Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  “We are in the foothills,” Kyrem marveled.

  They had, indeed, made good speed. The land had turned grassy, red earth contained by shelving terraces of blue rock; wild goats gamboled on the outcroppings, and only the rounded crests of the grassland were forested with thorn. They could see to all sides, and for the time they had certainly outdistanced their enemy, if the weasel-faced man were their enemy.

  “Look,” said Kyrem. “Even our demons are fewer.”

  It was true. With the dawn and the foothills, several of the black horse-headed birds had circled away and left them, flapping back toward Kimiel.

  Kyrem laid his head down again. “I hope I am in better fettle before we reach Avedon,” he muttered.

  Seda was feeling weak and sore as well, battered by that first wild ride. But they kept on at the quiet gaits throughout the day, eating a few scraps of bread from Seda’s pocket, drinking from her flask, fearing that if they stopped to rest, they would not be able to go on again. The sun grew hot, for in these parts it was already summer, and the heat sapped their little remaining strength. When at last evening came, they stumbled from their mount with no thought for fire or food. Seda stood swaying for a moment and rubbed Omber’s forehead where the sweat had dried on it, giving him Devan thanks or greeting, and he stood gravely. Then she unblanketed him, pulled her own sleeping blanket from the pack and tossed Kyrem his, and they both nearly fell into them, sinking to the ground.

  “Besides me, you are the only one who can ride him,” Kyrem murmured. There was a warmth in his voice, an ungrudging generosity that made Seda blink and moved her to words.

  “Thank you, Ky,” she said softly. Sometime during his illness she had started calling him Ky.

  “He is starting to like you,” Kyrem added.

  “Shuntali! Shuntali!” shouted a demon from the dark.

  The next day as she rode, Kyrem still weak and leaning against her, Seda learning more and more of an accord with the horse, she felt an odd, sticky sensation under her and realized to her horror that she was bleeding. The onset of women’s flux—she could not realize for a moment what it was, for she had almost forgotten that she would be a woman. Then her eyes opened wide in consternation. This must somehow be hidden from Kyrem. They could not be together if he found her out.

  She rode the rest of the day in a paralysis of worry. Luckily Kyrem, faint and weary, noticed nothing. Luckily also the blanket on which they rode was red, like Kyrem’s lost cap. They stopped that evening by a stream, and Kyrem lapsed at once into a sleep that was almost a swoon. Seda washed out the blanket, wet with more than the horse’s sweat, and washed her own clothing and herself, and that night she stole more than food. She came back with someone’s old patched tunic swaddled and wadded underneath her trousers. Then after they had eaten, she slept contentedly and dreamt of riding Omber.

  In the nighttime of far away an other opened her dark eyes, startled awake. This dream, this sense of a great beast, a stallion, moving between her legs, what could it mean? And the sun, the warm breeze—and the grasslands, the blue rock, and not so far behind, the mountains! Great lofty crests of sorrel with their mane of black trees—things she had never seen, yet she saw them so clearly—and she herself, had she not been … a boy? A stripling half drunk by a wayward power?

  But how could she have dreamt such a strange thing? She was a maiden, humbly born and just thirteen, just entered on her first flux. Soon there would be the ceremony of passage, the lengthening of her skirts to below her ankles, and already her mother and her mother’s noble mistress had been adjuring her to sit more gracefully, walk more sedately as she grew into women’s estate, speak more demurely and more seldom and with circumspection, conduct herself always in such a way that her chastity would never be questioned. And it was true that she had never slept far from her mother’s bed.

  Then who had been the man, the youth, pale of face, comely, curly of jet-black hair—and how could it be that she had dreamt of sleeping by his side? Only a dream, she told herself. Yet even on waking she remembered his face as clearly as though she had seen it in flesh and in fact, as though she had gazed on it with longing. And her heart throbbed with the memory.

  Atop the mountain, the most holy mountain that men called Kimiel or Anka, the enemy heard report from his black horse-headed servants and frowned. All the Devans destroyed except the one who mattered the most! And this little Vashtin, this shuntali, what was he to thwart the most holy rage? The Old One bent his mind that way and frowned again. Something was wrong; he found no outcast lad, but a virgin girl in her first red moon dew and full of powerful magic.

