Wings of Flame (18 page)

“Gone,” Auron breathed.

Something dark appeared in the eastern sky, a flying thing, growing larger. Auron silently watched it sweep closer, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. The grotesque horse-headed thing, black wings that seemed to blot out all light, malevolent white rolling eyes, bared yellow teeth, mane all in a tangle like black cobweb, and those pitiful hanging hooves.… The demon flew so close that he could feel the waft of its great wings, and he stood still, fixing it with his glare.

“What agent sent you?” he demanded of it. “Who is your master?”

The demon did not reply. “Gone—gone—gone—” it started to chant.

“In the name of Suth, answer me, effigy!” Auron roared.

“Gone,” it mocked, “all gone,” and then it flew away.

Seda sat watching the old man from her place against the damp wall of the cave. Old? He might not have been so very old, but he was bent, glaring and grizzled, the color of mud flecked with dirty snow; she had to think of him as old. She was on Mount Kimiel, after all, the holy mountain, where no one came except a few priests and the sacred horses. The old man lived in the seer's cave. If he were Suth, then she did not like Suth and might as well be in hell ice. He sat with a young raven on his finger, whispering into the place he judged to be its ear.

“Kyrem is dead,” he whispered over and over again. “Kyrem is dead.” The word he used for dead was
nihil
, unbeing. “Kyrem does not exist.”

“Kyrem is dead,” the young bird peeped mindlessly and obediently. The old man stroked it and put it back into its wicker cage to await the nighttime, when he would undertake the magical ceremony that would transform it into a thing fit to strike terror and consternation in those to whom it took its message. He chose another raven to work with meanwhile. There were dozens, perhaps as many as Auron's horses. Their stench filled the place. The old man spent all his daytime hours feeding them, training them and caring for them tenderly—far more tenderly than he cared for his prisoner. It was not by choice that Seda sat against the wall. A leg iron secured her to the rock.

“Kyrem is dead,” the old man instructed the next bird.

If he were Suth, then Suth was a liar. Kyrem had been alive and well when she left him, Seda knew. So the old man had to be a liar. How she hoped he was a liar. Why was he keeping her, she wondered. All the others had been killed. And he never looked at her except to curse her. He was fluent in his cursing, far more so than his birds.

“The devil take you and leave his clawmark in you and bend all your bones,” he would intone, handing her a meager daily ration of food. “My curse on your eyes, your legs, your sexual organs. May this food grow fangs inside you and do you no good. May your teeth rot until your breath smells like that of a carrion dog. May your fingers grow together and your ears fail you. Shuntali! Shuntali! Devan dog. You are dead. You do not exist.”

She listened to him impassively, pulling her shuntali's toughness like an invisible cloak around her, letting the curses bounce off her like flung stones that did not break the skin. Bruises did not matter unless one noticed them, cried about them, and she had given up crying some years back. Besides, the old man lied. Why then should his curses be true?

“Liar,” she said softly sometimes, and he would strike her, cuffing her on the head, and take away the food before she had touched it.

It did not matter. She sat with her back against the cold rock, expecting nothing, caring for nothing, wanting nothing. For until she let something matter to her, he could not hurt her overmuch.

The magical transformation of raven into demon took place within the dark penetralia of the cave, the darkest of darks, cave within a cave, where no one could see, neither the sorcerer nor his prisoner. It involved the invocation of the simurgh, primeval god-rival of Suth, and of Suth as well, the dark Suth to be joined with the dark spiritous bird, raven become more than raven, soon to be demon. Vibration of great wings filled the cave, and the bell-like ringing of hooves. The sour air grew tense with the conflict and uneasy mating of invisible presences. And with the dawn, a wicker cage stood empty and a black demon took wing. “Kyrem is dead,” it shouted, then flew off toward the sunrise, toward Deva.

Within a few weeks an unaccustomed visitor thundered into Avedon. Townsfolk screamed and scattered before the hooves of his steed. Kyrillos the lion, king of Deva, was a big man, dark and heavy-bearded, and he sat a thick-necked charger. Although he came with only half a dozen retainers, his sudden armed and helmeted presence struck terror in Avedon. Alarm bells began to ring.

