Kindred and Wings

by Philippa Ballantine

  Pelanor drank him down, as his body drove into her.

  Orgasm was not the word for what it was. It was pain, loss, anger, and beauty all rolled into one.

  When Pelanor came back to consciousness, it was to find Byre’s body lying across hers. On her lips was the taste of his blood, still rich and good but cooling. She realized that in the moment, she’d had no thought of control, and was suddenly terrified.

  “Byre?” She touched his shoulder with genuine trepidation. He felt cool, but then just as her fear choked her, he murmured something and levered himself from her.

  His eyes widened as he looked down at her, and Pelanor knew she looked a sight. Her fangs, lips and chest were covered with his blood—and she was as naked as the goddess had made her.

  “I’m all right,” he assured her, his hand touching the line of her face. “But I . . .” He broke off, and licked his own lips. “I wasn’t expecting . . .”

  “That?” she offered. Usually when sharing her body with someone not of her kind, she left quickly. Pleasure was a passing thing for a Blood Witch, but a strange sensation was washing over her.

  He looked almost embarrassed, but helped her up. Both of them struggled to pull their clothing back together, but did not meet each other’s eyes. Finally, there was nothing for it. She had to know.

  “Is it always like that for your people?” Pelanor demanded.

  Byre blushed, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I . . . I really don’t know. I was so young when the Scourging happened that I never got to touch another of my kind.”

  She’d been an idiot. “Yes, I suppose burning and dying when you touch another Vaerli would make that difficult. How about with mortals?” Pelanor had to know. It wasn’t about stroking his ego. Something had happened, something more than sex.

  When Byre shook his head, she felt an odd little surge of happiness. “No, never.” Then he took her hand gently in his own and squeezed lightly. “You have to understand that Vaerli seldom lie with other races—especially before the Harrowing.” Then, perhaps to ease her mind, he kissed her again.

  It was there, underneath the passion: a hint of fire.

  Pelanor knew that her blood lust was sated; she felt light and powerful once more. She still would have gladly pulled him down onto the hard earth again—would do so in this instant. It was not just his blood.

  When she had passed through the last mouth of the goddess she had felt more sure of herself than she ever had before. She had known her place in the scheme of things. She had become part of something much larger and better than she was. Now, standing on the edge of the white Salt Plain, all of that was blown away. For if she was a Blood Witch, then why had lying down with a Vaerli pleased her so deeply?

  Love was something reserved for the gewalt. It was he, and he alone that should make her complete—not some Vaerli.

  When she kissed him back something was shifting within her. Could there be a reason she was here with him, feeling these things? Her kind did not believe in fate or predestination. They believed in blood and kin. Yet Byreniko loomed large in her vision now, and Pelanor didn’t quite know what to do with that. It was terrifying and exhilarating.

  She tried to keep her voice light when she replied, “Perhaps there is a reason for that.”

  A slight smile lifted Byre’s mouth, but he put his hand over hers and squeezed. “I don’t know what it means, Pelanor. Your kind and mine—we never had much contact. Perhaps it is the blood.”

  She closed her eyes and felt it pulse in her. Every time she drank from a person not her gewalt she’d been disappointed . . . until she drank from Talyn. That had been heady, but drinking from her brother was different again.

  “Perhaps,” she said, buttoning the last of her shirt, and dusting off her skirt. It was hard to believe it, but these were the same clothes she’d worn went she left the coven, the same clothes she had fought his sister in.

  As she looked out over the white plain, she thought of what had brought her here, and wondered with a little trepidation what lay ahead. “What is out there?” she asked him, turning and looking over her shoulder at him.

  Byre sighed, and taking her hand, kissed the palm of it. “Let me show you.”

  He led her out on the surface of the lake, the place where the white salt cracked under her heel and the Vaerli territory began. It was a strange, barren place, but it was not that which chilled her.

  “It feels like I am on ice,” she whispered to him. “Like I might slip and fall.”

  The Vaerli tightened his grip on her, and she felt a little more sure of herself. “I won’t let you,” he replied softly, and together they walked out a little further. Suddenly the blood in her veins that had made her feel so powerful did not feel so much so.

  As they walked, Byre talked to her; at first merely comments on the color of the sky, or the bleakness of the place. After they had gone far enough into the Salt that the edge was no longer visible, he began to open up to her.

  “This is the last place I remember seeing my mother.” His voice was carefully neutral, but she could tell that those words cost him. “She was injured in the Scourging, badly. She, my sister and I were separated from my father.”

  The Harrowing of the Vaerli was a part of legend. In her coven there were Blood Witches who had been alive then; ancient, gnarled old women who claimed to have been terrified to drink the blood of the cursed Vaerli—even as they had watched them flee.

  His words made Pelanor start. She managed not to blurt out what she was thinking, but she knew it had to have been running through Byre’s head from the moment Ellyria had the command to come back here. He might see them again. Not only his recently dead father, but also his long lost mother and sister.

  She couldn’t imagine how that would be. Pelanor cleared her throat. The salt was shifting under their feet again, but in a very different manner. Every step they took felt like the ground was spinning beneath them. The distance they walked in one stride was impossibly long. The earth couldn’t move that fast, even in Conhaero . . . could it?

