Aeriel rested the broad basket against her hip and adjusted her kirtle. The steep climb she and her companion had been taking the last six hundred paces or so had caused the loose, flowing garment to twist around at the neck and fall askew.
"I have to rest," she said faintly, and not waiting for her companion's reply, sank down on the hard, grey brittlerock of the mountainside and set the empty basket down beside her.
It was cold up on the steeps, the air too thin to hold any heat. But Solstar was warm, a bare six hours from setting. Its white light streamed back at her from the eastern horizon, warm on her bare arms and neck and face, warming the broken rock shelf on which she sat.
Aeriel gazed out over the wide plain of Avaric, fair as a pearl, bright as foxfire beneath the black, starry heavens. Oceanus hung, a swirl of blue and white, almost directly ahead of her. Below, she could see her village over to the right: tiny, far away, at the foot of the mountain and the edge of the plain.
"Come on," said Eoduin, digging her toe into Aeriel's backside. "We've still a way to go yet."
Aeriel sighed and got up, followed her companion. Eoduin was tall and slender, as befitted a person of lineage. After all, she was the daughter of the village syndic and her mother was half-sister to the satrap. She had a carriage about her, Aeriel observed wistfully, all self-sure and comely arrogance that came of living all her life in the largest house in the village, with sixteen different kirtles (think of it, sixteen! Aeriel had just two) and house servants.
Aeriel was one of these. She gazed longingly at her well-born mistress's hair, black as the heavens, with a blue sheen by earthlight. Eoduin's skin, pale and blue as breastmilk, had a subtle radiance that gleamed even in shadow. But Aeriel, slighter than her companion by a head, was boy-shaped still, her skin deeper-shaded: a wan rose-tan that even bleaching with lightning weed could not expunge. And her hair, thinner and finer than Eoduin's, was silvery yellow. Pretty enough by daylight, or lamplight - but it took on a hideous greenish cast, like unripe figs, by earthshine.
Aeriel sighed and scrambled up the slope after Eoduin, admiring the other's long-limbed stride, envying - but hopelessly - the unconscious ease with which the syndic's daughter held her basket slung over her back like a cloak. Aeriel knew that even when she herself began blooming into maidenhood (as Eoduin was blooming now), even then, she could never hope to match her mistress's proud grace.
After another hundred paces, Aeriel said, "We're getting awfully high."
Without turning around, her companion answered, "The summit's not much farther."
"I can't see the village anymore," said Aeriel. It was true. The turn they had just taken had led them around the mountain face a few degrees.
Eoduin laughed. "What are you afraid of?" she said, her sapphire eyes now mocking-merry. "Darkangels?" She stopped a moment to let Aeriel come up beside her. "You really do believe that old cradle tale Bomba was telling us," said Eoduin. "Don't you?"
Aeriel thought back on the strange, half-silly, half-deliciously exciting stories the bumbling old wife sometimes spun for her young charges at the distaff. She had told them one only a few hours before Aeriel and Eoduin had set out from the village to gather wedding flowers on the steeps - by way of a caution, Aeriel supposed, though this one had come out more muddled (and therefore ludicrous) than sobering.
Eoduin dropped her basket to the ground. Aeriel watched as she hunched her shoulders and screwed up her face in imitation of the old nurse's features. "The wraiths," she whispered, as if toothless. "The wraiths that roam the mountains, snatching bodies, causing landslides. Believe me...."
She wagged one claw-finger at Aeriel.
"Believe me, girl; I've seen them. Don't you go up high on those steeps, or you'll regret it - if you live to regret it." Aeriel bit her lip to suppress a smile. Eoduin always reduced her to helpless mirth. "And the vampyres!" Eoduin railed. "The icari: dozens of black wings and the faces of demons. One look'll turn you to stone, and then where'll you run, girl?"
The syndic's daughter began to stagger, worrying her hands and muttering.
"One'll swoop you away to his castle to make you his bride. And you know what the icari does with their brides, do you, girl?" Her voice had thinned from a low whisper to a faint, hysterical shriek. Aeriel wrapped her arms about her ribs and fought to hold back laughter. "They drinks up their souls!" Eoduin shrilled, then sank to her knees, gasping,
"Oh, my heart, my poor heart...," exactly as Aeriel had seen her half-senile old nurse doing numberless times.
