Delirium’s Mistress

Fashions change. Even in mythology.

“I rule none of it,” called Atmeh to heaven. “Listen to me, you peerless soulless gods, I rule nothing and no one, and soon, soon I will outshine you, for I will be a mortal. And one day, as you never can, I and mine shall inherit the earth.”

And Chuz lowered his eyes, his matchless eyes. He, magnificent, a Lord of Darkness, held in his arms now a mortal woman. As Azhrarn had discovered, that was like clasping the tides of the sea, the winds of heaven. How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on.

“The gods will take notice, Mother, of our righteous distress, and come to my assistance.” In this pious belief she was, of course, quite mistaken (since in those days the gods cared nothing for mankind).

The deeds of conquest and omnipotence have a sameness, as does the exposition of most evil.

You will go to any length, however sumptuous or cataclysmic, in order solely to avoid the words: it appears I am at fault.

No, she is cruel and pitiless and indifferent (which we have learned, through her teaching, the gods are to mankind—and indeed, have not the lessons of our lives ceaselessly informed us this was so?).

Oloru slumped against the 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?”

“Now, when the man struck you, if you had only said to him, ‘strike me again for good measure, I have no quarrel with you,’ perhaps he would have struck you, or perhaps not, but the affair would have been finished with, and you at liberty to go on as you wished.”

“Master, I see it is a parable, but nevertheless, some men, being allowed to strike another unchecked, will make a habit of striking there. Is that not also an interruption?”

“Life is a series of blows,” said the priest, “birth and death being the greatest of these, but between them, many of lesser sort. And is it possible to return or mend every smack of fate and life? Sit down beneath a storm, for if you shout at it, it will not hear you.”

Ebriel regarded his adversary. His eyes grew peculiarly lambent, as though he had come to love her. Of course, they were sworn foes; perhaps he had.

Though they were beautiful, so are fires and leopards.

“Oh, dutiful daughter,” said Azhrarn. “You are to be a goddess somewhere, for I would teach this world the nature of gods.”

“And what is their nature?” she said.

“Indifferent and cruel. And loving not mankind.”

“What can we do?” said they, limping home. “We are only ordinary men.”

By which they meant they thought themselves extraordinary enough that their skins must be saved at all costs.

Various had been the cruelties of the goddess in the early years of her reign. At Azhrarn’s instruction she performed many deeds in order to educate the earth and the viciousness of the gods, and, more important, their indifference to all human suffering.

As for kisses, he kissed you well. I have his new memories to add to the old. But that life is only a mirage. It has been joyful enough to be a youth, and spry and agile in the horizontal art, but age and immobility have their compensations. The adventurous existence will inevitably pall, for the man who thinks.

“What have you seen since last you looked on me?”

He said, “Misery and want, and fear, and death. I saw a beggar begging for help from a muddy stream. He told me it was as much use to do that as to beg help of heaven.”

Truth is at the door, howling and stamping her foot. Truth is not always decorous.

So in the end she dwelled alone, surrounded by everything a third of the world could bring her, and played at appalling sorceries, while, in her sprawling Goddessdom, men did incredible mindless evils, each in her name.

For herself, she had done directly very little evil. And what she had done, mostly, at Azhrarn’s incentive, was her duty. For the rest, accepting her as a goddess of wickedness and carelessness, men let loose all the rubbish in themselves for her sake.

The groaning and the screaming, the prayers—useless and known to be useless—the exhortations, scrabbling attempts at exodus, the burrowings that would yield no safety, the ecstasies of madness and immolation—each and all occurred: the correct paraphernalia of catastrophe. But, seen from the heavens, what was it but a fomentation in a hill of termites? That which is so small cannot be important.

Is the only challenge in the world to be greed and viciousness? Is the only satisfying power the power of the ascent over men, the only dream, ambition? And must the alternative to greed, evil, ambition—be only sluggishness?