Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  “There,” said the captain finally. “A dingle. We will be able to risk a fire.”

  A hollow had sometime been scooped in the flank of the mountain, as though by a god’s hand. Laurel clustered thickly around the rim of it and tall iron-black trunks marched down within. The trees stood so closely ranked and the drop fell away so steeply that they had to cling to their horses. Once standing at the loamy bottom, they felt as if they were in another world. Relieved and eager, they set to work, some building a makeshift shelter of laurel boughs, some gathering last year’s fallen thorns for fuel, some kindling fire with bow and bore since no one had flint and iron.

  “We have no water,” said Seda.

  “We shall see,” Kyrem replied, pointing at the horses. Off to one side Omber stood pawing at a patch of moss and ferns. Seda went over and discovered that the steed had uncovered a trickle of water and was digging himself a basin to catch it in. She ran back to the prince.

  “A spring,” she reported, astonished. Kyrem nodded.

  “In Deva we value our horses for many reasons,” Kyrem said obliquely. And Seda remembered that the great horse-god had made Ahara Suth, the sacred spring near Avedon, with a single blow of his mighty hoof.

  Huddling together in their shelter after nightfall, eating their remaining roots and a coney caught in a snare, watching the fire that burned just outside their open entryway, the company felt nearly comfortable. Still, the men of Deva mourned their lost comrades. Talk turned to how they might avoid further tragedy, and to Auron of Avedon, king of Vashti, and how he might be plotting to kill them all.

  “I keep telling you,” Seda said, she who usually kept silence, “Auron is not like that.”

  They laughed at her, but not so loudly this time, and Kyrem glanced at the lad quizzically.

  “How can you say that, Seda?”

  “Auron is the king,” she averred, her voice rising so that she was nearly speaking aloud.

  “But do you know him, or know of him?”

  “Have you ever even seen him?” added the captain.

  “Of course not.” She did not herself understand her own passionate certainty. She only felt, instinctively and unreasonably, that if Auron son of Rabiron were not a good and righteous king, the bright green buds would not be on the ilex nor the green grass growing from the sorrel earth nor the celandine growing so yellow or the wilderness rose so blue. “He is King, I tell you,” she added with just a hint of whimper in her voice, looking at them all with pitiful eyes, daring them to laugh at her again, she, he, a poor shuntali. Seda was not above using her own misfortune to give her leverage on the scrupulous.

  “Oh, let him alone,” Kyrem said promptly. “Have you no family at all, Seda? Are you orphaned?”

  “I think I am a twin,” she said.

  “What?” He did not understand.

  “I sometimes remember a mother and a father and a … someone very like myself. When twins are born, one is cast out.”

  “What?” Kyrem spoke in astonishment this time. But some of his men were nodding. In Deva also, twins were regarded as unnatural. But rather than abandoning one, parents treated them as one child, and so did the clan and village as well, insisting that they take passage together, marry another set of twins and that on the same day, even die on the same day. Girt about with all these restrictions, twins were regarded as awesome and somehow unlucky.

  “The one who comes second from the womb is cast out,” Seda went on. “That is the bastard. And the mother is lamed for adultery.…” She let her words drift away, recalling the dark, pretty mother who hobbled around a mistily remembered cottage.

  “Great galloping Suth!” Kyrem exclaimed, shocked.

  “So you do not do these things in Deva?” Seda was also capable of a certain dry humor.

  “Most assuredly not!” Kyrem started to stand up in his discomfiture, remembered in time the low roof of the hut and sank down again. “Although,” he admitted, “I do remember hearing an old curse, ‘May you be the mother of twins,’ or some such. I thought it was because of the hard labor.” He winced at his own words.

  It is hard on all concerned, Seda thought, not speaking the thought.

  “My lord,” a man said urgently, “send the lad away. He is bringing us ill luck.”

  “Silence,” Kyrem snapped. “Seda, how did you live if they cast you out?”

  She shrugged. “They had to keep me until I was three, that is the rule, so that it would not be murder.”

