Bertaud nodded. “We might send back to Tihannad for more men if you think that best.”
“No,” the general answered, consideringly. “No, I think that should not be necessary. It would take time, and what if these griffins begin to do more harm to more than calves while we delay? The core of this company is Anesnen’s fifth cavalry.”
Bertaud knew Anesnen’s reputation. He nodded. “If we must bring the griffins to battle, that is indeed good to know,” he agreed. “Especially if there are only a few dozen up there. Still, we shall hope for better than battle. Esteemed Diene, have you given thought to our initial approach?”
The mage glanced up, an abstracted look in her dark eyes. “What is there to consider? We shall be straightforward.”
“But prepared to be otherwise,” said Jasand.
They were straightforward. But prepared to be otherwise. They left their horses in Minas Ford; neither griffins nor the desert itself would likely be kind to horses. They marched on foot out of the village and up into the hills. The village folk turned out to watch them go, but no one but some of the younger boys ventured to follow. Their mothers called them back before they could follow very far.
“That’s as well,” General Jasand observed. “In case any of the creatures get past our lines.”
Bertaud nodded. The last thing they wanted was to stir up the griffins and then allow one or two to escape to ravage the countryside. “If there must be a battle, we shall hope they are willing to mass and meet us.”
Diene gave him a reassuring nod. “You needn’t fear they’ll avoid us, I think. Indeed, they’ll meet us quickly enough, if we walk into their desert. Griffins are not likely to avoid conflict, I assure you.”
Bertaud supposed that was true enough. He did not find it especially reassuring, however.
They turned around a curve of a hill and, for the first time, found a handful of villagers waiting to watch them pass. Jos, whom Bertaud recognized, and a scattering of grim-looking men and excited older boys. A couple of the men lifted their hands in recognition and salute. Some of the soldiers, pleased to be recognized, returned solemn nods. As Bertaud passed the villagers, he offered a deep nod that was almost a bow, acknowledging their presence and concern.
He remarked to Jasand, “They’ll follow, I’m sure, and watch from a safe distance. I trust it will be a safe distance. In fact, I’d send a man to make sure of it, if necessary.”
“I hope we’ll have plenty of men to spare for all sorts of minor functions,” the general answered drily. But he also gave one of his men a glance, and the soldier peeled off from the column and went to speak to the village folk.
The edge of the desert was a remarkably clean line: On one side, the gentle green of the ordinary Feierabiand countryside; on the other, the empty desert. They halted on the ordinary side of the line. General Jasand, with a nominal glance at Bertaud for approval, divided his men and began to arrange a company to either side of the approach he thought most promising for battle. But for the first hopeful approach, Diene and Bertaud simply walked straight up the mountain to see what they might meet. Bertaud gave the mage his arm, which she leaned on gratefully.
“I’m far too old for such nonsense,” she grumbled. She flinched as they crossed into the heat and drought of the desert, muttering in dismay and discomfort. Bertaud found the pounding heat uncomfortable, but from Diene’s suddenly labored steps and difficult breathing, he thought that the elderly mage was indeed experiencing something more than mere discomfort. There was a wind off the mountains that blew into their faces. It was a strange, hot wind, carrying scents of rock and dust and hot metal—nothing familiar to a man born on the sea side of these mountains. There was an unfamiliar taste to it. A taste of fire, Bertaud thought.
Sand gritted underfoot, on slopes where there never had been sand before. Red rock pierced the sand in thin twisted spires and strange flat-topped columns, nothing like the smooth gray stone native to these hills. Bertaud glanced over his shoulder to where the men waited, drawn up in the green pasture at the edge of the desert, and shook his head incredulously.
A shape moved ahead of them. Not a griffin, Bertaud saw, after the first startled lurch of his stomach. A man, seated on a low red rock, fingers laced around one drawn-up knee. He sat there as though the rock were a throne, watching them approach with no appearance of either surprise or alarm. His face was harsh, with a strong nose and high cheekbones. There was a hard, stark patience in those eyes, and also a kind of humor that had nothing to do with kindness. He looked neither old nor young. He looked like nothing Bertaud had ever seen.
