Kindred and Wings

by Philippa Ballantine

  Since then, Byre had seen many, many things. He stood his ground while the centaur stamped and scowled at him. They did not want to be noticed, and an argument with a centaur was bound to draw attention to them. Byre wrapped his arms around Pelanor and pulled her into the shadow of a nearby tent. The centaur let out a angry snort, and passed them. The musky scent of him was overpowering.

  Pelanor stared just as angrily after him. “I see in the past he was just as charming as when I will first meet him.” She looked up at him. “One thing has always puzzled me about your people; why did they Name Kindred at all?”

  It was something he had wondered in his odd time. “I don’t know. Once again, I was too young to be taught such mysteries.” He knew there was a deep vein of bitterness in his voice, but he didn’t care. “Perhaps only because they could. Perhaps to amuse themselves they decided to play with the legends of others. Maybe it was even to cow the various tribes that they invited to Conhaero.”

  “I hope they didn’t Name any for the Blood Witch legends.” Pelanor wrapped her arms herself before jerking her chin in the direction of the large green tent. “So if that is where the confrontation happened . . . I mean . . . will happen, then where did the Caisah come from?”

  It was good she herself had changed the subject, because it would do her no good to find out that the Vaerli had not spared raiding the Blood Witch mythology as well. Instead, Byre scanned the white expanse that lay beyond the gathering. “I have heard tell that he came from the Salt—but that is impossible; the Salt kills any who are not blessed by the Kindred. Vaerli.”

  The Blood Witch at his side was silent a moment, but she had her head raised to the wind like a dog tracking prey. “Vaerli all around me,” her voice was in a soft tone, almost loving. “But to the west something else . . . something mortal.”

  “Mortal?” Byre followed her gaze, but even his eyes could detect nothing. “Out there? Impossible!”

  “We must go,” she said, taking his hand once more.

  “How far?” he asked.

  “Impossible to tell,” she replied. The idea that they might miss learning about the Caisah, maybe even stopping him, was not acceptable to Byre. He turned and strode away, leaving Pelanor to follow in his wake like a child.

  His jaw was set as he approached the nykur. The dark, clear eyes regarded him from under the razor sharp green hair. It was no Named Kindred, but it was a creature of this world. It had chosen to obey his kind, and now it would have to obey him.

  “I have need of you,” was all Byre said, holding out his hand and thrusting all fear away.

  The unnamed nykur regarded him from its great height, threatening impalement by tossing its horned head a few times. Up this close it smelled of salt and danger.

  “I need to find him,” Byre finally pleaded, hoping that some of his sister’s abilities still lingered in him. “They told me I need to see. Ellyria did.”

  The nykur opened its mouth, so that all of its saber-like teeth were visible. Pelanor, who had caught up with him, caught at Byre’s elbow, but she was clever enough not to say anything.

  They both stood there, easily within striking distance of the beast. When it finally tossed its head and lowered one foreleg in a bow, Byre felt as though he were hallucinating.

  “Isn’t this stealing?” Pelanor asked, before hastily adding, “Not that I care if it is . . .”

  “The Vaerli have no real concept of personal possessions,” Byre replied, as he slid his hand under the nykur’s nose. “Besides, there is no owning a beast like this. He is no Named Kindred that owes anyone anything. It is his choice to come and go.”

  When he turned and looked at her, he knew a mad grin was on his lips. “And he has chosen to go with us . . . at least for a bit.”

  None of the Vaerli around them took any notice as the nykur folded his forelegs and allowed them to mount on his back. The thought flashed across Byre’s mind that this was how his sister must have felt the first time she climbed onto Syris.

  Pelanor leapt up easily behind him. “What a wondrous beast,” she whispered. “Look, even his hair reminds me of home.” She held up her fingers so that Byre could see the stripes of blood on them.

  When she licked them off with her tongue, the nykur was not the only one to stir. “Waste not, want not,” she said with a slight smile.