  “Great Suth,” Kyrem said again. “Murder might have been kinder.”

  “They … they never killed the babies outright. In the old days I would have been taken to a mountaintop and left to die.”

  Kyrem sat gazing at her, engrossed, ignoring the mutterings of his men. “So you have a brother somewhere, a twin, whom you have never seen,” he said in wonder.

  Seda shrugged again to hide her confusion. It was a sister. Try as she might, she could not remember the name, but she remembered the infant face, mirror of her own. The years since were all confusion. How had she lived, and how had she become a boy?

  “Lord,” said another of the soldiers, “we are half naked and shivering in a wilderness; is that not ill enough? Send the lad away, before he brings worse on us.”

  Kyrem turned on the man. “You fool, you sound like a Vashtin!” he said hotly. “They with their stars and their talismans and their charts and rules and their lucky this and unlucky that! Remember you are a Devan, you carry your own magic with you in your very body! You have no need of luck.” He glared at the man and turned back to Seda, still fuming. “We value people more in Deva,” he said darkly.

  Seda had to smile, a small, shadowed smile. The Devans had not always been particularly valuing of people in their warlike dealings with the Vashtins. But there were no shuntali in Deva, or so it seemed. “Here, people are cheap,” she said in her soft voice. “Only horses are precious.”

  “How so, lad? Will they try to rob us of ours?”

  It was the captain. But she never answered him, for a dark, winged form swirled by and landed with a thump just at the verge of night, beyond the fire. They knew at once that their demon had returned, even before they saw the sheen of firelight on two unlikely hooves and the red reflection of firelight in equine eyes.

  “Devan dogs!” the thing sneered.

  As one man all the Devans sprang up and charged it, demolishing their hut. The horse-bird lurched up and away, just out of reach of their angry, grasping hands. “Dung of Suth!” another voice said blasphemously from behind them.

  They jerked around, puppets pulled by someone’s string. Another winged and horse-headed black demon sat there almost companionably by their fire. Behind it, in the ruined hut, the lad Seda groped for a rock, preparing to stun it. But before she could strike, yet other voices took up the chant.

  “Dung of Suth! Balls of Suth! Bowels of Suth! Die! Die! Devan dogs!”

  The men clustered like frightened horses, circling, staring in every direction. The black birdlike things faced them on every side, weird in the firelight and ominous, darkling, beyond it. How many? Perhaps a dozen; no one could see clearly. Quite enough to make their hearts sink in unreasoning despair, for they had thought there was only the one.

  Beyond the dingle the laurel bushes rustled, though there was no breeze. Shadow-tails, Seda thought. But the men seemed not to think so, nor did the steeds. At the far end of the hollow near the spring she could hear the horses milling and whinnying. The animals were alarmed, but they hated to leave their masters.

  “To mount,” the captain ordered, and his men were glad to obey him, for every sinew of every one of them cried out for flight, though the demons had threatened them with no bodily harm. The horse-birds, each sitting on its two hooves, moved aside before their rushing exodus, and the dingle echoed with a sort of whinnying laughter.

  Kyrem, as panicky as the rest of them, stopped only long enough to take the erstwhile stableboy by her arm and hurry her after
the others. She tugged against him.

  “What is the matter?” she protested softly, and though he did not stop, he slowed his pace to argue with her.

  “Have you no sense?” he whispered furiously, fear turning to anger; he felt mockery in her words and mockery in the presence of the demon birds. “The night is full of danger. Anyone can feel it.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  He stopped for a moment to hearken. The night was still and, this far from the fire, quite black. Omber stepped softly up to them, the sound of his hooves muffled by the forest loam. Kyrem felt a pang of despondency as sharp as that of an abandoned child.

  “See now what you have done?” he said bitterly. “They’ve gone off and left us.”

  Shouts rang out harsh and fearsome across the night, and the scream of a stallion hurt or enraged. Kyrem stiffened, turning toward the uproar at the edge of the dingle.

