Kindred and Wings (9 page)

That comment made her spine tingle. The empathic link was indeed weak but she could sense Circe was masking whatever her true feelings were. That also was something no Vaerli would have even attempted. The joy of the link was the sheer honesty of it. The coil of unease unraveled even further in the pit of Talyn’s stomach. At her back she heard Syris stamp his hoof in an echo of that distress.

Feeling her anger and consequently her frustration grow she tossed the scroll of parchment down at the edge of the water. “Do it yourself. Find yourself a fire and be done with it.”

Only now the child reacted, when she pulled back her teeth and hissed at Talyn like a feral cat. Circe slid her arm around the girl and pulled her behind her.

“You should have that taken care of,” Talyn said, managing to keep her voice flat and calm, even though her skin was almost ready to crawl right off her.

Circe let out a little laugh. “Little Veleda is just feeling a little fragile, not quite ready for the world.” Talyn could have sworn she felt more words hovering just on the tip of Circe’s tongue:
But soon. Very soon . . .

As Circe patted the girl’s slick hair, she crooned something to her that Talyn could not understand. It did not sound pleasant or soothing to her ears, though. When she was done, she turned back to Talyn. “What you should be concerning yourself with,” she said with an eerie tilt of her head, “is that scroll and its destruction.”

Talyn’s hands curled into fists at her side. She had heard that tone of voice many times, standing before the Caisah. It meant she had much experience keeping quiet in the face of it.

Circe patted Veleda on the head as she went on. “It will not be easy. What is made with power cannot merely be burned or shredded.” She smiled slyly. “Surely you have not forgotten the ways of the
pae atuae
so quickly?”

Word magic was the most ancient of Vaerli magics. Its use stretched back beyond the time that her people had been summoned to Conhaero. The myths had it that
pae atuae
had been one of the ways they had survived the great white of the Void.

“It was never going to be my magic.” She found herself skirting the issue, even as she watched with some trepidation, the little girl emerge from behind her elder. Veleda had such a look of adult cunning on her face that Talyn feared what the
pae atuae
carved on her body, but hidden by her dress, might actually say. She would bet that they were twisted versions of what the real seers should have worn.

“Even so,” Circe snapped as shadows began to twist like smoke around her shoulders, “you must know that the great words once set down are not easy to destroy. It must be in a certain time and place and by the right person. You—as a descendant of Ellyria—are the right person.”

“And the place and time?” Talyn asked, certain she would not like the answer.

The bunching of shapes at the Phage’s shoulder was resolving itself into the shapes of the Kindred, and the nubs around Veleda began to rise and sink like terrifying pustules. Syris was suddenly at Talyn’s back, pressing his tall shape against her and filling her nose with the scent of greenery, like fresh seaweed. The beast had no words, but he was well able to make her feel a little better knowing he was there.

Which was a fine thing, since now the tormented heads of the Kindred were breaking free of Circe’s flesh as well and beginning their odd, horrific and yet mesmerizing dance.

“The time and place will be of your choosing,” the Phage said finally, “because only dragon fire can destroy what Ellyria Dragonsoul made.”

A dragon, and there was only one of those that Talyn knew. It was not the dragon that worried her, as much as it was the one who had Named him. Finnbarr the Fox, who was so much more than a simple talespinner. Talyn swallowed and looked away.

“Wahirangi CloudLord will not do as I ask,” she whispered. “He was not Named by me, and dragons are not something I know how to deal with . . .”

“But you know how to deal with the one that Named him.” The Phage’s pale face looked even worse when it was plastered with a smile.

Veleda made Talyn start when she spoke. Her voice was high and clear, and made every hair stand up on the once-Hunter’s skin. “The Fox is hunting for his brother, and we happen to know where he is going. She who told him is weakened greatly. The dragon and the means of the scroll’s destruction will come to you.”

Talyn met her new master’s eyes and felt bile rise in the back of her throat. She opened her mouth and tried to find words. She wanted to rage—and not just at the Phage. She’d traded the mercurial Caisah in for the chill determination of these twisted versions of her own people. Now they would force her into contact with the one man she feared to see again.

For an instant she considered pulling out the pistol the Caisah had given her and shooting them both then and there. However, she had seen things in the months since her change of masters that made her realize that would be pointless. Much like the tyrant, the Phage were harder to kill than that.

It would be better to play along and see where all this was going.

Finally, she croaked out the words she did not want to let out. “Where shall I go?”

The blank eyes locked with hers, while the heads of the imprisoned Kindred moaned in eerie accompaniment. “You shall go to the sea. Where he was most happy.”

The words ran her through as sharply as any sword would have. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head and backing up a step. “Not back to the sea.” It was where she’d met Finn, fallen in love with him, and lost herself. Thanks to his breaking of her control, she remembered each of those precious dangerous moments as if they had happened yesterday.

The snarling, snapping circle of Kindred heads were suddenly silent, all watching her. It was so eerie that she suddenly wished for them to go back to their pain. The Phage watched her from cool, dark eyes. “Is the Hunter so very afraid of one little fox?”

“I am the Hunter no longer,” she replied, half-shouting so that she showed none of her vulnerabilities, “and Finn means nothing to me.”

At her back, Syris pawed the ground, snorting through his nose and showing how little he cared for Circe and her small minion.

Yet it was Veleda who spoke again. “Then ride your beast to the sea, and manipulate the talespinner into destroying the scroll. He has a weakness for you that will prove useful.”

Then, as if dismissing her, the pair of Phage turned about to slide back into the water. Talyn spoke. She was curious, after all, and had no one else to ask: “I saw something in the sky just after I retrieved the scroll . . .”

