Lord of the Changing Winds

by Rachel Neumeier

  She saw at once that he was badly injured. His arm had been gashed as though by knives; he was still bleeding from those wounds, though fortunately the blood flowed only slowly. Kes thought that his arm was also broken, though she was not sure. She was nearly sure the ankle was broken, though, from the swelling and the black bruising. Worse, the man’s breathing sounded shallow and difficult, and there was a bubbling sound to it that suggested to Kes that probably ribs, too, had been broken, and that at least one had pierced a lung.

  No one, so far as Kes could see, had done anything to help the injured man. But then, as far as Kes could see they hardly did anything to help one another either, except for lending an injured griffin their company. And Opailikiita had done that, at least. And he was still alive, so maybe the young griffin was actually doing something to help him after all…

  Opailikiita bent her neck around and down to watch Kes as she opened the man’s shirt and touched the terrible spongy bruising across his chest. I have no power to heal, she said, not quite apologetically. I slowed the loss of blood. That seemed the same as for one of my own people.

  “Oh,” said Kes, startled and remembering at last that the griffins could at least do that. “Thank you…”

  “That was well done,” Kairaithin said, glancing down at the injured man’s arm with a strange kind of indifferent approval. “Another time, you will find that you might also block our desert from drawing the strength of earth from a wounded human. This is possible. One makes the barrier of one’s own self.”

  Yes, said the young griffin, in a tone of surprised comprehension.

  “One does not use fire to heal a creature of earth,” Kairaithin said to Kes. “But you are uniquely poised between earth and fire. I do not know what you might find to do—either with fire or with earth.”

  Kes did not really hear him. She was frowning down at the man. She ran her hand across the stone, gathering a little red dust; then she let the dust turn to light within her hand. She knelt, then, holding light cupped in her palm and wondering what, precisely, she could do with it. Nothing of the man spoke to her; though she listened, she could not hear his name in the beat of her blood. She had known that griffins were creatures of fire and that they were nothing to do with earth; she had known that the fire magic Kairaithin had taught her to use was nothing to do with men. But she had somehow forgotten, during these few days in the desert, how very unlike men and griffins truly were. Now she did not know what to do.

  The man’s breathing had grown more labored, even in this small time. Bubbles of blood formed at his nostrils; blood ran slowly down from the corner of his mouth. He was going to die. If Kes might save him, she would have to do it swiftly; there was no time to think and think again, or to hesitate—and if she tried and failed, he would be no more dead than if she did not try.

  Kes took a sharp breath and set her hands on his chest, both her empty hand and the hand holding light. She shut her eyes, listening for his name, for his heartbeat. But no matter how she listened, she heard nothing except his difficult breathing. It was worse still; it worsened every moment. He was surely going to die. Unless Kes could save him.

  His blood did not turn to rubies as it fell in droplets to the hot stone; it flowed. There was no fire in his blood. Kes bit her lip and poured fire into his blood, as she had learned so recently to take it into hers. At first, his body fought the intrusion of the fire; he did not wake, but convulsed, and he made horrible, hoarse sounds. Kes flinched. But at least, she thought, he could still make sounds. So his lungs were not altogether ruined… Opailikiita put out a wide feathered eagle’s foot and pinned the man down against the stone so that he would not injure himself further in his agony.

  Kes almost stopped, almost drew back. But she knew sometimes a healer has to cause pain in order to heal; and though she hurt this man, she hoped healing might follow. She could not use fire to heal a creature of earth—so he had to stop being entirely a creature of earth, at least for a moment; and if she could take on something of both natures, then why not this man? And so she poured fire into him and through him, though he fought it; she made fire run through his blood as she had learned to allow it to run through hers. She altered his very nature, and though his body fought her, she persisted. And he had been much weakened. She felt his resistance break under the relentless assault of fire.

