Lord of the Changing Winds (29 page)

Kes stared at him, her anger smothered by shock and fear. She should have been weeping. Her eyes were dry as the desert. She whispered, “I would not even have been able to bear the horses.”

So. And then you would have become fire all the same.

Bowing her head, the girl whispered, “I would rather have known what it was I was losing.”

You do know, now. Does this knowledge please you?
Kereskiita,
you will become other than human. Already fire rather than earth sustains you. You have no thirst, no hunger; though you may be weary, it is not with the weariness of men. Does it profit you to know this?

Kes did not answer. Perhaps she could not. She looked down at the sand beneath her feet, her breath catching. Tears fell at last, flashing in the sun and rolling in the sand, fire opals and carnelians. Kes dashed jewels away from her face and turned her back on them all.

I would give you a choice, if I could.

Unexpectedly, Jos moved. He got up and took a step forward, coming up close behind the girl. With startling familiarity, he laid his broad hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him, giving her a little shake to make her lift her head. With unexpected eloquence he said, “Kes, this
wanenteir
would have you believe you have already given up your humanity. But you have not. You use fire; fire flows through your hands and your eyes and your heart and you think you are made of fire. But you are not. You were born to use the magecraft of earth. You should gather earth into your hands; you should use earth and metal and human magecraft until there is no room left in your heart for fire. You can do this. Would you abandon earth? Forget Tesme? She certainly won’t forget you. She thinks of you all the time, she watches the hills all the time, she still hopes you will come back to her. What you choose now is what you will become. But it is still your choice. Won’t you come back?”

Kes stared up at him.

Kairaithin said,
You are mistaken, man. Have you not been listening? She has no choice, for I will give her none.

Jos didn’t even look at the griffin, but only at Kes. He said, “You need her. You need her goodwill, lord
malacteir.
Or how should your people stand against even Feierabiand, far less Casmantium? You found her and you made her and you intend her now to be your weapon, but if she will not, then you are lost. I know this, and you know it, and if
Kes
understands it, she will be proof against any threat you can make—”

Be quiet. Or it is you I will kill
, said the griffin.

“No,” said Kes. Her voice was thin and shaky, but she turned quickly to stare at Kairaithin, and her eyes, though enormous in her delicate face, held in them a resolve that Bertaud had not expected.

Kairaithin tipped his head to the side, studying the girl out of one fierce black eye. His expression was not readable. But he did not threaten Jos again. He said to Kes,
In a hundred years perhaps you will have the strength to challenge me. But I assure you, you do not have that power today, and you will do as I choose and not as you would choose.

“I trusted you,” Kes whispered.

Do you not understand that my need is too great to allow me to be trustworthy? I will permit neither Casmantium nor Feierabiand to destroy what remains of my people. The choice you have is whether to suit your power to my need by your own choice or by mine. That is all the freedom you have.
Kairaithin paused. No one spoke. The desert wind brought the dry scents of dust and stone and heat into the dark shadow of the cliff.

It is not a terrible thing, to be a creature of fire
, the griffin added, his tone almost wistful. He angled his head sharply downward; his beak opened and clicked cleanly shut. Fire ran through his eyes, and he went suddenly elsewhere, leaving three humans who should never have been in this foreign desert to stand alone in the shadow.

Kes sighed sharply and sat down rather suddenly, her legs folding under her. Her thin hands trembled. She closed them into fists and stared blindly at the sand. The Casmantian soldier sat down more slowly next to her, and she leaned against him and turned her face into his shoulder.

“Who
are
you?” Bertaud asked him, bewildered anew by the familiarity between the soldier and the girl.

The soldier sighed. “No one,” he said.

Kes straightened and wrapped her arms about her drawn-up knees. She said, in a small, weary voice, “He… he works for Tesme. My sister. But…” Her voice trailed off.

“I was once a soldier of Casmantium,” the man said. He met Bertaud’s eyes, flatly refusing anything further. Then his eyes dropped back to rest on the girl’s face, and he shook his head. “Better I had left you with the Arobern. He would not have harmed you.”

“He would have,” Kes whispered. “Don’t you understand? His need would have been too great to allow him to be kind.” She shut her eyes.

“I—” said Bertaud. “You—”

Neither of them even glanced at him. Jos touched her chin with a fingertip, turned her face up toward his. The girl opened her eyes again, surprised. Jos said gently, “He would have made you human again, and that would have been a good thing. Kes, that creature was trying to frighten you, and I suppose he did—he frightened me—but, look, he can’t force you to use fire. To become a creature of fire. Either you will or you won’t, and truly, the griffin’s need is a weapon in
your
hand. Why else should he have tried to silence me? All you require is the courage to use your own strength.”

Kes gazed at him wordlessly.

Jos dropped his hand to rest on his knee. But he spoke with even more intensity. “You’ve always been braver than anyone would think, to look at you. Braver than you’ve thought yourself. You can make them believe no threat will move you, if you try. The
malacteir
need you. You don’t need them. The sword is in
your
hand.”

“But threats can move me,” whispered Kes, “if they are the right threats.” She sounded very tired. “And, Jos… what if I want the fire? I ought to want to go home, and sometimes I do want that, but the fire is so beautiful. What if I forget to want anything but fire?” She closed her eyes and tipped her head up toward the hard sky. Again Bertaud thought there should be tears; he heard them in her voice. But this time no tears glittered into jewels down her face.

