Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  “How am I to know?” Seda shrugged extravagantly. “You know I do not sleep here. To be sure, I checked on you from time to time. I rejoiced when I found that the fever had broken.”

  Kyrem stared at her for a moment longer, still unsmiling, before he turned away with a shrug of his own, a shrug rendered mercifully free of pain. He went slowly to the washstand and picked up the coins that still lay there, fingered them briefly and then slipped them into his leathern scrip.

  Chapter Nine

  “Seda, you stink, boy,” he said to her a few days later. “Don’t you ever bathe?”

  She hung her head, blushing. “I can’t,” she whispered. “There is no—nowhere in those barracks—”

  No privacy. Servants were expected to go down and bathe in the river, where a section was set aside for men and one for women. Kyrem laughed, for he had noted his lad’s modesty on their journey hither, a modesty that assorted well enough with Seda’s soft voice and quiet ways. Indeed, he could hardly picture the lad bathing in the river, under so much open sky. His laughter quieted, and he thought.

  “Barracks,” he said softly, feeling a sudden surge of homesickness. “By the sound of it, just what I am used to. This room is far too quiet for me. Seda, let us bring a bath up for me, and you take it.”

  She stared at him, and he laughed again.

  “Oh, I’ll keep out of your way, never fear. I’ll take your place down below.”

  “Ky!” She sounded incredulous.

  “I am quite serious. Come, show me where we get the water.”

  He was both enthusiastic and adamant, and within a few hours it was done. Seda had bathed herself, hair and all, wrapped herself warmly and settled into Kyrem’s soft, swinging bed. For once her poor young breasts need not be bound—such a soft bed, a bed like an embrace. And Kyrem was stretched on Seda’s harder bunk down below amid many bunks, feeling clever and content.

  “You Devans are a peculiar folk,” a servant said to him. “Do you often change places with your varlets?”

  “Yes,” Kyrem replied promptly. “It is traditional.” He flexed his feet and stretched luxuriously, feeling very much at home, and the others accepted this in him and talked before him freely. He lay and listened to the chatter. The doorman was a cuckold, but he did some wenching of his own. Nasr Yamut made a veritable devil of a master. But all good and no evil was said of King Auron.

  “Tomorrow is the eve of the summer solstice,” Auron told Kyrem some several days later. “Time for the king to take a bride by the traditional reckoning, but you know I have none, so every year at this time an oracle is done for me, as at other times. And there are the usual festivities, bowers and bonfires, and the parade of sacred horses, which I must review. Will you stand by me?”

  Kyrem nodded with the faint beginnings of a smile.

  “You would not take it amiss,” Auron continued, “if I found you some more elaborate clothing?”

  “No,” Kyrem said, “I would not take it amiss.”

  “I do not go to the fires and the dancing,” said Auron. “I seldom go anywhere lest I should endanger my dearly beloved heels.” He sounded more whimsical than bitter. “But you can go of course. I am sure your friends among the servantry would be glad of your company.”

  Kyrem glanced at him sharply, but he found no censure or mockery in Auron’s tone or face.

  So it was that the following afternoon he stood beside Auron on the portico of Auron’s gold-domed palace, looking down over the railings into the crowded street below. He wore a brocaded tunic and a tabard of velvet and a cloak of the Devan royal hue, dusky purple, which was flung back and fastened with a brooch of gold; he wore chamois breeches and boots of soft tooled leather, also gilded; he wore bands of gold that spiraled up his powerful arms, and a ceremonial sword too fine for any battlefield, and a tallish red cap with a tuft of feathers at one side. Auron’s seven-colored robes were of brocade, and he wore his usual crown and buskins. Kyrem towered over him, fidgeting and feeling awkward, suspecting that his finery had been made especially for him, for none of it bore any of the embroidered emblems or talismans customary in all Vashtin clothing.

  “We don’t want the steeds to outshine us,” said Auron.

  The crowd parted and began to arrange itself along the sides of the street, and in a moment Kyrem saw what Auron meant as the horses came through.

