No Flame But Mine

by Tanith Lee

  Later, at the evening halt when they were alone – Azula had gone to fetch a hot drink for them – Aglin recalled these words. ‘Is it good she spoke out? I don’t know. Whenever she says anything of any substance it’s to do with her mother.’ The mageia grunted. ‘Beebit had a premonition she was due to be off, or so I think. Just a day before she said to me, It’s a chancy life, whoring, but now Azula’s with you, lady, she’ll learn better.’

  Jemhara saw she had let fall her scarf in the snow and bent to retrieve it. Aglin tapped her on the arm. ‘Don’t you go bending like that, Jema. Oh, I know you’re in the family way. Have a care.’

  ‘You’ve grown too clever, Aggy.’

  ‘And who taught me that?’

  At which they smiled and Aglin picked up the scarf. But no more was said, for Azula came from the cook-fire with the hot beer.

  It would be a long journey. None could have doubted that. The smooth milky days progressed, and the star-sparkle nights, during some of which the caravan forged on.

  Ten days further south white woodland came down the land to meet and envelop them. The trees, though stretching every way for miles, were widely spaced. Glacial spires of pine and balconies of glassy cedar, damson and fig in knotted rings like petrified dancers, the stems and roots making hurdles between, forced the caravan from its serpentine formation. Vehicles, riders and trudgers alike were scattered out. Here stabs of ice tall as towers dripped moisture at the persistent sunlight. A faint musical tinkling filled the air even by night, a song of water drops let fall on the thin white tin of centuries-frozen leaves.

  This would be a bad place for an ambush or other assault. Nothing like that occurred, but they pressed forward as quickly as they could. Men riding ahead presently returned and told how the woodland lasted for many more miles.

  Thryfe the eagle, too, quartered the sky and pored over the terrain below. The woodland did indeed go on and on, breaking only at last on a bleak plateau that hung above a craggy mass of snow fields. Nothing was there either. Far away and away the land ran, melting into distances the too-gentle blue of the sky.

  Even if Kl Ctaar existed, this would be a quest of months. Though the people had brought food and other stores with them, and the men hunted where they could, even the woods were unusually sparse in the matter of game. A strange impression fastened on Thryfe. A giant broom seemed to have swept the country bare of anything more useful than wood, ice and snow. Perhaps not strange. Perhaps something had.

  Jemhara saw, across the woody vista of dark glass and white tin, a figure walking steadily towards her.

  The trickling tinkling sound of the melting water drops was very shrill. No one else was near by – and abruptly she noticed that the six dogs who had been harnessed to the slee standing just to one side were not there. This did not seem particularly notable. She sensed huge thaumaturgic pressure in the air. She was here to meet the one who strode towards her.

  He was clad in a mail of ice. His dark hair blew back behind him. The god Yyrot, she thought. Winter’s Lover.

  The god spoke. ‘A beautiful Winter’s day, Jemhara.’

  Jemhara bowed.

  When she looked up again, Yyrot had altered. Now he was another god. This had happened before, she believed, this sudden metamorphosis.

  Now the god was Lionwolf – yet—

  ‘Surely you remember me better than that, Jemhara?’

  Golden this god, with laval hair like molten silver. And not Lionwolf, but the one who had first fathered him on Saphay.

  ‘So I did, or was made to. But now,’ said Zeth Zezeth the Sun Wolf, ‘his father is mortal and his mother mortal. And even though they are of that wise little sect the Magikoy they are made only of dust and cold human mud. What a shame. How far he has sunk, my former son.’

  Jemhara knelt down on the snow and this time bowed her head very low. Inside her body her heart hammered, like a fist in her brain, like a drum in her womb. Did the foetus hear too?

  ‘I doubt he hears. As yet he is not in the flesh. He was in Hell a long while. So currently he will play about incorporeally on the earth, refinding it. Do you see this?’ Without preface Zeth turned his back to her. She beheld, through the layers of whatever cosmic fabric clothed him, and perhaps also through layers of etheric skin, a scar that jagged like one of the death-storm’s lightnings along his spine. ‘Oh, it is nothing,’ said Zeth, terrifyingly resentful and frivolous. ‘But I have shown you. Something flung me against the sky. I will admit it hurt me. I have been hurt. I do not like to be hurt. Not that any save great powers could ever do it. One like you, little Jema, or like your paramour that cripple Thryfe, neither of such as you could touch me even if you ripped your souls apart with trying. Do you see? Answer now.’

