Lord of the Changing Winds (21 page)

The man who held her answered the cold one, but absently. His eyes were on Kes’s face. He gestured abruptly, and torches were lit and brought forward; Kes found her heart leaping up at the friendly brightness of the fire, though she knew her relief was not reasonable. Her shivering eased, and she found herself able to look at her captor more steadily.

He was a large man, not tall, but broad. His hand on her arm was twice the span of hers. He was clearly a soldier. He wore armor—rings of steel showed under his shirt, which was of finer cloth than a common soldier would own, surely. His features were strong, as powerful as his deep voice. He wore a short beard, grizzled with gray where his hair was dark, which made him look somehow harsher still. But his eyes held only interest and a little anger, not cruelty. And the anger faded as he studied her.

He said to her, speaking this time in the language of Feierabiand, “What is your name? How old are you?” He spoke carefully, awkwardly, with a strong accent, so that at first Kes did not understand him. But he repeated himself patiently. She was surprised, even in her fear, at his patience.

“Kes,” she whispered at last. “Fifteen, lord. Fifteen this spring.”

Heavy brows lifted, and the man said something in Prechen, sounding surprised. Then he said to her, speaking carefully, “A girl. A child.” And something again to the cold mage at his back.

“She is a mage, my lord, no matter her age; make no mistake about it,” said the mage. He spoke quickly and easily, his Terheien effortless. The light of the torches showed that he was an unusually small man; indeed, he was hardly taller than Kes herself. Yet he did not seem young—nor precisely old. Kes thought he seemed somehow ageless, as though passing years had touched him only lightly. He might have been forty or fifty years old—or a hundred, or a thousand. Kes would have believed he had lived a thousand years; there was a depth in his pale eyes that whispered of long years and hard-won power. His features were fine, almost delicate; his hair, worn much longer than the soldiers wore theirs, was frost white.

Despite his small size, the cold mage seemed very much assured. He was smiling. Kes would have shied away from that smile, only the other man held her so she could not. “A fire mage,” said the mage. “So they found a child on the cusp of power who might be turned from earth to fire. Who would have thought it?” He reached to touch her face.

Kes shrank with a gasp against her captor, hiding her face against his chest from the threatened violation of that touch.

The lord of soldiers held still an instant in clear astonishment. Then he closed a powerful arm around her shoulders, gently, and said something terse in Prechen to the cold mage that stopped the other man in his tracks.

The mage spoke in Prechen.

The big man shook his head at whatever the mage had said, then shook it once more, a curt gesture, when the mage spoke again. He said something to the mage in his turn, and then again to the other men in a tone of command. The men fell back and turned away, making ready to go… somewhere.

“Come,” the man said to her, but kindly. His grip on her arm eased and finally fell away. “Will you come? Not try to run? I not—I will not hurt you.” He added as an afterthought, “My name is Festellech Anweiechen. My honor would broke, would be broken, to hurt little girls.”

His clumsy Terheien was oddly reassuring. Or perhaps, Kes thought, it was the careful way he tried to reassure her.

“All right,” she whispered, and took a step as he directed.

They took her high into the mountains, out of the desert. Her promise notwithstanding, Kes looked for a chance to break away from the men and flee into the desert, but her captors were careful and no chance came. There were horses waiting with more men a little distance away. Kes thought she might be able to get away when she saw the horses, but she was not given one of her own. She was lifted instead to sit in front of the lord. Kes did not protest, but inwardly she felt despair; she knew she was trapped as surely as any rabbit in a snare. She would never be able to leap from the horse without the lord catching her, and even if she did jump all the way down to the sand, she would never be able to flee on foot from men on horseback. She could do nothing but make herself small and quiet and hope to see the bright, clean flight of a griffin across the brightening sky. But she saw nothing.

It seemed to Kes that they rode for a long time, always up and farther up, but she thought afterward that it could not have been so long, for the dawn had not yet fully arrived when they reached the place where the desert border lay against the mountain country. The cold boundaries around her mind seemed to close her in upon herself, so that she found it hard to think. But she knew that the binding Kairaithin had put on her must have been broken, and this cold binding put in its place. She knew the little mage must be very powerful, and she was more afraid than ever.

When the hoof falls of the horses changed from the soft muffled thud of hooves falling on sand to the sharper metallic ring of shod hooves on stone, she looked up. The air had seemed cold to her since the men had found her in the shadow of the red cliff. But the cold was different now, seeming deeper, more a true part of the world. The cold mage sat back in his saddle, small hands letting the reins fall loose on his horse’s neck, seeming to relax from a tight-held tension Kes had not recognized until it vanished. Everyone seemed relieved. Men all around her laughed and spoke among themselves. They took cloaks from their saddles and put them on. Festellech Anweiechen threw his cloak around Kes without a word, riding bare-armed himself. Kes slowly pulled the cloak around herself. One kind of cold eased. The other kind did not.

They had come much higher into the mountains, she understood, and had crossed beyond the farthest edge of the griffins’ desert into country no one, neither griffin nor man, claimed. There was even snow, glimmering white in the pale morning light. Kes had longed to wrench herself free of the desert, but she had wanted to go home, not be forced to ride up to a snowy pass in the high mountains. Now she longed for the desert, but it was behind her, and felt miles farther with each step the horses took.

