The Lesser Kindred (ttolk-2) (5 page)

The three of us sat round the fire in the kitchen that night for a quiet cup of spiced wine after supper. I was proud of my cooking for once, for if I say it myself the geese had been roasted to perfection. Varien had enjoyed it nearly as much as Jamie.

The two youngest stableboys, Rab and Jon, had just finished washing the crockery through in the scullery while all the rest went about feeding and closing in the beasts for the night. There was a frost in the clear night air, bitter cold in the nose and threatening.

Jamie had spent the short daylight hours showing Varien around the stead. "Varien tells me he has never seen a stead before," said Jamie, bemused. "Though if all you say is true," he added wryly, "he'd have had little enough reason to do so."

"And still you doubt, Master Jameth," said Varien quietly. He seemed a little amused. "How shall I convince you, beyond my word and that of your own heart's daughter Lanen?"

Jamie held Varien's glance as long as he could, but had to look away. "You'll never convince me with words," he answered, somewhat subdued. Varien's eyes were the strongest argument he had. "It'll just take time. But I'll know truth when I see it." One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile as he looked at Varien again. "You can't say you expected me to believe you right off? You have to admit, it's a little unlikely. You're a good man, Varien, on that I'd stake my life, even if your eyes are peculiar. You could be anything, I suppose—but come, tell me, have you anything left of your old people in you to prove it?"

"Beyond the memory of my life with my Kindred, I do not yet know," Varien replied. He seemed to be taking this all very calmly. "I have been in this body so short a time, only three moons, I believe." He grinned then, all sadness forgotten as he reached over to take my hand in his. "I have not been paying overmuch attention to the passage of time, or to what this new body can yet do that I could do before. So different, so wondrous—in truth I have been far more intrigued by the differences." He let go of my hand then and held up his own two hands, palms towards him, staring at them, then passed the fingers of one hand over the other. "These Gedri hands are so soft, so delicate, they can feel the passage even j of air. Yet withal they are so deft, so capable and strong, you can thread a needle one moment and haul on a rope the next." He was lost in thought, gazing at his hands. "These were the things I truly envied you, those long years when the ferrinshadik held me and I dreamed of such a moment."

"What does that mean—ferrin—whatever you said?" said Jamie.

"Ferrinshadik—it is a word in our tongue for the longing that touches many of us, to speak with another race, to hear the thoughts of another people who can speak and reason," said Varien, thoughtfully. "Some are spared, but many of us feel it as a longing to speak with the Gedrishakrim—with humans, whom we call in our language the Silent People. To some poor souls it is a deep and lasting sorrow for the passing of the Trelli, who in refusing the Powers of order and chaos sowed the seeds of their own ending."

Jamie looked at him, shaking his head. "Varien, your pardon, but what are you talking about? What powers?" he asked.

"Jamie!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know the Tale of Beginnings? Sweet Lady, even I know that!"

Jamie shrugged. "Never spent much time listening to bards."

Varien smiled at me and shifted slightly in his seat, sitting up straighter and facing both Jamie and me equally as best he could. I grinned back. "So—this is the human version of the Kantri Attitude of Teaching, is it?"

"It is indeed," he replied. "If you do not know the Tale of HeginningSi Jameth, it is time you learned. It speaks very well of your own people." He moved his neck slightly, brought his chin a little down—and I knew that he was in-stinctively moving Kantri muscles to arch his neck and face his students more directly. He spoke surely but slowly. I later learned that he was having to translate an old tale of the Kantri into human language even as he spoke.

"When Kolmar was young, there were four shakrim, four peoples, who lived here: the Trelli, the Rakshi, the Kantri and the Gedri. All possessed speech and reason when the Powers of order and chaos were revealed to them, and all four learned at the same time that in the life of all races there is a time when a choice must be made. Each chose differently.

The Kantri, the eldest of the four peoples, believed that al-though chaos is the beginning and the end of all dungs, it is order that decrees this, and thus they chose to serve order. For this they were granted long lives and a way to remember all that had gone before.

The Trelli, the troll-people, chose not to choose. They did not wish to accept either and denied both. In mat decision was the seed of their own ending, for to deny me Powers is to deny life itself.

