Lord of the Changing Winds

by Rachel Neumeier

Tesme, looking over Kes’s shoulder, took a slow breath and let it out.

  Nehoen took the finished drawing out of Kes’ hands and looked at it silently. Kes looked steadily down at the table.

  “When did you see them?” Nehoen asked gently.

  Kes glanced up at him and looked down again. She moved her hand restlessly across the rough surface of the table. “This morning.”

  Tesme was staring at her. “You didn’t say anything.”

  Kes traced the grain of the wood under her hand, running the tip of her finger around and around a small knot in the wood. “I didn’t know how. To talk about them. They… are nothing I know words to describe.”

  “You—” Chiad said incredulously.

  “Hush,” said Nellis, laying a hand on her husband’s arm. “Kes, love—”

  At the gate of the inn yard, someone moved, and everyone jumped and stared. Then they stared some more.

  The man at the gate was a stranger. But more than a stranger, he was himself strange. He wore fine clothing, but unusual in both cut and color. Red silk, red linen, red leather—all red, a dark color like drying blood, except for low black boots and a black cloak. He did not wear a sword, though even in Feierabiand nearly all men of good birth carried one. But this man did not carry even a knife at his belt. He held no horse, and that was surely strangest of all, for how had a gentleman come to Minas Ford if not by horse or carriage?

  The man’s hair was black and very thick, without a trace of gray—although it was somehow immediately clear that he was not a young man. The lines of his face were harsh and strong. His eyes were black, his gaze powerful. He had a proud look to him, as though he thought he owned all the land on which his gaze fell. His shadow, Kes saw, with a strange lack of astonishment, was not the shadow of a man. It was too large for a man’s shadow, and the wrong shape, and feathered with fire. Kes glanced quickly into her sister’s face, and then looked at Nehoen and Jerreid and Kanes, and realized that although everyone was startled by the stranger, no one else saw that his shadow was the shadow of a griffin.

  The black-eyed stranger with the griffin’s shadow did not speak. No one spoke, not even Jerreid, who liked everyone and was hard to put off. Everyone stared at the stranger, but he had attention only for Kes. And rather than speaking, he walked forward, straight to the table where she sat. He clearly assumed everyone would get out of his way, and everyone did, although Nehoen, getting abruptly to his feet, put a hand on Kes’s shoulder as though he thought she might need protection.

  Ignoring Nehoen, still without speaking, the man picked up the drawing Kes had made and looked at it. Then he looked at her.

  Kes met his eyes, seeing without surprise that they were filled with fire. She took a breath of air that seemed stiff with heat and desert magic. She could not look away, and wondered what the man saw in her eyes.

  “What is your name?” the man asked her. His voice was austere as barren stone, powerful as the sun.

  After a moment, Nehoen cleared his throat and answered on her behalf. “Kes, lord,” he said. “Kes. She doesn’t talk much. And what is your name?”

  The man transferred his gaze to Nehoen’s face, and Nehoen stood very still. Then the man smiled suddenly, a taut hard smile that did not reach his eyes. “I am sometimes called Kairaithin. Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin. You may call me so, if that pleases you. And yours, man?”

  Nehoen swallowed. He met the black stare of the stranger as though he was meeting a physical blow. He said slowly, reluctantly, “Nehoen. Nehoen, son of Rasas, lord.”

  “Nehoen, son of Rasas,” said the stranger. “I am not your enemy.” He did not say, I do not care about you at all, but Kes saw the merciless indifference in his eyes. When he turned his attention back to her, she looked down at the table. She said nothing. She did not dare speak, but beyond that, she simply had no idea what to say. The stranger seemed to see her exactly as she was, but she had no idea who, or what, he saw. In a way, she found this hard-edged perception more difficult to endure than the ordinary expectations of the townsfolk.

  “Kes,” said the man. He put down the drawing she had made. “My… people… have encountered difficulty. There are injured. We have need of a healer. You are a healer, are you not? My people are not far removed from this place. Will you come?” He asked this as though Kes had a choice.

  Kanes rose to his considerable height, crossed his powerful smith’s arms across his chest, and rumbled, “Who asked you to bring your… difficulties… here, stranger?”

