No Flame But Mine (10 page)

To Guri, bewildered, nearly exasperated, the whole method seemed excessive. Especially since he himself had been born and died in the world, then persisted as a sort of ghost in it, then died
again
and landed in his own punishment cell of Hell. Eventually released from Hell he had been tossed back here.

With one major alteration. This now was the
past
.

It had stunned him when first he figured it out, hanging over the glamorous city of Sham.

Sham had been only a bitter remnant in Guri's former earthly life. Long ago sacked and wrecked by conquerors from the southerly Ruk, Sham then was a jumble of debris and mud and ersatz slave-markets. Of all the legends of glorious gates just one, a Copper Gate, had partly stood. Here and now however there were five, and each of these in excellent repair. This Sham too had towers and terraced blocks and decorated squares and superb fighting-grounds.

Ambling through the air and over the landscape of the past for some while, Guri had observed the peoples of Olchibe and Gech, and incidentally discovered their lack of gods. In Guri's original life the Great Gods of Olchibe were an accepted fact.

Knowing the inevitable format of his own return to flesh, a dire suspicion welled up in Guri then.

As for last night, no other way to put it: he had fathered himself.

Oh, he had never
meant
to. But he had seen the girl before he left the purlieus of Hell, a vision. The moment he was here and spotted her therefore, as she trotted back towards her sluhtin, an unavoidable attraction had enmeshed him. He had had to accost her.

What he had actually done certainly offended him. If he considered it, he had copulated with his own mother, although naturally at that point she was
not
his mother. One coming myth to hush up then, probably.

Irresistibly now Guri squinted through the early morning, through snow-mist and ice and the legs of frozen trees and rocks, and saw the girl whose name was Yedki examining her blood-stippled blanket. How complacent she looked. Women!

Guri braced himself and peered on, right through the slender curve of her belly. Within, a shape balanced among the branches of her inner organs, like a rosy pear. Yedki's healthy youthful womb. And yes, deeply fastened was a tiny sequin, wiggling just a little; frightening, miraculous atomy, already flexing its amorphous muscles—

‘Me,' said Guri.

Resigned, he closed the book of his potentially god-like brain and leapt instead straight up into the cloudless height above the mist. He might as well enjoy himself for the few mortal months of freedom he had left. For after that who knew what fresh horror and muddle would ensue?

FIVE

There was an eye in the sky. Visible only to a mage or a highly gifted psychic, it might have belonged to any number of deities. To vicious Zeth Zezeth whose name essentially rendered was Zzth, or to mild Ddir the artisan god, who rearranged the patterns of the stars. The eye might even have belonged to the yet unreborn floating godsoul of the Lionwolf.

The eye belonged to none of them.

It had more the ambience of an opaque window, something blind which was yet somehow
watching
.

Around the window too, gradually, a type of activity gathered. Ultimately this would come to be seen quite readily by anyone as weather.

Beneath sprawled the sweep of the Southern Continent, and there the shamble of Kandexa, fenced off in sectors by the hem of the frozen sea.

Streamers crossed the sky now. The hour was early but the light was deadening. A storm must be imminent. But there, storms happened. Nothing new in that.

He had been dreaming. He was two years old and his mother was going out to break ice for the water jars. He had had a premonition. He ran to her and begged her not to leave the house. Her face became serious and she nodded, and sat down by his side. A little later both of them saw a black wolf steal from the shadow by the tree. They shut the house door and were safe.

Thryfe had always hated wolves, even the less terrible white wolves of the south and east.

How different would his life have been if his mother had heeded his inarticulate screaming, and not died under the village ice-tree?

He opened his eyes and saw in front of him the sweet sleeping face of Jemhara …

Had she cured him at last of the nightmare?

She stirred. The smooth petals of her lids lifted. She gazed deeply into his face.

During the twenty-three days and nights they had been together here in Kandexa, she had quickly lost the look of fear and of perilous search which her first awakenings beside him had engendered.

The first few times he had taken her back into his arms at once, kissing her hair. ‘All's well, beautiful.
Now
all's well.'

