Taking Flight

there, as well. He looked up. It didn’t look as if Irith was coming back right away.

He considered. He knew that he would find her again — Zindre’s prediction was that he would marry her and bring her home to Shulara with him, so he knew he would find her again.

He didn’t know when, where, or how, though.

That would have to take care of itself; there were more immediate concerns. “We can go on and build the pyre ourselves,” Kelder said. “But first, I want to know just what in the World is going on here!” He stepped forward and grabbed the old man by the shoulder.

The filthy cloth of his tunic felt greasy and unpleasant under Kelder’s hand, but Kelder ignored that. The old man started slightly at the youth’s touch, but didn’t resist; he didn’t even turn to look, but instead kept staring after Irith.

“Old man,” Kelder said, “who are you?”

The drunk simply stared at the departing Flyer.

“Talk to me, damn it!” Kelder shouted. “Who are you? Why is she scared of you?”

That penetrated.

“Scared of me?” The old man turned and looked up at Kelder, astonishment plain on his face. “Why would she be scared of me?”

“That’s what I want to know!” Kelder snapped. “Who are you?”

The man blinked, as if considering a new and surprising idea.

“What’s your name?” Asha asked, stepping up beside Kelder.

“Ezdral,” he replied. “My name is Ezdral.”

“Just Ezdral?” Kelder asked.

The old man shrugged. “Mostly,” he said. “Back in Shan they call me Ezdral the Sot, mostly.” He blinked. “That’ll do. I’m not drunk right now, haven’t touched a drop since I saw Irith in the arcade last night, but I’ve been pretty sodden for a long time, there’s no sense in denying it.”

“All right, Ezdral,” Kelder said, withdrawing his hand and resisting the temptation to wipe it on his own tunic, “how do you know Irith?”

The old man looked down, coughed, spat something out, wiped his mouth on a grubby sleeve. He turned, squatted, and then sat down, crossing his legs slowly and carefully.

Kelder waited.

Ezdral looked up at him, and then gestured at the ground. Asha took the hint and dropped down, sitting facing Ezdral. Kelder took a moment longer, but joined them.

“When I was eighteen,” Ezdral began, “I met...”

“When was that?” Asha interrupted.

Ezdral frowned. “What year is it now?”

“5222,” Kelder told him.

“Then I’m... let me see... sixty-two, is it? Born on the first of Thaw, 5159...”

“Sixty-three... no, sixty-two,” Kelder agreed.

“So it would have been forty-four years ago.” He looked at them for agreement.

Asha nodded. Kelder said, “Go on.”

Ezdral took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“When I was eighteen,” he said again, “I met a girl, a beautiful girl with golden hair, like I’d never seen before. I was working in a stable in Mezgalon, and she was passing through, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We got to talking, and she said her name was Irith the Flyer, and when I asked how she got a name like that she showed me how she could grow wings and fly.”

Kelder and Asha looked at one another.

“Forty years ago?” Kelder asked.

Ezdral nodded.

“It can’t be the same one,” Kelder said. “She’s only fifteen. She said so.”

Ezdral shook his head wearily, and peered at Kelder from beneath heavy lids. “She was fifteen then, too,” he said.

Kelder’s lips tightened. “Go on with your story,” he said.

“We talked, and I fell in love with her,” Ezdral said. “I mean, wildly and madly in love. She was so beautiful, so sweet. And we left Mezgalon together, and we traveled the Small Kingdoms from Shan to Lamum, Fileia to Lurethon.” He smiled. “Oh, we had some good times, we did. Filched a jeweler’s best stones once in Hlimora just so Irith could play with them. Danced naked in the Forest of Amramion. Got roaring drunk with the crown prince of Tuyoa, and Irith challenged his court wizard to a duel of magic and almost got herself killed. She could do other magic, not just shapeshifting, you know — had maybe half a dozen spells. Wasn’t any match for a real wizard, though.” He sighed.

The recitation paused for a moment, but Kelder and Asha waited without protest this time.

“We were together a little over a year, I think,” Ezdral said, resuming his tale. “I was nineteen, maybe twenty, by then. I started to think about maybe settling down somewhere, maybe having children someday. And one day I woke up and Irith wasn’t there. We’d been at her favorite inn in Shan on the Desert, a place called the Crystal Skull, and I still was, but she wasn’t.”

Kelder glanced down at Asha; she was sitting rapt, taking this all in. “Why did she leave?” the child asked.

Ezdral turned up an empty palm. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe she just got bored with me.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I waited, at first — I waited a month, to see if she would come back. When she didn’t, I went out looking for her, going up and down the Great Highway and around to all the places we’d gone together, but I didn’t find her. I’d hear about her now and then — how she had flown over Angarossa Castle shouting insults, or been seen playing with the Queen of Ophera’s cats — but I never caught up to her, never saw her myself. And after a time I sort of drifted back to Shan, doing odd jobs or begging, and I stayed there and waited for her.”

“Why didn’t you just forget about her?” Kelder asked. “Find yourself another girl?”

“Because I couldn’t, damn it!” Ezdral shouted, in the first display of temper Kelder had seen from him. “I couldn’t! Don’t you think I tried? But I couldn’t go to sleep at night without thinking about her, couldn’t look at another woman without thinking that Irith was prettier... I was in love with her, so damnably in love — and I still am, damn it all to the Nether Void!” He pounded a fist on the sand, and then went on more calmly, “I started drinking to try and forget her, I just drank all the time, whenever I could get money, and it was even starting to work, a little, after twenty years or so — and then last night I looked up and there she was, I saw her walking past me, as big as life, looking just as she always had. And at first I thought I was dreaming, or that the wine was giving me visions, though I hadn’t drunk that much, and then I thought I was dead and had died and this was her ghost, and I could see her because I was a ghost, and then I finally realized it was real, she’d come back, and I called to her.”

He fell silent for a moment, and Kelder remembered the previous night’s events, not with satisfaction, but with a growing dismay, like a weight in his belly.

“I called to her,” Ezdral repeated, “and she said she didn’t know me, she ran away screaming, and then you hit me, and I fell down.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelder whispered.

“You didn’t know,” Ezdral said, waving it aside. “I knew, though. I knew she had been deliberately avoiding me all these years, that that was why she hadn’t come back to Shan, and I knew she’d leave again now that she knew I was there, but I had to talk to her, I had to tell her that I loved her, so I went to the gate and waited, and I hoped she wouldn’t just fly over the wall. And she didn’t, but you were with her, and I didn’t want a fight, so I followed, trying to think of what I could say, what I could do that would make her talk to me, make her stay with me.” He let his breath out in a long, shuddering sigh.

Asha didn’t know what to say. Kelder couldn’t say anything at all, and Ezdral had finished. For a time they all sat silently on the sand, thinking their own thoughts.