The Darkangel (7 page)

but his colorless eyes roved aimlessly over the barren landscape.

He turned suddenly, and saw her. Startled, Aeriel drew back from the window, but he called to her—not by name; she did not think she had ever told it to him: "You, girl." And she went out to him—for when he looked at her straight on, his clear eyes meeting hers, her strength failed her. She could do no other than to obey him. He turned away from her and gazed again over the plain. "Someone has been feeding my gargoyles," he said. "Was it you?"

"Yes, my lord," she answered softly.

"I did not give you permission," he said shortly, still looking out over the land.

"No, my lord," she said.

"Why?" demanded the vampyre, still not looking at her, "why did you do it?"

"They were so hungry, my lord," said Aeriel.

He looked at her now, and, seeing again the cold beauty of his face, Aeriel felt weak.

"I like them kept lean," he said. "They make better watchdogs then."

It was not until he looked away that Aeriel found her tongue. "Their eyes will be sharper and their ears the keener if they are not distracted by hunger...," she began.

"Do you propose to argue with me?" snapped the icarus.

"No, my lord," said Aeriel softly.

The vampyre drummed the fingers of one perfect white hand on the battlements. They gleamed slightly, like lambent Avaric, against the dull, dark stone. "Tell me, how did you manage not to be killed by them?"

"Their chains are not long enough to let them come near me if I stand against the stair."

The darkangel nodded, then turned to glance at her over one night-winged shoulder. "You knew this before you went up?"

She shook her head, for she could not speak while he watched her.

"Then why did you go up?" he asked her.

"They needed someone to feed them," she stammered as his eyes wandered.

"They would have killed you if they could," said the vampyre.

She answered, "Yes."

"Then why?" he said, with real curiosity now. "Why did you go up?"

Said Aeriel, "They needed me."

The darkangel shook his head then and laughed. "I suppose I should kill you," he said idly at last, "I did forbid you to go up on the tower—but I shall not. You are interesting.

Not one of my servants was ever brave enough to go up amongst the gargoyles before, much less disobey me." He shook his head, frowned very slightly. "Strange. You do not look brave."

He eyed her then as though he expected some answer. She looked away. "I am not brave, my lord."

He laughed again. "Perhaps not. Perhaps you are only stupid. No matter. Henceforth you shall feed my gargoyles as well as attend my wives."

He paused then, expecting another reply, and Aeriel murmured, "You honor me, my lord."

"But keep them lean," he said, with a sudden severity. "If ever I discover them growing fat and sleepy, you shall be their last meal for a long twelvemonth."

With that he strode away from her and disappeared into the castle. Aeriel leaned against the terrace wall for many moments after, waiting for her heart to steady and her strength to return.

As the day-months wore on, Aeriel, became aware that the vampyre was growing more restless, pacing the castle and muttering. "He is growing hungry," said the wraiths; their wits gradually were sharpening. Eight of them had new kirtles now. "Half the year is up,"

the duarough told her, "and in a few months' time, he will fly in search of another bride."

Aeriel often caught glimpses of him, prowling through the keep.

Sometimes he caught the little silver bats that flew about the towers after dark in search of tiny moths and millers; the icarus caught the bats and broke their wings. This Aeriel knew, for sometimes she came upon them starved to death on the walks about the keep, or fluttering helplessly across the floor of some empty castle room.

One day in the garden she came upon him. Cupped in his hands he held some tiny, struggling creature. A bat, she realized in a moment. It was a bat. He had broken only one of its wings and was tossing it into the air to watch it flutter back to earth in a frantic spiral. Aeriel could just make out its high, thin twittering on the very limit of her hearing.

Before she could think, she found herself running forward.

"Stop," she cried out. "Stop!"

The vampyre ignored her. The bat struck the cobbles of the walk and ceased to move.

The ica-rus nudged it tentatively with one sandaled foot, then picked it up by its crumpled wing and shook it. The bat did not stir. Aeriel stood watching.

"Don't," she cried. "Please don't throw it up again. It's stunned. You'll kill it___"

The vampyre laid the bat down on the garden wall long enough to look at her. Her voice trailed away and died. The icarus eyed her a long moment with his eyes clear and colorless as quartz, then glanced back at the bat. Its black eyes stared at nothing, glazed.

