Law of the Broken Earth(84)

All the lesser griffins fell back and away, as though at a signal. Kairaithin came a pace away from the looming Wall and stood, outwardly impassive but, to Jos’s practiced eye, looking weary and heartsick and very much alone. The black feathers of his neck and shoulders ruffled up and then smoothed down again. His great wings were nearly furled. He turned his head to look at Kes—no. At the place where the Lord of Fire and Air had died, where now nothing remained but drifting red dust and flickers of fire. He did not look at Kes herself. Nor did he look at the white griffin who stood near her.

But Tastairiane Apailika looked at him. The white griffin said in a smooth, deadly voice that sliced across their minds like a knife, Kiibaile Esterire Airaikeliu is gone. Nehaistiane Esterikiu Anahaikuuanse is gone. Who will challenge me?

From the depth of silence that followed, it appeared no one would.

The shining white griffin continued to regard Kairaithin. He was poised with supreme grace and confidence, wings angled aggressively forward. The hot sunlight blazed off his terrible beak as though striking edged metal. He lifted one eagle’s foot clear of the sand, his talons glinting like silver knives.

In contrast, Kairaithin clearly did not want to fight. He still looked dangerous—nothing could stop his looking dangerous. Jos did not think he was exactly afraid, for fear was not something griffins understood. But he looked as though, if he were to challenge Tastairiane Apailika now, he would lose. And he looked as though he knew it.

The Lord of Fire and Air has gone into the fire and the air, the white griffin said. His tone was not exactly triumphant, but it held pride and strength and something more, an awareness of his own strength, and a willingness to command. He said, I am become the Lord of Fire and Air. Will any challenge me?

All the other griffins shifted, not exactly rushing to put themselves at Tastairiane Apailika’s back, but reorienting themselves around him. They accepted him as their lord, Jos saw, and he saw that even Kairaithin felt the new power and confidence in the white griffin, that he could not help but respond to it, for all he was unalterably opposed to the other.

Kes said, in her smooth, light voice that was so nearly the voice Jos remembered, “Lord of Fire and Air! What wind will you call us all to ride?”

Tastairiane Apailika turned to her and said, Break the Wall.

“I will break it,” said Kes. She looked at Kairaithin. She was not laughing now. She reached out with great deliberation to set her palm against the burning stone, in a gesture that was very clearly a challenge, and a challenge that she very clearly knew her former teacher could not take up.

Come, said the new Lord of Fire and Air, to Kairaithin. There was a new depth and power to his voice. Tastairiane Apailika had come fully into his strength. Something about declaring himself had done that for him, or else something in the recognition of the other griffins. He commanded Kairaithin again, Come here.

Kairaithin seemed to shrink back and down—not very much, not even with any perceptible motion. But Jos saw very clearly that the griffin mage had nothing left with which to defy the new king of the griffins: neither strength nor pride nor even the certainty that recently had sustained him.

Then Bertaud, with a courage and presence of mind that astonished Jos, walked across to Kairaithin’s side. He turned there, setting one hand on the black-fathered neck, and regarded Tastairiane Apailika with an expression Jos could not read at all.

Well, man? the white griffin asked him impatiently.

Bertaud began to answer him.

What answer the Feierabianden lord might have made, Jos could not guess, but he did not have a chance to speak. Before Bertaud could utter even a single word, Kairaithin, with more decisive speed than Jos had imagined he could yet command, swept him up, and Jos with him, and took them with him, away from the Wall and out of the desert entirely.

The world tilted and turned, and raked away behind and beyond them, and they were standing abruptly on solid stone. They stood now in the mountains, in a high, clear morning above Tihannad, with Niambe Lake shining beside the city.

The city lay below them, quiet and peaceful, with no sign of any impending peril. Here and there bright-coated skaters raced along the lake’s edge where the ice was still firm enough to be trusted, but little wavelets rippled across the middle of the lake. Mist rose from the lake into the cold air. Out in the town, threads of darker smoke made their way gently up into the sky.

It was almost impossible, in this place, to really believe in the desert, or in griffins, or in the Wall that had so briefly held fire from the country of earth and that was now so near failure.

Kairaithin had taken on human form again, perhaps because he had brought them to a place of men. He stood now with his head bowed and his eyes closed, as though he had used up the last of his strength in bringing them here. Perhaps he had, for when he took a step, he swayed. Catching his arm to steady him, Jos looked at Bertaud in alarm.