Lord of the Changing Winds (22 page)

B
ertaud found Iaor in his private parlor with his queen and only the barest handful of attendants.

The king gave Bertaud one assessing, incredulous stare and rose from his couch. Eles, behind him, cocked his head to one side and looked warily interested. Bertaud waited as the king murmured a word of apology to his little queen. He whispered something to her that made her blush and giggle, and she went out happily. She smiled at Bertaud as she left the room, a smile untouched by any faintest shadow of worry. She looked very young.

Keenly aware of his own youth and inexperience, Bertaud glanced after her. He found himself faintly aware of surprise that he had ever managed to be jealous of this girl, whom Iaor petted and reassured and dismissed like a child; the king had never treated him so—even when he had been a child. Now, far worse than the intrusion of the new young queen into Iaor’s life was the new question of how much of Iaor’s favor had ever been merited by a man incompetent enough to lose a hundred men and a mage in a single day’s disastrous campaign. How much would be left, after this?

Gathering his courage, Bertaud told the king, in a few terse words, what had occurred in the griffins’ desert, and how he had come to return to Tihannad alone. Eles, standing stolidly behind the king, jerked his head at a guardsman, who went out quickly. Eles folded his arms and looked grim.

The king, schooled from childhood not to wear his thoughts on his face, nevertheless looked stricken, to a man who knew him well. He slowly sat back down on the couch. Leaning his elbow on its arm, he looked at nothing for a long moment.

Bertaud hesitated, ashamed to ask for reassurance and yet unable to keep still. “Iaor… this isn’t news I wanted to bring you.”

The king glanced up. “Bertaud,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think you, or poor Jasand, can justly be held responsible for failing to anticipate what happened. It was I who sent a hundred men with spears and a mage, when it appears I would have perhaps done better to send you alone.”

This was a far kinder judgment than Bertaud had expected, or was due. “I could have overruled both Jasand and Diene. I should have done.”

“Why didn’t you?” The king’s tone still did not hold condemnation, only query.

“Iaor… I did not trust my own judgment in the matter.” Bertaud hesitated, not knowing how to explain the confusion that had afflicted him in the griffins’ desert. Not certain he wanted to try. No. He was certain he did not want to try. What he wanted to believe was that he wasn’t obligated to try. But… Iaor would need to know what he faced.

After a moment, he said reluctantly, “That is not a comfortable desert for men. It is hard to think clearly with the red wind blowing. I mean that literally. I felt—I thought—this isn’t easy to describe, but I didn’t trust my own thoughts or feelings. The problem seemed—it seemed worse for me than for Jasand. And worse, or at least different, for me than for Diene. And as Jasand and Diene were in accord, it seemed better to trust their opinion than my own.”

Iaor nodded slowly. “I will send you to Meriemne. She may understand the affliction you describe. Will you go to her?”

Bertaud hesitated. Diene had been… implacably hostile to the desert and the griffins. He found in himself a strong reluctance to face the eldest mage of Feierabiand and see in her seamed face the same hostility. But… the suggestion was only one step from a command, and if he didn’t comply willingly with the one, he had no doubt the other would follow. He bowed his head obediently. “Of course, Iaor.”

The guardsman returned, escorting General Adries, who had clearly been told the news. The general nodded grimly to Eles and took a quiet place to one side. The king acknowledged Adries with a glance, but spoke to Bertaud. “And so, now? What do you advise me to do?”

Alarmed, Bertaud shook his head. “Please. Don’t ask me. I don’t… I don’t trust my own judgment even now. Truly, Iaor.”

The king’s eyes narrowed.

“You know what I will advise you,” Eles said to the king, and asked Bertaud, “How many men would it take to do the job right and have it done?”

Bertaud felt a strong reluctance to even address this question. But he had no choice, and answered slowly, “I certainly saw more than a hundred griffins. I would not be surprised if there were several hundred there. If we expected them to be clever as well as big… a dozen companies ought to be able do it, with mages to keep the fire and wind away from the men. If your majesty,” he added to the king, “thought that wise.”

