Sword of Fire and Sea

Vidarian felt an abrupt tightening in his chest, a sensation he had come to recognize as the precursor to someone wielding elemental energies in his immediate vicinity. Strange green lights that his eyes told him he saw but he knew had no real “light” of their own danced out from the healer's fingertips, ribbons of energy that filled the air with a refreshing crispness, almost like the scent of pine needles. The ribbons were joined by bands of blue, red, and gold so quickly that Vidarian was not able to identify any of the matching changes in the air, though he knew they were there, and a strange harmony thundered in his ears.

Then, suddenly, all of the energies were one, and they flickered out of his sight. Vidarian staggered and leaned into the doorjamb-it felt like something was crawling under his skin, swimming just below the reach of his consciousness. A sickening coppery taste filled his mouth.

All at once it was over; the healer was folding her sleeves back down and Ariadel was carefully testing the mobility of her healed jaw.

// Fish go down straight, not sideways, // Thalnarra offered helpfully.

Vidarian felt his eyes bulge further. “What?”

// Nothing. You look like you're having a bit of trouble there. Remember to breathe. //

“Right,” was all he could manage, around concentrating on pulling air into his lungs.

// It gets easier the more you see it. What did you sense? // The gryphoness's piercing red eyes sharpened on him, their pupils pinning and flaring briefly.

“Like something…crawling…” He rubbed compulsively at his forearm.

// So you can feel it. // There was distinct satisfaction in Thalnarra's voice. // Some only experience a ringing in their ears, or a paling of the energy-light. //

“No, I felt it, all right.” Belatedly he remembered his manners and turned to the healer. “Thank you, Mender, for your help.”

The old woman smiled, baring a set of surprisingly white, strong teeth. “It's an honor to make y'r acquaintance, er-sir-”

“Just Vidarian, please, Mender,” Vidarian said quickly. The healer only smiled and bowed out of the room.

You should let them say it, Ariadel chided with Vidarian's mind. They are getting the chance of a lifetime, to meet the Tesseract. The word had rapidly become a trigger for cold chills up Vidarian's spine.

I just don't think any good can come of spreading big titles around….

“No good can come of trying to hide what you are, either,” Ariadel said, testing out the flexibility of her jaw.

// She speaks true, // Thalnarra addressed all of them, then tilted her head to fix Vidarian with a scarlet eye that once more flashed light and dark with her scrutiny.

// How can you do what you must if you are balked by a mere word? //

“And what must I do?” He couldn't quite keep the impatience out of his voice, having lost count of how many times he'd asked the same question.

But this time Thalnarra answered, black pupils flaring to fill her eyes.

// Change the world, of course. //

At midafternoon the following day they made port in Val Harlon to bid farewell to the Stormswift and board a lighter rivergoing craft. Val Harlon was unrivaled in splendor, as always-its white filigreed arches gleamed in the sun, visible far from the shore. Even at this distance it was possible to make out the strange famed sculptures that perched atop the spires-shaped like a human, but completely feathered, and winged like a gryphon. Fishing “farms” spread out in narrow fingers to either side of the channels that led to and from the port, crisscrossed with floating walkways woven from white reed.

The Sunstar, yet another Sher'azar-commissioned vessel, sat alarmingly low in the green water, its black hull set with thick glass in portholes that looked out no more than a handspan above the river's surface. She was sleek and narrow, which meant for smaller sleeping quarters, but to Vidarian the sight of her trim deck and precise three-cornered sails more than made up for the inconvenience. He also didn't spend much time below, in the first place.

The river fascinated. Vidarian had never liked rivers; even on the largest ones, the land crowded in too closely, and the calmer land waters gave berth to indolent but deadly creatures; somehow that combination struck Vidarian as cosmically wrong. Now, though, he sensed how the water changed; he felt it in his veins. Though thinner and tamer, the water here was of a purer source, absent the salt that gave the sea her body and wildness-it was clean and alive. Even the lush greenery that drank the river's essence from the shore pulsed with the presence of water itself, flavoring the very air. Vidarian spent many hours each day simply sitting in the shade of the mainsail, drinking in the new flavors of the elemental energy around him. He would return below only for meals and to sleep.

Though small, the Sunstar boasted more amenities than the Stormswift, being something of a luxury vessel and never intended for the abrasive salten sea. Vidarian grudgingly admitted that a few of her fittings outshone the Quest, and a small handful, such as the clever mirrored light fixtures that spun to distribute tension but never tilted, he memorized for adaptation onto his family's ship. If he could have discerned it, he would eagerly have learned what allowed the Sunstar to boast such elegant interiors while remaining as light and fleet as a sailfish on the water.

Vidarian spent two days perched at the bow of the small river-ship before the smooth separation of the green waters before the knifelike prow began to wane in its wonder. The other occupants of the small vessel had left him to his peace, perhaps wisely recognizing his need for quiet with the magics at war within him, but on their third day on the river, Thalnarra came and sat next to him, her muscles shifting with the gently swaying deck.

“How did she do it?” Vidarian asked, without turning his head to look at the gryphoness. Thalnarra chuckled.

// You refer to the fish incident, // she said, as if that was any explanation, but she continued before he could contradict her. // Healers maintain an internal balance of all four elements, at least insofar as we can tell. To tell you the truth, I don't know if anyone completely understands it. It is an ability that they display from an early age, and it is instinctive. //

“Why did it keelhaul me like that?” Vidarian folded his arms and consciously smoothed the scowl from his expression as he turned to regard Thalnarra, leaning against the carved, upswept “flames” that formed the Sunstar's bow.

// Only because you've never seen it before, while Kindled. Exposure to Healing strikes us all differently. Most air magicians smell it; water magicians hear it; fire magicians see it; earth magicians taste it. //

Vidarian's brow furrowed. “But…I'm almost certain I felt it, crawling around…” He rubbed his hands on his shirtsleeves, trying to shake the memory of the strange sensation from his fingertips. The gryphoness did not answer, though she flicked a momentary scarlet glance at him before returning her focus to the parting river below. Vidarian clenched his teeth. He had come to conclude that not all magicians had such a flare for the dramatic-just the Fire ones. “Who feels it, Thalnarra?”

// We have records of magicians from long ago-centuries upon centuries ago, as far as we can reckon-that could “feel” Healing. // The feathered tip of her tail flicked against her ankles. // They were called PrimeAdepts, and they were masters of all four elements. //

“Am I going to be a…PrimeAdept?” Vidarian swallowed. He was having a hard enough time with two elements in his blood; what would it be like with four?

Thalnarra gave a purring chuckle, the feathers on her throat rippling, that set him at ease. // Not likely. For one thing, all of the PrimeAdepts were gryphons. // She fixed him with a superior stare for a moment, and he met it, though his survival brain clamored against facing down that primal predator regard. Her amusement rippled in his mind, not unkind, and she again turned her head back toward the water. // And for another, // she continued, // we do not think there remains enough magic in the world to support a PrimeAdept. //

“There was more magic, before?” The question was obvious, and somehow Vidarian felt that he knew the answer in his bones, in his blood, but he needed it spoken.

// Oh, yes. There was a time when most creatures had magic…and when humans and gryphons were quite outnumbered by other sentients on this planet. And further back, in the Age of the PrimeAdepts, magic was everywhere. // Thalnarra twitched one tufted ear, her pupils contracting and flaring, her mind somewhen else.

“What happened?”

// Get me that fish, // Thalnarra said abruptly.

“What?” Pulled from his imaginings, Vidarian looked down into the river.

// Get. Me. That fish. // She gestured down into the ship's wake with a talon; a small school of silver fish swam alongside, staying just ahead of the rolling water. Still trying to figure out when he had missed the turn in their conversation, Vidarian reached down to take a fishing pole from the hooks suspended below the rail. // Not that way, // Thalnarra corrected. Even more confused, Vidarian stared at the fish. They were starting to separate from the ship, would disappear in moments.

He almost realized Thalnarra's intent too late. Then, as the last fish started to change its course, he reached out with his senses.

Coolness flooded his mind as he made metaphysical contact with the river. All of the life he had sensed before roared up before him-the reeds as they whisked past on the shore, the slimy moss that covered the stones on the bank, the flat lily pads with their pointed orange blossoms…and the silver fish, each as long as his forearm. He found the nearest fish with his mind and then crept forward into the rushing water just in front of it. Then, not entirely knowing what he was doing, he pulled.

The fish flipped out of the water, or rather, the water flipped upward and took the creature with it. As it sailed high in the air and then began to fall, the still-moving ship coursed to meet it, and Thalnarra caught it neatly in her beak. Two twitches of her throat and it was gone. // Very good, // she said, and Vidarian did not know if she praised him or the fish.

“Don't mention it,” he said anyway. Thalnarra answered his question as if uninterrupted by the snack.

// We do not know for certain what changed, // she said, // whether it was of “our” doing or whether the world simply began to lose its magic. We do believe that some of the continuing loss is population-related. Our populations-and, more specifically, your human populations-continue to rise, but the amount of magical ability doled out to both our species seems to remain the same. Therefore we have fewer magic-workers, and those few we have are not as strong as magicians of old. //

“But I thought the goddesses gave magic.”

Thalnarra nodded. // They do, and at the beginning of the history of the great Temples as we know them today, magicians turned to the elemental goddesses and asked them to renew their magical abilities. To a certain extent, the goddesses answered, and so the priestesshoods were born. Some would say that it is Ele'cherath's will that magic should dwindle, or that we do not act on her will enough and so she slowly withdraws her blessing from us. The fact is no one really knows. //

It was all getting a little too philosophical. “What am I supposed to do?”

The gryphoness tilted her head, eyeing him. // I told you. Change the world. //

“But you didn't say how.”

Thalnarra sighed and returned her gaze to the river. Her pupils started to contract and flare again for several moments before stopping suddenly. // The Tesseract is prophesied to seal the Great Gate, // she said, still not looking at him. // The Gate of the PrimeAdepts. //

“Oh,” he said. “What happens after that?”

// We don't know. //

The following day, the water changed color slightly, growing less green. By midafternoon the watch called out a sighting-Moorport was on the horizon. At this, Ariadel, looking considerably less sun-touched than Vidarian for her time spent below, clattered joyfully up to the top deck. She smiled as she squinted into the sunlight.

“You're in fine feather,” Vidarian said, chuckling at her gaiety.

“Moorport is my favorite stop,” she said, beaming at him despite his gentle jibe. “Come, I'll show you.”

Ariadel's excitement, Vidarian was later forced to admit, was fairly justified. She led him to a stately establishment far enough away from the river to shed its scent but close enough to be within easy walking distance of the port. A sign hung over the door proclaimed it the Inn of the Lustrous Pearl.

Within was a paradise in miniature. Strange plants with leaves and flowers that Vidarian could not name filled a small conservatory just inside the tall front doors, and tiny birds twittered from the trees that arched slender branches over a cobbled path that led to the inn itself.

Either Ariadel had sent word ahead, or the proprietors of the Pearl were ready for custom at any time of the day; neither would have particularly surprised Vidarian. As soon as they stepped inside the warmly lit entryway, a pair of smiling women, strikingly beautiful with dark hair and eyes, took Vidarian in hand and led him down the left corridor-Ariadel accompanied another pair to the right, flashing a wicked smile at his alarmed expression. She wiggled her fingertips at him before disappearing around a corner.

After a couple of right-angle turns, the wood-paneled hallway opened up into a small, comfortable chamber lit with lamps of frosted golden glass, each easily as large as Vidarian's head. Spaced between the lamps, covering every inch of wall space, were beveled wooden racks-and in the racks, row on row of gleaming glass bottles, all identically shaped but no two of the same color. In the center of the room was a padded leather table flanked by a pair of cedar cabinets.

The two women separated, neither having spoken. The first went to peruse the bottles, while the second began removing Vidarian's clothes, after briefly introducing herself as Orchid. He jumped as she tugged gently at his coat, but she only smiled again. “Come now,” she said, and though her voice was low, it was courteously businesslike. “You must remove your clothes for massage.” She glanced over at her partner. “He looks tense.” They shared a grin, and the second girl nodded, moving to another section of racks and selecting a series of bottles.

Vidarian managed to keep some parts of his anatomy from going completely red by the time all of his clothes were off, but it was a struggle. The first attendant wrapped a warm, fluffy towel from one of the cedar cabinets around his waist before guiding him to the table. She made a move as if to help him climb atop it, but he gently slipped away from her grasp and levered himself up on his own.

The leather was cool against his chest, but not uncomfortable. The clink of glass from behind him indicated that the second attendant had made her selections, and shortly Vidarian heard her slippered feet pad across to the table.

“First a lotion,” one of them said-he thought it was Orchid, but wasn't sure. Both of them had exotic accents, something like the intonation of the islanders in the northwest tropics, but not precisely. He puzzled over the lilt and emphasis of their words until a touch of liquid coolness in the center of his back made him tense involuntarily. There was a smile in the attendant's words. “You are with Lady Ariadel. She has asked her usual therapy for you.” A sharp, cool scent filled Vidarian's nostrils as the girl worked the lotion into his back muscles. The vapors were remarkably refreshing, seeming to clear the clutter from his mind.

“What is that?” he asked, impressed.

“The scent is from the oil of crushed laurel-wood and cedar bark. We blend it with a salve made from dustneedle leaves and pods.” Vidarian was racking his memories for anything like what she'd described, and had come up with nothing when a sudden spreading warmth between his shoulder blades blurred any future thoughts traveling through his head. “A warmed almond oil,” Orchid offered, and he could hear the smile in her voice. She added, without being asked, “Sandalwood, lavender, and mayweed.”

Time blurred for a spell as Orchid expertly transitioned from spreading the sweet, heady oil to a deep-tissue massage. Her surprisingly strong fingers found pockets of tension he was fairly sure he'd been carrying around for several years, and the abrupt, heated release was almost painful. Then the gentle orange warmth of the lanterns took hold of Vidarian's senses, briefly becoming his world.

His thoughts drifted, as they were wont to do since the battle with Vanderken, toward his ship and his crew. A pang of longing and guilt echoed in his chest, an itch to be back upon his own deck that no magic, however remarkable, could suppress. There was pride there, a glowing ember of pleasure at how Marielle would now receive her own long-overdue captainship, but he'd sailed for so long that the daily tasks of life at sea sprang upon his unconscious mind-was the sailcloth sound? Had they taken on enough vegetable to keep Ilsut appeased for the crew's health? Little Lifan, when should she be sent to a true windreader for apprenticeship? Like little gnats they surfaced, and one by one he forced himself to let them go, to trust in Marielle and the crew to see themselves safely home. At length, he ran out of worries, and his mind bobbed as on a gentle sea. Almost, he heard a soft voice singing a strange and wordless song.

When he came back to himself, Orchid was doing something rather remarkable involving her thumbs and the balls of his feet-it sent little prickles of sensation jolting up his spine. Despite the sleepy haze he'd drifted into earlier, he suddenly felt quite awake and energized.

Orchid seemed to sense his return to full consciousness. Her quiet voice was pitched for his ears only, a tone that said she was describing plant leaves, or linseed oil. “You must be careful with priestesses,” she pressed deeply just above his heel with her thumbs. Vidarian's heart picked up speed, and not from the pressure. “They are rarely what they claim, and even more rarely what they seem to be. You know this, I am sure, good sir, but you have been with Lady Ariadel long, and your air together is one of shared pain that binds. Take care it does not bind you too closely.”

Vidarian would have spoken at that, for an objection rolled up like a blue squall in his chest, but Orchid twisted his foot in a way that sent thin lances of white energy up his calf-hardly unpleasant, but utterly disabling. Lights flashed across his eyes, and Orchid was still speaking as she moved to his other foot, with a smile as though she were commenting on his reaction. “Lady Ariadel is long a friend of this inn, we have known her family for generations. But there are secrets that the priestesshood keeps from her. Never confuse her for them.”

Quelled, he said, finally, pitching his voice to wonder, as though he were asking about her technique: “How do you know so much of the priestesshood?”

“They do not have a monopoly on secret knowledge,” she said, a careless murmur that said she was discussing the weather, a cloth shipment. “You have energy of a kind I have never seen, sir Vidarian. Your task will be as great, of this I have no doubt. Look to yourself for answers, and trust not what you hear.” She raised her voice. “Prepare a robe, please.”

Orchid's assistant padded lightly across the room and was promptly at his shoulder, ready to help him to his feet and into a plush cotton robe.

Orchid appeared in front of him just as he settled the robe across his shoulders. Something glistened on each of her index fingers, and she reached up to massage his temples with them. The sharp, clean scent of lavender filled his nostrils, and he took a deeper breath almost without meaning to. “Remember always,” she said, rhythmically as if in harmless ritual benediction, “the gifts you carry will bring many to desire your friendship. But that friendship is your own gift, to be delivered to those most deserving. And the world is wide and full of secrets.” As if to complete her anointing, Orchid brushed one thumb across his forehead, and smiled, the intentness of her eyes sealing the words they had exchanged into silence. She and the assistant stepped back and bowed gracefully, still smiling, palms flat on their thighs. Vidarian fought the impulse to return the bow as they smoothly straightened. Orchid gestured, and her assistant nodded, then turned to lead him down another hallway.

In his haze of physical relaxation and mental brooding it was difficult to recall what directions they'd taken before, but if his suspicion was correct, the inn was huge-Orchid's young assistant, still unnamed, led him further in toward its center through another series of wood-paneled hallways, one of which opened up suddenly into a misty atrium.

Ariadel awaited them there, stretched like an indolent goddess across a satin-upholstered lounging chair. Her eyes roved up and down Vidarian's body as he approached. The assistant did not quite bow quickly enough to mask her smile.

When the young masseuse had taken her leave, and Vidarian had settled gingerly into another lounging chair next to Ariadel's, the fire priestess spoke. “You had Orchid? Oo.” Catlike envy twinkled briefly in her lazy gaze, and her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “She's my favorite.”

Vidarian searched her eyes for any hint of hidden intent, but found none, and grabbed at random for something to say. “I didn't catch her assistant's name.…” He craned his neck to look back up the wood-paneled passageway.

“She probably didn't have one.”

“What?”

“I mean, she has a name, of course, but she probably doesn't have a flower-name yet. They only get those after they've completed training. The assistants are all trainees.”

“I see.” He consciously smoothed his furrowed brow. “Do you come here often?” As he spoke, Vidarian took in his new surroundings, eyes roaming to absorb the tall, waxy-leafed trees, spreading ferns, twittering little birds, and strange hanging decanters that issued forth steady streams of white mist.

“I try to stop in every time I come up this route. They're very kind, and adjust their schedules to accommodate me when they can.” Ariadel was picking delicately at a silver platter of strange pink-orange fruit. After a moment she selected a thin slice and began to nibble at one end, away from the slim green rind. Between bites (which by her ecstatic eye-closing she thoroughly enjoyed), she said, “It makes the rest of the journey quite a bit more tolerable.”

Vidarian lifted his eyes from the fruit platter, one hand hovering over it. “Rest of the journey?”

Ariadel wrinkled her nose. “It's by verali. Smelly creatures. I never liked them.”

Priestesses had a fondness for heights that continually baffled Vidarian. The climb to Sher'azar was steep, blasted by wind and sun alike, and treacherous. Thalnarra had parted with them at the mountain's base, and as they watched her climb into the sky, wings angled and embracing the wind, Vidarian got a glimmering suspicion as to why all of the great temples perched like rock gulls on barely accessible mountaintops. If what Thalnarra had said about the origins of magic was right…he wondered if the priestesses that inhabited the temples now knew they had been meant for gryphon perches and not human habitation.

This trip up a treacherous mountain, at least, bore stark and comforting contrast to Vidarian's lone trek up the unforgiving crags of Sher'azar. Though the wind bit, the warmth of their verali mounts and the soft shrouds of black wool given to them at the mountain's base kept them both warm and protected from the howl of Sher'azar's persistent winter.