  When the nykur rose, there was no choice but to hold onto the hair. Unlike Syris, this beast had no saddle on him, so they were both grateful of their leather pants and skirts. Unfortunately, their hands would not have such an easy time of it.

  It was a small pain compared to the greater ones he had endured. Byre wrapped his palms around two great clumps of the nykur’s hair. “Hold onto me,” he said to Pelanor, which she did gratefully.

  No one wanted the Witch to require more blood quickly. So it was Vaerli blood that flowed onto the nykur, which seemed only right.

  The beast trotted from camp, with them clinging to its backs and feeling like children who were doing something very naughty.

  “That way,” Pelanor said, pointing over Byre’s shoulder. “I smell the blood of something not Vaerli.”

  It should have been impossible, but on this day of great horror, it was almost a relief to hear her say that something was different. Something was coming.

  Once beyond the camp, the nykur began to run. The flex of muscle and power under him was a heady thing. Byre now began to understand why his sister was so wrapped up in the beast. The green, cutting hair flew in the wind of the nykur’s passing. It kissed Byre’s skin, leaving tiny cuts where it touched, but it was a small price to pay.

  Riding a horse was nothing compared to this. It felt as though if Byre asked, the nykur could carry him to the end of the world itself. It was a temptation.

  Pelanor would not let him just fly away. Her senses were keen, and all too quickly she was pointing again. “There!”

  Now he saw it, too. The disappearing shapes of Kindred, sliding beneath the Salt Plain, back into their own world. They neither stopped to speak to the two of them approaching on the nykur, nor gave any indication that they were aware of their arrival.

  However, they had left something behind.

  “Impossible,” Byre whispered, even as the nykur slowed first to a trot, then to a walk.

  How had the Caisah gotten to the gathering of the Vaerli, had always been the question. The answer could not be that the Kindred had brought him! That would be a betrayal of the pact between the Kindred and his people. Why would they have done such a thing?

  The nykur stopped feet from where the crumpled body of a man lay face down on the salt. The curly dark hair was immediately familiar to Byre; he would have known it anywhere. The costume that he wore was strange; it appeared almost to be a kilt, but armored. An unusual looking helmet had come off his head and lay a few feet away.

  Byre sprang down and picked it up. It looked like iron, but the curious thing was a line of tall feathers that ran down the middle. It made Byre think of a rooster vying for attention.

  With his foot, he rolled the man over. It was indeed the Caisah—but dressed most strangely, and in a position that no Vaerli from Byre’s time would have recognized.

  The timeless face was as relaxed and vulnerable as a baby’s, yet he knew it had committed terrible atrocities. It had ordered the death of Byre’s own father. What he would do with this information now was the question. A hard ball of vengeance began to gather in the pit of his belly, and the only thing Byre knew would soothe it was blood.

  Three nights the royal mistress waited, all nerves and lack of sleep. The Caisah did not call for her and the darkness was not her friend. Kelanim sat on the wide edge of the window and looked out over the sleeping city. Perilous and Fair was always at its best when under the gentle ministrations of night; the strange silvery writing and the undulating drawings that were carved on every wall and roof gleamed with moonlight. Only the Vaerli—and perhaps Kelanim’s love—knew what they meant.

>   They also made her think of the strange writing on the old looking piece of vellum that the centaur had her slip beneath the Caisah’s pillows. She twined one lock of her long, thick red hair about her finger and tried to hold back the rush of fear that suddenly filled her belly. The beast had said it would allow him to become human and mortal again. She herself had heard him wail and complain about how he hated his immortality, how it was driving him mad . . . so she could not have done a bad thing.

  The cool night breeze slipped in through the window and scampered over her skin. The delicious tug of it over her breasts pulled a little gasp from her throat. It, in turn, made her think of him. Wriggling slightly, Kelanim pulled up the hem of her night robe. It was very plain, and nothing like she would wear for him. It was made for comfort, not for seduction.

  She was just about to retire to her narrow bed, when movement caught her eye. White in the dark sky, a flicker of the thin moon on a shape fluttering down toward the conical outline of the Chapel of Wings.

