Read Online No Flame But Mine by Tanith Lee - Free Book Online Page A

crone I am, but she is never me. But for all that now she’s dead as a nail in your door.’
    Nirri had recoiled. The witch craned limberly forward. Nirri was nonplussed yet again by the unlikely freshness and fragrance of the crone’s breath. There was a subtle perfume on her too emanating from her rags of hair or garb, her sackcloth skin.
    The witch said, ‘Where’s your son?’
    â€˜ My son ? Do you mean Dayadin – my lost best boy—’
    Now the old crone’s mouth dropped open. Did she go white? ‘Dayadin …’ she said. The voice had changed. ‘Oh God – oh gods – was he yours ?’
    â€˜ You have seen him ?’
    â€˜Don’t ask – don’t ask me—’
    With no warning both women were in floods of tears. They leaned together, sobbing, finally clinging to each other weeping. The already anxious joyhall palled with trepidation.
    It was a fact Arok had rescued Nirri from the tidal wave the whale-leviathan Brightshade had raised, and the old mad Saffi was left behind, turning up later on the whale’s nightmare back-country of mud, monsters, stench and bones. There Saffi and her inadvertent originator Saphay had perished together. But when Saphay rose from death a goddess, and ruled a while over the Vormish, Dayadin had been brought to her as their captive. As she was taking her new people across the ocean to this second continent, Brightshade, on the orders of his father Zeth Zezeth, had attacked her. In the fracas the bloody whale had swallowed Dayadin whole.
    Nirri wept for her lost son, not asking, fearing the worst.
    Saphay, goddess in guise of crone, wept for all of it: lost Dayadin, Lionwolf her own lost son, Athluan her lost lover now born back into the witless world as Nirri’s second child.
    How tangled the lives of men and gods.
    When the tumult of grief drained off, Saphay in her crone form straightened and patted Nirri on the arm. Nirri was cinder-eyed from tears. The crone naturally was fresh as a shrivelled hothouse peach.
    â€˜I meant your other son. Athluan.’
    At this one of the waiting-girls jumped up and shrieked, doubtless unsensibly, ‘Don’t let the old bitch near him! Kill her! Kill her! She’s a gler!’
    â€˜Oh, sit yourself and shut up,’ snapped Saphay. ‘I’m unkillable. Don’t waste all our time with such stuff.’
    Upstairs in the Chaiord’s apartment, Athluan had woken up and asked his young nurse what the noise was for below in hall. The nurse had been unnerved by some of the cries. She said if he would be good and not stir from his bed, she would go down and inquire.
    Athluan sat there, wondering who he was. He had had another bad dream, the recurrent one about Rothger, his brother who had slain him in the previous life. At the moment the child could not put any of it together. Asleep he was someone else, or, more troubling, who he really was or should be. Waking was often a trial.
    His nurse did not come back.
    Then he heard his mother’s step on the ladder-stair.
    She appeared in the room and he saw she had been crying. He held out his arms mutely, full of sadness that something had made her unhappy. Was it his father? No, for Arok was away. Had something happened then to his father?
    â€˜No, hush, nothing like that. But a wise-woman has arrived. She spoke of your – your lost brother.’
    â€˜Rothger …’
    Nirri was growing used to these discrepancies. They were upsetting but would surely fade out of him with age. She said, ‘Dayadin.’
    The wise-woman now stepped off into the room. She was very agile for one so elderly. Athluan stared.
    â€˜It’s you,’ said Athluan. Suddenly he was all smiles.
    Saphay the crone poised in the upper room, still fazed a little by her refound lover so unsuitably young – as indeed he had told her he would have to be, when last they met. But her eyes strayed from him. The room