Law of the Broken Earth (23 page)

T
wo rivers ran out of Niambe Lake: the little Sef, which fed into the great Sierhanan, whose width divided Feierabiand from Linularinum; and the larger and more southerly Nejeied, which ran right down the middle of Feierabiand all the way to Terabiand on the coast.

Two rivers likewise fed the lake. One, the upper Nejeied, had its source in the high, distant mountains of the far north, beyond Tiearanan. But the other river, the one that came down to the eastern tip of the lake, had no name. That river came down out of the wicked teeth of the mountains where men seldom ventured. There was no reason to brave that place, for if a man did, with enormous difficulty, crest the difficult pass where the river ran, he would look down only into the savage desert where griffins flew on a fiery wind and no man could live.

There, at the top of the world, among the high, jagged peaks where the nameless river had its source, stood a cottage. It had been built below the sky and above the
world, in a small, level place surrounded by tilting planes of stone and ice. It was solidly made of rough stone, chunks of pale granite mottled with dark hornblende and darker iron ore; the chinks and cracks between the stones were sealed with packed moss and ice. Within, the cottage was plain but surprisingly comfortable, not least because of a fire that burned continually, with neither fuel nor smoke, in a ring of stones in the middle of the floor. This had been a gift from the desert, a contained fragment of fire that would probably continue to burn even when time had long since reduced the cottage to a heap of tumbled and broken stones.

Above the cottage, the polished, ice-streaked granite faces of the mountains raked up into the sky, so that on bright days light was thrown back and forth above the thatched roof. On those days, with sunlight striking at every angle through the clear air, mist rose from the ice to wreathe around the cottage.

The true source of the river was invisible among the sharp peaks and the drifting mist and the clamor of cold, brilliant light, but a silver thread of moisture ran down the stone beside the cottage. This narrow stream fed a tiny alpine meadow surrounding the cottage, as it fed a string of similar meadows on its meandering route down toward the lake that was its eventual destination. The trickle of water sparkled with more than ordinary brilliance in the sun, and in fact it sparkled more than any water had a right to even when the clouds piled up thick around the tips of the mountains, for the nameless river carried something of the wild magic of the mountains down from the heights.

There was little snow this high in the mountains, for
the air was too dry. Even so, ice glittered in the shadow of the cottage. Yet the meadow seemed like a cup into which the brilliance and warmth of the sunlit afternoon had been poured, so the meadow was not, in fact, so terribly cold.

A dozen small, hardy brown hens and one white-feathered cock pecked around the cottage, taking advantage of the relative warmth. A long-legged goat with a tawny coat stood in the sun and gazed, with a meditative expression, into the empty vistas below the cottage. Above the cottage, clinging to a broken edge of stone and singing in a voice that rose through the still air like sparks from a bonfire, perched a bird.

The bird was about the size of a common jay, the gray-and-black jay that sometimes ventured up to these high meadows. But this bird was not a jay, nor anything like one. It was feathered in fire. Its head was orange, with black streaked like ash above its black eyes. Its breast was gold, its wings orange and crimson, the long trailing feathers of its tail crimson and gold. When it sang, its throat vibrated and sparks showered down across the ice that glittered on the stone below its perch. When it flew, which it did suddenly, darting high into the sky and then down again and away to the east and north, flames scattered through the air from the wind of its wings.

The bird did not come to the cottage every day. But sometimes, especially on afternoons such as this, when the air was brilliant and still as glass, it came to sing for him. Jos, who had few visitors, liked to think the bird scattered luck as well as fire from its wings. He regarded any day on which it appeared as a lucky day. And he thought, pausing with his hands full of grain to throw out for the hens, that luck would be a good thing, today.

Far down below the cottage, yet well within sight, stood one end of the Great Wall. Jos thought of it that way: the Great Wall. It was impossible not to set that kind of emphasis on it, if you looked down upon it on every clear day. The Wall dominated his world, even more than the jagged peaks of these wild mountains. It was made of massive granite blocks carved out of the heart of a mountain… more than one mountain, for this Wall wove its way from this place to the other end that anchored it, two hundred miles or more to the east. South of the Great Wall lay the wild wooded hills and great fertile plains and rich, crowded cities of Casmantium, where Jos had been born. To the north lay the desert.

The griffins’ desert was nothing in size compared to Casmantium, but from Jos’s vantage, looking down on both simultaneously, this was not perceptible. The desert ran down the far slopes of the mountains and then away farther than sight could discern: red sand and knife-edged red stone; molten light thick as honey and heavy as gold; winds that hissed with sand and flickered with fire. The northern face of the Wall, its desert side, burned with a hard, brilliant flame so bright it was painful to look directly at it. The other face… on the side of earth, the Wall was glazed with ice and veiled with mist. Above the Wall, all the way to the vault of the sky, the air shimmered, for the Wall was more than a physical barrier. It barred the passage of any winged creature of fire or earth as thoroughly as it barred those that were land-bound.

At two points, where the Wall had cracked through, massive clouds of white steam billowed up into the sky.