The verali themselves seemed agreeable enough: lanky creatures with exceptionally long necks and legs. Their curled wool-black for Vidarian's, a kind of mottled rust-and-ochre for Ariadel's-had a strong smell to it, not entirely unpleasant, but carried by oil from their skin, and as such it clung to any who handled them for days after. It was the smell of them that Ariadel claimed drove her mad. Between being saddled with a verali and having to leave her kitten at the Gatehouse (Endera, it seemed, was allergic to cats and would not permit them on temple grounds), Ariadel had worked up a fine head of ire, and Vidarian kept as clear a berth as he could without drawing attention to his distance. Irrational Ariadel had been about that kitten from the very beginning, but Vidarian had to admit that leaving it behind hadn't been easy-the thing had made such a terrible fuss, seeming to know even before Ariadel did that it would not be coming with them.

When they stopped to make camp halfway up the peak, with the wind intensifying and threatening ice, the sun had already sunk low beyond the foothills, leaving only a smudge of ruddy light to carry its eulogy. When Vidarian slung himself down from the saddle, jolts of forgotten feeling speared his legs, and he reached for his mount to steady himself.

Something, he was never quite sure what, guided his hand to one side, away from the hold he normally took on the pack's open flap. Startled anew by his sudden lack of control over his hands, he was about to stretch out his legs to make sure no other muscles were failing when he caught the glint of something small and metallic out of the corner of his eye.

There, tucked into a fold of the pack, rested a tiny glinting spider, gold of body, its ten legs balancing it cozily on a network of gossamer stretched across the parted leather. Vidarian's sharp breath of surprise brought Ariadel to his shoulder, and when she saw what the pack contained, she let out a little cry of astonishment.

“These spiders were prized by the priestesshood decades ago,” she said, a flush high on her cheeks, all thought of verali or abandoned kittens forgotten. “We haven't seen one in all that time, and they were rare long before my mother was born. Endera will be ecstatic.”

“What do you want to do with it?” Vidarian eyed the spider, unsettled by its returning ten-eyed unblinking gaze.

Ariadel's forehead wrinkled as she considered the creature. “We can't leave it in there. One jolt and it'd be done for.” With a little turn that scraped gravel under her feet, she turned to her verali and dug into its packs. After a moment of rummaging she came up with a sheet of the thick, fragrant parchment the priestesses used as a kind of quick-flaming incense; when burned, it would go up in a rush of bright flame all at once, leaving behind only a column of richly scented smoke.

With deft fingers Ariadel began folding the parchment into a small but secure little box. “The acolytes used to practice at making paper figures,” she explained. “This won't be paradise, but it'll do.” She'd left one side of the box open and held it widely ajar as she returned to Vidarian's side.

The spider lifted its two front legs as her shadow crossed its vision, but otherwise did not move, not even when Ariadel, exquisitely careful, brought the box around behind it and scooped it, plus a good portion of web, gently into the paper box. She shut the lid by tucking its flap into one of the intricate folds, then cupped the box between her hands as though it were the warm egg of some precious bird.

But another occupant of the pack had been disturbed by the tearing of the gossamer web. It skittered across the back of the pack, tiny clawed feet clinging delicately to the leather. Vidarian took an involuntary step back as its motion caught his eye. “I think you're going to need another of those boxes.”

Ariadel rushed back to the pack, still cradling the paper box with fingertips touching it as little as possible. “Another one?” Her voice was dry with incredulity.

The second spider, as far as Vidarian could tell, was identical to the first, glittering gold body and tiny black eyes. “Looks like it. Is that lucky?”

Ariadel cast him a look that made him feel quite the cabin boy, but superstitions had never been his forte. “Not particularly.” She frowned. “Just very strange.” But she made another box, and it went next to the first, tucked with a cushioning nest of underclothing into the emptied case for their firebox. By the faraway look in her eyes Vidarian knew she was still contemplating the spiders as they set about making camp-Ariadel with the fire and cooking, Vidarian seeing to the verali.

It was the first night that they had spent together, truly alone, since the farmhouse and the storm. That quiet realization set in with the fading of the sky and the appearance of the first bright stars. Three moons brightened the sky, enough to show them both to each other clearly even without the golden light of the fire.

“Did you always want to be a ship captain?” Her soft voice barely rose above the crackling of the fire as it consumed the dark, pitchy wood that was all that was available on the mountain.

Vidarian stared into its quiet light a long moment before he answered. “I wasn't supposed to be,” he admitted finally. “The Quest was my father's ship, my grandfathers'…. They won her from the first Emperor.” He thought again of his ship, his crew, and here his feet further from the sea than they'd been in years. “I was born on her. But Relarion, my brother, was supposed to be her captain. He died when I was young.”

Concern wrinkled her forehead, and something more-a fear and a hesitancy. But she said only, “I'm sorry.”

He lifted his hands to the fire's warmth, shaking his head. “You never let go of a pain like that, but it's an old one. I became the captain I thought my father wanted from Rel.”

Ariadel smiled, a soft smile of quiet wonder and unfamiliarity. “We never had a ship, but…my family always thought that I was special,” her head tilted with shyness, “destined for something.”

His hand moved of its own and brushed her arm with the back of his fingers. “You are.”

Her eyebrows lifted a heartbeat before her laugh, high and sudden, but then her fingertips, cool with the night, were on the back of his neck, pulling. Vidarian moved to her with a quiet rush, filled his hands with her hair, drawing their faces closer, and when they met it was with electricity, searing memory and completion that shot straight down to his bones. His hands traversed the slender column of her neck, rested on her shoulders, thumbs tracing slim collarbones, before he opened his eyes again.

“This was where we left off,” Ariadel breathed, and her heart was a wild rhythm beneath his hands.

“Then it's a good place to pick up,” he said, and her arms tightened at his back, drawing them closer again, sliding to guide him to parts of her that were soft as summer waters, firm and smooth beneath his weathered hands. As their faces met again something dropped inside him, and every sensation doubled. When his hand slid down her arm the sweet rush of warmth was in his mind as in hers, felt as she felt, and when she drew quick breath, the same headiness quickened his pulse. That's very interesting, she breathed, in his thoughts. And pick up they did.

Vidarian woke, gasping.

They had made camp in the lee of a rocky prominence, a pocket in the stone sheltered from the wind. Here it seemed full night, but a red glow that just touched the stony path outside whispered of the oncoming dawn. Vidarian's eyes sought it out of reflex, reaching for light as he drew in a deep breath to still his pounding heart.

There, resolving with the slowly grown morning, was the curve of a slender foot disappearing beneath folds of velvet.

The red-haired priestess he had met on his first journey up the mountain stared coldly down at him for a long moment, then turned and left the niche opening. Her footsteps made no sound.

The command in her stare had been unmistakable, and Vidarian swallowed a groan as he levered himself up from the blankets. He moved carefully and watched Ariadel as he did so, but she did not stir.

The priestess stood facing the dawn, pupils reduced to pinpricks and rendering her golden eyes all the more unworldly. There was no sign of the splendor of images that had surrounded the goddess at their first meeting; only, for several long moments, her stony silence.

“I miscalculated,” she said at last, and Vidarian tried to wrap his mind around that thought. The perpetual winds of Kara'zul seemed to rise at the sound of her voice. “We have all miscalculated. And now the hour is late.” Her eyes remained fixed on the rising sun, a steady gaze that would have burned the eyes of a human in moments. “You should die for what you bring into this world. I should have killed you, last you came here. I only want you to know that.”

No protocol that Vidarian had ever learned dealt with apologizing to an angry goddess. “If I have angered you, my-”

“Leave my mountain quickly,” she said. “You cannot anger me. But you are mine no more.”

In the morning Ariadel was as subdued as Vidarian felt, and he resolved then to mention the appearance of the fire goddess to no one. There had been no symbols for Endera to mine, and indeed no message for any but himself. As they packed in wordless cooperation, he wondered if somehow Ariadel suspected that the goddess had visited, and spent the remainder of the morning puzzling over how she could know, or, if she did, why she remained silent.

But Ariadel's mood seemed to lift as they closed in on the temple by midday, and Vidarian listened with genuine interest as she described the history of the various parts of the architecture and the paved road that led to it. It was a much finer way of approaching the temple, he decided, than being carried in unconscious.

Their welcome, too, differed night and day from his first visit. Acolytes stood waiting for them at the temple doors, panels of carved red ironwood that stood three times a man's height. One of them took the verali, leading them off to an outbuilding as soon as Ariadel had taken the paper spider boxes from the packs. She carried them gingerly and led the way through the temple doors.

“I'll need to see Endera right away.” She turned apologetically to Vidarian. “But they'll have prepared quarters for us both.”

“We have,” the remaining acolyte said, and her eyes were round and blue and large as she addressed Vidarian. “Lady Endera has prepared a private banquet in honor of your arrival, my lord-”

“It's Captain.”

“-my lord Captain,” the acolyte corrected with a deep bow of apology, and Vidarian swallowed a sigh. “If you'll be so kind as to follow me, I can escort you to our bathing house, and your quarters.”

Vidarian lowered beseeching eyebrows at Ariadel, but she only lifted the spider boxes gently in encouragement. “Some hot water would do us both good,” she said. “I'll see you at dinner, Captain.”

“All right.” He surrendered with lifted hands. “Lead the way.”

By the time he was seated at the alabaster banquet table, Vidarian was glad indeed of the temple's opulent bathhouse, though he could swear he still detected a hint of verali musk on his skin. Perhaps Ariadel was right about the smelly creatures. He found himself smiling as he thought of her reclining at the Lustrous Pearl, and mastered his features with conscious effort.

Endera joined them some time after Ariadel arrived, accompanied, rather to Vidarian's surprise, by Thalnarra. Despite the presence of the huge gryphoness, the four of them were dwarfed by the high-ceilinged banquet hall and vast alabaster dining table, and their voices echoed. The two golden spiders had been invited as well, it seemed-each occupied a mesh terrarium filled with thick green-leafed branches.

“Welcome, Captain,” Endera said, bringing her hands together in a gesture of goodwill before she sat at the head of the table. “You return to us an invaluable treasure.” She touched Ariadel's arm gently, and Ariadel gave a demure bow of her head, but Vidarian did not miss how her eyes searched Endera's expression beneath lowered eyelashes. Vidarian himself had not known what to expect from the Sher'azar priestess, now that he was…what he was. But he allowed himself a measure of cautious relief that Endera's demeanor toward him had not changed.

“As agreed,” he said, watching her. “A Rulorat does not fail a contract.”

“Indeed not.” Endera's teeth glowed in the candlelight with her smile. She lifted a hand, and a pair of robed acolytes entered, one moving to turn over each diner's teacup and the other filling them with a pale steaming drink from a silver urn. When the first had turned over all of the cups, she lifted the cover from a porcelain bowl set between them, revealing a heap of wine-red sun cherries, and bowed out of the room with the tea carrier.

Vidarian lifted his tea to stop himself from gaping at the fruit. He had never seen more than a handful of them in the same place in his life, and knew none who had. Endera plucked about that many from the bowl with a set of silver tongs and proceeded to spoon a frothy sugared cream over them with staggering familiarity. He waited until Ariadel had taken a portion before setting down the tea and selecting his own, resisting the urge to put a price on each thumb-sized fruit that hit his plate.

The flavor was extraordinary, as it always was. The summer intensity and gentle sweetness of them took him back to nearly forgotten early childhood, when his mother had strong-armed his father into purchasing three of them for his birthday. And, he had to admit, the cream balanced their vivid tartness perfectly.

“No one,” he said at last, “has really explained to me just what the Tesseract is.”

Thalnarra's crushed-paper chuckle brought the hair on the back of his neck up, much as he should have been used to it by now. The gryphoness had been watching the cherry bowl dwindle with what Vidarian assumed was a mild curiosity, but at Vidarian's question she reached across the table and, with surprising delicacy, lifted a cherry between two hooked claws.

// The Tesseract seals the Great Gate, // she said, as she had on the Sunstar, // because he bridges Substantive and Ephemeral magics. // With a disregard for fabric that made Endera stiffen ever so slightly, Thalnarra pierced the cherry and proceeded to draw a diagram on one of the table's cloth napkins. The juice stained the white fabric scarlet, and she doled it out with gentle claw pressure until a diamond shape emerged. // Air, // she indicated the top corner of the diamond with a droplet of juice, // Earth, // the bottom, // Fire, // the left, // Water, // the right. // And this is you. // She rent the cherry deeply then, drawing a stream between the left and right points of the blurry diagram. // Centuries ago, the Great Gate was closed, but as the years pass the influence of what lay behind it grows. You represent that change, and have the power to seal the gate. //

The emptiness in the center of the diagram, crossed by “him,” somehow turned Vidarian's guts to water. “What's in the middle, there?”

“It is theoretical,” Endera still looked slightly sour for the ruining of her napkin. “Referred to as ‘void,’ and described in some connection to telepathic abilities, and other magics since lost.”

“The other elements have goddesses,” Vidarian blinked against a moment of lightheadedness. “Who is the goddess of the void?”

Ariadel laughed, and her merriment was a flash of silver in Vidarian's thoughts. “There is no goddess of chaos.” She twinkled with mirth, visibly lingering over the absurdity of Vidarian's suggestion-and clearly unaware, as Vidarian was not, of Endera's hands subtly clenched around her teacup. He met her eyes, only briefly, and the grip eased, smoothly, as though without thought.

Vidarian cleared his throat, then took up his tea and sipped it. One of his eyebrows leapt up in curiosity toward Endera before he could quite help himself. The tea was delicate but unsophisticated, surely no prize leaf from the surrounding mountains for which the temple was so renowned-and yet both Endera and Ariadel tipped their cups carefully, as though it were priceless.

“Simplicity, my dear Vidarian,” Endera said only. “We are but a simple priestesshood.”

“And what does this simple priestesshood want of me, Endera? For I suspect all this-“ he took in the hall with a swept hand “-is not merely trapping for the delivery of my sun rubies.”

The priestess smiled. She tapped her knuckles lightly on the table, and the acolytes returned, bearing covered platters that trailed wisps of curling steam. Seeming by chance, but surely it wasn't, the acolytes lifted the silver covers in order: Thalnarra, Endera, Ariadel, and finally Vidarian. Beneath was an artfully arranged spiral of sliced meat-runnerbird, he thought, in a light herbed oil.

“We merely wish to advise you,” Endera said, as they picked up forks, “to prevent you from making, shall we say, avoidable mistakes.”

“Such as?” Vidarian asked, scooping up and eating a polite forkful of the sliced meat. And then dropping the fork with a clatter he saw but did not hear, as unbelievable spice roared up to close his throat and even his ears as he coughed instinctively-managing only with the aid of years of diplomatic drilling to avoid spraying meat and sauce all over the table. His eyes filled with water and the room vanished into heat and color.

“Lambwillow tea,” Endera was saying, when his ears finally cleared enough. “It has certain pepper-amplifying properties.”

“We drink it so often, I'd forgotten,” Ariadel was apologizing, and her own cheeks were flushed, whether with an echo of his pain or mere abashedness, he wasn't sure. Truly, I'd have warned you, she insisted in his mind, and he thought forgiveness at her, but wasn't sure if their connection worked that way.

“These ‘avoidable mistakes,'” Vidarian began.

The doors to the dining room banged open, an admirable feat for such large panels of wood, and what stepped across the threshold threw Vidarian to his feet before he quite knew what he was doing. His sword, brought for ceremony, sang from its sheath, then, exposed, leapt with energy-fire and water, this time his own.

“So it's true,” the first hooded figure said, throwing back her black velvet headpiece to reveal blonde curls and piercing grey eyes. “He is the Tesseract-and you've kept him from us, Endera.” The look she-Vkortha? Priestess?-turned on Vidarian made his stomach turn: fervent. Mad.

Endera, too, was on her feet, standing in Thalnarra's path, which seemed altogether unwise. The gryphoness had summoned a halo of blinding fire energy, visible now to Vidarian's kindled sight, but without this, her pinning eyes and near-vertically stiffened feathers told any wise prey animal to find another acre as far away as possible. “This was not our agreement, Aleha.” Endera's voice was tightly controlled, pitched low to avert gryphon murder.

It didn't work. // Your agreement? // Thalnarra thundered, and reared, flaring her wings in spite of the closed space. One of the spider terrariums was caught by an outflung primary and clattered to the floor, its spider sent scuttling from the room.

Endera, Aleha, and her still-hooded attendant fell back toward the door, and only Vidarian's voice stopped Thalnarra from leaping upon them: “Explain yourself, Endera. Quickly.” As they moved, his swordpoint remained trained on the Vkortha who had spoken. In the dance of fire and water about the blade, crackles of energy snapped between his aura and Thalnarra's.

“There are no Vkortha. These women are Nistran priestesses, envoys from Zal'nehara,” Endera said.

“No. We serve the Starhunter now, Endera,” Aleha said.

Endera spun, her eyes wide. “Madness!” she hissed, and in spite of her betrayal, the sheer alarm in her voice chilled Vidarian's spine. Aleha's eyes were wild, ecstatic.

In the chaos, Thalnarra's voice was acrid smoke in Vidarian's mind alone. // I knew nothing of this. Endera has made a fatal error. I am making arrangements. Their minds slip from mine like fishguts, //-the last in frustrated disbelief.

“They'll not have Ariadel, I don't give a damn the reasons why,” Vidarian began.

“Your mistake, Vidarian, is in thinking she is half so valuable to us as you are,” Endera murmured, and Ariadel choked-her thoughts radiated confusion, heartache, fury. “And you'll not abandon her here, we both know it.”

“No,” Ariadel said, her voice distant, numb. “He won't.”

// This is a deep betrayal, Endera. // The word “betrayal” had a cloud of thoughts connected to it, smoky tendrils of a complex language altogether inhuman.

“I am sorry, Thalnarra.”

// You have no idea yet how sorry. //

Ariadel looked across the table at him.

Vidarian, the name was a whisper in his mind, a quickening of his being. “Run.” They breathed the command together.

Vidarian leapt across the table, and Thalnarra let out a deafening shriek that nearly stopped his heart. Thalnarra, Aleha, and the other Vkorthan priestess staggered away from the door, and Vidarian and Ariadel fled through, Thalnarra quick on their heels. Ariadel grabbed Vidarian's hand and led him at a run through the maze of temple passageways; Endera's voice echoed behind them, a command to her acolytes: “Control this situation!”

When they emerged at last on the ground floor of the temple and staggered out onto the stone courtyard, two pairs of familiar golden-painted wings were waiting. “Kaltak! Ishrak!” Vidarian shouted.

The two brothers, harnessed again to the little “flying boat” (as Vidarian had come to think of it), parted their beaks in welcome, feathers rousing-but they clacked shut again and smoothed, all business, when Thalnarra roared out onto the courtyard behind them. The acolyte who had harnessed the two harrier gryphons started babbling at Thalnarra in confusion when she saw the gryphon priestess's flaming aura and battle-raised feathers, and Thalnarra curtly ordered her back into the temple, lifting her own lead harness with her claws and climbing into it by herself.

// We meet again, brother! // Kaltak welcomed cheerfully, oblivious to his commanding officer and the acolyte.

The acolyte fled, shouting, back into the temple, just meeting Endera and the two Vkorthans as they emerged.

// Up, // Thalnarra barked, and the three gryphons leapt into the air, leaving Ariadel and Vidarian to scramble into the craft behind them. In moments, they were aloft. // Shield yourselves, // Thalnarra warned, and auras of fire leapt up around Kaltak, Ishrak, and Ariadel. Vidarian clumsily followed suit, but his blended energy made things difficult-the water pulled at the fire, which snapped back at the water. The strange buzzing he'd felt over the Vkorthan island filled his mind again, and that strange murmur, the wordless song that brought to mind Aleha's wild eyes.

