Kindred and Wings (22 page)

So it was quite a shock to see real evidence of it laid, literally, out before her.

In the blue tinge moonlight, the paled-skinned beauty Uinia was writhing atop the Caisah as seductively and as fluidly as the nagi had moved. The love of Kelanim’s life had his hands on Uinia’s full breasts, and his head tilted back admiring the show.

Whatever she needed to do, had to be done . . . and soon. The nagi had sent her here so she would see that. The snake had told her to leave the goblet, just in case she spilt any of its precious liquid.

The threat to a dragon was not from without. Finn knew that he flew one of the most dangerous and feared creatures of Conhaero. The threat to Wahirangi was Finn himself, and what he might need the dragon to do.

They had flown for days in near silence.

His brother was down there somewhere. Ysel. He was with the Talespinners of Elraban Island. If it had not been so serious he might have thought it were a joke. He had trained there in his youth, and enjoyed every moment of the rigorous training. It had turned him from an idealistic boy into a trained idealistic boy.

As Wahirangi turned his head toward the east and the sea, Finn could not understand why he was feeling unease in the pit of his stomach.

Wahirangi had protected him from every danger, but Finn was still unsure of him. The knot in his stomach just would not abate.

The dragon was his to command, wasn’t he? Yet, he had not obeyed him in all things.

They flew over mountains twisting themselves into lakes, and valleys summoning the strength to rise to mountains. It was a view of Conhaero that he had never contemplated before. The vast glory of the place, with none of the complications.

“You are silent,” Wahirangi rumbled, twisting his golden head to look over his shoulder. “You are not concerned about what your mother said, are you?”

Finn had the terrible thought that the dragon could read his thoughts, or perhaps sense his doubts.

“She said I would find Ysel back at the beginning and that I must protect him,” he muttered, his hands clenching around the saddle. He almost couldn’t remember how it felt to walk on his legs anymore.

“Doubt is the way of the seer,” the dragon rumbled, turning his curved head back toward the horizon. “Their powers are seeing the paths ahead, but none of them can claim to see the way of all things. Every person in this place contributes to the future. That is a lot to hold in one’s head.”

Wahirangi was right, too. “I suppose,” Finn ventured, looking down from the dragon’s back to the world racing by under them, “that you are right. After all, if they were really that good, then the coming of the Caisah would not have been quite a shock.”

“Unless it had to happen,” Wahirangi returned. He paused for a while, as he climbed higher. The sound of his wings beating against the wind was the only sound for some time. “Tell me, talespinner, to master a tale, do you always have to know what is coming? Or is part of the joy that it unfurls to you? Which would you rather have?”

Finn considered for a time, remembering how wonderful his training as a boy had been. The magic of the ending of a story—yes, it was a beautiful thing. However, now that he knew all the traditional stories, he still found them charming. “I think I would prefer to know the ending.”

Something like a chuckle ran through the belly of the beast beneath him. “Typical mortal answer. That is the joy of your stories. You find satisfaction in the ending because you know it, and it is safe. Unfortunately, life—even for a Kindred—can never be known. In that chaos is great beauty, and I hope one day you will see it, my friend.”

They flew on some more, the land sliding beneath them like a complicated painting. Finn was glad he had picked up some dried fruits and tackbread before they had left the cabin in the woods. He nibbled as they travelled, and then even managed to doze.

His dreams were all of bejeweled dragons, and falling and flying. He lurched awake several times, terrified of losing his footing in the makeshift saddle and plummeting to his death.

When they finally reached the sea, Wahirangi trumpeted the announcement. He jerked out of his light slumber to see the sun sinking into the sea behind a layer of gleaming pink clouds. It had been so long since he’d seen the ocean that the effect was most visceral. He thought of her, and their time by the ocean in the tiny, cramped, dark, blissful hut.

Perhaps that was why he had unconsciously wandered always away from the sea. The smell of salt, and the bite of sand under his tongue made him think of her far too much. He cleared his throat and leaned forward over Wahirangi’s shoulder. “There,” he said, needlessly pointing out the home of the talespinners to the sharp-eyed dragon.

A series of tall islands ran from the white bluffs of the eastern coastline down into the sea. It was as if some giant might have once used them as a staircase as he tiptoed down to the waves. None of them were big enough to sustain a village, but they were close to one another. The talespinners had brought some of their wealth back to this place and woven for themselves a spider web town that seemed to have sprung from some children’s tale. It progressed across the islands, a string of bridges and narrow buildings. Every one of these constructions Finn knew better than the back of his own hand.

He had run across many of those bridges, marveling at the crashing ocean beneath, fearless as only the young can be.

He stood up in his stirrups and looked at them in wonder.

“I used to ask the masters of Elraban how this place stood when everywhere on the coast was always in constant change. They said the Kindred had blessed it, and they loved the stories too. Is that true?”

Wahirangi let out a long breath that almost became musical. “The Vaerli told us tales once, sang us music, gave us Names. It was one thing that we missed when the Pact was broken. We do indeed halt the movement of the earth here for the talespinners, so they might have a refuge. The Caisah does not like tales, as you may remember.”

Finn knew he should feel delighted to come back to the only home he had ever known, but it felt a little too much like defeat. Running back to the masters when his stories had not done their work. When he had instead taken up a past he never knew about, and abandoned his dreams.

As they circled lower toward the village, he was surprised that none came out to witness the arrival of a dragon; it was an unprecedented thing, and one that should have been recorded for all of Conhaero to share. As they got within a hundred feet of landing, he saw that there were indeed some people out to greet Wahirangi.

