Land of the Burning Sands (37 page)

“Tehre—” her brother began again.

Tehre interrupted without looking up. “Do you think the stable boys have our horses ready? And Lord Bertaud’s carriage? Are all our people up?”

Sicheir paused. “I’ll go see to it,” he said tightly, and strode out.

Lord Bertaud put a cup of tea in front of Tehre—hot and bitterly astringent; he must have watched to see how she liked it. He pulled out a chair of his own. The echoes of hurried men drifted through the inn, so Tehre assumed Sicheir must have roused out all the retainers and guards and servants. She wanted to run in circles, shrieking. She slid her hands back over her eyes instead.

“If I may ask,” Lord Bertaud said quietly beside her. “Who is this man? Not a court lord, surely?”

Tehre dropped her hands to the rough surface of the table, looked at her tea for a moment, then picked up the cup at last and sipped. The astringent liquid seemed both to clear her mouth of the cottony feel of too restless a night and her mind of the shock that had met them along with the dawn. She put the cup back down, looked at the Feierabianden lord, and sighed. “A king’s agent,” she explained. “He speaks with the king’s voice; orders from him are as binding as commands from the king himself. I think—I think the Arobern must
really
have meant it when he told me to go home. But who ever would have expected—?”

“I think perhaps your king is angry with me, not with you,” Lord Bertaud said. He gave her an inquiring glance. “Do you think? He can’t command me to return, so he commands you and offers a slight against my honor if I refuse to accompany you. Well, we shall see.” His eyes, over the rim of his own cup, were shadowed and grim. “You might have done better to go north on your own, Lady Tehre. I am sorry—”

Tehre shook her head. “If Fellesteden’s heirs are moving against me, against my family, somebody had better be there to counter them. Though Sicheir—if the Arobern is angry with me, though I hope you are right about that, but if he is, then
Sicheir
is the one who should answer whatever charges have been made.” She was silent for a moment, thinking about that. Then she added, “I’m sorry the Arobern is using me to compel you to return.” And angry, she found. She was even more angry than frightened. The king’s sending an agent after her somehow solidified her conviction that whatever was wrong in the north was
terribly
wrong. The king ought to have told her what it was, he ought to have
sent
her north, did he really think she would only stumble over her skirts and get in the way of his mage?

“Ah,” Lord Bertaud said softly. After a moment, he added, “Lady Tehre… I confess I feel a great urgency to go north.”

Tehre began to say,
Oh, you, too?
But then she put one puzzling observation together with another and said instead, “Oh, because of the griffin we saw flying over the river?”

An unconsidered gesture from the Feierabianden lord nearly tipped over his cup; he steadied it hastily and gave Tehre an unsettled look.

Tehre had no idea whether she should apologize, or, if so, for what. It seemed obvious that Lord Bertaud had, or felt he had, some connection or understanding with the griffins. Probably he did. The Feierabianden king had reached his accommodation with the griffins
somehow
. She slanted a curious look at the foreign lord. His manner was bland, his expression neutral, his eyes hiding… what, she wondered. What had Lord Bertaud’s role actually
been
in the brief, ferocious struggle in Feierabiand in the early summer?

She did not ask that. She asked instead, “What does it mean that we saw a griffin so far south? Why do you need to go north?”

Lord Bertaud’s mouth tightened. He did not answer.

Tehre tapped the table restlessly with the tips of her fingers. “You said you would escort me south. I could free you from that promise—”

“Lady—”

“But if you could tell me why you need to go north, maybe I could see whether I, too, should go north. Even in despite of my king’s command.” She tilted her head back, meeting the foreigner’s eyes with direct inquiry. “Do
you
know what the trouble
is
in the north?”

“No,” the Feierabianden lord admitted in a low voice. “But I think it may be worse than even your king suspects. I have—” He paused, then shrugged and said simply, “I have a suspicion about this.”

“A suspicion,” Tehre repeated. She eyed the foreigner. “A suspicion, is it?”

But then Sicheir came back in, and after him the king’s agent, and there was no more chance to speak privately.

E
ben Amnachudran’s house looked exactly as homey and comfortable as Gereint recalled. The big house sprawled amid the wide scattering of stables and smoking sheds and other outbuildings. The wheat was not yet quite ready for harvesting, but a scattering of women and men worked in the neat gardens or collected fruit from the orchards of apple and pear trees that surrounded the house. Cattle grazed in generous pastures. Nearer the road, a boy and four dogs watched over a flock of tall black-faced goats with tawny coats and soft, floppy ears.

Gereint, keeping his expression blank, glanced sideways at Beguchren. The mage was studying the estate and frowning. “What?” Gereint asked, just a little too sharply.

“That pond is empty,” Beguchren answered, not appearing to notice the sharpness.

Gereint frowned, too, and followed the direction of the other man’s gaze. It was true. He had not noticed at once, but the new pond Eben Amnachudran had recently constructed, nearly filled with water when Gereint had first seen it, now contained only a glaze of dry, cracked mud across the bottom. He looked farther, up the hills, and found that the stream that should have fed the pond was dry as well. “It’s late in the summer, now,” he said uncertainly. But in his mind, he heard Amnachudran’s voice:
My house is at the base of some low hills, where a stream comes down year-round.

Beguchren shook his head. “Not that late. And there should be plenty of rain here and in those mountains”—he nodded toward the gray-lavender shapes of the far mountains—“no matter how late the season.”

“The griffins are interfering with the rain?” Gereint asked him.

Beguchren only shook his head again and nudged his mare forward at a gentle walk.

