Kindred and Wings (25 page)

Yet, what person had ever known the Caisah? Not even the women he shared a bed with. However, all that lay ahead of him. For now, he was very new to Conhaero. He swept his cloak around him, and unnervingly turned his face toward the gathering.

“I must give my warning,” he said, as if they were his underlings. “I gave my solemn oath to deliver it.” With that, he set off walking toward the Vaerli meeting place, in a strange military step that Byre had only ever seen on the Rutilian Guard before. Another puzzle piece dropped into place.

A solider that had come through the White Void. If this was purely an intellectual exercise he might have been delighted, but for Byre this was far more than that. This was the end of his people.

The Caisah was walking toward history, and all Byre could do was watch him, mesmerized.

Pelanor tugged on his arm, her smaller size completely irrelevant to the pull she could exert; his blood in her veins gave her plenty of strength. “We must follow him,” she hissed impatiently.

He did not want to. He had no desire to watch the wounding of his mother, the Harrowing of his people, and the flaming deaths of his kin. Yet, Ellyria Dragonsoul had endured far worse for the Vaerli.

Byre hastened his own footsteps so that they trailed the Caisah only by a little. Byre shivered at the thought that to an outside viewer it might look as if they were acting as an honor guard to him.

They approached the gathering again, and this time there was no guard to come out to them. Instead the Vaerli themselves came out. Perhaps they had felt the disturbance through the Kindred. Byre pulled up the hood on his cloak reflexively, and shot a glance across at Pelanor. She took the hint and jerked hers up, too. It would bring shame and danger on her people if a Blood Witch was recognized traveling with the Caisah. Byre certainly did not want his face associated with the Caisah, especially with what was to come.

The ranks of the Vaerli came out from their tents and wagons to watch with dark eyes as the man the Kindred had brought approached. He leaned only slightly on the staff with the eagle surmounting it, but his bearing was erect. He walked toward them, with Byre and Pelanor trailing unhappily in his wake. Luckily, he did not acknowledge them at all.

When he stopped only feet from the first of the Vaerli, they did too. Silent sentinels to what they knew was coming.

Immediately Byre was grateful that he had put up his hood, for his father Retira stepped out from the crowd. He was as he had been when Byre was a child, though he had not observed how much his father had changed when he had rescued him from the Caisah’s prison. Retira had a thick mop of jet-black hair, and his beard had only a few strands of silver to mark it. His eyes, as all of the Vaerli’s, contained endless points of light. Stars that the Vaerli had put there to mark the Pact.

“You are not Vaerli,” Retira spoke directly to the Caisah, and Byre was grateful for that, too. He did not know how he would have reacted to his father acknowledging him. “I do not know how you have bested the sacred Salt, but you must turn back.”

Several of the Vaerli wore dark looks, and many hands were on the hilts of swords. They were ready to defend what was there, and a ridiculous hope sprang in Byre’s chest. What if the Caisah was killed before the Harrowing could be released? It would not be his fault if that happened. Maybe time could re-write itself?

“I am here to see Putorae,” the Caisah said. The seer’s name sat oddly on his lips, as if he did not quite know how to pronounce the syllables, and the emphasis was not exactly right. His words were also stilted, and Byre suddenly understood that these words were not simply chosen. This man had practiced these words many times before.

He had been schooled.

The duplicity of the Kindred grew deeper in his mind, and he almost reached for his own long knife then and there.

When he spared a glanced across at Pelanor, he caught the tiniest shake of her head in his direction. It was enough of a reminder that his weapon stayed in its sheath.

While he continued to wrestle with that awkwardness, a ripple of whispers ran through the Vaerli assembly, and he knew what they were thinking. His father’s demands were a bluff. Any who crossed the Salt could only be a Vaerli, and there were no rules to contain a Vaerli at the gathering. As for the seer, she belonged to the people, and any of the people could call on her as they wished.

The Caisah’s head turned as he examined all those before him, and then in one swift movement he bent and laid his sword out on the Salt for them.

Byre wondered how defenseless he actually was, but it was a gesture that all peoples could understand. As his eyes scanned the crowd for his mother, or even his sister, he could feel his heart hammering harder and harder in his chest. He did not want to see this.

In many respects Ellyria might have had the easier testing. It was a red-hot knife beneath his skin to see so many faces that he vaguely recognized, and yet to know that he would never see them again. He was trapped between awe, horror and trying to soak up as much of this as he possibly could.

“All may speak to the seer,” the Caisah said, and though his voice was soft, it carried.

The word magic, the
pae atuae
, could not be disobeyed. From what Byre knew of his own people they were sticklers for pacts, oaths and honor. Slowly, the press of Vaerli parted, and the way was clear to enter.

Byre kept his head down, only daring the occasional glance up as he followed the Caisah deeper into the sacred heart of Vaerli life. He kept his jaw clenched, lest he blurt out a warning. As they followed behind the Caisah, Pelanor drew closer to him, and her fingertips trailed against the edge of his cloak. Byre would not allow himself the comfort of her touch. It was the least of things he could do to share his people’s suffering to come. Very soon they would be alone, and he would share that with them.

As he glanced out from under his hood, he caught glimpses of the Vaerli watching this odd, small procession pass them. He tried to hang on to the little details: the weapons they carried, their confused expressions, and even the musky smell of too many bodies out too long in the baking heat of the Salt. Every one of these details was something of the experience he had been too small to hold on to.