Iaor propped his chin in his hand and gazed at them both. “Bertaud,” he asked again, deliberately, “what is it that
you
advise me to do?”

In a way, this insistence could only be seen as flattering. But Bertaud dropped his eyes, for once uncomfortable with the trust Iaor showed in him. Since the king demanded an answer, however, he tried to form one. He thought of Kairaithin saying,
Agree, man, if you would be wise
. He thought of the great force contained, barely, within the powerful griffin king. He thought of fire falling from the air like hail, and the flame-edged flight of griffins across the dust-veiled sky.

He thought of Kes, her hand on the shoulder of her friend, saying,
I don’t understand her, but she has a good heart
. He thought of Kairaithin asking, oddly wistful,
Will you think well of us?

He asked, “What will your honor endure?”

The king, relentless, returned the question. “What should it endure? What will you advise me?”

Bertaud let his breath out and spread his hands. “Leave them be for their year. That desert can be reclaimed by time and rain. The land won’t be lost forever.”

“Is that what you advise me? Shall I take the rubies I am offered and let men say I traded the blood of my men for a handful of gemstones?”

Bertaud winced, though he had expected precisely this reaction. He thought of the blood of a hundred men poured out on the red sand. He thought of a frail, elderly mage, flung through the air by a careless blow from a great white wing.

He thought also of Feierabiand, with sly Linularinum on one side and aggressive Casmantium on the other, and how both neighbors would surely think,
How strong can Feierabiand be, if Iaor Safiad makes accommodation with invading monsters and will not fight them even when they take his land? If Feierabiand will not guard its borders from griffins, perhaps it will not guard its borders from us?

He thought of the rumors that must already have run to the Fox of Linularinum and Brechen Arobern of Casmantium, and knew Feierabiand was endangered by the presence of the griffins in the heart of their country, even aside from the damage done by the desert they had brought with them.

Against this there was nothing but the voice of an unlettered village child, saying helplessly,
But it would be wrong to let them
die.

Bertaud pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes, sighing. Then he dropped his hands and looked up. “My king… I see that you have no choice but to drive them out. But
I
wish you would let them be.”

The king sat back in his chair, looking subtly dissatisfied.

“Iaor… I understand that Feierabiand must not appear weak, lest Casmantium or even Linularinum become overexcited. But I don’t… I don’t think you should take what happened with the griffins as provocation, or see their simple presence as affront, or necessarily go to great trouble to be rid of them. It was our fault. My fault. It’s no reason to spill living blood after dead.”

“Theirs was the provocation.”

“They couldn’t help it, Iaor.”

“They could certainly have acted with greater restraint once they arrived in our lands.
We
are not the ones who drove them from their own country. Their arrogance here does them no credit.”

Bertaud made a frustrated gesture. “You asked my opinion, Iaor. I told you I did not trust it. But I would not wish… if you will permit me… I would not wish to make the desert our enemy.”

“Is it not our enemy now?”

“Not yet.”

The king conceded this possibility with a slight tilt of his head.

“I am sorry to disagree with the esteemed Bertaud, but if these creatures make desert of our lands or kill the cattle of our people, then they are our enemies. And if we permit them their depredations, we will look weak,” Adries argued, contributing to this debate for the first time. Adries was a younger man than Jasand, a quieter man, less experienced in the field, not given to braggadocio or showy gestures. But he had a gift for keeping a great number of details in mind at once, and so was trusted by Iaor to keep track of all the military matters that concerned both borders. He added now, “Save if they yield a great tribute to your hand, my king; and even if they did, could we trust them? They are not creatures of earth. They are foreign by their very nature.”

Iaor Safiad glanced at Bertaud and turned a hand palm up. “My friend, you must know this is true.”

Bertaud nodded. He did know it. Bitterness filled his mouth; he did not even clearly understand why. “I never guaranteed them peace from you.”

The corner of Iaor’s mouth twitched up. “I should think not.”

“I had simply hoped for it.”

