Wings of Flame

by Nancy Springer

  “Peckernose!” a cursing creature shrieked with passionate abandon from the darkness just beyond their camp fire. “Prince peckernose!”

  Kyrem swung like a bear where he stood, and for a moment rage darkened his face; Seda thought he would go after the horse-bird with one of his useless charges. But the next moment his face cleared and he threw back his head and laughed, a wild, free, ringing laugh, the beggar’s laugh that mocks any adversity.

  “Peckernose yourself!” he shouted back at the bird with no beak, and all around the camp fire men smiled.

  “What makes you think it means you, lord?” a soldier joked quietly.

  Kyrem grinned and answered not the jester but Seda’s inquiring glance. “My name,” he told her. “It means ‘phallus’ in the language of the Old Ones. No dishonor intended, only that I am called after the emblem of love and fertility. My father’s name means ‘lion.’ So I am the phallus out of the lion, do you see?”

  Seda felt her heart go hot and spoke before the feeling could reach her face. “Who are the Old Ones?” she asked. The question had been with her for days, waiting.

  Kyrem’s grin faded. “I scarcely know. Those who lived in Deva before us. All that is left of them is their sacred language and their saying that souls go up as birds. They worshiped birds, their great god was the simurgh. Folk say that their horses were as yellow as our yellow clay, tarpans, and that they themselves were colored as if arisen from earth itself, dun of skin and hair. They might well have returned to earth, for all I know.”

  “It is said also that someday their great king who lies asleep under the mountains will arise and smite us all,” a man added.

  “And folk say as well that it is unlucky to speak of them overmuch,” the captain warned.

  “Let us have no more talk of luck,” Kyrem said, though quietly. “That is not fitting for Devans.” And they all fell silent, for they knew two who had once said that Seda had brought them bad luck, two who no longer lived, and now they wondered whether to feel foolish or afraid. But for the time, their magic ran strong in them. They smiled and slept that night with no thought for noise or luck or curses.

  The next day the first one of their remaining number met his fate.

  It was one of the demon things that did it to him, the one that whinnied out, “Devan dogs!” The soldiers were beginning to be able to tell them apart, almost as though they were pets, and they had lost most fear of them, for the things merely mocked and followed. But on this day the company was riding along some steep terrain, picking a winding way amid shelves of rock, and the horse-bird swept low overhead, catching a man on the side of his head with its heavy, dangling hooves, knocking him off his mount and over the rocky edge. The fellow went crashing and tumbling down the mountainside, coming to rest finally far below, smashed and dead. The others never knew which killed him, the blow or the fall, but his head was half crushed, and either way, the blame fell to the account of the cursing horse-headed bird.

  After they had made their way to the body and stood for a while around it, stunned, Kyrem’s three remaining followers turned on him in open rebellion.

  “It has been nothing but ill fortune ever since this shuntali joined with us!” a man cried, shaking.

  “I do not believe such stuff,” the captain said, “but you know, Kyrem, the lad was there at that inn, and no mishap had plagued us before then. Perhaps Vashtin magic does hold some sway—in Vashti.”

  “We’ll all be dead,” the other soldier groaned.

  “I know the lad means us no harm, Kyrem,” the captain continued, “but perhaps—”

  “You’re talking craven nonsense, all of you!” said Kyrem hotly. If he felt an inward chill at what had happened, that was his secret, for an unreasoning bond now held him to the unfortunate he had befriended. “Seda has done us all good and no harm. He is to stay by my side for as long as he wishes.”

  “I will go,” said Seda. She turned and without another word started walking back the way they had come, uphill and away from them.

  With mingled guilt and relief, the men watched her depart. Kyrem felt some more genuine distress. “Seda, wait!” he called after her. “Where will you go? What will you do?”

  She turned for a moment, shrugged and waved and kept going. Her situation was not new to her—why, then, the tug at her heart?

  “Well,” said Kyrem tightly to his companions, “let us tend to this dead one and be on our way.”

