Lord of the Changing Winds (16 page)

There was a silence. Kes thought that the griffin-mage was not ashamed or even disturbed at what his people had done, that he didn’t understand why she was upset, that when he said
It was a day for death
, he meant something other than, and more than, what she heard. She realized that when she did not understand him, he did not know how else to answer her.

But he said at last,
The emissary of your king yet lives. He may die. But it would please me if he lives. I cannot heal his wounds. I do not know whether even you might heal human injuries with fire. But perhaps you may find a way to save this man. Will you try?

“Of course!” Kes looked around at once, as though she might find the man lying near at hand. She even made herself look across at the field of battle, but flinched again from it—anyway, she could not believe anyone lying there might live. The sand and overpowering heat were already claiming the dead men, who no longer looked as though they’d ever really been alive.

He is not there
, said Kairaithin.
I will take you to him. I think you should first remind yourself of fire and of healing. Aranuurai Kimiistariu will die if you do not see her whole. Will you let her die?

Kes hesitated, looking once more toward the battlefield. She took a step toward the wounded griffin, but stopped. “I can’t go over there!”

Kairaithin regarded Kes from the fierce, impenetrable eyes of an eagle. Then he stretched out his wings and brought the wounded female griffin from where she lay, shifting her through the desert afternoon to lie close by Kes’s feet.

Riihaikuse Aranuurai Kimiistariu lay almost upright, in a near-normal couchant position, but her head was angled oddly downward and she panted rapidly. Her eyes were glazed with pain, or even possibly with approaching death. Crimson blood rolled down from savage wounds, scattering as rubies and garnets across the sand.

See her whole
, Kairaithin said,
or she will surely die.

Kes wanted to weep like a child. But weeping would not bring back the dead, and anyway, she found, despite the pressure behind her eyes, that she had no tears. Nor would the death of Aranuurai Kimiistariu bring back the dead. It would be wrong to let her die. Wouldn’t it be wrong? Kes hesitated one more moment. Then she let the wounded griffin’s name run through her mind and her blood and held up her cupped hands to gather the hot afternoon light. But she did not at once kneel down by the bronze-and-black female, but glared instead at Kairaithin. “You’ll take me to the injured man after this?
Next
after this? If he dies before I come to him,” she said fiercely, “I won’t heal any other of your people! Do you hear?” Even Kes herself did not know whether she meant this threat. But she tried very hard to sound as though she meant it.

Little kitten, you are grown fierce
, said Kairaithin. His tone was amused and ironic, but he also spoke as though he approved.
No other of my people are so badly injured that they cannot wait. Make Aranuurai Kimiistariu whole, and I will take you to the man of your own kind. Though it is, in all truth, a day for death, I, too, wish this man to live. An emissary to send to your king is precisely what I desire.

Kes stared at the griffin mage for another moment. Then she knelt down to pour the rich light she held in her hands out across the griffin’s injuries.

*   *   *

The injured man lay high atop the red cliffs, within the pillared hall. The stone roof blocked the direct sun, but the heat even in the shade was heavy—it seemed somehow more oppressive than it had been out in the open light. Opailikiita lay near the man but had, so far as Kes could see, done nothing at all to help him. Kes spared the slim young griffin hardly a glance before falling to her knees beside the man; she was barely aware that Kairaithin followed her, or that he had once more taken the shape of a man so that he would not crowd her when he looked over her shoulder. Her attention was all for the man.

She saw at once that he was badly injured. His arm had been gashed as though by knives; he was still bleeding from those wounds, though fortunately the blood flowed only slowly. Kes thought that his arm was also broken, though she was not sure. She was nearly sure the ankle was broken, though, from the swelling and the black bruising. Worse, the man’s breathing sounded shallow and difficult, and there was a bubbling sound to it that suggested to Kes that probably ribs, too, had been broken, and that at least one had pierced a lung.