The twin rings of Kindred flicked back, their tormented eyes burning into hers, while Circe and Veleda did not. It was an eerie effect that set Talyn’s teeth on edge. “The sky?” the child whispered under her breath.

The former Hunter watched with trepidation as the mass of heads stilled. She was used to them twisting and turning as if they were burning. This was different; they barely moved while their eyes scanned her face. Their regard was a hefty weight to bear.

“Yes,” she said, her heart suddenly beating hard in her chest. “A strange cloud moving with brightness, that looked like lightning, but there was no thunder and no bolt to the ground. Syris acted very strangely.”

“There are many strange things in Conhaero,” came the reply, hissing from the mouth of the younger-seeming Phage, though she did not turn. “Even the mighty Vaerli have not seen all of them.”

Then, dismissing Talyn as if she were a frightened child, both of them strode back into the water, sliding under it and disappearing with not even a ripple. Even the Caisah had not dismissed Talyn that casually.

The Vaerli was not so much of a fool; she understood that the Phage was keeping something from her. When she had tied her fate to theirs, Talyn had thought she was going to learn some of the secrets she had missed out on due to the Harrowing. Instead, she was only now beginning to comprehend the true depth of her mistake—but what other paths were open to her? It was this or seek out a fellow Vaerli who wanted to end in flames. She was not yet at that point, so Talyn turned to Syris. “To the sea, then. We will await Finn and his dragon there.”

When she climbed onto the back of the beast, and his razor sharp hair cut her hands, she barely felt it. Already her mind was on the shore, wandering, wondering where she had gone wrong, and if there could possibly be a path back for her.

“We must be careful how we proceed.” The fact that a dragon was saying this made Finn more than a little nervous.

He settled back in his place on Wahirangi’s shoulders, readjusted the straps of his saddle, and tried to think of what his companion meant by that. What could cause a dragon to be so concerned? Certainly nothing that flew in the sky could bother such as he was.

“Is there something you are not telling me?” he asked finally, though asking such a thing of a dragon felt a little dangerous too. He knew all sorts of stories about the secrets a dragon might be prone to hold onto.

Wahirangi swiveled his golden head about and regarded his passenger with those probing opal eyes. Finally, he dipped his head and admitted, “While you were inside I searched the grounds. The smell of the Named is all over this place.”

Finn took a deep breath as his insides clenched. Wahirangi was one of the Named, but the other Kindred who had also received names were an unknown quantity. Ysel was in great danger if they were involved. All this time he had been communicating with his brother, and never known he was kin or that he was in such danger. “What can that mean?”

“You and your brother are the sons of the last Seer of the Vaerli,” Wahirangi said, his voice full of sadness. “You are both something that should not exist. The Named could find a use for such a thing.” A flicker of blue fire danced around the dragon’s jaws. “You have seen them before, when they attacked us in the desert?”

Finn swallowed hard, remembering the panic in the gathering, and what the creatures had done to mere mortals. “Yes,” he ventured, “but I didn’t get a close look. There was smoke, and it was night so I . . .”

“You saw what they can do, though,” Wahirangi pressed, while a long sigh rippled through his body.

“But aren’t you one of the Named now?” Finn asked, leaning forward in his saddle. “Doesn’t that mean you can communicate with them? Tell them what to do?”

The dragon flexed his wings, though he did not lift off from the ground. Finn had not known Wahirangi for long—and indeed the dragon had not known himself for long in this form either—but silence so heavy seemed something alien to his great presence.

“Yes,” he finally replied, “you Named me, and it was wonderful thing to be given a name, but for some Kindred the process is not nearly as wonderful. You see, the Named receive many things from their maker, including portions of their personality and . . .” the creature paused, raising his head to look up at the swirling stars, “. . . well you might call it their soul.”

He shook himself suddenly and so hard that Finn was glad he had his legs locked in the saddle and his hands wrapped around the pommel. Wahirangi’s tail lashed back and forward, and flickers of blue flame ran along his jaw. All signs, Finn had learned, of the dragon’s inner turmoil.

A low rumble formed in his chest. “The Named you met, Finnbarr the Fox, were not whole creatures. They were released from their prison after many cycles, and their original Namers are lost to them. Then there are the new Named that are being created . . .”

“New?” Finn whispered, his hands clenching white around the saddle horn. “Who is making new Named?” Even as the question popped out of his mouth he thought of the vision he’d shared with Talyn; the terrifying woman out on the Salt, the one with the Kindred trapped in the fabric of her body. The writhing shapes of the Kindred attached around her shoulders had haunted his nightmares.

As if he could feel what Finn was recalling and could not bear it, Wahirangi let out a trumpeting cry and thrust himself up into the air. For a long few moments the rush of the wind about him, and the feeling of his stomach dropping away from him was all Finn could concentrate on.

When they reached the level of the clouds, and his face was damp and cool, he found his mind could work again.

“Where are we going?” he shouted over the rush of air and the relentless thrum of the dragon wings on each side of him. He had not told the dragon where he had been the happiest, so this seemed like a mad venture.

Wahirangi made no reply, merely extended his neck out straight before him.

The dragon had his head arrowed toward something—that much was clear—so Finn was forced to sit back in the saddle and be a mere passenger. He trusted the dragon as he had trusted the Kindred it had once been. That Kindred that had saved him and his friends in Perilous, it was also the one that had protected him in the Chaos wastes, and most definitely been the one he had finally given a Name to.

In fact, he trusted the dragon more than he did himself. After all, all the years of his traveling had really been about one thing. Now, given some distance from it, he was able to acknowledge that. He had been pursuing Talyn, hoping above all hope that he could make her remember their love. Wahirangi and the ghost of his long dead mother had helped him understand that his dreams were in vain. The Hunter had chosen to forget their moments together—a conscious decision that he could not pretend had not happened.