"Who will kill the vampyre?" said Aeriel softly, softly. The vehemence of her own words surprised her. She was kneeling beside the wide, low windows of the deserted alcove just off the empty dyeing chamber. Night outside was dark and still. Her mouth tasted like metal. She had not known she could feel such bitterness.
She remembered waking hours, many hours after the sun had set, and seeing old Bomba along with some others of the servant women murmuring over her or moving quietly about the darkened chamber. Bomba had laid a cool, damp gauzecloth on her forehead.
Time passed. And then, she remembered Eoduin's mother, the syndic's wife, shoving suddenly into the room, the women falling back deferentially, uncertainly before their mistress, who came to stand over Aeriel, white-faced and screaming: "So she is awake, now, is she - why wasn't I told? My daughter is dead because of you, worthless chattel!"
The woman's hair was disheveled, her thin cheeks tear-streaked, her garments rent with mourning. Her face above Aeriel looked like Eoduin's, only older. One long finger she leveled at Aeriel. "Why could you not have protected my daughter? You should have given your life for your mistress." The woman's breast heaved in a sob. "Why could the vampyre not have taken you instead of Eoduin?"
And then the sharp crack of the woman's hand against Aeriel's cheek, so sudden the tears sprang to her eyes. Startled murmurs from the servants, the syndic hurrying short-breathed into the chamber, pulling his wife away. "Come off, my dear. Such displays of grief are untowardly. You demean yourself before mere serving-women___" Then Bomba's great bulk bending over Aeriel again and fingering her stinging cheek gently with murmurs of "There, there, child. There."
Aeriel beside the alcove window stared out into the night. Since her recovery she had kept as far from Eoduin's mother as she might. She thought then of Eoduin, the mistress she had served almost since before she could walk. She recalled it vividly: the aristocrat's young doted-upon daughter pointing her out to her father at the slave fair twelve summers gone and begging him to buy that one, that one. Eoduin, who had been her constant companion since - more friend than mistress, though a proud and a high-handed friend.
Her only friend.
Aeriel sighed bitterly. Now all things had changed. His daughter dead, the syndic planned to sell Aeriel soon - she had heard the servants' whispering in the halls - his wife demanded it. Aeriel thought of the provincial slave fairs in Orm: bids and shackles, confinements, blows. Here in the syndic's house, Eoduin had always protected her.
She would be sold northward, she was certain of it, deeper into the hills. Here at plain's edge, owned servants were sometimes treated with tolerance. But it was worse in the mountain heartlands: tales of slaves beaten or worked to death___ It chilled her, thinking of it. Aeriel
closed her eyes to the dark outside. I cannot live without Eoduin, she thought, and I would rather die than brave the slave markets of Orm.
She pulled her tangled thoughts away from that, tried to think on other things. Already the village poets were beginning to sing of the syndic's hapless daughter, stolen away for the vampyre's bride. Yet with all their singing and moaning and murmuring in all the fortnight since, not one of Eoduin's friends or kith had stirred a step to climb the steeps again and confront her murderer. That is not justice, Aeriel raged silently, in despair.
Holding the icarus' great black feather up before her face, she opened her eyes and stared at it. Its dull darkness absorbed and nullified the white and smoky lamplight. Without, the shade of night, now three-quarters of a half-month old, loomed blacker than birds' eyes.
The white plain of Avaric gleamed faintly in the pale blue light of Oceanus.
"Someone must kill the vampyre," she breathed, as to the feather, almost pleading; the quill's black plumage stirred, "that Eoduin may be avenged."
"There is no vampyre," said Dirna gently, her only companion in the small, empty room.
She sat behind Aeriel, combing out her hair - carefully in back where her head was still tender.
"Then what is this?" demanded Aeriel, twisting around. Her hair caught in the teeth of the comb and pulled sharply. Catching Dirna's hand in hers, she ran the older woman's long, leathery fingers over the feather.
"I don't know," hissed Dirna quietly. Her voice was always soft and sibilant, nothing like Bomba's deep-sounding tones.
"Don't know?" insisted Aeriel. "What does it feel like?"
The other sighed and groped for the little horn comb hanging tangled in Aeriel's hair.
"True, dear one, it does resemble a feather - but it cannot be. Perhaps it is a leaf or flower of some high mountain plant no one has ever seen before...."
