Wings of Power

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “You have been in battle,” Vijay stated. “Have you ever seen a veteran lose his nerve? He has been in so many skirmishes, he has so much knowledge of war, that the significance of the coming battle overwhelms him!”

  Gods, Gard shouted mutely, the man is almost eloquent!

  “You have power. You win her for me”

  Gard hissed, “Do not overestimate my powers.”

  “You will get me Yasmine, Gard, or you can walk back to Ferangipur. And when you arrive, I might well have taken your wife for my own zenana, in retribution for your disobedience.”

  Wife? Deva? I would like to see you try to take Deva . . . Gard’s thought concretized and his bones skreeled. The dragonet swung gleefully upon the pentacle, a pendulum in his chest. Retribution? Shikar had captured Deva, had tried to rape her, had sold her to a slave dealer. Poetic justice, to take his wife in the midst of his own zenana. The greatest challenge yet . . .

  Vijay shuddered, eating his words and finding them hard to swallow. “Forgive me, my friend. I would not threaten my servants—I would buy their loyalty, not steal it from them. I would not speak resentfully of my brother.”

  “I do not sell loyalty, Vijay. I offer it freely. For good reasons.”

  Vijay’s eyes glittered feverishly. His dark cheeks were swept first with carmine, then with pale saffron, then with carmine again. “Then, do you have reason to serve me?”

  Gard peeked around the doorpost. Yasmine had not moved. She might have been a portrait edged with gold leaf, except that no artificial pigment could capture the living colors of her face. Appropriate, to place upon her head those tinkling bells. Her laughter would sound like that, her manner would be as airy and insubstantial. Her mouth would taste of roses.

  Vijay might be possessed, but he trusted his wizard . . . Gard laughed under his breath. The dragonet leaned back, smirking, legs folded. How tidy, to avenge Deva and amuse myself at the same time. To spite Deva, and to honorably do as my employer—asks, not demands. “Watch me,” he said.

  He tickled the dragonet and it jumped up, limbs outstretched, poised. He sent his thought into the pentacle, and the wings upon it unfurled and spread. He soothed the jangling of his bones, gathered their excruciating perception, molded it.

  Vijay. The angle of the brow, so. The breadth of the shoulders, so. The mustache like a banner displayed upon the parapet of Ferangipur, so.

  Vijay’s eyes opened so wide the whites glinted around the dark irises. “Nothing astonishing,” said Gard. He pirouetted. “We are not too different in body build, after all.”

  Vijay made some strangled assent in his throat. Yasmine’s voice stopped, but the chimes continued.

  A strange sensation, thought Gard. Not as strange as becoming a tiger or a cat, but still very peculiar to be inside someone else’s body. Vijay’s dark brown eyes admitted not less light, but less imagery than his own gray ones. Vijay’s limbs were heavier than his own, more stolid, if less likely to betray clumsiness, then equally less likely to exhibit a lithe and infernal grace. The dragonet was larger, filling his entire chest, half choking him. It would take more effort to sustain the illusion than to work the seduction.

  If he was still capable of seducing anyone. “Go back to your room,” he whispered to Vijay. “Lock the door on your way out. And wait.”

  Vijay’s throat heaved in a gulp. Muttering something under his breath, what might have been a prayer or a curse or both, he went.

  If I stop to think about this, Gard thought, I will not do it. He stepped into the garden and said quietly, “Greetings, Lady Yasmine.”

  Her hand jerked and threw the crust of bread into the pool. The mirror-image of woman and flowers and blue sky shattered into glinting tiles. The swan galloped over the surface of the water and with wing-beats like whip cracks launched itself into the sky.

  Gard smoothed his voice into honey, like the honey clotted in his throat. “Forgive me for startling you. But—but I had to speak with you.” He took a step closer.

  The hand that had been splayed protectively upon her breast fell like a fluttering leaf into her lap. Her eyes were a lustrous aquamarine, measuring the man who stood before her. She smiled.

  Emboldened, he stepped to her side, captured the hand, brushed it with his lips. Odd, to have his chin hanging beardlessly out in the atmosphere . . . Roses. Her flesh was surely made of rose-petals. The all-pervading scent dizzied him as surely as a flagon of strong wine.

  She giggled, blushed, and snatched her hand away. “How did you get in here?” she inquired. Yes, her words did tinkle like bells.

