The Lesser Kindred, Page 3

  Then the noise that had wakened me struck my ears again, moments after I felt it—a low rumble that started below hearing, a vibration through the deep earth. Without thinking I was out of my chamber and had launched myself into the night before I realised what was happening. I called out in truespeech to the one living soul dearest to me.

  “Kédra, my son, where are you?”

  “Father? Blessed be the Winds! I called and you did not answer, I feared you still kept the Weh sleep. Are you healed?”

  “Nearly, my son. Strong and well enough to fly, at any rate. Where are you, and did you feel the shaking of the ground?”

  “I am aloft my father, with Mirazhe.” He sounded almost as if he laughed, and was a little out of breath. “Fear not, your grandson Sherók is in my arms. He is much grown since last you saw him, and this excitement is thrilling him. He has never flown before. Listen.”

  Sherók, Kédra’s littling, was far too young yet to use full truespeech, but through Kédra I listened to his son. What I heard was closer to emotion than to speech or thought, but the littling was no more than a few months old—and he was full of pure delight. “How long have I kept the Weh?” I asked, calmed and pleased by this link with young Sherók. I could just imagine him in my mind’s eye—his tiny scales yet soft, his back ridge still forming and hardening, his stubby tail thrashing in delight. In colour he was a blend of Kédra’s and my dark bronze and his mother Mirazhe’s bright brassy hide. His soulgem was covered as yet, as was true of all younglings. Sometime in the next nine months the scale that protected it would fall away—but his eyes were golden, a rare colour among our people and most wonderfully beautiful. Not that I am biased, you understand; but grandsires know these things.

  “Less than three moons, Father,” he replied. “Are you but now roused?”

  I tried to gather my scattered thoughts as I sought out the scant winds of the winter’s night to help keep me aloft. My flight muscles were stiff, surely, and my shoulder ached from the wound the rakshadakh Marik had given me—ah, that was an evil memory!—but both were recovered enough to heal without further time spent in the Weh sleep.

  “The ground has shaken twice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the first woke me from deep sleep. It was the second that set me flying.” I had been listening but had not heard that threatening rumble again.

  A soft voice touched my mind. “Think you it safe to return to the ground yet, Eldest?” It was Erianss, a lady some centuries older than Kedra but still far younger than I, and she sounded annoyed. I stifled the laughter that came to my mind. “I know exactly as much as you do, Erianss. It has not been so many years since the last earthshake, surely you remember.” Still, perhaps she had a point. I spoke in the broadest truespeech, that all might hear. “Let those who wish to speak of this meet at noon on the morrow at the Summer Field, away in the south. This is not a Council meeting. I make no demand of any.”

  “Then I will see you there, Father,” said Kedra. “Where are you bound for the rest of this night?”

  I had already begun climbing, pushing myself to rise in the cold night air. I would pay for this overexertion tomorrow, but now was the best time to investigate. The fires of the earth are more clearly seen in darkness. “I go north, Kédra, to see what Terash Vor is doing. I will let you know what I have seen.”

  “Good hunting, then. Mirazhe and the kitling and I will meet you at the Summer Field tomorrow. Mind you keep high and safe in the firewinds, my father.”

  I hissed my amusement, loud enough for Kédra to hear it in my truespeech. “So I shall, my son, and I thank you for your concern.” I did not remind him who had taught him about downdrafts near the firefields, or how long ago. The experience of age can be so burdensome to the young. “Bear my love to Mirazhe.”

  “I will. Fare you well, Father,” said Kédra, and his voice was gone from my mind as it was never absent from my heart. As I worked my way high and north, I thought for a passing moment of those other two whose lives were so closely intertwined with Kédra’s and mine—Varien Kantriakhor, my soulfriend Akhor in his new self, and his lady Lanen Kaelar. I had meant to bespeak them the moment I woke from the Weh sleep, but for now this was the more important task. Still, I wondered how they fared, even as I flew through the cold winter’s night towards Terash Vor, the Breathing Mountain, to see what the future held for us all.

