Lord of the Changing Winds

Book 1: The Griffin Mage Trilogy

by Rachel Neumeier

Genres: Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Griffins lounged all around them, inscrutable as cats, brazen as summer. They turned their heads to look at Kes out of fierce, inhuman eyes. Their feathers, ruffled by the wind that came down the mountain, looked like they had been poured out of light; their lion haunches like they had been fashioned out of gold. A white griffin, close at hand, looked like it had been made of alabaster and white marble and then lit from within by white fire. Its eyes were the pitiless blue-white of the desert sky.



Little ever happens in the quiet villages of peaceful Feierabiand. The course of Kes's life seems set: she'll grow up to be an herb-woman and healer for the village of Minas Ford, never quite fitting in but always more or less accepted. And she's content with that path-or she thinks she is. Until the day the griffins come down from the mountains, bringing with them the fiery wind of their desert and a desperate need for a healer. But what the griffins need is a healer who is not quite human...or a healer who can be made into something not quite human.

Release date: April 9, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 400

Sample

The griffins came to Feierabiand with the early summer warmth, riding the wind out of the heights down to the tender green
pastures of the foothills. The wind they brought with them was a hard, hot wind, with nothing of the gentle Feierabiand summer
about it. It tasted of red dust and hot brass.


Kes, gathering herbs in the high pastures above the village of Minas Ford, saw them come: great bronze wings shining in the
sun, tawny pelts like molten gold, sunlight striking harshly off beaks and talons. One was a hard shining white, one red as
the coals at the heart of a fire. The griffins rode their wind like soaring eagles, wings outstretched and still. The sky
took on a fierce metallic tone as they passed. They turned around the shoulder of the mountain and disappeared, one and then
another and another, until they had all passed out of sight. Behind them, the sky softened slowly to its accustomed gentle
blue.


Kes stood in hills above the high pastures, barefoot, her hair tangled, her hands full of fresh-picked angelica, and watched
until the last of the griffins slid out of view. They were the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. She almost followed
them, running around the curve of the mountain’s shoulder, leaving her angelica and elecampane and goldenseal to wilt in the
sun; she even took a step after them before she thought better of the idea.


But Tesme hated it when Kes did not come home by dusk; she hated it worse when her sister did not come home before dawn. So
Kes hesitated one moment and then another, knowing that if she followed the griffins she would forget time and her sister’s
expectations. There would be noise and fuss, and then it would be days before Tesme once again gave reluctant leave for Kes
to go up into the hills. So she stayed where she was on the mountainside, only shading her eyes with her hand as she tried
to follow the griffins with her eyes and imagination around the curve of the mountain.


Griffins, she thought. Griffins…. She walked slowly down from the hills, crossed the stream to the highest of the pastures, and went on downhill, her eyes
filled with blazing wings and sunlight. She climbed stone walls without really noticing them, one after another: high pasture
to hill pasture, hill pasture down to the midlands pasture. And then the low pasture, nearest the barns and the house: the
fence here was rail instead of stone. This meant Kes had no convenient flat-topped wall on which to put her basket while climbing
over. She balanced it awkwardly against her hip and clambered over the fence with one hand.


Her sister, Tesme, spotted Kes as she walked past the nearest barn and hurried to meet her. The griffins, it was plain, had
not come down so far as the house; Tesme’s eyes held nothing of fire and splendor. They were filled instead with thoughts
of heavy mares and staggering foals. And with worry. Kes saw that. It pulled her back toward the ordinary concerns of home
and horse breeding.


“Kes!” said her sister. “Where have you been?” She glanced at the basket of herbs and went on quickly, “At least, I see where
you’ve been, all right, fine, did you happen to get milk thistle while you were in the hills?”


Kes, blinking away images of shining wings, shook her head and made a questioning gesture toward the foaling stable.

“It’s River,” Tesme said tensely. “I think she’s going to have a difficult time. I should never have bred her to that Delta
stud. He was too big for her, I knew he was, but oh, I want this foal!”


Kes nodded, taking a step toward the house.

