Sword of Fire and Sea

“I'm sorry,” he said again, heartsick but willing courage into his steps as he carried her out to the carriage.

Once again the vehicle was clattering through the night, and Endera took them out to the open field behind the north dock, where they had landed so long ago. Ruby took one look at the flying craft-a proper one, this time, and no makeshift pram-and started thrashing again.

“I'm not riding in that thing,” she declared, a bit of her old fire back, even if it was out of panic.

“You are,” Vidarian murmured, watching the apprentices leap adroitly down from the carriage to load their supplies. When they finished, Vidarian took a step toward the craft, causing Ruby to struggle again. He almost lost his grip on her, and staggered. When he regained his balance, he shook her just hard enough to get her attention. Or, it was supposed to be. She ignored him and continued to thrash. Vidarian reached out with his water Sense and pushed at her, again gently, and this time she grew still as soon as the ripple passed over her.

“I don't like gryphons,” she said quietly, though her eyes went to the tufted ears that flickered toward them at her words. Her face only hardened. It was an odd statement from someone with a gryphon's face entirely covering her right shoulder, unless you knew Sea Kingdom rites. Vidarian had never asked her where the gryphon had come from; usually the tattoos were symbolic, but the white gryphon on her shoulder was much too lifelike.

“They're hardly all the same,” was all he could think to say, though even as he did so he realized he knew only five of them at all well.

Ruby didn't struggle again, but said only, “You'll wish we'd sailed.” Then she closed her eyes.

Vidarian lifted her up and over the rim of the craft, handing her gently into the waiting arms of the two apprentices who had loaded the supplies. They worked silently and efficiently, settling her into a padded and blanket-covered gurney directly on the deck.

As soon as they finished, the apprentices hopped lightly out, making way. Vidarian held out a hand to Ariadel and helped her up the portable wooden stepladder, then over the rim and into the craft. He lost no time in following her, and even as he was throwing a leg over the edge, the apprentices were moving to clear the stepladder away in preparation for takeoff.

Endera approached the basket, pausing only when one of the gryphons threw out a wing, stretching, to block her path. None of the three acknowledged her presence. “Your horses and supplies await at the Invesh Pass, as requested.” She rested a hard stare on Ariadel for a moment. When she found no response there, she turned to Vidarian and started to say something, then shook her head. “Safe travels,” she said only, and stepped back, leaving plenty of room for outstretched wings.

In addition to being larger, this craft boasted padded leather seats and an admirable use of space reminiscent of a well-kept ship. A simple galley set into the pointed aft held all of their food supplies and a tiny cast iron cookstove mounted on sea-swing-like gimbals. Benches of polished wood and leather cushions with woven silk safety harnesses provided seating for nine, though Vidarian wondered how three gryphons could carry so many. A clear area just behind the bow provided enough space for Ruby's nest, while cabinets set to port and starboard carried a familiar array of navigational equipment, as well as a few additional tools Vidarian guessed were associated with altitude measurement. He wondered, briefly, how so much development could have been done for these crafts-enough of it was all too familiar, but much had been custom created specifically for flight. There were stories…Once again he was forced to assess sea stories and mythology, wondering what was exaggeration or fairy tale, and what was lost knowledge-but then they were lifting into the sky.

As the gryphons exchanged a series of chirps and calls that Vidarian had come to realize were some kind of takeoff preparation signals, he noticed that his safety harness had an expansion belt. If he moved these two clips-yes-it seemed to be designed to allow a rider to stand up from one of the benches. As he adjusted the harness, then stood and took hold of a brass handgrip mounted in the side of the craft seemingly for this purpose, Ariadel reached out in alarm.

“Vidarian-” she said.

// It's quite safe, // Altair murmured, his voice like fresh-broken mint leaves in their minds. The craft lurched gently as the gryphons broke into a lope, headed for the cliff, but Altair's tone was conversational. // This is one of the safest crafts in the air fleets-from the days of the skyships. A treasure lent our cause by my people. // Just as he finished speaking, the three gryphons threw out their wings in perfect synch-and leapt out over the cliff. Vidarian's contemplation of Altair's casual reference to “skyships” was swallowed by the sudden view of the glittering sea hundreds of feet below them.

The craft itself dropped, pulling a startled shout from Vidarian and Ariadel both, and suddenly they were seeing the undersides of the three gryphons-the chains and braided silk bindings that held the craft to the gryphons’ harnesses played out on pulleys, pulled by gravity.

// A more efficient suspension system, // Altair explained, apology coloring his words. // I should have warned you. The longer bindings allow us to maneuver with much greater agility than other styles of flying craft. // Even as his heart hammered, Vidarian could see that this was true-the three gryphons now each had a much greater range of motion for their wings and bodies.

The gryphons climbed, their wings stroking strong and even. Wisps of cloud tore past their wings, beaks, and the sides of the craft-Vidarian reached out once to touch one, marveling as it broke across his fingers like steam from a teapot, leaving cold moisture in its wake.

As they broke above the last layer of harbor mist, the night sky opened huge over their heads, studded with stars. On the eastern horizon behind them, the sun now crept skyward, staining the distant land-flat farm fields precise with rows of crops-with brilliant orange and gold, a pool of liquid fire. Directly below, the lights of Val Harlon flickered against the still dark hours of morning, glimmering through breaks in the clouds.

