by Tanith Lee
‘My father is the god of fire,’ said Curjai. He did not think he believed it quite, not now. But they did, at least by lip-service. ‘He has passed the importance of fire to me. Now it is under my jurisdiction.’
He looked about.
One by one the fresh-lit torches, the limpid candles failed.
A sort of gasp winged through the chamber. It was like something going away.
‘I take back from you the gift of fire,’ said Curjai. Tears sprang into his eyes. He grieved for them, he saw, even as he spent on them his curse. He could have razed the city. Yet was this any more lenient?
‘Any flame you conjure here, for light or heat, to cook, to comfort yourselves, any flame will die. As my mother died from your lack of honour. And as your scavenger king died from the claws of my cat.’
A hush, multiple, imploring, descended.
Dozen by score the lights went on going out.
Beneath their feet the warm floor turned to ice.
As the night swept in it found the palace thick with shadows. The capital sank to turbidness all through. Though they struck their flints again and again, though their mages and shamans again and again drew up the magic sparks, each glint of fire immediately died.
No torches burned now along the streets. The lamps of houses were void. Coldness entered and strolled with the dark in the rooms and thoroughfares. A faint moaning and weeping lifted. The stars stared down. A single moon, a crescent like a cat’s claw, gained the zenith in a kind of mockery.
Like a city sacked, ruined by war and plague, Padgish a necropolis, with ghouls and ghosts wandering about sobbing and praying, striking flints on walls, watching the bright seeds shrivel, one by one.
Ruxendra found Curjai seated in the hunting-park some ten or so nights later, with Catty lolling at his side. Catty had caught a deer and, having vainly tempted Curjai to eat some of it – daintily bringing him a severed leg or haunch in his tigery jaws – was enjoying a solitary supper.
The blue dog bounded to join in. The tiger and the Hell hound had a brief tussle, cleverly recognized each other from their recent astral past, and began to dine à deux.
‘Animals can be so disgusting, don’t you find?’ said Ruxendra primly, inappropriate with emotion at finding him.
‘Human men and women are animals,’ said Curjai, not glancing at any of them.
‘And we are no longer human.’
Curjai rose and strode away along the slope.
He had been so difficult to find.
Ruxendra sped after him. ‘Curjai!’
‘What is it?’
‘Do you remember me?’
‘You? Yes. You wished to slaughter Lionwolf and failed. You forced Arok back from death and did him harm. You are a travesty.’
She baulked. Recovered. ‘It is you who have made a mistake. Now you blame me for an invented error. My brothers were like that. But I could always get round them.’
‘I am not your brother.’
‘I’m glad of it. In society, where once I was brought up, incest is frowned on.’
At her own words Ruxendra coloured. But she was a goddess now. She blushed like a dawn.
Curjai did not see this, did not look. She was irrelevant to him. All things were.
He stared towards the capital, obscured now by ice-woods and elevations. ‘I robbed them of their fires.’
‘They killed your mother. Why shouldn’t you punish them? They hurt you – you might have rained fire on them and well served.’
He turned to her, perplexed. She bristled there, furious for him. She had no tact. She was like Catty. She would have ripped off the king’s face to pay him out, then brought Curjai dinner, probably cooked in some Rukarish way – useless and ill-fitted gestures. But motivated by love of him, he tiredly thought. Like her bold claim that he was not her brother, so might be loved by her in carnal ways.
‘You know what they did then.’
‘Of course,’ she said, with a slight impatience.
‘They will die,’ he said. ‘And not all of them are guilty. Their children, their beasts. I had no call to punish them.’
Ruxendra went to him and put her hand lightly on his arm. ‘Look there.’
This different side of her took him by surprise. She was also capable of gentleness, sense, and magery. He recalled that now. He looked where she pointed.
In the snow a picture blossomed.
