Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu, the Lord of Fire and Air, the king of all the griffins, swept down out of the sky. His immense power came before him like a motionless hurricane—Jos did not know how else to express it. All other power flattened out before him, crushed to stillness. The wind itself died; the air cleared of its red haze of dust; the flames that had blazed up from the desert sands died.
On all sides, the struggle quieted. Kairaithin settled back slowly to the ground, folding his great wings. Kes, looking tiny and helpless and frightened, drew herself slowly away from the Wall and turned to face them, one hand still braced against the fire-washed stone for support. The Lord of Fire and Air landed near her, his gold-and-crimson mate on his other side and the savage white Tastairiane Apailika beyond her. Ruuanse Tekainiike, looking much younger and smaller in such company, came down warily near them. The young griffin mage had not fled after all, Jos realized belatedly, but had gone to bring the king and his company to this place.
And now that the king was here, Kairaithin had lost. There was no more mockery in the look Kes gave him, but rather wary respect. But even the greatest griffin mage could not threaten her again, not—
Kairaithin, who had turned to face the Lord of Fire and Air, flung a slender blaze of power like a knife at Kes. He did not even look at her; his blow took everyone by surprise, most of all Kes. It was a thrust of such power and strength that it passed right through the forceful stillness the king of griffins had imposed, and unable to block or answer it, she leaped away. But anyone, even Jos, could see that she was nothing like fast enough.
Everyone moved in a blaze of speed and fury: Opailikiita with a blaze of magecraft of her own to block Kairaithin’s blow, the Lord of Fire and Air casting himself forward to protect Kes, the king’s mate lunging after him, Tastairiane and a half dozen other griffins flinging themselves simultaneously against Kairaithin. And Kairaithin was overset by their combined force, but only momentarily, for he was a very powerful mage and neither Tastairiane nor any of his own former students could match him.
But though the griffin mage was forced back, and back again, until he was pinned against the Wall himself, his blow had found its mark. There could be no mistake on that account, for even Jos and Bertaud, out of place as they were, felt the reverberation of power and loss and destruction echo and reecho through the desert. It happened very swiftly, but there was a whirl of blinding sand and fire and an explosion of red dust, and then a single hard, savage cry of fury and anguish, and then, suddenly, stillness.
But it was not the same stillness that the king had imposed.
At first, even after the griffins drew back, Jos thought Kairaithin had after all managed to achieve his aim. He thought that Kes had been destroyed. Even though the woman he had known had ceased to exist years ago, grief rose up into his throat and choked him. He started to step forward, blindly, wanting at least to look down at her body, or at least at the ebbing fire and white sand and flecks of gold that she might have left if she had been too little human to leave a body.
As he had before, Bertaud stopped him. Jos started to knock the other man’s hand away, and then stopped, for he saw with astonishment that again, though he could not imagine how, Kairaithin had missed his mark. Kes was still alive. She was standing beside Opailikiita, her hand buried in the soft feathers of the slender griffin’s neck, staring at Kairaithin. Her expression was very odd.
It took Jos much longer than it should have to realize that the Lord of Fire and Air had taken Kairaithin’s blow in her place, and that in her place he had been destroyed. He understood this only when the red-and-gold griffin who had been the king’s mate, crouching low to the desert sand, gave another loud cry, of such despair and grief and fury that Jos was frozen speechless and motionless by it, as a mouse might be frozen among its tangled grasses by the scream of a stooping falcon.
Everyone seemed equally frozen, griffin and human alike. Kes was holding one hand out to where the king had been. Red dust sifted through her slender fingers. She looked stricken. Beside her, almost as close as Opailikiita, Tastairiane Apailika stood so still he might have been hammered out of white gold. His fiery blue eyes blazed and his immense wings were half spread, the feathers like the flame at the white-hot heart of a fire.
The red-and-gold griffin who had been the king’s mate—her name was Nehaistiane Esterikiu Anahaikuuanse—flung herself abruptly into the brilliant air and exploded violently into flaming wind and red sand, and was gone.
For a long, long moment, no one else moved.
At last, Tastairiane Apailika turned his savage, beautiful, white-feathered head and looked deliberately at Kairaithin.