Free No Flame But Mine by Tanith Lee Page B

by a black wolf. It sees the people it must protect dissolved to sand. It says, hang yourself, atone, suffer. That’s what love does. Is there nothing else?’
    Her voice now was even less, a flake of tinsel dropped inside a cup. ‘Why did you leave the wine and fruit, the ring?’
    â€˜I found the apple on my way here. In a derelict hothouse, the last single apple, all the rest black and rotten, but this one pristine and preserved in ice. The wine was frozen too in a goblet which had itself become ice. I lit your fire and let them thaw.’
    â€˜And the ring …’
    â€˜The ring. That was mine, when I was young. When I had a little money, in a city – then. Then I left it off. The display of Rukarian kings made me sick. So no adornment for proud Thryfe. I found it recently at my house near Stones, after you’d gone away. I was – drawn to it again, to my earlier self – innocent, unembarrassed to be happy. But I found too I can’t wear it now. My left hand’s turned partly to stone.’ He saw her start, glancing up with a firework of concern in her gaze. Oh, women. Women. He said, ‘You have my ring. I’ll go away now.’
    â€˜Your hand—’
    â€˜It’s nothing, and serves me right. It happened from the punishment I gave myself in the Insularia. That jail from which you rescued me at such cost to yourself.’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ she said.
    â€˜Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Perhaps come here, Jemhara. Perhaps come here and make certain I’m an illusion. Or a liar. Or a ghost. Or a lover. Could I be that? Come here, Jemhara.’
    Exquisite, clad only in her body – bizarre to him as any garment from another earth – Jemhara rose. She crossed the room with slow, even steps. A few feet from him she halted. Thryfe, astonished, amused, aroused, reassured , felt his own clothing peel from him at the action of her will. He, now, naked as she. Jemhara laughed, her head tilted to one side.
    â€˜Yes, my lord,’ she said, ‘this is you.’
    I touch – I burn—
    I burn – I touch—

FOUR
    Distant by much more than miles, lands or seas: the Southern Continent again, but up under the handgrip of the hilt which forms the north extremity of its mass. Here is a terrain of snow and ice-jungle one day to be known as the Marginal Land. But not yet. Now it is a territory named Ol y’Chibe, which means We, the People .
    Rather further north stands the golden city of Sham – whose name too has a meaning: None Greater .
    Few are.
    At Sham the terraces tower, the huge metallic gates lift the sky on their backs, idly holding it up to be helpful. There is the Silver Gate, the Golden Gate, the Iron and the Bronze and the Copper Gates. Great plazas lie inside Sham, linked by squirrelling roads made of hammered coal, where dazzling markets display the cunning of the Ol y’Chibe and their affiliate people the Ol y’Gech – We, the Cousins .
    Beyond the Copper Gate of Sham-None-Greater spread icy lakes and swamps that frequently unfreeze, and home savage beasts used in the contests of Sham’s arenas.
    The y’Gech are sallow-skinned like mature ivory. The y’Chibe are yellow as creamed gold.
    Neither people has gods. They have never needed them, they say. They believe that always everything of theirs, once down, will rise up again unaided, just as the beautiful white ourths they rear and ride kneel down at a command, and stand up at another. The dead drop too, but the spirits of the dead stand up and come back in new flesh. What business is this of any god? Let gods go worship themselves.
    South of Sham in what will, centuries on, become the Marginal, Ol y’Chibe forms its al fresco towns of sluhtins.
    The cold surrounds all this in pallid blankets.
    There have been two or three centuries of Winter so far. But what have the Chibe and the Gech to fear? The witches of their kind are well versed in