Wings of Flame by Nancy Springer Page A

move the affected arm. He felt sullen.
    â€œCome with me today,” he said to Seda.
    â€œThat is not fitting,” she told him. “You have rank to uphold, and I am a servant.”
    â€œI need a friend worse than I need a servant,” Kyrem said.
    â€œYou have a royal friend, if you would only notice.” She glanced at the coins. Kyrem scowled at her and stalked out.
    The servant was honest. The coins stayed on the washstand for the next three days, and Kyrem continued as sore and sullen as ever. He was bored most of the time, for there was little for him to do while he was avoiding Auron. One can spend only just so much time with one’s horse, exercising and grooming—though the priests and their boys seemed to be fussing over the sacred steeds constantly, leading and grooming and combing mane and tail and braiding lucky beads into the forelock—but even had Kyrem been inclined to spend all day brushing Omber, his painful shoulder would not allow it.
    â€œMay I do it?” Nasr Yamut asked, seeing Kyrem wince as he attempted to pick up the stallion’s feet for cleaning. The priest sounded eager. It pleased Kyrem that Nasr Yamut so badly wanted what was in his, Kyrem’s, power to bestow. In a more sane frame of mind he would not have thought of sharing Omber with a smiling stranger, but he was in a fit mood to swagger. Also, he hoped Omber might kick the priest.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said grandly. He placed Nasr Yamut’s hand against the curve of the steed’s neck, giving the man authority to touch him. Nasr Yamut cleaned the hooves deftly, and Omber did not threaten to kick. Watching, Kyrem felt an inexplicable prickling of dismay.
    â€œSuch a beauty,” Nasr Yamut declared, stroking Omber. “So noble, so mannerly. Truly a paragon among horses.”
    Perhaps, Kyrem decided to still his dismay, this priest might be a friend of sorts after all.
    When he was bored thereafter he would go in search of Nasr Yamut, if he had not met him at the stable, and find the priest in the temple teaching the novices or reading the charts for some wealthy suppliant or tending to the spiced barley mash that was always brewing on a gilded brazier for both the priests and their sacred steeds. And Nasr Yamut would greet Kyrem as a friend and an equal, leaving his work to walk and talk with him.
    On Kyrem’s fourth day in Avedon they walked out to the place of fire, the Atar-Vesth, and Kyrem studied the blunt promotory of blue rock and its strange red-leafed trees that were shaped, leaf and tree, like flames or perhaps like a horse’s ear. And they visited the stone Suth, and Kyrem looked warily at the gem in its forehead, but it neither shone nor took on color other than a smoky crystal hue, shadow of the stone Suth beneath it.
    â€œIt is said in the lore that every horse carries the treasure of the world between its eyes,” Nasr Yamut said, “but none of our foals has yet been born bearing such a gem, only the lucky white star.”
    â€œIs that the meaning of that gem then?” Kyrem asked. “That Suth owns the treasure of the world?”
    Nasr Yamut hesitated. “It is not known exactly what is the meaning of that gem,” he replied at last. “For many years men have feared it.”
    Kyrem had felt that fear, but he chose not to reveal it. “Why?” he asked blandly.
    â€œPeople have died of touching it. We priests recite their names on our days of sorrow and fasting. No one nowadays will touch it, and no one comes here except we priests who serve the effigy of the god. Folk used to come more commonly at one time, it seems.” Nasr Yamut pointed at the pedestal, and looking more closely, Kyrem could see a glyphic inscription in the stone, worn nearly smooth with the touch of time.
    â€œDo you know what it says?” he asked the priest.
    â€œYes, and …” a delicate hesitation, for effect, Kyrem felt sure.