  Glancing up at Byre, she knew not to ask him. Too many things were plaguing his thoughts, and she suspected the nature of this place was meant to unsettle. Still she couldn’t just leave him to remain silent.

  “Do you remember what happened at the Harrowing?” she ventured, leaning in close against him. “None speak of it—certainly not the Caisah, from what I have heard . . .”

  Byre’s eyebrows drew together until he resembled nothing so much as a stern mask. “What do people think happened?”

  She shrugged. “Some say he called down lightning. Others say it was like a great whirling cloud of pestilence.”

  “It was none of those things.” His eyes closed briefly, as if summoning the memory from deep down and far away. “I was a child, so I was not at the meeting. I don’t know what happened, but I saw the aftermath.”

  “What was that like, then?”

  His words made her wince just a little. “You will see, Pelanor. It is coming soon enough, and you will be witness to it.”

  The white was endless and mind-numbing. Pelanor felt like it was inside her head, wiping out everything that was in there. She could not imagine how it might be without a Vaerli at her side and his blood in her veins.

  “It seems easy to walk,” she commented, more to try and get him to talk than anything.

  “That is because we are Vaerli,” he murmured. “The Salt has its protectors. It is more a living thing than a place, but just be grateful that you do not see it.”

  He never let go of her hand, and despite being a Blood Witch and her own private universe, Pelanor was grateful.

  Then a thought struck her. “But what of the Caisah then? How did he get across the Salt Plain?”

  “You mean, how will he get across the Plain?” She glanced up at Byre, and saw a flicker of pain cross his face. This was a bitter homecoming for him. “I do not know, but I suspect we will see it all.”

  Th
ey walked on, their feet seeming to skim across the dire salt, and yet it felt as though they were not getting anywhere at all. Time had little meaning here, but it seemed to drag on Pelanor.

  Then, just as she felt as though she was reaching the end of her sanity, something gray appeared on the horizon. She blinked rapidly, wondering if her eyes had finally decided to give up on her. However, as they moved closer and closer to it, the shape resolved itself into a long line of caravans, wagons and horses.

  She squinted. Or were they horses?

  It was quite the gathering. She had thought the gathering she’d witnessed in the sand with Finn the Fox was impressive. This made that look like a tiny family get together.

  “So many,” she said, her eyes flickering over the transport, the fires, and the emerging hubbub of the crowd. “So many Vaerli . . . I never imagined there were so many of you.”

  “Once we were numerous . . . at least, my father told me that. It was said the Vaerli rode the land in a multitude.”

  It was a strange thing to think of them that way. In her time and place they were so scattered and so few. Pelanor began to have more of an appreciation of what they had suffered. It also brought her some measure of relief: they would not stand out so much in this crowd.

  “This is a sacred place, Pelanor.” Byre pulled them to a stop, and looked down at her with a sad and serious expression. “And we cannot change what will happen here today—not even if we yearn to.”

  She knew immediately that he was talking to himself most of all and not to her. The things that lay ahead would be a dreadful temptation: a chance to see his father, mother and sister again, as well as soak in the community that he had lost at such a young age.

  The blood they shared warmed Pelanor, and she blamed it for the empathy she was feeling for the Vaerli. She rubbed his back a little. “Then let’s go on. We have much to learn and not long to learn it.”

  The scream that issued from the mouth of the dragon was enough to shatter eardrums and rend sanity. The Named fighting against each other was an abhorrent thing, and Finn had never heard of it happening—not in any of the stories.

  As the griffins circled lower, he felt smaller and smaller. Wahirangi remained on the ground, trumpeting his anger to his fellows and flexing his wings. He seemed unwilling to take the fight to the griffins even though they were making their intentions plain. Finn’s gaze darted around, as he felt at any moment they would be overwhelmed and destroyed.

  Finally, the dragon could no longer safely remain where he was. Wahirangi leapt into the sky, thrusting his way through the press of griffins; angry squawks and feathers flew around them. Finn crouched low over the dragon’s back as his wings swung hard and deep, but he did not use his fire, not once to clear the way. Beaks and claws raked along the great length of the dragon, but he did not turn and retaliate. Finn yelled in rage and frustration, as the dragon angled himself almost straight up, the griffins in close pursuit.

  “Fight back,” the human clinging to his back screamed. “Burn them out of the sky.”

  Any illusion that Finn had that he was in charge was swept away as they went higher and higher, but no flame appeared.

  The screams of the griffins followed them, but the higher Wahirangi climbed the fewer of them there were. Finn realized that though the griffins were nimbler at the turns than the dragon, they could not match his stamina and strength in the air. As he climbed higher and higher, the griffins dropped away one by one.

  But Finn could not really enjoy the success, because by this time he was gasping for air and having increasing difficultly hanging on to the saddle. His vision was blurring and the little air in his lungs felt like knives.

  “Wahi . . . Wahirangi . . .” he choked out.