  Terash Vor is in the centre of the western half of the range of mountains that divide the north of the Dragon Isle from the south. The divide is abrupt where the gentle hills rise sharp and sudden into high peaks five times their height. From the shapes of the mountains it is clear that in the distant past they must all have been of the same kind. I remember hearing my father, Garesh, speak of other mountains in the range burning as well, from time to time.

  My people, the Kantri, the Greater Kindred, whom the Gedri children call True Dragons, had lived on this island for nearly five generations—that is to say, as many thousand years—ever since our self-imposed exile from the four Kingdoms of Kolmar on the Day Without End, burned in the memory of our race forever. On that day one single child of the Gedri, the human known only as the Demonlord, arose in a great darkness, and in the space of only a few hours the world was changed.

  In those times the Kantri and the Gedri lived together, short lives and long intertwined to the great benefit of each: the long lives of the Kantri gave a sense of time outside their own brief lives to the Gedri, the humans; the swift-living Gedri kept the Kantri from forgetting to live each passing moment for all the joy it held and would never hold again. However, on that dark day a young man, a healer, reached the final abyss of his discontent with the small gifts granted him by the Lady, the great mother-goddess Shia worshipped by the Gedri. He longed to be among the great of his people, but he was not granted that excellence by the Winds—or, the Gedri would say, by the hand of the Goddess that shaped him. In his fury and frustration he made a dreadful pact with the Rakshasa, the Demon-kind, third of the four original peoples (the fourth were the Trelli, all dead long ages since). In exchange for his soul, his very name was taken from him and from all the world for all time, and the Demonlord was granted a hideous power over the Kantri. He began by killing many of his own people, moving with a speed beyond flight from one kingdom to the next, until he murdered Aidrishaan, one of the Kantri, and for some unknown reason stayed beside the body. Aidrishaan’s death scream had reached his mate, Tréshak, who told the rest of us instantly through truespeech—for the Kantri are blessed with the ability to speak mind to mind—and we rose, four hundred strong, to destroy this murderer or die in the process. It was not courage, for we have wings and claws, our armour and the fire that is in us and sacred to us: the Gedri are tiny, naked and defenseless before us. No, it was in no sense courage. It was anger. That one of the Gedri should dare to destroy one of the Kantri!

  Tréshak arrived first, on the wings of fury, and she dove at the Demonlord, claws outstretched, fiery breath scorching the ground whereon he stood—but he was unharmed by her flames, and with a gesture and a single word, Tréshak was changed. Even as she flew she dwindled to the size of a youngling, her blue soulgem blazing as she cried out in torment. She fell from the sky, for her wings would no longer bear her up, and as she fell her soulgem was ripped from her by a horde of the Rikti, the minor demons.

  It would have been better had the rest of the Kantri stopped to consider what had happened, for clearly no Gedri had ever withstood our fire before, far less done so evil a thing.

  We did not.

  The fire that is life to us blazed out of control in our madness, and four hundred of the Kantri flew straight at the Demonlord, setting fire to the very air as they flew. The Demonlord spoke rapidly, the same word over and over, and full half of the Kantri fell from the sky and had their soulgems torn from them.

  He could not kill us all, even so. It is said he laughed as he died, as the Rikti around him disappeared in flame—they are the weaker
of our life-enemies the Rakshasa and cannot withstand simple dragonfire—but whether he laughed from the heart of his madness at death and pain, or because some darkness in his soul believed even then that he would triumph in the end, we do not know. His body was trampled and torn until the youngest of us, Keakhor by name, called out, “He is dead, we cannot kill him more. For pity’s sake look to the wounded.”

  The Kantri turned then to those who had been crippled by the Demonlord and his servants. We tried to speak to them, but in vain. The truespeech that allows us to speak with one another as we fly, where the rushing winds could not carry speech, also allows us to sense emotion as well as thought, but there was no reason, no trapped mind to touch—simple fear was the only response to our desperate attempts to speak with them. Among the ashes of the Demonlord were found the soulgems that had been ripped from our mates, our children, our parents—and even then the gems bore the taint of their demonic origin. In the course of nature, the soulgems of the dead resemble faceted jewels, and when the Kin-Summoning is performed by the Keeper of Souls they glow from within with a steady light. The summoner may then speak briefly with the dead. These soulgems gleamed—to this day they gleam—at all times from within with a flickering light.

