Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  Sula nodded; she knew that.

  The river ran deep and noiselessly, a great flow of smooth silver-gray, between banks on which the lilies clustered thickly—white lilies in the red soil of the Vashtin side, and black lilies, as black as black satin, in the strange black soil of the beyond. Kyrem stopped his horse short of the white lilies.

  “Folk say that it is death to pass them,” he muttered.

  Sula made no reply but pressed the more closely against his back, shivering. A chill wind was drawing the warmth from her shoulders, and though the white lilies stirred and drooped in the wind, the haze of mist over the river hung as still as a heavy tapestry. All beyond it seemed muted, yet glowing like ancient gold.

  After a moment Kyrem turned the horse to the left, the west, and started riding slowly along the silent silver curves of the river, all the while looking across it. Haze foiled his sight. From what little he could glimpse, the Untrodden Lands seemed to lie in soft folds that might hide anything, some of them topped by trees taller than any in Vashti. Trees stood also within the river curves.

  And beyond one such clump of trees, on the far verge, amid the black lilies, stood something white and very still.…

  Nasr Yamut, white-robed. Standing in a mystic’s trance, he seemed not to see Kyrem.

  “Balls of Suth!” Kyrem whispered, blasphemous in his irritation. “Perhaps we can get by without speaking to him.”

  But as horse and riders drew abreast of Nasr Yamut, he stiffened, stirred and came forward a step amid the melantha, staring.

  “My king!” he exclaimed.

  Kyrem halted the horse and stared in his turn, for Nasr Yamut had never before called him king.

  “But what are you doing here, my liege lord? Vashti will be bereft without you.”

  “I left a worthy steward,” Kyrem replied. “He who used to keep the door.” He spoke slowly in his astonishment, for there was a vast change in Nasr Yamut; his whole manner, his voice, the very expression of his face, open, clear and joyous. Unmistakably Nasr Yamut, yet somehow entirely different. “What has happened to you?” Kyrem blurted.

  “Happened?” Nasr Yamut stared, then drew back a step from his own memories. “Yes, I see,” he admitted. “I hated you once. But now I am no longer afraid.”

  “You were afraid?” Kyrem was amazed, for of all seemings, the priest had least seemed afraid.

  “Yes. Throughout my entire life, afraid of power. Others might wield power over me if I did not first wrest it away and myself hold sway.… But here everything is power, and where all are puissant, there is no domination. Danger, but no domination. When I came to his shore, a mighty king met me. Rabiron, the first Rabiron, welcomed me and took me to the palace of his ancestor Auberameron. Auron will be welcomed some day in like wise, and so will you.”

  Kyrem sighed and shook his head, no longer attempting to understand. Perhaps Nasr Yamut was mad. Black flower of madness, they called it, the melantha. “Seda is there, somewhere,” he said. “She who is too young for yon far shore.”

  “She who used to be called shuntali? Yes. She is puissant, very puissant. Only one who is puissant may venture here without punishment.”

  “I must so venture, to bring her back.” Kyrem swiveled on his steed’s back to face his bride. “Sula, get down, take the food. Await me here.”

  “I will do nothing of the sort,” she told him. “I am coming with you.”

  “You cannot! There may be that beyond the river which will destroy you.”

  “There may be that which will keep you from ever coming back to me. Then will I be the more slowly destroyed. How can you think I would leave your side?”

  They sat glaring at each other at close quarters, there on the spotted horse’s back, close enough to kiss.

  “I will be the more likely to find strength to return,” Kyrem said softly at last, “if I know you are awaiting me.” But she answered him with a tilted, tender smile.

  “It will not do, Ky. You cannot protect me. This peril is mine as well.”

  On the far side of the Ril Melantha, Nasr Yamut spoke as though once again in a trance, continuing his thought.

  “She came across on that great blue roan of yours, came across clinging to the back of the swimming horse, and the stallion greeted me, and did not hold it against me that I had wished to slay him.”

  “I see,” Kyrem muttered to Sula or the speaker. “Well—hold fast then.” Leaning forward, drawn forward by the force of his will, he urged his crop-eared steed past the white lilies and into the water.

