The Lord of the Changing Wind is… attempting to change the course of the winds, answered Opailikiita.
There was a strange kind of humor to the griffin’s voice, but it was not a familiar or comfortable humor and Kes did not understand it. She looked around, trying to find the lie of country she knew in the sweep of the shadowed desert. But she could not recognize anything. If she simply walked downhill, she supposed she would eventually find the edge of the desert… if it still had an edge, which now seemed somehow a little unlikely, as though Kes had watched the whole world change to desert in her dreams. Maybe she had; she could not remember her dreams. Only darkness shot through with fire…
Kereskiita—said the young brown griffin.
“My name is Kes!” Kes said, with unusual urgency, somehow doubting, in the back of her mind, that this was still true.
Yes, said Opailikiita. But that is too little to call you. You should have more to your name. Kairaithin called you kereskiita. Shall I?
“Well, but… kereskiita? What is that?”
It would be… “fire kitten,” perhaps, Opailikiita said after a moment. And, with unexpected delicacy, Do you mind?
Kes supposed she didn’t actually mind. She asked, “Opailikiita? That’s kiita, too.”
Glittering flashes of amusement flickered all around the borders of Kes’s mind. Yes. Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike, said the young griffin. Opailikiita is my familiar name. It is… “little spark”? Something close to that. Kairaithin calls me by that name. I am his kiinukaile. It would be… “student,” I think. If you wish, you may call me Opailikiita. As you are also Kairaithin’s student.
“I’m not!” Kes protested, shocked.
You assuredly will be, said another voice, hard and yet somehow amused, a voice that slid with frightening authority around the edges of Kes’s mind. Kairaithin was there suddenly, not striding up as a man nor settling from the air on eagle’s wings, but simply there. He was in his true form: a great eagle-headed griffin with a deadly curve to his beak, powerful feathered forequarters blending smoothly to a broad, muscled lion’s rear. His pelt was red as smoldering coals, his wings black with only narrow flecks of red showing, like a banked fire flickering through a heavy iron grate. He sat like a cat, upright, his lion’s tail curling around taloned eagle’s forefeet. The tip of his tail flicked restlessly across the sand, the only movement he made.
You have made yourself acquainted with my kiinukaile? the griffin mage said to Kes. It is well you should become acquainted with one another.
“I am not your student!” Kes declared furiously, but then hesitated, a little shocked by the vehemence of her own declaration.
She is fierce, Opailikiita said to Kairaithin. Someday this kitten will challenge even you. She sounded like she approved.
Perhaps, Kairaithin said to the young griffin, but not today. There was neither approval nor disapproval in his powerful voice. He added, to Kes, What will you do, a young fire mage fledging among creatures of earth? I will teach you to ride the fiery wind. Who else will? Who else could?
Kes wanted to shout, I’m not a mage! Only she remembered holding the golden heat of the sunlight in her cupped hands, of tasting the names of griffins like ashes on her tongue. She could still recall every name now. She said stubbornly, “I want to go home. You never said you would keep me here! I healed your friends for you. Take me home!”
Kairaithin tilted his head in a gesture reminiscent of an eagle regarding a small animal below its perch; not threatening, exactly, but dangerous, even when he did not mean to threaten.
He melted suddenly from his great griffin form to the smaller, slighter shape of a man. But to Kes, he seemed no less a griffin in that form. The fire of his griffin’s shadow glowed faintly in the dark. He said to Kes like a man quoting, “Fire will run like poetry through your blood.”
“I don’t care if it does!” Kes cried, taking a step toward him. “I healed all your people! I learned to use fire and I healed them for you! What else do you want?”
Kairaithin regarded her with a powerful, hard humor that was nothing like warm human amusement. He answered, “I hardly know. Events will determine that.”
“Well, I know what I want! I want to go home!”
“Not yet,” said Kairaithin, unmoved. “This is a night for patience. Do not rush forward toward the next dawn and the next again, human woman. Days of fire and blood will likely follow this night. Be patient and wait.”
