Law of the Broken Earth (44 page)

Jos wished he could say,
Oh, yes, only do this and avoid that and victory will be ours!
But he could only shake his head.

Bertaud nodded, unsurprised, and shifted a lamp over toward his maps. It was not yet dusk, but the room had only an east window and the light failed early this time of year.

He had been considering the lay of the land above the lake and before the precipitous hills, where they expected the griffins to come out of the broken country of the pass. “They will not care for those wild heights,” he said
absently, not really to Jos. “Nor for the magic carried by the gathering river and held by Niambe Lake.”

This was true. Griffin-fire had little in common with that cold, wild magic. Their hot winds would blow only weakly through those mountains and near the lake. That could not possibly compensate for the advantage Kes would provide the griffins, however, not to any real degree. Jos did not say so. He did not have to. They both knew it.

“We will arrange our men here and here, I think,” said Bertaud, tracking figures on a map. “Archers here and over along here. The griffins must come this way and that will force them to pass through this killing ground, here.”

Griffin mages could burn arrows in the air, and Kes would heal any injured griffins before they could fall. Jos made no comment.

Lord Bertaud gave him a look. “Yes,” he said. “But my officers will expect us to arrange ourselves as though we may do something useful. If the main body of men is here, then it will not seem strange if I set myself with a small, picked force”—he traced a line forward, right into the mouth of the pass—“here.”

Jos nodded. “You don’t think you can hold them all?” he ventured.

The Feierabianden lord did not look at him. “The pass will force them down and keep them tight-packed. I think I will be able to hold them all. But if I am wrong, I think it would be as well if we have our men arranged so as to be some use.”

Jos nodded again.

“Tastairiane will be in the forefront of the attack, I
imagine, and if I can stop him, that will at least cast the rest into confusion.”

“Kes will stay far out of arrow reach. And out of your reach?”

“I can’t—she isn’t—” Bertaud stopped.

“She’ll be riding Opailikiita, I guess.”

“And if I can’t compel Kes, I should be able to compel Opailikiita. Yes. She has always been very careful to keep Kes far out of reach of any stray arrow, but the mountains may force her to fly lower, closer to the ground. And closer to me. I may be able to force Opailikiita to turn against Kes. That will allow our arrows to do useful work against the rest of the griffins.” The lord did not look happy about this. There was a strained note in his voice, rather as though he were discussing his potential ability to impale children.

Jos nodded again, silent.

“I know,” Bertaud said, looking up suddenly to meet his eyes. “I know it must be done, and better the griffins are destroyed than Tihannad, and after us all the country of earth. But—”

“I—”

Bertaud slammed his hand down on the maps he had been studying. He did not shout, but said almost in a whisper, “
Don’t
… tell me you understand.”

Jos caught himself, barely, before he could take a step backward. “No, lord. I beg your pardon.”

The Feierabianden lord stared at him for another moment, his eyes narrow and his color high. Then his gaze fell, and he flung himself into a chair and rubbed his hands tiredly across his face. “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, lord,” Jos said earnestly. He hesitated. “Kairaithin?”

“If he could bring me Tastairiane, or bring me
to
Tastairiane, he surely would have done it by this time, don’t you think?” This began as a cry of despair, but ended as a question that pleaded for reassurance. “Do you think so?
Could
there still be time for Kairaithin to succeed? If he will try, in the end, and not merely delay and delay and hope I am overwhelmed in the end—”

“Until the last seconds run through the glass, there’s still time.”

Lord Bertaud laughed bitterly. “Ah. Thank you.”

“It’s an aphorism because it’s true,” Jos said gently, and heard the gentleness in his own tone, and was surprised by it. He had not realized until that moment that he thought the other man fragile.

“Well,” said Bertaud, and hesitated, glanced around with an air of uncertainty that suddenly firmed into decision, and called into the air, “Kairaithin! Sipiike Kairaithin!”

