Wings of Flame (16 page)

“Don't,” he whispered.

“But I can't stay with you in this body. I don't have—strength. Someday I may be a woman, but I am nothing now. I must go.”

“Stay,” he begged. “You'll have Omber, you will be someone. Auron, tell her!”

“I'll still be a shuntali. You can't change me from one thing to another just by giving me a horse,” said Seda rather sharply. “And I cannot shelter in your house forever, Liege.”

“So you will go to find your twin,” said Auron slowly.

“Maybe. And maybe my mother and father. Perhaps something has changed. Perhaps they will accept me now.”

“You are very brave.” He stared straight at her, but his eyes misted over with thought or more than thought, so that she sat still and scarcely dared to breathe, wondering what he was seeing in her.

He stirred at last and spoke. “I would be willing to protect you for as long as I live,” he said. “But that may not be so long after all, and you need more than protection, you need … you need heart's ease, this quest of yours, call it what you will. And let me say a thing to you: Do not underestimate your own magic as you search. I have had a sure sense that you are, or you could be, more powerful than I, as powerful as Kyrem.”

“I?” she murmured, looking at him in puzzled disbelief.

“Do you not think too highly of my power,” Kyrem told her wryly.

“The powerless are often powerful.” Auron looked serenely at air, straight between them. “But for the time, there is a problem. We know what is done to female shuntali here, and you can no longer be a boy, Seda; neither your body nor your heart will allow it.” He turned to his hostage and guest with a gesture of decision. “Kyrem, give her the horse as a Devan,” he said.

A storm of protest arose from both of them. “But I am not taking Omber!” Seda cried, and Kyrem hotly held to the Vashtin ritual of the Gift.

“As a Devan?” he shouted at last. “But why?”

“So that she may ride it,” said Auron. “Have some sense, you two.”

The words cut through the tangle of their emotions. They stared at each other, finding the beginning of agreement in that look.

“Very few Devan women ride,” said Kyrem slowly. “Those who do are generally the daughters of warrior chieftains, nomads, who wish to show that their daughters as well as their sons are proud and valorous.”

“Excellent,” said Auron promptly. “Let her be such a Devan princess then. And so you are, Seda, from this moment, and if anyone says or acts otherwise, let me have the correcting of him.” There was a glint in his gaze, diamond hard.

“There will be a royal escort,” he added, “and gold, and whatever you need to get you safely out of Vashti, lass.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, looking dazed and somewhat discomfited.

“You deserve all the aid the world can give you,” Auron told her. “Remember that.”

“How are you going to find your family?” Kyrem asked her.

“I remember a few things. And I hope my dreams will aid me.” She hopped awkwardly out of her chair and gave Kyrem a shy hug. “I will take Omber,” she told him. “Thank you. And I hope I can—I mean, I want—I will try to bring him back to you someday.”

Chapter Thirteen

The next few days were spent in preparation. Kyrem passed the time rather tensely, avoiding Seda. Knowing she was a girl had subtly altered his perception of her, and seeing her made him uncomfortable. For the first time he had noticed that her features were, indeed, attractive, her eyes dark and expressive, her hands slender. At the same time it guiltily disturbed him to remember how tireless, even tough, she had been during their journey and afterward, how he had depended on her as a comrade and an equal. She deserved all his love. Why, then, did he find himself acting condescending and slightly aloof?

“You look very nice,” he said to her one day, meeting her in a passageway. Oh, the brotherly tone of that remark! He clenched his jaw in inward fury, but Seda did not see; she was looking down ruefully at her indigo skirt.

“How am I supposed to ride Omber in this?” she asked.

“Sideways. I have been working with him. He'll take you that way.” What a treat that had been for the priests, to see the prince of Deva riding out woman-fashion. They had jeered heartily. But he had done it.

“I'll need some boots. These things are useless.” Seda indicated her fringed and beaded sandals.

“I'll go see Auron about it.” Kyrem took the excuse to turn around and start off, but Seda called after him.

“Ky—” It was an appeal.

“What?” He turned back to her, stiffening in apprehension.

