From time to time—for want of anything better to do, he told himself—Kyrem would climb to the cup of the watchtower and stand there looking off in the direction Seda had gone. On the morning of the tenth day after she had left, he stood there for hours in a lethargic condition, so listless that he hardly stirred when Auron himself came up the steep steps, puffing slightly and having difficulty with his buskins and at last teetering silently beside him.
“What do you see of our lad, any more?” Kyrem asked him idly after some moments had passed. He knew that Auron spent an hour or two every afternoon in his trancelike, sleepy-eyed state.
“Our lad that turned out to be a lass?” Auron smiled; then the smile turned bleak and faded. “Nothing,” he said. “I see nothing of her any more, for she has reached the mountains, and the sight of those regions is withheld from me, I cannot tell why—whether by the waning of my own powers or by the will of some strong one who contests me.”
Kyrem’s Devan skepticism would not let him believe in Auron’s hidden enemy, but he was feeling too languid to argue with him about it. “Well,” he said, “it is no more than the ordinary lot of men, not to be able to see afar.”
“I saw her last three days ago,” said Auron, “and she was well and content then.”
“Good enough,” said Kyrem.
They were silent for a while. “Won’t you come down, lad, and eat?” Auron asked finally.
“Wait.” All Kyrem’s torpor left him in an instant; he straightened and stood taut and keen. A dark blot was growing in the azure blue of the sky. It swept toward them rapidly, ever larger, and Auron gasped.
“It is one of those—”
“Demon things,” Kyrem finished for him.
Looking as large as the sky, it flew directly over them, circling the slender point of the tower roof, its great black wings nearly touching the tiles, its baleful, blank white eyes glaring, red-rimmed, out of its grotesque equine head. Black hooves hung heavily and clattered against each other. Flinching back in spite of himself, Kyrem drew his sword. But the weird horselike thing did not come close enough to let him use it. “Gone,” it said, a wailing roar out of the black cavern of its mouth. “Gone—gone—gone—gone.…” It flew away, still chanting, the words dying on the distance like echoes.
“Great Suth,” Auron murmured, shaken. “He has grown strong. He reaches to Avedon now!” But Kyrem did not hear. He stood like a lance, motionless, staring away toward the place where they had last seen Seda.
“I should go after her,” he muttered distractedly. “But how? Onagers are not fast enough. Take one of the sacred steeds—”
Auron looked at him in an alarm that verged on panic. Kyrem did not notice.
“They are half wild, I know,” he went on, nearly babbling. “But with my personal magic I think I could school one to obey me.” He turned to leave, took one long stride toward the stairway. Auron caught at his sleeve.
“You’ll have every priest in the kingdom shrieking for your head,” he said. “Or mine.”
Very true, Kyrem knew. Already there had been demands for a royal apology on account of his “attack” on Nasr Yamut and the resultant show of palace force. Auron had ignored the uproar. If Kyrem had been thinking, he would have noted how unlike Auron was this concern with the shrieking of priests; he would have looked at him and seen his fear, terror, the real fear, of the hidden enemy. But Kyrem did not know that fear, and he was thinking only of Seda.
“Is there no way I can thieve a horse?” he demanded, frustration heightening his tone. “From the mountainside, perhaps, without their knowing?”
“No!” Auron stepped forward with reckless haste when Kyrem mentioned that dreaded holy mountainside, nearly falling off his buskins. Kyrem’s outflung arm caught him.
“Sorry,” Kyrem murmured, startled by the violence of Auron’s reaction.
“You are lending too much credence to the things,” Auron said more quietly.
The prince stared at him, puzzled, sensing something amiss, but he had never met subterfuge in Auron, and he failed to recognize it now.
“I give no credence to omens,” he said with proper Devan spirit, “and curses cannot hurt me. But that black thing was sent by someone. Some schemer—”
“Your enemy then. Not Seda’s.”
“I suppose so,” Kyrem acceded. He conceived only of a political enemy. He refused to think of any other sort.
“Whoever it is, then, likely wants only to send you off on a wild chase.”
Kyrem said nothing. He stood looking away to the north and east.