"Dirna!" cried Aeriel.
Her fellow servant stared straight ahead and said softly, assuredly, "There are no birds even half so large. Birds are rose, or pale blue, or subtle green. Yet you say this thing is black. There are no black birds."
"It isn't from a bird," said Aeriel evenly.
"There are no vampyres," Dirna told her, with infinite patience, "just as there are no mudlicks or water witches."
Aeriel stared off across the room and held her tongue. Dirna had been this way as long as she had known her. Sometimes she wore an eerie look that told she was in the mood for tales; then she swore absolutely by the creatures of the dark. But other times, her eyes seemed to clear a little, and she scoffed at them all as nothing but mad minds'
wanderings.
The latter humor seemed to be on her now, and Aeriel despaired. Much as she shrank from Dirna's queerness, her calmer moods could be even more galling. She wished the other had not found her, come creeping into the little alcove where Aeriel had retreated to gaze out at the night; she wanted to be alone. She felt Dirna beginning to run through her fine yellow hair again.
"The air is thin up high on the steeps," she said. "Fatigue can trick your eyes. Perhaps a landslide, perhaps she fell - I don't know." The comb pricked and pulled at Aeriel's scalp.
Dirna sighed. "You mustn't grieve, dearling. I know it wasn't your fault."
Aeriel stiffened and stared at her. Dirna seemed to be listening, but Aeriel saw no one in the outer chamber.
The older woman said softly, conspiratorially, "Eoduin was not the easiest mistress to serve." Dirna pulled a few of Aeriel's hairs from the comb. "But she admired you in a way - did you know it? - how you took her mother's every blow with never a sound. You know she used to fly into fits of tears if her father so much as slapped her___" Dirna fluttered her fingers to let the freed hairs fall. "She was even a bit jealous, I think. Did you sense that, my heart - resent it even - your mistress's jealousy?"
"What do you mean?" demanded Aeriel. Dirna's words astonished her. Eoduin jealous -
and of her? Impossible. "I loved Eoduin."
"Say nothing to me," hissed Dirna softly, "and I will have nothing to tell." She found Aeriel's chin with her hand and turned it away to face straight ahead. She spoke almost beneath her breath. "Everyone believes you, you know - or else holds tongue. The syndic believes you, else he'd have had you beaten for the truth."
Aeriel felt the comb parting her hair.
"They went up into the steeps with candles - had you heard? - looking for the place.
They didn't find anything, though - no wonder. You can't see a thing by earthlight and candles." The comb tugged at a tangle in Aeriel's hair. "They did find a few more of those leaves - feathers, whatever they are - so I heard. You were smart to strew them about.
The body will have fallen all to ash by the time the sun's up."
Dirna's voice had hushed to a mutter. She laughed quietly, companionably.
"You're much cleverer than I took you for, little one. And there must be a deal more spirit in you than you've ever let show. Tell me; did you plan it, or just seize an opportunity? At sunrise, you can take me up and we'll hunt for the bones."
Aeriel stared at her. Her throat went tight. She wanted Bomba suddenly. She wished Dirna had never come. "You'll find no bones," she choked. "The only bones you'll find are the sea-things dead long years."
Dirna continued combing her hair, unconcerned. "Don't fear," she said. "You can trust me." The older woman's voice was full of pity. "I know that circumstance - the altitude, a sip of horn liquor: circumstances can make anyone a little mad."
Aeriel pulled hard away from her. "I didn't," she said. "You think I killed her and I didn't.
It was the vampyre carried her away."
Dirna shook her head. "There is no vampyre, child."
"There is!" cried Aeriel. Her teeth were clenched. Outrage welled in her against the icarus, against Eoduin's faithless kith and friends, against Dirna and her soft, slippery words. The feather crumpled in her hand. "There is."
"Not so," said Dirna firmly. "Now let me comb your hair."
"No," said Aeriel, backing away.
"All is well," crooned Dirna with compassion.
"I understand how you must feel. Have I not told you? I killed someone dear to me once, too."
Aeriel looked at her with horror almost as deep as that she had felt on the mountain, and remembered one of the ghastly tales Dirna had once told her, all alone, in secret. It had been nothing like the silly, soothing old nurse tales of Bomba's. It was not even like the other ones Dirna herself had ever told, for this story, she had sworn utterly, had really happened - and to her.