Aeriel gave up, laughed until she felt breathless and giddy, though the air on the high steeps was too thin for laughing properly or long. She felt a little sick with the altitude and had to sit down again, rest her forehead on her knees. Sobering now, she kept her face hidden. She did not want Eoduin moving on before she could regain her breath.
Unsmiling now, Aeriel thought about Bomba's stories and shook her head. No, it was not the tales of Bomba that had worried her - fat, good-natured Bomba - but Dirna's. Gaunt, furtive Dirna, who used to sit at the loom in the workroom a little distance from the others, staring off at nothing, her spare, withered fingers weaving by touch.
Her tales were of a different sort from Bomba's. Dirna whispered of dracgs and witches, gargoyles and specters - horrifying tales of death by drowning. Eoduin always laughed at them as she did at Bomba's simpleminded fables, but they made Aeriel shudder. Dirna never got muddled in her tellings: she spoke as if she knew.
Aeriel raised her head from her knees. Eoduin had risen and shaken off her guise. Pulling a few black strands of hair from her large, clear-blue eyes, she kicked her basket deftly downhill toward Aeriel, then nodded for her bondservant to follow as she strode gracefully up the path. Aeriel sighed shortly, collecting her mistress's basket along with her own, wished she had a servant to caddy for her whenever she grew tired of carrying.
"Cheer up, worry-wrinkle," Eoduin cried over one shoulder. "What vampyre would want you?"
Aeriel shook the frown from her face. "No, it's just that...," she began, starting after her companion and tripping. Balancing on the steep slope while clutching a basket in each hand was proving difficult. She scrambled to her feet, snatched up Eoduin's basket before it could roll away down-slope like tumblebrush, and hurried up alongside her mistress again. "It's just that the sun will be down in a few hours, and..."
"Six!" cried Eoduin, laughing. "We've plenty of time before nightshade."
"Yes, but what if... ?" Aeriel almost lost her footing again on the smooth, crumbling rock, and Eoduin pulled her to her feet without so much as a glance or a pause in stride. Aeriel held to the baskets. "But what if one of us gets hurt," she continued, "or loses the way?"
"Don't you mean what if you get hurt?" asked Eoduin, without rancor. "After all, you seem to be the only one stumbling." She laughed and did not offer to help carry. "But by the Pendarlon, if I'd known you'd be so clumsy, I might have allowed more time."
Aeriel blushed and looked away. It was true: she was clumsy, and beside her mistress's deft grace, always felt doubly so. Her companion tilted one shoulder in a shrug and glanced at Aeriel.
"Don't fear, little lameling. If you should twist an ankle or knock yourself silly falling off a ledge, I'll carry you and the baskets back in less time than it's taken us getting this far."
Aeriel felt her color deepen, bit her lip against retort. She wasn't lame - just awkward and unsure. Eoduin knew that. Aeriel's knuckles on the basket whitened; she glanced at Eoduin. The syndic's daughter smiled at her carelessly. Aeriel's eyes stung. These were the only times she ever resented Eoduin, who used that hated name lame-ling, she realized, only to bait her. This time, though, she seemingly meant no teasing by it.
Perhaps she even intended it affectionately. Aeriel relaxed her hands and let her color fade.
"You needn't worry about the other, either," her companion was saying. Her tone was one of friendly tolerance. "I won't lose the way, and if you keep by me, you won't either."
Aeriel sighed and shoved her thoughts away, fell into step behind Eoduin again. The sun felt warm on Aeriel's back, and the shadows, whenever the path ducked behind boulder or ledge, were cold as well water. She dropped one basket from her hip as the trail grew narrower, let the light, bulky mesh of twined marshgrass bump along against her leg.
They climbed.
She fell to watching the landscape, the lie of the rocks. She listened to the bell-thorn, silvery thin briars that tinkled like glass in the rare mountain wind. She watched the small, rose-colored lizards sunning themselves in the last hours of Solstar before crawling into their crags again to sleep for another long nightshade. She looked at the petrified bones in the rocks, bones of fishes, eels, and water plants left over from the time when the steeps had been nothing but flat mud bottom, and all the world a sea.