You're doing well, Ariadel encouraged, and he worked to focus words back at her: Where are we going?

“To sea,” she shouted, and Thalnarra cried a piercing agreement. “To Val Harlon, and the Quest. To my father.”

The steep and winding tracks of Sher'azar dwindled in moments of arrow-swift gryphon flight. Robed figures boiled up out of the temple as the mountain dropped away beneath them, and when the two so-called Vkorthans emerged, they raised their arms, and immediately the air chilled around the airborne craft. But Endera, now mouse-sized with distance, pulled their arms back down, pointing and shouting an objection, and the chill dissipated.

// You're no good to her dead. // Thalnarra spoke his thought, but in her voice it was with pungent irony, and more of that predatory focus that made the small mammal inside his brain want to find cover.

Below, the twisting river marked their path to Val Harlon, perched on the horizon and marked by the sparkle of the western sea and the sun that arced slowly toward it as late afternoon advanced into evening. The two younger gryphons flew unevenly, even to Vidarian's ill-practiced eye, but Thalnarra's determined, angry wingbeats kept them from voicing any question, at least where their passengers could hear. Feather-tipped ears flicked back toward them now and then with what could have been speculation or silent conversation with their leader.

“I should have known Endera was capable of this,” Ariadel said, breaking him out of his contemplation of gryphon and skyview. “But I didn't.” Her eyes and her voice were full of hopelessness that cut at his heart, and he shifted carefully in the basket to wrap an arm around her.

“This whole business blew off course long ago,” he said. “If I'd had my father's business sense, I'd have seen Endera was angling to betray us.” A laugh escaped him, hard and bitter, and Ariadel squinted askance. “Marielle,” he said, battling a surge of guilt and the flash of anger that came with it. “She said fire priestesses were trouble, before all this started.”

“Well, they are,” Ariadel said, all lightness, but her fists clenched and unclenched for just a moment.

“There are many in your family?”

“No, actually,” she said, surprising him. “I'm the first in several generations.”

“But I thought-“ he began, but stiffened when she gasped, staring fixedly at his neck. “What-?”

“Hold still!” Her hand darted out to brush his collarbone, then came back, curled. She cupped it with her other hand, and when she parted her fingers just enough for him to see, a tiny golden spider skittered across her curved palms.

“Not another one,” he said, beginning to be unnerved by the whole thing, in spite of considerably more shocking recent events.

“No, it's the same one,” Ariadel said, motioning with her elbow for him to dig through the craft's storage crates for something to keep it in. “Thalarra knocked over its enclosure, and it must have jumped onto you when we escaped.” He suppressed a shiver at the thought.

He found an oiled packet of string, but Ariadel vetoed it with a shake of her head. A tiny traveling tinderbox passed muster, and she gingerly emptied the spider into it, then tucked the box into a pocket of her robe. He didn't bother asking what in the world they were going to do with it on ship.

“My parents came from air and earth families,” she said, picking up the earlier, spider-free thread. “'Windhammer’ is a conjugate name. I have an aunt four generations back who was a fire priestess, but no one since.”

“Your family from air and earth,” he said, “mine from fire and water. Trouble, the lot of it.”

She laughed, and said, “My father will like you.”

“Your father,” he said, remembering her instructions to Thalnarra. “Why are we going to see him? And where?”

“The Selturians, and he can help you,” she said. “He's a magus. An Air monk.”

“What?” Vidarian was stunned. “I've only read about them. I thought they were all gone.” A male element-wielder…

“He's one of the last. The priestesshood doesn't like to admit he exists.” Ariadel smiled sadly and seemed about to say more, but Thalnarra called out from ahead.

// Angling down. // With her words she sent a dizzyingly sharp mental image-via gryphon-enhanced eye-of the shoreline, just now coming into view. They squinted against the sun, and what Vidarian caught sight of made his gut clench with anger.

“Is that what I think it is?” he shouted up to Thalnarra.

// Yes. They've surrounded your ship. // Another mental picture, impossibly detailed from this distance: the Quest, Marielle at the port bow, her sword arm raised angrily-while the knife-prowed messenger craft of the fire temple hedged the ship in from all sides. // I doubt they intend to let you board. //

“She'll not steal my ship from me-“ Vidarian snarled, a white rage bubbling up in him now. Elemental priestess or not, Endera had gone too far.

“Not that I disagree,” Ariadel murmured, in a tone he'd begun to recognize meant she was trying to defuse a situation that she recognized as unreasonable, “but at the moment we have a question of resources. Not even the five of us can succeed against so many ships and priestesses-if we try, they'll have us back on the mountain by nightfall.”

// She's right, // Thalnarra said, breaking over his immediate argument like a drenching tide. // You must focus on what you need, not what you want. //

“We need to get to sea,” Ariadel said, again her voice calm, persuasive. “We don't necessarily need the Quest-yet.”

In his fury, Vidarian couldn't mask a flash of recognition as he caught sight of another ship on the edge of the harbor.

“What's that?” Ariadel followed his sightline, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “You know that ship?”

“I might,” he prevaricated. “It's been a long time.”

“Thalnarra, can you land us close to the harbor but outside the city?”

// There's an inlet north of the harbor-we can take you to the shore there. //

As one, the gryphons banked, tipping their right wings down while their lefts went up, catching the wind coming in off the ocean. The flying craft tilted sharply and Vidarian and Ariadel scrambled for purchase; soon they were angling around the southeastern edge of the city, turning northwest. The broad loop would keep them out of eyesight of Endera's messenger ships, and perhaps buy them a little time before discovery.

They landed in a long clearing flanked by a stand of coastal pine and then the shore beyond. Vidarian thought that Thalnarra would remain and see them to their destination, but she didn't move.

// We must go to our flight at once, // she said, her mind still clenched with thought and anger as it had been since Kara'zul. // There's much I must discuss regarding our alliance with the priestesshood. //

“Thalnarra-” Ariadel began.

// This is beyond your reach, Priestess, // Thalnarra said, and an apologetic softness only just took the sting out of her words, but Ariadel lowered her head, chastened. // Endera does not yet know what she's set in motion. But I suspect neither do you two. // Some of her old humor was back at this last, and Vidarian managed a brief smile.

“Charnak; vikktu ari lashuul,” Vidarian said, and Kaltak let out a trilling whoop of approval.

Thalnarra's voice was warmer, but still guarded. // Your memory proves excellent again. // She reared back and stretched her wings, then folded them again. // I could wish we would not need that particular blessing, but fear that we shall. //

// And we extend it to you also. // Ishrak, smallest of the three creatures and usually quietest, gave this solemnly, and the other two nodded, an odd expression from beaked faces.

// Good luck to you. We will meet again soon, goddess willing. // Thalnarra's voice, Vidarian realized, was comforting, like a crackling fire in autumn. He would miss it.

They stepped back as the three gryphons first shook out their feathers-beginning with the tips of their beaks and extending all the way to the plumes at the ends of their leonine tails-and then began to beat their wings in preparation for taking to the air. Ariadel and Vidarian watched, taking in the wonder of powerful muscle and feather, until they completed a tight upward spiral and disappeared over the trees to the southeast.

As they watched from the north shore of the harbor, Val Harlon went about its business with tranquil ordinariness. Ships passed in and out of the harbor, queued for inspectors, were shuttled in and out of drydock. The dull thud of carpenters’ hammers echoed off the shoreline here, where the soundest trees had long ago been cut back for ship lumber.

Vidarian knew some of the ships, but none sufficient for the kind of favor they needed: a sea journey across the Outwater. Grudgingly, he told Ariadel as much.

“What was that ship you recognized? Out on the harbor's edge?”

“It's called the Viere d'Inar,” he said, knowing the name itself would mean nothing to her.

“Is that Velinese?”

“Yes,” he said, impressed. “It means ‘the crown of the sea.'”

“Rather ostentatious.”

“It comes by the name honestly.”

Ariadel squinted at him. “What aren't you wanting to say?”

Vidarian drew in a deep breath and held it, then exhaled fast. “It's a Sea Kingdom ship. A close ally of my family's.”

“Then we should speak with the captain!”

“It might not be so simple.” Gods, this was tortuous. But better, he decided finally, to have it all out at once. “Her name is Roana. Years ago, her mother and my parents thought that she and I should marry to cement a business alliance.”

Ariadel blinked. “Oh.”

Vidarian soldiered on. “She's the West Sea Queen now, after her mother.” Ariadel's eyes widened even as he felt a pang at the words-Rhiannon had died when they were teenagers in some sort of duel. “Once she became the Sea Queen so young, a business alliance became far beneath her station.”

“Isn't it dangerous for her to be here?”

“Probably. But the Sea Kingdoms are peculiar. If she were to show weakness, a fear of a particular port, no matter how reasonable, she could be challenged and even overthrown.”

Ariadel looked out over the water, to the far side of the harbor and the Viere. It was a large ship-half again larger than the Quest, truly a queen of the waves. Strong and formidable, even in the Outwater. He saw Ariadel making these calculations, eyeing the other ships in the harbor, turning at last to face him again. “I think we should ask her. I don't think we have a choice.”

“We can't afford to linger in the city,” he said, “but I can at least look around in the shipyard. Could be there are other friends here.”

“We have little to bargain with,” she reminded him, and he nodded. “This could be fortune.”

“Or more ill luck,” he agreed glumly, ire still tickling the back of his eyes whenever he caught sight of the Quest, so close and yet impossibly out of reach.

The shipyard of Val Harlon was run by an old ship's carpenter known to the Rulorats-he'd even repaired the Quest a time or two. Stimson Allanmark seemed to have been crushed by the weight of the sun over his years, and had handled so much tar it now marked a permanent dappling on his hands and forearms. His beard, knotted with sea air, gave him a perpetually put-upon expression that made it difficult to tell when he was being friendly.

“Vidarian, my boy,” he greeted them, first bowing to Ariadel with polite correctness (and no more), then reaching to shake Vidarian's hand. “Nistra's gift to see you again. I wondered where you were, with the Quest anchored aught. Never seen you apart.”

“Strange times, my friend,” Vidarian said, and Stimson's thick eyebrows knit with agreement.

“Strange indeed,” he agreed, voice husky with seriousness. “Scuttlebutt is you've had some trouble with the fire priestesses. Beggin’ your pardon, my lady,” he gave another proper nod to Ariadel, though with an eyebrow inched in curiosity at Vidarian.

“There is a disagreement,” Vidarian agreed. With the knife ships blocking in his own, there was little point in arguing.

“You Rulorats and your mucking about.” Stimson chuffed. “I hope you can resolve it before you get an Imperial inquisitor's attention.”

“I'm working to address it presently,” he said. “But at the moment, what we need is a ship and an exit-outside the temple's sight.”

Stimson grunted, then turned and waved a gnarled and tar-stained paw for them to follow. “We should discuss this in my office.”

“You have an office?” The words escaped Vidarian before he could stop them, and Stimson turned back for just a moment, giving him a look that asked if it were entirely necessary for him to be quite so thick. Vidarian cleared his throat and motioned Ariadel to follow.

The yardmaster's “office” was the belly of a permanently drydocked galleon, a retired Imperial war-queen. Stimson led them through a heavy salvaged door that had been fit into a massive patched fissure in the hull. He hauled the door open, and before Vidarian's eyes could adjust, the yardmaster's voice carried a smile with his greeting: “Well, here's one might be able to help.”

The shadow of the familiar leather cap over inimitable riot of red curls came into view first, and Vidarian braced himself as he crossed the threshold.

For a moment it was like seeing a ghost. The bold figure perched on a supply barrel-white swordsman's shirt and black leather vest, longsword and main gauche at hips, black linen trousers disappearing into embroidered leather boots-was direct out of his childhood. Roana, from the mantle of red curls to her sardonic, challenging smile, was the spitting image of her mother as Vidarian had known her, sun-gilt and utterly unstoppable. The tattoos that curled around her neck and hands, indeed most visible patches of skin, were different ones, but they were in the same places.

“Queen Roana, I take it,” Ariadel glided in front of Vidarian, all smoky diplomacy. “I am Priestess Ariadel Windhammer. Vidarian has told me much about you.”

“Call me Ruby.” She winked aggressively as she stood to greet them, and Vidarian saw his life becoming more difficult.

“Queen Ruby.” Ariadel was unfazed. “Mr. Allanmark suggested you might be able to assist us with passage from Val Harlon.”

Ruby's widening smile, all faux-innocence and teeth, was aimed at Ariadel but intended for Vidarian. “But Priestess, the harbor just happens to be full of temple knife-ships. Surely one would bear you hence at far gentler expense?”

Her feint scored; Ariadel colored.

Vidarian stepped forward to join Ariadel, deliberately placing himself with inappropriate closeness. “We're looking for passage to the Selturians. The temple is not especially well disposed toward us, nor we them, at the moment. A simple misunderstanding surely soon corrected.”

“Surely,” Ruby repeated, still smiling at Ariadel. “And until then, you're a renegade fire priestess. Fascinating.” No seafarer sympathized with a follower of Sharli, as a general rule, but Ruby was far too canny a captain herself to let herself be won over by a religious vendetta. “And a liability.”

Flashbacks of his original deal with Endera disoriented him for half a moment, but he didn't hesitate to use exactly what had turned that conversation, hoping the tiny chime of guilt in his conscience wouldn't percolate into his voice. “I am owed a pair of sun rubies by a high priestess,” Vidarian said, and Ruby's eyes darkened with surprise and greed. “When our disagreement is resolved, they are contract-bound to deliver. I assume you'd have a natural interest.”

Ruby covered her avarice adroitly, but not before Vidarian could make it out, and she conceded his point with a genteel wave of her hand. “For the pair-”

“For one,” Vidarian interrupted.

Ruby laughed and extended her hand. “For you, Vidarian-of course. One sun ruby, passage for two to the Selturian Islands. My ship, as it happens, stands ready to depart.” Not without trepidation, Vidarian shook the proffered hand, altogether too aware of his situation. Whereas he had demanded collateral from Endera, Roana knew that her resources were too powerful and vast to even think of worrying whether Vidarian would repay his debt. With a gallant sweep, she released her hand and spun in theatrical invitation toward the back of Allanmark's “office.” Vidarian and Ariadel squinted, and just barely made out the upper edge of a concealed door further masked by a wall of stacked crates.

While they calculated where it must go-down into the earth, below the harbor-Ruby laughed again, a sound like a pennant snapping in the wind.

“You thought we'd come in through the front door?”

The tunnel that wound from Allanmark's door down beneath the pier was highly illegal, and therefore spared the inconvenience of safety inspections. Twice in their journey out of the city they took side tunnels that detoured around muddy cave-ins, and by the time they emerged, Vidarian and Ariadel found their hands covered with silty muck from the cave wall. Ruby, of course, was spotless.

From this promontory over the north side of the harbor, a precarious stairway of small granite slabs marked a track down to the water, where one of the Viere's shallow prams waited to ferry them aboard. Vidarian thought he recognized the old sailor who saluted them aboard the craft and wordlessly launched it, but couldn't summon a name. To buy time and forestall awkwardness, he turned to point out to Ariadel the gallant ship that grew larger with their approach, a shadow rising out of the sunset-stained harbor waters.

To know the Viere d'Inar was to know love and envy and terror all at once, a storm of rapture that clenched the heart of any seafarer who knew boot from tail. She was a spectacular frigate-built brigantine, tall sails like the arched wings of a gull fit to split the sky, sleek and truly unreasonably fast for a ship her age and tonnage. And she was a city-thirty-two guns and over a hundred and fifty souls, if he remembered right. The emperor might boast larger ships in tamer eastern seas, but here in the west with its wild ocean and labyrinth reefs, the Viere was queen of all she surveyed. There would never be any ship for Vidarian save his Empress, but only a fool would doubt the Viere's primacy.

As the pram drew closer, two sailors high above manned the davits, dropping its hook lines in unison with powerful strokes on the winch. Their sailor shipped his oars just in time to fasten the hooks, and they rose into the air, all with the swift efficiency of a machine. Ruby affected a stern expression appropriate for a captain surveying her sailors, but the glint in her eye betrayed her pleasure at this small demonstration of the Viere's superior performance.

Vidarian was close enough to Ariadel to feel her rapidly indrawn breath as they ascended the rail, bringing the full bustle and scurry of the ship into view. With night coming on, cabin boys trotted briskly across the deck to light rows of ship's lanterns. Even this mundane task was elevated on the Viere-the boys (and one girl) used antique glow-poles dating back before the Sea Wars. Vidarian had only ever seen one in operation, and here Ruby had four. The ball of fire-magicked glass at the end of the elaborately worked iron rod would ignite a wick but nothing else-not even flesh or powder.

As they stepped onto the deck, a burly man wearing the knots of a first mate strode purposefully toward them. He wore little ornament, likely needing only his vast size to intimidate; the deep lines etched into his face were hereditary rather than marks of age.

“You look familiar,” Vidarian said, before he could manage pleasantries. The man grinned, wide mouth parting like a riven hull.

“This is Galon, my first mate,” Ruby said. “You knew his father, Remi.”

Vidarian turned toward her in surprise. “Old Remi had a son?” The man had been a sea dog if there ever was one-veteran of multiple wars, hardened further by a yearslong feud that had devoured most all his blood kin. He turned back to Galon and offered his hand. “Vidarian Rulorat, captain of the Empress Quest.”

“Two sons!” Galon said, taking Vidarian's hand inside a massive paw, and indeed his deep voice was an echo from Vidarian's childhood. “And a daughter. Though my sibs're land-crawlers, all. A merchant and a scribe.”

“I'm pleased to hear of the Aldani clan's thriving,” Vidarian said, and Galon's grateful smile betrayed some of the gentle giant behind the hardened mariner.

Ariadel shifted beside him, and before Vidarian could make a belated introduction, Ruby sailed in.

“And this is Priestess Ariadel Windhammer, of Sher'azar. We'll be escorting her and Captain Rulorat to the Selturians.”

“Around the horn?” Galon chirped, surprised. Ruby smiled, and Galon only shrugged, then returned her smile and bowed himself out. “Adventure awaits, then. I'll see us launched, it won't be but a moment. Vadri's been working on the mizzen, so I'll have to pry him off.”

“Tell him to check the aft hold,” Ruby said. “It should keep him busy for a few days.” When Galon saluted-a casual thing, more parody than military precision-and turned aft, shouting commands to the crew, Ruby explained, “Our ship's carpenter is a little zealous. Fantastic in a bind, requires a little managing otherwise.” She smiled, turning to watch the accelerated motion of the crew as they moved to set the Viere on course. “Shall I show you to our guest quarters?”

A genteel request it was not, entirely-without waiting for them to agree, Ruby turned aft and set off in long stride, leaving them to hop to or be left in the scuttle. They crossed the Viere as fish swimming upstream, traversing the long deck-twice the length of the Quest-before reaching the capstan. Beyond it and the towering mizzenmast lay the large and heavily carved aftcastle, and there a cabin boy-scruffy, redheaded, likely a cousin of Ruby's-scrambled to haul open the ponderous oak door that led inside.

Vidarian had assumed Ruby was exaggerating when she mentioned “guest quarters,” but she hadn't been. A childhood memory of the Viere gave him a rough understanding of its layout-he'd spent six weeks aboard this ship in exchange for training that had, among other things, cemented the goodwill between his parents and the West Sea Queen-and the quarters he and Ariadel were assigned had been Ruby's while her mother still lived. The captain's quarters occupied the many-portholed stern of the ship, ornately worked inside and out, and flanking the carpeted hallway that led to them were two other large (by ship standards) chambers, one for the first mate and one, it seemed, for the captain's guests.

