Wings of Power

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  The people in the maidan, soldier and slave, merchant and priest, whimpered in abject terror. The bodies of Menelik and Persis were a dark hump at the side of the basin. Somewhere a cock crowed confusedly. Tarek spun toward Gard, lip curled not in fear but in frustrated rage.

  Deva quivered. In the darkness her skin began to glow. “Raman?” she said. “Hurmazi?” Her voice purled like a brook over opalescent pebbles, like a wind through a willow grove. “Do not make me laugh. I rule here.”

  “Ah?” said Tarek, his rage perforated. Senmut’s jaw dropped, seemingly attached to his face only by the bristles of his beard.

  Deva was incandescent with beauty, flashing multiple shades of blue. Her jewels sparked like lightning. Gard’s, Tarek’s and Senmut’s shadows writhed down the sides of the temple. Demoness, goddess—shakhmi, shakhmi . . .

  “Shakhmi!” exclaimed Tarek. He pointed to Deva, chin up, teeth clenched. “Saavedra, you have used me. Down all these years you have used me, even though I came to you only once!”

  Well hellfrost and demon-fire! thought Gard. Deva has been right all along! His heart ached with adoration and stubborn fury mingled. The dragonet bent in an extravagant bow.

  Deva—Saavedra—smiled. “All I had to do, Tarek, was precede you, and follow you, and arrange the shards of circumstance you strewed about yourself. How does it feel to be used?” Again she raised her hands, fingers spread in arcane gestures. “Go ahead. Kill your mother, your lover, your daughter. Make me die—if you can!”

  Tarek raised his hands, grimaced, and clenched his fists, the gloss of his confidence smudged by the fingerprints of man and woman and deity.

  Ah, Deva, goddess or no you are mine! Gard’s spine coiled. The dragonet, already distended, surged to fill his entire body. The pentacle spat lightning across the platform and Tarek reeled back. His breath escaped in a strangled oath, “I shall be damned!”

  “I would be pleased to oblige,” Gard retorted.

  His body, Deva’s body, was fluid flame. Power, the desire and the joy of power—they were gods. Unity of sensation and purpose—sexual rapture, cerebral bliss, ethereal glory—perfection, utter perfection! The daemon twisted with impossible suppleness and he followed, threading light to shadow around the needle that was Deva.

  Through a sapphire haze he saw the sun’s halo wink out and a rim of light glance from the quarter where the darkness had first appeared. Voices cried. The wind thrilled. Clouds gusted across the sliver that was the sun.

  Gard was Deva, he was the dragonet—he was outside them both, and saw Tarek leap upon the altar, his boots planted firmly between the horns . . . Eldrafel leaped over the great bulls of Minras—the island leaked fire, burned, exploded in a tremendous cloud of ash and cinders . . .

  Gard danced. Tarek wore a cloak of mist and steam, carried a shield of cloud—lightning cleaved the cloud, ricocheted, flared along Gard’s senses and dissipated. Tarek was uncertain, and in uncertainty, weakened.

  Deva was panting. She was Saavedra, and she was moaning and gasping like a woman in the throes of passion, mouth open, eyes rolled back.

  Senmut looked from sun, to cloud, to Tarek, to Gard and Deva, as sparks spattered around him like those that flew from his forge. Bhai crept over the edge of the platform, holding a gourd that leaked bits of black powder. Gard evaded a bolt of lightning, shrugged off a roll of thunder, extended his hand.

  The pouch around Senmut’s neck opened. His glass lens zoomed up into the air above his head. Bhai lifted his gourd in one hand, a burning taper in the other. Senmut raised his arms to ward off the coming blow.

  Deva grimaced, eyes narrow, chest heaving delectably, barely contained in her bodice. The clouds swirled and shredded and clotted again. But in that brief moment in which the sun glanced through the clouds, Gard tilted Senmut’s lens.

  A needle of radiance touched the gourd. A curl of smoke, a spark, and it exploded. Bhai screamed and hurtled backward into the crypt. Senmut rushed forward to peer into the depths. What he saw made him sit heavily upon the platform, head bowed, shoulders constricted.

  The sun was more than half restored, when it was covered again by hysterical wisps of cloud. Thick greenish bronze light broke through the clouds and vanished. Tarek gestured, lightning licked at Gard and he parried. Strike and parry again. Tarek staggered.

