Sword of Fire and Sea

Though the coastal island of Siane's Eye was lush with whispering palms and tropical flowers too exotic for the names of men, the wind that swept ever outward from its alabaster monuments came chill as a lifetime of penance. It prickled Vidarian's skin, but he hardened himself to it; the Sisters would not see a Rulorat captain hiding his hands like a saltless boy.

He turned to salute the Empress Quest, waiting far below in the green harbor waters. A signal flag acknowledged his safe arrival, and that the crew would await his return.

One last bridge separated the small viewing ledge from the white temple of the goddess of the air, but now that his stomach expected its sway, it was harder to cross than the first. The only sea or land access to the Eye was via an arcing bridge of interlocking alabaster blocks. Whatever bound them was supple, free to the play of the cold wind, and though it bore carved handrails, the memory of its lurching-unfriendly foliage all that awaited after a plummet thrice the height of the Quest's mainmast-would be with him some time.

Setting courage between his teeth, he boarded the second bridge, locking his eyes on the waiting temple, willing his legs to interpret the sway of the bridge as the rhythm of a deck. Familiar. Safe.

Then he was across, the yawning green that haunted his peripheral vision swallowed by secure earth and smooth cobblestones. A figure wrapped in gauzy robes perpetually at the play of the temple wind stood by to greet him.

Upon reaching the first white arch of the temple Vidarian covered his surprise at the aged face beneath the diaphanous hood by bowing smartly from the waist and removing his tricorne. He did not know what he found more peculiar: the lines etched like weathered sandstone against the woman's cheeks, or the strange striped lizard that coiled tightly about her left forearm. The little beast was pale green, skin like pebbled sand, and its many-striped eyes moved independent of one another.

“Welcome, Captain.” The priestess's voice was like vellum crumpled and straightened many times, latticed and soft. Her eyes were the translucent grey of a winter sea. “Priestess Endera awaits you within. We of the Eye are pleased to bring water and fire together once more.”

“I wondered at that. I should have thought the priestess would call me to Val Harlon,” he ventured. The lizard's near eye tracked him.

“For undertakings of import, the air sisters have ever been the conduit for the volatile elements.” She gestured to the alabaster. “We are the bridge.”

“Truly extraordinary engineering,” Vidarian said with genuine appreciation. “What substance is it that holds them together?”

She blinked; lambent, alien. “Why, air, of course.”

And so they had swayed, the bonds of all the elements not as strong as they once were. His stomach gave a lurch as he involuntarily imagined those bonds failing at just the right moment. He thanked the air priestess and pushed his thoughts along; if she did know what Endera had planned for him, she would hardly give any sign. “Please lead the way,” he said instead, and she smiled and turned on soundless feet toward the next temple arch.

Hanging from the ceilings, arches, and indeed every available surface of the white alabaster were feathery fronds of olive-green vegetation that dropped no roots, though they clung in places to the stone. They drank thirstily from the air, lifted by the breeze that came from the temple's core. Tiny golden blooms no larger than Vidarian's thumbnail peppered some of the plants, and from these danced slender black butterflies, their wings shimmering blue in the dim light. Here and there another of the strange striped lizards clung to a vine or alabaster column; wherever they passed, each tracked Vidarian with one weirdly telescoping eye.

The pressure of the moving air grew stronger as they passed further into the temple, born from the Windwell at its very center. His companion's light robes, made of wound scarves, now lifted steadily behind her like so many pennants from a festival barge. At the next hall, its vaulted ceiling easily three times the height of a tall man, she turned and led him down a quieter passageway out of the wind, and thence into a carpeted reception room lit by lanterns of blue oil, their crystal chimneys throwing shards of pale light in shifting starbursts against the white walls. The air priestess bowed, lifted a hand unburdened by reptile, and turned back down the hall.

At a delicate table of pale maple wood sat Endera, whom Vidarian had met only once before and that two decades ago. Her voluminous wine-red robes defied the gentle delicacy of the air temple, as did the rich gold of her skin and eyes. She motioned him to the seat opposite her, and poured him a cup of tea that, by the gold leafed embossing on its nearby shipping packet, would have kept the child of a merchant family in silk for a year. Vidarian sat.

“Well, priestess? Your little waifs were quite-insistent-that I meet you here, and I have the bruises to prove it.”

White teeth flashed beneath the velvet hood. “Well trained, dear Captain, is the term I believe you're searching for.”

“Of course.” He picked up his tea. Inhaling deeply of its sweet, subtle fragrance, he took a gulp and tried not to think about the price of the hot liquid that slid down his throat. As it reached his stomach, a secondary flavor-just a touch of floral bitterness-bathed his tongue, but it brought with it a welcome awakening of the senses.

Siane's Eye was neutral territory. Though Vidarian would have liked to ignore the summons from Endera, certain obligations forced his hand, but his cordiality only went so far. He enjoyed the tea as much as one might, but waited without speaking long enough for his impropriety to become clear.

The fire priestess's carnelian circlet glowed suddenly as she leaned forward into the lamplight. Even in shadow her face was statuesque, suspended in the agelessness of long-held authority. “I have a task for you, Captain. Your ship and lineage make you uniquely suited to it, and I am willing to pay well.” Vidarian was about to make a quick retort that he was not to be “tasked,” but the air stopped in his chest as Endera began to move one arm across the table.

With casual grace, the priestess turned over her hand, emptying a black velvet pouch into the air. Vidarian's breath moved again, drawn swiftly inward, as a pair of slender cabochons each the size of his thumb clattered down onto the table.

The green stones glowed, and not from the blue light of the lanterns. Vidarian's hand moved toward them out of pure human reflex-but he withdrew just in time. Still, the heat that he knew they held seemed to burn on his fingertips. More wealth sat before him than any ten of his comrades had ever seen. “Sun emeralds,” he said, breath ragged in his throat. “Dear priestess, who have you taken under your wing that could possibly be worth such a price?”

“She was under my wing already.”

“You can't possibly mean-”

“I do.” No hint of any emotion colored the priestess's face as she lifted her teacup to her lips and sipped, cradling the porcelain in long-fingered hands. This Vidarian saw peripherally, locked as he was on the stones lest they disappear, knowing envy greener than sun emeralds was alive in his eyes. “She requires escort to my sister in the Temple of Zal'nehara. Circumstances demand that this route move along the western coast.” For only a moment Vidarian glanced sharply upward; to tour the western coast to get to the Temple of the Sea was to make a trip of perhaps twenty days take several months. But his attention was drawn magnetically back down to the emeralds, and Endera smiled, catlike. “Lovely, aren't they? And near priceless.” Her voice was sweet music in his ears, a persuasive spell.

Abruptly Vidarian pushed back from the table, his spine sinking into the plush seat cushion. A faint sneer twisted his lips as he stared at the table, morbidly fascinated. “Not on your life, Priestess. Those gems are worth more than I am, more than the Quest and all her crew. That's dangerous.”

Endera's hands froze around the cup and her tone dropped a few degrees. “Then name your price.”

A thousand prizes leapt to mind, dizzying him. A ship to mate his Empress, swift as a gull and strong as a kraken-five ships, ten! He could be Admiral Vidarian Rulorat, and he knew that if he asked it of her, Endera would make it so. Those two emeralds alone would purchase enough wealth to keep him fat and rich for the rest of his days. But…

“There's no price could be worth such madness,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I'm sorry, Priestess. My crew would have me tossed if I brought a fire priestess on board; you must know that. Much less for a tour through the Outwater, full of pirates and Nistra knows what else. Good day to you.” He turned and strode for the exit, making a break as quickly as dignity would permit.

“Sit down, Captain.”

He stopped in the threshold but did not turn, riding the swell of temper that threatened to break over his composure.

“I am a very busy woman, Vidarian. I had no intention of calling you to this meeting to waste your time and mine with fruitless negotiations.” Endera slowly finished her cup of tea, but there was no warmth in her voice. “I had hoped this wouldn't be necessary. Seventy years ago your great-grandfather made a commitment to my predecessor on behalf of the Rulorat family. The Breakwater agreement. You know of it.”

Vidarian sat down. The swell had died to a bubbling tide of dread.

“I am invoking that commitment, yet I wish our engagement to remain cordial. So let me try this again.” She leaned forward. “Name your price, Captain.”

His throat was dry, but the teacup was empty, and he did not move to refresh it. He permitted himself a brief clenching of both fists, then dove in, protocol be damned. “What makes you think, Priestess, that I should abide by an agreement dormant these last thirty years? It was not an agreement I made, nor my father.”

He'd pitched his voice to rattle her, but she didn't even pause. “Our last renewal was indeed thirty years ago,” her voice like tumbled glass, “two years before you were born, dear Vidarian.” At her maternal, understanding smile he clenched his fists again below the table. “I certainly know this must be difficult for you, but think what your father would have done.”

Of that there was no question. And yet…“He'd have known to cross the Outwater with a Sharlin priestess on board would be madness too, Priestess.”

“A risk, most certainly. For which you are offered very generous compensation, Captain.”

The compensation sat on the table between them, still glowing, and not with reflection. A wildness seized Vidarian. “Binding magic. Those emeralds, tied to my life-destroyed when I am.”

Endera was silent for a long moment. After a small eternity she reached forward and placed her hand across the priceless stones. A smile turned her scarlet lips, dazzling and dangerous. “You are an intriguing man, Captain,” she said, and there was laughter in her voice. “I agree to your bargain.”

Then, without speaking, she focused intently on the jewels beneath her cupped hand. Bright golden sparks kindled in the depths of her eyes, and a glare like summer sunlight speared through her fingers from the emeralds, leaving dark spots spangled across Vidarian's vision. For one wrenching moment he felt as if the breath had been drawn out of his chest-then all was as it had been. The light was gone from beneath the priestess's hand, and from her eyes. She withdrew her hand.

“It is done.”

This time Vidarian did not stop himself when he moved to take up one of the stones. Its immediate surface was cool to the touch, but the heat that burned within stirred his very soul.

An ocean of light swirled inside the polished stone. The sun emerald was green only around the outside, winking golden when turned in the lantern light. It was heavy-heavier than any other jewel he'd touched. Only reluctantly did he slide it into his left hand and pick up the next.

As soon as he touched it he knew something was wrong. This stone was not heavy, and the light that danced within it formed twisting flames. His eyes darted up to Endera. “What is this?”

“Such an observant lad,” she smiled.

“What did you do?” he asked sharply, dropping both jewels back on the table without a care for their value.

“Be careful, Captain,” the priestess warned, golden eyes suddenly sharp. “All things come with a price. This emerald is not bound to you. It is bound to the priestess you will escort, and both will remain in my possession until you return. You privateers call it-insurance.” Endera reached again across the table and brushed a golden fingernail across the first of the emeralds. A cold shiver ran up Vidarian's spine. “All things with their antithesis,” she murmured, regarding the stone with disturbing intensity. Her eyes were lazy, thick lashes low as she looked back up at him. “The cardinal rule of spirit magic, and indeed all magics, holy or not. In order to bind that stone to your life, I had to bind some of your life-just a little part-to the stone.” Her smoldering gaze sharpened with her voice. “You will escort Priestess Windhammer, Captain, and you will see her safely to the Temple of Zal'nehara and the protection of my sister, where the sea will mask the fire within her.” She picked up the first of the emeralds and tucked it into the black velvet pouch. When she held it out to him, he accepted it without thinking, numb. “Then you will return here, and I will give you not only the other emerald but also two sun rubies of equal size. You will be a rich man, and Priestess Windhammer will be safe.”

Vidarian stood stiffly, dumbstruck. Before he could think, Endera spoke again in a clear dismissal: “She will meet you at Val Harlon's east pier tomorrow evening, number ten.”

Still rebelling at how thoroughly he had been caught in the priestess's web, but unable to refuse with the offer of the stones now doubled, even if his life did not depend on it, Vidarian managed, “So be it, then.” He did not offer his hand; the bargain, as she had put it, was already sealed entirely too tightly for his liking.

Endera smiled.

Giving a stiff bow, Vidarian turned to stalk away, but the priestess's voice caught him just as he lifted the velvet curtain.

“One more thing, Captain.”

Vidarian froze.

“You will have no steel that bears a polish near this priestess. The Vkortha who seek her are telepaths, and can sense any such metal when it comes near the life flame of a fire priestess. It acts as their eyes.”

“Priestess, you can't possibly be serious. Our anchors, the fittings for the ship-”

“Are all salt-encrusted and infused with the energy of the sea. These are no risk. Only any polished steel that your crew may bear will be. Steel, well cared-for, retains the memory of its origin; it recalls the flame that birthed it. Each fire priestess past the initiation rite carries within her a thread of the great Mother Flame, and it calls to all its brethren.”

Unthinking, Vidarian reached for his sword, and Endera's eyes followed his hand. “This sword was my father's, and his father's before him. I'll not leave it in any port.”

“Then keep it,” she said, “but keep it covered at all times when you are in the presence of Priestess Windhammer. Any consequences that follow should you fail are yours to deal with-but if there's anything left of you when the Vkortha are through,” she tapped her fingernails on the table, and for a moment they flared like tiny suns, “there won't be when I am.”

Vidarian bowed again, tight-lipped, and strode through the arch before he could ensnare himself further. The priestess's soft voice came to him as he paused to return his hat to his head, as if it were his fate.

“Protect her well, Vidarian.”

Vidarian left the Eye as though propelled by its unceasing wind. But as he passed through the final archway, the old air priestess lifted her narrow hand, and he stopped, just short of stumbling.

“I would never question a sworn Sister,” she said without preamble, gently stroking the chameleon's back. “Yet I have known Endera for many years. Her movements are her own. And she did not come here under the command of Sher'azar.” She drew a tiny crystal whistle from her wide belt. “Take this. If it hasn't yet faded, it summons a powerful wind, the Breath of Siane.” As she smiled, her eyes vanished into the vast wrinkles above her cheeks. “You cannot imagine its value. Carry it wisely.”

As she passed him the whistle its tightly coiled strand of braided linen came unwound, and Vidarian lifted his hat, partly in salute to the air priestess, partly to allow the whistle around his neck, where he tucked it behind his neckerchief. The thought of returning to his crew with this errand had thrown his thoughts into a gale, and he felt a rush of gratitude for the kindness from this priestess of that turbulent element.

“Go with the blessing of Siane, Captain, though your winds be fierce or fair.” Her pale eyes were distant, but deep within them, as in the gullet of a hurricane, there was the glow of distant lightning. She smiled. “I suspect you'll need it.”

Marielle, the Quest's first mate, was waiting at the alabaster bridge.

Vidarian bit back a sigh as he saw her. In truth, the sight of her was steadying, but they'd agreed her responsibility was with the crew, not on the island. And from the set of her shoulders, at the moment she was not Marielle, First Mate, but Marielle I-Changed-Your-Swaddling-Clothes, Captain Sir. He averted his eyes from her aggressive grey stare out of reflex, only for an instant, which of course made things much worse.

“Dare I ask, Captain Sir, what you have gotten us into this time?”

Batten and caulk. And forge ahead.

“We've taken a commission with the Sharli Priestesshood, an escort mission to bring one of their number to the Temple at Zal'nehara, where the Nistra followers there will take charge of her welfare.” Marielle's eyes widened at about every fourth word.

“Direct through the bloody Outwater? I presume you told them how mad an idea that is?”

“She invoked the Breakwater, Marielle.”

Marielle crooked three fingers in the sign of Nistra, warding. “A name your granddad had no business agreeing to! It's a bad affair, getting between goddesses, to say nothing of a call-the-waves-down-on-me bloody agreement name like that.”

As with all true many-decade friends, Vidarian and Marielle had small, specific, manageable habits that drove each other insane. For Vidarian, Marielle's was her unavoidable religious affectation. He battened down some more. “Please try to be reasonable, Marielle. Your superstitions-”

“Are nothing of the sort, they are concrete and provable and as old as the sea herself. The crew won't have it, sir, and I don't allow as I should either,” Marielle bristled, gripping the ends of her waist sash in agitation. “‘The Wake knows they've plenty of ships of their own, these priestesses. Why the Quest?”

“They do have their own ships. And you know my obligation to them.”

“Your granddad building some ships really don't-”

“This truly isn't up for discussion, Marielle.” He stared her down, and her mouth clicked shut, but sternly as ever. “I'm sorry. I don't like it any better than you do. But I can't take my family's name and ship without their obligations. You've sailed with enough Rulorats to know that.”

Her angled eyebrows said she was almost convinced. “Will you at least consent to asking the sea witch for Nistra's forecast on this? I'll warrant you weren't foolish enough to take this on without advance payment.”

Vidarian folded his arms, instinctively moving to brush the velvet pouch in his front pocket, surreptitiously. “I'll allow it if you insist. Though nothing changes, Marielle. The Quest is committed already.”

“It'll be a forewarning, at least. Captain Sir.”

Marielle's cabin was as large as Vidarian's, being in previous generations allocated to his grandmother, when she and his grandfather had captained the ship together, all except in formality. Marielle had it so stuffed with gear and paraphernalia that it looked perhaps a third its true size.

In the back of the cabin, bolted to a table near the bed cabinet, was a large glass shelter that contained a currently purple-spotted green octopus and a large quantity of salt water. Marielle had acquired the sea witch, a peculiar southern sea creature quite famously expensive (and invaluable on ships of any merit), in a wager many decades ago.

Wordlessly, Marielle pulled her prayer book from a shelf beneath the table and opened it to the section on prophecy via sea witch. Nistra followers had discovered the sea witch's unique capabilities over a hundred years ago and instituted their use wherever possible. They needed a steady diet of small crustaceans, fresh and alive, which presented some problem to followers that lived too far inland, but Marielle kept a ready supply pulled up from the sea floor at all times. Now she pulled a leather pouch from a rack beside the bookshelf and dropped a handful of calcified sand into the water. The witch turned completely and unsettlingly transparent.

Still not speaking, she reached out a hand, palm up, toward Vidarian. He frowned just to register his disapproval and pulled the velvet pouch from his pocket, then slid the emerald from it and into her waiting fingers. Without looking at it, as if she instinctively knew its hypnotic properties, she dropped it into the tank.

From the initial flash of bubbles the emerald dropped straight down, sinking with barely a drift to right or left to rest, glowing, among the rocks at the base of the tank. The octopus writhed, reaching for the glass borders of its tiny domain like a man thrown overboard in a tempest. Then it turned the deep red of a flesh wound aged in the sun.

Marielle's face was impassive as she quickly turned the wax-slick pages in her prayer book. Carefully inked illuminations played out identical octopi in a spectrum of colors. When at last she came to the shade that closest matched the octopus's current color, with some flipping back and forth of pages to be sure, she froze and bent over the description. The prognosis was not good. Vidarian only caught the words “…except in great defiance to your safety of mind and body will…”

He prepared for the explosion as she gently, carefully closed the book. But her voice was unexpectedly low and soft.

“It ain't never come to good, your family and Sharli, Sir. Never.”

As the sun bloodied the sky to the west of Val Harlon the next evening, the Empress Quest bobbed in green water at dock nine. A slender black knife of a rivership bearing the banner of Temple Kara'zul rested beside her, and as twilight settled in, a hooded figure descended from the ramp next to the dock ten marker.

Endera's charge wore a sweeping skirt of burgundy crushed velvet and a cloak of the same, seeming not to notice the cloying heat that kept all of the sailors and passersby displaying maximum skin, even in the wind-chased evening. A belt of carved onyx cinched her narrow waist, matched by a glittering pendant around her neck. Where Endera had been a polished, silvery flame with alabaster skin and golden hair and eyes, this Priestess Windhammer was a dusky ember, dark gold her complexion and raven black the long braid whose tail brushed past her hips.

