No Flame But Mine

by Tanith Lee

  And she in turn knew him, even to his adopted name, and put out her fire. For she had fought with this one previously and bested him – or at least beaten him off. She thought of ice pyramids, and the icy waste she had struggled through lashed by winds. She thought of the fleet of icebergs sent against her people of the Vormland, and how she had smashed them – but through that the Vormland fleet too was wrecked, and her people lamented and abhorred her and cast her out, and now as she vaguely guessed her name among them was a dirty word; several dirty words.

  Tirthen was the cold heart of this continent and, she perceived, of the whole earth. Tirthen was Winter.

  The joyhall and garth were full of vulnerable humans. And above, Athluan her husband, whom she had searched for so long, lay sleeping in her flame, not yet ready to be woken.

  ‘Greetings, sir,’ said Saphay to Tirthen. ‘Will you not sit down …’ and with the court irony of Ru Karismi she added, ‘by the fire?’

  Winter of the World sat by the fire. And the fire now and then cowered. Saphay sat across from Tirthen, and when she glanced into the fire it bloomed up in showers of sparks and heat. Sitting there and seeing that she had come also to an unheralded knowledge of herself and her present vocation. She became – happy. But this distracted and she put it aside like a small appealing animal she loved. In a while, my darling, soon. When I have dealt with him.

  ‘What is it you desire?’ she asked him.

  ‘I have no desires. I need none.’

  ‘Then you’re content.’

  ‘That concept can mean nothing to me.’

  ‘Your visit to us therefore is because …?’

  He met her dark eyes with his dark eyes. In this one aspect they did share something. Each seemed to notice it. They were both astonishingly callow as yet at their own business; he, such a terrible entity as he was, more than she.

  ‘Patently I am here for a purpose,’ said Tirthen.

  ‘Which is – if I may again inquire?’ She thought how she had spoken like this to kings in her city, even her own father. Especially him. One learned to be wary.

  ‘Do forgive me,’ said he, robotically perhaps mimicking her courtier-speak, ‘but I must put you away in a cupboard.’

  Aghast, Saphay lost her sense of self and her knack of fawning.

  ‘Cupboard?’

  ‘A figure of speech.’

  Insane. They did not really speak anyway, they uttered some language of gods.

  In the shadows at the hall’s perimeter, outside in the snow, confronted by what they assumed to be this super-gler, the Holas waited.

  Tirthen stood up again. The hearth fire went ashen. The fire froze.

  Saphay did not attempt to rescue it. She rose too. A glimmer of her power went visibly fluttering through her, like birds that flew inside her bones.

  ‘Saphay,’ said Tirthen. ‘Such a pretty name.’

  That was all he said.

  Even all those who could not talk the tongue of gods picked this up. Yet none of them fathomed it and nor did she, the goddess by the iced fire.

  She did feel something like a delicate frost on every inch of her body. She felt that, and then it melted from her. And Winter stepped aside out of some non-existent door which shut after him. He left only everything else behind him.

  None of them moved. None spoke. No dog barked or whimpered, not a hawk stirred a feather. Long ago the lions had ceased to growl.

  Conversely there came a deep soft sound. It reminded a few of the noise of heavy fur or velvet drawn over a smooth surface. That was all.

  Every person and creature in the garth heard it, and at the same level, and the tiniest child or infant, the littlest rodent foraging in the stores, the hard-of-hearing, did hear. Outside, they stared upward. Inside the hall they stared inward at a mental picture telepathically conveyed.

  Next day they left the cave-tunnel. No trace of the uncanny snowstorm lingered. The Simese went about looking for it, checking each height and inch of sky in case a bit of it still lurked there. Even Fenzi did this. Ruxendra sat in the cave, playing with the blue dog’s ears. Curjai had been rather keenly aware of this. The night before he had introduced her to the party as Ruxen-Ushayis. This was a Simese adaptation but emphasized that he thought she must still stay incognito. Fenzi had bowed low to her. Ruxen-Ushayis accepted that as her due. Obviously she was neither impressed nor startled by Fenzi’s appearance. In Hell there had been all types of man. Curjai she glanced at only rarely.

  That Curjai had aged another year or two rather suddenly was not lost on him either.

