Wings of Flame (28 page)

“Let her be!” Kyrem shouted, but knowing even before he spoke that all the power he could command would have no effect. This thing was far greater than he. If it should hurt Sula—but the demon turned back to him. And as it did so, Nasr Yamut stepped forward to stand by his side.

“My king,” he said in a shaking voice, “we must hold firm.”

Nasr Yamut looked as pale as the corpse-glow of the demon's wings. Growing desperation had made Kyrem mettlesome, and a last small shred of malice stirred in him. “I thought you were no longer afraid,” he snapped.

“I have not been,” Nasr Yamut said. “I have loved this place. But this black horse-creature moves counter to the order of it. Power turned toward domination—”

The terror steed came at them with beating wings and uplifted claws, sending them staggering several steps backward. Nasr Yamut caught hold of Kyrem's hand—not, Kyrem realized with a shock, to receive aid, but to give. Something touched his left hand as well—thin, twiggy fingers, Seda's twisted hand. With that touch he felt the pleroma of her pain, her despair, and of her love for him that underlay it. And he no longer cared if he were destroyed utterly, genius and spirit and soul.

“Now, by the numina,” he shouted at the black Suth, “I am the emperor of the Untrodden Lands, and I bid you depart!”

Laughter. “Men lie. The holy place has no name and no emperor.”

Hot breath, scorching hot as the mistral, struck Kyrem's face as the feathered horse of darkness drew nearer. He wet his dry lips.

“My friends lend me the power of their love,” he said as firmly as he was able, “and with it I face you and command you to go.”

“Only Suth commands the demon Suth.” The terror steed no longer laughed. “Hence, petty king,” it thundered, and with a single blow of one white-fire wing, it broke through the shield of Kyrem's will as if it were eggshell, seared him across the face with sickening pain and knocked him to the ground. Nasr Yamut lay unconscious, and Kyrem nearly so, but in his final defiance, so he thought, he forced his eyes to open, to focus. He stared up into the mouth of the terror steed, its great teeth bared as if to rend him—and by his shoulder knelt Seda, her thin arms over him, her verminous head near his own, staring up in like wise.

Her mouth stirred, that horrible wreckage of a mouth.

“Go away,” she whispered.

“Ah, little one.” It was the dry voice again, oddly tender. “Even you cannot command me hence. Not in this place.”

“I bid Suth hither then,” she said in a stronger voice, “Suth and the simurgh.”

“You cannot—”

“I command the powers of the numina, and I bid them hither.” Her words rang out in the lambent haze.

Stunned anew, Kyrem stared.

Far up in the mist a glow of brighter gold began, and spread, and bloomed, sunbursting, more swiftly than Kyrem could comprehend—and then there was Suth, Suth on wings of flame, so that Kyrem, who would not shut his eyes for all the terror of the demon steed now blinked for a moment in the pain of great beauty, for no horse of mortal kind could match Suth for beauty, the airy golden flowing of his mane and tail and the silver-gray sheen of his crest, his flanks, his fetlocks above hooves of aureate white. And the stone, the Suthstone glowing wine-red on his forehead beneath small and perfect ears. And his eyes, wise eyes.… He was all shine and glory, all goodness, and before Kyrem could more than think it, he came down, down out of the shimmering sky to the very place where the terror steed reared, and melted into the dark Suth, and stood on earth.

Utterly startled, Kyrem struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain of his blistering face.

There stood, not demon steed and the silver-gold Suth, but the single god on four glossy black hooves, his flanks black and white and tarpan-dun and gray as stone, all colors—it was Suth the spotted steed, for Suth and the dark Suth were one. And Kyrem met Suth's eyes, milky cloud-white eyes that seemed to look through him, that seemed to have known him forever and beyond forever. Only Suth could command the dark Suth.… The great god-stallion did not speak. But he arched his neck, laying his soft muzzle against his own chest, and courteously he backed a few paces, just far enough so that Kyrem could see Sula rising from the ground, standing pallid and swaying some several paces beyond him.

Gravely Suth inclined toward her his great head. With stumbling feet she ran to Seda and sank to her knees beside the crippled girl.

“Sister,” she breathed, putting out her arms, and instantly Seda returned the embrace. And they clung together, foul and fair, health and unhealth, queen and pauper. And Kyrem looked at them, and swallowed, and looked beyond them toward Suth, the god-steed who was both light and shadow.

Then, floating down on fiery wings out of the resplendent mist—Kyrem felt his senses swirl as Suth raised his great head and whinnied in greeting. For the simurgh drifted down, the mighty bird of sky and sunset swept down and settled companionably on the back of the horse-god, shone yellow and red and golden on his shoulders, and two pairs of fiery wings blazed as one. The sky-blue eyes of the simurgh gazed past the cloud-white eyes of the steed.

“Seda,” Kyrem whispered, and he walked shakily over to where the two young sisters still crouched, seeking heart's ease in each other's arms. They were weeping and talking both at once, their words a babble as of mountain water.