“Ariadel Windhammer,” she said, hesitating slightly upon reaching him. She extended her hand-a small, petite thing. Delicate though she might be, the priestess had a strong, firm grip. She was complete and total trouble.

Finally, he managed, “Vidarian Rulorat, captain of the Empress Quest.”

Her smile was morning breaking over the eastern sea. “Rulorat, truly? I should have trusted Endera to find me a stalwart guardian. Your family is renowned on the seas.”

Vidarian was about to answer when a soft, plaintive mew echoed up from one of the crates stacked beside the pier.

Ariadel blinked. “Do you hear that?”

“Just a dock cat.”

“Nonsense. I doubt if its eyes are even open yet.” Like a predator herself she crouched and listened intently, moving silently among the crates on the dock. The source of the mew made the mistake of scuttling from one crate to the next, and Ariadel pounced.

She pulled it from the crates as one might an unsuspected treasure. The molten light of the setting sun flashed in the kitten's green eyes, and then across Ariadel's dark ones.

Vidarian blinked, then squinted suspiciously at the kitten. It was more a ball of grey fur than a creature, though punctuated with pink ears and nose. Despite being fluffed into a rather rotund shape, bones showed through its skin where the patchy fur exposed it. Doubtful it would be much of any use at all as a mouser.

“I feel she must come with us,” Ariadel said, curiously fixated on the creature's eyes.

He nodded, diplomat enough to hide his skepticism. One picked one's battles. “If it's your will, Priestess.” Vidarian swept his arm in an invitation toward the gangplank ahead.

The Empress Quest was a sleek double-masted schooner of eighty-five feet in length, carved from red teak, light and strong. Shallow-bellied for a seagoing ship, she rode high in the water, with pennants snapping in the breeze. She was currently one of the larger ships in the harbor, built for the rugged coastline, barnacled where her waterline had once been higher from prolonged exposure to rough waters. There was nothing in the world lovelier than the sight of her bobbing at port, and so it was with some misgiving that Vidarian observed the priestess's reluctance to board.

Finally he held out his hand to her, and she stared at it for a moment before accepting his assistance. As she stepped onto the plank, she murmured, “Pardon my moment. I've never been on the high sea before,” but it was with the curious calm one would observe a foreign delicacy at dinner. Still, her grip on the kitten gave her away-its eyes looked about to pop out in her firm grasp.

“Windhammer,” he said, partly to distract her. “Strange name for a fire priestess. Have our families met before?” She did not look at him, but seemed bent on taking in every detail of her surroundings as they stepped onto the Quest's fine deck.

“My father's name,” she said distractedly. “The fire in my veins is from my mother. A remote cousin of Priestess Endera's. Oh!” She exclaimed in surprise as the grey kitten suddenly squirmed loose (likely in protest to her death-grip, though Vidarian certainly wouldn't say so) and landed on the deck with a thump. In a shot the kitten was off, streaking toward the galley as if it knew exactly where it was going.

Vidarian watched in chagrin. Then, raising a hand to his cheek, he called out, “All hands prepare for sail! Ms. Solandt, bring us out!” The sudden loudness of his voice startled the priestess slightly, but she recovered, watching the stream of men that poured out of the forecastle with slightly narrowed eyes.

“Oughtn't I meet the crew?”

He grinned. “After we're settled on route. My Empress grows impatient if docked too long. Shall we?” He raised a hand toward the main hold, and she followed his gesture, but somehow managed to make it look like it had been her idea all along. Trouble indeed.

The forecastle's anteroom, by his grandmother's tradition, was as ornate as a wealthy landsman's stateroom, and used to honor individuals of the crew on special occasions. Heavy mahogany cabinets and a massive matching table, all intricately carved with water nymphs and merfolk, were bolted to the polished teak deck, their fixtures hidden by carved clawed feet. A pair of runners covered the deck to either side of the table, patterned in the voluminous chrysanthemum designs peculiar to the continent-island nation of Targuli. Each was of thin but surprisingly soft silk, woven at an astronomical thread count and also stapled discreetly to the boards. Vidarian shut the thick door behind them, cutting off the bustle of the crew's quarters.

Ariadel took it all in with cool aloofness, thick lashes masking her half-closed eyes. She, of course, was used to much greater splendor than this-but Vidarian guessed that the watery theme was not quite her cup of tea.

Speaking of which, he moved to a silver tea service that he'd asked Marks to lay out prior to their journey. Sitting in a polished rack fixed in the center of the lacquered table, the teapot was a tall silver affair rimmed with filigreed roses. Two matching cups sat on silver saucers nearby, and Vidarian deftly measured out portions of dark honey-colored tea for both of them. Ariadel accepted her cup gratefully, exclaiming over the detail and skill of the worked metal. “My mother's,” Vidarian explained, not diffident, and Ariadel turned her attention to the tea.

However, as she took her first sip, she worked quite obviously to avoid spitting the liquid back out. “It's cold!”

Vidarian cleared his throat to hide the start of a laugh. “Your pardon, Priestess. The tea is from Insartia, and intended to be enjoyed chilled. It's been quite warm out.” Taking up his own cup, he swallowed a mouthful of the tea, enjoying its herblike, minty overtones. “We'll be under way shortly, and I'm afraid I must leave you to attend the launch. So if you'll pardon my directness-” he looked over his cup for permission, and continued at her cautious nod, “you are not, of course, obligated to tell me, but why are they searching for you?”

Ariadel stared into her cup as if the answer would rise from its glassy surface. After a long moment she said, hollowly, “I know where they live.”

Vidarian frowned. “You are only one person. Surely others know the location of their operation. They must have spies, staff, orderlies?”

The priestess shook her head, increasingly subdued. “Not that simple, I'm afraid. They migrate, but they have a single unmoving fortress on an island in the Farwestern Sea. I happened to stumble upon its location, and they read the signs of my presence.” She took a quick draught of the tea. “It was not intended that they should be able to do so.”

Cradling his cup between his hands, Vidarian traced the silver roses with his eyes for a moment. “I gather this is somehow Endera's mistake.”

“She knew the risk.” Ariadel abruptly set down her cup. “The knowledge was worth it. And she knew that her sister at Zal'nehara would protect me. The Daughters of the Sea have been searching for the Vkortha fortress unsuccessfully for years.”

Knowing it would be futile to mask his ignorance, Vidarian simply asked: “The sea is their domain, and they could not find the island? And if you have told others, why are you alone hunted?”

“Their domain was their weakness. They are too familiar with the environs of water, and the Vkortha have many layers of telepathic camouflage on the island. It took fire to penetrate them, for they were woven in with the patterns of the ocean itself, with which the Zal'neharans were too familiar. And I have told no one else. Endera has a certain latitude from Kara'zul, but they would not have approved of any such official cooperation with Zal'nehara, and know nothing of my efforts or hers.”

Vidarian shook his head, with a terse smile. “I won't pretend to understand temple politics.” He would have said more, but three tones from a brass bell atop ship cut him short. Setting the cup aside, he offered his hand to Ariadel. “If you'll excuse me?”

Her touch was like fire-not surprising, perhaps, if one had time to think about it. Vidarian hadn't. And like fire, it didn't let go easily. “Captain, I have little doubt that Endera tricked you into this.”

Vidarian laughed softly, dodging her earnestness by dint of a quick step backward and a respectful half-bow. “It was my own folly, Priestess, and I intend to make the most of it. The Quest and her crew have no equal on the sea, I promise you that.”

For the next two weeks Ariadel could rarely be seen abovedeck, plagued as she was with seasickness. Or it was certainly sickness, and certainly from the sea travel, but unlike any Vidarian had ever seen. She spent most of her time in meditation, and was friendly if demure at meals with the crew-she had even entirely won Marks, the cook, to her side by dint of her willingly shared Velinese cooking techniques.

No one on a Rulorat ship would be intimidated by ability, but Marks, an old stick of a ship's cook who had served under Vidarian's father, had a certain pronounced discomfort when it came to revealing admiration for the priestess's particular expertise. When pressed, he was a stoppered bottle uncorked-“And her knife skills, Captain-I know chaps'd pay good honest scratch at the academy to watch that woman shred ginger!”-but each admission came with guilt more worthy of an eastern cathedral. Because only Vidarian of all the crew knew that Marks had, in his youth, aspired to be a land chef in one of the imperial courts, he was the sole recipient of the cook's confessions, and so over the course of those first early weeks acquired, not quite willingly, a rather thorough education in the culinary comparison between the Velinese mainland and the sprawling southeastern empire.

When not administering jovial cooking lessons, and instead caught unsuspecting by a knock at her door, the priestess's eyes had a furtive look, pinched as if all the world were pressing down upon her. But by the third week she'd improved significantly, enough to explore the ship in earnest. While making the rounds one morning Vidarian noticed a suspicious amount of handiwork being done aft on the main deck: net weaving, sail patching, minor woodwork-someone had even hauled a barrel up from stowage for recaulking.

He found Ariadel at the eye of the storm, whispering to the lamps. The sight brought him up short, and he only realized he was staring when Calgrath, a spry and time-wrinkled topman who as far as Vidarian knew hadn't actually aged in a decade, addressed him in an awed mutter.

“Somethin’ else, ain't it, Cap'n? She been at it all morning-already fixed the row lights along the port corridor.” Vidarian almost quailed to hear the reverent note in Calgrath's voice; he'd seen the man stoically extract sea urchin spines from a cabin boy's foot, fight a pirate with only a flying jib to his back, and laugh through a storm that sent half a dozen salted sailors back to land permanently. In fifteen years only the moonlit glaciers of Val Morhan had awed him.

As the priestess whispered to each lamp, the cuffs of her velvet robe hiding her raised hands and obscuring her words, the flame within leapt up like a loyal puppy to a long-missed master. She left a trail of bright flames behind her, and yet with every invigorated flame the assembled crew collectively held its breath.

Vidarian cleared his throat sternly, and the spell was broken. Crewmen and -women jumped in startlement, then made a good show of shouting duties to one another as they returned to their assigned work. Vidarian did his part by glaring in dissatisfaction, but he couldn't help being relieved for all their sakes that it was him who caught them gawking and not Marielle. The first mate had been efficient and professional as always, but one swore the skyglass climbed whenever she and the priestess were within ten feet.

Having completed charming the lamps, the priestess was asking Revelle Amberwight, munitions lieutenant, about the location of the stored powder when Vidarian closed enough to make out her words. The officer colored, her high cheeks darkening, and made her apologies as Vidarian approached, claiming urgent duty on a staff inspection, or surely she would be glad to give the priestess a personal tour. It might even have been true. She saluted as she hurried past.

“Something I can help you with, Priestess?” Vidarian asked, to defuse the puzzlement on the priestess's delicate features.

“I'd thought to look over your powder,” she said, courteous but not masking her eagerness. The curiosity of the priestesshood was legendary; few he knew had much experience with the followers of Sharli, but by the priestess's demeanor he assumed they must be much like the Nistrans, endlessly fascinated with poking at their chosen element and documenting how it twitched. Merchant vessels rarely complained-their curiosity was a generous one, and filled many a captain's purse. “My temple has been studying the dwindling potency of firearms enhanced in the last decade. We believe we may have a remedy.”

“I am not, as you might imagine, anxious to see my ship turned into a laboratory,” he prevaricated, thinking of Marielle and swallowing his immediate hope and greed. It was true, what she said: the past two decades, not just one, had seen the accelerating decline of distance weapons. It meant closer battles, when they couldn't be avoided. Uglier ones.

“It could mean a great difference to your defenses,” the priestess argued, echoing his thought. “I am, of course, eager to lend any assistance I may for your crew's welfare, and my own.”

“You'll want a sea test,” he allowed. “A hand cannon would be enough.”

“It would suit perfectly,” she smiled.

The scuttlebutt flew quickly, as it always did. By the time Vidarian had collected a hand cannon and gauge, a collection of observers had gathered at the windward bow. Marielle, by fortune or her own design, was relieving the quartermaster at the helm and thus out of sight.

Ellara Stillwether, munitions officer, accompanied Revelle and the priestess, observing the process carefully. She and her lieutenant took careful measurements, assisted by Lifan, their little windreader. The priestess had been shocked at first to discover a child on board; Vidarian, in turn, had been surprised that she was unfamiliar with the custom. Lifan was Ellara's cousin, and fiercely guarded; Ellara herself had served as windreader on the Quest, when she could-the ability faded with the onset of adolescence. Ariadel assured them that no such parallel existed for fire, which typically appeared after adolescence if at all. For Lifan's part, she was as brightly intelligent as her protector, and showed a steady knack for figures that made Vidarian sure she would one day follow in Ellara's footsteps, if the land didn't lure her away.

After a full battery of initial calculations was complete, Ellara meticulously loaded the hand cannon, tamped it, laid its neck across a mark on the bow, and fired. The shot echoed over the calm water, and when it finally arced down to splash into the blue, Revelle called out a time and trajectory estimate.

As they prepared for the second shot, Ellara solemnly passed the flask of powder to the priestess. What followed was significantly more satisfying to the attentive eyes of the crew than her earlier performance with the lamps. On the deck she spread a linen cloth, and upon this spread a measure of powder. With her hands just above it, but never touching, she began a rhythmic chant, twitching her fingers to its beat. Vidarian would admit to no one that his own heart lurched when the powder began to glow; the gasps of the crew were enough.

Gradually the glow faded, and the priestess tipped the powder back into its flask by rolling the linen into a funnel. She handed the flask back to Ellara, who accepted it with reverence barely masked by her outward veneer of skepticism, and wadded the linen away into a pocket, of which her robe seemed to contain many.

Without ceremony Ellara directed Revelle and Lifan to take their readings again, and they complied swiftly. Then Ellara loaded the cannon once more, her movements as measured and diligent as if she were at her officer's test again.

The crew erupted in a furor as the shot sailed out across the water, easily a third again the distance of the first. Some whooped with delight, others murmured appreciation or amazement-and above them all, Ellara voiced a strident cry that checked the others. “Captain! Our calculations!” Her dark eyes were flinty with concern, darting as they doubtless racked through the hundreds of adjustments that the priestess's powder implied for their defenses.

“Ms. Amberwight,” Vidarian spoke without turning from the water. “My quarters. You'll find a red leather book on the third shelf. Fetch it, please.” The priestess's head tilted in inquiry as the lieutenant saluted and hurried off. “My grandfather's log,” he explained. “He had a fascination with munitions. The middle section is entirely devoted to trajectory calculation tables. Outdated, we thought, even in my father's time.” He laughed.

In moments Revelle had returned with the requested volume. She offered it to Vidarian, but he gestured instead to Ellara, who looked about ready to pounce. Or explode. She was too professional-narrowly-to seize it from her lieutenant's unprepared hands, but neither did she waste time in finding the page Vidarian directed her to.

“The measurement is quite close,” Ellara said, her eyes intense on the text when they weren't darting to her wax tablet for comparison. “We'll want to run more tests…”

“There should be enough of the new powder for several,” Ariadel offered. She seemed slightly fatigued, but satisfied as a housecat, leaning against the bow.

The sun was beginning to drop over the water to the leeward side, and here the forecastle cast a long shadow that just reached them. Celer, one of the two cabin boys, had fetched a lamp and now bore it up near them, a fine excuse to get a close-up look at the powder that his height had not previously afforded. A glint from the priestess's hands caught Vidarian's eye; a pale blue residue clung to her palms. Vidarian wouldn't have noticed it if not for the flickering lamp, but as she lifted her hand, the residue glittered like powdered graphite. And yet she had not touched the powder.

“The tests, I'm afraid, should rightly wait for tomorrow, and daylight,” Vidarian said, and though both Ellara and Revelle looked as though they'd like to object, they could hardly slow the sun, and quelled their objections. Ellara surely was mentally concocting some way to float lamps on the sea's surface so as to prolong the experiment, but she would have to settle for poring over the elder Rulorat's book into the deep hours of the night, as she doubtless would.

“Priestess, if I may?” Calgrath offered, and Vidarian turned to him in surprise. He gave a little bow, excusing himself, but continued, “Our medical kit? Surely-”

“It would take a trained specialist in the medical arts to adjust those. I dare not risk imbalancing them,” Ariadel apologized, and added, “I'm sure your ship's mender has them in the best condition possible.” This won a smile from the old seaman; the priestess could not know that the mender in question, currently on a watch shift if Vidarian recalled the day roster, was Calgrath's younger brother-in-law; but the keenness in the old man's eye when it came to medicine should have told her enough.

“Priestess, a word, at your convenience?” Vidarian ventured, and Calgrath bowed himself away.

“Of course, Captain.”

Back in the wood-varnish embrace of the forecastle anteroom, Vidarian sat quietly, not speaking, while Marielle, off from her shift at the helm, delivered the familiar silver tea service from the galley, almost certainly prompted by Marks. The grey kitten, which had been confined to the forecastle after three times managing to raid the galley (and nearly losing its life to the cook on the third) slept soundly, curled on a brocaded chair.

“Will you be liking anything else?” Marielle asked coolly, once she'd settled the tray. She was a scant degree off, in the angle of her hips, from bodychecking the priestess, as if to deny her presence.

“No, thank you, Ms. Solandt.”

“Very good, sir,” she nodded, and finally spared a glance for the priestess, out of protocol. “Nistra's peace.” She bowed, and left, shutting the door behind her.

The priestess permitted herself a soft laugh once the door was safely closed.

“Something amuses you, Priestess?” Vidarian couldn't quite keep the frost out of his tone.

Her laughter stilled. “Just an odd expression, it strikes me,” she said, and leaned forward, folding her hands self-consciously. “It seems I've done something to offend you, Captain.”

“Only insofar as you've been playing tricks on my crew, Priestess,” Vidarian said. “Neither they, nor I, deserve such.”

The priestess's eyes widened; her etiquette training surely did not cover direct confrontation. Better, Vidarian thought, that she learn sea ways quickly-he reined in his anger to a cold implacability, but was startled, himself, to find that there was disappointment there as well.

When she didn't answer, Vidarian continued, “There was something on your hands. You added it to the powder.”

She stiffened. “I said that we had a remedy, not that it was supernatural.”

“But the chanting, the hand-waving, the glowing. The lamps. Trickery, yes?” As he spoke he heard his father's anger in his own voice, the rumble of distant thunder.

“They're not fairly ‘tricks,'” the priestess insisted hotly. “They do work.” Now her hands came together under the cuffs of the robe, vanishing.

“But it's nothing to do with elemental manipulation.”

“It's nothing to do with my elemental ability,” she corrected, but reluctantly, a deer brought to bay. “It is manipulation.”

“Why?” he asked simply.

She surprised him by sliding to her feet, rising gracefully as a courtier. She inspected her upturned palms ruefully, then brushed them against the velvet robe. A pang of uneasy guilt shot through him at the distressed curve of her shoulders, the set of her jaw. He'd meant to chasten her, to demand forthrightness, but not to wound her. “I've never been skilled with the necessary deceptions,” she sighed.

“Necessary?” His voice was sharp again, and he took a deep breath. “Why should deception be necessary?” he continued, willing his grandmother's civility, calling up arduous etiquette lessons from his childhood.