No one, so far as Kes could see, had done anything to help the injured man. But then, as far as Kes could see they hardly did anything to help one another either, except for lending an injured griffin their company. And Opailikiita had done that, at least. And he was still alive, so maybe the young griffin was actually doing something to help him after all…

Opailikiita bent her neck around and down to watch Kes as she opened the man’s shirt and touched the terrible spongy bruising across his chest.
I have no power to heal,
she said, not quite apologetically.
I slowed the loss of blood. That seemed the same as for one of my own people.

“Oh,” said Kes, startled and remembering at last that the griffins could at least do that. “Thank you…”

“That was well done,” Kairaithin said, glancing down at the injured man’s arm with a strange kind of indifferent approval. “Another time, you will find that you might also block our desert from drawing the strength of earth from a wounded human. This is possible. One makes the barrier of one’s own self.”

Yes
, said the young griffin, in a tone of surprised comprehension.

“One does not use fire to heal a creature of earth,” Kairaithin said to Kes. “But you are uniquely poised between earth and fire. I do not know what you might find to do—either with fire or with earth.”

Kes did not really hear him. She was frowning down at the man. She ran her hand across the stone, gathering a little red dust; then she let the dust turn to light within her hand. She knelt, then, holding light cupped in her palm and wondering what, precisely, she could do with it. Nothing of the man spoke to her; though she listened, she could not hear his name in the beat of her blood. She had known that griffins were creatures of fire and that they were nothing to do with earth; she had known that the fire magic Kairaithin had taught her to use was nothing to do with men. But she had somehow forgotten, during these few days in the desert, how very unlike men and griffins truly were. Now she did not know what to do.

The man’s breathing had grown more labored, even in this small time. Bubbles of blood formed at his nostrils; blood ran slowly down from the corner of his mouth. He was going to die. If Kes might save him, she would have to do it swiftly; there was no time to think and think again, or to hesitate—and if she tried and failed, he would be no more dead than if she did not try.

Kes took a sharp breath and set her hands on his chest, both her empty hand and the hand holding light. She shut her eyes, listening for his name, for his heartbeat. But no matter how she listened, she heard nothing except his difficult breathing. It was worse still; it worsened every moment. He was surely going to die. Unless Kes could save him.

His blood did not turn to rubies as it fell in droplets to the hot stone; it flowed. There was no fire in his blood. Kes bit her lip and poured fire into his blood, as she had learned so recently to take it into hers. At first, his body fought the intrusion of the fire; he did not wake, but convulsed, and he made horrible, hoarse sounds. Kes flinched. But at least, she thought, he could still
make
sounds. So his lungs were not altogether ruined… Opailikiita put out a wide feathered eagle’s foot and pinned the man down against the stone so that he would not injure himself further in his agony.

Kes almost stopped, almost drew back. But she knew sometimes a healer has to cause pain in order to heal; and though she hurt this man, she hoped healing might follow. She could not use fire to heal a creature of earth—so he had to stop being entirely a creature of earth, at least for a moment; and if
she
could take on something of both natures, then why not this man? And so she poured fire into him and through him, though he fought it; she made fire run through his blood as she had learned to allow it to run through hers. She altered his very nature, and though his body fought her, she persisted. And he had been much weakened. She felt his resistance break under the relentless assault of fire.

She could feel very clearly that if she persisted he would die, and that if she stopped he would reject the fire and revert entirely to earth, and then he would still die. But for just a moment, caught between those choices, the man held fire as well as earth. And in that moment, Kes poured light over him and through him and pulled him hard toward the wholeness she saw behind the broken body. And, under the touch of her hands and the insistent gaze of her eyes and the fierce pressure of the light, he became whole.

As he became whole, his true nature reasserted itself with violent force, and the fire poured out of him in a fierce blaze that, as Kes lost control of it, might have burned him badly. But Kairaithin reached past her and caught the fire, and sent it elsewhere before it could so much as singe the man’s clothing.