Ruby shouldered open the heavy door while still managing a flourish, and invited them in with a sweep of her hand. Ariadel stepped inside and Vidarian followed, swept in a memory. Himself, an awkward fourteen made more awkward by knowledge of his parents’ intent for Ruby and he; the Sea Queen's daughter, sprawled on the deck of this cabin with her then-frizzy head of copper curls obscuring the book open across her palms. The furniture had changed, but the pale celadon rug, expensive silk from the Qui Empire, was the same.

Ariadel turned toward the door, where Ruby leaned against the jamb. “We thank you for your hospitality, your majesty.”

Ruby, who had never been called “majesty” in Vidarian's hearing, grinned. “You've paid handsomely for it. Or you will.” There were teeth, but no threats, in her smile. “We'll be under way presently, and I'm for the launch. A pleasant rest to you both, and be welcome on our Lady Crown.”

While Vidarian set to inspecting the contents of the satchels they'd salvaged from the gryphon's little craft, Ariadel moved toward the small shelf of books set into the aft bulkhead like a moth toward light. A narrow bar of polished brass kept each shelf from losing its contents with the ship's movement, and it took a bit of maneuvering for her to extract a small cloth-bound volume. The books, too, Vidarian remembered from his youth-largely texts written about the Sea Kingdoms by outsiders. Queen Rhiannon had wanted her daughter to know what was said of their way of life by landers.

The leather satchels proved disappointing: a few days’ rations for the two of them, a fire kit and flat traveler's pan, and a map. No magical artifacts this time. Likely Thalnarra had learned from the last trip and hidden them away.

A whisper of movement as he set the second satchel beside the bed was his only warning.

Something struck the side of his head, hard-the heavy blow sent him reeling with spots across his vision. He spun, sword flying from its sheath, but staggered into the port bulkhead with a crash. Ariadel stood with feet braced, her hands, still wrapped around a book, glowing with elemental energy that sang the sword into life. Clenching the hilt, he wrapped his own energies into it, turning to face one corner of the room and then another, baffled-he and Ariadel were alone. The crash had brought shouts from above, and thundering footsteps echoed down from the deck.

The unseen enemy struck again, darkening the world for precious seconds. The blow left dizziness behind it and he faltered, seeing three Ariadels and lowering his sword for fear of accidentally striking any of them. He raised his arms to protect his head, blade flat against his neck as he crouched, half in defense, half in fear that if he remained upright the vertigo would take him.

A whisper in his mind-this is quite a mess, isn't it? Words quite unlike Ariadel, and the voice wasn't the same-

The door exploded inward, and his heart leapt to face another attack, but it was Ruby, her face a storm of fury, Galon and another crewman close behind. Her own sword was drawn, the longsword that had belonged to her mother, and it too incandesced in the light of Ariadel's life flame. She spared a glance for it, surprised, but returned her attention to the attacker. Vidarian expected confusion, but when she saw that the room was empty, she only snarled again.

Another blow, this one to his calf, and he fell to the side. Ruby leapt over him like a cat, a glittering chain and pendant in her left hand. She threw it forward, around nothingness, and suddenly a man was there, gasping as she yanked the chain taut around his neck. In the swing of her right arm came the longsword, its blade a flash of cold metal across his exposed throat, cutting clear through half his neck, withdrawn only after the sickening thud of its impact with bone.

The Sea Queen, taut as a belled sail, straightened with a snarl of disgust, wiping the blade on the man's tattered shirt. His limbs spasmed with death, but an equal measure of her raised lip was for the blood spilling across the expensive carpet, not his suffering.

Vidarian lifted himself to his knees, and regretted it. Ariadel rushed to him as he swayed, the fire wreathing her hands dimming to a warm glow. The book she'd been clutching, a treatise on Sea Kingdom culture, thudded softly to the carpet. As adrenaline faded from his veins, the full extent of the attack's force was beginning to register, and Vidarian blinked against a pounding in his skull that brought waves of darkness with each pulse.

Beside them, Ruby was turning the head of the dead assassin with the flat of her blade. “A null,” she said, deftly moving the tip of the blade under her pendant and twisting it free. She turned to Galon, her voice promising a soon-arriving storm. “Find out how he snuck aboard.” And then to the crewman, “And clean up this mess.” Both saluted and rushed from the room, grim and intent, leaving Ruby to smolder.

“Will you put him on your skin?” Ariadel asked, and if there was nervousness in her voice, she worked well to mask it.

Ruby lifted an eyebrow at Ariadel's acknowledgment of their custom, and the fingers of her right hand, marked with an old tattoo-left for the death of her first enemy-flexed around the sword. Her answer was a spit of disgust. “A man who never existed deserves no honor mark when he dies. He'll not touch me.” She turned away from the body to face them in full. “You'll sleep in my quarters tonight.” Ariadel started to object, but Ruby lifted a hand. “Someone was intent enough on killing you to sneak aboard the most dangerous ship in these waters. It would dishonor the West Sea Kingdom if you were to arrive at your destination dead.”

The ship's doctor, after a thorough examination that brought Vidarian into full awareness of the extent of his bruises, declared him unlikely to die. Night now was under way in full, and they'd wrapped his head in bandages before burying him in the thick featherbeds and embroidered coverlets of Ruby's bed. The sheets smelled faintly of cedar and cinnamon, and though there was easily room enough for two, Ariadel insisted on sleeping in a hammock strung in front of the door. Vidarian found it all rather ridiculous but was in no condition to complain, and, with the assistance of a bitter draught administered by the ship's doctor, fell into a deep sleep as soon as the lights were out.

Ah, here we are again. A voice. Soothing, almost. Familiar, almost.

The soft rush of the sea against strong ship-beam was a deep comfort after their days on land. But the sound was distant, because he was floating, reaching out into the sea itself. It should have been cold, but it wasn't-the fire of life that lived within it sang through him, from the tiniest creatures too small for the eye to see, all the way to the ship-sized whales who fed upon them. Their warmth was his warmth, and the sea was filled with bright consciousness, here between water and fire.

So curious. It's refreshing after all this time. I enjoy your mind.

The voice pulled at him, stopping him from reaching further. Annoyance, mild-he wanted to find the boundaries of this place. Ariadel? he thought, and her name filled him with sudden confusion. Who was he? They were on a ship. Where was the ship? Where was Ariadel?

Oh, that? That's very inconvenient. Let me fix it.

And the soft, warm presence that had-ever since the Vkorthan island-seemed just beyond his reach, but comfortingly near, was abruptly gone.

You're too good for her, you know.

He woke in a cold sweat, throwing back the opulent bedclothes with a wrench that set his head pounding. A sense of dread threaded with panic crept through him unlike any he'd experienced in his adult life. Strange nightmare…

A rustle from across the cabin. “Ariadel?” he whispered. She was a deep sleeper, but something had awakened both of them; there was more rustling of sheets, and then her feet thudding against the carpeted deck. Her hand was cool against his forehead, and she bent over him, concerned eyes meeting his.

It was just a nightmare. But-Can you hear me? he thought.

Ariadel's eyes continued to search his, looking for further sign of his injury. No thought came back to him.

Hoarsely, he whispered again, “Think something at me,” and her eyes sharpened with worry. A wrinkle between her eyebrows, for a moment-then her eyes widened.

“You couldn't…hear that?” her voice trembled, ever so slightly.

He shook his head.

In the dim light, her eyes glistened with water, and her hand clenched beside his head. Then she blinked them clear. “The blow to your head,” she said, and then coughed, grief closing her throat. “The nulls are a scourge,” she choked, anger burning through her pain. “They have no magic of their own, so they attack those of us who do.”

“Why couldn't we see him?” He knew he was asking a simple question to avoid telling her about the dream-that someone, another woman, had spoken in his mind and taken away their bond. Guilt welled up inside him, and he shivered involuntarily.

She took his shiver for a chill, and crept under the covers with him, sliding an arm carefully around his shoulders. He sighed at her warmth, coiling an arm around her waist, even as his bruises and head twinged. “They have no elemental nature,” she said, and pulled the covers higher around them. “It's an aberration-all sentient creatures, save them, have some elemental nature, even if it is faint. Most people have a balance of the elements-it's an imbalance that allows us to wield magic. But nulls have none at all. We don't consciously see elemental nature, but our subconscious mind processes it, and without it, a person becomes all but invisible to us.”

“That pendant Ruby had-”

“Fire magic,” she said, and without their link he couldn't quite tell whether there was a touch of anger beneath the words or not. “It imbues the wearer with a small amount of fire energy. She's dealt with nulls before.”

Like a child, he didn't want to sleep, fearing a return to the strange dreams, but fatigue, pain, and warmth conspired against him, pulling him down into unconsciousness again. Ariadel shifted, gently settling her arms more tightly around him, and he closed his eyes, surrendering-for now-to sleep.

Stepping onto the main deck the next morning was like staggering out of a tavern with a roaring hangover. The light assaulted his eyes, pounding the back of his head like an iron anchor, and Vidarian staggered half a step. Ariadel's arm, linked around his as if he were an old man, tightened, keeping him upright.

The journey to the bow, where several sailors told them Ruby kept an eye on their course, was a long one at such a slow pace. The busy bustle of the ship-brass being polished, sail repaired, rope knotted-was a homey comfort, even as it was a reminder that this was not Vidarian's ship and these were not his crew. He knew that Marielle would steer them steady, but the sense of wrongness at being away from his ship was a constant companion, and some primitive, superstitious part of his mind blamed all their recent misfortunes upon it.

Just as they caught sight of Ruby, perched like a gull on the tip of the bow, Ariadel gasped. At first, Vidarian thought it was at the young girl standing next to the captain, her arms full of a glass bowl with a writhing sea witch inside, but then he felt the coil of elemental energy-water, of course-wreathed around Ruby's body and outstretched arm. Below, the sea was a frothing, joyous tumult, propelling the Viere forward with unnatural speed.

Ariadel's frustration radiated out at him even without a telepathic link, and her mouth was twisted with disgust. “She's a rogue,” she muttered, aghast. “That magic is raw and untrained! She should be remanded to the Nistrans!”

“The Sea Kingdoms do not answer to land authority,” Vidarian said quietly, turning his head to make sure none of the crew had heard her. “Not even the priestesshoods.”

His words only enflamed her ire, but she caught his pointed glances and kept it silent.

As they closed on Ruby and the dark-haired girl Vidarian took to be her windreader, Vidarian noted with a sinking feeling the familiar dried-blood color of the sea witch inside the glass bowl. The girl bowed herself away without a word, arms wrapped protectively around glass, water, and octopus.

“I see you keep to the old rites,” Vidarian said, not quite keeping the weary resignation out of his voice.

Ruby snorted, still looking out over the waves, her first acknowledgment of their arrival. “You know full well a wise captain keeps the rites of her crew, and no more. Galon called for the sea witch after the attempt on your life.” She turned, then, and leapt down onto the deck, her boots thudding hollowly on the damp wood. In liquid coils the sea energy wrapped itself back into her body and disappeared, and with it, their unnatural speed dropped away.

Ariadel seethed beside him, and Vidarian spoke to stay ahead of her. “What's your decision, then?”

“I will call a Conclave. Not in a decade has there been an assassination attempt aboard this ship.” The tightness with which she emphasized ‘decade’ had Vidarian calculating backward. Rhiannon had been killed just over a decade ago. Surely she hadn't been assassinated? He searched Ruby's face for a hint of the answer, but she gave none.

“And turn us away from the Selturians, and my father? I must object,” Ariadel said, and Vidarian hoped Ruby hadn't noticed her clenched fists.

“I'm sorry, Priestess,” Ruby said, “but I'm quite resolved.”

“By Sea Kingdom law, you owe me the right of resolution by individual combat,” Ariadel said.

“Ariadel-“ Vidarian began, his head managing to swim and pound simultaneously, but Ruby took no notice.

“I would,” Ruby said, unruffled, “if landers were due the rights of sailors, which they are not.”

“I am the mate of one of your allies, and so due his rights.” Now Vidarian choked-wondering if Ariadel knew what she was claiming (the lander equivalent of marriage!), and then wondering if he wanted to know. The coughing fit that seized him brought blinding bouts of head pain with it.

Ruby, for her part, raised an eyebrow, smiling laconically at Vidarian's discomfort, and conceded with a genteel nod of her head. “Terms?”

“Staves.”

“Swords.”

Ariadel glared. “Magic.”

“Enough,” Vidarian managed, and their heads snapped toward him like unruly vipers. He glared back through a pounding head. “You both know full well you can't engage in public battle on these decks.” He turned to Ruby. “However you fought, it would come to magic, and she could burn down this ship-I've seen it.” And to Ariadel, “And even if you won without killing us all, you'd have an even bigger problem, because the crew would either kill you or declare you captain.”

Thwarted wrath emanated from each, either of which would have been intimidating alone. Only the pulsing of his head gave him impatience enough to hold his ground. Ruby was quicker on the uptake, visibly smoothing.

“He's correct, of course,” she said, all royal diplomacy again. “But I assume that you play Archtower?”

Ariadel stiffened, feeling for an insult. “Gevalle,” she said, not quite a question.

“The Velinese name,” Ruby agreed. It was a war game played with pieces of carved stone on a kind of grid. Vidarian had never once in their many games managed to defeat Ruby when they were children, a fact that she doubtless needled him with now. “I have a board in my quarters.”

“Very well,” Ariadel said. “One game.”

They crossed the ship in silence. There was no diplomatic way to search either woman for weapons before they entered Ruby's quarters together, more was the pity. Vidarian opened the door for them, expressing his disapproval with an abrupt wave of mock gentility, but Ariadel did not acknowledge it, and Ruby replied with an exaggerated curtsy that was no doubt perfect Alturian Imperial form.

After she stepped across the threshold, Ruby raised an eyebrow, then shut the door in his face. He squawked an objection, but Ruby's muffled reply was command-voiced: “You are dismissed, sir!”

He gritted his teeth, then regretted it as pain flashed in front of his eyes. And you are enjoying this far too much, he thought at the door.

I like her, came the foreign thought, its voice growing more familiar, and his vision swam. Knives of anxiety swept up his spine in successive cold chills, and he looked around wildly.

Who are you? he thought, reaching out with his mind. But the voice, if it did have a presence at all, danced outside his reach. For a moment, before it left entirely, he sensed a giddy amusement, as of a malevolent child who torments an animal. Sudden rage flooded through him, beating back the pounding in his head, and only the sound of Galon moving in the adjacent quarters reminded him to contain himself.

Was he going mad? Had the initial link to Ariadel, forged by the fire goddess, cracked open his mind like an oyster shell, and now other thoughts leaked in? Were such things even possible?

There was no sound from behind the captain's door, and so he retreated up the passageway and exited into the sunlight. The aftcastle was largely untended this hour of the morning, though men and women moved in the rigging, scurrying to answer the commands called out by the second mate from the wheel ahead. Vidarian climbed the narrow ladder and ascended the top deck to look out over the stern, the blue waves, and the wake left behind from their swift passage.

Watching the rushing water, he was aware as he had never before been of the tremendous energy that surged around the ship. It seemed such a small and inconsequential thing, this creation of wood and tar and sail, to have the audacity to brave the ocean. Down, down went the water, deeper than his ability to perceive with eye or Sense. Not for the first time in his life, but for the first time in a great many years, he was in awe of Nistra, lady of the waters.

One little element, a voice whispered, who plays with her little ship toys, and loves that you love her. You're too good for her, too.

The chill seized him again, and he forced himself not to turn, knowing he would find no one. But this time, he wasn't alone in hearing it: around the ship, the waves crept higher, and the ocean sang dissonance to his senses, and anger. Inside his mind, the voice laughed, again with the strange edge that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck-but it mercifully retreated, and the waves calmed again.

Two hours later, Ariadel and Ruby emerged from the aftcastle, and to the sinking of his stomach, both looked entirely too satisfied for his well-being. Vidarian had no desire to witness a pirate Conclave, even though it might be, as Ruby claimed, the safest place in the sea.

Ruby walked to capstan and placed one booted foot upon it, calling out to the crew. “We remain on course,” she said, and a chorus of “Aye, Captain” answered from the deck.

Ariadel's victory was short-lived. She might have won a game of Archtower, but now there was Maladar's Horn to contend with. Vidarian had passed around the horn twice, and only twice. The Quest was shallow-drafted enough to manage the great winding Karlis River, if ever he had need to access the eastern sea, now that the Imperial locks were in operation. Most ships used it to bypass the horn if they could, and the reasons why were looming on the horizon: anvil-headed clouds, dark as a betrayer's heart, and a cold wind that drove them toward the knife-reefed coast.

A good speed would carry them around the arm of the perpetual storm. From the wheel, Ruby was calling out the trimming of the mainsail, and the Viere made crisp progress through waters just beginning to turn dark. As Vidarian and Ariadel watched the sunset-stained water from the bow, the wind fell out from under them. After a rattle of rigging settling back against the poles, all was silent, save the distant boom of thunder that echoed across the wave-plain from dim flashes in the bellies of the thunderheads.

The Viere continued to make slow progress through the waves, tacking against a nonexistent wind. Ariadel looked askance at Vidarian. “A silence before the storm,” he said. “You'd better go below. Make sure everything-and I mean everything-is tied down securely.” She nodded, then moved toward him. He wrapped his arms around her tightly for a moment, chin resting on her hair, and then she turned for the forecastle, moving quickly while the deck was still steady.

As she crossed, she exchanged nods with Ruby, who advanced toward the bow, having turned the wheel over to Galon. He still had not figured out what had so securely settled their feud.

She lifted a brass telescope and looked out at the distant storm, answering his unasked question. “We'll go in with the storm jib as far as we can,” Ruby said, all levity for once gone from her demeanor. “I may require your assistance, at the worst.” She gestured down at the water, and a chill stole over Vidarian as he took her meaning. It was one thing to play at magicking a handful of riverwater, and quite another to attempt taming a storm. Ruby seized his shoulder and smiled. “Just follow my lead.”

He managed half a smile. “Aye, Captain.”

The wind picked them up then, cold and ominous. The sails snapped taut against their trim restraint, and the ship lurched forward into newly agitated waves. “Reef main and hoist storm jib!” Ruby shouted, turning away from the bow and striding for the wheel. “All hands check harness to jackline! Look sharp!”

Men and women scrambled for their posts. From the bow, Vidarian tested the security of the jackline anchored there and extending back to the stern. A series of metal hooks guided the line over the forecastle, and he checked each as well as he moved down the deck. Below on the gundeck, three young sailors were moving to secure and check the cannon, and Vidarian joined them in hauling and tying rope. Above, rain began to drum the deck.

The thunder was echoing closer as they sailed into the reach of the storm, and the ship pitched to steeper and steeper angles, testing the cannon-lines. Wind lifted the rigging, howling through the sails, and at last on one great pitch to port, the sea broke over the rails, coursing over the spar deck in a rush that sank his stomach before cascading down the ladders and onto their heads.

Vidarian had worked his way to midships at this point, and stood with the ladders and capstan just before him to stern. Ruby's voice came down from overhead: “Heave to! Get me in front of that-!” Vidarian had not heard that word in over a decade: a particularly creative bedroom maneuver unmentionable in polite company.

Despite the pitching of the ship, the cannon were secure, and none too soon with the full wrath of the storm upon them. Vidarian looked with dread at the dripping ladder, then took courage between his teeth and mounted up it.

Abovedeck the world was in chaos. The thunderheads bore down on them from above, blackening the sky. Lanterns had been lit across the ship, bolstering the thin light from beyond the storm at the horizons, where, somewhere, the moon still shone. Vidarian staggered under the assault of rain and wind to fix his harness to the swinging jackline.

