The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2)

by Elizabeth Kerner

  Poor thing. Game isn't very plentiful, that time of the year. She licked her claws, then licked my hand clean even of the scent, then walked very calmly to the stream and washed.

  I couldn't think what to do with her, but in the end it wasn't really up to me. She stayed with me all that year, through summer and harvest and all through the winter, until spring was come again. She had grown quite a bit in that year, must have been nearly her full height, for towards the third moon of the year it was like living with a horse in the house. I was grateful for my own height and strength then, for I could just about make her shift herself when I needed her to move. Still, she had learned for the most part not to knock things over. She slept in front of the fire and I moved my chair well to one side, and we managed well enough.

  By the end of that year I couldn't imagine life without her.

  We had been constant companions. I had hunted for her, fed her up—and that took some doing, I'll tell you for nothing— but when she was old enough and strong enough, just after the Autumn Balance-day, she got the idea, and after that she provided for me. I ate better that winter than ever I had, enough that I could share with others in the nearby village who were in need of a bit of help and grateful indeed for meat in winter.

  And she was someone to talk to. I spoke to her as to another soul, and though I don't think she understood my words, she seemed to try to reply. As time went on, I almost thought I heard a word every now and then. I must have been a little daft.

  In spring, though, when the first warm wind blew through my little clearing, when I'd just put the early vegetables in the ground, she came out and felt the breeze. She lifted her head, sniffed for all she was worth, and spread her wings. She'd had trouble with them as they were growing, when the skin and the tendons stretched it bothered her, and I'd tried all my simples until I found a few that helped her. A soft ointment made with oil, mint, pepper and a scented resin, much as I'd use to salve an old man's bones in winter, seemed to work best, and she chose the resin herself. Nosed it off the shelf, she did, while I was wondering what would be best. It would be one of the ones I have to trade for, and to be honest it convinced me I'd been right about her being female. I usually saved it for perfumes to sell at market, but— well, I couldn't deny her, now could I? So she not only had her pains soothed, she smelled of the most amazing combination of exotic perfume and dragon.

  However, when I saw her ruffling her wings like that, I got a feeling I didn't like. I knew the time was coming. It wasn't natural for either of us, living together, and though she had taken well enough to my ways they were not hers. I hoped she'd be able to learn to fly on her own, though. Not as if I could teach her!

  Didn't need to. She tried a few times, flapping and looking terribly awkward, then somehow she managed to stay aloft for a moment or two. That did it. She just kept at it after that, and by the next moon she was flying better than I thought was possible for the creatures. I had always heard they could barely fly, but she seemed to manage it without any trouble.

  Then one morning, as spring was drawing towards summer, I rose after her and found her in the most open bit of the clearing. She was waiting for me. I don't know how I knew, but I did. She was leaving and this was farewell. I walked straight up to her and she watched my every step. I put my arms around her neck and hugged her, and she wrapped her wings about me just for a moment.

  It felt like saying farewell to a daughter, and I couldn't just let her go like that, could I? So I held her big face in my hands and gazed into her eyes. "Fare thee well, then, my Salera," I said, stroking her cheek ridge. "Kitling. Lady keep you wherever you fare, little one. I'll miss you. Fly well and strong."

  She closed her eyes and touched my forehead to hers, that bump on her forehead warm against my own brow—she was always so warm to the touch—then she straightened up and looked at me. She said something then, I'd swear, but even after all that time I couldn't understand it. I think I tried in my mind to make it sound like my name, but in truth it was a long way off from that.

  "Lady keep you," I murmured, and stood back. She crouched, then leapt, her great haunches launching her into the air, her wings sweeping down, beating fast. I watched her flapping madly until she found warm air. Then she stretched out her wings and rose smoothly in a gliding spiral upwards. I give you my word, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She turned her face south—deeper into the forest, towards the Sulkith Hills—and was gone.

