Jos regarded the griffin mage with worry. Kairaithin did not seem to have recovered his emotional balance, whatever that properly comprised, from the brief, shocking battle by the Wall. He seemed stunned, perhaps by his failed attempt to destroy Kes; or by his awareness that the Great Wall must surely break; or, most likely of all, from the awareness that the king of the griffins was dead and that Kairaithin himself had killed him.
Jos had expected Kairaithin to leave them here above Tihannad once he had brought them here, to let them make their own way down to the lake and into the town. He had expected the griffin mage to take himself away alone to some deserted bit of desert where he might think or curse or worry or consider the new span of his options, or whatever it was that a griffin might do at such a moment of personal loss. He had little idea what that might be, but he did believe that Kairaithin felt the king’s death as a personal loss, and far more bitterly for how it had happened.
Instead, the griffin mage had followed the men down along the side of the mountain toward the lake, as though, Jos thought, he simply could not imagine where else he might go. Now, standing with his face raised to the high mountains, his expression closed and still, he looked, for the first time, not only drawn and weary but also old.
Then Lord Bertaud looked over his shoulder and impatiently snapped at both of them, “Come!”
Jos flinched, more in startlement than in alarm. But, after all, where else could he go? He took a step after the Feierabianden lord.
But, to his surprise, Kairaithin also flinched and lowered his head and came, like a servant or a dog. Jos had not precisely expected a flash of anger or offended pride; he had not thought about that command or its tone enough to expect anything. But he was deeply shocked by the weary compliance he saw in the griffin mage’s bowed head.
It seemed to shock Bertaud as well, for he turned quickly and came back toward them—toward Kairaithin, because he was not looking at Jos. He began to reach out a hand as though he would touch the griffin mage, grip his arm or his shoulder. But then he stopped and his hand fell back to his side. But the intensity of his gaze seemed to compel a response from Kairaithin, who lifted his head and met Bertaud’s eyes.
They stood on the cold windswept stone of the mountain, the two of them, Feierabianden lord and griffin mage, as though for that moment they were the only two living creatures in the world. Jos could not understand what he saw between them. He thought it was neither friendship nor enmity, but perhaps some strange kind of understanding that owed something to both.
Bertaud said quietly, “I beg your pardon.”
“You need not,” Kairaithin answered. He bowed his head again, and this time Jos saw that he did this with a kind of deliberate effort, yet not precisely unwillingly. He said, “Everything I have done has led to this moment. All the important choices fell to me, and I was wrong, and wrong again, and all that has come or will come now is due to my lack of foresight.”
“No,” said Bertaud at once, forcefully. “Six years ago, if you had not made Kes into a creature of fire, everything that you feared for your people would have happened exactly as you foresaw it. Your diminished people could never have faced both Feierabiand and Casmantium, and it would have come to that eventually. Those Casmantian cold mages were determined to destroy you all, and they would have done it. I believe they would, if not right at that moment, then very soon—”
“I should have foreseen what a weapon I made, when I made Kes—”
“You did! Of course you did! Why should you mind giving your people a potent weapon? It was me you didn’t foresee, and how could you have? How could anyone have?”
“You call griffins?” Jos exclaimed, utterly shocked by this sudden realization—Feierabiand for calling, yes, very well, but calling griffins?
Then, as both Bertaud and Kairaithin turned toward him, he understood just how foolish he had been to cry this realization aloud to the listening mountains. Six years alone had been too many—he would never have exclaimed aloud when he’d been practicing proper spycraft, no matter how shocked he’d been—he took a step back.
Kairaithin, his mouth tight, the expression in his black eyes unreadable, began to lift his hand.
Jos took another step back, knowing there was no point to it, no flight possible, nothing to say. He had in one flashing moment—too late—understood what it would do to the griffins to know that they could be commanded like dogs, and understood as well that no one in the world knew they could be, except those standing here on this mountain above Niambe Lake. It was impossible that any oath of silence could possibly satisfy Kairaithin. He took a hard breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked the griffin mage full in the face. He saw no mercy there. He did not expect to, for he knew that mercy was not something griffins understood. He found himself thinking of Kes, beautiful and inhuman and just as merciless as a griffin. He tried to think of her, instead, as she had been years ago, when she had been merely human. He could remember, though with some effort, the shy, graceful girl who had shunned company—though not his—and liked to run barefoot in the hills. He shut his eyes to better hold her image before his mind’s eye.