  “Locked doors are no barrier to true love,” he said gallantly. The daemon in his throat gagged. He shoved it down. Vijay, he reminded himself. I am Vijay. “I am Vijay, prince of Ferangipur. I heard of your legendary beauty, and my heart was filled with it. I had to see you, to talk with you, to . . .” Gard seized her again. “. . . touch you.”

  This time she did not rescue her hand. Her expression kindled and began to shine into his own. Had anyone ever bothered to talk to her, or had her body been sold like a choice cut of meat?

  “You are the brother of Srivastava,” she murmured. In all innocence, perhaps, remembering a gossiped name. Or perhaps her husband had rebuked her for not being Srivastava.

  Gard unleashed his—Vijay’s—most devastating smile. She fluttered, her lashes beating like butterflies. She wriggled, the sheer silken layers of her garment sliding like falls of glistening water over her body. The pool stilled itself so that Gard could see Yasmine and Vijay seated together, surrounded by lush frills of scarlet, against the depths of the sky. The garden was a world in itself. Nothing else mattered.

  “Ferangipur,” she repeated. “I have heard of its magnificence.”

  “Its splendor is a mere shadow of your beauty.” She looked down into her lap. Gard secured her other hand and held them both. They were fragile shells in his strong brown grip; he could crush them if he chose. But why should he choose to hurt her?

  The wind chuckled among the roses. The swan circled the garden and landed again in the pool, sending ripples through the images on the water. The headdress shivered delightfully. No indecision between beauty and plainness for this woman. She was exquisite, in shape, in gesture, in voice.

  A shame, Gard thought suddenly. Her beauty was so delicate that the least sag of an eyelid, the briefest crease of a cheek, might spoil its illusion. Youth, after all, was transitory. And who was there to notice its moment of glory? Shikar?

  Gard’s body stirred with desire and wilted, the effort of maintaining his image too great for such indulgence. The dragonet filled him, so that he felt that if he sneezed, his own face as well as Vijay’s would fly off and reveal the pointed snout, the sharp teeth, the limpid gray eyes of the daemon.

  He must not sneeze. He must not let anything so mundane as lust tarnish the ephemeral beauty of the moment. The dragonet smirked into his collarbone.

  Yasmine looked coquettishly through her lashes. She pulled herself away and, lifting the folds of her sari so that she could walk, glided swanlike across the garden. Gard followed her. From his mouth spilled the proper words, wheedling phrases, compliments, teasing expressions of interest.

  She answered, too innocently to be truly flirtatious, but promisingly, nevertheless. He moved on to winsome crooked smiles and light, as though accidental, caresses.

  It was a dance, a curious variation on the dance of power, himself with himself. A dance of himself and dragonet with illusion, male chimera with feminine mirage, more unreal and yet at the same time more vital than any activity he had pursued since . . . More unreal and more vital than any activity he had pursued since he had seduced Deva and she him, to such drastic effect.

  The dragonet flounced. Gard smothered a burp, collected himself, quelled the sprouting red hairs below Vijay’s mustache.

  “. . . Apsurakand,” Yasmine was purling. “. . . merchant’s daughter. Honored by the Shah . . . somewhat dismayed in Muktardagh . . .�
�

  She had a child’s consciousness of her own body; her hands smoothed her dress over her hips, her fingertips toyed with the spill of gold at her ear lobe, her tongue repeatedly tasted her lips. Did she sense her power over men, or did she simply, like an infant, lack anything else to be aware of?

  “My husband,” she said, with a quick frown as though she were not quite sure of his name, “keeps me only for show. Not that anyone ever sees me, except on the occasional feast day, when he parades me like an idol before his warriors. Who stink of sweat and sour wine.”

  Gard said something sympathetic. Yasmine twirled across the pavement. She bumped, quite inadvertently, into his chest, so that he had to steady her with an embrace. It was like holding a milkweed pod, bits of fluff clinging to him with soft inconsequence.

  The marvelous aquamarine eyes sparkled into his. “My husband has only come to my bed three times,” she confided. “I had heard that such—activity—could be pleasurable. I never believed it until now . . .” Her voice died away. Her breath was as fresh as a newly blown rose. Gard reeled in its draft. His hands excavated the layers of fabric she wore.

