Aeriel stood gazing after the retreating figures, but the gargoyle pulled free of her suddenly and bounded up the road. Aeriel whistled, but the grey beast would not come back. With an effort, she started after it. The road began to climb rapidly.
Rounding a turn, she came upon an orchard suddenly, all blighted and spoiled, the leaves lying crisp upon the ground, the fruit shriveled, black upon the boughs. Solstar, very low in the east, cast long black shade. Aeriel heard screaming, then sobs.
The gargoyle dashed away through the bars of darkness and light. Aeriel began to follow, and nearly stumbled over a girl. She was dressed in fine garments; bangles upon her ankles gleamed. Her head and face were veiled but for the eyes. All her skin had been painted black, save little dots and swirls where the pale showed through.
It was she who had screamed. She was panting now, straining hard against a chain that held her to a tree. The metal of the shackles gashed her wrists. The bark of the trunk flaked away where the chain chafed it.
Aeriel threw back the hood of her traveling cloak and went toward her. The girl started, staring, shrank from her with a cry, then lost her footing in the leaves. She fell heavily, then struggled awkwardly to one knee.
"Spirit," the painted girl gasped at last, sinking again. Behind the tree, the chain had slipped: she could not rise. "Spirit, for the love of the old gods, help me. I must get free before Solstar sets."
She began to struggle again. Aeriel cast off her pack, set down her staff and knelt. She took the chain between her hands and stared at it.
"I am no spirit," she said. "Only a traveler. I passed your father upon the road."
The painted girl twisted her arms, trying to make her hands small enough to pass through the bands. "He is not my father," she spat. "I am a slave in his house. Can you free me?"
Her voice grew desperate again. "Oh, the Beast, Savingbeast—someone must have told him, or he would not have used a chain!"
Aeriel tugged with all her strength, then rested a moment and tugged again. "What do you know of a beast?"
"Someone told me the village talk, that a monster had come into Zambul to spoil the Bird's hunting. It would set me free, they said—but what beast can bite through chain?"
Aeriel pulled the ivory dirk from her robe. She pried at one of the links, then sawed at it.
The blade's tip snapped. Aeriel threw the dirk aside. "The links are welded shut," she said.
"Gods help me; gods help me," the painted girl sobbed. She cried out suddenly. "Even now—he wakes!"
Aeriel whirled, and abruptly, she saw. In the heart of the grove, thirty paces distant, stood a massive tree. Upon one branch crouched something dark.
It looked like a bundle of black velvet, as tall as Aeriel and nearly as great around. The blighted tree looked almost grey in comparison, for this thing threw back none of white Solstar's light. It was itself completely shadow. Not even heaven was so dark.
It was the black of a darkangel's wings. Aeriel felt the blood shrinking beneath her skin.
The painted girl tore at her chains. The folded wings upon the low tree limb were stirring.
"He wakes! He wakes!" the painted girl cried. Solstar behind them was half set away.
The bundle shuddered, paused, then stirred again. Layers of darkness unfolded from it like the petals of a huge night-blooming flower. The painted girl thrust her wrist into Aeriel's grasp.
"Break my hand," she cried. "Force it through."
Aeriel found herself powerless to move. The unfolding of those wings fascinated her.
Two of the wings now were fully extended. Another pair poised half unfurled.
The darkangel was turned away—Aeriel realized that with a start. It was its back she watched, its face still hidden from the light. She came aware of someone's hands upon her. The painted girl had said something.
Aeriel shook her head dully, half turned to her. "Even broken, your hand would not pass through."
"Cut it off, then!" screamed the girl.
Half the darkangel's wings were open now, and the others beginning to unfold. The girl was groping desperately for something among the leaves. Aeriel realized suddenly, like the lifting of a spell, in only a few minutes more Solstar would be set.
She turned, saw the painted girl snatching the dagger up, laying her wrist upon the ground and putting the broken blade to it. Aeriel stooped and caught her hand. "Hold,"
she told her. "I have thought of a way.
"Heron," she hissed, catching her staff. "Bird-on-a-Stick. Awake!"
The heron shivered, let out an outraged squawk, became flesh. "What is the matter?" she cried. "Why are you addressing me by ridiculous names?"