He noted that his father did not follow the Caisah down the cut steps and into the council chambers beneath the Salt. As they walked past him, Byre held his breath and clenched his hands, least he lose control and grab hold of the man who had already died for him. What he could not control was one last look as they descended the stairs.

It was just a split second where their gazes locked together, but Byre could have sworn that his father gave a slight start. As a child, Retira had always told his son how much he resembled his mother. Since Retira had never mentioned this moment to Byre, he must have cast aside any strangeness about the hooded stranger as merely some kind of hallucination in a truly evil day.

They were soon past the press of Vaerli, and headed into the chamber of the council. Though Byre had always dreamed of seeing such a holy, sacred place, this was not how he had imagined it would go.

The Ahouri watched the sky change above them. Unlike the other times when they had been in charge of change, they did not seem to care much for it. Equo was watching his kin’s reaction to this terrifying show of lights more than the lights themselves.

“It is the White Void, isn’t it?” Varlesh asked, unconsciously edging nearer to his brothers.

“Yes,” Si replied. “It has finally returned. The Conflagration.”

“It’s beautiful,” Varlesh said, his gruff voice stained with a rare kind of awe.

Equo tilted his head back and watched the play of colors across the sky. He imagined how different it would have looked to the Vaerli while they were the only race to live in Conhaero. Perhaps they would have remembered the Pact they had made with the Kindred, and quailed.

A pact made in the dim reaches of time, one they had surely consigned to the back of their minds and simply dismissed as part of legend, was now coming to haunt them.

So they had run from it, tried to find a way to escape their fate. They had sacrificed their own children on the Steps, and instead of going into the Void, they had called others, like the Ahouri, to them. By adding their blood and strength, they had managed to fend off their obligations.

Now, looking up at the streaming white and blue across the whole sky, he knew it for what it was; a summons to the Vaerli. One last chance for the first people of this land to honor the Pact.

If they did not, the balance of chaos and order would be undone. It was more than Equo’s imagination could manage, all the worlds in the Between that would suffer.

Suddenly the fate of his own people did not seem as important as it had only moments before.

As the Ahouri watched, the lights in the sky gathered themselves, turned and twisted about each other, until the sky was alive with hundreds of burning, spiraling tornadoes which were now reaching to the earth below like many angry fingers.

The Ahouri answered as best they could. Leaping into the sky, they claimed the forms they had used to reach this meeting place, and would have fled. Si, however, called to them, and the voice of the conscience would not be ignored.

“Fly, but the Void will have you, and that will be the end of the Ahouri.”

Tiny dragons, birds, massive insects with whirling wings, all paused. The White Void was streaking down to earth everywhere. Some would escape, but the trios would be destroyed. By gathering together, they had allowed one devastation to hold the future of their whole race.

Equo knew this was his doing, but was not sorry for it. What sort of life had his people led since the Caisah had hunted them? He laughed as the wind tugged at his jacket. Maybe it was the most fitting way for the Ahouri to finally end. The White Void was merely putting them out of their misery.

He grabbed for Varlesh as the rock around them shifted. It seemed even the world was not stable enough to hold them, and they would be crushed between sky and land. As Equo tumbled from his feet, he caught the image of Si still somehow standing upright, silhouetted against the approaching White Void.

They were all falling—at least, those who were not flying. Equo could have reached for the form, but it seemed such a waste of energy. Let the Void have them. They had teetered on its edge for long enough.

When that thought flashed across his mind, he was suddenly rising. Hands that were impossibly large were holding him. Now it didn’t seem an easy thing to go.

He swiveled around and looked into the flaming eyes of a Kindred. This one was not as the one that had latched onto Finn. This was larger and far more threatening. Around him other Kindred were also aiding the remaining Ahouri.

Kindred who had not been seen for a very long time.

Will you join with us, Form Bards? Will you join your blood to this world?

Equo frowned at the question. “Conhaero is our home, it was our refuge. Take whatever is needed.”

The pain that went through his body was like he had been speared by something. When he was left gasping in its wake, he stared down at his body, expecting to be bleeding everywhere—dying, even. Yet nothing was missing.

When he looked up, he saw trails of Ahouri blood spiraling up to meet the blinding White Void. The roar of it was so deafening that nothing else could be made out over it. Even the screams and howls of his people. It might have been a song, or it might have been merely a primal outrage at the thing they feared most.

Equo remained silent. The White Void had too many of their songs already; he would not give it another one.

He watched impassively as the maw descended toward them, not flinching. His only thoughts were of Nyree and how he should have said so many things to her. Then, just as suddenly as it had disturbed the night, the tornado whirled back up, and away. The sound of its passing was like a beast abruptly silenced.

The quiet after it was also as painful. The Ahouri gave up their winged shapes and dropped to the ground in human form. If they had been unconvinced by Equo’s admonishments, then the appearance of the White Void and the Kindred had changed all that.

One by one, they bent in bows to the masters of Conhaero who stood in an impassive circle around them, watching with them with eyes that flamed. They were shapeless masses, but they did not menace the Ahouri as Equo might have thought they would. Together they had stopped the incursion of the White Void. What could they not do?

As if it could read his thoughts, one of the Kindred turned to him.
We have not turned the White Void aside, Master Ahouri. Merely beaten it back for a spell with your blood.

“Then what did you take our damn blood for?” Varlesh blustered, though his eyes were wide with recently departed alarm.

The Kindred were silent.

“Something has changed,” Si ventured, edging closer to one of their number and peering at them. “Why have you come now?”

It was impossible for the face of a creature made of rock to convey any real emotion, but the voice projected into their heads sounded almost contrite.