  Ril Melantha was slow but deep, very deep. The horse’s hooves churned in water, never touching bottom. The crossing seemed long, breathlessly long, though the river had not looked so wide. Turning once, Sula saw that Vashti seemed dim and distant through the mist. She shivered, pressed against the willful hardness of Kyrem’s back, jewel hard, and did not look behind her again.

  The sacred steed came out of the river with a plunge and a streaming of water, leaving deep hoofprints in the strange black soil of the bank, stopping amidst the strange lilies of black. Nasr Yamut came over and stood quietly by Kyrem’s side, his hands tucked into the full white sleeves of his robe. Watching the play of mistlight, pale gold, on the former priest’s still form, Kyrem knew suddenly, with certainty, that he could trust him. All things were different in this place of lambent haze.

  “Where might I find Seda?” he asked him, and Nasr Yamut raised quiet eyes.

  “You are right, my king, that she does not entirely belong here. She senses it herself—she will not enter the palace. She roams. But she is often to be seen in the meadow preferred by the horse. Will you allow me to lead you there?”

  Kyrem nodded, and Nasr Yamut walked off northward, away from the river. After a moment’s thought, Kyrem dismounted to walk beside him, leading the crop-eared horse with Sula yet on its back in her queenly robes. And so in silence they trod the Untrodden Lands. Kyrem looked down in muted surprise to find the earth so solid beneath his feet. All else seemed strange—the glowing golden haze, the water pure silver in the streams and ponds they passed, the trees so tall and all in crimson bud, the grass growing oddly pale out of the black soil, pale jade green and nearly as tall as the black lilies that swayed in no breeze but that of the horse’s passing—

  They sensed the presence of Seda before they saw her, Seda amidst the tall, soft-green grass and the black lilies. Nasr Yamut must have sensed it also, for he stopped as well as they.

  “Let me go to her first,” Kyrem murmured to Sula. “Please.” And she nodded.

  A horse was grazing in the meadow, a blue roan stallion—Omber. Omber as of old, freed of caparison, mane flowing silkily as he fed on the black lilies. Beyond him another creature also fed on the melantha, a creature hunched and creeping, stuffing the blossoms into a misshapen mouth with fingers crooked and greedy. She did not see Kyrem coming at first, the girl-creature did not. But Omber lifted his head and whinnied with gladness. Seda came up to look as would a shadow-tail, startled, then shoved herself away from Kyrem with animal speed and curled herself into a tight ball, head between her bony knees and hands, hiding against the earth. Only heaving ribs and a crippled spine faced him.

  “Seda, please.…” he begged.

  He tried to touch her, and she hitched away, still maintaining her hedgehog stance. “Go away,” she said, her voice rusty from disuse and muffled against earth. “I am dead. I do not exist.”

  “Do not say that! You are one of the mighty ones; your saying it makes it so.”

  Omber had come up to Kyrem, rubbing a soft muzzle against his shoulder, and Kyrem stood still, accepting the comfort of the animal. He could have wept, cried out “Araah!” to the heedless trees—

  “Take Omber and go,” Seda muttered.

  “No, indeed. He belongs to you.”

  “And you were going to let them kill him.” She raised her head; anger gave her strength to do that, and she stared at him flatly. He wet his lips with his tongue, un
able to answer. But then she sat up, all an awkward sprawl, looking beyond him, anger washed away by wonder. At a small distance, her face pale with horror and pity, Sula stood.

  “Sister,” Seda breathed.

  Sula took a step toward her. Ten such steps would take her to her twin.

  But before they could touch, before she could essay even the second step, there was a noise so intense, so sudden and overwhelming, that Kyrem clutched at Omber’s mane to keep from falling, and only that grip of Kyrem’s hand kept Omber from rearing up to flee. Lion’s roar, thunderclap, rumble as of a thousand galloping steeds on the plains of Deva, but no, far greater and more vehement, a noise fit to stun reason, worse than earthquake roaring, a noise fit to sunder sky itself. And down came the terror steed, rending the luminous veil of haze and bringing with it, seemingly, the dark. And on clawed feet it landed directly between the shuntali and her twin.

  Black, black, a thick-necked stallion with a feathery sheen on the head and shoulders and black plumes, black, sinuous plumes for mane and tail. Glint of white teeth and corpse-white flame of wings and those horrible bone-white bird-clawed feet.… And on the forehead, the jewel of glittering black. It was the demon, the dark Suth. Kyrem closed his eyes to the sight of it and hid his face against Omber’s neck in all-embracing fear.