  "Blast the child, she's trodden all over my new lavender," I muttered. "Wretched dragon. She never did look where she was going in the garden." Then I realised I'd walked on fully half of the new plants myself and broken most of them, and I started to swear at her, at myself, at the seedlings for being in the wrong place. I was so angry I could hardly see straight.

  Well, it might have been anger.

  I never saw her again, though I surely did look. I stayed there another two years, tending my garden, helping those I could, selling my potions and oils and perfumes at the market, waiting for Salera. She never came back. In the end I decided I had to find out what I could about her kind, for I'd never known a thing save what I learned from her, and she was raised by me, poor soul.

  The only place I knew to go was Verfaren, where the Healers are trained. I'd heard they had a library, writings from as far back as writing went. Surely someone must have studied the creatures in all those years. So I packed up my bits, left the door open and the fire laid just in case she returned, and went to learn what I could at the College of Mages.

  That was seven, nearly eight years ago now. I learned what there was to learn but I had to search the library through to find it. I helped in the garden to earn my keep. In time I came to know the library so well that when the master of the books was taken ill, he asked me to stay and help. I stayed, and helped, and when he passed on I was asked by Magister Berys himself if I would take the books for my work. I told him true that I hadn't come planning to stay, but that if he was willing I'd stay awhile, until my way was clear to me and it was time to leave.

  "And when will that be?" he asks me.

  "When the wind's right and the sky calls," I answered. It wasn't respectful, but then I never liked him. To be honest I was only staying to honour old Paulin. "And I'll not give up the garden."

  He just laughed, and said that if I knew the books and didn't mind the students, it was good enough for him, and he'd get a gardener into the bargain. So I've stayed on here, learning what I could, getting to know a few of the students passing through, enjoying their different views on life and learning. The only difficulty I have is putting up every year with the new young girls, who find a tall, fair-haired man not so much older than themselves a great temptation, or perhaps a challenge. I'm not boasting, you understand, it's all a bit wearisome as far as I'm concerned. I can't help my looks, and I don't encourage or take advantage of the girls.

  However, it has changed me, being around so much learning. I've read everything I could find, and I speak differently now than I used to. You can't read so many words without starting to use some of them. My sister laughs at me but I think she is secretly impressed. She was the only other person who ever knew Salera and she misses her. I go back home occasionally, to visit with Lyra and to make sure my cottage in the wood has not fallen down. In fact I was there before midwinter just past, making all snug before the frost set in. I still returned to Verfaren though, to see in the new year, despite the fact that I have never felt that I belonged here. I have never felt the need to go back home, either.

  Until a few years ago, when I met Vilkas and Aral. Interesting that almost the only lass who has been able to see me as no more than a friend from the beginning has been Aral, and that she has captured my heart so completely.

  Life does that to you sometimes, when you're not looking.

  Maikel

  I was speechless with wonder. "Marik? My lord?" I whispered, not daring to believe what I saw.

  "Who did you think it was, M
aikel? And what's wrong with your eyes?" he asked, frowning at me. Berys laughed.

  "He has not been well, Marik. Worn out with fussing over you. Still, you are both under my protection now, so there is no need for concern."

  Marik seemed to get angry at that but he was not really strong enough for anger yet. "For now," he murmured. Why he should be angry at Berys's words I could not understand. I worried for a moment that he was not as fully recovered as he seemed.

  "How is your leg, master?" I asked. He seemed surprised. He glanced down and flexed the muscles. "It hardly hurts at all."

  "Wait until you stand up," chuckled Berys. "Maikel tells me you have been unable to get out of that bed for more than five minutes together ever since you returned, and that has been full four moons by my reckoning. It is time you took some exercise." He grabbed the blankets and tugged them off the bed. "Come, man, it's midmorning, time you were up and doing."

  The Magister dragged my Lord Marik out of bed and got him to stand, which is more than I had managed to do for many months, but I barely noticed it. He was weak, he was disoriented, but he was himself again. His mind was healed. I could scarcely believe it. I had not yet dispersed my Healer's sight and without thinking I used it to look into his mind.

