Law of the Broken Earth (48 page)

The crashing at the door now seemed to linger oddly on the air; the sounds reverberated against the air as though from a great distance… Black sparks were falling away from Mienthe’s feet. She seemed to be walking on a layer of translucent glass that lay across deep cracks… To Tan, she did not seem to have created those cracks, but rather to have
collected
them somehow, pulling them out of the very fabric of the world and arranging them in this orderly shape, but he could not have explained what he meant by this idea or why he thought so. He also thought the cracks were going down, down and in, even though when he remembered to glance up he could see that they were still in the room, that the world outside the spiral seemed unchanged… perfectly unchanged, as though frozen in glass, as a glassblower might lock a delicate flower or leaf into a glass weight, only it was as though
the glass had turned inside out, so that everything outside it was locked into stillness and only within the spiral did motion and life remain possible.

But this was an illusion, for even as the strange idea occurred to Tan, the door flew soundlessly to pieces—well, not soundlessly; it was only that the crashing, splintering sounds did not seem important.

Linularinan soldiers surged into the room but then flung themselves aside rather than forward. Tan wondered what they saw; indeed, he wondered what
he
saw. Mienthe had come to the end of her line, and Tan to the open center of the spiral, but, though he stopped, she kept on, placing one foot neatly before the last. Though she had no quill or ink, the line drew itself out under her feet, or she drew it after her by the act of walking forward. Tan wondered whether he should follow after her, but he could not see how there was room for him to go forward—nor could he see how
Mienthe
found room to walk forward, only she made her own space as she made her own line. But Tan did not know how to do that.

Istierinan Hamoddian came through the door after the soldiers, who pressed back to give him room. Tan turned to gaze at Istierinan, across what seemed simultaneously an immense distance and the span of an ordinary, rather small room. The Linularinan spymaster looked old, much older than he had bare weeks ago. Old and ill. The bones of his face had become prominent, his eyes dark and hollowed, his hands skeletally thin. He was holding something—a quill, Tan saw, made of a white falcon’s feather, its tip glistening with ink so dark a red it might almost have been blood. Then Tan blinked again and saw that it
was
blood.

Istierinan spoke—he was shouting: The tendons stood out on his throat. In a way, Tan could not hear him, or only dimly, as from a long way away. Yet if he thought about the sounds, he realized they were actually loud. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he cried. “You don’t know what you
can
do!” He started toward the entrance to the spiral, his white quill held out before him like a weapon.

At the same time, Mienthe faltered, but not because of Istierinan. “It’s not enough,” she said, her tone dismayed. “I can’t finish it—the turns are too tight—it doesn’t go deep enough—it’s not right, I’m not doing it right, it’s all wrong—”

“Ignorant child!” Istierinan was beside himself with fury and a terror so great it was almost exaltation. “Of course you’re not! How could you?
Get out of it
, turn it around—
You!
” he shouted at Tan. “Give what you stole back to me now and I may
even yet
be able to set this right!” He strode forward, set himself at the entrance of the spiral, but then hesitated there, his breath coming hard, his hands shaking, gathering himself for that first step.

“You’ll
never
set it right,” Mienthe cried. “You can’t, you won’t, you don’t even want to! Get out, get away!”

“Mie—” said Tan. “If you can’t do this, if you can’t do whatever needs to be done, then maybe—”

Mienthe turned to him. She was weeping with frustration and fear, and her voice was shaking, but even so she spoke with passionate conviction. “He can’t! He set it up all wrong before; it was him, if it wasn’t him then it was someone
like
him. I’m sure it was! And he didn’t do it right! It’s never been right, not from the first time it was ever set down!”

“Mie,
what
was set up wrong?”

“Everything!” Mienthe cried. “The law of the world! He’s a mage as well as a legist! He hates fire, and if
he
writes the law down in that book, he’ll write it all wrong!”

Istierinan stepped into the spiral, between the black lines.

