“Thanks.” Tiago gave him a grim look, which Rune returned.
Neither male said what they were thinking. There were a whole host of reasons why they may not have heard from the faerie since the incident, and most of those reasons were not good ones.
“Tricks is okay,” Tiago said. She’d better be okay, or he would make sure there was hell to pay.
“Niniane,” Rune said.
Impatient, Tiago shrugged. “Whatever.”
Rune clapped Tiago on the shoulder. “Well, go find her and make sure she stays okay.”
“You know I will.”
Tiago jogged up the stairs to the Tower rooftop. He turned his face upward to look full upon the bright orb of the sun. With a sense of unutterable relief he let his human form fall away, along with the shackles of the city. He lunged upward. Massive wings hammered down as he climbed into the air, and a thunderclap tore through the sky.
He slipped into the oldest, truest part of his soul.
He did not know his actual age, but he remembered soaring high above the Great Plains as vast herds of bison covered miles upon miles of land. The bison had once been his favorite prey. He would plummet from a great height, a murderous juggernaut that would slam down on the beast he had chosen and shatter its spine. The rest of the bison herd would stampede in a panic, leaving him to gorge in solitary peace as the wind undulated through an endless sea of prairie grasses under a colossal turquoise basin of sky.
He was known to many of the American Indian nations as the creature that commanded thunder and lightning, quick to stir to wrath and war, but his true identity was as a sojourner of the Earth. He would take flight for days on end, slipping into a fugue state as he watched oceans and lands scroll by underneath the glimmering shadow of his giant outspread wings.
When curiosity brought him to ground at last, he shapeshifted for the first time to walk among humans in a land filled with golden desert temples and palatial burial tombs of kings surrounded by cities of the dead. The humans clustered in a vibrant green fertile strip of land that followed the snaking path of a river like the folds of a silken dress molding to the curves of a voluptuous woman.
He mingled for a brief time with a small, dark, intelligent people who wrote of him in the Pyramid Texts, from the time of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The people worshipped his winged form and called him a god of the wind. They claimed he brought with him the breath of life.
The people of Egypt had offered him everything a human being could desire, but he was not human. They tried to hold on to him with offerings of gold, and chains of worship, sex and dynasty, but he would not be chained or held. Only when the great winged serpent Cuelebre hunted him down, pinned him to the ground and spoke to him with patient beguilement and cunning intellect of a vision of a nation of united Wyr did he consent to listen.
Cuelebre had faced a formidable challenge with the oldest and strongest of the ancient Wyr. He could not bludgeon them into submitting to his rule and then hope to trust them in any kind of high-functioning level of governance afterward. Instead, he had to use persuasion to bring them to his side, to ask them to partner with him in the creation of a Wyr nation. Cuelebre coaxed Tiago into realizing that growth was inevitable for both humankind and the Elder Races. Civilization’s dance had begun an inexorable waltz across the world.
Tiago must participate in the waltz. He must change as the world changed or become irrelevant. He refused to be reduced or set aside in the new formation of the world.
Thus, long ago, he agreed to work in a sometimes fractious collective partnership. He grew to admit it did not lessen who he was but enhanced him and used him to their best mutual benefit.
He was a warlord. To an ancient people he was a god of storm and lightning, a prince of the sky.
He was Wyr.
TWO
Motel 6 wasn’t so bad. In fact it was kind of cute in a polyester sort of way.
Sure, it wasn’t the Regent, or the Renaissance, or the Ritz-Carlton. But the desk attendant had been cheerfully disinterested when Niniane had checked in, the prices were affordable and, most important, they had smoking rooms. Score.
On the one hand, there wasn’t any room service or those darling little liquor bottles in a small refrigerator. On the other hand, there weren’t any assassination attempts or a pending coronation. Hmm. Niniane wondered if they offered a twelve-month lease.