She had been recalling he knew that previous first time, there in his mansion at Stones, when he woke at last from the trance of their gorgeous mutual lust to remember his chastity, and Ru Karismi's fatal error that he had been determined to prevent.

He could never have saved the city from itself. He was sure now. He would have died, that was all.

And so – missed this.

She roped his neck with her arms, her breasts pressed against him, all the slender curving warmth of her body.

For a while then once more all the dialogue between them was made of sex.

Spent, he held her closely. Over on the wall, he noted that the twig-hand of the bucolic goddess Ranjal seemed ridiculously wooden and over-motionless, as if clumsily concealing its alert involvement. A voyeur goddess?

‘Let me go,' demanded Jemhara. ‘Let me heat some beer. Let me see if the apple's grown back again.'

‘It always does.'

‘Perhaps,' she murmured, ‘we shouldn't eat it. It's thau-maturgic. How do we know if it does us good?'

‘Highness Jema,' he said with profound gravity, ‘don't you think you would know if you were poisoned?'

He watched her as she went about the attic room, setting the buckled pan of beer over the brazier, placing the bread neatly on a platter. The green apple he had brought here always regrew when they had eaten it, providing they left it hidden under a bowl, as if to reform from its own core in plain sight was indecent. Why the apple
did
regrow he was unsure. But it was nourishingly wholesome and tasted always clean and fragrant – as this woman did, this beautiful woman made of alabaster skin and crow-wing hair.

Besotted fool, he thought, amused. Let him be one, then. He must learn these human ways.

They ate and drank and devoured half the apple each. Back under the bowl went the core.

‘What a canny village wife you are.'

‘And you a bad, lazy husband. Get up, Lord Thryfe, or shall I come and bite you?'

‘Bite me.'
Is this
myself
saying that
?

‘No. I will bite you only if you leave the bed.'

‘Here I am.'

‘Perhaps not a bite. Will this do …'

‘You called on God,' she said afterwards. ‘Which?'

‘There are none. No, not even that live twig over there. I called on something as men always have in joy or anguish. We're taught these things. They live in us like mice in walls, and mean nothing.'

Soon they would go out and walk through the zone named Paradise. There would be persons to see to, and tasks to accomplish. Paradise was bursting with mad hubris that now it had
two
Magikoy, and one of them, as most suspected, the famous magus Thryfe. Who always denied he was, as Jemhara always denied herself too. Other sections of Kandexa had grasped the idea jealously. But then they skulked to the gate begging for this or that assistance, and willing to trade sheep, cattle, wine and treasures looted from under the city's hearthstones. Mage help was never refused but tricks – there had been one or two – were crushed, their authors chastened.

The sky from the attic window looked odd to him. Ribbons of shadow streamed from a dot of glassy emptiness itself like a window of grey sugar. Thryfe stared at it, and for a moment was on the verge of divining something vile.

A faint low cry distracted him.

He sprang back to her across the room. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing at all. I was dizzy.'

‘Sit. Now, look up at me. Yes.' He gauged her acutely, for a second merciless in his scrutiny. She had gone very pale but her natural colour was returning and she smiled, still fearless before his stern mask, that of a Magikoy healer in mid-diagnosis.

‘You see. It wasn't anything.' The eyes of the eagle clouded. Jemhara stiffened. ‘What have you seen?'

‘You,' he said quietly. ‘And one other.'

‘Which other?'

Thryfe felt a pang, a sort of horror, unjustified maybe, or not. For certainly neither of them had inclined to predict let alone want this. Though it was the one thing any other man or woman might have wanted or predicted.

‘You're carrying. And by me.' Her mouth dropped open. He wanted to kiss it and held back. ‘Have I wronged you, doing that to you?'

‘You speak – as if you'd harmed me … a
child
?'

‘Yes, a child. It's firmly lodged and has the aura of a male. Do you
want
this, Jema?'

‘Do I want—'

‘Don't fog your thoughts with village superstition. There's no life-force there as yet. That will come later. It's a seed smaller than a pin's tip. If you truly desire to bear this thing, we can secure it. But if not—'

‘Wait,' she said in a very little voice. Suddenly she dipped her face into her hands.