  Wings. Kelanim sat up straight, suddenly more awake than she had been for hours. The chapel of the Swoop had been sealed up when they had proved disloyal. Their loss had sent the Caisah into a rage only matched by the one he had when the Hunter had been lost to him.

  Surely the Swoop would not come back now. That would be suicide for certain. Another possibility hit her. The Named. Many of them could fly. Gathering her robes around herself, Kelanim slipped from the windowsill and to her door.

  Easing it open a fraction, she was glad that she always kept the hinges so well oiled. Out in the corridor, all was quiet. The faint smell of rosewater lingered, so that meant the servants had been past recently. Every night the harem was sprinkled with the cloying water, thought to bring peace and beauty. To Kelanim it only smelled of desperation.

  Her perfume was of lilacs and cinnamon, a concoction that the Caisah had expressed an affinity for. Thinking of him still made the mistress’ heart beat a little faster. If one of the Named had come to Perilous, then she would be the one that they wanted to speak to. She paused only long enough to take her dark cloak off the hook behind the door and slip it on. It was not much protection from the dangers of the Court, but it at least hid her instantly recognizable hair and provided some chance of remaining in the shadows.

  The old chapel was part of the inner court, so she did not have to worry about going beyond the walls. Several times, though, she had to slip into alcoves and side corridors as eunuchs and female servants moved silently around the palace. Kelanim had never thought much on the army of lesser folk that kept Perilous running, but now it felt as though all of them were determined to keep her from reaching her goal.

  Patience had, at least until recently, been her greatest personal virtue. She felt none of it now. The possibility that the centaur had dangled in front of her like a gleaming jewel had made her ache for completion.

  Stealing through the corridors of Perilous like a thief, she began to fantasize about a time in the future where she might be able to stalk them as queen. Once the Caisah was a mortal, he would have no need of the other women. He would be able to think on things that normal men could, like love and raising a family.

  That glowing idea made her insides ache. A child for the Caisah, one born from her womb, would be the most spectacular thing.

  It made the whole mad scheme worth it.

  As Kelanim got closer to the chapel she felt the cold steal past her robe and thin slippers and into her bones. Her breath was now visible in front of her and she dared not touch the stone wall of the building. The seneschal had locked the great ironbound door of the chapel tight, and she didn’t have access to the key.

  As the mistress stepped closer, she saw with a little thrill that the door was ajar, with a thin slice of light breaking through into the corridor.

  She crept forward, certain at any moment one of the Rutilian Guard would appear and haul her off to the dungeons. She felt as though she was in danger, but curiously she was excited by it. As when she stood next to the Caisah, she felt truly alive.

  A sound was coming from inside the temple. The sound of wings.

  Emboldened by the thought that no one should be inside, Kelanim crept through the doorway. The chapel had an entranceway where penitents could take off their shoes, and wash their hands and feet in the small pool that stood just to the right of the next door. The water was long dried up, and the mistress did not feel the need for any ablutions.

  The Lady of Wings was not her scion, and she was not even sure she believed in the scions. With as much fear as she felt, standing there in the half-dark listening to the faint sound of wings, she felt no real reverence. The scions had led the various tribes and races through the White Void to this place, but they had never been present in her life. None of them had stood up for her when her own father had sold her into virtual slavery to the Caisah. Where had any of them been when she had wailed and cried out to them? She’d wept alone in her room, wracked with fear and horror at what her own parents had done. No scion had magically appeared to whisk her away to freedom.

  They were not gods, and they were not saviors, so there was no value in them.

  However, there was no denying that in this moment she did feel some primitive reaction to something in the other room.

  Kelanim, mistress to the Caisah, had never shied away from danger. She would not do so now.

  Slowly, carefully, she went forward into the chapel. It was shaped like the dome of a dovecote, an odd realization that brought a smile to her lips. The perches lined the ceiling and walls, which soared upward in a cone-shape. Strangely, it did not smell.

