Kindred and Wings (14 page)

He was making a persuasive argument, and perhaps she’d been a fool not to see what the centaur pointed out so easily.

“Imagine how your moth-like your existence must seem to the Caisah,” the centaur said, his voice sliding around her senses like balm, “and think on how many moths have passed through his life.”

Tears filled her eyes, and she suddenly realized how many of the harem women would have paid good money to see this: Kelanim, the hard-nosed, icy first mistress, brought low.

The centaur and the horses observed this crumbling of her reserve, but Kelanim no longer cared. When her tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks, she let them, and tilted her head up defiantly. “I will still love him, even if he cannot return it. I will endure until there is nothing left for me.”

The centaur stepped forward, out of the stall, to stand only two feet away from her. This close the smell of him was impossible to avoid; an odd combination of horse sweat and powerful man. It was not unpleasant. “Why should you endure, when there is a way for him to love . . .”

She was no fool. The centaur had just told her the solution, and though her heart leapt with the possibility, she had not got so far in the harem by being reckless. “I will not harm him,” she replied, and even dared a half-step forward, “and I would be doing that by taking his immortality from him.”

The centaur was silent for a moment, his great dark eyes drifting around the barn, taking in trappings of man and beast. “You think immortality is such a gift?” His hand suddenly clamped down on her shoulder, and Kelanim felt the heat of it go right through her while the weight of it nearly brought her to her knees. “I was once a Kindred, little human. I lived on the tides of chaos, and time was nothing to me. When I was Named all that changed, and I was fixed in place. For a long time it was a wonderful thing to me, to experience time, but all things wax stale for me now. Beauty, love, tragedy and even friendship mean nothing to me living this way. Can you imagine that?”

Looking up into his eyes was like looking up into the face of a statue, implacable and terrifying. Kelanim bit her lip in order not to cry out. He was doing a fine job of making her feel inconsequential. “Then why did you summon me here?” she snapped, feeling as if something inside her might break.

The snort that came out of him would have made someone of weaker constitution flee in terror, and when his massive hooves stamped on the cobblestones in front of her, Kelanim did feel the urge to cry out. Only some inner core of character kept her shaking, but upright. The centaur leaned down, so that his breath was on her face. In anyone else that would have been an almost erotic gesture; with him it was the most terrifying experience. “We have helped you get rid of the Hunter.” One of his huge hands closed around her throat. “And we shall help you free the Caisah so that he may truly love you. Isn’t that what you want?”

Kelanim could breathe, but she was well aware his fingers could tighten at any moment. He had been the one to send the note that encouraged her to manipulate the Caisah into sending Talyn after the talespinner. That had worked wonderfully. Carefully, she nodded, and then gasped out, “Yes . . .”

The centaur considered her, twisting her head from side to side as if she were some exotic bug he had captured. Then, finally, he released her. “You are doing the right thing for the man you love,” he added, his voice rumbling through her bones in this close proximity. “Think of it, does he sleep well?” The centaur’s eyes bored into hers.

Kelanim found herself breathing hard and fast, but her mind followed him along the path. The Caisah did not sleep well; he often woke screaming in the night, or muttered terrible things in his sleep.

“Immortality was not meant to be his.” The centaur’s hand was now pressed on the top of her head. The heat from a moment before that had terrified her now seemed a comfort. “You know this.”

She licked her lips, and dared to reply, “You are right. He has said so before, in fact.”

“Then you must take it from him, relieve his burden.” He stepped back into the shadows again. “It can be done, and then he will be as other men, able to live and love as they do.”

For a split second Kelanim was terrified; the idea that she could have a hand in taking away her love’s protection hit her hard. However, she remembered the pain in his voice, and how much she wanted to feel his love in return. “Then tell me how to do it,” she whispered. “I would have him live a whole life, not a half one for all eternity.”

The centaur bowed his head. “It will not be an easy thing, and there are many dangers for you, too. Immortality, when given to a mortal, can crack their sanity.”

“I know that,” Kelanim replied, her hands clenching into fists. “Every day I am with him is a danger, so do not think to turn me aside with that.”

“Very well.” The centaur reached back into the saddlebags he carried on his withers. He handed the mistress a small bag. “Place this piece of paper under his pillow while he sleeps. It must be near his head.”

She opened the bag, just to be sure that it was nothing poisonous, but it did indeed appear to be a piece of faded vellum inscribed with the
pae atuae
. Kelanim swallowed hard, her throat suddenly seemed as tight as it had when the centaur had his hands on her. “It . . . it won’t hurt him will it?”

“Has anything written by Vaerli ever had a chance of hurting the Caisah?”

It was a good point. “So then,” she continued, folding the paper carefully and putting it back in its pouch, “this will restore his mortality by morning?”

The centaur’s laugher filled the stable, making the nearby horses snort and shy away. Kelanim worried that the stableboys might come back to investigate. “As if the gifts of the Void can be so easily taken away from a scion,” the centaur said. “No, this is only the first part.”

“Then tell me the rest?” the mistress demanded.

Another laugh, this time lower. “All in good time, little slattern. First, you must prove yourself to us, then we shall see how to proceed.”

He turned, adroitly considering his great bulk, but then paused at the outside stall door. His shape was outlined by the moons’ light, revealing his thick locks of hair running from his head, over his shoulder, down his back, and transforming into a mane along the way. It was bizarre and beautiful.

The wind from outside blew his scent once more over her, and now a shudder went through her. The centaur was primal and terrifying—something the Caisah fired in her as well. “I will find you again,” the centaur rumbled. “Do as we ask, and all will be well.”

Before he could get away, Kelanim—perhaps inured to danger by her time with the Caisah—blurted out, “What is your name?”