Instantly he knelt beside her. ‘My fault,' he said. ‘Whatever you decide, blame me for it.'

‘
Your
fault? Do you think I can't protect myself in that way?'

‘Yes, yes. But neither you nor I – we took no precaution.'

‘It's never that, my love. Oh,' she said, ‘oh, what's been done?'

He held her, waiting. He felt a huge current like a turning tide far out beyond the ice-locked shore, which shouldered roughly through the room. Dread after all sank its claws in him. Must everything of his be spoiled or
spoil
? Coldly he thrust off the thought. Here was one lesson he must
not
relearn, the petty recrimination at an act of mindless fate.

Jemhara sat lost in memory. She saw a treacherous red-haired god who came to her and told her, even if she had denied it to herself, that Thryfe would find her. And Thryfe and she between them would create—

She said, ‘What do you hate most in the world?'

‘Hate?'

‘Say without thinking.'

‘Useless cruelty – wolves—' Checked, he glanced back at his own words.

She said, ‘I am to bear the reborn Vashdran. Lionwolf. Look into me again and see.'

‘No, Jema. He's gone, burned away for ever by the White Death. This is some fancy—'

‘Some fancy I was given and made to memorize.
I foresaw
. He told me you'd come to me. He told me, in obscure ways now made clear,
he
would be the result. A god, a demon god. Inside me.'

‘Never. This isn't—'

‘
Look into me again
.'

‘Jema—'

‘
I will look too
.'

They looked.

Each saw something other, and the same.

To Jemhara it was a citadel, rose-red, holding in it a sapphire that was an embryo. She felt nothing she could analyse let alone comprehend.

To Thryfe came the image of a fiery crimson heart. And inside that a tiny second heart, flaming.

A womb of fire that held – a son. A
sun
.

When he blinked he saw her eyes were cold with tears and he caught her hands.

‘This means
nothing
to us. You, or I, can rid you of it.'

She said simply, ‘My love, I doubt even the god you called to can rid me of
this
.'

Outside snow blurred across the window. But the man and the woman did not see.

‘It's snowing,' said Beebit. ‘What a filthy sky. Are you off to Aglin today?'

‘Yes. She said to go back this morning.'

‘Azula,' said Beebit, ‘it doesn't matter any if you can't learn. Aglin's a fine mageia, but perhaps not so clever a teacher. Now if Lady Jemhara had taken you on—'

The daughter of Beebit and the goddess Chillel continued calmly tying indigo beads into the dark right side of her hair and pale ones into the brown side.

‘I don't mind, Ma. It'll come right.'

Beebit sighed. She had had high hopes of her daughter's latent sorcery. But really it was
extremely
latent, was it not? Though grown to full womanhood in so short a time, bright, intelligent, lovely, and fast to master the contortionist's art, Azulamni had never manifested any other magical flair.

And though Aglin was trying every handful of days, as her own duties in Paradise allowed, to teach Azula the basics of witchcraft, it seemed this novice had no talent. The fire, called to light, stayed unlit; the water told to thaw stayed adamant. The small stone that should have scuttled along the ground sat as if glued in place.

Yet how could that be? Azula was herself a wonder. Some great power must be there in her.

While Beebit fretted, and revealed as much by telling Azula
not
to fret, the girl herself seemed merely vaguely sorry to disappoint.

Her hairdressing complete Azula got up. ‘Where will
you
go, Ma?'

‘As mostly,' said Beebit grimly, ‘back into the western ruins. The old house is down, as you've seen for yourself, like everything else for a mile around. But people still dig. So do I. My daddy your granda's there, under the bricks and snow.'

Perhaps with unconscious unkindness Azula said, ‘But will you know him, Mother? Won't he be a skeleton?'

‘I shall know him. I
must
know my own.'

‘Shall I come too?'

‘Not today, Azulamni. Off you go to Aglin and have your lesson.' They had had this conversation many times. The phrases were almost ritual now. ‘After all, when your magic breaks out of you, you'll be able to help me with more than physical strength.'