Kindred and Wings

by Philippa Ballantine

  The Vaerli around them laughed gently. Morleth’s rumble of amusement was strong enough to run up through the earth into their bones. “Little brother, there is no need for ceremony. We are all children of the chaos here. One and the same.”

  Byre did not understand what that meant, but found he was blushing as if caught in some foolishness by a relative.

  “Ellyria is waiting for you,” Morleth boomed, extending her gleaming silver arm. “Come fly with me.”

  “Sacred blood,” Pelanor hissed, and actually took a step backwards behind him.

  Byre turned on her and grinned mischievously. “You can always fly yourself if you want to, no need for a dragon to take you.”

  The Witch’s gaze flicked between him and the shining dragon as she appeared to consider her options. Then a slow smile spread across her face, wicked and fearless. “A dragon flight is something even a Phaerkorn cannot turn down.”

  Then, just like that, they were climbing up the silver leg of Morleth the First. When Byre’s hand came down on the dragon’s skin, it was warm and surprisingly smooth, like polished leather.

  In all the stories of Ellyria’s dragon, it had never been mentioned how kindly her great curved eyes were. Byre had been raised on tales about how Morleth had been terrible and perilous, yet as he pulled Pelanor, almost giggling, up behind him, he couldn’t see the danger in her.

  The dragon was magnificent and shining like polished steel. Just looking on her was enough to bring a smile to anyone’s face, he thought. Then all rational thought was jerked out of his head as she sprang upwards into the sky.

  Byre laughed while Pelanor squeezed him tight, her abrupt gasp of surprise a heavy breath in his ear. Morleth’s wings snapped wide, thrusting them through the air higher and higher. A few wide, deep beats of her wings and they were among the clouds—higher than birds. V’nae Rae was spread out below them, like some child’s drawing of the city. Byre, despite his slight fear of heights, was mesmerized by what lay before them. Pelanor’s hands tightened on his waist, and she pushed her narrow face in against his shoulder.

  Such magnificence couldn’t last forever. Eventually, they spiraled down, circling the ragged mountains that were even at that moment being smoothed by Vaerli and Kindred so that the city would have a place to remain static.

  The citadel was much as Byre remembered—but fresher, whiter and sharper than it had been, or would be with the Caisah in residence. The pae atuae would show up best under moonlight, but even under an afternoon sun they glinted from time to time. It lifted his heart to see everything as it had always been meant to be—and not how things had devolved under the tyrant.

  He did not want to think of that man or that time—not right now.

  “The Waterfall Gates of Iilthor,” Byre said turning and pointing to the fluted and carved niche where the two gushing rivers splashed to each side of the silver bound doors. Everything was familiar and somehow so very different.

  Morleth trumpeted a laugh, one that they could feel deeply in their flesh and bone. “What a wonderful name! I think we shall call it that. You Vaerli have a real ability to name things—it is so delightful!”

  Byre felt a shudder of strangeness run through his spine, as the vagaries of time began to make themselves apparent. The Kindred who lived without the tides of time became stranger and stranger to him.

  It was a much-needed reminder that they were alone in this place, and it would have its own dangers and rules that they best discern quickly. Byre kept his mouth closed on the subject of any more names, lest he create too much of a disturbance in time.

  Instead, he turned his attention to the place they were moving toward. He observed a sweeping balcony at the highest point of the Citadel that poked out of the red cliffs like a admonishing finger. It looked fragile and filigreed, but incredibly the vast bulk of Morleth landed easily upon it. Not even a creak sounded beneath them.

  Byre stroked the dragon’s smooth, strong hide, uncertain if he wanted to get down. What would be the chances of him ever being able to get back up again? It was the kind of experience he did not expect to repeat.

  The dragon’s head swiveled about and she regarded her passengers. “You came a great distance to find my lady, Byreniko-of-the-future, so I think you should talk to her while you may.”

  His mouth dropped open, ready to ask a thousand questions, but then the flicker in Morleth’s eye reminded him: she had once been a Kindred. A Name had not changed everything, necessarily. She was still of this earth and knew more than he ever could.

