Kes, said the griffin. And a Casmantian soldier. His beak clicked again, a sharp aggressive sound.
“What?” said Bertaud, in an entirely different tone, finding this hard to credit.
But, as the horse drew closer, he saw that Kairaithin was right. A Casmantian soldier sat in the saddle, with Kes, in an outlandish brown dress rather too short for decency, perched on the animal’s withers in front of him. She sat with her hands resting on the horse’s neck, leaning forward eagerly, like she might at any moment slip from the saddle and run to the desert.
Though she did not hold the reins, it became clear as they neared the desert boundary that it was Kes who chose their direction. When the soldier eyed Kairaithin and even Bertaud askance, it was Kes who touched his arm and spoke to him, and he—reluctantly, Bertaud thought—directed the horse directly toward them. And when the animal tossed up its head and balked at the searing, dangerous scent of the griffin, it was Kes who slid down to the ground, Kes whose word to the soldier drew him to dismount after her.
The soldier released the horse, which backed nervously, spun, and cantered back the way it had come. The soldier cast a glance after it as though he thought of following its example, but then he looked down at the girl at his side and followed her instead.
Kes showed no uncertainty at all. She ran forward, crossing the border between natural mountain and desert with the urgency of a drowning swimmer coming to the surface of the water and a lifesaving mouthful of air. She was barefoot, but showed no sign of discomfort, though the sand should have burned her feet. Barely seeming to notice Bertaud, she went straight to Kairaithin. Her pale hair was tangled and her eyes huge in her small, delicate face; she looked like a tiny child next to the griffin. Kairaithin bent his head down to her like a falcon bending over a mouse. Their shadows lay across each other on the sand, the griffin’s made of fire, the girl’s fire-edged.
The Casmantian soldier crossed the desert boundary more slowly, with far less enthusiasm. He looked at Bertaud, oddly, with more trepidation than he seemed to hold for the griffin. His face, coarse featured and broad, was perfectly inexpressive. Passing him in the streets of a town, one would perhaps think him simple. Bertaud sincerely doubted this was the case.
Kereskiita, said Kairaithin, ignoring the soldier completely, and stroked her face lightly with his beak.
“Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin,” answered Kes, in her timid little voice, and reached, not timid after all, to lay her hand on the griffin’s face just behind that dangerous beak. Then she drew back. “This is my friend Jos,” she said simply, indicating the soldier, who glanced uncomfortably away from the searching look Bertaud gave him. Again, he seemed less worried about Kairaithin.
Bertaud found it difficult to imagine what Kes was doing, running from the Casmantian army in the company of a Casmantian soldier. Even if he could have thought of a way to ask, he doubted he would get an answer.
If he brought you out of the grip of Casmantium and back to me, I am grateful to him, said Kairaithin. The look he bent on the man was severe, dangerous, forcefully attentive. The soldier—Jos, if that was his right name—swayed under the force of it, going ashen. He did not look away from the griffin’s stare; perhaps could not. For the first time, he appeared more impressed by the griffin than by Bertaud.
“He did.”
Then I am grateful. The griffin had not glanced back at Kes, but continued to fix the soldier with his hard, black stare. He said to him directly, I am in your debt. What will you ask of me?
“Nothing,” said the man, in a deep, quiet voice. “Lord.”
Wise. Kairaithin’s voice glinted with humor. He turned again to Kes. You are well? I see you are bound.
“Free me,” whispered Kes.
Whose binding? Do you know his name?
“The little one. The white-haired one, with ice in his eyes and his blood. Beguchren, Beguchren Tesh—Teshrichten, I think.”
Yes, said Kairaithin. Beguchren. I know him. I know his work. He is very powerful, but now that you are come back to me, I can break his binding. Come here to me. He lifted his head, his wings; fire ran suddenly across his wings and filled his eyes, his open beak. Fire ran down the fine feathers of his throat and fell, like the petals of some strange flower, to the sand. It burned bright and clean, without smoke; it made a sound like the hissing of wind-caught sand.
The Casmantian soldier stepped back hastily. Bertaud, too, backed away.
