Lord of the Changing Winds (27 page)

“You are thirsty,” he said then, and a wry look came into his eyes. “I am not accustomed to providing for the needs of men.”

“Is there—surely there is no water in this desert?”

“No.” Kairaithin did not quite smile. The sunlight poured across the desert and lit an aureole behind him. His outline seemed to shift, or his shadow had risen up and stood beside him; he seemed now man, now griffin. He said, and Bertaud was not certain whether he heard his voice in the ordinary fashion or merely within his mind,
There is no water nor hope of water in this desert.

Bertaud suddenly felt twice as thirsty. He shut his eyes.

Come
, said Kairaithin, and the world tilted and moved.

The air was suddenly much colder—cold and fresh, with a clean living scent to it utterly unlike the smells of hot stone and metal that filled the desert. It struck Bertaud like a bucket of icy water. He gasped, opening his eyes.

The stone was gray and smooth underfoot rather than jagged. Twisted mountain trees clung to the thin soil captured by hollows and pockets of stone. Snow lay tucked into shadows and crevices. A thin trickle of clean water ran down a sheer stone face and gathered at its foot into a small pool.

Bertaud blinked at this startling, chilly world, and turned his head.

Kairaithin, in griffin form, lounged in pouring golden light not twenty paces away. Red sand flickering with delicate tongues of flame spilled out from the shadow of his wings. The desert stretched out behind him, running down the lower slopes of the mountain and vanishing in a bright hot horizon.

Bertaud looked back at the icy pool, and then lifted his gaze, following the sweep of the mountains up to the cold heights where the edges of gray stone blurred into a pale sky. He shook his head, bemused, and went forward to drink. The water from the pool was so cold it hurt his teeth. It tasted of the living earth and the promise of growing things.

Bertaud straightened, feeling that he might never thirst again. He dipped his hands in the water idly once more, and walked back toward the griffin and the desert with droplets of icy water spiraling around his fingers and sparkling as they fell to the stone.

Quite deliberately, Bertaud stepped from the pale light of the mountains into molten summer. The water on his hands evaporated instantly.

Kairaithin waited. His taloned front feet were crossed lazily, one over the other; his haunches were tucked to one side like a great indolent cat. A slow breeze stirred the fine feathers of his neck and the longer ones across his shoulders. He looked very much part of the desert, as though it had brought him forth from red stone and golden light and the blackness of the desert night. His head turned to fix Bertaud with the quick unhuman movement of an eagle. But his black eyes were exactly the same.

Bertaud cleared his throat and gestured up the mountain. “Is that where the Casmantian troops are?”

Kairaithin tilted his head a little to the south. Light slid across his beak as over a sword blade.
There.

Bertaud eyed the steep land the griffin had indicated. It did not look like it hid thousands of men. A close inspection yielded a suggestion of haze in that area that might have been the smoke of cooking fires. Or might have been simply haze. “The
King
of Casmantium is there? The Arobern himself?”

Do you doubt me?

Bertaud looked back at the elegant form of the griffin, at the fierce eyes. They were harder to read, set in the face of an eagle. He thought he saw a familiar hard humor in them. He did not see deception. He could not imagine a reason for this particular deception. “No.”

You should not. Shall I send you back to your king to tell him so?

Bertaud thought of the look on Iaor’s face when he had brought his stolen blade down across Kairaithin’s chains and winced. And he had left his friend and his king for the desert, at the urgent demand of a griffin. “I don’t… I doubt…” He did not know how to finish his thought, and fell silent.

If I sent you to speak for me to the King of Feierabiand as
my
agent… as the agent of the Lord of Fire and Air, if you would prefer… the human king could not lift his hand against you. And then you might speak to him of Casmantium. I might suggest such a course of action. Would he hear you?

“He did not hesitate to raise his hand against
you.
”

He would not perceive you as a threat.

