Wings of Flame by Nancy Springer Page B

“… I dare say I may tell you. It reads,
    â€œ Come hither, pilgrim, bearing
    your heart’s desire .
    See whether your boldness
    will win your desire
    or death. ”
    â€œGrim,” Kyrem remarked.
    â€œYon is a dangerous jewel, and an oracular one in some way, we feel. It changes color when great events are in the offing. We watch it with awe.”
    For once Kyrem did not scoff, inwardly or outwardly, at the words of the Vashtin.
    Not far from the stone Suth ran the hoofprint fountain, Ahara Suth, the great crescent curve of blue rock where the river welled up. “Suth must be as big as the world,” Kyrem said.
    â€œWhat is the Devan belief concerning the shape of the world?” Nasr Yamut asked him.
    â€œBelief?” Kyrem shrugged. “We know little enough. Our own land is the center, and beyond it lie places where souls go or where gods dwell or where the Old Ones went when we drove them out. Perilous places. And a great river surrounds it all, and then the edge of nothingness. But no one really knows except from dreams.”
    â€œThere is a great river at the edges of Vashti,” said the priest. “Lore tells us that beyond that bourne the soil is black instead of red, and black lilies grow there, beyond the deep water. The river is called Ril Melantha, and it is always hidden in mist. That is a magical stream. No one crosses that river except the white-robed ones, the atarashet, those who are beyond the fire, to enter upon their life of meditation, and they never return.”
    â€œI do not understand this matter of the atarashet,” said Kyrem. It sounded like none of the customs of his land.
    â€œWhen fire-masters go beyond, they cross the Ril Melantha to the Untrodden Land, the place of powers, of the numina and the puissant dead. From that moment they are atarashet; they become as if dead to this world. They speak with the spirits of potent kings of old, of seers out of the past. They meditate amid the black lilies. They grow wise.”
    â€œAre they not wise, then, before they go?” asked Kyrem. This seemed to him to be an odd way to make a mystic.
    â€œWe hope all fire-masters are wise.”
    There seemed no safe answer to this.
    â€œAre mystics honored in your land, Prince Kyrem?”
    â€œOf course,” he replied automatically. “The mystic is the third eye of being, that eye through which the world beholds itself and knows itself divine. Of course we honor our mystics.”
    Behind his back the jewel in the forehead of the stone Suth winked and glittered as he spoke. Nasr Yamut saw and stiffened and opened his mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it. If the jewel was the third eye of Suth, then what was this prince?
    â€œAnd do you honor priests?” he asked Kyrem instead.
    â€œOf course. But not—” Kyrem smiled sourly. “Not as much as you are honored here.”
    â€œHow do you mean?” Nasr Yamut spoke smoothly, and Kyrem, who had begun to trust him, did not notice the tension around his eyelids.
    â€œPriests serve the god. Rulers and warriors tend to the real business of the world.” Kyrem shrugged, smiling, then grimaced as the shrug reminded him of the wound in his shoulder. “In Deva we raise men of might to rule,” he added obliquely, saying nothing more scornful of Auron.
    The king of Vashti was no warrior, no ruler to Kyrem’s way of thinking. He did no mighty deeds, uttered no proclamations, received no ambassadors, made no appearances of state. He did not ride forth, nor even walk. Indeed, to Kyrem’s knowledge, he had not yet set foot outside of his own palace. But within it he busied himself with councils and accountings, with the thousand petty affairs of his kingdom and city and servants; no detail was too small for him, Seda had said.
    And sometimes for hours on end Auron would simply sit, as passive as so much pastry dough, and stare. Nasr Yamut, on the other