“I got your things out for you—they’re in the barn—along with your shoes,” Tesme added, her gaze dropping to Kes’s bare feet.
But her tone was more worried than tart, the foaling mare distracting her from her sister’s lack of civilized manners. “You
just want your ordinary kit, don’t you? Don’t worry about those herbs—somebody can take them to the house for you.” Tesme
took Kes by the shoulder and hurried her toward the barn.


In the foaling barn, Kes absently handed her basket to one of the boys and waved him off toward the house. Tesme hovered anxiously.
Kes saw that she could not tell Tesme about the griffins; not now. She tried to make herself focus on the mare. Indeed, once
she saw her, it became less of an effort to forget sunlit magnificence and concentrate instead on normal life. River, a stocky
bay mare with bulging sides, was clearly uncomfortable. And certainly very large. She looked to have doubled her width since
Kes had last looked at her, and that had only been a handful of days ago.


“Do you think she could be carrying twins?” Tesme asked apprehensively. She was actually wringing her hands.

“From the look of her, she could be carrying triplets,” Meris commented, swinging through the wide barn doors. “I’ve been
waiting for her to explode for the past month, and now look at her. Kes, glad to see you. Tesme, just how big was that stud?”


“Huge,” Tesme said unhappily. “But I wanted size. River’s not that small. I thought it would be a safe cross.”


Kes shrugged. Usually crossing horses of different sizes worked all right, but sometimes it didn’t. No one knew why. She looked
at her kit, then back at the mare.


“Mugwort,” she suggested. “Partridge berry.”

“Good idea,” said Meris. “Partridge berry to calm her down and help her labor at the beginning—mugwort later, I suppose, in
case we need to help the strength of her contractions. I have water boiling. Want me to make the decoctions?”


Kes nodded.

Meris was a quick-moving little sparrow of a woman, plain and sensible and good-humored, equally at home with a foaling mare
or a birthing woman. Kes was far more comfortable with her than with most other people; Meris never tried to draw Kes out
or make her talk; when Kes did talk, Meris never seemed surprised at what she said. Meris was willing, as so few people seemed
to be, to simply let a person or an animal be what it was. No wonder Tesme had sent for Meris. Even if River had no difficulty
with her foal, just having Meris around would calm everyone’s nerves. That would be good. Kes gave the older woman the packets
of herbs and slipped into the stall to touch River’s neck. The mare bent her neck around and snuffled down Kes’s shirt. She
was sweating, pawing at the stall floor nervously. Kes patted her again.


“What do you think?” Tesme asked, seeming almost as distressed as the mare. “Is she going to be all right, do you think?”

Kes shrugged. “Jos?” If they had to pull this foal, she wanted someone with the muscle to do it. Jos had been a drifter. Tesme
had hired him for the season six years past, and he had just never seemed inclined to drift away again. He was very strong.
And the horses liked him. Kes liked him too. He didn’t talk at you all the time, or expect you to talk back.


“I’ll get him,” Tesme agreed, and hurried out.

Kes frowned at the mare, patting her in absent reassurance. River twitched her ears back and walked in a circle, dropping
her head and shifting her weight. She was thinking of lying down but was too uncomfortable to do so; Tesme, with her affinity
for horses, could have made the mare lie down. Kes neither held an affinity for any animal nor possessed any other special
gift—if one did not count an unusual desire to abandon shoes and sister and walk up alone into the quiet of the hills. She
did not usually envy Tesme her gift, but she would have liked to be able to make River lie down. She could only coax the mare
down with a touch and a murmur.


Fortunately, that was enough. Kes stepped hastily out of the way when the mare folded up her legs and collapsed awkwardly
onto the straw.


“How is she?” Tesme wanted to know, finally returning with Jos. Kes gave her sister a shrug and Jos a nod. He nodded back
wordlessly and came to lean on the stall gate next to her.


Foals came fast, usually. There was normally no fuss about them. If there was trouble, it was likely to be serious trouble.
But it would not help, in either case, to flutter around like so many broken-winged birds and disturb the mare further. Kes
watched River, timing the contractions that rippled down the mare’s sides, and thought there was not yet any need to do anything
but wait.


Waiting, Kes found her mind drifting toward a hard pale sky, toward the memory of harsh light striking off fierce curved beaks
and golden feathers. Tesme did not notice her bemusement. But Jos said, “Kes?”


