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

entirely misunderstood.
    Nevertheless here this being was. The recollection of his dream of the Lionwolf as sun god sparkled across Thryfe’s inner eye. He dismissed it.
    Some antagonist was at work against him: this unknown element, felt when Jemhara had been hidden, felt again in the attacking snow, might have stirred up, inadvertently, the arrival of a rogue helper symbolized as the primitive Ranjal. Benign energy to balance the malignant one.
    Thryfe offered Ranjal several elegant palmfuls of nothing. He had seen this done in her rough little temples. Though unreal she was presently alive and not to be offended.
    The hand seemed satisfied. It gave him a playful tap on the shoulder.
    Without any other preliminary the wiry vine that coiled behind it paid out like twirling whipcord. It roped him harsh and hard. The hand hooked companionably about his neck.
    The force of Ranjal, whatever motivated it, was conclusive. Lifted without effort, Thryfe was rushed up through the chimney, out of its top, and deposited neatly if ungently in the alley.
    A muffled rumble and further cloud of ice crystals signalled disintegration of the chimney.
    The hand unhooked. It lay down on its vine on the street.
    He might as well ask.
    â€˜What caused my imprisonment?’
    â€˜How I know? Some enemy cause it to you.’
    â€˜Surely. Then why help me?’
    A pause. He sensed a shaggy divine puzzlement.
    â€˜How I know? Is to do.’ The hand bounced and administered a sisterly slap on the arm. ‘Go us now.’
    â€˜Where?’
    â€˜Where you want go, where you as were going.’
    â€˜You know Jemhara’s house here?’
    â€˜This one of me,’ the hand flapped, ‘live there.’
    Then it gripped him, not quite by the scruff of the neck. He was reminded of a mother cat dragging her young to shelter, although Ranjal of course was more the mustelid type, a badger. By means of her merciless clasp they flew up walls, scraped rather against them, over roofs and sheets of ice.
    They landed among a bundle of dwellings, some marked by old fire. A door gave on a stair. The hand let go again, retracted its vine and leap-crawled away ahead. ‘Attic,’ was the last word the goddess vouchsafed to him.
    When he reached the top of the stairs the hand had vanished. He read that the door was firmly secured by magecraft. He read too Jemhara was not at the moment here. She had been. A faint non-physical perfume lingered.
    Thryfe leaned to the door and spoke an inaudible word.
    Unlike the ice-prison, the door reacted at once and in the anticipated fashion, opening without fuss.
    Something terrifying happened.
    A flood of joy sang through him. Twenty years – no, a hundred – dropped from his shoulders. He thought, No, not terrifying. Am I still such a fool ?
    He saw the narrow bed with its pelts, and the pillow where her head had rested. He saw the objects on the inlaid Rukarian table. On the wall was a peg with a worn, darned dress that seemed to turn his heart to butter, then harden it to a fierceness that burned. A twig hung there too, rather like an uncanny hand. Thryfe saluted it. He crossed the room and stood over the empty hearth and brought fire to it from nowhere in a single splash.
    Soon she would return. Soon she would enter this room. It occurred to him she might be afraid to discover him there, or think him some illusion, even a trick played by a talented malevolent rival witch.
    He put one goblet, made apparently from clearest ice, ready on her table, filled by dark red wine. And beside that an apple with a pure green skin that he had found on his travels and kept for her. A case of ice still swathed it, but the warmth of the conjured fire would deftly thaw that through. By the apple he laid an ancient ring of tarnished silver.
    Outside, the now moonless city crept unknowing towards morning.
    Thryfe opened the shutter.
    Whether he stepped out, or simply disappeared into the shadows there,