  Power and passion mingled, his heart and the dragonet’s thudding through his bones, his feet skimming the wood of the platform with supernal grace—Deva swaying before him, laughing, gasping—she is Saavedra, he thought with a spurt of glee. She is a goddess, and I am making love to her, and she likes it. His face stretched into a grin of ecstasy.

  And then everything stopped. Gard and Deva stood, auras interlaced, powers flickering as one. No, we cannot stop, it has gone too far—passion weds power; it spirals up and up until consummation and climax . . .

  Tarek knelt, his hands grasping the horns of the altar, his head bowed. Gard scowled. The gesture was of a hunted man claiming the sanctuary of a holy place. But this is not a holy place, this is Apsurakand.

  Deva motioned in benediction. This is Apsurakand, a holy place.

  Silence, the stillness of a bated breath. Not even the dragonet was breathing. The sun was round and blindingly whole, the star at the heart of a sky that was as pure and shimmering blue as Deva’s sapphire. In its intense light the city vanished.

  No, Gard thought, blinking, straining for air, the city was there. Shards of sorcery rained fire upon it; roofs ignited, columns were scorched—Jamshid’s curse, that Apsurakand would burn.

  The people in the maidan swayed this way and that. Some ran toward the flames, some away, some fell prostrate where they stood.

  Saavedra’s temple burned. Deva and Gard watched, hearts beating in rhythm, as below them the shabby garden vanished in a shower of sparks. Anemone bloomed amid startling blue camellia, and purple roses spilled over crystalline fountains holding quick glints of fish. The facade of the building shriveled and evaporated, revealing the gleam of blue, green, and violet-glazed tiles across which danced silver moons and golden suns.

  “A miracle, a miracle,” cried the waiting priestesses.

  A gust of cold wind pressed Gard and Deva together, fluttered Senmut’s robes as he climbed wearily to his feet, tossed the garments on the bodies of Menelik, Persis and Shikar across their contorted faces, concealing them.

  With a frenzied giggle Gard kicked a tiny pebble beside his foot. It bounced off the altar, bringing Tarek’s ashen face up with a start. It struck a coping stone. The stone loosened, slipped, slid. With a dusty rumble an avalanche of brick poured into and blocked the opening of Raman’s crypt.

  “A sign, a sign,” wailed the watching priests.

  “Hail,” said Tarek, sarcastically, into the altar stone. “Hail, wizard Gard, Kundaraja.”

  “You said yourself,” rasped Gard, still breathless, “magic would tilt the balance in this war.”

  Color, polished mahogany, returned to Tarek’s face. “Yes. I said that. Little did I know how truly I spoke.” He extended his hand toward Deva. “You have won, Saavedra. You and your minion the fire-demon.”

  “I am no one’s minion,” spat Gard.

  Deva gestured. The dragonet raised its wings. The pentacle flared more brightly than the sun. Gard danced. There, now he could breathe, now the cold air warmed in his chest and rippled the expanding wings of the daemon that glittered purple and silver, amethyst and red. Power, passion, step turn step again and again, swelling to that last paroxysm . . .

  Tarek saw his own hand clutching the altar. Abruptly he released it. He stood and brushed himself off. A tendril of his thought sliced Gard’s—if I stand, he will knock me down. If I stay here, I appear a supplicant.

  Gods! Gard screamed to himself. He has to die, make me want to kill him! But when did the gods do their own dirty work?

  Deva’s breath sobbed through her lips. She reached toward Tarek. Her face twisted in mingled pain and rapture—again, step
again, turn again, her voice wheezed in Gard’s ear—again, again. . .

  Tarek crossed his arms and stared, brow furrowed, into the middle distance, ignoring the rills of liquid flame that poured down his turban, singed his jacket and made smoking puddles at his feet. “If I had died in battle, I would have merited a hero’s grave. Young women would have poured libations over it and laid laurel garlands upon it.”

  Ashes spun down the wind, smudged Tarek’s form, whirled away. “But then,” he said, brows rising, “it was a magnificent gamble, was it not? To tease fortune.”

  Gard and Deva turned together, the dragonet crushed between them, bodies thrilling, minds screaming senses burning in rivulets of molten gold.

  “To strive,” said Tarek. “To seek, to find . . .”

  A sheet of flame. He disappeared. The crowd shrieked in excitement. Senmut looked up, eyes bloated.

