Law of the Broken Earth (30 page)

Besides, even Jos, who had spoken to her not so long ago, still thought of her by the human name she had long since ceased to use.

“We will go down,” Kairaithin said, and on that word shifted them all out of the bright airy heights and straight down into the powerful desert.

For the first moment, the heat was welcome, even pleasant. Jos found his numbed fingertips and his ears thawing instantly. He had almost forgotten what it was like to be really warm. This heat spread through him, unknotting muscles in his back and neck, so that he relaxed and stretched and stood straight.

After that one moment, the desert heat rapidly became excessive, and then overwhelming. The red sands were alive with delicate flames that flickered upward with every motion and then subsided, ebbing like water. The air sparkled not only with red dust but also with sparks of fire that settled downward as flecks of gold. The wind was hot and gritty and bone-dry. The very sunlight was entirely different here than it ever was in the country of earth: It hammered down upon them, brazen and heavy.

Kes turned. The young griffin mages turned with her: Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike, as dependably good-humored as any griffin ever could be, the rich brown
of her feathers flecked and stippled with gold, slim and beautiful. A pace to the rear, Ashairiikiu Ruuanse Tekainiike, dark bronze and gold, his eyes brilliant gold and his temper far less certain.

Kes herself looked less human even than Kairaithin, for where the griffin mage had deliberately put on human form as a mask and a convenience, Kes was not making any pretense of being human. Only her shape was human. She seemed to have been formed out of white gold and alabaster and porcelain; she glowed from within as though white fire flowed in her veins. Maybe it did. Fire filled her hands and poured down her arms, pale fire scattered from her hair when she turned to look at them. Fire glowed in her eyes, pale and brilliant and terrible. Her shadow, flung across the red sand, was as molten as her eyes.

She was smiling, an expression that expressed nothing human. She looked happy, even joyful, but hers was a dangerous joy that held nothing of ordinary affection or gentleness. She said, “Jos!” and came to take his hands.

Jos was absurdly flattered that she would speak to him first, that she would come to greet him before she even acknowledged Kairaithin, much less Bertaud. Though he knew she spoke to him first partly as a deliberate slight against Kairaithin, though he knew she had her griffin
iskarianere
now and never thought of him, he could not help but find the pleasure in her voice flattering. But he stepped backward as she came toward him. He could not help but step back, for the fire that filled Kes, unleashed as it was now, would burn him to the bone and she had plainly forgotten this.

She realized this an instant after he did, and stopped.
The white fire that burned so bright in her did not exactly fade, but it ebbed lower and lower, until standing near her was not quite so much like standing near an oven. She reached out to him again, and this time Jos let her take his hands. Her fingers did not seem exactly human in his; they were slender and graceful, exactly as he remembered, but holding her hands was like holding the hands of an alabaster lamp shaped like a woman. She said again, not gently or cheerfully, but with a kind of pleased possessiveness, “Jos.”

He knew perfectly well that she spoke to him and ignored Kairaithin in this pointed way in order to deliver a subtle affront. He knew this. But it did not stop his heart from coming into his throat in the most foolish and childish way. He said, “Kes,” and found he could not say anything else.

“Why do you wish to break the Wall?” Lord Bertaud asked her, very simply and directly, when Kairaithin did not speak.

Kes released Jos’s hands, turning to gaze at the Feierabianden lord. Her smile had grown somehow both more brilliant and sharper-edged. She was wilder than a griffin, less fierce but more capricious, less high-tempered and passionate but more whimsical. Or so she seemed to Jos, who had known her when she was a human girl and then while she had been made from a creature of earth to one of fire and then afterward, when the fire had taken her completely. She said, “Why should any such constraint be allowed to stand? It is an offense against all the country of fire. Besides, Taipiikiu Tastairiane Apailika wishes the Wall to be broken, and why should I not please him if I can, now it has been cracked through?”

“Tastairiane?” said Bertaud, as though even saying the name hurt him.

“You recall Tastairiane Apailika? He is my
iskarianere
now,” said Kes. She spoke with pleased amusement, but the edge to her humor was sharp enough to cut to the bone.