Curjai beheld droves of people, all those in Padgish, leaving the metropolis. Leaving the lean, well-paved streets and central wide boulevard, the tree-trunk pillars and high roofs and windows with patterns of coloured crystal. He saw the dromazi and the horses and the dogs going with them, and cats on leashes or in baskets, and birds in cages or on wrists. And with them too, huge and upright glowing shadows on the unlit shadows of the dark, the great god Obac Tramaz, with his dromaz head and fine black eyes, and his small elegant blonde mouse wife Vedis – for there were plenty of her kind too concealed in the furnishings and provisions packed on the carts.
These two gods were involved and nurturing. They attended and presided over the exodus as the people did with their loved pets. And though the citizens of Padgish did not see the giant presences that moved among them, perhaps they felt some strength from them.
‘There are the gods,’ said Curjai.
‘The old order. They are the past.’
‘Then the past – has been more kind.’
He noticed among the persons passing out through the black gates two of Arok’s Jafn. One of the men held a child caringly in his arms. Humanity also could express kindness.
What have I done? Can I undo it?
He knew he could not. He had passed sentence, and it was not in him to revoke his bane; he would be unable to take it from them until for him too the anguish calmed.
Ruxendra began to speak in a haughty superior way of new duties and acts among gods, then stopped. Instead, with a quiet firmness she said, ‘I will send them a fair dawn, your people. A benign omen for tomorrow.’
Her own reversal of tactic pleased her. She was pleased to have spoken more softly – he did not need abrasion. If he was to love her he must learn he might trust her, even though he was a man, a hero, a god.
And she imagined painting in extra tints on the sky and for a moment, making her jump, a fan of diluted cerise rouged the midnight east. There was no sun there. It was a false dawn, and next went out like her blush.
Curjai had not even seen it, she thought, though numbers of those fleeing Padgish had craned over their shoulders in fright. One must be more careful.
Back along the park Catty and Star-Dog exchanged two or three buffets and then lay down for a snooze.
How could she woo Curjai? How awkward he was. Alas, in her past in the ordinary world, outside her training she had only had to deal with fairly petty troubles, until the very end, by which time she was dying, then dead, unable to take notes.
‘Curjai?’
But he did not hear. He was reciting, barely aloud, the Simese lay of Tilan and Lalt. The two heroes met and were united, kindred and beloved. Tilan and Lalt; Curjai and Lionwolf. That then was the only one who could comfort him.
Ruxendra-Ushah forgot how his voice had cracked before when he spoke to her, and their alchemical if non-physical and never verbal congress in Hell.
She summoned her pride, and went away.
She did this as a woman not a god, and so had only reached the slope beyond the wood when from nowhere Curjai stood in front of her on the snow.
Ruxendra managed not to start, nor to click her tongue with disapproval.
He had left off reciting.
He held out to her his hand.
‘Walk with me,’ he said.
She gave him her hand.
How warm and strong he is, she thought.
How cool and serene she is, thought he.
God and goddess, they began a stately perambulation, as if both were in their mortal nineties, erudite, and had done all t
hings over endlessly.
Beyond the height of the deserted capital neither Obac Tramaz nor Vedis paid heed. Old gods indeed, centuries old they were, but ancient adults do not always spurn young lovers. Some see such love like a lighted torch that illuminates the future. Kiss then the more when the fire fails. Kiss the more when the lamps go out. Kiss tomorrow awake – who else will bother to do it but love?
Somewhere among the snows Curjai and Ruxendra embrace. Fire and morning; heat and light. And in the mournful procession now a hundred miles from Padgish, the brands shine up without being kindled, and in their cages, thinking daybreak has come, all the cage birds call.
He had been looking at the agony for some time.
It was a long way off now, across hills and seas and continents.
As it sailed further from him so he came closer to himself, and finally he knew he was Dayadin, son of Arok, and that he lay on his back on the hard snow.