When he wasn't in fear for his life, Vidarian observed, flying like this was actually rather beautiful. He and Ariadel exchanged a shared smile of wonder; she hadn't stood, but leaned out over the edge of the craft from her seat. Ruby, however, had not moved.

“Ruby, we're-” he began.

“Don't tell me,” she said, her eyes shut and mouth creased in a frown. “I don't want to know.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, and returned his eyes to the remarkable panorama of city and coast below. Seemingly tiny waves crashed against the rocks south of the city, and the sea, which melted into darkness to the west, arced gently below them as the gryphons marked out a gradual curve in the sky, turning south. “Thalnarra,” he called, looking up and to port where she flew. One red eye tilted down at him for a moment, an ear swiveling in inquiry. “Does this craft have a name?”

Mirth lent a cinnamon spice to her thoughts. //I thought you would have seen the markings on the bow. She's called Destiny. //

“Of course she is,” he said, and sat back down.

For five days they watched the sky in all directions for signs of pursuit. Logically speaking, it would take any Sky Knights-even assuming the Company's claims of such an alliance were legitimate-more than a week of fast flying to reach Val Harlon even from the closest outpost. But after so many surprises they weren't willing to leave anything to chance.

// Arikaree has great mind-strength, // Thalnarra assured them. The gryphon could reach out with his mind for leagues in either direction, detecting the presence, if not the precision, of any thoughts near them.

// Hurr, // the pelican-gryphon agreed. // None be following us, yet. // Even still, Vidarian couldn't help scanning the skies with the brass sighting glass every few hours.

Two days into the journey, Ruby roused enough to sit up and look out at the afternoon sky. Her healing was clearly progressing-she complained with greater fervor every day as she downed the bitter draughts prescribed by the healers-but her expression as she gazed out at the sky was bleak. One night, after they'd made camp, Arikaree walked up to her as she stared out at the western sea.

They stood looking at each other for a long time-the gryphon's eyes pinned and his head tilted at intervals, and Ruby's expression changed every few moments. It took Vidarian several moments of surreptitious observation before he realized that they must be speaking to each other-and that apparently Ruby knew how to speak mind-to-mind with a gryphon without also speaking out loud. More mysteries-but as Ruby's attitude lightened considerably after that night, he didn't pursue them.

On the fourth day, the great southern Windsmouth Mountains rose up before them, and on the fifth day, they dominated the horizon. The weather turned, also, and they huddled under the fleece and wool cloaks Endera had provided as the twisting arm of a miniature blizzard washed snow across the craft. Altair, at the front flight position, deflected the worst of the stinging snow away from them, but this did little to warm the air. When they began to descend, gliding toward the glowing tower that marked the watchpost at the Invesh Pass, it was with relief.

The rugged guards at the watchpost had less welcome news, however. Their supplies were present as promised-three fine horses and twice as many verali, three to carry the gryphon's flying craft and three to bear their gear- but rather than providing shelter for the night, the guards suggested- strongly-that they ride immediately through the pass.

At the far side of the pass, they were told, was another traveler, and even with the gryphons’ protection augmenting their own abilities, another set of eyes and hands would be most welcome. Especially if, as the Invesh guards claimed, the traveler had been this way more than once before.

// And a storm is coming, // Altair said, lifting his beak to the air and testing it with his tongue. The guards agreed, and after a warm meal of mutton stew, sent them on their way.

The gryphons, for their part, were as at home on the ground as in the air, though they clearly preferred the loftier vantages of the heights, and a slight tenseness in their bodies hinted at their increased alertness. Each bore a ball of light-deep red for Thalnarra's, blue-white for Altair's, glowing green for Arikaree's-that led them through the deepening dark and the shadow of the mountains. Ruby took to her saddle bravely, but was exhausted by the end of their short ride through the pass; relief shone clear on her face as they emerged from the towering mountain walls.

On this side of the pass was a break in the mountains, and a dark clearing. The guards had established an unmanned waypoint for travelers, and here, as promised, was the sleeping figure of the man who traveled the pass also. A line of verali and one horse stood sleeping at a rough hitching post at the camp's edge. The man's fire, banked, glowed softly and illuminated his shadowed form, and they moved quietly, though in exhaustion, to make a cold camp. The gryphons dug shallow sleeping pits in a loose triangle around the humans, and, after picketing and watering the verali and horses, they slept.

Dawn at the pass came slowly, with pale light inching over the eastern mountains to brighten the thin and ever-present fog. Even at this low altitude the wash of meager daylight made the world seem dim and half asleep.

The intoxicating smell of brewing kava, rather than the advancing light, pulled them from their bedrolls.

Kneeling near the fire and tending the kava pot was the stranger who had been sleeping when they'd arrived at the waypoint. By day, his string of verali proved to be weighed down with sacks of-if their stamped labels were to be believed-kava, imported from across the entire continent.

He looked up when they rose blearily from their blankets and waved them closer. Kava alone hadn't stirred Vidarian from sleep in years, but by its strange and complex aroma, this was no ordinary brew.