The Rakshi were already of two kinds, me Rakshasa and . the smaller Rikti. Both chose chaos and thus balanced the Kantri—but pure chaos cannot exist in a world of order without the two destroying mat world between them. The Rakshi for their choice received length of days to rival me Kantri, and a world within me world for their own, with which they were never content.

The Gedri discovered after much debate mat they could not agree among memselves, but unlike me Trelli they did make a choice. Indeed, they chose Choice itself, that each soul might have the power to decide which to serve in its own time. Thus they acquired me ability to reach out to either Power and bend it to their own wishes, and almough both the Kantri and the Rakshi were creatures of greater strengm, it is the Gedri who have me world as their own."

Varien smiled, his recitation over. "Come, Jameth, do you ' tell me you have never heard this tale? Surely your bards remember it?"

I looked to Jamie, who said, "If they do, I have never heard mem sing it." His voice sounded strange, and I looked more closely at him. His expression was very peculiar. "Though I think, now, mat I heard something of the kind from my grandfather when I was very, very young." He looked up, and his voice took on a tinge of wonder. "How old are you, Varien?"

Varien ignored him for the moment, which I suspect was just as well. He had raised his hands as if to massage a stiff neck, but he looked terribly awkward; he had turned his J palms out and was trying to use me backs of his hands when 1 he stopped, looked up at me, and slowly turned his hands over. I gasped as I realised—no claws. He had been accustomed his life long to turn his great foot-long talons away from his own scales lest he injure himself. The smile that had lit his face turned to a grin as he used his fingertips to release the tight muscles in his neck, that had tried to hold up a man's head as a dragon would have. He laughed then and I with him. "Name of the Winds!" he cried, leaping to his feet, delight in his eyes and his voice deep with his joy.

He turned to Jamie, his eyes bright, his whole soul in his gaze. "This second life is a wonder beyond words, Master Jameth. Would that I could tell you how it feels! I stop a hundred times in a day simply to breathe, to feel the swift beat of my heart and the passage of air through my chest. I tell you, it is a dream I never dared admit even to myself, this deep longing for human form, for the hands of the Gedri children. This and walking on two legs!" And suddenly he laughed. "You have no idea how convenient it is, Jameth, not to have to carry wood in your mouth. It tastes terrible, believe me."

I was grinning, for I had seen him do just that, and spit fire afterwards to char away the splinters. This was all purest Akor, if Jamie could but know it.

"I tried for years to walk upright," said Varien, "but our legs simply are not shaped for it. My joints ached for days every time I tried, and I finally gave it up." He had calmed down a little and stood now before the fire, warming his hands.

"How old were you then?" I asked, teasing him. "You told me you had practiced landing on two feet, but you never said I word about this."

He paused a moment, smiling at old folly. "I was past my majority, but not long past, when I first tried. I was in my sixth kell that first time, and just over a hundred years from my ceat when I admitted defeat." He turned and smiled at inc. "It was hard to surrender such a desire, my heart, but I was nearly my full size by then and hard-pressed to explain to Shikrar why I found it so difficult to walk for a month. It hurt terribly, I was an idiot to try."

"What's a ceat?" I asked.

"For that matter, what's a kell?" asked Jamie.

"A kell is a hundred winters," said Varien, gazing now at the flames, his voice calm and peaceful in the firelit darkness, "and a ceat is the halfway point in the lives of the Kantri, when we have lived twice the time of our majority and half the full span of our lives. It is a time for celebration, for noting the prime of one's life and rejoicing in it. A ceat is ten kells, a thousand winters. My own ceat passed just twelve—no, thirteen winters gone now."

Jamie swore vigorously, and though the firelight obscured his face I heard the strange note in his voice as he spoke. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you're more than a thousand years old?" I couldn't tell if it was fear or disbelief or anger, or some mixture of the three.

Varien, unmoved, said, "I speak only the truth in this, Jameth of Arinoc. I have seen a thousand and thirteen winters, and were I still of the Kantri I should hope to see yet a thousand more. We are a very long-lived people; if nothing hurries it, many of us can hope to see the turn of our second ceat ere death comes to claim us."

