Kindred and Wings (13 page)

Ellyria Dragonsoul was staring at it though with the kind of fixed attention that reminded him of only one person: his sister, the one the world knew as Talyn. He hesitated to speak and break her concentration.

Pelanor, coming up behind him, was not nearly as diplomatic. “Well, that is quite a mess.”

The mother of the Vaerli looked up, her eyes for a second completely alien, but a sharp smile danced across her lips. “Indeed it is. A mess.”

Her concentration trailed off as she seemed to suddenly become engrossed with her own arm. The
pae atuae
flexed and swiveled on her skin, an effect that made Byre nervous. His father had been a master of the word magic, and so his son knew the power they could contain. The marks of the made seer were an unknown quantity. Though his mind buzzed with unasked questions, he couldn’t find it in himself to query the mother of his nation.

Naturally, Pelanor had none of those qualms. She strolled over to stand within a hairsbreadth of Ellyria’s back and looked down at the pattern spread out like an octopus before them on the floor. After a second with her head cocked, she pointed to the dark gray ribbon. “But that is the twelve-mouthed goddess.”

Byre, despite his reverence, darted over the pattern to stare down at what she had recognized. The tiny wooden pieces that were locked together in this strand were indeed marked by the symbol of the Phaerkorn’s goddess.

“How can that be?” Pelanor asked him in a demanding tone. “My people are not even here yet.”

“The buried avatar.” Ellyria nodded. “The female energy we require.”

Byre turned about slowly, looking with great care at the puzzle of interlocking pieces twining away from them. With careful inspection he was able to make out sigils and signs of the Lady of Wings, the Rutilian Guard—and even the Caisah himself, the spread winged eagle.

“And here you are.” Ellyria dropped to her haunches and touched a narrower band of red. The sigil of his name was immediately apparent. “And here is the little Witch.” Pelanor’s section of the puzzle was also red.

“Mother,” Byre whispered, “how can you know so much? This has all yet to happen.” He turned around in confusion, suddenly understanding what the puzzle behind him meant. “It has happened.”

Ellyria gripped his hand hard. “They gave it to me, all I asked for.” Her eyes were frighteningly clear and piercing. “The Pact was made—but there is always a price.” She pointed down to the floor. “They broke away and everything was ruined.”

The ribbon she pointed to was as wide as that representing the Caisah, but he did not understand the sigil. He pronounced the unfamiliar word. “Phage . . . the Phage?”

“The Pact breakers,” Ellyria whispered. “I have not been able to see the way to stop them. I have tried. I’ve laid the pieces again and again but it just won’t fit.”

He followed the slithering length of the pieces that were so obviously distressing the Mother of the Vaerli. Up ahead its broad swath cut through the more fragile lines of his and his sister’s. “What does that mean? Where do we meet these breakers?”

Whatever clarity she had briefly held onto slipped away like summer mist. Ellyria the Mother, the most revered of the Vaerli, fell into muttering to herself and scrambling on the ground.

Pelanor walked over the puzzle, entranced, then leapt lightly over pieces so as not to disturb them. Byre stayed very still, concerned that if he moved in the slightest he would lose his senses.

Clearing his throat, he tried to refocus and get past the rush of actually being in the presence of Ellyria Dragonsoul.

“Look here!” Pelanor’s sharp eyes seemed to making better sense of the puzzle than his. “Is this the Harrowing?”

The conjunction of pieces made this spot appear like a tangle of wool. Some he expected, like the Caisah, but to see the dark skein of the Phage was unusual. He’d been there that day at the Bastion, he recalled none that would have been described as Pact breakers. As much as Byre wanted to ask Ellyria about that, he sensed this could well unbalance her. He had another question, the one that he’d battled to have answered.

“Grandmother,” he said softly, “can you end the Harrowing and give back the Gifts to our people?”

Her eyes never left the
pae atuae
on her right forearm as her left index finger traced them. “The Gifts are not lost. The Harrowing is from your time, and it is you who must fix it.” The words were not said in a cruel manner, but Byre felt them hit him as if they had been. Ellyria Dragonsoul looked up at him suddenly, examining him as minutely as she had the
pae atuae
. “You were there, you know what happened and how to fix it.”

Now, both women were looking at him. A confused smile spread on Byre’s mouth. They had to be playing some kind of cruel joke. “I was . . . I was a child when that happened. I was there on the Salt Plain, but I was definitely not in the meeting when the Caisah came and—”

“But you were there.” The seer stepped closer to him. This near, it was impossible to ignore her nakedness, and not to let his eyes trace the
pae atuae
over her body. She was a work of art. When she tapped him in the middle of his chest with her index finger, he felt his heart slow, and his eyes grow heavy. He’d been wrong; she was not a work of art, she was more like a drug.

Growing up in the wilds, away from his people, he had not been idle. Peon was the inhaled smoke of choice, and two local farm boys—ones not afraid of the fact he was Vaerli—had introduced him to it. The spectacular but empty visions he had shared with them, he had mostly done for the far more heady taste of acceptance. Ellyria was like that.

When she touched him, colors exploded at the back of his eyes, and nothing seemed to matter except the movement of her lips. Each of the words from her mouth were intensely important.

“You were there,” she said in a low tone which he knew was only for him. “The lines of connection and time run from you back to there.” The seer pointed behind him, and Byre blinked. It felt as though she had pulled back a curtain for him. The world was so much more than his eyes could possibly tell him. Trailing from his body were threads, such as might be found in a magnificent carpet. They ran from him—from everyone in the room—backwards.

“Do you see?” Ellyria asked, her voice the tone of a teacher showing something new and special to a student. Byre nodded as he concentrated.

