Kindred and Wings

by Philippa Ballantine

  Equo knew this was his doing, but was not sorry for it. What sort of life had his people led since the Caisah had hunted them? He laughed as the wind tugged at his jacket. Maybe it was the most fitting way for the Ahouri to finally end. The White Void was merely putting them out of their misery.

  He grabbed for Varlesh as the rock around them shifted. It seemed even the world was not stable enough to hold them, and they would be crushed between sky and land. As Equo tumbled from his feet, he caught the image of Si still somehow standing upright, silhouetted against the approaching White Void.

  They were all falling—at least, those who were not flying. Equo could have reached for the form, but it seemed such a waste of energy. Let the Void have them. They had teetered on its edge for long enough.

  When that thought flashed across his mind, he was suddenly rising. Hands that were impossibly large were holding him. Now it didn’t seem an easy thing to go.

  He swiveled around and looked into the flaming eyes of a Kindred. This one was not as the one that had latched onto Finn. This was larger and far more threatening. Around him other Kindred were also aiding the remaining Ahouri.

  Kindred who had not been seen for a very long time.

  Will you join with us, Form Bards? Will you join your blood to this world?

  Equo frowned at the question. “Conhaero is our home, it was our refuge. Take whatever is needed.”

  The pain that went through his body was like he had been speared by something. When he was left gasping in its wake, he stared down at his body, expecting to be bleeding everywhere—dying, even. Yet nothing was missing.

  When he looked up, he saw trails of Ahouri blood spiraling up to meet the blinding White Void. The roar of it was so deafening that nothing else could be made out over it. Even the screams and howls of his people. It might have been a song, or it might have been merely a primal outrage at the thing they feared most.

  Equo remained silent. The White Void had too many of their songs already; he would not give it another one.

  He watched impassively as the maw descended toward them, not flinching. His only thoughts were of Nyree and how he should have said so many things to her. Then, just as suddenly as it had disturbed the night, the tornado whirled back up, and away. The sound of its passing was like a beast abruptly silenced.

  The quiet after it was also as painful. The Ahouri gave up their winged shapes and dropped to the ground in human form. If they had been unconvinced by Equo’s admonishments, then the appearance of the White Void and the Kindred had changed all that.

  One by one, they bent in bows to the masters of Conhaero who stood in an impassive circle around them, watching with them with eyes that flamed. They were shapeless masses, but they did not menace the Ahouri as Equo might have thought they would. Together they had stopped the incursion of the White Void. What could they not do?

  As if it could read his thoughts, one of the Kindred turned to him. We have not turned the White Void aside, Master Ahouri. Merely beaten it back for a spell with your blood.

  “Then what did you take our damn blood for?” Varlesh blustered, though his eyes were wide with recently departed alarm.

  The Kindred were silent.

  “Something has changed,” Si ventured, edging closer to one of their number and peering at them. “Why have you come now?”

  It was impossible for the face of a creature made of rock to convey any real emotion, but the voice projected into their heads sounded almost contrite.

  We gave up on all surface dwellers. We had made a pact with the Vaerli, and they broke it. You might call what we felt despair, and we stayed long in the ground. One of our number, though, thought that change was possible. He dared to hope, and rose to find answers. He found more than that; he was Named by one you call friend.

  It could only be one person.

  “Finn Named a Kindred?” Equo felt as though there was no end to the strangeness of the day.

  Not just Named. Named him dragon.

  “A dragon,” Varlesh whispered, his eyes darting over the clear skies as if he were imagining him there right now. Even the Ahouri had not dared that shape. It carried weight and significance beyond just its form.

  As have others. The Kindred shifted through the earth drawing nearer—it could not be out of fear. You have already seen her in the skies. She is nearly ready to come out of hiding.

  Equo thought of what Azrul had glimpsed in the skies above their camp and shivered. “What do you want of the Ahouri?” he asked, knowing in his heart of hearts that the answer would cost his people dearly. “We are not slayers of dragons.”

  No, but you are part of the Pact now. Just as we have made pacts with the Phaerkorn, the Choana, many of the Manesto tribes. They all know what is at stake, and we are all bound together by blood. Now we come to you.

  The Ahouri all looked at each other. Though the Form Bards had long been allies of the Vaerli, they had never had much discourse with the Kindred. That the enigmatic masters of Conhaero should now be seeking to make pacts with all the newcomers was a definite change.

  Equo swallowed, thinking for a moment how one choice to call for a gathering was now making his trio leaders in a people that had never had much call for them. When he looked around at how few there were, he could also see how none of them were stepping forward to complain. They were indeed a people on the edge of non-existence.

  “What do you need from us?” Varlesh spoke for them, tilting his head up and looking as confident as he could manage. It was a bluff, but one that Equo was sure he didn’t have left in himself.

  You have something sacred and necessary to this world’s survival. You know and love her. You must bring her to the Belly of the World, where she will be tested along with all the other Vaerli. It is their last chance.

  Equo felt as though he had been punched in the gut. “The Vaerli?” he blurted out. “You mean to kill them all, then. The curse will set them all on fire. They will die if they gather as we have tonight!”

