The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2) (3 page)

I have said I thought Hadron was my father—so I did, until Jamie told me the tale of my mother, Maran Vena. He said I looked like her, tall and strong and grey-eyed. I would not know, as she had left me with Hadron when I was but a babe. Jamie, it seems, had been devoted to her and had been her lover for three years as they travelled the length and breadth of Kolmar. Then she had met Marik of Gundar, a Merchant, and for some reason I could not understand (for Jamie didn't know it) she left Jamie and took up with Marik for three months. She was never entirely comfortable with him, and it was just as well: her curiosity had saved her life, for she had overheard Marik plotting with a demon master. Marik promised the life of his firstborn child to the Rakshasa, the Demon-kind, as the price for a Farseer, a glass globe in which he could see anything he chose anywhere in the world, and thus gain power over his enemies. My mother Maran and Jamie stole the Farseer just moments after it was made. They only just escaped with their lives, and by pure chance—I almost said "evil chance"—they found themselves, six weeks later, in the village where I grew up, and Maran met Hadron the horse-breeder. He adored her from the moment they met, or so Jamie says; but she was already pregnant with me when she wed Hadron. She left when I was less than a year old, and for love of her and because I might just be his daughter—for even Maran was not certain who my father was—Jamie had stayed on at Hadronsstead, never speaking of the past out of respect for Hadron, always there for me to turn to when Hadron turned me away. Too tall, too man-like, too plain, too strong, too wild: nothing I was or had ever done had pleased Hadron and I had lived a desperately confined life, abandoned by my mother, rejected by the man I thought was my father. Little wonder that Jamie's gentle love and kindness had been all the world to me from my earliest memories. I had not learned the truth until my adventures began, not six months past—I only knew that I had always loved and trusted Jamie, always relied on him, and bestowed on him all the love that Hadron rejected.

I had learned since, to my deep sorrow, that my father was indeed Marik of Gundar, and that he still sought me as payment for the Farseer. I had met him on my travels. It was his ship that took me to the Dragon Isle, it was his demon-master who summoned the Raksha to take me, it was he himself who tried to make me betray the Kantri and who gave me of his own free will to the demons. It was Akor, Varien in his dragon form, who had saved me from that, but Marik was too great a fool to let it rest. He tried then to steal a great treasure—the soulgems of the Lost, not gems alone but the very souls of some of Akor's people—and to protect himself he had all but killed Akor. I closed my eyes briefly and shivered at the memory. The battle had been dreadful, and I still woke terrified from time to time with the vision of Akor's silver scales drenched with bright blood. In the end Akor and his soulfriend Shikrar had found a way to defeat Marik. I don't know how or why it worked, but they broke his mind. He was mad and helpless, and like to remain so as long as he lived.

I never lost any sleep over that.

Perhaps it seems unnatural, to feel so little for him, but I had never known him until that journey, and he had tried to kill me and those I loved more than once. What would you? To my sorrow, he was, with my mother, the creature who made me—but in every sense that mattered, my true father sat now across from me, an eyebrow lifted, amusement dancing still behind his eyes.

"And where have you been wandering, my Lanen?" he asked, smiling. "I know that look. You're a hundred leagues away from here."

"You know me far too well," I said, grinning. "But I'm back now, so no matter. Is there any more of that soup?"

Varien and I helped Jamie with some of the chores—feeding and brushing the horses, cleaning tack, spreading straw—until Varien walked up to me and gently but firmly took the pitchfork out of my hands, took me by the arm and led me into the house. I was confused, for I tried to ask him what he was thinking and he would not answer aloud, and hushed me when I tried to speak. He seemed both intense and amused, a most curious combination. When I finally thought to bespeak him I was astounded by the depth of the feelings that I sensed—his mind roiled with his longing combined with the greatest good humour as we moved into the bedroom and he shut the door behind us.

I could hardly believe the passion in his kisses, in his body as we moved apart only enough to undress. It felt—I shivered—somehow, for the first time it felt like the depth of passion that had joined us in the first place, love and honour and desire strong as the bones of the earth. I was moved almost beyond words—how can I describe it to you? It was the first time I realised that the impossible was true: I was wed to Akor, a thousand years old, wise and strong—and celibate until very, very recently.