At last they came to a camp. They rode past rank after rank of tents without slowing, and she saw that it was very large. The tent they came to at last was three times the size of the others and had men standing before its door, which was folded open to the night. They stopped in front of this tent. Lord Anweiechen dismounted and held up his hands for Kes as though she was a much younger child. She bit her lip and took his hands carefully, allowing him to catch her as she slid down the horse’s shoulder. He took her into the tent, seeming oblivious to her nervousness.

More men came in—some who had come with them on the ride, and others, she thought, who had not. The cold mage was one who came in. Kes recoiled from him, but he did not approach her. She found herself whisked instead to one side, to a pile of cushions thrown across a thick carpet on the floor of the tent. Someone went around the tent lighting lanterns. Someone else passed around mugs of hot spiced wine, giving Kes a mug with a matter-of-factness that made her take it. She sipped it carefully. The spices were not the ones her sister would have used, and a sharp homesickness, distinct from the fear that had begun to ease, went through her. She bent her head over her mug, blinking hard. Men spoke among themselves and to Lord Anweiechen, who answered them cheerfully.

Then another man came in, and Lord Anweiechen rose to greet him with a quick attentiveness that caught Kes’s attention. In fact, everyone rose, orienting to this man as naturally as flowers turn toward the sun. He was younger than Anweiechen, but not a young man: There was no gray in his beard, but he was thickset and powerful. He was clearly a soldier, metal showing at wrist and throat; he was tall as well as broad, with a heavy, rugged face that nevertheless did not seem cruel. Anweiechen spoke to him, and he answered in a friendly tone and clapped the man on the shoulder. So they were friends, Kes thought, and this newcomer was also surely a lord; indeed, everything about him proclaimed it. The cold mage inclined his head and said something to him, and again the man answered cheerfully, this time glancing aside at Kes where she sat among the cushions.

She could not understand them, and found herself looking down at the carpet on the floor. Except then nervousness made her look back up to make sure the little mage was not coming near. He was not. He had taken one of the chairs to one side of the tent, near a long table, and sat there, imperturbably smiling, with a mug of hot wine in his hand. He was not even looking at her. He laughed at something one of the other men said to him. Kes could not help shrinking from the sound of his voice.

The new lord noticed. He came over to her and stood frowning. Kes looked down. He said abruptly, in harshly accented Terheien, “I am Brechen Glansent Arobern. Do you know me?”

Kes mutely shook her head.

The lord tossed a wry look to Festellech Anweiechen and said something in Prechen. The older man grinned. Then the lord said to Kes, speaking slowly, “I am King of Casmantium. Do you understand me?”

Kes nodded cautiously, staring at him. He looked, she thought, like a king. There was a power to him like the power of the king of griffins. The other men in the tent moved around him with the same kind of awareness the griffins had for the Lord of Fire and Air.

“This
child
is a fire mage?” another man said, in slightly better Terheien. He also wore a beard—rare in Feierabiand—but his was brown verging on red, and considerably thicker than those of the other men. As though to balance the beard, his head was bald. Then Kes, blinking, saw that he did have hair, but that it was shaved very short all over his head. She realized she was staring, blushed, and looked down.

“So Beguchren assures me,” said the king.

The man made an incredulous sound.

“She is indeed a fire mage,” said the small mage, coolly, in his smooth Terheien. “Though new to it, I judge, and with nothing of the customary mage’s training. The human training. A griffin mage must have woken fire in her when she was just on the verge of coming into her proper magecraft. He preempted the magecraft of earth before it could rise properly. Look at her shadow.”

They all looked. Kes looked also. Her shadow, dim in the light, had been thrown out in several different directions because of all the lanterns. It swayed and flickered as the lanterns moved. Yet even Kes saw that it was edged with flame, that it stared back at the cold mage with eyes more fiery than lantern light. She blinked in surprise.

“So,” said the king, in a thoughtful tone.

“I thought the griffins had no mages left,” said Lord Anweiechen, his tone faintly accusatory.

“I, also,” the frost-haired mage said mildly. He said to Kes, regarding her with composed curiosity, “Whoever he was, the griffin mage did you no favors, child. Did he tell you what would happen to your shadow if you reached out your hand to the fire?”

Kes did not try to answer. She looked helplessly down at the carpet, feeling very small, like a rabbit surrounded by wolves.

The king said something to the mage.

“Of course,” he answered the king, but in Terheien. “I am not merely an earth mage, but a cold mage. Mages of fire and earth have a natural aversion toward one another at the best of times, but this girl has a greater antipathy toward me than she would even toward an ordinary mage of earth. She would fear and dislike me under far kinder circumstances than these, lord king.” He hesitated, and then shifted to Prechen and spoke again.

The king frowned. He said to Kes, quite kindly, “Rest, child. Sleep a little, if you can. No one will hurt you. Certainly Beguchren will not.” Then he turned away and went to the table, where some of the men joined him. Anweiechen took another of the chairs. Some of the other men did the same. Other men received orders from the king—that was clear from his tone and attitude—and left the tent.

One man came and stood near Kes. Like many of the other men, he wore a brown shirt with a black badge on the shoulder; metal links showed where the shirt laced up at the throat. He had a short sword at his side. He rested his hand on its pommel absently, but he did not look threatening when Kes glanced at him timidly. He gave her a brief smile, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked away. The understanding that he was a guard set on her by the king dawned on Kes slowly. But he did not seem unkind. Ignored by all the men, she even began to relax a little. Later still, she slept, and dreamed of flying through brilliant skies on pale wings that flung fire into the air with each downstroke.