  “Shuntali,” said a dry, whispering voice, “Devan dog. You are dead; you do not exist.”

  Kyrem’s eyes flew open and his head snapped erect. He knew that sere voice, bloodless and desiccated even when it had lived! Instantly his fear turned to consummate wrath, fury that suffused him, filling him with a glowing power so great that it shone redly in the mist far beyond the meadow. With a wordless noise very nearly like a lion’s roar, he strode forward and faced the black bird-steed, near enough to touch.

  “Old One,” he commanded, “go away and trouble us no more. It is you who are dead.”

  Laughter, loud whinnying laughter, with the flash of chalk-white teeth. And behind all else the sound of an old man’s wheezing mirth.

  “I am the Old One,” the demon said in that same snake-hissing voice. “But I am far more.” And with those words the voice changed; instantly it was dark and immense, a voice fit to fill the world as thunder fills the sky. “You dare command me! It is you who must go away, small one, and quickly, before you are destroyed.”

  Though he kept hold of his power, fear crept back into Kyrem, and he glanced toward the one for whom he feared the most. Sula took a step forward, her second step, as if to come to him, or perhaps to go to her sister. But the black Suth reared up in threat, darting toward her its vicious foreclaws, and it gave out a roar that drove her back and sent her stumbling to her knees.

  “Unclean, twin, unclean! Stay far, stay asunder! Step nearer and I strike, I the destroyer of the unclean! The Old Ones know the ways of twins—”

  “Let her be!” Kyrem shouted, but knowing even before he spoke that all the power he could command would have no effect. This thing was far greater than he. If it should hurt Sula—but the demon turned back to him. And as it did so, Nasr Yamut stepped forward to stand by his side.

  “My king,” he said in a shaking voice, “we must hold firm.”

  Nasr Yamut looked as pale as the corpse-glow of the demon’s wings. Growing desperation had made Kyrem mettlesome, and a last small shred of malice stirred in him. “I thought you were no longer afraid,” he snapped.

  “I have not been,” Nasr Yamut said. “I have loved this place. But this black horse-creature moves counter to the order of it. Power turned toward domination—”

  The terror steed came at them with beating wings and uplifted claws, sending them staggering several steps backward. Nasr Yamut caught hold of Kyrem’s hand—not, Kyrem realized with a shock, to receive aid, but to give. Something touched his left hand as well—thin, twiggy fingers, Seda’s twisted hand. With that touch he felt the pleroma of her pain, her despair, and of her love for him that underlay it. And he no longer cared if he were destroyed utterly, genius and spirit and soul.

  “Now, by the numina,” he shouted at the black Suth, “I am the emperor of the Untrodden Lands, and I bid you depart!”

  Laughter. “Men lie. The holy place has no name and no emperor.”

  Hot breath, scorching hot as the mistral, struck Kyrem’s face as the feathered horse of darkness drew nearer. He wet his dry lips.

  “My friends lend me the power of their love,” he said as firmly as he was able, “and with it I face you and command you to go.”

  “Only Suth commands the demon Suth.” The terror steed no longer laughed. “Hence, petty king,” it thundered, and with a single blow of one white-fire wing, it broke through the shield of Kyrem’s will as if it were eggshell, seared him across the face with sickening pain and knocked him to the ground. Nasr Yamut lay unconscious, and Kyrem nearly so, but in his final defiance, so he thought, he forced his eyes to open, to focus. He stared up into the mouth of the terror steed, its great teeth bared as if to rend him—and by his shoulder knelt Seda, her thin arms over him, her verminous head near his own, staring up in like wise.

  Her mouth stirred, that horrible wreckage of a mouth.

  “Go away,” she whispered.

  “Ah, little one.” It was the dry voice again, oddly tender. “Even you cannot command me hence. Not in this place.”

  “I bid Suth hither then,” she said in a stronger voice, “Suth and the simurgh.”

  “You cannot—”

  “I command the powers of the numina, and I bid them hither.” Her words rang out in the lambent haze.

  Stunned anew, Kyrem stared.

