Wings of Flame (10 page)

“It seems little enough learning for one who may someday rule,” Nasr Yamut said, still smiling. “Here, we believe in wisdom. Before I became an epigone, I had hundreds of lines of lore taught to me, all committed to memory and chanted daily, and before I became a flamen, thousands, and the disciplines of the mind as well. But if you speak of subtlety, see here.”

He bowed low before the chart of seven, and they moved on to the larger chart, that of the seven times seven.

“Forty-nine colors of horses.”

He named some of them. Seven kinds of white—the pure candid white, and the porcelain, ash white, argent white, ermine, alabaster, and the aureate, or fire white. Seven sorts of yellow—the fallow dun, clay dun, saffron, barley meal, amber, sand, and the scorched, or fire-fanged. Each of the forty-nine tiny mosaic horses was shown in a different posture, curveting, running, rearing or standing at the alert. Looking at them all, Kyrem felt his head spin from hunger—or from a reluctant wonder.

“Sard, ruby, copper, cynoper, burnt bay and fire bay and murrey.” Nasr Yamut recited the seven reds.

“I have never heard of a purple horse,” Kyrem murmured.

“It is puce, a brownish dun purple, the color of a flea,” Nasr Yamut said offhandedly. “The fire-touched colors are the most significant, the flame or scorch colors.”

“Is that so?” Kyrem sounded only faintly sarcastic.

“But beyond even this chart there are yet other colors—the leopard-spotted horse and the horse of spreading flowers and the trout-speckled horse, the rose roan, the dappled horses and all those who bear white markings or the lucky star of Suth, or mane and tail of different colors; and then there are the whorlings of the hairs of the coat to be considered, wheat ears and shooting stars and cornflowers. As for the sacred horses, and the oracles and kingmakers in particular, they are quite beyond any chart, transcendent.”

“I should think so,” said Kyrem with a certain fervor. The sacred steeds were undoubtedly the oddest horses he had ever seen.

“Come,” said Nasr Yamut. “Would you like to see the hoofprint spring and the stone Suth?”

“Thank you, but no. Some other day.” Kyrem had decided to heed the importunities of his stomach. Also, he had seen that stone horse not long before, and the memory still flickered eerily in his mind, casting a shadow of vague unease. He had no desire to see it so soon again.

“Come here to the temple, then, any time between the bells. We priests live overhead. Ask for me.”

Kyrem only nodded. He was not too eager to seek friendship in this city of his captivity. He turned and took his leave, wondering what welcome would await him this time at Auron's dwelling.

It was dinner, nothing more or less. The doorman directed him to his chamber, where water for washing awaited him along with a linen towel. Then he was summoned to a small room just off the golden-domed audience hall, where Auron sat studying his hands, his crown on a small table beside him and dishes with covers of silver on a larger table before him.

“Oh, there you are,” he said, his tone warm but quiet. He sat up straighter and offered a chair. “Sit down, eat. Here is wine. I know you are starved.”

Kyrem sat down and accepted the food with the best indifference he could muster. To his annoyance, his stomach would not let him muster much, and the viands were superb. Lamb in mint sauce, pastries, pomegranates, a salad made from the blooms of violets—he ate heartily and silently. Auron took only the salad.

“Your servant Seda has been lodged in suitable quarters,” said Auron after some time, and Kyrem threw his head up with a snap.

“Seda is my friend!”

“I thought as much,” Auron said. “But he is to be your servant now, it seems. He did not feel that he could remain here otherwise. Shuntali, he called himself.”

“Ah.” Kyrem's tone was dark with irony and his scorn for Vashtin ways. “And would you have known it of him had he not told you?”

“I would have known well enough.” Auron met his hostage's hard gaze steadily. “But I would not have cared. Nor do I now.”

Chapter Eight

“That arrow wound,” Seda said. “You should have it looked at.”

She had brought Kyrem pitchers of hot water and was watching him bathe. New clothes of red and royal blue were laid out for him on a vast tiled washstand below a tessellated wall; linens and pillows and blankets of the finest soft mohair clothed his bed, which swung from ornate chains fastened overhead; the room was luxurious in every detail. Kyrem had forgotten any vexation against Seda in the press of the day's events. He remembered now only that Auron had made his lad a servant, and anger warmed him at the thought. And he would have to take his meals with that monarch or else starve, it seemed. He was considering the merits of starvation when Seda spoke of the wound.