  The man did not even glance at the smith. But Kes flinched. She could not understand how Kanes, strong as he was, could possibly think he could challenge the stranger. She could not understand how the smith could miss his contained power.

  But Kanes, it seemed, was not alone in that inclination. Nehoen shifted half a step forward and said in a tone edged with hostility, “She’s needed at her home.” He looked at Tesme.

  Tesme blinked. She had been staring at the stranger, wordless. Now she said in a breathless voice, “Kes. Come home,” and held out her hand to her sister.

  Kes did not move. She looked into the face of the stranger and whispered, “You are a mage. As well as—” she stopped.

  A swift, fierce smile glinted in the black eyes.

  “Are you—” Kes began, and stopped again.

  “I am not your enemy,” the man said, harsh and amused. “Do this for me, and perhaps I will be your friend.” Fire flared in his eyes. He said patiently, holding out his hand, “I have no power to heal. I think you do. Will you come?”

  “Kes—” said Tesme.

  “Look, Kes—” said Nehoen.

  “I—you should understand, lord,” Kes whispered, “I only use herbs.”

  The man continued to hold out his hand expectantly. “You drew that. Yes?”

  Kes, lowering her gaze, looked at the drawing that lay on the table between her hands. It seemed strange to her now, how smoothly that image had emerged from her eyes, from her memory. Her hands closed slowly into fists. “Yes.”

  “Then I hardly think you will need herbs. It was not a herb woman I sought. Searching, it was you I found. Will you come?”

  Kes found she wanted to go with him. She knew he was not truly a man; she knew he was not any creature of the ordinary earth. But she longed, suddenly and intensely, to go with him and see what strangeness he might show her. Kes got to her feet, not looking at anyone but especially not at her sister, and laid her hand in his. His long fingers closed firmly around hers. The stranger’s skin was dry, fever hot to the touch. He tilted his head to the side, meeting her eyes with his powerful black gaze. There was nothing remotely human in his eyes.

  The world moved under their feet, rearranging itself. They stood high up on the slopes of the mountain. Kes caught her breath, blinking, and found the world had gone as strange and beautiful as she could ever have wished.

  The sun poured down with ruthless clarity upon the rocks, which were red, all in twisted and broken shapes, nothing like the everyday rounded gray stone of the mountain. Griffins lounged all around them, inscrutable as cats, brazen as summer. They turned their heads to look at Kes out of fierce, inhuman eyes. Their feathers, ruffled by the wind that came down the mountain, looked like they had been poured out of light, their lion haunches like they had been fashioned out of gold. A white griffin, close at hand, looked like it had been made of alabaster and white marble and then lit from within by white fire. Its eyes were the pitiless blue white of the desert sky.

  And, Kes realized, the griffins were not actually lounging. They were not relaxed. They lay on the sand or atop the twisted red stone ledges, tense and tight-coiled, looking at Kes with fierce and angry stares.

  The man at her side moved a step, drawing her glance. The merciless sun threw his shadow out behind him, and here in the desert that shadow was clearly made of fire. It was more brilliant than even the molten sunlight. Flames tossed around the shadow’s fierce eagle head like feathers moved by the wind.
Its eyes were black.

  The man said with harsh approval, “You knew, of course.”

  Kes nodded hesitantly.

  “Of course. You see very clearly. You are such a gift as I had hardly hoped to find, woman, though it was for one such as you I searched. You are exactly what we need.” He drew her forward, between gold and bronze griffins, into the shade cast by the shoulder of the mountain. His shadow paled in that relative dimness, like the edges of a clear flame, more sensed than seen.

  A griffin lay there in the shade. It was, indeed, injured. A deep and bloody wound scored its golden lion flank, and blood speckled the bronze and black feathers of its chest. It lay with its mouth open, panting rapidly. Its tongue was narrow and barbed. Its eyes were open but blind, glazed with pain.

  Kes stared at the wounded griffin in horror, as much at the ruin of its beautiful strength as at its pain. The stranger had said he needed a healer, but she had not imagined such desperate wounds and suffering. She had none of her things, not the sinews for sewing injuries nor the powders to keep infection from starting. And even if she had had those things, the griffin’s wounds looked too serious for her skill anyway.

