The Darkangel

by Pierce, Meredith Ann

  she inquired. "They are very beautiful—far more beautiful than the icarus' castle___"

  "I should say," the duarough replied, "and by much. Here there is life, and that cold tour up there holds only death and death. And as for the coming down sometimes, of a certain you may— you will have to, if you want to eat. And I shall welcome you. I haven't had someone to talk to for ages." They waded back across the stream. "The other one, the one before you," the duarough continued, "she stopped talking after a while. Those loathsome wraiths did it to her, I'm sure. Poor dear, she went quite mad as they in the end. Ah, here we are."

  He had reached a narrow stair, which, instead of carving a tunnel into the rock as the garden stair had done, was cut into the side of the rock face, and ascended the wall in a slippery, uneven row of steps. The duarough motioned her up the stair ahead of him. The white torchlight wavered and danced behind her now as she ascended into the shadows where the light of the river barely reached.

  "Where does this lead?" she asked the duarough.

  "Up to the castle," he said. "It opens into the corridor by the servants' quarters. There are some nice little rooms about. You might like to choose one of them as your own—it is away from the noise of the gargoyles and the wraiths when they decide to start moaning___Oh, I almost forgot."

  Aeriel paused on the stair and half-turned, for her torchbearer had stopped and was now rummaging in the many folds of his full grey robe.

  "Ah," he said, and drew from his pocket a little object of gold—not the white zinc-gold or pale electrum her people usually called gold—but true fallow gold, more tawny than anything Aeriel had ever seen before. "You'll need this if you intend to spin for the wraiths," said the duarough and handed it to her. "Your spindle."

  It was indeed a spindle—tiny enough to cup in the hand, but weighty as lead. Aeriel held it in her hands and wondered at the delicacy of its make.

  "One of the few trinkets the queen left behind," he informed her.

  "But," said Aeriel at last, "how shall I use it? I have found nothing as yet to spin."

  "Nor will you," the duarough said, "if you mean to search in the garden or the castle for flaxsilk or fiber: there is none. No, what you spin must be of yourself...."

  "I have not hair enough on all my head to make even one kirtle...," stammered Aeriel, and at this the duarough laughed—a surprisingly hearty, deep-throated laugh for such a little man.

  "I can see that you are not acquainted with the singular properties of this golden spindle,"

  he said after a moment, regaining himself. "This spindle spins from the heart, child—joy, sorrow, anger, hate. Whatever you feel in your heart this spindle will spin. The last one, the one before you, she spun on it pity and loathing—that was all she could manage in the company of those dreadful wraiths, and I can little blame her. But such garments fall to pieces in only scant time, and they are too heavy for the wraiths to bear. No, I think you must find something else to spin on this spindle, daughter." He gestured up the stairs. "Go along now, girl. The door to the castle is only a few steps up."

  "But what am I to spin if not pity and loathing?" said Aeriel, astonished. "What else can one feel for such poor creatures?" Then, almost to herself, "And how am I to make thread of my heart's feeling—any feeling—at all?" But the duarough had already turned and started down the steps. "Oh, I've no idea, child," he called over one shoulder. "We duaroughs are miners and scholars, not spinners. You must learn in your own way and in your own time how to use it, as well as what to spin."

  And Aeriel was left standing, quite bewildered, with the golden spindle in one hand, until she realized she had best turn and find the door into the castle quickly, before the duarough and his light receded too far down the steps.

  4. A Spindle of Fallow Gold

  Learning to use the spindle proved long and difficult. Aeriel spent hours in her chamber—she had found a small, bare room in the servants' quarters to serve as hers—

  sitting with the spindle, going through the motions of back-spinning a few threads of nonexistent fiber, securing them with a half-hitch, then giving the spindle a twist to set it spinning and letting it drop, just as she had done with her spindle of ram's horn at home.

  Nothing availed. Instead of producing thread on which to hang and twist, the golden spindle inevitably dropped to the floor with a clear, heavy clink and sat there turning like a top until it fell over. Try as she might, Aeriel could not master its mechanism. The day-months passed. The wraiths, of course, were no help. She went to visit them often, as promised, but they were so horribly thin and dreary, and complained so bitterly at the weight of their coarse, drab garments, that she could bear them for not longer than an hour at a time.