  No longer did I see mat desert mat had haunted me for so long. His mind appeared at first glance to be much like any other, bright with flashing thought and swirling with colour, but there was an obvious difference just below the surface.

  I know not how I may explain this to you. Imagine a hut made of twigs and branches of all different shapes and sizes. At first glance it appears solid, but when you look closely you see that it has been made hurriedly from shoddy materials, and the nails that hold it together are poorly forged and too short. It looks whole but one good wind would blow it to pieces. Or a bridge—yes, that's it, imagine a single slim bridge spanning an abyss, barely long enough to reach across. There are no handrails and it shakes at every step. It is possible to cross, but the link is dangerously weak and could shatter at any time.

  For a moment I stared at Berys, horrified. He had not healed Marik, he had patched him together with thin cord and weak glue. It was a dreadful, irresponsible thing to do, for if that patch came undone my lord would be worse off than before. The undermind trusts only once. If Marik's mind shattered this fragile link, it would never accept Berys's healing again. It would probably never accept any healing again.

  I looked up to protest, then thought better of it. Best not to mention such a thing in Marik's presence. I must speak to Magister Berys later, alone.

  In the meantime, Marik practiced walking. He was dreadfully weak, as might be expected, but he managed a few steps several times that day. And he finally ate real food, not just the infants' mush we had managed to get down him before.

  Perhaps the mend would hold. Certainly the habit of sanity was the best cure. The longer he remained well, the stronger his mind would become. But I didn't like the slapdash way he had been healed, and I resolved to say something about it when I could catch Berys on his own.

  Salera

  I sought him then, following instinct, even as I trembled at the thought of the journey before me and wondered if I could find the place where I was raised. I had travelled far and wide in the years between and was not certain where to look, but there lived in my mind a quiet woodland up in the hills, where there was a cave once and pain, and a house in a clearing with a stream at the side. I knew somehow in the confused heart of me that it was there I would find him.

  As I followed the mind's trace that drew me to him, I saw many of my own kindred in passing. Some came to me with a glad sound and that was very good. I saw more than I had dreamt there might be and my heart knew joy at the seeing. But as night follows day so there is darkness in all things, and I also passed many of the Hollow Ones. They were shaped as we but there was nothing within them but pale fire and the need for food. They turned upon one another, rending in anger where kinship was lost, and my blood grew cold as the ice beneath my feet when I saw them.

  I travelled long, by sun and moon, flying where I could, walking when I had to, seeking any sign of him or of my old home on the ground or in the air. I stopped to eat and sleep as need found me and hope carried me, until finally I began to recognise the land. The trees were naked so early in the year, though I remembered them with white flowers and red berries, but it was the same place. We had walked here together of a morning. I was come home.

  Alas, his smell was cold, and my tail dragged in the dust that lay soft and gentle upon the threshold. I did not smell death, but neither did I smell present life. But there was food to be had in the wood, and water and shelter, and I could keep myself strong as I awaited his coming. For I knew in my soul that he would come, as I knew that day followed darkness. I had only to wait and watch.

  VIII Journeys

  Shikrar

  The moon was dark. Full six se'ennights had passed since the night of the earthshakes that had wakened me from my Weh sleep.

  My dear son Kedra and I waited in the entry to the Chamber of Souls, watching the sun set. The winter days were growing longer, noticeably so now, but the cold had returned with a vengeance. Frost was in the air, sharp and clear, and this night there would be no moonlight to soften the ice with beauty.

  Kedra was fully trained in the Kin-Summoning but I had decided that this time I should undergo the fasting and meditation, for he still kept watch over his youngling. However, it was not necessary to spend every waking hour in preparation. Even though I had to keep to my chamber for the full fortnight before the Kin-Summoning, to fast and to quiet my soul, Kedra brought young Sherok to visit me every day to lighten the waiting.

