The Darkangel (17 page)

"Pen-darlon..."

"You must," the leosol replied, and here, despite its weakness, his tone grew stern. "But a single day-month remains until the vampyre flies. In that time you must return to his keep and give the Avarclon's immortal hoof into the hands of the duarough." Aeriel felt her heart grow cold at mention of the icarus. She had hardly thought of him in many day-months. "Otherwise the dark-angel will have his final bride," the lyon said, "and all our efforts—yours, mine, the little mage's— will be undone. Is that what you would have?"

Aeriel shook her head. Her heart felt now bitten in two. She grieved to leave the lyon so, alone upon the dunes, and she feared also returning to the vampyre's keep. She bent her head over the Pendarlon. "No," she whispered. "No."

She did not realize she was weeping till she saw the tears falling upon his mane. "Peace, child," the lyon told her. "Courage."

"I have no courage," she replied. "I am not brave."

"So you continue to claim." She was not sure whether she heard a trace of amusement in his voice or not.

The leosol let her alone then, closed his eyes to rest. Aeriel let the tears fall until no more would come. Then she scrubbed the burning gold from her one hand with dry sand and found her walking stick. The Pendarlon opened his eyes. She put her arms about his shaggy neck, rested her head against his tawny mane.

"Since I must go, I shall," she whispered. "I am no help to you here." Trying to breathe smoothly now, she had not tears or strength left to weep. "Good-bye. You have helped me much."

"Farewell, daughter," the lyon said. "Do you know the way?"

"South," she answered. "Due south to desert's edge and across the plain. Pendarlon, shall ever I see you again?"

"Perhaps," the great cat said, "though much rides on chance, and the gods, and your own skill. Be off now, child, and the luck of the stars run with you."

Aeriel held to him hard for a moment, then rose and turned away. She started upslope toward the dune crest. The sand slid under her feet. The sun on her left was already two-thirds of the distance toward horizon's edge. With luck, she might reach the plains by dusk. Her shadow streamed out long and black across the dune face to her right.

She reached the crest and looked behind her. The Pendarlon lay by the fallen brach, his eyes now closed again, his breathing shallow but regular. The light of Solstar bathed him and his wounds. Aeriel would have paused to watch him if she had let herself. She wanted to. She made herself turn away and face the south, then started down the windward side of the dune.

Aeriel walked. Swiftly, determinedly, she padded over the coarse, crusted sand. Her desert staff made a soft, scrunching sound as its tapered heel bit into the sand. She walked until the sun had fallen four degrees in the heavens, and when she could step no farther, let her knees buckle and lay face down in the trough between two dunes.

Sleep enveloped her at once and she dreamed of the darkangel, saw him snapping the bone of a bat's wing between his teeth while telling her, "You are even more sport to bait than these." Aeriel felt a sharp pang from the scar on her neck and stirred in her sleep. In dreams she heard the duarough's voice crying, "Haste, daughter, and find the Avarclon,"

though she herself protested, "I have not yet said that I shall help you."

Hollow-eyed, the wraiths drifted before her, moaning, "Aeriel, Aeriel will not help us!"

She heard her own voice cry out, "Eoduin! Which one of you is Eoduin?" Then she heard the gargoyles howling and rattling their chains as Orroto-to assured her, "Peace, little pale one. Everyone is free," and the Pendarlon whispered, "I cannot bear you any farther. You must go on alone."

Aeriel awoke with a start to find herself lying alone in the empty desert. Solstar hung barely five degrees from setting. The forward edge of one drifting dune had eased gently over her feet and legs. She shoved herself to her knees and hastily batted away the soft weight of sand. Only then did she realize she was shivering. Her bones felt cold; her muscles ached. She chafed her chill limbs stiffly a moment and wondered if the vampyre would strangle her the moment she returned. Then she chewed a little of the food from her pouch, though she had no stomach for it, struggled to her feet, and started off again. It was not until many hours later—too late to retrace her steps—that she realized she had left her walking stick behind.

She reached the borderland just as Solstar touched the east horizon. She halted on the last sandy downslope, leaned back against the crusted duneside a few moments to rest.

