“Kes,” the king said affably. His voice was still harsh and guttural, but he could not help that, and he seemed to want to be kind. “Where is your home?”
Kes found her voice after a moment and whispered, “Minas Ford.”
“You are fifteen, Festellech Anweiechen informs me?”
She nodded.
The king grunted and shoved a platter of rolls her way. “You look twelve,” he said bluntly. “It is the shy way about you, I suppose. My mage Beguchren Teshrichten says you are becoming a fire mage. He says you are half fire now. I suppose that is true.”
Kes supposed it was.
“Eat,” ordered the king, frowning at her. “You are all bone. That makes you look young also.”
Kes obediently took a roll, nibbling it without appetite.
The king took one also and ate it in two bites, continuing to frown. He asked abruptly, “Why were you alone in the desert?”
Kes had no easy answer for this. But she was afraid not to answer. She said, ashamed of the timidity of her voice, “I… I was walking. And… and thinking.”
“Walking and thinking,” repeated the king. His eyebrows had gone up a little, but he did not seem to find this answer incomprehensible. “Humph. Minas Ford… are there king’s men at Minas Ford? Feierabianden soldiers? I hear there was a battle and many soldiers of Feierabiand were killed, yes? Did any survive, do you know? Or did some stay in Minas Ford, or others come after?”
Kes blinked at him and shook her head.
“Humph.” The king continued to study her. “Is Iaor Safiad content to have malacteir in his land, then? Griffins, yes?”
Kes did not know what to say, or whether she should say anything at all. It seemed best perhaps to say nothing, but she was afraid silence would make the king angry. Besides, he looked at her so expectantly and so forcefully that she felt she had to find some kind of answer. At last she answered cautiously, “There… there was a battle. Yes. I saw the place, after. It was… it was horrible. I suppose there might be more soldiers there now. I don’t know.”
The king’s eyebrows went up again. “Huh.” He did not say anything more for a little while, gesturing instead for Kes to eat.
Kes was not hungry. She made herself eat part of the roll, to make the king happy, and a small slice of white cheese. She did not want even that. Because the king did not seem unfriendly, she nerved herself to ask, “What… what is it that you want… in Feierabiand… lord?”
“A port city with a good harbor,” he answered promptly, taking Kes utterly by surprise. “And if I can win one, perhaps a new province for Casmantium, hah? Terabiand has a good harbor. Your kings have always charged very high to use it. And the tolls on the mountain road are, ah, an insult, you know? Always the tolls go up, and the road is not even good.”
Kes stared at him. “You can’t… you can’t just take Terabiand.”
“I think I can,” said the king mildly, or as mildly as his heavy voice would allow him to say anything. “And all that country between Terabiand and Casmantium, maybe all the way up to Bered and Talend. That would make a very good province. It would rival Meridanium, which my great-grandfather won, hah? You, well, you may be a problem, yes.”
Kes looked down at the table, at the bread she had been slowly pulling to pieces with her fingers.
“Do you know… did you know that the wanenteir—the fires-mages of the griffins, you understand?—were making you into a sandicteir, a creature of fire? Did you know you must stop being a sandichboden, a creature of earth, to become a creature of fire? You would lose your festechanken, your human-ness, the part of you that is part of the earth. You would not be able to get it back.” The king had tilted his powerful head to the side, frowning again, angry… on her behalf, Kes understood suddenly. She remembered being angry herself and wondered if she should be again, but the anger was dim now. Fear of the cold mage suffocated even the memory of anger. She only felt cold. She said nothing.
“My mage, Beguchren Teshrichten, you know? He says you are not all the way sandicteir. Not yet. He says he could clean the fire from you, he and my other cold mages. But you would fight him, very hard. So hard you might die of it.”
Kes stared at him, horrified. The thought of that small, white-haired mage touching her in any way whatsoever made her feel ill.
The king propped his head on one hand, looking at her closely. “You would fight him, yes,” he concluded. “You do not like my cold mage, yes? He does not like you either, little fire mage. He says it is a natural… what is the word… dislike, but stronger. Yes? So Beguchren is wise enough to leave you to me, which is best. I am not a mage at all. I like you, little festechanenteir. I do not like what the wanenteir did to you. Do you like it?”
Kes hardly knew. She knew that what the king said was true, that Kairaithin had indeed made her into something other than she had been. It felt natural to be as she was, to long for the sun and the clean desert, to reach for the stillness that lay at the heart of the flame… She reached out, on that thought, and flinched away from the cold barriers the Casmantian mage had put around her mind. She huddled instead into her chair.
“You should help me,” the king said persuasively. “Against the malacteir, not against your own people; I would not ask that. But against the malacteir, why not? You have family, yes? A lover waiting for you, maybe? The malacteir would take those things from you. Did the wanenteir, the mages who began this change, did they warn you what they did? Help me against the wanenteir and at least the change will not go further. If you wish, if you want enough to be human, my mages can give you back your festechanken. They could take the fire out of you. You could endure their touch if you wanted it enough. Yes? I think you could. I think you are very brave.”
Kes did not know what to say. She was afraid that everything the king said was true, and she did not want it to be true. She did not feel brave at all.
