“Yes—festechanenteir. That means a fire-mage who is also human. Isn’t that what it means?”
Yes, agreed the griffin.
Near Bertaud, Jos glanced up at Kes and then looked away again. Her friend, she had said, with no explanation of how she had made a friend of any Casmantian soldier. The man did not seem inclined to explain.
“My heart is turning to fire, my bones to red stone. Why didn’t you tell me?” Kes asked Kairaithin. Her voice rose; she might have been happy to get away from Beguchren and back to the desert, but now that she felt herself safe, and despite her apparent shy timidity, she was clearly angry. “I knew you were teaching me to love fire. But I didn’t know you were teaching me to forget earth! Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing to me?”
Jos turned his head away and shut his eyes. Bertaud, though most of his attention was on the girl and on Kairaithin, studied the Casmantian curiously.
Should I have? Should I have said, “You should be an earth mage, you would wake into your power at a touch, but if you reach for fire now, you will become fire? Your heart will become fire, your breath will become desert wind?”
“Yes!” Kes cried. “Shouldn’t you? Why should you not?”
Think, said Kairaithin, patient and pitiless as the sun. I might have told you, “Take what I give you, do as I teach you, and you will lose what you are and become something other.” You would have fled me and fought me and wasted your strength struggling against the fire, until I would have been forced to compel you by threat to obey me. I would have killed your sister’s horses, one by one. And then I would have killed your sister’s servants. And then I would have killed your sister. Would you have withstood all that I would have done?
Kes stared at him, her anger smothered by shock and fear. She should have been weeping. Her eyes were dry as the desert. She whispered, “I would not even have been able to bear the horses.”
So. And then you would have become fire all the same.
Bowing her head, the girl whispered, “I would rather have known what it was I was losing.”
You do know, now. Does this knowledge please you? Kereskiita, you will become other than human. Already fire rather than earth sustains you. You have no thirst, no hunger; though you may be weary, it is not with the weariness of men. Does it profit you to know this?
Kes did not answer. Perhaps she could not. She looked down at the sand beneath her feet, her breath catching. Tears fell at last, flashing in the sun and rolling in the sand, fire opals and carnelians. Kes dashed jewels away from her face and turned her back on them all.
I would give you a choice, if I could.
Unexpectedly, Jos moved. He got up and took a step forward, coming up close behind the girl. With startling familiarity, he laid his broad hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him, giving her a little shake to make her lift her head. With unexpected eloquence he said, “Kes, this wanenteir would have you believe you have already given up your humanity. But you have not. You use fire; fire flows through your hands and your eyes and your heart and you think you are made of fire. But you are not. You were born to use the magecraft of earth. You should gather earth into your hands; you should use earth and metal and human magecraft until there is no room left in your heart for fire. You can do this. Would you abandon earth? Forget Tesme? She certainly won’t forget you. She thinks of you all the time, she watches the hills all the time, she still hopes you will come back to her. What you choose now is what you will become. But it is still your choice. Won’t you come back?”
Kes stared up at him.
Kairaithin said, You are mistaken, man. Have you not been listening? She has no choice, for I will give her none.
Jos didn’t even look at the griffin, but only at Kes. He said, “You need her. You need her goodwill, lord malacteir. Or how should your people stand against even Feierabiand, far less Casmantium? You found her and you made her and you intend her now to be your weapon, but if she will not, then you are lost. I know this, and you know it, and if Kes understands it, she will be proof against any threat you can make—”
Be quiet. Or it is you I will kill, said the griffin.
“No,” said Kes. Her voice was thin and shaky, but she turned quickly to stare at Kairaithin, and her eyes, though enormous in her delicate face, held in them a resolve that Bertaud had not expected.
Kairaithin tipped his head to the side, studying the girl out of one fierce black eye. His expression was not readable. But he did not threaten Jos again. He said to Kes, In a hundred years perhaps you will have the strength to challenge me. But I assure you, you do not have that power today, and you will do as I choose and not as you would choose.
“I trusted you,” Kes whispered.
