Lord of the Changing Winds (36 page)

A deadly pause spun itself out. Tastairiane Apailika began to answer.

Kes drew courage from Kairaithin’s strength, from Opailikiita’s warm support, from bright Eskainiane’s amused approval. Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu was wrong: She was not brave. She did not know how to make powerful speeches. She was too afraid of the white griffin to even look at him. But she said swiftly to the Lord of Air and Fire, before the white griffin could speak, “I might cower at your feet. Maybe I will. But I won’t… I
won’t
make right any harm that comes to any griffin. If you harm people of Feierabiand. I won’t. Nobody of Feierabiand has harmed
you
. What business is it of yours to do them harm?”

Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu laughed, quick and confident and brilliant and pleased by courage wherever he found it—even in her. Even when she opposed his own plan.

And the king, always inclined to be swayed by his
iskarianere
’s opinions more than any other, allowed himself, at last, to be amused as well. He said,
We will consider this new wind you propose. Sipiike Kairaithin, you may make it plain to us, and we shall consider it.

Kairaithin inclined his proud head at last, small flames rippling through the delicate black feathers of his throat. He said,
It will please you well enough, O Lord of Fire and Air—or so I believe. And if it will also please my little
kinukaile,
shall we not be generous to please her?

Perhaps we shall
, said the king, and Kes knew they had won after all—won a changed direction for the wind, and life for her people, and a chance for safety for all of Feierabiand. She moved quietly to one side, joined Opailikiita, and leaned against the young griffin, catching her breath and trying to believe that they had won and that everything would be all right.

Iaor Safiad of Feierabiand engaged Casmantium in the midst of the desert, as everyone, Kes supposed, had at one time or another intended, although for wildly differing purposes. But they did so under conditions designed to favor Feierabiand. Or Kes hoped that was so. Kairaithin said it was. Opailikiita said so, too, an assurance Kes trusted more than the griffin mage’s.

When the army of Feierabiand came bravely into the desert, the griffins flew to meet them with every appearance of violent intent, but without harboring such intent in their fierce unhuman hearts—or so Opailikiita assured Kes.

Kes tucked herself between Opailikiita’s wings when the young griffin took to the wind: She clung hard to handfuls of feathers, trying not to think about how far below the sand lay. Opailikiita turned in slow spirals through the hot air, above even most of the larger griffins, and slowly Kes relaxed a little. Opailikiita lay so still on the wind, with only the slightest shift of feathered wings to adjust her course, that it began to be easy to feel safe. Kes leaned what seemed perilously far over to peer across the griffin’s shoulder.

The griffins rode the hot winds below Opailikiita. They soared in small groups or alone, forming slow patterns in the air as groups overlapped and parted and merged and parted again: bronze and gold, red and brown, and copper and black. White Tastairiane flew fiercely alone, sliding through the patterns other griffins made, and the rest made way for him. The only griffin Kes could not find below her in the sky was Kairaithin, and she knew where
he
was and why he was not with the rest.

She followed one griffin and then another with her gaze. She knew all their proud, violent names. She knew the feel of each one’s voice, fierce or subtle or sharp as wind-honed stone. She would have known each from all the others just from the tilt of a head or the fiery glance of an eye. Their names thundered in her blood and rolled across her tongue, each one distinct. She knew she would feel injury to any one of them as a break in the natural flow of fire through this desert. She knew that she would be able to channel fire into such injuries and make them whole.

And she knew that doing so would mold her own body and soul into the shapes of fire. She would fly with Opailikiita and call fire through the air, pour it through her hands; fire would run through her veins like blood and she would become a creature of fire. She knew this. She thought, briefly, of shifting herself off Opailikiita’s back and far away. Of leaving this war between men and men, between men and griffins, between earth and fire to be fought by someone else, its cost borne by someone else. Anyone else. She could do that. Kairaithin did not bind her. Nothing bound her. She might find herself outside Tesme’s house, with her sister’s voice calling to her… What would Tesme be saying? She found she could not imagine any possible words.

