Wings of Flame (9 page)

She could not answer. Fear bound her speechless, and she looked as if she would faint.

“Lad, believe me, there is no need to be so afraid.” Auron drew closer as he spoke, stooping slightly, putting his face on a level with hers. “A king also makes an odd sort of outcast creature. We are not so unlike.”

She did not hear him, for floor and walls had begun to spin at his nearness. His presence demanded an answer from her, a confession, or so she thought—She closed her eyes.

“Shuntali,” she whispered, that terrible, that hated word she had never before spoken. Then she fell to the floor. She had meant, when she began, to seek succor of the floor, but by the time she reached it, she had fainted.

She awoke a few minutes later to find herself lying with her head in the arms of the doorkeeper and the king himself kneeling beside her, dosing her with wine. She turned her head to hide her eyes from him. But Auron placed a hand by her cheek and gently held her gaze with his.

“Seda,” he said. He himself had titled her with that name now. “That was very courageous, but unnecessary. ‘Shuntali' is not a legal term within the code of this kingship.”

She stared, not understanding. Auron sighed and tried again. “Seda, you also are my most honored guest, the companion of my guest the prince.”

She did not feel that she could stay on those terms. She wet her lips three times before she could reply. “Let me be his servant,” she whispered at last.

“But I have servants enough for him and for you! You both have suffered. Rest a while.”

Her eyes, the look in them of a small, trapped animal, gave the answer. Auron saw and acceded to the need in her.

“All right,” he said. “Serve if you must, but remember that you will not be able to work your way into wholeness, Seda. You must seek for better truth.”

He placed his other hand against her head, comfortably, almost casually, and she sat up, suddenly stronger.

“The body I can heal,” Auron told her. “I am a king of Vashti; I have that power. Suth help you with the rest. Now come and eat.”

The stable was large, with clay-floored horse-bays for nearly fifty steeds opening onto a central courtyard. Finely sculpted spiral columns supported the red-tiled roof that overhung the stalls deeply, making them cool and shady. The brick walkway behind the columns was as tidy as the hallway in a lady's home, each horse-bay piled deep with yellow straw, and the stone trough in each one brimming with clean water. Scores of paupers in Deva scarcely lived as well as the steeds here.

Into this scene of equine bliss came Kyrem, scowling, his hand on Omber's neck.

Stable and yard swarmed with priests and would-be priests, many boys in brown robes and youths in gray, a few men in blue or red. These were not their own colors, but the hierarchical colors of their calling; they had forgone their own personhood to become priests. None of them greeted their visitor or so much as glanced at him; they busied themselves. The boys scurried about like so many brown beetles. But Kyrem had only just started to look around him when a tall man in a yellow robe stepped from the shadows of a stall and strode to meet him.

“Kyrem, prince of Deva, greeting,” he said, inclining his shaven head slightly, his tone gravely courteous.

“And who might you be?” Kyrem demanded, his tone not nearly as courteous.

“Nasr Yamut, atarabdh, at your service.” Atarabdh meant fire-master. This priest had reached the highest rank he could hold without entirely retiring from the world into a life of meditation as did the atarashet, those beyond the fire.

“I need stabling for my horse,” said Kyrem curtly. As a member of the warrior elite, he held rank above that of the priest, whose calling exempted him from the obligations of war. Or at least in Deva the rank of a warrior aristocrat was above that of a priest, even a powerful priest.

“This way,” said Nasr Yamut, seeming not at all affronted.

A priest in a green robe and a green skullcap, two in red robes and two in blue were exercising horses in the central courtyard, leading them about by brightly colored braided ropes of cotton. The steeds pranced and skittered on their strings like so many kites, or like huge fish, Kyrem thought. They seemed almost unmanageable, but the priests never reprimanded them. As he and Omber skirted the group, Kyrem looked carefully for the first time at the sacred horses.

“Their ears are clipped!” he exclaimed aloud in shock. The creatures had only stubs of ears left, nearly level with their polls.

“Of course,” Nasr Yamut said. “The more closely to resemble Suth.”

