Wings of Power

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Gard gathered his wits. The dragonet jiggled its head experimentally. Yes, they were both still breathing, very slowly, very deeply, hearts plodding from one beat to the next. The room seemed a league away. When Raj handed Narayan across the table to Vijay, their forms moved with the exaggerated gestures of puppets in the children’s theater in the maidan.

  Deva? Gard thought. His mind’s eye saw her close beside Ladhani, behind the screen, the sapphire casting a fine blue light around them both.

  Rajinder proceeded gamely with the durbar, Bogatyl handing him rolled scrolls and painted vellum sheets. His voice murmured like the waves upon a beach, “—Prince Vijay-ji to Apsurakand. Wizard Gard. Letter to Menelik ed Allaudin congratulating him on the—er—acquisition of a son—his nephew Jofar, adopted as heir . . .”

  Jofar. Menelik must be desperate for an heir to adopt slow-witted Jofar. Unless he valued skill at arms more than wits.

  “—letter to the Shah as a token of good will . . .”

  A zephyr of wet air stirred the close air of the room. The rain slowed. A drenched sentry crossed the room, his feet slapping upon the floor. His murmur to Rajinder was almost unintelligible; Gard felt the words rather than heard them. The bolt of lightning had struck the great tower, splintering the ashlars of the parapet and throwing a soldier to his death below. Raj nodded grimly, and waved the man away before an ashen Jamshid could hear. But Srivastava heard. Her eye turned to Gard as if he somehow had betrayed her.

  By Saavedra’s multiple teats, woman, I am no storm lord and have never claimed to be one! Your intuitions have played you false again . . .

  Jamshid and Srivastava were leaving. Everyone was leaving. Vijay said something about the journey beginning tomorrow and Gard muttered a response. The swish of the rain ebbed, slowed, and stopped. Solitary drops dripped from the roofs and plunked down into the depths of his heart, bouncing like ballista shots off the dragonet’s head. The small creature shook itself like a wet dog and hid beneath its wings.

  Servants began clearing away the dishes. The saltcellar rose before Gard’s eyes and went sailing away upon currents of air. Deva stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. I have no siblings, he thought. Neither do you. We have each other. “I shall return to you, I promise.”

  Her mouth crumpled in affectionate irritation. “Yes,” she said, “You shall.”

  A frail ray of sun illuminated the garden, outlining each leaf like the gilded capitals of Ferangi calligraphy. Arm in arm, under a banner of truce, Gard and Deva strolled out into a world purified by water. Only to see the great tower, a beckoning finger against a sky sketched in broad strokes of blue and gray, riven from top to bottom in testimony to the power of fire no water could quench.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gard ran a comb one last time through his hair. No help for it, he had had to bathe in Mohan water, stinking of musk and mildew, and now wore a crust of silt over his patina of sweat and dust. The air was so thick he felt as if he were swimming as he stepped from the tent into the encampment. Perhaps that tantalizing odor on the air was dinner.

  The sun was a dazzling smear in a white sky, a hands breadth above the smudge of the horizon. A spectral gibbous moon hung overhead. The river was a sheet of beaten gold. Not a breath of wind stirred; a solitary raft creased the surface of the water so precisely, Gard wondered if the river would break in two and part so that he could peer into its murky depths.

  But here, nine days’ journey from Ferangipur and a day from Apsurakand, the mighty Mohan had no depth, not until the monsoon rains filled it. Now an expanse of dried mud lay between the encampment and the rim of the water. The Ferangi had every reason to believe they were favored by the gods—the monsoon washed tons of fertile silt from this land down the river to their territory.

  Several servants squatted in the midst of a cloud of buzzing flies scraping the skin of the tiger that Gard and Vijay had killed that afternoon. Its entrails lay in gory patterns across the ground, its magnificent gold and black stripes were mottled by blood and its eye sockets looked blindly up into the sky. The chase and the kill had been exhilarating. Now, Vijay stood somberly considering the relic as if he watched a funeral pyre consume a loved one— Well, had he not once watched as his wife’s young body was eaten by flames?

  Gard’s cheeks and chin tingled, the hairs of his beard stiffening and thrusting outward. His muscles stretched, rippling beneath skin clad in sleek black and gold fur. The dragonet sketched arcane shapes on Gard’s bones. Empathy. Shape-changing skill. Power—only Deva could understand the lure and the peril of magic, and Deva was not here . . .