Its mouth hung open a little, its tiny white teeth sharp as rosepricks. Aeriel could see the slight, swift rise and fall of its fragile side as it breathed.

The darkangel shrugged. "I am done with it," he said. "It no longer amuses me."

He brushed it off the wall and over the precipice with one brief motion. Aeriel closed her eyes and turned away. A long moment passed before she could speak.

"Why?" she said, not looking at him. "Why do you torment them?"

"For sport," he answered readily. "I am bored. This castle bores me. My wives bore me. I must have some amusement."

Aeriel opened her eyes. "Need you have killed it?" She was still unable to face him.

The icarus shrugged again; she could hear the rustle of his dozen wings. "Why not?" he said. "There are others."

"Must you catch them at all?" asked Aeriel. "It is so cruel."

"Oh, lizards are even better sport than bats," the vampyre replied. "One can bait them with moon-moths, then pick out their eyes, or tear out their tongues...."

If he continued, Aeriel did not hear; she covered her ears with her hands. Even then she could hear the darkangel laugh at her.

"You are even more sport to bait than the lizards," he said when she took her hands from her ears again.

"There are pleasanter forms of amusement than the tormenting of helpless creatures,"

cried Aeriel.

"Are there?" said the vampyre. Aeriel felt her skin shrink as he stepped closer, eyed her.

"What do you do to amuse yourself?"

Aeriel turned quickly from him, gazed out across the garden. "When I was young," she said, "when I lived in my village in the foothills at the edge of Avaric's white plain, Bomba would tell us tales...."

"Bomba?" said the icarus, drawing back a trace. "Bomba?" He pronounced the name as though he found it absurd. "Who is this Bomba?"

"My nurse," said Aeriel. "No, Eoduin's nurse really----" Her throat tightened and her heart turned at the thought of Eoduin. Even in the company of the wraiths Aeriel had not thought of Eoduin now in months. She found it impossible to think of the wraiths as women, could not imagine any of them had ever been a living maid, as Eoduin had been—but the vampyre was speaking.

"You shall tell me a tale," he said,

Aeriel looked at him. "Now?" she asked.

"Yes, now," he said impatiently. His eyes bored into her like a hawk's. Aeriel swallowed and cast about her for a tale. "Well?" the icarus inquired.

"I shall tell you the tale of the Maiden-Eater," she told him, and began. The tale was a long one, about a kingdom besieged by a dragon and the king's daughter who slew it and the young hero who helped her. The vampyre laughed outright when she came to describing the wyrm.

"Big as a cottage?" he cried at last. "With wings? It is evident that you have never seen a firedrake. They are twenty and thirty times so large, and they certainly cannot fly, though they swim. Incidentally, they do not spit brimstone; they breathe sulfur and flame." The icarus folded his arms and leaned back, looking down on her, his lips curled in contempt.

"No mere mortal could have killed one single-handed."

"Her sword
was
magic," said Aeriel.

"The dragon would have killed them both long before she could have used it."

Aeriel looked at the ground. "You have seen dragons, my lord."

"Oh yes. My mother keeps a pair as pets."

Aeriel looked at him. "Your mother?" she said. The word sounded strange from his tongue.

His lips twisted again into a smile. "I do have a mother," he said. "How did you suppose I came to be?" His tone was amused and had no kindness to it. Aeriel dropped her eyes and mumbled something. The icarus pursed his lips a moment, and his look grew farther away. "She is very beautiful, my mother."

Aeriel let another moment go by before she spoke. "What is her name?" she ventured at last.

"And how would I know that?" replied the vampyre, affronted. "Great personages such as she do not hand out their names so freely."

"But you are her son," insisted Aeriel, softly.

The vampyre looked suddenly away, and for the first time his cool assurance flagged.

"She will tell me...," he began. "She has promised to tell me—when I come of age."

"And is she... like you?" asked Aeriel, wondering what sort of being mothered vampyres.

His hesitation had surprised her.