She turned, the robe swaying gracefully with her, but with more weight, his sharper eye concluded, than velvet should account for. “Your people have noticed the fading of your tools, you've said as much yourself-over decades.” He nodded, but rather than pursuing her case, the priestess bafflingly turned away again, and then back to him. She searched for something in his eyes, boring into him until he could feel his cheeks heating. “What I'm about to say would have me confined to Sher'azar for a decade, if Endera or anyone else found out,” she began, but now that she had committed this much did not hesitate. “The tools aren't simply fading. Our ability to manipulate the elements has also been dwindling-not merely for decades, but for the better part of a century.”

A cold fist of dread clenched in his stomach. “The sea wars-”

“-were the beginning of the unrest,” she agreed. “A great change is coming. We've seen this dwindling accelerate in the last decade, and now-”

“-the Vkortha,” he finished for her, and again she nodded.

Silence stretched between them. The kitten, according to the enigmatic internal logic of cats, had slept through their heated discussion, but now awakened and stretched. The priestess picked it up, coaxing a rattling purr out of its thin chest with a few strokes of its back, and settled herself on the chair it had just been occupying.

“Strange doings,” Vidarian said at last, folding his hands. “I can't begin to comprehend them. But I also have never seen willful deception come to a good end. I still do not now see why this cannot be explained to my crew.”

“Do you tell your crew every smallest detail of your charting decisions, your courses, which contracts you accept and which you do not?” she asked, scratching the kitten behind its ears. It purred louder, then rolled under her hand, kicking upward with its feet and attacking her playfully. She wrestled back for a moment, then released it onto the carpet.

“Not every detail,” he said, bound by his own honor to honesty, though unsure what he was admitting, exactly.

“Yet they follow you, because you are their captain,” she said, looking up at him again. “If you were to democratically decide every detail, the ship would never move.”

“I do not demand their deceived belief,” he said. “That's something else entirely.”

“But we do not truly deceive,” she insisted, and the intent sincerity in her wide eyes was more disarming than he'd have liked to admit. “The benefits that I have provided to your ship are genuine.” That he could not deny, and the fervor in her voice was not sternness but ardent conviction. “Captain, you must believe me, that what I have seen as a priestess of Sharli, again and again, is that the priestesshood is needed. The priestesshood alone retains the records of these fluctuations in elemental energy, and if we are to survive, we require the support of the common folk, which comes only when they believe that we are still capable of our foremothers’ deeds.”

“I will not argue against that cannon shot, and I am grateful,” he said. “But can you really be so sure that the priestesshood knows best?”

She smiled, asking with her eyes if he was so sure about baiting her. He smiled back. “I'm never sure of anything,” she said. “As the philosopher Veldaus said, ‘the sure mind is the closed one, capable only of repetition.'”

“You certainly seemed sure of him,” Vidarian said, nodding at the kitten, which was presently attacking a tasseled end of the table runner.

“Her,” Ariadel corrected absently. “I apologize for unsettling you,” she said, her head tilting in what Vidarian was sure was sincere puzzlement. “I don't know what came over me. It's against my training to hold with such impulsive superstition.”

He laughed before he could stop himself. “A fire priestess? Trained against superstition?”

She colored slightly, but her smile was gentle; the sudden thought of Endera even attempting such an expression surprised Vidarian with its absurdity. This Ariadel was obviously unlike any fire priestess Vidarian had known. “You must have little experience with priestesses,” she said, echoing his thought. “Although the common folk”-her eyes dropped to the tray Marielle had brought in, surely unconsciously-“permitted and, yes, even encouraged their superstitions, the priestesshood rigorously trains against such things.”

“Yet I must bear them in my crew.” He sighed, and at her worried glance, smiled again, wryly. “Fear not. I will not betray your secrets. But I will appreciate your honesty in private, at least.”

“That I can promise you,” she said, and he gave a little half-bow of thanks from his seat.

Beneath them, the ship was moving, turning on its course. Vidarian's stomach clenched again, for he knew their place on the chart. They angled southwest, the prevailing south wind dropping from belled sails; in such fashion did the Empress Quest enter the Outwater. And her lights blazed bright against the great dark sea of the night sky.

One week later Vidarian sat closeted in the aft cabin, door firmly shut and commanding officers instructed to ensure that the priestess stayed on the other side of the Quest for a brief duration. When he was satisfied that all was secure, he settled down on the bench bed and drew his sword.

Since Endera's description of steel's “remembrance” he couldn't quite look at his ancestral blade the same way. The longsword, light and strong with the slightest arcing curve to the blade, was as old as the Empress Quest-five generations past, and Vidarian was the sixth. If what Endera said was right, some fraction of his grandfathers’ souls remained in the blade.

Sunlight filtered down through the blue and green stained glass set into the back portholes of the cabin, bathing him in gentle aquamarine light. It slid across glimmering steel like foam along a beach as he turned his arm, feeling the familiar weight of the three-quarter-tang blade and its mahogany covered hilt. As always it felt like an extension of his hand, the weight of his family settling like a protecting mantle about his shoulders.

The square of flattened steel just above the sword's silver-plated crossguard bore six names-and when Vidarian fathered a son, his name would be chiseled in below them at the boy's thirtieth birthday. Seven generations did not make for an ancient tradition, but theirs was sound, and its weight rested heavily in Vidarian's palm.

As was sometimes his habit, he sat contemplating the names for a time; having long since memorized every serif and curve, the letters were familiar, almost mesmerizing. He was still staring at them when the first shouts rang out abovedeck, pierced by the emergency cry of the boatswain's pipe-ship sighted, ship closing.

Vidarian sprang to his feet and only just remembered to sheathe the blade before thundering out the door of the cabin.

High afternoon sunlight lanced his eyes as he ran out onto the deck. Men were boiling up the ladders at either end of the ship, and Calgrath, perched in his customary position in the crow's nest, was bellowing down.

“Captain! Ship sighted off th’ port bow! It's the Starless, sir, and she be closin’ swift!”

Spitting a curse, Vidarian began roaring commands. Fast as the Empress Quest was, she was no match for the Starless Night, a pirate vessel known for breaking speed records as a matter of annual sport. And she'd been lurking, to appear so suddenly. Off to port was a collection of tiny islands wreathed by perilous shoals, all but invisible in the dark waters; it was madness verging on suicide to plant a ship there, but that was a fair description of Vanderken's strategy.

Marielle met him at the wheel. She was already shouting orders to the rest of the crew, but paused to exchange a few low voiced words with Vidarian. “Captain, these're not Starless waters. She hasn't been seen in these parts for over two years! Mighty odd if you ask me.”

“Right now it's best not to ask, Ms. Solandt. Just get me every cannon aboard aimed at that loveless craft!” Taking a sighting from the compass at his right, Vidarian spun hard on the wheel, bringing the Quest about as hard as she would bear, swinging her slender bowsprit around to face the Starless. “Solandt!” he shouted, remembering something. Marielle answered with an “Aye?” from across the deck. “Get someone to the priestess-keep her below deck! Once she's secure, get back up here and unlock the fore starboard chest-I'll not have these men meet Vanderken with rusted weapons!”

“Aye, sir!”

The orders were rapidly carried out, and well for it, too, as the Starless was closing with disturbing swiftness. Within moments, it seemed, cannon-fire boomed on the distant waves, falling short of the Quest, but not nearly short enough.

The wind was against the opposing vessel but she plowed on unconcerned. The Quest's arc shortly brought her around nearly ninety degrees to her own wake, presenting her gallant and cannon-studded port bow to the rapidly closing Starless. “All cannons fire when ready!” came the distant shout from Marielle, and Vidarian held the wheel firmly on course.

A resounding BOOM! shook the deck as the Quest opened fire, the priestess's augmented powder performing superbly; the crew roared to hear such play. The Starless, steady on her approach and moving too swiftly to accurately gauge position, could not avoid the shot in time, and took a hit to her highest mast. Her answering forward salvo was equally ineffective, thrown off by the damage to the high sails, but it spat salten spray across the Empress and her crew.

“All cannons take aim on her stern! Those who haven't armed, do so-we won't be so lucky again!” A tense but full-volumed shout answered Vidarian's command as crewmembers scurried across the deck.

The Starless loomed still closer, weakened but not deterred by the hit to her high mast. Spinning the wheel to starboard, Vidarian turned the Quest rapidly on the water, taking advantage of her deep keel to bring her side out of range of the enemy's punishing cannon.

But the fire that he expected never came. Instead, a volley of grapeshot filled the air with a sickening hiss, and pelted in a vicious, stinging rain against the Empress's forward sails, caught not yet furled for battle. Vidarian's stomach sank as their forward momentum fell away.

A comparatively slow ship made slower, the Quest now had no chance at flight; Vanderken and his crew would board, it was just a matter of time. Rather than stall the inevitable, Vidarian called Marielle to the wheel and left her to steer. The Rulorat sword sang its freedom from the sheath, and with his free hand Vidarian took up rope from a braided ladder and began to climb the main mast.

When he was halfway up, Vidarian could make out the stalwart form of the enemy captain astride the deck of the Starless Night. Vanderken raised his own sword in a salute, and though his grin could not be ascertained with the eyes, it was evident in his voice.

“Ahoy, Captain Rulorat! It's been some time!”

“Not long enough, Vanderken! And ‘twill not be until your thrice-damned ship ceases to poison these waters!”

“Now, my boy, what manner of greeting is that for an old chum?” Vanderken's voice grew in volume as the Starless continued its inexorable approach.

“Do you see that pennant, Vanderken?” Vidarian shouted, pointing his sword at the banner of Sharli that now flew from the crow's nest. “Would you be so quick to challenge a goddess?”

“Flags and faerie dust, lad!” His laugh carried flat and sharp across the water. “This be Nistra's bosom! Now you just wait right there!”

Moments later, a sickening crash joined the two vessels at the bow, punctuated by musket-fire as the crews exchanged volleys. Enhanced powder or not, it would not be a good fight; by the numbers pouring out of Vanderken's ship, he had, as was his custom, overloaded his berths, and appeared to have roughly a three-to-two ratio on the Empress's crew: hardened murderers, all. Swinging down from the mast, Vidarian ran to the starboard bow, leaping up to the thick rail. Mercilessly he kicked an enemy sailor into the brine as he caught his bearings, and waited for Vanderken to approach.

The captain of the Starless styled himself a “real” pirate; he did not hang back behind his crew, but foraged up with them. Men fell on both sides as muskets took their toll on the ranks, but out of custom none touched the region around the two captains.

Finally Vanderken leapt across the brief gap between the two ships’ starboard bows, landing hard on the deck of the Empress. Vidarian raised his blade and waited, a snarl of disgust on his lips.

Vanderken's sword was a lighter one, and he was quick as a viper with it. Still, Vidarian's defense held, and throughout their first clashing exchanges, neither man gained ground. Vidarian came in high, Vanderken slid the blade away along his own; back and forth they went.

“Tell me, Vanderken-how does one sleep, with infamy like yours?” Though fatigue now warmed his chest, Vidarian paced his breathing so as to seem effortless, baiting Vanderken into expending his own on a tirade.

“In a world so twisted as this, give me infamy over honor,” Vanderken said, breathing with each thrust, unfazed by Vidarian's ploy. “Give me infamy,” he growled again, and a pulse of dread shot through Vidarian's heart at the pure hate in his voice, “over pandering to the land-maggots. I sleep like a babe-”

When a bass explosion rocked the deck of the Empress, Vidarian staggered backward in shock-but Ulweis Vanderken only laughed. “What madness is this?” Vidarian demanded, but the other captain's eyes were on the site of the explosion.

Vidarian had not yet turned away from his opponent, and so saw the look in his eyes when triumph metamorphosed to horror.

It would later be recalled that the burning Eyes of Sharli descended overhead from a bank of clouds that boiled up out of the red sea. A demoness, her eyes rimed with hellfire, had stormed up out of the belly of the Empress and unleashed the fury of ten worlds upon the crew of the Starless Night-a fury of myth, of universes filled with fire. Brilliant blue flames shot from the pair of golden eyes that seared themselves into the memory of every crewman, igniting the pirate vessel's sails and burning them to ash in seconds. Then the sea around the craft began to boil, and it seemed that the very air caught fire. Men, all who had crewed the Starless but none from the Empress Quest, found that their clothing combusted and their skin burned. They leapt from the ship, attempting to douse the flames in the sea, but found no mercy there in the bubbling depths. Vidarian remembered only that his sword began to incandesce, pulsing like a living thing, as the enemy captain staggered back from him.

Vanderken ran back to his ship, jaw slack with disbelief, to stand aboard the crumbling bow as the turgid waves rolled up in a burning frenzy and washed him from the world.

In the aftermath, only a single crewman remained from the Starless-a midshipman, by the knots on his sleeve. He only had three real teeth, but made up for it in muscle mass, and had survived the firestorm only by having enough sense to douse himself in one of the Empress's fire-fighting barrels rather than pitching himself into the boiling sea. Still, he had taken many burns, and was unconscious.

When Vidarian went to find Ilsut, the ship's healer, he found him carefully but quickly finishing the ties on a sling that bound Marielle's entire right arm, splinted at forearm and upper, to her chest. Vidarian stopped short at the infirmary threshold, stricken. When Ilsut rose, there was no note of accusation in his dark eyes, only purpose, but his hurried nod as he gathered his tools and made for the front of the ship released a wall of guilt to crash through Vidarian's shock.

“Marielle,” he said quietly, then stopped, lost again. No use asking how bad the injury was; without doubt, it sealed the only issue of any importance: that she would not be eligible for promotion within the emperor's admiralty, not this year, at least. It was well known that Captain Theravar of the imperial coastrunner Ardent intended to retire within six months; Marielle had been favored by the College for the post, had fought long and hard for years. Most of the crew knew that she kept a tiny and expensive scale model of the Ardent in her quarters, bought last year when Theravar's coming retirement was announced. But the injury would disqualify her from the-however damnably ceremonial-ritual drills that tested imperial captains.

In her exhaustion-not, Vidarian would not allow himself to think, defeat-her usually precise diction faded into the snarled ship-speak of her humbler youth: “Belay that, Cap'n. The time it could've availed me's long past, so it's naught but empty words.”

He knelt, heedless of protocol. “If it is in my power to correct this, after we've returned, you know that I will.” He searched her posture for hope, for the spirit that had driven her these many years. For forgiveness.

She would not look at him, and he had known her too long to think it was out of fear. “You did your duty, Captain. I'll do mine. ‘Twas my choice setting foot on this ship, knowing what I did.”

He moved to try again, mustering a stern argument about acts of heroism and the Naval College, but at that moment Lifan appeared in the doorway. “Sir? The midshipman. He's regained consciousness.”

Vidarian looked from his first mate to the windreader. Lifan, hidden away from the fighting, nonetheless was now seeing its aftermath. Though she bore up bravely, she was shaken as any child would be. He stood, thanked her, ruffled her hair affectionately (and took some small relief in the relaxing of her taut shoulders after; the reassured smile-at least he could do that much), and headed for the quarterdeck.

The ship's carpenter had been supplied and dispatched to take care of what mast damage he could with tar and rope, and what crew not assigned to assisting him or other repair work had gathered around Ilsut and Vanderken's midshipman.

“Ye warned them, Cap'n, there be no shame in what they got.” This was one of many statements in response to Vidarian's grave demeanor. Little did they know that his concern could be measured less than nothing for Vanderken and his lice-ridden crew.

“Agreed,” Vidarian murmured, startling them by lifting his voice for the first time since the Starless had gone down. “They should have known the consequences.” His eyes rested, not on the poor wretch before them, but on the ladder down into the hold.

“But why would they risk their entire crew to board, Cap'n? It don't make no sense.”

“That,” Vidarian answered grimly, drawing his sword and resting its tip on the shoulder of the bleary survivor, “is precisely what I intend to find out.”

Vidarian had hardened himself to the notion of a grueling interrogation, but in the end it was very simple. When Ellara, unasked, had fetched Ariadel, they had no need of so much as rope for restraining. The midshipman began to weep and babble as soon as her cloaked figure appeared in the doorway.

Ellara gave Vidarian a nod, then turned to face the rapidly confessing prisoner. Vidarian offered the priestess his arm and they retreated from the quarterdeck, the sounds of a grown man's sobbing following them in echoes off the wooden walls.

If Ariadel's touch before was fire, her hand on his arm now was a brush of palest smoke. The faint scent of it even seemed to cling to her presence, though he wasn't sure if it was merely his imagination. Her feet barely seemed to touch the deck as she walked, and her skin was a uniform angry red in color. Darker rose marked her cheeks in a persistent flush.

In silence they walked the length of the deck, finally approaching the ladder that led up into the forecastle. When they reached the anteroom, Vidarian led the priestess to a high-backed chair, then moved to close both of the doors. When they were secure, he returned and set about pouring kava for both of them. Without being asked, he treated hers liberally with brown sugar and verali cream.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, handing her the cup.

She nodded. “I'll be fine.” Her voice was not quite a whisper.

Vidarian settled down into a chair opposite hers, fingers laced around his own silver cup. “Then perhaps you can tell me what in the name of all that's holy happened out there.”

“I called on Sharli-and she answered.”

“I'm afraid that's not good enough, Priestess. I know you are weary, but if my guess is correct, the Vkortha now know our exact position.” Memory recalled to him the sensation of burning steel filling his hand, and it hardened his words. “Why did you come abovedeck?”

The priestess's body language conveyed a blush, but with the current state of her skin it was impossible to tell. “Men were breaking into the lower hold,” she said, emotion coloring her hoarse voice. “They set off some kind of explosive. I-panicked a little, I'll admit. I called on Sharli. I did not expect her to answer-so forcefully. It was she who ascended the staircase.”

“And left your body like this?”

Ariadel nodded. “It will pass within a few days. I experienced this at my initiation rite, much more dramatically than this. Sharli is the Living Flame; we cannot host her in our mortal bodies without some aftereffect.”

Vidarian frowned, subdued. He finished his kava before answering, letting the warmth fill his stomach. “I have already directed our warrant officer to set a course for the nearest port. We will pick up medical supplies there. I have some here, of course, but none that would treat burns such as yours.”

The priestess straightened, wincing as her back thumped hard against the chair. “Captain, you said yourself, the Vkortha know our position. We cannot stop!”

Setting the empty cup on its tray, Vidarian shook his head. “I'm afraid we have no choice. There's only so much the ship's carpenter can do-one of their volleys cracked our aft mast, and we've sustained damage to the hull, not to mention the explosion site. Only the Empress's sound construction prevents her from taking on water even now. We must dock, if only for a little while.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'm sorry, Priestess.”

Ariadel sank down into her chair, staring. “Do not be, Captain. Sharli's will or no, this is on my shoulders-and I have endangered your crew.”

Vidarian leaned forward earnestly. “Think not on it, Priestess. My crew does not fear the danger you bring-you've seen it yourself.”

She laughed bitterly. “And now they avoid me in the passages, Captain. It will not be the same after this.”

“They'll get past it,” Vidarian insisted, though his own heart caved with doubt. “We've seen more than you might think.” He smiled then, and would have reached to pat her hand out of reflex, but caught himself in time. Instead he stood and gave her a bow, reminding them both of his duty. “The crew of the Empress Quest remains at your disposal, priestess. We will see you safely to your destination, I promise you.”

They sailed through the night and approached Westhill Harbor just as dawn was pooling crimson on the eastern horizon. The crew worked with silent efficiency to bring the Empress into port, dropping anchor under Marielle's direction, though Ilsut had ordered her restricted to her quarters. Vidarian selected a dozen crewmembers to accompany him ashore, separated into two groups. One group he intended to return to the Empress after the supply run-the other he did not.

