Law of the Broken Earth(97)

Gereint broke into this discourse without the least surprise or fuss, “Tehre, if you please, I imagine Lady Mienthe would like to have something to eat at a civilized table while you find appropriate clothing for her.” He added to Mienthe, “I think I am able to assure you, Lady Mienthe, that no Linularinan agent, mage or otherwise, will trouble your rest in my household.”

Mienthe nodded, trying not to laugh. Tehre’s Wall, the griffin had said to her cousin. So Lady Tehre had made that Wall. Mienthe found she was not at all surprised. She wondered what sort of protections might surround a household that included Lady Tehre and her husband. Very secure ones, probably.

Then she realized the king had not said he would send Tan with Lady Tehre, and hesitated, wondering whether she should say something, or ask, or protest.

Before she could speak, the Arobern said to Tan, “You, I wish to give into the hands of my friend Beguchren Teshrichten and my mage Gereint Enseichen. Will you permit this?”

For once, Tan did not seem to have any smooth response to hand.





CHAPTER 11





The king’s house in Tihannad, where he held his winter court, was tucked close by the shore of Niambe Lake. It was a comfortable, rambling house built out of the native granite, with shingles of mountain cedar, nestled in the center of a comfortable, rambling town also built out of stone and cedar. A low wall ran about the king’s house, as a greater wall encircled the town, but neither wall had been called upon to defend against enemies for hundreds of years and the gates of both generally stood wide and welcoming, with neither guard nor even a clerk to count who came and went.

But the gates of Tihannad were guarded now, and all but hidden by the crowd of folk waiting to be admitted. Jos saw at once that very few folk were leaving, or at least not heading south; all efforts were bent toward getting in.

Lord Bertaud paused when he saw the crowded roads and the press at the gates, his eyebrows rising. He might have been wondering, as Jos certainly was, whether the folk pressing into Tihannad expected walls of stone and timber to defend against griffins who rode upon the wind. Though perhaps it was not the walls themselves but the lake so near those walls that was expected to ward away fire. Perhaps it even would.

“I would have thought Tiearanan would be the retreat of choice,” Bertaud commented, gazing down toward the press at the gates. “Though perhaps it is, for those who are able to climb that steep road at speed. These may be local folk who fear they may not come swiftly enough to any more-distant shelter.”

Jos only nodded distractedly, and Kairaithin did not even seem to hear these comments. After a moment, Bertaud shrugged and led the way down across the slope of the mountain toward the town.

For a few minutes, they walked in silence. Jos thought about the wall, and a little about Kes, but that was too painful and he tried to think about other things—anything else—only then he thought, So here we are, walking down toward Tihannad, and that was such a strange, uncomfortable thought that he hardly knew what to do with it. Six years alone in the high mountains had surely unfit him for human company, and what would he possibly do now in a clamorous town? A Feierabianden town crowded with fearful farmers who hoped their walls or their lake would protect them.

Lord Bertaud would hardly have brought Jos trailing at his heel to any purpose. Only the exigency of the moment had compelled Kairaithin to shift them all, and he had brought them here. But though that was well enough for Lord Bertaud, Tihannad was no place for Jos.

His steps slowed, and then stopped. He looked uncertainly up into the broken country of stone and ice, east and north, back toward the high pass and his abandoned cottage. His fire would burn without ceasing, but would his goat and all the foolish chickens know how to make their way from meadow to meadow along the silver length of the nameless river, down to warmer country and better pastures? The goat, perhaps, he thought, but probably not the hens or the vain white cock.

But he could hardly make his way back up through that rugged pass on foot and alone and without anything at all in the way of supplies. Even if he could, when the Great Wall finally shattered and the griffins came through the pass, he doubted whether they would spare anything they found in their way, man or goat or bird. Probably they would tear every stone apart from every other stone merely with the fiery wind of their passage.

Kairaithin, too, had halted. He had followed Jos’s gaze, up and east and north, but there was nothing a man could understand in his eyes. Jos wondered what the griffin mage was seeing. Not these mountains, nor a small abandoned stone cottage. Fire, and the Wall, and the red dust where the king of the griffins had lunged forward just that little bit too fast…