“Blood?” Kes thought of the griffins’ terrible injuries, of Kairaithin saying Arrows of ice and ill-intent. She said, horrified, “Those cold mages won’t come here!”
Harsh amusement touched Kairaithin’s face. “One would not wish to predict the movements of men. But, no. As you say, I do not expect the cold mages of Casmantium to come here. Or not yet. We must wait to see what events determine.”
Kes stared at him. “Events. What events?”
The amusement deepened. “If I could answer that, little kereskiita, I would be more than a mage. I may guess what the future will bring. But so may you. And neither of us will know until it unrolls at last before us.”
Kes felt very uneasy about these events, whatever Kairaithin guessed they might entail. She said, trying for a commitment, suspecting she wouldn’t get one, “But you’ll let me go home later. You’ll take me home. At dawn?”
The griffin mage regarded her with dispassionate intensity. “At dawn, I am to bring you before the regard of the Lord of Fire and Air.”
The king of the griffins. Kes thought of the great bronze-and-gold king, not lying injured before her but staring down at her in implacable pride and strength. He had struck at her in offended pride, if it had not been simple hostility. Now he would make some judgment about her, come to some decision? She was terrified even to think of it.
She remembered the gold-and-copper griffin, Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu, saying to Kairaithin, You were right to bring us to the country of men and right to seek a young human. Maybe that was the question the king would judge: Whether Kairaithin had been right to bring her into the desert and teach her to use the fire, which belonged to griffins and was nothing to do with men? Escaile Sehaikiu had said Kairaithin was right. But she suspected the king would decide that Kairaithin had been wrong. She gave a small, involuntary shake of her head. “No…”
“Yes.”
“I…”
“Kereskiita. Kes. You may be a human woman, but you are now become my kiinukaile, and that is nothing I had hoped to find here in this country of earth. You do not know how rare you are. I assure you, you have nothing to fear.” Kairaithin did not speak kindly, nor gently, but with a kind of intense relief and satisfaction that rendered Kes speechless.
I will be with you. I will teach you, Opailikiita promised her.
In the young griffin’s voice, too, Kes heard a similar emotion, but in her it went beyond satisfaction to something almost like joy. Kes found herself smiling in involuntary response, even lifting a hand to smooth the delicate brown-and-gold feathers below the griffin’s eye. Opailikiita turned her head and brushed Kes’s wrist very gently with the deadly edge of her beak in a caress of welcome and… if the slim griffin did not offer exactly friendship, it was something as strong, Kes felt, and not entirely dissimilar.
Kairaithin’s satisfaction and Opailikiita’s joy were deeply reassuring. But more than reassurance, their reactions implied to Kes that, to the griffins, her presence offered a desperately needed—what, reprieve?—which they had not truly looked to find. Kairaithin had said the cold mages would not come here. Not yet, he had said. But, then, some other time? Perhaps soon?
I have no power to heal, Kairaithin had said to her. But then he had taught her to heal. Kes hesitated. She still wanted to insist that the griffin mage take her home. Only she had no power to insist on anything, and she knew Kairaithin would not accede. And… was it not worth a little time in the griffins’ desert to learn to pour sunlight from her hands and make whole even the
most terrible injury? Especially if cold mages would come here and resume their attack on the griffins? She flinched from the thought of arrows of ice coming out of the dark, ruining all the fierce beauty of the griffins. If she did not heal them, who would?
Kairaithin held out his hand to her, his eyes brilliant with dark fire. “I will show you the desert. I will show you the paths that fire traces through the air. Few are the creatures of earth who ever become truly aware of fire. I will show you its swift beauty. Will you come?”
All her earlier longing for her home seemed… not gone, but somehow distant. Flames rose all around the edges of Kes’s mind, but this was not actually disagreeable. It even felt… welcoming.
Kes took a step forward without thinking, caught herself, drew back. “I’m not your student,” she declared. Or she meant to declare it. But the statement came out less firmly than she’d intended. Not exactly like a plea, but almost like a question. She said, trying again for forcefulness and this time managing at least to sound like she meant it, “My sister will be worried about me—”
“She will endure your absence,” Kairaithin said indifferently. “Are you so young you require your sister’s leave to come and go?”