Even as the seven riders pulled up before Auron's stately dwelling, Auron himself came gravely out to meet them, weaponless as always, walking down the long ascent of shallow stone risers in his buskins and his gently flowing robes. Kyrillos dismounted to speak to him and had his men dismount also.

“My son,” Kyrillos demanded, his tone urgent.

“He is not here.”

“Where then? You swore to me—” The king of Deva checked himself with an effort, waiting for Auron to answer.

“He is off on a quest in the hills yonder.” Auron looked back the way Kyrillos had come, and Kyrem's father shouted in reply.

“Off roaming? But of course he has his men with him?”

“No, my lord,” said Auron steadily. “They were all slain on the way hither. And Vashtins do not ride horseback. He went alone.”

Kyrillos snatched at his sword, and every man of his did the same. But the king of Deva froze with his hand on the hilt.

“Draw if you like,” Auron told him. “My guards are under orders not to defend me. We stand outside the household walls.”

“I do not understand,” said Kyrillos tightly. “Has it not been well between him and you?”

“It has been very good.”

“I thought as much. And between us as well. I trusted you. Yet you have let him go off alone, into danger—”

“Your son is not a sheep, my lord, that can be tethered by the foreleg,” said Auron rather sharply. “He has grown since last you saw him. I had to let him go or else put him in chains—and we both know that would not have served our purpose.”

“Do not speak of that,” Kyrillos muttered.

“I swore to you that I would cherish him as my own,” Auron went on, “and I have done so, even to the point of letting him be a man. If you judge that I have broken faith with you, then my body is at your disposal. But I must warn you, Kyrem would not think kindly of you for slaying me.” Auron spoke so evenly, he might have been discussing a matter of mere ritual.

Kyrillos glanced back at the mountains as if already searching for his son. “He might yet be alive,” he said grudgingly.

“Indeed, I should fervently hope so! What has made you think otherwise?”

“Horse-headed birds.” Kyrillos heavily took his hand away from his sword. “Black demons of ill omen, spreading rumor of his death around my kingdom. Have you seen or heard of any such creatures here?”

“Both heard and seen.” Auron stood looking away toward distant Mount Kimiel with narrowed eyes. “I have spent men upon men seeking the enemy on that mountain,” he declared, “and hour upon hour, day upon day, and to no avail. It is time and past time that I went to beard this mystery myself, in my own person. Take me your prisoner, king of Deva, so that I may ride with you.”

Kyrillos shook his shaggy head with a slow smile. Challenge was in that smile. “I have no horse for you,” he said. “You must find your own.”

“Why, then, I will.” Auron turned toward the sacred stable.

“And you will never be able to manage it in those things,” Kyrillos added, staring meaningfully at Auron's buskins. “Have you no boots, or sandals even?”

“I will find some.” Auron kicked off the buskins, sending them flying up into the air, but he had to grasp at Kyrillos's outstretched hand to do it; his legs nearly collapsed under him, and he gasped with the pain, his calves fully extended for the first time in thirty-seven years.… His eyes closed and his head swam with the sickness of his agony. Then he brought the forces of his mind to bear on his body. Slowly he straightened, opened his eyes, stood with stockinged heels flat on the pavement. He let go of Kyrillos and faced the Devan king, standing quite erect.

“Come in,” he snapped, “take refreshment, make provision.” Then he stalked up the many stairs and inside, giving orders as his servants gaped at him in greatest consternation.

Half an hour later, in breeches and Kyrem's spare boots, his smaller feet swaddled in wrappings to fit them, he walked to the stable and took Nasr Yamut's white-headed favorite from its regal bay, and no one halted or gainsaid him.

Chapter Fifteen

The brigands—criminals and mercenaries and outcasts of all sorts—who lived on Mount Kimiel understood vaguely that the power of the Old One made it a refuge for them. They served him. Their encampments formed defenses around his mountaintop cave, defenses nearly impossible to penetrate undetected. They brought him food and young ravens from the nest and oddments to feed the birds. These offerings might as well have been their sacrifices placed on an altar, the old man their god rather than their master, for they feared him and bowed to him as much in worship as in service. Nameless One, they called him. Odd that things most holy and things most despised were similarly shunned. Seda also was nameless in that place.