Gereint followed reluctantly. He imagined riding into the courtyard and one of the hostlers coming forward to take their horses; he could all but hear the man’s friendly
Ah, Gereint, back for a visit?
and Beguchren’s raised eyebrows. The mage might be distracted by thoughts of griffins and dry streams and lack of proper rainfall, but he could hardly be so distracted as to miss anything of the sort.

It wouldn’t have to be a hostler. One of the maids could say something, one of the men-at-arms who had come south with Sicheir and returned. Eben Amnachudran himself, if Tehre’s letters had gone astray:
Why, Gereint, back from Breidechboden! Didn’t you get on with Tehre after all, then? And who is your friend?

He should have sent a letter himself—he should have hired a fast courier to carry it. He and the king’s mage might have outridden Tehre’s letter if she’d sent hers with some slow, heavy-laden merchant or tradesman. Why hadn’t he
asked
how she’d sent the letters?

But the man-at-arms at the gate was not one Gereint recognized, and the hostlers who came to take their horses were equally unfamiliar. The man-at-arms took their names with a kind of grim satisfaction that suggested the recent presence of griffins even before he spoke. “We are very glad to bid you welcome, lord mage!” he said to Beguchren. “We have been much troubled of late. Please allow me to guide you—I will send at once to the honored Eben Amnachudran, master of this house—I assure you, lord mage, he will be very glad to welcome you.”

The man-at-arms sent servants running, himself leading them to a library, a warm, comfortable, crowded room lit by round porcelain lamps and heavy with the dusty smell of old books. Half a dozen chairs were arranged in a small group near the room’s one window. They had elaborately carved legs and backs, but their cushions were thick and soft and the rug beneath them was large and likewise soft. Gereint was too nervous to sit down, but he pointedly shifted a chair a little out from the others for Beguchren. The mage gave Gereint an ironic look, but settled into the chair without comment.

Eben Amnachudran came to them there, a very few minutes later. Gereint stared urgently into his face, trying to ask without words,
Did you get the letters, do you know what happened?
Trying to command soundlessly,
Don’t know me, don’t recognize me.

Amnachudran did not even glance at Gereint. His smile was welcoming and appeared perfectly guileless, but he focused entirely on Beguchren. Gereint felt the knots of tension in his neck and back begin, very slowly, to relax.

“Lord mage!” Eben Amnachudran said to Beguchren, bowing swiftly. “Welcome, my lord, to my house and to the northern mountains, and may I be so bold as to say you’re very welcome indeed? We have had a challenging few days. I hope that is why you have come?”

“Yes,” Beguchren began, but paused as Lady Emre came in. She was carrying a large platter with tea things and cakes. She nodded, smiling, and said warmly, “My lord mage.”

To Gereint’s well-concealed—he hoped—surprise, Beguchren rose, walked forward, and took her hands. He was almost exactly her height. He said, “Emre. How long has it been?”

“Too long, truly. Please, sit. May I offer you tea? I believe you take honey and milk in your tea? Have a cake, do. Our cook would be the envy of many a great house in Breidechboden, so perhaps it’s as well we dwell so far removed, though it means we see our friends too seldom.”

Eben Amnachudran watched this cordial meeting between his wife and the king’s mage with no sign of surprise. He had known, Gereint surmised, that they were friends. Or at least warm acquaintances. Well, his wife was one of
those
Tanshans; small surprise she should have at least some acquaintance with a court mage. And, being herself, any acquaintance would naturally be a warm one. That was good, surely.

And, better still, Emre Tanshan, like her husband, glanced at Gereint with not even the smallest flicker of recognition. “And your associate?” she said to Beguchren. She turned to Gereint with the exact polite smile she would, no doubt, have given any stranger arriving in a friend’s company. “Would you care for tea, honored sir?”

There was tea all around, and cakes. The cakes were made with chopped apples and coarsely ground walnuts and had been generously glazed with honey. Eben Amnachudran took a chair near his wife and let her carry the conversation, which she did effortlessly, staying to safe subjects: painting and poetry and court gossip, but nothing unkind or even ungenerous. Neither Emre nor Beguchren mentioned griffins.

Amnachudran sipped tea and said very little, but his gaze was shrewd and knowing. He glanced once, unobtrusively but not quite covertly, at Gereint. Then he offered him a plate of cakes and a smile. “You are a mage yourself, honored sir?” he asked courteously.

“An associate,” Beguchren answered for Gereint, smoothly, while Gereint was still wondering how to answer. “Honored sir, perhaps you and your lady wife will describe for me now the events of, as you say, your ‘challenging’ days? You have, perhaps, seen griffins flying overhead? Perhaps repeatedly crossing your sky?”

Eben Amnachudran and his wife shared a wordless glance. Then Amnachudran turned back to Beguchren. “My lord, as you say. Not today, as happens, but I set one of the boys to counting: We have had griffins pass overhead thirty-seven times, beginning nine days ago and continuing through the day before yesterday, at intervals from three to fourteen hours, averaging nine hours. We have seen three to seven griffins at a time, with the modal number of griffins being three.”

Gereint was mildly amused. How like a scholar to calculate intervals between flights and numbers of griffins. He glanced at Beguchren, wondering if the mage found these numbers useful. Beguchren showed nothing but impenetrably polite attention.

“The track of their flight,” Amnachudran was continuing, “has shown a steady trend… If you would be so kind, my dear…” His wife brought a scroll from a rack and helped her husband unroll a map across the widest table in the room. Everyone leaned forward to look.

“You see, the first flight we saw curved along here, above the hills.” Amnachudran traced a curving line north of his home with the tip of a finger. “I did not begin to chart as early as I should have, but by noon of the second day, the line was here, parallel to the original line, you see, but almost directly above the house. And by that evening, here.” They could all see the progression of that line from north to south. The last flight Amnachudran drew for them had been along a line well south of the estate.