Wings of Flame (11 page)

“There is a great river at the edges of Vashti,” said the priest. “Lore tells us that beyond that bourne the soil is black instead of red, and black lilies grow there, beyond the deep water. The river is called Ril Melantha, and it is always hidden in mist. That is a magical stream. No one crosses that river except the white-robed ones, the atarashet, those who are beyond the fire, to enter upon their life of meditation, and they never return.”

“I do not understand this matter of the atarashet,” said Kyrem. It sounded like none of the customs of his land.

“When fire-masters go beyond, they cross the Ril Melantha to the Untrodden Land, the place of powers, of the numina and the puissant dead. From that moment they are atarashet; they become as if dead to this world. They speak with the spirits of potent kings of old, of seers out of the past. They meditate amid the black lilies. They grow wise.”

“Are they not wise, then, before they go?” asked Kyrem. This seemed to him to be an odd way to make a mystic.

“We hope all fire-masters are wise.”

There seemed no safe answer to this.

“Are mystics honored in your land, Prince Kyrem?”

“Of course,” he replied automatically. “The mystic is the third eye of being, that eye through which the world beholds itself and knows itself divine. Of course we honor our mystics.”

Behind his back the jewel in the forehead of the stone Suth winked and glittered as he spoke. Nasr Yamut saw and stiffened and opened his mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it. If the jewel was the third eye of Suth, then what was this prince?

“And do you honor priests?” he asked Kyrem instead.

“Of course. But not—” Kyrem smiled sourly. “Not as much as you are honored here.”

“How do you mean?” Nasr Yamut spoke smoothly, and Kyrem, who had begun to trust him, did not notice the tension around his eyelids.

“Priests serve the god. Rulers and warriors tend to the real business of the world.” Kyrem shrugged, smiling, then grimaced as the shrug reminded him of the wound in his shoulder. “In Deva we raise men of might to rule,” he added obliquely, saying nothing more scornful of Auron.

The king of Vashti was no warrior, no ruler to Kyrem's way of thinking. He did no mighty deeds, uttered no proclamations, received no ambassadors, made no appearances of state. He did not ride forth, nor even walk. Indeed, to Kyrem's knowledge, he had not yet set foot outside of his own palace. But within it he busied himself with councils and accountings, with the thousand petty affairs of his kingdom and city and servants; no detail was too small for him, Seda had said.

And sometimes for hours on end Auron would simply sit, as passive as so much pastry dough, and stare. Nasr Yamut, on the other hand, always seemed to be concerned with something important, even when he was not. He took command, gave orders to underlings, brushed aside the trivial, strode away to pace and brood, dynamic. Kyrem stood somewhat in admiration of the intensity of the man, the force of his intelligence, the scope of his conversation. Nasr Yamut made a superb teacher, he felt sure, he who had always had small use for teachers. Yet the priest honored him by asking him his opinions.

“Do your priests not prophesy, then?”

“In Deva,” Kyrem answered promptly and with feeling, “prophecy is the province of old women who delve for the bones of murdered children. We of the blood take things as they come.”

Nasr Yamut stood silent for a while. “Well,” he said at last, “I must return to my duties. Do not come here alone, my prince. This is forbidden ground except on the great occasion of a sacrifice.” He accompanied Kyrem back to the temple, then left him.

The prince went back to the gold-domed palace at the hub of Avedon to find Auron waiting at table for him as usual. And as usual they ate their dinner in silence—until Auron broke silence.

“These buskins of mine are ridiculous, as you've thought many times,” he said, his voice quite gentle, though not at all apologetic. “But I do not wear them as an affectation, to make myself appear taller. They are royal footgear. The heel of the Vashtin monarch is never to touch the floor or the ground, not even in the privacy of his own chamber. And these silly things keep the royal heel from even coming near it.”

Kyrem tried not to gape. To be sure, he had made no effort to keep his face from showing his thoughts, but it startled him that Auron should have guessed them so accurately.

“In the days of my grandfather's reign,” Auron went on rather dreamily, “they lamed the king as well. Though I can hardly understand why.”

“In Deva we do not hobble our kings,” Kyrem said automatically. He felt dazed, and uneasy.