Far below stood the men, far away and small, impossible to tell one from another. The heads of their spears flashed like silver droplets of water in the desert; the strings of their bows and the heads of their arrows flashed silver. They stood in precise ranks, lines of men and more lines beyond them: Kairaithin had said the King of Feierabiand had brought only a small army with him into the desert, but to Kes it looked like a very large army. She wondered whether they might actually turn against the griffins, and if they did, what would happen.

They have a magic of their own, which they bear with them, even into our desert
, Opailikiita commented.
Those arrows are not earthbound. They, if not their makers, may fly to meet a griffin in the air. Men are very dangerous. And the spears make it hard to come against men on the ground.

“You did not… the last time, you did not seem worried about the spears?”

There are many times as many men here now. And this time they would expect blinding dust and sand, and falling fire, and attacks from any direction. See how they have angled their companies to guard one another.

Kes could see nothing of the sort. She asked tentatively, “What would you do if I were not here?”

Were you not with us
, said Opailikiita,
we would have a difficult battle, so few of us against so many men. Though the desert itself is our element and will fight for us and carry our power, still there are earth mages to hinder us. Even so, you will see today, when the Arobern comes onto the sand, how the desert is our ally and our tool, we who have no other gift for making.
She sounded fierce and joyful and proud; she sounded like she was looking forward to it.

“You are sure the… the Casmantians will come into the desert?”

Are you not? Yes, little sister, they will come. You see how the Safiad sets his people so that they would be vulnerable to attack from out of the mountains. The Casmantians will see it also, and they will come to that opportunity, as an arrow in flight would be drawn to its target. Well you are with us, my beautiful sister, for if not my people would be as vulnerable as the men of Feierabiand.

Below, men lifted twisted horns of brass; long golden notes rolled out over the desert. Soldiers halted and turned; spear points dipped and rose again, flashing. Men in the center of each formation lifted bows, strings flashing silver, and nocked arrows. Horns rang out again, rich and mellow and sounding to Kes like slow summer days and harvest festivals and not like war at all.

Above the men, bright Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu swept a long, fierce trail of fire through the hot air. Esterire Airaikeliu, Lord of Fire and Air, darker and more terrible than his companion, curved suddenly out of a spiral and fell after his
iskarianere
, with a shrill piercing cry like a stooping falcon: His cry struck fire from the air. Above him, other griffins shrieked and flung back their wings and stooped, and fire fell from the wind that roared past the long feathers of their wings.

Below the griffins, men cried out in fear and shouted urgent commands: Arrows rose suddenly in a silver rain.

Kes covered her eyes and bowed low over Opailikiita’s neck.

No. Look
, said Opailikiita, and Kes peeked timorously from between her fingers. Arrows did not reach their targets but burst into flame in midflight. Griffins, striking, came down savagely upon the… sand, between companies of men, outside of spear’s reach. The beating of their wings flung up red dust and sand until Kes could see nothing clearly. Men shouted. Metal crashed against metal, with a horrible clatter of ringing and shrieking.

But spears did not strike griffins, nor did griffins strike men. The fire that burned across the sand guttered in the stiff wind and went out.

Good
, said Opailikiita.
They are brave.

Kes did not know whether she spoke of the griffins or of the men. But she thought the men were very brave. Their horns sang through the thick dust, and the long notes were valiant and clear.

Casmantium
, Opailikiita said, in a tone of satisfaction.

Startled, Kes followed the direction of the griffin’s gaze. There, where the mountains came down and met the edge of the desert, men were coming out from around a corner of smooth gray stone onto the red sand. Men and more men, and then more yet, in ranks that formed quickly and instantly broke into motion: brown and black, with silver spears and bows that caught the light like griffins’ beaks.