As they were making their preparations to disembark, Vidarian stood before the door to Marielle's cabin. He adjusted the boatswain's pipe-captain's gold-around his neck, running his thumb across the engraved Rulorat lettering on its throat. Then he knocked.

Marielle opened the door, and a jolt of surprise registered in her eyes, fast fading with her perfunctory nod and salute. “Captain,” she said only, and pulled the door further in wordless invitation. The reef charts for Westhill were spread across her cot, but this was the only defiance of neatness. She was, of course, already packed.

He stepped inside and shut the door, then spared a moment to see if she would permit awkward silence between them.

She did. In another officer, such silence might be nervous, searching-a hound seeking approval, fearing reprimand-but Marielle's clear grey stare was predator's patience. Vidarian had only seen a wolf once, a caged creature kept by a wealthy nobleman who had employed the Quest on occasion. Even confined, the animal had looked at him just like this.

“I intend to take half of the crew inland,” he began, and when she opened her mouth to remind him she'd already been briefed, he raised his hand in a request to continue. “We'll need lumber for the hull repairs, and I aim to be displeased with Westhill's lot.”

Marielle's eyebrows lifted. “Westhill has perfectly fine lumber, sir. The coastal hardwood.” The tiniest kernel of her old willfulness was there, but only just.

“It may be fine for Westhill, but not for my Empress,” he said, thumping the nearest bulkhead for emphasis. “I'll demand red teak, what she's built of.” She straightened to object again, and he spoke quickly to cut her off. “A week inland, I know, and more than that on return. But there I'll split the land crew again. Half will fetch the lumber and cross coastward to meet you here,” he moved to the Westhill chart and indicated a spot back up the coast from their current position. “In two days, I'll return with the other half, and we'll hire passage on the next ship to pass through.”

“You, and the priestess,” Marielle continued for him, quick on the uptake as usual, though her voice and humor remained low. Then she started. “The Quest will sail without you.”

Even though it was his own plan, her words made his stomach drop. “Yes,” he said. “It will. After I've seen the priestess to Zal'nehara, we'll meet you back at Val Harlon.”

Marielle went to the charts on her cot, stirred them, ostensibly reading routes but clearly searching her thoughts. “And doing this you aim to shake the pursuit,” she said carefully, her eyes racing with branching speculation.

“That's one reason,” he said, and she made a rough noise, a growl in preparation for protest, but he cut her short with a shake of his head. “By turning over command of the Quest to you, by returning her to sea with you alone at the helm, you will have a field promotion according to the naval codes. And field captains…”

Marielle sucked in her breath, and paled, then flushed. Several things warred on her face-the tight stubbornness of her lips, the outrage in her flared nose-but more than anything, the wide, vulnerable hope in her eyes. The hope of a woman who had given up such frivolous things. He hated it, deeply: what their destinies had done to them. But he was not about to go down without a fight, and neither, ultimately, would she. “Field captains…are exempt from qualification drills,” she finished for him, with awe and disbelief at her own words.

“The war code,” he agreed. It had never been rescinded. Neither, however, had it been invoked in eighty years-since the last of the sea wars, ended when Vidarian's grandfather was a young man.

Marielle was silent for a long moment, her clouded eyes betraying thoughts turned inward. Thinking madly, Vidarian was sure, of a reason he could be wrong.

He laughed, startling her. “This must be the first time I've actually seen you speechless,” he said.

“I don't like it,” she said, finally.

“There you are,” he said. “Back to normal.”

“I'm serious, Vidarian,” she said. “Captain.” The hope had faded into worry, and he spared a wistful moment for it, memorizing what it had been like to see her so alight. “You've never been away from this ship so long. Your father was never.”

“And it is my family's mandate, my grandfather's action, that binds me now to this task,” he said, all levity forgotten. “It does not bind the crew. Therefore my duty to protect them, weighed with my duty to fulfill the-” She looked at him sharply, and he skated around the inflammatory term. “The Agreement made by my grandfather,” and the outrage faded a touch from her eyes, “demands this course.”

She shook her head again, but sighed, and he knew he had won. “Duty,” she mused, putting vinegar into the word.

“Mine,” he agreed, and removed the golden boatswain's pipe and its chain from his neck. He picked up her hand and pressed the pipe into it, curling her fingers around its precious throat. “And yours.”

Marielle looked down at her folded hand with trepidation and wonder. Yet, again, these were short-lived, as her shrewdness took over once more. Her fingers loosened around the pipe. The echo of his father's identical motion ten years ago shot through him like lightning, but Marielle's worried eyes brought him back to himself. “You don't have to do this,” she said.“There's no need-”

“I don't have to,” he agreed, and closed her fingers around the pipe again. “But it's my decision.”

“I thought not to change it,” she said simply. “But I will thank you.” Her voice was suddenly hoarse, as she brushed the pipe chain with the tips of her fingers, tracing it. Making sure, Vidarian thought, that it was real. “Thank you, sir.”

Vidarian drew her into a rough, brief embrace, and she cleared her throat repeatedly, blinking. “We can't escape our destinies,” he said, then withdrew, but gripped her firmly by the shoulder. “But we can use what power we have for the benefit of those deserving.”

Marielle returned the embrace, her hand steady on his collarbone. “Aye.” She lifted the pipe in a little toast. “And may neither of us regret it.”

Abovedeck, a clamor from the main deck drew Vidarian from making a final check of the carpenter's repair plan. The shouts from the crew were concerned, not panicked, and so he did not run, but moved quickly nonetheless for the foremast.

The crew had been loading supplies into the dories for their trip inland. Among the tools had been an ice barrel; Marks was supervising the unpacking of several measures of meat and fish for the land journey, and consolidating their ice to help preserve what remained. Ice, floated down the river from Kara'zul, was easily found in Val Harlon, and they'd taken on a quantity of it to ease the journey through the Outwater.

Ariadel had, beyond any sane explanation, doused herself in the reserved ice awaiting consolidation, and the water that the ice had melted into over the weeks at sea. She was drenched and shivering from top to waist, and was now being swathed in linen run up hurriedly from the hold.

“No accounting for ‘em,” Calgrath muttered as he passed, shaking his head, “the whims of priestesses.” Doutbless a thousand new superstitions would spring up around her latest escapade.

Vidarian went to see to her himself, aiming to find out why in the world she'd dunk herself in ice water, but as he accepted a quickly offered stack of linen from young Lifan, Ariadel spoke first, bringing him up short.

“You're nowhere near as sure of this plan as you'd like them to think,” she murmured, teeth chattering, and he looked around rapidly to see if anyone else had heard. “It's all right,” she added. “I understand.” And her quiet smile, given the impertinence of the observation, was entirely too warming.

As they disembarked into the dories, Marielle stood at the winch, captain's pipe in hand. Vidarian was sure she was unaware of how tightly she clenched it. At her right hand, Malloray Underbridge, a mute who'd served on the Quest since Vidarian's father's days, stood watching the distant harbor nervously, mouthing silent meditation chants. In the twenty-odd years Vidarian had known him he had never once set foot on shore-an odd fellow, but with an uncanny intuition for sea conditions and trade commodities that had kept him aboard on his own terms.

“Fair seas, Captain,” Vidarian said as his dory descended toward the water, saluting Marielle. At his accolade, Marielle straightened, saluting in return, and most of the crew couldn't hide their enthusiasm, grinning and returning her salute in kind. Whispered explanations passed through the group for those who looked around, not understanding, and then they took up their own shouted farewells and cat-calls. By the time the small passenger boats touched water, Marielle was shouting commands, her tone daring any who might test her authority, and quick footfalls echoed down from the deck as those left aboard leapt to. And in spite of their downward passage throwing the ship's damage into sharp relief, her side listing in a way that made Vidarian's heart lurch, he smiled as they set off across the harbor.

In Westhill, Vidarian made a great show of his dissatisfaction with the local hardwood, oscillating between the genteel apologies of a tradesman who dared not burn bridges in any port and the ravings of a foam-addled seafarer. In the end, he threw up his hands in mock surrender, by turns apologizing to the logging master and haranguing the quality of his product. When they left for the harbor's small livery stable to rent carts for the journey inland, despite the loss of business the loggers seemed relieved to see their backs.

Two men sat in the back of the last cart armed with muskets; they would be marked, no doubt, by passersby, but no more (or so Vidarian hoped) than the average commodity-bearing caravan. To further mask their intentions, they had also taken on a quantity of extra fruit in the carts; true merchantmen, on such a “tedious” mission, would have made the most of it by carrying goods to their inland destination, and so they did.

The priestess sat cloaked beside Vidarian as he drove the leading cart. Her color had improved somewhat, and her eyes looked less sore and watery. By midday, though she remained somewhat subdued, she carried her half of a conversation that helped pass the time (as only so much amusement could be derived from watching the back end of their grey mule).

As the road continued to stretch long before them, the topics grew increasingly familiar. “Priestess,” Vidarian said at last, “I really must know. Your, er, display with the ice barrel…” Ariadel flushed, opening her mouth for an obvious refutation, and Vidarian reminded her, “You pledged your honesty, for my ears if no other's.”

She was silent for a contemplative moment. “It was no esoteric ritual, if that's what you think, though the ‘how’ of it would likely surprise you.” At her abruptly solemn tone he almost regretted the question. Ariadel grew quiet for another uncomfortable stretch, then sighed. “I was trying to Quench myself.” She placed a peculiar emphasis on the word, but Vidarian had a shrewd-and stomach-sinking-idea of what she meant.

“Is that even possible?” he asked, finally.

“Supposedly. But I have no idea how to go about doing it. They do not teach us how.”

“But why?”

“To throw off the pursuit. It's trained to the signature of my ability- which now brings danger to us all.” She grew thoughtful again, and her grim contemplation put an end to conversation for the next several stretches of terrain. At last Vidarian called a halt, and they feasted, though with tense gaiety, on the provisions that comprised their “trade” shipment: foods that did not fare well in ship's storage but would be welcomed further inland. Marks waylaid two portions of the small crew into setting and tending cook-fires, and prepared their meal himself. In short order he had fresh fish crackling with butter and garlic on iron skillets and two rounds of creamy white cheese sliced onto soft bread. Fruit juice, nonintoxicating but a treat nonetheless, rounded out the meal.

In due course they were back on the road and Vidarian reflected briefly that land travel would never cease to annoy him. The mule's stubbornly slow pace grew maddening at times, and the surrounding territory, while lush compared to most, seemed dull and lifeless against the endless flow and mysterious depth of the open sea. He spent some time mentally critiquing the landscape, until finally they arrived at their destination.

At a tiny town, really more a trader's waypost than a settlement, the crew halved and parted ways. One cart continued on to collect the promised red teak and trade the rest of their goods further east, while Vidarian, the priestess, and three crewmen stopped at the town. For any natural pursuer it would have been a neat plan, but Ariadel did not seem reassured.

A handful of coin bought them dinner and beds of sweet hay in a farmer's barn, both cheerfully delivered by a family only too happy to see silver come into their hands. When captain and crew adjourned to their lodgings armed with large bowls of ham and pea soup, the farmer's children were gleefully discussing what they'd purchase at the next coastal faire.

After dinner, the crew divided up the rest of the night into separate watches. The red-painted barn, though small, boasted a small tack room that they allocated to the priestess. A few carefully arranged bales of hay ensured that no one would gain entry to the makeshift safehouse without the knowledge of whomever stood guard beyond the door.

Vidarian took the last watch. In the late evening a storm blew into the valley, beginning as a squall and gradually increasing in intensity. Having spent only his early years on land, Vidarian had seen many storms rage across the open sea, but never one that spent such fury past the coastline. Stinging rain came down in solid sheets that turned immediately to ice upon striking the ground. Lightning crackled with strobe-like frequency in the lightless predawn, illuminating the deranged spires and windblown shocks of ice that formed along walls, doors, windows, and anything that showed itself above the ground.

The old barn creaked in the howling wind, but within all was quiet, and the structure had been built well-their hay remained dry. Accustomed to their smaller berths aboard the Empress, the crew slept solidly in the comparatively larger space of the barn's loft-but in the tack room a light still shone when Calgrath woke Vidarian for his watch.

Squinting at the glow beneath the door, Vidarian paced each long wall of the barn, then came to sit in the pool of golden light. The storm thundered on and yet the light did not waver, and after two hours Vidarian turned, venturing a glance between the door's hinges.

Inside, sitting on a pile of furs loaned her by the farmer's wife, Ariadel stared fixedly into a tall candleflame that neither wavered nor consumed the blackened wick on which it rested. Fascinated by its stillness, Vidarian found himself staring into the flame as well-and when he came back to himself with a start, he gave an involuntary jerk of his right arm, thudding it soundly into the door. Cursing to himself, he stood and continued to peer inside.

The priestess blinked slowly, a dreamer ascending gradually from a deep sleep. Bit by bit she came back to herself, first moving her hands to touch the furs with marked unfamiliarity, then finally standing and squinting myopically at the door. Moments later she stirred again and moved to open it.

“Good evening, Captain,” she whispered. Her color had improved yet more and seemed almost entirely back to normal.

“Good morning, Priestess,” Vidarian answered, sotto voce and abashed by his accidental movement. “I did not mean to disturb you.”

She smiled tiredly. “Sometimes one wishes to be disturbed. Please come in, I would not wake the crew.”

Still not fully apprised of himself, Vidarian could only nod, then duck inside the tack room at her invitation.

As the door clicked shut the storm receded even further from hearing, muffled by stacked bales of hay that insulated the tack room against noise from beyond the exterior wall. The scent of leather still lingered in the warmer air, although the tack itself had been shut away in storage chests before its many meticulously polished buckles, bits, and cinches could betray the priestess's presence.

Taking a seat on one of the bales, Vidarian squinted in the low light of the candle whose glow had so entranced him from outside the little room. As before, it neither wavered nor dimmed-but up close it was vastly more fascinating. Within the tapered flame he imagined that he could see dragons twisting sinuous in bands of ochre and gold, braided with the image of a phoenix rising with burning wings atop them. The flame danced rhythmically without altering its light, pulsing with such regularity that it achieved an eerie steadiness that seemed to cast no moving shadow.

“It is a life flame,” Ariadel murmured, and regarded the little candle with motherly fondness. The flame, which continued its pulsing dance, had moved on to other refrains, now depicting a fiery horse galloping across a field of ever-curling clouds. How he saw these things he did not know, but somehow they emanated from the steady, almost iridescent light.

“It's beautiful,” he said quietly, without thinking. He felt more than saw Ariadel blink beside him, awakened slightly from her reverie at the intensity in his words. An apology on his lips, he turned back toward her, but her eyes were shut. With strange fluidity she began an intricate gesture, hands darting to and fro like leaping flames. The candleflame began to twist, and finally at the height of her movement it darted away from its wick, speeding swiftly between her fingers like a fleeing will-o'-wisp.

Ariadel's eyes burned golden as she opened them again. In that moment every image Vidarian had seen dancing through the life flame shone eclipsed by the depth in her dark eyes. Memories, not his own, rushed into his mind-the waiting fury of the Vkortha as a tangible weight on every inch of his skin; a pair of burning eyes searing into his soul from a distance too great to contemplate; a surge of catastrophic power (enough, he somehow knew, to level an entire city); a flickering flame small and vulnerable surrounded by the terrible, gushing sea. Then he returned to himself, reaching at the fleeing memories as a child after dancing butterflies.

Vidarian froze. He had closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he found he had indeed reached-and his hand rested upon the priestess's face. Slowly he registered the smooth, cool skin beneath his thumb, softer still at her neck where his fingers rested, and the silken locks of her hair brushing the back of his palm. Shock coursed like ice through his veins and he stuttered for a moment, darting to withdraw. But Ariadel only smiled, smoke on a sunset horizon, and closed the distance between them.

Her embrace was flame rushing into being where there had only been ember and tinder, but her lips were warm and real when they met his. Vidarian had only a fraction of a moment to reel in shock, and then he was lost again, falling through a world of singing fire.

Ariadel's hair shone in the light of the life flame just before it engulfed them both in sweet darkness, falling down to pool around Vidarian's head as they fell softly onto the pile of furs. The scent of her skin, a peculiar aroma of mingled cinnamon and sandalwood, soared into his senses, revealing a dizzying depth to the tantalizing hints that had come to him before always from a distance. Hesitant but compelled, his hands slid down around her slender waist, drawing her closer. Her teeth flashed white in the sporadic candlelight as she smiled again, and then his eyes slid closed as a rush of ecstasy accompanied her questing lips’ discovery of the hollow of his throat.

Moving to meet her, and driven beyond thought, he turned roughly on the furs, smiling.

Then there were two sounds, both so simultaneous as to be forever inseparable in his mind. Ariadel's smoky chuckle, a promise and a challenge at once-and the metallic hiss of his sword, forgotten, sliding loose from its scabbard as he moved.

All hell broke loose.

The storm that raged outside lurched tangibly, air pressure shifting with a nearly audible pop as its attention centered on the tiny farm. Vidarian and Ariadel, blinded by the shining light from the Rulorat sword, heard the crash of the two outer barn doors as the storm thundered down on its target. Less than a second later, the unnatural wind and punishing ice found the tack room and ripped away its door with a gut-wrenching creak of twisting metal and the snap of splintering wood.

Rolling to protect the priestess, Vidarian strong-armed the sword back into its place and staggered toward the back corner of the room, Ariadel under his arm. In raged the screaming storm, but it stopped when the light from the sword ceased, and curled like a predator reorienting on the scent of its prey. With a knowledge he did not understand, Vidarian sensed that the storm was not intelligent of itself, but was being driven, at great cost, from far away.

In frozen terror they watched as the spinning wind and frozen rain lashed out systematically, literally combusting the bales of hay stacked up around the back wall. Distant shouts sounded from beyond as the crew woke, but the eye of the storm now rested in the threshold to the tack room, and all beyond was consumed in a shrieking vortex.

The muffled cry of a cat sounded over the wind nearby as the foundling grey kitten darted from cover, seeing its hay bale ripped away into the storm. It staggered, crying piteously, still half asleep and stumbling in the wrong direction-toward the door.

To Vidarian's horror, Ariadel gave a dismayed shout and dove after the creature. He shouted in denial and warning, but it was too late.

The storm struck.

All was darkness, ice, and wind as the vortex leapt at its quarry. Ariadel's hands had just closed around the terrified kitten when the cyclone lifted her from the ground. Her scream came back to Vidarian as he strove with every muscle in his body to run toward the eye of the storm-then bellowed in panicked frustration as it only drove him backward.

And then it was gone. In a single moment the wild gale had fled with its prize, leaving a thundering silence in its wake. Rain-ordinary rain-began to fall outside the barn.

Vidarian's momentum carried him out of the tack room when the resistance of the cyclone disappeared out from under him. There he fell to his knees, landing hard on his upflung wrists and clenching the sodden earth of the barn floor in shock, anguish, and rage.

Dimly Vidarian became aware of the silent eyes of his crew, who gathered around him in a haphazard half circle, questioning fear in their eyes. This alone would not have fazed him, but Ariadel's absence and the accompanying tide of guilt somehow dragged at his very soul. It took a long moment for him to master himself.

Finally he stood, shaking dirt from his hands and water out of his eyes. His haggard voice was soft but implacable.

“Pack the carts. We're going after her.”