  Taking the hint, Byre slipped down and held out a hand to Pelanor. She looked down at him, head cocked. Her voice, when it came, was almost admonishing. “I am very far from my gewalt here, Byre of the Vaerli. I hope you know what you are doing . . .”

  He didn’t reply, because to reply would have meant having to lie. He did not want to do that to her. Instead, he mutely kept that hand extended to her. Eventually she gave in, took it, and stalked after him as he went inside the Citadel.

  It was a beautiful, moving thing, this palace. The walls shifted and danced with mosaics of the Vaerli and the Named. Centaurs capered around the corner of the hallway that opened out onto the terrace, and seemed to dare them to follow as they moved ahead of the newcomers. The tiny stones that made up the decoration flared different colors in an amazingly complex pattern. Byre had no idea how it was done, but suspected it was leading them somewhere.

  Pelanor’s hand clenched in his. Her eyes widened at the fine silk curtains fluttering in the wind, and the cut crystal above them that lit the way, but with no discernible light source.

  Finally, by virtue of following their flat, impossible guide stones, they found her.

  It was madness how she was simply there. Ellyria Dragonsoul, the first of the Vaerli, the one who had made the Pact with the Kindred. She was the one individual who had always been upheld as the greatest of their kind, and thus she was an ideal more than a real person, woven in myth and surrounded by holiness. Byre stopped suddenly, as if he’d been struck from above.

  Hearing them enter the bare chamber, Ellyria turned to regard them. No aura of anything particular surrounded the woman standing in the white stone chamber. She was not haloed by light, or burning with righteousness, but it was also impossible to pretend she was normal.

  She looked young, with a heart-shaped face and sharp cheekbones, but her eyes reflected a great age. Her shiny black hair was folded into a thick plait that lay straight against her spine. Mother of the Vaerli she might be, but Ellyria Dragonsoul was also completely naked. However, it did not shock or titillate. Instead, it seemed the most natural way to find her. Her nudity made the words carved on her body clearly visible, like blue snakes spiraling around her limbs, encircling her breasts and twisting across the flat plane of her belly. It was hard not to follow the curving lettering, to try and discern what it might mean, but Byre managed to pull his eyes away when he realized something: Ellyria was his great-grandmother; kin and blood.

  At his side Pelanor was unusually silent, and he wondered how Ellyria looked through the Blood Witch’s sharp senses. One thing he could be sure of was: she was somehow catching a whiff of power from the leader of the Vaerli. He was unsure how much the Phaerkorn knew of Vaerli mythos, but she did the right thing: dropped her eyes to avoid staring, and waited hopefully to see what he did.

  Byre bent to one knee and inclined his head also to the floor. It was a gesture he had never seen a Vaerli make, but in the face of the mother of his people it was entirely appropriate. He waited, breathing hard, until he saw her bare feet appear in his vision. Then he felt a slight touch on the crown of his head.

  “You have made a long journey.” Her voice came out strangely hesitant, and softer than he might have imagined. “I see how sad and hurt you are. I am very sorry for it.”

  Byre glanced up. Her eyes were like the other Vaerli’s, full of stars, but there was no focus within them. Getting to his feet, he watched her wander away f
rom them in a dissolute manner. She flicked her gaze over one shoulder and smiled. “Come into the Puzzle Room.”

  Both Byre and Pelanor jumped when Morleth’s crested head appeared at the window Ellyria had just been standing before. The dragon was large enough to twine herself around the Citadel and peer in any window she might fancy.

  “She is as you find her.” Morleth rested her smooth, gleaming head close to the window and watched the Vaerli disappear deeper into the Citadel with one blue slitted eye. “Her struggle with my Kin did not leave her scarred on the outside, but the inside is another matter. It is difficult to be both born and made seer.”

  “Both?” Byre stiffened. This was something he had never heard before. “Ellyria is a seer?”

  The dragon let out a great sigh, her talons shifting on the white stone. “Such vision is a great burden,” was all she would say, before she pulled her head back from the window and disappeared from sight.