  All must come, or all must die. That is their calling. You must only bring the made seer to us. Without her there will be no chance of survival. The seers must stand together or the White Void will consume this world.

  One of the Kindred shifted away from his peers, and his burning face turned back the way Equo, Si and Varlesh had come.

  Already, the Phage mean to make her theirs. Fly if you want to save her.

  Equo had the song already forming, but it was Si who turned back for a moment. “And the Ahouri?”

  We have a task for them. The Kindred replied. They will be our heralds, and sing the songs that are needed. Have no fear for them. Fly, or lose your seer forever!

  They let the notes of change surround them, becoming the dragonets once more, and turned their heads back they way they had come. Equo was at the head of their little formation, his mind already focused on Nyree, the Kindred almost forgotten.

  Without any further instruction from his brother, Finn sat down at the base of the rock, propped his hands up on his knees, and held the loop of yarn before him. It seemed like such an everyday thing to lay so much on.

  When he glanced up, Ysel was watching him with absolute clarity in his eyes. He had not moved from his spot of the rock, and looked like he could have waited there forever. Such patience in one that seemed so young did not seem right.

  “Too much thinking,” Finn whispered to himself under his breath. “Time for some doing.”

  He had not worked the pattern in the thread since before his Naming of Wahirangi. A lot had happened since then, and he recalled that even before then, the pattern had fought back against him.

  “You’re different now,” Ysel said, giving his brother a hesitant smile. “You know what and who you are.”

  The clamor of thoughts would hardly let him go, but he thought back to his talespinner training. Koth had taught all the youngsters the art of preparing for a performance.

  Finn rolled his head round a few times with his ey
es closed, letting his mind quiet as best he could. He concentrated on his breathing as if it were the most important thing in the world. That empty space was usually where he found his strength to speak before an audience, but it was also the place where he had found the pattern to reach Ysel.

  Now in that space, he recalled the first time he had woven the pattern. He’d been sitting beside a meager fire, on a long night when he had been chased from another town. The stars had been his only companions, and his belly had been aching with hunger. One of his old coats had become frayed, and he’d played idly with the thread before pulling it loose. Finn recalled the feeling of utter hopeless that had washed over him as he had played with the piece of yarn. He could never say at what point he had tied it into a loop and begun to mindlessly repeat the child’s game.

  Holding on to those memories, Finn began to wind the thread into the familiar patterns. He did not think of what his brother wanted from him, not even what a certain dragon had seen in him. Instead Finn thought of a face cupped in his hand. He thought of dark eyes, and lips that had been made for kissing and smiling, yet had seen not much of either of those things. He recalled how happy he had been, and how nothing else had seemed to matter in those brief days. Despite the fact he had told her that she was nothing to him, and denied her to his mother, she was still in there.

  The string tightened, and Finn looked down in shock to realize that he had made an intricate pattern that almost felt in danger of cutting his fingers off. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to be worried about, but for a second he panicked just a fraction. If this was his power it was not much of a one, to make a trap out of a children’s game.

  “Here,” Ysel said, sliding down off the rock, and taking a position up opposite his brother. “Let me help.”

  He inserted his fingers into the pattern, and pulled the design back and forward a few times. For a moment it felt like the yarn itself was going to break, but in between the tugging between the brothers, and some low cursing from Finn, the yarn sprung apart.

  Finn and Ysel exchanged a look. The shape was a cat’s eye, held between their fingers.

  “I thought you said it was my power,” Finn said, examining the pattern they had made at as much distance as he could manage without pulling it apart.

  “I thought . . .” the boy stammered, and suddenly the talespinner felt sorry for him. He’d been held for a long time in the belly of chaos, and then been hidden away for so long—yet he remained in essence a child.

  “I’m joking.” Finn tilted his head. “I think perhaps the magic works best for us together. Alone I always had trouble with it. It looks like the cat’s eye formation, all right.”

  “Then look through it,” Ysel said, though his voice held no real conviction.

  Carefully with their hands working in unison, Finn was able to raise the thread to act like a pane of glass. At first he was looking into blackness, darker than night or loss of hope, but then it cleared through gray, white, and finally flaring red. It burned so hot that Finn almost jerked his head away.

  When the burning cleared enough, he was looking out over a plain, smooth and dimly lit by a red moon. It was the moon of Conhaero, but masked by clouds that boiled with dangerous colors. A tall mountain rising dark against the skyline punctuated the plain. It was spewing out thick clouds, and the rattle of rocks sounded all around.

  Finn saw another shape in the clouds, a dragon with wings spread, sailing the skies above the withering mountain, but it did not have the golden sides and curved head of Wahirangi. Its longer, more serpentine shape had a crest of long, sharp spines down its back. He squinted, concentrating harder. A small shape clung to its back, on a saddle. It was far too small to be an adult, and a streamer of dark hair flew out from behind it.

  Below the dragon, on the edge of the lava and fire, stood four figures facing the interior of the volcano. None of them moved, despite the danger and the dragon apparently circling lower toward them. Their hands were linked, and Finn could feel something from them. Unity. Determination. It was like a lodestone pulling him in.