  He rehearsed their time in the Otherland. Had she come after him here because she loved him? Or, more disturbing thought, had his attraction to her, forgotten by him though it might have been, summoned her?

  Now anyhow there were other matters to concern him.

  Arok had lain all night on his back in the tunnel. He spoke to no one and never moved. But he was not asleep. Curjai, who no longer needed sleep unless he wanted it as a luxury, sat by and often looked across at Arok. They – Curjai would not blame the girl for all of it – had returned Arok into his body. Whether he had been slain before some Fatefully ordained hour Curjai was uncertain. Nor was he certain either that was really a good enough reason for dragging the life-essence back over the threshold. Untimely death must often happen. Hell had been full of plenty who seemed bewildered and regretful out of all proportion to their method of dying or loss of earthly friends and possessions. Probably you got over it, adjusted and if necessary rejoined the world hurriedly to tidy up anything left undone. Arok for sure did not seem relieved let alone glad to be here again, while his initial muffled urgency over home and family seemed done.

  Near sunrise the distant lightnings also disappeared. Only the ripple of the low fire lit the cave. The remainder of the people, even the goddess Ruxen and the dog, were slumbering. Curjai had approached and crouched down near to Arok.

  ‘You can’t sleep, Chaiord.’

  ‘All Jafn spurn sleep.’

  Curjai took in Jafn Fenzi, who did seem to be asleep.

  ‘Yes, Chaiord, forgive me, I remember now. You equate sleep with death, don’t you?’ That was blunt enough. Any response? None Curjai could either see or detect. He murmured quietly, ‘I apologize that we woke you, sir.’

  Arok failed to say, But I told you I was not asleep. He grasped the point and answered dully, ‘Yes, you woke me. She did.’

  ‘What—’ How absurd. Curjai, who recollected all and everything of the outer life, was attempting to question this survivor. Refusing to hold off he continued, ‘Do you have a memory of where you went, where you came back from?’

  ‘None.’ Arok’s eyes gazed only up into the roof of the cave. The firelight ran over them in wavelets. He had not blinked, Curjai noted, not once in many minutes. Perhaps not since he had come to out there in the snow.

  ‘When you – recovered, what did you think had happened to you?’

  ‘I know what happened. One of your local gler ungods struck me, turned me to ice. Death. I didn’t want to go. It was wrong.’

  ‘And so, you’re not displeased to have woken up?’

  ‘What’s pleased?’ said the dead-live man. ‘What’s not pleased?’

  ‘Dawn’s coming. Then we’ll move. Get to the garth, and you’ll see your wife and son. Do you remember you said that? That you must do that?’

  ‘Then I’ll do that, I’ll see them.’

  Curjai leaned near to Arok’s face and blew very lightly on him, a sparkling, clean and warming breath of healing, the sort only gods might give. Arok did not bat an eyelid or lash. He lay there.

  ‘Pardon us, if we did you a disservice.’

  ‘What is a disservice?’ asked Arok. ‘What is a service?’

  In the name of Attajos, Curjai thought with crucial dismay, he’s left most of himself behind.

  Curjai had never reckoned gods might be embarrassed or depressed. He was both. He recaptured uncomfortably his own distress at his
own childhood death. But that end had led to all beginnings. Maybe gods actively disliked rubbing their own noses in human horrors. That could explain a lot.

  ‘Would you prefer …’ Curjai hesitated. The sentiment felt blasphemous, but blasphemy against humanity not deity. ‘Would you prefer to be dead?’

  Idly said Arok, ‘What’s dead? What’s not dead? Prefer … What’s prefer?’

  Once the day fully started, and since the weather was average enough to travel, Fenzi took the Chaiord up on his dromaz. Arok moved stiffly yet not ungainly. He made no protest, no comment, offered neither thanks nor any token of authority. Fenzi’s face was unreadable. Sombrec, Fenzi’s lover, was giving the pair a wide berth.

  Then Ruxen refused to mount Curjai’s dromaz. She poised on the snow combing her silky locks with a scented comb evolved from thin air, while the Hell-dog galumphed about after nonexistent snow hares. ‘I shall journey in my own way.’

