Law of the Broken Earth(123)

But she was there before Jos, even so. She was walking forward when Jos slammed open the door and ran in, panting in great heaving breaths. She had her hand out in almost a friendly manner, and Bertaud was not alarmed—or not alarmed enough. He was just standing there, not even backing away, far less running for the door—not that running would help; the air prickled with living fire. In a moment the house itself would blaze up, the maps and furnishings and the underlying structure itself, and Lord Bertaud would burn like a tallow candle at the center of that conflagration.

Jos could not get enough breath to shout a warning, but Bertaud took in his precipitous arrival and then seemed to see for the first time the white fire prickling across Kes’s outstretched hand. He caught the edge of the map table and flung it over to block her way; worse than useless, for the papers caught fire as they spilled across the floor. Kes put her foot on the fallen table and stepped across it, so lightly it did not even wobble, but flames licked out across the wood—white flames, pale gold at the edges, burning with an intense heat that seemed likely to set the air itself on fire. Bertaud tried to shout, but the burning air drove him back, choking, his arms across his face.

Here at the edge of the room where Jos stood it was not so unendurably hot, and so Jos took a quick hard breath and shouted, “Kairaithin! Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin!” His voice, rough and half-strangled with heat and terror, fell flat and dead against the brilliant air. He lunged forward over the burning table and caught Kes’s uplifted hand in his, dragging her back and swinging her around. He looked into her face, and he could not recognize anything he saw in those golden eyes. The fire that filled her burned his hand and arm, but to his astonishment she caught her fire back away from him after that first instant, containing it, so he did not instantly die for his temerity.

Then Kairaithin came. The eastern wall went up in a fierce blaze, and Kairaithin strode out of that sheeting flame as though he were coming through a door and took in all that was happening in one swift, summing look.

For one horrifying instant, Jos thought the griffin mage might simply lend Kes his own terrible power and rip fire out of the air through the whole house. Then his furious black gaze locked on Bertaud’s, and although the man was coughing and could not speak, all the flames flattened sharply toward the floor, flickering madly, and went out, exactly like candle flames blown out from above.

“Kairaithin—” said Kes. Her tone was urgent, remonstrating. She stretched her free hand out toward her old teacher.

“Kairaithin!” Bertaud said in a much different tone, though just as urgently, and tried to catch his breath through the coughing.

“No!” cried Jos. He knew the Feierabianden lord meant to command the griffin mage to kill Kes—he knew he should even agree, he knew very well he should agree, but he couldn’t, not even now. He had not let go of Kes, not even yet, and now he jerked her back to put himself between her and Kairaithin. He shouted furiously to the griffin mage, “Get her out of here, get her as far away as you can, and keep her away! Don’t you see, that will do, that will be enough, if she isn’t there even that bastard Tastairiane won’t press through the pass without her—” He ran out of breath, coughing helplessly; his chest burned and agony radiated from his hand all the way to his shoulders and he knew, he knew he hadn’t said enough, hadn’t said it right, he’d never been a man with a gift for words—

Then Kairaithin, with no expression Jos could read, called up a hard-driving wind right through the walls of the house, a wind shot through with wild darkness and rushing sand and flames, and that wind whirled all around them and swept them up, and the world tilted out from underneath them, and Lord Bertaud was left behind in the map room and the king’s house as the griffin flung himself and Kes and Jos away into the wind.





CHAPTER 15





Mienthe came back to Tiefenauer only weeks after she had left it. It seemed like years. It had been raining from the moment they had entered the Delta, but the rain ceased at last as they pressed through the last of the countryside toward the town. Mienthe put back her hood and straightened her back, looking up as the first sunlight of the day struggled through the heavy overcast.

They were coming into Tiefenauer not from the east, but more from the south. The Arobern had taken them around that way so they could come up the coast road. “We turn only a little out of our way, and this road is better for marching, especially in the rain,” he had said, with no explanation of how he came to know the quality of the roads in Feierabiand and the Delta. “And we do not wish to come without warning upon the Linularinan troops in the town.”