No Flame But Mine (19 page)

A great deal had happened he did not understand but two awful thought-
shapes
stayed staring in his not-mind. First the worldly rebirth of the loathed half-brother whom he had failed to eradicate. Secondly the fact of Zeth Zezeth who inevitably must return to harm and mutilate.

The human thoughts
I am in despair – where shall I turn
–
there is nowhere
blew inside the leviathan's intellect.

Poor child
sang memory in another voice. Once it had been dulcet. Now it was spiteful, mocking, taunting.

Brightshade realized. It was the former comforter, now this taunter, who had operated the penetrative stab of robbery and hurt in his side.

Brightshade on the ocean floor wept. His tears were white iron. The streamers of blind fish goggled at them with their sightless optics. Indifferent, the submarine ice floes snored.

And the watcher watches.

Large eyes, not even open perhaps, see everything.

If the giant whale has been aware of scrutiny he fails consciously to know it. He is busy with himself and his own grief.

In any event the condition of Brightshade is soon logged, and the watcher turns from him. The eyes open or closed move like two midnight lamps, away. And then – far off into the unformed past.

Though Crarrow, the young girl was not as experienced as others of her calling. She had carried her offspring for three months only, her belly swelling up like a loaf in an oven. At two months she had seemed six months gone, and at three it was obvious she was ready. Yedki was outraged by this, and even her grandmother the Crax's reassurances had not done much good. The grandmother anyway was still plainly troubled, conceal it from non-officiates though she did. She had guessed from the first something bizarre was going on.

Now Yedki shrieked. She did not have the knowledge to detach her spirit from her body and spare herself the excruciation of childbirth. Her labour had lasted three hours. Already Yedki shouted that she could not bear it. When the pains came she kicked and wailed, begging to be killed.

The other members of the coven exchanged glances.

Apart from the grandmother Crax, Ennuat the virgin was thirteen, and the child member eight. All had witnessed and all in some form assisted at a birthing act earlier. Never had any heard a woman carry on like this. Doubtless they had been lucky.

‘There, there, Yedki,' Ennuat soothed, frowning, ‘it will soon be over.'

‘You – told me that – a day ago—' Yedki screechingly exaggerated.

‘I never! You've only been in the throes this past hour or so.'

‘Quiet,' said the Crax. ‘Yedki, all's well. Bear up.'

But another surge enveloped Yedki who screamed, punching the ground as if to knock it out.

‘
I will never
,' she grated in the aftermath, ‘endure this hell again. Gran – kill me – kill me!'

But ‘Your baby!' squeaked the little girl Crarrow.

‘Befuck the baby! No more of
this
!'

The Crax now frowned. She leaned suddenly over Yedki and tapped her on the forehead.

Yedki gave a yelp and her head lolled. She was senseless.

‘Stand away,' said the Crax. She stood up straight as a black tree in her mantle, locking her feet to the earth, releasing her own inner life-force.

Swirling outward this incorporeal element nearly collided with a non-corporeal young man of the Ol y'Chibe, who was abruptly present, buzzing round the prone Yedki like a worried insect.

The Crax deduced instantly what he must be: the reincarnating soul that claimed the baby and would become it, once it was delivered; that is, the expectant son.

‘Out of the way, boy,' the Crax cried. ‘Leave this to me.'

The man respectfully fell back. ‘Yes, Mother.'

As she darted forward the Crax became aware also of a curious rupture in the air. She thought she glimpsed something watching her and believed it might be female. It did not seem malign but apart from that she could tell nothing about it. She had no time to waste.

Guri, transfixed by dismay, saw the Crax seat herself on the writhing belly of his unconscious mother.

Squeamishly he crept away.

The baby-body was leaving the womb. He felt now no connection to it. It was like a symbol, a corpse even, something modelled on or redeemed from a living entity, and really quite unusable.

Did he honestly wish to reoccupy a fleshly form? To lie helpless, dumb and half blind, at the mercy of all?

Like Yedki Guri contemplated the possible escape route, even if only temporary, of another death.

But he had delayed too long.

Out squeezed the newborn child in a veil of crimson, anchored briefly by a starry umbilical cord.

