Kindred and Wings

by Philippa Ballantine

  The moment that he saw that, Ellyria stepped away from him. The once simple trail spun like a tangled skein of wool and became impossible to read.

  Byre gasped and bent over, clutching himself. His mind felt suddenly scrambled, much as it had years before when tasting peon for the first time.

  With focus and concentration he managed not to throw up before his childhood hero. What she had shown him was magnificent and also terrifying. So many junctures and possibilities that it bent the mind to hold them all—let alone understand them.

  When Byre straightened up he looked at Ellyria with new respect. He also suspected that the pae atuae were holding her together, like something bright contained in a jar. Without them she might fly apart altogether. She smiled slightly. “I see you understand.” The seer turned to the back wall. “He’s ready to go.”

  The Kindred were there, waiting. Maybe they had been there all along. The flaming eyes and the indefinite forms still chilled him, but he knew that to go ahead he had to trust in them. He jumped when Pelanor’s hand slipped into his.

  The Blood Witch squeezed his fingertips and smiled. Women everywhere were mesmerizing him, because for a moment he could not take his eyes off the points of her teeth on her lip.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the Salt,” Pelanor said, and then laughed. “But you are going to have quite some explaining to do about me. I guess I will just have to stay close.”

  Day was giving way to night by the time Kelanim found a good time to sneak out of the harem. If she had been fresh to it she would never have managed it. Delios the chief eunuch was an old friend that she had cultivated for years, and he knew her devotion to the Caisah.

  He also knew that sometimes the pressure of the harem grew too much. So when she appeared at the gate shrouded in a brown cloak, her face hidden behind a battered old mask, he did not make any comment. Instead, he simply held the door open.

  It was not as if she could go beyond the palace walls. In fact, her usual operation was to walk the walls, drink the night’s cool air, and maybe pray a little. The gods might have forgotten her, but she had not totally forgotten them.

  Tonight was not for the gods. It was for her mysterious benefactor. Keeping to the shadows, Kelanim worked her way toward the stables. The stablemaster and his boys slept above their charges, but the night was helping her. The wind howling around the corners of palace and whipping up leaves into eerie hisses in the road would mask her footsteps.

  Reaching the stables, the mistress slipped inside and eased the door shut. The smell of straw, horses and leather washed over her, and despite the rawness of the odor Kelanim appreciated it. It was honest—more honest that the smells of the harem. Sandalwood, jasmine and rosewater dominated her life, and hid the reality. Here at least was truth.

  The trouble was, she didn’t know who she was meeting. For the last few months she’d been receiving cryptic messages in the most unlikely places, and always they had seemed to make life easier. Talyn was gone because of them, but Kelanim still didn’t know who her benefactor was.

  Something moved in the stables, a horse shifting from foot to foot in its sleep, but she jumped.

  “Mistress, you are right to feel fear.” The voice that came from the stall, made her heart leap into her throat, and she grabbed for the wall. It was not the stablemaster or any of his boys—she knew that immediately. The voice was deep and resonant, the kind a person could feel all the way though their bones. “You are in the presence of the Named.”

  Kelanim stood frozen to the spot, and the whole world seemed to lose its importance. The Named. She had read voraciously all she could find on the Vaerli and the Kindred. She knew that the Named were the creatures created by Vaerli, and they were rare and powerful creatures.

  Though her heart was racing, Kelanim took a few hesitant steps closer to the voice.

  “A brave creature then,” her visitor went on, “but then, you must be to fool the Caisah so completely.” Whoever was speaking was within the middle stall in the line, and when the mistress reached the railing she saw why. A centaur. She blinked hard and her hands tightened around the wood of the rail until her palms hurt. The centaur remained there, as huge and irrefutable as could be imagined. His back half was a jet-black carthorse, while the human shaped portion was an equally massively muscled man, and that was merely the outside. Being Named, he would have other resources.