The ship tilted down a swell nose-first at a speed and angle that gripped Vidarian's stomach with vertigo. He took hold of his lifeline with both hands as his boots lifted off the deck-only for a split second, but the crash as they bottomed out, the long bowsprit ahead knifing through saltwater, knocked hardened sailors to the deck across the entire ship. The sea came pouring over the gunwales, drenching the decks and everyone on them.

“Cast drogue!” Ruby shouted over the din, and the command was relayed to the quarterdeck, where hands rushed to toss a series of linked heavy buoys overboard to snake across the undulating swells. As the drogue line snapped taut, the ship steadied for a few precious moments. Vidarian fought to join Ruby at the wheel.

“It's driving us into the reef!” he yelled, sputtering as torrential rainwater streamed down his face, and pointed out across the bow. The ship now angled to port, running from the storm but straight into the murderous embrace of the knife-reefs, the glistening tips of which surged into view in the lee of the swells.

“I realize,” Ruby said dryly, an impressive feat, “this is that ‘worst’ I was talking about.” She eyed the bow, and for the first time, Vidarian realized that she was humming. It was a low sea shanty, old and familiar, but her voice imbued it with strange energy, and a great strength poured out from her through the base of the ship. She paused in her humming long enough to shout, “Bare poles! All hands to lifelines! This is it!”

Vidarian saluted, one hand on the jackline, and hauled himself along it toward the bow. It was a long fight, and for every step forward he lost three more to the pitching deck and howling winds. At last he was climbing the ladder to the forecastle deck, clinging to the rail against what seemed the worst of the storm.

From here the black glittering spines of the horn's reef were far too close for comfort. Knowing his duty, though not how it would be accomplished, he thrust his awareness down into the turbulent sea.

The shock of the ocean's cold presence stunned him for several long moments. This was not the peaceful sea of the northern empire, but an angry, wild place that had nothing but hostility for the minds of men. It stalked around him with patient curiosity, and he knew that his death would be but an afterthought in its power. Beloved Nistra, he thought, my life has been yours, and my fathers’ lives before me.

And then, unequivocally, a presence was there. It restrained the angry ocean with the gentle absolution of a woman's touch on the neck of a snarling guard dog. But there was curiosity in the presence, too, and an unfathomable depth unlike any he had ever experienced. Show me, came the impression, clear as tropic waters, but wordless, an assault of a thousand images and sensations.

He opened himself fully to the ocean, as he had only in dreams before. It coursed into him, became him, subsumed him. There was no Vidarian, only the current, without constraint or barrier. He was cold and strong, full and relentless. With the slightest movement, he reached to turn the ship away from the reef, and from his distant body felt the deck move beneath his feet.

Deep within him, fighting within that distant body, was dissonance-something not cold and substantive but bright and ephemeral, light but untouchable, electric and hot. And from the heart of this dissonance came a snarling voice: He isn't yours! He's MINE!

A sensation of distaste, sulfurous, wafted at him from the presence in the sea. It turned from him, and with it, he lost his grip on the ocean currents. They pulled him down into darkness, and it would have been without hope, save that, even as he descended, he saw the bowsprit ahead emerging into early morning sunlight, out of the grasp of the terrible storm. Behind them curved Maladar's Horn, and he collapsed to the deck, exhausted.

The curl of land that encircled the Selturian Islands protected them from the wrath of land or sea. This spur of mainland in the southwest corner of the Alturian Empire was technically held by the emperor, but it was a wild place, full of strange creatures that had no love of humankind. The Selturians were sparsely populated despite their tropical weather-it was simply too much trouble to reach them by any means, save perhaps flight.

Vidarian woke with the warmth of sunlight slowly drying his soaked clothes and hair. Gulls cried overhead, approaching curiously from the islands to inspect the ship for scraps of food. He struggled upright, first to a sitting position and finally pulling himself to his feet. Dizziness hammered at his head, the night and storm and ocean reawakening the ache in his still-battered skull.

When he staggered down the ladder, Ruby was waiting, looking tired but cheerful.

“You did well,” Ruby said, “if a little impetuously. They'll have felt you in the wastes, I'd wager.”

“Better than in the deeps,” he said, and she laughed, with a gesture of concession. He shaded his eyes and looked out over the water. The three green Selturians surrounded them. They were close enough for him to catch sight of the strange furred animals that swung between the trees.

“I've had a pram prepared,” Ruby said. “You and Ariadel may set off when ready. I've given the crew leave to explore the islands if they'd like, but most are interested in sleep.”

When he made his way to the boathook, Ariadel was waiting, looking across to the islands. Her skin was pale and her eyes sunken-she'd likely fared no better than he in the aftcastle. He helped her into the pram, and two men at the winches lowered them down into the water. Vidarian took up the oars himself, pushing them away from the steep sides of the Viere and settling in to row. Between strokes, he asked, “How long has it been since you saw your father?”

“Years,” Ariadel said. “The islands are so remote.”

“And his occupation not-encouraged.”

She shook her head, surprising him. “There's little reason for interchange between the priestesshood and the rare elemental monks. Their magics are just so different. Men,” she paused, and smiled gently, “most of them, anyway, cannot wield the greater magics. You'll see.”

In a few minutes he was helping her from the boat and onto the sand, and then pushing the little craft above the tideline. Ariadel had directed him where to land, and by the time he had shipped the oars and set the pram aright, a modestly dressed figure awaited them at the tree line beyond the sand.

Ariadel set off toward the figure, and Vidarian was surprised to find nervous energy swirling in his gut. What was that Ariadel had said about “mates” to Ruby? He realized he had no idea what Velinese wedding or courtship customs were. But confidence, perhaps, could overcome. He advanced up the beach, taking care to keep Ariadel beside him, and approached the figure, which turned out to be an elderly man with age-spotted skin and hair that had most likely once been black, like Ariadel's.

“Lord Windhammer, I presume,” Vidarian extended his hand, and caught Ariadel's flinch out of the corner of his eye.

The older man's smile was sad as he took Vidarian's hand and clasped it briefly. “It's been quite some time since I bore that name,” he said. “It's Aldous Windfell, the name of my birth.” He turned to Ariadel, who embraced him warmly, but gingerly. “How is your mother?”

“It's some years since I saw her,” Ariadel admitted, returning to Vidarian's side. “She's been off on another of her collection trips, and-well, you know how she is about time.”

Aldous smiled, and his eyes disappeared beneath folds of wrinkled skin. “I do indeed.” He made a motion with one hand. “Her goddess, or mine, or yours,” the hint of another smile turned his tone, “protect her. But we can discuss this later. You will be exhausted after your night at sea,” he said. “We have a number of guest cottages. Sleep now. We'll speak again in the evening. I am sure there's much to discuss.”

Collapsing on the deck of the Viere didn't quite constitute “sleep” so much as “lack of consciousness,” and Vidarian was too exhausted to argue with Aldous's prescription of true rest. He and Ariadel fell into their beds, and when they woke, sunset colored the peaceful sky beyond the cottage's window. Ariadel's movement woke him, and once she realized he was awake, she rose and lit a peculiar blown-glass sphere designed, it would seem, to respond to the touch of life flame.

“Your father didn't seem surprised to see us,” Vidarian said, finding rest had returned coherent thoughts to his head. He hoped he hadn't said anything too unforgivable yesterday.

“He is Air,” she said, as if this explained everything. “I don't think they know the word ‘surprise.'”

Vidarian wanted to quiz her further about her father to avoid another misstep, but knew that they must not linger. Continually he felt the pull of the Quest, and the knowledge that the longer he stayed away from her, the greater her danger from overzealous priestesses.

This island, one of three that bore the name Selturian, was small but ample enough for a large, airy plantation house, three guest cottages, a thorough vegetable garden, and several acres of jungle besides. Silent young men and women tended the gardens and the goats that provided sustenance for Aldous and themselves; plain-clothed as they were, Vidarian would not have recognized them for apprentices without Ariadel's telling him so.

In the main house a simple but luxurious spread of goat cheese, tree nuts, and tropical fruit was laid out, and both Vidarian and Ariadel found themselves ravenous. Aldous sat with them, shelling and slowly eating a few nuts for politeness’ sake, but his gaze was distant and his thought clearly elsewhere. Finally, he turned to Vidarian.

“So,” he said, a gentle humor seemed constant in his voice, “you're the Tesseract, then?”

Vidarian paused, a dark-juiced berry halfway to his mouth. He looked across at Ariadel and was somewhat gratified to note she seemed surprised by his abruptness also.

Aldous laughed softly. “We do little but research, here,” he said, “and the winds of destiny flow freely about you.” He gestured to Vidarian's neck, where the small crystal whistle, given him by the priestess at Siane's Eye, still hung on its silver chain, all but forgotten. “That is the Breath of Siane, is it not?” When Vidarian nodded, Aldous smiled. “May I?”

Vidarian looped the chain free from his neck and passed the little whistle over to Aldous.

“You didn't tell me you carried an artifact,” Ariadel said, her tone dangerously light and neutral.

“You didn't ask,” he said, and Aldous smiled again, his eyes still on the whistle.

The older man turned the whistle over in his hands, sending light reflecting across its crystal surface. Then, he breathed across it, an odd tone emanating from his chest that made the hair on the back of Vidarian's neck stand up. The whistle glowed and seemed to hold the man's breath within and around it, a spiral of air that hummed like the rim of a crystal goblet touched with water.

“It's quite beautiful,” Aldous murmured, then passed it back to Vidarian. “But what you need are the storm sapphires.”

Vidarian put the silver chain back on and tucked the whistle into his shirt. “Storm…sapphires?”

“Well, yes, if you're to journey to the gate between worlds.” Aldous speared a slice of burgundy-colored citrus with a fork and proceeded to eat it slowly.

“The Great Gate?” Ariadel managed around a mouthful of goat cheese. “I thought that was just a legend.”

Aldous smiled again. Vidarian was coming to dread that expression. “Much knowledge is lost to the priestesshoods, my dear, including the closing of the gate some two thousand years ago. When they do acknowledge it, the priestesshoods hold that the Tesseract should seal it shut.”

“Legends said the gate must not be opened,” Ariadel agreed, though irritation edged her voice. “That it should let chaos into the world.” At her words, something sent a chill up Vidarian's neck again, but neither of the other two seemed to notice.

“Chaos, yes. Change,” Aldous said, brushing crumbs from his fingers. “And those who hold power rightly fear change.” He looked up at Vidarian, his eyes grey with age but missing no sharpness. “You should be on your way.”

Ariadel all but squawked. “But-I've only just brought him here. I thought you might-”

“There's little time to lose,” Aldous said, addressing them both. “Little time, I'm afraid. And this coming from an Air master.” He rose, pushing his chair back behind him with a soft scud across the slate floor. “Ariadel, if you wouldn't mind, in my study is a book that will help us. Mayene will know which one-our collected learnings on the Great Gate.”

Ariadel stood and nodded, looking between them intently for a moment, then leaving to find Mayene.

The old man lifted a hand wizened like dried ginger to point the way out of the hall. When Ariadel had quite left their hearing, he set off slowly, speaking without turning. “You must be worthy of her, Vidarian,” Aldous said, his gaze going distant like the air priestess's had at Siane's Eye, what seemed so long ago. “Be worthy of her,” he said, and smiled, “or I'll break your knees.”

A whistle from the island's watchtower split the air the next morning. As Vidarian and Aridel emerged from the tiny guest cottage, eyes bloodshot from a night spent scrutinizing Aldous's books, they caught sight of what the watch had seen: three gryphons, flying in ragged formation in from the east. As they drew closer, the cause of their ragged flight became apparent: the lead gryphon flew irregularly, and the two that followed were forced to rush ahead or backwing alternately to keep up. When they came upon the island, their wings stretched outward in a long glide, and they fell to earth quickly in the heavy tropical air.

The three banked together in a wide curve as they came in to land, and now their differences were clear. In the lead was Thalnarra, her feathers battered and thin; she was missing a primary on her right wing, among other things. The gryphon back and to her left was bizarre, unlike anything Vidarian had seen in statues or paintings, much less live and real: it had a long, triangular head and an even longer beak with a hooked tip and a huge flap of loose skin below the lower jaw, like a fishing bird. Its neck, too, was long and crooked, and its broad rectangular wings were longer than Thalnarra's, though its body was smaller. The third gryphon was strange as well, with huge sapphire-blue eyes against snowy white feathers and a compact black-tipped beak; the feathers at the end of its leonine tail forked in a swallow-tail, beginning with white feathers that gave way to slender black ones, matched also on the tips of its otherwise white wings.

They landed on the sand several yards from the cottages, but the wind of their passing rattled the fronds at the top of the tall trees. The landing was not graceful; the strange fisher-bird-gryphon seemed unaccustomed to landing on solid ground, and Thalnarra stumbled as she touched the ground, favoring a wounded foreleg. Vidarian and Ariadel exchanged a look, not quite believing what they were seeing, and ran for the three creatures. As they did so, Ariadel turned to call for medical supplies, sending three of the apprentices scrambling for the large house.

Thalnarra's breath was labored when they reached her, and close inspection revealed her condition to be even worse than it had seemed from afar. Numerous open cuts wept fluid sluggishly across her body from five-taloned slashes on her shoulders and hindquarters. They'd been treated at some point, for they ran clean, but the flight had broken them open again. She had more body feathers missing, and those that remained were tattered and drab.

“What on earth happened to you?” Ariadel asked, then turned to the other gryphons in apology. “Be welcome, friends, to the Selturian Islands and the home of my father, Aldous Windfell.”

// We are in need of friends, // Thalnarra said. // Though my battle, for now, is won. //

The white gryphon with the large eyes and pointed face spoke with a voice like a low flute. // It was ritual combat. Her people use the old gryphon law to resolve disagreements.

// Being an old tradition, hurr, // the fisher-gryphon agreed, his voice like drifting kelp, peaceful and remote. He shook his head, sending his chin flap flopping, and lifted his feathers, from the white and grey stripes of his face to his blue-black wing-feathers.

// But it was won, // Thalnarra said, exhaustion in her voice, and a steely insistence, rebutting the disapproval of the other two. // The gryphons of the fire clans stand with us. It will take some time to gather them, but gather they will, and our allies.// She indicated the other two with the tip of her beak, and they nodded each in turn-water and air, Vidarian realized.

“Stand with ‘us'?’ Vidarian said, turning to gesture to the three apprentices who now emerged from the main house with armfuls of bandages and a crate of medicines.

// With you, of course, // Thalnarra eyed him dangerously, // against the priestesshood. //

The cottage was quiet when Vidarian returned to it, looking for Ariadel, who had fled while he helped see to Thalnarra's wounds. He called out her name, but there was no answer, and he expected to find the building empty when he pushed open the door.

He found her crumpled on the floor, the embroidered robe loaned her by one of the apprentices pooling around her. Her breath came with a rattle of emotion, and she sniffed as she turned toward the door to look at him, her face streaked with tears. In her lap was the gangly kitten, half grown, and before it occurred to him to wonder how in the world it had gotten there, Vidarian thought perhaps it was dead, and this the cause of her distress. But the kitten, lying on its back, rolled over with easy agility and pushed its face at Ariadel's hand, demanding attention.

“How-?” Vidarian managed, rushing to Ariadel and kneeling. She pointed across the floor, where the small tinderbox that she had used for the golden spider, before their flight to the Selturians, lay open and empty. Vidarian looked at it blankly. “What? I don't understand,” he said.

Ariadel stroked the kitten's head, then leaned close to look into its eyes. Something passed between them-and then the kitten disappeared. Vidarian gasped, leaning closer, and Ariadel lifted her hand. Perched upon it, balanced delicately on the tips of its feet, was the spider.

“How is this possible?” he whispered, head swimming.

“She's a shapechanger,” Ariadel said, and laughed softly, incredulously, a sob half mixed with it. She reached out with her free hand to slide a leather journal open to a marked page across the carpet to Vidarian. He picked it up; the page was labeled “Snowmelt,” and held sketches of a white horse, some of them fancifully rendered, the horse's rear end replaced by a sinuous fish tail. Ariadel turned her hand, and the spider skittered, then vanished, replaced once more with the kitten.

“What is this?” Vidarian asked, turning a page. “And why does it trouble you so?” He reached out to touch her shoulder, and she leaned into him.

“My great-great-great-grandmother had a horse named Snowmelt,” she said. “She was the last fire priestess in our family, until me. As a girl I loved the stories of Snowmelt, her devoted horse-there were stories that he wasn't just a horse, but a shapechanger, able to turn into a great cat and protect her. We always assumed they were just stories.”

“It's remarkable,” he said, reaching out to let the cat sniff his hand. It did, then turned up its nose at him. “But why does it affect you so?”

“Everything's changing,” she said, and blinked back tears again, composing herself. “The gryphons declaring war against the priestesshood. Shapechangers returning to the world. New magics are coming, many of them strange and dangerous.” She stopped again, breathing deeply. Something in her tone made him think of the strange voices he'd heard, and he thought of confessing them, but she went on. “…And I…I'm afraid I…”

He wrapped his arms around her, careful not to upset the kitten, and rested his chin on her shoulder, waiting.

She shook her head, swallowing. “It's nothing. It's just overwhelming, that's all.” She coughed, clearing her throat, and stiffened in his embrace ever so slightly. “None of us know what's coming. I fear for all of us.”

Aldous had treated the gryphons’ arrival with as much nonchalance as he had his daughter's, and now he sent them off again with equal gentle authority. The gryphons, he said, and their intention to aid Vidarian's cause, meant that the hour was truly grown late.

“I wish you strength,” the older man said to Vidarian, seriousness in his pale eyes. “If our studies are accurate, you are even now encountering some strange things, indeed.” His weighty gaze searched Vidarian's, and then he patted his shoulders with both hands like a father would a son. “But you'll bear up under them. You must.” Vidarian longed to ask him about the voices, and the severing of his telepathic bond with Ariadel-but in his features saw the father of the woman he loved, and dared not.

On their second day on the island Ruby had joined them, availing herself cheerfully of the hospitality of Aldous's house. Now, though, they were to separate, and Vidarian saw her off from the sandy beach.

“You're off in search of more booty, I understand,” she said, grinning at him from the shadow of a rather absurd feathered hat. “I should think you'd be satisfied with what you had, you greedy git.”

“Are we ever?” he asked, for once not finding her ceaseless ribbing grating to his nerves, and realized with surprise that he'd miss the Viere as well. Her solid decks had stood them well around the horn. “You've executed your part of our bargain. I regret that I cannot pay you yet.”

She tutted in response. “My business is in Val Harlon, as it was before we departed. We'll meet you there, and I'm sure your friends will have helped sort out this little misunderstanding with the fire priestesses by then.” Ruby indicated the gryphons with a gesture of her chin. When she'd seen them for the first time, her eyes had widened, a shadow full of dread and memory passing behind them-but it was gone, fled behind her customary mask of an easy smile, before he could inquire.

“You'll be for the horn again, then,” Vidarian said, guilt welling up that he would not be there to assist them.

“Tish. We've sailed it before. I got you here, I can certainly get my own ship back.”

“At Val Harlon, then,” he said, offering his hand.

She took it, and pulled him into a rough, brotherly embrace. “Val Harlon. Take care you're not late.”

Aldous, despite his unruffled demeanor toward them, had never worked with gryphons before. They had no carrying boat, but the older air monk had closeted himself away with the white gryphon, called Altair, to discuss their shared magic at incomprehensible detail. That left Ariadel, Vidarian, Thalnarra, and the fisher-gryphon, called Arikaree, to improvise one.