  They hastily covered the body with scree. The dead man’s horse had panicked and bolted, long since out of sight, gone off to join the wild horses on Kimiel. And as ill luck would have it, packs had been on it that contained most of their meager gear and supplies. Kyrem decided against pursuing the mount, and the others did not object; they were eager only to be gone, to make their way out of these mountains that now seemed to loom so ominously.

  They rode silently until sunset. Then in the afterglow they turned and looked at each other. They had no food and little comfort in blankets or each other’s company.

  “There are some of those ruddy mushrooms beneath the trees,” the captain said at last. “Let us see how they taste raw, since we have no pan to cook them in.”

  They were good. But Kyrem ate only a little, for appetite left him whenever he thought of Seda. The others ate heartily, lazing by the fire and ignoring the voices that called from the shadows all around them.

  “Peckernose! Peckernose!”

  “Where is your father? Bastard! Bastard!”

  “Die! Die! Devan dogs!”

  The captain bent over where he sat with a groan. As Kyrem stared, the others did likewise. Then, as he rose to go to them, the pain struck him in his turn. His belly, poison working its way through his vitals—His men were screaming. He did not scream, but the gut agony bent him and felled him like a strong blow; he landed nearly in the fire, lying on his side in the dirt and writhing. His head swam, and sparks not of the fire flashed before his eyes. Was he losing his mind? He seemed to see Seda, one hand on the neck of the missing horse, standing just at the rim of the firelight and staring. Horror on the lad’s thin face. Horror—Kyrem remembered horror and nothing more.

  The horses fought. Stallions all—for mares were not ridden but used for brood and milk, and gelding was scarcely whispered of, an enormity as blasphemous as the mating of mare to onager—once the control of their masters ceased to restrain them, the stallions fought.

  The white went first—soft, posturing, suitable only for ceremony and show; rearing, it was soon toppled over backwards and broke its neck in the fall. The black was more dangerous—the pure, clear black, not a brown hair on it, not even the fine hairs of forehead and muzzle—very dangerous, but it took a smashing blow in the jaw from Omber’s hind hooves and fled to die a lingering death from starvation. The falcon-speckled gray, lean and swift, favored as resembling the raptor, fared little better, running off with the blood flowing bright from a deep meeting of teeth at the jugular. And the red bay, the kumait with the lucky star of Suth on the forehead, took a striking blow on that star, strong enough to send it crashing to the ground. Omber alone, the blue roan, remained, and a wisp of a girl of a stableboy scarcely noticed the battle, intent on the fate of the one remaining human sufferer before her.

  When at last he awoke, yellow sunlight was streaming through the trees. Morning, he thought. How the leaves have spread. Where has the night gone? He tried to rise and discovered to his hazy surprise that he could not; he felt too weak. He could see to either side. No sign of the captain or the others, but one of their blankets was stretched, tentlike, over his head. He noticed a steady pain in his stomach, not so much the familiar pang of hunger as a more sluggish ache, the feeling of illness. Then Seda appeared above him, carrying a pan of something.

  “Seda,” he said, wondering that his voice came out as a quavering whisper.

  The lad sat down wordlessly beside him, folding her long legs, and without preamble, she began to spoon the stuff into him. It was a
very thin gruel. Kyrem swallowed a few spoonfuls, astonished and insulted, before he mustered strength to bring an arm up from under his covering of blankets. He intended to take the spoon, but his hand, wavering, blundered into the pan of gruel, sending it splattering over Seda and the ground.

  “Stop that!” said Seda as sharply as he had ever heard the lad speak. “Lie still.”

  Kyrem glared—the ungrateful youngster! But in a moment all his attention was taken up by a phenomenal sensation in his innards. The gruel seemed to be eating its way through them. Pain attended every inch of its progress, and Kyrem doubled up and lay on his side, moaning. Seda came over and inserted her hand into the tight curl of his belly, rubbing it hard. At first Kyrem wanted to shout in protest, but then he realized that the warmth and pressure of the lad’s hand eased him somewhat, and by cautious degrees he relaxed.

  “What is going on?” he panted. “Was that poison you fed me, Seda?”

