Wings of Flame (24 page)

“I am sure she will be,” the lady said kindly. “Now, about these headpieces—”

“Thank you for thinking of us, my lady,” said the needlewoman, because she knew such thanks were expected.

“You are quite welcome. The headpieces are to be all in satin stitch.”

The Choosing took place at the river meadow between Avedon and the sacred grove. Devans came in throngs, their colorful tents festive under cloudless skies—even the winters were mild in the lowlands—and Kyrillos and all of Kyrem's brothers came, and in spite of everyone's fears, the gathering turned into a celebration. Factions vied to outdo one another only in hospitality. Vashtins, invited to the Devan encampment, feasted on whole spiced lamb roasted in pits and admired the mettlesome horses. Devans walked in delight amid the tiles and mosaics of Avedon. Young women of both kingdoms strolled about heavily veiled so as not to reveal themselves before the fateful day. And on that day, not the traditional day for nuptials, but still a day marked as auspicious by the sun and moon, planets and stars—on that day Kyrem put on a tall red cap and took his place on a gaily draped platform, settling himself to choose his bride.

“Let the procession begin,” Nasr Yamut intoned. Although his malice had not abated, he had been keeping it to himself, biding his time. In the deep of night his moment would come.

Musicians struck up a stately melody on pipes, reeds and tambourines. Half dancing, splendidly arrayed, the girls promenaded before the prince. The occasion reminded Kyrem somewhat of the ceremonial procession of sacred steeds he had seen in Avedon, and the maidens' draperies, he thought, were no more functional than those of the horses. Heavily embroidered skirts, tight-fitting bodices studded with gems. Glittering corsets that bared gilded nipples.… Some of the damsels wore only filmy scarflike panels that drifted as airily as cloud wisp, revealing the white young bodies within. Some wore even less, nothing but beads and gold bracelets and gold fillets in the hair. Somewhat abashed, Kyrem made himself look at the faces. Lips reddened with carmine, eyes glinting moistly between lids blackened with kohl, sometimes studded with tiny beads. No better. All sheen and shimmer, surface.… Strands of fresh-water pearls hanging down from delicate ears pierced all around the rim. More pearls looped through braided hair, dark or russet.… With a small shock Kyrem recognized Auron's former footbearers and smiled grimly at a private jest; these girls were supposed to be virgins! He knew no more than that about any of them, for his would-be brides were not introduced by name or rank or provenance. Some few he recognized under towering headdresses; those were the daughters of Devan nobles. Marrying one of them might constitute a lesser risk than choosing a bride unknown to him, a pretty whore perhaps—though it would be the best of policy if he could settle on a Vashtin bride—

One of the maidens had lost the rhythm of the graceful processional, had stopped where she was to stand staring at him, dark eyes wide. And all thoughts of policy vanished from Kyrem's mind. He jumped up, heart pounding, vaulted off his platform and ran forward to touch her arm.

“Seda?” he blurted, tears threatening. But it was not Seda; he knew that already. This girl was taller than Seda, fresh-faced and beautiful in a simple dress of white, and her long, dusky hair rippled down over her shoulders unadorned. All the hope and trust of a well-beloved child were in her look. She could not have been more than fourteen years old.

“Seda's twin.” Auron had come to stand by Kyrem's side. “It has to be. The faces are identical.”

“What is your name?” Kyrem asked the girl, trying to gentle his voice, trying to calm himself. For just an instant he had believed Seda to be alive, and renewed grief was piercing his heart.

“Sula,” she whispered. The name meant sunlight, sunshine. This maiden was a Devan then.

“And you had a twin who was cast away?”

“I—don't know of any!”

That soft voice. This had to be. “I will take you as my bride,” Kyrem vowed.

Kyrillos had come up in time to hear that, to hear something of a twin, and comprehend. “My son, you will be seeing ghosts all your life!” he protested. “Let the dead rest. Find a better reason to take a bride. This lass is too young.”

“I can have no better reason,” Kyrem flared at his father. “Why should I wed a stranger? Sula, are you here of your own free will?”