Kyrem remembered the statue and looked again at the sacred steeds. All of them were oddly mottled and dashed with white—cousins of cows, he thought scornfully. Three had white legs and hooves, soft hooves that would never have withstood the rocks of the upland steppes of Deva, as Kyrem did not fail to note. On their faces they were marked with wide blazes of white that took in their eyes. Kyrem nearly shuddered; of the bald-faced horse it was said in Deva that he carried a shroud. But that was superstition. These horses looked fat, and so sleek and polished that the veins showed through the thin hair of their legs and muzzles.

“Will this do?” Nasr Yamut asked.

Kyrem blinked. It was a big cavern of enclosed horse-bay into which Omber could be put loose rather than being tied by the head as in the other stalls. There were only a few such enclosures in the stable, Kyrem saw at once, and he felt sure they were intended for the royalty among horses.

“It will do admirably,” he said, trying to keep any hint of surprise or gratitude out of his voice. Certainly Omber deserved no less.

“We do not want such a fine stallion to become restive,” Nasr Yamut said.

Kyrem darted a glance at him, wondering what might be his hidden purpose. For a priest of such high station to be found at the stable seemed odd. Was it he who had decided on this special stall, or Auron? No matter. Enemies, both. Though this priest at least seemed more like a man than Auron.

He lingered at the stall door while Kyrem tended to Omber, clapping his hands and calling in quick succession for brush, rubbing cloth and scraper. Brown-robed boys came running.

“I do not want any of them touching Omber,” Kyrem said rather sharply. “I will care for him myself.” He almost added, “If Auron permits,” but stopped himself in time. He would not become a hostage in his own thinking.

“Of course,” said Nasr Yamut smoothly. “They would not touch him in any event,” he added after a moment's awkward silence. “The browns, the boys, are allowed only to sweep and fetch and clean, and the grays, the novices, may polish the ceremonial gear and carry water and food. But no one is allowed to touch a horse until he is confirmed to the priesthood for life and is a blue, an epigone—and then only under the supervision of a flamen.”

“Red,” said Kyrem involuntarily. He was being lured into conversation in spite of himself.

“Correct.” Now it was the priest who stood silent.

“So what rank is next?” Kyrem asked, trying not to sound peevish.

“There are three greens, epopts, and then myself.”

I am indeed dealing with an exalted stableboy, Kyrem thought wryly.

“The epopts and I, we tend only the oracles and the kingmakers.”

Kyrem could not help raising his dark brows in inquiry.

“Here is one in the next stall,” Nasr Yamut offered. “If you are finished.…”

The prince stroked his stallion's high crest and silky mane, glancing at the full manger and suppressing a starving urge to take some of the corn for himself. But he was a prince of Deva; he could go for a while longer without food. He followed Nasr Yamut out of the stall and watched as the priest, with quiet but evident pride, led a tall horse out of the next bay and into the sunshine. The creature kicked and reared dangerously, and the priest brought it down without comment.

“The colors, the markings,” he said, “they are the finest we have yet attained.”

Mud colors, Kyrem thought contemptuously. The horse's coat was mottled and blotched with gray, dun, brownish hairs and speckles of white. But it was not only the body markings that made this the oddest creature Kyrem had ever seen. The entire head, halfway down the neck, was white, giving an impression of hoary age, and the eyes were white as well. Kyrem wondered if the creature could see. When it turned its head his way, it seemed blind and at the same time secretly spying, as if it could see inside him, and he felt a chill of sudden revulsion or horror. Irrationally he thought of the demon horse-birds he had left behind in the foothills. The shape of this horse's head reminded him of them somehow, except for the clipped ears. Splatters and dashes of reddish hair grew on the steed, with a broad patch of red spreading down its chest. The priest laid his hand on it reverently.

“The bloody wound,” he said.

The horse attempted to bite him. Nasr Yamut pulled back.

“Hit him,” Kyrem exclaimed, “if you do not want him to do that.”

“These are sacred steeds!” Shock and indignation showed plainly on Nasr Yamut's face, and just as plainly he struggled to suppress his anger. “We never strike them or restrain them in any way,” he added more quietly.

Stalls and ropes, not restraints? Horses were kicking and pawing and biting in their stalls all the way around the stable. Kyrem took breath and let it go again, refraining from further comment.