“A personal favorite,” the man said, rising from the fire and nudging a small woven sack with a proprietary toe. His voice, eyes, and hair were dark like the kava, thick with some accent Vidarian couldn't quite place. He extended his hand, and Vidarian clasped it. “Luc Medicka, kava collector.”

“Vidarian Rulorat,” he introduced himself, and held a hand out to Ariadel, “and Priestess Ariadel Windhammer.” Luc took her hand and bowed over it, a brief motion that spoke of foreign custom rather than flirtation. Nonetheless, the slightest heat edged Vidarian's voice. “Collector? You're traveling a long way with that collection.”

The man followed Vidarian's gesture with his eyes, and waved his hands dismissively at the loaded verali. “A modest shipment. My clients pay handsomely for these strains of kava on the southern continent. To be honest, their tastes are rather ordinary.”

“The southern continent?” Ariadel repeated, skeptical. “The mountains have closed passage for nearly a century.”

“For caravans, yes,” Luc agreed. “If you know the way, there are cave systems that still connect to the continent.”

// Quite dangerous ones, // Thalnarra rumbled, and Luc turned to her in surprise. If he'd never seen a gryphon before, he didn't show it; his eyebrows arched higher for just a moment, but soon he was bowing in greeting.

“This is Thalnarra,” Vidarian said. “The others are Altair and Arikaree.”

“Northern gryphons,” Luc said, and Thalnarra's tufted ears flicked forward in surprise. “I've met your kin, though rarely, on the southern continent-if they can be said to be kin.”

// They are, // Altair agreed, approaching and giving Luc a nod of his beak, a strange gesture that the man again took in stride. // If distant ones. A forest people. //

“Brilliant colors, their feathers, like you wouldn't believe,” Luc said, then gave a dip of his head in apology. “Not that yours aren't, of course.”

// Of course, // Altair said dryly.

Luc turned to Vidarian, and at first it seemed to be in an attempt to change the subject. “You radiate, if it is not rude to say, sir, a most peculiar energy.”

All three gryphon heads swiveled toward the man at this, and Ariadel smiled curiously. “You're quite perceptive,” she said, her tone lifting upward in a question.

Luc bowed again, a habit it would seem, then bent to pour kava for the three of them-as he was pouring, Ruby approached sleepily, and they exchanged introductions. Quick, soft gestures of his hands inquired as to their tastes for sugar and verali cream; Vidarian and Ariadel took both, while Luc and Ruby kept theirs black. Luc gave Ruby a proprietary smile of approval at this.

When they sat around the fire with their cups, Luc spoke again. “There is a word in Ishmanti: invael. It means truth's antithesis. The opposite of truth. Not a falsehood, which is a sliding-aside of truth, a dodging of truth with truth at its core, but a direct negation of the very fundamental nature of truth itself, the heart of truth. The antitruth that devours true things, that spreads into the world and undoes what truth we forge.”

“Like the Starhunter.” Thalnarra's hackles raised as Vidarian said this, and Ariadel turned to him in puzzlement, but Luc was unfazed.

“Yes, the Starhunter is invael. But she is also truth. She is truth and its antithesis. She is the differentiator.” He turned toward Vidarian. “She is choice.” He took a long draw on his kava, pausing as if in meditation as he savored it. “And that, sir, is what emanates from you.”

“You'll find all manner of strange characters in these mountains,” Luc said, as their horses picked their way over a particularly intricate length of trail. The beasts were smart, thank Nistra-Endera must have known they would need to be for this territory. Vidarian's horse, according to the labeling on his gear, was called Feluhim, another Ishmanti word that he didn't know, but Luc, being from that sun-blasted place, did: it meant loyal son, but most often was used for horses, strangely. “We're on the fringe of civilized places. My father used to say, if a man lives where no others will, there's a reason why, in the man and the place.”

After the waypoint, they had moved again into the mountains, where they gauged the passage of time more by the phases of their hunger than by the light, which was fickle and pale. Steep walls rose to either side of them, and twice they had to detour around rockslides, adding hours to their days. The gryphons made ready use of their claws and talons in scaling rocks and boulders, but the horses needed clearer trails lest they risk slips and broken legs. High overhead, the perpetual storm that hung over the Windsmouth was their constant companion, now and then casting down a thick blanket of snow that further obscured the ground. The everstorm, as it was called by the Invesh guards, was what kept the gryphons from bearing them south by air-it was massive, beyond Altair's ability to tame, and extended so far to the north and south that any gryphon that had ever attempted to fly over it had never been seen again. All this the gryphons did not admit easily, and the storm was one of the few things Vidarian had ever seen the creatures universally respect.

And so they picked their way through the mountains by foot, holing up in caves when the storm grew fiercest. On their fifth morning in the mountains, they reached a split in the trail. One path descended-according to their maps, it traced a route to the southeast by way of descending altitudes. The other path led higher into the mountains.

“And here we part,” Luc said, “for your path is stranger than mine.” He smiled jauntily at this. They had not disclosed their final destination, nor their intent, but he'd seemed to divine something of both without being told. “Your journey leads up,” he said, and pointed to the trail that wound up the mountain. “There is a waypoint, the last known to the empire, at the top. I believe it's kept by water priestesses,” he nodded to Arikaree, who returned the gesture with some diffident surprise. “There ends my knowledge.” He clasped each of their elbows in turn, the parting gesture of the Ishmanti-Vidarian knew it from etiquette books, but had never experienced it. “I hope that we meet again. I'd like to know what lies beyond that mountain.”