That was certainly true. Bertaud let his breath out slowly. He did not want to go back to Tihannad to face Iaor. He very passionately did not want that. He turned the idea over in his mind, and said at last, “If I go back to Iaor, it will most certainly not be as your vassal. Or as the vassal of any griffin. Meaning no offense, O Lord of the Changing Wind.” On the other hand… he could not help but realize that the griffins did most desperately need an emissary. He winced slightly, thinking about that.

Kairaithin merely watched him, without sign of either offense or understanding. Waiting, Bertaud understood, for something more: something, perhaps, that he would be able to understand.

He sat down on the hot sand and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Perhaps… I don’t know. Perhaps I might agree to speak for you. As your… I don’t know. Not your vassal. I should never have let you give me your protection. Potent though it undoubtedly is.”

It seemed expedient at the time
, Kairaithin said.
If I misjudged and did you harm, I regret it. That was not my intention.

“You are not at fault,” answered Bertaud, and sighed, feeling the weight of guilt. He tried to think. “Maybe as your advocate.”

Casmantium is dangerous to my people; Feierabiand is dangerous.
Kairaithin turned his head, stared out across the reaches of the desert as though he tried to gaze through possibility and chance to see what he should do. For all the griffin’s undoubted power, Bertaud understood that he, too, felt the press of limited, difficult options.

I must reclaim my little
kereskiita, said the griffin, in the tone of one acknowledging stark necessity.
With her, we have choices; without her, we have nothing. You must help me regain her, man, and then we will talk further of human kings and armies.
Kairaithin rose to his feet, scattering sand; when he shook himself, the movement of feathers settling into place made a sound like the hissing of fire.

Bertaud, too, stood. He said, “But—”

He did not know what he might have said. A horse bearing a rider came at that moment around the curve of the mountain, checked nervously at the sight of sand and griffin, and then came on slowly.

The feathers on the back of Kairaithin’s neck rose into a stiff mane; he opened his fierce beak a little and clicked it shut again, with a noise of bone against bone. He said,
Kes
.

“What?” Bertaud was startled. It was obvious to him that the rider on the horse was far too big to be Kes—too big to be any woman.

Kes
, said the griffin.
And a Casmantian soldier.
His beak clicked again, a sharp aggressive sound.

“What?” said Bertaud, in an entirely different tone, finding this hard to credit.

But, as the horse drew closer, he saw that Kairaithin was right. A Casmantian soldier sat in the saddle, with Kes, in an outlandish brown dress rather too short for decency, perched on the animal’s withers in front of him. She sat with her hands resting on the horse’s neck, leaning forward eagerly, like she might at any moment slip from the saddle and run to the desert.

Though she did not hold the reins, it became clear as they neared the desert boundary that it was Kes who chose their direction. When the soldier eyed Kairaithin and even Bertaud askance, it was Kes who touched his arm and spoke to him, and he—reluctantly, Bertaud thought—directed the horse directly toward them. And when the animal tossed up its head and balked at the searing, dangerous scent of the griffin, it was Kes who slid down to the ground, Kes whose word to the soldier drew him to dismount after her.

The soldier released the horse, which backed nervously, spun, and cantered back the way it had come. The soldier cast a glance after it as though he thought of following its example, but then he looked down at the girl at his side and followed her instead.

Kes showed no uncertainty at all. She ran forward, crossing the border between natural mountain and desert with the urgency of a drowning swimmer coming to the surface of the water and a lifesaving mouthful of air. She was barefoot, but showed no sign of discomfort, though the sand should have burned her feet. Barely seeming to notice Bertaud, she went straight to Kairaithin. Her pale hair was tangled and her eyes huge in her small, delicate face; she looked like a tiny child next to the griffin. Kairaithin bent his head down to her like a falcon bending over a mouse. Their shadows lay across each other on the sand, the griffin’s made of fire, the girl’s fire-edged.

The Casmantian soldier crossed the desert boundary more slowly, with far less enthusiasm. He looked at Bertaud, oddly, with more trepidation than he seemed to hold for the griffin. His face, coarse featured and broad, was perfectly inexpressive. Passing him in the streets of a town, one would perhaps think him simple. Bertaud sincerely doubted this was the case.