“Yes?” the king urged her.
Kes thought of Kairaithin, of the sweep of powerful wings against the hot blaze of the desert, the griffin mage’s mastery of fire and air. His power. His austere voice, saying, You are a gift I had hardly hoped to find. He had made her feel… had made her know… had made her understand… her thoughts stuttered to a confused halt. Kairaithin was too difficult to think about. He had bound her so she could not go home, so she had to stay in the desert. She had been so angry.
Now she was too frightened to be angry. The cold binding Beguchren had put on her seemed so much worse than anything the griffins had done, even if it hurt her only because of what Kairaithin had done to her first. It might not be sensible to be more frightened of the cold mage than of Kairaithin; in fact, it might be sensible to do as the King of Casmantium said and ask his mages to tear the fire out of her blood—but it wasn’t a matter for sense and Kes couldn’t help what she felt. And what she felt, she realized bleakly, was that she would rather die than let Beguchren touch her. Except, if she could never go home again, that would be like death, wouldn’t it? And would she truly rather accept that than let the cold mage take the fire out of her blood?
She did not even know. She whispered, almost blindly, “Why did you have to drive the griffins into Feierabiand?”
The King of Casmantium regarded her through narrowed eyes and did not answer.
Kes answered her own question. “Because you wanted them to make their desert in Feierabiand. So we would worry about them and not see you. But you thought you had killed all their mages. No wonder… no wonder you want me to help you. And then stop being… being a mage myself.” She stopped, looking suddenly and fearfully at the king.
He had his chin propped on his hand, and he was smiling. That smile would have looked threatening, except for the rueful expression in his eyes. “Well,” he said. “Not so much a child, are you? So you think behind those fire-lit eyes, yes? So, Kes, you must understand… if you will help me against the malacteir, that would be good, but I can do without this.” He paused, and his expressive e
yes hardened. “If you will not, well, I must have my own mages free to help me and not spend all their attention to guard me against you. So if you will not do as I ask, I will have Beguchren take the fire out of you. I think that is what I must do. Do you understand?”
Kes understood. She shrank into her chair.
“I am sorry,” the king told her.
Kes knew that he meant it. And that he had meant the threat he had made as well. She could not move. She longed, suddenly and desperately, for the brilliant silence and layered time of the desert—and then realized that she ought to have longed for her own home. But all she saw when she closed her eyes was the stark beauty of the desert. She tried again to cry out within her mind for Kairaithin, for Opailikiita. But her voice echoed within the barriers the cold mage had closed around her and she knew they would never hear.
“All your choices are hard,” the king said, and sighed sympathetically, but with no suggestion he would change his mind. He stood up and gestured curtly toward the soldier who still guarded her. “That is Andenken Errich. He will stay with you, yes? He will not harm you. He speaks Terheien, a little. He will bring you water to wash, food if this does not please you. You may stay here or go out of the tent, walk around—Andenken Errich will go with you, you understand? No one will harm you.”
“Except you,” Kes whispered.
“Except me,” the king agreed. “So think hard, little festechanenteir. Walk and think. I will send for you at dusk and ask you again. You understand?”
Kes nodded. Her throat felt thick, her eyes dry and barren of tears, yet she thought if she tried to speak she might weep like a child.
The king, frowning again, shook his head. Then he went out.
Kes looked cautiously at her guard.
The soldier looked sympathetic. He said in bad Terheien, “Would go out? Would walk? Is cold.”
Kes thought of all the tents in this camp, of all the Casmantian soldiers there. Of how they would all look at her if she went out. They would all know she was the human fire mage their king had caught—the king’s mage had caught, netted like a fish out of a stream. She felt as much out of her element as that fish. She wanted to cry. Her throat swelled; she blinked hard and shook her head.
But then the confines of the tent seemed suddenly as unbearable, and she jumped to her feet after all. She took a step toward the door and, hesitating, turned back to the safety of the tent—knowing it was not safe, that nothing was safe, but it felt safer than the outside world. She could hear the voices of men, the clatter of activity all around her. It frightened her. Yet she could not bear to stay still. She looked in appeal at her guard.
He seemed to understand what she felt, although Kes did not understand how he could. He went to the door of the tent and held the flap back for her. “Come,” he said—not a command, but an invitation.
The guard took her first to his tent—she thought it must be his own, from the way the soldiers there greeted him. They called him Errich and laughed at him for being so lucky as to escort a pretty girl—Kes did not have to understand their language to understand that. He blushed, looking younger than she had thought him, and they teased him harder. But when Kes also blushed, they stopped teasing and became very solemn, although their eyes still laughed.
There were four of them besides her guard. They were all young, all earnest, and all very polite. Young men in Minas Ford would never have been kind enough to stop teasing just because a girl blushed—that would only have made them tease harder. Or, well, maybe they, too, would be gentler, with a girl they did not know, a prisoner whose language they did not speak.
Either way, because they had hardly any language in common, Kes didn’t need to speak, and the young soldiers couldn’t think her strange for her silence. They did not know she had been made into something not entirely human, Kes realized, and on the heels of that thought found it surprising that they couldn’t see the fire in her eyes. She could see the earth in theirs.