“It is only a scratch,” he said.

“It is not. It is a piercing wound, and it was never properly cleaned, and it is starting to swell. You should have the king take care of it.”

“Auron?” He swiveled around to stare at her.

“Yes. The king is a healer.”

“I'd sooner swell.” Kyrem turned back to his washing, finished it and reached for a towel of milky white cotton. He pushed aside a new tunic in the process.

“Bullheaded,” Seda said. “You will be wearing your old rags next, and refusing his food. Or do you not scorn the king's food?”

He gave her a hard look, not failing to note that she wore new clothing which was soft and whole, though plain.

“I will eat Auron's food and wear this gaudery and even accept gifts and courtesy if I must.” Kyrem turned away with a gesture of decision. “But I will have no part of any devilish Vashtin magic. And it does not surprise me to hear you say that your dear king is a sorcerer.”

“A healer!” she protested.

“It is all the same. One capable of the sending of certain horse-headed birds.”

He had told Auron the tale of their journey after dinner, grudgingly and only because justice demanded that the Vashtin king should be allowed a chance at vindication of himself and his kingdom. Auron had given orders immediately. Patrols were to go forth, men on foot with donkeys carrying their supplies, to find the mysterious archers. Kyrem cynically expected that they would find nothing.

“I am going to bed,” he said to Seda, and she went off to her own bunk in the barracklike servants' quarters—the male quarters of course.

The next morning, quite early, Kyrem went to fetch Omber from the stables, speaking to no one, not even to Seda. He rode the horse out of the city gates as soon as they were open, and at trot and canter he sped far up the terraced farmland to the hills where sheep grazed and over the rise of the first one, out of sight of Avedon. There he dismounted and let Omber graze and roll and play, himself sitting on a blue boulder patterned with lichens of pink and whitish green, contentedly watching the horse and expecting at any moment to be surrounded by Auron's retainers come to march him back to captivity.

The sun reached its zenith and moved past it, and Kyrem's stomach took up arms against him. No Vashtin came near. Finally, reluctantly, he rode back to Avedon and stabled his horse. In his gold-domed palace, Auron sat waiting at the table as before.

Kyrem ate hungrily and silently, also as before, feeling cross and somehow outwitted. Auron ate little.

“It seems I am permitted to go out and exercise my horse,” Kyrem said, keeping his voice as toneless as possible.

“Of course,” Auron replied rather sleepily. “Take a packet of food from the kitchen next time. There is no need to go without.”

“And if I ride away?” Kyrem challenged.

“That is as it comes.” Auron glanced up from under delicate, highly arched brows like those of a well-bred woman. “It is true, you are unhappy here, perhaps you have comrades or a sweetheart in Deva whom you miss, perhaps you dream of yellow cliffs and great spaces. But you know the value of your father's bond or you would not be here.”

Kyrem felt startled and angry, for Auron's words were accurate except concerning the sweetheart. Dismayingly accurate. Still, he would play his game out.

“And if I pack myself two weeks' worth of supplies and ride out of here bound for Deva,” he said, “what will you do then?”

“Why, nothing.” Auron met the youth's shocked gaze blandly. “Assuming that you would return to Deva by a different route so as to avoid those pertinacious enemies of yours. But you would have your father to deal with when you arrived there.”

Kyrem applied himself to his meal and said nothing more. Inwardly he seethed, knowing that he had been bested. He spent the afternoon exploring the city, staring with hard eyes at elegant houses, shops, stalls and tile-bordered streets. He took supper in his room, having Seda bring him fruit and bread from the kitchen, and he went early to bed.

The next morning there was some coinage lying on his washstand, some coppers, a few silvers and a single small gold coin, no extravagant amount but enough to provide some amusement at the gaming stalls, some sweets perhaps, a bauble, a small gift for Seda. Kyrem looked at the coins and let them lie. His shoulder was swollen and sore, hurting him so much now that he found it difficult to move the affected arm. He felt sullen.

“Come with me today,” he said to Seda.

“That is not fitting,” she told him. “You have rank to uphold, and I am a servant.”