  Another griffin crouched near the injured one like a friend or a brother: Something in this griffin’s manner made Kes think of how Tesme would have hovered by her side if she had been hurt. She longed, suddenly and intensely, for Tesme; yet at the same time, she was fervently glad that her sister was not here. There was nothing in this place Tesme would have understood, and Kes felt, strongly if incoherently, that her sister’s presence would only have offended the griffins and weakened Kes herself.

  The guardian griffin had feathers of brilliant gold overlaid with a copper tracery. He sat up as they approached, tail wrapped neatly as a cat’s around his feet, and fixed Kes with a brilliant copper-gold stare. She faltered, but Kairaithin drew her forward.

  “There are others injured,” Kairaithin said. He sounded… not concerned, precisely. Not like a man might sound, whose friend was injured. Kes did not understand what she heard in his voice, but it was nothing human. He went on, “But this is the worst. This is our… king. He must live. Far better for your people, as well as mine, if he should live.”

  Kes could not tell if he meant this as a threat, or merely as a statement. She moved forward hesitantly, kneeling by the wounded griffin. She put her hand to its chest, parting the feathers delicately. The injured griffin did not move; the other one shifted a foot, talons scraping across stone. Kes flinched back, but he did not move again. And Kairaithin was waiting.

  The wound she found was a puncture, deep… she could not tell how deep… wide as well as deep. It was bleeding only a little, a slow welling of crimson droplets that ran, each in turn, along the lie of the feathers to fall, glittering and solid, to the sand. Tiny gemstones, rubies and garnets, sparkled in the sand under her knees. Kes blinked at them, fully understanding for the first time that these were truly not creatures of earth. That they were wholly foreign to this land and to her own nature. And she was expected to heal them? She cast Kairaithin a frightened glance.

  “An arrow made of ice and ill intent,” said the griffin mage, watching her face. “I drew the arrow and slowed the blood. But I have no power to heal. That is for you.”

  Kes laid her hand over the wound. She had no herbs, no needles, no clean water, nothing a healer would use at her craft… She touched the griffin’s face, traced the delicate shadings of gold and bronze under the blind eye, moved her hand to rest on the rapid pulse beating under the fine feathers of the throat. She said, trying to sound helpless rather than defiant, “But… truly, lord, I know nothing but herbs.”

  “You know what you see. You know what we are. Are you not aware of your own power, poised to wake? Did you not know me at once?”

  Kes did not know what the man meant by “your own power.” True healers were mages, not mere herb women. She was not a mage. She knew very well she was not a mage. Mages were not simply gifted, as Tesme was gifted with her affinity for horses, as makers or legists might be variously gifted. There was always magic in making, in made things; everyone had that to at least a small degree. There was magic in spoken and, especially, written words—especially in Linularinum, where everybody learned to write. But the affinity to an animal, the ability to make or build, the legist’s gift of setting truth down with quill and ink… all of those things were part of inborn, natural earth magic. Anybody could be gifted.

  But mages were not merely gifted. They were gifted, but the gift wasn’t enough to make a mage. Or so Kes had always believed. Mages studied for years and years, learning… Kes could not imagine what. And there were never many of them: the necessary combination of power and dedication were vanishingly rare.

  It had never occurred to Kes to wonder how an old mage chose an apprentice, or how a young person, perhaps, found within herself the desire or capacity or… whatever it might be that might lead her to want to be chosen. Kes had never wanted anything like that. Kes had only wanted to be left alone, to walk in the hills and look at the sky and the pools and the growing things. Hadn’t she? If the idea of being a mage had ever occurred to her… would she have wanted that? Did she want it now?

  Now that the notion had occurred to her, Kes thought, uneasily, that she might almost want it. It would set her apart… but in a way that people could understand, or at least that they could be comfortable with not understanding. And she had always been set apart anyway, or set herself apart, somehow. Mage-skill would have made her… made her… she did not know what. Something different than she was now. Wouldn’t it? And yet, this griffin-mage thought she might be a mage? Even trying now to look inside herself, she could find nothing whatsoever that seemed to her like power.