Kes blinked at him, startled. The cool dimness of the foaling barn seemed strange to her, as though the fierce sun the griffins
had brought with them had somehow become more real to her than the gentle summer of Minas Ford.


“Are you well?” Jos was frowning at her, curious. Even concerned. Did she seem so distracted? Kes nodded to him and made a
dismissive “it’s nothing” kind of gesture. He did not seem fully convinced.


Then Tesme called Kes’s name sharply, and, pulling her attention back to the mare, Kes went back to lay a hand on River’s
flank and judge how she was progressing.


The foal was very big. But Kes found that, after all, once the birth began, there was not much trouble about the foaling. It had its front
feet in the birth canal and its nose positioned properly forward. She nodded reassuringly at her sister and at Jos.


Tesme gave back a little relieved nod of her own, but it was Jos who was the happiest. The last time a foaling had gone badly,
the foal had been turned the wrong way round, both front legs hung up on the mare’s pelvis. Jos had not been able to push
the foal back in enough to straighten the legs; he had had to break them to get the foal out. It had been born dead, which
was as well. That had been a grim job that none of them had any desire to repeat, and the memory of it was probably what had
wound Tesme up in nervous worry.


This time, Kes waited until the mare was well into labor. Then she simply tied a cord around each of the foal’s front hooves,
and while Tesme stood at the mare’s head and soothed her, she and Jos added a smooth pull to the mare’s next contraction.
The foal slid right out, wet and dark with birthing liquids.


“A filly!” said Meris, bending to check.

“Wonderful,” Tesme said fervently. “Wonderful. Good girl, River!”


The mare tipped her ears forward at Tesme, heaved herself to her feet, turned around in the straw, and nosed the baby, which
thrashed itself to its feet and tottered. Jos steadied it when it would have fallen. It was sucking strongly only minutes
later.


After that, it was only natural to go to the village inn to celebrate. Tesme changed into a clean skirt and braided her hair
and gave Kes a string of polished wooden beads to braid into hers. Tesme was happy. She had her foal from the Delta stud—a
filly—and all was right with the world. Jos stayed at the farm, keeping an eye on the baby foal; he rarely went to the village
during the day, though he visited the inn nearly every evening to listen to the news that travelers brought and to have a
mug of ale and a game of pian stones with the other men.


Kes was not so happy. She would as soon have stayed at the farm with Jos and had bread and cheese quietly. But Tesme would
have been unhappy if she had refused to go. She was never happy when Kes seemed too solitary. She said Kes was more like a
silent, wild creature of the hills than a girl, and when she said such things, she worried. Sometimes she worried for days,
and that was hard on them both. So Kes made no objection to the beads or the shoes or the visit to the inn.


They walked. The road was dry and firm at the verge, and Tesme—oddly, for a woman who raised horses—liked to walk. Kes put
one properly shod foot in front of another and thought about griffins. Bronze feathers caught by the sun, tawny flanks like
gold. Beaks that gleamed like metal. Her steps slowed.


“Come on,” Tesme said, and impatiently, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Kes!”

Kes blinked, recalled back to the ordinary road and the empty sky. She didn’t say that she was not afraid, exactly. It had
been a long time since she’d tried to explain to Tesme her feelings about people, about crowds, about the hard press of their
expectations. From the time she had been little, everyone else had seemed to see the world from a different slant than Kes.
To understand, without even trying, unspoken codes and rules that only baffled her. Talking to people, trying to shape herself
into what they expected, was not exactly frightening. But it was exhausting and confusing and, in a way, the confusion itself
was frightening. But Tesme did not seem able to understand any of this. Kes had long since given up trying to explain herself
to her sister.


Nor did Kes mention griffins. There seemed no place for them in Tesme’s eyes. Kes tried to forget the vision of heat and beauty,
to see only the ordinary countryside that surrounded them. To please her sister, she walked a little faster.


But Tesme, who had been walking quickly and impatiently with her hands shoved into the pockets of her skirt, slowed in her
turn. She said, “Kes—”


Kes looked at her inquiringly. The light of the sun slid across Tesme’s face, revealing the small lines that had come into
her face and set themselves permanently between her eyes and at the corners of her generous mouth. Her wheaten hair, braided
with a strand of polished wooden beads and tucked up in a coil, held the first strands of gray.