“That,” said Diene, “is surely the stranger that the man spoke of. And quite clearly a mage.” Her voice was flat with dislike. She shaded her eyes with her hand, as though against light.
Bertaud said nothing. He took a step, and then another, feeling heat against his face as though he walked into a fire. The feeling was so vivid he was faintly surprised not to hear the roar of leaping flames before him. He glanced at Diene, but her expression was set and calm. He could not tell what she was thinking or feeling.
The man rose as they approached, and inclined his head. “You were looking for me, I believe,” he said. His voice, pitiless as the desert, nevertheless held the same strange, hard humor Bertaud saw in his eyes. “Kes told me I might look for lords of Feierabiand on this road. Your soldiers I saw for myself.”
Bertaud tried to focus his thoughts. But a hot wind blew through his mind, shredding his focus. The wind seemed to contain words; it seemed to speak a language he might, if he strained hard enough, learn eventually to comprehend. At the moment… it only confused his wits and his nerve. He tried to work out whether this was something the man was doing purposefully or merely a strange effect of the desert, but he could not decide.
“You are a griffin,” Diene stated. The familiar human words seemed somehow surprising; they seemed to hold a meaning beyond what Bertaud grasped. The woman stood straight, but there was more than straightness to her posture. She had gone rigid with a hostility that alarmed Bertaud. It was not fear. That, he would have understood. Her feeling appeared stronger and more dangerous.
But the mage’s hostility did not appear to be returned. A smile glinted in the powerful eyes; curved, after a moment, the thin mouth. “I have no desire to be your enemy, earth mage. Restrain your sensibility. Have you never before experienced the antipathy between earth and fire? It’s compelling, I know, but you need not give way to it, if you will not. I assure you, it is possible to rule your instincts—”
Diene shook her head. She broke in, her voice harsh with strain. “I know you are unalterably opposed to creatures of earth. I know that. If you would not be our enemies, go back to your own country of fire.”
“We cannot.”
The woman stared into the austere face. “Then we will be enemies.”
Wait, Bertaud wanted to say. Wait. This is moving far too fast. But he could not find his voice. He thought if he tried to speak, the voice of the desert wind would come out of his mouth.
The taut smile became fierce. “If you will it so, then we will be enemies,” said the man. The griffin.
“Wait,” Bertaud managed, but lost his voice again. The potent stare moved to catch his, and he found he could not look away.
“Man,” said the griffin. It was acknowledgment, and something more. “What is your name?”
For a stark moment Bertaud thought he might have lost the ability to speak. But a reflex of pride stiffened his back and let him, at last, find his voice. “Bertaud. Son of Boudan.” His tone became, with an effort, wry. “Lord of Feierabiand, Lord of the Delta.” And the title that was most precious to him: “Advisor to Iaor Daveien Behanad Safiad, King of Feierabiand. And yours?”
“Kairaithin,” said the griffin, with that ferocious hard humor that was nothing like the humor of a man. “If you like. Sipiike Kairaithin. Anasakuse, to those who presume themselves my intimates. Shall we be enemies, man?”
> Speaking, Bertaud found, became easier after the first words. A little easier. He shook his head sharply, trying to hear past the high, hot wind that blew through his mind. “Are you… are you doing this to me?”
The intensity of that black gaze shaded off toward curiosity. The man tipped his head to the side inquiringly, a gesture oddly inhuman. “I am doing nothing to you. I assure you. Your earth mage would know if fire overreached itself in her presence. But I did not approach you to take hostile action. I put myself in your way only to speak.”
“Is something troubling you? Something else? What’s wrong?” Diene was studying Bertaud with narrow-eyed concentration and an attitude that said, Whatever it is, it is the griffin’s fault and he is lying.
But Bertaud thought that the griffin spoke the truth. So this strange blurring of his mind was surely an effect of the desert. He shook his head again, stopping Diene when she would have asked again. He tried to think clearly. “You cannot go back to your own desert. Cannot. Why not?”