“We hope to tell you,” Vidarian said.

“If you ever find yourself in the west sea, ask for me,” Ruby said, as she clasped Luc's elbow-clearly comfortable with the gesture in a way that obliquely irked (but didn't surprise) Vidarian. “I don't know how we'll get by without your brew every morning.” Now that she was on solid ground, Ruby seemed to be recovering more every day, though the presence of the poultice at her side kept them from forgetting her injury.

“I'd be honored to trade with the famous fleets of the West Sea Queen!” Luc exulted, and Ruby colored with satisfaction. The two had taken to rising earlier than the rest of the party, and Luc seemed to take particular pleasure in introducing Ruby to the various blends he kept with him, including those housed in vials Vidarian knew he didn't share with the rest of them. A developed palate, he claimed, was needed to appreciate them. He removed one of these from his wide-sleeved multicolored coat and presented it to Ruby with both hands. “You must take this as a token of my goodwill for our future business,” he said.

Ruby accepted the glass with reverence, turning it over in her hands and watching the flakes of bark rotate within. “No, you mustn't,” she demurred, then squinted more closely at the vial. Her breath quickened ever so slightly. “Is this-?”

Luc winked, then stepped back and gave a sweeping bow to the three of them. “Farewell, friends,” he said, then turned to mount his horse, a rugged roan that had fared better in the mountains than the taller horses Endera had provided. It seemed to eat anything, including the daily mouthful of kava bark fed it by its master. Luc clicked his tongue at the string of verali that bore his goods, and started down the long trail.

They ascended the mountain slowly, stopping frequently to water the horses. The air grew thin as it had when the gryphons had flown high over Cheropolis; Vidarian had never climbed a mountain so high.

By midday, another of the mountains’ heavy weather patterns began to move in, an arm reaching down from the everstorm. A familiar chill settled wetly into the air, and by late afternoon snow was falling in earnest, thick clumps of it that piled on their shoulders and quickly began to accumulate on the trail.

A thin light high above them at first seemed a mirage, but proved otherwise as they drew closer to it. The storm thickened and thinned by turns, obscuring the light, but as they reached a plateau on the trail they suddenly found themselves faced with a tower of stacked slate. A glittering limestone monument was thickly engraved with the emblem of the northern water priestesses.

“What is a water priestess doing so far from sea or river?” Ariadel asked, shaking snow from her hood.

// We are being surrounded by water, // Arikaree pointed out, snapping at a particularly large clump of snow as it spiraled toward the ground in front of him. // Water is having many domains, and each be holding a secret of elements. //

// This branch of the everstorm is perpetual, // Altair added. // It is a peculiarity of the Windsmouth. A relic, some say, of the long magic days. //

“PrimeAdepts,” Vidarian said, and Altair made a soft clicking noise in his throat, a gryphonic note of assent.

They banged on the heavy door to the tower, and shortly were answered by a short woman clothed in teal velvet. She waded out into the knee-high snow and led them to another door in the side of the mountain, which proved to be a warm and comfortable barn carved out of the stone. The verali and horses huddled inside without much prompting, and were soon settled with water and warm bran mashes.

The tower itself was considerably more spacious than it seemed from the outside. In a large vaulted receiving room at the base there was more than enough room for the gryphons, and after accepting an evaporation treatment from Thalnarra, each of them curled up on the plush carpets while the water priestess prepared tea.

Her name was Ilisia, and she was very strange. Twice she called Ariadel by the wrong name, despite polite correction, and during their short visit she seemed to forget what she was doing midtask at least four times.

// We go into the mountain, // Arikaree said. Ilisia seemed to be able to keep track of his words a bit better than the rest of them.

“Ah, yes,” she said, her eyes disappearing into the wrinkles of her face as she smiled. “You will open the dragonspine. They've been speaking of it.”

“Who?” Vidarian asked, but Ilisia only smiled as if he'd said something in another language she didn't understand.

“What is it you study here?” Ariadel asked finally, when any logistical questions proved impossible-and this, as it were, opened the floodgates.

“Study, study,” she said, as if repeating a child's rhyme. “We study inevitability.” Her eyes went vague, and for a moment she closed them in ecstasy. When she opened them, there was neither white nor pupil, but a glassy blue-green as of the western sea in summer. Something churned with recognition in Vidarian's blood, and her voice pounded between his ears: “The world passes away,” she said, hollow and full all at once, “knowledge fades, runs together. The world is connected, streams like invisible water-our minds melt together, carried by waves, all thoughts become one-all returns to liquid.”

The route through the mountain, Ilisia insisted, was not up, but down. She seemed to have some trouble keeping track of opposites-up and down, left and right, living and dead-which wasn't the best for endowing her proclamation with confidence. But up was the everstorm, and that, at least, was indisputable.