“That shoulder of yours,” Auron said, his eyes suddenly keen. “It should not still be so sore. It troubles you, I know. Will you let me tend to it?”

Kyrem stood up, backing away from the table, shaking his head. Then he turned and fled, leaving his dinner unfinished.

The next day he awoke feverish. He rose anyway, ignoring Seda's entreaties to the contrary, and rode Omber out to the river and let the horse bathe in it, and he spent most of the day in the water himself, numbing the ache from his wound, trying to wash the fever from the rest of him. He arrived very late to dinner and found that Auron did not await him, to his surprise and somewhat, oddly, to his discomfiture. He ate little, finding himself queasy, and went early to bed. In the morning he was too ill to arise.

“Ky, let me bring the king. Please,” Seda begged.

“No. For a certainty not,” he muttered thickly. “Are there no other healers here in Avedon?”

“Midwives. I trust you don't want them. King Auron—”

Kyrem flung himself upright to face her. “No!” he roared with a force that turned his feverish face purple and started blood running from his nose. Seda jumped to staunch the flow with whatever cloth came to hand.

“All right, all right,” she soothed, easing his head back onto the pillow and cooling his face with a wet piece of toweling. “Bullheaded.…” She sat by him until the bleeding stopped and he lapsed into a troubled sleep. For the sake of his pride she could do no more for him that day, and after dark she went first on a private errand and then to her own bed. She did not sleep. By herself she could not tend Kyrem in the nighttime, for if it ever should become known that she was a woman, he might be dishonored in the minds of all Vashtins—she was a shuntali, after all. But he would not die overnight. She had already seen to that.

That night the faraway other dreamt that she was a servant, a manservant, living in the crowded servants' quarters of a great king's dwelling. The other servants teased her, the shy young newcomer, often but not unkindly. She was a shuntali—what did that mean?—but they made nothing of that, for Auron would never have allowed it. Auron was the wisest, kindest king Vashti had ever known, and his ways of dealing with matters of the judgment hall had already become legendary. The servants knew all things about him, and they found no fault with him. Was Auron the comely youth with the black curly hair? No, that one lay abed, as sore in spirit as in body. Would Auron heal him? My king, heal him, please. He should not be like this, he is not like this inside; he has a nature as generous as yours, only younger, more ardent, less wise, and some things it is hard for him to understand. Already you know these things of him? My king, you will help him? Then must I slip away through these crowded barracks in the silent mid of night, slip away for the prince's sake, hushed, creeping. And look, King Auron awaits me near the prince's chamber door; he would have come without my pleading. Kyrem sleeps, I have checked, and Auron allows me to hold his candle—

The other awoke and lay staring at the darkness, puzzled and afraid, as usual. Auron's name at least she knew—but only as that of an enemy.

Kyrem awoke in the morning feeling as well as he ever had in all his youthful life, as though sunrise sang within him, and he sat up in wonder. His fever was gone, and so was the ache in his shoulder. Raising his arm, he tested the joint, flexing it in every direction, and he could feel no pain in it; as far as he could tell, the wound was dry and healed. He stood up and for once did not call for Seda, but dressed himself thoughtfully. Seda was late in coming, and when she entered his room, she said nothing, only glanced at him with a shy smile, almost a wary smile, wary of too much show of gladness. He stared at the lad, not answering her smile.

“Has some one been in here to see me during the night?” he asked her, his voice low, toneless.

“How am I to know?” Seda shrugged extravagantly. “You know I do not sleep here. To be sure, I checked on you from time to time. I rejoiced when I found that the fever had broken.”

Kyrem stared at her for a moment longer, still unsmiling, before he turned away with a shrug of his own, a shrug rendered mercifully free of pain. He went slowly to the washstand and picked up the coins that still lay there, fingered them briefly and then slipped them into his leathern scrip.

Chapter Nine

“Seda, you stink, boy,” he said to her a few days later. “Don't you ever bathe?”

She hung her head, blushing. “I can't,” she whispered. “There is no—nowhere in those barracks—”

No privacy. Servants were expected to go down and bathe in the river, where a section was set aside for men and one for women. Kyrem laughed, for he had noted his lad's modesty on their journey hither, a modesty that assorted well enough with Seda's soft voice and quiet ways. Indeed, he could hardly picture the lad bathing in the river, under so much open sky. His laughter quieted, and he thought.

