Wings of Flame (8 page)

Crack of thunder, and torrential rain poured down. Seda awakened with a jolt to darkness and confusion. The storm had brought on an early nightfall, and Kyrem had slowed Omber to a walk, peering about him. In the gloom and blinding lightning nothing could be seen clearly except the occasional momentary sheen of the river off to their right.

“Vashti is a senseless country,” Kyrem muttered. “Dry as old bones one moment and all in a flood the next. Well, it is time to double back toward Avedon, I suppose.”

The river made a maze of itself, meandering around the city. They rode toward where Kyrem thought he remembered a bridge, and failed to find it. Then they thought they had strayed onto a spur of land within a river loop, and they changed direction and lost the river altogether. Lightning showed them a flash of white somewhere off to the left; might it be the white clay walls of the city? They rode toward it and found nothing. During the next hour they rode in several directions as the darkness deepened and the rain poured down, until at last they admitted to themselves, though not to each other, that they were wet to the skin and quite lost.

“What now?” Kyrem complained. “Trees. Surely we cannot have come all the way back to the foothills.”

They rode under the shelter of—what? They could see little, but they could sense the branches far above them that rustled in the rain and broke the force of its fall, sending down large, plopping drops instead of stinging spicules. No undergrowth impeded them, and a sort of hush, a distancing of the thunder and roar of the night, told them that the trees were mighty, the woodland large. They came up against a steep slope and turned away from it.

“We
cannot
have come back to the foothills!” Kyrem insisted, although no one had contradicted him. “No, wait, here is a clearing.”

They could sense the space by the pouring of the rain. Then lightning blazed, turning it all at once brighter than a dozen suns, and they both screamed.

A horse, a monstrous horse perhaps fifteen feet tall, towered over them, curveting, collected to spring; their startled, fearful eyes stared up at its flexed head, the gaping mouth with teeth bared, the distended nostrils, the fearsome, white-ringed, staring eyes—and between those eyes, set just at the center of the forehead, a great gemstone that flashed blue in the lightning—but there was no lightning, yet the stone continued to blaze! Omber reared with a scream of his own, a stallion's scream of fear, for he was as unnerved as his masters. With a squelching thud, Kyrem and Seda landed on the ground, and Omber plunged away.

Prince and girl sat where they were, staring. On that huge head above them the jewel flared purple, then red, giving off its own fiery light in the dark woodland clearing. And on the shoulders of the steed … were those wings of flame? It had not moved from its gathered stance. With a shaky laugh, Kyrem stood up.

“It's made of stone,” he said. “A sort of statue—but, Suth, doesn't that flickering light make it look alive?”

“Don't touch it!” Seda warned, still seated and gasping.

“I wouldn't go near that jewel yonder for anything.” The gemstone had turned a greenish hue, then yellow. By its light Seda could see Omber peering cautiously from between the trees at the edge of the circular clearing.

“But the horse itself I dare touch,” said Kyrem, and stepping onto the pedestal, he reached up to stroke a shoulder. The wing, or flange, that sprouted from it was rudimentary, flame-shaped, and not large enough to carry the bulk of the beast had it indeed been alive. The stone of the body was splotched and discolored with rain and lichen. Seda could see a large patch of pink lichen on the chest, flowerlike in shape and darkened to the color of blood in the rain. Brownish patches mottled the flanks and haunches. The head seemed white. The mane streamed moon-gray in the jewel's light, which had gone from yellow to white.

“Get away!” Seda exclaimed, standing up. “Do you not believe in the vengeance of Suth? You swear by him.”

Kyrem stepped down but ignored her question. “Look,” he remarked, “the ears are broken off. When might that have happened, I wonder.”

“The statue looks very old,” Seda muttered.

“Well, at least we know now where we are.” Kyrem sighed, forcing his body to relax. “The sacred grove. Yonder hill is the altar, and the spring must be somewhere about. And we are just outside the city walls.”

“And the gates are closed by now.”

“Then we might as well spend the night here as elsewhere,” said Kyrem with a fine, reckless air. “We have shelter here of a sort”—he eyed the dripping trees—“and our very own light to see by, which is well since it is too wet for us to make a fire.”