  Odd, his powers had been blessedly inert until now. Gard seized his body before it dissipated. Copper curls softened the angle of his jaw. Hairless skin encompassed his bones, face and forearms tanned, chest and belly as pale as a Sabazian’s hair. But the quick insinuation of power lingered, humming in his blood.

  Vijay sighed extravagantly. His immaculate turban tilted. “Ho, Gard,” he said. “We shall give the skin to Persis, as a rug.”

  “Who?” Gard asked.

  “Menelik’s wife, Persis. A formidable lady. A shame every male child died in infancy. Or perhaps fortunate for us.”

  Ah, of course. Deva had told him that, too. Deva told him everything. “Menelik and Persis have adopted a son, have they not?” Gard reminded him. “The warrior Jofar. I—er—met him once.”

  “Oh yes. Menelik would choose a warrior.” Vijay turned away from death splayed at his feet and squinted into the west. The lowering sun thickened the moist haze of the river bottom; a mist gathered above water and forest like steam above Senmut’s crucible. The shadows of the tents and the trees behind them were translucent, duplicating the wisps of cloud that curled feebly across the pallid sky. “The land rises beyond those trees. Do you suppose the air could be lighter there?”

  Gard’s dragonet sat with its wing tips across its face, as coy as any lady of the zenana concealing herself with the end of her sari. Its eyes darted from side to side as if searching for something. The pentacle in the pouch around Gard’s neck hissed faintly. Again his nostrils flared. No, not food. Incense of some kind, eddying slowly upon windless air.

  “Gard?”

  “Yes, Nazib, probably so. Let us go see.”

  Side by side they slogged across the mud flat, into the breathless shade of the trees, up a slope. Jagged limestone boulders protruded from the soil like the bones of the world itself. Gard wondered if they, too, tingled with beckoning magic.

  From the top of the hill, clumps of trees looked like islands floating in fields shimmering with light and heat. The distant shapes of mountains were violet stains upon the horizon, their snowcapped tops blending into a gleaming nacreous sky. Several horses browsing nearby trotted up to peer at the men. Vijay allowed the largest to sniff his hand. “Good stock,” he said. “Giremoni, probably. Look at those flanks.”

  “I do not suppose,” said Gard, looking at the smooth flanks, “that they are bewitched women? With a handful of oats we could return them to their natural state, and they would then be grateful.”

  Vijay chuckled appreciatively.

  Gard’s head and the dragonet’s went up simultaneously. A breeze touched his face and died, but not before he heard the music drifting upon it. “Did you hear that?”

  The prince listened, frowned, shook his head. “What?”

  “Music. A harp and a flute.”

  The horses heard it. They whinnied and stamped, their hooves making muted thumps in the grass. The sun dipped into the west, the air congealed like cooling bronze, the haze trembled.

  Gard blinked and stared. The horses were changing. Their coats faded to shining white, their delicate muzzles sprouted silky beards, and from their foreheads spiraled single slender horns that shone with the same nacreous glow as the sky. The dragonet offered them a courtly bow. “Vijay,” said Gard.

  “Hmm?” The prince patted the shoulder of the closest beast. It gazed serenely at him with eye
s of the purest liquid blue, like melted sapphire. Pastel colors flowed up and down its horn.

  “You do not—you cannot . . .”

  Vijay slapped the animal’s rump. It tossed its head, mane rippling, beard fluttering, horn winking; it snorted in a sound like disdainful laughter and trotted away.

  The breeze carried a scent of—asphodel? Gard wondered. Lemon grass? Patchouli? A harp, counterpointed by a shenai, played a melody unlike any he had ever heard. It was a silken thread coiled about his throat, not choking but caressing him, drawing the blood into his cheeks.

  The dragonet bounced up and down in his stomach, its wings quivering with delight. “Vijay,” said Gard again. His lips and tongue were uncannily sensitive, as if tasting the mouth of a woman who had been drinking Dulcamara. The name of the prince floated perceptibly before him. “Music. Over there.”

  “Ah?” replied Vijay. “How interesting. Show me.”