  The gargoyles, too, she took to visiting, though she was careful never to approach close enough to be scratched or bitten. She brought them fish and mushrooms that she had gathered in the caves— they looked so starved and their eyes were filled with such pain that she could scarcely help but feel pity for them. After she had come to them several times, they began to look for her—to yap and yelp the moment they heard her step on the tower stairs. Gradually, as the day-months passed, they grew less bony, even sleek. Their eyes lost their wild glaze, and they ceased to howl and shriek so terribly on the long fortnights.

  And then suddenly Aeriel discovered- the working of the spindle. She had been practicing, striving with it, trying for hours to cajole it into producing a thread. This it had stubbornly refused to do. And slowly, as she went through the motions of spinning, without thread, she fell into a kind of daydream, remembering her first spinning lesson at the age of four, in the spinning room among the other women—spinning their white wool with absentminded ease.

  Bomba had put the ram's-horn spindle into her hands, shown her how to draw and twist back the wether's wool into the beginnings of a thread, how to wrap it around the base and secure it at the topnotch in the shaft, then let the spindle fall and turn while she drew the wool in thin tufts through her fingers and let them twist away as the spool of ram's horn dropped down, slowly down—it seemed an eternity—until it touched the ground with a click and fell over.

  But the sound Aeriel heard now, as she stood in her room in the vampyre's castle, was not the soft click of old bone on hard-packed earth, but the bright clink of gold on stone. She looked down, and there at her feet lay the spindle, still turning idly, with a coarse white thread twisting up from the shaft. Quickly, before she could lose the knack, Aeriel snatched up the spindle, wound the thread, and let the golden spool drop. The thread did not break, continued to form, though it was thick and ragged as a gasp.

  "It must be amazement," thought Aeriel, "that I am spinning, for I am amazed to be spinning at all."

  After that, she took the spindle with her when she visited the wraiths, and spun there. At first she could find only pity to spin for them—a coarse, dull thread like the garments they wore. And when, after a few hours in the wraiths' company, she could stand them no more, sometimes the thread turned to woolly loathing, sticky and stinging as a bruised nettle stem. Then she would leave them and go down to the caves to bathe in the warm river or talk to the duarough. And after a while, she would go back to the wraiths and take up the spindle again, twisting a thick thread of coarse, dull pity out of the air. The day-months passed.

  And then one day it all changed. The wraiths had become familiar to her now. Though their bodies were even thinner than when she first had seen them, their pitifully dull wits actually seemed to have improved slightly as she spent time with them, talked to them.

  Glimmerings of memory came to them now, though when Aeriel pressed them, none were often able to distinguish between glimpses of their own past lives and snatches recounted by a sister wraith. Aeriel still could not determine which of them was Eoduin, indeed, was not entirely sure she could have borne the knowing.

  Gradually, though, she was coming to tolerate, then even take with good humor, the whining whispers of her charges (de
spite the vampyre's words, they were not really mistresses), their nagging insistence that the thread she was spinning was too heavy and coarse. She had run out of loathing, and though they were painfully eager for attention, she tried not to pity them. And one day while she sat spinning, she found the thread passing through her fingers was growing thinner, and finer; then the coarseness went out of it completely of a sudden, and she realized she was spinning patience now—and love followed fast behind.

  Whereas an ounce of pity had spun only a skein of thread, and loathing even less, a drop of charity made a thread so fine and long that she had not yet reached the end of it. And whereas the spinning of pity and loathing exhausted her after only a few hours' work, charity and patience was the easiest spinning she had ever done. Soon she was weaving kirtles for the wraiths on an old hand loom she had found abandoned in one corner of the cellar: the work was light and taxed her not at all.