  Gard’s mind, Deva’s mind, were one and the same. Their voices emitted the same trembling cry of completion. Somewhere, deep in some quivering nerve fiber, they saw a ship with a black sail breasting the crest of a wave—the Great Sea, moaned Gard—a pirate ship, groaned Deva.

  Sailors stood, ropes dangling unheeded from limp fingers, whetstones clanking to the deck, dumbfounded at the apparition suddenly appearing in their midst. Tarek braced one hand upon a railing and the other on the hilt of his scimitar. He looked around him with cool, deliberate speculation. His lips curved into an ironic smile. “. . . and not to yield,” he said under his breath. And then, loudly, “May I ask just who is in command of this ship?”

  Even his image was gone. But his voice echoed, yield, yield, yield . . .

  But we did, we succumbed to power and gloried in it and won by all the gods by all the wings of power we won . . . Never again. The thought clunked down the steps of the temple and left a crater in the ground. Never again.

  Their combined auras guttered and shredded in the wind. Pentacle and sapphire went out. The dragonet sighed, dipped its wings, offered a jaunty salute, and frizzed into a gnat-sized cinder. Perceptions flayed and raw, knees like jelly, Gard and Deva dropped together onto the edge of the platform. The crowd, glutted by magic, cheered. Senmut shook himself, scrambled up, and hurried to the couple’s side. “Are you well?”

  “I killed my own father,” Gard mumbled, his mouth clumsy, “how could I kill yours, Deva?”

  “You never killed your father,” she replied hoarsely. “And as for mine, as for mine—may he prosper in his new life.” A tear like a strand of silver slipped down her cheek.

  “I think we need have no fear of that,” Senmut said.

  Several Apsuri officials crept up the slope of the temple, making various respectful and frightened bobbings and scrapings. Fires to be extinguished . . . Bodies to be buried . . . A ruler—Alliance needs a ruler.

  The faces bleared before Gard’s eyes. With an airy wave of his hand he said, “Rajinder ed Jamshid of Ferangipur will rule. Dump it all on him.”

  “Rajinder lives!” the crowd shouted. “A miracle, a miracle, a sign from the gods!”

  Gard realized that he wore no shirt. His skin puckered with goose flesh and he snugged Deva even closer to his side. But even she was cool. His little daemon—the creature was gone. He was empty as an orange peel, sucked dry; his torso would cave in . . . Deva inhaled. Her expanded chest just filled the hollow in his.

  The officials were pelting him with queries. “Deal with them, Senmut,” he said.

  Senmut, grinning approvingly at Gard’s good sense, began giving orders; “Use your water system! Organize squads with buckets . . .”

  The sapphire in Deva’s nose was a faience bead. The strand of filigree running to her ear was brass. Her face was cotton plain and her eyes were dazed mud brown, untouched by the gods. He did not care if the gods existed or not, as long as Deva did. He kissed her.

  Her lips, returning his kiss, were very pleasant. But no magic sparked between them. Gard extended his arm and looked at the scar, the mark of Saavedra; it was lurid pink. He peered down at Deva’s homely face on his shoulder. “Are you finished here?” he asked.

  She burrowed trustingly into his side. “Yes. Can we go home now?”

  Home, he thought, tasting the word curiously. Home. And he began to cackle with laughter very close to exhausted tears.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Gard tripped over his own feet and plunked down on the deck next to the barrel where Deva sat. He laid his head against her thigh. Her hands, strong and capable of doing anything except working magic, teased the chestnut hair that skimmed his forehead.

  A cool breeze sang in the rigging of the ship. The Mohan chuckled around its prow. Green jungle unrolled to either side and the clear blue sky slipped by overhead; the opulent sunlight of late afternoon danced upon land and water and sail, blithely unaware that it had ever been blotted out.

  By magic? No, Senmut had assured Gard that the eclipse of the sun had been a perfectly mundane event. Which was more—or less—than he could say about some of the other events of the past six months or so. It was a matter of defining the boundary between mundane and supernatural.

  “How soon,” Gard asked Deva, “before you feel the baby move?”

  “Not for a long time yet. I am just barely sure that I really am with child. But you shall be the first to know, I promise.”

  Gard had always hoped and feared that, like a mule, he was sterile. “What I know,” he said with a firm nod, “is that it is not a bastard.” Deva chuckled, and continued stroking his face.