Dirna sat, comb in hand, near where Aeriel stood, and gazed at nothing, her eyes bright and filmed over, blind. Aeriel shuddered and shrank from her. "What's wrong?" said Dirna, turning her high-held head a trace. "Come here."
"No," said Aeriel, falling back another step.
The madwoman reached for her. "Come here; I want to comb your hair."
"No," cried Aeriel and fled. The black feather fell from her hand as she ran through the empty dyeing room and then the crowded weavers' room. She tripped over a full basket of yarn, spilling the skeins across the dusty floor. Scrambling up, she fled the room, unheeding of the angry shouts that followed her.
She found Bomba in the spinning room, hunched over in one corner, nodding off to sleep.
Her great bone spindle lay fallen over on the floor, its fine wool thread beginning to unwind as her thick fingers relaxed. The other women spun and chatted, ignoring the old nurse.
"Bomba," cried Aeriel, falling down beside her. "Bomba."
Bomba sputtered and half-woke, sat a moment blinking, then reached her massive arm to enfold the frightened girl. "Hm, what's this, little one?" she murmured. "More nightmares?"
"It was Dirna," cried Aeriel. "She thinks... She said..."
Bomba woke a litde more, gave a snort of disapproval. "Dirna, eh? You stay away from her, child - old tale-twister. She's a little fey, you know?"
Aeriel buried her face in the soft fold of Bom-ba's bosom and sobbed. "I will kill the vampyre," she choked, longing for Eoduin and hating her murderer. "I will kill him." Her whole body shook. She thought again of the syndic's wife: "Why could the vampyre not have taken you instead of Eoduin?" Now Dirna's words had made her feel even more deeply that it was somehow all her fault.
The old nurse clucked, patted and stroked her hair for a while. Gradually, Aeriel's weeping quieted. She clung to Bomba and felt no consolation. The old nurse settled herself a bit more comfortably, sighed and drifted off into sleep again. The women spun on, unconcerned.
The climb up the cliffs was steep and Aeriel was out of breath, for she was hurrying.
Solstar had been barely peering over the rim of the western deserts when she had slipped away from the others at their morning prayers in the courtyard of the syndic's house: praying to the Unknown-Nameless Ones, they who had first fallen from the sky in fire to quicken this, a then-dead world, the moon of Oceanus, into life. Little was known of them, and they were not much spoken of.
Aeriel quickened her pace along the brittle mountain trail. No one had seen her leave the village. She carried only the long-knife she had stolen from the kitchen and a small sack of provisions. She did not know how long she might have to wait, but she would wait -
wait until the icarus came, or the food ran out and she died. Surely he will come, she thought, if only I wait long enough. He must come.
"Hear me, O Unknown-Nameless Ones," she panted, padding rapidly along the narrow, rising path. She had never prayed before, but she had heard the syndic do it, offering up the house prayers each morning and the village prayers each night. "Hear my words,"
prayed Aeriel. "Let there be justice for the killing of my mistress and my friend. Not any of her family seeks to avenge her...."
As I would, thought Aeriel, pausing for breath. Her head was spinning from her haste.
Let them hear me for Eoduin's sake - I myself am of no consequence. The Unknown-Nameless Ones granted few prayers, she knew, and generally only personages of great importance dared petition them. She eyed the star-strewn sky uneasily, hoped fervently no blue-white lightning would dart down to silence her presumption. It was not courage that had prompted her to make this climb, only despair. The slave fairs would be held next day-month in Orm.
"Answer this entreaty of one small slave, O Ancient Ones," she cried into the thinning air, "and I care not what becomes of me after." What did her life matter anymore? Eoduin was dead. "I will go quiet into new slavery, or dedicate myself at Temple to your service, or spill my blood on the altar-cliffs in sacrifice to you - what you will."
All three prospects terrified her, but she made herself speak the words. Surely the gods would have pity on one so desperate? The dark, vast sky above loomed empty but for stars. She gasped for breath and realized then that tears were streaking her cheeks. Her jaw hurt from having been clenched a long time, hard.
She scrubbed at the tears angrily, shoved away from the cliffside against which she had rested, and hurried on up the path. "I'm coward enough without weeping," she muttered.