“No! But she’ll be worried!”
“She will endure. It will be better so. A scattering of hours, a cycle of days. Can you not absent yourself so long?” Kairaithin continued to hold out his hand. “You are become my student, and so you must be for yet some little time. Your sister will wait for you. Will you come?”
“Well…” Kes could not make her own way home. And if she had to depend on the griffin mage to take her home, then she didn’t want to offend him. And if she had to stay in the desert for a little while anyway, she might as easily let him show her its wonders. Wasn’t that so?
She was aware that she wanted to think of justifications for that decision. But wasn’t it so?
Come, whispered Opailikiita around the edges of her mind. We will show you what it means to be a mage of fire.
Kes did not feel like any sort of mage. But she took the necessary step forward and let Kairaithin take her hand.
The griffin mage did not smile. But the expression in his eyes was like a smile. His strange, hot fingers closed hard around her hand, and the world tilted out from under them.
The desert at night was black and a strange madder-tinted silver; the sky was black, and the great contorted cliffs, and the vast expanses of sand that stretched out in all directions. But the red moon cast a pale, crimson-tinged luminescence over everything, and far above the stars were glittering points of silver fire. Now and again, in the distance, a coruscation of golden sparks scattered across the dark, and Kes knew a griffin had taken to the air.
Kes sat above the world, high atop stone, under the innumerable stars. Kairaithin, wearing the shape of a man as he might have worn a mask, stood at the very edge of the cliff, gazing out into the blackness. From time to time, he glanced momentarily toward Kes and Opailikiita, but he always turned again to look outward. Like a sentinel. But Kes could not decide whether he seemed to be waiting for a signal from a friend—though she wondered whether griffins exactly had friends—or from an enemy. She knew very well griffins had those.
Kairaithin’s arms were crossed over his chest, and now and again when he glanced her way, he smiled slightly—not a human smile. It was even less a human smile, Kes had decided, than his shadow was a human shadow. But she could not decide exactly where the difference lay.
Kes was sitting cross-legged on the stone, leaning back against Opailikiita’s feathered shoulder. The young griffin was teaching Kes how to summon fire into the palm of her hand, and how to let it sink down into her blood. Fire will run like poetry through your blood, Kairaithin had said to Kes, and she now understood, at least a little, what the griffin-mage had meant. She called the fire out of her body again, set it dancing once more in her hand, and grinned swiftly up at Opailikiita.
Good, said the young griffin, bending her head down to look at the little flame. She clicked her beak gently in satisfaction or pleasure or approval—something at least akin to those things. Fire becomes part of your nature.
“Yes, I suppose,” agreed Kes. The little flame in her hand was a pleasant warmth. It felt oddly familiar, as though she had spent her life holding fire in her hands—it felt as comfortable as holding an egg, only more lively. More like holding a kitten, maybe. Something small and alive. Something that might scratch, but not seriously. She closed her hand carefully around the flame. For a moment it flickered at her past the cage of her fingers. Then it was gone.
Could you call it back? Opailikiita asked.
Kes looked up at the slim griffin, then down at her closed fist. She opened her hand again, palm up, and drew fire from Opailikiita, from the stone, from the desert air. The flame bloomed again in her palm. “It’s not even hard,” Kes said, smiling.
It is always easy to follow your nature, agreed Opailikiita.
“I never knew…”
Opailikiita began to answer, but Kairaithin said first, “Every man, and every griffin, believes he possesses a fixed and singular nature. But sometimes our distinctive self proves more mutable than we might suppose possible.” He was not smiling now, but Kes did not understand the expression she saw in his eyes. But she did not have time to wonder about it, for then he straightened away from the pillar he’d leaned against and glanced away, toward the east. “The sun rises,” he said.
