Beside Jos, Lord Bertaud uttered a low oath. He had stepped back in shock at the deadly plunge of the griffins, and now, recovering himself, he gripped the cold stone of the windowsill and stared downward. His expression was odd. Jos had seen creatures of fire many times, but was still struck anew each time by their ferocity and beauty. He was not surprised by Bertaud’s shock. What he did not understand was the intensity of grief and longing hidden behind the man’s hard-held calm.
Bertaud spoke at last, his tone flat with the effort it took to contain his emotions. “Tastairiane Apailika is not there.”
“If the Wall breaks, I’m sure he’ll come,” Jos said. He kept his voice light, dry, inexpressive.
Nevertheless, something in his tone must have caught Bertaud’s attention, for the lord turned his head, his glance sharp and, at last, attentive. But what he said was, “I’m sure he will. When he does…” But his voice trailed off, and he did not complete this thought. He turned instead, caught up his fur-lined coat, and stepped across to the door. He fumbled for a moment with the cold iron of the latch and the stiff leather of the hinges, then thrust the door open and stepped out into the chilly light of the morning.
Jos followed, though his coat was nothing like as good. He found Lord Bertaud standing out in the middle of the meadow, scowling down through the brilliant freezing air toward the distant Wall. His arms were crossed over his chest. Despite his forbidding expression and solid stance, something about his attitude struck Jos not as aggressive but as defensive, even hesitant. But when he spoke, he did not sound hesitant at all. He sounded sharp and commanding, every bit the court lord.
He did not speak to Jos, however. Instead, he called out into the crystalline silence of the heights, “Kairaithin!”
At once, as though the griffin had been waiting for that call, fire blurred out upon the meadow. Anasakuse Sipiike Kairaithin drew himself out of fire and air and the piercing stillness of the mountains. For that first moment, he wore his true form: fierce black eagle head and feather-maned neck and chest, black-clawed red lion rear, his eyes blazing with fiery darkness. Then his wings beat once, scattering fire through the air, and closed around him like a cloak as he reared up and dwindled to the shape of a man. But the black eyes he turned toward them were unchanged, strange and unsettling in the face of a man, and his massive winged shadow stretched out behind him with the same fiery black eyes.
He said, his tone unreadable, “I am here.”
Lord Bertaud gave an uneasy little nod, but now that the griffin mage had come, he did not seem to know what to say.
Jos came forward, with a deferential glance for Lord Bertaud and a welcoming nod for the griffin. “Kairaithin,” he said, and gestured down the slanting, jagged pass toward the Wall. “What shall we do? Shall we go down and speak to them?”
“They will not hear you,” the griffin mage answered, his tone strangely bleak. He glanced at Bertaud, half lifting a hand. But when he spoke, it was to Jos. “I will take you down to them, if you wish. But a day of blood and fire is coming, and I see no way to prevent it. Only to turn it in one direction or the other. But whether it turns right or left, still there will be blood and fire.”
Jos waited a moment, but still Lord Bertaud did not speak. So he asked, “If your king and the fire mages you trained and all your people call for a wind to carry them to that day of fire, why should you want to turn it?”
He thought at first that Kairaithin would not answer. The griffin mage did not look at him, but glanced once more at Bertaud and then down toward the wall. But Kairaithin said at last, “If the People of Fire and Air try to ride that wind, they will find an unexpected storm which carries all before it. They believe the earth alone will burn, but fire and earth alike will be torn asunder.”
Bertaud still said nothing, but somehow Jos found that his very silence commanded attention. He looked from man to griffin and, with a spy’s trick to encourage others to speak, refused to say anything himself that would disguise or slip over the palpable tension that sang between them.
“You should go down to the Wall,” Kairaithin said abruptly. His black gaze was on Bertaud’s face, but he was speaking to Jos. He said, “You should go speak to Keskainiane Raikaisipiike. Kes. Perhaps she will hear you. Neither Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike nor Ruuanse Tekainiike are important. Kes calls their common wind and sets its direction. If Kes is turned toward a different wind, all the mages of fire will turn, and the Wall may yet stand.”
“I have spoken to her,” Jos protested. “You know she will not listen to me.” Then he paused, because Kairaithin did know that. Jos belatedly understood that Kairaithin wished to speak to Lord Bertaud and did not want Jos to overhear what they would say to each other. He looked from one of them to the other, seeing that Lord Bertaud, too, understood Kairaithin’s intention.