The white bird clutched the head of the staff in her toes, flapping for balance. Aeriel thrust her closer to the shackle about the painted girl's wrist.
"Can you pick a lock?" said Aeriel. "You unbarred the gate for us in Talis. Can you open that lock?"
The painted girl stared at the heron, her sobs choked into breathless gasps. The heron eyed the shackle's keyhole, began to tap it with her bill. The girl shrieked suddenly.
"He stands!"
Aeriel started, turned.
"Hold me steady," the heron snapped.
The vampyre stood upon the black branch now, its back still to the vanishing sun. The heron put her eye to the keyhole. The stink of rotten matter grew smothering. The icarus fanned and flexed its pinions. Aeriel wondered wildly where her gargoyle had gone, and where was the strange beast the old gatherer had spoken of?
Solstar sank lower, barely a fingernail above the hills. Oceanus peered, pale blue through the curled, black trees. She heard a scratching sound. The staff tipped in her hands. She saw the heron giving her neck an odd, lunging twist. The tip of her beak in the keyhole turned. The painted girl tore the shackle from her wrist.
Solstar set. The sky above turned black as nothing. The orchard around them was drenched in shade. The vampyre upon the far tree turned, lit now with the ghostlight of Oceanus and the stars. Aeriel had only one glimpse of pale garments on a young man's form, a face savage with hunger, and blank, colorless eyes.
The painted girl screamed, bolted from Aeriel. Aeriel wheeled to follow, but the vampyre was already flying. The wind of its wings flattened her garments against her, billowed her hair. Aeriel threw herself flat to the ground, hoping it must miss her, wheel around for another try.
Even as she did so, the rhythm of its wings changed, steadied. It hovered now, above her in the air. Aeriel scrambled to her knees, caught up her staff. The icarus stooped. Aeriel swung—her staff struck nothing, for the witch's son had drawn back suddenly.
A form, two forms had leapt out of the grove. They sprang over Aeriel, Greyling clamping the darkangel's forearm in its teeth. The other beast, grey like the first, seized the vampyre's leg in its taloned paws. Two pairs of skinny wings thrashed upon its shoulders. A collar of brass encircled its throat.
"Catwing," gasped Aeriel. "Gargoyle, Cat-wing!"
The winged beast sank stump teeth into the vampyre's leg. The icarus screamed, inhumanly shrill, and shook its attackers off as though they were nothing. Greyling fell, but the winged beast recovered in the air, gaunt pinions straining. It seized one of the darkangel's wings.
Aeriel held to her side, gasping for breath. Her fall had knocked the wind from her.
Nearby, the greyling rolled, gibbering, gathered its fantastically bony limbs and sprang.
Someone was pulling at her. Aeriel staggered to her feet.
"Fly, fly!" the painted girl shouted.
Aeriel sprinted away with her into the trees. Cat snarls, yelping and birdlike screams rose in the distance behind them. The girl dragged her till Aeriel regained her stride, but then it was the girl who clung to Aeriel, gasping and stumbling.
They left the orchard suddenly, burst onto open ground. Earthlight washed around them, pale, pale blue. The stench of blight faded. Aeriel gulped the clean air. Her staff felt lighter suddenly. She
stared at it, realized she had been carrying it, her pack as well. The heron launched off into the air, skimming ahead of them downslope, toward another vale.
"Follow," she cried. "I can find the best path," and sailed low, whiter than wood smoke in the pale earthshine.
NINE
9
The Suzerain
The heron led them through close woods, down dry ravines and along shadowed paths.
Aeriel heard still the vampyre's screams, the yelping of two gargoyles in the distance behind, and bit her lip in fear for them—the icarus seemed able to bat them aside at a blow.
All at once, after they had been running what seemed a very long time, a great angry shriek rose behind them. The vampyre burst into the air above the hills, circling. His white garments blazed amid the nothing-darkness of his wings. Aeriel listened hard, straining her ears, but she heard no sound of the gargoyles now.
Above the trees, the icarus scanned, eyes sweeping the hills. Aeriel and the girl shrank deeper into the crack along which they fled. Presently, with a chirrup of rage, the witch's son swooped away— toward town, and the majis' house.