“I am sorry, then, that I cannot follow that course. I will send General Adries south. I must. Nor, though I regret this as well, will I ask you to accompany him when he goes.”

And Bertaud knew that the king’s regret was real. Not that it made the slightest difference. As a true Safiad, once decided on a course, Iaor committed himself fully. General Jasand was dead, but Adries remained. Iaor would send the younger general south, and spill blood once more to water the thirsty desert sands. Adries, warned by Jasand’s example, would be cautious, but he would be determined: it was not likely to be only human blood spilled, next time.

Bertaud was grateful not to be asked to lead, even nominally, this second force. Grateful not to even be accompanying it. He
was
grateful, most determinedly. He would not allow his exclusion to feel like a slap; had he not repeatedly questioned his own judgment? How then could he blame Iaor for questioning it, too?

So he pretended to a calm he could not feel, and outlined the weapons of the griffins for Adries. Wind and fire; dust that stung and blinded… surprise.

“We shall have to summon a mage or two from Tiearanan,” Adries said, acknowledging this warning with a serious nod. “And I shall ask several of the mages here to accompany us. I think that will reduce the effects of wind and sand. And surprise is a weapon you yourself give to your opponent. We shall endeavor not to give the griffins that weapon a second time.”

Bertaud tried not to read this last comment as yet another judgment on his own recent performance. He knew Adries did not mean it so. He was simply a straightforward, quietly competent man who was determined to redeem the honor of Feierabiand. Bertaud understood perfectly. That he could not desire the general’s success with a whole heart was not Adries’s fault.

Bertaud understood very well whose fault it was. He was furious with himself for allowing the singing clarity of a griffin’s flight across a lucent sky to echo in his memory. But that night, he dreamed that he rode on out-swept wings across fiery winds. In his dreams, he let exultant storms of sand and wind sweep him up to crystalline heights so dark and pure that even fire froze and shattered like glass… He woke in the morning startled by the earthbound heaviness of his own humanity.

Meriemne, eldest of all mages of Feierabiand, found his stumbling descriptions of the desert and the griffin and his dreams both interesting and troubling. She gave him tea and made him sit on the floor by her feet so she could rest the tips of her thin fingers on his cheek. Bertaud sat patiently, leaning his head against her knee. He felt as though time had scrolled backward and he had returned to this court as a boy of ten. Or as though that boy sat next to him, filled with fear and despair and barely acknowledged hope, not yet confident of the strength and constancy of Prince Iaor’s protection. But in time, powerful bonds of loyalty and trust had grown between them… Had the man finally lost the trust with which Iaor had honored that boy? He tried not to even think about that question, focusing rather on the details of his encounter with the griffins.

Meriemne listened intently to Bertaud’s recounting of what had happened in the desert, her blind old eyes aimed at his face as though she could see. She acknowledged, when Bertaud asked her, that a budding earth mage might, if caught just as her power began to flower, be twisted into other channels. “At least in theory,” Meriemne said thoughtfully. “One can see how such a thing might be possible. That is technically quite interesting, but it
is
hard on the poor child. Does she know what long-term effects this, ah, alteration of her nature is likely to have?”

Bertaud had no idea what Kes knew, and could only guess what Meriemne meant. He shook his head. “I don’t know, esteemed Meriemne. If it’s true that earth and fire mages have a strong aversion to one another, then one would imagine it might be uncomfortable for a girl to be made into a fire mage when she ought to have been an earth mage?”

“Oh, the aversion is real enough,” Meriemne agreed absently. “Natural affinities and antipathies are not unusual, you know. As the aversion of a songbird to a serpent, or the affinity of a raven to a wolf: There is a similar affinity between earth mages and young people growing into a gift for magecraft, you know; that’s often the first hint of the coming gift. And then there is this deep aversion between mages of earth and those of fire. But no, I don’t believe it will be uncomfortable, as you say, for the girl herself. More for those who love her, who find she has become something they cannot recognize… and a shame to lose her,” the mage added more prosaically. “We can always use another earth mage.”