  Once, after several day-months had passed (three or four; she did not count them), she saw through a window the darkangel standing on the ramparts of a balcony that jutted from the castle overlooking the garden. She stopped to look at him. It was the first time she had seen him in a long turn of stars, perhaps even since the last day-month. The icarus stood gazing out over the plain. His wings sloped down from his shoulders like a thick cape of black velvet that swallowed the light of Solstar and gave none of it back in a sheen. His face was fair as limestone, perfectly immobile—as though chiseled of stone—

  but his colorless eyes roved aimlessly over the barren landscape.

  He turned suddenly, and saw her. Startled, Aeriel drew back from the window, but he called to her—not by name; she did not think she had ever told it to him: "You, girl." And she went out to him—for when he looked at her straight on, his clear eyes meeting hers, her strength failed her. She could do no other than to obey him. He turned away from her and gazed again over the plain. "Someone has been feeding my gargoyles," he said. "Was it you?"

  "Yes, my lord," she answered softly.

  "I did not give you permission," he said shortly, still looking out over the land.

  "No, my lord," she said.

  "Why?" demanded the vampyre, still not looking at her, "why did you do it?"

  "They were so hungry, my lord," said Aeriel.

  He looked at her now, and, seeing again the cold beauty of his face, Aeriel felt weak.

  "I like them kept lean," he said. "They make better watchdogs then."

  It was not until he looked away that Aeriel found her tongue. "Their eyes will be sharper and their ears the keener if they are not distracted by hunger...," she began.

  "Do you propose to argue with me?" snapped the icarus.

  "No, my lord," said Aeriel softly.

  The vampyre drummed the fingers of one perfect white hand on the battlements. They gleamed slightly, like lambent Avaric, against the dull, dark stone. "Tell me, how did you manage not to be killed by them?"

  "Their chains are not long enough to let them come near me if I stand against the stair."

  The darkangel nodded, then turned to glance at her over one night-winged shoulder. "You knew this before you went up?"

  She shook her head, for she could not speak while he watched her.

  "Then why did you go up?" he asked her.

  "They needed someone to feed them," she stammered as his eyes wandered.

  "They would have killed you if they could," said the vampyre.

  She answered, "Yes."

  "Then why?" he said, with real curiosity now. "Why did you go up?"

  Said Aeriel, "They needed me."

  The darkangel shook his head then and laughed. "I suppose I should kill you," he said idly at last, "I did forbid you to go up on the tower—but I shall not. You are interesting.

  Not one of my servants was ever brave enough to go up amongst the gargoyles before, much less disobey me." He shook his head, frowned very slightly. "Strange. You do not look brave."

  He eyed her then as though he expected some answer. She looked away. "I am not brave, my lord."

  He laughed again. "Perhaps not. Perhaps you are only stupid. No matter. Henceforth you shall feed my gargoyles as well as attend my wives."

  He paused then, expecting another reply, and Aeriel murmured, "You honor me, my lord."

  "But keep them lean," he said, with a sudden severity. "If ever I discover them growing fat and sleepy, you shall be their last meal for a long twelvemonth."

  With that he strode away from her and disappeared into the castle. Aeriel leaned against the terrace wall for many moments after, waiting for her heart to steady and her strength to return.

  As the day-months wore on, Aeriel, became aware that the vampyre was growing more restless, pacing the castle and muttering. "He is growing hungry," said the wraiths; their wits gradually were sharpening. Eight of them had new kirtles now. "Half the year is up,"

  the duarough told her, "and in a few months' time, he will fly in search of another bride."

  Aeriel often caught glimpses of him, prowling through the keep.

  Sometimes he caught the little silver bats that flew about the towers after dark in search of tiny moths and millers; the icarus caught the bats and broke their wings. This Aeriel knew, for sometimes she came upon them starved to death on the walks about the keep, or fluttering helplessly across the floor of some empty castle room.

  One day in the garden she came upon him. Cupped in his hands he held some tiny, struggling creature. A bat, she realized in a moment. It was a bat. He had broken only one of its wings and was tossing it into the air to watch it flutter back to earth in a frantic spiral. Aeriel could just make out its high, thin twittering on the very limit of her hearing.

  Before she could think, she found herself running forward.

  "Stop," she cried out. "Stop!"