The griffin mage—Kairaithin—lifted his shoulders in a minimal shrug. “Because we were driven from the desert into the mountain heights, man, and that is no world of ours; because we had no choice but to come down into this humid land where the sea wind combats our own wind. And have no choice but to remain, at least for a time. This country is not ours, but it can be made to serve. We will not give way. We have no way to give. Go back to your king, man, and tell him we have no desire to be enemies of the men here. Tell him he would be wise to make room for our desert.”
Bertaud shook his head, drew a difficult breath. Blinked against a haze of hot, red dust. Tried to focus. Asked at last, “Driven by what?”
The griffin’s lip curled.
“Driven by whom?” Bertaud asked him. He drew a breath of hot air and tried to think. “Why?”
The griffin held out a hand, a sharp commanding gesture. Bertaud blinked, took a step forward. He almost extended his own hand, as the other seemed to expect. But Diene struck his hand down. The griffin lowered his, slowly. He said to her, “Earth mage, you are unwise. You were unwise to put yourself in my way, and you are unwise now to yield to your dislike for fire.”
“Wiser than to trust you.” The look in Diene’s dark eyes was hostile. “You are a mage. But what else are you?”
“I have been patient,” the griffin answered curtly. “You exhaust my patience, earth mage.” He shifted his weight restlessly, glancing up the slope toward the cliffs, as though he would go.
“Wait,” said Bertaud, faintly. He tried to imagine what an impatient griffin would be like, if this was patience. But the griffin mage, to his surprise, turned back. He was restless, catching Bertaud’s eyes again with his as a hawk might catch a hare. But he turned. To meet that hard stare was almost physical pain. Bertaud sustained it with an effort; asking again, “Driven by whom?”
“Casmantium.” The expression in those black eyes had gone hard, savage. “Who else?”
Bertaud closed his eyes, trying to think. He breathed the metallic air, listened to the desert wind. The taste of hot copper slid across his tongue. Casmantium. “Casmantium,” he said aloud, and opened his eyes again. “Why?”
The griffin’s shrug this time was indifferent, edged with a restlessness like fire. “Perhaps Casmantium tired of having our red desert crowd her fair cities.” But once again he seemed willing to speak. He took a step forward, holding Bertaud’s eyes with his own, and spoke more intensely. “Man, there are some who declare that desert ours, and argue for our return to it. Others say we should make this land ours, and stay. Our… king… is of the first mind. Therefore, I advise you, go. Leave the desert we make here to the wind of our wings. We will withdraw in time, and then you may reclaim it.”
“You have no right to dictate terms to us!” Diene snapped, glaring at the griffin.
“Be quiet,” Bertaud commanded her desperately. He felt he had been on the edge of an important understanding, and had lost it. He had been so glad Diene had come. He had not wanted to meet the griffins alone, and he had agreed with Iaor that the learning and wisdom of a mage would be valuable in this meeting. But now he would have given almost anything to be rid of her.
“Earth mages,” the griffin mage said to him, with an impatient little movement of his head, oddly birdlike. “She should not have come into this desert. Do you not know earth magic is antithetical to fire? All mages experience the aversion, but the stronger the mage, the stronger the aversion. One may make allowances for the effect,” he added, his tone edged with contempt, “but your mage does not seem inclined to try.”
Diene began to speak, clearly a hostile answer to this statement. Bertaud held up a hand in a gesture so sharp she desisted. He shook his head, trying to shake sense back into his mind, and looked back at the griffin. Kairaithin. “If Casmantium drove you out of your desert, what makes you confident we cannot?”
That strange, harsh amusement moved in the black eyes. “You have no cold mages. Your earth mages here do not study to become cold. Nor, even did you find cold magecraft at your fingers, do we now sleep unaware of human aggression.”
Well, that was certainly true. Bertaud drew a breath, let it go. “If you would withdraw into the hills. Leave the pastures. If you would hunt deer and leave be the cattle, I would be prepared to take that as a gesture of goodwill.”
“And your king?”
“Will expect some recompense for his generosity to allow your sojourn in his lands. Nevertheless, he will be guided by my opinion.”