“I need a friend worse than I need a servant,” Kyrem said.

“You have a royal friend, if you would only notice.” She glanced at the coins. Kyrem scowled at her and stalked out.

The servant was honest. The coins stayed on the washstand for the next three days, and Kyrem continued as sore and sullen as ever. He was bored most of the time, for there was little for him to do while he was avoiding Auron. One can spend only just so much time with one's horse, exercising and grooming—though the priests and their boys seemed to be fussing over the sacred steeds constantly, leading and grooming and combing mane and tail and braiding lucky beads into the forelock—but even had Kyrem been inclined to spend all day brushing Omber, his painful shoulder would not allow it.

“May I do it?” Nasr Yamut asked, seeing Kyrem wince as he attempted to pick up the stallion's feet for cleaning. The priest sounded eager. It pleased Kyrem that Nasr Yamut so badly wanted what was in his, Kyrem's, power to bestow. In a more sane frame of mind he would not have thought of sharing Omber with a smiling stranger, but he was in a fit mood to swagger. Also, he hoped Omber might kick the priest.

“Go ahead,” he said grandly. He placed Nasr Yamut's hand against the curve of the steed's neck, giving the man authority to touch him. Nasr Yamut cleaned the hooves deftly, and Omber did not threaten to kick. Watching, Kyrem felt an inexplicable prickling of dismay.

“Such a beauty,” Nasr Yamut declared, stroking Omber. “So noble, so mannerly. Truly a paragon among horses.”

Perhaps, Kyrem decided to still his dismay, this priest might be a friend of sorts after all.

When he was bored thereafter he would go in search of Nasr Yamut, if he had not met him at the stable, and find the priest in the temple teaching the novices or reading the charts for some wealthy suppliant or tending to the spiced barley mash that was always brewing on a gilded brazier for both the priests and their sacred steeds. And Nasr Yamut would greet Kyrem as a friend and an equal, leaving his work to walk and talk with him.

On Kyrem's fourth day in Avedon they walked out to the place of fire, the Atar-Vesth, and Kyrem studied the blunt promotory of blue rock and its strange red-leafed trees that were shaped, leaf and tree, like flames or perhaps like a horse's ear. And they visited the stone Suth, and Kyrem looked warily at the gem in its forehead, but it neither shone nor took on color other than a smoky crystal hue, shadow of the stone Suth beneath it.

“It is said in the lore that every horse carries the treasure of the world between its eyes,” Nasr Yamut said, “but none of our foals has yet been born bearing such a gem, only the lucky white star.”

“Is that the meaning of that gem then?” Kyrem asked. “That Suth owns the treasure of the world?”

Nasr Yamut hesitated. “It is not known exactly what is the meaning of that gem,” he replied at last. “For many years men have feared it.”

Kyrem had felt that fear, but he chose not to reveal it. “Why?” he asked blandly.

“People have died of touching it. We priests recite their names on our days of sorrow and fasting. No one nowadays will touch it, and no one comes here except we priests who serve the effigy of the god. Folk used to come more commonly at one time, it seems.” Nasr Yamut pointed at the pedestal, and looking more closely, Kyrem could see a glyphic inscription in the stone, worn nearly smooth with the touch of time.

“Do you know what it says?” he asked the priest.

“Yes, and …” a delicate hesitation, for effect, Kyrem felt sure. “… I dare say I may tell you. It reads,

“
Come hither, pilgrim, bearing

your heart's desire
.

See whether your boldness

will win your desire

or death.
”

“Grim,” Kyrem remarked.

“Yon is a dangerous jewel, and an oracular one in some way, we feel. It changes color when great events are in the offing. We watch it with awe.”

For once Kyrem did not scoff, inwardly or outwardly, at the words of the Vashtin.

Not far from the stone Suth ran the hoofprint fountain, Ahara Suth, the great crescent curve of blue rock where the river welled up. “Suth must be as big as the world,” Kyrem said.

“What is the Devan belief concerning the shape of the world?” Nasr Yamut asked him.

“Belief?” Kyrem shrugged. “We know little enough. Our own land is the center, and beyond it lie places where souls go or where gods dwell or where the Old Ones went when we drove them out. Perilous places. And a great river surrounds it all, and then the edge of nothingness. But no one really knows except from dreams.”