  ‘I see, perfect lord.’

  ‘Yes, such good manners. You learn all your lessons swiftly and superlatively well – magic, whoring, excessive virtue. Now learn this. I am quite fond of you, Jema. Never disillusion me in my fondness. I have many scores to settle and you will be my handmaid. Then I may spare you much that others will have to endure.’ Jemhara knelt on the snow. The aura of his gold and silverness vibrated in rhythm with the drums that clanged in her body. ‘You are, in this at least, modest, and inquire of yourself how it could be likely that you might ever aid a god such as I am. But I shall find for you a way. An honour and delight for you, is that not so?’

  ‘Yes, perfect lord.’

  He laughed then. The wonderful quality of the laugh seemed to squeeze her inside out – and, worse than that, inside out of the world—

  Jemhara woke as if breaking free through thick ice. A violent nausea convulsed her. As she vomited, she felt the strong hand of her human lover supporting her forehead.

  ‘The child,’ Thryfe said, as bonelessly she slumped back against him.

  Jemhara whispered, ‘Yes, that. And a dream.’

  ‘What dream?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  The caravan crawled on through the woods, a dislocated snake. At last the white plateau, balanced on its shafts of cliff ice, gaped in front of them. It was unwelcoming and apparently featureless. However, it made a change.

  As night descended, long before any moonrise the brilliancy of the daggerish stars shined the plateau up. The travellers became aware that the starlight was exceptional.

  From about the camp fires they gazed at the heavens.

  Gradually a mutter began, then a calling. The noise was excited yet without any hint of alarm.

  Thryfe left the tent where he had been doctoring a feverish old man. He stood on the snow, gazing up as did countless others. Even the animals seemed to take in the picture in the sky and had raised their heads to stare.

  A city blazed up there, made of stars, picked out in piercing splashes of turquoise, reddish and yellow fire. It had walls and roofs, high terraces and towers, a reminiscence for many of Ru Karismi herself in the era of her glory.

  The incredible sight covered so much space that even a man’s two hands held up against it did not obscure more than half the image.

  Across the camp the voices were exclaiming now that Ddir had done this, the god who placed the stars. He must have drawn in millions of them to create this fabulous artwork. A Rukarian deity, he could only mean it for them or their kind. A lustrous omen. It was his guarantee to them: they would soon reach the new metropolis.

  Behind him Thryfe heard the old man’s two grandsons carrying him out to witness as well. ‘Look, Great-da. D’you see it? Isn’t that fine?’ Thryfe thought they should not have moved him just yet. Nevertheless the stars burning in the old man’s eyes were probably excellent medicine.

  Thryfe wondered if Jemhara too had left whatever she was at to look at the phenomenon. Probably she had.

  There were gods, then.

  It seemed to him he had always, secretly, feared as much.

  Some hours after, when the city of stars had moved further to the west, one vaporous dim breath of cloud blew over them and cov
ered them for a minute or so. They blazed on through the cloud, then all at once their unique fire deserted them. They became only stars again, vanished back into the void, making no special pattern. Only three narrow moons gave light.

  The next day virtually every person in the caravan was imbued with vigour and hope. Jokes were shouted to and fro as they urged their transports on. Song carolled. The snake, again in flawless formation, hurried.

  During the afternoon the clear sky showed a sheet of purity, the air motionless. Seen from above, as Thryfe this time did not see them, they had moved about one-third of the way across the plateau. Perhaps some forty miles lay behind, eighty or ninety ahead.

  There are forecasts in most situations. The hammerhead cloud closes before the storm, the glare burns on the face of one about to strike you. Now nothing, no clue.

  Those behind saw the head of the caravan serpent suddenly dip – as if it had found something intriguing in the ruffled thick-packed snow.