  Curjai could have done the same, but seldom did when in the company of ordinary men. An oblique modesty. Only his mother Riadis, or the shamans, had seen him regularly de- or re-materialize. He knew in himself his time with Lionwolf had made him less Simese. He found a Rukarian mode in speech, in manner, perhaps even Jafn. It seemed to Curjai he was quite unlike himself by now, even as he had been in Hell. The least he could do therefore was ally himself to humans when with them.

  The group rode off, the dromazi loping in their ground-devouring strides, while the confounded girl and the hound popped out like dawn stars.

  They reached the Holasan-garth inside the day, about an hour before sunfall. The weather had been elaborately helpful, not a wisp of wind or flake of snow, sky like a well-scrubbed plate.

  Presently there was a height and the line of riders drew up there, looking over to the south-east.

  ‘Well,’ said one of the men, ‘why are we waiting?’

  Curjai, alerted, saw Fenzi’s mask of face had reformed to blank astonishment.

  ‘What is it, Fenzi?’

  ‘God knows, I do not.’

  ‘A Jafn riddle?’ Sombrec joked with unwise sarcasm.

  ‘No riddle.’ Fenzi swung from the saddle leaving the resouled and soulless Arok sitting, his eyes unblinking, face unchanging. ‘It was there,’ said Fenzi. ‘There.’

  They stared where he pointed.

  Snow-plain soared and sank. Far away uplands hung ghostly in the last milky sunlight. Closer to hand were hills large and small, some very round, like upturned bowls made of chalk.

  Nowhere was there any signature of mankind.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Fenzi.

  ‘Storms can confuse a landscape. Could you have mistaken the—’

  ‘No,’ said Fenzi. ‘Chaiord,’ he said, not looking round, ‘you know I speak a fact. The Holasan-garth was over there.’

  Arok remarked, ‘Yes. Just there. Where there is.’

  Curjai stared with the rest. It seemed to him irregular furrows and runnels showed in the plain that might be the leftovers of short fields of dormant crops, and across from them a low mound that might have been an orchard of some sort. But mostly Jafn kept their agriculture within the garth walls. It was not much of a clue. One of the smaller of the bowl hills did rise just beyond. It shone with the colourless sinking sun. But also … how curious … from some kind of light trapped deep inside.

  FOUR

  Guri grew up two years in every one. This was just like his adopted nephew Lionwolf, on the first excursion to earth.

  At ten Guri was a man of about twenty. Leopard-skin yellow of complexion, blue-black of hair, tall and mathematically flawless in build, he was a peerless exemplar of his race. Needless to say his strength and stamina too were matchless. He could run in enormous leaps mile on mile – rather as he had when in his previous earthly ‘spirit’ form. He could also inevitably fly. He could raise colossal weights, accurately fire ten or more arrows from a specially made male bow, to bring down ten deer together, and stroll up the sides of rocks, trees, and buildings.

  He had been Lionwolf’s inadvertent apprentice. Watching the fabulous brat had taught Guri his trade of deitility and now he did not miss a trick.

  Despite that, this second beginning had not been very auspicious.

  His mother, Yedki, had abandoned him as soon after labour as she could walk.

  They had all reasoned with her, most significantly her Crax. Yedki would not listen. ‘I was deceived,’ she said. ‘I never asked for this.’

  ‘Yet you have it. See, you’ve borne a hero—’

  ‘Befuck it,’ said Yedki, packed a cloth with her effects and went away on a young female mammoth. Either she perished in the wastes or found another sluhtin. The Crax, who thereafter could not find her in any occult fashion, possibly did not try very hard.

  Ennuat was the one who reared the child, feeding him the mixed milk of two mammoth cows and also of her elder sister, who had herself just given birth to a normal kiddling. Guri thrived. Not that any named him Guri. He was known as Gthesput. At the start the name muddled then amused him. Then he grew used to it. When he was about twelve – or six – he incorporated Guri into the name. Gurithesput.

  By then his fame was automatically waxing, and with it an additionally bizarre story. Ennuat was the virgin coven member. The tale went Guri was therefore the result of a virgin birth. This seemed less disgraceful than what Guri knew as the reality: that he had fathered himself. Therefore he did not deny the tale. As for Ennuat, she would look so forbidding when anyone mentioned it, soon no one did.

  When he was sixteen, that was eight, Guri left the sluhtin and went to visit the sluht-city of Sham. A crowd of adoring young warriors rode with him, all of them on fine mammoths.