“Yes,” said Bertaud in a low tone. “I had heard so.”

“Had you? Well, one would never predict what word might be carried on some errant wind,” Kes said, and laughed.

It was a cruel laugh, like no sound she would ever have made when she was human. Jos winced from it. He knew, none better, how pitiless the griffins were by nature, but pitilessness was not the same as cruelty, and it hurt him to hear that note in her voice.

Bertaud said, not as though he expected Kes to understand or believe him but as though he felt driven to speak despite this, “If griffins turn once-for-all against men, if it should come to true battle, Kes, I promise you, no one will win. Least of all the People of Fire and Air.” He hesitated and then added, “Even you, swift as you are to heal the injured, even you cannot bring a griffin back to life after he has been killed.”

Kes only laughed, shaking her head in dismissal of this warning. “Oh, no. You’re mistaken. You’re entirely mistaken. If I’m swift enough, no injury need be mortal.”

“You cannot be so swift, not when thousands upon thousands of men draw together to face a mere few hundreds of griffins—”

“I can be as swift and attentive as I must be,” Kes answered with perfect confidence. She reached out to lay her hand on the Wall. Fire ran up along the great blocks,
playing over her wrist and hand. The flames were ruddy where they rose from the red sands, but white where they crossed her hand. She smiled.

“Kes,” said Kairaithin. “Keskainiane Raikaisipiike.”

“
Siipikaile
,” said Kes, turning to face him directly for the first time.
Teacher
, that was. But she pronounced the word with a mocking edge, and met his powerful black gaze without the slightest flinch. Her eyes were filled with fire, black and gold and paler gold, set in a face that might have been carved of porcelain. Jos remembered when Kes had had eyes of a pale grayed blue, like water. He tried to remember when they had turned to fire. Not at once, he thought. Not in those early years, when they had built his cottage and kindled the fire that burned within it. There had still been a touch of humanity about her in those days. But the last of it had burned away a long time ago.

Neither of the young griffin mages flanking her acknowledged Kairaithin at all. They would not, Jos knew. No griffin would speak to Kairaithin, from what he had said about flying alone. Brawny, powerful-shouldered Ruuanse Tekainiike crouched down a little; the feathers of his neck and chest, feathers that might have been beaten out of bronze and inlaid with gold by some master metalsmith, ruffled up with a stiff rattling sound. He looked brutal and dangerous, but he did not meet Kairaithin’s eyes. He was not a match for his former teacher and no one, least of all Tekainiike himself, mistook it.

Opailikiita was a question. Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike… she had been Kairaithin’s student long before he had stolen Kes from the country of earth and made her into a creature of fire. Slender and small, her beauty was
subtle rather than flashy. She was more powerful than she seemed to any first glance. Jos had once known her rather well. When Opailikiita turned her head to avoid looking at Kairaithin, Jos suspected it was not acknowledgment of his superior strength that made her look aside. He thought it was regret for what her old teacher had lost. Or at least some griffin emotion similar to regret; some emotion hotter and more violent than mere regret. A sort of angry grief, perhaps.

Kairaithin would not be goaded, neither by the scorn in Kes’s voice nor by the overt indifference of his former students. Perhaps he truly did not care. He said, “You understand less than you believe,” but when he took a step forward and lifted a hand, it was not to remonstrate with Kes, as Jos at first thought. Instead, he struck at her with a wholly unexpected blaze of power that burned right through her and hurled the rest of them violently aside.

Kes shredded into fire and air under that blow. She did not even have time to cry out. Opailikiita did, the harsh scraping shriek of an enraged griffin. She flung herself fearlessly at Kairaithin, who merely called up a hard wind that threw her aside, tumbling her over. Young Tekainiike, also shrieking, reared back in shock and then leaped into the air, his wings thundering as he strove for height—fleeing, to Jos’s shock, who would not have expected any griffin to fly from such a battle.

