The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  Ryel sniffed, and groaned, and cleared his throat. His breath vapored on the chill air. "Chal. At once."

  None appeared.

  Quite deliberately he asked again, but with the same result. Dagar might not be powerful in the day, but Pukk had been right: the spirit-energy of the Aqqar was sucked dry. After last night's colloquy Ryel was disinclined to summon Pukk again, but he had no other servants in this place—only his Mastery, meant for higher aims than the body's needs, and his own ingenuity, not particularly scintillating just now. Rolling onto his back, the wysard contemplated the opaque grayness overhead as he shivered under his damp cloak and wondered if, for the first time in a dozen years, he was about to catch cold or worse. At that dire thought he redoubled his inventiveness, and suddenly remembered the little chunk of kulm he'd wrapped up with his flint and steel, stuck inside his chal-gear and thrust into a corner of his saddlebags on the morning of the day he'd reached Markul.

  Some rummaging and cold-fingered cursing later, he'd coaxed a spark and started a fire under the chaltak; and after an interminable interval the water bubbled hot enough for him to throw in a good big pinch of chal-powder to make the strong brew he liked best. As soon as the powder settled he poured the infusion into the chal-cup, warming his hands around the bowl. The heat was an indescribable comfort, and he gave a little groan of pleasure as his stiff fingers relaxed; and when he put his lips to the bowl he shuddered as the chal, more delicious than any he'd ever drunk in Markul, shed its stimulant warmth into his ill-rested limbs. Since boyhood he'd loved chal, brewed to a deep jade-color in the Almancarian fashion; the Rismai and other steppe-dwellers in the realm of Destimar commonly drank it much lighter. Every horseman of Risma carried a set of chal-gear, neatly and compactly nested, in his saddlebags; most often the gear was wrought of tough fire-resistant Semlorn porcelain, but richer folks' were of silver. Ryel's chaltak and bowl were of exquisitely wrought electrum and enamel fit for a wandering prince, which his mother had had made for him as her parting-gift when he left for Markul. He had much missed them during his years in the City, and it was sheer pleasure to have them back again. As he savored that reunion, he thought of the land he had left so long ago, and would at last behold again.

  The realm of Destimar was vast, comprising not only the Inner and Outer Steppes to the east and south, but fertile lands reaching as far as the sea, west of the towering jewel-teeming massifs of the Gray Sisterhood. The capital city of Almancar lay emplained at the foot of the Sisterhood's eastern slopes, and within its walls Ryel's mother had been born and had lived cherished amid every luxury until the age of fifteen. Much had Mira told her son of her native city and her family, and of her two brothers who roved the World by ship and caravan in search of treasures rich, beautiful and ancient. But she seldom spoke of her parents, from whom she had become estranged when she chose to marry a Steppes horseman rather than one of the several Destimarian nobles who had sought her hand.

  The man she married, Yorganar, had grown to manhood on the Outer Steppes, and later moved to the Inner lands. It was the custom in both Steppes for folk to dwell as phratria, loosely-knit clans united and identified by their banner. The bannermen of the Muk'hai, the Bostrai, the Bakatt Segred and the Kaltiri—or the Red Moon, the Raincloud, the Nightwind and the Grass-fox—dwelt in the endless green fields of the Kugglaitan just west of Almancar, and were famed for their great flocks of sheep and cattle; save for the wandering and warlike Kaltiri they were town-lovers for the most part, nomadic only in summer. The people of the Elhin Gazal and the Fang'an, or the Triple Star and the Stormhawk, lived deep in the Rismai lands to the northeast, in encampments they shifted four times a year; they were renowned for the most excellent horses in the World. The Kugglaitai were close friends of Almancar, but relations between Risma and the Bright City were less civil, for the horse-folk of the Inner Steppes were haughty of spirit, and scornful of town-life; and whenever the Sovran exacted his yearly tribute of mares and stallions for his stables, he was compelled to come himself to fetch them, or send his emissaries to traffic at the great horse-fair held every year at springtide.