She looked, Kes thought, startled, like the few faint memories she had of their mother. Left at nineteen to hold their father’s
farm and raise her much younger sister, married twice and twice quickly widowed, Tesme had never yet showed much sign of care
or worry or even the passage of time. But she showed it now. Kes looked down again, ashamed to have worried her.


“Are you all right?” Tesme asked gently. She usually seemed a little distracted when she spoke to her sister, when she spoke
to anyone; she was always thinking about a dozen different things—mostly practical things, things having to do with raising
horses and running the farm.


But Kes thought she was paying attention now. That was uncomfortable: Kes preferred to slip gently around the edges of everyone
else’s awareness—even Tesme’s. Close attention made her feel exposed. Worse than exposed: at risk. As though she stood in
the shadows at the edge of brilliant, dangerous light, light that would burn her to ash if it fell on her. Kes always found
it difficult to speak; she never knew what anyone expected her to say. But when pinned by the glare of close attention, the
uncertainty she felt was much worse. She managed, in a voice that even to her own ears sounded faltering and unpersuasive.
“I—I’m all right. I’m fine.”


“You seem preoccupied, somehow.”

Since Tesme frequently noted aloud that her sister seemed preoccupied, even when she was paying quite close attention, Kes
did not know how to answer this.


“There’s something… Is there something wrong?”


Kes could find no words to describe the magnificence of bronze wings in the sun. She would have tried, for Tesme. But the
mere thought of trying to explain the griffins, the hard heat they had brought with them, the strange look of the sky when
they crossed it in their brilliant flight… She shook her head, mute.


Tesme frowned at her. “No one has been, well, bothering you, have they?”

For a long moment, Kes didn’t understand what her sister meant. Then, taken aback, she blushed fiercely and shook her head
again.


Tesme had come to a full halt. She reached out as though to touch Kes on the arm, but then her hand fell. “Some of the boys
can be, well, boys. And you’re so quiet. Sometimes that can encourage them. And besides the boys…” She hesitated. Then she
said, “I like Jos, and he’s a wonderful help around the farm, but Kes, if he bothers you, you surely know I’ll send him away
immediately.”


Kes said, startled, “Jos?”

“I know you wouldn’t encourage him, Kes, but lately I’ve thought sometimes that he might be, well, watching you.”

“Jos doesn’t bother me,” Kes said, and was startled by the vehemence of her tone. She moderated it. “I like Jos. He wouldn’t…
he isn’t… and he’s too old, anyway!”


“Oh, well, Kes! He’s not that old, and he’s not blind, and you’re growing up and getting pretty, and if he notices you too much, there are other places
he could get work.” But Tesme looked somewhat reassured. She started walking again, if not as quickly.


Kes hurried the few steps necessary to catch up. “I like Jos,” she said again. She did, she realized. His quiet, his calm,
the competent way he handled the horses. The way he never pressed her to speak, or seemed to expect her to fit into some unexplained
pattern of behavior she couldn’t even recognize. He was comfortable to be around, as so few people were. He had been at the
farm for… nearly half her life, Kes thought. She could not imagine it without him. “He doesn’t bother me, Tesme. Really, he
doesn’t. Don’t send him away.”


“All right…” Tesme said doubtfully, and began to walk a little more quickly. “But let me know if you change your mind.”

It was easier to nod than protest again.

They walked a little farther. But then Tesme gave Kes a sideways look and added, “Now, if there’s a boy you do like, you’d let me know, Kes, wouldn’t you? I remember what I was like at your age, and shy as you are, you are getting to be pretty. You know you don’t need to slip off silently to meet somebody, don’t you? If you want to walk out with
Kanne or Sef or somebody, that’s different, but you would tell me, wouldn’t you? There’s a world of trouble for a girl who’s
too secretive, believe me.”


Kes felt her face heat. “I don’t like anyone!” she protested.

