Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  “I’ll wager you have not yet tried. Focus your mind on Avedon, and see.”

  Kyrem’s gaze grew faraway and his smile faded. “Yes, I see,” he murmured after a long moment. “But Nasr Yamut is sitting on your throne—how can that be?”

  “Not my throne any longer. Yours. I have left it, and all my powers are gone.” Auron stood up, and though he had said his powers had left him, he looked leaner and stronger and keener of eye than Kyrem had ever seen him. “King of Vashti, are you well enough to ride?”

  For a moment the title took Kyrem’s breath away. But then he remembered that titles were only words after all. He arose and went to Omber, silently offering the sharing of the steed to his mentor and adoptive father. Kyrillos and his retainers started gathering up food and gear.

  “I will not be a king who sits in the palace and wears buskins,” Kyrem said very gently to Auron.

  “No, I should think not!” Auron laughed softly, seeming wry but not at all affronted. “I should think not. And I believe the people are ready for the change,” he added. “They admire you and will accept you, but for the priests. And it is time and past time that we dealt with the priests.”

  All was ready. Kyrillos and his six men strode to their horses. Kyrem managed to scramble onto Omber, then reached down to help Auron up behind him. Kyrillos seemed to be waiting for something—the king of Vashti was to ride in the fore. Swallowing once, then lifting his head, Kyrem led the company off toward Avedon.

  But before they had left the clearing, a dark shadow fell over the group and a familiar black monster flew overhead, its feathers whistling, the sound of mockery. “Curse you! Curse you all!” it cried, then swirled away.

  Kyrem followed it keenly with his gaze. “So,” he murmured, “the curse is not yet off the land.”

  “No.” Auron spoke from just behind his shoulder. “The agent of it has died, but his minions live on. And the curse itself has long since been pronounced with power.”

  The curse of war.

  “Then how is it,” Kyrem asked, “that you can say there will be no more fighting, Auron?”

  “Why, we will have to negate it, lad.”

  They rode away toward Avedon, and from its perch in the cave, an owl watched them go, and from the shelter of an evergreen laurel, other eyes watched them also, feral eyes, until they had rounded the mountain peak and dipped out of sight westward.

  After they were gone, a nameless creature of the wild lived on the mountaintop alone. Small, hunchbacked and twisted, it dragged itself about on all fours and scratched for worms and grubs to eat, or gulped the occasional toad or newt. Remnants of skirt trailed after it, looking like bedraggled blue quills. The creature drank at the stream and would not go into the cave; it slept on the open ground in the chill that increased nightly. Yellow autumn moon waxed from crescent to full and waned halfway to crescent again. The creature found little to eat but made no sound, except once when it crawled down to the stream for water and glanced up at a darkening sky and saw the yellow moon. “Araah!” it cried out into the night, an echoing, animal cry. “Araah!” at the heedless moon. But then it drank and slept and did not cry out again.

  When the creature awoke in the dim dusk of that dawn, a dark circle had formed around it. Black-winged demons to the number of a dozen or more stood there, stolid on their ridiculous hooves, their equine heads turned toward her in curiosity. What did they want, she wondered. She was not their master, that she should speak to them. She lay motionless, watching them, until after sunrise, and they waited patiently for her. Finally she stirred and crawled toward the laurel thicket beyond them, intent on something to eat, and their ring parted before her, but then they crowded after her. All day they followed her about, hopping along on their black hooves and fluttering their wings to keep balance, occasionally banging their noses when the weight of their heads caused them difficulties. They did not curse or mock; they seemed almost diffident, like uneasy children.

  Something odd stirred in the girl-creature as evening drew on, and she crawled up onto the hummock above the cave to watch the sun set over Vashti. The horse-birds could not manage the slope with their clumsy hooves and had to fly up in order to keep her company. They arranged themselves in ranks behind her and sat quietly.