“What the ruddy devil is there for me to do all day except clean my nails?” she asked with the sort of passionate intensity most people reserve for matters of romance or gold. Kyrem grinned with relief. She was no more ready for love than he was.

“Do you want to mend my shirts?” he teased.

“Son of Suth, no! Mend them yourself.”

“Let us take a walk then. Have you never been down among the shops of the town? Come, I'll escort you.”

The days went by far too quickly after that. Within the moment, so it seemed, it was time for her to leave.

On the morning of the appointed day—one auspicious to travelers, according to the stars—Kyrem was up before dawn, making his way down to the stable to ready Omber. There, under the sour surveillance of the priest on duty, he groomed the horse and set about braiding the black mane and tail. Seventeen braids for the mane, including one over each intelligent eye; he tied the ends with red wool as he went along. Seven braids for the tail, all along the top of the bone, and the rest of the hanging, spiral-twisted hair gathered into a single great knot. When he had finished, he fastened the red riding blanket onto the horse, checked the hard blue hooves and led, not rode, his stallion out of the stable and up the brick-paved street to the steps of Auron's palace, where he knew Seda would be waiting.

There she stood at Auron's side, almost hidden amid a crowd of servants and soldiers and the onagers they were to ride and pack donkeys with their silly little fringed headstalls. Her mouth came open as he walked up.

“Kyrem,” she demanded, “whatever have you done to poor Omber?”

“You should talk,” he replied, staring pointedly at her short, beaded braids. Then he relented and explained. “It is Devan custom. The braiding and knotting ensures that the luck of the beast will go with the new owner.”

“I thought you Devans didn't believe in luck,” she said.

“You're a Devan now,” he told her. “Remember. And we are a bit more careful in regard to horses than we are with other things.” He grinned sheepishly.

“Well.” She swallowed. “He looks lovely. Will you help me up?”

He set her on Omber wordlessly. Auron reached up to hand her a cloth purse full of gold.

“You know your way?” he asked anxiously. It had been agreed she would take a northern route, indirect, to avoid the ill-fated Kimiel pass where Kyrem's retainers and Auron's patrol had come to woe.

“Well enough.” She sounded almost brusque. It was an awkward moment, for no one knew what to do or say, not even Auron. She left finally with very little said. She thanked the king, thanked Kyrem obliquely—“It feels good to be back on Omber,” she said. Then she rode away with Auron's gold beneath her shawl and her retinue around her.

Kyrem watched her progress down the street until she turned toward the city gates and disappeared behind shops and houses. Then he ran for the steep spiral stairway of the watchtower. Coming out at last into the cuplike enclosure under a brilliant turquoise sky—those bright skies of Vashti, every day the same—he saw her pass through the gate and traverse the terraced fields beyond—peasants hard at work pouring water on the crops stopped their labors to look at her—then he saw her ride beyond the terraces of red earth into the gently rumpled meadowlands. She would disappear behind a sparse hedgerow of stunted thorn and reappear in the pasture beyond, disappear again into the fold of a hill. He watched her grow smaller and smaller with distance. Finally, near midday, he lost sight of her for good in the heat haze of far away, and he could only assume that she still existed.

There was not much for him to do after Seda left. No horse for him to groom and caress and exercise, no lad for him to tease. He even missed his former colloquies with Nasr Yamut. Since he had no excuse to go near the stable, he never saw the priest at all, not even to exchange insults. His friends among the servantry were busy during the day. Perforce he spent much of his time with Auron, and perforce he learned much of Vashti's affairs and of Auron's ways of dealing with them. Auron's ways were often different from Devan ways. Kyrem watched and thought and sometimes made judgment.

“Might I interest you in learning the runes, lad?” Auron asked him.

Kyrem had been taught to scorn such skill as in the realm of scribes and clerics, underlings, but he needed ways of passing the time. He applied himself to the task, and within the week he was able to decipher at least parts of the documents Auron placed before him. They were mostly compilations of Vashtin law. He read them with interest until they raised questions they did not answer.