Released to breathe, the baby sucked in air to sneeze. And in that fatal second Guri too was sucked right in. What thereafter sneezed
was
Guri. His follow-up yodel of regret and rage was taken for a healthy kiddling's bellow.

Only Ennuat, holding him fondly, staring down into his eyes, noted for a moment something else that glared up at her – something alien and annoyed – but sinking, already overpowered. The Guri-baby loudly grizzled.

Yekdi awoke also in that instant and began to sob. Upset, the child Crarrow broke down too. Ennuat and the Crax balanced, grimly cheerful, amid the uproar of howling, hiccuping misery that welcomed to life a new god.

The other child did not appear to have faced such a bold dilemma. He was a mature infant, and lay inside an upper room, in a house of wood and stone with a horizontal sword hung over the main entrance, and a formless unvisited statue of God in the cellar.

The upper room had a large bed in it, but the child did not lie there. He was in a cot, or had been. The vague outline of it persisted, but mostly it seemed to have burned away, as had presumably any clothing the child might have worn. Now the child slept suspended inside a ball of flickering flame. Washes of red and gold passed continually over him, shading his whiteness, for he was a very white child, complexion and hair light as snow. In fact, if one observed
closely
– one did, but also many already had – the fire washes might be thought to be running about
under
his skin as well as across its surface.

A woman of the Jafn, a queen called Nirri, poised in the doorway at the top of the ladder-stair. Her face was a study in strain. She did not enter the room.

The great bed was unslept in too. For almost a month Nirri had instead been lying down on a mattress in a specially constructed room of screens below.

She was not allowed, she had been told, to break the sorcerous web of fire.

‘Athluan,' Nirri murmured.

The child did not respond.

Nor did the shining thing that sat there on a chair. The shining thing – the goddess Saphay also known as Saftri – merely stared at the child. And shone.

‘Lady,' said Nirri with toneless formality, ‘can I or my women bring you anything?'

‘Nothing,' said the shiner.

‘And he …?'

Nirri asked herself, blinking at the fluctuation of the fire, if her son was much bigger, far older – six years, seven?

‘Go away, queen,' the shiner said. Her musical voice was not even ungracious, certainly not maleficent. Simply remote, shiny.

Nirri went back down the stair. In the hall below the warriors still present, the women and other children averted their gaze from her face. Outside a filthy snow-thatched gale was blowing. Arok the Chaiord had not returned. By now it seemed fairly sure he and the other men who had gone hunting must be lost. The goddess upstairs doubtless could have settled the question, but she never did. No man either had been elected to take Arok's place. The coronation of a makeshift king was pointless probably, given the rest of this scenario.

Nirri walked out of the hall and into the room of screens. She sat by her brazier, whose firelight was not anything like the fireball upstairs.

Carefully breathing she slowed the beat of her heart. She thought,
Arok lives. I would know if he didn't. I knew in my own way with the other one I wed. And the child's well. The child will grow and be a hero – a god – as
She
seemed to promise
.

Nirri thought,
Or I am wrong
.

Very bad weather had started almost as soon as they left the capital.

As they descended to the snow plain, winds had come at the party from north and east, lashing and driving the top-snow before them. The dromaz mounts that every man rode made not so much of this. They lowered their heads, snake-like, and the riders too bowed forward, turning each compendium of beast and man into one humpy arrow on four racing legs.

They had offered to Obac Tramaz before leaving; even the visiting Jafn men did so. Obac Tramaz was the god of the dromazi, a fawn gentleman with a dromaz head, dromaz pad feet and hands, and two little humps on his back. The queen at Padgish, Riadis, venerated Obac above all others, even her occasional mate Attajos. ‘Obac sent her a sign I was coming back,' Curjai had told them, with an offhand familiarity over gods that was, Fenzi said, only to be expected.

Curjai rode at the front of the eight men, with Fenzi and Sombrec.

Arok had privately remarked to Fenzi that Curjai had grown older even in the short space they had been at Padgish. ‘I took him for twelve. Now he's what? Fifteen?'

Fenzi had shrugged. ‘What else?'