There were perhaps fifty of them, the brigands, enough to fill a sizable village, but few people knew of their existence. When they found it necessary to rob, they struck quickly and at scattered places, leaving alone most of the villages that stood nearer and the travelers who journeyed close at hand. The few priests who wandered the mountain for the sake of the sacred horses knew of them, but they kept silence, for Nasr Yamut had commanded silence. Nasr Yamut sensed the power on the mountaintop, and he liked to study power; he watched, waiting for events that could be turned to his own advantage. Always he took care to withhold all thoughts of such possibilities from his mind when he was near Auron. The Vashtin king sensed only the presence of an enemy, not that of his minions, for his presence masked theirs.

One other person knew of the brigands: the prince on horseback who moved quietly between the black-trunked trees, searching and always searching for an opening. But he was only one, and no fool, and he could do no more than guess what awaited him.

Sometimes he could hear the talk of the guards, but it did not help him much. Their master kept them mostly in the dark.

“I wonder why the Nameless One would not let us attack the foreigners,” a sentry asked his companion.

“He wanted them to get through to Avedon. He is hoping for trouble.” The other laughed. “He likes trouble, that one.”

“Then why will he not let us go looting if he likes war so much? And what is his game with that shuntali?” The sentry shook his head. “I don't understand him.”

“We have only his word that she is a shuntali. I thought at first that she was a Devan. And she acted like one, she had that damned pride of theirs. For a while there he couldn't touch her.”

“Well, he has touched her now.” The man laughed nastily. “Oh, yes. He has touched her.”

The old man had found a way through Seda's defenses to the needful center of her being.

There, at the core. By cleverness and a malicious persistence and the mad insight of sorcery he had found it, the tender place, the still-bleeding scar of the umbilical that had been torn away too soon. Seda could say and say to herself that it did not matter, but to her young, half-grown body it did matter, very much; one needs a mother at least until the bones are fully formed. Mother love.… The Nameless One could scarcely remember mother love, and to him it truly did not matter any more. Only for that reason had it taken him so long to understand. When at length he did discover, did comprehend, he smiled slowly, a cruel smile. And when he spoke to the girl thenceforth, he began in the name of that abandonment.

“Where is your mother?” he would chant, his words as offhand as villagers' flung stones. “Were you not born of woman, that you have no mother? She flung you away with her curse, like the offal you are. Where is your precious prince? Where is your lover? Bastard, you have none. Dung of Suth, all turn their backs on you. May your eyes cross. May your breasts droop and your bones bend. I curse you with the curse of your mother and your god. May you have a hump on your back and warts on your face. May you be as withered and sterile as Vashti, as harsh as Deva. The curse of all who worship the name of Suth be on you. Bastard, shuntali! You are dead. You do not exist.”

His coldhearted intensity stunned and bewildered her. His words struck deep now, deeper than any stones of passion. Why would he not kill her more simply? What had made him hate her, Kyrem abandon her, her own mother hate her, everyone hate her? She was accursed.… But it was more than hatred in him, something even more chilling. Something made the lawless robbers heed him, listen to his ravings, do his will. There was a certainty in him that seemed almost supernatural, some secret knowledge.… Perhaps he was Suth. Had she not always borne the curse of her god? But why had he chosen to reveal himself to her now?

“Shuntali! Shuntali! Devan dog! You are dead. You do not exist.”

“The dead do not wish for death,” she whispered back at him once. The god lied. But he did not bother to strike her any more. He knew that his words now hurt her far more than blows.

At first Auron stayed on his horse only by reading its thoughts and anticipating its movements, then hanging on with hands and heels. That first day of riding was the most grueling physical trial he had ever endured. The sacred stallion was wild with freedom and ran like a crazy thing, with Kyrillos and his men urging their own steeds after. It made, as Kyrillos drolly said, a merry chase. Only a body softened by years of inaction kept the white-headed stallion from leaving them behind entirely in its mad career toward Mount Kimiel. It ran itself into a lather. By evening of the first day the company had covered nearly half the distance to the foothills, albeit erratically.