“Does the beast have a name?” he asked at last, cautiously. Best to be courteous, since he had offended.

“No, of course not.”

No names for the sacred steeds. Somehow he felt he should have known as much.

“And it is an oracle?” he asked, still trying, if distantly, to be polite.

“Of course. Our finest.” As the horse reared again.

“But how does it speak to you?”

“In the paddock, the holy enclosure. It is outside the city walls, near the sacred grove.”

Nasr Yamut seemed fully mollified by the prince's interest in this matter, but Kyrem stared blankly.

“We study and interpret the neighings and movements of the steeds when they are released. The direction taken, how many bounds, the bearing … it is a subtle art,” Nasr Yamut explained with evident patience.

And the poor beasts are never freed except at such a time, Kyrem thought with an intuitive leap to truth. The sons of wind tied in stalls, led in circles and rune figures, no gallops across open ground, not even under a rider. And they call Devans cruel.… They will not want Omber to use that paddock, and I want to stay far from this wrong-headed magic. I will take him to the hills outside of the city to romp and play—beyond the terraced land. If I am permitted.

“I thought you read charts,” he said to Nasr Yamut.

“We do that too. The prophecies of the oracular steeds apply only to the king and his kingdom.” The priest spoke with a teacher's eager zeal. “The charts are for anyone who cares to learn his personal destiny. Come, would you like to see them and the temple and the Ahara Suth, the sacred spring?”

Even though his stomach was shouting, Kyrem went with him, not so much out of interest as a reluctance to return to the ruler's dwelling and face Auron and Seda. He did not know how to confront Seda.

The way led through a postern gate to the interior of the temple, a tall building standing against the outside of the city wall, cool and dim and thick of clay-brick wall, a fortress terminating in red-tiled towers spun out into javelin points against the sapphire sky. Kyrem did not see the towers until later, for his eyes were on the guardian above the entry, the stuffed and mounted head of a real horse, indeterminate of color and evidently very old; he could not meet its shriveled and sunken eyes. More such horses' heads were inside, to the number of thirteen of them, ranged above the charts, some of them with clipped ears and most of them with white faces, or at least plentiful white markings about the forehead and muzzle. Some of the less ancient ones had polished stones set in for eyes. Those were only a little easier to face than the others.

“The kingmakers,” Nasr Yamut explained, seeing Kyrem staring at them. If Kyrem had asked, the priest could have recited the names of the thirteen kings of Vashti and pointed to the head of the sacrificial horse that had ushered in each one. But Kyrem did not ask, for he did not wish at that time entirely to understand.

A pair of silent, gray-robed youths stood flanking the charts, expressionless, holding the fragrant lamps and guarding the flagons of chrism and the repositories of the mysteries. This was part of their training. The charts themselves were gigantic, finely detailed mosaics that filled the whole of the tall white wall of worship, the nave of the place, the sanctuary. Nasr Yamut genuflected and then approached them, chanting.

“
Moon-white owns second sight
,

Yellow dun is essence of sun
,

Ardent, of Mars, is the sard-red bay
,

Blue is the steed of the evening star
,

Brown is sturdy, its emblem earth
,

Quicksilver fleet is the mystic gray
,

The black as significant as the white.
”

The chart of seven. Kyrem knew it only by hearsay. The colors all Vashtins wore except priests, and to each horse color a star or planet and a glyphic symbol, an element, a jewel, a flower and a beast, so that the chart made a perfect square.

“Aside from the horse itself, the stars and the jewels are the most important,” Nasr Yamut said. “For stars are the jewels of sky and jewels the stars of earth.… Come, I will give you a reading and require no offering. What were the day and time of your birth?”

“I do not care to say,” Kyrem said, though not discourteously. Conversation had taken some of the edge from him.

“Why not?” The priest gave him a keen but smiling glance. “I know you Devans honor the name of Suth.”

“We keep far from charts and symbols and all such subtlety,” Kyrem replied promptly. “Princes of Deva are taught only to ride, to shoot the arrow from the bow, to use the curved sword and to speak truth. It is enough.”