They followed the heron till the veiled girl was staggering. Aeriel came to a halt in a thick brake of trees. "Heron," she cried. "We must rest."
The white bird curved around in a low arc, alighted. "Mortal creatures," she murmured. "I had forgot."
Aeriel leaned wearily against a tree. The painted girl crumpled at her feet, trembling, her breaths shallow and pained. Aeriel sipped from her water flask, then offered it to the girl, but she turned her head away. The blood on her wrists was dark and dry. Aeriel used a bit of water from the flask to wash them. The girl clenched her teeth, made strangled little cries.
"I am sorry this hurts," said Aeriel, "but I have a balm that will help."
The painted girl dried her wrists upon her veil, shaking her head. "My feet," she managed after a moment.
She shifted gingerly. Aeriel did not at first know what she meant. She took one of the girl's dark-painted feet upon her lap and brushed the dust from it. She saw gashes and blood upon the sole.
"How did this happen?" she cried. "I felt nothing sharp underfoot."
The girl shook her head. "Before you came. The majis cut my feet so that even if I escaped his chain, I could not run."
Aeriel started, stared. As gently as she might, she washed the feet of the painted girl, using the hem of her desert shift for a cloth. The veiled girl's breath grew ragged suddenly. Aeriel was not sure whether with laughter or sobs.
" 'I love your dark beauty,' " she spat. " 'I love your dark love.'"
She was weeping, the swirls across her cheeks growing muddy with tears. Aeriel did not understand what she had said. The other unfastened the veil from her face, and Aeriel realized then, with a start, it was not paint that made the girl's skin dark. The dots and whorls upon her cheeks were not pale, unpainted places, but white paint daubed upon dark skin.
"It was what he used to say to me," the girl went on. " 'My dark beauty, my dark love, I'll give my own child to the Bird before you.' "
She turned her head away again. Aeriel said nothing for a little. Irrylath, Irrylath—she could not get the thought of him out of her mind suddenly, and did not know why. She gazed at the painted girl's skin, black as the boy she had seen upon the Sea.
"I did not realize you were so dark," she murmured at last. "I thought the paint..."
The girl put one hand to her cheek. "This?" The stuff came away on her fingertips. "Bride paint—they thought he must want something other than a meal this time."
She scrubbed at it, suddenly fierce, and at the backs of her white-daubed hands. It smeared. Aeriel caught her breath in then. The thought welled up all at once, without her bidding. I, too, have been a darkangel's bride. False lover. False love.
Aeriel washed the painted girl's cheeks, her hands. She took ambergris from her pack and crumbled it, rubbed the waxy green granules into the soles of her feet, her wrists. Very carefully she bound them up, using the dark girl's veil. Aeriel touched her feet again.
"Do they pain you still?" The other shook her head. Her hair was parted in little squares, braided close to the skull. "Then why do you weep?"
The dark girl sat limply against the tree, her breathing quieted. She spoke dully.
"When I was in the majis' house, the rose-skinned ones used to say, 'When I am free, I will go to Rani,' and the blue-skinned ones, 'To Bern. When I am free. Where my kith are. Where I was born.' But where are my kith? Where was I born?"
She shrugged, shivering, chafing her arms.
"My first mistress bought me from a Bernean trader who would not say where he had got me. I have never heard of any land where the people are like me."
She looked at Aeriel.
"The majis used to let me leave the house and walk abroad when I would. He knew I could not run away. 'You will never leave me, my black chick,' he said. 'You have nowhere to go.' "
Aeriel knelt, putting her hand on the dark girl's hand, and strangely, for the first time since the heron had brought her her staff, she was not afraid of Orm.
"Come with me awhile," she said. "I was once a slave, bought as a babe. I have no kith and no home—I go where I like. But I do know where you are from. I passed it, crossing the Sea-of-Dust: a boy stood fishing on a reef, his skin like shadow. I am going to Terrain, but after, I must cross the Mare again. I'll take you, if you'll come."
The dark girl looked at her.
"What is your name?"
"Erin," the other said. Her tears had stopped.