  “There,” Seda murmured.

  “They’ve been attacked again!” Seething, he flung himself onto Omber and galloped off, leaving her standing where she was.

  They never knew whether the fight was with the weasel-faced man and his followers from the hostelry or with some commonplace robbers, for it was too dark to tell. Though they had little enough to be robbed of, except perhaps the horses, which no Vashtin would touch.… Kyrem hurled himself and Omber into the slashing confusion under the trees, bellowing for his men to rally to him, and the suddenness of his charge gave them some small advantage for the time. They cut themselves away and broke free, fleeing down the mountainside, but the dark and the unknown terrain soon slowed them. They stopped after a bit in a dense stand of cover and stayed the rest of the night there, tensely standing guard, no one sleeping. Dawn showed them each other somewhat cut and bloody, tired and pale. The captain was there, and Kyrem, and three men. Two others were missing, and Seda.

  “We must go back,” said Kyrem.

  “Take the wise path, Kyrem, and go on,” said the captain grimly. “Those who are gone are gone for good and aye by now.”

  “We do not know that. They could have hidden themselves, as we did.”

  “I heard at least one give his death cry at my side. And remember, your first duty is not to them or to your rag-tag youngster, but to your father’s bond.”

  That thought gave Kyrem pause for a while. But then he stubbornly shook his head.

  “You young fool—” The captain lost patience and temper, but Kyrem stopped his words with a black glance.

  “I may be a fool and young too, but I know myself. I cannot merely ride away and leave them. I will go back, with you or alone.”

  In the end they all retraced their tracks, riding warily. They found the dingle and the battle-scarred soil amid blackthorn, and they found their two comrades there, quite dead. There was no sign of Seda, though they circled the dingle.

  “Now may we go on?” the captain snapped.

  They rode away westward, heavy-hearted, the soldiers on account of their comrades, and Kyrem, though he frowned hotly to admit it even to himself, on account of the lad he had so unceremoniously deserted. But before they had gone much beyond the next belt of trees, they heard a clatter of quick, light hooves coming up from behind. They turned, half fearfully, wondering if certain black birdlike things preferred walking to flying. But there came two donkeys, each heavily loaded with packs and blankets and gear, and leading one and bouncing about on top of the other was Seda, driving the creature forward by twisting its ear.

  She presented the booty wordlessly. There was food in the packs, and a few garments, and flasks and cooking pans, and many of the things they lacked. The captain spoke to her harshly.

  “Where did you get all of this?”

  “Those who attacked you last night—they left their train unguarded.” She faced him blankly, wrinkling up her nose a trifle at his tone. “I make a better thief than a brawler,” she added finally. “Are you not glad to have food? Do you still say I bring you bad luck?”

  No one said a word, but Kyrem put down his hand to her and hauled her up once again onto Omber’s back. The others took the packs and blankets and sent the donkeys away with a whack.

  “What is the matter?” Seda asked after they had ridden for quite a while in silence.

  No one answered her. No one would say what it was that preyed on their minds: that the two who had died were the two who had spoken against her.

  Chapter Four

  Down from the mountaintop, the holy mountaintop, the highest in the Kansban range, called by the Devans Anka, by the Vashtins Kimiel, down came the cursing, flapping, black demon things. For days they followed above the riders, hurling their imprecations. “Devan dogs!” would come the neighing shout, causing the soldiers to mutter angrily. “Curse you! Curse you all!” A dozen or thirteen at a time would be lurching about in the air, shaking their black-maned heads crazily or thumping into the trees. Each one had its own litany of ill will. “Dung of Suth!” one would cry, and others would join in, “Blood of Suth! Balls of Suth! Bowels of Suth!” until the whinnying chorus deafened those below and made them shout. Outrage filled them, not just on their own account, but on their god’s. They could see these black things only as monstrous, blasphemous parodies of the horse-god’s greatness.

  “Let us take to the trail again,” the captain said heavily. “We can have no thought of secrecy anyway, with these cousins of vultures wheeling above us.”