See
, said Opailikiita, still with satisfaction,
they think the Safiad is ignorant of them still. Possibly they even believe
we
are ignorant of them.

“Yes,” Kes said nervously. It seemed to her to be taking a very long time for the Casmantian army to cross the sand and close up behind the Feierabiand soldiers. And, if she could trust Kairaithin and Opailikiita, they would find themselves in a terrible trap. Of their own making. Yet she could not watch, and covered her eyes.

Then she could not bear to be blind, and looked after all.

The first part of the Casmantian army struck the rear of the Feierabiand army, and there was suddenly a vast confusion all through that region: Kes could find no order to any of it.

But Opailikiita said fiercely,
Thus we strike down those who would destroy us.

Kes said nothing. A griffin’s name rolled through her mind suddenly: Esheteriu Nepuukai, a young griffin, copper-bright wings and golden lion pelt, bright and passionate. She knew as though she stood beside him that he lay in the sand with a terrible wound across his chest and a spear through his foot, blood pouring out of him, shattering into garnets and rubies as the sun struck it. She knew when the spear was wrenched out and drawn back for another thrust. She thought of Tesme, fleetingly, but there was not time to think or worry or be frightened, because the spear was already stabbing out once more. Before the strike could be made, Kes made the young griffin’s body whole, and watched with her mind’s eye as he hurled himself forward. She felt as though she flung herself forward with him, exaltation spilling like fire through her own wings.

Shaistairai Kaihastaikiita fell through the brilliant air, arrows in her side and flank; the arrows were tipped with ice and ill-intent. Kes burned through them with clean fire and closed the wounds with fire; the griffin fell through sheets of fire, caught the wind with powerful wings, and flung herself straight down in an explosion of joy and fury, an explosion that burned through Kes as well.

The Lord of Fire and Air himself took an arrow in the throat. Kes burned it out and left him surging forward straight into a thicket of spears. They tore him open, face and chest and sides, and Kes, his name pounding like the sun through her blood, made him whole again. And again. Until the wounds ceased to come.

Is it hard, my sister?
asked Opailikiita, turning in her slow spiral path to carry Kes back across the battleground.

“No,” whispered Kes. It was not hard. But it swept Kes’s attention inward, where griffin names sang like poetry in her blood.

She had no attention to spare any longer to look from above at the battle. She felt she was in it herself: a battle to repair tears in the natural order of the world, to weave wholeness through ragged injuries. Once or twice a cold malaise seemed to touch her, crept like ice across her fingers where she gripped Opailikiita’s feathers in her hands. But each time the cold fell away almost before she knew it was there, and she forgot it instantly in the rolling thunder of fire that filled her eyes and her heart. At last all she saw was fire, until she became fire and burned with Opailikiita, who turned to fire beneath her and laughed with fierce joy.

Kes did not notice right away when the frequency of injuries pressing themselves upon her attention slowed, and slowed… Eventually she found she had time to find herself riding the wind, griffin back, in human form again, uncertain whether she had ever truly left it. She had time to lean over Opailikiita’s shoulder and stare into the burning dust below, time to try to see the shapes of men and griffins hidden by that red dust. She did not fear to fall, now. She thought that if she leaned too far and fell, she would simply fall into fire, turn into fire and blowing sand. But she did not fall. Nor did she speak. It seemed to her that she had forgotten the sounds of human language—that if she spoke, flames would fall like jewels from her tongue.

Opailikiita, too, seemed disinclined to speak. An awareness of her filled Kes, because she was so near or because she was so closely allied: She seemed not only a slim brown griffin, but also equally a streak of bodiless fire falling out of the molten sky.

Below, the dust was settling. Sunlight poured through the dust and turned the air the color of blood or fire. Small griffin fires burned here and there in the sand, leaving flecks of gold and fire opals and carnelians to glitter where they burned out. The darker garnets and rubies of griffin blood sparkled in the sand where the griffins had fought and bled for this victory.