowing me to see clearly like I had never seen things in my entire blind life—for I am blind as a bat, my Lord Nadir, and that is my only true measure. I am not supposed to see clearly! And yet, though nearsighted, I can right now see each grain of sand, each tiny sharp outline of this desert for hundreds of feet around us! It is only at the horizon that things begin to blur naturally, as I am used to observing them. And therefore all of this must be not real.”
“But to what purpose?” whispered Nadir.
“I know not,” said Yaro. “Only that Illusion is her nature, and her purpose. Ask her yourself, my Lord. In the meantime, I will drink this water in the cup, even though you may think I am drinking sand.”
And with that Yaro raised the wooden bowl to her lips, and swallowed hungrily, swallowed dry bone-white dust.
And then Yaro choked and began to cough.
“Stop,” said Egiras, watching the sand granules spill from Yaro’s face. “There is no water, Yaro. You have gone mad from the sun and the heat and the desolation.”
“You lie!” exclaimed the servant, forgetting herself, and she again brought the cup up to her lips with trembling bony fingers, saying hoarsely, “I will see the water! Just as I saw the Lord of Illusion hiding in my Lord Nadir’s dark shadow, as he always does, for that is how I knew! I saw a glimmer of water there, yes. . . .”
And to that Egiras replied quietly, looking at her with surprisingly straightforward sympathy, “I am sorry. It is nothing but a mirage, woman—possibly because we have remembered Tazzia the god of mirage, and thus called him to us briefly. And I regret myself that it is so.”
Egiras looked at them all—at the wild-eyed dark young woman holding the cup, at her loyal Nadir standing like a monument to approaching death, at the old black-skinned crone who was even now taking her last breaths on the pallet.
And for a moment an odd sense came to her, a sudden feeling of constriction in the area of her chest or her lungs, or maybe a little deeper. It was a new feeling, for she had never sensed this before, this peculiar brief connection with others, with what they were sensing. . . . Egiras looked at them and knew that they were all here in one way or another because of her.
Bonds of human servitude.
And a sudden thought came to her: what if indeed it was true, that she was herself so bound to Illusion that there were things being obscured around her, a whole world that she could not see except through the sterile filter of the dark one?
Egiras blinked, staring intensely, and for a moment the memory of the white moons standing with false brilliance in her vision returned with searing fire. . . . But she blinked it away. And she looked at Nadir, and she saw his dark forehead which could no longer even produce sweat, and she saw that his eyes were so calm and resigned. Was that because of her?
For he was here now and would be here up to the end, and he would die with her with just such calm silence, under a burning desert sun.
“Nadir,” said Egiras, looking into his eyes, and then her voice broke and cracked, with something more than thirst. “Nadir. . . .”
The man looked at her, responding immediately to her call, as he always did.
“What is it, my Princess Egiras?” he said.
“Nadir, I want you to leave me, Nadir. Go forth. . . .”
In sudden attention he neared her. “What?”
“I want you to go,” repeated Egiras. And then, “No, it is not I that want, not I—rather, you need to go. You must leave me now. All of you. It is not too late for you. I, meanwhile, will turn my face toward the East, and will walk alone for as long as I can.”
“How can I leave you?” he said. “What nonsense! Where is there to go? We are all together now, and we will all die—”
“No!”
Her voice came as a screech, broken, jagged, inhuman, echoing in the windblown humming silence.
Egiras stood up straight and began to back away from them all—from the old woman and the dark skinny young woman, and most of all from him.
As she moved away, she felt an odd thing happening. It was as though an invisible ancient and permanent restraint were being drawn taut between them—between her and him, one on one
—as though a rope of wind and dry sunrays stretched tight and began to constrict her throat and to pull at her innards. And the more she walked, putting distance between them, seeing the line between them stretch in her inner mind’s eye, the more it hurt her inside, until the hurt became a sharp agony in her solar plexus and then in a place that she at last realized was her heart. The rope of wind and sunlight pulled at her heart, and the other end of it was attached to Nadir’s.
And then, as the agony grew utmost—so that she no longer sensed the heat of the desert, for it was brighter than the sun—then Egiras cried with her last breath, “Be free of me! Go! I set you free! I will not look upon you or call you or need you, ever!”
With that, the rope of agony was severed—having been stretched to its utmost—and the world grew very dark, and at the same time it was very bright, beyond day.
* * *
I watched her crumple to the sands, like a puppet that has suddenly lost its strings. And as she fell I felt something break between us, a sudden sharp snap of acute pain. And I sensed a peculiar lightness that I had not felt since I was a little boy, walking alone on the streets of the great city that spawned me, long before I met Grandmother, who was Ris, and long before I entered the desert. . . .
With my old instinct I started to run toward her, but then stopped. The urge of duty that had until now directed my actions was no longer there, and instead there was an emptiness. I felt light and calm and almost indifferent. I could simply leave her be, lying there in the scalding white sand, and walk away and never look back. And then the next second I felt a stab of a different feeling rushing in, and in that moment I heard Yaro exclaim behind me. “Oh, My Lord Nadir! Oh, look! Water!”