Tan turned so as to meet him when he came around the last turn, but for all Istierinan’s age and evident illness, he moved toward Tan like a superior swordsman might stalk toward a rank novice who’s had the temerity to issue a challenge. Tan had thought he understood legist-magic. Now he knew he didn’t understand anything, and the only thing he knew with perfect certainty was that he was afraid of the older man.

“I see the way it should go—if I could only
finish
it,” cried Mienthe, but though she turned and tried to draw her spiral forward and inward and down, it was as though she leaned against something solid, tried to press herself forward through air that had become as sheer and hard and unyielding as glass, and not nearly so easily broken.

Without warning, fire blazed out of the air and into the outer reaches of the spiral, slapped against Mienthe’s empty black line as against a physical barrier, and rose, towering to the ceiling.

Tan, staggering, dropped to his knees and tucked himself forward over the book he still held, as though it contained all his hope of life and sanity. But the fire did not rush into the center of the spiral at all; rather, it whipped outward around the curving lines of the spiral and roared out into the room. It sheeted past and over Istierinan, who staggered but did not burn.

Outside the spiral, the fire was much worse. Flames roared up the walls; the discarded chairs caught; flames licked across the boards of the floor. The soldiers fled.

Mienthe was screaming, Tan realized at last. He came up to one knee, twisting about to look for her, but she was untouched. She was crouched down upon the black line of the spiral, her hands pressed against her lips, shaking and white with terror, but never stepping away from the line she had drawn.

Someone else groaned, a deep, raw sound of agony, and the flames suddenly flattened low and flickered out. The walls and floor were charred, everything was charred except within the spiral, but there was no longer living fire anywhere.

A man stood near the entrance to the spiral. His posture was rigid, ungiving. His austere face was set in an expression of bitter resignation and anger. When he turned his head, taking in the room and Mienthe’s spiral, his black eyes burned with power. Istierinan, straightening, stared at him with horror and loathing.

A little distance from him stood a big man and, tiny next to him, tucked half out of sight behind him, a pale, fragile girl. The man was gripping her delicate hand in his big one, gripping hard, by the clenched muscles of his forearm. But it was not the girl who had cried out with pain, but the man, and now he let her go, cupping one terribly burned hand in the other.

The girl looked dismayed. She came back toward the man, her steps quick and light.

“No,” snapped the dark man. “Fool! Do you not understand yet what may wake when you use fire to heal a man?”

“He’s right. He’s right. You mustn’t,” said the big man, backing away from the girl, his face twisting with pain and with some strong, dangerous emotion.

“It’s my fault, then!” cried the girl, and whirled away from them all, gathering herself as though she might spring away into the air.

“No,” said the dark man again.

The girl whirled to face him. “Let me go!” she cried. “Kairaithin, let me go! If this is my fault, let me set it right! He cannot constrain
me
!” Her voice was high and light, furious and desperate and somehow not at all a human voice. And she
glowed
, Tan realized, as though she burned with her own internal fire. Flames flickered within the tangled gold-white hair that fell down her back; her eyes were swimming with golden fire.

“Get out!” roared Istierinan, his voice thick with fury. “Get out!”

“Impossible,” said the dark man, Kairaithin, but to the girl. He took no more notice of the Linularinan spymaster than an eagle might have paid a furious songbird. Less. He said, still to the girl, “And untrue. Nothing that has happened is your doing. Though you may still pay the cost of it. As may we all.” His taut posture had not eased; he tilted his head as though listening to the great wind that had brought them; as though listening to the roar of fire, or of some powerful music none of the rest of them could hear. His voice was strong, harsh, dangerous.

Like the girl, he was a creature of fire, Tan realized, though the fire that burned in him was darker and more powerful and far more tightly controlled. His shadow rose behind him, huge and wild and burning. It was not the shadow of a man, and at last Tan realized what he
was, what he must be, for all he wore the shape of a man.
This
was the griffin who had come to Mienthe’s cousin?
This
had brought the warning that had taken Bertaud and the king away to the north and left the Delta vulnerable to Linularinan machinations? Tan was amazed by the composure Mienthe had shown after meeting this creature.