“I—yes,” she breathed, though in fact she had scarcely understood what was happening. But now he stood before her, the one whose face she had seen in her dreams. And he must have seen her before as well, it seemed, by the look in his eyes. She stood in a trance of holy awe. This thing had been settled in the stars; she was a handmaiden of Suth.

“We will be married this very day, you know, this very hour. Will you have me? Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He took her by the hand and led her to the feast.

They ate little. The time was taken up by ceremony, the wine-pouring and symbolic sheaf of barley. Nasr Yamut hovered near, leering. Kyrem would scarcely speak before him. But as soon as he could, he took his bride again by her soft hand and led her away to the bower built on Atar-Vesth. In silence they climbed the steep slope between the flamelike trees until they reached the flattened blue-stone apex, the altar itself. There stood their bower, a leafy latticework of liana interwoven with grapevine and late starflowers. Under its fragrant roof lay bedding worthy of a royal couple, down-filled cushions piled high, silken coverlets.

The two stood gazing wordlessly. Kyrem had never done this thing, for the doing of it would bind him for life with a mystic bond, such was his being and genius. He felt more than a little afraid. What would this deed spell for him, contentment or woe? But the doing itself, that was nothing. He had heard the talk of his brothers, had glimpsed a few indiscreet conjunctions between servants. And only lately Kyrillos had instructed him.

“Go gently, take your time,” the Devan king had finished. “You will have all afternoon.”

Kyrem turned a soft glance on his bride.

“Do not fear that we might be disturbed,” he told her. “My father and my eleven brothers stand guard around the base of this promontory.”

That moved her to a small smile. “You trust your brothers?” Sula inquired, and Kyrem laughed aloud with delight.

“I trust my father's command,” he said.

His laughter thrilled her, awoke some echoing chord in her; she had heard such laughter once or more in a dream. Her dark eyes widened, and he saw it, sobered and drew her to him.

At some small distance, out of sight of the bower and out of earshot, a girl-creature of the wild was hiding in a knot of grapevine, plucking the purple fruit. The tart grapes did not satisfy her hunger, for she had traveled far and with difficulty, and all the while an aching emptiness had pulled at her, an emptiness not of the belly, though the pangs of her belly were persistent enough. It was the emptiness of one in need of healing, wholeness, the same emptiness that had once pulled a shuntali turned Devan princess away from Avedon and that now tugged her back. Odd, the call seemed so strong. But then there was belly hunger too, and the smells of a feast on the air, almost unbearable. The girl-creature fidgeted in controlled anguish. She did not dare show herself in daylight. Come nightfall she would venture forth to find food and perhaps win her way through to Auron—she had almost forgotten that name, could scarcely envision the kindly face. Was it he who called her? Or something else that she sensed close, so close.…

No more than half thinking, no more than half human, she lay down in the brown loam beneath grape leaves and dozed. Had she not been mostly asleep, she would have been terrified by the sensations that overcame her, but as it was, in her emptiness and exhaustion, she accepted them unquestioning. Tingling, tingling thrill, ecstasy and ache in one, lips moving, moist, lips, and then a soundless music rising to a great mountain peak of tension, hollow, and then—full, fulfillment, a supreme fullness and wholeness and oneness with—love, pure joy.

The girl-creature opened her eyes dazedly. Someone had whispered her name. Sula. Her name, whispered so softly—but how could that be? There was no one with her, and she was nameless.

She felt stronger, and irrationally happy. Standing, she found that she could stretch nearly erect, and in a surge of new energy, she scrambled up a tree to reach the high-climbing grapes. There she stayed for a while, and not far away a slumberer dreamed of her.

Dusk, at last. She dropped down from her perch and moved off cautiously on all fours, down the slope toward a place where she hazily remembered the presence of food—led as much by instinct as by memory, dim vision of a place once visited, long before. Singing arose in the distance. There was no guard, for everyone had joined the feast; the prince and his bride had come down from their bower.

