Songs of the Earth (26 page)

‘I’m sorry, but it’s not exactly something you can just drop into the conversation two minutes after you’re introduced, is it? Pleased to make your acquaintance and by the way I’m a—’ Two adepts strolled up on their way to breakfast. Gair paused until they were safely inside the refectory, then continued, ‘—shape-shifter. But now that you know, can you keep it in your pocket? I don’t particularly want to give everyone another excuse to stare at me.’

‘Is that the reason you were expelled from the Motherhouse?’

‘No. I don’t think they ever found out about that.’

‘And you’re like her? You know, seagulls and things?’

‘I think she favours a kestrel, actually, but yes. Darin—’

‘What’s your animal? Is there just one shape you can be apart from this one, or many? Is it painful?’

Gair held up his hands to stem the tide of questions. ‘Slow down, slow down! I can do more than one shape, yes, but I’m best with birds – so far, anyway. No, it doesn’t hurt, unless you make a mess of the change and then you feel dizzy and sick for a minute or two. If there’s anything else you want to know, you’ll have to ask me later. Now,
please
, can we keep this between ourselves?’

‘All right, hold your furrow straight.’ Darin rolled his eyes, then pressed his right palm over his heart. ‘Word of honour, I’ll not say anything.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’

‘How much? Enough to write an essay for me?’

‘I’ll let you win at chess, how about that?’

A wide grin split the Belisthan’s face. ‘I already do. Just promise me you’ll show me one day. Soon!’

‘Done – but not in the middle of the refectory.’

‘And done.’ Darin pushed Gair in the direction of the stairs. ‘Now go on. The Masters’ quarters are the far side of Chapterhouse and she’ll have your tail-feathers if you’re late.’

Five flights of stairs later, Gair arrived outside Aysha’s apartment wondering why a woman who could not walk without the aid of sticks would choose to have her study so high up. After checking he didn’t have crumbs on his shirt, he knocked on the door.

‘It’s open.’

He stepped inside. Whatever he’d expected, he was wrong on almost every count. Aysha’s suite was airy, lavishly panelled in golden wood set at intervals with small, intricate mosaics in colours as rich as brocade. Creamy
qilim
rugs and sheepskins softened the
floor. To the left was a dining table and chairs with deeply curved seats and backs padded in butter-coloured leather. To the right a pair of damask-upholstered couches flanked a pale marble fireplace in which dozens of unlit candles clustered like parishioners on the chapel steps. Arranged around them were drifts of pebbles and pieces of salt-weathered wood, polished smooth by sand and surf.

‘You took your time.’ Aysha was sitting at her desk by a pair of tall glazed doors, silhouetted by the bright sky outside. Her expression was impossible to read, but her voice told Gair all he needed to know.

He bowed. ‘Forgive me, Master Aysha. I shall try not to be tardy in future.’

‘See that you aren’t.’

Planting her ebony canes firmly, she hoisted herself to her feet and turned towards the doors. Gair hurried to open them for her, letting her precede him onto the balcony.

‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘what other shapes do you know besides the fire-eagle?’

‘Birds, mostly. I seem to have a knack for them.’ He closed the doors behind him. ‘Master Aysha? I was expecting a lesson from Master Brendan this morning.’

‘I excused you. From what I understand, you already have more than enough skill at illusion not to have to listen to that windbag twice a week.’

Gair blinked.

‘What else?’

‘I’ve tried dog, cat, deer and horse, but I couldn’t hold them for long.’

‘We’ll work on those another time.’ A brisk breeze ruffled Aysha’s short-cropped hair and she turned her face into it, eyes crinkling up against the glare. ‘What about a wolf?’

‘I’ve not tried that yet.’

She faced him, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, and smiled. Her teeth were very white. ‘You will.’

Spreading her arms, she let her canes clatter onto the slate tiles and Gair could sense her gathering up the Song before he saw the change begin. Then her outline shimmered, pale shirt and green breeches becoming indistinct and amorphous as smoke until, in a swirl of colour and movement she was gone and a kestrel perched on the carved balustrade. Talons grated on stone as it shook itself to settle its feathers, then it cocked its head towards him.

Well?

The Song was there as soon as he reached for it, already roused by her working, and seconds later he was perched beside her, his fire-eagle towering over her slender kestrel. Without another word she launched herself into the wind, and he had to follow promptly or else lose her amongst the gables and chimney-pots of Chapterhouse.

Aysha took to the air as naturally as if she’d been born a bird. Agile as a dancer she soared through the warm air and though Gair wore his eagle-shape as comfortably as his own skin after a decade of practice, the kestrel’s narrow wings had the better of him in such close quarters and he was hard-pressed to keep up. In open skies he would have her beaten for sheer power and endurance, but her manoeuvrability there left him floundering.

Once clear of the buildings she flew due west towards the sea. A haze over the water misted the horizon, but near the shore the air was clear as fine crystal. Sunlight sparked and shimmered along the wave-crests and grey-backed gulls rode the breeze in search of food. Aysha’s appearance in the middle of their flock caused consternation. Shrieking, they swooped around her in loops, clamouring at her to be on her way, but she flipped her wings and rolled easily away from them. Gair was not so fortunate, and he took a battering from their hard bills before he was able to sideslip clear and follow her up over the cliff-tops.

