Lord of the Changing Winds

by Rachel Neumeier

  Nothing was simple, now. She wished she could be angry about that. She should be angry—with Kairaithin; with the Lord of Fire and Air; with Brechen Glansent Arobern, the ambitious King of Casmantium, who had driven the griffins out of their high desert as a tactic against Feierabiand. And she was angry. But her anger only flickered around the edges of her fear.

  Against her side, Opailikiita stirred. The griffin turned her head to look at Kes out of one golden-brown eye, a fierce attention that drew Kes all but involuntarily back into the immediate present. The stroke of gold through the feathers above the griffin’s eye gave her a ferocious look. And she was ferocious. But…

  “Sister,” said Kes, and smoothed those soft feathers with the tip of one finger.

  The griffin closed her eyes and tilted her head against the delicate caress; if she had been a cat, she would have purred.

  Kes stared into the desert and thought about fire, and earth, and sisters. What, she wondered, would Tesme make of the red desert? Of the fire-eyed griffin? Tesme would be horrified by both, Kes was nearly certain. She would be afraid of both. And either might kill her, the griffin almost as indifferently as the desert. Though Opailikiita would not want to make Kes unhappy. But she might kill Tesme anyway and say in surprise when Kes protested, But it was a day for blood.

  A day for blood.

  Blood would surely water the desert, soon. It would flood forth abundantly. And what would bloom of this gathering storm? And what would it cost to turn that storm? If she could. Could she?

  And if she could, would she be glad afterward? Perhaps she would say, But was this not a day for blood? and wonder why she had troubled herself. Kes pressed her hands over her eyes, trying not to think about losing herself to the desert, of letting it change her not only into a different person but into an entirely different kind of creature. But even if she refused to think about this, she knew it was possible. More than possible. She almost longed to pour fire through her heart to her hands, to scatter fire across the wind right now, just so that change would happen, would be done with, so she could stop agonizing over the prospect. Afterward… afterward, what would she think? Or feel?

  Did it matter what she thought afterward? Or felt? Did it matter, what she might lose by what she chose, when she had no choice, really? Did it matter what she might gain?

  Kes said to Opailikiita, “You know the binding Kairaithin put around me.”

  I know, the slim griffin said.

  “I can’t leave the desert. But you could help me. You could push the desert… out.” Kes gestured vaguely.

  The griffin turned her head, closed delicately feathered eyelids half across her golden-tawny eyes. Where would you go?

  In a way, Kes wanted to say, Home. She shut her eyes, trying to think about the comfortable house where Tesme would be waiting for her. Worrying for her. Wondering where Kes was, what she might be doing, whether she was safe. But images of the desert intruded on memories of her home: flames rippling in the wind and licking out of the sand; the merciless sun blazing above red cliffs, stark shadows stretching out beneath…

  She blinked, and blinked again, and stared away north and west, toward the dust haze that marked the road and the king. “There.”

  At her side, Jos stilled attentively.

  What would you do there? asked the griffin.

  “Find the king. And tell him… tell him… everything, I suppose.” Kes contemplated this feat, now that it was laid out plainly in words, with extreme disquiet. She shivered. Could she walk into the presence of the King of Feierabiand and tell him anything at all?

  Tears pressed at her eyes, or a pressure and heat that should have been tears. If she wept, she knew that fire opals would scatter across the sand. She blinked fiercely, not wanting to see jewels where there should be tears. She had bravely enough declared what she wanted to do. But when she stood in the midst of a crowd of soldiers and courtiers and strangers, she knew she would stand mute and helpless until, defeated by her own inability to speak, she was forced to retreat again to the silence of the desert.

  And yet, if she could not believe she would find the courage to stand and speak, could she not at least find the courage to try for the first small step in that direction?

  Opailikiita, fearless herself, did not understand fear and would not have comprehended Kes’s anxiety even had she tried to put it into words. But she understood peril and prudence. She said, The Lord of Fire and Air would be very angry.

  Kes knew this was so. She asked cautiously, “But… do you care?”

