AZRAFAEL
By John Henry Carrozza
In the Kingdom of Dancing Flowers, across the great ocean Deep,
there was once a castle of carven onyx, its twin towers hewn from the same
titanic rock, where ruled over the lordship of Cyr'l Lin a benevolent man
who was born when the Aerth was young in the province of Dellius, and
who married a woman whose descent is not known, but who rumours claim
was sculpted by the fingers of gods out of the fine clay from the banks of
the River of Life which flows down from the sky beyond the Crystal
Mountains in a place unseen by mortal men. The man was Lord Djon, his
wife the Lady Sol Ny'a, and upon the eve of their one hundredth year of
marriage the lady gave birth to a daughter, upon whom they bestowed the
name Azrafael, for her beauty even at birth marvelled that of the fabulous
Island of Azra, where it is told fell the nectar from the Holy Fruit of Ba'al
when it was split by the primal god Az'ton to signify the beginning of time.
Soon the child became a young lady, and her beauty only evolved with each
passing day until, by her twentieth birthday, her visage was so resplendent
and so ravishing that her father was forced to fit for her a mask, lest any
man who gazed upon her face would go mad by virtue of his overpowering
desire for the beauty which could only have been wrested from his deepest,
most satyric dreams; it is said that a man's libido would be shattered as by a
lascivious bolt and strewn upon the fabric of his mind so that his own
primal desires would infiltrate his every thought and every waking moment,
hanging his soul by whatever cord of essence remained. Soon it became
apparent that even the mask was not sufficient to disguise the pulchritude of
young Azrafael, and Lord Djon was forced to seclude her to a windowless
room atop one of the castle's twin towers, hoping to find a way to allow his
beloved daughter to once again walk among the mortals of Aerth, for it had
been concluded that she must surely have been the direct descendent of the
gods who roam the heavens beyond the Crystal Mountains through which
foothills the River of Life runs lovely and soft past banks of white clay from
which the lovely Lady Sol Ny'a is rumoured to have been sculpted by the
hands of the same powerful gods.
Long and far Lord Djon travelled, across the great ocean Deep,
beyond the fabled Isles of Azra and Sharon, through the ivory forests of
By'lath Twil, over the mountains of sand at the edge of the Endless Desert
of the East, past the peaks of Kryl and the Valley of Barok Well; far he
travelled to the distant lands of Eidon and Syllaby, whose sages are
renowned and seers proclaimed throughout the world; long he wandered the
great bazaar at Pharanon in the land of Emeralia; oft he prowled the ports of
Selenais and Osis in search of sailors who could promise safe passage to the
cursed lands of Dark Spires and Arkanon beyond the Gates of Silence. He
spoke to mystics from the most sacred of orders and conversed with the
Unnamed Scribe who lives alone in an ageless monastery atop the
legendary high cliffs overlooking the Gulf of Time; he sought advice from
the witches who dwell in the woods of perpetual darkness in a land better
left unmentioned; he journeyed to the rarely beheld Library of Lost Souls to
consult the fabled Book of Pages. Every avenue he searched; every stone
he overturned; but ne'er did he receive any answer to his prayers. So, he
returned disillusioned to his home in the Kingdom of Dancing Flowers, to
the great castle carven of onyx in his own lordship of Cyr'l Lin, where he
sat upon his throne and pondered with his wife by his side to console him
and to dry his tears with the cloth upon her own resplendent breast.
As the years passed, the Lady Azrafael grew bored of her
confinement - of the games and puzzles she would solve and resolve, of the
blindfolded dancers who were sent to entertain her, of the great meals she
was delivered on trays of etched silver, even of the songs she would sing to
herself about places from her dreams where she could walk the streets
unadored, her beauty no more uncommon than a flower in springtime; her
face no more sublime than the spangled night sky; her eyes no more deep
than the wells of ink upon the desks of poets; her skin no more fragile than
the wings of a dragonfly; her hair no more flowing than the River of Life;
her life no more a prison than Aerth itself.