  “What is this born and made business?” Pelanor asked, tucking her dark hair behind one ear in a sharp gesture. Phaerkorn were haughty folk indeed—even in such strangeness.

  “There are always two seers among the Vaerli,” Byre replied as evenly as possible, even though he wanted to dash after Ellyria. “One is born into the role and one is made into a seer when she reaches maturity. They work together. The born has the gift of interpretation while the made has only the strength to see. I never knew . . . no one ever told me that Ellyria was both.”

  “She is expecting you to follow,” Morleth said, appearing again, thus proving her hearing was sharp, “but be careful.” The dragon tilted her head as she peered in, and Byre was reminded of a child peering into their toy house. The effect was disconcerting.

  Byre did not direct Pelanor to follow him, but he could feel that she did. The Vaerli blood in her made her a shadowy echo in his new perception. Trying to ignore her, he concentrated on observing more of the interior of the Citadel. He had never seen the inside in his own time, so could not judge what the Caisah might have done to it. The deeper they went, the fewer mosaics there were. Instead, the pae atuae was everywhere. It danced through and over the mosaics that were opposite each window. Light flooded every nook and cranny so that no shadow dared to linger.

  Byre would have loved to stop and examine the word magic—for he had never had the chance to learn it—but down the end of the corridor he could sense Ellyria. She was the center and the beginning. If ever he had a chance to find out answers to those questions, it was down there.

  He’d heard of the Puzzle Room, the place where his sister had earned pieces of the answer the Caisah dangled before her. The idea that it had been made by his own people was a new one.

  Cautiously, aware of Morleth’s warning, Byre pushed open the door. Ellyria was standing, hands on hips in the middle of the room that was flooded with a curious golden light. Spread out on the floor was not the Caisah’s puzzle, but something infinitely more complex.

  Mosaics depicting fire were fanned out on the floor before her. From this center radiated other interconnected pieces. There were several colors that joined together before separating and interconnecting with others. The whole effect was of ribbons wiggling their way out in a bewildering pattern that made Byre’s head hurt.

  Ellyria Dragonsoul was staring at it though with the kind of fixed attention that reminded him of only one person: his sister, the one the world knew as Talyn. He hesitated to speak and break her concentration.

  Pelanor, coming up behind him, was not nearly as diplomatic. “Well, that is quite a mess.”

  The mother of the Vaerli looked up, her eyes for a second completely alien, but a sharp smile danced across her lips. “Indeed it is. A mess.”

  Her concentration trailed off as she seemed to suddenly become engrossed with her own arm. The pae atuae flexed and swiveled on her skin, an effect that made Byre nervous. His father had been a master of the word magic, and so his son knew the power they could contain. The marks of the made seer were an unknown quantity. Though his mind buzzed with unasked questions, he couldn’t find it in himself to query the mother of his nation.

  Naturally, Pelanor had none of those qualms. She strolled over to stand within a hairsbreadth of Ellyria’s back and looked down at the pattern spread out like an octopus before them on the floor. After a second with her head cocked, she pointed to the dark gray ribbon. “But that is the twelve-mouthed goddess.”

  Byre, despite his reverence, darted over the pattern to stare down at what she had recognized. The tiny wooden pieces that were locked together in this strand were indeed marked by the symbol of the Phaerkorn’s goddess.

  “How can that be?” Pelanor asked him in a demanding tone. “My people are not even here yet.”

  “The buried avatar.” Ellyria nodded. “The female energy we require.”

  Byre turned about slowly, looking with great care at the puzzle of interlocking pieces twining away from them. With careful inspection he was able to make out sigils and signs of the Lady of Wings, the Rutilian Guard—and even the Caisah himself, the spread winged eagle.

  “And here you are.” Ellyria dropped to her haunches and touched a narrower band of red. The sigil of his name was immediately apparent. “And here is the little Witch.” Pelanor’s section of the puzzle was also red.