The crew was tense and quiet as they carried out Vidarian's command in the pale light of false-dawn. Every minute that passed itched at him to be on the road, but the storm had left more than significant damage, and he could not in good conscience abandon it to the farmer's repair. Finally, and with reluctance, he again split the crew, leaving behind one of the carts and six men to assist with repairs and then return to Westhill and the Empress Quest. To compensate for those repairs that could not be made without the purchase of additional hardware, he left the entire stock of goods from both carts-in the end, the farmer would make out handsomely, and did not complain.

Four men sat in silence on the road east, and three of them did not know where they were going. Neither did they ask.

At a tall sycamore marked along half its length with an ancient lightning scar Vidarian turned the cart onto a narrow trace that led up a steep and rocky hill. After an hour punctuated by the crackle of rocks that rolled away in the cart's wake, lush grapevines began to fill the fields around them as they passed from wild lands into tame. Now and then they caught sight of a female worker toiling among the trellises, but none offered a greeting.

They crested the hill and a sprawling but symmetrical structure of white stone came into view, mostly composed of columned terraces open to the air. Women moved among the simple courtyards and passed in and out of the buildings, but no one acknowledged the cart that trundled into their midst. The banner of Sharli snapped in the wind over the tallest column.

Swinging down from the cart, Vidarian handed the reins to Calgrath and strode toward the center building, passing undaunted through its towering supports. There, however, he stopped-he had no idea where to go from here. Long ago he had learned of this settlement of the fire priestesses, but only as a speck on a map.

More women passed through this central hall, most wearing the grey raiment of novices. They passed him a few veiled glances, but their eyes darted away when he tried to catch them. Finally he addressed them all, “I must speak with a priestess on behalf of a Daughter of Sharli. She is in great danger.” Tension sharpened his words, but it was only with the strictest discipline that he refrained from simply grabbing one of the novices and shaking them into cooperation.

He did not know when they appeared, or how long they had been watching, but there were three burgundy-robed women standing in the colonnaded threshold to one of the other buildings. They stared at him evenly and he noticed that the passing novices now gave him a wide berth. A very wide berth.

Clearing his throat self-consciously, he said, “I come to you on behalf of Priestess Ariadel Windhammer. She took passage with my ship under the authority of the Priestess Endera. This morning she was abducted by the enemy she fled, and even now is in their custody. I seek your help.”

“A clever ploy for a bandit, sir, even if you do carry the names of two of our sisters.” The priestess furthest to the right, shorter than the other two, eyed him coolly. Fury rose, but he schooled it, lifting a hand to mimic the gesture he had seen Ariadel perform to summon her life flame. As his hands moved from memory he ground down on the abrupt convulsion in his heart, the freshened recollection burning guilt into his mind anew.

He felt nothing, but when he completed the gesture the three priestesses drew back as if pulled by a single string. They stared, and he did not know whether they were aghast or merely disgusted.

Finally one spoke, her voice quick and dangerously nonchalant. “Where did you learn that?”

“I saw it performed the night before Ariadel was taken. I have a very good memory.”

She frowned. “Apparently so. Come.” With that, and no alteration in her expression, she turned, sweeping down the hallway like a ship at full sail. Vidarian hastened to follow.

The priestess's heels echoed on the marble floor as they traversed a narrow hallway. At her raised hand, the other two gave identical demure nods and turned off at a crossway, disappearing down the passages. After some thirty feet, along which the decorations that filled occasional niches in the walls grew increasingly ornate, they came to a door that swung open under the attention of a grey-robed novice.

Tall and golden-haired, the priestess turned intensely blue eyes on Vidarian as she took a seat before a heavy ebony desk. “Now then,” she said quietly. “What can we do to aid you in your quest to return my Sister?”

“You know her?” Vidarian asked abruptly, surprised to be taken at his word so easily now.

“There are fewer full Sharlin priestesses than you might think. I do know of Ariadel, and the gesture you performed was her sign.”

“I see.” He scrutinized the priestess, but found no strategy. “I need passage to the High Temple at Kara'zul.”

Her demeanor slipped. “What?”

“Passage, I said. To Kara'zul. I must speak with Endera.”

“That is impossible. Only the inducted are permitted to travel to the High Temple.” At his visible umbrage, her brow furrowed. “I myself have been there only once.” When Vidarian did not waver, the priestess spoke again, folding her hands on the desk with earnestness. “I wish to help you, truly, but what you ask is not within my power.”

“Then who should I seek?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. “If you travel to the foot of the Mountains of Sher'azar, where Kara'zul lies beyond, you will find another conclave of our Order.”

“Sher'azar…those mountains are weeks away.” He spoke mostly to himself, a horrible discouragement sinking down around his shoulders, but she answered.

“Luck is with you in that much. Your crew must stay here, but there is another way for you to go, if you are strong enough.” A glint of speculation shone in her eyes, and it reminded him painfully of Ariadel.

“Show me.”

She smiled. “Go to your crew and tell them of your journey. I will bring the rest to you.”

When Vidarian returned to the cart he saw the crew in a new light. It was apparent that, throughout his passage in the halls of the fire priestesses, they had not spoken. Each sat slumped, eyes not quite focused, and he recognized their pain as his own. He cursed himself for not realizing that the crew might also blame themselves for not protecting Ariadel.

Breaking into a trot, he closed the gap between himself and the cart and swung up onto the driver's bench. Clasping Calgrath's shoulder, he shook the men from their introspection.

“The priestesses have agreed to help us,” he began, and they brightened, “but I must ask you to stay here. They have some way of giving me passage to Kara'zul, but only on the condition that you remain. I cannot ask it of you…” He trailed off, looking at them.

Calgrath glanced at the other two, then settled his eyes back on his captain. “We'll be here, sir.” With that, he reached up to clasp Vidarian's shoulder briefly, but firmly. The others nodded.

Vidarian was about to offer his thanks when all three of the other men suddenly gasped. Two of them reached for weapons. Expecting the worst, Vidarian turned.

Passing through a large archway came a trio of creatures, filing one at a time, that were straight out of a storybook. A very lethal storybook-one of those where the children get eaten at the end.

Their forequarters were of a goshawk, if a goshawk could be the size of a horse-complete with white and navy feathers and slightly unhinged-looking red eyes. The hindquarters were heavily built, something like a mountain lion's, but with claws that did not retract and which dug divots into the packed earth of the courtyard as they walked. Massive wings shifted with each supple movement and their tufted ears flicked to and fro with alertness.

Gryphons. The holy books said that each of the goddesses kept them, but he'd never quite believed it. Now he understood the statues that decorated nearly every elemental shrine he had visited before. None of them did the creatures justice.

While he was still gawking, the first of the three captured his gaze with burning red eyes. Then there was a voice in his head, coppery like the taste of fresh metal: // My, my, Captain. You look as if you've swallowed a fish sideways. //

It was too much. It was too gods-be-damned much. Vidarian, who had ridden three hurricanes and safely navigated Dead Man's Hook four times without breaking a sweat, fell over in a dead faint.

He woke to the sensation of being gently rocked in the embrace of a soft hammock. A faint creak as of braided hemp on wooden beams vouched for this illusion, and he could almost hear the rush of the sea. Vidarian opened his eyes to the sight of a soaring sky spreading overhead in every direction.

But the rhythmic pulse that vibrated in the air was not the rush of waves against a rocky coast.

As he looked around, bleary-eyed, Vidarian found that he rested in a large basket. The contraption sloped upward all around him, and the rim was just above his eyes. Further up still, three gryphons beat strongly and regularly at the air with long speckled wings, one to either side of him and one-smaller than the other two-directly before. It took him a long moment to calculate how high up they probably were.

One of the gryphons, a long-necked fellow to his right, must have seen Vidarian's bulging eyes. // Don't look down, // he warned, and this mind's voice was like salt on bread, sharp but humble. // It's a little startling if you haven't flown before. //

Vidarian stiffened as the creature's voice echoed in his mind. For once, the grief, restlessness, and guilt he had borne since Ariadel's capture worked for him; his anger forged a forced acceptance of the situation. A talking gryphon. It really wasn't that bad.

“My men!” Vidarian shouted finally, finding that he had to work even to hear himself above the beating of the gryphons’ wings. “I remember-er-collapsing…” Fainting. He hadn't really fainted, had he?

// You did indeed, Captain. // This from the gryphon to his left, her voice female like the first, though with no resemblance whatever to a human female's voice he couldn't say how he was sure. Her voice called up the warmth of a hickory-fueled hearth in winter, spiced and soothing. // We explained to the men that we had given you a traveling draught to ease your comfort in the air, and that it had acted faster than we expected. Fortunately, they believed us. // Vidarian felt a flush heating his cheeks. Likely the men knew exactly what had happened, but forgave him. As he moved further into the waking world, he found himself able to cope with a strange situation made much stranger.

“In the stories, you speak like men,” Vidarian shouted over the wind. The gryphon to his right clacked his beak, a sound like timber cracking. Cocking his large head to one side with catlike pupils flaring, he somehow looked surprised.

// What, with our voices? // The feathers all along the creature's long neck fanned outward and he released a trilling call that deafened Vidarian momentarily. It sounded like warbling laughter. // Speaking telepathically is not something easily explained in a children's book. But it is said once that we did speak your tongue, long ago. All things come full circle; perhaps we will speak again someday. //

Vidarian hunkered back down in the basket and pulled his coat shut against the wind. As he scooted toward the back of the basket to redistribute its weight, he found that it carried built-in wicker bins, three of which were tied securely and a fourth that was only loosely fixed. Curious, he peered inside, and found that it contained a smaller basket covered with white linen cloth.

// Help yourself, // the gryphon to his left offered, catching sight of his movements with her sharp eyes.

Vidarian needed no further invitation, discovering an abrupt wave of intense hunger that washed darkness across his vision. Within he found a waxed and stoppered bottle of a thick golden wine, two rounds of hard-crusted bread (curiously tangy, he found upon tearing one open and taking a bite), and equal portions of dried beef and fresh green grapes. Pausing every now and then as the basket gave a lurch and temporarily obliterated his appetite (// Sorry, breakage in the wind currents, // came quick apologies), over the next hour he made himself a simple but satisfying meal of the provisions.

Stomach full and heart empty, he finally allowed his weariness to overcome him. Though not knowing how in the lilting movements of the basket, he slept.

For the second time Vidarian woke in the basket's embrace, but this time it was discomfort that roused him. The gryphons were rapidly descending, and as they neared the earth he found an alarming pressure building up in his head.

// We're landing, // the forward gryphon announced, turning his head to look back on the passenger. // Move your jaw, it will loose the pressure in your ears. // Vidarian did as he was told and found to his relief that, after a slightly worrisome pop!, the pain did recede. This process repeated itself perhaps three times before the mountain below hove into view.

The gryphons’ great wings tore at the clouds as they descended, sending tendrils of thick moisture spiraling away in their wake. Directly below, golden-capped spires began to appear, and they sparkled in the mist.

“Is this Kara'zul?” he shouted.

// No, // the gryphon to his right answered. // It is Sher'azar Temple. We cannot take you directly to Kara'zul; you will have to speak with the gatekeeper here. // As he spoke, the gryphon landed in tandem with the other two, setting the basket down lightly on the mosaic-tiled ground. On legs that did not quite want to work properly, Vidarian managed to lever himself out of the basket, and landed weakly.

// Here we must leave you, // the front gryphon said, giving a bow of his beak. // We have tidings to bring to the high priestess. //

“Then I thank you most sincerely for your aid,” Vidarian said, giving a bow of his own, and knowing little else what to do. “If I can ever be of service to you, please let me know of it.”

// We will keep it in mind, // the right gryphon answered, with a twinkle in his eye. Then the leading gryphon gave a nod and the three creatures leapt once more into the air. The wind from their wings beat strongly down upon Vidarian and he squinted as he watched them ascend. Within moments they had disappeared back into the clouds.

Vidarian peered intently at the handful of tiny buildings that comprised the Temple at Sher'azar. Built in black lacquered hardwood, the structures echoed those of the lightning-scar settlement priestesses, reaching up into the slate-grey sky like the remnants of kindling in a smoldering fire. None were quite the same height.

Like the previous settlement, all was stonily silent-but this one was apparently unpopulated. Though the etched clay pots and their occupants, a variety of strange (and probably dangerous) plants, showed signs of recent and dutiful tending, no creature, human or otherwise, gave a sign of their existence here.

As time dragged on Vidarian grew increasingly restless, finally forcing himself to sit on a large spur of rock that climbed up out of the ground. Some interminable minutes later, the steady but painfully slow sound of hoofbeats began to echo from further down the foothill to which the Temple clung.

Vidarian stood and waited long enough for his legs to start stiffening in the damp air before a covered cart arrived, drawn by a grey donkey. Its driver was a shadowed figure wearing one of the now familiar burgundy robes.

“Greetings,” Vidarian called, raising his hand. “I come seeking the Gatekeeper of Sher'azar.”

“Then I'm afraid you've come at the wrong time,” answered a dulcet voice from inside the hood of the burgundy robe. “The gatekeeper is not here.”

“Not here?” Vidarian asked, startled out of protocol. “Where is she? This is a matter of most urgency.”

“She has gone Down to teach children at a neighboring village,” the priestess answered with peculiar emphasis as she pulled the cart to a stop. Tossing back her hood, she unveiled a rather startling mass of deep red curls that bounced across her shoulders as if thankful for freedom. Her pale green eyes turned upward as she gave voice to a strange, warbling chant.

A smattering of hooded figures began to materialize out of the mist, many of them carrying baskets partially loaded with mountain vegetables or wild mushrooms. They gathered around the cart.

“We will help you if we can,” the redheaded priestess offered, a less than reassuring smile on her thin lips. She remained in the cart.

Vidarian stared at her, wondering where to begin. “A trio of gryphons brought me to your Temple…”

“Gryphons brought you here?” she asked, looking at him slantwise. “Strange, we had no word from them, and they did not remain to introduce you?” She clucked her tongue.

“They claimed urgent business with the high priestess,” Vidarian frowned, brow furrowing.

“Ah, and so you seek the Gatekeeper,” his erstwhile hostess smiled, folding her hands around the cart reins. “I'm afraid that in her absence, your only option would be to ascend the mountain yourself. And by our law, we cannot offer you more than a token assistance with such an undertaking.”

At her words the other followers of Sharli exchanged a few surreptitious glances. More of them were smiling more than Vidarian liked, but all he could do was forge ahead.

“Very well then. I will gratefully accept any assistance you can render.” He decided on forthrightness, which seemed to inexplicably miff the priestesses slightly.

“Come, then,” the one on the cart said, with abrupt coolness. “We are permitted to trade with you for supplies.”

He had very little coin on him, but the attendants accepted what Vidarian did carry with his gratitude. They did not offer a mount, but supplied him with a rather disturbingly small quantity of food in a canvas sack along with a firebox and a very basic assortment of medical supplies. Then all of the priestesses gathered to see him off, bowing with synchronized solemnity. Without preamble he started off along the ascending mountain trail, but he caught a flash of white teeth as the priestesses turned back to their chores. He hoped he had imagined their smiling mouths, and all disappeared into burgundy velvet and mist before he could decide one way or the other.

The mountain loomed before him, indistinct in the mist. Drawing in a deep breath, he filled his lungs with the pine-laced scent of the thick air, then started up the rocky slope.

Time gradually lost its cohesion, punctuated only by the heightened rush of blood in his veins. He repeatedly steered his imagination away from thoughts about the fanciful forms of torture a telepathic race might visit on a captive.

He did not know precisely where he was going, but the priestesses had offered only a single word in response to numerous queries: “Up.” Presumably the High Temple was at the pinnacle of Sher'azar Peak itself, lost somewhere in the maddening fog that engulfed the mountain range. The muscles of his legs and arms began to grow stiff in the clammy air, but he grit his teeth and forged on up one craggy pass after another.

Only when he first began to hallucinate did he stop to rest. The slender demi-peaks that reached up off of the mountain began to take the shape of hazy hooded figures, shadowed against the mist. Their invisible eyes seemed to reach right to his bones.

Blinking rapidly, he turned at the next spur leading off the trail and sat gingerly on an outcropping of blue slate. But the shadows still watched, and after a few moments he spurred himself on again, unable to stand their scrutiny while sitting still.

Driven by that new discomfort, he passed a ghostly night climbing the mountain. The unending mist made sunset unclear; he only became aware of it when there was so little light that he stumbled on the forbidding terrain. At last he found his legs would carry him no further; the air had grown cold and thin in the heights. Dizzied from lack of air, he made a poor excuse for a camp, did not bother with a fire, and set himself down in a shallow hole dug from the gravelly floor. He tried not to compare it to a grave.

The darkness that shrouded the mountain came at last to drape itself across his mind, and he slept.

The pale grey light of dawn did not wake him. Only when the sun began to burn through the mist, falling like liquid flame through the morning fog, did Vidarian stir. He struggled upward in his pit of a bed, blinked bleary-eyed at the rising sun, and prepared to force his aching muscles once more into movement.

A flicker of motion from the eye of the sun gave him pause.

Before he had time to stand, a figure separated itself from the crimson sphere that slowly flooded the morning with scarlet light. Her hair burned with wild abandon down the length of her back, seeming to take its color from the blood of the sun itself, and her skin in the painfully bright light was whiter than the finest porcelain. Sharp blades of sunlight, now streaking down across the mountain, gave the illusion of elfin slenderness to her burgundy-robed form and sheltered her feet from the indignity of making contact with the cold, wet earth. In the tepid twilight her hands glowed golden at her sides.

In a moment the fiery vision was gone and in its place stood a woman of indeterminate age and build. Her hair was indeed red, and gloriously so, but when separated from the sun her entire form seemed to dim into mortality. The smile that lit her features when she caught sight of him, however, reminded him of Ariadel. Presumably they instructed all fire priestesses in the art of smiling to dwarf the breaking dawn.

“Well, hello there,” she said, and there was a strange hollow quality to her voice as it echoed against the stone mountainside. “You certainly look a sight.”

Vidarian scrambled in the gravel, surprise making his sore muscles move faster than they might have otherwise. “Er, good morning, Priestess…?”

She smiled again. Her voice was like crystallized honey-strong and hard but sweet and bright at once, as if just on the verge of bursting into song. “My name is not important now. I was simply out on a…morning constitutional, you might say, and was surprised to see a Son of Nistra this far up our mountain.”

“S-son of Nistra?” Vidarian echoed, unsure that he'd heard her correctly.

“Well, yes, of course,” the priestess answered, pursing her lips and folding her arms across her chest. “You have the mark of Nistra all over you. Didn't you know that, boy?”

Miffed at her overfamiliar tone, but unable to argue, he only shook his head. She sighed in heavy exasperation, but did not drop her smile; if anything, it widened.

“It's no matter. Tell me, what do you want here on the Great Mountain of Sharli?” The title she emphasized grandly, as a jester would of a king who thought too much of himself. Vidarian had never heard the name of the fire goddess used so lightly, and this strange priestess intrigued him. She took a seat beside him on the shale and he found himself drawn into telling his story-for once not begrudging the time that slipped away while he did so.

When he had finished, she drew him back into a retelling of the spell cast on the sun emeralds.

“Do you remember, dear Vidarian, if the priestess stopped for breath when enchanting the two stones?” She looked at him intently, but, as before, there was a smile hidden beneath her seriousness.

Vidarian thought deeply, trying to call the memory back to his mind. “No,” he said at last, “I'm almost certain she didn't. There was only that strange glow, and then both stones were changed.”