  Long had the Elhin Gazal horses been reputed the best of all the world, and those of the Yorganarek breed descended from Windskimmer were deemed almost beyond price, and sought after by the great and rich of every land. Ryel had thus grown up used to the comings and goings of lords and princes in his father's yat, and as a boy of twelve had poured out wine for the Sovranet Mycenas of Destimar, and been called a fine young lad; but even then he knew that his family's privileged status was of very recent date. Yorganar had been born a Kaltiri, and his people had raised cattle. But while young men barely out of their teens, he and his brother Edris had forsaken their kinsmen of the Grass-fox banner to become warriors in Destimar's border disputes with Shrivran; and they signalized themselves by valor that the Sovran richly rewarded when the struggle was concluded in peace two years later.

  Having tasted the life of the armed camp, the brothers found themselves more inclined afterward to be horse-tamers than herdsmen, and accordingly shifted their clan-allegiance to the phratri of the Three Stars, which was glad of such brave and ardent new blood. With riches, skill and strength gained from their warrior's days the twin brothers together built up the choicest stud in the Inner Steppes, and when Edris renounced his share of it first to soldier in the Northland for the Dominor of Hryeland, and then to spend the rest of his days in Markul, Yorganar was thus made richer even than the Triple Star's chieftains. But as a new man under a strange banner, without kinsmen among the phratri, wed to an outland wife and father of only a single son, Yorganar was always somewhat distanced from the folk of his adopted clan; and Ryel had grown up without that dense network of relations that signalized the nomadic life of the Inner Steppes. Nor was his bond with his father a strong one, which was likewise counter to Steppes ways. His mother had been so much to him--nurturer, sister, friend, queen.

  "I would be with you now if I could," he whispered to her in a sleep-roughened voice unsteady with trapped and burning tears. "But I have no way. And it'll take long to reach you, every day bringing you more pain. I wish I had the Art."

  As if to partly give him the lie, a whickering snort issued from very close by; and Ryel started up to find an animal grazing less than twenty feet away. Had it been a fabulous monster all horns and warts, the wysard could not have been more astonished; but it was a mare of the true Steppes breed, neat-limbed and strong and lovely, worth its weight in matched pearls.

  "This is a dream," he whispered. The horse heard him, and lifted its head to look his way with great dark wondering eyes. At that gesture, so graceful and apt, Ryel caught his breath.

  "Jinn?"

  The horse's ears twitched, and its dark eyes assessed the wysard warily under thick-fringed lashes, but without fear. Very slowly Ryel got to his feet. He was trembling, but not from the dawn cold this time.

  "Jinn. I know it's you. Jinn, little sister, do you not remember me?"

  The horse hung back, its four legs planted and its head lowered. Ryel took a step forward, ever talking in a voice soft and steady.

  "How came your mane and tail so long, and so light? It becomes you. Your coat's all rough, but we'll smooth it. And how is it you're so young? You should be old, old; not as fresh as the day we parted before the walls of Markul. Can it be that the land around the City kept you youthful, even as it kept my gear from perishing? But that isn't possible; surely you've escaped from a rich caravan, and some proud young brave is now desolate because of you."

  By this time he had his hand on the horse's mane. Very gently Ryel stroked the pale shimmering forelock. In doing so he ran a finger over the cocked left ear, seeking a little nick at its base. He found it, and jerked back as if bitten.

  "No. It can't be."

  It couldn't. Not after so many years. But nevertheless the horse was warmly real, its breath vaporing on the raw Aqqar air. Real, and undoubtedly fleet and tough if her likeness to Jinn went f
urther than mere semblance. Slowly lest he frighten the animal away, Ryel went to his saddlebags and took out the halter. "I never dreamed I'd have a use for this, here in the wasteland. Could you get used to it again…Jinn?"

  The name worked like a spell. The mare stood motionless, giving only a snort or two as Ryel tossed the saddlebags onto her back and fitted the halter onto her head. Reaching into his pocket, the wysard brought out a bag of dried fruit.

  "Here, little one. Apricots—your favorites, remember? They're a bit on the leathery side, and I'd say a word to freshen them, but it wouldn't work now. What, don't you want them?"

  The horse apparently did not. After a tentative sniff, Jinn turned her head away.

  "Very well. I won't force you," Ryel said. "But let me do this, at least." And he stroked Jinn's satin mane, and hugged her about the neck.

  Although he had not ridden for a dozen years, the wysard vaulted without effort onto the mare's back and sat easily despite the lack of a saddle, his Steppes horsemanship unforgotten.

  "All right, little one. Let's have a run, and see if you're as fast as your namesake was."