  The sunset was spectacular, magnificent over foothills crowned with copper leaf of thorn. Golden light—memory was more feeling than thought, feeling of the golden-domed dwelling in Avedon.… And great orange plumes of cloud floated across the western sky—lifted wings above a crimson heart, a wounded breast, of sun that shot out a single ray of brilliant yellow into the blue dome of sky. Cloud shifted, caught the yellow light … the watching creature blinked, dreaming for a moment that she had seen a blue and yellow eye and the down-curved beak of a great bird. She had. Snake of lightning shot across the western sky, and with thunder sound, the simurgh flew toward her. On wings of flame.

  It did not grow larger, coming nearer, for it was already as big as the sky; it merely condensed, like mist of cloud becoming droplet clear, every feather jewel clear and translucent, shining. Breast of ruby red and crest of yellow and yellow beak and great orange flares of wings. No, it was not a jewel bird, the girl-creature sensed; it was a bird of fire, sunset fire, crystalline fire, and the incredible plumes streaming from crest and tail, and the sheen of red wattles, red fiery flesh of head and blue eye.… It carried in its beak a small chalk-white snake that wriggled fiercely. But as it reached the mountaintop, it smashed the head of the snake against red rock and popped the silenced reptile into the gaping mouth of the waiting creature as if she were no more than a nestling.

  She gulped it down at once. Food was food. But she felt it burning its way down her gullet and into her belly, and the earth beneath her clawlike hands and crippled shins seemed to soften, flesh of the Mare Mother, her only mother, answering her touch with warm touch, embrace. And in the bare mountaintop blackthorn trees she heard birds, and she understood their chatter, heard them telling the names of the insects they had eaten that day and the business of their families.

  The simurgh threw back its crested head and gave forth with a harsh, brazen cry. Dazzled, the girl-creature saw that the inside of its mouth was the same cerulean blue as its eye. And she understood its cry. Your father was the last of the Old Ones, the simurgh had cried.

  “Is that why you fed me?” the girl-creature asked softly. She spoke no language of men, not then. She spoke a wordless language, her query a soft whimper, and the simurgh understood, as she had understood its cry.

  Perhaps. Your blood is impure, but it runs strong. The simurgh shifted and settled its feathers, sending up spearheads of light so that folk in the lowlands thought there was a conflagration on the mountaintop, fire to rival the vanishing sunset. It threw back its huge head and cried again. I fed the Old One sometimes. But he did not worship me aright. He was full of spleen.

  The girl-creature understood about her father in a creaturely sense, that he had been and was gone. She did not understand in any human sense, to ask, Who was he? She merely said, “You have no one to worship you any longer then.”

  It is of no consequence. I was here before men, before Mare Mother. I was here, sky was here, and long after men and land are gone, I shall fly.

  “What is it that you want of me?” the girl-creature asked.

  Learn, grow, heal.

  She grimaced, for she also was full of spleen, and she felt too hateful to even hear the name of healing. “Is that all?” she asked, a hard edge of irony in her wordless voice. “Nothing more?”

  For now, nothing more.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the arid heat of the lowland Vashtin autumn, Kyrem returned to Avedon. He held Omber to the slow, prancing, ceremonial trot as he traversed the streets. Auron had dismounted at the gate and walked beside him, serene in his commonplace state, a vessel of power no longer. Kyrillos and his retainers rode behind. All the people in the streets turned and watched intently, seeing Kyre
m, seeing Auron, and a power stirred in the city, its own power, as the news ran.

  At the palace gate the doorkeeper welcomed his former master and the prince with a smile. “I am supposed to ask you what is your business,” he told them.

  “Such impudence merits no answer,” Kyrem snapped. “Auron is still master of this dwelling. Let us pass.”

  “No, in fact, I am not,” said Auron to Kyrem. “You are, by my express will. So go in.”

  Kyrem strode past the doorkeeper, and the man stood aside, his smile broadening. Auron followed. Kyrillos and his retainers stayed outside the household walls, tending Omber and waiting. Within, the servants watched as Kyrem and Auron walked straight to the dome room. There they found a phenomenon much of the sort they expected.

  Nasr Yamut awaited them, sitting firm on the throne. He had put off his priestly robes and wore the multicolored robes and jewels of the Vashtin king. Footbearers attended him, and a pair of winged buskins perched on the ebony stand at his side. On his shaven head rested the crown.