  Kelanim ignored his goading remark. She flicked a look over her shoulder to make sure they were really alone. “How could you get into the palace like . . .” she gestured helplessly to encompass all the centaur, “as you are?”

  “I am not alone,” the centaur said, glowering at her. “I am part of the vanguard, the things to come. Others of the Named can come and go through the palace with perfect ease. This place was never made to hinder Kindred, Named or un-Named.”

  The idea of imagined creatures like the centaur roaming through the corridors of the palace was very uncomfortable. Her mind darted through all the possibilities of what that could mean; the horrors and delights of childhood stories unleashed in her world. However, she did not move from her spot, though every ounce of her wanted to rush back to the harem, bar the door, and hide beneath the silk covers of her bed.

  The deep mahogany of the centaur’s laughter rolled over her. “Such a little woman, but full of great bravery . . . and all wasted on the Caisah.”

  “I love him,” she said with more strength than she actually felt.

  Strangely, he did not scoff at her protestations of love, but simply folded his arms in front of him and stared down implacably at her. She had never felt so small—even when the man she loved had struck her.

  “Your Caisah has learned one of the terrible things about immortality,” the centaur said, each word falling on her like a hard stone. “That love is a myth to comfort those with small lives. Love cannot endure a never ending existence.”

  Kelanim’s mouth went dry, and her hands clenched at her sides. She wanted to protest that he did not know the Caisah, but something in those dark centaur eyes made her hold her tongue.

  “It is not your fault.” Now the beast sounded almost comforting. “You cannot compete with the weight of history.”

  The mistress thought of his restless sleep, and his quickness to anger.

  “You would deny him the delight of love once more?” The centaur stamped one hoof, and it was so loud in the quiet of the stables that Kelanim jumped.

  He was making a persuasive argument, and perhaps she’d been a fool not to see what the centaur pointed out so easily.

  “Imagine how your moth-like your existence must seem to the Caisah,” the centaur said, his voice sliding around her senses like balm, “and think on how many moths have passed through his life.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and she suddenly realized how many of the harem women would have paid good money to see this: Kelanim, the hard-nosed, icy first mistress, brought low.

  The centaur and the horses observed this crumbling of her reserve, but Kelanim no longer cared. When her tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks, she let them, and tilted her head up defiantly. “I will still love him, even if he cannot return it. I will endure until there is nothing left for me.”

  The centaur stepped forward, out of the stall, to stand only two feet away from her. This close the smell of him was impossible to avoid; an odd combination of horse sweat and powerful man. It was not unpleasant. “Why should you endure, when there is a way for him to love . . .”

  She was no fool. The centaur had just told her the solution, and though her heart leapt with the possibility, she had not got so far in the harem by being reckless. “I will not harm him,” she replied, and even dared a half-step forward, “and I would be doing that by taking his immortality from him.”

  The centaur was silent for a moment, his great dark eyes drifting around the barn, taking in trappings of man and beast. “You think immortality is such a gift?” His hand suddenly clamped down on her sho
ulder, and Kelanim felt the heat of it go right through her while the weight of it nearly brought her to her knees. “I was once a Kindred, little human. I lived on the tides of chaos, and time was nothing to me. When I was Named all that changed, and I was fixed in place. For a long time it was a wonderful thing to me, to experience time, but all things wax stale for me now. Beauty, love, tragedy and even friendship mean nothing to me living this way. Can you imagine that?”

  Looking up into his eyes was like looking up into the face of a statue, implacable and terrifying. Kelanim bit her lip in order not to cry out. He was doing a fine job of making her feel inconsequential. “Then why did you summon me here?” she snapped, feeling as if something inside her might break.

