Wings Over Talera

by Charles Allen Gramlich

  I turned to look at Rannon, my mind seething with questions. But she had moved away to open a set of casement doors that led, I suspected, onto a balcony. I was wrong. When I followed her through those doors I found that we were on the roof of one wing of the palace. And it had been transformed—into a rooftop garden where ahmbr trees drooped with blossoms of white, vying with apple and pear to shade narrow pathways of pearl-colored stone.

  Alongside those paths, spring’s early flowers were in riot—goldenswords and black lilies, silver nyxe, yellow angel-hair and crimson hysis. Honeywhisper moss hung in the trees, dewed with cool mist from twin fountains of jade and garnet.

  Between the fountains stood a gazebo whose latticed sides were twined with roses and pepper ivy. Rannon had paused there and was looking back at me. Tears stained the clearness of her azure eyes.

  I started toward her, to try an offer of comfort, but she held up a hand to stop me. I halted, hovering while she fought for control. Only when she regained it did I feel the strain in my chest from not breathing, and the tension that ached in my jaws where they had been clenched.

  “I want you to listen to me,” Rannon said.

  My palms slicked with sweat; my heart began to thud—out of fear that her words would not be the ones I wished to hear. But mutely, I nodded.

  “After you...left,” she continued. “I hated myself.”

  I opened my mouth to deny her statement, but shut it again just as quickly. She’d asked me to listen and I would give her that no matter what.

  “Yes,” she continued. “It didn’t matter that I’d intended for you to surrender yourself to me, that I’d never planned for my brother to come barging in with soldiers to arrest you. I doubted you. And for that I hated myself.”

  Her eyes searched mine and she did not look away as she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “But I ran,” I said into the pause that followed her last words. “Surely that cemented my guilt in everyone’s mind.”

  She shook her head, leaving strands of fine hair caught like wisps of dark silk over her cheeks.

  “For my father and brother, it did. And for many among the nobles who were jealous of you. But not for me. I knew why you fled. I saw your eyes. You ran because the one who claimed to love you, doubted you. Hurt you. For that I won’t forgive myself. For that,” she did look down then, “I release you from all pledges you have made to me.”

  I froze. It didn’t seem as if I’d be able to breathe again. “You....” I almost choked on the words. “You do not wish to marry me any longer?”

  Rannon looked back at me again, and there was in her face a look of genuine surprise.

  “Did you not see the rooms?” she asked. “Built for us? And the nursery where I hoped our children would be raised? Did you not understand what they meant?”

  I stared at her, then looked down myself.

  “I hoped,” I said.

  She stepped forward and cupped my chin, lifted my head slightly to let her gaze explore my face. There was a question in her eyes, and to it I replied:

  “If you cannot forgive yourself, then I cannot forgive myself either. If I had been stronger. If I had not doubted too. I would have let myself be arrested, knowing you would set me free.”

  She smiled, a little. “I would have,” she said. “I know I would have.”

  “Then forgive,” I said. “And let me forgive. And we’ll not talk of such things again because there will be no need.”

  It seemed a long time before she spoke.

  “Spirit and skin,” she said. “I will always be yours.”

  To that there was no reply I could make.

  At least not in words.

  EPILOGUE

  “WHAT ABOUT THEIR EYES?”

  Hand in hand and smiling, Rannon and I went to check on those we cared about. The burns that Rhandh the Vlih had taken from Vohanna’s sorcery were healing. Rhandh himself was muttering and angry over being confined in bandages. I thought that a good sign.

  Kreeg was improving as well, though still weak and pale from nearly having the life crushed out of him at Kellet’s Bay by that laith. His constant companion was Valyan, healthy himself, of course. Even Heril had returned from his journey and was a welcome face to see. He’d been my friend the longest of anyone upon Talera.

  I regretted only two things. First, I regretted that Diken Graye had not been found. He had become a friend and I would have seen him pardoned for his unwitting and unwilling service to Vohanna. But not even his body had turned up. Second, I wished I’d been able personally to thank the Druidess, Ahrethane, who had aided me in the jungle. In a quick return to her leafy bower, I had searched for her and found nothing. On her table I’d left the boots I’d borrowed, and a note of thanks telling her to ask for me in Timmuzz if she ever needed anything.