They started with a yawl, a small sailboat decommissioned from a larger sailing vessel kept by Aldous and the small community. With its mast removed, it was larger and considerably less unnerving than a dinghy or pram, but still small enough for its weight not to tax the gryphons overly. Still, it was heavier than the lighter craft built for flight, and so, after fitting it with harness and rope-a light, strong kind made of silk here on the islands-they provisioned it sparingly. The flight path east to An'durin, the great inland sea along the Karlis River, should take them over forests plentiful with game, and the gryphons were confident of their ability to hunt along the way.

At length, and as they were prepared to depart, Aldous and Altair emerged from the former's study, still chattering but more conscious now of those around them. Vidarian was impressed that they'd managed to reckon the time on their own, until he saw an apprentice emerge behind them and exchange a nod with Ariadel.

Ariadel's departure from her father was not without a few tears, and it pulled at Vidarian's heart to separate them so quickly after so long and perilous a journey. The few days on the islands had been a respite, not just for the warm sun and clear air, but from the strange voice that spoke to him as well. The presence in the ocean still nagged at him: he would swear that the one who spoke to him during the storm first was Nistra. But the second-the one that had invaded his thoughts so many times now? Had the magic in his mind grown wild, developed a personality of its own? It certainly seemed capable of it.

The kitten, now, was inseparable from Ariadel, and looked quite pleased with itself. Either natural maturation or its time as a spider had favored it: it was sleeker, seemed not quite so desperate for food, though it still ate its own body weight daily, it seemed. Aldous had exclaimed with wonder the first time Ariadel had shown him its trick of shapechanging, and inspected it closely; Thalnarra had also been impressed, but more reservedly.

The gryphoness, the largest of the three if he didn't count the fisher-gryphon's overlong neck and head, had benefited from the attentions of the field healer that lived here on Aldous's island. The man's talent was small, but made a difference: her cuts were not quite so vivid, and would hold together in flight this time.

As the apprentices helped Thalnarra and the other two gryphons into their harnesses, the gryphons spread their massive wings, testing flexibility and the strength of their harnesses. Finding both satisfactory, they sat back on their haunches, waiting for Vidarian and Ariadel to board.

“I thank you for your hospitality and invaluable advice,” Vidarian said, clasping Aldous by hand and elbow in a formal Imperial gesture learned from his father. “I know little of such things as fate, but knowing what we know now, I should think our course doomed without either.”

Aldous chuckled, shaking his head. “I suspect you would have found your way, if indeed fate is involved, as I suspect she is. Thank you for bringing a little sunshine to an old man's island retreat. And remember,” he smiled broadly, magnanimous as the gentle tropic wind, “what I said about the knees.”

“Of course, sir,” Vidarian agreed, and stepped back hastily to the craft where Ariadel waited, perched on its newly padded center seat. He vaulted into the craft beside her and sat, reaching for the rope ties they'd fixed to the craft's sides to help keep them from pitching out. The craft Vidarian had ridden before had no such precaution, but he wasn't about to replicate that particular design if he could avoid it.

As soon as Aldous and his apprentices stepped back to the tree line to give them clearing, the gryphons began to beat their wings, each giving two to stretch the muscles before leaping into the air and laying about with earnest. The craft lifted steadly, its counterweights balancing as intended, and they rose steadily into the air.

The island, its house, and its inhabitants dwindled rapidly as the gryphons circled higher. Whitecaps on the waves crashed against the shore, and soon they could see the other two islands, one north and one east, bare of inhabitation it would seem from here. Far below, the Viere d'Inar angled toward the northern coast, and Maladar's Horn with its ever-present storm. He wished them better luck with it, and watched the ship move through the waters for as long as he could, until they passed through a layer of clouds and mist that obscured the world below.

An'du, the great whale of the inland sea, was the last known possessor of the storm sapphires. How they would find her, much less convince her to relinquish them, he had little idea-and he had two days in the air to figure it out.

Distances were strange by air, but on a map he knew the An'duril to be as far east as Val Harlon was west, but only a third as far north. The gryphons rode prevailing winds from the sea and so flew strongly, tracing the edge of the Windsmouth Mountains. By day, the trees rushed by below, so regular as to be hypnotic, and by night they dipped beneath the canopy to take shelter and sleep. Not only would it have exhausted the gryphons to fly through the night, it would have been dangerous as well: after sunset, their heads seemed to nod unwillingly with sleep, some deep drive urging them to roost.

At noon on the second day the trees thinned out below into a meadow, and then into a sparse grassland as they arrowed northeast. A glint on the horizon was the Karlis River, and it widened toward late afternoon into the glittering expanse of the An'durin. By sunset, the whole of the inland sea dominated their horizon, and distantly, at its far northern shore, was the shadow of the An'durinvale, the dark forest that half-wreathed it.

The gryphons dropped altitude as they drew nearer to the expanse of water, turned to dark glass by the sun sinking below the skyline behind them.

They made camp, foraging for fallen wood and grass for a fire, the five of them silenced by the presence they knew waited in the water. The gryphons tore the earth, digging shallow sleeping holes and lining them with grasses before they flew off to hunt. Vidarian and Ariadel made a cold supper out of provisions from the yawl, and were preparing the night's campfire when the gryphons returned. When Ariadel moved to light the fire, Thalnarra stopped her.

// He should be exploring the other half of his abilities, // she said, and Ariadel looked at Vidarian, then nodded.

Vidarian regarded the pile of grass and branches for some time before he reached out with the smaller, brighter sense within him, the erratic one that snapped and snarled as it could against his water sense. In attacking the water within him, as it did perpetually, it turned and lashed out at his own essence, and without quite realizing what he was doing he snarled back at it as he would a dog. It quailed, dipping in what he would swear was apology, and cooperated as he reached out to the stacked sticks. It seized upon them hungrily, and flames leapt up with alarming quickness. As the light and heat flared, something, too, flared inside him, opening, and for a moment every detail of his surroundings was revealed in instant clarity, as if he were more awake than he'd ever been in his life. Then the fire crept back inside of him, coiling, to bicker with his water sense again, and the feeling faded.

// A little rough, but well done, // Thalnarra said sleepily, settling into her bed of grass. Vidarian and Ariadel followed suit, climbing under blankets they'd spread across more of the ubiquitous summer-burned vegetation.

Yes, well done, a voice whispered in his head, half giggling. His arms clenched involuntarily around Ariadel, who looked up at him in sleepy askance, but he forced himself to smile and shake his head, relaxing. She closed her eyes, but as Vidarian looked out over the still waters of the An'durin, spangled over with stars and dark heavens, it was some time before he closed his.

They woke to thin light and cold air, a heavy fog that had obscured the sun and drenched the world in white mist. The fog stopped a spare handspan from the surface of the An'durin, as if some unearthly force kept it from touching the water and what lay beneath. All was quiet.

“We're going to have to go out on the water, to talk to her,” Vidarian said, though none too keen on the idea of piloting a mastless yawl on such a large body of water. The gryphons, with the exception of Arikaree, didn't like it, either; the pelican-gryphon tested the water with his claws, then proceeded to wade in and swim, buoyant as a gigantic duck. Thalnarra watched from the shore, and Altair took to the sky; his long, sharp wings allowed him to hover effortlessly high over the water.

They unloaded the yawl of all its cargo and took supple branches from a young tree, heavy with leaves on their ends, to use as makeshift paddles. The pebbled shore made launching the yawl a simple exercise, and soon they were paddling laboriously for deeper water. While they launched, a wind picked up, swirling from Altair's tiny form high above them; a slow cyclone spun mist away from the surface of the lake in a cone that met his glowing claws at its pinnacle.

Just as the silt-lined sandbar disappeared beneath them, dropping into cloudy depths, An'du appeared.

For a split second she was a shadow beneath them, and then she was breaking the surface. For Vidarian it was a dizzying memory-the massive whale, easily six times the length of their small craft, was exactly as he had pictured her in his vision at the Vkorthan island.

She rotated in the water, her movements turning the yawl as well. In a moment her massive head was at the prow.

Your presence, An'du said, and by their reactions Vidarian saw that Ariadel heard her also-not as gryphons spoke, from a respectful mind distance, but straight inside their heads. I know you. Please, come closer.

“Vidarian-” Ariadel began, but Vidarian was already leaning out across the water.

An'du's great eye rolled toward them as she turned on her side, then gave a powerful pulse of her tail to lift her great anvil-shaped head out of the water. Don't be afraid, she said, as Vidarian drew back into the boat. We are rarely quite what we seem.

When her nose touched his outstretched hand-slick and suppler than the finest leather-she vanished.

Thrashing suddenly in the water was-impossibly-a woman. Her skin was mottled green, a shadow of what An'du's had been, and, as she writhed, it became clear that her whale body remained below her waist, though much diminished in size, complete with broad white tail and frond-like camouflage.

Her head broke the surface, followed by her body, as her powerful tail propelled her up to “stand” above the water. Her hair-a deep green-clung to her face, and as she brushed it from her eyes, she laughed, high and full. She spun in a circle, arms akimbo. Vidarian looked away from her bared chest, though it didn't seem entirely necessary: the skin there was covered with pale mottling, but otherwise smooth, without human feature. When she swam toward the yawl, her size became clearer: she was easily half again the size of a normal woman, and would have towered over Vidarian if they stood side by side.

“It has been centuries,” she said, brushing hair away from her face and opening her eyes, “since I have known my true shape.” An'du's eyes were inhumanly large and without whites, filled instead with deep brown iris and pupil. She smiled at Vidarian and Ariadel, then held the expression, as if testing it.

Vidarian looked at Ariadel, but she only shook her head, as astonished as he. “We came to ask you about the storm sapphires,” he said, stunned into the obvious.

Her smile brightened, savvy. “Of course you would. And I will give them to you, for your coming signals the long-delayed awakening of my people. You have no idea how long we have waited.”

“How many are you?” he asked, before he could help it. “And where?”

“Many,” she said, her smile dwindling at last into seriousness. “And through all the oceans of the world. But the tale is long, and you haven't time.” She dropped down into the water then, and dove. Seconds later, there was a pulse from below the water that rocked the boat again-and An'du was a whale once more. She continued to dive, disappearing from their sight, but in three breaths was returning again, and, as before, when she lifted her head from the water near Vidarian, she became the half-human creature again.

An'du gagged, and Vidarian reached toward her out of reflex, tipping the yawl, but she recovered on her own, spitting out two large blue stones. She touched them to the water, and they shuddered in her hands-deep within, they echoed with lightning and swirled with cloud.

Vidarian held out his hand, but An'du shook her head, closing her hands over the blue stones. “When you depart, so too will my ability to hold this shape, until the gate is reopened.”

“Reopened?” he said in surprise, exchanging a look of confusion with Ariadel.

An'du flicked her tail, sending a ripple through the water. “There are two paths,” she said. “In one, you seal the gate; in the other, you reopen it. You must know the consequences of each.”

“And you can-become yourself-if I'm here…or if the gate is open. But I can't-”

“Certainly not,” An'du agreed, dipping below the water for a moment and surfacing again. “You can't remain here. But part of you can.” She traced the surface of one of the sapphires with a fingertip, and lightning echoed beneath it.

Vidarian's hand went to the pouch at his side. It stayed there, not removing either of the stones that lay inside. He looked at Ariadel.

“It seems a fair bargain,” she offered, still clearly subdued by the thought of opening the gate, and An'du smiled.

“The stone will be destroyed upon my death,” he said. “I think it only fair to warn you.”

“I only need it until the gate is opened,” she said. “If you should do so, the awakening will begin, and I will even return it to you, if you wish.”

“No,” he said, and drew the emerald from his pouch. His heart quickened as he touched it, a tremor of recognition pulsing through his senses. “I give it to you in trade. I've trusted you in my darkest hour, and need all the allies I can get.”

They exchanged the stones, and as the sapphires fell into his hands, it was with a great weight, and he struggled to regain his balance. Overhead, Altair cried out, a piercing cry that cut the air, and the sky darkened.

“You must control them,” An'du warned. “Especially when they're near the sun rubies. The gate must be opened with both, but they will not be content to be near each other.”

Vidarian sat back in the yawl, wrapping his hands around the stones and extending his senses over them. They pulled him in like a funnel cloud, and he fought for control, gripping them in his mind. The sky lightened, reluctantly, and the cold bite that had hung in the air eased. Deep inside him, from within the braided core of his elemental senses, something tested the power of the sapphires, and exulted.

“I wish you luck,” An'du said seriously, rolling the emerald between her fingers in a way that made Vidarian shiver and turn back to her. In the early morning light, her dark eyes cast down and bathed in the light of the emerald, she was strikingly beautiful, if equally alien. “You will have enemies, changebringer, that will not end with the gate's opening-or sealing. Allies you need, and you will have, but the powerful have the most to lose, and so will resist what you bring with all their strength.” Her hands closed around the emerald, dousing her face with shadow. “Luck, indeed, for all of us.”

When they returned to shore with the sapphires, Arikaree, after stepping away from them long enough to shake the water from his feathers and fur, approached Vidarian, his eyes fixed on the blue stones. Vidarian's hold on them felt like pulling a sail filled with the wind; he was not fatigued yet, but he would be. And so when the pelican-gryphon extended his foreclaw, palm open, Vidarian tipped the stones onto it with a measure of relief.

The gryphon inspected the stones for some time. Within, miniature clouds roiled, and the occasional soft peal of thunder even caused them to shudder. // A storm is being a bridge, hurr, // he said, touching a talon to the surface of the stone. The electricity within it shot from the bottom of the stone to the tip of his claw. // The lightning, hurr-the storm being meeting of sea and fire, the lightning a lance between earth and sky. Bridge for gate-opening, bridge for change-bringing. //

“Thalnarra,” Vidarian said, “An'du said that the Tesseract opens the gate-not seals it.”

The gryphoness made a dry clicking noise in her throat, a sound of dissatisfaction that wasn't quite a growl.

// There are-conflicting prophesies, // Altair said.

Vidarian felt his eyebrows lifting.

// According to some prophesies, the Tesseract seals the Great Gate, solidifying the choice made by the PrimeAdepts centuries ago. In others, he opens the gate, bringing its old powers back into the world. // The gryphon's large blue eye turned toward Vidarian, pinning. // A modern theory indicates that the Tesseract chooses the world's destiny. //

// But in either event, // Thalnarra said, her tone not conceding an inch, // your path, and ours, takes us to the gate. //

It seemed too great a simplification for so great a decision, but a look in Thalnarra's eye told him now wasn't the time to press for detail. “An'du said that I would need the rubies as well,” Vidarian said.

“Which means Val Harlon,” Ariadel finished. “And the Quest.”

// We are strong mages, all of us, but not enough to stand up to all that Endera will bring, if she chooses, // Thalnarra rumbled.

“I can't imagine this would come to violence,” Ariadel protested.

Thalnarra turned to look at her, red eyes pinning, but she said nothing.

“Ruby will be docked there,” Vidarian said, talking between them. “If we fly quickly, she won't have waited long.”

They hauled the yawl from the An'durin and prepared it for flight once more. As the gryphons were stretching their wings in preparation for the flight, Thalnarra said, // The fastest route to Val Harlon by air takes us over Cheropolis, and an assortment of outlying villages. //

// We must ascend, // Altair said, his flutelike voice surprising after Thalnarra's intense but familiar one. // In the higher altitudes I will protect you with a shield of air. We can breathe there, but you cannot. //

And indeed, while the beginning of their trip took them at a familiar height over hills and forests, as they drew closer to human-inhabited roads, the gryphons angled upward in the sky. The ground dwindled further beneath them, and Vidarian, who had become accustomed to the lower altitudes, found himself dizzied all over again as the landmarks grew smaller and smaller. His ears crackled with pain, and Ariadel motioned him to move his jaw-they made a midday snack of nuts and goat cheese from the Selturians for an excuse. As Altair had predicted, the air grew thin and harder to breathe. His lungs worked gamely, but it was as if the air simply was not there. When the gryphon's shield closed around them, muffling and enriching the air, it was a relief, and a however-illusory sense of security against the heights.

As if buoyed by the higher altitudes, or perhaps an unexpressed air of urgency, the gryphons flew quickly west, and crossed the distance in a mere three and a half days, rising earlier and flying deeper toward night. Only when their wingbeats began to falter did they move to descend; Altair, who seemed to handle the upper altitudes more easily than his partners, looked as though he alone could have gone much longer.

At midday on the fourth day, the spires of Val Harlon crept over the horizon, five points like talons on a gryphon's foreclaw reaching into the sky. And by midafternoon they were descending, spiraling toward the shielding forest that had cloaked the gryphons from view the first time Vidarian and Ariadel had landed here, fleeing the might of Sher'azar.

But to Vidarian's surprise, they did not curve toward the sheltering forest. As they drew closer to the ground, it became increasingly apparent that the gryphons intended to land on the docks themselves, bearing toward the long arm of an empty pier adjacent to the Empress Quest. Further out, at the mouth of the wide bay that sheltered Val Harlon from the wild outer sea, the Viere d'Inar stood vigilant.

“Thalnarra!” Vidarian shouted. “Where are you going?”

// The time for subterfuge is ended, // she said, and the finality with which she rested on the last word sent a chill down Vidarian's spine. // Our separation from humanity was half our culture and half yours. I demanded from my flight a dissolution of our alliance with the priestesshood, and with it ends our exclusive contact with them. //

// The air flights stand with our fire bretheren in this, // Altair added, his voice even softer than usual, a subtle (or perhaps Thalnarra would have said “passive aggressive”) dig at the larger gryphon's increasingly heated words. // We do not wish to alarm the smaller villages, whose mythology has grown against gryphonkind, but it will begin here in the cities. //

Vidarian was learning not to ask what “it” was. Changebringer, he thought acidly, if only to cover his trepidation.

As they dropped toward the ground, the gryphons’ wings fanning outward to brake and glide, the dockworkers raised their hands to shade their eyes and point, then turned and shouted. Men and women alike stood, stunned-some turned and fled, seized by fear, while others ran toward the water, summoned by the spectacle.

Perhaps thinking to protect her, the priestesses had moved the Quest to the inner harbor. There was little traffic from other ships here, and the gryphons glided to a landing on the empty adjacent pier.

Vidarian's family ship was covered with fire priestesses. Almost all his crew had been removed. They'd been gone so long, certainly many would have taken berths on other ships. But Marielle stood at the bow beside Endera, her hands in irons. His first mate and the priestess were exchanging heated words, indecipherable at this distance, though by the jerking of Marielle's chained hands they clearly concerned two too-familiar black-cloaked figures that stood behind Endera.

The priestesses held torches each alive with an unnatural light, their life-essences burning in the clear light of day. The hair stood up on the back of Vidarian's neck as he counted how many coated his ship, each armed with flame. He helped Ariadel out of the yawl, and together they unharnessed the gryphons. The crowd that had gathered was growing larger, but none dared approach within fifty feet of wing, beak, or talon.

The three creatures stretched and folded their wings, and Thalnarra nodded to Vidarian. He turned toward the city, advancing up the pier, and in short order they were drawing near the Quest's mooring.

“Come no closer, Vidarian!” Endera called when they approached hearing distance. “We will negotiate the terms of your ship's return from here!” An unearthly, malicious sound like low thunder vibrated the air around them, and Vidarian realized that Thalnarra was growling.

// Peace, sister, // Altair murmured, but his entreaty only heightened her ire.

“My air brother, I welcome you to Val Harlon-and wish it were under better circumstances!” Endera shouted to him.

// He is not your brother, // Thalnarra said, and the growl in her throat was dwarfed by the force in her mind's voice: a raw ferocity crackling in her mind, and a fierce satisfaction. // And I am not your Sister. Our bond with the priestesshood is ended, Endera, over your rash choice. // She punctuated this with a piercing cry, rearing back on her hind legs and hooking a talon in the direction of the two black-cloaked figures that stood behind Endera.

“These are water Sisters-“ Endera began, turning.

