Kindred and Wings (17 page)

The scream that issued from the mouth of the dragon was enough to shatter eardrums and rend sanity. The Named fighting against each other was an abhorrent thing, and Finn had never heard of it happening—not in any of the stories.

As the griffins circled lower, he felt smaller and smaller. Wahirangi remained on the ground, trumpeting his anger to his fellows and flexing his wings. He seemed unwilling to take the fight to the griffins even though they were making their intentions plain. Finn’s gaze darted around, as he felt at any moment they would be overwhelmed and destroyed.

Finally, the dragon could no longer safely remain where he was. Wahirangi leapt into the sky, thrusting his way through the press of griffins; angry squawks and feathers flew around them. Finn crouched low over the dragon’s back as his wings swung hard and deep, but he did not use his fire, not once to clear the way. Beaks and claws raked along the great length of the dragon, but he did not turn and retaliate. Finn yelled in rage and frustration, as the dragon angled himself almost straight up, the griffins in close pursuit.

“Fight back,” the human clinging to his back screamed. “Burn them out of the sky.”

Any illusion that Finn had that he was in charge was swept away as they went higher and higher, but no flame appeared.

The screams of the griffins followed them, but the higher Wahirangi climbed the fewer of them there were. Finn realized that though the griffins were nimbler at the turns than the dragon, they could not match his stamina and strength in the air. As he climbed higher and higher, the griffins dropped away one by one.

But Finn could not really enjoy the success, because by this time he was gasping for air and having increasing difficultly hanging on to the saddle. His vision was blurring and the little air in his lungs felt like knives.

“Wahi . . . Wahirangi . . .” he choked out.

The golden head turned, regarding him for a moment as a human might stare at a bug, but then the dragon folded his wings and dropped lower. Relief flooded through Finn as he was finally able to see clearly, and even think a little. As he craned his head, left and right, and did a sweep of the air below him, he realized that they had swooped down far from where the griffins could follow. He could see them as distant curves on the horizon, but they would not be able to catch up from that distance.

He threw himself down across the dragon’s back, wrapping his arms around the scaled neck, and took in a few more luxurious breaths. When Finn finally levered himself up, he asked one question. “Why did you not burn them? Wahirangi, you could have destroyed them all in an instant.”

A deep note thrummed through the dragon, something that might have been vague displeasure. He did not look at Finn when he finally spoke. “Think on it for a moment, human . . . who are the griffins and what am I under this skin?”

He felt like an idiot. “You are Kindred, both Named I guess—but they are no longer your kin—and they would have killed you if they had the chance.”

“So that makes it right for me to kill them?” the dragon asked, his voice liquid and sad. “They are Kindred, and we do not kill our own. They have been blinded by the power of others, but that does not mean they can’t be saved. I have hope that it may happen one day . . . though being in this form makes it hard to see how that might happen.”

“You might be able to get them back from the Phage?” Finn demanded, wondering if the beast was about to show him some more magic. He was ready for it.

“No,” Wahirangi replied, as he stilled his wings and began to glide for a spell. “Not I. That is beyond my power, but they can indeed be saved.”

“But not by you? So then, by someone else?” the talespinner pressed. “Who would that be?”

The dragon was silent for a long time, content to soar the skies with the clouds. “You,” he finally replied. “You are the son of Putorae, the Last Seer, and you have her powers deep within you.”

Finn opened his mouth a couple of times, seeking words. It was one of the few times that he could not find any to do the job. Finally, he sat back on the dragon’s back and thought about that.

He could not imagine what Wahirangi was talking about, but then again ever since leaving Perilous and Fair he had been trying to catch up with himself. He’d Named himself a Kindred after all, and still didn’t know how exactly that had been done.

He’d said no words that he could recall. So if the dragon was expecting him to battle the Phage for the Named then he should at least give him some idea how.

“I know you saw her,” the dragon said, obviously deciding he’d had enough chance to digest the information. “You saw Putorae. I can smell her on you.”

The idea that his long-dead mother had a smell was the least disconcerting thing about the day. “You know her,” he croaked out.