They offered her bits of dried fruit, clearly the choicest food they had, so that she blushed again and, although she wasn’t hungry, made herself nibble what they gave her. They brought her water to bathe, which was wonderful, and stood careful guard over her privacy while she washed. Kes washed very quickly, but though she half expected one or another of the young men to peek in at her past the cloth they’d hung up, none of them did. One of them had given her a clean brown shirt to wear after she’d washed. The shirt was much too big for her, coming down past her knees, making a kind of short dress. Kes looked doubtfully down at herself after she put on the shirt. It was certainly a strange kind of dress. She knew she must look ridiculous wearing it. Gathering enough courage to put back the cloth took longer than the bath itself. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t hide in this tiny corner of the tent for the rest of the day. Could she? The idea was tempting. But, no, Kes decided reluctantly. Really she couldn’t.
But when she at last came out into the tent, the young men didn’t seem to think Kes looked ridiculous. They hid smiles at how far she had to roll up the shirt’s sleeves, but that wasn’t the same, and their glances were admiring as well. Although she blushed again, they didn’t make Kes want to hide. One of them—the tallest—found a thin strip of leather and gave it to her for a belt, because all their belts were too big. Then all the young men went off somewhere, with much teasing back and forth, except Errich, who watched them leave and then gathered up his sword and a spear—Kes could not imagine he thought he would need them, but he took them anyway—and led her to the edge of the camp.
It took a surprisingly long time to go all the way to the edge. It was hard for Kes to guess how many soldiers there might be in this company. A lot, she thought, but she had no clear idea how many that might really be. The camp was far larger than Minas Ford. Most of the men had gone somewhere else—Kes could hear them in the distance, a shout of command and roar of response, and supposed they were doing something soldierly and probably violent. So there was no crowd of soldiers in the camp. That made it easier to look curiously around, to examine in wonder the neat rows of tents—for everything was neat and orderly, despite the rugged land in which the soldiers had been forced to camp.
From the edge of the camp, she could just see the desert. She longed for its heavy golden light. But of course Errich wouldn’t let her go that way. She sat on a rock and just looked at it, as a little crippled sparrow might have looked at the wide sky it could not reach. Errich stood nearby and gazed down at the desert as well, a slight worried crease between his eyebrows: Was he thinking of marching down into it to face the griffins? Or of coming out the other side to strike into Feierabiand? What did simple soldiers think about when their king took them off into battle? Kes couldn’t imagine what that might be like. She shivered.
Think hard, the king of Casmantium had advised her. Kes found it hard to think at all. She sat on the gray stone with her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, the sleeves of her borrowed clothing rolled up around her wrists, and stared at the boundary between the human world and the world of the desert.
Errich leaned on his spear a few paces away and waited patiently. Occasionally a soldier jogged past about some fathomless errand. None of them even seemed to notice Kes. They all looked the same to her—large young men in brown and black, with metal showing at neck and wrist, carrying swords or spears or bows. None of them looked worried. They all looked depressingly like they knew exactly what they were doing and what their place was in the world. Maybe Errich had only been thinking about Kes, who had been found in the desert and who so clearly wanted to return to it—was it clear to him? Probably. She hadn’t tried to hide her longing.
The sun climbed higher, shedding little warmth across the mountain heights. Errich had found a place near Kes to sit down. He still seemed patient. He simply rested, his spear leaning against the rock where he sat, his hand casually resting on the hilt of his sword. But he was alert enough. Kes knew that if she got to her feet and started
to walk down the mountain, he would stop her.
Men came and went in the camp at their backs, sometimes many men and sometimes only a few, according to some pattern of activity that doubtless made sense to Errich but that seemed completely random to Kes.
A soldier came up during one of the quiet periods, a big man like any of the others; Kes did not look at him. He said something to Errich, and her guard laughed and agreed. The soldier smiled. He started to go, turned back, said something else, and both men laughed. Then, leaning smoothly forward with a casual air, the soldier drew a knife swiftly and competently across Errich’s throat.
Kes, shocked, leaped to her feet.
Errich, his eyes wide with horror and amazement, made it to his knees before the other soldier thrust him back and down. He could not cry out; with his throat cut, he could not even whisper. The blood ran down his chest. He made an awful choking sound as the life went out of his eyes.
The soldier bent down and closed the young man’s open eyes, speaking again, a low phrase in Prechen. At that moment, the Casmantian language did not sound coarse or harsh at all. It sounded like a language meant for grieving, for sorrow. For loss.
Kes had not made a sound. She stood with her hands clenched in front of her mouth, her eyes wide, staring.
The soldier who had killed Errich straightened and turned toward her. She thought he would kill her next and knew she should run away, except he would catch her, and besides she couldn’t move. Then their eyes met. For a long moment she did not know him, even then. But then she did. The big soldier—wearing the clothing of a Casmantian soldier as though perfectly familiar with it, with a sword at his side like it belonged there and a shirt of metal chain under the one of brown cloth—was Jos.
Lord of the Changing Winds Page 18