  Hah, probably Shikar was incapable. Vijay would be doing Yasmine a favor, teaching her the finer things in life.

  “You,” breathed Yasmine, “do not smell of sweat and sour wine.”

  I should hope not. Gently, firmly, he took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to his. She made a pretty show of resisting, turning her head, squirming in his arms, so that in the end they were pressed even more tightly together and his lips were immovably lodged against hers. Yasmine’s lips were sweet crushed berries.

  Now. Leave her wanting more. Gard released Yasmine and set her a few paces away from him, careful to leave his hands open, empty and yearning. “I presume, lady,” he sighed. “I force myself upon you. I should leave you.”

  Her lips were still parted, still damp from his kiss. Her eyes were unfocused. “Come back,” she panted. “The zenana is locked for the night after the eleventh hour. Come back to me, Vijay.”

  Vijay? Oh . . . How much softer the prince’s name was than his own. Gard murmured something soothing and backed away.

  She followed, wafting across the garden, roses bobbing like boats in her wake. Her eyes shone, her cheeks blushed, her hands stretched, fleshly tendrils, after him. “You will come back to me. You will.”

  “Yes, yes, lady. At the eleventh hour.”

  He blew her a kiss. He paused at the door for an elaborate bow. Either a cloud momentarily blotted the sun, or the crystalline purity of the scene was smudged by vapors of lust . . . He spun into the corridor, skirted the other doorways, opened the lock and gained Vijay’s room before he dared to breathe.

  A surge of nausea swept over him. He clutched at the doorframe as his vision blurred, as ants crawled under his skin and the dragonet shriveled in his stomach. His disguise peeled from him. He was Gard, king of Minras, wizard of Ferangipur, serving one ruler by abusing the hospitality of another.

  Vijay was sitting upon the gift carpet, knees crossed, arms crossed, waiting. “Well?”

  “She is yours,” wheezed Gard. The dragonet looked up with a groan. “Go to her tonight. I hope you enjoy yourself.”

  Vijay rose. “You did not—I mean, for yourself . . .”

  Gard slid bonelessly down the wall and huddled on the floor. He cackled with laughter. How? he shouted silently. With what? “No, Vijay. She is as perfect as she ever was.” If not, he added to himself, quite as pure.

  Oh no, he was no procurer. And she was no—well, she was naive and foolish, certainly . . .

  “Ah, then,” Vijay cleared his throat and headed for the door. “I must go and perform my diplomatic duties.”

  No “thank you”? But of course not. Vijay was the master, Gard only the servant. Used like an old cloak to mop up spills upon the floor.

  Something lay heavily upon his shoulder. A long blond hair. He pulled it off and held it shimmering before him. Spun gold, already a bit tarnished.

  The dragonet was violently ill in his gut.

  * * * * *

  Gard felt stretched so thin that surely a passerby could have seen his bones outlined through his flesh. But he was alone, lying in his cot staring at the cracked plaster of the ceiling, sorting nightmare and reality among its interstices. Neither quite fit.

  All night his dreams had been haunted by Yasmine’s and Vijay’s whispers and moans. He could, if he cared to look deeper into vision, see them together. Long black hair entwined with the blond. Beauty in face and form, shallowness in perception. They deserved each other.

  The dragonet stirred in its sleep and pricked an ear. Vijay murmured, “A jewel like you belongs in Ferangipur. What a waste, to leave you here, alone and unappreciated.”

  Yasmine’s sleepy, satiated sigh was a rill of tiny bells, “Ah, my love, I would follow you anywhere.”

  “Then come back to Ferangipur with me, and be my wife.”

  Gard bolted upright in his bed. Vijay, you idiot, do not start taking yourself seriously! An adventure in Muktardagh, a cheap but enjoyable prank is one thing. Actually stealing Yasmine away is another.

  An insult, grumbled the dragonet, is not nearly as satisfying when unexpressed. Would Shikar dare to tell the world that the ineffectual young prince of Ferangipur had stolen his wife from under his nose? If he could not even keep his own wife, how could he aspire to the rule of the Alliance?

  The taste of honey and roses congealed in Gard’s mouth, scumming his teeth and tongue. He crawled from the bed and searched for his tooth twig. Deva, Srivastava, we have avenged you . . .