“Interesting,” the priestess smiled. “Very interesting. Endera is out of practice.”

Vidarian tried not to gawk. “And-why would you say that, my lady?”

The priestess only broadened her smile. “If I were you, I should find those emeralds. They're quite valuable, you know. As for answers, you ask for too many, when you know them yourself.”

At length she stood and brushed off her robes. Vidarian spoke hastily as she turned to go.

“Lady, I must know. Who are you, who are so-wise?”

Her eyes were alive with secret mischief as she looked back over her shoulder, voice fading as she walked off into the mist. “The gryphons called me Ele'cherath of old. The seridi, my children, who have also been called so many different names, called me San'vidara. But for myself, I call me-”

Vidarian woke, gasping desperately yet finding no comfort in the air that rushed into his lungs. It was thin and cold, sending spangles of black across his vision as he attempted to focus on the blinding glare of the sun that beat down into his eyes. Thrown so suddenly from consciousness to darkness and back again, his body could not keep up, yet from the depths of his soul he clung to the striking sensation of a vast, pulsing rhythm that seemed to come from all around.

Gradually sounds began to separate from the pulsing beat-a flurry of rapid, excited whispers.

Finally his eyes focused, but he blinked again, not quite accepting what he saw. Leaning over him with an expression he guessed to be concern was a sleek face with a narrow nose and a line of golden dots painted above each eyebrow. The eyes below were a warm, almost molten gold, exotically tilted.

“Ah,” his watcher murmured, with a tiny tap to her nose, “he wakes.”

At her words the whispers that surrounded them increased in velocity and volume, though in his dazed state Vidarian could not make out any individual words. Shaking his head, he sat up.

There were fewer whisperers than he had initially thought, but the small handful of priestesses that crowded around him drew back as he moved. Only one among them did not.

“Priestess,” he acknowledged, then winced as pain lanced through his skull, awakened by his own voice.

“Captain Rulorat,” Endera answered, her half-lidded eyes evincing no sympathy for his suffering. “My priestesses found you out cold halfway down the mountain, sprawled on the rocks. Care to explain?”

“I think one of your priestesses knocked me out,” he answered testily, rubbing at his left temple.

“That would be impossible,” Endera answered, folding her ceremonially robed arms. “There were no priestesses on your side of the mountain all night.”

“Perhaps you can be a bit more specific,” the first priestess said gently, placing a hand between his shoulder blades. It was warm. “Did she give you a name?”

“I think she called herself…San'vidara,” Vidarian said, eyes half closed as he attempted to clear his vision. He was looking at the first priestess just long enough to see her eyes do what a human's never would-the pupils rapidly shrunk and flared, pinning like an eagle's. All around him the whispers grew to a furor.

Vidarian turned swiftly to demand what was going on, but found his neck suddenly up against the edge of a dazzlingly shining knife. Endera's eyes were burning.

“So help me, Vidarian, if you dare to mock me at this time and place…” her growling tone promised the torture of a thousand deaths. Slow ones.

“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Priestess,” Vidarian grated, being very careful not to move.

“It would explain his appearance, Endera,” the golden-decorated priestess murmured, her voice half an octave lower than it had been, with a harmony like tolling bells. “Among other things.”

Vidarian looked desperately at his strange-eyed supporter. “She said the seridi called her that. And that the gryphons called her…Ella…Ele'chertoth. Or something like that.”

// He speaks the truth, // a new voice rumbled in all of their minds, and the priestesses drew back again. Even Endera lowered her blade. // Even if he had somehow learned the Seridan name for Sharli, the name Ele'cherath is protected among the scholars of gryphonkind. // The speaker stepped forward, a gryphon more massive than any of the three he'd seen before. She was tall and muscular, colored like a goshawk but with an array of golden designs painted on her wings. Fiery red eyes settled like burning coals upon Vidarian. // She gave you her other names, those that we call her by, because to hear her True Name would unmake you, // she explained, with a soft tone that nonetheless gripped his heart with ice. // Our goddess is ever one to toy with our own mortal makings, but still you are lucky to be alive. // The stunned and frightened looks of the younger priestesses confirmed the gryphoness's statement.

“I trust your judgment, as always, Thalnarra,” Endera answered, but kept one hand on the knife and looked as if she'd rather have it in Vidarian's gizzard. Or somewhere worse. But she only sighed, then gestured to two of the other human priestesses. “This will bear some explaining. Bring him.”

The two priestesses closed in around Vidarian and helped him to his feet, not unkindly. They then marched him down a hall that carried a faint aroma of smoke and honey, barely perceptible but daunting to his spirit nonetheless.

At length they passed through a marble hall, but none of the priestesses showed any signs of slowing. At the end of the hall in either direction sat a huge white marble altar topped by a massive gold chalice, squat and crowned with a circle of bright fire. Even with the lengths of cold marble between them, Vidarian could swear he felt heat on his skin.

“Are those…?” Vidarian trailed off, staring wide-eyed at the chalices.

“Yes,” Endera answered shortly, continuing her brisk walk ahead of them and not turning her head. “Those are the Living Flames of Sharli.”

Never in his life did Vidarian think he would see the Flames, revered by all followers of Sharli, no matter how meek. Even as they passed, he caught sight of elaborately robed priestesses attending the twisting flames, their garments in the characteristic wine red but rimmed at cuffs, hem, and collar with white ribbon. The Flames had not gone out in twelve hundred years, and likely longer-twelve hundred years merely marked the point at which the priestesshood began to keep count, nearly four dynasties ago.

Beyond the marble hall was a door, plain by comparison but carved of fine heavy ironwood. A young acolyte garbed in ashen grey rushed to open the door before Endera's sweeping feet, and then they were all inside.

“Now then,” Endera began, settling down at her desk. Her eyes were clear as they looked up at Vidarian. “You've spoken with our goddess. It seems that she wishes you to pursue this quest.”

“I intend to rescue Ariadel, Priestess, no matter what it takes,” Vidarian managed, taking a step forward ahead of his attendants.

“Mm,” the priestess murmured, sliding open the top drawer to her desk and withdrawing a sheet of slick ivory parchment. “If it is the will of Sharli, we will certainly assist you. Even now my priestesses are sending for gryphons to carry you as far as you will go.”

“Sh-Sharli did instruct me to do one other thing,” Vidarian began, then plowed ahead before Endera's abruptly sharpening eyes could stop him. “She told me to retrieve from you the sun emeralds. She seemed to think they would be my key in locating Ariadel.”

For a fire priestess, Endera could pull off an incredible icy glare. Straightening as he would against a torrential wind, Vidarian steeled himself for the worst. In the end, though, Endera only reached once more into her drawer and withdrew a black leather pouch. It clinked softly on the desk when she dropped it.

“Sit down, Captain,” Endera said, so sharply that Vidarian did as he was told before even thinking about it. The priestess glanced up for a moment and the two other priestesses bowed out of the room. When the door clicked shut, Endera spoke again. “You're here now to give me a detailed report of your encounter with our goddess.” When he did not answer, she continued, but her tone slanted upward warningly. “The goddess comes to us in many forms, and, rather than waste her time in speaking, delivers her word on many matters through nuance of her appearance and slightest gesture. You are to recall to me as much as you possibly can.” Suddenly Vidarian became aware of how absolutely strained Endera was-he conjectured that he must have been the first of the uninitiated to give such a report. Maybe even the first man.

Endera glanced up from her parchment, lifting her pen from the paper and making that small gesture seem the greatest weighty annoyance. “You had better get started, Vidarian. I don't think you have much time to spare.”

The priestess grilled him until his head swam with fatigue, pursuing points on the tiniest possible detail yet telling him to skip entire sections of their dialogue. Finally he had described it all to her satisfaction, right up to a detailed account of the drowning sensation that immediately preceded his waking.

Endera abruptly dropped her pen, splattering black ink across the neatly lettered page. She did not move to pick it up. “You felt-what?”

Vidarian's brow furrowed. “I felt as though I was drowning-swimming through a sea, yet all was too thin for me to breathe. I gasped.”

“You were blue when we found you,” Endera said, retrieving the pen and absently sliding it back into its case. “But we thought it was from the cold.” She did not speak again, but stared for a long time into the tiny flame that topped the ornate oil lamp to one side of her desk. Finally she looked back up at him, golden eyes dark with tense confusion. “She's kindled you,” she said, then turned her head back to the flame, “but not to her own fire.”

Silence gaped wide between them as Vidarian stared at her in confusion. “I take it that's unusual?”

Endera glared at him, then returned her gaze to the candle, saying nothing.

“She said I was a Son of Nistra,” Vidarian thought aloud, and the priestess returned her burning gaze to him with alacrity.

“That you are, Captain. In more ways than you even know. Sharli has kindled-or, the Nistrans would call it awakened-in you the water magic of Nistra. We did not know she would ever do such a thing…though obviously it is possible.” Restlessly the priestess stood, the hem of her robes brushing the slate-tiled floor.

“Priestess,” Vidarian said abruptly, realizing something. “If I am kindled, or awakened, or what-have-you…do I have a life flame?”

Endera blinked. “No, certainly not. You-” she paused and sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “There is much more information-theory if you will-to it than this, but what the Nistrans have that we do not is called the Sense. They sense the presence of living things in their vicinity, and further away when trained, through an ability to home in on the rhythm of the Sea that abides in all living things.”

“A rhythm. I heard a rhythm, when I woke-I felt it all around me.” He listened for it again and found it as it had been, pulsing softly in the background. If he let his mind wander, he imagined that he could feel the presence of every priestess in the temple, their ripples reaching him as those from stones dropped into still water.

“Yes, that's it.” The priestess sighed, settling back into her chair. “You hardly have time for an ecclesiastical education, but two things I can and must tell you: The first is that water magic is just as complex as fire magic, but it is substantively different. Water, along with earth, forms a side of energy called Substantive energy. Fire and air are on the balancing side of Ephemeral energy. Water works through manipulating the tiniest pieces of water that live everywhere-in the air, in your body, in the very ground. Fire, conversely, can act on these pieces, but of itself has no material property. This is what will differentiate your magic from anything I could possibly tell you about ours; water I only understand in theory, not in practice.”

Vidarian nodded slowly, wrapping his mind around the concept. “And the other thing?”

The priestess leaned across her desk, boring into his presence with her own. To his fledgling Sense she suddenly flared up into a towering flame. “What you now wield is more dangerous than any sword, any spear, or indeed any physical weapon you could possibly imagine. It is imperative that you understand this. The ripples that you can create by moving water will reverberate throughout the entire world, and as their ripples pass outward, they can potentially grow in size and cause catastrophic effects. As one new to the craft your own mind will limit you from doing most damage, but you must be aware of your potential.”

Then, like a candle snuffed, she dwindled to all his perception and fell back against the soft leather cushion of her chair. Vidarian only stared, an insidious chill seeping through his body.

“Ordinarily you would have the guidance of a Nistran priestess,” Endera muttered, gazing off toward the door. “I can only assume that Sharli gave you this gift-and understand that it is a great gift indeed-so that you could use your Sense to amplify the effect of the sun emeralds and locate Ariadel.”

“Why?” Vidarian blurted, hands moving to grip the arms of his chair convulsively. His heart rebelled against the question, but he asked, “Why is Ariadel so important that your goddess herself would intervene through a simple sailor?”

At this Endera raised a hand to her temple, her half-closed eyes going again to the still flame of the oil lamp. Vidarian did not know if she did this out of a need to focus on her Element or out of a simple desire not to look at him, but the unwavering light did seem to calm her.

“Sharli told us many months ago that Ariadel Windhammer would be the most influential priestess to grace our world since the Third Age.”

Vidarian stared, trying to count the thousands of years that that implied, and failing. Endera glanced up at him, a flash in her eyes condemning him for everything from birth to breathing, but she said, “Well, that's not exactly what she said. She appeared to us as a glowing beacon with eyes of two typhoons centered with cyclones, a burning elderberry bush in her left hand, and a silver truncheon in her left.”

Vidarian's throat was too dry to allow for a good splutter, but he coughed. A sharp glance from the priestess warned him not to question her authority. He didn't. Instead, he moved to pick up the leather pouch that rested atop the desk. Thumbing it over in his fingers, he slipped the sun emeralds out of their nest and into the palm of his hand.

They were as beautiful as he remembered. One now seemed to shudder with the rhythm that pulsed within it, a storm roiling within the small gem, but the other…

The other emerald still bore its dancing flame, brighter now to his sight…and as it rested against his hand he felt a resonance of energy between himself and the stone. Sharli had been right-they were tied together. And the rhythmic waves that pulsed out of the stone, out of the air, and out of Vidarian himself had never been so strong to him. They reverberated throughout his awareness. Unthinking, he raised the emerald, and suddenly the resonant waves circled into completion. Through the morass of pulsing energy some buried intuition took the three points-his location, what he could only assume was Ariadel's, and the emerald's, though it was so close to him-and told him exactly where they all rested in relationship to each other. The result was a beacon so bright in his mind that he could almost see it with his mortal eyes.

Quickly he slipped the stones back into their pouch, banishing the vision, and stood. Endera slid to her feet as well, looking at him in dark-faced confusion. He only held up the leather bag in a slightly quaking hand.

“I know where she is.”

The priestess stared at him long and hard for a moment. “You know that this is beyond our contract,” Endera said, her voice for once candid and subdued. Vidarian did not answer. The priestess only nodded, after a moment, then said simply, “I am gratified to know you are the man I thought you might be.” With that, she led the way back to the temple entrance.

Once again Vidarian was borne into the sky by a trio of gryphons, but this time he was awake, and each of the gryphons bore a pattern of gold painting on their wings. The patterns danced as they flew, tessellating back and forth from images of leaping fire to stars that spangled across the white feathers.

Vidarian sat toward the front of the carry-basket, Ariadel's emerald lifted high in his left hand. With his eyes closed he explored his new Sense, trying to focus and nurture it as quickly as he could. Now and then he experienced an intense urge to do more than simply take in the “surroundings” painted before him by his new ability-an urge to move the ripples that pulsed in his mind. Determinedly he shoved these aside, keeping his metaphysical hands behind his back, and the sweat that beaded along his forehead with the effort grew icy cold in the high-altitude winds.

In remarkably short order the basket began to descend, and he remembered to work his jaw as pressure began to mount in his ears. The gryphons dropped swiftly, at times seeming to plunge almost vertically downward, and Vidarian wondered every few hundred feet if his stomach had been left behind among the clouds.

They landed in the courtyard of Sher'azar Temple, and such was the control of these gryphons that they made his previous landing at the mountain's foot seem a child's first stumbling walk. As the great creatures removed their harnesses he recognized the leader as Thalnarra-and if his guess was right, the rapid flare-and-pin of her pupils only very thinly disguised a smoldering anger. He followed her blazing gaze to a collection of three priestesses that stood hesitantly at one of the many temple archways.

Finally one of them approached, reluctance emanating from her body language. “Thalnarra,” she said, bowing, “It has been-quite some time since you visited us here…” Then she caught sight of Vidarian and inhaled sharply. “You…”

// Priestess Alshandra, // Thalnarra growled, punctuating each of her words with biting anger. // May I introduce Captain Vidarian Rulorat, whom our goddess delivered to the Temple of Kara'zul. //

“Sharli…” The priestess backed away a step, her eyes going wide. “We thought…”

// You thought she would kill him, // Thalnarra finished for her, sitting down on the gravel and coiling her tail snakelike about her feet. // You sent him up the mountain at night knowing that the goddess permits no mortal uninitiated to see dawn on Kara'zul Peak. //

“W-we thought he was an interloper-”

// You did not think, girl, at all. // Thalnarra's mental voice rose to a crackling thunder and Vidarian winced at the sudden pain in his head. // Gryphons bore him to you, yet you did not send any of your messengers after them. The temple was unattended or they would have spoken with you themselves. Have you any idea who this man is? //

The priestess did not answer, and Thalnarra pounded relentlessly on, each of her words more forceful than the last. // He is the sole assigned protector and sole remaining hope of Ariadel Windhammer, if we ever do see her again since her fall into Vkorthan hands. //

It was too much for the chastened priestess, and she broke into tears. “Thalnarra, please don't send me to…”

// Oh, do shut up, girl. // The gryphoness sighed, lifting her beak and giving a tiny disgusted shake of wing feathers that glittered golden in the pale sunlight. // I will be reporting the misbehavior of the priestesses here to the high temple, and they will be responsible for you. Perhaps they will send you up the mountain to see what the Dawn Goddess thinks of your actions. In the meantime, I have escorted the captain to Sher'azar to see that he has the proper equipment for his journey. I will be accompanying him on his quest and both of us will need proper provisions. //

Vidarian started at her words, but could not argue-and strangely enough, all of the priestesses of Sher'azar were suddenly extremely cooperative.

That evening they were back in the air again, Thalnarra leading with two hand (claw?)-picked gryphons flanking the harnessed basket. Unlike Vidarian's recent carriers, Thalnarra's companions this time bore no gold on their wings-they were uninitiated into the rites of the fire priestesses, and as a result greatly deferred to her as a matter of course. She seemed to encourage this behavior.

The basket was considerably heavier this time, as well. Packed in with provisions of food for all parties (the gryphons planned to hunt, but Vidarian learned to his surprise that they preferred an assortment of supplementary foods that aided in health and meditation) was a tight packet of medical supplies, a strange navigational unit intended for air use, and, most interestingly, a small chest of carefully packed magical implements. Tucked into canvas pockets on two sides of the chest was a pair of leather-bound books, each no longer than his hand and roughly half as thick. The cover of one was a deep blue, the other a dark burgundy. After the gryphons had settled into a comfortable altitude, Vidarian weighed one book in each hand, looking between them with a mixture of trepidation and intense curiosity.

Both books had the exact same number of pages-a fact that he verified by checking the last carefully numbered page of each. Setting aside the burgundy volume, Vidarian opened the other and began to gingerly thumb through it. He paused when he reached a richly illuminated page that described a fist-sized translucent globe identical to one that he had seen in the chest.

Setting the book aside after marking it with an attached blue ribbon, he flipped the lid of the chest open again. Nestled into a bed of narrow wood shavings was a pale blue globe, translucent and dotted with an intricate array of identically deep pinholes, that confirmed his suspicions. It lay alongside a narrow box of dark wood that he promptly used to support the reopened blue leather book.

A richly calligraphed diagram marked out the uses and significances of each set of holes on the globe. Following its footnotes, he observed that the pinholes were arrayed in groups of five, most often depicting a diamond shape with a single pinhole in the center. When he had studied the page for several minutes, he felt confident enough to very carefully place his fingers in specific points around the object and lift it from its nest.

Nothing happened, which was good. Vidarian consciously let out his breath, becoming aware that at some point in the procedure he had forgotten to do so. What the book specified next was clear but daunting: that somehow a Nistran should apply their Sense through the sphere, using it, he supposed, as a sort of lens. This would lead to greater focus of the user's ability.

After he had held the globe long enough to make his awkwardly bent fingers complain, Vidarian-following the logic that if he wasn't meant to use it, it wouldn't be in the chest-decided to try it out. He closed his eyes and held the sphere at arm's length in front of him.

As the book had recommended, he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. As he did so he imagined that every bit of his breath was going through the sphere, flowing around its perfect shape and sounding off of its pinholes as through finger-holes in a flute.

It took nearly long enough for Vidarian to assume that he lacked the skill to activate it, but, just as he was running out of breath, the sphere began to resonate.