One day Azrafael requested a certain number of spools of the finest
yarn from the fleece of the multi-colored sheep from the Azure Hills of
Chalcery, and needles with which to knit. Her request was honored, and so
it was that she began to knit her tapestry. Although she had never before
sewn or pulled a shuttle, she at once held mastery of the craft, and her
tapestry became the talk of the castle. Those who witnessed its progression
were said to have wept at its beauty, and the lord of the castle was for the
first time able to smile, for his daughter had found a pastime which made
her noticeably happy and which was a part of her that could be shared by all
people without fear of madness. Diligently she worked upon the
masterpiece, and by the end of a year, she was nearly finished. As she
approached the end of her work, however, her servants began to notice a
change in her demeanor. She seemed more tense than before, although still
quite cheerful, and she spoke of certain dream lands and fantastic realms
more beautiful than any place on Aerth. She was heard to make allusions to
a vague 'journey' and how she would hope to return someday to be with the
people she loved. Although her babbling was dismissed as delusion, there
was still a sense of concern among those who knew her and frequented her
room - for although blindfolded and unable to ever see her face, her voice
was more lovely than any sound upon the air surrounding Aerth, and she
was very kind and always full of humility, for she longed to be of mortal
beauty so she could dine and play games with the servants of the castle,
whom, other than her mother and father, were the only people she had ever
known.
One evening she summoned her father to her room, and he came
with a basket of sweet fruit and nectar. She told him of the fantastic places
which she dreamed about and how she would soon be there. As it was late,
he knew this to be true, for she would soon be asleep, and her dreams would
become her reality for the night. He was glad that she could have such a
place to visit, if only in her dreams, so that she could have some experience
of living like other people, conversing unmasked with mortals like those
from which she was born. As he kissed her and wished her pleasant
dreaming, he noticed that the tapestry was only threads from completion,
and he hoped to see it in the morning when it would surely be ready for
public showing. He had planned a gala festival for the unveiling of the
design, which would hang above the fountains and gardens of the main hall
at the entrance to the castle, and would be certainly the quest of those from
lands throughout Aerth, for its beauty was unrivaled except by his daughter
herself. For the mortal world, this would be her gift - the gift of beauty,
which would bring a smile of love and compassion to the faces of all who
viewed it, and would bring together all people and all kingdoms with its
simple universal power. She whispered to him as he left her room, and
although he knew she had said "goodnight," it sounded to him for an instant
like "goodbye."
The following morning Lord Djon climbed the steps to his
daughter's room, anxious to view the masterpiece in its completion. When
he opened the door, he saw the tapestry hanging upon the wall, completed
as he had hoped. Azrafael, however, was not to be found. Frantically, he
summoned her servants to the tower, and called to them to search the castle
for his daughter. Nevertheless, he was unable to avert his gaze from the
woven scene which adorned the onyx wall before him. Within the scene he
beheld a landscape of indescribable beauty, the gently rolling hills reaching
out to a fabulous sky of a color unlike any other, touched by the outlines of
trees which defied Aerthly description, yet which seemed to weep even as
did he. Upon the hypnotic moors there arose a castle which could have
easily held the seat of the gods which must have created it. Ivory columns
sprouted from the soft grass and easily supported a massive structure of
glass and colored stone which formed at a certain point two towers which
only vaguely resembled those of which one he was currently inside. A tear
welled in the depths of his soul and poured itself onto his trembling cheek
as he gazed upon the open window atop one of the majestic spires. There in
the window, overlooking the fantastic landscape of an innocent dream, he
beheld the face of his own daughter, unmasked and resplendent, and for the
first time in all of his life he was able to stare with admiration and wonder
upon the face of pure beauty which no man had ever before been able to
gaze upon and still retain his soul. He beheld in the window the face of a
mortal - the most sublime mortal visage ever to grace the Aerth; and unless
the water in his eyes deceived him, she turned her gaze to meet his own and
smiled at her father.