“Stay,” Auron told him, “and wait and see what happens next. If you refuse to rise to his bait, he will be forced to expose himself.”
Waiting. The one thing Auron would be best at, the one thing Kyrem liked the least. He did not speak the thought. He stood silent. Seda ought to be well out of his reach by now, reason told him. The chase would be not only wild, but futile.
“Kyrem?” Fear in Auron’s voice. Kyrem was too Devan to know what fear it was: Auron’s ingrained, almost inborn terror of venturing forth into the wilds, he who knew only buskins and palace walls. The prince of Deva saw in Auron the anxiety of one who faces hostile priests. He was loath to make trouble for him.
“I will stay,” he said heavily. “For the time.”
In no way could he know, in no way could Auron surely sense, how Seda had been coaxed away from her course by the force of a strong and mysterious will, drawn as a shadow is drawn after the sun, by a beckoning that seemed no more fearsome than the beckoning of a river curve toward what lies beyond. She sensed it only dimly herself. She did not know her own power; how was she to suspect that such a power would take pains to ensnare her? For in her own reckoning, she was a cipher, of no account to anyone except perhaps as a target for the random flinging of stones.
It was the faraway other who felt Seda’s presence most surely those days. Waking or sleeping, tending to the quiet routine of her work or lying on her cot at night, she listened—a bright dreaming hummed in her always, beneath her conscious thinking, constant, like the tenor of a song. Something had changed; the body she dreamt of was no longer that of a boy, or not entirely. And it was washed, pampered even, and the clothes were new and pretty, the full blue skirt spread and floating over the great stallion. Riding, riding, always riding and dreams of riding, past the blue shelving rocks of the foothills, the goats that fed on the pink and powder-green lichens of them, uphill, strength and surge of the mighty mount and his fox-pricked ears before her face, tawny leap of chamois fleeing away before them, cool mountain breeze in late summer heat, crisp dusk and fresh dawn, vistas beyond belief and sunrise and the blue wilderness rose and the running of the yearling horses on the northern flanks of Kimiel. The other no longer fretted about the visions, their strangeness, their pertinacity, or even the eerie sense that they were growing ever nearer. She had become used to them, they amused her over the dull spinning of thread, and they were so beautiful now that she felt sure there could be no harm to them.
Until one day suddenly, in the midst of a skein, arrows flew, many arrows, and men screamed and blood ran; she went pale with the force and shock of it. And the great horse, hemmed in on a narrow mountain trail, could find no escape. Rough hands dragged her down from her sideways seat; she kicked and fought and in a moment the horse found an opening and leapt away without her. After that, all was nightmare.
For days and weeks thereafter she went about pale and silent and clenched in helpless nightmare. Her mother saw it and questioned her repeatedly, but she could not explain what had happened to her, was happening, and her mother did not know what to do for her.
Kyrem passed his time in Auron’s dwelling much as ever, but the place felt different since the visit of the horse-bird, as if foreboding filled it, and the prince grew apprehensive, irritable. There was no news of Seda; he expected none. Waiting—for what? He observed that Auron was waiting also, busily, almost strenuously. The king spent many
of his days in a taut sort of trance, and many of his nights, Kyrem found, in some sort of vigil, to no avail. Auron wore a strained and anxious air.
Nearly a month after Seda had left Avedon, the waiting ended. A messenger lad came running from the city gates to the palace, and at his urgent pleading the doorkeeper admitted him to the room where Kyrem sat with Auron.
“The horse, Sire! The horse, my lord Prince,” the lad gasped, falling to his knees.
“What, now, what horse?” Auron asked soothingly. “Has one of Nasr Yamut’s beauties taken colic?”
“No, my liege, the dark horse! The prince’s, that was gone. It’s outside the gates!”
Kyrem gave Auron one startled glance, then sprang up and ran. People in the streets parted before him. Panting, he reached the gates within moments, to find them closed. The gatekeeper awaited him.
“Go through the postern, good my lord Prince, and come around the outside. The horse is half mad, and we are frightened of it.”
A long, wild neigh rang from the other side of the gates. Kyrem tingled at the anguished sound of it.