Three figures stood outside the main entrance, and he recognized two of them immediately. One was Koth, the master of the Talespinners of Elraban Island, and he looked as disreputable as ever. The other was the smaller figure of his brother. He had seen Ysel enough times through the pattern to know his face.

Wahirangi closed his wings and dropped the last few feet to land as silently as a cat on the wind-blown grass of the cliff. For a moment none of them spoke.

Finn worked his legs loose of the saddle, feeling the cramp of far too long in it, and hoped he wouldn’t make a fool of himself as he slid down from the dragon’s back. He was lucky; his legs might have felt like wet wool, but they did manage to stay under him.

Ysel was looking at him as soberly as an adult; a reminder that life in the chaos with the Kindred, and then on the run from the Phage, had not allowed him to be a child. Koth, who looked even older and more ramshackle than when Finn had last seen him, smiled hesitantly, but his gaze slipped sideways to the woman Finn did not know.

A pain shot through Finn’s stomach. For a moment he thought it was Talyn standing before him. Then he made out the slight silvering in her hair, and the softer curves of a different woman. Yet, she was Vaerli. The brown skin and dark eyes told him that much. She wore a sword at her side, and the way she had placed Ysel behind and to her left made it immediately clear that she was one of the protectors that Finn had heard about from the boy. What he found odd was the strands of white in her hair, and the group of lines collecting around her eyes. He scrambled to understand for a second, and then his reading on Vaerli caught up with him.

She had gone to the mountain. Few Vaerli took that option, choosing instead to keep their connection to their kin even while they wandered, were chased, or committed suicide. It must have meant a lot to this particular Vaerli to protect Ysel.

Old Koth, after seeing no one move, and casting a wary eye toward Wahirangi, bustled forward. He embraced Finn in a warm, if pungent clasp. Koth did not approve generally of washing, hence why he enjoyed being guardian of the door. Though what he could have done against an invasion was anyone’s guess.

“My boy,” Koth slapped him on the back for good measure, “we’ve been waiting for you.” His eyes darted back and forth, as he kept his back to the woman and the child. “If you want to jump back on this remarkable beast, no one would blame you.” His gaze sharpened, as if he could tell Finn’s tale and its ending.

It was a kindly meant sentiment, but since seeing his mother, riding a dragon, and battling the Phage, Finn had no intention of turning aside. He was no longer the simple, if radical, talespinner that he had been when he left this place.

He stepped around Koth and walked toward his brother. The Vaerli did not place her hand on her sword hilt, but her stance straightened and her eyes never left Finn. He guessed this was how his brother had survived all this time.

If Ysel had been a normal child, Finn might have hugged him, or thrown his arms around him, but he was not. He looked down into the face that was a younger version of his own. This was the boy they had sent to the world when they thought that he had failed.

It was he that had encouraged Finn to continue his rabble-rousing ways, but also to be careful. The boy was far more sober than he had a right to be, but he was what he was.

“You knew everything,” Finn finally said, and he hoped none of his anger stained his voice. It was not a question, but his brother took it as such.

“Yes,” he replied, his eyes never leaving Finn’s. “They realized that sending you to the world without knowledge had been a mistake. They told me everything. I am not sure if that was the best course, either.” Those words from a boy that only looked to be ten, chilled the talespinner’s bones. Ysel jerked his head toward the woman. “This is my protector, Fida. Fida, this is my brother Finnbarr, called the Fox by some.”

Fida relaxed a fraction and allowed her eyes to take in the magnificence of Wahirangi. “I doubt that is what they will call you now.”

“Humor from a Vaerli?” Finn retorted, trying to lighten the mood. “We have come to the end of the world!”

It was perhaps the most ill-chosen thing he had ever uttered. A first impression was the most important weapon a talespinner had—or so he had been taught—and he felt he had just made a very bad one.

Wahirangi, in a display of subtlety Finn had not been aware he possessed, folded one front paw and performed a faint bow toward Fida. “Thank you for your service.” His voice was low and humble.

A flicker of surprise darted over the Vaerli’s features, and her eyes gleamed slightly. “I serve the Kindred, as many others have served without question, CloudLord. I hope in days to come your people will remember not all of us agreed with our leaders.”

Caught in the middle of this historic conversation, Koth’s eyes were fit to burst from his head, and his jaw was working as if he had a thousand questions but couldn’t decide which one to let out.

Finn touched his shoulder lightly. “Master Koth, I need you to keep watch on the door. My mother said to expect a visitor. Do not be frightened by what she rides up on.”

His old teacher went pale. “You warn me of this when you arrived on a
dragon
?”

It was such comments that had kept Finn amused as a boy, and it was nice to feel their touch again.

Wahirangi lowered his head until it hovered only a few feet from the master of the Talespinners, and Finn could feel a tickle of the dragon’s amusement leak across to him. When Wahirangi spoke, his hot breath nearly knocked the ancient man over. “I would speak with the once-Vaerli alone. I would question her on a number of things.”

Finn did wonder what those might be, but he also wanted some time alone with his brother, whom he had been separated from through all time and space for far too long. He had family now, and it was something he had always wanted, yet never had before.

As Fida tucked her hands behind her back and walked up the cliff-face with Wahirangi a little, she did glance back once, but the presence of a dragon was comfort to most people who were on good terms with him. Finn, careful not to touch his brother, walked the opposite direction.

Ysel kept up with him, but also remained silent until they reached a comfortable stone only yards from the front door. It still had a splendid view of the ceaseless sea. “You know,” Finn began, “I used to sit here when I was a boy about your age, and wonder about my family.”

“You have all the answers now,” Ysel said, hitching himself up on the rock in exactly the way Finn once had. “Father. Mother. Brother.”