“Barracks,” he said softly, feeling a sudden surge of homesickness. “By the sound of it, just what I am used to. This room is far too quiet for me. Seda, let us bring a bath up for me, and you take it.”

She stared at him, and he laughed again.

“Oh, I'll keep out of your way, never fear. I'll take your place down below.”

“Ky!” She sounded incredulous.

“I am quite serious. Come, show me where we get the water.”

He was both enthusiastic and adamant, and within a few hours it was done. Seda had bathed herself, hair and all, wrapped herself warmly and settled into Kyrem's soft, swinging bed. For once her poor young breasts need not be bound—such a soft bed, a bed like an embrace. And Kyrem was stretched on Seda's harder bunk down below amid many bunks, feeling clever and content.

“You Devans are a peculiar folk,” a servant said to him. “Do you often change places with your varlets?”

“Yes,” Kyrem replied promptly. “It is traditional.” He flexed his feet and stretched luxuriously, feeling very much at home, and the others accepted this in him and talked before him freely. He lay and listened to the chatter. The doorman was a cuckold, but he did some wenching of his own. Nasr Yamut made a veritable devil of a master. But all good and no evil was said of King Auron.

“Tomorrow is the eve of the summer solstice,” Auron told Kyrem some several days later. “Time for the king to take a bride by the traditional reckoning, but you know I have none, so every year at this time an oracle is done for me, as at other times. And there are the usual festivities, bowers and bonfires, and the parade of sacred horses, which I must review. Will you stand by me?”

Kyrem nodded with the faint beginnings of a smile.

“You would not take it amiss,” Auron continued, “if I found you some more elaborate clothing?”

“No,” Kyrem said, “I would not take it amiss.”

“I do not go to the fires and the dancing,” said Auron. “I seldom go anywhere lest I should endanger my dearly beloved heels.” He sounded more whimsical than bitter. “But you can go of course. I am sure your friends among the servantry would be glad of your company.”

Kyrem glanced at him sharply, but he found no censure or mockery in Auron's tone or face.

So it was that the following afternoon he stood beside Auron on the portico of Auron's gold-domed palace, looking down over the railings into the crowded street below. He wore a brocaded tunic and a tabard of velvet and a cloak of the Devan royal hue, dusky purple, which was flung back and fastened with a brooch of gold; he wore chamois breeches and boots of soft tooled leather, also gilded; he wore bands of gold that spiraled up his powerful arms, and a ceremonial sword too fine for any battlefield, and a tallish red cap with a tuft of feathers at one side. Auron's seven-colored robes were of brocade, and he wore his usual crown and buskins. Kyrem towered over him, fidgeting and feeling awkward, suspecting that his finery had been made especially for him, for none of it bore any of the embroidered emblems or talismans customary in all Vashtin clothing.

“We don't want the steeds to outshine us,” said Auron.

The crowd parted and began to arrange itself along the sides of the street, and in a moment Kyrem saw what Auron meant as the horses came through.

The priests who led them wore only their usual robes of the single color, plain and unadorned. But the horses were in glorious caparison: headstalls of peacock blue or scarlet leather sparkling with gold or semiprecious gems and with plumes of the simurgh, folk said, floating and bobbing above their clipped ears; mane and forelock all braided with beads and bright ribbons, ribbon rosettes on their cheeks. And then the great leather poitrels around their shoulders, studded with gold and with gold talismans hanging down to ward off evil. And then fastened to it a sort of garment too ornate and useless to be called a blanket, heavily embroidered and hung with tassels, and more tassels hung from the headgear and lead rope, and tassels danced at the fetlocks, and tails streamed with braids and ribbons, and even the hooves shone with black lacquer, clattering against the brick and tile of the roadway. All the flutter and glitter combined with the motion of the mottled steeds to make Kyrem blink dizzily. As usual, the horses were curveting and prancing dangerously, barely under the control of those who led them. They circled and blundered sidelong into the throng that lined the street. Screams arose as the crowd surged and struggled to avoid them.