The griffin mage came to that call, whispering out of the air like swirling ash. He drew darkness around himself as he came, rising to his feet out of black feathers and the sullen glow of a quenched fire. His shadow smoldered, brighter than either the lantern light or the pale daylight lingering outside the windows; the wooden floor under his feet smoked and charred.

Jos had never known the griffin mage to command his own power so ill. He wanted to exclaim, to remind Kairaithin to rule himself. Then the griffin turned his human face toward them, and they both saw the livid mark that ran across his cheek, and the way he held one arm tucked close to his body. Jos forgot what he had meant to say, and Lord Bertaud came to his feet, asking sharply, “Was that Tastairiane? Are you all right?”

“I am not defeated!” Kairaithin said fiercely. “Do
not
call me, man! Do you not understand I am doing all I can? Let me go!”

Bertaud lifted his hands in a helpless gesture of distress and grief, and the griffin shredded at once into the thin light, black feathers crossing the light like shadows, gone once more.

For a long moment, neither man moved or spoke. Then Bertaud laughed with no humor at all and pressed a hand across his eyes.

Jos said, “If he cannot get to Tastairiane Apailika…” He stopped.

“Do you know…” Bertaud began, and paused. But then he went on, speaking in a low voice. “He said once he would tell her. Kes. About me. About what she did, when she used fire to heal me, about how she’d woken this… gift… with her fire. He said the truth would do more than any lie to keep her from healing other men with fire; that she would understand she must never risk another man coming into this cursed affinity.”

This explained a good deal. Jos only nodded, allowing the other man to talk, as he clearly needed to. It might be the only useful service he could actually provide, listening to secrets Lord Bertaud could not tell anyone else.

“He can’t have done, of course. Or she would never support Tastairiane in this. And now it is too late. He’ll never be able to come at her now, no more than he can come at Tastairiane himself.”

Jos said quietly, “I suppose he saw, as the years turned on, how little she came to care for men. So he thought it was unnecessary to warn her not to heal men with fire. He thought,
Great secrets are always safest if no one
knows them
. And he thought she would never care to heal a man so again. Even—”
Me
, he had meant to say, but that would sound hopelessly bitter. He did not finish the thought aloud.

“You’re Casmantian. Not much chance you’d find yourself waking with any affinity, I imagine, no matter how much fire Kes poured into you. Though—” Lord Bertaud hesitated, and then finished a little grimly, “I suspect Kairaithin would have killed you if she’d ever happened to heal you with fire, just to be certain of it.”

Jos winced a little. He had come to consider Sipiike Kairaithin as something almost like a friend. But he thought the lord was right. “I sprained my ankle once,” he recalled. “That was during my first winter in the mountains. Kairaithin brought me splints… Kes did not come, not for several weeks. I wonder whether Kairaithin prevented her. He did not want to tell her this secret, but he would not risk her healing me… How does a fire mage heal a creature of earth?”

Bertaud only shrugged. “Go,” he said. “Rest, if you can. This is, what, the ninth day since Kairaithin brought his warning? And Kes is still using her strength against the Wall, I’m sure. I imagine the last grains of sand are running through the glass. If Kairaithin cannot come against Tastairiane tonight or tomorrow, I think we will discover what will happen when unquenchable fire runs against unyielding stone.”

Clearly the Feierabianden lord wished to be alone. Jos bowed and withdrew, leaving Lord Bertaud to pore once more over his maps. He could not imagine there was much chance of rest for either of them.

Jos walked slowly toward his room, an antechamber in
Lord Bertaud’s own apartment, through the dim light of the hallway. He was thinking of Kes. She had been in the back of his mind without ceasing all through these weary days, and was only more so now.

For all her fierce power, she knew so little. She knew nothing at all of what her adopted people would meet on this side of the pass… He thought of Bertaud saying,
He can’t have told her.
What a pity! And how ironic for a man who had once been a spy to think a secret too close-kept. But if she knew… if she knew… This one particular secret would do best if one more person knew it, if Kes knew it. Kairaithin could not come close to her, no. Her
iskarianere
Tastairiane Apailika, Lord of Fire and Air, would see that no enemy could come close to her.