The dragon’s wings beat for a moment, and Finn was pressed in the saddle as the dragon sought warmer currents of air. Flocks of birds passed beneath them, squawking in protest. Wahirangi snapped at them, and Finn could feel the dragon’s irritation in his own belly, like restless flame. The great beast could not survive on such meager fare—he preferred to hunt larger prey by himself—but these questions were bringing up a storm of emotions in Wahirangi.

When they reached the height where the landscape was reduced to blue and purple shadows, and clouds flickered between them and it, the dragon spoke again. “I knew her in the time before the Harrowing. She was a bright star that drew my kind to her like moths. She was . . . the word you would use might use would be . . . entrancing.”

Such language used about one’s mother might have been unnerving, but Finn had no memories of her himself. He found he was eager to learn more, but most of all one question he had not dared ask the fragments of her he had run into.

“How did she die?” He swallowed, cleared his throat. “Was it in the Harrowing? I thought that she died in the Harrowing . . .”

“You should be doing what you need to do to find your brother.” The dragon’s voice was suddenly hard, where before it had been full of compassion.

He did not need to weave the yarn to know. Putorae had already told him. Of all the stories he had learned in his time as a talespinner, none was as important as this one Wahirangi had to give him.

Leaning forward, Finn pressed his hands against the smooth, warm neck of the dragon. This was a creature of the Chaos, but he had Named it. He knew from the stories that Ellyria Dragonsoul had loved her dragon, but it had also obeyed her. “I am the one who Named you, Wahirangi. I need you to tell me what happened.”

The dragon flew on, but his golden head flexed on his long neck, peering back at Finn. The talespinner didn’t need reminding how insignificant he was, and how precarious his position was, perched on Wahirangi’s back. He’d just been told how damned important he was by a seer, and that had gone to his head a little.

“Tell me,” he repeated.

“It was after the Harrowing,” the dragon rumbled. “People say she died in it, but that is not true. She survived both it and your birth, but she did not survive your father.”

“My . . . our father killed her?” Finn felt as though he’d been doused in ice water. It was chilly riding dragons, but this was the kind of cold that he felt he would never shake. First a mother, and then a father. Too many thoughts were suddenly trying to cram their way out of his throat. He’d been an orphan, raised by the talespinners, and often wondered about his family. Eventually the stories, legends and myths they taught him had filled all those cracks and empty spaces. He had not thought of his father for a long time, so to hear him mentioned caused all sorts of tumult.

A peculiar shudder went through the dragon, and he swung his head about, looking above and below them.

Finn realized then that a dragon could disassemble just like a mortal, and Wahirangi knew more than he was letting on. It was like when Finn had sat at the feet of his master of myth, and asked for the whole story. Except that the talespinners liked to leave a dangling plot to draw a listener back for more. The dragon did not want him to ask any more questions, but there was one that hung between them.

“Who is our father?” Finn whispered to himself first, barely disturbing the chilly air with it. Then, as anger began to rise in his chest a little more, he sat taller in the saddle and asked it in a more demanding tone. “Wahirangi, who is our father?”

The dragon beat his wings harder, beginning a rapid climb into the cloudless sky. Finn did not know how things went with the Named. Could they lie to their creator? Could their creator demand knowledge from them? He liked the dragon, and he had much to be thankful to it for, but he had to know.

“I think I deserve . . .” he gasped out, finding his head curiously spinning the higher they got. It was harder and harder to think straight, but the dragon showed no signs of breaking off his climb.

“You already know,” Wahirangi replied, seemingly not bothered by the altitude, or the bone freezing cold. “Think on it. Who would your mother go to such great lengths to hide you from? Who has the power to make a creature such as you? Only a scion.”

Now Finn’s head felt as though it were stuffed with wool, but he knew that there were no scions left in Conhaero. He would have said as much, but he had so little energy left in him to do anything.

Wahirangi must have felt he had made his point; he folded his wings, and they dropped like a hawk through the air. For a short but terrifying moment, all that Finn could think about was hanging onto the saddle, and not ending up a smear on the ground.