  The priests who led them wore only their usual robes of the single color, plain and unadorned. But the horses were in glorious caparison: headstalls of peacock blue or scarlet leather sparkling with gold or semiprecious gems and with plumes of the simurgh, folk said, floating and bobbing above their clipped ears; mane and forelock all braided with beads and bright ribbons, ribbon rosettes on their cheeks. And then the great leather poitrels around their shoulders, studded with gold and with gold talismans hanging down to ward off evil. And then fastened to it a sort of garment too ornate and useless to be called a blanket, heavily embroidered and hung with tassels, and more tassels hung from the headgear and lead rope, and tassels danced at the fetlocks, and tails streamed with braids and ribbons, and even the hooves shone with black lacquer, clattering against the brick and tile of the roadway. All the flutter and glitter combined with the motion of the mottled steeds to make Kyrem blink dizzily. As usual, the horses were curveting and prancing dangerously, barely under the control of those who led them. They circled and blundered sidelong into the throng that lined the street. Screams arose as the crowd surged and struggled to avoid them.

  “Someone is going to get hurt,” Kyrem told Auron softly.

  “Someone always does. It is supposed to be rather an honor, being kicked by a sacred steed,” Auron said softly in reply. “And often they have to be brought to the palace to be healed.”

  Kyrem looked at him. He did not seem to be joking, but a wry edge was in his voice.

  The epigones came first and the flamens, blue and red, leading the lesser horses, those with the least spotting and mottling of white and divers colors. Caparisons grew ever more splendid as the procession of forty-nine went on, the garments of the horses layered and intricately cut, the headstalls ever more heavily laden with tassels and talismans. Finally came the three epopts in green, their splotched and spotted steeds draped in leopard skins, and last of all, Nasr Yamut, resplendent in yellow, shining like the sun, in fact, with his white-headed favorite fitted out in a massive jeweled poitrel from which sprang, one on each shoulder, large flame-shaped wings of red satin limned with thread of gold. The fire-master stood for a moment in front of the palace, bowing gravely to Auron and Kyrem as his steed shook its head and reared, fluttering the false wings, sending red shimmers flying—a gasp murmured through the throng. Then he walked past, and the crowd closed in behind him.

  “Now onward they go to the place of oracle, the paddock,” said Auron. “But the people may not follow them there.” He sounded tired.

  “Will they let all the horses run?” Kyrem asked hopefully.

  “No, only two or three. As the god guides them. But certainly Nasr Yamut’s beauty.” Auron sounded wry again. He went in to sit and stare as was his wont, and Kyrem went to change out of his grand clothes. Then, on impulse, he fetched Omber from the empty stable and rode him far out into the countryside, letting him gallop as long as he liked.

  Every two or three days Kyrem and Seda had been changing places that she could bathe, and he had come to know the servants well and know their ways and skills and the back passages they used. So it was that on the day of the summer solstice, the day after the processional of sacred steeds, he walked softly along a narrow serving-way toward a back entry that gave on the street nearest the stable. He was still within the palace and thinking of Omber when very near to him he heard Nasr Yamut’s voice.

  “I tell you, my king, beware.” That intense voice. Kyrem could not mistake it. But where could the priest be speaking to Auron then, and why?

  “The auguries were unmistakable,” Nasr Yamut went on. “Your reign is
nearing its end, and a usurper will take your throne.”

  A small serving portal stood close at hand. Kyrem eased it open a trifle and peered through the crack. It gave on the dome room, the audience chamber, and Kyrem’s mouth came open, for he had never before seen Auron sit in state.

  The rounded interior of the room was finished in gilded filigree and bright tile and velvet hangings, but Kyrem knew that. He had not known about the footbearers. Auron sat on the high golden throne, his head above that of the priest who stood before him, and his buskins sat on their own stand of carved ebony at his side, perched as if ready to take flight with their leathern wings. But Auron’s feet did not touch the parquet and tile of the dais, for two of the most comely damsels Kyrem had ever seen held them in their laps. The girls were dressed in flowing, filmy robes of white, and they were redheads with alabaster skins, as alike as twins, although they could not have been twins in Vashti. Auron seemed not to notice them in the least, for all that they held his feet. His eyes were fixed on Nasr Yamut, and in some way he seemed larger than Kyrem had thought him before.

