He got his breath. “Drat you! You horrible inquisitive—I might have known you’d—”
She chuckled outright. “T’is a change,” she said with wicked airiness, “to see the filly put the breaker through the hoops. But we’d best be off now, before she breaks a leg in the rope.”
Beryx assumed an awful dignity. “When I was interrupted, though you may not have noticed, I was in the process of assembling a few essentials for that. But of course, such a mighty Velandyr—”
“Half a mile down t’road. Twenty head. Didst not wonder why tha hadst such trouble finding any, then?”
“Oh, you. . . .” He flung his left hand in the air. “Then you can cursed well double me down to them. And”—an obvious quotation—“don’t say Can’t to me.”
“Mare’ll never notice. Clown? Art more like a Manuighend scarecrow. Couple of forked sticks tied in the middle with string.”
He was laughing as they reached the mare, arm still over her shoulders. The crinkle of those gray eyes told me she was laughing too.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to do anything so normal as be introduced? Of course you know them, but they might feel a little happier if it were made, um, legitimate.”
“Ah, I know them.” Again those penetrating eyes ran over me. “T’is wonderful how ignorance undoes itself. Were I a Morheage wishful to snare thee, the last living soul I’d use for bird-net would be a son of Stiriand.” Her eyes warmed as they shifted. “Hast had a fine time with him, ah? ‘I won’t eat this, I don’t want that, canst not see I’m bloated with mighty matters of wizardry?’ ” Callissa’s mouth opened like an empty bag. “Shouldst have made him wash up. T’is wonderful how that takes the fidgets out .” The smile chilled. “And couldst use that lesson elsewhere too.”
Her eyes moved on. The smile vanished altogether. A deep absorption held the surface of her gaze, but gray patterns moved, an echo of the thought in Beryx’s eyes, through the depths beneath.
Zem and Zam gazed solemnly back. Once one parted his lips, but neither spoke. At last that amusement, so like yet unlike Beryx’s, for his never had an edge to it, resumed its silent dance.
“Ah,” she said. “I’m like to call thee something worse than dolt.”
Zem drew a breath that I saw, with shock, was pure ecstasy.
The gray eyes twinkled. “Hast a small matter of a mother to suit with first. I’ll not lift a foal where the dam’s like to kick in my head.”
I was quite lost, and could see they were no more so than Beryx, watching with a small, eager, anxious grin. For an instant the four of them did indeed seem beings of an alien kind.
Then Fengthira nodded, clicked to her mare, said, “Must wait on the filly,” and shot Beryx a glance. “Shall I lift thee up?”
“Femaere,” he said, going round to vault up on the off-side. He looked down at her, a glint in his eye. “I should make you walk.”
She cocked her head. “Dost think tha can?”
They both spluttered. He held out his hand, she came lightly up, the mare turned on the spot, and her words floated back.
“Ye need not stand there like a row of barley stooks. Should be broke to aedryx by now.”
* * * * *
The horses were in a half-burnt deserted post-house. “And now,” Fengthira remarked as Stirian Ven clattered under us, “tha canst well ‘get along a bit.’ ”
They must have used the arts on us as well as the horses, for the night passed in a smooth rapid dream, whence I dismounted at dawn feeling we had hardly traveled at all. Strolling past, fresh as a daisy, Beryx grinned, “Easy with two,” and Fengthira, doffing her turban as she strode toward the kitchen of another empty post-house, threw over her shoulder, “Make me some eggs, if tha thinkst it so easy. That’ll stint tha cackling.”
She made him eat them, too. Then they resumed work, and we came out to find a fresh change assembled in the yard. “Assembled” is the word, for one wore harness blinkers, one a set of broken hobbles, one a snapped halter, and most sported no gear at all. When we mounted, Beryx said, “I’ll do the first turn.” Fengthira nodded. Apprehensively, we trailed after them onto the open road and the light of full if bleary day.
Nobody saw us. Aedryx’ doing or not, there was no one to see. There was only the smoke, and the ravaged countryside, and the road that unrolled till I began to feel myself a parcel whisked along by aedric messenger post. Beryx was tense, distracted, naturally distanced by the presence of an equal. And acquaintance with Fengthira did not breed familiarity.