Kereskiita
, said Kairaithin, ignoring the soldier completely, and stroked her face lightly with his beak.

“Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin,” answered Kes, in her timid little voice, and reached, not timid after all, to lay her hand on the griffin’s face just behind that dangerous beak. Then she drew back. “This is my friend Jos,” she said simply, indicating the soldier, who glanced uncomfortably away from the searching look Bertaud gave him. Again, he seemed less worried about Kairaithin.

Bertaud found it difficult to imagine what Kes was doing, running from the Casmantian army in the company of a
Casmantian
soldier. Even if he could have thought of a way to ask, he doubted he would get an answer.

If he brought you out of the grip of Casmantium and back to me
,
I am grateful to him,
said Kairaithin. The look he bent on the man was severe, dangerous, forcefully attentive. The soldier—Jos, if that was his right name—swayed under the force of it, going ashen. He did not look away from the griffin’s stare; perhaps could not. For the first time, he appeared more impressed by the griffin than by Bertaud.

“He did.”

Then I am grateful.
The griffin had not glanced back at Kes, but continued to fix the soldier with his hard, black stare. He said to him directly,
I am in your debt. What will you ask of me?

“Nothing,” said the man, in a deep, quiet voice. “Lord.”

Wise.
Kairaithin’s voice glinted with humor. He turned again to Kes.
You are well? I see you are bound.

“Free me,” whispered Kes.

Whose binding? Do you know his name?

“The little one. The white-haired one, with ice in his eyes and his blood. Beguchren, Beguchren Tesh—Teshrichten, I think.”

Yes
, said Kairaithin.
Beguchren. I know him. I know his work. He is very powerful, but now that you are come back to me, I can break his binding. Come here to me.
He lifted his head, his wings; fire ran suddenly across his wings and filled his eyes, his open beak. Fire ran down the fine feathers of his throat and fell, like the petals of some strange flower, to the sand. It burned bright and clean, without smoke; it made a sound like the hissing of wind-caught sand.

The Casmantian soldier stepped back hastily. Bertaud, too, backed away.

But Kes lifted her hands to the griffin’s fire. She took fire into her hands, into her mouth; fire ran across her skin like water, blossomed in her eyes. There was a hissing sound, as fire meeting frost might hiss: Mist rose around the girl in a thin, drifting veil. She made a small sound that might have been surprise or fear or even anger, though Bertaud had never seen Kes angry.

The air chilled suddenly. Frost ran across the sand at the girl’s feet, flashing brilliantly white in the stark desert sun. Kairaithin leaned forward and reached deliberately into the cold air with a feathered eagle’s leg. He touched Kes’s face with a single talon. The sunlight that surrounded him seemed to gain body and spill from the air like liquid; it roared like a bonfire. Both Bertaud and the Casmantian soldier took another step back.

Again, Kes made a wordless sound, this one definitely both angry and frightened. She had crouched a little, and now sank down to her hands and knees and buried her hands in the red sand. Fire hissed across the sand and rippled up along her wrists. She bowed her head over the flames as a normal girl might bend over a friendly little campfire. Kairaithin made a sharp gesture with his head and flexible eagle’s neck as though he were throwing something into the air from his beak. He
had
thrown something, something small and bright and—Bertaud thought—deadly. Whatever it was, it left a delicate trail of tiny sparks as it flashed away, back the way Kes had come. Sparks fell glittering to the ground, sparkling now as they became—Bertaud looked more closely—minute fire opals and specks of gold. He took a deep breath of the hot air and looked up again.

Kairaithin was standing perfectly still, looking not after the thing he had cast away, but at Kes. The girl was still kneeling on the ground, her face tilted up to the sunlight. Light poured over her, thick and golden as honey. She swayed suddenly and shut her eyes, then opened them. They were filled with light; tears of fire ran down her cheeks, but she did not seem to be in distress. In fact, she shivered all over and then smiled and sat back on her heels.