But Kes lifted her hands to the griffin’s fire. She took fire into her hands, into her mouth; fire ran across her skin like water, blossomed in her eyes. There was a hissing sound, as fire meeting frost might hiss: Mist rose around the girl in a thin, drifting veil. She made a small sound that might have been surprise or fear or even anger, though Bertaud had never seen Kes angry.
The air chilled suddenly. Frost ran across the sand at the girl’s feet, flashing brilliantly white in the stark desert sun. Kairaithin leaned forward and reached deliberately into the cold air with a feathered eagle’s leg. He touched Kes’s face with a single talon. The sunlight that surrounded him seemed to gain body and spill from the air like liquid; it roared like a bonfire. Both Bertaud and the Casmantian soldier took another step back.
Again, Kes made a wordless sound, this one definitely both angry and frightened. She had crouched a little, and now sank down to her hands and knees and buried her hands in the red sand. Fire hissed across the sand and rippled up along her wrists. She bowed her head over the flames as a normal girl might bend over a friendly little campfire. Kairaithin made a sharp gesture with his head and flexible eagle’s neck as though he were throwing something into the air from his beak. He had thrown something, something small and bright and—Bertaud thought—deadly. Whatever it was, it left a delicate trail of tiny sparks as it flashed away, back the way Kes had come. Sparks fell glittering to the ground, sparkling now as they became—Bertaud looked more closely—minute fire opals and specks of gold. He took a deep breath of the hot air and looked up again.
Kairaithin was standing perfectly still, looking not after the thing he had cast away, but at Kes. The girl was still kneeling on the ground, her face tilted up to the sunlight. Light poured over her, thick and golden as honey. She swayed suddenly and shut her eyes, then opened them. They were filled with light; tears of fire ran down her cheeks, but she did not seem to be in distress. In fact, she shivered all over and then smiled and sat back on her heels.
Beguchren has lost his binding, said Kairaithin. He folded his black-barred wings and sat down on the sand with a satisfied air.
“I know,” answered Kes. She looked away, up the mountain, gray and cold, to where the snow lay on heights. “He will know it, too.”
Oh, yes. The griffin’s tail lashed across the sand, one quick motion.
“Soldiers,” the Casmantian said suddenly, jerking a hand toward the boundary between the normal mountain chill and the desert.
There were: To his chagrin, Bertaud had not seen them until the Casmantian had pointed them out. They were far away, but coming fast. Quite a few men. That was not good. And neither he nor—he looked quickly—Jos had anything more than a knife.
Beguchren Teshrichten is among them, said Kairaithin.
“Then why are we still here?” Bertaud asked urgently. The Casmantians had put their horses into a gallop; he saw arrowheads glitter in the pale morning light. The first arrows arched high and began to fall.
There will be an accounting between us, said the griffin. But you are correct, man. It cannot be yet. The world tilted dizzyingly around them—then tilted back. Bertaud flung a hand out for balance, staggering. He had expected Kairaithin to move them far back into the desert, but when his sight cleared he found that they were still at its very edge. And the Casmantian soldiers were moving even faster now, if that was possible.
Beguchren prevents me, said Kairaithin.
An arrow whipped past Bertaud’s face and buried itself for a third of its length in the sand at his feet.
He took an involuntary step backward and cursed, shaken. Nearby, the Casmantian, Jos, drew his knife as though he seriously meant to face down several dozen Casmantian horsemen with nothing but that. Other arrows fell around them, though none so close as the first. Then arrows started bursting into flame as they flew, burning to ash and blowing away on the hot wind.
Well done, Kairaithin said to Kes.
“Five minutes and they’ll be on us,” said Bertaud to the griffin mage, drawing his own knife. “Or less.”
“Less,” said Jos, tersely.
Kairaithin half spread his immense wings. Flames rose, pale in the brilliant sunlight, at the edge of the desert. The racing horses, almost too close to the fire to stop, shied away to either side so violently that two of their riders fell. One fell into the flames and sprang up instantly, running blindly toward them, his clothing on fire, screaming in a horrible high-pitched voice. Kes covered her eyes, crying out herself, and the man crumpled almost at their feet, no longer burning.