Unlike the ripples that other living creatures generated to his newfound Sense, the rings that came off of the sphere harmonized with Vidarian's own, which he only then realized that he even recognized-his mind automatically filtered them out. There was a pop!, more felt than heard, and suddenly his own rings-his own pattern-had expanded immensely.

He didn't have long to enjoy it, though, because at that exact instant his vehicle began to fall out of the sky.

The plummeting (quite naturally, he thought) jolted him out of his experiment with the sphere, and he threw it unceremoniously back into the chest and occupied himself with hanging on for dear life.

Gradually the craft evened out in the air, but Thalnarra was practically molting with anger. Her head snapped around and she looked Vidarian full in the face, still pulling the basket and maintaining her wing-speed. Absently he realized that he didn't know her neck was quite so agile-it was disturbing in a way, but less so than her angrily widened eyes.

// What in the True Names of all that's holy did you think you were doing? // Her telepathic voice thundered in his head and he strangled down the distinct urge to hide under the cargo.

“I was following an exercise in the Book of Nistra-”

// You sent out a “welcome, please make yourself at home!” beacon to anyone with a lick of Sense in a two-hundred-mile radius! And doing exactly what you did, unannounced, would have Quenched a lesser priestess than I! //

Vidarian blinked. “I didn't know anything about Quenching…”

// Then perhaps you shouldn't be meddling about with the Book of Nistra. I suppose you looked up the amplification sphere in it without even reading the basics of Nistran magic, much less the Five Magics and how they interact? // Her thick wings beat violently at the air as she grew increasingly incensed, causing the basket to rock unsettlingly.

“I thought-”

// Maybe you had better start at the beginning, // she said acidly, then turned her beak back forward, feather-tufted ears swiveling away from Vidarian as if to pointedly deny his existence. Trying to make as little sound as possible, he withdrew the Book of Nistra and closed the little chest, going so far as to latch it securely before settling back to read-this time from page one.

An insidious sense of futility crept over Vidarian as he toiled through the book. At intervals he pulled out Ariadel's emerald to assure they were still on course-but with the gryphons’ sharp eyes for navigation, they always were, and it was mostly an excuse for him to stop reading. But every return to the neatly lettered pages was more daunting, and in the end he gave it up, choosing instead to stare vacantly across the cloud-traced sky.

// I apologize for snapping at you. // Thalnarra's clipped words jolted Vidarian out of an unintentional reverie, and he jumped.

“No harm done.” He smiled weakly, peering up at the lead gryphon. Although she continued to face forward, her ears had swiveled back to catch his movements and speech.

// Not by me, I hope. You do realize that what you did was tremendously dangerous? //

“I think so. But I still couldn't find anything in the book about Quenching.”

// It would have been in the Book of Sharli. But I can tell you. // Several moments passed, punctuated by the steady beat of the gryphons’ wings, before Thalnarra spoke again. // The Five Magics are arrayed in opposition and balance, // she began, her tone taking on a lecturing hint. // There are a number of…classifications, shall we say, between them, but the most important for you to know is the difference between what we call Substantive magics and Ephemeral magics. Earth and water are Substantive; air and fire are Ephemeral. That is why the greatest danger for you is to apply your new ability to manipulate Nistra's gift to “physically” touch the world-because water is Substantive, anything you touch in it will reverberate throughout the entire universe. On a universal scale this is insignificant, but locally it can have dramatic detrimental effect. The danger of an Ephemeral magic user is different, because we cannot actually move any of the elements, only apply energy to them, which is not quite the same thing. Moving for us is much more difficult than it is for you, and much more complex-but it is very easy for a beginning fire priestess to push the balance of energy within her, and this can be dangerous in a variety of ways. //

“You mentioned five magics-what is the fifth?” The whole of it made sense to him, but Vidarian wanted to know everything before he began drawing parallels in his mind.

// We call the fifth element aether, and it is really more theoretical than actual, from a magical perspective at least, because we have no one who can manipulate it. But it is in a third class of magic called Subtractive, whereas all the other four are considered Additive. Try what we may, the very nature of Substantive and Ephemeral magics both dictates that we cannot actually destroy substance or energy-only manipulate it. Aether has the power to destroy. //

“Can it also create?” A dry, humming click sounded in Vidarian's mind, and he gathered from the faint rush of emotion that followed it that Thalnarra was chuckling.

// Clever. Yes, in theory, aether can create. But we assume that its basic nature is to destroy, the same way that an Ephemeral's basic nature is to generate energy-so to create is probably much more difficult than destroying. Creation is the domain of the gods. //

“What is it that the Vkortha do? Where does that magic fit in?”

Thalnarra's tone grew dark. // The Vkortha do not practice magic. They are telepaths, and telekinetic-we do not consider these as part of the magical hierarchy. The way I am speaking to you is telepathic, and among gryphonkind it is considered mundane. There is some dispute, given the Vkorthan's recent activity, as to whether the old books should be changed to include their…activities. But we know so little about them, which is one of the reasons Priestess Windhammer was assigned to study them-we believe that their “magic” is actually a clever use of the mundane telepathy in conjugation with certain tools. // After a moment, she added, // We are not altogether certain what those tools are. //

Again they passed a length of time in silence, with Vidarian wondering, not for the first time, just what he'd gotten himself into. The thought that perhaps he was the one to solve it, since he knew nothing of the details and was therefore theoretically undaunted, was cold consolation.

The group rested by night, with the gryphons angling downward in the red twilight once they sighted a clearing appropriate for a safe landing. Each night one of the gryphons disappeared into the darkness and returned one or more hours later dragging a fresh kill. Thalnarra took her turn in this, and in each case Vidarian joined in their dinner-though he found that he still preferred his meat cooked.

During their brief meals he gradually came to know the other two gryphons that had volunteered to escort him. They were brothers-brown-plumaged and long-legged harrier gryphons whose loyalty to Thalnarra bordered on outright fanaticism. Their body language and sharp eyes reflected a spaniel-like demeanor whenever she so much as spoke one of their names. It was almost disturbing.

The older brother, Kaltak, took to telling Vidarian stories of the lairs and hunting grounds of the Cherath’kettu'ssa, or “children of Ele’cherath” as they referred to themselves. A friendly rivalry existed between Sharli's two gryphon subspecies, and both agreed that it was probably well that the harriers had little interest in the goshawks' territory, since their own was more than large enough.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kaltak (with the occasional side note provided by his brother) painted a portrait of a very warlike society-or, at least a society that would be warlike if not carefully mediated by the fire priestesses, called Shamans in their home. Each gryphon underwent a maturation rite before being accepted into the pride as an adult, and these two were in Thalnarra's service for a full preparatory year. Ishrak, though two seasons younger than Kaltak, had passed a test that allowed him to enter training in tandem with the older gryphon. In another species this would have incited cockiness, but Ishrak seemed to have nothing but respect for his older brother. Vidarian knew of few societies save those of pirates and merchants on the high seas, and the gryphons’ intricacies fascinated him. He listened avidly to their tales of adventure and lair life, sometimes understanding little about the details but gaining volumes of new regard for gryphon culture. Even had he accepted the existence of gryphons before he had seen one, “culture” was not a word that would have occurred to him even at the bottom of the deepest wine bottle. That disbelieving self, so unwittingly narrow in experience, seemed more than a lifetime away.

By night he found himself guarded by three balls of feathers and fur. When the gryphons curled up to sleep (and, birdlike, they grew tired as soon as the light faded), their wings hid any leonine portions of their body almost entirely from view, and the long, stiff feathers that ran along the back of their necks plumed upward as they buried their beaks between heavily muscled shoulder blades. One of them snored, and he wasn't sure which.

Perhaps reminded by his companions’ fluffy nighttime presence, he found his mind wandering to what had become of Ariadel's kitten. What could the Vkortha possibly make of it? Had they killed it out of hand? Inevitably his thoughts would venture into dark territory, and he heaved at them halfheartedly before at last settling into uneasy sleep.

The monotony of a blinding sun cast the basket in harsh, jagged shadows day after day and made the journey stretch into one long hypnotic noon. The pattern broke only once, causing Vidarian to start out of a bleary nap (one taken, as they had been for days, with the Book of Nistra open before him), when the gryphons began to angle downward in the sky-not at sunset, but with the sky still glaringly bright overhead.

“Priestess Thalnarra?” Vidarian mumbled, tucking the book back into his pocket and rubbing his eyes.

// We, or I should say they, can take you no further,// she answered, casting an obliquely apologetic glance over her shoulder. // We approach Vkortha territory. //

“How can you tell?”

One of the gryphoness's feathered ears slanted down at a sharp angle in his direction. // Listen. Feel. You will Sense it. //

He complied, carefully, but nearly before he had even been able to close his eyes, Vidarian became uncomfortably aware of a buzzing vibration that lingered in his mind. It grew steadily even as the party descended, as if they were passing into a great bank of fog, but the world to his mortal eyes remained disconcertingly mundane.

On the ground the woods were preternaturally silent. Whenever the gryphons landed a hush of the smaller forest creatures followed in their wake, but always there had been the ambient noise of distant activity. Not so, here. Either nothing lived in this forest, or if it did, it was being very careful to maintain an illusion of absence.

Under Thalnarra's supervision, Vidarian helped the gryphons separate provisions and particular supplies into a set of leather pouches that locked cunningly into brackets along the brothers’ harnesses. Thalnarra, though, made no move to collect the special herbs that Vidarian had come to recognize as exclusive to her use.

“Shall I help you pack, Priestess?” he asked, when at last the brothers were completing final preparations and there was little left to be done. Thalnarra's scarlet eyes pierced through his poorly veiled question.

// I intend to stay with you, Captain, for as long as I can. // She did not say more, but instead turned to the other gryphons, who abruptly stood at attention. Vidarian heard nothing, but by the narrowing and flaring of the creatures’ pupils, they were engrossed in a deep discussion. He turned away so as not to intrude even upon their expressions.

A heavy weight on his shoulder-one that, he noticed, bore a set of five-inch talons-surprised him out of his quiet contemplation. The claw was surprisingly warm-almost hot beneath the clean, dry skin. Vidarian turned slowly.

Ishrak's large golden eyes focused intently on Vidarian's for a long moment. Finally he uttered a strange, piercing call, and said, // Charnak; vikktu ari lashuul. // Then, as swiftly as he had come, he turned and paced away with casual, measured steps. Neither of the two gryphons looked back before they took to the air, the wind from their wings throwing leaves and dust in all directions.

When they were out of sight, Vidarian turned to see Thalnarra inspecting him with the tilted head and raised cheek-feathers that he had come to recognize as bemusement.

// I believe that would be the first time that a human mind has heard those words. You should feel honored. // Despite the amusement in her words, it was apparent that the gryphoness was quite serious.

“I do,” Vidarian said, watching Thalnarra carefully and folding his hands behind his back.

// It means, “be resolved; victory will find you.” It is the traditional parting phrase for a company of gryphons departing for war. //

Vidarian thought this over for a long moment, then nodded. “That's what we're doing, isn't it?”

Thalnarra did not answer, but her feathers, mantling up behind her neck as she sat down and gazed into the impenetrably dark forest to the west, spoke for her.

The buzzing hum continued to increase as they trekked further into the forest, rising into a palpable sensation of itching at the back of the brain. Frequently Vidarian caught himself shaking his head, a futile but reflexive response to the unnerving itch.

At length the forest gave way to a rugged, wind-blasted coastline. When they stumbled out of the trees and into the dubious grey light of the open shore, there was no warning-the trees, hung heavily with parasitic moss and vines, had blocked out any view no matter how close it was. Cold, sleet-fingered wind lashed at the tree line, whipping up out of the sea like the angry swats of a petulant cat.

Vidarian stared out over the open water, squinting at the hazy horizon.

// This confirms what we suspected but could not ascertain, // Thalnarra said, feathers rippling in the constant wind as she too squinted out over the waves. Her voice in his mind was not loud, a calm non sequitur in the maddening combination of thundering waves and buzzing Presence. // The Vkortha are on an island, or, if not an island, a peninsula whose bridge they have managed to hide from view. //

“An island?” Vidarian shouted, struggling to make himself heard. “How are we going to get to it?” Thalnarra cast him an unruffled glance.

// The flight basket is watertight. The ride won't be pleasant, but we can make it. //

“Make it to where?” He tried not to sound too alarmed.

// We'll see, won't we? //

There was no help for it. Vidarian trudged back into the dense forest, working to manage his dread at the notion of sailing literally blind into the unknown. He realized for the first time his dependency on the usual navigational implements-charts, compasses, sextants, and the few precious little charms that made the vast openness of the sea and sky at least somewhat manageable.

The thought of navigational tools made him pause. There was that strange tubular tool packed in with the magical implements, an air navigator-could it be used to guide them? At that point Vidarian would have clung to any hope of a useful instrument with ferocity. He asked Thalnarra about it as they wove their way through the tangled vines and rushes that seemed to have grown back in duplicate force since they had last passed through.

// It would work, // she answered, giving a nod of her beak as she leapt over a fallen log. // It's not ideal, but I can recalibrate it to the coast and we can, at the least, have some idea of where we are in relationship to land. //

That gave them a way back, if and when they needed it, which was enough for Vidarian. He plowed through the foliage with renewed vigor.

Although he had not considered it before, the seaworthiness of the gryphons’ basket became immediately apparent as Vidarian and Thalnarra slid it out onto the rocky sand. Vidarian wondered if perhaps its boatlike construction had subconsciously comforted him on that first harrowing ride.

Catching sight of his expression, Thalnarra nodded to his thoughts. // Rather than reinvent the wheel, so to speak, we based the baskets off of the design of a small boat. What slides through the water also slides through the air. It works in our favor all the more, now. // Without waiting for assistance, the tall gryphoness braced both foreclaws solidly on the basket's “hull” and gave a tremendous shove. The vessel slid wetly across the grey foam and slime that marked the waterline, and then it was afloat. Vidarian hopped in quickly as the tide took hold.

Before launch Vidarian had loaded a pair of long, supple branches into the basket. He now grabbed the first of these and used it as a poor but effective pole. Once he felt confidence in the method, he looked around, wondering where Thalnarra could possibly fit.

But she was already high above him, feathers twitching constantly to battle the erratic wind. // Take your bearing, Captain-I will follow the craft. // She held the recalibrated air navigator in one claw, having detached it from its place hooked to her chest strap.

Pulling in the pole and relying on the tide to wash them out, Vidarian carefully extracted Ariadel's emerald from a pouch around his neck. For a brief moment he closed his eyes, focusing on the faint, flickering presence of the emerald and the distant fluttering that called to the stone, far past the horizon. Swallowing a flood of emotion as he noted both the increasing strength of the emerald and what seemed to be a decrease in Ariadel's “signal,” her true life flame, he tucked the stone back into its nest and lifted his branch-pole unerringly south-by-southwest. Thalnarra gave a quick answering cry from overhead and angled away in that direction. Vidarian roughly thrust the branch back into the water, guiding his erstwhile craft toward the towering bank of dark clouds that marked their destination.

The first attack came by night, when the clouds overhead became menacing shadows that blotted out the stars and the sea was an expanse of cold, shifting mountains of glass that stretched into forever. Vidarian and Thalnarra, caught between the two, soldiered on against the onslaught of wind and wave, but at times it seemed they made no progress, and twice Vidarian swore that the shifting water was actually pushing them backward toward the shore.

Vidarian had poled his craft across the angry waves throughout the night, eventually reversing it to use the leafy end as a makeshift oar, but no dawn showed on the horizon. His muscles were reaching their utter limits-he had thought this perhaps a dozen times in the past several hours, but now he knew with a sallow dread overtaking his stomach that he was rapidly losing ground to fatigue.

He was just about to call a halt when Thalnarra gave voice to a chilling hawklike cry overhead. // Stay! // The single word flung itself into Vidarian's mind and took several moments to percolate, after which he shifted his weight and began fighting not to move onward but to keep the basket-boat in the same place. Thalnarra darted forward and upward, disappearing into the cloud cover.

Whether he succeeded he did not know, but Thalnarra appeared overhead before he could so much as wonder where she had gone. Her wings twitched in a rapid pattern as she kept herself hovering in place over the basket.

// Throw me the amplifier! // She placed a strange emphasis on the last word, and Vidarian knew what she meant. He moved to the chest, dropping the oar to the basket's wet deck and trusting the gryphoness to keep pace with the now-moving vessel. After fishing inside the opened wooden container for a moment or so, he froze; what was Thalnarra going to do with the sphere, and how in the world was he going to throw it to her? But the priestess's sharp eyes caught his hesitation and she let out another shriek, this one impatient and an inarguable demand. Vidarian picked up the sphere.

He hesitated again as he hefted the solid weight of the globe. // Just throw it! // Thalnarra's sharp words triggered the movement of his hand more than Vidarian's own will did. He wound up and slung the globe up into the air with as much force as he could manage.

It wasn't a good throw, but, with a stunning display of agility, Thalnarra dropped like a gull and snatched the globe out of the air. The sharp, ringing clack of her formidable talons against the glass of the amplifier carried faintly over the howling wind.

No sooner had Thalnarra touched the sphere than a wave of energy pulsed outward from her, intensely hot and carrying with it the faint but pungent odor of astringent smoke. Vidarian could see it with his eyes-a bright, blinding circle of red shot out across the waves. But the ring did not disappear into the distance as he thought it would. It stopped perhaps six gryphon-lengths away before pulsing back toward the center and simultaneously shooting up into a half-dome in the air.

The wind died away. Vidarian found himself acutely aware of Thalnarra's presence, from the steady beating of her wings overhead to the thump of her heartbeat. But the waves beyond the circle grew indistinct, as if seen in a dream.

“What did you do?” he called, voice echoing in the abrupt quiet.

// Shielded us from the Vkortha, // came the answer, and the gryphoness sounded very, very tired. // It won't last for long. // She dropped the amplifier back into the basket and Vidarian tucked it into his sash absently.

“Why now?”

// Because we're passing out of the storm-it's a barrier around their island. I can see the break in the clouds from here. //

The swift, cold water carried them toward the break so quickly that by the time Thalnarra completed her sentence they were breaking into a patch of open sky. Vidarian staggered forward as the water itself grew abruptly still, nearly pulling the oar from his hands. He stared blankly over the opaque, glossy water that seemed to have no depth as it reflected a sky that had no clouds. It took several moments for him to realize that palpable in the air was another stillness, this one strange: Thalnarra's mind, over the course of his time with her, had developed a certain “static”; he found that he could sense when she was nearby. No more-she hovered on the wind, wings beating regularly to keep her aloft, but the presence of her mind was far astray.

Then-

// Wait…I'm losing it…brace yourself- //

“For what?” he shouted, then winced at the booming volume of his own voice in the silence; he was too long accustomed to the thunder of the waves. But Thalnarra was gone.

Stars spangled in front of Vidarian's vision as if he'd taken a massive blow to the head. A strange whiteness clouded his eyes, and he blinked rapidly, raising arms that did their best not to respond.

“Vidarian, I'm so sorry.”

A shape clothed in golden silk gradually resolved to his left. Endera was seated next to him in a silver-chased mahogany chair. Her large green eyes were tight with grief and sympathy.

“Priestess?” Speaking sent lances of pain through his dry throat and caused his head to spin.

“Ssh, don't speak. You are safely returned to the temple now and in the hands of the Goddess.” Her hand on his shoulder was cool. He shivered.

“Ariadel-“ Vidarian choked out her name, hoping it was recognizable. Endera's brow contorted and she looked away. Her voice came as though from a great distance.