  Somewhat to his surprise, the lad replied. “The redcaps,” she said tightly.

  “Those mushrooms? But you had eaten them with us many a time.”

  “They are good food cooked, deadly raw.”

  The few spoonfuls of gruel reached the end of their agonizing journey. Seda turned back the blankets and cleaned Kyrem without comment. He forgot to be mortified, for a sense was growing in him that he had wet one foot in the river of death.

  “The others—”

  “Dead,” she said. “Dead within a few breaths. I could not help them.”

  He had eaten less than they. How long ago had that been?

  “Sleep,” said Seda, and he did.

  It had been nearly a week, he found later. Seda had nursed him constantly during that time. She had dragged the bodies of the dead men away and had covered the bodies of the horses with boughs, and she had found pasturage for Omber. She had stolen bread at the nearest village. She had gathered herbs such as she thought might help Kyrem. She had endured the mockery of the cursing demons through long nights alone with a sick and insensible prince. She had foraged for wild food for herself, snared coneys and shadow-tails, and she had boiled stolen barley meal into gruel.

  “You have to eat,” she told Kyrem when he awoke.

  He ate and suffered, and in a few days the suffering grew less and he was stronger, able to sit and hold the spoon for himself. At first he nearly hated the shuntali who tended him, somehow irrationally linking her with his misfortune, his pain. But along with his strength there grew in him a sense of gratitude. This lad, this stableboy, what Seda had done for him was extraordinary. The quick rescue from fire and foes at the inn had taken courage, but this slow helping of him back to health took more; it took constancy. Not many would have seen it through. They would have left him on a doorstep perhaps, or left him worse off than that. Those were harsh times. But Seda had showed true in every way.

  The fourth evening after he awoke, Kyrem sat silently beside Seda at the fire, watching the flames and listening to the familiar noise of cursing in the night.

  “Folk say that the souls of the dead go up as fire, that they make their way to the sun,” Seda said.

  He glanced at her keenly and kept silence. In his experience, Seda was not one to talk for the sake of conviviality.

  “I never thought,” she said.

  “Never thought what?” Kyrem asked after the curse-filled night had waited for a while.

  “I never thought to tell you about the redcaps.”

  “You are never likely to make a blabbermouth,” Kyrem wryly averred.

  “I never meant to be a curse to you,” Seda said, and Kyrem exploded into speech.

  “You are nothing of the sort! How can you be a curse, you who have done nothing but good for us? You who showed us paths and brought us food and risked yourself, saved our lives, saved mine at least twice, maybe more.”

  “Your ill luck began when you met me,” Seda said.

  “Our ill luck began that night, it is true, the night of our crossing over into Vashti, and you are the only thing here that has combatted it. No, if there is a curse, I think it comes from out yonder somewhere.” He glanced away toward the darkness and the mountains and the noise of the demons. Then he reached over and lightly touched her hand. They both felt the ancient magic in that touch, the bone-deep comfort and the bond.

  “I am not sure I believe in curses,” Kyrem added, “but if I do, then you must be my talisman, the jewel that sends harm away from me.”

  Chapter Five

  After the camp fire had burned down to embers, Seda went out a-thieving, as was her custom, and Kyrem lay in his blankets and dozed. When her thin hand shook him awake, he blinked in surprise. It was not yet morning. Darkness lay all around.

  “I have seen a familiar face at the hostelry,” Seda said.

  “What?” He did not understand.

  “One of those who fought with you. A pinched face, small eyes like those of an animal. Weasel-face, I call him to myself.”

  Fully awake now, Kyrem threw off his blankets. “They have followed us here? But weeks have gone by. I thought we were rid of them long since!”

  “Vashtins do not ride.” Seda had grown more talkative of late. “If they have followed us, likely they have only now caught up to us. And it is to be hoped that they do not yet know we are here.”