“That changes,” Tesme said, her tone wry. “If it changes for you, Kes…”

“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you,” Kes said hastily, hoping to sound so firmly reassuring that Tesme would let the subject die.
It was true anyway. Kanne? She suppressed an urge to roll her eyes, not wanting her sister to reopen the subject—but Kanne? Kanne was a baby, and too interested in himself to even notice a girl. Sef was almost as bad, all but welded to the smithy
where he was apprenticed. Kes couldn’t imagine either of them, or any other of the village boys, ever choosing to simply walk
out across the hills and listen to the wind and the silence.


“All right…” Tesme said. She did sound somewhat reassured. “It’s true you’re not much like I was. On the whole, that’s probably
just as well.” She glanced at Kes, half smiling and half worried.


Kes had no idea what to say to this, and so said nothing.

“You’re yourself, that’s all,” Tesme concluded at last, smiling. She patted Kes on the shoulder and lengthened her stride
once more.


The inn, set by the road near the river, right at the edge of the village, was all white stone and dark wooden beams. It had
a dozen pretty little tables in its wide, walled courtyard, across from its stables, which were screened from the inn by small
trees and beds of flowers. Jerreid and his wife, Edlin, and their daughters ran the inn, which was widely acknowledged to
be the best of all the little country inns along the western river road that ran from Niambe Lake all the way down to Terabiand.
The inn was not overlarge, but it was pleasant and very clean, and every window looked out onto one flower garden or another.
And the food was good.


Many ordinary folk and even nobles broke their journey in Minas Ford as they traveled from the little jewel-pretty cities
of the high north to the sprawling coastal town of Terabiand in the south—the Ford of the town’s name had long ago been replaced
by the best bridge anywhere along the river—and, as the saying went, everyone and everything passed along the coast at some
time. And so a good proportion of everyone and everything traveled up from Terabiand and through Minas Ford eventually, and
since Minas Ford was conveniently a long day’s journey from Bered to the south and an easy day’s journey from Riamne to the
north, many travelers looked forward to a stay at Jerreid’s pretty little inn.


Every upstairs room had a window, shutters open in this fine weather; every table, outdoors or in, was graced by a slender
vase of flowers. Edlin made the vases of fine white clay, glazing them with translucent glazes in blue and pink and white.
She made them to keep cut flowers, and she had the gift of making in her hands: It was common knowledge that flowers stayed
fresh in one of Edlin’s vases twice as long as they lasted in an old cracked mug.


Edlin also made tableware that was both pretty and very hard to break. She sold bowls and plates and platters from a shop
behind the inn, leaving the running of the inn almost entirely to her husband and their three daughters. Edlin grew the flowers
herself, though, and picked them fresh every week to arrange in the vases. That was, famously, as close to the work of the
inn as she would come. Jerreid, fortunately, seemed perfectly happy to leave his wife to her dishes and glazes and gardens.


“Tesme!” Jerreid said, as they came into the yard. He was a big, bluff, genial man with a talent for making his inn feel homey
and all his visitors feel welcome. He’d been leaning against one of the outdoor tables, chatting with what looked like half
the folk of the village—a big crowd for the middle of the day. There were no travelers present at the moment, although some
would probably stop later in the day. But Chiad and his wife had torn themselves away from their farm to visit the inn, along
with a dozen children and cousins and nephews. And Heste had abandoned her bakery for the moment—well, the morning bread was
long out of the ovens, and perhaps she had a little time before she would start the pies and honey cakes for the evening.
But Nehoen was also present, which was less usual. His big house with its sprawling lands lay well outside the village, and
he did not usually come to the inn except on market day. And Caris had for some reason left her weaving to visit the inn,
as well as Kanes and his apprentice Sef the smithy.


Kes looked at them all uneasily, wondering nervously whether she might guess what had drawn them all away from their ordinary
business. She hoped she did not blush when she glanced at Kanne or Sef. How could Tesme possibly think—? Was Kanne even fourteen
yet? And Sef! She looked hastily away from the smith’s apprentice, aware that she probably was blushing, now.


“You seem happy,” Jerreid was saying to Tesme. His smile, at least, seemed ordinarily cheerful. “How is your mare? River,
wasn’t it? She must have done well by you, yes?”