“Lost. She was lost. And before we even sent you from the Temple. We couldn't call you back in time, and when our forces could finally reach you, you were caught in a Vkorthan mind-trap. Their silisva had you ensnared in-”

“Their what?” Each word seemed to cost him more, but the priestess's words hammered him. Ariadel was dead? Loss, profound and blinding, swept through his veins like black oil in a stream.

Endera paused and looked at him, hard. “The silisva. Surely you remember.”

Anger sparked somewhere deep within him; it fluttered like a moth, but grew wings of flame. Though his throat felt filled with broken glass, he spat at the priestess, “You said…knew nothing about the Vkortha. You said Ariadel told you nothing…to protect…Temple.” Grinding out Ariadel's name set him back, but only for half a second, and at last he broke through the agony in his throat; the pain faded to numbness and he felt strength returning to his arms in a haphazard rush. He wrenched himself upright and took in the strange white walls that enclosed the small room. At first his mind boggled at the absence of any door-but then he blinked, and it was there, with the memory that it always had been. He turned in the bed, pulling cotton sheets into disarray, and threw himself at Endera, who leapt back like a doe. There was panic in her eyes.

“This isn't right,” he said, advancing on legs that were at once strong and in the next instant weak as water. “None of this…” he winced as his vision lurched, “is right.” Staggering sideways, he swept the silver-chased chair onto the floor. It clattered as it hit. “Sharli's colors are gold, not silver. No temple room would miss both a window and a candle.” He lifted his gaze to Endera, who was backing up slowly. “Your eyes are not green.” As he stared at the priestess, her eyes widened-and began to change color. They slid from green to turquoise to blue, and then through purple-but Vidarian had already turned away. He charged at the bare wall with a primal scream ripping from his lungs.

The ground swept away under his feet and he almost stumbled-but Vidarian Rulorat had never so much as placed a foot wrong aboard ship, and would not do so now.

The waves of the An'durin, green and deep, rocked the Empress Quest as her captain gazed out over the cloudless waters. It was an unnatural sea, they said-the An'durin suffered no living creature within it, save one, and so its waters were clear as autumn air. Shifting white sandbars were visible hundreds of feet below the glassy surface.

There was something he was supposed to remember…

Vidarian shook his head. An item left at port, perhaps. Some trinket his mother had asked for. He could find her another; ports dotted the shores of An'durinvale like gulls on a pier. He could not turn the Empress around now, with the wind so full in her sails and the sky so ripe for conquest.

In the distance a pair of wings soared just above the horizon, shadows on the salt-chased air. A gryphon?

A smile parted Vidarian's cracked lips at that. The sour salten breeze dried his teeth. A passing sailor saw his expression and paused, smiling hesitantly back with a question in his eyes, but the captain only shook his head and gestured the man onto his duties. Thoughts of gryphons indeed! Next he would be thinking of mermaids; gryphons were creatures of myth. He squinted to locate the creature in the air again-surely a wayward albatross-but it was gone.

Absently Vidarian pulled a brass spotting scope from his coat pocket and trained it on the horizon. He squinted-the waves had grown, tossing the ship to and fro on the swells. Thinking that it would pass, he continued to peer through the glass, but the waves continued to rise. Frowning, he re-pocketed the scope, just in time to see the first churning foam froth white off the Empress's port bow.

A Rulorat did not stagger, but Vidarian took a decisive step backward as the sole occupant of the An'durin Sea surfaced not two lengths from his ship, whipping the waters to a frenzy in her wake.

An'du, they called her-the sea was named after the great green whale that lurked in her depths. The top of the creature was white as the sand, lending her invisibility from above; three times as long as the Empress Quest, An'du had three sets of long, tapering fins speckled with white against slick moss-green skin. I remember you! The words whispered in Vidarian's mind, soft and strangely feminine. As she rose titanic from the sea An'du rolled to one side, fixing an eye the size of a dinner plate on the Empress and her captain. Phalanged tendrils of translucent gold flesh, kelplike camouflage from some long-forgotten home sea, trailed from her fins and spine, slipping above the water's surface as her huge torso slid sideways in the water. The great eye dilated, black rising against deep brown, and then pinned, sending a thrill of alarm down Vidarian's spine. There were legends about An'du-that the deadness of her sea was not her making, but man's, and she cultivated vengeance in her heart so black that it could kill with a single thought. But the sharpness in her one visible eye was not directed at him, focused instead at some point over his shoulder.

They do not know whom they trifle with, calling up your memory of me, she said, and Vidarian's head spun, not at the danger in her tone but at a sudden distortion of what seemed the very world around him, which bowed like a glass fishbowl. They think to trap you here! But then they think that all are as ignorant of their secrets as the priestesshood…. I do remember you. Then with one mighty push of her broad tail, she was gone-leaving behind only a voice that lingered painfully on Vidarian's thoughts-

And you must remember as well…

And he did. Visions of a lightning-cracked sea flashed before his eyes, weirdly juxtaposed on the serene waves of the An'durin. He clutched his head and screamed as images flooded his brain-a pocked crystal orb on a bed of velvet, a gold-chased mahogany chair beneath an alabaster window, a slender white hand slipping into darkness…

Blinded, he lurched across the deck, leaping over the bow as he reached it and flinging out his arms to embrace the green waters. The piercing cry of a raptor, far too loud to be an albatross, screamed over his head, melding with the song of a breaching whale that thundered in his skull-

He fell, long and long. The expected assault of the cold sea never came. He was a boy, standing at his father's side; he was a man, weeping at the empty bower of his mother; he was a captain, leading a battle-quickened crew aboard a black pirate vessel.

He was a man, holding in his arms a creature whose soul burned with white fire.

Suddenly his feet were back on the unstable but unshakably real surface of the gryphon basket, which had taken on an alarming amount of water. The real world engulfed him; every detail shouted its existence to his baffled senses. Only Thalnarra's triumphant shriek overhead brought him back into control, as she swooped low enough over his head to raise a wind that sent the falling rain blasting back onto the sea.

She did not speak, but arrowed off to the northwest, disappearing back into the storm. Magic glowed red at the tips of her talons, and she still looked near to exhaustion, but her wings took on a stronger beat when Vidarian waved to acknowledge her dive.

His time in the Vkortha's enforced trance had pushed him back out into the stormy whirlpool beyond the enemy's lair, but with a surge of adrenaline fueling his fury he fought his way back into their sacred circle.

This time, they were waiting for him.

Six figures robed in black stood in a semicircle just inside the perimeter of the cyclone that protected their domain. Their casual display of yet another intimidating magic made his heart skip; slippered feet rested easily on the still surface of the too-glassy water. His mind reeled, ready to battle another dream, but then the waves shifted, baring thin columns of ice that gave the lie to their illusion. Water magic? His own new sensitivity surged up, longing to study how they'd frozen the sea-but he did not need the sun emerald to know that Ariadel lay beyond them, fighting for consciousness-fighting to keep her life.

The attention of the Vkortha was fractured, but enough rested on Vidarian to make the six figures his entire world. Nothing they could have done would shift his gaze. But Ariadel's voice, hoarse with fatigue even as it spoke in his mind, could.

Vidarian, you have to get out of here…they're trying to get one last piece of information from me, or else I would be dead. More they can reap from your mind, and Thalnarra's-they search for her still, though her cloak has thrown them off! The web of their magic is everywhere…everywhere…. His mind spun again-he had not known that Ariadel could speak telepathically. But he worked to get beyond his shock and concentrate on her words-the last of which, and the insanity that touched it, percolated deeply enough to make his very soul quake. You must go, now!

“You know I can't do that,” he said aloud, trusting Ariadel to hear the words of his mind even as he stared at the still immobile figures of the Vkortha before him. The priestess, mad with fear and fatigue, continued to object-and Vidarian knew that the Vkortha were listening.

As they listened, and as they sent their minds questing outward into the churning sky for Thalnarra, Vidarian moved his hands behind him, slowly.

When his searching fingers found their targets, he was not slow. With one hand he drew his sword from its sheath, steel against steel singing even over the roar of the storm that surrounded them. As one the Vkortha stepped back, focusing the full weight of their formidable awareness on him as the clean steel-fireborne and rife with the spirit of Vidarian's ancestors-drew their magics like a magnet. As he had suspected, they'd trained their magics to strike any fire spirit that manifested nearby, the better to bring down Thalnarra the moment her shield slipped-not expecting that Vidarian's sword could provide a false target.

A wall of flame roared up around the edge of the Vkorthan island; Thalnarra had seen her opening. It would burn Ariadel-if it had a chance to get there.

Even as Thalnarra's defenses surged up around them, Vidarian sent his own awareness into the Rulorat sword. The torrential life force inside him, the storm that the sun emerald had only hinted at, poured down his arm and into the blade, becoming it. To his awakened senses, a coil of crashing water energy wreathed the weapon from pommel to tip. The burning light they now displaced flared as if living and angry, and Vidarian's chest threatened to collapse in on itself as the energies warred-he fought now, not just against the drilling eyes of the Vkortha, but to stay conscious under the weight of his own magic.

A second force welled up in him, something he could only call his own will, embodied. His teeth clenched, the bones of his grip went white around the sword, sparks flashed in his vision-and the energies obeyed him. Like chastened hounds, they suddenly bent to his mastery, weaving together, sealing the sword into a thing of living energy.

A cry of triumph and rage clawed free from his throat, and he was throwing himself from the basket before he realized it, into the embrace of the waves. Even as his feet tumbled toward the familiar shifting surface and the depths beyond, he snarled, a pure wordless denial of the forces claiming his body-and they listened. The waves stiffened, solidified-and when his boots met them, they held him, propelled him toward his enemies.

Another leap and he closed the gap. The sword with its woven energies met the enemy mage's defenses, crashing against them like waves breaking over ice. And like waves, the energies came rebounding back at Vidarian, pushing him backward. But his momentum gave him the advantage, and the Vkortha folded under the blade with an unearthly wail, its barriers collapsing and its body dropping into the sea.

The Vkortha dissolved into chaos. The five remaining turned and fled, each in a different direction, the seas freezing before them, waves sent rising up behind them in panicked last defenses. None made any effort to assist the others, and they were rapidly scattering over the sea and island.

From the sky, Thalnarra screamed a challenge and fell upon the one nearest her, bringing it down in a torrent of flame. But Vidarian knew they could not chase down the three remaining-one, at least, would escape, to warn its fellows and bring a renewed attack. Without thinking, he brought forth the etched orb of the amplifier from his sash. He raised it to his forehead, closed his eyes, and pushed.

A wave of energy pulsed out from man and amplifier, leaving a path of momentary but profound silence in its wake. All life stilled for the brief second of its passing. The Vkortha between it and the island wailed their death-cries as the magic found them distracted, unprotected, and utterly unable to defend themselves. Behind him Vidarian felt Thalnarra raise up her own magic to shield herself from the onslaught, and withstand it-but what happened beyond the line of Vkortha was strange.

The wave found Ariadel, bound only by magic that was quickly dissolving around her but unable to avoid the crashing pulse of water energy. It cascaded down over her, and the light within her soul went out.

Time slowed to a crawl. Amid the roar of the diminishing storm that raged around the island, Vidarian felt the stone in his breast pocket go cold. In that very instant, when despair would have taken him, the fire that lived within that rare stone leapt into Vidarian's heart-and found tinder there.

Vidarian fell to his knees in the waterlogged basket, his will sundered by the fire that roared up in his spirit. The sword in his hand began to glow, then incandesce. Just at the moment when he thought the flames would consume him-and when he would go willingly to their opiate embrace-an eagle's shape dropped out of the sky (…too big to be an albatross…) and dove down upon him. Thalnarra's aura covered his own and soothed his depleted spirit.

She stayed with him as they struggled to the shore of the island. There was no sign of the Vkortha; the ones that had survived the blast of the amplifier had fled. Absent the terrible storm, the island was quite mundane: white beaches dotted with brush and palm stretched to the east and west. And to the north, a crumpled figure lay still on the sand.

Weak in body and mind, Vidarian staggered across the sand, his feet sinking in dull thuds as the beach fought his passing. When he reached Ariadel's fallen body, he dropped to his knees and reached to turn her toward him. Blood flowed renewed in a strangled heart when he saw that she still breathed.

But there was accusation in those tormented eyes-eyes that had so long struggled against madness, and now had their last bastion taken from them. Gone was the mysterious beauty he had met so long ago, and in its place was a creature of shadow and a mind that did not recognize him.

He whispered her name, but she could not hear it. Helplessness turned rapidly to anger-the last of his energy was not spent. In a fury he turned his gaze to the sky itself, and throughout the core of his being screamed as he had not known he could: HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

But there, in the heart of his rage, a spark jumped from the inconstant flames that had taken hold in his soul. It flickered, jumped, landed-and found tinder.

Golden light roared up in Ariadel's eyes, and consciousness returned with them. Thalnarra, silent so long, hissed audibly behind them and rushed forward, spreading a wing over the once-broken priestess and extending her magic to feed the burgeoning new flame there-magic that Vidarian could now sense.

The sun moved far in the sky as they sat silently on the beach recouping their strength. Gradually warmth returned to their bodies, and Vidarian settled down into the sand, trying to make some sense of the energy that now swept without rhyme or reason through his body. A sudden sound-an angry “Rrrawl!”-distracted him momentarily from observing the turmoil inside his spirit.

The gangly kitten, looking even more emaciated than usual with its fur slicked down from the rain and sea spray, clawed its way out from under a broken plank, where it had apparently been nesting since the capture. The look in Ariadel's exhausted eyes said that she had not expected to see the little creature again. Gingerly and silently she picked the tiny cat up; even sitting where he was, Vidarian could smell the tinge of garbage and old fish oil that clung to the wet fur. Even as his nose wrinkled, he smiled, an expression that quickly faded when a surge of flashing colors swam across his mind again.

The magics there were arguing. Fire and water did not easily coexist. But it was a manageable struggle-in the scope of recent events, it was almost comforting.

When Ariadel spoke at last it was with a voice choked by disuse. “You-Quenched me. How?” Vidarian stared at her for a long moment, wondering how to answer.

Thalnarra, settled next to them with her wings spread out under the sun like a vulture, took up the answer without opening her eyes. // He had the amplifier and your fire was already low-the Vkortha had worn you down, the better to sense attacking fire magics. As for Vidarian-// one red eye revealed itself in a narrow slit between her heavy eyelids, // I have matched him to another of our prophesies, though I thought not to live to see this one: the warrior of fire and sea. //

Ariadel blinked dully, though with obvious recognition, as the kitten squirmed in her arms. “The Tesseract? Then…that would…”

// One revelation at a time, my dear. // Amusement colored Thalnarra's voice, obliquely reassuring Vidarian despite the irksome nature of her words. // He is a Kindler-and that is enough for him to know for now. //

“And then…where can we go now? We can make a boat from what remains of the Vkortha settlement here…but the last of them have surely gone elsewhere, and they will not take this defeat well.” Ariadel frowned, still struggling against the fragility of her body but gaining in cogency rapidly.

Thalnarra did not answer and Vidarian pulled himself slowly to his feet. He looked out over the calm, ordinary waters as they lapped against the shore. The sky was a deep sapphire blue as day made its steady journey toward evening-and where it met the sea could not be told for certain, so similar in shade was the distant horizon. Brushing sand from his beard, he turned back toward gryphon and priestess and folded his arms. “For now,” he said, “I think we go home. I have a matter of sun rubies to settle.”

Vidarian Rulorat's hands rested with soft confidence on the lacquered prow of the Stormswift, a sleek black ship with the banner of Sher'azar snapping from its highest mast. A gilt bronze weathervane overhead creaked with movement as the vast sea, incarnadine in the twilight, rippled with a change in the wind. The waters were as mesmerizing as they had been for Vidarian on the day he first remembered watching the waves. No matter where he was in the world, the water was his constant: one mother, one mistress, one life. She was eternal.

Vidarian? The sudden voice in his mind snapped him out of contemplation of the sunset reflections below. She's starting. You might want to see this.

Try as he might, Vidarian couldn't quite suppress a start when Ariadel spoke in his mind. He'd gotten used to Thalnarra's telepathy perhaps more easily because she never spoke with a physical voice. That, and she didn't speak inside his head the way Ariadel did.

In the rush of adrenaline that came with their recent standoff with the Vkortha council and the shock that followed, no one had noticed that, beyond being dehydrated and shaken, Ariadel had taken a strong blow to the side of the face and suffered a broken jaw. When cooler realization had set in and the fire faded from her veins, the lower right part of her face had started to swell, and soon she had joined Thalnarra in silence, if by a more painful route.

When Vidarian turned to walk quickly to the Stormswift's cabin, another banner caught his eye-the white torch insignia of the Sher'azar Healers floated from the crow's nest of the smaller ship that brushed sides with the greater black corsair. Sher'azar's reach was long-when their ordeal was over, Thalnarra stretched her mind to contact her fellows on the shore, who in turn relayed swift messages to the Fire Temple. Within three days the black ship that now bore them had appeared on the horizon, and two days later they met up with the smaller Greyvale in the northern waters off Val Harlon.

The Greyvale was a stout, stable rig with an expansive array of wide, square masts and a low waterline. She had three decks, though her aft quarter combined those three into a single chamber for a gryphon healing station where the creatures’ instinctive dislike of closed-in spaces could be mitigated. Right now it was full of ballast: huge bales of straw weighted down with lead, the former of which could either be thrown overboard or broken open and spread across the deck for a warm makeshift den. Thalnarra had declined the comforts of this hideaway in favor of a sleeping nest atop the main deck of the Stormswift, ostensibly because she preferred the cool sea air, but in reality to spare the healers the trouble of breaking open straw bales that they would then have to discard later as unsanitary. That, and having a fire magess in the back hold of a ship atop a bunch of kindling was probably not the healers’ idea of safety and sanity.

Inside the forecastle of the Stormswift Vidarian caught an odd medley of scents: the faint sweet nut-spice of Thalnarra's feathers, varnish from the dark wood paneling the walls, and an odd, grassy aroma that he couldn't identify. Thalnarra's tail thumped sedately on the deck just ahead of him, curled out from the threshold to the captain's cabin. Quiet nods met him as he entered the cabin's anteroom-the doorway into the cabin proper was open, and Ariadel perched on the edge of the captain's bed, bracketed by the captain herself (a burgundy-uniformed fire magess) and an adjunct healer from the Greyvale.

The strange smell seemed to be coming from a platter of crushed plant material that rested on a steel tray to one side of the bed. The healer, a vastly wrinkled woman with grey hair and nimble fingers, held a linen poultice of the stuff to Ariadel's jaw.

It's cactus, Ariadel thought at him, and she smiled, then immediately winced, from her perch. There was no separation of her thought from his-it was as if he'd thought it himself, only he had no idea what a “cactus” was.

She realized this, too. It's a plant from the plains-desert south of the Windsmouth range, they thought together. By the ruins? (This time it was actually his thought.) Even past the ruins, came the answering thought. Far, far south. That would explain why he'd never seen it before-it must be tremendously rare. The volcanic Windsmouth Mountains were beyond treacherous-some said they had swallowed up entire civilizations. And a series of skeletal reef-islands that confounded even the most learned navigator barred access to the southern continent by sea. Naturally it was the fascination of every dreamer and dusty-nosed archivist north of Cheropolis, and many more to the south.

The healer had rolled up her sleeves-apparently the strange green pulp wasn't the only act in the show tonight.