"Here, here are some," said Eoduin, halting so abruptly Aeriel almost ran into her. Aeriel eyed the low-spread blossoming shrub at their feet. Eoduin gazed forward and gestured ahead. "And there are more up the slope."
They were near the pinnacle of the mountain. Aeriel could scarcely feel herself breathe.
The sky was blacker here, the sun whiter, the Earth bluer, the stars brighter. When Aeriel looked down, she could see the light, luminous haze of atmosphere lying on the foothills, on the plain.
"You pick these," Eoduin was telling her, taking her own basket back. "I'll get the ones farther up."
It was difficult for Aeriel to hear her, the air was so thin. She obviously was shouting, but Aeriel, only a pace away, had trouble making out the more faintly spoken words. She nodded her reply.
"You brought a flask, didn't you?" demanded Eoduin, taking hold of the empty one she herself wore on a thong hung from her neck. It was a simple waterskin for desert travel, a couple of handspans long, made of white kid with an ivory stopper and beads of tinted bone. Aeriel nodded and tapped her own smaller, undecorated flask hanging from her neck.
"Good, then," cried Eoduin, softly, as from a great distance. "Stay here, in sight - don't wander. And don't spill any."
Aeriel nodded. Eoduin slung her basket over one shoulder and went on up the last, steepest twenty paces to the top. Aeriel watched her easy, surefooted ascent, her mistress's free hand resting lightly on rock or boulder from time to time to help her balance. Aeriel wished that she could have been born so long-limbed, so self-sure - so beautiful. She set her basket down and knelt beside the hornscrub, began gathering the flowers.
These hornflowers grew on a tiny, grey-silver bush which lived only on the highest steeps where the air was rare and perilously thin, not the slightest breeze ever stirring to disturb them. Each branch of the bush was covered with tiny, trumpet-shaped flowers: yellowish white, translucent as frost. Each trump was filled with a tiny drop of pale golden liquor, sweeter than ginger and richer than rum.
Aeriel pulled one blossom ever so gently from its twig. The trick was to gather them one by one, painstakingly, so that not a drop was spilled in either the picking or the pouring from flower to wineskin. The task was made doubly difficult by the flocks of tiny hummingswifts, no bigger than fireflies, that swarmed about the flowers and lip of the wineskin and could, between three or four of them, drink a horn dry before Aeriel could get the flower from bush to bottle. She shooed at them with one hand while keeping the other, holding the flower, perfectly steady.
Aeriel dropped the first, emptied trump into the mesh basket beside her and reached slowly for another bloom, and then another, and another. The motions became mechanical. Her back began to ache, and her legs felt stiff, but Aeriel ignored the pains, waved away the bothersome bee-birds and continued gathering.
A marriage was to take place in the village at sundown, dusk being the customary and proper time for weddings in Avaric. Eoduin, as eldest cousin to the bride, was pledged to bring the bridal cup of hornbloom nectar and garlands of the weddings trumps. But these could be harvested only a few hours before the marriage, the precious liquor and delicate blossoms so quickly spoiled.
It seemed to Aeriel as she poured the contents of another pale, trumpet-shaped flower into the goat-hide bottle, that the humming of the tiny swifts had grown rather louder, and shrill. She tossed the empty flower into the basket and ignored the sound to concentrate on carefully plucking another blossom. She imagined the preparations in the village: the decking of the streets with banners of white gauze, the bathing of the bride...
It occurred to Aeriel, then, that the sound she was hearing was not the angry whine of hum-mingswifts, but something else: a voice. Eoduin is calling me, she thought, as she pulled a flower away from the stalk. The pitch of the voice changed abruptly, intensified.
Aeriel brought the hombloom to the rim of the bottle. No, not calling anymore, she realized suddenly - screaming.
Aeriel dropped the flower, felt its droplet spill hot as a tear - no, hotter: hot as tallow; it burned her hand. She looked up the slope to where Eoduin was. The basket of wedding trumps lay overturned at Eoduin's feet. Her young mistress was standing mute now, looking up at the sky.
Then Aeriel saw wings, very near - great wings descending: a creature with more wings than she could count, all black, all beating fiercely. She felt a faint breeze against her cheek - for all the fury of those terrible wings, the air was too thin to carry more than a feeble gust.