  And it seemed she correctly understood the heart of the griffin, because where a human woman—or a human soldier—would have cared, and cared deeply, Opailikiita said simply, No.

  Jos stared at her. At them both.

  Kairaithin would also be angry, said Opailikiita. His opinion, I do care for.

  Kes looked into her fierce tawny eyes, and beyond them into the ferociously independent, unconquerable heart of the griffin that would not bear any kind of mastery. “Kairaithin has imprisoned me here. He leaves me to choose only what he would have me choose. Is that right?”

  No, said the griffin, definitely.

  “Then,” Kes asked her, “would you not help me choose as I would choose?”

  Yes. If you ask me. You may ask.

  Kes rose to her feet, standing on the edge of the cliff, at the edge of space; she blinked and stared into it, looking for the layers of heat and motion that a griffin would see. She perceived only space, however fire-touched her eyes. And, to the west, the haze of rising dust. Where the king would be. She did not let herself think of him. She thought only of the desert and the red cliff and the dizzying drop into space. And of Opailikiita, who was her friend and her sister and who understood space and movement.

  Jos stood up and moved a step closer to her. “And me.”

  “Of course,” said Kes, surprised, and put out a hand for his.

  And the world shifted around them.

  The edge of the desert was a sharp, clean break. Red sand and heat lay at their backs, an austere splendor ruled by a merciless sun set in a sky that was a hard and brilliant white. But before them, soft greens and grays and browns ran down the gentle hills into the more verdant green where the river ran. The light itself lay tenderly on the young green of pastures and woodlands, and the sky before them was a soft, delicate blue.

  The king’s camp was not in sight. Kes could see where the road must be, from the shape of the land; she knew there was a great host strung out along it from the dust and the distant sounds of many men.

  And she knew, without even needing to put it to a test, that she could not step from one land to the other. Kairaithin had set the desert’s boundary in her mind, or her heart. She could not pass through it.

  Even if she found him, probably the king would not listen to her—why should he? He was not her friend, as Jos was. There was not, Kes thought, really much point to trying to speak to him. She could go back into the silent reaches of the desert and sit with Opailikiita and Jos on a high cliff and watch events unfold and there would really be nothing, nothing at all, she could ever have done about any of it.

  She sighed. Then she said to Opailikiita, “I can’t leave the desert, but you could move it.” She gestured outward with both hands as though shooing the desert forward. “If the desert comes to the king, then I can speak to him and yet not break past Kairaithin’s boundary.”

  Opailikiita said, Yes.

  “I know it will be hard,” Kes said apologetically. The griffins spun the desert out of their own hearts; the desert wind came into the world through their own souls. She did not quite know how she had such temerity as to ask Opailikiita to spend her own self and strength on a task that the griffin did not even value—that might even be dangerous for her. She started to say, No, never mind, don’t worry about it, let’s go back to the high desert and listen to the sun striking the red stone—whatever will happen, let it happen.

  Before she coul
d, Opailikiita half opened her wings and leaned forward. A hot wind blew past her, or out of her; it came from the shadow under her wings and stirred the green grasses of the pasture. The grasses withered at that sere touch, an alarming thing to watch. Sand blew gently across them, catching in the yellowing blades. The strength of the sun came down, and the grasses dried and crumbled and blew away on the parched wind.

  Opailikiita took a step forward. And another.

  Behind her, Jos swore softly and fervently.

  Kes closed her eyes and followed Opailikiita blindly. She did not need to look where she walked: She walked in the desert and her path was always the same no matter where she set her foot.

  A Feierabiand soldier spotted them before the camp itself came into their view; his shout of amazement and alarm made Kes open her eyes. She stretched her stride to come up beside Opailikiita and put a hand on the griffin’s slim neck, hard-muscled under its soft feathers. She said worriedly, “If there are arrows—”

  You must catch them, said Opailikiita, a little breathlessly. They move in the air, they fly, they belong to the air. You can catch them with fire if you are quick, or turn them with wind. Remember, men make them so they will try to strike you. A wind must be very strong to turn them aside.