  Kairaithin’s power, on the other hand, beat against her skin like the heat of a bonfire. Kes closed her eyes and saw a black-and-red griffin move in the darkness behind the lids. I have no power to heal, he had said. What power did a griffin have, when he was also a mage? When she thought of the griffin, fire roared through the darkness. A voice like the hot wind of the desert said in her mind, Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin. She did not doubt Kairaithin’s power. Was it possible the griffin mage had made a mistake about her?

  “Searching, I found you, and so brought my people to this place,” Kairaithin said to her, as though in answer to her unspoken question. With her eyes closed, it seemed to Kes that he spoke from a place very far away. “And so we are here; and so is Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu, Lord of Fire and Air. See him whole, woman, with insistent sight; pour through your heart and into him the fire that sustains him, and he will be whole.”

  Kes opened her eyes again and looked up at the griffin mage, baffled. Insistent sight? She laid her hand on the wounded griffin’s chest and stared down at him, hoping for inspiration. His breath came rapidly. His blood, liquid as it left his body, was hot against her fingers. The gold-and-copper griffin stared furiously at her. She did not ask what the griffins would do if she could not heal their king. She thought instead of the griffin mage saying in his austere voice, I hardly think you will need herbs.

  Could he be right? What, then, would she need? See him whole, and he will be whole. She stared down at the bloody feathers under her hands, and found she did indeed want to heal that terrible wound and restore the griffin to health and wholeness. She wanted that. But even so, she did not know what to do. She drew her hands back and looked helplessly at Kairaithin, afraid he would be angry, but simply at a loss.

  The griffin mage did not appear to be angry, although perhaps impatient. He took one of Kes’s hands in both of his and held it firmly. Heat struck up her arm, racing from her hand up to her shoulder and then spreading down toward her heart. Kes gasped. It did not actually hurt. But it was a strange feeling, as though her own blood had been turned into a foreign substance within her veins.

  “Creature of earth,” said Kairaithin, letting her go but holding her eyes with his. “You may yet learn to understa
nd fire. Reach for fire and it will follow the pathway your will lays down for it, as a fire follows tinder across stone.”

  “Reach for it?” Kes said, faltering.

  “Make it a part of your nature. I will give you fire. Let the fire strike into your heart.” The griffin mage bent forward, staring at her, willing her to understand.

  Kes stared back at him. Let the fire strike into your heart. She pictured an arrow slanting down out of the sun at her, guided by Kairaithin’s will: a burning arrow, a golden arrow trailing flames. She flinched from the image.

  Beside her, the injured griffin shifted. His breath rattled in his throat. His eyes were blind, Kes thought, because they were filled with shadows.

  She blinked, and blinked again, and then shut her eyes and turned her face up to the sky. Lord of Fire and Air. King of the griffins. His pulse beat under the tips of her fingers. His name beat in her own pulse. She said, not understanding her own certainty, “Why is he in the shade? He needs light.”

  The mage moved his hand and the rock above them shattered and fell away, raining far down the mountain in little pieces. The sun poured down. Kes thought about the fiery arrow coming down at her, and this time she didn’t flinch. Instead, she did something that felt like calling out to it.

  “Yes,” said Kairaithin, his tone fierce and triumphant.

  Mere image though it might be, the arrow seemed to blaze down and snap into Kes’s body with an almost physical shock: The image in her mind of the arrow striking home was so vivid she gasped. She thought she could feel its sharp entry into her heart. There was a sharp-edged moment of agony, but then at once a sense of fierce satisfaction and a strange kind of wholeness, as though she had been waiting all her life for that arrow of light and heat to enter her. She felt filled with fire. It did not feel like power. It felt like completion.

  Kes shut her eyes and held up her hands to the sunlight. She cupped the light in her hands, hot and heavy as gold, and then opened her hands to pour it out like liquid. She listened to the griffin’s name in the beating of her blood. Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu. Creature of fire and blood. She stared into the sun, and then lowered her eyes to stare into his. She saw him whole, and blinked, and blinked again, her eyes filled with heat and light.