Do you not understand that my need is too great to allow me to be trustworthy? I will permit neither Casmantium nor Feierabiand to destroy what remains of my people. The choice you have is whether to suit your power to my need by your own choice or by mine. That is all the freedom you have. Kairaithin paused. No one spoke. The desert wind brought the dry scents of dust and stone and heat into the dark shadow of the cliff.
It is not a terrible thing, to be a creature of fire, the griffin added, his tone almost wistful. He angled his head sharply downward; his beak opened and clicked cleanly shut. Fire ran through his eyes, and he went suddenly elsewhere, leaving three humans who should never have been in this foreign desert to stand alone in the shadow.
Kes sighed sharply and sat down rather suddenly, her legs folding under her. Her thin hands trembled. She closed them into fists and stared blindly at the sand. The Casmantian soldier sat down more slowly next to her, and she leaned against him and turned her face into his shoulder.
“Who are you?” Bertaud asked him, bewildered anew by the familiarity between the soldier and the girl.
The soldier sighed. “No one,” he said.
Kes straightened and wrapped her arms about her drawn-up knees. She said, in a small, weary voice, “He… he works for Tesme. My sister. But…” Her voice trailed off.
“I was once a soldier of Casmantium,” the man said. He met Bertaud’s eyes, flatly refusing anything further. Then his eyes dropped back to rest on the girl’s face, and he shook his head. “Better I had left you with the Arobern. He would not have harmed you.”
“He would have,” Kes whispered. “Don’t you understand? His need would have been too great to allow him to be kind.” She shut her eyes.
“I—” said Bertaud. “You—”
Neither of them even glanced at him. Jos touched her chin with a fingertip, turned her face up toward his. The girl opened her eyes again, surprised. Jos said gently, “He would have made you human again, and that would have been a good thing. Kes, that creature was trying to frighten you, and I suppose he did—he frightened me—but, look, he can’t force you to use fire. To become a creature of fire. Either you will or you won’t, and truly, the griffin’s need is a weapon in your hand. Why else should he have tried to silence me? All you require is the courage to use your own strength.”
Kes gazed at him wordlessly.
Jos dropped his hand to rest on his knee. But he spoke with even more intensity. “You’ve always been braver than anyone would think, to look at you. Braver than you’ve thought yourself. You can make them believe no threat will move you, if you try. The malacteir need you. You don’t need them. The sword is in your hand.”
“But threats can move me,” whispered Kes, “if they are the right threats.” She sounded very tired. “And, Jos… what if I want the fire? I ought to want to go home, and sometimes I do want that, but the fire is so beautiful. What if I forget to want anything but fire?” She closed her eyes and tipped her head up toward the hard sky. Again Bertaud thought there should be tears; he heard them in her voice. But this time no tears glittered into jewels down her face.
The man gripped her shoulder, giving her a tiny shake. “And Tesme? Meris? Nehoen? All those who searched for you when you vanished into
the desert? They are your people. Minas Ford is your home. Would you turn away from them forever?”
“I don’t know,” the girl whispered. She paused and then confessed in an even smaller voice, “Sometimes I forget even Tesme. I’m sorry, I’m sorry she’s worried for me, I knew she would worry, I don’t know how I can forget, but sometimes…”
“Then I’m sorry, too.” Jos touched her cheek with the tips of two fingers, then dropped his hand again, slowly.
Bertaud came a step forward, dropped to one knee to put himself at the girl’s level, and asked her quietly, “And Casmantium?”
Kes opened her eyes. Both she and Jos looked at Bertaud as though he had spoken words in a foreign language neither of them understood.
“An army of Casmantian soldiers in the mountains, poised to come down across Minas Ford and all Feierabiand? Is this not a matter of concern? Do you not wonder about Casmantium’s intentions?”
“Oh,” said Kes. And answered very simply, “No, I know what Casmantium wants. The king told me. He wants a new province. He wants a port city with a good harbor.”
“Terabiand,” said Bertaud, appalled.