// Indeed they are not, hrrr! // Arikaree objected, radiating affront, his dark feathers rousing. // They are being known to no ocean! // His words, like Thalnarra's, were oddly weighted, carrying swirls of thought for which Vidarian's language had no words, and Altair turned to him in surprise. // Yes, hurr, // the fisher-gryphon affirmed, with a dip of his long beak. // You are feeling it also. A madness! //

“The temple cannot sanction this action!” Ariadel shouted, and in her voice Vidarian heard how it taxed her to contradict her mentor.

“I act alone!” Endera agreed, her own voice strident and shrill. “But for the good of us all, as you well know, my student! The priestesses you see here are loyal to me!”

Ariadel colored at the reprimand, but her jaw was firm. A heated retort died on her lips, though, when they all heard familiar boot-heels smartly crossing the dock behind them. In a moment, Ruby was at their side, her sword unsheathed and raised. She lifted it in an ironic salute to the Quest, and then back toward land, at the rowdy crew that raised their voices in a raucous cheer as she acknowledged them. The tip of the sword swung low and dangerous as she rewarded their acclaim with a theatrical bow.

“Impeccable timing,” Vidarian said quietly, and Ruby only grinned, wolfish.

“It was looking a bit dodgy,” she said, gesturing with the tip of her sword at the Quest.

The priestesses aboard grew visibly nervous at the cheers of Ruby's crew. Their flames flickered, then roared higher, licking dangerously close to the ship's rigging.

“Your choices are your own,” Endera called to the gryphons, deliberately ignoring the pirates. “History will doubtless condemn me for a villain-”

“Then perhaps you should reconsider your action!” Ruby shouted, lifting her longsword. The crew cheered again, eliciting more uneasiness from the priestesses.

“As much as I appreciate your assistance,” Vidarian murmured, “do take care they don't torch my ship.”

A scuffle broke out atop the deck, and by the time Vidarian realized what was happening, Marielle was being hustled from the deck, shouting obscenities at the cloaked figures. One of them strode toward the rail, reaching a hand toward Vidarian. Her hood fell back, baring the same blonde hair and grey eyes he'd seen at Sher'azar.

“Tesseract!” she shouted. “Fortune be upon you! Even now you draw close to our most exalted lady-”

The gryphons mantled at the tone in her voice and the weird energy that rose around her as she reached toward him.

Curious…the voice purred inside his mind.

“I sense her!” the grey-eyed priestess exulted, an hysterical wildness in her voice. “She is near!”

Both black-robed priestesses raised their arms, and in the strange energy that emanated out from them, the flames atop the torches that covered the Empress Quest roared lurid blue.

Chaos broke out aboard the Quest. Priestesses cried out as their own life flames leapt from their hands, wild and out of control. The flames, unearthly blue, crawled and writhed like living animals, and swept across the deck faster than if it had been doused in oil. Endera fought the flames, managing to douse her own, but only barely managing to rescue some of her acolytes from theirs. The freed priestesses ran down the gangplank, while others still on the deck leapt into the sea. Endera, abandoned, turned back toward the black-cloaked priestesses, shouting over the roar of the flames, “What is the meaning of this? Do you abandon yet another vow?” The blonde priestess hissed, an inhuman sound, and flung out a hand, releasing a wave of energy that knocked Endera to the deck.

Ariadel ran to meet Endera, lifting her hands to fight the flames aboard the ship. Thalnarra and the two other gryphons leapt away from Vidarian and Ruby, taking flight to wage their own war against the strange blue fire.

But their best efforts, Vidarian knew, might be enough only to save a few lives. Not the Quest, which even now, to his numb horror, was engulfed with ravenous fire.

Something ripped loose in Vidarian. In his anguish and fury, he relinquished control of himself to the power that simmered beneath his skin.

Pure vengeance, a celestial retribution that had consumed stars and entire planets, poured through his veins, and this world and even the universe beyond ceased to exist save for these two creatures, which deserved death and suffering through their every fiber.

His arms moved without his will, reaching toward the priestesses. They cried out in ecstasy, shouting for their goddess, babbling how they had waited, how they had been devoted.

He knew what it was to pluck a galaxy from the sky and swallow it whole. This was what he unleashed upon the cloaked figures: a nothingness that unmade them, ate them away from their cores to their skins, leaving nothing, not even a smoking circle where they had stood. He felt bone and sinew give way before him, marrow and muscle, as their screams of devotion turned to horror and fear.

Last to vanish were their thoughts, which lingered in the air like an echo in a ravine, and at last faded from a wordless cry of despair to a ringing silence. The flames rushed to fill the gap where they had stood, no longer blue, but a deadly and more familiar red.

In that moment of exultation, when the Vkortha had been reduced to nothingness, Vidarian seized back control of himself, gasping. He looked up and saw the burning tops of the Quest, the falling rigging, the skeletal main and mizzen blackened with ash and fire-

Ruby was suddenly there, hauling on his arm, dragging him away from the inferno. He turned back to her and saw his own anguish reflected there in her eyes. Tears streamed down her face-whether for his grief or from the searing smoke, he couldn't know. “She's gone, ‘Darian,” she shouted over the blasting heat, calling him by the childhood name his sister had used. He hadn't heard it since her death. “And you won't help anyone going down with her! Not like this!”

Vidarian staggered backward, pulled from the falling wreckage, but could not tear his eyes away from his family's legacy listing over, consumed by fire, groaning like an animal as one of the holds gave way and it tilted into the harbor. The main snapped, its base eaten by flame, and Vidarian's heart broke with it. He cried out, a wail lost in the roar of the fire, and threw a hand back toward it.

The main yard high overhead gave way with a sickening crack, and Vidarian stared up at it, numb. Ruby pushed him out of the way, throwing out her arms. The rent edge of the yard caught her in the side, its splintered and blackened end disappearing a handsbreadth into her flesh, so fast that it took her breath away midway through the start of a scream of pain.

Vidarian dove after her as she fell to the planks. A span of wood as long as his arm protruded from her side, and her legs spasmed helplessly as her body realized its trauma. He reached toward her, and her cry of pain was not from his touch, but it stopped him nonetheless. Gritting his teeth, he reached out with his senses, wrapping the projectile in elemental energy, and searing through the top of it, leaving it to fall away from her.

Debris from the ship continued to fall around them, splashing into the sea and crashing onto the deck. The Empress Quest was an alien thing, a burning demon from a nightmare, not the ship his great-grandfathers had sailed. Ruby gasped again, and Vidarian looped one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, then staggered to his feet and ran up the pier.

Ash burned his lungs as he cleared the radius of the burning ship and fell to his knees, taking as much of the jolt with his legs and body as he could. Ruby groaned and lost consciousness, her head lolling. He lowered her to the ground, supporting her neck with one hand.

“Healer!” he bellowed, scrubbing water from his eyes with an ash-stained sleeve. “Fetch a healer!”

The hospital at Val Harlon, adjacent to the three-partnered Collegia of Herbmastery, Mindcraft, and Healing, might be dwarfed by the great Healing Center and Imperial University far to the east in the Imperial City, but it was one of the oldest and largest institutions of its kind. Consequently there were few cities in the known world quite so recommendable for sustaining a serious injury in.

The Imperial healers had devised ways of prolonging the life of a man or woman into long centuries. Some-Vidarian's family among them, and the emperor himself-considered the practice unnatural, but so honed was the healers’ art in their time that the merchant princes of the Imperial City were known to surpass a thousand years in their lifespans. It was said that a merchant princess died when she chose, regardless of the desires of the goddesses.

But some things were beyond the long reach even of an imperial healer.

Vidarian and Ariadel, half asleep, leapt to their feet as the door to Ruby's chamber opened. Madwen, the senior surgeon, shook her head wearily as she emerged. She walked to them and clasped one of their hands in each of her own, then patted Vidarian on the shoulder.

She sank wearily into the faded velvet divan to the right of the chamber door. Ariadel gave Vidarian's hand a squeeze, then pressed him down into the opposite divan before moving to prepare tea for the three of them.

“I've seen my share of traumatic injuries,” the surgeon began, dabbing the faint sheen of sweat on her forehead with her sleeve, “but this is one of the strangest. It's severe, certainly-fatal within minutes had she sustained it at sea. But it should have been well within our arts to repair, here on land.”

Ariadel returned with the tea, a dark and bitter brew laced heavily with lemon and honey, and pressed a mug into Marwen's hands, then Vidarian's, before she took her seat beside him. The little shapeshifter, as was its wont lately, perched on her shoulder in its golden spider form. The healers either didn't notice it or were polite enough not to comment.

“But she will survive?” Vidarian passed the hot mug between his hands, soaking in its heat.

“I believe so.” Marwen sipped on her tea, then winced and blew across its surface. “I've applied a poultice that will heal her slowly over time, perhaps four months. The injury resists healing energy, and even if it didn't, to heal it all at once using her own energy or mine would cause her body such a shock as to be potentially fatal.” Her voice was calm, academic-but as she finished, it lilted slightly upward in an unasked question.

“What is it?” Ariadel asked, lacing her fingers around her mug.

Marwen blew across the tea again in an exasperated sigh. “This energy, what's resisting my efforts,” she said, then looked crosswise at Vidarian, “I think it comes from you.”

Vidarian coughed, sending searing liquid up his sinuses. It wasn't bad enough, then, that his lack of control had caused Ruby's injury in the first place?

All things and their antithesis, the increasingly present voice in his head whispered.

“I'd like to allow my colleague to examine you, if you'd permit,” Marwen said, a faint frown filling a much-traveled crease in her forehead.

“Of course,” Vidarian murmured, numb.

Marwen took a long pull on her tea, then dipped her head in an apologetic nod. “I sent word an hour ago, hoping you would agree,” she admitted.

They finished their tea in silence, and as Ariadel rose to clear the mugs, a knock on the anteroom door preceded the entrance of a mindcrafter. Marwen and Vidarian rose also now, to greet the visitor. Her face was lined, but faintly, and her black hair sparsely streaked with white, but her irises were the dense indigo of a newborn child's. Although she wore the deep blue robes of the Collegia, they were strategically disheveled, and warm rather than imposing.

“This is Anise, grandmaster mindcrafter,” Marwen said, and Anise smiled a gentle greeting. “Her work is known throughout the continent by mindcrafters and healers alike. Anise,” she turned between them, “the fire priestess Ariadel, and Captain Vidarian Rulorat-the Tesseract.”

Anise clasped their hands warmly, one after the other. “A great pleasure,” she said, lingering to look deeply into their eyes. Vidarian had never met a grandmaster of mindcraft before. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of her-what she was seeing, with each of those deep looks, and whether the reassurance that flushed through him when she did so was of his own making or hers.

“Ours also,” Vidarian said, to be polite. “We're extremely grateful for Marwen's assistance with Ruby.”

“Her injury is grave,” Anise said. She turned toward Ruby's room, regarding the door as if she could see through it. Could she? “She sleeps. Her heart aches for you.”

“You can read her thoughts from here?” Ariadel asked. Vidarian was somewhat gratified that she seemed to know no more about this level of mindcraft than he.

Anise turned back, smiling gently. “Not her innermost thoughts-only those she sends out to the world. No more than you would know simply by looking into her eyes.”

Vidarian wanted to know what she saw, then, looking into their eyes-but what he asked was: “And during your examination?”

Her features smoothed into a clinical calm confidence. “It will not take long, and for the purpose Marwen has described, I will not enter your mind itself so much as read the energies coming from it.” Ariadel and Vidarian exchanged a look of mutual incomprehension, and she continued, “We have found that wielders of elemental magic relay that energy from their minds, on an ambient level, even when they aren't actively using their ability. As your heart beats, as you breathe, so your elemental ability is pulsing and ‘breathing,’ and is as much a part of you as your heart or your lungs. I will read this energy only; you would know if I were to go further into your mind.”

Vidarian nodded his agreement, and she softly motioned for him to take a seat on the divan.

As Vidarian sat, Anise took a seat beside him, smiling reassurance. She lifted her hands, then paused, and raised her palms to either side of Vidarian's head only when he again nodded his agreement. With her hands spread close to each of his ears, she closed her eyes.

Vidarian felt nothing, but Anise's eyebrows lifted, then came together thoughtfully. She leaned forward ever so slightly, as if searching.

And if she finds what she seeks, what then? he heard, the soft voice insidious and close.

Anise's eyes snapped open immediately, and with a sharpness that left no doubt in Vidarian's mind what had recalled her. Her eyes-intense with the fullness of her skill and power behind them-bore into his, and as he stared back an emptiness quivered in his stomach, as though the force in her eyes were the tip of a glacier far deeper than he could possibly comprehend.

But then she blinked and lowered her hands, drawing back from him. She was quiet for a moment, closing her eyes with her palms on her knees, and neither Ariadel nor Vidarian exhaled until she reopened them and spoke.

“Your mind's energy is, of course, like none seen in my lifetime,” Anise said, and the slight hesitation in her tone said that she was reassuring herself of this as much as them. “There is a duality, and between the duality, a gulf great enough to transverse worlds.” At this thought her eyes unfocused slightly, but she remastered herself after a moment. “It is this gulf that draws the energy from your friend.”

Ariadel gasped softly. “His nature-impedes her healing?” The thought of it closed viselike around his heart.

“Yes and no,” Anise said, her voice warm with sympathy. “In its moment, his energy held her. In fact, her life is at this moment bound to his presence, and likely will be until her healing is complete.” She let that sink in, and silence fell between them until she filled it again. “The emanations I feel from her match the rhythm of this dualistic balance. To disrupt it now would almost certainly be fatal.”

Vidarian breathed deeply. “So…she took a blow meant for me, and my mere presence has sealed her injury.”

“For good and ill,” Marwen said, and Anise nodded. “We have no idea what her fate would have been had she taken the blow alone.”

“And when she wakes, your friend will surely tell you she would take the same action again, and wish for the past not to chain your thoughts,” Anise said, placing a light hand on Vidarian's shoulder. Her eyes were serious and inscrutable again. “The four goddesses know your mind to be weighed enough already.”

Four? the voice laughed.

As they left the hospital, navigating Val Harlon's narrow cobbled streets on the way to the inn that Endera had arranged for them-the priestess had fallen over herself to accommodate their physical needs in the wake of the Quest's destruction, providing for Ruby's surgery as well as their room and board-Ariadel grew quiet. The closer they came to the inn, the tighter her silence, until Vidarian feared to interrupt it. He searched his memory, wondering what he'd done.

When they reached their room, a sequestered corner chamber with a thick door that closed out any possible listeners, she suddenly dissolved into a baffling sequence of emotion: tears were the simplest part, colored here and there by a laugh (some of which were genuinely mirthful and some which were not), and finally anger that burned away into frustration, and more tears.

He had no idea what to do, and so as it started he took her hand, and was swallowed by confused relief when she turned to sob into his shoulder. Whatever he had done, apparently it wasn't completely unredeemable. The shapeshifter, unsettled by Ariadel's emotion, skittered across her shoulder and onto his. He tried very hard not to shake it off in a shiver of revulsion, but it transformed into its less unsettling kitten shape, hissed once, then leapt off his shoulder to run under the bed.

“Curse you,” Ariadel sniffed, just when he was beginning to think he was almost in the clear. She pulled away and moved to sit on the bed, gesturing him to follow. “I never cried so much in my life. I've been through elemental trials you couldn't imagine. I-well, never mind. With you it's every other day.”

He settled beside her gingerly, still searching for what brought this on.

Women, the voice whispered. They're crazy. Then another of its wild, unsettling giggles. He directed a stream of maliciousness in its direction, which seemed to amuse it, but it dwindled from his consciousness, returning back wherever it went.

“The Tesseract was prophesied to lose the jewel of his heart,” she said. “And I thought-”

A dozen things clicked into place. “You thought it meant Ruby,” he said softly.

“Well,” she sniffed, “before I met her, I thought it was me.” She laughed, but tears welled again to her eyes, and he wrapped an arm around her, sailing his own storm of emotion: dominant among it a kind of agony at what she had been putting herself through. “She told me she loved you only as a brother,” she said, blinking, “that she had loved a lander in the south for years, an artist, even though it was forbidden by her status.”

Vidarian laughed suddenly, bittersweet warmth loosening the pressure on his chest. Ariadel craned her neck to look up at him. “She never told me that,” he said. “Poor thing. She never wanted to be Sea Queen, you know.”

Ariadel blinked, tears beading on her eyelashes like tiny crystals. Vidarian bent to kiss her forehead.

“She was her mother's only daughter,” he said. “When we were children, she wanted to run away from the Viere to a farm in the south.”

The absurdity of the thought surprised a laugh out of Ariadel, and he smiled. “A farm?” she repeated, incredulous. “Ruby?”

“She had a fascination with growing vegetables and animals,” he said. “When you live a life on ship, they do seem rather magical.” Her childhood laughter flooded his mind in a memory, and his smile turned rueful. “I'm not sure she ever told anyone else about that. We are all called by our destinies.”

“That's all very well,” she said crossly. “But if Ruby isn't it, things don't look so good for me.” Bravery gave her words their sharp lightness, but Vidarian could hear the fear beneath, even while truth swept him like an ocean wind.

“It was the Quest,” he whispered, dread and grief and certainty seeping through him again at the thought of the ship, now a pile of ash and ruin in the harbor. “My fine lady.” The tide that swept him carried despair with it, a kind he had never known in his life. There was no doubt in his mind what the prophesy meant, nor that it was true-as disgusted as he was by the concept of prophesy in general.

Ariadel snorted wetly, but she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly for a long moment that said she understood. Vidarian leaned into her strength, just for that moment. “A ship,” she whispered back finally, then ran her fingers through his hair before bringing a hand down to gently trace his cheek. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

The next morning, Endera hosted them at a breakfast in the city. A sumptuous spread of delicacies prepared by one of the finest chefs in Val Harlon lay between them, but no one moved to touch the food.

“I wish for peace between us,” Endera began, when it became clear that no pretense would be tolerated. “And you cannot deny your need for assistance, even now. Would you turn away an ally?”

Vidarian stiffened at the echo of his own words to An'du, wondering, for a scant moment, how far Endera's reach truly was. But there was no knowing sharpness in her eyes; it was coincidence only. “I have allies.”

“Incomplete ones, as you well know,” Endera replied relentlessly. “I am no weak meddler, Vidarian, to pull your strings, but you must understand your importance. And you must understand what I will do to protect the world that I know.”

“Do you truly think you know this world, Endera?”

“Never in its totality. But more than most.” At this she reached for an arrangement of artfully sliced fruit, but she only moved it to a plate. She leaned forward slightly. “You have no quarrel with me. I set you on this path, but it unlocked a potential that was not only latent but inevitable in you.”

“You destroyed my ship.” He kept a tight rein on his temper, but the words threatened to pull fire from his veins.

“You know my sorrow for that is great,” Endera said, and Vidarian was surprised by the genuine weariness in her voice. “As well as for Ruby's injury. I know that neither of these are reconcilable. Yet you also know that they were unintended.”

“How is it not intent, when you lure me repeatedly into the hands of madwomen?”

“They are what you have always been told,” she said, and his blood boiled anew. “Wielders of a new and dangerous form of magic, a hybrid of energies not seen for thousands of years.”

“And you thought you could control them.”

“Not control,” she corrected. “Open channels to. Understand, perhaps. But all this is now quite thoroughly moot. I knew them, once. But the women you killed were none that I knew.”

Vidarian could not quite suppress a shiver as his memory of the blonde priestess's death shadowed his mind.

“And speaking of moot,” she continued, a sharpness creeping back into her voice. “So too is your pretense for rejecting my offer. I have something you need.” She reached into the pouch at her side, and released onto the table two stones identical to the sun emeralds save for their vivid red hue. They glowed even more than the emeralds had, shining like tiny suns beside the silver platters of pastry and fruit.

