Bertaud did not seem surprised by this, however. He stood looking aside, down toward the Wall, his shoulder turned toward both Jos and Kairaithin. His expression was closed and forbidding. Jos thought the man was not angry, or upset, or even frightened—he would have understood any of those emotions. He did not understand what he saw in that set, rigid face. He did not understand the strange relationship between the Feierabianden lord and the griffin mage, but he was abruptly certain that it was somehow important.
Jos wanted to argue, insist upon staying here by the cottage. He wanted badly to know what the other two had to say to each other that they did not want him to overhear. But no argument of his would matter if Kairaithin did not choose to hear him. Kairaithin could simply take the Feierabianden lord elsewhere if he wished to speak to him privately. Or if the griffin mage commanded Jos to leave, Jos had no power to defy him.
But Lord Bertaud said unexpectedly, “We might all go down to the Wall, perhaps. We might all speak to Kes. I’m curious to see her.” He glanced at Jos. “If you say she has forgotten us, forgotten the country of earth, then of course I believe you. But even so, I would like to speak to her.”
Jos found he wanted to know what the Feierabianden lord might find to say to Kes—and what answer Kes might give him. He nodded wordlessly.
Bertaud turned back to Kairaithin. “Those young griffins, they were your students, were they not? Have you so little influence with them now? Or have they sufficient strength to challenge you? I admit, that would astonish me.”
Kairaithin did not answer at once. He regarded Lord Bertaud with close attention, as though wondering, as Jos was, what might lie behind these comments. But he said at last, “Neither Ruuanse Tekainiike nor Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike could challenge me. You might well be astonished at such a suggestion. But your Kes has become in all truth Keskainiane Raikaisipiike—her intimates may perhaps still call her Kereskiita, the little fire-kitten, but she is no more a kitten.”
The griffin mage looked for a moment down along the broken stone of the pass, at the white fire that blazed around Kes and poured away from her to tear at the crack in the Wall. But at last he added in a low voice, “Well, I thought that one day she might challenge me. That day has long since come. I should never have made that human child into a creature of fire. Though that was not the greatest of errors I made six years ago.” He glanced back at Bertaud and away again.
Bertaud said quietly, even gently, “We can none of us turn time to run back, nor say what would have happened if we had acted other than we did. We all do as best we can. Who is to say that we would not have come to this in the end, your people and mine, whatever we did?”
After an almost imperceptible pause, the griffin mage answered. “Not to this. Not without the wind I called up. Not without Kes.” He paused again, very briefly, and corrected himself. “Keskainiane Raikaisipiike.”
Bertaud looked down toward the pass. “Even now, I can’t think of her by any name but Kes.”
Jos wanted to say, Speak with her for five minutes together, and you will learn to. But he kept silent, not wishing to stop either of the others from speaking further if he wished.
Besides, even Jos, who had spoken to her not so long ago, still thought of her by the human name she had long since ceased to use.
“We will go down,” Kairaithin said, and on that word shifted them all out of the bright airy heights and straight down into the powerful desert.
For the first moment, the heat was welcome, even pleasant. Jos found his numbed fingertips and his ears thawing instantly. He had almost forgotten what it was like to be really warm. This heat spread through him, unknotting muscles in his back and neck, so that he relaxed and stretched and stood straight.
After that one moment, the desert heat rapidly became excessive, and then overwhelming. The red sands were alive with delicate flames that flickered upward with every motion and then subsided, ebbing like water. The air sparkled not only with red dust but also with sparks of fire that settled downward as flecks of gold. The wind was hot and gritty and bone-dry. The very sunlight was entirely different here than it ever was in the country of earth: It hammered down upon them, brazen and heavy.
Kes turned. The young griffin mages turned with her: Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike, as dependably good-humored as any griffin ever could be, the rich brown of her feathers flecked and stippled with gold, slim and beautiful. A pace to the rear, Ashairiikiu Ruuanse Tekainiike, dark bronze and gold, his eyes brilliant gold and his temper far less certain.
Kes herself looked less human even than Kairaithin, for where the griffin mage had deliberately put on human form as a mask and a convenience, Kes was not making any pretense of being human. Only her shape was human. She seemed to have been formed out of white gold and alabaster and porcelain; she glowed from within as though white fire flowed in her veins. Maybe it did. Fire filled her hands and poured down her arms, pale fire scattered from her hair when she turned to look at them. Fire glowed in her eyes, pale and brilliant and terrible. Her shadow, flung across the red sand, was as molten as her eyes.