Lord of the Changing Winds (34 page)

He looked stern, she thought. Forbidding. She wondered if he ever smiled. Now that she was so close, she could see that his eyes were dark: not measurelessly black like Kairaithin’s eyes, but dark as fresh-turned earth, with a power to them as the earth possessed. He did not have the presence of the Lord of Fire and Air. But he had a presence of his own.

Words deserted her. Just as Kes had feared, she did not know what to say, and stood tongue-tied and clumsy in the midst of a hundred men. She edged closer to Opailikiita, trying to draw strength and courage from the griffin, who possessed both in such generous measure. But Kes still felt neither herself. She was horrified by the possibility that she would not be able to speak after all, that the day for blood and death would come and she would not even have been able to
try
to prevent it.

The king came forward one step, and another, waving away the concern of the men who pressed forward anxiously at his back. His dark eyes looked into hers, and Kes wondered what he saw in them, and thought that if he was perceptive he would see fire. His own were filled with curiosity.

Then he brought his attention back to her face, looking her over quickly from the top of her head to her bare toes. “Kes, I presume,” he said, and the laughter she had not seen in his face was suddenly perceptible at the edges of his voice.

Kes blinked. She nodded hesitantly.

“And who is this?” The king was looking in open wonder at Opailikiita.

Kes followed his gaze, and managed to smile, because the griffin was so magnificently unimpressed by men with spears, no matter how numerous, or by kings, no matter they were kings. Opailikiita arched her neck a little so her feathers ruffled into almost a mane; sun glinted off her feathers as though each one had been pounded separately out of bronze and had fine gold scrollwork inlaid across it. The muscles in her slim lion rear shifted powerfully as she eased herself to a sitting posture, and her tail, wrapping neatly around her talons, tapped gently on the sand.

“Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike,” said Kes, finding her voice after all. “She is my friend, and brought me here because I asked her to. She is not—well, she is dangerous, but not to you, um, your majesty, unless you try to shoot her. She only came because I asked her to make a path for me.”

“She is welcome,” said the king, and looked curiously at Jos.

“That is—”

“No one,” Jos interrupted harshly. “Except her friend.”

Kes looked at him in surprise.

“That is a Casmantian uniform,” noted the king, in a mild tone.

Jos shrugged.

Kes did not want to say anything about Jos to the King of Feierabiand. She asked instead, “Did, um, did Bertaud, did Lord Bertaud, did he tell you… about the Casmantian army?” Her heart sank: What if, for whatever reason, Bertaud had
not
told his king about Casmantium? Why ever should the king then believe anything
she
should say about that threat?

“He told me,” the king said reassuringly.

“Well,” Kes said, and nervously stroked Opailikiita’s neck, trying to draw courage from the griffin’s hot presence under her hand. She tried to look only at the king, to pretend that no one else was there, only she and the king. Who was not, after all, a very frightening man. Not nearly so frightening as Kanes the smith, really, she told herself. He hadn’t shouted even once, yet. She took a shallow breath and looked at her feet, trying to think what to say.

“Bertaud advised me very strongly that I should listen to you, if I was lucky enough to meet you,” the king said gently. “What is it you came to tell me?”

Kes glanced up to meet his eyes, glanced down again. She said unhappily, “Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu—that is, the Lord of Fire and Air, the king of the griffins, you know—he has decided to, to… make you come into the desert and fight Casmantium there. And when Casmantium has destroyed you, he will bring his people down against Casmantium while they are still in the desert, and destroy
them
. It is,” she explained earnestly, “a very simple plan, because you have to fight the griffins. And the King of Casmantium has to fight
you
, or why did he bring his army here? And he won’t know the griffins are as dangerous to his men as to yours because he thinks his cold mages can keep the griffins from harming his men. He doesn’t know—he doesn’t know about me. Or… he knows I am here, but he doesn’t know… we think he doesn’t know what I can do.”

The king stood very still, his eyes on her face. But Kes thought that he was seeing, not her face, but battles hidden just around the next corner of time. He said at last, “And if we will not fight this battle to please the griffins?”

Kes nodded hopefully—maybe he could find a way not to fight—but Opailikiita said,
The Lord of Fire and Air will see to it that you must fight
. Her graceful, unobtrusive voice slid delicately around the corners of the mind, but many of the men still flinched in surprise. Some swore, though quietly. The old earth mage recoiled slightly, looking like she was struggling between offense and fascination. The king’s eyes widened briefly. He said to the griffin, with careful courtesy, “How would he do this?”

This land knows us, now. The desert we have made out of our hearts is ours. Your earth mage will not break its power, though she may try. The King of Casmantium does not yet understand that his mages cannot break its power, either. So you will understand you must fight within the reaches of our desert.

The king stared at her. His face tightened; he looked suddenly stern again. “And if I take my people back up the road to the north?”

If you retreat, you will cede all this country to Casmantium; if you go south to block his move there, my people will put the desert under your feet and hold you. If you stay where you are, then the Arobern will press you against our desert and destroy you and still claim all this land.

“And what do you suggest I do to preserve my people against destruction, then?” the king asked her.

There is nothing you can do
, Opailikiita said, with a strange griffin satisfaction.

“Split your force,” suggested Jos. His deep voice carried an odd, reluctant kind of assurance. “If you must take part of it into the desert, do so, and use those men as well as you can. You will lose most of them, probably. But also send men to cut around through the mountains and come down on the Arobern from above. Even a small force can have a great impact if it’s used well. That way you may save something from this battle. If you send word to the west and the south now, at once, then what you do here may at least hold the Casmantian army long enough for the rest of Feierabiand to prepare.”

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged, looking half apologetic and half defiant.