  “Mother,” Byre whispered, “how can you know so much? This has all yet to happen.” He turned around in confusion, suddenly understanding what the puzzle behind him meant. “It has happened.”

  Ellyria gripped his hand hard. “They gave it to me, all I asked for.” Her eyes were frighteningly clear and piercing. “The Pact was made—but there is always a price.” She pointed down to the floor. “They broke away and everything was ruined.”

  The ribbon she pointed to was as wide as that representing the Caisah, but he did not understand the sigil. He pronounced the unfamiliar word. “Phage . . . the Phage?”

  “The Pact breakers,” Ellyria whispered. “I have not been able to see the way to stop them. I have tried. I’ve laid the pieces again and again but it just won’t fit.”

  He followed the slithering length of the pieces that were so obviously distressing the Mother of the Vaerli. Up ahead its broad swath cut through the more fragile lines of his and his sister’s. “What does that mean? Where do we meet these breakers?”

  Whatever clarity she had briefly held onto slipped away like summer mist. Ellyria the Mother, the most revered of the Vaerli, fell into muttering to herself and scrambling on the ground.

  Pelanor walked over the puzzle, entranced, then leapt lightly over pieces so as not to disturb them. Byre stayed very still, concerned that if he moved in the slightest he would lose his senses.

  Clearing his throat, he tried to refocus and get past the rush of actually being in the presence of Ellyria Dragonsoul.

  “Look here!” Pelanor’s sharp eyes seemed to making better sense of the puzzle than his. “Is this the Harrowing?”

  The conjunction of pieces made this spot appear like a tangle of wool. Some he expected, like the Caisah, but to see the dark skein of the Phage was unusual. He’d been there that day at the Bastion, he recalled none that would have been described as Pact breakers. As much as Byre wanted to ask Ellyria about that, he sensed this could well unbalance her. He had another question, the one that he’d battled to have answered.

  “Grandmother,” he said softly, “can you end the Harrowing and give back the Gifts to our people?”

  Her eyes never left the pae atuae on her right forearm as her left index finger traced them. “The Gifts are not lost. The Harrowing is from your time, and it is you who must fix it.” The words were not said in a cruel manner, but Byre felt them hit him as if they had been. Ellyria Dragonsoul looked up at him suddenly, examining him as minutely as she had the pae atuae. “You were there, you know what happened and how to fix it.”

  Now, both women were looking at him. A confused smile spread on Byre’s mouth. They had to be playing some kind of crue
l joke. “I was . . . I was a child when that happened. I was there on the Salt Plain, but I was definitely not in the meeting when the Caisah came and—”

  “But you were there.” The seer stepped closer to him. This near, it was impossible to ignore her nakedness, and not to let his eyes trace the pae atuae over her body. She was a work of art. When she tapped him in the middle of his chest with her index finger, he felt his heart slow, and his eyes grow heavy. He’d been wrong; she was not a work of art, she was more like a drug.

  Growing up in the wilds, away from his people, he had not been idle. Peon was the inhaled smoke of choice, and two local farm boys—ones not afraid of the fact he was Vaerli—had introduced him to it. The spectacular but empty visions he had shared with them, he had mostly done for the far more heady taste of acceptance. Ellyria was like that.

  When she touched him, colors exploded at the back of his eyes, and nothing seemed to matter except the movement of her lips. Each of the words from her mouth were intensely important.

  “You were there,” she said in a low tone which he knew was only for him. “The lines of connection and time run from you back to there.” The seer pointed behind him, and Byre blinked. It felt as though she had pulled back a curtain for him. The world was so much more than his eyes could possibly tell him. Trailing from his body were threads, such as might be found in a magnificent carpet. They ran from him—from everyone in the room—backwards.

  “Do you see?” Ellyria asked, her voice the tone of a teacher showing something new and special to a student. Byre nodded as he concentrated.

  It was no longer just a thread. It was everything. As he stared at his past, he could see the moment he had decided to trust the dragon, the place where he had been tempted to give up while in the custody of the Kindred, and further back, the choice he had made to follow his father.