Maybe a quarter of an hour after this he went up a stair in his brain and looked out of his eyes. He beheld Hilth the hovor cavorting in a small home-grown blizzard. Poor Hilth. Obviously he had been badly frightened. Now he rushed to Dayadin and forced upon him the only type of adoring hug a wind spirit could offer.
Once he had dug himself out of the resultant snow-drift, Dayad soothed Hilth down like a testy hawk.
Dayad felt by now only the thinnest resonance of any wound. But putting his hand over the left side of his ribs he saw instantly an image in his mind of what had been done to him. Four scars, scored spitefully deep, embroidered his diaphragm. On his blackness they were white as the bones they had, however briefly, exposed. But the healing it seemed had been almost as swift as the mutilation.
Who had done this, and why?
He thought it had been Brinnajni. She had marked him from female rancour, the way some Jafn girl might scratch the face of a man who spurned her. And a god naturally must always exceed.
Dayadin believed it was a latent fury that made vitality burn through him from the scars.
He got up and, with Hilth flapping round him, began to continue his advance inland. Soon he felt much better. The advance grew up into a sprint. The white world dashed by. Either he was again flying now or as near as made no difference. Delighted, the hovor kept pace. And for the first occasion ever Dayad thought he glimpsed the face of Hilth, fey yet almost man-like, coming in and out of the moving air.
There was a volcano in the end, far over to the north and east, puffing up a cloud on the lightening sky.
Here below a wolf made of rock and ice posed in mid-leap. Presently ahead a habitat appeared. There were walls and gates up on a platform, and a high house with a cracked sword horizontal over the lintel.
It was the Holasan-garth, rebuilt in another country.
Dayad the Star Hawk dropped to earth nearby. Fallen slabs of ice lay about strangely on the platform’s terrace.
Through a sort of psychometry he knew at once all about Tirthen’s ice-dome and its shattering. He knew of yellow-haired Saphay, and her departure.
Dayad had got up over the wall of the original garth those handful of years back, when he was a child and chasing his father to the battle. Hilth had assisted then, and insisted on helping now. If there were sentries, they did not see.
The Jafn Holas identified Dayad instantly. Mystically in their minds he had been growing to manhood as fast as he had done in fact.
They advanced on him; greetings and cries, cheering on the seething lanes, impeding him. He did not want to be churlish. Yes, yes, here I am. You knew I would come back? Of course you knew. He wanted them to make less noise. What would Nirri think? And Arok, his father—
Then they recounted the tale of what had happened to Arok. The dream had been true. Oh, he had realized it was. He had left Brinna for that, though he had seemed to love her more than all things, and now he did not love her at all. The people in the lanes beat on him like seas. So much sorrow, so much hope.
These people, this place, Arok and Nirri, they must fill up the gaping cavity where sexual love – first love – had been.
He reached the yard of the House. It was full of long-necked hump-backed beasts. He gaped at these, and a man of about twenty-nine years came out of the door.
Then the hush fell.
The crowd offered no explanation. It seemed caught in some conspiracy which excluded Dayadin and the man equally. But whether a conspiracy of unease or compliance it was impossible to be sure.
Dayadin looked solidly at the man. He was strong and well made, unmistakably Jafn with light eyes and white hair. He had an air to him too. Dayadin, if he had not been told Arok still lived in body, would have reckoned this man some usurper Chaiord.
‘Who are you?’ Dayad spoke loftily. He found himself envious and wrong-footed and shrugged the feeling off for he could not know if his reaction was a true one.
The white-haired man said simply, ‘Your brother, Dayadin. My name is Athluan.’
At once the clamour bubbled out again.
‘Second born, but older now than you are, Dayadin.’
‘A mageia did it. She fancied him older.’
It was Athluan who raised a quietening hand. The crowd duly quietened.
Dayadin said flatly, ‘Greeting, Athluan. If you are brother to me, then where’s our father?’
Athluan stepped to one side. ‘Go in and see.’
Dayadin had forgotten Hilth. But Hilth had led the way, then hung himself up like a shirt just inside the door.