She gripped the long-knife tighter in one hand. But let him come, she prayed, silent again. Only let him come.
Solstar was a few degrees into the star-littered sky by the time she reached the summit.
The air was thin, cold. There was no wind. She put her provisions down and knelt-sat on the hard, hot rock. The sun rose, slowly - half a degree every hour. The constellations turned, slowly. The waning Planet did not move, sat motionless in the heavens like a great, slow-blinking eye.
When the sun was four degrees into the sky, Aeriel ate a handful of bedchel seed and took a sip of water from the flask. When Solstar was six degrees above the plain, she ate again and stood up. Her legs were stiff and sore; one foot prickled numbly. She paced back and forth over the crumbling rock to get the circulation back. Then she sat down again and waited, dozed, ate, and waited again. He did not come.
The sun was sixteen hours into the heavens when she discovered the cracked mouth of her water flask had leaked half its contents into the thirsty rock. Solstar had climbed another twelve degrees when she drank the last of the water and threw the flask away.
The sun was thirty-six degrees into the heavens when she ate the last bed-chel seed. Her mouth felt tight and dusty, and she was hungry still. The stars wheeled slowly on. Her thirst and hunger grew until she felt dry and hollow as a reed. Solstar was halfway to its zenith when the vampyre came.
He came out of the northwest, as before, but this time she saw him from a long way off.
At first she thought it was just hunger making the stars wink out occasionally, but no. She could see more clearly now that she concentrated, now that he was closer, that this small but growing shadow across the stars was more than a simple figment of her own fatigue.
He was still far, and all she could make out clearly of him was the churning of his dozen wings against the dark sky and the faint, eerie glow of his garments.
He came very rapidly, as before. Aeriel stood up, shaking a little. For a moment, she was seized with the overriding desire to run, hide, escape lest he see her. No, let him pass, she almost prayed; let him fly on. But there was no mistaking that he must see her, now that she was standing, and no mistaking that his course was taking him directly to her.
She held the knife up in front of her in both her hands. He alighted on the cliff's edge, only paces from her. She felt the wind of his alighting and shuddered, but stood fast. His wings stilled, yet stayed spread. He draped and folded them about him in such a way she could see little of his figure and nothing of his face.
"You have been waiting for me," he said. His voice was startlingly quiet, clear, even beautiful - like a deep, full-ringing bell. The thinness of the air did not seem to affect it at all.
"Yes," said Aeriel, and her voice was nothing - a muted squeak. She gathered herself.
"Yes, I have been waiting for you," she cried out boldly, and could barely hear the words herself.
"I knew that you would be here when I returned," the darkangel said.
"Then you would have done better not to have returned," she shouted, softly. She wondered what manner of hideous creature stood behind those wings.
"Do you mean to kill me?" his voice asked calmly, reasonably. The vampyre's wings rustled but did not part.
Hatred welled in Aeriel, and she cried, "Yes. You have taken Eoduin, and I will kill you for it."
"I chose her as my bride," he said. "It is a great honor."
"It is death," spat Aeriel, rage choking her.
She heard the vampyre sigh behind his wings. "After a fashion, I suppose, but that is small enough price."
"And how many now have you wrung the price from, icarus?" she demanded. "How many maidens have you stolen for brides?"
Silence followed for a moment, as though the darkangel were thinking.
"I think I have had twelve-and-one brides in as many years," he said, then laughed. "I am a young vampyre."
Aeriel gripped the haft of her long-blade tighter and started toward him.
"Stop," he cried, his voice of a sudden commanding and stern. "You have not the power, nor the will."
Then he opened his wings, and Aeriel found she could not move for wonder. Before her stood the most beautiful youth ever she had seen. His skin was pale and white as lightning, with a radiance that faintly lit the air. His eyes were clear and colorless as ice.
His hair was long and silver, and about his throat he wore a chain: on fourteen of the links hung little vials of lead.
He was smiling at her slightly, a cruel smile that even in its cruelty was beautiful. Aeriel felt her knees buckling. The vampyre caught her as she fell and seized the knife from her.
He clasped her to him. His body was colder than shadow, so cold she felt the warmth of her own body running away into his while his own cold invaded her. The air around him was bitter chill, smelled heavy and sweet as licorice. She felt his great wings buffeting around her suddenly, and realized they must be flying.