  The men swam through air like syrup, toward what appeared to be a sheer outcropping of rock. The sun sank beyond the rim of the world. A sparkling mist drank the fields and the mountains dissolved. Twilight engulfed the world. Gard’s spine twanged and his feet carried him on.

  They passed beneath trees from whose knotted branches hung long skeins of moss that swept nearly to the ground. Gard’s shoulder touched one gray-green cascade and passed through it without feeling it. When Vijay brushed a drape of moss it emitted a spray of water droplets that bounced from his turban and jacket as if from a hot iron.

  The music grew not louder but more insistent. The melody, Gard realized, was that of his own heart, that of his own dancing feet—step, step, turn—Kundaraja. Clarity of perception, intensity of focus; this was not a simple oasis of power, as Senmut had told him sometimes occurred near wells or on mountaintops or in certain stone formations. Some conscious mind was contriving this place, stroking his senses into painful tumescence . . .

  He stopped dead at a cliff face, Vijay colliding with his back. Power and danger played a complex harmony. Whatever was calling him—the dragonet danced among his ribs, eyes gleaming with anticipation—whoever was calling him . . . Hellfrost! Am I going to let myself be intimidated by magic every time I get to have some fun!

  He raised his hand. The rock before him parted. A cleft fringed with nodding ferns opened into a wavering phosphorescence that edged each serrated leaf with silver. Music and incense billowed. “In here,” Gard said.

  “Where?” Vijay asked, staring blankly at the rock.

  Shaking him would do no good. “Follow me!” Gard turned sideways to brush through the cleft, the ferns warm and damp against his skin. He found himself in a rock- and tree-ringed glade that might as well have been an underwater grotto. The light was oddly diffused, not quite that of sun or moon or fire; the odor of incense was so thick it filled his nose and throat like water. The dragonet gasped. The pentacle blazed against his skin.

  Turquoise butterflies darted across the glade, flashing like a school of fish, chiming faintly as they veered and turned about Gard’s head. The glade was carpeted with brilliant red poppies and blush-white lilies, thrust rudely aside by spiky stalks of vervain. Surely all those plants did not occur naturally together. But then, this place was hardly natural.

  “What a shame,” said Vijay in his ear, “we have no women to bring here. A lovely bower indeed, and quite private.”

  The music stopped. Or perhaps it continued just beyond perception, sizzling in Gard’s blood.

  There—three women sat on low stools beneath the spreading branches of an ancient peepul tree. One set down a harp, one laid a flute in her lap. The one in the center fondled him with amused blue eyes. His blood surged into his head. The dragonet reeled giddily, caromed off his spine and into his heart, leaving both throbbing.

  But no, the woman in the center was not Deva. She strongly resembled her, true; satiny brown skin and black hair smoothed back from a face sculpted by sardonic perception. Shakhmi, Gard said to himself. Shakhmi, shakhmi.

  The woman on the left looked like Raisa, with black tip-tilted eyes and cheekbones like the prows of galleys. The one on the right had hair the color of honey and skin as fair as the lilies at her feet; she might have been Sabazian if she had been more angular, less meltingly pliant.

  Vijay was peering upward to where the tops of the trees disappeared into foaming rose tinted cloud. Gard nudged him and pointed.

  Vijay spun around, stepping on Gard’s toe. “Ahhh,” he sighed, his lips slipping back from his teeth like a tiger scenting its prey, its mate, or both. He made his most gracious bow. “Greetings, ladies. I am Vijay, prince of Ferangipur, and this is my—er—attendant, Gard, on a mission to Apsurakand. How did you come here, so far from civilization?”

  One of them smiled. The smile spread like ripples in water to the others. “Greetings, Nazib,” sang the one in the middle. “We are here fulfilling a vow to our god by watching his grove overnight.”

  “And which god would that be?” inquired Vijay, his voice edging into a low, vibrant register.

  “Hurmazi,” chimed the one on the left.

  “Then you are Apsuri noblewomen?” Vijay’s mustache wilted just a bit.

  “Indeed, Nazib. Here alone, bereft of our husband’s advice and protection.”

  “No one will harm you,” said Vijay stoutly. “I shall send you some of my own soldiers.” His mustache lifted and curled again.

