Wings of Flame (27 page)

It was the middle of the second day before he comprehended Seda's course, and his contentment left him all in a moment. He pulled the spotted horse to a halt.

“She is going to the lands beyond the bourne,” he whispered. Sula stared at him in alarm, for his fair face had gone paler yet and she could feel his shoulders tighten beneath the cloth of his tunic.

“I do not understand,” she told him.

“The Untrodden Lands, the place of the puissant dead! She is supposed to be dead—if she could neither go up as flame nor fly to the sun, perhaps that is why she has chosen this course.” Kyrem suddenly lashed his holy horse across the shoulders with the end of its single rein, sending it leaping forward with a startled plunge. “Perhaps we can yet prevent her.”

He rode the sacred stallion mercilessly hard for the next several hours. But as the day reddened, westward, he gave it up with a groan.

“They go far more swiftly than we. Omber is as hard as the blue stones, and this Vashtin steed no harder than a dish of curds.”

Sula nodded. She had found a trance of her own, could feel the flying mane and strong shoulders of Seda's stallion even as she experienced the balky plodding of the other. She and Kyrem rode on, more slowly, after nightfall. But Seda seemed as restless as they, though she could not have known they were following. They did not gain on her.

She left them visible signs of her passing—baubles she had torn off the sacrificial steed and dropped like so much trash. Countryfolk would not touch the sacred trappings for fear of the wrath of Suth. They peered from their homes in dread and awe as the second steed went by on the bright trail—tassels, beads, a pair of flame-red brocaded wings, pieces of golden net, a glittering torsade. The gold Kyrem let lie, but once he stopped his horse and got down to pick up a jeweled headstall. And with an odd, aching look in his eyes, he touched the single great stone on the browband, the crystal jargoon that lay centered on the forehead.

Within a few days they passed out of settled lands, for no folk cared to live so near the magical realm. All was wild grassland, wind and sky. The chant of the atarashet began ominously to hum in Kyrem's mind, the liturgy the priests had intoned when they sent Nasr Yamut off to his doom.

It's called the melantha, black lily of magic
.

It trails its pale leaves in the sundering water

Of the river that flows at the end of the world

Where there's no going over, beyond the white lily

Of never returning, the lily of death
.

Men name it melantha, black flower of madness
.

It blooms on that far verge, and ever the seeker

Stands pale on the near, yearning, calling, Melantha!

Melantha! I see thee, black lily of magic
.

He and Sula rode hard and silently, with strained faces and frightened eyes, until on the seventh day they came to the Ril Melantha.

“There it is,” Kyrem said in a low voice, “and Seda is somewhere on the other side.”

Sula nodded; she knew that.

The river ran deep and noiselessly, a great flow of smooth silver-gray, between banks on which the lilies clustered thickly—white lilies in the red soil of the Vashtin side, and black lilies, as black as black satin, in the strange black soil of the beyond. Kyrem stopped his horse short of the white lilies.

“Folk say that it is death to pass them,” he muttered.

Sula made no reply but pressed the more closely against his back, shivering. A chill wind was drawing the warmth from her shoulders, and though the white lilies stirred and drooped in the wind, the haze of mist over the river hung as still as a heavy tapestry. All beyond it seemed muted, yet glowing like ancient gold.

After a moment Kyrem turned the horse to the left, the west, and started riding slowly along the silent silver curves of the river, all the while looking across it. Haze foiled his sight. From what little he could glimpse, the Untrodden Lands seemed to lie in soft folds that might hide anything, some of them topped by trees taller than any in Vashti. Trees stood also within the river curves.

And beyond one such clump of trees, on the far verge, amid the black lilies, stood something white and very still.…

Nasr Yamut, white-robed. Standing in a mystic's trance, he seemed not to see Kyrem.

“Balls of Suth!” Kyrem whispered, blasphemous in his irritation. “Perhaps we can get by without speaking to him.”

But as horse and riders drew abreast of Nasr Yamut, he stiffened, stirred and came forward a step amid the melantha, staring.

“My king!” he exclaimed.

Kyrem halted the horse and stared in his turn, for Nasr Yamut had never before called him king.

“But what are you doing here, my liege lord? Vashti will be bereft without you.”