Jos, without a word, took the man’s sword. There was no sign now that the man had ever been burned, though his uniform was charred. Kes knelt on the sand near Kairaithin, eyes wide with terror, looking tiny and young and entirely helpless.
Kairaithin said, Beguchren is trying to smother my fire. The griffin had ringed them with fire, a towering but thin circle of wavering flames. As Bertaud watched, the circle narrowed perceptibly. The heat pouring off it was incredible. If they hid behind its protection for very long, he doubted either he or Jos would survive the experience.
“Who is stronger? You or Beguchren?” Bertaud asked Kairaithin.
In this desert, I. But if I set myself against the cold mage and break his hold, I will not have sufficient attention to spare to prevent the men from coming against you. And I will be too busy with Beguchren to defend either you or myself from them.
“Then you’ll have to let them past and hope we can keep them off you long enough. It would be nice if you didn’t take too long with Beguchren.” Bertaud stepped forward to put himself shoulder to shoulder with Kes’s Casmantian friend, in front of Kes and Kairaithin. He added, “I’ll need a sword.”
“Yes,” said Jos.
The circle of fire died. Bertaud could tell which of the men outside that circle was Beguchren, not only because the cold mage, small and white haired and finely dressed, looked nothing like a soldier, but also because he stopped in midstep and put his hands over his face, looking like a man under a terrible strain.
Besides, he wasn’t carrying a sword. Well, so slight a man wasn’t likely to do well in a sword fight, but he wasn’t carrying even a bow. No doubt being weaponless was less of a handicap for the cold mage than for Bertaud.
The first three Casmantian soldiers came in at them in a rush: Swords, not arrows, which was good; so Kes had done that much for them by burning the earlier arrows.
Bertaud threw his knife at the first man, and a handful of sand at the second—Jos lunged forward and killed the first man as he ducked away from the flung knife, and engaged the other two while Bertaud got the first one’s sword; Bertaud flung himself down, rolling under a stroke from a fourth soldier and barely making it back to his feet in time to block a slashing blow from a fifth.
The fifth soldier was a heavily built bald man with tremendous reach and plenty of weight to put behind his attacks. He also proved to be, unfortunately, extremely fast on his feet and uncommonly good with a sword. Bertaud backed up rapidly, half running, trying to prevent the rest of the Casmantian soldiers from coming at his back while he worked to keep his opponent from eviscerating him, and also tried to draw the soldiers away from Kairaithin. He was peripherally aware of Jos at the center of a knot of Casmantian soldiers, he had lost track of Kes entirely, and what was Kairaithin doing? The griffin mage seemed to be taking an unconscionable time about getting them all out of this.
The attempt to draw off the Casmantian soldier had certainly worked… a little too well. The bald soldier was backed up by two others, both uncomfortably skilled. The bald man aimed a slashing blow at Bertaud’s face, then brought his sword around in a smooth arc, terribly fast, in a reversed cut at his chest while his companions circled in either direction around Bertaud. Bertaud blocked both attacks, the second one just by a hair, and attacked straight ahead to get out from between the other two soldiers. The bald Casmantian met his attack without giving back more than a step or two; the force of their swords clashing together reverberated through Bertaud’s whole body.
He feinted at his opponent’s lightly armored legs, tried a real thrust at his belly, and was forced to leap sideways to avoid the aggressive attack of one of the others, a much younger man with silver-chased armor—he dropped to one knee under a wickedly fast attack of the young one, swept his sword in a circle to force all his attackers back, lunged to get to his feet, and the bald Casmantian made a quick sideways rush, and this time Bertaud did not manage either to block or avoid the blow.
It was like a kick from a horse against his side: There was no sense at first of being cut. That would, Bertaud knew, come. He felt no pain, yet. That would come, too. He tried to get back to his feet and found no opposition—a measure of how badly he was hurt, that his opponents backed away and did not try to re-engage. Another, that he could not after all manage to get up. He found, to his surprise, that he no longer seemed to be holding his sword. He touched his side and felt moisture; he could not bring himself to look down, and looked up instead.