  The vampyre ignored her. The bat struck the cobbles of the walk and ceased to move.

  The ica-rus nudged it tentatively with one sandaled foot, then picked it up by its crumpled wing and shook it. The bat did not stir. Aeriel stood watching.

  "Don't," she cried. "Please don't throw it up again. It's stunned. You'll kill it___"

  The vampyre laid the bat down on the garden wall long enough to look at her. Her voice trailed away and died. The icarus eyed her a long moment with his eyes clear and colorless as quartz, then glanced back at the bat. Its black eyes stared at nothing, glazed.

  Its mouth hung open a little, its tiny white teeth sharp as rosepricks. Aeriel could see the slight, swift rise and fall of its fragile side as it breathed.

  The darkangel shrugged. "I am done with it," he said. "It no longer amuses me."

  He brushed it off the wall and over the precipice with one brief motion. Aeriel closed her eyes and turned away. A long moment passed before she could speak.

  "Why?" she said, not looking at him. "Why do you torment them?"

  "For sport," he answered readily. "I am bored. This castle bores me. My wives bore me. I must have some amusement."

  Aeriel opened her eyes. "Need you have killed it?" She was still unable to face him.

  The icarus shrugged again; she could hear the rustle of his dozen wings. "Why not?" he said. "There are others."

  "Must you catch them at all?" asked Aeriel. "It is so cruel."

  "Oh, lizards are even better sport than bats," the vampyre replied. "One can bait them with moon-moths, then pick out their eyes, or tear out their tongues...."

  If he continued, Aeriel did not hear; she covered her ears with her hands. Even then she could hear the darkangel laugh at her.

  "You are even more sport to bait than the lizards," he said when she took her hands from her ears again.

  "There are pleasanter forms of amusement than the tormenting of helpless creatures,"

  cried Aeriel.

  "Are there?" said the vampyre. Aeriel felt her skin shrink as he stepped closer, eyed her.

  "What do you do to amuse yourself?"

  Aeriel turned quickly fr
om him, gazed out across the garden. "When I was young," she said, "when I lived in my village in the foothills at the edge of Avaric's white plain, Bomba would tell us tales...."

  "Bomba?" said the icarus, drawing back a trace. "Bomba?" He pronounced the name as though he found it absurd. "Who is this Bomba?"

  "My nurse," said Aeriel. "No, Eoduin's nurse really----" Her throat tightened and her heart turned at the thought of Eoduin. Even in the company of the wraiths Aeriel had not thought of Eoduin now in months. She found it impossible to think of the wraiths as women, could not imagine any of them had ever been a living maid, as Eoduin had been—but the vampyre was speaking.

  "You shall tell me a tale," he said,

  Aeriel looked at him. "Now?" she asked.

  "Yes, now," he said impatiently. His eyes bored into her like a hawk's. Aeriel swallowed and cast about her for a tale. "Well?" the icarus inquired.

  "I shall tell you the tale of the Maiden-Eater," she told him, and began. The tale was a long one, about a kingdom besieged by a dragon and the king's daughter who slew it and the young hero who helped her. The vampyre laughed outright when she came to describing the wyrm.

  "Big as a cottage?" he cried at last. "With wings? It is evident that you have never seen a firedrake. They are twenty and thirty times so large, and they certainly cannot fly, though they swim. Incidentally, they do not spit brimstone; they breathe sulfur and flame." The icarus folded his arms and leaned back, looking down on her, his lips curled in contempt.

  "No mere mortal could have killed one single-handed."

  "Her sword was magic," said Aeriel.

  "The dragon would have killed them both long before she could have used it."

  Aeriel looked at the ground. "You have seen dragons, my lord."

  "Oh yes. My mother keeps a pair as pets."

  Aeriel looked at him. "Your mother?" she said. The word sounded strange from his tongue.

  His lips twisted again into a smile. "I do have a mother," he said. "How did you suppose I came to be?" His tone was amused and had no kindness to it. Aeriel dropped her eyes and mumbled something. The icarus pursed his lips a moment, and his look grew farther away. "She is very beautiful, my mother."