Seda scowled. “I am sure the light is not for our benefit,” she snapped.

“And, by Suth, food!” Kyrem had found a niche in the pedestal, and from it he pulled a flat round of bread. He sank his teeth into it even as Seda ran forward with a cry of indignation and fear.

“Ky, you'll be killed by the priests if the wrath of Suth does not strike you down first!”

“You pious Vashtins.” He offered her a second round of bread, still chewing hungrily. “I would not care if a hundred screaming priests surrounded me at this very instant, I am so starved. Eat, Seda! What else but this has Suth ever given you?”

“I am used to hunger. I am going to find Omber.” She marched off, her back angry and stiff, and the light of the jewel gently faded out behind her.

Warm in her sheltered bed under the eaves, the faraway other awoke with a start to stare wide-eyed at the thatch close over her head. What had it been, this vivid dream of—Suth himself? The treasure of wisdom and of the one true wish gleamed between that god-stallion's eyes, she had seen it. Did the dream mean she was to be a vestal for him? She shuddered at the thought, for Suth made a demanding master. But had there not been that youth in the dream also, he of the handsome face and the jet-black curls? And once again, that sense of her own trousered self, a lad?

Often of late she had been troubled and frightened by feelings she could not explain. In the midst of her maidenly tasks, laundering the fine fabrics her mother embroidered for lords' daughters, spinning the bright threads, stirring the dyes, she would feel the oddest sensations—surge of strong beast between her knees, wind keen in her face, rough touch of fur or trees or rock, taste of sweat, pull of strong muscles as if she could climb and run forever, she who sat daintily stitching. She wondered if she could confide in her mother, if her mother could help her, but she doubted it, and her just-budding sense of womanhood and independence kept her silent.

In the dark she lay and wondered. Suth the stallion, the god-steed—was he not but a steed after all? Winged with fire maybe, but a steed? And what might it be like to sit such a steed, or to serve him?

She paled, then blushed hotly, shaken and shamed by her thoughts. Blasphemy—but no god struck her dead.

Kyrem saved the second round of sacrificial bread for his lad, even though his own stomach wanted it badly. And sometime in the privacy of night, after she had brought Omber back, after the storm had rumbled away and she and Kyrem had supposedly settled into an uncomfortable sleep, Seda ate the bread. No god struck her dead, and morning dawned fine and bright. Before priests could come to serve their god, or before anyone else was likely to be up and about to see them, they slipped out of the grove, Kyrem on Omber and Seda afoot, as she insisted. When the gates of Avedon opened at sunrise, Kyrem entered his fateful city at last.

Chapter Seven

The gates were flanked by spiral-twisted columns inlaid with mosaic, and within, mosaics in glass and gems and tile adorned the walls of homes and shops: mosaics in the stylized melantha and acaltha pattern, or depicting the Mare Mother and Suth and his seven wild sons in their seven colors and with manes streaming to signify their grandfather the south wind, the mistral. The streets were cobbled or paved in saffron brick, and multicolored tiles bordered the small, square courtyards and the gardens with their ornate vases and statuary, their blossoming fruit trees. Though she had heard tales of the loveliness of Avedon, Seda had not truly comprehended them. The beauty of a city given over to craftsmen—the very bricks she trod were impressed with a spiral design. For the first time since she could remember, Seda felt her own shabbiness as she strode at Omber's side. Kyrem sat his steed stiffly erect, the blood of his arrow wound blackened on his black clothing, his jaw set and the lines of his face hard. Seda wished he would not look so forbidding.

Auron's palatial gold-domed dwelling fronted on the city center with its wide square of tile and brick and garden. At the steps they had to leave Omber on his own, for no Vashtin servant would touch him. They ascended the broad, shallow stone risers past porcelain tubs full of scarlet-blooming quince. At the top a doorman met them.

“Kyrem, prince of Deva?”

“Who else?” Kyrem's manner, usually the youth's proper mixture of civility and arrogance, tipped the balance this time toward arrogance.

“And your servant?”

“My friend Seda.”

“Go in,” said the man. “Straight ahead and—”

But there was no need for directions. Auron was hurrying to meet them, his crown and its crimson turban in his hand, picked up in haste from their ebony stand.

