Lord of the Changing Winds
Read Lord of the Changing Winds Online
Authors: Rachel Neumeier
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Fantasy, #Women's Adventure, #Mythology & Folk Tales, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Epic, #Fairy Tales, #FIC009020
The griffin struck at Bertaud’s face with a
beak like a blade, but somehow Bertaud’s sword
was in the way. He had no notion how it had
come into his hand—his left hand, for the
white griffin had his right pinned in its grip.
H
e cut at its head, so close to his own, and it flung him away. He fell hard, to sand that flickered with little ripples of fire; he rolled fast to get up, beating at a charred patch of cloth over his thigh, but made it only so far as his knees. He could not move the arm the griffin had torn. White agony lanced through his chest: Ribs were broken. He could not get his breath, did not yet know if broken bones had pierced his lungs, could not imagine the pain would be worse if they had. He had lost his sword in the fall. The loss did not seem likely to matter. The griffin, above him on the rock, wings spread wide, seemed as immense as the sky. It stared at him with fierce eyes of a hard fiery blue, and sprang like a cat.
“No,” he cried at it without breath, without sound. He found himself more furious than terrified. He tried to fling himself to his feet, but his right leg would not hold, and he was falling already as the white griffin came down upon him. Darkness rose up like heat, or he fell into it, and it filled his eyes and his mind.
B
Y
R
ACHEL
N
EUMEIER
The Griffin Mage Trilogy
Lord of the Changing Winds
Land of the Burning Sands
Law of the Broken Earth
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Rachel Neumeier
Excerpt from
Land of the Burning Sands
copyright © 2010 by Rachel Neumeier
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: May 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-08885-5
Contents
A Preview of
Land of the Burning Sands
This one’s for my brother Brett—without whose advice,
instructions, and long-distance consultation,
my Web sites would either not exist or
would crash on a regular basis!
1
T
he griffins came to Feierabiand with the early summer warmth, riding the wind out of the heights down to the tender green pastures of the foothills. The wind they brought with them was a hard, hot wind, with nothing of the gentle Feierabiand summer about it. It tasted of red dust and hot brass.
Kes, gathering herbs in the high pastures above the village of Minas Ford, saw them come: great bronze wings shining in the sun, tawny pelts like molten gold, sunlight striking harshly off beaks and talons. One was a hard shining white, one red as the coals at the heart of a fire. The griffins rode their wind like soaring eagles, wings outstretched and still. The sky took on a fierce metallic tone as they passed. They turned around the shoulder of the mountain and disappeared, one and then another and another, until they had all passed out of sight. Behind them, the sky softened slowly to its accustomed gentle blue.
Kes stood in hills above the high pastures, barefoot, her hair tangled, her hands full of fresh-picked angelica, and watched until the last of the griffins slid out of view. They were the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. She almost followed them, running around the curve of the mountain’s shoulder, leaving her angelica and elecampane and goldenseal to wilt in the sun; she even took a step after them before she thought better of the idea.
But Tesme hated it when Kes did not come home by dusk; she hated it worse when her sister did not come home before dawn. So Kes hesitated one moment and then another, knowing that if she followed the griffins she would forget time and her sister’s expectations. There would be noise and fuss, and then it would be days before Tesme once again gave reluctant leave for Kes to go up into the hills. So she stayed where she was on the mountainside, only shading her eyes with her hand as she tried to follow the griffins with her eyes and imagination around the curve of the mountain.
Griffins
, she thought.
Griffins
…. She walked slowly down from the hills, crossed the stream to the highest of the pastures, and went on downhill, her eyes filled with blazing wings and sunlight. She climbed stone walls without really noticing them, one after another: high pasture to hill pasture, hill pasture down to the midlands pasture. And then the low pasture, nearest the barns and the house: the fence here was rail instead of stone. This meant Kes had no convenient flat-topped wall on which to put her basket while climbing over. She balanced it awkwardly against her hip and clambered over the fence with one hand.
Her sister, Tesme, spotted Kes as she walked past the nearest barn and hurried to meet her. The griffins, it was plain, had not come down so far as the house; Tesme’s eyes held nothing of fire and splendor. They were filled instead with thoughts of heavy mares and staggering foals. And with worry. Kes saw that. It pulled her back toward the ordinary concerns of home and horse breeding.