Kes nodded. “And not to pay the toll on the road. And he says the road is bad. But I think really what he wants most is Terabiand. And as much other land as he can take.”
“And all Iaor knows is that griffins have made a desert here. He will come down from Tihannad, expecting nothing but griffins, and he will find the desert on one side and Casmantium on the other.”
“You can warn him,” the girl said, not understanding. “Kairaithin would take you to him, I think. He would… surely he would rather soldiers of Feierabiand fought Casmantian soldiers than came against his own people. Or I… I could ask Opailikiita to take you to him, if Kairaithin will not. I think she would, if I asked her.”
“I think,” Bertaud said bitterly, “that probably if I have the temerity to approach Iaor after the way I left him, he will have me arrested.”
The Casmantian soldier gave Bertaud a narrow look at this, but Bertaud did not care. He was consumed suddenly by a disbelief in all the events of the past hours. It seemed incredible that a griffin should have come to Tihannad, that in order to free him, Bertaud should have renounced the loyalty that meant more to him than life itself. Again, the image of Iaor’s face in that moment of betrayal came before his eyes. He flinched from that image, staring instead out into the desert, trying to let the brilliance drive that memory away. Despite everything he could do, it lingered.
Though… if he had not freed Kairaithin… he would still be in Tihannad, and no one in Feierabiand would know yet that Casmantium had come across the mountains. It was clear what Brechen Glansent Arobern intended: to let Feierabiand commit its strength against the griffins and then come hard against them from behind when they were exhausted with fighting fire. Was not the chance to prevent that worth anything? Bertaud pressed a hand over his eyes and tried to believe this.
Kes, too, rubbed her thin hands across her face. Then she asked, “But won’t he listen to you before he arrests you?”
Bertaud sighed and stood up. He stared out across the stark, beautiful desert, where light pulled fire out of the sand and spilled fire down the red spires of rock until the brilliance of it became painful to gaze upon. He said, reluctantly, because it was not arrest he feared but the look in Iaor’s eyes, “Yes. Yes, I suppose he will.” He looked back at the girl, incredulous all over again at her smallness against the strength and power of the desert. “And what shall I tell him you will do?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“You must do as you choose,” said Jos, his deep, slow voice sounding very certain.
Bertaud answered him sharply, “Sometimes circumstances choose for us.” He turned urgently back to the girl. “I shall go to Iaor and hope he will hear me. And you… Kes, the griffins must support Feierabiand against Casmantium. Is not Casmantium inexorably their enemy? Have they not proven so? We need not be their enemies. We might even be allies. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the girl whispered.
The Casmantian soldier had a grim look to him; he, too, understood what Bertaud was saying. He said nothing.
“Can you make Kairaithin understand? And the rest of them?”
She only shook her head, clearly not knowing.
“You must,” he said intensely. “You must. We must not allow Casmantium a free hand here. That will be no benefit to the griffins or to us.” He gave Jos a hard look. “Will you say otherwise? Whom do you support in this?”
The soldier only shook his head. “I chose… when I killed that boy and took Kes out of the Arobern’s hands; again when I fought against the king’s mage and his men. That was my choice then, lord. Do you think I can go back now?”
Bertaud gave a slight nod, not really satisfied. But it was all the assurance he was going to get, clearly. He said to Kes, “Then will you get your friend to take me to the edge of the desert? As far north as she can?”
And so Kes called Opailikiita.
CHAPTER 11
Bertaud found Iaor, this time, in the better of the two inns in Riamne, with a very respectable army spread out in an encampment half a mile below the town, along the Sepes where the smaller stream divided from the larger Nejeied and quickened its flow between steepening banks. That Kes’s griffin friend had known where the king of Feierabiand rested this night… that carried its own uncomfortable message.
Opailikiita had brought him to Riamne by that strange folding through air and time that the griffin mages seemed able to do, but Opailikiita did not linger in Riamne; she brought him to its walls and immediately took herself away again. Back to Kes, who was her friend? Back to Kairaithin, who was, Bertaud understood, her master? If she went to Kairaithin, would she tell him where she had taken Bertaud? If she did, and if he was angry, it would be a problem for Kes to deal with. Could she?