  He frowned yet again and sent orders winging to his other, human servants.

  As Seda and Kyrem rode past one last rampart of the mountains the next day, orange rock came roaring down at them, and Omber’s best speed barely took them out of danger. Looking back, Seda saw human figures, black and tiny with distance, standing where the landslide had begun. A few of the cursing, black demon things circled above them, and a few more from their own unofficial entourage left them, flapping back to join the others.

  “If those are our enemies from the inn back there,” said Kyrem, “they will be hard put to catch up with us afoot.”

  They pressed the pace a little. But they could not ride long or late with Kyrem still so weak. And the next day, as they threaded their way down the rocky valleys of the foothills, an arrow flew at them from some distant thornwoods, barely missing them, parting the air between them with a rush. As Omber leapt forward in response to their panic, another flew just behind his haunches, and as they fled, another fell to the track at their feet.

  “Bowels of Suth!” Kyrem muttered, having learned blasphemy from black mentors.

  They rode as long and hard as they were able, camped in secrecy with no fire, rose early to ride again. Each day, as Kyrem grew stronger, they made more miles, and for a while there were no more incidents.

  By the time Seda was over her flux and had secretly discarded the old tunic, Kyrem had mostly regained his former fettle. Once again he took his place as rightful rider of his steed, and once again Seda rode behind him. Though she was not as timid with him as she once had been, she felt too timid to speak her mind about this arrangement. It was his horse after all.

  They had come far down the foothills; they would soon be in Avedon. All but two or three of the cursing demons had deserted them. But those few reminded them constantly of danger and the enemies and misfortune that had followed them thus far.

  “Die! Die! Devan dogs!”

  In Avedon there would be safety for Kyrem, Seda felt sure. All the energy of her will was bent toward bringing him safely there. Kyrem also pressed on toward Avedon, but with a different feeling, not thinking of safety and hardly thinking he would ever actually arrive. The journey had become its own reality to him.

  “There it is!” Seda exclaimed, and Kyrem stared, unbelieving.

  Atop the breast of the last soft foothill, they looked down on Auron’s city. It seemed all white and brilliant, sparkling gemmily in the strong Vashtin sunlight. City walls, spiral towers, stately buildings were white-plastered and ornamented with mosaics, some of them, Seda had heard, made of real semiprecious stones; they blazed in the sunshine, and beyond the city stood a blaze of red, the flamelike trees of the sacred grove. They marched up the sides of the flat-topped promontory called Atar-Vesth, the place of fire, and they surrounded the spring of Suth whence sprang the welling river, Ril Acaltha. Mirrorlike, blinding bright in the light, it looped and spiraled clear around the city, winding its way under narrow bridges, rimmed with yellow sand.… And flowers: the yellow flowers that gave the river its name, and other flowers, tall spires of red, pillows and froths of white and blue and pink—every terrace was bordered with flowers. The red land was all done up in such terraces to either side of the river, with troughs and buckets always working to bring the water up. Avedon fed on the Ril Acaltha.

  “Look,” Seda said. “The r
ed-tiled roof—that is the temple.” Where the priests of Suth read the great charts and kept the horses at the sacred stable. “And the gold dome—that is King Auron’s dwelling.” At the very center of the city, amid all the glitter, and outshining it all.

  “I must be out of my mind,” Kyrem said abruptly. He backed Omber until the court city vanished like a vision behind the crest of the hill. Then he wheeled his horse and headed at a canter back up into the foothills, toward the wilderness and its sheltering woods.

  “What is the matter?” Seda asked, startled.

  “I can’t go in there! I look like a beggar!”

  He was variously put together with pieces of looted gear and clothing borrowed from dead men. He had a black-enameled helm that rose to a stubby point, and he had a belt, his long knife and a curving sword. He was thin, but he had his strength back; he looked dangerous and lean. Seda sniffed at him.

  “No one would ever take you for a beggar,” she told him, “and especially not on Omber.”