We still felt umbrage when she addressed Beryx like a small unruly boy. Nor was it comfortable to be called by name when she hardly knew us in the flesh. Moreover, Fengthira was far more the usual idea of a wizard than Beryx had ever seemed. Once accustomed to his arts, you saw through to the man, a man whose courage and mirth and humility made him impossible to dislike, and then liking deepened, unable to resist his deep and unforced warmth for all humankind. But around Fengthira was a distance that never closed, something that went far beyond an awareness of her nature and her origin. Her mirth had an edge; her care was impersonal. There was an aloofness that, before meeting Beryx, I would have taken as the essence of an aedr’s difference. She was like some wild thing that will come to share your bread but never share your life.
We were cantering along Tengorial bypass as I thought this. Early morning, horses going easily, only the scarred land and the stifling gloom to bring your spirits down. Then a gray shimmer crossed the tail of my left eye.
“Si’sta,” she said. “I’m not overfond of men. Horses come first, with me.”
I tried not to gulp.
“Thinkst me impertinent?” She always seemed to laugh at rather than with you. “I made him an aedr. Dost salute tha recruit-boys? And I’ve seen a stud-book’s worth of kings.”
I recalled the Lady’s gibe at Fengthira’s age. Without her turban she did indeed look an old woman, silver hair, deeply seamed skin over those haughty bones. But now, giving whippily to her mare’s action, eyes full of that ageless aedric laughter, she seemed the merest girl.
“He,” she went on, “was made. Men are in his bones. I was born. Makes him softer than me.” She glanced ahead, and her own eyes softened. Then they came back, with the stab of a rapier. “Wilt need to remember that, up there.”
“Eh?” I was startled into speech.
“Art well enough, thaself. Loyal to tha backbone, upright as old Granite-eyes. And as hard.” I spluttered. “Think’st tha’s fathomed Math. I don’t say tha’s not well begun. But”—her eyes fairly skewered me—“Math’s no set and surveyed highway with every by-road wrong. We all see it for ourselves, and every seeing’s right. But I doubt tha seest like him.”
“What,” I said, “do you mean?”
“Spell it out, ah? Then don’t look, in Zyphryr Coryan, for him to lead you over the palace gate yelling, Justice! And, Burn the witch! Don’t expect a halter for her, let be a block and axe. T’is what tha praised in him as against me. Soft-hearted, clear to daftness. Ah. T’is his way in Velandryxe. ‘Vengeance is sweet, but wisdom chooses salt.’ ”
I opened my mouth to snap, I understand that. Perhaps I would have boasted that I had chosen it myself a time or two. Then my parents’ memory roared over me like a running fire. My vision went red, my fists clenched. I did not have to bawl it aloud: Not this time!
Fengthira had seen already. I surfaced to find it in her eyes. She gave me one quick jerk of the head.
“For all but tha own blood, ah? And how many more to say the same? But si’sta. He will not.”
“I—” I did manage not to blurt total inanities like, Even he can’t be that crazy! But if the rage fell back, reason endured.
“And just how,” I said through my teeth, “can he stop it? Aedr or not?”
She gave a slight, all but one-shouldered shrug. “T’would take a Velandyr to answer that. And happen not a seer either, before t’ time. But hearst tha this. Whatever haps, he’ll not beli
e Math. Unless tha dost the same, when the pinch comes, t’will be fare-thee-well ’twixt him and thee.” Her eyes were agates. “So I warn thee, to ease it. Whatever he owes thee, even those with thee, even Assharral—he’ll put the filly first.”
* * * * *
The next morning, we rode out on Rastyr’s cliff.
If I knew the cliff when I saw it, that was all I knew. Tyr Coryan had shrunk to a bowshot of scummy gray water. The city was gone. The world was hot and throbbing, throttling full of smoke and dust-fine ash, the forge-stink had become a stench of brimstone, like a fireball shop in full career. As we reined in, Beryx glanced at Fengthira, who glanced back to us.
“Let them come,” she said. “Safer for them, and chance help for thee.” She added with mordant humor. “They think they’re here to see it end, and surely, they will.”
She glanced at Callissa. “Tear a strip of shirt-tail, child, and make a mask. Else tha’lt choke in this brume.” The gentleness remained as she turned to Beryx, who had grown stiff and a little pale. “Lead on, lad. T’is tha road now.”