  We believe that the souls of our lost Kindred are trapped within, neither alive nor resting in death, and despite endless years of toil and trying they are yet bound.

  The bodies of our brothers and sisters had become the bodies of beasts. We could not kill them, for old love, but we could not bear to see them either. They were first called on that day the Lesser Kindred, and it has become our only name for them. They breed now like beasts and live brief, solitary lives. Several among us try to contact the newly born every year but none have had any response. Never in all the long weary years since that time has there been even a shred of hope that one among them might have heard or tried to respond in any way.

  We left Kolmar that very day, for already several innocent Gedri healers had been killed by Kantri wild with grief. Those who kept their heads in the midst of evil knew that the two peoples must be sundered until the Kantri who were left could see a human without needing to take swift and fatal revenge for the deeds of the Demonlord.

  It has been almost five thousand years since that day, and there are among the Kantri still those who cannot bear even the thought of the Gedri without a fury rising in them. It does not matter that there are now none left alive who were even the grandchildren of those who were witness to the deed: the cry that Tréshak gave when her soul was ripped from her echoes down the aeons, its fury and despair as wrenching and poignant as if it had happened not a day since. The Kantri live for two thousand years, if disease or injury or accident do not intervene, and the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of those who were there know the story in the marrow of their bones. Forgiveness is difficult, especially now that—alas!—especially now that our race is failing.

  My son Kédra’s youngling Sherók was born in the autumn—ah, he is a perfect littling, you should see his eyes!—but until his birth, the Kantri had gone five hundred years without issue. Our King and my soulfriend, Akhor, has long pondered our decline, but even he with wisdom beyond his years could not tell whence arose this barrenness, or why. We were grown desperate now, lest our race should die out entirely. I prayed to the Winds that Akhor’s miraculous transformation might have some great purpose beyond that of uniting him with the soul he loved, that perhaps he might learn from the Gedri something that would succor his own people. If he did not, the black truth was that we were doomed, and Sherók would be the last of us.

  I shook my head, breathing deeply of the night air, taking myself through the Discipline of Calm even as I flew, dispersing such darkness of heart. Such thoughts would catch no fish nor lift me a talon’s breadth higher as I flew. I tried to concentrate on the problem at hand. I nearly succeeded.

  Some have occasionally wondered if the murmuring ground might have anything to do with our present plight. The ground beneath our feet on the island was seldom quiet for long and we were accustomed to its shaking, but it had been growing more disturbed over the last several hundred years, and such violent movement as wakened me from my Weh sleep was rarer yet and demanded investigation. Never mind the fact that my own curiosity would have sent me to the same place, and as quickly—now that I stood in the stead of Akhor, our King who was among the Gedri, I had to think of all of my people. It was a curious feeling. I wondered as I flew whether Akhor had ever grown accustomed to this sense of bearing the Kantri on his wings and in his talons wherever he went, whatever he did.

  The sky above the mountain was red and grew redder still as I approached. I had expected something of the sort. When I was still far distant, however, I found that I was not prepared for all. Terash Vor was sending its fiery breath high into the air, one vast stream of fire flowing upwards only to fall again to the ground, like a single burning feather from a bird the size of the sky. I kept my distance as I flew round about it, to learn if there was aught else to see. To my surprise, there were several smaller flows on the north side of the mountain, and a few distant red glows on others in the range showed that this was but the surface of a deep disturbance. I called upon Idai, an elder of the Kantri and an old and trusted friend.

  “Idai, may I bespeak you?”

  “Of course, Shikrar,” came the familiar voice of her thoughts. “What troubles you?”

  “I am at Terash Vor and I would that you might see what I have seen. Will you come to me here? I shall await you at the Grandfather.”