  “Omber needs grooming,” Kyrem muttered. He had dismounted and was poking about the woods with a fixed intensity of expression but with no purpose that the girl could divine. She slipped off the horse in her turn.

  “Whatever are you looking for?”

  “Isn’t there a sort of bush that makes black dye?”

  “Yes, it grows by streams. But what …” She broke off and stopped where she stood, her hands on her narrow hips and her bony elbows pointing out to either side, weaponlike. “Ky Crazy,” she stated, “we are not going to stay in this wood for another minute! Something has been hunting you for weeks, and now, half a mile from safety, you take it into your head to decide you want matching clothes!”

  “You’ve grown louder since I’ve known you,” Kyrem remarked.

  “You are out of your mind if you spend another night away from Avedon.”

  “For all I know, the one who is trying to kill me sits on the throne in Avedon.”

  “I keep telling you,” she shouted, “King Auron is not like that!”

  “How would you know?” he retorted, and he turned on her in harsh, unwilling anger. “Damn it, Seda, I have come weeks on a starving journey to a place I hate and fear, harried like a rabbit by Suth knows who or what, some malevolent, faceless enemy—damn it! I can’t just walk in there like someone coming to pay a morning visit!” He stood breathing raggedly. “Twelve brave men lie dead between here and Deva,” he added, more quietly but more fiercely. “Don’t you understand?”

  “All right. I’ll help you dye your mourning!” She threw up her small, twiggy hands and marched off downhill, toward where she judged a rivulet might run. “Don’t expect to sleep,” she added sharply over her shoulder. Until then she had taken the main burden of nighttime watching, reasoning that Kyrem was mending and needed his rest. Until then.

  They found the plant, made their small camp, stripped the needed bark and placed it in a kettle of water to boil, all in silence. There was nothing to eat and no pot to cook it in. Seda shrugged and sat by the fire. Kyrem scowled.

  Three mocking voices sounded in the dusk. “Where’s your mother?” one neighed. “Where’s your lover?” chanted the second. “Bastard! Bastard!” the third one cried.

  “That’s right, demons dear,” said Kyrem morosely. “Curse me all you like. Here I sit, hungry, twelve comrades dead on my account, called mad by the one remaining”—he cocked a sour eye at Seda—“attended by flapping monsters, sent off into unknown peril by the command of a father who probably uses me more than loves me—” He stopped.

  “You think your father has betrayed you into danger?” Seda asked, astonished.

  Kyrem jumped up and paced, as if to outstrip his anger. “It is hard to say,” he hedged. “He chose me out of the dozen of us, and I am not the eldest—he would never send his eldest son, the heir, on such an errand. Nor am I the youngest, or the cleverest, or—or anything. He sent for me and told me without a word of explanation that I was to go as hostage to Deva, without encouragement or sorrow or emotion of any kind. That is his way, and I should be accustomed to it by now, but I can’t help feeling like … like an outcast.”

  Though they had shared much in the course of their journey, he had not yet shared so much of himself with her, and she felt all the honor of it. Instantly peace was made, anger forgotten and only empathy left. She knew that outcast feeling well. “Surely your mother was sorrowful to see you go,” she said anxiously.

  “I have no mother.” He laughed at her expression, the warm laugh of a friend and equal. “It is true! We princes are all bastards. The king sows his seed where he will, that is the custom, and he brings home his choice of the crop. We boys were all raised together in a big barracks.”

  “So that is what you meant,” Seda said. “What you and the others told me that first day.”

  “That we were all bastards? That was part of it.” He sat beside her again. “It’s a sort of joke also, the Devan way of saying that we are none of us any too sweet. Devans are a tolerant folk.”

  He was forever extolling Devans. That was his inner defense, Seda guessed in a quick rush of insight. There was a vulnerability about him she had not seen before.… He stood up and unlaced his shirt, preparing to place it in the dye pot, and the girl turned away from the sight of his strong, naked shoulders, feeling a thrill she refused to acknowledge or admit to.

  “Seda,” said Kyrem rather suddenly, “have you ever thought of looking for that twin you think you have?”

  Odd that he should mention that scarcely remembered other. Odd; since her flux she had felt for the first time that absence, that lack, like an ache or an empty place, like hunger.