I laughed in the midst of our passion. "You do learn quickly, for such an old man!"

He smiled, a fierce joyful smile, and replied—well, you may imagine as you will what he replied, for the sweet things said in a marriage bed are not to be repeated.

Hear now the words of the Eldest, the Keeper of Souls of the Greater Kindred. Here I commit my soul to the Winds and give you my name for truth-fasting: I am Hadretikantishikrar of the line of Issdra.

Hear now the truth of those times that changed the world.

I woke in darkness with a start and knew that something was wrong. I had been drowned deep in the healing Weh sleep, so that struggling back to awareness was not unusual in itself—but the air tingled and the ground felt strange beneath me. The Weh always leaves a feeling of new health and strength, especially in one as old as I, but this was different. My heart was pounding and fire grew within me, a reflection of what I could only think was fear. Why?

Then the noise that had wakened me struck my ears again, moments after I felt it—a low rumble that started below hearing, a vibration through the deep earth. Without thinking I was out of my chamber and had launched myself into the night before I realised what was happening. I called out in truespeech to the one living soul dearest to me.

"Kedra, my son, where are you?"

"Father? Blessed be the Winds! I called and you did not answer, I feared you still kept the Weh sleep. Are you healed?"

"Nearly, my son. Strong and well enough to fly, at any rate. Where are you, and did you feel the shaking of the ground?"

"I am aloft, my father, with Mirazhe." He sounded almost as if he laughed, and was a little out of breath. "Fear not, your grandson Sherok is in my arms. He is much grown since last you saw him, and this excitement is thrilling him. He has never flown before. Listen."

Sherok, Kedra's littling, was far too young yet to use full truespeech, but through K6dra I listened to his son. What I heard was closer to emotion than to speech or thought, but the littling was no more than a few months old—and he was full of pure delight. "How long have I kept the Weh?" I asked, calmed and pleased by this link with young Sher6k. I could just imagine him in my mind's eye—his tiny scales yet soft, his back ridge still forming and hardening, his stubby tail thrashing in delight. In colour he was a blend of Kedra's and my dark bronze and his mother Mirazhe's bright brassy hide. His soulgem was covered as yet, as was true of all younglings. Sometime in the next nine months the scale that protected it would fall away—but his eyes were golden, a rare colour among our people and most wonderfully beautiful. Not that I am biased, you understand; but grandsires know these things.

"Less than three moons, Father," he replied. "Are you but now roused?"

I tried to gather my scattered thoughts as I sought out the scant winds of the winter's night to help keep me aloft. My flight muscles were stiff, surely, and my shoulder ached from the wound the rakshadakh Marik had given me—ah, that was an evil memory!—but both were recovered enough to heal without further time spent in the Weh sleep.

"The ground has shaken twice?"

"Yes."

"Then the first woke me from deep sleep. It was the second that set me flying." I had been listening but had not heard that threatening rumble again.

A soft voice touched my mind. "Think you it safe to return to the ground yet, Eldest?" It was Erianss, a lady some centuries older than K6dra but still far younger than I, and she sounded annoyed. I stifled the laughter that came to my mind. "I know exactly as much as you do, Erianss. It has not been so many years since the last earthshake, surely you remember." Still, perhaps she had a point. I spoke in the broadest truespeech, that all might hear. "Let those who wish to speak of this meet at noon on the morrow at the Summer Field, away in the south. This is not a Council meeting. I make no demand of any."

"Then I will see you there, Father," said Kedra. "Where are you bound for the rest of this night?"

I had already begun climbing, pushing myself to rise in the cold night air. I would pay for this overexertion tomorrow, but now was the best time to investigate. The fires of the earth are more clearly seen in darkness. "I go north, Kedra, to see what Terash Vor is doing. I will let you know what I have seen."

"Good hunting, then. Mirazhe and the kitling and I will meet you at the Summer Field tomorrow. Mind you keep high and safe in the firewinds, my father."

I hissed my amusement, loud enough for Kedra to hear it in my truespeech. "So I shall, my son, and I thank you for your concern." I did not remind him who had taught him about downdrafts near the firefields, or how long ago. The experience of age can be so burdensome to the young. "Bear my love to Mirazhe."