  She could feel very clearly that if she persisted he would die, and that if she stopped he would reject the fire and revert entirely to earth, and then he would still die. But for just a moment, caught between those choices, the man held fire as well as earth. And in that moment, Kes poured light over him and through him and pulled him hard toward the wholeness she saw behind the broken body. And, under the touch of her hands and the insistent gaze of her eyes and the fierce pressure of the light, he became whole.

  As he became whole, his true nature reasserted itself with violent force, and the fire poured out of him in a fierce blaze that, as Kes lost control of it, might have burned him badly. But Kairaithin reached past her and caught the fire, and sent it elsewhere before it could so much as singe the man’s clothing.

  The man took a long shuddering breath, but it was a deep and steady breath and there was no blood in it. The wounds were gone; there were not even scars to show where his arm had been torn, nor any shadow of bruises across his chest where his ribs had been broken. He did not open his eyes, not yet. But, Kes knew, he was no longer unconscious. He merely slept.

  She stood up, shakily, and put a hand out to Opailikiita. The slim griffin was there, her wing tucking itself under Kes’s hand, quietly supportive.

  “Remarkable,” Kairaithin said. His tone was more thoughtful than approving, and Kes looked at him sharply, but he said nothing else.

  Yet he is, in truth, wholly a creature of earth, is he not? Opailikiita said, sounding a little uncertain.

  “Yes,” said Kairaithin. “Now.” His bent a considering glance on Kes. “Will you see the other wounded? There are not so many, and none other so seriously injured. Still, they would benefit from your care. Will you come?”

  “Yes…” But Kes gave the sleeping man an uncertain look, reluctant to leave him.

  “He will live,” Kairaithin said. “He will sleep for some time, I think. It is difficult rest you will have given him, kereskiita, teaching him to dream of a fire he cannot touch. But I think that will not harm him. You are safe to leave him for a little.”

  I will stay near him, Opailikiita volunteered, and stretched out like a cat on the hot stone. I will watch him for you, little sister. I will block the desert from drawing his strength. I think I understand now the way to do that.

  “All right,” Kes agreed. She was still reluctant, but she trusted Opailikiita. More, she found, than she trusted Kairaithin. She gave the griffin mage a wary look. “You’ll bring me back here?”

  “I will assuredly bring you back to this place,” Kairaithin told her. “Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu will come soon enough to speak to this man. I think when our king speaks to the emissary of the King of Feierabiand, it might be as well if you were here, little fire kitten.”

  “Oh…” Kes winced a little at the idea of standing between the Lord of Fire and Air and the man; only… only she liked even less the idea that the man might wake here in the griffins’ hall to find himself entirely alone, surrounded by griffins. That would be hard. Especially after he had watched the griffins kill all his companions… “All right,” she said at last. “But I don’t know how to speak to… to emissaries and great lords.”

  “You will do well enough,” Kairaithin assured her drily. “Am I not your teacher?” He held out his hand.

  Kes cast one more glance at the sleeping man and then stepped toward the griffin mage and let him take her hand.

  There were indeed not many injured griffins this time. And, as Kairaithin had told her, they were not so badly injured, most of them. They were much, much easier to heal than the man had been; Kes found she barely had to think ab
out what she did. This did not exactly surprise her. It seemed very reasonable that she should find healing the people of fire easy, after the struggle to heal a man of earth.

  What did surprise Kes was how many of the griffins greeted her by name—by her fire-name. This time, they did not look through her, nor did any of them strike at her. They were not embarrassed, this time, for her to see them injured and weak—or Kes thought that perhaps that was the difference, or something like it, as nearly as a human woman could understand it. This time, the injured griffins knew her and spoke to her; not only the injured ones, but their iskarianere as well. They called her Keskainiane Raikaisipiike in fierce, joyful voices. Kes wondered what exactly that name meant. She did not, somehow, like to ask Kairaithin—if it drew partially on his own name, maybe it was too personal a question somehow? Maybe she would ask Opailikiita, later…

  “When is Esterire Airaikeliu going to go to the hall?” she asked Kairaithin nervously. “Will it be much later than this? Are there many other griffins to heal?”