  Srivastava drifted along the railing, dropping garlands of withered winter roses into the water and staring at them as they whirled away. The eyes that had been lucid black pearls were now crusted iron, unfocused. Her tuneless song barely rose above the swish of the water.

  Gard and Deva exchanged a sympathetic glance. “Is Yasmine any better off,” Deva asked, “sitting in the corner of the temple, drinking unwatered wine and lethenderum? You should have seen her—no kohl, no carmine, her face as blank as a wiped slate. Soon no one will believe that face launched a fleet, fielded two armies, and brought down the great tower of Ferangipur.”

  “Her face was,” Gard responded, “a mirror in which men saw their own desires.”

  Senmut sat on a box nearby. “Almost there!” he said cheerily to Srivastava. “As soon as we get you home, my dear, I shall give you cordials that will perk you right up.”

  Srivastava’s face puckered in bewilderment. She drifted down the opposite rail, casting her flowers into the stream. A gharial surged from the water and swallowed a garland. A few of the freed Ferangi women followed her at a discreet distance, spindles whirring in their hands as they walked.

  “It has been two months since Ferangipur fell,” sighed Senmut.

  “And over a month since it was redeemed,” said Rajinder. He and Ladhani passed Srivastava with murmured assurances and strolled arm in arm to the bow. They shaded their eyes against the gleam of the sun and the burnished bronze of the water and peered long and hard downstream. “The captain says we arrive at dusk,” Raj went on. “I shall see then how well my orders were carried out in my absence.”

  Senmut began, “The ideal ruler would be a philosopher . . .”

  “I would do better to be a bricklayer,” said Rajinder, with a jaundiced but not unkind glance at the old monk. Senmut subsided.

  “At dusk,” said Ladhani, “I shall see Narayan running and playing with the peasant children. Or so Raj tells me.”

  Rajinder nodded. “He is much louder than he once was, and not nearly as clean and tidy, but I daresay he is stronger for it all.”

  “And are the rest of us who survived the war stronger for it?” asked Deva, so quietly only Gard heard her. “Stronger, if no longer clean and tidy?”

  That was the first unanswerable question he had heard in days. If he ignored it, it would go away. He smiled affectionately and did not reply.

  But the thought was sown. How pleasant to merely remember images
rather than be consumed by them, to see only the scene before him and not onion-like layers of other places and other times. The landscape unfolding now was water, riverbank and sky, not symbol and omen—sun glint on the river, fire and water, Gard and Deva . . .

  He waited for the dragonet to make some disparaging comment. But the little creature was only a gnat-sized awareness tickling the flanks of his thought, incapable of opinion, not critical but not inspiring either.

  His gold pentacle embossed with gold wings was an ornament on his chest. The scar on his arm was an imperfection in his flesh. His spine held his body upright. When he saw purple, he saw insipid dyed cloth, not the ineffable shimmer of Rexian purple. If his mind did not spew radiance it did not spew darkness; it simmered like a small oil lamp. He did not miss the dragonet. Not yet.

  He yawned. The lowering sun spread light over the world, polishing the river, trying the wind to see if it were in tune. Winter in the Mohan was much more pleasant than the heat of the summer or the rotting dampness of the monsoon—strange inside-out seasons, but he would grow used to them.

  Rajinder said, “You owe me, Gard. Out of all the ambitious people in this drama I was the only one who did not want to rule the entire Mohan, and you have laid it in my lap!”

  Gard managed a shamefaced shrug. “It was not until the last moment that I had any intention of doing so. The rest of it just happened.”

  “Certainly,” Deva nodded. “Happenstance, coincidence, plot . . .”

  “I would like to continue serving you,” Gard went on. “But I have no more magic. If I ever dance again, it will not be done well.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Rajinder, grinning. “What I need is a vizier. I fear the accommodations might be somewhat spare, compared to what you are accustomed to, but . . .”

  Gard considered that grin. The Ferangi prince, now the Ferangi rajah, was as handsome and personable as ever, despite the faint scars visible at the throat of his jacket. He was leaner now, not so much in body as in demeanor, trimmed of competing entanglements. Suddenly Gard thought of Andrion’s enchanted sword, the pure crystalline sweep of its blade, not marred, but whetted by hard use. “I would be honored, Nazib-ji,” said Gard.