“… empty place,” Seda was saying.

“… felt you,” Sula went on. “Dreams, I did not understand at first …”

“… where my name should be …”

“… if only we had been born one, you need not have suffered so.”

Diffidently Kyrem put his arms around Sula and the shuntali. “I love you both,” he whispered.

Seda's anger was gone. “Ky—” She spoke only the single word, laid the scabby weariness of her head for but a moment against his shoulder, and understanding pierced him.

“Yes, I have failed you,” he told her, the pain of saying it tightening his voice. “And I cannot help you now. But, Seda, there is power in you like the power of … of earth itself.”

She raised her head and stared at him blindly; her eyes were as all-seeing as Suth's.

“Seda, hear me! You have the Vashtin magic as well. Your color is saffron, like your sister's, and your emblem is the sun, your element essence, your flower the acaltha, your jewel the yellow beryl, your luck bird”—he stopped, realizing that she already knew—“the simurgh,” he muttered anyway.

Heal yourself, little one
, the great bird told her, a cry as out of the bell of a trumpet.

But instead she laid down her head and sobbed, a dry, hurtful sound, that most human of sounds. A wounding human knowledge had come to her through Sula's touch. “My father did this to me,” she cried out in her turn. “Our father did this to me.” And then she hid her face in the rich fabric at Sula's shoulder and wept.

Kyrem could not bear it. He got up, seeking comfort, and found Omber and leaned against the horse, and Omber turned to nuzzle the young king's ear.

Nasr Yamut came to himself and rose to his feet, smoothing his white robe, staring at the two who huddled in the grass amidst the melantha. He stared longer at the great god-steed and god-bird just beyond them. How could they bear that fearsome nearness? But Seda and Sula seemed hardly aware of anything around them—

So it was that, when a soft equine muzzle came down to snuffle at their cheeks, both reached up at the same moment, unthinking, to rub the itchy spot at the center of Omber's forehead, where the hairs formed a whorl.

But it was not Omber. Kyrem stood stroking Omber and watching, scarcely daring to breathe, for it was Suth, the great Suth, snorting so softly and extending his arched and lovely neck so as to nuzzle the two faces that lay so close together—

And at once Sula's hand and Seda's hand touched the great stone that flashed green and red and golden between his wise eyes. And the stone blazed out like sunfire, blinding, so that their hands looked red and insubstantial on it, and the two girls sat stunned and terrified, unable to move.

“Say it, Seda!” Kyrem shouted crazily, irrationally; say what? What was the name of the one true wish? Heart's ease, heart's desire?

Heal yourself, little one!

Tears on her face.… Her rotting, misshapen mouth moved. All that it would take was that she should call herself by name. Mighty eyes were on her, urging her, and she knew, she knew her own name, better than anyone believed. Struggle with sickly, crippled self lasted only a little while.

“Sula,” she whispered.

At the word, Suth reared back with a great ringing neigh, a sound like bells of rejoicing and trumpet gladness, and the stone on his forehead shone pure white. And the simurgh sang out its own brazen note of gladness and blazed upward on wings of flame. And Suth also took to the sky with a snort of joy. Upward, soaring upward they both flew, spiraling about each other until they disappeared in golden mist. But no one watched them go.

For where two girls had sat amidst black lilies there was now but one, a young damsel in queenly robes, and she sprang up with a cry of surprise mixed with loss or gain, and Kyrem hurried to her, grasped her by the shoulders.

“Sula?” he whispered, looking into her wide, dark eyes. It was Sula's body, straight and shapely, for the god wore a comely body always, but—it was Seda somehow too, in a wry pauper's smile, in all-seeing eyes, in a lithe step toward him, the strength of thin fingers in his hand. She lifted those delicate fingers and wiped away the oozing burn on his face as if it had never been, leaving him comforted, comely and whole. Transcendence of suffering was in her, healing, and a sure knowledge of the ways of love. She and Kyrem embraced, but then they stood regarding each other as equals as well as lovers: She would make him a queen of unsurpassed wisdom and power.

“I am … grown,” she said. “I am well.”

“But—Seda?”

“She is well, well and happy, living, loving. Only the shuntali was ever dead.”

“What am I to call you?” Kyrem murmured. “What is the word for light and shadow?”

“Call me Love.” She took his hand.

Priestlike, ceremoniously, as though performing a marriage, Nasr Yamut came and stood before them and between them. In their clasped hands he placed a black lily. But the flower, when they took it, was white.

“Vashti has need of you,” he told them. “Farewell.”

Then they saw that white lilies bloomed all around them, and a deep and silent river ran; beyond it a white-robed figure saluted once and vanished in mist. Omber grazed nearby, among the white lilies, and also the crop-eared horse, the oracle.

Cantering back toward Avedon, she rode Omber, she the nameless queen. The king of Vashti rode the sacred steed.

THE CHART OF SEVEN