Whether or not, there was nothing he could do about it. Standing outside the town’s open gates, Bertaud gazed at the diverging rivers that ran past the walls. He wanted, suddenly and intensely, to walk away again and never turn his head to see what he was leaving. The water slid steadily past on its way south to the sea. He might follow it south to the coast. Or he might go west to his own estates in the Delta. That would certainly surprise his uncles and cousins there.
He turned back to the town instead, deliberately, and went through the gates, threading his way through its streets to the inn.
The inn was a brick edifice, three stories tall, with balconies outside the highest rooms and flowers on the balconies. Bertaud knew where the king would be: The best suite the inn offered was on that top floor, with rich furnishings and a private bath and rooms for servants the lord who guested there would bring. Iaor would have taken that whole floor for himself and his military advisors and senior officers, and for Meriemne if he had brought her with him, as seemed likely. Possibly the king’s entourage was ensconced all through the lower floors as well.
What Bertaud did not know was how best he might now approach the king. His own nervousness appalled him, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of Iaor’s face when Bertaud had defied him came back to him again, starkly. And if he had lost the king’s trust and regard, perhaps forever? What would be left for him then? His father’s house in the Delta? He grimaced.
Deliberately, he put that thought aside. If he’d lost the king’s esteem… at least, Bertaud thought, surely Iaor would listen to him before he sent him away, or had him arrested. And so the king would know that a Casmantian army was in the mountains behind the griffins’ desert, with Brechen Glansent Arobern at its head. That news would surely buy forgiveness. But, Bertaud thought, probably not a return of the easy trust, the certainty that he and Iaor had once had between them.
He sighed and stepped toward the inn’s main door, wanting now primarily to get this whole encounter behind him.
A soldier was posted there, not a guardsman whom Bertaud would ha
ve known, but a man in the colors of some western-border company whom Bertaud had not, to his knowledge, ever seen before. Bertaud began to speak to him, but the soldier unexpectedly laid a hand to his sword without waiting, moving quickly to block the door to the inn and raising his voice in a shout.
Startled, Bertaud began to protest, then paused. He might not know this young man, but surely there was no chance that the soldier did not know him. Had his captain set orders that Bertaud was to be arrested on sight? Had a general given such orders? Adries, perhaps?
Had Iaor given that command himself? Bertaud thought, heart cold, that after the way he had fled Tihannad with the griffin mage, this was all too possible. He wondered now why he had not expected it; why he had imagined to be able to walk straight into the king’s presence. Perhaps, indeed, Iaor would refuse to speak with him.
Or if this command had been given by some general or courtier who had been his rival in the court, perhaps Iaor would not even be told that he had come back.
It was this last thought that sent Bertaud’s hand to catch and hold the soldier’s before the young man could quite clear his sword from its scabbard. The soldier tried to break his grip, so Bertaud caught the man’s wrist in his other hand, even knowing how stupid this was, knowing that he had lost this encounter the moment he’d allowed it to become a physical contest. Other soldiers were coming… He saw no guardsmen, no one he could expect to listen to him over whatever order they’d been given. He could not fight the soldiers; he could not command them. What else was left? Bertaud let go of the soldier’s wrist and stepped back, hoping for inspiration. It did not come.
Another soldier, some lieutenant he didn’t know, as he did not know any of these men, grabbed Bertaud’s arm and stepped behind him to pinion him. For a moment there was quiet. Bertaud opened his mouth to speak, but found he did not know what to say.
A young guardsman, undoubtedly drawn by the commotion, came out of the inn. He looked curious and half alarmed. The young man was faintly familiar… Bertaud had thought he knew all his guardsmen well, but this one… He recognized him, then, and was all but overcome with a sudden unlikely desire to laugh. It was Enned son of Lakas, whom he had reluctantly accepted as a guardsman… what, seven days ago, eight? Enned recognized him, too. The young man’s eyes widened.
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