"Where are you taking me?" she tried to say, but he was holding her too tightly for her to speak, even to breathe. She felt the windless emptiness above the atmosphere, felt the vampyre's dozen wings straining in the void. We must be among the stars by this time, she thought vaguely, before the chill and airless dark intruded on her thoughts, and she lost consciousness.
Her first awareness was of being able to breathe again. He had relaxed his grip. The atmosphere was rare yet, thin enough to make her gasp - but she could breathe. The darkangel's great wings still beat about her; she sensed the buoyancy of flight. And she was cold still, so very cold.
They were descending; she felt it - the rhythm of his wings had changed, and in the distance below, she heard a thin wailing, keening, almost screaming. It grew louder and more terrible as they drew near. Shriller it became, more raucous: hoots and shrieks and howls of hysterical laughter - until they were hovering in the midst of it. The buffeting of his wing-beats grew so fierce then that Aeriel half swooned. The screaming swelled and rose. The icarus touched down and stilled his wings. He let go of Aeriel and she dropped in a heap at his feet.
"Get up," he said.
Aeriel raised her head and looked around her. They were on the terrace of a tower, a tremendously high tower of cold grey stone: it sweated in the light. A spiral stair twisted up the central core a turn or two above the level of the terrace to the base of the pole where the standard flew.
It must have been woven of witch's breath, thought Aeriel, so light it was that even the seldom wind at such a height could lift it, send it streaming back from the pole in long furls.
Gargoyles sat on the battlements - lean they were and the same hideous damp grey as the stone. They looked at her with hollow eyes and rattled their silver chains. They had wings of bats or wings of birds, most of them, and licked their beaks or teeth with forked and double tongues. Two paced restlessly before their platforms; others whined or picked their claws, or groomed their mangy fur or feathers, or lizard skin, or scales.
The nearest one snapped at Aeriel. She drew away from them, pressed closer to the vampyre, but he moved off from her toward the hole in the floor where the spiral steps entered the tower.
"Come," he said. "They'll not attack you while you are with me, but you must not come here alone."
Aeriel looked first at him, at his beautiful bloodless face, his colorless eyes and long silver hair. She had never seen any living being so fair as the darkangel. She glanced back at the starved, ragged gargoyles. They had a sharp stench to them, like rotted cheese, or buttermilk. Aeriel could think of no creature foul enough to compare with them.
The icarus paused gracefully at the steps; all his moves were grace. "Do you come?"
Aeriel turned back to him. "I am to be your bride," she said, not questioning. The certainty of it overwhelmed her.
The darkangel looked at her then and laughed, a long, mocking laugh that sent the gargoyles into a screaming, chattering frenzy. "You?" he cried, and AeriePs heart shrank, tightened like a knot beneath the bone of her breast. "You be my bride? By the Fair Witch, no. You're much too ugly."
Aeriel was silent for a long moment. "Then why have you brought me here?" she asked at last.
"You are to be my wives' tirewoman," he said, then turned and began to descend the stairs. Aeriel got to her feet but did not follow. The gargoyles shrieked and strained at their shackles. The vam-pyre halted after a moment and turned to her again. "Do you come, girl - what is the matter with you?"
"I am not to be your bride," said Aeriel.
The vampyre snorted; his lip curled with contempt. "And why in this world should I have to do with you? Certainly you can see your looks are hardly worthy of one such as I.
Look at yourself - there is color to your skin, and one can see the blood in your veins.
You are scant and scrawny; your hair is yellow, and those fig-green eyes... There, have I said enough?"
Aeriel looked at his flawless white skin that had no delicate tracery of blue veins beneath, his hair fine as filament, and platinum fair. Her own skin and hair were dark by contrast.
The icarus continued: "However, despite that you are hideous to look at, I have brought you here - you can spin and weave, can you not? - to serve as my wives' tiring woman.
Are you not delighted?" When Aeriel did not respond, the darkangel frowned and folded his arms. "Girl, I do not think you fully appreciate the honor I do you."
Aeriel came then, beneath the hard gaze of his disapproving eyes - the menace of his brooding made her flinch - and together they descended the tower into the keep.
The castle was immense, and empty. The vampyre led her through room on room of cold grey stone, rooms that contained nothing but an occasional piece of furniture - a carved alabaster couch beside a fine silk tapestry, perhaps, and that was all. The icarus looked about him with satisfaction. Aeriel gazed about her in dismay.
