Land of the Burning Sands (48 page)

Gereint didn’t answer. He had a strong feeling that the griffin was concealing something, or at least failing to mention something important. That the reason the griffin mage had chosen to set his strength alongside Gereint’s on the far side of the wall… was complex and dangerous and either inexplicable in human terms or else something the creature had no intention of explaining. But he could also see that the griffin was right about the wall: It was unfinished. The task needed to be seen through all the way to the end. And for whatever reason, the griffin meant to complete it. But he was appalled by the idea of doing over again the labor they had just completed.

“Though, if you lack the strength—” the griffin mage began, his tone edged with contempt.

Shaken by loathing, Gereint said sharply, “I’ll manage my side. See you do the same!” And he flung himself away from the lake, with its mysterious shores hidden by its shifting mists, and back through a fold in the world, to the place where he had started the work of sealing the wall. It was easy: as easy and natural as making had once been for him; a step and the world tilted and swung around him, and another step and he stood again by the river, below the hillside where Beguchren had challenged the griffins. The hills were empty now. Neither men nor griffins remained. But water ran clear and sweet in its rugged channel, finding its way around the odd, twisted red cliff that had blocked its old path. Delicate green shoots were already poking up along the river’s new channel, from good earth only lightly disguised by a thin covering of red sand.

Now, in daylight, Gereint could see the broken mountains. Some of the broken mountains. He could see where the three closest mountains had stood. The earth was nearly level there now, the broken and torn ground between the more distant mountains and the wall showing where the avalanche of stone had come down. Gereint shook his head, looking at the miles-wide trail of devastation that marked the path of the avalanche through the stark emptiness of the desert. If there had been forest or pasture left there, the avalanche would have destroyed it as certainly as the desert had done. And if he had looked over the wall, he knew he would find similar destruction. How many mountains must be leveled to build a hundred miles of wall? Two hundred miles? All the closest mountains, he concluded, and probably some of the more distant mountains had been hauled down as well… Tehre would never have had the strength to do this, not even with the power he had found for her. More than ever, Gereint was aware that he did not want to fight the griffin mage. He was unwillingly, bitterly, grateful to the Feierabianden lord for persuading the griffin to throw his immense strength behind Tehre’s effort, and now behind his own.

He knew the griffin was there now. On the other side of the wall. Waiting. He could almost feel the creature’s fierce, patient scorn.
If you lack the strength
… Gereint set his teeth and turned back to the wall.

A
t dawn, a night and a day and another night after Gereint and Eben Amnachudran and four hundred men had followed Beguchren Teshrichten into the country of fire, Gereint stumbled suddenly out of hard blocks of granite laced with hornblende and dark, rich hematite and found himself standing, blinking and dazed, amid the jagged crags of great, toothed mountains. Their polished granite faces shone in the sun while darkness still lay in the valleys between the peaks. He realized slowly that these were not the smaller and more comfortable mountains that held the vast, mist-wreathed lake north of Meridanium. These mountains were taller and altogether wilder, their faces glittering with ice that flung back the early light of the rising sun. These were the mountains that raked down along the border between Casmantium and Feierabiand. They rose and rose before him in serried ranks, rose-pink cloud shredding around the naked teeth that sliced up into the sky.

Behind him, he knew without turning, ran a hundred miles of wall. Two hundred miles. More, maybe. Blocks of stone a spear-cast wide and three high wound along a path all across northern Casmantium. On the far side lived fire and the hot wind, the merciless sun and burning sands… The griffin mage was there, opposite Gereint, a fierce presence that blazed and flickered with fire. But, though Gereint tried to gather the remnants of his strength to meet the challenge he half expected, the griffin did not intrude into the country of earth.

On this side, the mountain was glazed with ice. Mist condensed in the cold that radiated from the wall, curling in wisps and streamers along the powerful earth. The ice and the heavy earth denied fire, resisted any incursion of fire. But, though any ordinary griffin might be held by the wall, Gereint suspected it would not stop the griffin mage if he bent his strength against it. Though surely this dawn had found the griffin as exhausted and worn as Gereint…

Perhaps it did, for suddenly Gereint could tell that the griffin mage was gone. Away into the brilliant inimical desert, to rest amid the red sands and burning winds—he was welcome to them. Gereint longed for his own place of rest and silence. He rested his hands on the frozen wall, bowed his head, stretched his awareness wearily back along the long, long span of stone, and let the world fold itself around him. And found himself standing, for the third time, in the courtyard outside Eben Amnachudran’s house, surrounded by the scents of cut hay and horses, apples, and, somewhere close at hand, warm bread fresh from the oven. The familiar, homey scents, the ordinary bustle of men and women about their ordinary business, the natural warmth of an ordinary autumn dawn, were all suddenly overwhelming after the desert and the griffin and the wall. Gereint folded up his knees and sat down right where he stood, on the very doorstep of Amnachudran’s house, lacking even the strength to look for the fragrant bread.

Amnachudran found him there. He did not speak: only Gereint’s name. He put a hand under Gereint’s elbow, urged him wordlessly to his feet, and brought him to a room paneled in pine and oak. Lady Emre, her face shadowed with worry, brought him bread dripping with butter and honey. Gereint ate three bites of the bread and then found enough strength and awareness to ask, “Tehre?”

Amnachudran and his wife exchanged a glance. “She’s fine. She’s here,” Lady Emre assured him. “She’ll be glad to know you are—you are here. Shall I send for her?”

Gereint shook his head. “Later.” He set the bread down on its plate, leaned his head against the back of the chair, and was instantly asleep.