"You mean a winged icarus?" he asked, regaining himself, and flexing his coal-dark feathers. They rustled like fine, stiff silk. "No, she prefers water to air. She is a lorelei."

"And she keeps dragons."

"Yes." A moment's silence followed as the darkangel settled his wings. When next he spoke, it was with no trace of his former faltering. "But hers do not eat maidens. They eat ships." He laughed again, that same cruel and careless laugh. "Ah, me, that was a silly tale you told, but amusing enough. Tell me another."

His tone had taken on a keen edge at the last. "My lord," Aeriel stammered, "I am hungry and tired. I have just spent many hours spinning and weaving for... for your wives"—she had to catch herself lest she, in his presence, say "the wraiths"—"and I..."

He held up his hand, suddenly tolerant again. "Ah, yes. I sometimes forget you mortal creatures need inordinate amounts of food and sleep, /need only a little and a little." He gave her a dismissive nod. "Very well, go have your food and rest, and then come to me in the audience hall, where you shall tell me more of these tales."

So Aeriel told the darkangel tales, and fed his gargoyles, and spun and wove for his wives, and fished with the duarough in the quiet cave pools, and the day-months passed.

She told him all the tales she could remember ever hearing from Bomba, or Eoduin, or anyone else she had ever known. The vampyre seemed to listen with only half an ear, remarking now and again on some improbability in the tale, but he did listen, and Aeriel found no more broken bats or maimed lizards in the garden.

But she found herself now at the last (as she began work on the last of the wraiths'

garments) running short of tales, so she asked the duarough for tales, and he told her those he could remember from his nursery days in the caves of Aiderlan, a dozen thousand day-months past. And she told these to the vampyre in the deserted reception hall of the castle, and he listened seemingly with no more attention than before.

Then came the day she told him the tale of the chieftain's son who had lived in a great palace called Tour-of-Kings. It was a tale Dirna had told her, for Dirna had been of the plains folk before she was taken for a slave—told Aeriel the tale while combing out her fine, yellow-tinged hair. It was late, late afternoon, almost dusk in the vam-pyre's castle.

The white sunlight streamed like water over the black slate floor. Aeriel sat on the floor in the warmth of the sunlight, while the ica-rus stood by the window and picked a flower to pieces as she spoke.

Aeriel said, "This is a tale that Dirna once told me, and it is the last tale that I know. She told it to me one fortnight when we were quite alone, to frighten me, and I do not know if it is true. This is the tale: there was once a woman who was handmaiden to a great chieftain of the plains. And this woman, Dirna, had a child of a day-month old when the chieftain's queen bore him a son. But the queen fell ill, and so Dirna's child was taken from her that she might nurse the chieftain's son.

"But Dirna mourned the loss of her child and grew to hate the child she nursed. Although she was but a serving-woman, she vowed vengeance against the chieftain, and bided her time. Now it became clear in a few seasons that the fever that had befallen the queen at the birth of her child had left her barren. So when the child had reached his fifth year of age, the queen and her train undertook a pilgrimage across the desert to consult the priestesses of Lonwury about her barrenness.

"So the pilgrimage was made to the shrines of Lonwury across the dry desert, and the queen remained in the sacred city for a year, and her son with her. When all the prayers and the rituals and anointings were completed, the queen gathered her train and started back across the desert. They had journeyed about three-quarters of their way over the waste of dunes when a great wind sprang up that raised the sand in clouds so thick they hid the stars.

"The caravan made camp at once to wait out the storm, but it blew all day-month and on into the shade of night. At last their water ran so low they had to break camp and try to reach the next oasis. The wind drove them then, and they wandered far off their course, till it was day again and the storm abated. They found themselves in a rocky place at desert's edge, amid a maze of canyons, on the shores of a great shallow lake.

"But something was amiss; the queen saw this at once, for nothing grew along the banks of this mere, or in it. A lonely howling, as of jackals, could be heard faintly from the canyons, though not a living creature was to be seen. And when the desert wind blew, not a ripple marred the dark water's surface: it lay still as a mirror, and barren. Those camels that had been allowed to drink sickened and died. The queen ordered at once that no waterskins be filled at this waterhole, and no one was to drink. They would move on.