Chapter Twenty

He had awakened her with a kiss from an hour's gentle slumber. Sula. Sleeping, she looked all childlike innocence, but Kyrem had reason to believe she was a woman, or very nearly so, and she was lovely, and love of her suffused him; he could scarcely believe his incredible luck, that he was to spend the rest of his life with her. They went down to their supper, the two of them, all smiles and soft glances and the touch of warm hands. Kyrem could not stop smiling. And the best of it was that no one dared to laugh at him, not even Nasr Yamut, for he, Kyrem, would be king.

The others had feasted all afternoon; therefore what the prince and his bride ate was not so much supper as the continuation of the ceremonial dinner in many courses. They ate heartily this time. And as they sat in their places of honor on the platform, Sula's mother was brought to join them. Kyrem had sent trusted servants to find her. The woman had been in hiding since the hour of the Choosing, fearing her mistress's jealous wrath.

She came before the royal couple with a sort of humble dignity, kissed her daughter and answered Sula's embrace with a few tears and a smile. She was dressed in plain, dark clothing and she walked with a limp, but it was evident that she had once been beautiful, though her raven hair was now touched with gray.

“You will be kind to my daughter, lord?” she asked, or rather declared. “She is very young—too young to wed, really, but I have no husband, we are poor, and I knew she would never have another such chance.”

“I have loved her for these many months,” Kyrem said, “in the form of her counterpart, whom you spurned.”

The woman went pale, but her gaze did not waver. “Where is the other?” she asked.

“Wait,” Sula exclaimed. “Then it is true, I have a sister, a twin? I thought I remembered, I dreamt—but you told me there had been a baby who was dead.”

“I could not tell you the truth,” the woman said to her. “Best beloved, please do not be angry with me.”

“But, Mother—” Sula gave her a hurt glance and turned to Kyrem. “You have loved her? Where is she?”

“Dead, indeed,” he told her gently, “or I would have been wed with no Choosing. I am sorry,” he said to the mother.

She stood pale but firm. “You think me a monster, both of you,” she said. “Another woman my age would understand how it was in those days, how a young wife did what she was told—but now that I am older, how I regret it.”

Indeed Kyrem had thought her a monster, many times, before he met her. She, the mother who had forsaken Seda! But looking at her, and thinking of Sula, he knew he must somehow have been mistaken. The monster had been of his mind's making.

“I would like to hear your story,” he said. “Sit down.” He rose to make a place for her on the platform, on the cushioned couch next to her daughter, and after a glance at him, she took it. He leaned against the table to face her.

“Tell me,” the woman requested, “what was she like, what was her life like, how did she fare, how did she … die?”

“First tell me how her life began.”

They talked through sunset and dusk and into torchlit darkness. It took that long for the tale to fully unfold. Sula was of Devan blood, but she had lived half her life in Vashti. Her mother and father had fled there from Deva before she was born.

“It is hard to describe the man,” her mother explained. “I should not have married him. Parents, aunts, uncles, they all warned me against him. But I loved him because he could charm the birds. He was of the old wild blood, not Devan, older than Devan, feared. He was never really accepted in Ra'am, not by my family, not by anyone. I loved him; he was handsome, he was intense, he needed me. No one else would pity him as I did. Then there was a poisoning of an important person and he was blamed. He was beaten and driven out of the city. That night I stole from my room, took food and followed him. I found him and nursed him and we were wed by the ceremony of his ancestors, in secrecy. Then we made our way by foot over the mountains into Vashti. My family was searching for me, but we eluded them.”

The man was used to living by his wits. The pair wandered through Vashti earning their food any way they could, sometimes stealing it. Those were hard days, but good, the woman said. Finally an opportunity offered, a cottage was secured, a permanent dwelling place. The man was clever and could do whatever his lord required of him. The woman was a seamstress at her lady's command.

“It was terribly important to him that we should be accepted,” she explained. “He tried in every way he knew to be settled, respectable. It was impossible of course. We were Devans, intruders, upstarts in the lord's affection; we were never much liked. But he thought that maybe in time, if we adopted the customs.…” Her voice trailed away, and she stared at an empty place, air, beside her daughter.

“So that is why we had to abandon the other babe,” she said.

No one spoke, and after a while she went on, reluctantly, as though forced by something within herself to relive a time she had long tried to forget.