To which Arok, as if playing a clever move in a board game, added, ‘But so did you grow – quickly.'

Curjai had volunteered to take news of Arok and the other Jafn back to the Holasan-garth. This it seemed was permissible, also that Fenzi go too.

Eventually a lull came in the winds. They made a bivouac in a slight valley among fat blades of mountains. Sombrec tried to curb his jealousy as his Jafn lover Fenzi, and his prince Curjai, spoke intently by the second fire.

‘I feel it tug on me,' Fenzi said. I'm sure I know what it is. But how to put it to them that I'm going soon. Especially to my father. And Arok. He lost his son Dayadin, and all this comes from that. I, inevitably, remind him of Dayadin. He has always been kind to me, favoured me. Unspoken between us, but I try to measure for him as – a son. Where I can.'

‘But you haven't a choice,' said Curjai. ‘Well,' he added reminiscently, ‘I saw your mother, of course. I mean
that
mother.'

‘Chillel. Did you? I understand she's very beautiful.'

‘More than beautiful. There's no word here for her beauty. Nor, really, any word there.'

Fenzi nodded. One god naturally could soundly evaluate another.

Aware of what Fenzi thought Curjai said, ‘I was only half god then. It was in the blue Hell with Lionwolf. Chillel ruled there as Hell's queen. She was called Winsome.'

‘I … seem to know this.'

‘Yes, very likely. Perhaps you can see her for yourself too, if you look
inward
. Like scrying but without smoke or a glass.'

‘I think my sister does that. At least, one of my sisters. I thought there was only one. But now – again I seem to think there are two. It's unclear to me and I don't know what the second one looks like. The first is black.'

‘When will you leave?'

‘I could leave now. Exactly now. Just get up and stride off towards Chillel. A magnet draws me, that's what it's like, even though I don't know the direction, let alone the country. Is she here – no – where then? But I could set off: somehow I should reach her. I dream of it, journeying towards her. I've felt this almost half a year, on and off. Now it's solid as a steel rope. It isn't,' he gravely added, ‘that Chillel is
forcing
me towards her.'

‘It must be mutual attraction. Maybe she doen't even know she exerts such influence.'

There was silence.

Then Fenzi said, ‘Stars are attracted towards the heart of the earth. They crash on the surface. All you see is a golden scar left for a moment on the night sky.'

‘It won't be like that.'

‘She is
Chillel
. A god made her from dark and snow. I may walk into her presence and burn up in a sudden self-combustion.' Fenzi was calm, perhaps sad. ‘She is Chillel.'

‘And you're her son. Come on, man.
You
can't be consumed. Half god is good enough to survive meeting a mother. Attajos knows, he's pure flame, but I never even got singed. And now, look,' Curjai put his hand into the fire. He did it surreptitiously however, hiding the action from those around so as not to alarm them. He knew they were awed enough already. He constantly had to work at it, jest and chaff them back into partial easiness.

Fenzi and Curjai observed Curjai's hand in the fire, burning, burning and completely at home. Curjai removed his hand and laid it quietly on Fenzi's own. ‘There. Not even very warm.'

Fenzi grinned. ‘I couldn't do that.'

‘How do you know? Think of what you are. What you
may
be. Well, but maybe don't try it just yet.'

‘Nice advice. The Lionwolf was half god too. He died, though you say he's coming back.'

‘He's already back, my friend.'

Sombrec had stopped himself jealously peering at the two young men and so, fortunately, missed the hand clasp. Less fortunately he now also missed the glorious look on Curjai's face which was obviously not for Fenzi. Curjai, like Fenzi very well among men though he might, clearly
loved
among men elsewhere.

Behind one of the mountains a great panorama of cloud abruptly shouldered high. The sky bubbled. The lull in the winds had ended.

Men turned apprehensively, seeing the whole north sky shift into a tumble of masonry cumulus, black-white, from which icy shafts of hail had already begun to clatter.

Ten minutes later the men and the dromazi were once more heading south towards Arok's garth.

They had propitiated the Simese god of winter too but it seemed to little effect. You could never be sure of gods. Not even
gods
could be sure of them.