It was no longer just a thread. It was everything. As he stared at his past, he could see the moment he had decided to trust the dragon, the place where he had been tempted to give up while in the custody of the Kindred, and further back, the choice he had made to follow his father.

The moment that he saw that, Ellyria stepped away from him. The once simple trail spun like a tangled skein of wool and became impossible to read.

Byre gasped and bent over, clutching himself. His mind felt suddenly scrambled, much as it had years before when tasting peon for the first time.

With focus and concentration he managed not to throw up before his childhood hero. What she had shown him was magnificent and also terrifying. So many junctures and possibilities that it bent the mind to hold them all—let alone understand them.

When Byre straightened up he looked at Ellyria with new respect. He also suspected that the
pae atuae
were holding her together, like something bright contained in a jar. Without them she might fly apart altogether. She smiled slightly. “I see you understand.” The seer turned to the back wall. “He’s ready to go.”

The Kindred were there, waiting. Maybe they had been there all along. The flaming eyes and the indefinite forms still chilled him, but he knew that to go ahead he had to trust in them. He jumped when Pelanor’s hand slipped into his.

The Blood Witch squeezed his fingertips and smiled. Women everywhere were mesmerizing him, because for a moment he could not take his eyes off the points of her teeth on her lip.

“I’ve always wanted to see the Salt,” Pelanor said, and then laughed. “But you are going to have quite some explaining to do about me. I guess I will just have to stay close.”

Day was giving way to night by the time Kelanim found a good time to sneak out of the harem. If she had been fresh to it she would never have managed it. Delios the chief eunuch was an old friend that she had cultivated for years, and he knew her devotion to the Caisah.

He also knew that sometimes the pressure of the harem grew too much. So when she appeared at the gate shrouded in a brown cloak, her face hidden behind a battered old mask, he did not make any comment. Instead, he simply held the door open.

It was not as if she could go beyond the palace walls. In fact, her usual operation was to walk the walls, drink the night’s cool air, and maybe pray a little. The gods might have forgotten her, but she had not totally forgotten them.

Tonight was not for the gods. It was for her mysterious benefactor. Keeping to the shadows, Kelanim worked her way toward the stables. The stablemaster and his boys slept above their charges, but the night was helping her. The wind howling around the corners of palace and whipping up leaves into eerie hisses in the road would mask her footsteps.

Reaching the stables, the mistress slipped inside and eased the door shut. The smell of straw, horses and leather washed over her, and despite the rawness of the odor Kelanim appreciated it. It was honest—more honest that the smells of the harem. Sandalwood, jasmine and rosewater dominated her life, and hid the reality. Here at least was truth.

The trouble was, she didn’t know who she was meeting. For the last few months she’d been receiving cryptic messages in the most unlikely places, and always they had seemed to make life easier. Talyn was gone because of them, but Kelanim still didn’t know who her benefactor was.

Something moved in the stables, a horse shifting from foot to foot in its sleep, but she jumped.

“Mistress, you are right to feel fear.” The voice that came from the stall, made her heart leap into her throat, and she grabbed for the wall. It was not the stablemaster or any of his boys—she knew that immediately. The voice was deep and resonant, the kind a person could feel all the way though their bones. “You are in the presence of the Named.”

Kelanim stood frozen to the spot, and the whole world seemed to lose its importance. The Named. She had read voraciously all she could find on the Vaerli and the Kindred. She knew that the Named were the creatures created by Vaerli, and they were rare and powerful creatures.

Though her heart was racing, Kelanim took a few hesitant steps closer to the voice.

“A brave creature then,” her visitor went on, “but then, you must be to fool the Caisah so completely.” Whoever was speaking was within the middle stall in the line, and when the mistress reached the railing she saw why. A centaur. She blinked hard and her hands tightened around the wood of the rail until her palms hurt. The centaur remained there, as huge and irrefutable as could be imagined. His back half was a jet-black carthorse, while the human shaped portion was an equally massively muscled man, and that was merely the outside. Being Named, he would have other resources.

Kelanim ignored his goading remark. She flicked a look over her shoulder to make sure they were really alone. “How could you get into the palace like . . .” she gestured helplessly to encompass all the centaur, “as you are?”

“I am not alone,” the centaur said, glowering at her. “I am part of the vanguard, the things to come. Others of the Named can come and go through the palace with perfect ease. This place was never made to hinder Kindred, Named or un-Named.”

The idea of imagined creatures like the centaur roaming through the corridors of the palace was very uncomfortable. Her mind darted through all the possibilities of what that could mean; the horrors and delights of childhood stories unleashed in her world. However, she did not move from her spot, though every ounce of her wanted to rush back to the harem, bar the door, and hide beneath the silk covers of her bed.

The deep mahogany of the centaur’s laughter rolled over her. “Such a little woman, but full of great bravery . . . and all wasted on the Caisah.”

“I love him,” she said with more strength than she actually felt.

Strangely, he did not scoff at her protestations of love, but simply folded his arms in front of him and stared down implacably at her. She had never felt so small—even when the man she loved had struck her.

“Your Caisah has learned one of the terrible things about immortality,” the centaur said, each word falling on her like a hard stone. “That love is a myth to comfort those with small lives. Love cannot endure a never ending existence.”

Kelanim’s mouth went dry, and her hands clenched at her sides. She wanted to protest that he did not know the Caisah, but something in those dark centaur eyes made her hold her tongue.

“It is not your fault.” Now the beast sounded almost comforting. “You cannot compete with the weight of history.”

The mistress thought of his restless sleep, and his quickness to anger.

“You would deny him the delight of love once more?” The centaur stamped one hoof, and it was so loud in the quiet of the stables that Kelanim jumped.