After they loaded and pulled the reluctant horses and verali from the warmth of the mountain stable, Ilisia led them behind the tower. There, a gigantic pair of stone doors were set directly into the slate wall that the tower's materials had been carved from. By its position, it seemed that the tower existed to guard this entrance, but, to Vidarian's surprise, Ilisia pulled the doors open without ceremony. A small, cold breeze wafted up from the opening, which revealed a dirt path that spiraled down into darkness.

A thin howl echoed through the mountains; a wolf calling its brothers and sisters in celebration of a kill. But Thalnarra's hackles lifted at the sound, and Vidarian turned to her. “What was that?”

// A wolf, only, // she said, though her hackles remained up. // Surely no concern to us. Though you should mind the meat-creatures. // The image in her mind of a “meat-creature” was an amalgam of horse, cow, and verali, and he was unsettled again at the reminder that she likely considered Feluhim a snack candidate at best. He had no special love of horses, himself (though he certainly preferred them to verali), but the thought of eating the tall dark horse that he fed bits of dried apple to every morning turned his stomach.

“Down you go,” Ilisia said cheerfully, then turned and shuffled through the snow back toward the tower without another word. The horses, however, were not convinced by her cheer, and balked at the mouth of the trail. Altair stalked behind them and hissed, but this only worsened matters, eliciting a shriek of fear and anger from Ruby's horse that further spooked the other two. Finally, Ariadel pulled the head of each horse, one by one, down to her eye level and rubbed between its eyes, murmuring. The little shapeshifter skittered out from her hood and changed into the kitten, leaping onto Ruby's horse and purring. This was enough, at last, to convince them-and none too soon, for all three snow-sodden gryphons were looking increasingly carnivorous by the minute.

Ooh, it's dark down there, the Starhunter whispered just as they crossed the threshold, and Vidarian shivered in spite of himself. He'd learned by now that her absence was always more ominous than her presence, and that if she vanished from his mind, it was only to await a more opportune time to disturb him. The shiver, and his wave of anger at her, rippled through his mind and heart, where it resonated off of the rubies and sapphires. Their answering swing of energy was wilder this time, stronger, and he fought to throttle them down.

He didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until a wave of dizziness made him gasp. A thin bead of sweat crept down around his left eye, and he shook his head.

“That was her, wasn't it?” Ariadel asked quietly, walking beside him. The stone tunnel gave a hollow echo to her words, carrying them ahead and down. Behind her, the still-nervous Feluhim jerked on his lead, and she turned to soothe him, while Vidarian's heart skipped a beat as a thousand very bad ways to explain the Starhunter flickered through his mind: She's a voice in my head, I see her in my dreams, she doesn't like you very much.…

So honest, though. The Starhunter giggled. Don't you want to be honest?

“Yes,” he said instead, through clenched teeth.

“How…does she speak to you?” Her voice was strained, but he recognized a thin line of determination between her eyebrows.

“Like you used to” would be another wrong answer, and it made the Starhunter chuckle again. “Invasively,” he said. “Annoyingly. She-says confusing things.”

“Like what?” was an obvious question, and he cursed himself for walking into it. Then he wondered why the thought of describing all of it terrified him so.

Maybe Lord Tesseract Vidarian Rulorat is not so noble as he wants everyone to believe.

“She makes you angry,” Ariadel offered, rescuing him from repeating things he didn't want to voice. He realized she was trying to understand, had striven to accept the existence of something she had always been told-by people she trusted-was impossible.

Vidarian nodded. And now that they were discussing the goddess riding in his brain-“Thalnarra,” he said, sweating again as he forced his voice to a controlled tone. “You and Endera knew about the Starhunter. Why hide it from everyone else? From Ariadel, from me?”

Altair clicked his beak in disapproval, a sound like bone cracking that made the horses jump again as it echoed. But Thalnarra's voice was nonchalant. // Mysteries and layers of the priestesshood, you'll have to ask Endera, not me. Gryphons have known of the Starhunter since she was locked behind the gate. //

“But gryphons mistrust humans with a great deal of knowledge,” Ariadel argued, and the bitterness in her voice refuted any reply before it could be spoken. Thalnarra gave none.

They descended the cave trail in silence, the gryphons’ spheres of light racing forward and back to light their way.

Hours were difficult to count down here, as they had been above, and the slow spirals of the trail added to the hypnotic lull. Vidarian would have walked directly into the sudden wall that loomed up in front of them, his thoughts far from his body, were it not for Arikaree's rough squawk of warning.

This set of stone doors, like the walls around them, were sandstone, the slate having been left behind long ago. The gryphons’ colored lights cast everything in a dull orange hue, but the rock itself was a dull yellow, thick with dust that obscured the detailed carvings that covered every inch of the doors’ surface. But the sinuous path that they described could be little else.

“A dragon's spine,” Ariadel said, reaching out to brush dust from the door. It gave way in a powdery flutter that made her cough, baring an intricately carved scale like that of a giant fish.

The rubies and sapphires had been humming in Vidarian's mind, and as he brought them from their pouches at his waist, they flared so brightly that he nearly dropped them. Ariadel shielded her eyes beside him, and he squinted as he raised them to the doors.