He saw Kairaithin, surprisingly close, rearing up, his red-chased black wings immense against the brilliant sky. He was aware of Kes, huddled by the griffin’s leonine feet, looking tinier than ever. He thought Jos was still fighting—good for him—although he was aware of a faint and foolish embarrassment that he’d gone down before the other man. As though that mattered. He wondered whether Kairaithin was still too much engaged with Beguchren to protect himself from the soldiers. Bertaud had not managed to do much to reduce that danger. Nor would Jos, probably. Bertaud could not see the cold mage anywhere. Was that a good sign? It was obvious that neither Bertaud nor, soon, Jos was going to be able to protect the griffin or Kes much longer.
He thought he saw Kairaithin come down to all fours, wings spreading out to cover the whole sky, darkness blotting out sun and light and heat alike… and then the light returned, pouring across him with an intensity that was almost pain. He was blind with light, filled with light and heat, he felt his very bones had turned to light and burned through his body. Gasping, he lunged upward and found himself caught and held. For an instant, remembering battle, he tried to fight. A voice, soft and delicate, spoke words he did not at once understand, and the constraint disappeared. So he got an elbow under himself and pried himself up at least far enough to look around.
Kes, sitting back on her heels beside him, sighed, relaxed, stretched, and got to her feet.
Bertaud blinked, and blinked again, trying to clear his eyes of light enough that he could see. The measureless desert stretched out in all directions. Red cliffs and spires twisted upward all around them, reaching narrow jagged fingers to the hard sky. Heat poured down upon them so forcefully that it might have possessed weight and body.
If Bertaud was disoriented, Kes was not. She now stood poised, looking at once timid and confident, close by Kairaithin’s side. Her fine soft hair fell around her face, sun glowing through it; it might have been spun of pale light. A warm light seemed to glow through her skin, as though it contained fire rather than flesh. Possibly she would have been an earth mage save for Kairaithin’s intervention, but she looked now as though she had always been meant to be a mage of fire. She looked, in fact, as Kairaithin did when he wore the form of a man: like nothing that had ever been human.
Jos sat on the sand near Bertaud, in the shadow of a twisted red rock, not looking at any of them, but outward at the desert. Bertaud followed his gaze.
All around them, among the spires of rock, lounging on the hot sand or on rugged ledges, were gr
iffins. Golden and bronze, warm rich brown and copper red; pale as the edges of a candle flame or darkly red as the last coals of a smoldering fire, they sprawled in the sun like cats and stared into the brilliant light with eyes that were not blinded. Only a few appeared to acknowledge the arrival of Kairaithin or Kes or human men in their midst.
Kes looked at Bertaud, glanced at Jos, shook her head, and raked her fingers absently through her hair. They moved again, the world tilting around them. Bertaud realized with a shock that it was the girl and not the griffin mage who had moved them this time. That she had done it as a griffin mage would: With a thought, with a shifting of the stillness of the desert. They stood suddenly in the stark black shadow of a broken cliff. The contrast of the shadow with the relentless pounding sun out in the open was dizzying.
Bertaud gasped, catching his balance with an outflung hand against the stone wall. He did not try to get up, but leaned his head back against the cliff wall and shut his eyes.
The Casmantian soldier, who had gotten to his feet, sat back down as well, with slow, careful movements.
Kairaithin lay down, stretching out like a cat. He appeared amused, although Bertaud could not have said why he had such an impression. Bertaud asked him, “Beguchren?”
Retreated, answered the griffin, with obvious satisfaction. This day was mine. And, after a moment, with a little tip of his fierce eagle’s head, Ours.
Bertaud nodded back to him and said to Kes, “That’s twice you’ve saved my life, I think. Thank you.”
Kes gave him a quick shy smile, but she seemed more edgy and nervous now than she had during the fight. She paced hurriedly from one edge of the shadow to the other, unable to settle. She said, “I used fire. It was much easier this time.”
Of course, Kairaithin told her. You do very well, kereskiita. You are quick to learn and powerful in your gifts.
Kes turned to the griffin. “The Casmantian king said I was—was—I don’t know the word—festech-something.”
“Festechanenteir,” said Jos, not looking up.
Lord of the Changing Winds Page 20