  Kairaithin glanced up at the sun, which still blazed hot and high above the desert, well above the western edge of the desert. “Not so much later,” he conceded. “But that was the last.”

  Around them, the world tilted and shifted. Fiery winds whipped sand through the air, then settled. They once more stood in the hall of stone and sand, high above the desert. The man still lay where they had left him, though now his head was pillowed on Opailikiita’s foot. The young griffin had stretched not only a wing above the man, but also a different kind of protection; Kes could see that the desert heat beat less harshly upon the shadowed stone where the man lay.

  Along one edge of the hall, with here a foot or there a wing dangling casually above the height, rested the Lord of Fire and Air and his iskarianere Eskainiane Escaile Sehaikiu, and the red griffin who was their mate, Esterikiu Anahaikuuanse, and a griffin of pure shining white whose name Kes did not know. They had all been studying the human man. Kes thought Opailikiita was very brave to stay by the man and shield him not merely from the forceful heat of the desert, but also from those powerful stares, which, at least from Anahaikuuanse and from the white griffin held considerable hostility.

  Now the king and all three of his companions turned their heads and regarded Kairaithin for a long moment, and then as one bent that implacable regard on Kes. She resisted an almost overpowering urge to step backward and hide in Kairaithin’s shadow.

  Keskainiane Raikaisipiike, said the king.

  “Lord,” Kes answered hesitantly, after she found a quick glance at Kairaithin did not yield any guidance.

  What is this here? demanded the king, the power of his voice ringing through the hot air. Do I understand you bent the nature of fire to repair injury to this creature of earth?

  Kes was too startled by what seemed a rebuke to answer at once. But then she was, to her own surprise, angry. She said, “I bent his nature, lord. Since it was fire that injured him in the first place, it seems only fair that fire should repair his wounds!”

  The king and the red female both looked angry at this, though whether because Kes had used fire in such a way or merely because of her boldness, she could not tell. The white griffin looked savagely hostile. But Escaile Sehaikiu tipped his head back and laughed—silent, joyful griffin laughter that made Kes want to smile, though she was still angry. It occurred to her that in griffins, anger and laughter might not be so separate as they were in men, but then she did not know what to make of this realization or whether the insight might be important.

  The white griffin said in a ferocious, deadly voice, That is rightfully my prey, and nothing to give to a human woman.

  Kes flinched from its hostility, but Kairaithin said in his driest tone, “If one will make a fire mage of a human, it is hardly just to be astonished when occasionally she acts according to the nature of a human. You may well give up your prey to her and to me, Tastairiane Apailika. Why not? You may surely afford the luxury.”

  You claim this man, then, said the king, in a hard tone that silenced any response the white griffin might have made.

  “I do. Will anyone challenge my decision?” Kairaithin walked across the hall and stood over the man Kes had healed, looking back aggressively at the other griffins.

  Opailikiita folded her protective wing and drew away from the man, coming to join Kes. But her withdrawal was somehow nothing like a retreat; from her fierce stare, it was clear she would willingly take on all four of the larger and greater griffins to protect the human man—for Kes’s sake, because Kes had left him with her. Kes buried a hand in the fine feathers of Opailikiita’s throat, trying to draw bravery of her own from the brilliant courage of the slim griffin.

  “He will wake soon,” observed Kairaithin, not glancing down at the man. “And what shall we say to him when he wakes, O Lord of Fire and Air?” He returned the hot stare of the king with effortless power of his own. “Will any here declare that I was wrong to seek out this human woman and raise the fire in her blood?”

  You remind us all of your prior right decision, said the king harshly. Shall we believe that all your decisions are right?

  Kairaithin smiled, a thin, fierce smile with nothing of yielding in it.