But I did not look back. Instead, I walked forward and I knelt before Egiras, and I reached out with my shaking parched hands to hold her husk of a body, knowing that she was still alive but barely.
Sensing me in turn, she opened her dark eyes, and they were liquid. “Nadir,” she whispered.
“No . . . In the name of Ris, no . . . I have set you free, and now you will be able to see what you could not before, and you will be able to drink the water and live. But—only if you leave me. Get away from me, Nadir, for I stain you even now with the darkness of Illusion.”
Yaro approached us, and she came down on her knees at my side. “Look!” she exclaimed, touching me, and I was compelled to turn.
I glanced and saw that she was holding the wooden cup, gingerly, and saw what was now within it.
The cup was full to the brim with clear water.
While all around us was a small oasis of prickly desert shrubs and hardy greenery surrounding, only a few feet away, a small natural spring.
“Take it, my Lord, and let her drink! We are saved!” whispered Yaro, a wild new expression in her eyes.
I released Egiras with one hand, with the other continuing to support her against my chest. And I took the cup from Yaro’s trembling fingers. As I did so I felt a coolness come from it, like a breath of distant ocean, and with it a memory of childhood.
My heart began to race wildly as a maelstrom of hope surged into it, and I brought the cup to the lips of Egiras, dipping it forward.
But then I watched in growing horror. As the water came in contact with her flesh it immediately turned to sand, which crumbled down her chin and her throat.
“You see . . .” whispered Egiras to me with a strange smile of joy I had not ever seen in her.
“I have set you free, Nadir. There is now
a chasm between us once more, as it should be. I alone will die now, while the three of you will cross the desert. Even now, the desert is all around me. . . .”
And at her words it burst within me, something wild and uncontrollable that I had no words for. For the first time since childhood I wept.
* * *
Yaro watched Nadir as he shook with tears, his large smooth, features twisted, and she knew there was a new bond forged between him and the strange terrible woman whom he had so long served. And this time the bond was such that it was unbreakable.
For, while duty and honor and caprice and hatred had bound them previously with Illusion, in their place was now truth and warmth. Instead of cause and effect there was freedom. And with it, a choice.
“Egiras!” cried the great man, her former servant and henchman and loyal shadow. “I will never leave you, Egiras, how can I? You are like—”
“Go on, speak it,” said Yaro. “She is like your very breath. She is the one closest to your heart.”
And then the skinny woman sighed and put her hand to her brow, rubbing it thoughtfully, saying, “Tell me what I can do, and I will do anything I can. There must be something that can be done for her whom you love so much, my Lord. . . .”
“And surely there is, Yaro, child of dust,” said her mother from the sling-bed. Now the old woman arose, surprisingly hale, and stood up straight. And she walked toward them lightly over the sands, her footfalls effortless as the wind, those of a young woman. Yaro’s mother stopped, and they looked upon her and saw that her tattered beggar clothing had transformed into robes of brilliant white cotton. Her skeleton-parchment face was wrinkled still, and yet her eyes danced—young and mischievous and brilliant—and were distinctly no longer the eyes of a mortal.
“Mother!” exclaimed Yaro, her mouth falling open. “What has happened to you! Oh!”
“What do you think?” said the one before her with a smile.
“Oh!” continued Yaro, stuttering. “What—you are not—who are you?”
“Of course I am,” replied the other, while Nadir stared, his dilated eyes filling with ancient recognition.
“I am still your Mother,” said Ris to Yaro. And turning to Nadir she added, “And I am your Grandmother.”
And then she moved between them and bent forward. She put her hand on the lifeless forehead of the dying Egiras and she said, “And as for you, daughter of Illusion, I have been nothing to you until the moment you decided to open your heart, and now I would like to make you mine also. For you carried me with your own hands.”
There was a sudden rising of the wind around them, a wind that had come out of nowhere and wailed and stirred the sands.
Egiras opened her eyes with a snap.
Her eyes were roiling darkness, and they too were not mortal eyes now. “Ris . . .” she whispered, trembling. “I see you, Ris!”
And even as she spoke, a dark shadow began to form before them out of the swirling wind that obscured the very sun.
The shadow was translucent, like a malformed mirage, yet shimmering like air warping in the heat.
Only, he was cold, the Lord of Illusion.
He stood opposite Ris, and his eyes were not visible. Only his voice sounded, the whisper of a snake.
She is mine.
Is that so? Ris spoke forcefully, also in their minds.
Egiras arose in that moment, straining up, freeing herself from Nadir’s arms, her eyes pupilless. She stared upwards, between the shadow and the figure of corporeal whiteness of cotton.
“Choose!” exclaimed Ris. “This is your only moment of true freedom! Chose Him, or choose me!”
Come, Egiras . . . whispered the snake. I have given you life, and I am a part of you always. Without me you cannot be.
“Oh, I want to be with you, Ris, the Bringer of Stillness and Water, the Bright-Eyed Liberator, the Mad Sovereign of Wisdom!” sobbed Egiras. “And yet, He calls me, for He is my father also, my real father. . . .”
Choose!
And then the whole world came to a frozen silence. They all waited for her, even the granules of sand and the beams of the sun.