“Horses,” Ariadel said, and Vidarian looked up in surprise. “The priestesshood has them, and it's the least you can do to ease our journey.”

Endera bridled at Ariadel's tone, but she only stared at her younger colleague for a long moment; sensing, Vidarian knew, as he did, the completeness of the bridge burned between them, and Ariadel's still raw sense of betrayal. “Horses,” she agreed. “Two.”

“Three,” Ariadel corrected. “Mountain breeds. And three verali. All awaiting us at the Invesh Pass.”

“For peace,” Endera said, extending her hand across the table. “And what advice-I will not say guidance-the fire priestesshood may provide you.”

Vidarian watched her for a long moment, then turned to Ariadel, who inclined her head. He took Endera's hand, and she exhaled as they touched, a vulnerable relief in her eyes. In that moment she seemed aged far beyond her already long years. When she released her grip, she set his hand down atop the sun rubies, which flared with warmth to his touch.

The thrum in the pouch at his side was the response of the storm sapphires, and his mental grip tightened around them. They subsided only after several moments of resistance.

“Do you know, Vidarian, which path you will take, at the gate?” Endera asked. The look Ariadel gave her at these words was another blend of anger and surprise.

“With respect, and peace,” Vidarian said carefully, looking up from the stones only when he was sure of his control over them, “I can't take your advice on that any longer. My counsel is my own.”

O n their fifth day in Val Harlon, Vidarian and Ariadel woke in good spirits. Ruby was at last showing signs of mending, and of a return to her old self. Being in one place for more than two days straight had settled Vidarian's mind, which over the last several weeks had grown nervous and brittle. Anise, whether summoned by Marwen or her own intuition, visited him often at Ruby's bedside. The mind, she said, could not be healed as could the flesh, but it could be shaped in one direction or another.

They stepped into the morning sunlight under a clear sky that gave credence to their enlivened spirits. Ariadel insisted that they detour through the west end market before making their way to the hospital-Ruby should be feeling well enough for a more substantial breakfast than the nutritious but flavorless fare insisted upon by the healers.

Val Harlon's famous west end market was a riot of colors, sounds, and aromas. Fruit vendors plied passersby with sliced delicacies in an impossible array of colors, while bakers and tenders of traveling carts of meat pies needed to rely only on the wafting rich scents of freshly baked bread and savory sauces that drew custom straight to them.

One particularly busy purveyor of mushroom and venison pastries tempted them, but they resisted, gathering up a modest basket of cinnamon buns, white melon, royal tangerines, and fresh kava sealed hot in a porcelain jar. Vidarian, who had sampled kava from the far southern continent alongside the strange kava-strength teas of the Qui Empire, had to admit that Val Harlon's distinct variety of the peppery and potent kava bark was among the best in the world, smooth and palatable to even the most finicky of connoisseurs.

While they were haggling over a tiny burlap sack of cinnamon sugar, an ornate carriage pulled by a huge black gelding rattled over the cobbles alongside them. The horse caught Vidarian's attention first: he was huge, and had a faint iridescence to his coat and a canniness of eye that brought to mind the winged steeds of the Alorean Sky Knights, protectors of the emperor. Surely no mere merchant, however wealthy, could boast an animal descended from that rare and coveted lineage, but the likeness was striking.

An elaborately coiffed head appeared from the window of the carriage, and as soon as Ariadel had handed over a pair of coins for the sugar, a slim white hand followed it and beckoned them closer. “Sir, madam, if I may have a moment?”

Vidarian and Ariadel approached the carriage cautiously. Carts and wheelbarrows flowed around it, their operators grumbling under their breath but none daring to challenge the vehicle that blocked their way. Val Harloners were rarely so given to politeness, and it prickled the back of Vidarian's neck to see it.

The woman inside the carriage, her grey eyes hawk-sharp, was dressed to match both carriage and coiffure, in expensive black brocade with silver piping. Her precise smile conveyed her relief at speaking equal-to-equal in the market's morass of banality. “Lord Tesseract,” she began, and was on to the next before Vidarian could correct her, “I am Oneira Ehrenfar. I represent the Fourth Mercantile, and speak also on behalf of the greater Alorean Greater Import Company. The senior partner in Val Harlon wishes to extend an invitation to you both,” she nodded to Ariadel, and Vidarian didn't like the superior way she assumed Vidarian's prominence between the two of them.

Fourth Mercantile. Alorean Greater Imports. Vidarian flexed his diplomatic muscles, attempting to hide his distaste. “Certainly the desires of such a friend to the empire are of great interest to us,” he said, pitching his tone carefully flat to convey his own superiority, even as he hated doing so, “and we would be glad to arrange a meeting at the partner's convenient time.”

“Now, actually, is quite his convenience.” Her eyes lost no sharpness, making no concession for the abruptness of the request-which should have been embarrassing. Dangerous territory.

Vidarian worked again to stifle his irritation. “We are just now en route to visit a good friend in hospital. Surely the Company's business is not so desperately urgent?”

“All business is urgent,” Oneira replied, “the Company's more so, for those who make real decisions, as I'm sure you understand, Lord Tesseract. Your friend, ‘Queen’ Roana,” her mild disgust at Ruby's title danced a careful edge of offense, “surely requires her rest. I can arrange to deliver your gifts, and perhaps you could call on her this afternoon, after our conversation? The senior partner is a busy man.”

Even without his ship-as the Company surely knew-Vidarian had too many friends and allies at the mercy of the Company's controls over ports and harbors to risk their ire unnecessarily.

“We will be glad to take you up on your kind offer, then.” He sighed.

“Excellent,” Oneira said, and rapped on the roof of the carriage. When a footman scrambled down the polished brass ladder at the aft side of the vehicle, she waved him to take the basket from Vidarian and gave instructions on where to take it, including the building and room where Ruby was housed, without prompting. She smiled, looking down into the basket, adding, “and do pick up a few delicacies on our behalf. Salted morels, marmalade, and olive tapenade from Bertram's.” Vidarian calculated as the footman bowed and took his leave; the quality and price of the additions were both a show of power (as well a reprimand of Vidarian's taste in gifts, if he wanted one) and a bribe. He fumed behind the bared teeth of a gracious smile, and they mounted up at her invitation into the carriage.

The inside of the carriage was as ornate as its exterior, gleaming with oiled leather and polished brass. Another rap on the roof from their erstwhile hostess, and they were on their way. Being beholden to wheels, their conveyance was no smooth sail, but some mechanism involving oiled springs made it the gentlest carriage ride Vidarian had ever experienced.

He was unsurprised when they turned toward Val Harlon's wealthiest Point Ista district, but he did lift an eyebrow when they turned up a long drive flanked by mounted guards. Three more checkpoints were between them and their destination, as it turned out; any escape would be with their host's cooperation, it would seem.

They stepped down from the carriage onto tightly fitted paving stones that marked a circle around exquisitely manicured gardens of perfectly clipped green and blue grass. The manor itself was, for its splendor, certainly over a century old, of the antique colonnaded type, but upgraded with modern brass lanterns and window-fittings. When they were shown into the foyer, Vidarian took a deep breath, expecting a long wait, but their abductor led them directly up an imposing grand staircase of white marble.

At the end of a long carpeted hallway at the top of the stairs was a heavily carved pair of mahogany doors attended by precisely uniformed guards in red wool and glittering brass buttons. The polish hid a functional edge-a familiar wear on chain-wrapped sword hilts, coats cut for movement as well as aesthetic, precise-fit vambraces. The guards recognized Oneira and opened the door for her immediately; Vidarian moved her status upward in his loose estimate.

The senior partner sat behind a massive desk flanked by ceiling-high windows and velvet curtains all intended to cast both light and awe upon whomever entered through the mahogany doors. Bright eastern sunlight cast the partner as a silhouette, but as their eyes adjusted, he revealed himself to be eerily identical to the few other Alorean Import partners Vidarian had ever met. Cosmetic differences aside-he had black hair and blue eyes, unlike the others-all of the so-called merchant princes of the Company had the same uncanny features, flawless and vibrant youth with none of its innocence, purchased duly from those healers who cared more for coin than mending. There was no telling how old this particular company man was, though to achieve the rank of senior partner his years numbered almost certainly over three hundred.

And whatever their status, they didn't rate the partner standing up to greet them. Oneira waved them to a pair of brocade-cushioned chairs worked with gold leaf where they weren't covered with imported silk. And possibly, Vidarian thought sourly, beneath where they were. He walked Ariadel to her seat and bowed over her hand when she was seated, brushing his lips across her fingers with just enough impropriety to tease a disapproving frown out of their host. Be damned if he wasn't going to get some satisfaction out of this.

“So,” he said as he took his seat. “What can we do for you, partner…?”

“Senior Partner Justinian Veritas, overseer of the Fourth Mercantile and the Greater Alorean Import Company's voice in Val Harlon,” Oneira said, standing at the man's shoulder.

Justinian smiled thinly. “We thank you for making it here on such short notice. Oneira is my second, and the future representative of the Company here in Val Harlon.”

“You know that will never happen,” Ariadel addressed their escort for the first time, and she stiffened ever so slightly. “They need you here because of the power of the priestesshoods, but any partner naming a woman as his heir would be committing political suicide. And none of the partners are especially interested in dying.”

“As I'm sure you understand, Mr. Rulorat,” Justinian said, addressing Vidarian as if Ariadel had not spoken, certainly knowing how it caused Vidarian's hands to clench at his sides, “our dealings can be pleasant or unpleasant, and I will ultimately leave the choice between up to you.” Justinian folded his hands together and rested his elbows on the desk. His gaze was sharp with intelligence but carefully casual. “To be quite honest, I think the Company's interest in you is ill considered at best. But if you truly know our ways as well as you'd have my junior colleague believe, you also know that my orders come from the top. I'd just as soon avoid any unpleasantness.”

“‘Unpleasantness’ would be an interesting way of describing your company's control over ports my family has needed to survive for over a century,” Vidarian said.

Justinian gave a small wave of his hand, somewhere between a concession and a dismissal. “We are a force across the five seas, this is true, and the responsibilities that come with such power are significant.”

“What I meant to say was,” Vidarian consciously unclenched his hands and folded them on his lap, “I really don't have any interest in working or cooperating with you.”

“All business,” Justinian said softly, “is in knowing the interests of your partners,” his eyes lifted, piercing blue with the light coming through the window behind him, “and of your competitors.”

“What you call ‘competitors’ we call ‘enemies,’” Vidarian said, meeting the partner's stare unflinchingly.

Justinian looked down first, but only to nudge a packet of paper across the desk with a slim fingertip. “I understand full well that you have no natural inclination toward us, but I also understand you to be a rational man. A businessman.”

Vidarian reached across the desk and slid the paper packet toward himself, catching it with his other hand as it slid off the desk entirely. He opened it, but kept his eyes on Justinian, lowering them to the papers only when he could read them at a downward glance. But as his eyes passed over the words it became harder to keep his head up-and clear. As anger-and, he would admit only under duress, a bit of fear-thrilled in his veins, the storm sapphires in his waist pouch rumbled a response. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing them and himself to stillness. When he opened them, he said, “You don't have the authority to do this.”

“Oh, we do,” Justinian said, with an almost-boredom that set Vidarian's veins to bubbling again. “You've been in the west too long, Lord Tesseract. The Company is now quite strong with the emperor, and with the imperial city. You realize, then, why I don't find your cooperation a particularly challenging objective.”

He passed the packet to Ariadel numbly. The company, for whatever reasons known only to them, wanted to hole him up in the imperial city, far away from the sea or the gate. The princely commission for his “service” in the city would have intrigued him six months ago, but only irritated him now. And the dispatches, which by all accounts looked absolutely real, also commissioned the imperial army in enforcing his compliance if necessary. “Why bother warning me?” he asked, finally.

“As I told you,” Justinian said, “I find this all rather unnecessary and poorly thought-out. What I do object to is any besmirching of the Company's name from your however-fruitless resistance.” He tilted his head, squinting at Vidarian. “You do intend to resist, do you not?”

“I don't intend to cooperate with you or anyone else merely for the sake of doing so.”

He sighed theatrically. “And I suppose you also can't be bought.”

“Not by you.”

“How unpleasant,” Justinian said, and took a carved geode from atop a stack of documents. He rapped hard on the desk, which echoed hollowly. One of the guards from outside opened the door. “Andrews. Please escort our guests back to the city. We've fulfilled the requests of the partners.”

The beds at the inn were now familiar, from plush mattress and featherbed to the lavender oil that scented their sheets, and as Vidarian sank into theirs, it was the first genuine moment of comfort he'd had since that morning. The candle beside the bed flickered out-Ariadel's doing, and not by hand, something he was only beginning to become accustomed to-and she, as usual, was asleep in moments, leaving him to stare up into the darkness.

The curtains over the room's large window hadn't been closed. He thought about getting up to draw them shut, but as he moved his arm with the thought, Ariadel shifted in her sleep, murmuring. Settling his arm again, he shifted gingerly, then shut his eyes, reaching for sleep.

It was to no avail. The light of the stars winking through the far window should have been negligible, but it seemed to cut right through his eyelids. Aimless thoughts tumbled in his brain, worries half coherent and half not, until finally he opened his eyes again, if only to banish them. The window and its light were still there, insistent.

Gradually, his eyes blurred, and the stars blurred with them. They drew together and began to spiral gently. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, but the pattern persisted. Slowly, but steadily, the swirl drew itself into the shape of a woman, reclining in midair, clothed in tendrils of darkness that covered not nearly enough of her light-drawn skin. He flushed, and shook his head, but to no avail.

“Go away,” he said finally, glancing at Ariadel out of fear of waking her. She didn't stir.

The figure drew closer, still lying in midair. When she spoke, it was a soft voice echoing across a great distance. He fought down the flare of recognition that lit in his soul when he saw her. This was the creature that had lived in his mind for so long, it seemed, now made manifest at last. “Where do you think you are?” she asked, floating sedately. She did a lazy barrel roll in the air, her hair fanning out in a graceful arc as though it were underwater.

Vidarian blinked. “I'm sleeping,” he said. For a split second his vision doubled dizzyingly, and he saw two realities: himself, sitting up in bed, facing the floating woman; and himself, one arm looped around Ariadel, sleeping soundly.

“Correctamundo,” she said, rolling again until her feet were pointed toward the ground, then twisting lightly back into a standing position.

“What are you?” he asked, and she laughed, as some part of him knew she would.

Her face-just her face, leaving neck and all below in place-turned upside down.

“What do you think I am?” she asked, in his voice. Hearing his own voice echoed back to him, in addition to sending a chill through his body, made him realize he'd asked his question the same way-as a statement.

“You're the goddess of chaos.”

“Chaos,” she flared, her head spinning back upright as she advanced on the bed, eyes inhumanly large and filled with livid white light. It was a whiteness of absence, a whiteness of between-being, a whiteness of nonexistence. Her fingers spidered over the footboard, fingertips hooked into gleaming claws. “That's what they call it,” she said softly. “I bring them balance, and they call me chaos. Chaos goddess, star hunter.” The name rang recognition again through his very core.

“They call you retribution,” he said, fixing his eyes on her, much though his brain willed him to look away.

“Rich men call me retribution,” she agreed. “Poor men call me justice.” Straightening, she raised her arms in front of her, hands balled into fists, halos of empty white light fluorescing around her body. Her voice dropped into an eerie, inhuman hollowness. “And what is retribution, but a return? All things,” the voice dwindled to a soft hiss, “and their antithesis.” She lifted off her feet again, the light dwindling around her, and floated toward the bed. Her right eye flashed red while her left burned blue. “At the heart of all things living is a wildness, a chaos, a not-being. I am the sea and I am the fire, and we are what's in between. And you, dear Vidarian, will set me free.”

Fear and stubbornness gripped him in iron fists that pulled apart from his center. “You don't know what I'll do.”

“Don't I?” She leaned close, whispering as if imparting a secret. “I'm a goddess.” The word carried power, like the language of the gryphons; it was more than merely what met his ears.

He held firm. “I've met goddesses.”

“But not,” she whispered again, sidling close, her scent like lightning, “like me.” She pushed herself away from him, floating toward the window. “I can do bad things to you, Vidarian. Bad things. You should do what I want.”

“I'm not afraid of you.” Strangely, he was fairly certain it was true. What more was there left to be afraid of? Should he fear her? The empire? The Alorean Import Company?

She looked down at the bed, into the reality where Ariadel slept beside him, and smiled.

A snarl leapt into his throat, a threat onto the tip of his lips. But she blew into his face, a cold wind that sucked the breath from his chest.

“See you later, alligator.”

Hands on his shoulders threw him into gasping wakefulness. Instinctively he rolled out of their grasp, blocking Ariadel's body with his own.

“Vidarian,” Endera whispered sharply, and he swam out of sleep and into his senses. Ariadel moved underneath him, squawking groggily, and he twisted, sitting up and facing Endera.

Her shadowed form gradually resolved from the silhouette of the Starhunter supplied by his sleep-addled brain and into the weary and worried golden eyes of the fire priestess. “I apologize for waking you,” she said, in a tone that was certainly no apology, “but you must leave the city immediately.”

Ariadel had awakened quietly and now sat up in bed, frowning at Endera, but there was fear and respect in her eyes. She had not, and perhaps would never, recovered from the personal betrayal of her mentor's manipulation, but she knew, as Vidarian did, a survival order when she heard one. “The Company,” she said only.

Endera nodded. “I don't know what you told them,” she addressed Vidarian sternly, “but the guard is moving as we speak.”

“We have to get to Ruby,” Vidarian said.

“Out of the question,” Endera replied.

“She'll die,” Ariadel said, an entreaty and a warning in her voice.

Endera looked at them for two long moments. “Fine,” she said. “But hurry, both of you.”

They hadn't much in the way of possessions to begin with; Vidarian had purchased a new pair of boots more suited to their current land travel, but the rest of all his worldly holdings had burned with the Quest. In moments they were dressed, packed, and descending the inn's outer stairs into the cold night and the black carriage that awaited on the cobbles.

“Thalnarra, Altair, and Arikaree are waiting at the north field,” Endera said, as the carriage rattled toward the west hospital. Ariadel shivered, and as Vidarian moved to wrap an arm around her for warmth, Endera pulled a thick black verali fleece-lined wool cloak from a satchel at her side and handed it across to Ariadel. She produced another for Vidarian. “For the altitudes,” she said, and Ariadel reluctantly accepted the gift. Vidarian did the same. “There will be more supplies for you at the waystation on the southern border.” Her voice was strained, and Vidarian knew it to be with the pain of being so distrusted by Ariadel. Vidarian's distrust she no doubt took in stride, but some part of her conscience still railed, it would seem.

They tossed the cloaks across their shoulders as they stepped down onto the street outside the hospital. At the door were two cloaked fire apprentices who stood ready with baskets of supplies. They climbed aboard the carriage, clinging to the outside rails like footmen, as Viadarian and Ariadel rushed inside.

Ruby was awake and waiting for them.

“You have to take me to my ship, Vidarian,” she said, imperious even while half healed. “I can't die on land. You know that.”

Vidarian walked straight to her, slid one arm under her legs and the other behind her shoulders, and lifted. He spoke while carefully maneuvering her out the door that Ariadel held open. “We can't go to your ship, Ruby. I'm sorry. And you're not going to die.”

Ruby twitched in his arms, but wasn't strong enough to seize her own fate. “Please, Vidarian,” she said, turning her face toward him. Her face was hollow with the trauma of her healing, her eyes and cheeks sunken, if not deeply. Her entreaty, so far from the imperious Sea Queen who had commanded them mere weeks ago, tore at his heart. “You know you'd be out to sea if you had a choice,” she whispered fiercely.