  Approaching the city they were met on the road by a caravan of y’Gech.

  Though racial ‘cousins’ some rivalry and caution did exist between y’Gech and y’Chibe. Seeing twenty mounted Chibe warriors advancing along the road, which was Shamish-built and a paved one, the caravan ushered its own fighting men to the front and right across the way.

  As Guri and his company drew level the caravan’s Gech witch ran out too. She had green and black hair and shook a rattle made of crocodile bones and small brass bells. Imperiously she pointed with one long finger at the ground. The Chibe warriors must dismount.

  Only Gurithesput did so, amicably enough.

  ‘Hail, magical woman. What’s up?’

  She was young, but with old, flat, venomous eyes. Perhaps she had lived among crocodiles and other swamp oddities too great a while.

  ‘You shall not go by. You mean ill to Sham. I can smell it on you.’

  The Chibe men snarled and the mammoths snorted. No one liked to be insulted over his smell. They had got themselves up in their best, too, for the visit.

  But Guri only grinned. He was a god, acknowledged it, felt still renewed and young enough, not to mention wild enough, to revel in it. Along with the other perks of godism he smelled excessively good, he knew, at all times.

  ‘Are you sure, Magica? Why don’t you come and sniff me? Then you might change your mind.’

  The Chibe chuckled. One of the mammoths put up its trunk and bellowed in a bold paraphrase of the male erection.

  Magica stamped her boot. Stalks of greenish fire burst from the paving and made a low crinkling barrier between the warrior Chibe and the Gech caravan.

  Guri looked at it. ‘When a man likes a girl,’ he said, ‘it takes more than a fence to keep him away.’ And with that he walked right through the fire, which at his touch went out.

  He towered over the witch and now, if she had doubted, very likely she sussed a hint of his enticing personal aroma. Then he kneeled on the road before her and kissed the boot which had stamped. Instantly the kiss-shape appeared on it, made of white silver.

  Guri got up again.

  The witch’s eyes were no longer flat or venomous. They were full of tears. For a moment Guri triumphed, and then he felt sorry. He had not meant to humiliate her. He
had always had, and had now, vast honour for sterling mageias of most sorts, and always for the Crarrowin and Cruin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Gurithesput. ‘I went too far.’

  ‘No,’ whispered the witch, ‘I see what you must be.’

  ‘A god,’ Guri risked admitting.

  ‘There are no such. But yes. A g—a g—’ A proper sound atheist, she could not even get it out.

  ‘I am Guri,’ said Guri, to help.

  ‘Whatever your name or nature,’ she said, throwing back her head to meet his eyes full on with her weeping ones, ‘you will bring shame and death among us, and on mighty and glorious Sham you will bring down ruin. This prime city will be trampled to a cake of mud, because of you and your – godishness.’

  Guri went sallow. His eyes flickered as if he might faint. He was convinced she was not cursing him. She had sensed – smelled – on him some awful flavour of forecast events. Dumbly he thought back over his past, so far in these people’s future. Yes, by the time of his first life, Sham had been nothing, a heap of dirt with one lone wreck of a gate. And the glory of Chibe was reduced to scattered war packs whose sluhtins crouched always under a weight of unvoiced nonentity. As for the country of Gech it had been a borderless ramble – tiny villages amid the ice swamps, wanderers and wise-women who served others, such as Jafn barbarians. The coven-name Cruin had been forgotten.

  He steadied himself and said to the witch, ‘Can’t it be averted? You tell me. I will be guided by you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, averting instead her gaze. She put her hand on his and a shiver went through her. ‘I can counsel you.’

  At which Guri gave up, for he saw she fancied him as most women did, and wanted him for that, the more important axis of people and land forgone or lessened by desire. Women. But that was unfair, his sixteen-year-old acuity told him: men were just as bad in such matters.

  Exactly as the elderly might feel young inside their bodies, the young might sometimes feel, inside their own youthful hides, ancient, tired and nearly historical. The Chibe detailed in their woven songs, and in some of the carved or written graffiti found on stones or walls, that the recurring birth-death-birth cycle of reincarnation was the reason. Not everyone every time lived to a ripe old age. Thus old age, when experienced, was the less familiar state. But the first stages of life, childhood and youth, might be repeated thousands of times. The young, even children, could well feel old and worn therefore.