  One other thing had happened that caused me no regret but gave me pleasure instead. In searching for Diken Graye among the ruins of Vohanna’s pyramid I had found the very rapier that my cousin Eric Ryall had carried and which I had taken for myself after his death. That weapon had been torn from my hand by Vohanna’s saddle bird while I’d fought for my life against her Amazon form. Its blade was the sharpest and strongest I’d ever held, and I had learned since that it was forged from what is called Tyzinn steel, the secret of which is lost to the modern age.

  Now, though, I was far more concerned with Bryce than with any sword. His room was open when Rannon and I arrived, but there were guards at his door and bars on his windows. He was sitting propped up on pillows in bed when we entered, his disconcerting silver hair coiled down across his shoulders. He turned to look at me with eyes in which the pupils were starting to show again through the rusted red. That red was itself fading gradually, leaving behind the natural grey irises with which he’d been born.

  “Bryce,” I said, approaching him.

  “Ruenn,” he replied, his voice steady but...hollow. I noted that my brother’s artificial hand was hidden beneath the covers and was grateful for that. I started to take his other hand, reconsidered. Rannon stood patiently behind me. Bryce had not acknowledged her.

  It seemed I hardly knew the man before me.

  I could think of nothing else to say, at first. Then my gaze caught in the luminous lines of ink that had been worked into nearly every inch of Bryce’s exposed skin. The brilliant colors were fading a bit, I thought, and hoped it was not just a wish.

  “The physicians found specks of milkstone in your tattoos,” I said at last, gesturing at the scrawled runes on his body. “But they said they got them all.”

  Bryce nodded, no change in the flatness of his gaze, then settled back against his pillows until he was looking up at the ceiling. I saw the puckered scars at the sides of his throat where I’d cut out two toir’in-or myself, but I was thinking of what our cousin Eric Ryall had told me when I’d asked him about where his other milkstones were implanted.

  “Inside,” he’d said. “In my guts.”

  “What of Vohanna?” Bryce asked suddenly, and I felt a little chill, as if a tiny, snow-laden wind had slipped its fingers along my back. “When I first woke up, you said she was dead.”

  After Vohanna’s death, as if triggered by that death, Bryce had awakened from his mysterious coma on the deck of Hurnan Jystral’s flagship. He had said nothing, done nothing at first but lie still and stare into the sky. I’d told him that Vohanna was finished and that we’d erase every sign of her and her evil.

  He had smiled then. Or smirked.

  Now he smiled again, in the same way.

  “Dead. Yes,” I said against his smile. “She died impaled and torn open. And we took her down to the jungle and burned her on a pyre made from the ruins of her ancient city.”

  Bryce chuckled when I finished, and turned a face toward me that was as pallid as dying moonlight.

  “I know what you’re
thinking,” I said defensively. “That Vohanna can change bodies. I saw her do it myself. But none of the bodies from her lair were close enough for her to enter. Besides, we burned them too, or what was left of them after the crash of the pyramid.”

  My brother’s stare did not go away; it began to anger me.

  “And,” I continued, “if she’d possessed someone we would have found it out. Those black eyes of hers would have given it away. I watched for them. I checked everyone on both ships that were involved. Vohanna is dead!”

  Bryce drew his strange right hand out from under the blankets and reached up to idly stroke the scars in his throat where I’d taken his milkstones. Then he turned his head until he was staring once more at the ceiling.

  “Of course, Ruenn. Surely you are right. But....”

  “But what?” I snarled.

  My brother gave that little half smile again. His voice was distant when it came.

  “But what of the saddle birds, Ruenn? What about their eyes?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charles Allen Gramlich grew up on a farm in Arkansas, near the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, then moved to the New Orleans area in 1986 to teach psychology at a local university. He’s since sold four novels, two nonfiction books, and numerous short stories. His tales, while mostly in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, have also included westerns, children’s stories, mainstream fiction, slipstream works, and experimental pieces. Charles has also published poetry and nonfiction, the latter ranging from reference works on science and psychology to articles on writing.

  Charles is a member of SFPA (the Science Fiction Poetry Association). He is an editor for The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, and currently lives in Abita Springs, Louisiana with his wife Lana. He has one adult son, Joshua. His blog can be found at:

  http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com