  He touched a heel to her side, and the mare leapt into a gallop that no whip in the world could have prompted, and that surely no other mount in the world might equal. Ryel felt his hair stream out behind him, and in the fullness of his joy he began to sing a Rismaian ballad forgotten by him until that moment, shouting the words to the wind.

  The day passed in an eyeblink—far too fast, in fact. Tirelessly Jinn raced across the infinities of green, never slowing her pace for an instant. At last Ryel forced her to a halt lest he kill her.

  "This isn't right," he said, more disquieted than pleased, now. "Miles and miles gone by at a dead gallop, but you're not lathered even a fleck. You don't seem to need to eat or drink—or satisfy any other natural urges, for that matter. I'm starting to think you aren't real."

  Jinn gave a whinny that sounded indignant, but Ryel was beginning to feel strong unease. He expected in the next moment for the air to close in chokingly around him, and the persecuting voice to shrill about his ears like an evil bug, and the horse to transform into something unspeakably monstrous.

  For several taut heart-taxing minutes the wysard awaited the worst as Jinn watched him with great questioning eyes. At last Ryel allowed himself to calm, and put out a steady hand to stroke the mare's bright mane.

  "Someone sent you," he said. " Someone who knows my memories. Someone who wishes me well. But who could it be?"

  Whatever Jinn's arcane powers, speech was apparently not one of them, and Ryel had no time to ask whose Art-imbued agency had intervened so wonderfully in his behalf. He remounted, and rode.

  But even if Jinn never tired, Ryel did. At sunset he made camp in the simple way of a Steppes bannerman, with no other shelter than his cloak. By now he was well out of the Aqqar. The mists had thinned, and now he was amid open air. With a World-horse the journey would have taken many a weary day, but Jinn's swiftness owed nothing to earth, for which the wysard was inutterably grateful. That evening Ryel looked up at the sky and for the first time in twelve years saw stars glimmering among the ragged clouds; and then the pale gold moon rose in silent state, vast as it slid upward from the grasses, a vision so wondrous that the wysard looked on in breathless awe. He barely slept that night, but continually awakened to fix his eyes on the flickering sparks and glowing disk. With hunger in his heart he dreamed of the dawn, and awoke to find the sky alight as if on fire, and he turned his head and saw the sun, and his eyes dazzled and burned.

  That same day he found a trail and followed it sunward, tracing the path to a caravan-road he remembered well, riding ever southwest, joying in the brilliant blue of the sky, the clear ardent light, the green infinity of grassland. And soon the endless jade sweep took on other colors, vivid patches of citron yellow, glowing magenta, bright turquoise, deep scarlet—colonies of flowers spreading in their millions, anemones and roses and lilies in the height of their bloom, eagerly making the most of the evanescent Steppes spring. Amid interfused fragrance and color Ryel journeyed enraptured, feeling like a wandering prince in some epic of Destimar; like Prince Ghenris when he rode up to the throne of the Emperor of Rintala over a carpet that covered the entire floor of the vast presence-hall of the fabled palace, a carpet of the most precious silk dyed in a thousand hues, and pricelessly perfumed—a paltry rug compared to this endless living tapestry in which Jinn's hooves sank to the fetlock in soft scented growth.

  It was under bright midday that he at last saw the banners of his people, deep blue with a triple star of silver, fluttering and snapping above the horizon's curve. Beyond the banners stretched a soft green plain, immensely vast, studded here and there with little conical hills. And far beyond that plain the white peaks of a range of huge mountains, the Gray Sisterhood, cut a jagged swath between earth and heaven.

  My land, Ryel thought as his heart leapt. My great green land.

  Those far-flung little hills had once been live volcanoes spitting fire, many thousands of years gone. Each cinder-cone bore the name of a Rismaian deity, and in their hollows the phratri sheltered their horses from the winter winds, sure of divine as well as natural protection. The wysard had grown up with legends of the Age of Fire, when all this earth was red and reeking with fiery lava; his people deemed themselves sprung from those flames. In the undulant slopes at the base of the volcano-hills the Rismai on occasion found ancient bones of men, their weapons and other goods; and the axeheads and arrowheads were highly prized by warriors of the phratri, who deemed them full of power and good fortune in the hunt. And the hunting was good, for antelope sheltered in the rare thickets of scrub pine, and hares in the basalt crevasses.