“Will he? And is your opinion sound, man? We have not hunted men. You may take that as a measure of our goodwill.”
“Yes,” said Bertaud. He thought it was. He stared into the austere face. “I will need more than that to take to my king.”
“Will you? Then come.” The griffin took a step forward, lifted his hand a second time. Not a commanding gesture, this time. Nor the appeal of the suppliant. This gesture held invitation. Or perhaps challenge.
“No!” said Diene.
Bertaud shut his eyes, opened them, and said patiently, “Esteemed Diene—”
“No!” snapped the mage. “Young fool! This creature is nothing you can trust! Put yourself in its power and you may well find it’s no power you can put off again. Fool! And you!” She spoke directly to the griffin mage. “Be clear, creature! You say I should trust you? What nonsense! Explain what you intend and what you will do, if you will have us trust you!”
The griffin stood with stark patience, waiting, his hand still extended. He did not so much as glance at Diene. His attention, furnace hot, was all for Bertaud.
Diene glared at him, transferred her glare to Bertaud, and drew herself up to her best small height. She was furious, and furiously hostile. But did he, Bertaud asked himself, think his own judgment superior to hers? The heat of the desert seemed to beat against his face like the power of the sun. He knew he could not think clearly. Had not been able to think clearly since he had first found red sand under his boots and looked into the fierce human face of the griffin. If the mage so vehemently distrusted fire, maybe she was right; if earth mages hated the desert, maybe that was a sign it was wise for men to hate it…
Young fool, Diene had called him. Bertaud feared that she was right, whether Kairaithin had done this to him purposefully or whether it was merely some strange effect of the desert.
The griffin lowered his hand. He said, with savage humor and no sign of either disappointment or anger, “Then go. And go, man. Go. Out of this country, you and yours, and back to your king. You may tell him, if he is wise, he will leave well alone. If he is wise, he will heed that opinion.”
And he was gone. Red dust blew across the place where he had been.
Bertaud was halfway down the mountain before he was aware that he was moving, and farther than that before he remembered Diene.
The mage was with him, struggling to walk over the rough ground, her face set hard as a mask.
Bertaud stopped, offering h
er his arm. She stopped, too, breathing harshly, and looked him in the face. He did not know what she saw there.
“If you had gone into that power,” she said, “I think you would not have come out of it.”
Breath hissed through his teeth. But he did not give her the answer that first leaped to mind. He said instead, deliberately, “It’s possible you saved my life, esteemed Diene.”
The mage blinked, waited.
“Or it’s possible you threw it away! We came here to talk to them! Now we will have no choice but to fight. Was that the antipathy? You expected it; did you control it, or did it control you?”
“I expected it—I’d read about it—Meriemne reminded me about it, but I confess it was a stronger effect in the event than I’d anticipated.” The lines in Diene’s face had deepened; she looked drawn and exhausted and ten years older than she had that morning. “But, believe me, Lord Bertaud, mages’ antipathy to fire or no, it’s not possible to make peace with those creatures. I know that now, very clearly. Does the wolf lie down beside the fawn?”
Bertaud shook his head, not exactly disagreeing but wanting to disagree. And he did not even know why. He glanced up the mountain, irresolute, ready on that thought to turn on his heel, go back up the mountain, and leave the mage to make her own way down.
Her hand on his arm stopped him. She said, “Lord Bertaud, from the first moment, there was no possibility of avoiding battle. I had hoped—I had thought—but I knew it was impossible when first I saw that… when I saw that creature and the shape it had put on. You must surely have known it, too. There is no possible way to yield to it! You are not blind. Or I would have said not.”
Bertaud wondered if she was right. He said nothing.
Diene waved her hand to indicate the mountains, the heat haze that moved in the silence—a silence vaster and harsher than any that belonged by rights to Feierabiand. “I thought I understood what we would face up on this mountain. And I saw nothing any creature of earth will ever understand. Antipathy? How could there ever be anything else between fire and earth?” She was shivering. Even in the heat. She looked small and old and frightened. Despite himself, Bertaud was moved. He let out his breath. Offered her his arm.
Lord of the Changing Winds Page 10