  The little one was astounding and filled me with delight. I had forgotten how swiftly they change when they are so very small. Each day he was more steady on his feet, each day it seemed that his wings grew. It would not be many months now before they were in proportion to the rest of him. He was already making the sounds that would flower into speech, and soon thereafter he would begin to send his thought-pictures to more than his mother and father. True-speech was still a few years in the future, of course, but after a mere quarter of a year he was grown half again as large as he had been at birthing.

  He was lighter in the scales than his father, for his mother, Mirazhe, was a burnished brass, and his colouring was somewhere between that and Kedra's dark bronze, but his eyes were golden as an autumn sky and beautiful beyond words. When his soulgem was revealed he would receive his true name, but that would not be for nearly a year. The gem is too soft at birth to be uncovered and has a natural scale of skin that protects it. Eventually, when the soulgem has hardened, sometime in the first year, the scale dries and falls off. It is the first coming of age, the first step towards life as one of the Kantri, and a time of great rejoicing.

  His very fife was rejoicing to me. Every time I saw him, every time I picked him up and held him close, wrapped him in my wings, laughed with him, played with him, I saw behind him the form of Lanen the Wanderer, who had saved his fife and that of his mother on the very day of his birth. And sometimes I imagined, or felt in my heart as deep longing, my lost Yrais. She was my one true soulmate, mother to my own Kedra and more dear to me by far man my own flesh: but she had died young, when Kedra was yet a littling. I had never stopped missing her, and from time to time of late I found myself speaking to the air, telling her of her new grandson. How proud she would have been.

  The last rim of the sun disappeared behind low cloud. "It is time, my father," said Kedra. He bowed to me, then stood in the formal Attitude of Respect. I was hard put to it not to laugh, he was being so serious, but I did manage to contain myself. I bowed in return and mirrored his stance. "Let us approach the Ancestors, in all humility, in this our time of need."

  I took one last deep breath of the night air and turned back in to my chambers. Kedra remained until I should call him.

  All was prepared within. With a brief
invocation to the Winds, I drew breath and sent Fire into the heart of the wood piled high in the firepit, for Fire is sacred to us and the Kin-Summoning a solemn duty and honour. Light blossomed with the heart of flame, flickering and gleaming off the walls and the floor of khaadish, set thick with the soulgems of the Ancestors. I cast onto the blaze certain leaves and branches, representing each of the Winds. They made a sweet smoke, which I inhaled deeply.

  I had fasted full a fortnight in preparation and so was light-headed to begin with. The smell of kirik and tel-aster, merisakis and hlansif (that the Gedri call lansip) rose and blended in the still air of the cavern. The fire shone bright on the gathered soulgems.

  The back wall of the inner cavern was studded with them. They were ranged in order, eldest highest, set deep in khaadish to protect them. Now, you must not imagine that set in that wall was every soulgem of every one of the Kantri who had ever lived. Even apart from the soulgems of the Lost, with their never-ending flicker of light and darkness, it had been several lifetimes after the Choice before we had learned of the Kin-Summoning. Also, it had happened from time to time that some of us had died in far-off places with none to retrieve our soulgems and bring them home in honour. I bowed before them all, with a private thought of sorrow over the newest of them—the soulgem of Rishkaan, who had died in the autumn fighting a demon master. He had killed the rakshadakh who had threatened us though it had cost him his fife. "Lie safe on the Winds, old friend," I muttered, then turned back to the fire and settled down, still breathing deeply of the smoke, and began the Invocation.

  "In the Name of the Winds, humble I call upon thee, Ancients of our Kindred. O ye who sleep, graciously wake ye to listen. We who live call upon thee in our need. Lend us thy wisdom, speak again in accents of life, teach us who are thy children those things that are needful. Hear, speak, aid us. It is one of thine own who calls. I hight Hadretikantishikrar, of the line of Issdra. I beseech thee in the name of our people, speak."