When they finally leveled off, for a while Finn just breathed, feeling the wind over his skin as a blessed relief, and the sunlight on his face. Yet, he would not be distracted completely.

“No scions remain in Conhaero,” he stammered out, hating how unsteady his voice was.

“One never left,” Wahirangi said, and that was all he needed to say.

Finn leaned back in the saddle. He thought about the Caisah, and the one time he had seen him. It had not been a good view of him, since he’d been wearing a mask and manhandling Talyn. Could it really be that he and Ysel were the sons of the Caisah—the man that everyone knew was immortal and impotent?

Clearing his throat, Finn had to admit to himself that it was quite the turnaround to his past. Only a few months before, he had been considering himself below anyone’s notice, and had to trek to Perilous and Fair in an attempt to be taken seriously. Now, his mother was the last Seer of the Vaerli, and his father the destroyer of that race.

He was just about to compose another question, when the dragon let out an almighty bellow that rattled through his being and split the air in front of them. It was loud enough to make Finn clap his hands instinctively over his ears, lest they be destroyed. It was a very good thing that he was tied into the saddle otherwise he would have fallen to his death. He had never heard Wahirangi make such a sound.

His head was ringing and his body shaking, but he leaned forward to demand why the dragon had done such a thing. His voice died in his throat because his eyes finally saw what Wahirangi had seen first: a sinuous shape on the horizon, with great wings and a head shaped like an arrow blade.

It had appeared out of the clouds, and was descending sharply and quickly toward them. Finn licked his lips. “Is that . . . that can’t be another dragon?”

“You are not the only one with the power of Naming,” Wahirangi hissed, as his head oriented toward the ominous shadow. “There are others . . .”

“Who would that be, then?” he asked softly, resting his hand on the long knife sheathed at his side—though he knew it for a ridiculous gesture. “Is this who you mean has corrupted the other Named?”

The dragon was silent a moment, pumping his wide wings to climb higher. An eagle, Finn remembered, always struck from above. Wahirangi had no desire to be the prey. “Indeed. The Phage,” the dragon growled. “A sect of the Vaerli long hidden, but always looking for a way to trap and use Kindred.”

“Never heard of them,” he replied. “I’ve studied all the myths and legends of all the races of Conhaero—even the Vaerli. How can they . . .”

“No one speaks of them.” Wahirangi’s voice usually was clear, like a bell, but now there was a guttural, angry tone to it. “They Name Kindred for their own purposes, and feed off their power.”

“How can they do that?”

Something rumbled deep within the dragon’s chest, a threatening storm ready to break free. He banked left, catching an updraft that lifted them above the clouds, and for a moment they could not see the other serpentine shape. Wahirangi’s head swiveled around, so he could obviously pierce the clouds with his superior vision. It did not make Finn feel any more secure.

“They found a way to manipulate the Pact,” the dragon finally replied. “They turned our Gifts to the Vaerli around on us. Twisted them to make us prisoners. Unnamed Kindred are all in peril when the Phage are near. Named with strong Namers, we are another story.”

The last part ended with growl that ran through Finn’s legs and into his chest. Wahirangi was gathering himself for something. The talespinner had always heard stories of the implacability of the Kindred, but now he was beginning to understand how all that changed when they were Named. The shape of dragon came with a set of parameters that he had a feeling he was about to discover the meaning of.

Carefully he checked the tie around his legs that held him into the saddle, and wrapped his fingers tight around the pommel that rose between his legs. Then, leaning forward, he tried to keep his heart from leaping out of his own chest.

All around were damp clouds and gray light that let him see only a few feet in front of him. Wahirangi, his neck stretched out before him, could see more, and that was all the talespinner could rely on. Still, it would have been nice at this point to have at least some of those Vaerli gifts that he was apparently entitled to. All he had were his knives and a growing dread.

He dare not say anything to Wahirangi, because it was obvious that the dragon was intent on something, and besides that the talespinner did not want to break the thick silence that was all around.