“I left a worthy steward,” Kyrem replied. “He who used to keep the door.” He spoke slowly in his astonishment, for there was a vast change in Nasr Yamut; his whole manner, his voice, the very expression of his face, open, clear and joyous. Unmistakably Nasr Yamut, yet somehow entirely different. “What has happened to you?” Kyrem blurted.

“Happened?” Nasr Yamut stared, then drew back a step from his own memories. “Yes, I see,” he admitted. “I hated you once. But now I am no longer afraid.”

“You were afraid?” Kyrem was amazed, for of all seemings, the priest had least seemed afraid.

“Yes. Throughout my entire life, afraid of power. Others might wield power over me if I did not first wrest it away and myself hold sway.… But here everything is power, and where all are puissant, there is no domination. Danger, but no domination. When I came to his shore, a mighty king met me. Rabiron, the first Rabiron, welcomed me and took me to the palace of his ancestor Auberameron. Auron will be welcomed some day in like wise, and so will you.”

Kyrem sighed and shook his head, no longer attempting to understand. Perhaps Nasr Yamut was mad. Black flower of madness, they called it, the melantha. “Seda is there, somewhere,” he said. “She who is too young for yon far shore.”

“She who used to be called shuntali? Yes. She is puissant, very puissant. Only one who is puissant may venture here without punishment.”

“I must so venture, to bring her back.” Kyrem swiveled on his steed's back to face his bride. “Sula, get down, take the food. Await me here.”

“I will do nothing of the sort,” she told him. “I am coming with you.”

“You cannot! There may be that beyond the river which will destroy you.”

“There may be that which will keep you from ever coming back to me. Then will I be the more slowly destroyed. How can you think I would leave your side?”

They sat glaring at each other at close quarters, there on the spotted horse's back, close enough to kiss.

“I will be the more likely to find strength to return,” Kyrem said softly at last, “if I know you are awaiting me.” But she answered him with a tilted, tender smile.

“It will not do, Ky. You cannot protect me. This peril is mine as well.”

On the far side of the Ril Melantha, Nasr Yamut spoke as though once again in a trance, continuing his thought.

“She came across on that great blue roan of yours, came across clinging to the back of the swimming horse, and the stallion greeted me, and did not hold it against me that I had wished to slay him.”

“I see,” Kyrem muttered to Sula or the speaker. “Well—hold fast then.” Leaning forward, drawn forward by the force of his will, he urged his crop-eared steed past the white lilies and into the water.

Ril Melantha was slow but deep, very deep. The horse's hooves churned in water, never touching bottom. The crossing seemed long, breathlessly long, though the river had not looked so wide. Turning once, Sula saw that Vashti seemed dim and distant through the mist. She shivered, pressed against the willful hardness of Kyrem's back, jewel hard, and did not look behind her again.

The sacred steed came out of the river with a plunge and a streaming of water, leaving deep hoofprints in the strange black soil of the bank, stopping amidst the strange lilies of black. Nasr Yamut came over and stood quietly by Kyrem's side, his hands tucked into the full white sleeves of his robe. Watching the play of mistlight, pale gold, on the former priest's still form, Kyrem knew suddenly, with certainty, that he could trust him. All things were different in this place of lambent haze.

“Where might I find Seda?” he asked him, and Nasr Yamut raised quiet eyes.

“You are right, my king, that she does not entirely belong here. She senses it herself—she will not enter the palace. She roams. But she is often to be seen in the meadow preferred by the horse. Will you allow me to lead you there?”

Kyrem nodded, and Nasr Yamut walked off northward, away from the river. After a moment's thought, Kyrem dismounted to walk beside him, leading the crop-eared horse with Sula yet on its back in her queenly robes. And so in silence they trod the Untrodden Lands. Kyrem looked down in muted surprise to find the earth so solid beneath his feet. All else seemed strange—the glowing golden haze, the water pure silver in the streams and ponds they passed, the trees so tall and all in crimson bud, the grass growing oddly pale out of the black soil, pale jade green and nearly as tall as the black lilies that swayed in no breeze but that of the horse's passing—

They sensed the presence of Seda before they saw her, Seda amidst the tall, soft-green grass and the black lilies. Nasr Yamut must have sensed it also, for he stopped as well as they.