  Suddenly ashamed of his spying—though every child and servant in every royal household survives by spying, and Kyrem had done it often enough when he was small—he started to ease the door closed. But then the mention of his own name froze him in place, and he listened.

  “Usurper?” Auron was saying mildly. “Are you sure this is not just another way of indicating that I have no heir?”

  “The signs were strong and dark for enmity, Sire,” Nasr Yamut replied. “And you know Prince Kyrem bears you no love.”

  Kyrem scowled and bristled at that, surprised at his own anger. He felt the more surprised at Auron’s reply.

  “Prince Kyrem is an honorable youth.”

  “He has sneered at you openly, my king!”

  “He was sent here with no explanation and no regard for his own wishes and no promise of reward. What do you expect from him except hostility? He makes no secret of his feelings; he is all honesty. And I have never scorned honesty, Nasr Yamut.” Auron cocked a keen eye at the priest.

  “He may make a very honest usurper then!” Nasr Yamut exclaimed. “Send him away, Sire.”

  “There is no such thing as an honest usurper,” said Auron quite without heat. “Moreover, Prince Kyrem has a generous heart.”

  “Him? That haughty Devan?”

  “The very same.” Auron sounded faintly amused. “If he is sometimes arrogant, it is because he feels … needful, I think. There was little enough nurture in his rearing.”

  Kyrem listened in increasing astonishment, and Nasr Yamut’s ardor grew in proportion.

  “You are far too kind, Sire. You have always been so, to your own disservice. Prince Kyrem means you no good. Already, even without the aid of the oracle, I can see the beginnings of his scheming. He has grown familiar with the lower classes, those who are most likely to serve him without compunction. He rides a horse openly, and all the poor and uneducated folk look up to him with awe. Even the well-born youths admire him. He is young, handsome, he makes free of your city—”

  “And worse than all that, he is a Devan, and Devans do not hold priests in such high regard as we do here.” Auron’s voice had become suddenly stern; Kyrem stiffened at the sound of it. And the king’s gaze—Auron’s eyes seemed to flicker with an unearthly light, colorless and all colors, light as of the statue’s deadly jewel, the third eye of Suth. That eerie stare held the priest as motionless as if he were pinned in place by an invisible weapon. “The truth, Nasr Yamut, if you please,” said Auron grimly.

  The fire-master licked dry lips. “He blasphemes everything we honor,” he whispered.

  “To your way of thinking. What else?”

  Nasr Yamut winced and wriggled, trying to escape, but he could not break free from the force of Auron’s stare.

  “Prince Kyrem possesses an immense gift for power,” he blurted at last. “His whole body is crisp with it, but he does not yet know himself and the usages of it. Please, my king, send him away before he learns.”

  Kyrem stood incredulous. He could not believe he possessed any power comparable to that which he was witnessing. Nasr Yamut sweated where he stood. And he had thought the king a fop, and the priest a man!

  “Certainly you will be the last one to teach him.” Auron sounded amused again. “All right, Nasr Yamut. The exact content of the oracle, if you please.”

  The priest was allowed to lower his eyes at last. He looked at the exquisitely tiled floor as he spoke. “A short running for the shortness of your remaining reign, my king,” he said, his voice shaking. “And a strong neigh for a strong new ruler. And much kicking.”

  “That last might signify you priests,” Auron said. “All right, Nasr Yamut. You may go.”

  The man looked up. “Good my sire, everything in me abhors this prince! I beg you—”

  “Is that why you have befriended him so prettily, helping him to while away the days, because you abhor him?” Auron interrupted. “Go.”

  Auron had not moved from his place, had not moved so much as a finger, and there was not a retainer in sight. But Nasr Yamut turned and went at once, in haste. Power was in that command beyond his reckoning.

  And Kyrem stood thinking how that power could have been used against him at any time, and how it had been withheld. He stood for a moment gathering courage, and then he pushed open the door. He strode across the dome room, a long crossing, and stood before the dais and throne, at Auron’s feet, looking up at the king.

  “I heard,” he said.

  Auron gazed back at him, saying nothing, showing nothing.