Aysha led him along a mazy, circuitous route that more or less followed the ragged coastline round to the north side of the island and down into a cove, little more than a nick in the flank of the
island. It was barely large enough to accommodate a couple of fishing boats. The small beach was embraced by steep headlands that captured the day’s warmth like a dripping-bowl under a roast.

She circled in to alight on the golden sand and shifted back to her usual form. He landed beside her, waiting for the next part of the lesson, but she simply sat down with her back against one of the haystack-sized rocks. When she saw him still standing she patted the sand beside her, to indicate that he should sit. He sat.

‘You fly well,’ she said. ‘You’re self-taught?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shape-shifting’s a rare gift. How did you come into your talent?’

‘By accident, I suppose. I was watching a fire-eagle fly over the glen and wondering how it would feel to ride the wind like that, and the next thing I knew, I was in the air.’ Gair picked a piece of blackened bladderwrack from the sand and twirled it between his fingers. ‘I scared myself so much I fell out of the sky and landed in a gorse-bush.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Nearly eleven. It was the summer after I first started to hear the music.’

‘And you had no idea what you were doing?’

‘None at all. I was watching the eagle and I heard a new melody in the Song, high and wild and lonely. I reached for it, and …’
And the Song poured me out into a new shape like water into a glass
.

‘And you flew.’

‘And I flew. Not very far – but for a few seconds I knew what it was like.’

‘Which was?’

‘You already know. You can fly too.’

‘I don’t know what it felt like for you.’

Gair ducked his head, picking at the seaweed with his thumbnail. ‘I felt free.’

‘Did you tell anyone about it?’

‘No. No one knew until I was tested, my first day here.’

‘I thought Alderan looked surprised.’ She smiled that dazzling smile again, combing the sand beside her with her fingers. ‘The Song often comes to people like that, when there is something they want or need badly enough to make them open themselves up to it. Or something they want to escape from. Alderan tells me you are an orphan.’

‘As good as,’ Gair said. ‘I don’t know who my father was, some soldier probably. My mother gave me up to charity when I was a few days old.’

‘And the family that found you took you in?’

‘There were always fosterlings of one sort or another in the household … orphaned children from the tenant farms, cousins training to be squires, that sort of thing. One more or less made little difference.’

‘We are what we make of ourselves, not what others make us,’ said Aysha. ‘Where we come from, how we’re born – that’s just biology.’

‘I wish that were true.’

‘You sound bitter.’

‘Just realistic. I have no name, Master Aysha. Without a name I have no place, no station, except what others choose to give me.’

Blue eyes slid past him to where the surf chewed restlessly at the shore. ‘Some would say that having no fixed station in life makes you the master of your own ship, with no one to answer to, no one to disappoint. There are no expectations but what you set for yourself. There’s a freedom in that, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’ The seaweed crumbled in Gair’s fingers and he let the pieces fall, brushing the bits from his hands. ‘I just wish I knew where I belonged.’

‘You’ll find your place,’ she said. ‘Give yourself some time. And if you can’t find a place, make one. That’s what I did when I came here fifteen years ago, and I had less to my name than you do.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When Alderan found me I was living with the street-children in Abu Nidar, slitting pockets in the souq for my next meal. Look at me now: I’m on the inner council of a forgotten Order at the arse-end of the Empire, barely tolerated by my peers, and regarded as a freak by the students. Bird-lady, they call me. Imagine the lofty heights you could reach!’

Leaning back against the rock, she closed her eyes with a sigh. ‘Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that.’

What could he say? ‘Are you unhappy here?’

‘No – I could be in a much worse place, believe me.’ She turned her face up to the sun. ‘It’s such a nice afternoon. We should have brought a picnic.’

Gair stared at her. A strange lesson this was turning out to be.

‘Peppered ham,’ she mused. ‘Honey-glazed chicken. Fresh bread, still warm from the oven. That soft goat’s cheese they make here, the one that’s rolled in herbs. Apricots.’

‘Master Aysha?’

‘Oh, and some of those maple-sugar pastries the baker in Pensaeca Port makes. They’re little slices of heaven.’

‘Is this part of the lesson?’ His stomach growled and a flush raced up his neck, but Aysha laughed.

‘Someone’s sand-tiger needs feeding. We might have to pack two baskets if you’re going to bring him along. So tell me what you like to eat, Leahn. What would you bring for a picnic on the beach?’

He raked a perplexed hand back through his hair. He had no idea where to start. ‘Well, I like most things, I suppose. Your list sounded pretty good to me.’ His lack of contribution to the banquet struck him. ‘Strawberries,’ he offered.

‘Oh, I love strawberries. I’d never tasted them until I came here, but if I’d known what they were I think I would have left the desert a lot sooner. What else? Do you like oysters?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never eaten them.’

‘You should try them some time. Fresh from the boat, squeeze a lemon over and swallow them whole, straight out of the shell.’

Surely she didn’t mean …? ‘Raw?’

‘They taste of the sea.’

‘Salty and full of sand?’ he said, and she laughed.

‘They’re delicious, trust me. With a crisp white wine, they’re incredible.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, Master Aysha, I’ll take your word for it. I prefer my food dead when I eat it.’

Shading her eyes, she studied him. ‘I didn’t think you’d be squeamish.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re a shape-shifter like me. Surely you’ve hunted in another form before now?’