  The snort that came out of him would have made someone of weaker constitution flee in terror, and when his massive hooves stamped on the cobblestones in front of her, Kelanim did feel the urge to cry out. Only some inner core of character kept her shaking, but upright. The centaur leaned down, so that his breath was on her face. In anyone else that would have been an almost erotic gesture; with him it was the most terrifying experience. “We have helped you get rid of the Hunter.” One of his huge hands closed around her throat. “And we shall help you free the Caisah so that he may truly love you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Kelanim could breathe, but she was well aware his fingers could tighten at any moment. He had been the one to send the note that encouraged her to manipulate the Caisah into sending Talyn after the talespinner. That had worked wonderfully. Carefully, she nodded, and then gasped out, “Yes . . .”

  The centaur considered her, twisting her head from side to side as if she were some exotic bug he had captured. Then, finally, he released her. “You are doing the right thing for the man you love,” he added, his voice rumbling through her bones in this close proximity. “Think of it, does he sleep well?” The centaur’s eyes bored into hers.

  Kelanim found herself breathing hard and fast, but her mind followed him along the path. The Caisah did not sleep well; he often woke screaming in the night, or muttered terrible things in his sleep.

  “Immortality was not meant to be his.” The centaur’s hand was now pressed on the top of her head. The heat from a moment before that had terrified her now seemed a comfort. “You know this.”

  She licked her lips, and dared to reply, “You are right. He has said so before, in fact.”

  “Then you must take it from him, relieve his burden.” He stepped back into the shadows again. “It can be done, and then he will be as other men, able to live and love as they do.”

  For a split second Kelanim was terrified; the idea that she could have a hand in taking away her love’s protection hit her hard. However, she remembered the pain in his voice, and how much she wanted to feel his love in return. “Then tell me how to do it,” she whispered. “I would have him live a whole life, not a half one for all eternity.”

  The centaur bowed his head. “It will not be an easy thing, and there are many dangers for you, too. Immortality, when given to a mortal, can crack their sanity.”

  “I know that,” Kelanim replied, her hands clenching into fists. “Every day I am with him is a danger, so do not think to turn me aside with that.”

  “Very well.” The centaur reached back into the saddlebags he carried on his withers. He handed the mistress a small bag. “Place this piece of paper under his pillow while he sleeps. It must be near his head.”

  She opened the bag, just to be sure that it was nothing poisonous, but it did indeed appear to be a piece of faded vellum inscribed with the pae atuae. Kelanim swallowed hard, her throat suddenly seemed as tight as it had when the centaur had his hands on her. “It . . . it won’t hurt him will it?”

  “Has anything written by Vaerli ever had a chance of hurting the Caisah?”

  It was a good point. “So then,” she continued, folding the paper carefully and putting it back in its pouch, “this will restore his mortality by morning?”

  The centaur’s laugher filled the stable, making the nearby horses snort and shy away. Kelanim worried that the stableboys might come back to investigate. “As if the gifts of the Void can be so easily taken away from a scion,” the centaur said. “No, this is only the first part.”

  “Then tell me the rest?” the mistress demanded.

  Another laugh, this time lower. “All in good time, little slattern. First, you must prove yourself to us, then we shall see how to proceed.”

  He turned, adroitly considering his great bulk, but then paused at the outside stall door. His shape was outlined by the moons’ light, revealing his thick locks of hair running from his head, over his shoulder, down his back, and transforming into a mane along the way. It was bizarre and beautiful.

  The wind from outside blew his scent once more over her, and now a shudder went through her. The centaur was primal and terrifying—something the Caisah fired in her as well. “I will find you again,” the centaur rumbled. “Do as we ask, and all will be well.”

  Before he could get away, Kelanim—perhaps inured to danger by her time with the Caisah—blurted out, “What is your name?”

  When he turned and glared at her, that feeling in the pit of her stomach became almost painful, and she added, “I need to have something to call you.” For a moment she wondered if she had gone too far with what was essentially one of the most dangerous creatures in Conhaero. Would she end up with her throat crushed and tossed beneath the horses?

  Finally, the centaur turned back once more, and spoke, “You can call me Pholos. It is not my true name, but it will do for you.”