Beyond lay the loose, grey soil and scrub of the wasteland bordering the plains. The sun on her left was already half-hidden behind the eastern steeps by the time she roused herself. Solstar gradually slipped behind the mountains and the grey scrubland turned black. Aeriel walked on through the pale earth-shine; the great star had been a long time set before she allowed herself again to rest.

The stars wheeled, slowly, halfway round the sky. The Planet waxed, earthblue, toward midnight, gradually waned, and the wound on her forearm mended in a long, pale scar.

The fortnight passed. Aeriel trudged and rested, ate, slept, then arose again and continued on—always south. Visions of the darkangel invaded her dreams.

It was in the grey dark before dawn that Aeriel first made out the icarus* castle, mounted on its mountain jutting up from the plain. She made for it steadily, more numb than afraid, and by the time Solstar had risen, she had reached the cliff's foot. The gargoyles spotted her as the light grew bright enough. They began wailing horribly, as they had wailed when the darkangel had first brought her to keep. They sounded starved and desperate. She knew no one had fed them while she was gone.

She found the stairs cut into the cliff face, the uneven narrow stone steps leading down from the garden. Aeriel tucked the velvet pouch beneath the neck of her robe and began to ascend. The gargoyles continued their screaming. She knew the vampyre must have heard them by now.

Suddenly, she saw him. He stood at garden's edge, at the head of the stairs, fists upon his hips as he watched her. The paleness of him gleamed softly against the black, starred sky.

One of his wings was hanging askew, she noticed suddenly, dangled awkwardly amid the rest. Aeriel remembered the darkangel's slow, limping retreat when last she had seen him, and realized he must have broken this pinion in the struggle with the Pen-darlon.

The icarus did not fly now, but let her come. She was too far from him yet to see his face.

She studied her feet as she mounted the slick, unrailed steps instead—one stair, two, twelve, twenty. She lost her count at thirty-seven.

Then abruptly, he stood before her. Aeriel halted on the last, top step; no more lay beyond. The vampyre blocked her path into the garden. She stood barely a pace from him, not looking at him. Her pulse was pounding from the long, steep climb.

The vampyre said, "So you have come back." Aeriel felt a dull surprise dart through her.

His voice had lost its bell-like resonance. It sounded hollow now, grating. How ever could I have believed that voice beautiful? thought Aeriel. The vampyre demanded,

"Why?"

Aeriel struggled to find her tongue. "I could not stay away," she managed at last—that was true enough—and found that though she was yet very afraid of him, she was no longer powerless to answer him.

He made a sound in his throat then that might have been acknowledgment, perhaps indifference or contempt. He said nothing for a moment, as if thinking, then drew breath suddenly. His words, when they came, sounded oddly agitated. "I knew you would return. All along I knew. That is why I did not bother to retrieve you from the Pendar-lon when he so impudently snatched you from me." She watched his white, fisted fingers clenching and struggling against his palms. "I might have brought you back anytime I wished." His tone grew tighter, lighter, yet sounded at the same time strangely unsure.

"But I knew you would be back soon or late. I let you return of your own, that you might see for yourself no one may defy me."

Aeriel said nothing. She could taste the falseness of his words. It was cowardice that had caused him to give her up to the Pendarlon—so much she was able to see even as she had lain wounded along her rescuer's back. Aeriel snorted, very softly, stared at the darkangel's feet: cowardice alone.

He said nothing more. She dared not glance up to see, but he seemed to be looking at her, studying her. Suddenly he put his hands upon her shoulders. Her knees went weak. "If you kill me now...," she started in a rush; her voice shook —but the words died on her lips when she raised her head to speak, and beheld the darkangeFs face for the first time in many day-months.

Strangely, it had no power over her. His eyes were the same colorless crystal as before, his complexion white as ash; the leaden necklace still circled his throat. But he was no longer fair to look upon: across one cheek were the four long, bloodless slashes the Pendarlon had dealt him. They had not healed in all this time. The left shoulder of his garment hung in ribbons, and through the rips she saw the white, unbleeding wounds of his flesh.

He ignored her words, and she realized his gesture had not been intended as a threat.

"You have grown, girl, since last I saw you." His tone was quieter now, almost curious.