  “Thank you, Nazib,” crooned the blonde, “but it is a condition of our vow that we remain here alone.”

  “Under the protection of Hurmazi,” the Khazyari woman sang.

  Gard stood just behind and to Vijay’s side, like a good little attendant, his hands not folded but clenched behind his back. He dug at a poppy with the toe of his boot. The dragonet chanted in his gut, imkhash, imkhash. Apsuri noblewomen, pinfeathers! he thought. Noblewomen, Apsuri or otherwise, would have retainers of some kind, servants bringing pillows and sweetmeats. Their husband would have never sent them out without guards—what were the gods, when property was at stake? He glanced helplessly at the handsome, affable face—Vijay, you idiot, how could anyone be so intelligent and yet so blind!

  “However,” caroled the Mohendra woman, “you can aid us in one way, Nazib. A prince of the blood would have, of course, superior judgment.”

  Vijay’s chest swelled. “What judgment can I make for you?”

  Gard’s daemon began banging its head against his breastbone. His eyes narrowed. Each woman’s face shimmered slightly, the features not quite firm, as if they wore masks of light and color fashioned of the torpid but still insubstantial evening air. Their saris altered color, yellow darkening into red slipping almost imperceptibly into deep purple. Their jewels winked from bloodstone to ruby to sapphire.

  Creatures of the twilight, these women. Goddesses or demonesses? Or something of each, like Deva, with Deva’s subtlety of intent? Surely deities had better things to do than tease a sprig of the royal house of Ferangipur, no matter how amusing his lack of perception.

  “We are having a slight disagreement.” The honey-haired lady indicated a velvet pillow set before them. “This trinket came winging down from the sky a few hours ago, a gift from the god for our devotion to him. But there is only one of it, and three of us.”

  Vijay bent to look more closely. Gard craned around him. Upon the crimson velvet—which had been flame orange a moment before—reposed a golden pomegranate. It was broken open so that tiny golden seeds spilled out, their encompassing golden jelly seeming actually to tremble in the ambiguous light. Even Senmut had never made anything so fine. Gard was reminded of the salt cellar, the gift of Menelik to Jamshid.

  “How lovely,” said Vijay. His dark eyes gleamed sideways at Gard. Typical women, to fight over something pretty. “How can I help?”

  The Khazyari smiled, her teeth sparkling between her lips like pearls set in bronze. “Choose, Nazib, which of us will own the pomegranate.”

  “Oh,” said Vijay. His brows arched upward
, his mustache rippled in an exhalation. He looked dubiously from face to face to face. Each set of feminine eyelashes fluttered, each head tilted coquettishly, each mouth softened in a beguiling smile. Vijay dissolved into an answering smile, dewy-eyed as a lamb.

  The dragonet spun as if evading supernal swords. Gard’s mind leaped. Wives. Hurmazi. Of course. These were the spouses of the chief god of the Apsuri. Neglected spouses, apparently; according to the Allianzi gospel, Hurmazi went nobly about his divine business—something to do with defeating his evil brother Raman—without dissipating his strength in the zenana.

  He fitted names to the faces before him: Kyphasia, the buxom blonde; Pallias, with the incised face of a Khazyari; and Ranithra, the Queen of Heaven, who looked like Deva . . . The women laughed merrily. Their voices twined about Gard’s thought and clung to it with little licking kisses. So you know who we are. Perceptive boy. What of it, eh, what of it?

  Gard flushed and wrenched his mind away from the probing, tactile amusement of the goddesses. The dragonet panted and stopped dancing.

  “Of course,” Vijay was saying, “the house of Jahangir is known for the quality of its courts.”

  “Its reputation has reached even here,” sighed Kyphasia. Her sari, now periwinkle blue, rose and fell over the luxuriant curve of her bosom.

  “Perhaps I should take evidence from each lady,” continued Vijay, addressing Kyphasia’s torso, “as to why she should have the pomegranate.”

  Who brought you here, anyway? Gard demanded silently. What about asking me, Nazib-ji? I am not a peasant, you know.

  Go ahead, murmured the dragonet with an impish grin. Let us see what sort of scrape Vijay gets himself into. His charm will extricate him, of course; women are not very important in this part of the world. A nice distraction from pondering the imponderables of power and love.