They were jet, those wings, as deep as the sky, as black as Eoduin's hair - no, blacker, for they were dull, unoiled. They gave off no sheen in the light, no gleam to the eye. They drank up the light and diminished it: they were wings of pure shadow.
It seemed to Aeriel, as she watched that storm of darkness descend, that she discerned the figure of a man at its heart, a man dressed in some pale garment, a man of fair complexion - but the wings beat with such rapidity against the near-empty air that she could not make out his face.
The figure reached the mountaintop and alighted, but barely - his sandaled feet hardly touched the stone. Before him, Eoduin cried out in terror. Though Aeriel knelt not twenty paces from her, the sound was distant, as though it had traveled miles. He held out his arms to Eoduin, abruptly, as in command. Eoduin backed away. The darkangel stepped toward her. Aeriel could see only the vague white shimmer of his garment amid the dark fury of still-beating wings.
Eoduin whirled and began to run, down the slope toward Aeriel. She had not taken two steps before the vampyre had swooped and caught her. Aeriel heard Eoduin's piercing cry. The icarus' speed and Eoduin's weight bore them forward and down. His powerful wings thrashed the air. Aeriel bolted to her feet - too fast. Her legs, still from long sitting, would not bear her. The vampyre swooped overhead, so close Aeriel could have reached to touch him.
The world had reeled, and falling, she threw up her arms then, not to touch, but to ward off the cold, fleeting shade of those horrible wings. Her knees buckled. She felt her feet skid from under her. The darkangel was gaining altitude above her. She saw Eoduin still struggling in his arms, but could no longer hear her screams.
Aeriel felt her elbow strike the earth, and then her shoulder, as a dozen sharp, hard, rolling pebbles dug into her flesh. The ground was in motion beneath her, slipping, sliding. The icarus was already far away, a dark blot against the stars. She glimpsed the shadow of his dozen wings very small against Oceanus.
"Eoduin! Eoduin!" she started to cry; then her head struck ground with a sickening jolt.
The back of her skull went numb. All the sky was white stars for a moment. Her scalp felt wet and warm. Then suddenly the brightness dimmed. "Eoduin," she heard herself breathe, barely, once, just before all the light in the world went out.
Aeriel licked her lips and burned her tongue on the sweetness of horn liquor. She was lying on hard, sloping ground. Jagged pebbles pressed into her back like great pus-pox, hurting her. She could feel the goatskin bottle on her chest and the warmth on her cheek and throat where it had splashed out, spilling. She was lying on the slope, her head lowest, her feet uphill from her: her toes were numb. All this she knew without opening her eyes.
She opened them slowly, saw the star-littered sky above through the slight glare of sun in her eyes. She tried to move and found it hard, very hard. Her head came away sticky from the ground with a soreness that made her feel sick and stupid. She got one elbow under her and propped herself up, gazed straight at Oceanus, a huge and constant blue with no shadow of wings across it now.
She said, "Eoduin," and wept, but she was too weak to weep much.
Her hand was cold. All her body was warm in the sun, but her left hand was cold: she looked at it presently and saw that the shadow of a boulder down the slope had crept across it. That frightened her. She snatched it from the shadow and sat up, twisted around - too quickly. Her temples pounded; she felt the blood running out of her head, and blotches of darkness wandered across the stars.
Solstar was setting. She could see it as her vision cleared. It was barely three degrees above the horizon - and that would diminish as she descended the mountain. She twisted her head around the other way. The pain increased sharply at the sudden move. She could already see the shade of night across the desert to the west. She had two hours, maybe less, to get back to the village by nightfall. With the wedding procession about to begin, who would miss one little slave?
She chafed the leaden, cold-bitten hand in her lap and felt nothing. It was numb. She groped for the flask at her neck: yes, there was a little of the liquor left. She poured the bright liquid out onto her limp, waxy hand, then grimaced, rocked in pain as the heat soaked through the frostbite, burned to the bone and then to the marrow. As the heat diminished and was gone, color returned to her hand; she could move it.
She got to her knees and then to her feet, took a step, stumbled and fell. She got up again and started down the slope. The soreness in her head was mostly dull, but when she missed her footing and staggered, the pain stabbed. She clung to the rocks of the mountainside, to the scrubweed, to the crannies. She raked her arm on bell-thorn and scraped her knuckles raw when she slipped. Twice the winding trail crumbled beneath her feet and fell away down the mountainside like a tiny meteor shower. And always the sun sank lower as she descended the steep, and the shadows lengthened. The air grew warmer and thicker: her breathing eased.