  Then the serpent’s head was all gone. Instead there was a black hollow about a fifth of a mile in radius, full of a loud rushing gasp.

  Into the pure air sprayed ice crystals – tiny stars – shimmering. And on the edge of the hollow there was a peculiar writhing upheaval and commotion – which was wagons, carts and animals and human things attempting to save themselves, each other – yet pulled forward and away by some invisible horror which sang, Now, now, why bother with that? See, this is so much easier – why trouble to resist?

  Slipping, tumbling, the shambles poured down into the vortex – struggles at a further edge here and there anchored, hauled back, stragglers and their property – or struggling, anchored, hauled and then still prised loose, losing everything, everything—Down—

  A liquid wave of shrieking and cries, the crack and groan and smash of wooden things, sloughed wheels bowling merrily along the snow – uproar bleached to a dull moaning boom. A sort of stasis after, in which to attempt understanding of something never to be understood.

  Even in this stasis, however, one major flaw. There was to be no margin to attempt anything of consequence. The drama is not done.

  Another hollow opens.

  It is a huge throat, yawning, swallowing.

  Repetitive the awful action – living things and vehicular things – slipping, tumbling – the gush and crackle, ring and thud, the screaming – the lovely lacy sprays of ice and snow—

  Thryfe, standing in the sleekar, blinds himself deliberately to any thought of Jemhara in her slee, and where she may be positioned, or if already she has gone into the abyss. He dredges from the ravaged gulf inside himself, the core from which he wrested raw power to save her from the lightning bolt, and slings with gargantuan force a kind of armour round and over the piece of plateau where the caravan reels, round and over and under, down into the shuddering fault lines beneath.

  For a moment he thinks the cordon holds.

  Then comes another black gulping, another plunge – so close now that Thryfe can perceive, exact as a printed scene on a bowl, the arching bodies as they spin and dash away – the dogs tangled in harness, the woman with her flying curly hair—

  Snow spray mantles him. His power is rubbed out.

  To the sky he roars in silence, utter silence: Take me. If I’m useless that way, use me another. Use me. Seal up the snow with me—

  And he feels the blow slam down on him as if the sky fell. His last thought is a wordless, hating arrogant thanks.

  Unconscious in the sleekar he does not get another view of the next subsidence. He had believed in himself, he had reckoned his power might transmute, through sacrifice. An ultimate hubris? If so Thryfe is unaware of his punishment, the humiliation of redundancy.

  The whole of the plateau is going, streaming inward on itself, down, down into the gut of the ice-cliff, the outer walls of which, eighty, ninety miles away, now rock and spit at the shock.

  Jemhara had been with Aglin and the girl Azula.

  After the first and second catastrophes Jemhara had seen Aglin glance urgently at Azula, and then give up. Azula only stared, sallow under her brown skin – frightened?

  Then Jemhara saw the crack in the snow that came ribboning towards them like dark ink spilled. She pushed both women out of the slee. ‘Get away! It’s only me it wants. Run!’

  But Aglin at that instant, all across the chaos and the plumes of upthrown spray, saw Thryfe had fallen. And how the area about him settled – grew solid.

  Aglin jumped back at Jemhara. ‘Sorry, my pet.’ She had herself learned a few methods of survival, this mageia of the backlands. She punched Jemhara full on the jaw with her sound right hand.

  As Jemhara collapsed Aglin caught her awkwardly. ‘Help out, you!’ she snapped to Azula. Like an embarrassed child the girl sprang in the slee and took Jemhara’s weight.

  ‘Why did you?’ Azula asked.

  ‘Can’t you see?’ All around, crinkling and griping, the plateau was now insanely stabilizing. ‘She said, it was her it wanted. Her – and him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Enough. Look, the crack’s sealed over. The ground’s all right now. I’ve got her. There, she’s resting on the floor. Run and fetch my herbal bag. There are plenty to tend. Gods grant I haven’t harmed the kidlet.’

  Westward, where the city of stars had dissolved or sunk, Bhorth, King Paramount, descendant of the royal line of Ru Karismi, paused just outside the wooden doors of his palace in the physical city of Kol Cataar, Phoenix from Ashes.