He drew his hands back as if burned when a shudder rippled through the stone, but it came from the doors only, and so, after a quick look back at the gryphons for agreement, he touched the stones together again. A triangle of energy loomed up before his senses: earth from the doors, earth from all around them, fire and water from the rubies and sapphires. “It needs air,” he realized, and reached for the crystal whistle at his neck-

// Fool, you'll kill us all, using that down here, // Altair hissed, and Vidarian tried to mask how the gryphon's warning stung. He dropped his hand, and Altair added his own energy to the pattern on the door.

That's four, but you need one more… the Starhunter whispered. Vidarian's stomach dropped-

And the doors opened.

They stood and watched the opening, breathless, but in spite of the infusion of magic needed to open the passage, there was no revelation beyond the threshold-only another trail, this one leading upward. The horses didn't balk this time, and seemed only too pleased to begin climbing rather than descending.

The path up to the surface was shallow and broad; the spiraling path beyond the spine must have brought them down from much of what they'd climbed over the past many days. At long last, they stepped into sunlight- not the bone-rattling cold of the everstorm, but long-missed sunlight, streaming down from a vaulting blue sky. Trees, vivid green and lush, lined the edges of the clearing at the cave's entrance. Pockets of snow dotted the ground and the trees, giving evidence that they hadn't entirely escaped the weather, but for now, at least, the sky was clear.

They waited until everyone had emerged from the cave to attack.

Feluhim screamed-no gentle warning, this, but a shriek of total herbivore terror that rattled Vidarian to his bones. Wolves-creatures he had read of but never seen-poured out of the forest from all sides of the clearing, lunging toward them.

Thalnarra and Altair loosed battle cries in answer to the horses’ screams of fear, and leaped over them, taking to the air just long enough to flare their wings and dive upon the wolves. Arikaree, no raptor, reached out with his senses, an arm of water so strong and pure that it stunned Vidarian to see-and then he plunged it into the nearest wolf, extinguishing the flame at its heart without so much as slowing down. The wolf dropped, dead, and its companions wailed in grief and fury.

The wolves split immediately into groups, most harrowing the two gryphons that reared and slashed, while pairs of them darted in toward the horses and humans. Vidarian's sword sang from its sheath, marking a deadly arc in the air that gave them pause, and as he fed it with his mind, it incandesced, a flowing flame that rushed hungrily for their life-energies. Behind Ariadel, Ruby moved to draw her sword also, and managed it, though not without a grunt of pain.

A strange whisper, wordless or incoherent, a language Vidarian couldn't understand, rippled through the wolves, and he shook his head, sure it was an illusion.

Oh, how interesting, the Starhunter observed, and in his mind she was casually eating while they battled for their lives, something that filled his head with the scent of melted butter. They weren't like this when I was here before.

He snarled at her, in thought only, but fear and curiosity beneath it made him wonder what part of this could be new to a goddess. And what were these things?

The more they whispered, the more he thought he could almost understand them, and even as another wolf leapt into his blade, only to be impaled at the shoulder, words with their lunges came clear: Ours, ours! Ours, curseyou. Curseyou! Ariadel lifted her hands beside him, and the next wolf that leapt up to take advantage of his bound sword cried out in agony as its fur burst into flame.

One of the verali had collapsed under a pile of wolves and lay thrashing on the ground, but at least ten dead wolves joined it in repose, and suddenly the rest decided with one mind to abandon the fight. They turned and fled into the woods, yelping, howling, their minds whispering those strange mad epithets.

Abruptly all was silent in the clearing, save for their labored breath. The fallen verali was now quite thoroughly dead and still.

Thalnarra lowered her great head to scrape blood from her beak on a patch of snow. She left a vivid red smear across the slush, and when she lifted her head again to look at Vidarian her beak glittered wet-black. // I don't like to kill them. // In the hearth-warmth of her voice was a thread of guilt and unhappiness like fouled meat. // They're thinking creatures, intelligent, // she said, giving an agitated shake of her neck-feathers.

// But they wouldn't listen, // Altair said, a deep sadness in his voice that cut like ice. // Our languages have drifted. //

“You know what these are?” Vidarian said, moving to one of the wolves to clean his blade on its pelt, then thinking better of it and using snow instead.

// Sightwolves, // Thalnarra said, lifting her head to look back at the cliff that loomed behind them, and the Windsmouth beyond it. // We're on the other side now. //

Though exhausted to the bone from the trek through the mountains followed by the sightwolf onslaught, they couldn't bear to sleep in the clearing, littered as it was with blood. Aided by the gryphons’ massive claws, they were able to dig a trench for the dead wolves and lone verali, then trek into the forest. According to Ilisia's maps, these woods formed an arc around the edge of the mountains, and at their far side was a stone outpost, centuries old, but it should be strong enough to house the horses and verali for a few days.

The horses, smelling wolf, first refused to enter the forest, and had to be persuaded by growls from the impatient gryphons. There had been little meat through the snowy mountains, and Vidarian knew that Thalnarra would have far preferred to eat the beasts than herd them, but he'd convinced her that they were needed for the return journey. He found his eyes lingering on the gryphons’ beaks and claws with renewed respect; it was one thing to realize in the abstract what they were capable of, and another entirely to have its evidence now burned into his memory.