But even the Lord of Fire and Air could not hold a fire mage from going where she would; no, not even if it occurred to the powerful white griffin to constrain her. Likely it would not occur to him, for griffins did not lightly accept or impose any constraint on one another. Kairaithin might not be able to reach Kes. But, though Kes might be wary of Kairaithin, she would not fear
Jos
. If she wished, she could come to him. And then he could tell her this dangerous secret. He had sworn silence—but Lord Bertaud, from what he’d said a moment earlier, would plainly release him to tell
Kes
, if he could.

Probably she would not come. But if she did, he could tell her what awaited her adopted people on this side of the pass. Then she would at last understand why the People of Fire and Air must not strike into Feierabiand—no, nor against any part of the country of earth. Then she would refuse Tastairiane’s command to break the Wall, and all the coming storm might yet be averted.

Jos turned on his heel and headed, not toward his room, but toward the stairs. Up and up again, from the busy areas of the house to the upper hallways where no one went but servants, and up again, the remaining flight to the slanted door that led out to the roof. Not a very high roof, for the kings of Feierabiand did not care for tremendous ornate palaces such as those the kings of Casmantium built. But nevertheless above the town and out in the free air, where a creature such as Kes might come.

It was just dusk, a propitious moment because fire mages moved most easily through wind and light at dusk. Even Kairaithin preferred to come and go at dusk, especially if he moved out into the foreign country of earth. Jos was not certain that Kes
could
shift herself from the country of fire and right across the wild mountains into the country of earth. Especially with the Wall in her way. Nor was he sure that she
would
come, even if she heard him, and he was not confident even of that.

But he called her. He called her by the name she had owned when she was human, and then by the beautiful, complicated name she owned now: Kereskiita Keskainiane Raikaisipiike. He gazed up at the earliest stars, glittering cold and distant in the luminous sky, and dropped the long graceful words off his tongue as though he were reciting poetry.

And Kes came. Like a white star falling to the earth, like lightning called out of the sky, like a stroke of fire through the dark; the breeze shifted from the north to the east, and strengthened, suddenly carrying a scent of hot sand and molten air, and Kes shaped herself out of the wind and walked forward across the shingled roof. She moved as though she barely touched the roof, as though
she might walk straight up into the sky if she ceased to pay attention to where she placed her feet. Her shadow, dim in the dusk, glowed like the last of the sunset. Her eyes, turned toward him, were filled with fire.

Jos stood still, watching her come. His heart had twisted the moment he’d realized she had actually come to his call, and it felt tight and painful still. He could feel the beat of his pulse in his throat. She walked toward him, smiling her fierce, beautiful smile, her eyes blazing with life and fire, and he forgot for that first moment why he had called her and what he had intended to say.

“Jos,” she said. Her voice was light and quick and joyful, but behind the joy was something else, a strange wistfulness that was more nearly something he could recognize. There was no cruelty to her voice now—nor any kindness, but that he could endure, so long as the cruelty had gone out of her. She held her hands out to him.

She had settled her fire, contained it; he could touch her without danger. So he took her hands in his and looked down into her lovely, inhuman face. He said, “Kes.”

“You called me,” said Kes. “I came… I wished to see you one more time.” Her ethereal white brows drew together slightly in puzzlement. “I heard your voice, and I wished to come,” she repeated, speaking slowly, as though she found this curious.

“Kes,” Jos said again. And then, with dawning fear, “One more time?” He had closed his hands too tightly on hers. She did not flinch from his grip, but he realized the strength of his grip and flinched on her behalf, opening his hands.

She did not draw back. She did not seem even to realize he had let her go. “I broke the Wall,” she said simply.
“This past noon, when the sun struck down with all its power. Only a very little is destroyed, but that part was the anchor that locked the Wall tight against the wild mountains. The pass is open to fire now. At dawn we will call up the fiery wind. Tomorrow will be a day for blood and fire.”