The man gripped her shoulder, giving her a tiny shake. “And Tesme? Meris? Nehoen? All those who searched for you when you vanished into the desert?
They
are your people. Minas Ford is your home. Would you turn away from them forever?”

“I don’t know,” the girl whispered. She paused and then confessed in an even smaller voice, “Sometimes I forget even
Tesme
. I’m sorry, I’m sorry she’s worried for me, I knew she would worry, I don’t know how I can forget, but sometimes…”

“Then I’m sorry, too.” Jos touched her cheek with the tips of two fingers, then dropped his hand again, slowly.

Bertaud came a step forward, dropped to one knee to put himself at the girl’s level, and asked her quietly, “And Casmantium?”

Kes opened her eyes. Both she and Jos looked at Bertaud as though he had spoken words in a foreign language neither of them understood.

“An army of Casmantian soldiers in the mountains, poised to come down across Minas Ford and all Feierabiand? Is this not a matter of concern? Do you not wonder about Casmantium’s intentions?”

“Oh,” said Kes. And answered very simply, “No, I know what Casmantium wants. The king told me. He wants a new province. He wants a port city with a good harbor.”

“Terabiand,” said Bertaud, appalled.

Kes nodded. “And not to pay the toll on the road. And he says the road is bad. But I think really what he wants most is Terabiand. And as much other land as he can take.”

“And all Iaor knows is that griffins have made a desert here. He will come down from Tihannad, expecting nothing but griffins, and he will find the desert on one side and Casmantium on the other.”

“You can warn him,” the girl said, not understanding. “Kairaithin would take you to him, I think. He would… surely he would rather soldiers of Feierabiand fought Casmantian soldiers than came against his own people. Or I… I could ask Opailikiita to take you to him, if Kairaithin will not. I think she would, if I asked her.”

“I think,” Bertaud said bitterly, “that probably if I have the temerity to approach Iaor after the way I left him, he will have me arrested.”

The Casmantian soldier gave Bertaud a narrow look at this, but Bertaud did not care. He was consumed suddenly by a disbelief in all the events of the past hours. It seemed incredible that a griffin should have come to Tihannad, that in order to free him, Bertaud should have renounced the loyalty that meant more to him than life itself. Again, the image of Iaor’s face in that moment of betrayal came before his eyes. He flinched from that image, staring instead out into the desert, trying to let the brilliance drive that memory away. Despite everything he could do, it lingered.

Though… if he had not freed Kairaithin… he would still be in Tihannad, and no one in Feierabiand would know yet that Casmantium had come across the mountains. It was clear what Brechen Glansent Arobern intended: to let Feierabiand commit its strength against the griffins and then come hard against them from behind when they were exhausted with fighting fire. Was not the chance to prevent that worth anything? Bertaud pressed a hand over his eyes and tried to believe this.

Kes, too, rubbed her thin hands across her face. Then she asked, “But won’t he listen to you before he arrests you?”

Bertaud sighed and stood up. He stared out across the stark, beautiful desert, where light pulled fire out of the sand and spilled fire down the red spires of rock until the brilliance of it became painful to gaze upon. He said, reluctantly, because it was not arrest he feared but the look in Iaor’s eyes, “Yes. Yes, I suppose he will.” He looked back at the girl, incredulous all over again at her smallness against the strength and power of the desert. “And what shall I tell him you will do?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“You must do as
you
choose,” said Jos, his deep, slow voice sounding very certain.

Bertaud answered him sharply, “Sometimes circumstances choose for us.” He turned urgently back to the girl. “I shall go to Iaor and hope he will hear me. And you… Kes, the griffins must support Feierabiand against Casmantium. Is not Casmantium inexorably their enemy? Have they not proven so?
We
need not be their enemies. We might even be allies. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the girl whispered.

The Casmantian soldier had a grim look to him; he, too, understood what Bertaud was saying. He said nothing.

“Can you make Kairaithin understand? And the rest of them?”

She only shook her head, clearly not knowing.

“You must,” he said intensely. “You must. We must not allow Casmantium a free hand here. That will be no benefit to the griffins or to us.” He gave Jos a hard look. “Will you say otherwise? Whom do you support in this?”

The soldier only shook his head. “I chose… when I killed that boy and took Kes out of the Arobern’s hands; again when I fought against the king’s mage and his men. That was my choice then, lord. Do you think I can go back now?”

Bertaud gave a slight nod, not really satisfied. But it was all the assurance he was going to get, clearly. He said to Kes, “Then will you get your friend to take me to the edge of the desert? As far north as she can?”

And so Kes called Opailikiita.

B
ertaud found Iaor, this time, in the better of the two inns in Riamne, with a very respectable army spread out in an encampment half a mile below the town, along the Sepes where the smaller stream divided from the larger Nejeied and quickened its flow between steepening banks. That Kes’s griffin friend had known where the king of Feierabiand rested this night… that carried its own uncomfortable message.

Opailikiita had brought him to Riamne by that strange folding through air and time that the griffin mages seemed able to do, but Opailikiita did not linger in Riamne; she brought him to its walls and immediately took herself away again. Back to Kes, who was her friend? Back to Kairaithin, who was, Bertaud understood, her master? If she went to Kairaithin, would she tell him where she had taken Bertaud? If she did, and if he was angry, it would be a problem for Kes to deal with. Could she?