“Kes!” said her sister. “Where have you been?” She glanced at the basket of herbs and went on quickly, “At least, I see where you’ve been, all right, fine, did you happen to get milk thistle while you were in the hills?”
Kes, blinking away images of shining wings, shook her head and made a questioning gesture toward the foaling stable.
“It’s River,” Tesme said tensely. “I think she’s going to have a difficult time. I should never have bred her to that Delta stud. He was too big for her, I knew he was, but oh, I want this foal!”
Kes nodded, taking a step toward the house.
“I got your things out for you—they’re in the barn—along with your shoes,” Tesme added, her gaze dropping to Kes’s bare feet. But her tone was more worried than tart, the foaling mare distracting her from her sister’s lack of civilized manners. “You just want your ordinary kit, don’t you? Don’t worry about those herbs—somebody can take them to the house for you.” Tesme took Kes by the shoulder and hurried her toward the barn.
In the foaling barn, Kes absently handed her basket to one of the boys and waved him off toward the house. Tesme hovered anxiously. Kes saw that she could not tell Tesme about the griffins; not now. She tried to make herself focus on the mare. Indeed, once she saw her, it became less of an effort to forget sunlit magnificence and concentrate instead on normal life. River, a stocky bay mare with bulging sides, was clearly uncomfortable. And certainly very large. She looked to have doubled her width since Kes had last looked at her, and that had only been a handful of days ago.
“Do you think she could be carrying twins?” Tesme asked apprehensively. She was actually wringing her hands.
“From the look of her, she could be carrying triplets,” Meris commented, swinging through the wide barn doors. “I’ve been waiting for her to explode for the past month, and now look at her. Kes, glad to see you. Tesme, just how big was that stud?”
“Huge,” Tesme said unhappily. “But I wanted size. River’s not
that
small. I thought it would be a safe cross.”
Kes shrugged. Usually crossing horses of different sizes worked all right, but sometimes it didn’t. No one knew why. She looked at her kit, then back at the mare.
“Mugwort,” she suggested. “Partridge berry.”
“Good idea,” said Meris. “Partridge berry to calm her down and help her labor at the beginning—mugwort later, I suppose, in case we need to help the strength of her contractions. I have water boiling. Want me to make the decoctions?”
Kes nodded.
Meris was a quick-moving little sparrow of a woman, plain and sensible and good-humored, equally at home with a foaling mare or a birthing woman. Kes was far more comfortable with her than with most other people; Meris never tried to draw Kes out or make her talk; when Kes did talk, Meris never seemed surprised at what she said. Meris was willing, as so few people seemed to be, to simply let a person or an animal be what it was. No wonder Tesme had sent for Meris. Even if River had no difficulty with her foal, just having Meris around would calm everyone’s nerves. That would be good. Kes gave the older woman the packets of herbs and slipped into the stall to touch River’s neck. The mare bent her neck around and snuffled down Kes’s shirt. She was sweating, pawing at the stall floor nervously. Kes patted her again.
“What do you think?” Tesme asked, seeming almost as distressed as the mare. “Is she going to be all right, do you think?”
Kes shrugged. “Jos?” If they had to pull this foal, she wanted someone with the muscle to do it. Jos had been a drifter. Tesme had hired him for the season six years past, and he had just never seemed inclined to drift away again. He was very strong. And the horses liked him. Kes liked him too. He didn’t
talk
at you all the time, or expect you to talk back.
“I’ll get him,” Tesme agreed, and hurried out.
Kes frowned at the mare, patting her in absent reassurance. River twitched her ears back and walked in a circle, dropping her head and shifting her weight. She was thinking of lying down but was too uncomfortable to do so; Tesme, with her affinity for horses, could have made the mare lie down. Kes neither held an affinity for any animal nor possessed any other special gift—if one did not count an unusual desire to abandon shoes and sister and walk up alone into the quiet of the hills. She did not usually envy Tesme her gift, but she would have liked to be able to make River lie down. She could only coax the mare down with a touch and a murmur.
Fortunately, that was enough. Kes stepped hastily out of the way when the mare folded up her legs and collapsed awkwardly onto the straw.
“How is she?” Tesme wanted to know, finally returning with Jos. Kes gave her sister a shrug and Jos a nod. He nodded back wordlessly and came to lean on the stall gate next to her.