"Yes," he said. "They took most of it with them when they left. This used to be a king's palace, did you know it? But the king's son died young and his father grew old without an heir. Then I came when he was dying and the land had no champion to defend it, so the queen took her people far to the east, across the Sea-of-Dust to found a new kingdom.
This is my palace now."
Aeriel followed the darkangel through the empty rooms and empty halls. "Have you many servants?" she made bold to say at last, for she hardly felt fear of him now, only a vast sense of insignificance.
"There is only you," he answered. "I had another tiring maid before you, but she tried to run away. She did not get far across the plain. I caught her by the hair and strangled her, then threw her to my gargoyles. If you try to leave here, I will do the same to you."
Aeriel nodded. After a time, she murmured faintly, "And what is to be my room, my lord?"
"Any room," he told her. "Find one that suits you and take it."
"And where are your apartments, lord?" she asked.
"I have none," he said. "There is only my bedchamber, there, and it is locked."
He gestured to the right. Through an arched doorway, Aeriel saw another chamber, at the end of which stood a straight stair leading up to a landing. She caught only a glimpse of an ornately carved door, standing shut at the head of the stair, before the icarus turned down a hallway and Aeriel had to hurry to follow.
He nodded back over his shoulder toward his chamber door without turning. "I sleep but once a year."
He led her down corridors and stairwells, through the lower floors, the washing room -
long dry and deserted, the storage rooms where no supplies were kept, and finally the kitchen of bare shelves where no herbs or onions hung drying from the ceiling beams.
"But what shall I eat?" cried Aeriel, dismayed.
The vampyre shrugged. "You must find your own food; the other ones always did. There is a garden - perhaps you will find something there. I, you may know, sup but once in a twelvemonth."
"On your wedding night," said Aeriel.
The darkangel stood fiddling with the leaden chain about his neck. "I have shown you enough of the castle," he announced suddenly. "Now you must meet my wives."
He led her up a winding stair, down a long narrow hall to a little door at the very end. It opened onto a tiny windowless room in which were twelve-and-one emaciated women.
Some stood in corners or crouched, leaning back against the walls. Some crawled slowly on hands and knees; one sat and tore her hair and sobbed. Another paced, paced along a little of the far wall. All screamed and cowered at the entrance of the vampyre.
"Yes, they are a sight," he said to Ariel, "though they were all beautiful when I married them. I do not think the climate here agrees with them. Wives," he said, "this is your new servant. Do not encourage her to run away, or I shall have to kill her as I did the last."
The women looked at Aeriel with caverns where their eyes should have been. Their starved cheeks were translucent in the lamplight, the skin of their faces pulled so tight Aeriel could see the imprint of their teeth through their lips. Their arms looked like birds'
legs - skin on bones with no flesh in between. They cringed; they trembled. One of them moaned: her voice was hollow. Their hair was all coarse and dry as blighted marshgrass.
These are wraiths and not women, Aeriel thought suddenly - the soulless and undying dead.
"You must spin for them," the vampyre was saying, "and weave - nothing heavy, you understand. They are very fragile. Wool or even silk weights them down so they cannot walk, but must crawl about the floor like crippled beggars. I do not come to view them often, but when I do, I expect them to appear presentable."
"Not wool or silk," said Aeriel, watching the wraiths; "then what shall I weave?"
"You must find it yourself - something grows in the garden perhaps." He half-turned away, as if to leave.
"Which one of them is Eoduin?" said Aeriel, her voice fallen to a whisper as she realized one of these creatures must once have been her friend.
The darkangel shrugged. "Surely you do not expect me to remember which one is which?" He left her standing in the middle of the room.
Aeriel ran after him a pace or two. "Where are you going, my lord?" she cried.
He turned and said impatiently. "What business is that of yours? You are but a servant, and I have spent enough time on you."
"But... what if I should need to find you?" stammered Aeriel.
"Why should you need to find me?" said the vampyre. "Your duties do not concern me."
"But...," groped Aeriel, "I shall be all alone."
"Alone?" cried the icarus. "You have twelve mistresses and one." Then he turned and strode off down the hall, leaving Aeriel in the room with no windows, and the wraiths.
