by Rachel Aaron
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 fledgling 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?
Kairaithin held out his hand to her, his eyes brilliant with dark fire. “I will show you the desert. I will show you the paths that fire traces through the air. Few are the creatures of earth who ever become truly aware of fire. I will show you its swift beauty. Will you come?”
All her earlier longing for her home seemed… not gone, but somehow distant. Flames rose all around the edges of Kes’s mind but this was not actually disagreeable. It even felt… welcoming.
Kes took a step forward without thinking, caught herself, drew back. “I’m not your student,” she declared. Or she meant to declare it. But the statement came out less firmly than she’d intended. Not exactly like a plea, but almost like a question. She said, trying again for forcefulness and this time managing at least to sound like she meant it, “My sister will be worried about me—”
“She will endure your absence,” Kairaithin said indifferently. “Are you so young you requ
ire your sister’s leave to come and go?”
“No! But she’ll be worried!”
“She will endure. It will be better so. A scattering of hours, a cycle of days. Can you not absent yourself so long?” Kairaithin continued to hold out his hand. “You are become my student, and so you must be for yet some little time. Your sister will wait for you. Will you come?”
“Well…” Kes could not make her own way home. And if she had to depend on the griffin mage to take her home, then she didn’t want to offend him. And if she had to stay in the desert for a little while anyway, she might as easily let him show her its wonders. Wasn’t that so?
She was aware that she wanted to think of justifications for that decision. But wasn’t it so?
Come, whispered Opailikiita around the edges of her mind. We will show you what it means to be a mage of fire.
Kes did not feel like any sort of mage. But she took the necessary step forward and let Kairaithin take her hand.
The griffin mage did not smile. But the expression in his eyes was like a smile. His strange, hot fingers closed hard around her hand, and the world tilted out from under them.
BY RACHEL AARON
The Legend of Eli Monpress
The Spirit Thief
The Spirit Rebellion
The Spirit Eater
The Spirit War
Spirit’s End
The Legend of Eli Monpress: Volumes I, II & III (omnibus edition)
PRAISE FOR THE ELI MONPRESS SERIES
“Fans of Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) will be thrilled with Eli Monpress.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A romp of a lighthearted fantasy starring an absolutely darling rogue.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A charming and fast-paced caper with intriguing worldbuilding and interesting characters.”
—RT Book Reviews (4 stars)
“This book was a nice surprise and a complete winner for me. Rachel Aaron has written a fun story which can be best described as ‘Terry Brooks Meets Scott Lynch’ in a lighter vein.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
“Full of humor and suspense, this action-packed fantasy adventure is highly enjoyable.”
—SciFiChick.com
“An entertaining, fast-moving fantasy story.”
—fantasyliterature.com
“A writer to watch in the future.”
—www.sffworld.com
“The Spirit Thief is one mad roller-coaster ride of a book that flies along almost faster than you can read it.”
—www.graemesfantasybookreview.com
“… A jocular satire loaded with charm and irony…”
—www.alternative-worlds.com
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Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Aaron
Excerpt from The Griffin Mage Copyright © 2011 by Rachel Neumeier
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-0-316-21562-6