To cross the threshold.
So easy? It was done.
The joyhall was like the dream again. He had recalled it so often, he saw, he seemed to have robbed it of reality. And anyway that hall had not been here, had not been now. The confusion of return, massive as abduction, rocked Dayadin. For a moment he faltered, not knowing where he was or quite who. Perhaps when she had struck him on the snow with her claws he had died, and all this was some mirage of the Other Place.
He glanced at the beams, and the skeleton crew of striped hawks gathered there, at the dogs and the old lions in House collars. Women poised at the hearth and two or three at a loom. The warriors, fully armed, were banded in silence. All was silent finally. It was like a house of the dead where only statues of the deceased, faithfully carved and painted, displayed what had been done in life. Dayad even noted a man in a corner with a tawny skin and beaded hair, not Olchibe but some other race indigenous here as were the animals in the yard. But this man too was a statue.
And Nirri was standing in the firelit shadows.
How much older she had grown, yet how queenly. Of course, her statue showed her at her best, the age on her put in for gravitas. She stared at him unmoving as a statue must.
He saw the gems of water spilling from her eyes.
She wept. She lived. She was not, even if all the rest were proved to be, a dream.
With a clutch of the heart that was almost terror he acknowledged she would have known him if he had returned in the shape of a bear or as a vrix. She would have known him probably from a single knucklebone or crinkled hair. And he had thought her a statue.
He reached her with uncanny swiftness. She only smiled. He held her in his arms and not a word was said between them, there in the silence of the joyhall.
And then she did speak. ‘There he is, there he is, your father. Go to him, Dayadin.’
So then he let her go and turned his eyes to the wooden chair where Arok the Chaiord sat.
One of the wise-women had left her house and run panting up the garth. Now she appeared by Dayadin and mumbled again the story of Arok’s misadventure. ‘We could do nothing. He died and was brought back – but his soul was caught among the stones.’
‘I see that, lady,’ said Dayad.
He did. He crossed between the other statue people and the fire, and stood in front of Arok.
‘Father,’ said Dayadin humbly, ‘here I am.’
Arok said nothing. Then he dully said, ‘Who? Where? What does i
t matter?’
Dayadin beheld the source of statues and dream-state.
He put his left hand four-fingered on the four scars under his clothing. He only knew to do it. A throb of power shot into his arm and through his spine.
He thought Not Brinna – She – it was Chillel—
‘Father,’ said Dayadin, ‘come back to me.’
Arok muttered. Then vaguely he said, ‘No, son. You stay there and guard your mother and the women.’
In Arok’s floating, bloating brain a kind of upheaval occurred without warning. Huge blocks seemed to loosen and move this way and that, crunching over each other.
He was fighting in the snow.
No, that was not what he was doing. Someone, some Vormish enemy, had bashed him on the head. The blow had sponged him with unlikely gentleness. He had turned over and gone down and men on foot ran across him, and a reiver fish-horse jumped to clear his body.
Now I finish.
He could not move, yet he could still see.
What he saw was his son, Dayadin, dashing over the vista.
Illusion: Dayadin was no longer a child but a grown man, a warrior.
I shan’t live to see that then. That’s what it means. I lived through the White Death, but Chillel’s purpose is accomplished. I am redundant and can die.
Arok remembered what his son had said. Come back to me.
Nirri was for ever remarking that Dayadin nearly always got his own way …
Arok floundered. He had to reach his son.
‘God – God—’ Screaming deep-voiced like a stag, Arok burst upward – out of Hell or out of Heaven, out of coma, through every obstacle of flesh and spirit, from snow and blood and earth and stone and smoke and winter and time – and landed in his own body in his own garth in the new continent, with his chair crashing over and the world spinning, and seized Dayadin in his arms – ‘My God – you live – you’re alive—’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Dayadin modestly, holding him close. ‘And so are you.’
‘And so – am I.’