“Yes, yes, yes!” Tesme came across the yard, leaving Kes to follow more slowly. She took Jerreid’s hands in hers and smiled
at him. “A filly, healthy and big, and River’s fine. We’re celebrating. Have you any blackberry wine left, or did you drink
it all yourself?”


“We’ve plenty—”

“But you might want to hold off on the celebrations,” said Chiad. Dark as the earth he worked, serious by nature and not given
to celebrations at even the best of times, he looked at the moment even more somber than usual. He slapped the table with
one broad hand for emphasis as he spoke.


“Give the woman a chance to catch her breath!” exclaimed Jerreid, shaking his head in mild disapproval.

Chiad gave him a blink of incomprehension and instantly transferred his attention back to Tesme. “You’ve got your young foals
down by the house, haven’t you, Tesme? Do you know what Kanne saw this morning?” Kanne was Chiad’s son, and he now sat up
straight in his chair and looked important.


Kes knew. She heard it in Chiad’s voice. She saw it in Kanne’s eyes.

Tesme arched her eyebrows, still smiling, if a little less certainly. “If it wasn’t someone underselling me with Delta-bred
stock for cheap, I don’t think I’ll mind, whatever it was.”


“You will,” said Chiad, heavily, with a somber shake of his head. “Tell her, boy.”

Kanne laid his hands down flat on the table and sat up even straighter, looking proud and important. “Griffins!” he said.

This had not been what Tesme expected, and she looked blank.

“Griffins!” Chiad said. He slapped the table, shaking his head again in heavy disapproval. “Of all things! Half lion, half
eagle, and all killer! My barley is likely safe enough, but you’d best look after your stock, Tesme!”


Tesme still looked blank. She said after a moment, “Kanne, are you sure they weren’t just eagles?”

“Now, that’s what I said,” Jerreid agreed, nodding.

“Sure, I’m sure,” Kanne said importantly. “I am sure! I know what eagles look like, Jerreid! These weren’t eagles or vultures or any bird!”


“Griffins never leave their desert,” said Heste, frowning. Her attitude suggested that she had said this before, repeatedly.

“They do,” said Nehoen, so patiently it was clear he’d said this before as well. “Griffins in the spring mean a hard summer.”
Nehoen was not sitting at the table. He had gotten to his feet when Tesme and Kes had entered the courtyard. Now he moved
restlessly, leaning his hip against one of the tables and crossing his arms over his chest. He was old, nearly fifty, but
he was one of the few gentlemen of the village and thus showed his age far less than a farmer or smith.


“What?” said Tesme, blinking at him.

Nehoen smiled at her. He owned all the land out on the west side of the village near the river, and he could not only read,
but owned far more books than all the rest of Minas Ford put together. His grandmother had been an educated woman of the Delta,
and had put great store by books and written learning. He explained now, “Griffins in the fall mean an easy winter, griffins
in the spring a hard summer. They say that in Casmantium. There wouldn’t be a saying about it if the griffins never left their
country of fire to come into the country of earth.”


“But why would they?” Tesme asked. “And why come so far? Not just so far south, either, but all the way across the mountains into Feierabiand?”


“Well, that I don’t know. The mages of Casmantium keep them out of Casmantian lands—that’s what their cold mages are for,
isn’t it?—so maybe if the griffins wanted to move, they had to cross the mountains. But why they left their own desert in
the first place?” Nehoen shrugged. “Who can guess why such creatures do anything?”


“Griffins are bad for fire,” said Kanes. The smith’s deep voice rumbled, and everyone hushed to listen to him. “That’s what
I know. They’re made of fire, and fire falls from the wind their wings stirs up. That’s what smiths say. They’re bad creatures
to have about.”


Smiths knew fire. Everyone was silent for a moment, thinking about that.

“Griffins,” said Jerreid at last, shaking his head.

“Griffins,” agreed Nehoen. He began a rough sketch on a sheet of paper somebody had given him.

Chiad’s wife said, practically, as she was always practical, “Saying Kanne is right, as I think he is, then what? Fire and
hard summers, maybe—and then maybe not. But it stands to reason a creature with eagle talons and lion claws will hunt.”


“Surely—” Tesme began, and stopped, looking worried. “You don’t think they would eat our horses, really??