  Then he sprang away from her and out into the night, disappearing before she could take another breath. All Kelanim, mistress of the Caisah, could do was tuck the pouch he had given her into her belt, and turn back for the palace.

  If she was prone to prayer, now might have been the time for it.

  Riding toward the sea was not the thing Talyn wanted to do. She had not been to the sea since her time with Finn, and even though she had purged that memory, somehow, some little part of her still abhorred the ocean. Now, the Phage were sending her there, and she felt as broken as she had when she’d been the Caisah’s Hunter.

  Bending low over Syris’ back as he raced east, she tried not to think of what she was doing. Tried and failed. She had given up everything to be the Hunter, and had comforted herself in the night that she was at least working toward getting the Gifts of her people back. Lifting the curse that had been placed upon them had seemed like a goal that was worth her own sacrifice.

  Since that had been revealed as a cruel trick by the Caisah to keep her close and amuse himself, she had fallen into despair. The Phage had seemed the only option.

  She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. The speed at which they were traveling was playing tricks with her vision. In her mind’s eye she could see the puzzle pieces laid out before her, and the revelation that when formed together, they had made the image of Putorae, the Last Seer. The Caisah was impossibly cruel. He had told her the answer to the lifting of the curse was in the puzzle, but one long-dead seer was not the answer. He was a liar.

  Everything was a lie. As Talyn watched the world fly past in a gray blur around her, she was surprised by one thing: she had not killed herself. Some damned annoying little spark of self-preservation still burned on. Even when things were hopeless, she couldn’t bring herself to take her own life—not when so many Vaerli had never had the chance.

  Syris’ muscles bunching and clenching beneath her served to remind her that forward momentum was possible. Yet she was not as she had been. Time on the back of the nykur was not easy on muscle and bone—even for a Vaerli. Leaning forward, Talyn whispered into the long curved green ear, “Rest, my darling.”

  Syris slowed from his ground-eating gallop to a quick trot, and the world resolved back into its normal state.

  They were on a wide plain, where the Road of the Caisah was beautifully absent. It was unmitigated Cha
osland—just as it had been before the coming of so many people. Talyn leaned back in the saddle and stretched her aching back. The smell of grass and fresh air buoyed her spirits slightly, reminding her that the world was not all bad.

  Conhaero, the land of chaos and change, the refuge of the people through the White Void. It must have looked awe inspiring and delightful after the madness of the swirling between worlds.

  Bouncing on her saddlebags, the scroll caught her eye, and for the first time curiosity began to chew at her. The Caisah had sent for this scroll, presumably from some hidden store of his. Immortal beings tended to collect a lot of objects and items; Talyn knew that her own people often hoarded such things.

  Once the libraries and storage vaults beneath V’nae Rae had been bulging with scrolls of history and lore. Many had contained pae atuae since only so much word magic could be inscribed on walls and other surfaces.

  As Syris brought himself to a halt, stamping and tossing his head, a dreadful thought came to Talyn. The man who had inherited the city, who had renamed it Perilous and Fair, had been free to plunder those teachings. He had been able to read every one of their stories. Some were written in ancient Vaerli, impossible for even her kin to decipher now, but others would have told him much about her people.

  Now she glanced down at the scroll in a totally different way. What would the Caisah want so urgently? What could he have hidden?

  The patterned tube that contained that information was only a hand’s breadth away. She slipped down from the nykur, but stood still for a long moment. The Phage had said only dragon fire could destroy the scroll? Who else apart from that fool Finn had ever had a dragon?

  Her fingers traced the canister, feeling the raised pattern and the tight seal of wax that provided proof that it had not been tampered with or opened. Her mind raced. Dare she open it now?

  With a ragged sigh, Talyn turned away. The Phage were not to be taken lightly. The thing she had to remember was that they were the enemy of the Caisah—that was the only fact that mattered.