  She replied simply, “I come. I shall be with you in the hour.”

  The Grandfather was the name of the mountain nearest the south, the first that rose dark above the quiet hills below. It was so called for that it had, in some lights, the seeming of a vast black dragon. There was a large ledge on the south side—what would have been part of a back, or a folded wing—where two could stand and speak together. It was often used as a meeting place. I used it on occasion but I never was comfortable there.

  We of the Kantri are long-lived, as I have said, seeing as many as two thousand winters in the natural course of things. We are thus not inclined by our natures to take note of anything so short as an hour. However, time passes for us as it does for all creatures, and while I waited for Idai I decided to dare my wings again and take another quick look around the fire plain. By the time I returned to the Grandfather to await her I was deeply troubled.

  I had often been to Terash Vor. It usually happened that some time in every kell—every hundred winters—me mountains took a deep shuddering breath and exhaled fire. Some of these episodes were more active and some less, but I had seen this level of fire only once before, when I was little more than a youngling myself. Thus this was the equal of the worst outbreak in living memory, for I am the Eldest of the Kantri. Not for sixteen kells had there been such unrest in the ground. I wondered what it might portend.

  Idai bespoke me from a distance as she approached. “Shikrar, how fare you? I had thought you still kept the Weh sleep until I heard your call to the Summer Field on the morrow.”

  “The ground shook me awake, indeed, but I am healed enough that the waking has been no hardship.”

  I heard her gasp of a sudden and felt the fear in her mind, and I knew she had seen the great plume of fire. “Name of the Winds, Shikrar! What has so blasted the very rock that it thus burns in anger?” She spoke aloud then as she landed beside me, her great wings almost fluttered as she came to earth. I had seldom seen her so agitated. “I have never seen such a thing.”

  “I have, but I was barely fledged the last time. Come aloft again with me, let us take as close a look as we may.”

  We leapt from the ledge, spreading wings wide, and took advantage of the fire-made updrafts to keep us high aloft. We investigated the patches of brightness on the other mountains and found little to comfort us. It was a great outbreak, and like drenching rain on hard-baked ground it had spread far an
d wide. The flows on the north of Terash Vor were a little unusual; the fact that three other peaks in the range were also gushing fire was cause for deep concern.

  It seemed every bit as bad as the memory from my youth, and I well remembered that at the time there had been much debate about our future on the island. The necessity of having to leave had been seriously discussed. Only the dying of the mountains’ fire had ended the debate. I could not, however, trust simply to memory for something so important.

  As Idai and I turned away south again, towards our chambers and the Great Hall, I bespoke my son. “Kédra, are ye landed safe and well?”

  His voice sounded strong and confident in my mind and below all ran a current of quiet delight like a strong river. “We are, Father, and Sherók is already pleading to go aloft again! He seems to have quite a taste for it. What have you found?”

  “Much, and none of it of comfort. I fear I must ask for your assistance. Is Mirazhe well enough to care for Sherók without you? I will require you for the Kin-Summoning at the next dark of the moon.”

  “She is, my father,” he replied, instantly somber. “I will begin my preparations.”

  “You need not act quite so swiftly as that!” I replied, hissing my amusement even as I flew. “I must speak with as many as come to the Summer Field at noon, and we shall have more than a full moon before I am prepared for the Sumrnoning. However, if you will meet with me in the Chamber of Souls at dusk of the coming day we can begin our preparations.”

  He agreed and bade me farewell. Idai and I flew in silence back to our several chambers, for we both had much to consider.

  Berys

  It is done! I have begun this record of my acts, on the eve of my flowering. For the price I have paid to the Rakshasa, the greater of the two races of the demons, my thoughts and actions will appear on these pages, for I wish to remember all but cannot spare the time to write at day’s end when what I require is sleep. A minor making this, compared to others I have done and shall do, but well worth the time it will save. This book will be my secret and my truth, that when I am finally raised to my deserved eminence and all of Kolmar is at my feet for as long as I wish it, those I hold in thrall may read how they were defeated. Their despair will add greatly to my rejoicing.