When he turned and glared at her, that feeling in the pit of her stomach became almost painful, and she added, “I need to have something to call you.” For a moment she wondered if she had gone too far with what was essentially one of the most dangerous creatures in Conhaero. Would she end up with her throat crushed and tossed beneath the horses?

Finally, the centaur turned back once more, and spoke, “You can call me Pholos. It is not my true name, but it will do for you.”

Then he sprang away from her and out into the night, disappearing before she could take another breath. All Kelanim, mistress of the Caisah, could do was tuck the pouch he had given her into her belt, and turn back for the palace.

If she was prone to prayer, now might have been the time for it.

Riding toward the sea was not the thing Talyn wanted to do. She had not been to the sea since her time with Finn, and even though she had purged that memory, somehow, some little part of her still abhorred the ocean. Now, the Phage were sending her there, and she felt as broken as she had when she’d been the Caisah’s Hunter.

Bending low over Syris’ back as he raced east, she tried not to think of what she was doing. Tried and failed. She had given up everything to be the Hunter, and had comforted herself in the night that she was at least working toward getting the Gifts of her people back. Lifting the curse that had been placed upon them had seemed like a goal that was worth her own sacrifice.

Since that had been revealed as a cruel trick by the Caisah to keep her close and amuse himself, she had fallen into despair. The Phage had seemed the only option.

She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. The speed at which they were traveling was playing tricks with her vision. In her mind’s eye she could see the puzzle pieces laid out before her, and the revelation that when formed together, they had made the image of Putorae, the Last Seer. The Caisah was impossibly cruel. He had told her the answer to the lifting of the curse was in the puzzle, but one long-dead seer was not the answer. He was a liar.

Everything was a lie. As Talyn watched the world fly past in a gray blur around her, she was surprised by one thing: she had not killed herself. Some damned annoying little spark of self-preservation still burned on. Even when things were hopeless, she couldn’t bring herself to take her own life—not when so many Vaerli had never had the chance.

Syris’ muscles bunching and clenching beneath her served to remind her that forward momentum was possible. Yet she was not as she had been. Time on the back of the nykur was not easy on muscle and bone—even for a Vaerli. Leaning forward, Talyn whispered into the long curved green ear, “Rest, my darling.”

Syris slowed from his ground-eating gallop to a quick trot, and the world resolved back into its normal state.

They were on a wide plain, where the Road of the Caisah was beautifully absent. It was unmitigated Chaosland—just as it had been before the coming of so many people. Talyn leaned back in the saddle and stretched her aching back. The smell of grass and fresh air buoyed her spirits slightly, reminding her that the world was not all bad.

Conhaero, the land of chaos and change, the refuge of the people through the White Void. It must have looked awe inspiring and delightful after the madness of the swirling between worlds.

Bouncing on her saddlebags, the scroll caught her eye, and for the first time curiosity began to chew at her. The Caisah had sent for this scroll, presumably from some hidden store of his. Immortal beings tended to collect a lot of objects and items; Talyn knew that her own people often hoarded such things.

Once the libraries and storage vaults beneath V’nae Rae had been bulging with scrolls of history and lore. Many had contained
pae atuae
since only so much word magic could be inscribed on walls and other surfaces.

As Syris brought himself to a halt, stamping and tossing his head, a dreadful thought came to Talyn. The man who had inherited the city, who had renamed it Perilous and Fair, had been free to plunder those teachings. He had been able to read every one of their stories. Some were written in ancient Vaerli, impossible for even her kin to decipher now, but others would have told him much about her people.

Now she glanced down at the scroll in a totally different way. What would the Caisah want so urgently? What could he have hidden?

The patterned tube that contained that information was only a hand’s breadth away. She slipped down from the nykur, but stood still for a long moment. The Phage had said only dragon fire could destroy the scroll? Who else apart from that fool Finn had ever had a dragon?

Her fingers traced the canister, feeling the raised pattern and the tight seal of wax that provided proof that it had not been tampered with or opened. Her mind raced. Dare she open it now?

With a ragged sigh, Talyn turned away. The Phage were not to be taken lightly. The thing she had to remember was that they were the enemy of the Caisah—that was the only fact that mattered.

So instead, she tempered her curiosity with practicality. The scroll had to be destroyed, and anything that kept a little more power away from her former master had to be a good thing. Talyn set herself to getting a little rest. Night was drawing in fast, and she did not like the purple clouds gathering. It would probably be rain.

Syris’ dark eyes followed her as she set up a circle of stones, lit a fire, and made herself as comfortable as she could be in this lonely place. It was not the first camp that she’d been forced to make for herself.

She sat on her blanket, looked up at the menacing clouds, and chewed on a bit of dried meat. Lonely had become the normal for the Vaerli, but it had not always been. Talyn thought back to the Gatherings of old. It was an odd recollection to be having, and she had not had much reason to think of them lately.

When she had taken Finn there, she had been haunted by memories of those days, but since then she’d been working to block their memory. She had not stricken them from her memory, which she could have done as nemohira. Talyn swallowed the tack, and tilted her head back to watch the plain swallow the glowing red ball that was the sun.

No, if she had consigned those memories to dust then she would have lost the last precious glimpses of her mother and her brother. Instead she hoarded those memories like an animal hiding food for the winter.

It was the curious half-light moment, when the rays of the sun turned the clouds to violet, and there was a feeling of oppressive humidity in the air. Syris would not settle. Talyn looked over at the great green beast and watched him curiously. It was not like her mount to be upset over a little weather. The nykur was the nearest thing to a Kindred, attached to the chaos in ways that not even Talyn could understand completely. When he began to paw the earth and roll his black deep eyes at the sky, she listened to what he was trying to tell her.