"I will. Fare you well, Father," said K£dra, and his voice was gone from my mind as it was never absent from my heart. As I worked my way high and north, I thought for a passing moment of tiiose other two whose lives were so closely intertwined with Kedra's and mine—Varien Kantri-akhor, my soulfriend Akhor in his new self, and his lady La-nen Kaelar. I had meant to bespeak them the moment I woke from the Weh sleep, but for now this was me more important task. Still, I wondered how they fared, even as I flew through the cold winter's night towards Terash Vor, the Breathing Mountain, to see what the future held for us all.

Terash Vor is in the centre of the western half of the range of mountains that divide the north of the Dragon Isle from the south. The divide is abrupt where the gentle hills rise sharp and sudden into high peaks five times their height. From the shapes of the mountains it is clear that in the distant past they must all have been of the same kind. I remember hearing my father, Garesh, speak of other mountains in the range burning as well, from time to time.

My people, the Kantri, the Greater Kindred, whom the Gedri children call True Dragons, had lived on this island for nearly five generations—that is to say, as many thousand years—ever since our self-imposed exile from the four Kingdoms of Kolmar on the Day Without End, burned in the memory of our race forever. On that day one single child of the Gedri, the human known only as the Demonlord, arose in a great darkness, and in the space of only a few hours the world was changed.

In those times the Kantri and the Gedri lived together, short lives and long intertwined to the great benefit of each: the long lives of the Kantri gave a sense of time outside their own brief lives to the Gedri, the humans; the swift-living Gedri kept the Kantri from forgetting to live each passing moment for all the joy it held and would never hold again. However, on that dark day a young man, a healer, reached the final abyss of his discontent with the small gifts granted him by the Lady, the great mother-goddess Shia worshipped by the Gedri. He longed to be among the great of his people, but he was not granted that excellence by the Winds—or, the Gedri would say, by the hand of the Goddess that shaped him. In his fury and frustration he made a dreadful pact with the Rakshasa, the Demon-kind, third of the four original peoples (the fourth were the Trelli, all dead long ages since). In exchange for his soul, his very name was taken from him and from all the world for all time, and the Demonlord was granted a hideous power over the Kantri. He began by killing many of bis own people, moving with a speed beyond flight from one kingdom to the next, until he murdered Aidrishaan, one of the Kantri, and for some unknown reason stayed beside the body. Aidrishaan's death scream had reached his mate, Treshak, who told the rest of us instantly through traespeech—for the Kantri are blessed with the ability to speak mind to mind—and we rose, four hundred strong, to destroy this murderer or die in the process. It was not courage, for we have wings and claws, our armour and the fire that is in us and sacred to us: the Gedri are tiny, naked and defenseless before us. No, it was in no sense courage. It was anger. That one of the Gedri should dare to destroy one of the Kantri!

Treshak arrived first, on the wings of fury, and she dove at the Demonlord, claws outstretched, fiery breath scorching the ground whereon he stood—but he was unharmed by her flames, and with a gesture and a single word, Treshak was changed. Even as she flew she dwindled to the size of a youngling, her blue soulgem blazing as she cried out in torment. She fell from the sky, for her wings would no longer bear her up, and as she fell her soulgem was ripped from her by a horde of the Rikti, the minor demons.

It would have been better had the rest of the Kantri stopped to consider what had happened, for clearly no Gedri had ever withstood our fire before, far less done so evil a thing.

We did not.

The fire that is life to us blazed out of control in our madness, and four hundred of the Kantri flew straight at the Demonlord, setting fire to the very air as they flew. The Demonlord spoke rapidly, the same word over and over, and full half of the Kantri fell from the sky and had their soul-gems torn from them.

He could not kill us all, even so. It is said he laughed as he died, as the Rikti around him disappeared in flame—they are the weaker of our life-enemies the Rakshasa and cannot withstand simple dragonfire—but whether he laughed from the heart of his madness at death and pain, or because some darkness in his soul believed even then that he would triumph in the end, we do not know. His body was trampled and torn until the youngest of us, Keakhor by name, called out, "He is dead, we cannot kill him more. For pity's sake look to the wounded."