"You are no longer so bony. One may even tell you are a wench beneath that rag." The coldness of his palms numbed her shoulders. "And the sun," the vampyre mused, "has bleached your skin and hair. Perhaps the desert life agrees with you."

He slid his hands upward from her shoulders and Aeriel felt herself pale. Surely now he meant to strangle her—but he only placed his hands on either side of her face. Her cheeks stung with the chill.

"I had not known you had such eyes," the ica-rus was saying. "They are emerald. That is a rare color for eyes." He had called them fig-green once, thought Aeriel. The darkangel smiled, a coldly amused smile. "Do you know, I well believe you may be almost prettier now than was my last wife? She was a darksome thing, hair like black silk." Aeriel closed her eyes at the thought of Eoduin. "You were with her when I came upon her," the vampyre said. "Ah, how I thought you ugly then."

Aeriel opened her eyes and shuddered, looking at his torn face. The slashes of his cheek gapped and seamed shut when he spoke.

The vampyre grew uneasy beneath her gaze, shifted his stance. "What are you staring at?" he muttered.

Aeriel felt a sudden, inexplicable pity welling up in her, like that she had felt, when first she saw them, for the gargoyles and the wraiths. She did not realize she had reached to touch his wounds until she saw her hand upon his cheek. "Do they hurt you?" she asked him.

The vampyre dropped his icy hands from her face, pulled away from her and put his own fingers to the rends. "They burn," he snapped, half-turned from her. The quietness had left his voice. "But my mother will mend them. I shall go to her tomorrow morning, and she will sew them up with a silver thread." He glanced sidelong at Aeriel. "They will hardly show—the wing, too----"

"They will not heal of themselves?" began Aeriel, before she remembered that without blood, nothing heals.

The darkangel turned completely away. "No." His tone had soured. "It is a small price to pay for becoming an icarus. My mother will put it to rights. Besides, if I never heal, I also shall never scar." The feathers of his pinions ruffled, then smoothed into a dark cape as before. "My mother says I am far too handsome to be allowed to scar."

The one broken wing refused to settle. He stood fingering it. Aeriel could not see his face. She put her hand slowly to the scar on her own neck—a double crescent of colorless tissue—became aware in that same motion of the longer mark upon her forearm, now healed. They no longer pained her. It had never occurred to her to be ashamed of them.

The Ma'a-mbai told tales around the cookfires of the winning of their scars. The icarus had begun to pace.

"By rights," he muttered, still fingering his injured pinion. His mood had darkened. "By rights I ought to kill you now, for having disobeyed me, run away, and dealt me these....

very slight damages." He drew a long breath, evenly. "No less, they
have
proved troublesome." His fingers tightened on the wing. "And the dreams, though they have passed."

Aeriel almost drew back a step as his sharp gaze lanced across her—until she remembered that she stood upon the precipice, with no place to fall back upon but empty air.

The darkangel continued to eye her. "I could have killed you as you stood upon that mountain," he said harshly, "knife in hand—yet mercifully I spared you, brought you here." His white brow lowered dangerously above ice-colored eyes. "Yet thus and thus have you repaid me." He touched his wounded wing, the slashes as he spoke.

Aeriel gazed at him. And as he paced there, under her gaze, there was no splendor to him anymore, no grace or majesty, only menace and vicious petulance. He has no power over me, she realized. A sixmonth ago I would have fallen at his feet. Her pulse had steadied since the climb. The warm wind from the plains was at her back. She held her ground beneath his glare.

"If you kill me now," she found herself saying then, in a voice that did not shake, "who will weave your last bride's wedding sari?" It was what she had faltered at saying before.

The vampyre stopped short. "A new bride," he murmured, "yes." Her words seemed to have diverted his attention. He dropped his wing. "I must take a new wife soon. This very month." He was no longer looking at Aeriel, gazed off across the garden. "And she shall be my final bride." The charms of his leaden necklace clinked as he nodded. "For a while, I shall go home and visit my mother then, and pay her just tribute. And when she has made me a true vampyre—" He smiled coldly; his voice grew velveted. "I shall join my six brothers, and we shall divide up the world between us."

The casualness of his assurance chilled her. Oh, he is evil, she told herself and longed to be away from him. "I must go and begin work at once," she told him, "if I am to complete the weaving of your bride's gown by nightfall."