He woke early in the morning on the next day, having slept around an entire day and night. He knew exactly how much time had passed; a deep awareness of time and place seemed an odd and unexpected offshoot of magecraft, more welcome than some. And he woke rested, and clear-headed, altogether a better awakening than his last in this house… Eben Amnachudran sat in a high-armed chair by the room’s window, gazing out at his orchards. His expression was quiet, thoughtful, still touched with the weariness and strain of the past days. His elbows were propped on the windowsill and his chin rested on his laced fingers; in one hand he held a quill pen, its feather brushing his mouth and cheek. On a table by his elbow rested a large leather-bound book, laid open to a map of northern Casmantium, with notations in black and red ink fitted into its margins. Also on the table, of more immediate interest, rested a plate of honey cakes and a platter with tea things.

Gereint cleared his throat. “That’s a copy of Berusent, isn’t it? You’re not getting honey on the pages, I trust?”

Amnachudran swung around, smiling. “Gereint. Good morning! We were beginning to fear you might never wake on your own—I half wanted to try to bring you back to ‘this hither shore of dreams’ myself, you know, but Emre was adamant that you should be let sleep till you woke. How are you? Can you sit up? Can you hold a cup? The pot’s a good one; it keeps tea hot and fresh for hours. I don’t know how you usually drink it, but I thought it best to put plenty of honey in this.” Rising, he poured steaming tea and brought the cup and the plate of cakes to the bedside table.

Gereint propped himself up against the pillows. He found himself smiling. “I always seem to be waking up in your house…”

“After prodigious feats deserving of the very best tea.” Amnachudran handed him the cup, watching to be sure he could hold it without spilling the scalding liquid.

Gereint drank the tea all at once, like medicine, and allowed the scholar to take back the cup and pour it full again. The tea was indeed very sweet, much sweeter than he ordinarily took it, but this morning he welcomed the rich sweetness. He ate a cake, licked honey off his fingers, and asked suddenly, “Tehre?”

“Perfectly well. Asking for you. She argued, along with me, that we should try to wake you, but Emre overruled us both, no doubt wisely. She was worried about you. She said you hadn’t anything like your ordinary strength to start—and we all could see what you’d done to the wall. Tehre’s friend Lord Bertaud insists it runs the
entire
length of the griffins’ desert?”

“From the great lake high in the north, along the Teschanken, and then west along the border right to the western mountains. Lord Bertaud? That is the Feierabianden lord?”

“Yes. A very useful sort of friend for Tehre to have made, I gather.”

Gereint shuddered at the memory of the griffin mage, but he said, to be fair, “The griffin said the Feierabianden lord persuaded him to seal the wall with fire on his side.”

“Yes, so I understand.” Amnachudran poured a cup of tea for himself and sipped it slowly. “We are very fortunate Lord Bertaud was sufficiently concerned to insist on coming north. And very fortunate my daughter insisted on accompanying him. I’d never have thought—well, parents are the worst judges of their children’s skill, as they say. But among you all, we managed to claim something very like victory. I’d not have imagined that, watching the griffins ride that burning wind of theirs toward us. But I admit, I didn’t believe the wall could run all the way to the western mountains.”

“I didn’t exactly use my own strength to seal it. I used mine, but also the deep strength of earth.” Gereint paused, looked more closely at Amnachudran’s face. “And the strength of your men. Isn’t that right? Your strength… but you seem well enough…” He could not quite bring himself to ask the question he wanted to ask.

“Hardly anyone actually died,” the scholar answered, not needing to hear the question. “Fortunately, once the desert withdrew, Emre brought nearly everyone remaining in the household to find us and bring us home.”

Gereint imagined the lingering death that would otherwise likely have claimed the men whose strength he’d so ruthlessly used. He swallowed.

“What you did was necessary. You saved us all,” Amnachudran said gently, watching his face. “You and Tehre. And Beguchren Teshrichten. And even that griffin mage, once the Feierabianden lord persuaded him to help rather than hinder…”

“Beguchren tried to explain to me about making earth more… I don’t know. More itself. The earth holds so much power… I could never have done it with only my own strength.” Gereint paused, then added, “It’s true about the griffin. He used his own strength, but he also channeled the fierce strength of fire. He said he helped Tehre build the wall… He helped me seal it.” Though it was hard to believe a creature of fire would speak any sort of truth. “Maybe Beguchren—” He paused. Put the cup he held down on the bedside table. Asked, trepidation running through him like ice, “Beguchren?”

Amnachudran hesitated. “Asleep,” he said finally. “We think.”

The cold mage was asleep. But asleep in a way that worried Gereint enormously. He seemed shrunken among the bedclothes, lost amid the blankets and pillows. He had never been anything but slight, but now the flesh seemed to have melted away from his body. The fine bones of his face stood in stark prominence; his eyes had sunk into shadowed hollows; he was deathly pale. Gereint thought he looked far closer to death than to waking.

Lady Emre sat in a high-backed chair close beside the bed, her hand resting lightly on the blankets close by Beguchren’s face. She looked drained and weary, and she had lost a good deal of the comfortable plumpness Gereint remembered. But her smile, as she sprang to her feet and came to greet him, had all of its accustomed, lively warmth. “Gereint!” she exclaimed. “Back among us! You see, I told Eben to let you sleep, and here you are! You look quite wonderful! Though you need feeding up, I can see. You’re still far too thin. Eben, you must remember to tell the cook—oh, he’s not back yet, that’s right. Well, then, let’s remember to tell whoever’s in the kitchen to make something fortifying for noon.”

Gereint smiled back at her and forbore to mention her own strained look. She had not asked anything about the battle or the griffins or the wall, for which he was grateful. He cast an inquiring look at the still figure on the bed.