  “Your brother whom you have never known.”

  Sister. She had told him something of herself during their weeks together, but not the secret that troubled her the most. Her young breasts were swelling, a development she noted with dismay; she bound them sternly beneath her rough shirt so that he would not feel them against his back as they rode. She was still a boy to him.

  “Do you think you might be a Devan? You somewhat resemble the nomadic folk I have sometimes seen in Ra’am.”

  Ra’am was his father’s capital city, with its walls of yellow clay. Thinking of herself, of her sister, of hidden parts and secret feelings, full of confusion, she did not answer. But he was used to her silences. Noticing nothing amiss, he began to groom his horse.

  “High polish for you, old nuisance,” he said to the steed softly, “for in the morning we’ll be riding you into Avedon.”

  “I’ll walk,” said Seda, and Kyrem looked at her in surprise. “I am a shuntali to everyone except you,” she explained. “They could kill me for sitting on a horse.”

  “But how can they know,” Kyrem asked, “if you do not tell them?”

  “They’ll know.” The question seemed nonsensical to her. She fully believed that her taint, her unworthiness, was manifest in every aspect of her being as plainly as if it had been branded in black glyphs on her forehead.

  “May your breasts droop!” a voice whinnied from the darkness, and Kyrem roared with laughter, not knowing that such nonsense made her wince.

  Chapter Six

  Shirt and tunic and short cloak and trousers were dyed a rusty black and hung up on prickly bushes to dry. Girl and youth kept watch that night or dozed uneasily, but no danger threatened them, and they arose with relief at dawn. The city gates would not open until sunrise or later.

  “I hope they have something to eat in there,” Kyrem muttered as they waited. “Ride with me,” he urged when it was time.

  She shook her head again. “I will walk.” And he knew better than to coax her; the lad could be very stubborn in her quiet way.

  “Well.…” He vaulted onto Omber and stroked the steed’s neck, gaining courage. Then somehow, subtly, he transformed himself into the Prince. Seda knew his power as a person, his innate magic, his gift, but for the first time she sensed the power of his rank and his office. Stra
ight and sober, all in black, sword at his side, black hair curling from under his black helm, he sent the splendid blue-black horse forward at the slow and collected ceremonial walk. The hostage rode forth to meet his fate. In a moment he would crest the last rise and ride down into Avedon—

  “Game ho!” a voice shouted, the cry of a hunter who sights his quarry.

  And arrows flew at them from several directions. One clanged against Kyrem’s helm, and one pinned his cloak to his shoulder from behind, striking the bone beneath the skin; for a moment he was almost blind with pain. Some swished beneath Omber’s belly and through the grass at Seda’s feet.

  “Come on, Seda!” Kyrem called, turning and offering her his hand to pull her onto the horse with him. But her thought was different. “Ride, Ky!” she shouted at the same instant, and she gave Omber a fierce swat on the rump with her palm to send him plunging forward. Then she scurried back toward the shelter of the thicket they had just left. Omber’s rush carried Kyrem over the rise toward the safety of Avedon. Or so Seda hoped.

  Kyrem let Omber run as far as the first bridge, then drew him to a halt, cursing. The few peasants who were about scattered at the sight of him, for a man on a horse was an omen, awful, a harbinger of war. And the black horse was the darkest omen, the worst. The blue roan, black of skin, not much better.… Kyrem laid his head on Omber’s neck and tried to think.

  Wounded. What might they be doing to Seda? Raise the garrison of the city, hundred men or more, go find the boy—obstinate pride stirred. For all he knew, those within the walls were his enemies as well. And they were Vashtins, they would care little for him, and for the shuntali even less. Painfully he sat up and reached around to where the arrow jutted, removed it with a jerk, letting the blood flow down and soak his black clothing. He would have to find Seda himself.

  And to do that he would have to circle around behind the lines of his unseen enemies. Hills hid him for the time.… He turned Omber and set off northward at the canter, following the yellow verge of the river. From the topmost tower of Avedon a watchman studied him curiously until he vanished around a curve of the terraced land.