  No river flowed through Risma, but scattered spring-fed ponds reflected the swift-changing clouds. At the edge of one of these basins stood the springtide encampment of the Elhin Gazal, its scattered yats echoing the shape of the cinder-cones, smoke rising from the peaked roofs as if from live fire-mountains.

  His blood thrilling at the sight, Ryel would have driven his heels into Jinn's sides, but there was no need, for Jinn had seen the yats as well, and plunged into a gallop that mocked all other speed she'd shown.

  A sentinel had noted Ryel's approach, and now drew his bow. Well aware that only two words would save his life, the wysard forced Jinn to a skidding halt and drew a deep breath.

  "Ryel!" he shouted. "Ryel Mirai!"

  The wysard waited, his hands lifted clear of his weapons in token of his peaceful intent, as the warrior overcame his apparent surprise, returned his arrow to his quiver and his bow to its sheath, and urged his horse to a canter. I know you, Ryel thought, his recognition growing all the more joyous and amazed as the rider neared him. You draw your hood about your face, but I know your eyes. Of all lucks, I had not hoped for this.

  They were now a spear's length apart. The hooded warrior spoke first, in the common Almancarian that was the trade-tongue of the Steppes; and his keen dark eyes surveyed the wysard's every feature.

  "The name you shouted so proudly belongs to one many years gone."

  "Gone, but now returned," Ryel said.

  "You do not use your patronymic, if you are he."

  "I follow the custom of our people. But I may call myself Ryel Mirai, son of Yorganar that was. I greet you, Shiran."

  The warrior's eyes widened, but only for a moment. "Many of the Rismai are named Shiran."

  Your voice has changed, Ryel thought. As mine has.

  "Shiran is indeed a common name on the Inner Steppes," he said aloud. "But in all the Steppes there is only one Shiran Belarem Alizai, and he and I once raced our first horses on this same stretch of ground. But he used always to wear a bow-guard of heavy gold, a treasured heirloom. Why does he not wear it now?"

  Frowning brows at that, and a searching stare. Then from behind the hood the voice came rough. "Your eyes are strange."

  Ryel felt the blood drain from his face like water into hot sand. N
o. Oh, no. He sees it. Sees the blackness, and—

  "Yes," the sentinel said. "Strange. Not like ours." But as he spoke he took his hand from his dagger-hilt, and his voice grew calmer, sweetened with something like laughter. When he next spoke it was in the Rismai dialect, although formally, as befit men newly acquainted. "There used once to be a boy with such blue eyes, here in the camp."

  Ryel blinked, but replied in the same language. "Was there indeed?"

  The sentinel nodded. "A pale weakling he was. And I used to jeer at him, until he grew strong enough to make me sorry." The cowl fell free, then, to bare a brave face all in smiles. "Many years, play-brother," said Shiran, holding out his hand in that frank way that had ever been his. "I'd never forget those sky-colored eyes of yours, no matter how long you kept away. How many years were they?"

  "Ten or so," Ryel said, too weak with relief to contest the grip of Shiran's tough brown palm. "Not many."

  "An entire dozen, play-brother, not one of them short."

  "You've grown strong in that time."

  "And you soft." Shiran released Ryel's hand after a last hard clasp. "But tabibs' hands are ever soft. For all that, I dare swear you've cut up more corpses than I've yet slain, there in that leech-school of Fershom Rikh. So, have you mastered your craft at last? You should have learned by now to raise the dead, at very least."

  Because wysards were greatly feared and distrusted in the Steppes, Ryel's parents had explained his leave-taking by saying he'd chosen to be a tabib—a doctor—and had elected to study medicine at Fershom Rikh, a far-off city of Destimar famed for its schools and its healers. Tabibs were scarce in the Steppes and honored, so this news had met with the phratri's entire approval. Shiran's questions made Ryel remember Edris, and for a moment he looked away. "Somewhat less is my skill."

  Shiran did not observe Ryel's emotion, for his attention had shifted. "Only a skilled doctor could afford a horse like yours. She reminds me of Jinn--none but Windskimmer's get could cover ground so fast as this lovely one does. But Jinn would be old now, and this one seems less than two years." He reached out and stroked the mare's pale silken mane, and his thoughts seemed to wander. "Your sister Nelora has grown up while you were gone. Half the braves of the encampment are at each other's throats for her sake—which is just as she likes it."