  Inside the hall, now stolidly built of rock-hard wood, the after-supper poet was whinging away to his harp. Strains of the poem seeped out.

  All are selfish. Even the savage

  Have their own concerns.

  The house-dove sees darkness fall

  With such regretful petulance

  She longs to fan with her wings the fires

  Of sunset,

  And keep them aflame;

  The hunting wolf regards the sun

  As thief of night’s pleasures,

  And would tear out the throat of day.

  Bhorth had never had much patience with poetry. Years ago at Ru Karismi he had tended to nod off when the poets started, or else had absented himself with a woman. In this new-built and rough-hewn conurbation, the sophistry of such stuff had for him a false note. The poet’s harp, for example, shaped like a great copper and gilt butterfly, strings stretched over the pin-shaped body; did that have any excuse for being here?

  A guard on the door saluted over-solemnly. ‘He’s in right good voice tonight, sir.’

  Bhorth pulled a face. ‘Probably eaten too many ginger leaves.’

  They laughed. Poets? Keep them. Soldiers were better, soldiers and sensible artisans. You knew where you were with those.

  Bhorth moved off along the terrace which, only a year back, had still been fashioned of crammed ice-brick, but was now of finished stones. Much of the palace had been constructed of stone or wood. The areas of packed ice remaining stood out. As for the town – the city – whatever it was – the majority of the buildings were hardwood, some of stone, at the worst sheathed in something less finite than hide or snow. The two successful hothouses had been expanded. The third one which nobody had been able to make work, it was cursed the architect declared, had at last been remade on the barbarian plan – and since went on not badly.

  And who are we to argue

  With our savage inmost hearts—

  Bhorth glanced indoors through a high narrow window with a disordered curtain, now bottled in glass. He saw his queen, Tireh, seated with her women and her aunts, listening to the poem and the music.

  Neither of the city’s two Magikoy women were there. They tended to keep apart as had been proper earlier in the true city, when Magikoy were plenteous. As for the ancient male Magikoy here, he had died five months before sitting peacefully at the iron-clad hearth of the hall, smiling as if amused at running out on them like that.

  Deeper into the palace the pair of infant
princesses, Bhorth and Tireh’s latest children, slept in the care of nurses.

  Bhorth realized he was making an itinerary of facts and persons, achievements, weaknesses, precisely where everyone was. As if he would soon be reporting on it all. Why was that? Did he sense something?

  After the White Death, after he had passed on the black pearl seed of Chillel, some other awareness had sometimes stirred in him. Not too often, and he was glad of that. A mage or sensitive he had never wished to be.

  Turning the palace’s stone corner Bhorth beheld his son, his son by Tireh via the peerless loins of Chillel. The young man was standing on the terrace’s edge, gazing up into the steel-blue icicle of the moonlight.

  Sallusdon was named for the former King Paramount, to remind Kol Cataar that he would be a king. But how could there anyway be any doubt of that? Such beings must be kings – or something higher.

  Getting on for four years of age, Sallus was a man and already taller than his father. You would put him at nineteen or twenty years. He had too a maturity behind his look that signified unusual intelligence and spirit.

  Women sighed when Sallus went by. Men stared. But this was not a beauty to woo or be envious of. Black Sallus was a hero, a god maybe, at least partly.

  Bhorth bulked there, watching his son. If he was honest the awe had never quite left him, though generally it was subsumed by some other emotion. The ever-present love and pride were perhaps more unwise. How could you pride yourself on fathering – this? It was like patting yourself on the back for dropping, accidentally, an apple pip – and four years later there soared a miraculous tree growing from snow, its arms burning with golden fruit.

  ‘Come and see, Father.’

  Bhorth pulled himself together. He walked over beside his son.

  ‘What’s up? Are you star-gazing?’

  ‘I am. About an hour ago something like a city, picked out in stars, appeared through the cloud in the west. It went down before I could be sure.’

  ‘A city. That’s old Ddir Star-Placer then, pottering about up there.’