The griffin mage turned suddenly, focusing all that dark, burning power toward Mienthe. She didn’t quite manage composure this time, but flinched noticeably from the scorching heat of his stare. “It was
your
wind,” he said harshly. “When I looked for a new wind to ride, it was
your
wind that swept across mine. And what direction do you mean for this storm you are calling?”

Mienthe flinched from the powerful Kairaithin, but in fact nearly all of her attention was on the pale-burning girl. She took a step toward her along her black spiral, holding out her hand. “It was
you
I needed all along!” she said. “Fire to balance earth! No wonder, no wonder—Was there a wind? Well, no wonder it brought you here!”

“No!” cried Istierinan. “Fool!” He did not leave the protection of the spiral, however, but turned and began to walk once more along the narrow passage between its black lines, toward Tan.

The pale girl said furiously to Kairaithin, paying no attention to either Istierinan or Mienthe, “It wasn’t
my
wind! I know what wind
I
would call up!”

“Kes,” said the human man. He spoke with difficulty, his voice ragged with pain, but his voice checked her where the others had only fed her fury. He said again, “Kes. You were a creature of earth, once. Try to remember. I know you remember a little, or you wouldn’t have held your fire back for me—you wouldn’t have thought
of healing me—and you did think of it. You did. You had a sister whom you loved, do you remember? I know she hasn’t forgotten you. Would you really call up a wind for Tastairiane Apailika, a fire to burn across your sister and her horses? Across everything you ever loved?”

Kes stood still, her golden eyes on the man’s strained face. Her eyes held nothing human; her expression was unreadable. But she stood still, listening.

“Kereskiita,” said the dark man, “the storm Tastairiane Apailika wishes to ride will carry the People of Fire and Air to destruction.” He lifted a hand, pointed straight at Mienthe’s black spiral. “Here is a different storm, when I had all but given up hope that any countervailing wind might arise. It is perilous and terrible, but surely set in a direction none of us had anticipated. It is too late to turn Tastairiane Apailika’s wind. Call this wind, then, and let it burn!”

“Kes,” said the man. He cradled his burned hand against his body and stared at the girl, his eyes purely human. He said again, “Kes.”

“Jos,” said the girl very softly. “I do remember.” And, turning toward the spiral, she took a single step that suddenly whirled her around it and left her standing beside Mienthe.

Far too close, in Tan’s opinion, but though he flinched violently, Mienthe reached out and laid her hand against the hand of the girl of fire, palm to palm. Nor did she jerk back as away from fire, but only looked into her face for a moment, her expression very serious.

“No!” shouted Istierinan again, his voice cracking in furious despair.

Mienthe lifted her hand from the other girl’s, turned,
and began to draw out her spiral: around and in, around and in. Kes turned in the opposite direction and began to draw a spiral of her own, this one a narrow line of white fire that turned outward, rising. Though they both sketched their parallel spirals on the same level floor, somehow the black spiral seemed to turn down and down, while the burning white spiral rose as it turned.

Tan saw at once what Mienthe had meant by fire balancing earth, for now Mienthe moved much more easily, with no sign that she had ever or would ever come against a limit to how tight she might make her spiral, how deep she might send it. And Kes moved as easily, every step as light as though she were actually rising as she went, walking away into the air.

Istierinan cried out, an articulate sound. He dropped to one knee and drove the tip of his white quill straight across the line of white fire. The quill caught fire and blazed up with a flame as white as its feather, and the red ink ran out of it, hissing as it came against Kes’s fiery spiral, quenching the flame and leaving only the black chasm of the spiral Mienthe had drawn.

Mienthe cried out, sounding furious as well as terrified. Then Kes cried out as well, her voice as piercing and inhuman as the shriek of a falcon. Their two voices blurred together until it was impossible to tell one from the other.