"Damnation!" cried Jamie. He could sit no longer; he sprang from his chair and began to pace the room—away from the fire and Varien—then all in a moment turned and , came straight to me, ignoring Varien altogether. He stood before me, his face to my amazement a mask of hurt. "La-nen, damn it, what has come over you? Why are you two doing this? You know there is nothing I would condemn, nothing I could ever deny you. Why invent so mad a tale? Do you not trust me to love you after all these years?" His voice thickened. "Have you gone so far from me, lass, in so short a time?"

I stood to face him, put my hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. Well, looked down. I have been taller than Jamie since I was twelve, but suddenly he seemed small and fragile. That came as a shock.

"Jamie, my hand on my heart and my soul to the Lady, I swear, I give you my solemn oath this is not a tale. It is the exact truth," I said. The look of doubt and betrayal in his eyes was terrible to bear. "Do you think I don't know it sounds insane?" I said angrily. "I haven't gone mad, and you know me too well for me to ever try to lie to you. It's all true, Jamie. All of it. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it either, but I swear on my soul it's true. I first met Varien when he was Akor, the Lord of the Kantri, the True Dragons. I loved him even then, knowing that nothing could ever come of such a love. I saw him fight a demon master and I saw the terrible wounds that tore him apart. Sweet Lady, I saw bone through one of them." I shuddered and passed my hand over my face, trying to dismiss the vision of Akor so horribly wounded by my own father, Marik. "Shikrar, Kedra and Idai carried him to his chambers, and there he—well, we thought he died, and with his friends I mourned him. I myself found Varien, as he is now, mere hours after the death of my beloved Akor, naked as a newborn and lying on the ashes of the dragon he had been. His soul is the same, his heart, his mind, his memories—it is only his body that has changed." Jamie stared at me, still hurt, still unbelieving. I turned away and sighed, then realised I couldn't help the half-grin that crossed my face as I sat down again with a thump. "Hell's teem, Jamie. I can't blame you. If I'd only heard the story, I'd think I was mad as well, or lying."

Jamie turned then to Varien, who stood silent, gazing still into the flames. "Well, Varien?" said Jamie, his hurt turned now to cold anger. "I will have it now, whatever it may be. Murderer, thief, demon master, penniless singer, mercenary, whatever you are—I charge you by your soul, by your hope of heaven, by your love of my daughter and as you hope to see the Lady's face on the day of your death, once and for all, tell me who and what you are."

"And why should you believe me this time?" asked Varien, beginning to grow angry in his turn.

"Because I will not ask again," said Jamie, staring straight into Varien's eyes.

To my surprise and Jamie's, Varien bowed low. "Very well, Jameth of Arinoc. My soul to the Winds, by all I hold sacred, by my love for Lanen and my hope of heaven, however different a heaven it may be from yours, I will tell you first and last who and what I am, so far as a little time will allow.

"My soul to the Winds, Jameth—and among my people that is a binding vow—I was born a thousand and thirteen winters past, the son of Ayarelinnerit the Wise and my father Karishtar, of the line of Loriakeris. I had a silver hide, like nothing that had ever been seen before among my people, and it was seen as an omen, though an omen of what none ever knew. My eyes and my soulgem were green, as they are yet, but that is not unusual among my people. I flew at the age of thirty winters, full twenty-five years before most oth- ers. I reached my majority at the turn of my fifth kell, as do all of the Kantri, and less than a kell later I was chosen as the new King when old Garesh, Shikrar's father, died. I first knew the fetrinshadik as a youngling, at the age of two hundred and forty, when I first saw the Gedri come onto our island. They had been lost at sea and some of our people took pity on them. We helped them repair their ship, though it was difficult, for our two peoples spoke very different languages. Still, we helped as we might. When they found lansip and discovered it helped to heal them, we allowed them to take away as many of the leaves as they liked, along with a dozen saplings. They left after a very short time, but I had watched them every waking moment and longed with a deep longing to speak with them. That had been forbidden. There was a Council called when they first arrived and it was decided that only the King would have direct contact with them, as many of the Kantri were still roused to fury by the very sight of the Gedri. When they left I had learned the meaning of a few—a very few—words of their tongue, and over the centuries I learned everything I could about them."