Law of the Broken Earth(24)

Then Bertaud took a step forward. He said sharply, “Kairaithin. Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin. Why have you come here?”

The stranger turned his attention back to him, and the moment passed.

Beneath the sharpness, Bertaud’s voice shook. But not, thought Mienthe, in terror. Whatever strong emotion gripped her cousin, it was not fear. Nor had Bertaud moved—say, to step in front of her. He did not pay her any attention at all. Rather than feeling hurt or overlooked, Mienthe found this reassuring. The man—the mage—whoever he was, he had to be a mage, though she had never heard of any mage who cast a shadow of fire—but he could not be so dangerous if her cousin, who clearly knew him, did not think Mienthe needed protection.

Bertaud did not wait for an answer, but said, his tone changing, “You look tired. You look… older. Are you… are you well, then?” His voice had dropped, the anger replaced by… worry? Fear? Mienthe wasn’t certain what she heard in his voice. “Did it harm you, crossing the Wall?” Bertaud asked. And then, “But how did you cross it?”

The man—the fire mage, Kairaithin—tilted his head, somehow a strange motion that made Mienthe think of the way a bird moved; it had something of that quick, abrupt quality. Mienthe saw that his shadow was a bird’s shadow, only too large and feathered with fire, and not altogether the shape of a bird. She blinked and at last recognized what creature cast that kind of shadow—she couldn’t believe she’d been so slow to understand. This was not a man at all, not at all. He was a griffin. The human shape he wore just barely disguised the fact, and only for a moment.

The griffin said, “The answer to all your questions is the same answer.”

His voice was as outrageously inhuman as his shadow: pitiless as fire and with a strange timbre, as though his tongue and throat were not accustomed to shaping the sounds of any ordinary language. He stood very still, watching Bertaud. Not as a falcon watches a hare, Mienthe thought, but she was not sure why she thought it was different, or why she thought the stranger was… not exactly afraid, but wary.

Bertaud, too, stood unmoving. Mienthe thought he had recovered from his astonishment, but she thought he was bracing himself against some message he would not welcome. He said, “What is that answer?”

“The Wall has cracked,” the griffin said. Then he was still again, watching Bertaud.

Bertaud clearly understood this very well. “Tehre’s Wall?” her cousin said, not a question, but in clear dismay. “How?”

“I do not know. It should have stood for a thousand years, that making,” answered the griffin—Kairaithin, Anasakuse Something Kairaithin—and how did her cousin come to know his name? Or the names of any griffins?

Bertaud said, “I thought it would.”

“Yes. Something disturbed the balance, which should have been secure. The Wall has cracked through twice—in the east where the lake lies high in the mountains and then again in the higher mountains of the west, near where the mouth of the lake called Niambe finds its source.”

Bertaud took a step forward. “Is it a problem with the wild magic, then? Does that interfere with the mageworking?”

Kairaithin moved a hand in a minimal gesture of bafflement. “Perhaps. The wild magic has lately trembled, yes. Something has troubled it. Or so I felt as I came through the heights. Though why, then, have both the wild magic and the maker’s magic woven into the Wall changed this spring, now, at this moment?” He did not attempt to answer his own question, but only stood still again, watching her cousin.

“So you came here to me,” said Bertaud, and stopped. There was an expectation in his silence. He was waiting… he expected something from the griffin mage. Something specific. Something, Mienthe thought, that he did not really want to receive, or hear, or know. And the mage expected something from her cousin as well.

“Twice, you have tasked me with my oversight when I did not warn you of an approaching storm,” said Kairaithin. “This time I think it best that you know what comes. This wind that approaches now… it will be a savage wind. If the Wall does not hold, as I think it will not, then my people will come down across the country of earth in a storm of fire.” There was neither apology nor regret in his tone as he said this. He simply said it. But there was an odd trepidation hidden behind the fierce indifference of his voice. He was afraid of what Bertaud might say or do, Mienthe realized. She blinked, not understanding this at all. She didn’t understand why a griffin fire mage—a griffin mage so powerful he could take on human shape and draw himself right out of air and the sunset light—should be afraid of anyone. Certainly not why he should be afraid of her cousin.