"I am Aeriel." She offered the girl their last water, and this time Erin drank. "Why did you call me 'spirit' in the grove?"
The other handed back the flask. "I did not see you come. You seemed to appear out of the air. Your skin was so white, the sun shone clear through you. I took you for the orchard sprite."
Aeriel laughed. The girl stood up, leaning against the tree. Aeriel made to help her, but the other shook her off.
"I can walk. The cuts are not deep. He is too much a coward to cut me deep. But he rubbed salt in the cuts to make them burn. What you put on them..."
"Ambergris."
"It has taken the burning away."
They continued on through Zambul, following no road, only the heron's flight. The hills had grown more wooded here. Not long into their second march, the two gargoyles overtook them. Aeriel embraced them, laughing with relief. Tongues lolling from running, they fawned on her. They looked bartered and disarrayed, but otherwise unharmed. Aeriel stroked the winged one.
It rubbed its head against her hand, made in its throat a thrumming sound like beetles'
wings. She fed it the second of the apricoks from her pack, saving the seed, and watched some of its gauntness leave it.
"Catwing," she murmured, stroking its scabby chin.
The air grew cooler as the fortnight rolled on. When Erin and she slept, Aeriel put the traveling cloak over them both. They had no water now, and access to none, for they kept wide of cottages and towns, but Erin showed Aeriel where to find succulent nightfruit, or winesheath in flower, and how to cook the fresh-laid eggs of lizards and birds on red ovenrock, that held the heat of Solstar long into the night. Aeriel sang Erin tales when they camped.
The ground they traveled seemed to be rising, the vegetation growing lusher. Fruit on the trees became more plentiful; the hollow reedgrasses they sucked for moisture were fatter now with juice. The fortnight was nearly done when Aeriel heard a gentle lapping sound.
"What is that?" she said softly, halting.
Erin, playing with the dustshrimp, looked up. "I hear nothing."
Aeriel took a few steps through the trees. The noise was faint, familiar—she could not think what it was. Erin put the dustshrimp back on AeriePs sleeve. The white heron was nowhere to be seen. Both gargoyles had lifted their muzzles, testing the air. Aeriel, too, now could smell it:
"Water," she murmured. "Running water."
The gargoyles bounded away through the underbrush. Aeriel pushed forward through the foliage. She heard splashing ahead, stumbled into a clearing. A tiny pool lay before them, feeding a stream that spilled away among the trees. The gargoyles had flung themselves into the water. The heron alighted beside the channel.
The gargoyles wrestled and nipped each other. Aeriel and Erin had to duck their spray.
The dustshrimp hid from the wet in a fold of her garment. Aeriel laid her things at wood's edge, slipped from her traveling cloak and shift. She waded into the pool.
The water was warm, steaming in the cool night air. The gargoyles subsided. The heron speared a fish. Erin pulled off her travel-stained garb, knelt at the pool's edge and cupped her hands.
Aeriel leaned back, let the water support her. Its taste was very slightly sweet. Earthshine fell blue, the starlight pale grey, but their light in the pool wavered yellow and white.
Erin came into the pool, and Aeriel noticed for the first time that though she was very slender, her breast was not quite so flat as a boy's, her hips not quite so lean. They bathed in the still, bright, steaming water, and drank.
Aeriel looked up suddenly. The gargoyles had long since clambered back onto the bank, shaken off and now lay sprawled there, one dozing, the other nibbling its matted fur.
Above the lapping and soft plashing, Aeriel heard a sound.
Erin, lying back upon the water, opened her eyes. "What is it?"
The noise had been so faint—distant, dying. It did not come again. Aeriel shook her head.
"Nothing. It must have been wind among the trees."
There was no wind. The night was still. Erin closed her eyes again, but Aeriel stood a few moments, listening. Nothing stirred. She came out of the pool, letting the cool air dry her.
Then she dressed and sat toying with her bandolyn.
Presently there came another sound, louder, nearer than the first: a belling and bawling like wounded kine. Then, nothing. And suddenly, much nearer, the breaking of brush.
Greyling and Catwing bolted to their feet. The heron looked up. Even Erin lying upon the water had heard it. She stood.
A Gathering of Gargoyles Page 9