  So they rode on the track, which grew ever wider as they neared the foothills. One-roomed inns and small villages dotted that way, each about a day’s journey from the last, but the travelers did not stop at them—they had no coinage, not even coppers, and also they remembered what had happened the last time they had stopped at such a hostelry. They avoided each small settlement, making their camps in the surrounding wilderness. They soon were out of food again. No wild berries were ripe so early in the season, but they found the devil’s-toe root from time to time, and mushrooms were growing in the loam that was constantly damp from mountain fogs and dews. Seda gathered odd fungi that were large, bluntly pointed of shape and bright red, for all the world like Kyrem’s lost cap, long since turned to ash in that fateful inn. She cooked them by the dozen in a panful of steaming water, and they were pleasing to the taste as well as filling. Sometimes—not often enough—they would manage to down a squirrel with a stone, or snare a rabbit. And in the night Seda would pay brief and clandestine visits to the local cooking sheds, returning with bread, cheese, and sometimes even meat.

  No one came after them or troubled them on account of these thieveries. But the horse-birds still flapped above them and cursed them with never-lessening fervor.

  “Can the things know what they are saying?” Kyrem wondered aloud. “I mean, each of them has its own little tattle-taunt, quite short—could it be that the creatures have small wit of their own?”

  Even that thought was unpleasant. “If that is so,” the captain asked, “then who or what trained them and sent them to harry us?”

  No one knew. A nameless enmity hovered over them and followed them like their own shadowing cloud.

  The nights were, if anything, worse than the days. The creatures always stopped with them at their camp, thudding heavily to earth at some small distance or attempting in a clumsy fashion to roost in the trees. There they shouted mindlessly all night and rattled the branches with their weight, turning sleep sour. The soldiers tried to shoot them with makeshift arrows, to stone them, trap them, snare them, drive them away by any means, but it was a business like the swatting of midges, doomed to frustration. After a while they would turn surly and pull blankets over their heads, letting the birdlike things be. Seda suffered as much from them as the others. “Shun-shun-shuntali!” one of the black things would cry, “Shun-shun-shuntali!” until she had turned into a taut knot of misery and could scarcely eat or sleep. Since the others were nearly as wretched, no one noticed her particular discomfort. But after a few days of this siege of curses, Kyrem set his jaw
and willed himself to combat it.

  “Come here,” he said to Seda one evening at their beleaguered campsite.

  She came listlessly. He had her sit down beside him and he took up one of her small hands, began wordlessly to trace with his own stocky finger the narrow bones that showed whitely through her skin. After a moment she looked up at him in astonishment. Comfort and strength were flowing through her, marrow-deep and bone-strong, and as she saw him truly, she realized that the power was in him again, as it had been that night at the inn; he looked bigger than himself and solid as the mountains, and the squawking demon creatures seemed of no importance beside him.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Devan magic,” he replied softly. “We carry it with us, in our bodies, our innermost selves. We have no need of chants and charms and lucky colors.” He touched her head lightly with cupped hands, turned her by the shoulders and gently traced the line of her spine, caressed her thin shoulder blades, sending a tingling joy and wonder through her. He would not have done so had he known she was a girl and not merely a boy younger than himself. For her girl’s heart was touched, and body magic is the most binding of magics. Kyrem was yet a virgin, but when the time came that he would lie with a woman, that one would be his mate for life, such was the power within him.

  With a final gentle touch he left her and went to his men. “Now you four,” he said to the soldiers, “help each other.”

  They did not have gift for the magic such as Kyrem’s. But, watching them, Seda began to understand something of the bond between the Devans and their horses. That constant touch throughout the day, gentle squeezing of knees and guidance of hand on the crest of the neck—no wonder, with the magic, that man and beast became nearly as one, the man’s will guiding the steed, the steed warm and generous in its submission. Did something of the steed’s strength come through to the man, she wondered? Did the magic work two ways? She knew what Kyrem had given to her—but what, if anything, had she given to Kyrem?