  “Those cursing demon things mark us! If they know the meaning of them. And I wager they do. Why else.…” Kyrem left the thought unfinished and rose to his feet, standing unsteadily. Urgently he felt the presence of an enemy, a relentless agent of misfortune that tracked him and pursued him, paring and paring away at his strength. “If only I can get on Omber—”

  He could not. Try as he might by the faint light of embers, he could not, nor did he have the strength of body to control the steed, strength to focus his Devan power. Swaying but still determined, he coaxed Omber alongside a fallen log. The stallion was confused by what was happening, starting to feel restive.

  “Give it up, Devan dog!” a horse-bird shouted. Enemies in the night. Kyrem suppressed his terror and ignored it.

  “Seda,” he said, “get on.”

  “But what of you?”

  “Do as I say. Get on him.”

  She scrambled onto the horse from the log, dragging after her a pack full of hastily gathered gear and supplies. Kyrem had just strength enough to boost her into her place.

  “Now hang onto his neck and pull me up behind you.”

  “Behind me?” she repeated stupidly.

  “Yes. I am going to have to hold on to you, and you are going to have to learn to ride like a Devan, lad.”

  Omber was a prince’s steed. No one except Kyrem had ever sat him to control him. By his training, no one could. Now Seda was to try.

  “Hold on by the mane,” Kyrem directed, his head already resting against Seda’s thin shoulders.

  The long, silky black mane. She laid the pack before her and grasped it.

  “Squeeze with your legs just a little to send him forward.”

  Omber did not move. He felt the presence of his master on his back, but strangely; something was wrong, and though he would not rear and hurl his master off, still, why should he obey this other? He pawed the ground angrily and flung up his head, shaking it, sending mane flying.

  “Squeeze again, and concentrate your thoughts on going forward. It is his will against yours.”

  Stubborn determination stirred in Seda, and her jaw grew hard, the line of her lips straight and narrow. She nudged with her legs again, then yelled and kicked.

  Omber gave a stallion’s scream of rage and sprang forward from a stand into a hard gallop. Seda hung on by the mane, and Kyrem hung on to Seda. And as the girl struggled to keep her seat and her balance, her legs fastened ever tighter around the horse, urging it on and on. There was no question of control; Omber took his own course. Back to the track and down the mountain straight through the village they sped, Omber snorting, the others riding intently, silent and pale, and the cursi
ng demon things flapping above. A few late-goers saw the blue-black horse bearing down on them, unknown riders, weird retinue, and they sprang out of the way, clutching at the talismans they wore around their necks and holding them up to ward off evil.

  “We’ve marked ourselves now for certain,” Kyrem gasped.

  Seda nodded, for she had seen a pinched face peer from the shadow of a doorway. But Omber plunged on down the valley track, shying and swerving at every reaching tree, running crazily. Not until dawn did exhaustion slow him to a walk, the lather of his mad exertions shining whitely all over him, steam curling up from his flanks in the morning chill. Kyrem was leaning hard against Seda, nearly unconscious, and the girl set herself to learn on her own how to handle the beast that strode under her.

  She came to understanding with Omber gradually, directing him with the tug at the mane, with the pressure of one hand against his neck, with the pressure of the opposite heel against his belly, bending him to the way of her choosing, with the shifting and settling of her body weight, and above all, with the focusing of her will. A sense grew in her slowly that was unlike anything she had ever felt before, a sense of power. It sang in her, and she listened, unbelieving. Her, power? She had always been powerless in every way and shut off from all Vashtin magic. She who had always had to struggle even for scraps to eat, she could not believe she was controlling the stallion between her knees.

  “It is in your blood,” Kyrem said, recovering somewhat. “Born in you—you are doing beautifully. Are you sure you are not a Devan, Seda?”

  She shrugged. She was neither as dark as a Devan nor as fair as a Vashtin. She looked like dirt, they had always told her. No matter.

  “It is the air,” she said, meaning the freedom, the mountains, the ways of the open road. Getting away from her bondage and the scorn of Vashtins. Knowing the company of Devans. It smote her that all but one of the Devans were dead. And the strength of their bright horses—she remembered the names of the horses, Chert, Agreeable, Topaz, Alabaster, Superb, Sard of Suth, My Difficult—that was the black.… She mourned the horses too.