  “I will not make you kneel,” Nasr Yamut said, “as you are both of rank, or former rank.”

  “Get off that throne.” Kyrem strode forward, letting his anger lend him force, put power in his voice. But Nasr Yamut kept his place.

  “Yonder king is a king no more,” he said. “He has abdicated his position, thrown aside the bonds of his office, abandoned his responsibilities. He is a renegade and a blasphemer.”

  “That last is for Suth to decide, is it not?” Auron replied in the quiet voice of an ordinary man. “I have abdicated, it is true. And if you have examined my documents of state, you will have discovered that I appointed an heir, who stands here with us.”

  Servants were quietly gathering along the filigree walls of the room, listening.

  “So, it is for your own sake that you want this throne.” Nasr Yamut turned a glittering look on Kyrem, jewel-hard and glittering.

  “I want to keep a vulture off it, nothing more,” Kyrem said, his tone not loud but forceful. “Stand down before I remove you bodily.”

  “Carefully, Prince, carefully,” said the former priest in a voice poison-smooth. “The throne itself lends me power, and I have some of my own, as you know. Back away, before you are destroyed.”

  “Not likely,” Auron remarked. Something in that offhand statement gave Nasr Yamut pause, for Auron was not one to speak emptily. He stared, glancing from prince to former king, and his voice grew shrill.

  “I have those who will fight for me!”

  A small stir sounded as Kyrillos entered the dome room and came over to report to his son.

  “Several hues of priest are lining up out there,” he said in carefully level tones, “with clubs and pitchforks and the like. Some bear more war-worthy weapons.”

  “Well then,” came a new voice, “we will have to fight also, for our proper master.” It was the doorman. Other servants looked at him and nodded, and most of the men among them went out.

  “Shall I order a charge?” Kyrillos asked. Kyrem shook his head.

  “Go, watch and wait.” And his father nodded and left.

  “In no way can you succeed, Nasr Yamut,” Kyrem said, turning to the priest on the throne. “Your followers may amass without, but I will prevail within.” He mounted the steps to the dais, towering over the seated man, and power of his will and his wrath filled him, making him seem both luminous and enormous. The two footbearers looked up at him and hastily abandoned their post, hurrying away. Nasr Yamut’s stockinged feet dropped with a small thud to the platform.

  “Get up.”

  The priest rose, standing awkwardly in the confined space between prince and throne, but his eyes did not admit defeat. They stared up at Kyrem’s, still venomous. “My men are under orders,” he said, “to attack if you force me from this dwelling against my will. There will be a slaughter.”

  “Your men will take the worst of it,” Kyrem said. “Men on foot are no match for Devan chargers.”

  But he knew at once that Nasr Yamut did not care about the well-being of his priests, did not care how many of them fell if their bloodshed brought him a martyr’s sort of skewed vindication. The tiled streets of Avedon would run red with blood on the fire-master’s account, and the white plaster of the houses be splattered with it. Kyrem thought of his father and his six retainers waiting there outside. They were warriors, they would fend for themselves, but what of the smiling doorman and the servants? He looked with his mind’s eye. Kyrillos sat his steed with weapon drawn, every sense alert, the servants ranked by him. Worse and worse—scores of townspeople were lining up for battle as well, some siding with the priests but most opposing them. The brightly colored robes of the priests fluttered like pennons in a warm breeze, and the brightly colored clothing of the Vashtin townsfolk bedecked the crowded streets. It might have been a scene of festive gaiety had its purpose not been so grim.

  Only lately Kyrem had first killed a man, and he had not enjoyed it. Bloodshed had been no more appropriate on the holy mountain than it would be in Avedon.… He brought his gaze back to the traitorous priest before him, knowing how he hated the man, how he would like to punish him. He thought of that, and then he sighed.

  “What do you want?” he asked Nasr Yamut.

  There are three types of magic, the simurgh was telling the girl-creature. The Vashtin magic, which is pitiful, all fear, and the Devan magic of vitality and will, which is potent, a good magic. But the mightiest magic is the earth magic of the Old Ones.