Their shadowed trek beneath the trees-ancient, brooding conifers of a type he'd never seen before-was an insensate exhaustion blur punctuated by flashes of eyes in the dark. Some of these, he was sure, were figments of the imagination, anxiety-constructs-but some, he was equally sure, were not.

The forest's shadows had deepened toward true night when they finally emerged from the other side. A cool wind brought the scent of fresh water to their noses, and the blue twilight spilling across verdant hills rolling before them had a strange, tranquil loveliness. The hills flattened in the southern distance into a great plain, while the mountains curved to the west, ending distantly in what appeared to be coastal cliffs. And here at the edge of the forest, to their great relief, was the promised outpost: a small house of stacked stone, much neglected, and a sounder stone barn. With so many trees nearby it was odd that the barn wasn't made of wood, but they didn't question the small blessing: if it had been, it would certainly have deteriorated beyond use long before their arrival.

Even the gryphons’ steps were faltering by the time they unloaded the verali. They arranged themselves in front of the stone barn to sleep while Vidarian, Ariadel, and Ruby unrolled their bedding in the space between. The night forest behind them was alive with the howls and yelps of a wild place's survival dance, and as sleep took them, Vidarian tried to remind himself that nothing here could be foolish enough to attack a sleeping gryphon.

In the morning, Ariadel didn't rise with the sun as she had every day that Vidarian had known her-brief though that time might be. Vidarian rose quietly, trying not to wake her, and found his way to the nearby river for the first morning wash he'd had in some time that hadn't involved snow. The water was cold, but restored him to full wakefulness, along with awareness of a number of stretched and sore muscles.

Ruby had risen before him, and crouched beside a fire she'd made by the river, tending a kettle. She was scrutinizing the metal pot so intently that she jumped when Vidarian laid a hand on her shoulder.

A flash of irritation followed her embarrassment at having been surprised, and she answered the question in his eyes hotly. “The temperature has to be precise,” she said.

“Your exclusive kava?” he said. “Better not let any tyros such as myself near it.”

“It's really no fault of mine that you have a peasant's palate,” she huffed.

“I'm just glad to see you're feeling better,” he replied. Sincerity was one of the few ways to defuse her ire.

Ruby eyed him, but stretched the arm closest to her injury, showing a greater range of movement than she'd had a few days ago. His comment had the desired effect: it mollified her enough to share the kava. He coaxed a few fat fish out of the river with water magic and cooked them with fire while she brewed the bark-be damned if this whole Tesseract business wasn't going to have some silver lining-and they made a very decent camp breakfast of it.

When Ariadel didn't rise by the time the gryphons returned from their morning hunt-nearly too fat to fly, Altair accused the other two; they'd taken two medium-sized deer-Vidarian started to worry, and went to rouse her.

The kitten, which had ridden for most of the journey in its more portable spider form, slept curled across her neck, as if huddled there for warmth. But when Vidarian moved to touch Ariadel's shoulder, he was taken aback by the worried intelligence in the creature's very awake and alert eyes. It knows, the Starhunter said softly. She'd been silent since the wolf attack, and seemed strangely thoughtful now. My creatures know things.

Ariadel's face and hands were both pale, and Vidarian rejected his immediate fear, but it refused to subside entirely. He'd seen this kind of pallor before, in his childhood….

It's what's inside her, the Starhunter whispered, warring against itself. Wind meets hammer!

Vidarian's stomach dropped. “No…” he whispered. But his new senses showed her accusation to be true. If he closed his eyes, her dominant fire nature rose up before him-but beneath it, in her blood, twined the energies of her parents: implacable earth and volatile wind, now turned against each other. He realized, with an echo of the terrible fear that had haunted his childhood, how the visiting priestess had known with a single look the nature of the disease that took his brothers.

Ask her, the Starhunter insisted, with a callous titter, if she has any brothers or sisters.

But he knew the answer.

Ask!

He took her hands and massaged them in his own, willing warmth back into her frighteningly cold fingers. “Ariadel,” he said, and she made a soft noise, her face contorting. Her pallor and reflexive grimace threw him back twenty years-his mother, a dried husk from grief, standing at the bedside of Relarion, his oldest brother. He was ten years old…. “Ariadel,” he forced himself to urge again, hoarse. “Do you have…” his voice rasped and he swallowed. “…brothers or sisters?”

“No,” she said, confusion wrinkling her brow. She cleared her throat, but it was a weak sound. “I-my parents had two children, before I was born. They-didn't survive.”

“They got sick,” he said quietly.

Her chin tipped down once in the shadow of a nod. “Blood plague,” she whispered.

Ruby's indrawn breath behind them lifted his head. She stood, her arms wrapped around herself, a handful of emotions warring on her face. He knew that expression well; the Rulorats had parted from their Sea Kingdom brethren to support the Alorean Emperor seven generations ago, but seventy years ago Vidarian's great-grandfather had further parted from sea custom by marrying a fire woman. The rigid Sea Kingdom rites weren't always so practical, but the stricture against interelemental marriage centered around a single purpose: avoiding the specter of blood plague.

The disease came on suddenly and usually took children, but cases had been documented in adults as old as thirty years of age. When Vidarian had turned thirty, three years ago, and survived, a peace had come over his mother. On her deathbed two years ago she said that she could die happy, knowing she wouldn't lose him as she had his brothers.