“I cannot . . .” whispered Egiras. “I cannot choose either one of you, for I contain both of you. I feel it now. Thus, I choose death, for I choose neither one of you, only myself, and I am dead already.”
In reply, Ris laughed.
“A perfect answer!” said she who was the opposite of the shadow.
Agreed . . . whispered the snake. And then, surprisingly, the shadow began to fade, and the wind settled down.
Ris stood before Egiras, and she reached forth with a wrinkled yet preternaturally strong hand, and she helped Egiras rise.
“Where is that old cup of mine?” said Ris. “Here, give it to me, my children.”
When Yaro placed the wooden bowl in her hands, Ris took the bowl and offered it to Egiras.
“Drink,” said Ris. “Now you will be able to do so, for you are both his and mine, and thus your own. Death will claim you as it does all mortals, but not for quite some time. She was not invited to this feast, and she does not have any say today.”
And Egiras took the cup and she put it to her lips, and indeed the water remained what it was while Egiras drank many great gulps, feeling the liquid balm pour inside of her. . . . When she was done, she returned the cup to Ris, who handed it back to Yaro and then to Nadir. They also drank, and were filled with sudden coolness, as though their weeks in the desert had not been.
“Now then,” said Ris. “Give me a hairpin, Egiras!”
And as they stared in confusion, Ris did not wait but pulled out one of the small metal pins that were stuck in the crumpled veils that Egiras wore.
“You think me mad, don’t you?” said Ris with a grin in her eyes, looking from one to the other of them with mischief, as she fiddled with the pin, straightening it. And then Ris cast the pin on the surface of the water that was in the cup.
The pin spun, but did not sink, and instead floated. It was like a very familiar thing that they should all know but somehow didn’t.
“Observe a desert compass,” said Ris. “To help you navigate the ocean of sand. This needle points North, while its opposite end is South. Your journey, my children, lies toward the West, back where you came from.”
“Will you come with us this time, Grandmother?” whispered Nadir, looking at her with luminous eyes.
But Ris sighed—if it is possible for a god to sigh—and then she smiled again, but with an odd bittersweet gentleness.
“Not this time either, my Nadir,” she replied. “For I go with Egiras. We continue East, as is her destiny. And since the Cup is yours, I must walk at her side and give her My Water.”
And then, like a chameleon, Ris brightened. “Come,” she said to Egiras. “We must be on our way! But first you must kiss your beloved goodbye, this time in truth. For, although your hearts are bound now with true bonds of freedom, he is not yours, and neither are you his.”
And as water began to come streaming out of her eyes, Egiras approached Nadir, and lifted her face to him. She stood and looked at him and into him and though him, and could neither blink nor turn her gaze away. Nadir in turn lowered his head, put his hands on her arms near the shoulders, and placed his lips upon her cool forehead.
Then he released her and turned his back to Egiras. And he remained standing thus. It was the harshest gesture of his life.
“Tell me when they go, Yaro,” he whispered, “for I cannot bear to look.”
Thus Yaro stared directly East and blinked and watched in his stead. But before she could reply or describe the moment of their passing—if such a thing could be inscribed within a single moment—there was no one else with them, only the wind.
“They are gone, Nadir . . .” she said. “Look at me, my Lord.”
And he did.
Silence and sunset.
“Not your Lord,” he said. “But someone who will now walk at your side, if you will have it so.”
Yaro stilled. Her face showed a succession of images and emotions as she moved through each and seemingly discarded them all, settling upon a blank expression.
“What side?” she said in a deadened voice, looking down at the sand. “I don’t know what my Lord means. . . .”
When at last she looked up, in the warm glimmer of sunset, he could see that water was streaking her cheeks with reflected flashes of gold and persimmon fire.
“Yaro . . .” he said, putting his fingers against her thin cheek. “Oh, Yaro.”
“Oh, Yaro what? Don’t bother,” she retorted with a snort. She scrunched up her features, and hastily rubbed the back of her hand against her dirty cheeks.
But Nadir could not help the involuntary curving of his lips, for here were the glimmerings of her former lively manner.
“Don’t bother,” she added, suddenly intense and once more serious, “unless you will have it so yourself. I am nothing, a child of dust. I can never be her, my Lord. You know that. . . .”
In reply, Nadir again smiled. He cast a final glance at the Eastern horizon, then did not look there again.
“If you are dust,” he said, “then look around—you are the whole world. With me, you fill this Cup. Only together may we both drink.”
DREAM THIRTEEN
CAELQUA’S SPRING
The desert spring drew the threads of her subterranean waters to her, picked herself up from the sands and became a woman.
It had been a long time.
Her name was Caelqua. Rather, it was hers once, a human name.
The woman stood considering, while water-memories surged into her mind, and time flickered in eddies of cool liquidity.
She had once been a young girl with persimmon hair, a garish flame. Now there was only the sand ocean in her tresses, skin taut with wind, and colorless eyes. She was a husk. As though she didn’t exist. . . . And yet she was something more. Caelqua walked slowly through the scalding sands while the sky poured the anger of the sun upon her unprotected flesh. There was no sensation at the soles of her feet, and she felt no thirst. She knew there was something she had to do.