“Let me go to her first,” Kyrem murmured to Sula. “Please.” And she nodded.

A horse was grazing in the meadow, a blue roan stallion—Omber. Omber as of old, freed of caparison, mane flowing silkily as he fed on the black lilies. Beyond him another creature also fed on the melantha, a creature hunched and creeping, stuffing the blossoms into a misshapen mouth with fingers crooked and greedy. She did not see Kyrem coming at first, the girl-creature did not. But Omber lifted his head and whinnied with gladness. Seda came up to look as would a shadow-tail, startled, then shoved herself away from Kyrem with animal speed and curled herself into a tight ball, head between her bony knees and hands, hiding against the earth. Only heaving ribs and a crippled spine faced him.

“Seda, please.…” he begged.

He tried to touch her, and she hitched away, still maintaining her hedgehog stance. “Go away,” she said, her voice rusty from disuse and muffled against earth. “I am dead. I do not exist.”

“Do not say that! You are one of the mighty ones; your saying it makes it so.”

Omber had come up to Kyrem, rubbing a soft muzzle against his shoulder, and Kyrem stood still, accepting the comfort of the animal. He could have wept, cried out “Araah!” to the heedless trees—

“Take Omber and go,” Seda muttered.

“No, indeed. He belongs to you.”

“And you were going to let them kill him.” She raised her head; anger gave her strength to do that, and she stared at him flatly. He wet his lips with his tongue, unable to answer. But then she sat up, all an awkward sprawl, looking beyond him, anger washed away by wonder. At a small distance, her face pale with horror and pity, Sula stood.

“Sister,” Seda breathed.

Sula took a step toward her. Ten such steps would take her to her twin.

But before they could touch, before she could essay even the second step, there was a noise so intense, so sudden and overwhelming, that Kyrem clutched at Omber's mane to keep from falling, and only that grip of Kyrem's hand kept Omber from rearing up to flee. Lion's roar, thunderclap, rumble as of a thousand galloping steeds on the plains of Deva, but no, far greater and more vehement, a noise fit to stun reason, worse than earthquake roaring, a noise fit to sunder sky itself. And down came the terror steed, rending the luminous veil of haze and bringing with it, seemingly, the dark. And on clawed feet it landed directly between the shuntali and her twin.

Black, black, a thick-necked stallion with a feathery sheen on the head and shoulders and black plumes, black, sinuous plumes for mane and tail. Glint of white teeth and corpse-white flame of wings and those horrible bone-white bird-clawed feet.… And on the forehead, the jewel of glittering black. It was the demon, the dark Suth. Kyrem closed his eyes to the sight of it and hid his face against Omber's neck in all-embracing fear.

“Shuntali,” said a dry, whispering voice, “Devan dog. You are dead; you do not exist.”

Kyrem's eyes flew open and his head snapped erect. He knew that sere voice, bloodless and desiccated even when it had lived! Instantly his fear turned to consummate wrath, fury that suffused him, filling him with a glowing power so great that it shone redly in the mist far beyond the meadow. With a wordless noise very nearly like a lion's roar, he strode forward and faced the black bird-steed, near enough to touch.

“Old One,” he commanded, “go away and trouble us no more. It is you who are dead.”

Laughter, loud whinnying laughter, with the flash of chalk-white teeth. And behind all else the sound of an old man's wheezing mirth.

“I am the Old One,” the demon said in that same snake-hissing voice. “But I am far more.” And with those words the voice changed; instantly it was dark and immense, a voice fit to fill the world as thunder fills the sky. “You dare command me! It is you who must go away, small one, and quickly, before you are destroyed.”

Though he kept hold of his power, fear crept back into Kyrem, and he glanced toward the one for whom he feared the most. Sula took a step forward, her second step, as if to come to him, or perhaps to go to her sister. But the black Suth reared up in threat, darting toward her its vicious foreclaws, and it gave out a roar that drove her back and sent her stumbling to her knees.

“Unclean, twin, unclean! Stay far, stay asunder! Step nearer and I strike, I the destroyer of the unclean! The Old Ones know the ways of twins—”