  “I have not listened before, nor did I intend to this time,” Kyrem said. “I happened by. I hope you believe me, King of Vashti.”

  Auron smiled slightly at that. “I can tell when people are lying,” he said, “and you have never lied to me, Prince. Not even in kindness.”

  Kyrem winced. “Least of all in kindness.” He forced himself to continue to meet Auron’s eyes, those wise, sleepy eyes, and he gestured toward the main door. “There went one whom I had thought was perhaps my friend.” He turned back to the throne. “And here sits one whom I had thought was certainly my enemy.”

  Auron smiled and shrugged, reached for his buskins, put them on and sent the footbearers away with a wave of his hand. “Nasr Yamut is not an evil man,” he said. “I do not think he would knife you in the dark. He plays at politics, that is all. And he understands power just enough to fear it in others, not in himself.”

  “And he fears me? That is laughable,” Kyrem said.

  Auron looked at him quizzically but did not reply. He descended the steps of his dais, teetering on the buskins, and came to stand beside his hostage and guest.

  “I have had word,” he said, “from the patrol I sent out.”

  Kyrem sensed the news that was coming—from the tone of Auron’s voice, or by some other sense? He kept silence and waited.

  “Three men returned. All the others were killed, they say. And they made it no more than halfway up the mountainside toward Kimiel.”

  “Killed? By what? Or whom?”

  “Arrows and misfortunes.” Auron paused long enough to remove the crown from his head and tuck it under his arm. “Kyrem, if you are ready,” he said, “I really think it is time that we talked.”

  Chapter Ten

  The odd thing, Auron thought, was that Nasr Yamut’s oracle might be in some sense inspired.

  He and Kyrem had settled into chairs in the king’s small personal chamber, and the prince faced him without speaking, waiting to hear what Auron had to say. So, how to begin.…

  “What are these powers of yours, Kyrem,” he asked, “of which Nasr Yamut thinks so poorly?”

  The prince arched his dark brows, taken by surprise. “Only the usual ones,” he answered.

  How the youth underrated himself. Auron wanted only that he should see his own prowess. “What are they?” he persisted.

  “Well,�
�� said Kyrem, “in Deva …” He was not boasting this time, only telling Auron the truth as he saw it. “In Deva, one who wishes to be called a warrior must be able to command an untamed stallion colt to bend the knee and bow before him. He must be able to stand immobile, with his feet in a ditch, armed only with a blackthorn stick, and fend off the shafts of nine spearmen who let fly at him in concert from a distance of nine paces. If he does wrong, he must speak truth of it and take the blow that follows, and he must lead the chase of his fellows across the steppes and escape them, and he must starve himself on the steppes until he meets his genius and understands his name.”

  His genius, his personal spirit, living emblem. Kyrem’s would have been that old phallic deity, genius of fertility. “And these many things you have done,” Auron stated.

  “Yes.” All pride was kept out of that word.

  “Most remarkable,” Auron murmured. “Well … what do you know of me, Kyrem? Of my powers?”

  The prince moistened his lips, sensing that the tests of Auron’s boyhood had been quite different from those he had just named. “You are a healer,” he said.

  “Only at close range. I have to touch. There have been kings of Vashti who could heal with a thought.”

  “And you read thoughts.”

  “Again, only at close range.”

  “Your servants say you are just and good, and I have not observed otherwise.”

  “I try. I feel a great responsibility.” Auron leaned forward slightly, preparing himself for a disclosure. “I am mother and father, spirit and nurse and nurturer of this land, Kyrem. I am not merely man or merely king. I am all things, all colors, all emblems, all hopes, and being so, I am no thing, neither mare nor stallion but more like the mule that is neither mare nor ass.” Auron spoke without bitterness, lightly even, but as he spoke, he willed Kyrem to understand, and Kyrem understood. The king was not speaking in symbols merely, but meant exactly what he said.

  “You are—part woman?”

  “An androgyne. Yes.”

  Kyrem stared, his feelings teetering between reverence and horror. What Auron had just said was abomination, a blasphemy, unnatural, as was the offspring of horse and ass, but like all things unclean and untouchable, it was also awesome. Kyrem could scarcely draw breath to speak.