Judging by the amount of steam, the cracks had not gotten any worse today, Jos estimated. Or not much
worse. Was that luck? Or had Kes found something better to do on this day than pry at the cracks, try to pull down the Great Wall, try to burn through to the country of earth? He peered carefully into the burning sky above the country of fire, but he could see no griffins riding their hot, dangerous winds. Perhaps they had all allowed those winds to carry them back into the heart of their own country. Perhaps Kes had gone with them. Perhaps Kes had called up that wind, a wind that would lead her adopted people away from the Wall that constrained them…

More likely the griffins had simply caught sight of a herd of fire-deer and allowed themselves to be distracted. Most likely they would come back soon. If not before sundown, then probably tomorrow.

And even without Kes or her companion mages pushing at the Wall, Jos thought the cracks would probably get worse. He was almost certain they had been worse this dawn than last night’s dusk. Damage that worsened overnight was probably not due to the griffins’ mages.

Jos only wished he knew what had caused the damage in the first place, what was still causing more damage every day. And, of course, he might wish as well that knowing what had caused the problem would let him see how it might be fixed. That was a separate issue.

There was a ripple in the air, a shift in the light, and Kairaithin was suddenly present, lying on the high winds, far above. His shadow swept across the meadow, brilliant and fiery-hot.

In his true form, Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin was a great-winged griffin, not the most beautiful griffin Jos knew, but one of the greatest and most terrible. He was a
very dark griffin. Black feathers ran down from his savage eagle’s head and ruffled out in a thick mane around his shoulders and chest. His black wings were edged and barred with narrow flickers of ember-red. They tilted to catch the wind, shedding droplets of fire into the chilly mountain air. His lion pelt was a shade darker than crimson, his talons and lion claws black as iron.

The chickens scattered beneath his fiery shadow, squawking in desperate terror, heads ducked low and wings fluttering. The goat, wiser than the chickens, bolted straight through the door into the cottage where it would, judging from past experience, crowd itself under the bed.

Jos tilted his head back to watch the griffin come down through the thin air—air imbued with the natural, wild magic of the mountains and the river. No griffins but this one could come to this place. That was why the Wall had been allowed to end down below: because it ran out into thin, cold air and wild magic inimical to griffin fire, and no griffin could simply pass around its end. Except this one. Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin seemed to have no difficulty going wherever he chose, whether in the country of fire or the country of earth or this wild country that belonged to neither.

Kairaithin landed neatly in the middle of the tiny meadow. Heat radiated from him. In his shadow, the delicate grasses withered. But in the rest of the meadow, flowers opened and tilted their sensitive faces toward the griffin’s warmth as toward the sun.

Jos said mildly, “If you would come in your human form, I would not need to spend hours prying the goat out of my house and collecting terrified chickens.”

Kairaithin tucked himself into a neat sitting posture
like a cat, tail curled around his eagle talons. He tilted his head to one side, the mountain light glancing off his savage-edged beak as off polished metal. He said,
Have you other pressing amusements with which to occupy your hours?

A joke. At least, Jos thought that question had probably been intended as a joke. Sometimes griffin humor seemed a little obscure to an ordinary man. He said after a moment, “Well. Little enough, I suppose, except for watching the Wall.”

The griffin’s eyes were black, pitiless as the desert sun or the mountain cold or a fall from a bitter height. But they could glint with a kind of hard humor. They did now. The griffin said,
One hopes observing the wall is not an activity that calls for your constant attention.

Jos said straight-faced, “I suppose I might be able to spare an hour from my scrutiny.” Then he added, much more tentatively, “The damage seems very little worse today than it did yesterday. Do you think perhaps the cracks through the Wall are becoming more stable?”

The griffin did not answer this, which might mean that he was uncertain or might mean that he thought not, but probably meant that he did not wish to dwell on a false hope. He asked,
Kes?

“She has not come today.” To the endmost block, Jos meant, the block that anchored this end of the Wall—the block that was most seriously cracked. Once, he would have meant,
She has not come here to speak to me.
He did not have to say that, now. Now, she never came to the cottage or to Jos. She ventured up into the mountains only to cast fire against the Wall, to try to shatter the stone or throw it down.

Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike? Ashairiikiu Ruuanse Tekainiike?

Ruuanse Tekainiike was a young griffin mage, hardly more than a
kiinukaile
, a student. Griffins might be students for a long time or a short time, and became full mages and no one’s subordinate, as Jos understood it, simply by waking up one morning and declaring themselves masters. Ruuanse Tekainiike was not a student because he admitted no master, but he was in no way Kairaithin’s equal. He did not worry Jos at all. Or very little.

Opailikiita was different. Opailikiita was a young griffin as well; she, too, was nothing like as powerful as Kairaithin, though Jos had reason enough to respect her power. But, much more important, she was a particular friend to Kes.
Iskarianere
was the griffin term for it—like sisters. Jos knew the word, though he was aware he had only a dim idea of its true meaning.

But then, as Jos also knew, griffins had only the dimmest idea of human concepts like
friendship
and
love
. He said, “Not them either.”

Kairaithin was silent for a time, gazing down from the little meadow toward the Wall. The sun had slid down past the tips of the highest mountains, so that great shadows lay in the valleys in the lee of the mountains. The temperature was already falling—or would be, if not for Kairaithin’s presence in the meadow. Alpine bees made their determined way from flower to flower, taking advantage of the warmth the griffin had brought into their meadow. Jos wondered whether the griffin’s presence was, on balance, useful or detrimental to the meadow. He might shed warmth and light all about, but those grasses
and flowers his shadow had burned would be a long time recovering.

Of course, if the Wall shattered, a little patch of burned grasses in a high meadow would be very far from the worst problem they would all face.