  The golden head turned, regarding him for a moment as a human might stare at a bug, but then the dragon folded his wings and dropped lower. Relief flooded through Finn as he was finally able to see clearly, and even think a little. As he craned his head, left and right, and did a sweep of the air below him, he realized that they had swooped down far from where the griffins could follow. He could see them as distant curves on the horizon, but they would not be able to catch up from that distance.

  He threw himself down across the dragon’s back, wrapping his arms around the scaled neck, and took in a few more luxurious breaths. When Finn finally levered himself up, he asked one question. “Why did you not burn them? Wahirangi, you could have destroyed them all in an instant.”

  A deep note thrummed through the dragon, something that might have been vague displeasure. He did not look at Finn when he finally spoke. “Think on it for a moment, human . . . who are the griffins and what am I under this skin?”

  He felt like an idiot. “You are Kindred, both Named I guess—but they are no longer your kin—and they would have killed you if they had the chance.”

  “So that makes it right for me to kill them?” the dragon asked, his voice liquid and sad. “They are Kindred, and we do not kill our own. They have been blinded by the power of others, but that does not mean they can’t be saved. I have hope that it may happen one day . . . though being in this form makes it hard to see how that might happen.”

  “You might be able to get them back from the Phage?” Finn demanded, wondering if the beast was about to show him some more magic. He was ready for it.

  “No,” Wahirangi replied, as he stilled his wings and began to glide for a spell. “Not I. That is beyond my power, but they can indeed be saved.”

  “But not by you? So then, by someone else?” the talespinner pressed. “Who would that be?”

  The dragon was silent for a long time, content to soar the skies with the clouds. “You,” he finally replied. “You are the son of Putorae, the Last Seer, and you have her powers deep within you.”

  Finn opened his mouth a couple of times, seeking words. It was one of the few times that he could not find any to do the job. Finally, he sat back on the dragon’s back and thought about that.

  He could not imagine what Wahirangi was talking about, but then again ever since leaving Perilous and Fair he had been trying to catch up with himself. He’d Named himself a Kindred after all, and still didn’t know how exactly that had been done.

  He’d said no words that he could recall. So if the dragon was expecting him to battle the Phage for the Named then he should at least give him some idea how.

  “I know you saw her,” the dragon said, obviously deciding he’d had enough chance to digest the information. “You saw Putorae. I can smell her on you.”

  The idea that his long-dead mother had a smell was the least disconcerting thing about the day. “You know her,” he croaked out.

  The dragon’s wings beat for a moment, and Finn was pressed in the saddle as the dragon sought warmer currents of air. Flocks of birds passed beneath them, squawking in protest. Wahirangi snapped at them, and Finn could feel the dragon’s irritation in his own belly, like restless flame. The great beast could not survive on such meager fare—he preferred to hunt larger prey by himself—but these questions were bringing up a storm of emotions in Wahirangi.

  When they reached the height where the landscape was reduced to blue and purple shadows, and clouds flickered between them and it, the dragon spoke again. “I knew her in the time before the Harrowing. She was a bright star that drew my kind to her like moths. She was . . . the word you would use might use would be . . . entrancing.”

  Such language used about one’s mother might have been unnerving, but Finn had no memories of her himself. He found he was eager to learn more, but most of all one question he had not dared ask the fragments of her he had run into.

  “How did she die?” He swallowed, cleared his throat. “Was it in the Harrowing? I thought that she died in the Harrowing . . .”

  “You should be doing what you need to do to find your brother.” The dragon’s voice was suddenly hard, where before it had been full of compassion.

  He did not need to weave the yarn to know
. Putorae had already told him. Of all the stories he had learned in his time as a talespinner, none was as important as this one Wahirangi had to give him.

  Leaning forward, Finn pressed his hands against the smooth, warm neck of the dragon. This was a creature of the Chaos, but he had Named it. He knew from the stories that Ellyria Dragonsoul had loved her dragon, but it had also obeyed her. “I am the one who Named you, Wahirangi. I need you to tell me what happened.”

  The dragon flew on, but his golden head flexed on his long neck, peering back at Finn. The talespinner didn’t need reminding how insignificant he was, and how precarious his position was, perched on Wahirangi’s back. He’d just been told how damned important he was by a seer, and that had gone to his head a little.

  “Tell me,” he repeated.

  “It was after the Harrowing,” the dragon rumbled. “People say she died in it, but that is not true. She survived both it and your birth, but she did not survive your father.”

  “My . . . our father killed her?” Finn felt as though he’d been doused in ice water. It was chilly riding dragons, but this was the kind of cold that he felt he would never shake. First a mother, and then a father. Too many thoughts were suddenly trying to cram their way out of his throat. He’d been an orphan, raised by the talespinners, and often wondered about his family. Eventually the stories, legends and myths they taught him had filled all those cracks and empty spaces. He had not thought of his father for a long time, so to hear him mentioned caused all sorts of tumult.

  A peculiar shudder went through the dragon, and he swung his head about, looking above and below them.

  Finn realized then that a dragon could disassemble just like a mortal, and Wahirangi knew more than he was letting on. It was like when Finn had sat at the feet of his master of myth, and asked for the whole story. Except that the talespinners liked to leave a dangling plot to draw a listener back for more. The dragon did not want him to ask any more questions, but there was one that hung between them.