  At his feet, the man moved at last, groaned, and opened his eyes, blinking against the flooding light, powerful even under the shelter of the stone hall, staring around with a dazed, helpless expression. Without thinking, Kes stepped forward as the man pushed himself up. She knelt to touch his shoulder, that he should not find himself in this place altogether alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  In the dream, Bertaud had wings… cleverly feathered wings that could feel the most subtle shift of wind. He stared into the wind and saw it layered with warmth and greater warmth, heat rising where red stone underlay it. He turned, fire limning each feather of his wings as he curved them to catch the air. Below him, the red desert spread out in all directions: rock and sand, dust and silence; nothing moved upon it but the wind. Both the desert and the wind were his, and he loved them with a fierce possessive love….

  He lay upon red stone, in rich sunlight that pooled on the stone like molten gold; he stared into the hot brilliant light with eyes that were not dazzled. The heat struck up from the rock like a furnace, and he found it good. His wings were spread, turned to catch the sun. There could never be too much heat, too much light….

  He rode through a storm. The wind roared through his wings. He was flung upward by the violence of the wind; a wing tip, delicately extended, was enough to send him spinning sideways into a loop that carried him, at last, above the storm into clear air. He cried aloud with exaltation. His voice struck through the air like a blade, but against the bellow of the storm he could hardly hear even his own cry; yet somehow both his cry and the roar of the storm were part of the great silence of the desert. It was a silence that encompassed all sound, just as the violence of the storm itself was encompassed by the greater stillness of the desert…

  He woke slowly. He did not hurt and that seemed strange, though he did not understand why he expected pain. Trying to move, he could not understand the response of his own body. It seemed the wrong body. He could not understand why he did not have wings and talons. His… hands… yes, his hands… moved, flinching from unexpected grit and stone, but he did not know what he had expected. He opened his eyes, with some difficulty. The lids were gummy, sticky with… blood, he thought. Blood? There had been… there had been… an accident? A… fight?

  He got his eyes open at last, scrubbed his arm across them, and looked up. Memory crashed back so hard it stopped his breath.

  He was lying on stone, high above the world. Pillars of twisted red stone stood all about, supporting a roof of stone so that he lay in shade—a hot shade, so hot the very air seemed like the breath of a living animal. The great hall surrounded by these pillars was floored with sand; the desert breeze wandered in and stroked the sand into patterns on the floor. It was not a human place. He did no
t have to be told that it was a place for griffins, which they had somehow drawn out of fire and the desert.

  And there were griffins in it: one that caught his eye immediately though it was not the nearest, dark bronze eagle forequarters merging seamlessly into lion rear, relentless golden eyes staring into his. Anger poured off it, like heat against his face. The anger frightened him. Yet Bertaud did not feel as… stifled, as stunned, as when he had first met Kairaithin before the battle. He could think, now. He thought he would be able to speak, if he came up with something worth saying.

  Even so, it took an effort to tear his gaze away, to get himself up on one elbow and look around. A gold-and-copper griffin was there, bright as the sun, close by the side of the first. Another griffin, dark red, her feathers heavily barred with gold, lay couchant behind those two males. That one, too, seemed angry. Angry and fierce and ready to kill for any provocation, or no provocation. And a white griffin, quite near, far more terrifying, a griffin from whom Bertaud flinched reflexively before he even remembered why.

  Then he remembered. He froze, trying to deal with that memory. The white griffin did not move. Its fiery blue eyes held his, utterly inhuman.

  A hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched, turning his head. A woman knelt at his side. No. A girl. Hardly more than a child. Kes, he thought. Of course, this would be the girl Kes, who had frightened her family and friends by vanishing into the desert with an unknown mage and had not returned.

  The girl’s eyes met his with a strange openness, as though she had no secrets in all the world, and yet there was a silent reserve at the back of them that he could not see through at all. A heavy golden light moved in her eyes, a light that held fiery wings and red desert sand, so that it took him a moment to see that those eyes were actually a grayed blue, like Niambe Lake under a stormy sky; the color seemed very strange. He had expected her eyes to be the color of fire.