Solstar had halfway sunk into the Sea-of-Dust by the time she heard the marriage hymns drifting up into the foothills on the soft plains wind. Strange. It seemed strange after the airless, muted steeps that here below, still a quarter-mile from the village, she could hear the singing so distinctly so far away. She listened to the words floating in the long, harsh twilight.
Farra atwei, farra atwei. Narett, miri umni hardue __.
Here in the foothills, just coming into the village, the path was much broader, smoother, less steep. She had come this way a dozen times: up to the spring to catch minnows, up to play in the caves and gather mushrooms, and just six hours past up into the mountains with Eoduin.
Aeriel grimaced with the pain of remembering. Eoduin had once pulled her out of one of those dark pools when she had slipped, pulled her out by the hair and pounded her on the back as they knelt, wet and shuddering, on the slick, steep bank until Aeriel had coughed up half a measure of bitter water and no more would come. That had been two years ago.
Aeriel's head hurt, now, as she fled down the broad, smooth path by the caves toward the village. She did not want to think of Eoduin. She thought of the music instead.
Tkyros idil temkin terral, Ma'amombi tembrilferral....
The words were closer now, a little louder. She realized that she was in the village. The smooth, square, whitewashed adobe houses gleamed in the dying light of Solstar.
Gathered gauze draped softly from their dark windows. The great street that ran east-west was a long corridor of light. The little north-south side streets were dark as death.
Anntuin dantuwyn tevangel hemb, Letsichel mirmichel gamberg an rend....
She was passing the houses more quickly now: she could see the village square ahead, filled with people. Then suddenly she was among the people, who did not seem to notice her but went on with the singing,, their eyes turned toward the half-gone sun. Pushing past them, she gave a cry to make them stop.
The hymn broke off raggedly in midverse. The syndic frowned from his place before the bride and groom. The bride in her new-woven sari glanced around. Behind her and the syndic, Aeriel saw Eoduin's mother, a thin-faced aristocrat with hair like night. Old Bomba swayed beside her, nodding off into sleep even as she stood. Aeriel stared at Bomba and the mother.
"Eoduin," she gasped, breathless.
The syndic, Eoduin's father, had been standing in shadow, came forward now into the glare. "Yes," he said, "where is she? The ceremony cannot be completed without the bridal cup." He eyed the flask still hanging from Aeriel's neck. "Has she sent you ahead with it?"
"She," said Aeriel. She could not catch her breath. "No, she..."
"Well, where is she, then?" demanded the syndic, pursing his fine lips. He gave an exasperated sigh. "How that girl can dawdle!" Turning back to Aeriel, his patience thinned. "Come, out with it, drudge, or I'll have you beaten."
"Gone!" cried Aeriel, marveling that even yet he did not understand. "The icarus," she faltered, "the one with wings..."
The syndic shook his head impatiently. "Are you gaming with me, drudge? Now where's my daughter, your mistress; where's Eoduin?"
Aeriel gazed at him and longed to faint. The syndic glared at her and would not listen.
The townspeople all stood hushed now, staring. Her head felt light, ached; she felt her balance tip. She swayed and staggered. The syndic eyed her with sudden suspicion.
"Have you been tasting of those hornflowers, girl?"
Aeriel looked back at him with dull surprise. "I hit my head," she muttered, putting her hand to the sticky place behind and above her ear.
She felt something at once soft and stiff amid her tangled hair. She pulled it free from the mat of blood. It was a feather, black, a cubit long. It had been in her hair the whole time she had been coming down the mountain, and she had not known. Realization struck her with the coldness of shadow across strong light.
She shuddered once, staring at the thing. Her hand snapped open but the feather did not fall, stuck to the half-dried ooze on her palm. She shook her hand and still it clung, black and blood-damp; she could not bear to touch it or pull it free with her other hand.
The last ray of Solstar winked out, like a candle snuffed. The square was smothered in shadow. All was night. Aeriel could still see the vampyre's feather dimly, a black streak in the dark against the paleness of her flesh. No one moved toward her. No one stirred to help her. She gave a long, low cry of revulsion and despair, and swooned.