Lord of the Changing Winds (9 page)

“No,” Bertaud said. “Of course not. But I don’t understand why griffins would leave their own country—and I certainly don’t understand why they would go as far south as Minas Spring! If they were determined to cross the mountains, why not simply come straight west through Niambe Pass? That, at least, would make some sense!”

Iaor gave a thoughtful nod. “Perhaps they did not like to fly near Niambe Lake and were willing to go many miles south to the next pass they could find. The natural magic of Niambe Lake would hardly be an amicable magic for griffins. Well, that’s a question for mages and we shall pose it to them, but whatever the reason, it’s just as well, or we might have the griffins bringing their desert to the shores of Niambe, and all the way to Tihannad, perhaps!”

Bertaud laughed, as his king intended. Feierabiand had never had much to do with griffins, but they both knew it was inconceivable that griffins, no matter how numerous or powerful, would dare trouble the king himself in his own city.

K
es woke as the first stars came out above the desert, harder and higher and brighter than they had ever seemed at home. She lifted her head and blinked up at them, still half gone in dreams and finding it hard to distinguish, in that first moment, the blank darkness of those dreams from the darkness of the swift dusk. She was not, at first, quite sure why the brightness of the stars seemed so like a forewarning of danger.

She did not at once remember where she was, or with whom. Heat surrounded her, a heavy pressure against her skin. She thought the heat should have been oppressive, but in fact it was not unpleasant. It was a little like coming in from a frosted winter morning into a kitchen, its iron stove pouring heat out into the room: The heat was overwhelming and yet comfortable.

Then, behind her, Opailikiita shifted, tilted her great head, and bumped Kes gently with the side of her fierce eagle’s beak.

Kes caught her breath, remembering everything in a rush: Kairaithin and the desert and the griffins, drops of blood that turned to garnets and rubies as they struck the sand, sparks of fire that scattered from beating wings and turned to gold in the air… She jerked convulsively to her feet, gasping.

Long shadows stretched out from the red cliffs, sharp-edged black against the burning sand. The moon, high and hard as the stars, was not silver but tinted a luminescent red, like bloody glass.

Kereskiita
, Opailikiita said. Her voice was not exactly gentle, but it curled comfortably around the borders of Kes’s mind.

Kes jerked away from the young griffin, whirled, backed up a step and another. She was not exactly frightened—she was not frightened of Opailikiita. Of the desert, perhaps. Of, at least, finding herself still in the desert; she was frightened of that. She caught her breath and said, “I need to go home!”

Her desire for the farm and for Tesme’s familiar voice astonished her. Kes had always been glad to get away by herself, to walk in the hills, to listen to the silence the breeze carried as it brushed through the tall grasses of the meadows. She had seldom
minded
coming home, but she had never
longed
to climb the rail fence into the lowest pasture, or to see her sister watching out the window for Kes to come home. But she longed for those things now. And Tesme would be missing her, would think—Kes could hardly imagine what her sister might think. She said again, “I need to go home!”

Kereskiita
, the slim brown griffin said again.
Wait for Kairaithin. It would be better so.

Kes stared at her. “Where is he?”

The Lord of the Changing Wind is… attempting to change the course of the winds
, answered Opailikiita.

There was a strange kind of humor to the griffin’s voice, but it was not a familiar or comfortable humor and Kes did not understand it. She looked around, trying to find the lie of country she knew in the sweep of the shadowed desert. But she could not recognize anything. If she simply walked downhill, she supposed she would eventually find the edge of the desert… if it still had an edge, which now seemed somehow a little unlikely, as though Kes had watched the whole world change to desert in her dreams. Maybe she had; she could not remember her dreams. Only darkness shot through with fire…

Kereskiita—
said the young brown griffin.

“My name is Kes!” Kes said, with unusual urgency, somehow doubting, in the back of her mind, that this was still true.

Yes
, said Opailikiita.
But that is too little to call you. You should have more to your name. Kairaithin called you
kereskiita.
Shall I?

“Well, but…
kereskiita
? What is that?”

It would be… “fire kitten,” perhaps
, Opailikiita said after a moment. And, with unexpected delicacy,
Do you mind?

Kes supposed she didn’t actually
mind
. She asked, “Opailikiita? That’s
kiita
, too.”

Glittering flashes of amusement flickered all around the borders of Kes’s mind.
Yes
.
Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike
, said the young griffin.
Opailikiita is my familiar name. It is… “little spark”? Something close to that. Kairaithin calls me by that name. I am his
kiinukaile.
It would be… “student,” I think. If you wish,
you
may call me Opailikiita. As you are also Kairaithin’s student.

“I’m not!” Kes protested, shocked.

You assuredly will be
, said another voice, hard and yet somehow amused, a voice that slid with frightening authority around the edges of Kes’s mind. Kairaithin was there suddenly, not striding up as a man nor settling from the air on eagle’s wings, but simply
there
. He was in his true form: a great eagle-headed griffin with a deadly curve to his beak, powerful feathered forequarters blending smoothly to a broad, muscled lion’s rear. His pelt was red as smoldering coals, his wings black with only narrow flecks of red showing, like a banked fire flickering through a heavy iron grate. He sat like a cat, upright, his lion’s tail curling around taloned eagle’s forefeet. The tip of his tail flicked restlessly across the sand, the only movement he made.