The man took a long shuddering breath, but it was a deep and steady breath and there was no blood in it. The wounds were gone; there were not even scars to show where his arm had been torn, nor any shadow of bruises across his chest where his ribs had been broken. He did not open his eyes, not yet. But, Kes knew, he was no longer unconscious. He merely slept.

She stood up, shakily, and put a hand out to Opailikiita. The slim griffin was there, her wing tucking itself under Kes’s hand, quietly supportive.

“Remarkable,” Kairaithin said. His tone was more thoughtful than approving, and Kes looked at him sharply, but he said nothing else.

Yet he is, in truth, wholly a creature of earth, is he not?
Opailikiita said, sounding a little uncertain.

“Yes,” said Kairaithin. “Now.” His bent a considering glance on Kes. “Will you see the other wounded? There are not so many, and none other so seriously injured. Still, they would benefit from your care. Will you come?”

“Yes…” But Kes gave the sleeping man an uncertain look, reluctant to leave him.

“He will live,” Kairaithin said. “He will sleep for some time, I think. It is difficult rest you will have given him,
kereskiita
, teaching him to dream of a fire he cannot touch. But I think that will not harm him. You are safe to leave him for a little.”

I will stay near him
, Opailikiita volunteered, and stretched out like a cat on the hot stone.
I will watch him for you, little sister. I will block the desert from drawing his strength. I think I understand now the way to do that.

“All right,” Kes agreed. She was still reluctant, but she trusted Opailikiita. More, she found, than she trusted Kairaithin. She gave the griffin mage a wary look. “You’ll bring me back here?”

“I will assuredly bring you back to this place,” Kairaithin told her. “Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu will come soon enough to speak to this man. I think when our king speaks to the emissary of the King of Feierabiand, it might be as well if you were here, little fire kitten.”

“Oh…” Kes winced a little at the idea of standing between the Lord of Fire and Air and the man; only… only she liked even less the idea that the man might wake here in the griffins’ hall to find himself entirely alone, surrounded by griffins.
That
would be hard. Especially after he had watched the griffins kill all his companions… “All right,” she said at last. “But I don’t know how to speak to… to emissaries and great lords.”

“You will do well enough,” Kairaithin assured her drily. “Am I not your teacher?” He held out his hand.

Kes cast one more glance at the sleeping man and then stepped toward the griffin mage and let him take her hand.

There were indeed not many injured griffins this time. And, as Kairaithin had told her, they were not so badly injured, most of them. They were much, much easier to heal than the man had been; Kes found she barely had to think about what she did. This did not exactly surprise her. It seemed very reasonable that she should find healing the people of fire easy, after the struggle to heal a man of earth.

What did surprise Kes was how many of the griffins greeted her by name—by her fire-name. This time, they did not look through her, nor did any of them strike at her. They were not embarrassed, this time, for her to see them injured and weak—or Kes thought that perhaps that was the difference, or something like it, as nearly as a human woman could understand it. This time, the injured griffins knew her and spoke to her; not only the injured ones, but their
iskarianere
as well. They called her Keskainiane Raikaisipiike in fierce, joyful voices. Kes wondered what
exactly
that name meant. She did not, somehow, like to ask Kairaithin—if it drew partially on his own name, maybe it was too personal a question somehow? Maybe she would ask Opailikiita, later…

“When is Esterire Airaikeliu going to go to the hall?” she asked Kairaithin nervously. “Will it be much later than this? Are there many other griffins to heal?”

Kairaithin glanced up at the sun, which still blazed hot and high above the desert, well above the western edge of the desert. “Not so much later,” he conceded. “But that was the last.”

Around them, the world tilted and shifted. Fiery winds whipped sand through the air, then settled. They once more stood in the hall of stone and sand, high above the desert. The man still lay where they had left him, though now his head was pillowed on Opailikiita’s foot. The young griffin had stretched not only a wing above the man, but also a different kind of protection; Kes could see that the desert heat beat less harshly upon the shadowed stone where the man lay.