  But Deva, too, had haunted his dreams, at one moment placing a soothing hand on his forehead, at the next slapping him silly.

  And Senmut. He had seen the old monk hobbling down from the gates of Dhan Bagrat toward a caravan, at each step his stick striking little whirls of dust and disgust from the ground. “What arrogance, to challenge the gods themselves,” he muttered. “I knew that boy had a black streak in him, too bright outside, too dark inside.”

  Gard threw down the twig and seized his clothes. Damn it, Senmut, how am I supposed to read the tangled will of the gods?

  He strode out the door, out of the palace, past yawning sentries, up a staircase to the top of the city wall, so wide he could have driven a chariot along the top. What a place to plant a dainty rose like Yasmine; Ferangipur, yes, that would be much more appropriate.

  The plain of the upper Mohan was a vast basin. The citadel of Apsurakand beetled like Menelik’s brow beyond fields and groves that drifted uncertainly in the mist of dawn. The distant mountains were tenuous gray against a rose quartz sky.

  He kicked a pebble along the wall. The dragonet rode in his stomach as Deva rode in a howdah, slightly green. There, fleeing down the western sky, was the nacreous oval of the moon. In two days’ time, at the full, he would be twenty-two years old. Last year at this time he had begun courting Raisa.

  Soldiers came running at him, brandishing their spears. “You are not allowed here, Ferangi! Be off, and quickly!”

  He could have turned them into toads, but it would not be worth the effort. With placating gestures, he went. The moon vanished and the sun rose behind him, consummating the day, but he ignored them both.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gard stared blearily upward. At last it was dawn, the rising sun bleaching out the stars. Another sleepless night and he would surely go mad.

  He glared balefully downward. The dragonet slumbered, not even having the decency to stay up with him as he fought nightmares through dark passages and light.

  He tried vainly to find a comfortable position in his shroud of blankets. Not that he minded being evicted from the tent he had shared with Vijay on the journey out from Ferangipur, but at least the prince could have offered him a pillow or two for his services. Who, after all, had wrapped Yasmine in the Muktari carpet and, the daemon straining in his gut, carried her out of the palace before her husband�
�s very eyes?

  And who had found, in a village just within Ferangi territory, a priest of Vaiswanara who was unaware of Yasmine’s previous attachment? Upon the gift of a gold coin and a length of silk, he had married her to Vijay in a small brick shrine, chickens clucking at the door. The young lovers had only laughed at such ambience, and said the required words with such blissful sincerity that even Gard’s jaundiced eye had glossed with sentiment, and the dragonet had offered them a salute of its gauzy wings.

  But now it was that cold hour before dawn when men are claimed by birth and by death. Judging by the symphony of gasps and sighs emanating from the tent, Yasmine and Vijay were determined to achieve one or the other.

  Gard pulled his blanket over his head. There, he could see nothing, not the fringed palm leaves against a pewter sky, not the dozing sentries as still as statues along the glassy sheet of the Mohan. He could hear nothing, not even the coppersmith bird hammering away like Senmut or Bhai.

  Ferangipur. We shall be back in Ferangipur today. I shall see Deva. The image of Ranithra, Queen of Heaven. Deva, and sanctuary.

  Deva stood in a sun-washed garden . . .

  What? Where did that image come from? Gard shook his head, trying to shoo it away. The dragonet grumbled and opened an eye. In those gray depths he saw the image magnified.

  Deva stood in the rooftop garden outside their chambers in the palace. The alabaster dome shone like the egg of some monstrous mythological bird. The sounds of voices in the street were filtered through a high-pitched hum, the whine of bees and a child’s voice singing tunelessly.

  Rajinder’s son, Narayan, sat among the marigold and heliotrope, lilac and lily. He moved tiny wheeled carts and carved elephants in procession across the dusty stone, accompanying his play with his song. Deva sat on a low wall nearby, sewing some serviceable bit of linen, humming her own melody in counterpoint to the child’s.

  He could still hear Vijay and Yasmine’s voices; god’s teeth, did they have to be so noisy about it? Their groans were like a water buffalo’s, growing louder and louder, mounting with a crescendo that ached in his awareness . . . Narayan’s humming stopped abruptly. Deva looked up. Her eyes flashed a deep and deliberate blue. She laid down her sewing.