The Kantri turned then to those who had been crippled by the Demonlord and his servants. We tried to speak to them, but in vain. The truespeech that allows us to speak with one another as we fly, where the rushing winds could not carry speech, also allows us to sense emotion as well as thought, but there was no reason, no trapped mind to touch—simple fear was the only response to our desperate attempts to speak with them. Among the ashes of the Demonlord were found the soulgems that had been ripped from our mates, our children, our parents—and even then the gems bore the taint of their demonic origin. In the course of nature, the soulgems of the dead resemble faceted jewels, and when the Kin-Summoning is performed by the Keeper of Souls they glow from within with a steady light. The summoner may then speak briefly with the dead. These soulgems gleamed— to this day they gleam—at all times from within with a flickering light.

We believe that the souls of our lost Kindred are trapped within, neither alive nor resting in death, and despite endless years of toil and trying they are yet bound.

The bodies of our brothers and sisters had become the bodies of beasts. We could not kill them, for old love, but we could not bear to see them either. They were first called on that day the Lesser Kindred, and it has become our only name for them. They breed now like beasts and live brief, solitary lives. Several among us try to contact the newly born every year but none have had any response. Never in all the long weary years since that time has there been even a shred of hope that one among them might have heard or tried to respond in any way.

We left Kolmar that very day, for already several innocent Gedri healers had been killed by Kantri wild with grief. Those who kept their heads in the midst of evil knew that the two peoples must be sundered until the Kantri who were left could see a human without needing to take swift and fatal revenge for the deeds of the Demonlord.

It has been almost five thousand years since that day, and mere are among the Kantri still those who cannot bear even the thought of the Gedri without a fury rising in them. It does not matter that there are now none left alive who were even the grandchildren of those who were witness to the deed: the cry that Treshak gave when her soul was ripped from her echoes down the aeons, its fury and despair as wrenching and poignant as if it had happened not a day since. The Kantri live for two thousand years, if disease or injury or accident do not intervene, and the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of those who were there know the story in the marrow of their bones. Forgiveness is difficult, especially now that—alas!—especially now that our race is failing.

My son Kedra's youngling Sher6k was born in the autumn—ah, he is a perfect littling, you should see his eyes!— but until his birth, the Kantri had gone five hundred years without issue. Our King and my soulfriend, Akhor, has long pondered our decline, but even he with wisdom beyond his years could not tell whence arose this barrenness, or why. We were grown desperate now, lest our race should die out entirely. I prayed to the Winds that Akhor's miraculous transformation might have some great purpose beyond that of uniting him with the soul he loved, that perhaps he might learn from the Gedri something that would succor his own people. If he did not, the black truth was that we were doomed, and Sherok would be the last of us.

I shook my head, breathing deeply of the night air, taking myself through the Discipline of Calm even as I flew, dispersing such darkness of heart. Such thoughts would catch no fish nor lift me a talon's breadth higher as I flew. I tried to concentrate on the problem at hand. I nearly succeeded.

Some have occasionally wondered if the murmuring ground might have anything to do with our present plight. The ground beneath our feet on the island was seldom quiet for long and we were accustomed to its shaking, but it had been growing more disturbed over the last several hundred years, and such violent movement as wakened me from my Weh sleep was rarer yet and demanded investigation. Never mind the fact that my own curiosity would have sent me to the same place, and as quickly—now that I stood in the stead of Akhor, our King who was among the Gedri, I had to think of all of my people. It was a curious feeling. I wondered as I flew whether Akhor had ever grown accustomed to this sense of bearing the Kantri on his wings and in his talons wherever he went, whatever he did.

The sky above the mountain was red and grew redder still as I approached. I had expected something of the sort. When I was still far distant, however, I found that I was not prepared for all. Terash Vor was sending its fiery breath high into the air, one vast stream of fire flowing upwards only to fall again to the ground, like a single burning feather from a bird the size of the sky. I kept my distance as I flew round about it, to learn if there was aught else to see. To my surprise, there were several smaller flows on the north side of the mountain, and a few distant red glows on others in the range showed that this was but the surface of a deep disturbance. I called upon Idai, an elder of the Kantri and an old and trusted friend.