You have made yourself acquainted with my
kiinukaile? the griffin mage said to Kes.
It is well you should become acquainted with one another.

“I am
not
your student!” Kes declared furiously, but then hesitated, a little shocked by the vehemence of her own declaration.

She is fierce
, Opailikiita said to Kairaithin.
Someday this kitten will challenge even you.
She sounded like she approved.

Perhaps
, Kairaithin said to the young griffin,
but not today
. There was neither approval nor disapproval in his powerful voice. He added, to Kes,
What will you do, a young fire mage fledging among creatures of earth? I will teach you to ride the fiery wind. Who else will? Who else could?

Kes wanted to shout, I’m not a mage! Only she remembered holding the golden heat of the sunlight in her cupped hands, of tasting the names of griffins like ashes on her tongue. She could still recall every name now. She said stubbornly, “I want to go home. You never said you would keep me here! I healed your friends for you. Take me home!”

Kairaithin tilted his head in a gesture reminiscent of an eagle regarding a small animal below its perch; not threatening, exactly, but dangerous, even when he did not mean to threaten.

He melted suddenly from his great griffin form to the smaller, slighter shape of a man. But to Kes, he seemed no less a griffin in that form. The fire of his griffin’s shadow glowed faintly in the dark. He said to Kes like a man quoting, “Fire will run like poetry through your blood.”

“I don’t care if it does!” Kes cried, taking a step toward him. “I healed all your people! I learned to use fire and I healed them for you! What else do you
want
?”

Kairaithin regarded her with a powerful, hard humor that was nothing like warm human amusement. He answered, “I hardly know. Events will determine that.”

“Well, I know what
I
want! I want to go
home
!”

“Not yet,” said Kairaithin, unmoved. “This is a night for patience. Do not rush forward toward the next dawn and the next again, human woman. Days of fire and blood will likely follow this night. Be patient and wait.”

“Blood?” Kes thought of the griffins’ terrible injuries, of Kairaithin saying
Arrows of ice and ill-intent
. She said, horrified, “Those cold mages won’t come
here
!”

Harsh amusement touched Kairaithin’s face. “One would not wish to predict the movements of men. But, no. As you say, I do not expect the cold mages of Casmantium to come here. Or not yet. We must wait to see what events determine.”

Kes stared at him. “Events. What events?”

The amusement deepened. “If I could answer that, little
kereskiita
, I would be more than a mage. I may guess what the future will bring. But so may you. And neither of us will
know
until it unrolls at last before us.”

Kes felt very uneasy about these
events
, whatever Kairaithin guessed they might entail. She said, trying for a commitment, suspecting she wouldn’t get one, “But you’ll let me go home later. You’ll take me home. At dawn?”

The griffin mage regarded her with dispassionate intensity. “At dawn, I am to bring you before the regard of the Lord of Fire and Air.”

The king of the griffins. Kes thought of the great bronze-and-gold king, not lying injured before her but staring down at her in implacable pride and strength. He had struck at her in offended pride, if it had not been simple hostility. Now
he
would make some judgment about her, come to some decision? She was terrified even to think of it.

She remembered the gold-and-copper griffin, Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu, saying to Kairaithin,
You were right to bring us to the country of men and right to seek a young human.
Maybe that was the question the king would judge: Whether Kairaithin had been right to bring her into the desert and teach her to use the fire, which belonged to griffins and was nothing to do with men? Escaile Sehaikiu had said Kairaithin was right. But she suspected the king would decide that Kairaithin had been wrong. She gave a small, involuntary shake of her head. “No…”

“Yes.”

“I…”

“
Kereskiita
. Kes. You may be a human woman, but you are now become my
kiinukaile
, and that is nothing I had hoped to find here in this country of earth. You do not know how rare you are. I assure you, you have nothing to fear.” Kairaithin did not speak kindly, nor gently, but with a kind of intense relief and satisfaction that rendered Kes speechless.

I will be with you. I will teach you
, Opailikiita promised her.

In the young griffin’s voice, too, Kes heard a similar emotion, but in her it went beyond satisfaction to something almost like joy. Kes found herself smiling in involuntary response, even lifting a hand to smooth the delicate brown-and-gold feathers below the griffin’s eye. Opailikiita turned her head and brushed Kes’s wrist very gently with the deadly edge of her beak in a caress of welcome and… if the slim griffin did not offer exactly friendship, it was something as strong, Kes felt, and not entirely dissimilar.

Kairaithin’s satisfaction and Opailikiita’s joy were deeply reassuring. But more than reassurance, their reactions implied to Kes that, to the griffins, her presence offered a desperately needed—what, reprieve?—which they had not truly looked to find. Kairaithin had said the cold mages would not come here.
Not yet
, he had said. But, then, some other time? Perhaps soon?

I have no power to heal
, Kairaithin had said to her. But then he had taught
her
to heal. Kes hesitated. She still wanted to insist that the griffin mage take her home. Only she had no power to insist on anything, and she knew Kairaithin would not accede. And… was it not worth a little time in the griffins’ desert to learn to pour sunlight from her hands and make whole even the most terrible injury? Especially if cold mages would come here and resume their attack on the griffins? She flinched from the thought of arrows of ice coming out of the dark, ruining all the fierce beauty of the griffins. If she did not heal them, who would?