“At last!” the king exclaimed. “I have been worried. You were seen yesterday with an arrow in your shoulder, and I sent out my entire household—” Auron seemed ready to throw his arms around Kyrem, but he came to a stop as Kyrem stared at him in open scorn. For the king of Vashti was not a king as Kyrem knew kingship; not much like his warrior father Kyrillos, forsooth! Auron stood short, balding and plump, looking like any ordinary merchant except that he wore sumptuous robes in all the seven colors, embroidered with every sort of glyph and flower or animal emblem, and on his short fingers sparkled at least one of every sort of lucky jewel; there were forty-nine in all, and more draped his neck and studded his clothing. In his excess of ornamentation he seemed foolish, unmanly. On his feet were buskins of gilded leather, their high wooden heels covered in scarlet leather. Flamelike flanges of the same leather rose up to flank his ankles—were they meant to be fire or wings? Even with the tall footgear, Auron stood half a head shorter than Kyrem, and the buskins made him mince along rather than stride. To Kyrem they seemed the crowning affectation, utterly ludicrous.

“But what is the matter?” Auron asked softly. “What has happened? I sense … bereavement.”

Kyrem gave only the briefest nod of greeting. He looked haughty and angry to Seda's eyes, not bereft. “Your realm is not kind to travelers, King,” he said harshly. “All those who came here with me are slain, and I bear wounds. Six men killed by brigands at an inn, the rest by treachery and poison; only Seda's nursing saved me, and my horse, which carried me out of constant peril.”

Seda stood staring at the fine floor of inlaid wood beneath her bare feet, but as Kyrem spoke, she risked a glance at Auron. He looked gray with shock, anguished rather than angry, as stricken as a mother facing a hurt child, and slowly he settled his crown onto his head.

“But this is terrible! That you should have been so beset on your way to me, in my kingdom.”

Seda felt a sudden impulse to fall to her knees. Auron's soft robes suited him, for he was more than king—he was parent, the kind father and loving mother she had scarcely known. Her legs trembled and weakened, but as she watched, he set aside emotion for the time and his face grew still and thoughtful.

“Prince Kyrem, you are most warmly welcome here,” he said quietly. “Please come in, sit down.” He gestured, nearly touching Kyrem but thinking better of it. “Have some wine, tell me everything. I need to know places, dates, the circumstances.”

Kyrem remained standing where he was. “I have sometimes thought,” he said evenly, “that those might have been men of your hiring who sought to kill me.” Seda trembled at his boldness. But Auron did not seem affronted.

“Yet you are here?” He glanced appraisingly at the youth, the dart of his eyes keen and seeking beneath the foppish headdress and crown. “Then you are very brave. And I cannot condemn you for your thought. But it is not true.”

“I can believe nothing you say,” Kyrem stated flatly. “I look only for falsehood. You are my enemy.”

“Ky, what are you saying?” Seda whispered, then found herself speaking aloud. “What are you saying?” She spun to face him, a small fury. “Show some decency! He has greeted you as an honored guest. No, more. As—”

She would have said as a son. But Kyrem had turned on her in astonishment and anger. “Seda, what has gotten into you?” he shouted. King Auron looked as astonished as he.

“You apologize at once!” Seda shouted back.

“That will not be necessary!” Auron exclaimed, and Kyrem drew back in disgust.

“I will go see to my horse,” he said, “if that is permitted. Or did you intend to have me put in chains?”

“I had not thought of it,” Auron said mildly.

“Kyrem, you proud fool—” Seda began, shocked anew. But Kyrem glared at her and strode out, the heavy carved door banging behind him. King and shuntali were left alone in the hallway, and Auron was studying Seda with friendly interest in his eyes.

“You are a Vashtin,” he said. “I can tell that much. But how is it that he calls you Seda? That is not a Vashtin name.”

She said nothing and started to tremble yet again, her eyes transfixed by his and terrified. She could not allow herself a name before him, before her king, she the shuntali; she felt sure she would die if she did. Falsehood, and her own manifest unworthiness—

“Oh, I see,” Auron murmured thoughtfully. “Never mind that then. Tell me, how did you come to travel with Kyrem? You two make an odd pair.”