Along the harbor they repelled two ambushes, not the steady, menacing puppet advance of a Commanded attack, merely villagers or fisher-folk crazed with fear and recent mishandling. Beryx knocked the club from one man’s hand. Fengthira rolled another head over heels. He chuckled, “Should see me eat with Axynbrarve.” She retorted, “Assharral’s taught thee manners, then.” Hearing them jest like sword-mates in the filthy fog, knives about them, an unknown calamity looming ahead, the very atmosphere rank with Assharral’s ruin, I found the whole thing uncannier still.
People remained in some villages, but at our approach they fled. Zyphryr Coryan was still veiled in the murk. The earth vibrated steadily, unfalteringly, to that distant roar.
We were near the gates when the air suddenly grew scorching, a glow lit the left-hand fog, and then, rising into it like some vast slanted branding-iron appeared a shaft of incandescent golden red.
Both aedryx checked. I heard Fengthira say, “That’s new.” And Beryx, more sharply, “It must come right down through the city—” then in sudden panic, “ ’Thira. . . .” And her brusque, “Bah! Starts below the palace, as tha’d know if tha’d matched Phathire.”
I was aching to demand, But what in heaven’s name is it? when she answered me.
“Lava, ah? Hill’s opened this side too. There’ll not be much to vaunt in Zyphryr Coryan now.”
Beryx took her up with decisive urgency. “If that’s moving like it seems we’d best hurry or we won’t get in at all.”
Choking worse than our horses, trusting our leaders’ eyesight, we cantered forward into the gloom. The heat grew ferocious. I smelt things burning, live trees, furniture, leather and aged wood, the harsh stink of old building stone purged by flame. Over them, drowning them, came a different smell, so hot it was a mere searing sword in the lungs. Till you breathed out, and your palate kept the tang of conflagration fed on no common fuel, the taste of molten rock, of earth’s own fiery core.
I glanced aside and barely a bowshot from the road a fiery cliff loomed over me, dispelling the smoke like steam from a heated iron. Fire without flame, a wall of heat and light that was its own sufficient food. Blinking away the red-hot after image, blurred in defensive tears, I knew I had seen the front of the lava flow, poured down across Zyphryr Coryan like the wrath of Math itself.
The gates were unguarded. There was uproar in the city, distant screams and shouts and death-cries, the clash of arms. Corpses littered the gate-square, some stabbed, some trampled, and Beryx said tautly, “Must have been a stampede.” He turned his horse for Treasury hill. “We should be able to go up the spur. The lava heads just under its neck.”
Just under its neck. As my horse dived sideways from a mansion spilt out in rubble and I ducked a hanging beam, my mind’s eye placed the spot. Almost directly below the parapet of Los Morryan.
The streets were a cross between earthquake and sack, blood and rubble mixed, fire and looting, murder done by or among the scavengers. I wondered where the remnant of the army was. Then came a crescendo in the subterranean roar, a spasm in some unimaginable heart. Heat spewed up, the smoke rose with it, and before the curtain dropped I saw Zyphryr Coryan clear.
We were halfway to Ker Morrya’s gate. Below and beside us the city sank away between spur and harbor down the Morhyrne’s flank, once a mass of mansion, temple, tower, park, garden, colonnade. The buildings looked as if a stick had been swept across a flowerbed. The city wall was flat on its side. The trees and grass were fire-blasted brown. And clear down the Morhyrne’s side lay that lava slash, so bright it did not seem part of the earth it flowed upon, so bright it must surely have extruded from another, more intense, scaldingly vivid world. The heat of it lashed across our faces, once. I was thankful to fall back with coughs and splutterings into the murk.
“Take the horses up,” I heard Beryx choke, and Fengthira, “Safer for both.” We forged on up the cumbered street.
The Treasury facade was down, columns rolled out in heaps of drums whose diameter exceeded a man’s height, gates crushed beneath. I spared a thought for the scribes. Then it occurred to me that guards, more loyal than I, might remain at Ker Morrya’s gate.
“Amver,” I snapped to the wraith at my elbow, “take Zam. Evis, give Zem to Wenver. Come on, you others. They can’t use farsight in this.”
As we closed up on them Beryx gave me a quick distracted smile. Fengthira also glanced about, a wintry gray flash. “Kindly thought on,” she said.