“Are you sure it is Omber?” he demanded.
“Go see.” The gatekeeper pointed toward the steps that led upward to his guardroom.
It was Omber, gaunt and frantically pawing at the hard red ground, his tail loose and bedraggled but the braids still in his mane. He looked like a specter of Suth. Kyrem could see why folk were afraid of the stallion; the sight chilled even him. Then hot anger surged through him, anger that the horse had suffered, and pity and love for the animal that stood waiting. He took the steps three at a time, going down.
“Open that gate,” he commanded where he had no right to command, and the man did it instantly. Kyrem had not time to move a step before the horse had met him, stood under the shelter of his hand, and Kyrem rubbed the whorl of the forehead in greeting, stroked the forelock, and Omber lowered his head, sighing, laying his muzzle against Kyrem’s chest.
“Great Suth,” Kyrem whispered, still caressing the horse. “Great Suth forgive us all, where is Seda?”
Chapter Fourteen
Auron joined him at the stable as soon as he could, hobbling in on his precarious buskins. “Has Nasr Yamut caused you any trouble?” he asked.
“I walked through him.” Kyrem’s lips were set in a thin white line, and white heat of anger flickered about him. Auron smiled at his own question; no one could have stood against Kyrem just then. Though in a moment he himself was going to have to try.… Nasr Yamut was nowhere to be seen.
Omber stood gulping a generous feed of oats.
“Do you think Seda sent him back to you?” Auron asked.
“Not like this. She wouldn’t have done that. And he wouldn’t have left her unless … unless something was very wrong.” Kyrem set to work brushing the horse feverishly, undoing the braids in the mane. “Something has happened to her, as we were warned it would. I should have gone to her long since.” He did not say that Auron had prevented his going when he should have gone. Courtesy and affection prevented his saying that, but they did not keep the angry thought from his mind. Auron sensed it as a harsh red flash, a hot, painful sensation, Kyrem’s fury and despair.
“I will send a patrol out at once,” he said, instantly aware of how feeble the words sounded. The last patrol had not yet returned. Kyrem set down the brush and faced him over the horse’s rump.
“No,” he said with a gentleness that belied his anger, “no more patrols. I am going to go after her myself. It can no longer be said that I lack a mount.”
“You cannot go, Kyrem,” Auron said, as he had hoped he would not have to say, as he had schemed not to say. He spoke just as gently as the prince, but Kyrem heard the settled certainty in those soft words. White flame of wrath threatened to warm his reply. He restrained it.
“Why?” he challenged as quietly as he was able. “Because I am your hostage?”
“Because you would be in grave danger. All events prove that. Kyrem, I would as soon go myself, leave Avedon for the first time in my reign and let my kingdom fend for itself, as allow you to venture forth.”
The king in his buskins, teetering off to rescue Seda.… The image, ridiculous, flickered through Kyrem’s mind before he realized with a dizzying shock that Auron spoke as of something utterly impossible.
“But I must go and—”
“You are to stay here. I took oath on that, you know, when your father entrusted you to my care.”
“My father is probably the one who has set hirelings to kill me as an excuse for war.” In his rage and dismay, Kyrem spoke what he had only felt before, dark feeling below the threshold of thought.
“You cannot really believe that!” Auron exclaimed.
“I—no.” Still there was a niggling doubt, for Kyrem had known very little of his father’s heart. And shame.… “But who then?” he appealed, annoyed to find himself suddenly near boyish tears. “I know now it was not you,” he faltered. “And nameless enemies are of no use.”
Auron bit his lip, face to face with a wound he had failed to heal. “I will put a name to it for you,” he promised. “By Suth and all his seven sons—” It was a solemn oath, but Kyrem turned away.
“You cannot, not here in Avedon. And I cannot wait. I must go find Seda at once. Omber is tough; he will take me to her, or at least to where he left her.”
“Kyrem,” Auron warned, “if I were to let you go off and you were lost, the consequence would indeed be war.”
The prince did not think so highly of his father’s love. He felt beyond much thinking of any kind.
