One night, Azrharn Prince of Demons, one of the Lords Of Darkness, took on him, for amusement, the shape of a great black eagle. East and west he flew, beating with his vast wings, north and south, to the four edges of the world, for in those days, the earth was flat and floated on the ocean of chaos. He watched the lighted processions of men crawling by below with lamps as small as sparks, and the breakers of the sea bursting into white blossoms on the rocky shores. He crossed, with a contemptuous and ironic glance, over the high stone towers and pylons of cities, and perched for a moment on the sail of some imperial galley, where a king and queen sat feasting on honeycomb and quails, while the rowers strained at the oars; and once he folded his inky wings on the roof of a temple and laughed aloud at men's notions of the gods.
As he was returning to the world's center an hour before the sun should rise, Azrharn the Prince of Demons heard a woman's voice weeping as lonely and bitter as the winter wind. Filled with curiosity, he dropped to earth on a hillside as bare as bone, beside the door of a wretched little hut. There he listened, and presently took on his man's shape- for, being what he was, he could assume any form he wished- and went in.
A woman lay before the exhausted flames of her dying fire, and he could see at once that she, as was the habit of mortals, was dying too. But in her arms she held a new-born child, covered by a shawl. "Why do you weep?" Azrharn inquired in fascination as he leant at the door, marvelously handsome, with hair that shone like blue-black fire, and clothed in the magnificience of night.
"I weep because my life has been so cruel, and now I must die."
"If your life has been so cruel, you should be glad to leave it, therefore, dry your tears, which will, in any case, avail you nothing."
The woman's eyes grew dry indeed, and flashed with anger almost as vividly as the coal black eyes of the stranger.
"You vileness! The gods curse you that you come mocking me in my last moments. All my days have been struggle, and torment and pain, but I should perish without a word if it were not for this boy that I have brought into the world only a few hours since. What is to become of my child when I am dead?"
"That will die too, no doubt," said the Prince, "for which you should rejoice, seeing that he will be spared all the agony you tell me of."
At this the mother shut her eyes and her mouth and expired at once, as if she could no longer bear to linger in his company. But as she fell back, her hands left the shawl, and the shawl unfolded from the baby like the petals of a flower.
A pang of indescribable profundity shot through the Prince of Demons then, for the child was of an extraordinary and perfect beauty. His skin was white as alabaster, his fine hair the color of amber, his limbs and features formed as carefully and wonderfully as if some sculptor had made him. And as Azrharn stood gazing at him, the child opened his eyes, and they were of darkest blue, like indigo. The Prince of Demons no longer hesitated. He stepped forward and took up the child and wrapped it in the folds of his black cloak.
"Be consoled, O daughter of misery and wailing," said he. "You have done well by your son, after all."
And he sped up into the sky in the shape of a storm cloud, the child still nestled to him like a star.