The gate square was devoid of life. Live beings, that is. Bodies were strung in a row under the arch, men and women, naked, vilely mutilated, and before my eyes winced away I saw the tatters of what had been court finery on the cobbles beneath.
“Ah,” said Fengthira, sliding down, with another scythe of a glance. “Dost feel like vengeance now?”
Nobody replied. Her eyes rose to Beryx, sitting his horse with the guise of numb horror I knew so well. She tapped lightly on his foot.
“Wake tha, lad.” It came with rough kindness. “Hast work to do.”
They walked among the horses, bidding them stay, then he turned to us. “Alkir, will you hold the gate? And the horses.” With an almost trusting look, he stepped between Callissa and the arch. “You’ll see the twins don’t see too much?” He turned back to me, and I took the words out of his mouth.
“Evis can handle this. I’m coming with you.”
I am still not sure what made me say it. Concern for him, remembrance of Fengthira’s prophesy? One last bloody determination that if Moriana escaped him along with Math, she should not escape the requital of Assharral?
I did have the wits to suppress that. I said, “Assharral needs a witness,” and stared him straight in the eye.
He looked away. Aedric reflex, his own habit, to protect human fools. His eyes and Fengthira’s crossed. She gave me one south-wind stab of a glance, and then, abruptly, turned to Callissa. “I’ll,” with a nod to me, “look after him.”
Callissa stared, then nodded too. For an instant I almost thought they had exchanged a conspirator’s glance, but I had no time to consider it. Beryx must have received his own message. He was bracing himself to face the gate.
* * * * *
This time the palace had not been upturned by its owner’s will. The signs of sack were everywhere, the ruin that is more than greed, more than callousness, the demon that possesses men at such times, here spurred on by revenge. There were bodies, too. If the court had fled for asylum, it was in vain.
“Foh!” said Fengthira, weaving down the colonnade, and shook her head at Beryx’s mute, sickened glance. “Every breaker to his beast. I know horses can be vicious. Which way now, Alkir?”
Smoke had rimed the fretted walls of the green vestibule, the floor was ripped up by something like picks, the jade plaques bore foul scribbles in fouler ink. But no mark of traffic, let be rapine, showed on the rough-hewn steps.
“Curs,” F
engthira coughed. “No guts for the stallion. Make do with t’heavy mares.” She glanced at Beryx. “What art waiting for?”
He turned. I was stunned to read uncertainty in his face, apprehension, outright timidity. Her eyelids crinkled, but she spoke with mock impatience.
“Art such a mouse’s heart as that?”
“ ’Thira. . . .”
“Get on with thee, man. Tha prentice. Claim her, then.”
“But. . . .”
Her eyes mocked him. “If th’art fearful, trust tha silly heart. One thing’ll not fail thee is tha foolishness.” But it was a good luck pat with which she pushed him to the steps.
As the fog swallowed him she glanced round, and her mirth become open hilarity. “And art gnashing tha teeth to come so far and miss all at the last. I’ll have mercy on thee. Look here.”
Her eyes flared. A gray world sucked me in, leaving behind her last words, ironic with self-mockery.
“I doubt I’d bear to miss it myself.”
I do not know what she did. But one moment I was gazing at her across a rumpled pavement, the next I was a pure faculty of vision, soaring over the rivannon trees to view the bower of Los Morryan.
Chapter XII
It must have been like a furnace down there. The plants and perridel leaves were scorched brown, dust lay on the shriveled moss. I saw with shock that the fountain’s basin held a mere residue of heat-crazed mud. No water, no sweet heedless melody. I hardly mourned it, for I had seen the Lady herself.
She was poised, balanced, atop the porphyry parapet. Her hair had been pinned up under some sort of coronal, but it had come loose, so thillians spurted white fire amid the ebony coils, and free strands wove on the lava’s updraft like snakes about her neck. She was wearing black. Fine black sendal in some tight-waisted robe whose floating skirts furled and shifted like huge black fluid lily petals, black that left her throat white as marble but no whiter than her bloodless face, black that paled against the inky depths of her eyes where the gold meteors blazed like battle-flags, black that could not tinge the dewdrop purity of the great globe she clutched with both hands to her breast. The lava glow spurted up behind her, livid red through the leaden smoke, and her head was back and up, the pose of the cornered darre that sees death coming and yet rears to strike.
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