Jos had also shouted aloud in shock and grief. He had been flung to his hands and knees, for even the glancing edge of Kairaithin’s power was like the blow of a smith’s hammer. Half blinded by flying wind and whirling sand, conscious of the furious griffins above and about, he
could not even crawl out of the way. He was aware of Kairaithin rearing up, of his human shape exploding to match his immense shadow, of black feathers raking the air above him; he was aware of fire cracking across the sky and of the flaming wind roaring down from the high, hard sky—

Then Bertaud seized Jos by the arm. He had been the first of them all to regain his balance, and the only one among them to make no sound. Jos had a fleeting realization that the other man might actually have guessed that Kairaithin might strike at Kes, for he had evidently been ready for it. Now he dragged at Jos, who with the other man’s help managed to regain his feet; they both ducked away from the violence of wind and fire, their arms over their faces to guard against the rushing sand.

“You knew—” Jos began, shouting over the fury of wind and griffins, but then coughed and could not continue.

He did not know what answer the Feierabianden lord might have made, for the other griffins came then, rushing down out of the storm; the harsh desert sunlight struck off their wings and flanks as off bronze and copper and gold. The ferocious light flamed on their knife-edged beaks and talons and glowed in their eyes. Behind them, the sky turned crimson with driving sand, and below them fire fell like rain from the wind of their wings.

In those first moments, Jos thought that all the griffins in the world had come to avenge Kes. Then he realized both that only a double-handful of griffins were actually plunging down that fiery wind toward them—though that seemed enough and to spare—and that Kes did not
need to be avenged. Kairaithin had not succeeded in his aim.

At least not yet. A streak of white and gold fire poured itself through the wind, shaping itself back into the form of a human woman. Kairaithin, beautiful and terrible, rearing huge against the sky, the wind of his power roaring through his black wings, struck at her again. Again she shredded away into fire and wind. She could not answer him, or would not, or at least she did not. She fled. But Kairaithin used his strength to block her flight, pinning her against the Wall and dragging her ruthlessly back into shape. He meant to kill her—to destroy her—she could not match him. Jos made a wordless sound but did not know he had tried to leap forward until he found Bertaud blocking his way, the other man’s grip on his arm so fierce even Jos could not break it. He wanted to hit him. He stopped instead, leaning forward, his fists clenched.

Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu, the Lord of Fire and Air, the king of all the griffins, swept down out of the sky. His immense power came before him like a motionless hurricane—Jos did not know how else to express it. All other power flattened out before him, crushed to stillness. The wind itself died; the air cleared of its red haze of dust; the flames that had blazed up from the desert sands died.

On all sides, the struggle quieted. Kairaithin settled back slowly to the ground, folding his great wings. Kes, looking tiny and helpless and frightened, drew herself slowly away from the Wall and turned to face them, one hand still braced against the fire-washed stone for support. The Lord of Fire and Air landed near her, his gold-and-crimson mate on his other side and the savage
white Tastairiane Apailika beyond her. Ruuanse Tekainiike, looking much younger and smaller in such company, came down warily near them. The young griffin mage had not fled after all, Jos realized belatedly, but had gone to bring the king and his company to this place.

And now that the king was here, Kairaithin had lost. There was no more mockery in the look Kes gave him, but rather wary respect. But even the greatest griffin mage could not threaten her again, not—

Kairaithin, who had turned to face the Lord of Fire and Air, flung a slender blaze of power like a knife at Kes. He did not even look at her; his blow took everyone by surprise, most of all Kes. It was a thrust of such power and strength that it passed right through the forceful stillness the king of griffins had imposed, and unable to block or answer it, she leaped away. But anyone, even Jos, could see that she was nothing like fast enough.

Everyone moved in a blaze of speed and fury: Opailikiita with a blaze of magecraft of her own to block Kairaithin’s blow, the Lord of Fire and Air casting himself forward to protect Kes, the king’s mate lunging after him, Tastairiane and a half dozen other griffins flinging themselves simultaneously against Kairaithin. And Kairaithin
was
overset by their combined force, but only momentarily, for he was a very powerful mage and neither Tastairiane nor any of his own former students could match him.