“Have you no works of philosophy,” he asked Auron over dinner, “or lore—wisdom, if you will?”

“Such matters are in the province of the priests, and they distrust writing, even in the mystic glyphs.” Auron smiled enigmatically. “They keep all lore very much to themselves. What is it that you wish to know, lad?”

“The power of the stone Suth and of the jewel between its eyes.”

“All concerning that statue is shrouded. I can tell you only what is the popular knowledge, which may be either wisdom or folly.”

Kyrem settled himself to hear, and Auron leaned far back, closing his eyes and trying to remember. “There is a sort of rhyme, or jingle …

“
Blue is for love, red for desire
.

Beware, fool, of Suthstone's fire
.

Those who to that jewel aspire

Learn the ways of wealth or death

Or the name of true desire.
”

“Anything else?” Kyrem asked after waiting a while.

“Not really.”

Kyrem stirred restively where he sat. “But what is the name of true desire?”

“I have my own thought on true desire,” said Auron, “but you may have another.”

“Let me hear your thought.”

“I think that the true desire of every soul is heart's ease, the peace within self.”

Kyrem shook his head. “I know nothing of that desire,” he said.

“From what I have heard, from what I have seen in vision, I think it is such heart's ease that comes on one in the Untrodden Lands. Where the powers be, where Suth feeds on melantha. Power with peace at the core.”

Power for peace, power not for domination? “I know nothing of such power,” said Kyrem.

“I think you know it better than you deem, lad.”

From time to time—for want of anything better to do, he told himself—Kyrem would climb to the cup of the watchtower and stand there looking off in the direction Seda had gone. On the morning of the tenth day after she had left, he stood there for hours in a lethargic condition, so listless that he hardly stirred when Auron himself came up the steep steps, puffing slightly and having difficulty with his buskins and at last teetering silently beside him.

“What do you see of our lad, any more?” Kyrem asked him idly after some moments had passed. He knew that Auron spent an hour or two every afternoon in his trancelike, sleepy-eyed state.

“Our lad that turned out to be a lass?” Auron smiled; then the smile turned bleak and faded. “Nothing,” he said. “I see nothing of her any more, for she has reached the mountains, and the sight of those regions is withheld from me, I cannot tell why—whether by the waning of my own powers or by the will of some strong one who contests me.”

Kyrem's Devan skepticism would not let him believe in Auron's hidden enemy, but he was feeling too languid to argue with him about it. “Well,” he said, “it is no more than the ordinary lot of men, not to be able to see afar.”

“I saw her last three days ago,” said Auron, “and she was well and content then.”

“Good enough,” said Kyrem.

They were silent for a while. “Won't you come down, lad, and eat?” Auron asked finally.

“Wait.” All Kyrem's torpor left him in an instant; he straightened and stood taut and keen. A dark blot was growing in the azure blue of the sky. It swept toward them rapidly, ever larger, and Auron gasped.

“It is one of those—”

“Demon things,” Kyrem finished for him.

Looking as large as the sky, it flew directly over them, circling the slender point of the tower roof, its great black wings nearly touching the tiles, its baleful, blank white eyes glaring, red-rimmed, out of its grotesque equine head. Black hooves hung heavily and clattered against each other. Flinching back in spite of himself, Kyrem drew his sword. But the weird horselike thing did not come close enough to let him use it. “Gone,” it said, a wailing roar out of the black cavern of its mouth. “Gone—gone—gone—gone.…” It flew away, still chanting, the words dying on the distance like echoes.

“Great Suth,” Auron murmured, shaken. “He has grown strong. He reaches to Avedon now!” But Kyrem did not hear. He stood like a lance, motionless, staring away toward the place where they had last seen Seda.

“I should go after her,” he muttered distractedly. “But how? Onagers are not fast enough. Take one of the sacred steeds—”

Auron looked at him in an alarm that verged on panic. Kyrem did not notice.

“They are half wild, I know,” he went on, nearly babbling. “But with my personal magic I think I could school one to obey me.” He turned to leave, took one long stride toward the stairway. Auron caught at his sleeve.