  Kes had burned arrows before; she knew she could be quick enough to catch them with fire. If there were not too many arrows. But what if there were too many? If an arrow struck Opailikiita, she thought she would be able to heal her. But what if an arrow struck her own body? Or Jos? Her steps slowed. It would be so much easier just to go back…

  “They are not shooting,” Jos said, and laid a hand on her shoulder. He meant the touch for reassurance, she knew. It felt like a pressure at her back, shoving her forward.

  The one soldier had been joined by others, a few at first and then more. But the shouts ceased. Men drew aside into two companies, one to either side of the path Opailikiita was making; they were close enough now that Kes could make out bows in some hands and spears in others.

  “You can see they will let us come right in among them,” Jos said. Again in his deep voice Kes heard not reassurance, but warning.

  She said worriedly, “Is the king there?” She did not know what she would do if the king was not there. Who else should she speak to? Who might carry her words to the king, and would they sound persuasive in someone else’s mouth?

  Would they, in hers?

  Jos peered ahead. “Just there, I think.”

  Kes looked at the man he indicated: Standing between the two armed ranks of soldiers, with others close by him. He looked grim and authoritative and sure of himself, thoroughly intimidating. He was like a lion, she thought, with a broad, assured face and muscled arms and sun-bleached streaks in his thick tawny-colored hair. He wore no crown, but nevertheless he looked very much a king.

  And what would this man see when he looked at her?

  Closer yet, and the nearest soldiers were close enough to have almost touched Opailikiita with their spears. They didn’t, however, but stood still, in straight ranks, with their spears grounded on the earth at their feet and their eyes straight ahead, except for little covert fascinated glances at the griffin, and at Kes and Jos.

  The king, close now, was also standing patiently. There was a man at his side—not Bertaud, and Kes was sorry, she would have trusted Lord Bertaud far more than these strangers. There was a very old woman seated in a chair, with woman attendants about her. Her eyes were closed, but she turned her face toward Kes with an awareness that went beyond sight. Kes knew by the sudden twist of dislike she felt that this woman must be a mage and flinched uneasily away from her strong awareness.

  Opailikiita stopped and sank down couchant upon the sand she had brought with her; her beak was slightly open and she panted with rapid shallow breaths. Kes laid an apologetic hand on her shoulder, cast one despairing glance back along the narrow tongue of desert they had made, and turned slowly and reluctantly to face the king.

  He looked stern, she thought. Forbidding. She wondered if he ever smiled. Now that she was so close, she could see that his eyes were dark: not measurelessly black like Kairaithin’s eyes, but dark as fresh-turned earth, with a power to them as the earth possessed. He did not have the presence of the Lord of Fire and Air. But he had a presence of his own.

  Words deserted her. Just as Kes had feared, she did not know what to say, and stood tongue-tied and clumsy in the midst of a hundred men. She edged closer to Opailikiita, trying to draw strength and courage from the griffin, who possessed both in such generous measure. But Kes still felt neither herself. She was horrified by the possibility that she would not be able to speak after all, that the day for blood and death would come and she would not even have been able to try to prevent it.

  The king came forward one step, and another, waving away the concern of the men who pressed forward anxiously at his back. His dark eyes looked into hers, and Kes wondered what he saw in them, and thought that if he was perceptive he would see fire. His own were filled with curiosity.

  Then he brought his attention back to her face, looking her over quickly from the top of her head to her bare toes. “Kes, I presume,” he said, and the laughter she had not seen in his face was suddenly perceptible at the edges of his voice.

  Kes blinked. She nodded hesitantly.

  “And who is this?” The king was looking in open wonder at Opailikiita.

  Kes followed his gaze, and managed to smile, because the griffin was so magnificently unimpressed by men with spears, no matter how numerous, or by kings, no matter they were kings. Opailikiita arched her neck a little so her feathers ruffled into almost a mane; sun glinted off her feathers as though each one had been pounded separately out of bronze and had fine gold scrollwork inlaid across it. The muscles in her slim lion rear shifted powerfully as she eased herself to a sitting posture, and her tail, wrapping neatly around her talons, tapped gently on the sand.