“If Seda is lost, none of it matters,” he muttered. “I should never have let her set off without me. I should have gone after her at once—should have told her—should have known.…” That I love her! Auron heard the thought as clearly as if it were his own, as clearly as if the words were spoken. They wrenched at his heart, but then he steeled himself. Kyrem was putting away the brush, gathering up gear. “I will need some provision,” said the prince.
“You are not going,” Auron told him in a different tone of voice, and Kyrem halted his preparations to look at him.
“Surely you will not forbid me.”
“Already I have forbidden you. What must I do to make you see?”
But Kyrem saw clearly enough, as he had seen one day through the crack of a door. The monarch stood there, eyes alight with a cold stony glow, jewel light, no color and every color, Auron son of Rabiron, king of Vashti and emperor of the Untrodden Lands. His power of the throne and his heartache.
Rage rose up in Kyrem, a pyre, bonfire, conflagration of fury. Auron had deceived him. Invisible chains had been on him all along, Auron’s shackles of power. Well, let Auron see his, Kyrem’s, power. He had magic perhaps just as strong, innate magic. Wrath and stubborn will swelled and hardened him, making him—it was true, in a jewel flash of clarity he knew it was verily true—a fit opponent for the Vashtin monarch. Exultation filled him, crystal hard.
“I am a match for you, Auron,” he averred, meeting the king’s eyes with his own of blazing black.
“I have never doubted it.”
“You cannot command me.”
“Perhaps not,” said Auron evenly. But his small, plump body did not yield its presence, nor did the focus of his eyes give way. All the force of his kingship was committed to the battle to keep Kyrem by him, a desperate battle, nothing held back. For a long moment they clashed in invisible combat, and in that moment Kyrem realized that their conflict would destroy one of them, snap one of them like a twig while the other remained; there could be no other outcome unless it destroyed them both.… And he loved Auron as himself; how could he risk harming him? In an instant all wrath and warrior will drained out of him, leaving him shaken and blinking.
Auron saw, heard it all, rage and struggle—and then the love in that yielding. Now he held Kyrem’s gaze and could not speak.
“Surely I am not really your prisoner,” said the prince bitterly
, and Auron found his voice.
“I love you as a son, I who have none.”
Kyrem looked away, had to look away, was allowed to look away.
“Set me free then,” he whispered, “and I will come back to you.”
To set one’s children free. Such was the role of the parent, and Auron knew it well, he who had parented land and people for many years. Now Kyrem had adopted him with a few whispered words. That one plea served to sever him from kingship and bring tears to his androgyne eyes.
“Go with all blessing,” he said softly, hearing his own words with faint surprise. Kyrem looked at him, then came around the horse to meet his arms. Unshakable bonding was in that embrace.
Several hours later Auron stood in his watchtower alone, looking out at the hills where Kyrem had gone at the gallop. Disappeared like Seda, gone, and when he reached the mountains, there would be no way of knowing, moment to moment, whether he still lived.
“Gone,” Auron breathed.
Something dark appeared in the eastern sky, a flying thing, growing larger. Auron silently watched it sweep closer, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. The grotesque horse-headed thing, black wings that seemed to blot out all light, malevolent white rolling eyes, bared yellow teeth, mane all in a tangle like black cobweb, and those pitiful hanging hooves.… The demon flew so close that he could feel the waft of its great wings, and he stood still, fixing it with his glare.
“What agent sent you?” he demanded of it. “Who is your master?”
The demon did not reply. “Gone—gone—gone—” it started to chant.
“In the name of Suth, answer me, effigy!” Auron roared.
“Gone,” it mocked, “all gone,” and then it flew away.
Seda sat watching the old man from her place against the damp wall of the cave. Old? He might not have been so very old, but he was bent, glaring and grizzled, the color of mud flecked with dirty snow; she had to think of him as old. She was on Mount Kimiel, after all, the holy mountain, where no one came except a few priests and the sacred horses. The old man lived in the seer’s cave. If he were Suth, then she did not like Suth and might as well be in hell ice. He sat with a young raven on his finger, whispering into the place he judged to be its ear.
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