  One thing that the acolytes of the Lady of Wings had apparently been most studious about was hygiene. Even after all these months, it should have reeked of bird business, but instead it smelled of cedar and the memory of incense—almost like the Caisah’s bookshelves.

  The sound of wings broke her contemplation. Turning her head upward, Kelanim saw that one of the boards that the Caisah had ordered hammered over the lofty entrances of the chapel had come loose.

  The bird that had discovered the opening was sitting on a perch not far away, looking down at her with golden eyes. It was a snowy white owl, a creature of awe and beauty. Despite her disinterest in the Lady of Wings, Kelanim was not unmoved by the creature. It had to be one of the Swoop.

  It tilted its head and watched her as if she were a mouse in the barn. Perhaps to one of the Swoop, she was.

  It opened its wings and dropped toward her, transforming in mid-air.

  A young woman, around whom light seemed to hover, was dressed in silver armor, with a winged helmet on her head and a long sword strapped to her hip. Kelanim did not move as the girl landed on her feet. She tilted her head, much as she had in bird form, and regarded the mistress.

  “I know you,” she said in stern voice. “You are one of the Caisah’s whores. What are you doing in my Lady’s sanctuary?”

  The insult was a slap in the face to Kelanim. She was fairly sure she had never been called any such thing—even by the Hunter. “This is no longer your lady’s anything!” she shot back. “You and all of your Swoop are traitors to the rightful ruler of this land, and I shall tell him as much.”

  She was about to turn and leave when the press of ice cold steel against her neck gave her pause. The mistress looked along its length and swallowed hard. The look in the other woman’s eyes was particularly deadly.

  “I am here for the tyrant’s blood,” she said, her voice as cold as her blade. “You will show me to his rooms, and maybe I will let you live.”

  For a moment panic washed over Kelanim. She wanted to live just as any mortal did, but she did not want to show one lone assassin where her lover slept, either. The mistress pushed away fear and contemplated her options.

  “What has he ever done but make you a whore?” The woman’s eyes, still gold, gleamed in the little moonlight that managed to reach into the chapel. “I can change all that in a moment.”
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  Her tone was so imperious that for a long moment Kelanim was not sure how to react. She was outraged that one of the Swoop would return, but also wanted to keep her neck intact.

  Then something moved in the shadows of the chapel, and it was a sound that sent a thrill of fear down Kelanim’s back. The whisper of dead leaves blowing over stones. Many leaves. Only one thing that could make that sound in here.

  The girl of the Swoop must have understood, too. Her eyes darted past Kelanim and into the shadows. Maybe her owl eyes gave her greater abilities to see into the dark, but it did her little good.

  Kelanim had barely blinked before it was all over. The intruder turned and disappeared into her snowy owl shape, and then the creature in the shadow struck.

  The thick serpent’s head caught the owl even as her wings spread. The teeth and jaws closed on the bundle of white feathers, and the bird had only a moment to let out a shriek of pain before it was lost among the coils of the creature.

  Kelanim stood very, very still while the snake emerged out of the darkness. One of its heads was busy swallowing the owl, while the other five examined her with flat, dark eyes. The nagi.

  She’d understood instantly and instinctually. Her grandmother had told her about the nagi, with all its venom and its cunning. It was impossible that such a thing could really exist, but here it was, plucked from legend much as the centaur had been.

  A Named Kindred. That some Vaerli in the past had given a Kindred such a dire name was something she could not comprehend. The Nagi was a Manesto legend, present in the tales of all tribes. It was the beast of vengeance from the shadows, and used to terrify small children into behaving.

  Even now Kelanim’s skin crawled as the fan of heads rose above her. The smell invaded her nostrils, stealing away her breath. The nagi reeked of old leaves left to rot away, and the hot tang of blood.

  In the moonlight the snake shifted from side to side, and Kelanim’s eyes flickered to follow it. She did not move, standing as motionless as the statue of the Lady of Wings in the center of the chapel.