  Far up in the mist a glow of brighter gold began, and spread, and bloomed, sunbursting, more swiftly than Kyrem could comprehend—and then there was Suth, Suth on wings of flame, so that Kyrem, who would not shut his eyes for all the terror of the demon steed now blinked for a moment in the pain of great beauty, for no horse of mortal kind could match Suth for beauty, the airy golden flowing of his mane and tail and the silver-gray sheen of his crest, his flanks, his fetlocks above hooves of aureate white. And the stone, the Suthstone glowing wine-red on his forehead beneath small and perfect ears. And his eyes, wise eyes.… He was all shine and glory, all goodness, and before Kyrem could more than think it, he came down, down out of the shimmering sky to the very place where the terror steed reared, and melted into the dark Suth, and stood on earth.

  Utterly startled, Kyrem struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain of his blistering face.

  There stood, not demon steed and the silver-gold Suth, but the single god on four glossy black hooves, his flanks black and white and tarpan-dun and gray as stone, all colors—it was Suth the spotted steed, for Suth and the dark Suth were one. And Kyrem met Suth’s eyes, milky cloud-white eyes that seemed to look through him, that seemed to have known him forever and beyond forever. Only Suth could command the dark Suth.… The great god-stallion did not speak. But he arched his neck, laying his soft muzzle against his own chest, and courteously he backed a few paces, just far enough so that Kyrem could see Sula rising from the ground, standing pallid and swaying some several paces beyond him.

  Gravely Suth inclined toward her his great head. With stumbling feet she ran to Seda and sank to her knees beside the crippled girl.

  “Sister,” she breathed, putting out her arms, and instantly Seda returned the embrace. And they clung together, foul and fair, health and unhealth, queen and pauper. And Kyrem looked at them, and swallowed, and looked beyond them toward Suth, the god-steed who was both light and shadow.

  Then, floating down on fiery wings out of the resplendent mist—Kyrem felt his senses swirl as Suth raised his great head and whinnied in greeting. For the simurgh drifted down, the mighty bird of sky and sunset swept down and settled companionably on the back of the horse-god, shone yellow and red and golden on his shoulders, and two pairs of fiery wings blazed as one. The sky-blue eyes of the simurgh gazed past the cloud-white eyes of the steed.

  “Seda
,” Kyrem whispered, and he walked shakily over to where the two young sisters still crouched, seeking heart’s ease in each other’s arms. They were weeping and talking both at once, their words a babble as of mountain water.

  “… empty place,” Seda was saying.

  “… felt you,” Sula went on. “Dreams, I did not understand at first …”

  “… where my name should be …”

  “… if only we had been born one, you need not have suffered so.”

  Diffidently Kyrem put his arms around Sula and the shuntali. “I love you both,” he whispered.

  Seda’s anger was gone. “Ky—” She spoke only the single word, laid the scabby weariness of her head for but a moment against his shoulder, and understanding pierced him.

  “Yes, I have failed you,” he told her, the pain of saying it tightening his voice. “And I cannot help you now. But, Seda, there is power in you like the power of … of earth itself.”

  She raised her head and stared at him blindly; her eyes were as all-seeing as Suth’s.

  “Seda, hear me! You have the Vashtin magic as well. Your color is saffron, like your sister’s, and your emblem is the sun, your element essence, your flower the acaltha, your jewel the yellow beryl, your luck bird”—he stopped, realizing that she already knew—“the simurgh,” he muttered anyway.

  Heal yourself, little one, the great bird told her, a cry as out of the bell of a trumpet.

  But instead she laid down her head and sobbed, a dry, hurtful sound, that most human of sounds. A wounding human knowledge had come to her through Sula’s touch. “My father did this to me,” she cried out in her turn. “Our father did this to me.” And then she hid her face in the rich fabric at Sula’s shoulder and wept.

  Kyrem could not bear it. He got up, seeking comfort, and found Omber and leaned against the horse, and Omber turned to nuzzle the young king’s ear.

  Nasr Yamut came to himself and rose to his feet, smoothing his white robe, staring at the two who huddled in the grass amidst the melantha. He stared longer at the great god-steed and god-bird just beyond them. How could they bear that fearsome nearness? But Seda and Sula seemed hardly aware of anything around them—