  She scratched for grubs all the while, scarcely listening, and the horse-birds hopped around her, now and then giving forth with a curse.

  You who are nameless, you own this magic, the simurgh said, and the creature of the wilds stopped her grubbing to stare up at the luminous firebird that had adopted her.

  Have you not felt your own power, little one? the simurgh asked. You who have nothing, all the numina are at one with you, or you with them. You are a feral being, at one with earth. You are earth, and the huge power of earth is in you. Listen.

  She listened. Black demons surrounded her, still looking to her as chicks looked to the hen. “Curse you,” they chanted. “Curse Vashti, curse Deva. Dung of Suth.” But the human words sounded like nothing more than the cawing of ravens to the creature of the wilds, and in that cawing and croaking she heard the wordless meaning.

  Oh, my poor body! This horrible, heavy head. Am I never again to eat anything but vile grass?

  What I would not give to be able to catch a fat, juicy insect.…

  Or a baby rabbit! How long has it been since I tasted rabbit?

  My poor legs. Useless for hunting or perching. That sorcerer, what has he done to us? Why has he done this to us?

  He has warped us, twisted us all out of our proper shape.

  An owl flew out of the cave, out at the wrong time of day for its hunting, and it hooted mournfully as it passed over her on soundless wings. You can heal them, that hoot said.

  I? she thought.

  Get of the Old One, you can heal them with a word, the simurgh told her.

  She lay scrabbling, all twisted spine and heaving ribs. “With what word?” she asked, her voice no more than a whine.

  With your express command.

  The thorn forest stood in silence as the girl-creature stalked a toad. Hunger made her impatient, and she missed her prey.

  “Araah,” she cried.

  Little one, speak, the simurgh admonished her, lifting its blazing plumes; downy sparks fell from them.

  “Curse you,” a black horse-headed bird shouted. Tend us, Mother.

  “Araah,” the girl-creature said again. “Be yourselves.” But they were only demons.

  No, little one, the simurgh told her more gently, its brazen cry muted. The power is in words. The words of men.

  Was she human, to speak such words? She had almost forgotten, it was far less painful to forget, and no such words had crossed her lips for a full changing of the moon and more.
She moved her tongue rustily, wet her lips, opened her mouth to bare her rotting teeth, but no sound came.

  Mother, a demon beseeched her.

  She moved her mouth again. “Be ravens,” she said huskily, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

  And the change came on them so quickly that she was never to remember it as more than an eyeblink. Black horse-headed grotesques were no more, poor parodies of Suth. Instead, ravens flapped up, cawing raucously, thanking her and praising the powers that be and flying off rapidly, on the hunt for food. There was no cursing in them any longer.

  Now, little one, said the simurgh in trumpet tones of victory, heal yourself.

  It was a task beyond encompassing. The girl-creature stared up mutely at the splendid god-bird that stood towering over her.

  All it will take is that you should call yourself by name.

  But she had no name that a mother had ever given her, whether Vashtin, Devan, or—Someone had given her a name once, but it was false, he was false, false. She had no true name.

  That shred of memory, more feeling than thought, that memory of a kind and golden place.… She moved twisted lips to whisper aloud again.

  “I will go down. Down to the lowlands, the warm place, down to Avedon. To Auron. Perhaps he will be able to aid me.”

  It is a long way, and the journey needless.

  “Even so, I will go.”

  But how?

  “I will crawl.”

  As you will, little one. The tone was sorrowful and kind. As you will. And the simurgh faded into sky.

  “Documents of state will avail you no whit,” Nasr Yamut said. “This former, fallen king mentioned your name in them, it is true. But such items are easily … unfortunately misplaced.”

  “So?” Kyrem shifted his weight, seeming larger with every moment. “This is a matter between thee and me, Nasr Yamut, which of us is of more prowess, and that answer we both know already, I deem. But folk stand outside with weapons in hand. And there is no need for shedding of their blood over a matter that is between us two only. So I ask you again, what do you want?”