  “Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike,” said Kes, finding her voice after all. “She is my friend, and brought me here because I asked her to. She is not—well, she is dangerous, but not to you, um, your majesty, unless you try to shoot her. She only came because I asked her to make a path for me.”

  “She is welcome,” said the king, and looked curiously at Jos.

  “That is—”

  “No one,” Jos interrupted harshly. “Except her friend.”

  Kes looked at him in surprise.

  “That is a Casmantian uniform,” noted the king, in a mild tone.

  Jos shrugged.

  Kes did not want to say anything about Jos to the King of Feierabiand. She asked instead, “Did, um, did Bertaud, did Lord Bertaud, did he tell you… about the Casmantian army?” Her heart sank: What if, for whatever reason, Bertaud had not told his king about Casmantium? Why ever should the king then believe anything she should say about that threat?

  “He told me,” the king said reassuringly.

  “Well,” Kes said, and nervously stroked Opailikiita’s neck, trying to draw courage from the griffin’s hot presence under her hand. She tried to look only at the king, to pretend that no one else was there, only she and the king. Who was not, after all, a very frightening man. Not nearly so frightening as Kanes the smith, really, she told herself. He hadn’t shouted even once, yet. She took a shallow breath and looked at her feet, trying to think what to say.

  “Bertaud advised me very strongly that I should listen to you, if I was lucky enough to meet you,” the king said gently. “What is it you came to tell me?”

  Kes glanced up to meet his eyes, glanced down again. She said unhappily, “Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu—that is, the Lord of Fire and Air, the king of the griffins, you know—he has decided to, to… make you come into the desert and fight Casmantium there. And when Casmantium has destroyed you, he will bring his people down against Casmantium while they are still in the desert, and destroy them. It is,” she explained earnestly, “a very simple plan, because you have to fight the griffin
s. And the King of Casmantium has to fight you, or why did he bring his army here? And he won’t know the griffins are as dangerous to his men as to yours because he thinks his cold mages can keep the griffins from harming his men. He doesn’t know—he doesn’t know about me. Or… he knows I am here, but he doesn’t know… we think he doesn’t know what I can do.”

  The king stood very still, his eyes on her face. But Kes thought that he was seeing, not her face, but battles hidden just around the next corner of time. He said at last, “And if we will not fight this battle to please the griffins?”

  Kes nodded hopefully—maybe he could find a way not to fight—but Opailikiita said, The Lord of Fire and Air will see to it that you must fight. Her graceful, unobtrusive voice slid delicately around the corners of the mind, but many of the men still flinched in surprise. Some swore, though quietly. The old earth mage recoiled slightly, looking like she was struggling between offense and fascination. The king’s eyes widened briefly. He said to the griffin, with careful courtesy, “How would he do this?”

  This land knows us, now. The desert we have made out of our hearts is ours. Your earth mage will not break its power, though she may try. The King of Casmantium does not yet understand that his mages cannot break its power, either. So you will understand you must fight within the reaches of our desert.

  The king stared at her. His face tightened; he looked suddenly stern again. “And if I take my people back up the road to the north?”

  If you retreat, you will cede all this country to Casmantium; if you go south to block his move there, my people will put the desert under your feet and hold you. If you stay where you are, then the Arobern will press you against our desert and destroy you and still claim all this land.

  “And what do you suggest I do to preserve my people against destruction, then?” the king asked her.

  There is nothing you can do, Opailikiita said, with a strange griffin satisfaction.

  “Split your force,” suggested Jos. His deep voice carried an odd, reluctant kind of assurance. “If you must take part of it into the desert, do so, and use those men as well as you can. You will lose most of them, probably. But also send men to cut around through the mountains and come down on the Arobern from above. Even a small force can have a great impact if it’s used well. That way you may save something from this battle. If you send word to the west and the south now, at once, then what you do here may at least hold the Casmantian army long enough for the rest of Feierabiand to prepare.”