Stargate by Pauline Gedge

tumbling eddies in the warm air, Ghakazian wheeled and flashed like brown lightning over the white-timbered villages, where his wingless ones came running out to wave at him. He swooped low, raining soft down-feathers and music upon them, his naked body almost as brown as his tangled hair but glowing with a shine like new honey. He called them by name, the dark-skinned men and women, the giggling children, and then he was gone, bolting into the sky, hovering outside a cave that angled back into one of the fanged mountains. Just above him Hiranka stared proudly above the clouds, the ever-present wind soughing past his outflung stone wings.
    â€œMirak!” he shouted. “Come out! It is I, Ghakazian.”
    A young man emerged from the cave and stood at its mouth, grinning and blinking in the sunlight, one hand on his small hip. His body was brown also, his hair long and black and snared hap-hazardly on the black wings that reared over his shoulders. His eyes were clear amber, flecked with green when the full sun caught them.
    â€œSun-lord, I am tired.” He smiled. “I have been chasing Hira all over the sky. I think he is going to be another Hiranka, and already he spends much time looking into the past, watching his ancestor glide among the mountains.”
    â€œWith dreams of challenging his lord one day, I suppose.” Ghakazian laughed. “I am glad, Mirak. I would like nothing better than a race around the world. Has the sun shone while I have been away?”
    â€œUnremittingly,” Mirak answered gravely. “But if it pleases you, let it withdraw for a time. The grass pleads for rain, and so do I. A little rain will keep my son at home for a while and allow me a few hours of thought in peace.” Mirak spoke lightly, but at his words a shadow passed over his lord’s face. The eyes darkened, the wings missed a beat, and Ghakazian fumbled to hover again just beyond the lip of rock.
    â€œRain,” Ghakazian muttered. “Rain. Ah, Ixelion!” Then the moment was gone. “So be it.” He smiled. “Let us have an afternoon of rain.” He raised an arm and shouted a friendly command. The sun flared for a second and dimmed, and Mirak saw large clouds hurrying to cover it.
    â€œThank you, Ghakazian,” he said, and he called over his shoulder, “Hira, Maram! It is going to rain.”
    Ghakazian had time to see Mirak’s wife and son come running before he left the cliff, beating his way leisurely downwind. By the time he reached his own domain, the land beneath him had opened under a swift pattering of gray water that was swelling to a steady squall, and before he could rise above the level of the clouds, his feathers and his hair streamed with moisture. Lightning forked suddenly and thunder reverberated. The rain shushed down faster. He broke through the gloom and came out into full sunlight. He amused himself by walking on the clouds until he was dry, his wings trembling like those of a hummingbird; then he turned to his hall and, parting the seal, went inside.
    The entrance was a tall, thin arch that began near the middle of the mountain peak and rose to a point of almost painful clarity and sharpness just under the summit. No stone effigy of a winged ancestor frowned over it, as over every other peak on Ghaka, and as Ghakazian dove to it, it seemed to him that the sill of the arch gave the cloud that foamed right up to it an illusory solidarity, made it a false earth. Only the first hall was floored or roofed, and it was here that he received his wingless ones, who sometimes climbed the steep stair cut in the mountain and stood dwarfed within, craning their heads backward to try to glimpse the unadorned roof. Ghakazian would fill the lofty hall with light, so that they would feel less lost, and would stand on his wide gray dais and joke with them, his wings discreetly folded behind him. It was not that they were envious of their winged brothers, or