  His gaze darted upwards again, and he realized that the dragon was now terribly close to the figures. Now all he felt was terror for them. He had to warn them somehow.

  The dragon and rider turned their heads toward him, and those eyes flared brighter even than the red light all around them. They were staring out at him, and this dragon, like Wahirangi, could see right into him. There was no escaping it.

  The yarn caught fire around Finn’s vision, and he found himself throwing it to the ground with a curse. Ysel had also jerked himself backward, and eyed the smoldering piece of thread. For a moment he looked like a normal child caught at something he was not supposed to meddle with.

  When he cleared his throat, his voice came out slightly squeaky. “We can get more yarn; it’s not the thread that is important.”

  Finn climbed to his feet. He felt washed out and very, very old. “But what we saw is. That place . . .” his voice ran out.

  “The Belly of the World, some have called it,” Wahirangi said. Neither of the brothers had noticed his approach, which for such a large beast was disturbing.

  “I have never heard of it,” Finn said, somewhat warily. He’d studied his whole life the cultures and legends of the people of Conhaero. “Where is it?”

  The dragon’s head turned toward the sea. “Out there.” The life of a sailor was not a long or profitable one. The constant changing of the land made the sea even more unpredictable. Finn knew fishermen aplenty, but none that had ever sailed out of sight of the land. Ever-changing currents and terrifying monsters of the deep kept them close to home.

  “In the ocean?” Ysel asked what Finn was thinking.

  “No,” Fida replied. “The Belly is the place for the Kindred only. Not even shared with the Vaerli when the Pact was still whole. It is the place where chaos itself is birthed into the world. The place where it should journey out into the void to balance the forces of stagnation.”

  “I saw a dragon there,” Finn interrupted her. “A dragon that was not you, Wahirangi.”

  The beast’s opalescent eyes fixed on him, and he had nowhere to look but into them. “You Named me, Finnbarr the Fox, and it was a mighty deed, but there are those who have might of their own.”

  “The Phage,” Fida said, crossing her arms. “I understand that you felt one trying to take Talyn from you on the scared Salt.”

  “They can make dragons?” Finn exclaimed. “Then what chance is there?”

  “Only one other can do as you have,” the dragon said soothingly. “But it is one you will have to face if the destruction of this world is to be avoided.”

  Ysel, who had been silent up until now, took hold of his brother’s arm, tugging him around. “You saw the four shapes on the edge of the volcano. Of those four shapes, all of them were seers of the Vaerli.”

  Now Finn began to wonder if his brother was out of his mind. Surely the strain of living his life just out of sync with the rest of the world had done something to him.

  “There are only ever two seers at a time in the Vaerli,” he said slowly, so that Ysel would not be insulted. “The born and the made.”

  “Indeed, there were only meant to be two until the Vaerli were ready to travel the White Void,” Ysel said, with a shake of his head. “But the coming of another two was needed, to act as anchors to hold the Vaerli in this place, while the first two went into the Void. There were always meant to be four.” His blue eyes held Finn’s. “You know who the new seers are, don’t you?”

  Son of a seer. Namer of a dragon. Finn had been forced to come to terms with many things since the disaster on the sacred Salt, and now he knew why. Why his mother had sacrificed herself, and why she had protected both of her sons as best she could. All the little coincidences—the voices of doubt in his head, the trick with the thread, and even his ability to break open Talyn’s memory—now made sense.

  He swallowed hard, looking around at the fou
r sets of eyes watching him ever so closely. Did they imagine he was about to crack under the stress of it all?

  He walked to the edge of the cliff, to where the sun was beginning its slow descent into the ocean. “We are the seers, Ysel, you and I, but I have no idea what to do.”

  “You stand up for your mother’s people,” Fida said, and when he turned to face her, Finn was surprised to see she how sad she looked. He was used to the implacability of the Vaerli, but not to seeing genuine emotion. It made him think of Talyn, and the smile on her face when she had remembered to love him. With that love he felt he could accomplish anything. That was why he had begun his campaign against the Caisah in the first place.

  He tried to hold on to that memory. “I can do that,” he replied, though his voice sounded weak to his own ears.

  “You won’t be alone,” his brother assured him.

  “But what about the other two seers?”

  Wahirangi closed his eyes for a moment. “Nyree is the made seer. She studied with your mother and would have been made.”

  “And the born seer?” Finn pressed.

  The dragon’s head retracted, now towering over the mortals with the dying light running over his golden skin.

  “Born but not yet revealed,” Fida whispered. “The real problem is the Phage. They have—”

  Ysel held up his hand, and the woman snapped her mouth shut. “Before any of that,” Ysel said softly, “there is also someone you need to meet in the village. Someone who watched you for a long time. From the moment you came here as a child like me.”

  The talespinners of Elraban Island had certainly a sense of theatre in how they lived. As Talyn crouched low over Syris' bunching shoulders, she caught glimpses of their homes through his flying mane.

  The cliffs turned into a promontory that thrust out into the pounding ocean, before becoming a series of broken islands stuttering their way into the waves, smaller and shorter as they went.