It did. There was nothing of the pearl-gray and lavender dawn Kes might have watched from her window at home. Here, the return of the sun seemed altogether a wilder and fiercer phenomenon. First the merest edge of gold touched the sky over the tips of the mountains, and then the sunrise piled up behind the black teeth of the mountains in towering gold and purple, and then the burning sun itself seemed somehow almost to leap away from the mountains and into the desert sky, fiercer and larger here than it ever seemed in the gentler country of men.
The light was probably gentle and warm in the cold heights, but there was nothing gentle about the sunlight that poured heavily across the desert. Kes thought she could almost hear it come, as she might have heard flood-waters roar down from the mountain heights. Heat, thick as honey, filled the air. It was not exactly unpleasant, but it was very powerful. Kes swayed under its force, let the fire she held flicker out, and put her hands over her face to shield her eyes. She blinked hard, expecting her eyes to water in the brilliance, but there were no tears.
“Opailikiita,” said Kairaithin in edged reproof, “that is not entirely a creature of fire.”
Yes, answered the young griffin, though in a faintly uncertain tone. She stretched out a wing to shelter Kes from the fierceness of the sun. Light glowed through the feathers above Kes’s head, but the brilliance was much attenuated.
“Useful as a momentary solution. However, as a permanent resolution of the difficulty, it lacks elegance,” Kairaithin said drily. He put out a hand, and stone shuddered around them. A hot wind came up, driving sand whirling about the plateau where they stood exposed to the sky. Opailikiita reached out hastily with her other wing, enclosing Kes entirely in a sweep of rich brown and gold.
Then the wind died. Opailikiita drew her wings away, and Kes, blinking around, saw that tall twisting pillars now stood all around the edge of the flat top of the cliff, crowned with a slab of red stone. The rough hall that was thus formed was nothing at all like anything men would have built. She had not exactly understood before that making was truly a thing of men. But this hall—rough, but blatantly powerful—was, she realized, probably as close to making or building as griffins ever came.
She had no time to think about this, however, for into the stone hall, riding on the wind and the light, came Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu, Lord of Fire and Air. His name beat like poetry or fire through Kes’s blood, overwhelming as the desert sun itself. He seemed huge, much bigger than she remembered; his wings seemed to close out half the sky. The wind roared through h
is wings; his talons flashed like polished bronze; his eyes were gold as the sun.
To the king’s left flew the copper-and-gold griffin, Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu, who had told Kes, When you would set a name to burn against the dark, think of me. Escaile Sehaikiu would burn against the dark like a conflagration, Kes thought; he blazed with such brilliance that he might almost have been feathered in fire even now. To the king’s right flew a female griffin—whose name Kes did not know, as she had never healed her—her red wings heavily barred with gold, lion body gold as the pure metal.
The king came down at the edge of the cliff, tucking his wings in close to fit between the narrow stone pillars and stalking forward with lion grace. He turned his head one way to stare at Kairaithin, then as his companions came under the roof after him, he turned that fierce golden stare on Kes.
His gaze, she found, was less readable than even the regard of an eagle or a lion. Kes wanted to cower down like a rabbit before that proud, incomprehensible stare. But Opailikiita nudged her gently in the back and said softly, her voice creeping delicately around the outermost edge of Kes’s mind, Remember you are Kairaithin’s kiinukaile and my iskarianere, and remember your pride.
Kes had no idea what iskarianere meant—except she did, in a way, even though Opailikiita had not exactly explained it to her. When the slim brown griffin said it to her, something of the sense of the word unfolded like a spark blooming into a flame. Kes put a hand out almost blindly, burying her fingers in the fine feathers of Opailikiita’s throat and whispering, “Sister.” And though it might not be exactly true in familiar human terms, though she did not really understand what the griffin meant by the word or what it encompassed, Kes was comforted and found the courage to stand up straight.
Human woman, said the Lord of Fire and Air. The king’s voice slammed down across Kes’s mind like a blow, so that she staggered under it and had to brace herself against Opailikiita’s shoulder. The king’s voice did not exactly hurt her—not exactly—but it came down on her with the heavy power of the desert sun. He said implacably, Human mage. And will you become a mage of fire?
Lord of the Changing Winds Page 7