“You’re a soldier,” the king said at last. “To be plain, a
Casmantian
soldier.”

“Not any longer.”

“No? Then where is your loyalty now?” the king asked him.

Jos grimaced, nothing that could be called a smile, though he might have intended it that way. He tilted his head toward Kes. “With her.”

“You were a spy,” said one of the men with the king, his expression neutral but his tone flat with distaste. The man turned a hand palm up when they looked at him, and shrugged. “Or so I surmise.” He seemed to consider this for a moment and then added to his king, with sudden urgency, “We need this man.”

Kes flung a worried glance up at Jos’s face and put a hand anxiously on his arm.

Jos looked down at her, touched her cheek with the tips of two fingers, and took his hand away in a gesture like a farewell.

“No,” said Kes.

He said, “It was a choice… to come here. It was for this I made that choice.”

“No!” said Kes, sure, if she was sure of nothing else, that she could not let Jos go into the hands of men who… men who… She did not know what soldiers might do to a captured spy, and she did not want to find out. Opailikiita, probably understanding nothing of the specific accusation, nevertheless understood that Kes was upset. She stood up, half lifting her great wings, fire limning the brown feathers with gold. Half the soldiers present lifted their bows, steel arrowheads flashing like ice in the sun.

The king flung out his hands in urgent command, compelling all to stillness; remarkably, all were still. Even Opailikiita.

It was to Kes the king spoke. “No one will harm him, you know—for your sake, if there were no other reason. Is it not his choice? Did he not make it when he suggested a plan against his own people?”

Kes, struck mute by her own words in this king’s mouth, could not find an answer.

Jos could. He stepped off the narrow line of desert Opailikiita had made for them, walked the few paces necessary to come to the king, gave him a brief nod, and turned toward the officer. He was pale. But no one could miss the deliberation of what he did.

“He is yours,” the king said to the officer.

Jos bowed his head and allowed the officer to lay a hand on his arm.

Opailikiita, perhaps baffled by these strong human emotions, or perhaps merely disliking the way the arrowheads caught the light, said,
We should go back to the desert. Are you satisfied with the warning you have given, sister? Do you not desire to return to the heart of fire?

Kes blinked. She looked at the king, who gave her a brief bow and a murmur of gratitude. A brief worried glance at Jos saw him stolid and uncomplaining, with a stubborn look on his face that she knew was meant for her. She took a small step toward him, though she could not leave the desert. “But I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why would you want to do this?”

Jos said gently, “Kes… you are still partially a creature of earth. But if this battle takes place as your friend describes, what will you do?”

Kes said helplessly, “You know I can’t let them die.”

“Which? Your people… or the griffins?”

Either. Both. Kes could not speak.

“If I help your king against mine, there is a chance… a poor one, yes, but a
chance
… that Feierabiand will be able to turn Casmantium back without the griffins coming in at all. That, even if the griffins come in, they will not need you to keep them in the battle. However poor, this is the one chance that the griffins will not after all carry you with them into their world. If you do not use fire, you will still have a way back to earth.”

Kes shook her head.

“A poor chance, I said. Can you see any other?”

They looked at each other, Kes tongue-tied and silent, Jos stubborn. He said at last, “Don’t use fire, Kes. Don’t let that Kairaithin force you to it. Don’t be drawn into this battle. It will burn out your humanity. You know that is true. This is the griffins’ battle, and a battle for men. It’s nothing for you.”

“I think—Jos, I think it’s not so simple—” Kes turned and put her hand almost blindly on Opailikiita’s shoulder. She thought of the exaltation of flight when the slim griffin carried her, the warmth of Opailikiita’s voice when she said
sister.
It occurred to Kes that she had ceased questioning the word. It was a truth, now. But she thought it could not be a truth unless she lost
Tesme
as a sister. Learning to love the desert would mean turning away, once and for all, from human love. And she realized she couldn’t bear to give up either her earth nature or her fire nature. “Maybe I can keep them both,” she whispered. “Can’t I just stay in between? Can’t I keep both worlds?”

Jos, his mouth set in a hard line, started to come back toward her.

“If you will all please wait,” cut in an austere voice that Kes knew instantly, and everyone turned hurriedly: Arrowheads and spear points flashed again, light striking off metal in quick, hard glints.

Kairaithin was there, in a little space that cleared about him instantly simply because of the barely leashed force that seemed to radiate outward from him like heat from the desert sun. He was in human form, but he had never looked less like a man. The harsh features of his human face barely hid the eagle’s fierce eyes and savage, predatory beak; his long hands might as well have been talons. His shadow was entirely that of the griffin: Insubstantial feathers ruffled in the wind, and the shadow stared out upon them all with fiery eyes.

The slim bar of sand and heat Opailikiita had made swept out in both directions to make a much wider extension of the desert; a hot wind carried red dust whispering across the earth. Kairaithin stood on sand; the wind stirred his clothing and whipped with sudden strength through his hair. It reached the king, and the king blinked and lifted a hand to shield his eyes against the dust; men all through the company were doing the same as the desert suddenly encompassed the land on which they all stood. The air smelled of hot metal and molten stone. Opailikiita shook herself, stretched, and lay down on the sand, looking much more comfortable. Kes understood how she felt. It seemed to her also as though the world itself had suddenly widened.

The old mage with the king shifted in her chair.

Kairaithin rounded on her instantly, small flames springing from the ground at his feet and ruffling his black hair. His power, grounded in the desert, thundered soundless and potent through the air; the very air tasted of fire. “Do
not
press me!” he snapped at her. “This is
not
the time. Fire and
air
, cannot you earth-mages rule your own inclinations?”