Ariadel was twenty-eight.

Jealous, jealous elements, the Starhunter whispered. How they fight when I'm not around… .

A cold chill penetrated the heat of Vidarian's grief. “What are you saying?” he said softly, ignoring the confused looks that Ariadel and Ruby turned on him.

You know what I'm saying, she laughed coldly. Set me free, and she lives.

Vidarian lifted his voice. “When was the first case of blood plague recorded?”

“It's ancient,” Ruby said, her tone dismissing the question. “Two thousand years.”

Has it been that long? the voice mused. Man, time flies.

“Two thousand years ago,” Vidarian said, willing strength from his hands into Ariadel's as he tightened his grasp, “they shut the Starhunter behind the gate.”

After wrapping Ariadel in every blanket they could find, and convincing Thalnarra to use a small amount of fire magic in a persistent spell to keep her warm, Ruby and Vidarian loaded the flying craft in silence. On the far side of the river was the start of a grassy plain, and Ruby, no longer hiding her facility with water magic, walked across the surface of the river to collect fodder for the horses from the other side. Arikaree complimented her on her technique, but her only reply was a flush that could have been pleasure or anger, and seemed probably both.

Vidarian wasn't convinced that the sightwolves wouldn't find some way to break into the old barn, but they could only fortify it minimally with the available materials and hope for the best. The horses and verali, for their part, seemed content and relieved to be housed and not traveling. By early afternoon all was prepared, and they were taking to the air.

The gryphons lifted with a will after their respite through the mountains, and Ariadel occupied Ruby's previous place at the bow. It seemed odd that they had never flown the craft without one of them being incapacitated, and an ill omen for a ship named Destiny. Vidarian's mother had been a superstitious keeper of sea adages, and in spite of his rational inclinations otherwise, at such times it was as if a small voice inside him whispered fear, caution, just-you-wait.

Ruby came to stand next to him at the stern, taking an interest in the ingenious galley hardware as he had on their first journey. Now that she had let go of her stubbornness regarding the gryphons (she even seemed to be developing a hesitant kinship with Arikaree), she was discovering the wonder of the altitudes.

“It's a bit like being at sea,” she observed, looking down over the clouds. “You can almost imagine it's fog over the water.”

Vidarian blinked, shaking off the malaise of superstition-a construct, he knew, to distract him from the fast-approaching choice he would make, and how Ariadel's fate tied into it. “I suppose it is,” he said, following her gaze. The clouds were thin here and whipped by beneath them, catching on the craft and splitting around it. A moment later, the sky opened up beneath them, clear, and their breath caught simultaneously. At the involuntary leap in his heart, the storm sapphires rumbled from the pouch at his side, answered immediately by a growl from the sun rubies. He closed his eyes, stretching control around them-an act that was becoming increasingly difficult the longer they stayed in his possession. Exhaustion, mental and emotional, tugged at him, and the stones seemed to realize his weakness and surge up in response.

“They're exhausting you,” Ruby said, pointing at the pouch.

Vidarian looked at her closely, wondering if he'd been unwittingly projecting his thoughts, but then realized they must have been written across his face. He nodded, moving forward and sitting down on one of the leather benches.

Ruby took a seat beside him, a thoughtful expression on her face. “If you gave the rubies to me, would they harass you so much?”

He blinked again, surprised. And again he searched her eyes for motivation, even as he felt a pang of regret for doing so. There was only a friend's concern in her eyes. “I'm not sure,” he said, opening the pouch. He reached inside slowly, touching the stones one at a time, and withdrew one of those that pulsed warm to his fingers. “Keeping them in separate packs doesn't seem to help.” Carefully, he extended his hand, holding it out to her.

Ruby accepted the stone with equal care, cradling it between her two cupped palms. She looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. “Any better?” When he shook his head ruefully, she grimaced and turned her attention back to the stone. As she pressed it between her palms, her eyes lit with surprise at its warmth, and she lifted it to the light, staring into it. “What are these things?”

“I've wondered that,” he said, drawing one of the storm sapphires from the pouch and resting it on his palm. By far the sapphires were the most volatile of the three types of elemental stone he'd seen firsthand. Physically they were identical in size to the rubies, but to his mind they felt “bigger,” as if they had more space inside them, however that was possible. “If they opened the mountain, and can open or close the gate, they must be keys of some sort, but it's related to their energy patterns, not anything physical.”

She snorted. “You sound like a priestess.”

“Or a gryphon,” he agreed, and she gave him a sharp look.

“Your sun emerald,” she said, before he could pursue the look, “the one you left with An'du.” Ruby's eyes had looked fit to pop out of her head when they'd told her, in the hospital, about their trip to the An'durin. “You said that it was bound to you, somehow.” He nodded cautiously, and she continued, “Could you bind this one to me?”

The swirl of his thoughts echoed through the storm sapphire, which flashed with ricochets of internal lightning.

“It's going to be mine anyway,” she said lightly, mimicking avarice. Then her voice lowered with seriousness. “And if it were bound to me, I suspect I could control it. You're going to need all the mind-strength you can get for what's coming, I'll wager.”

“I've only seen it done once,” he warned, “and I hadn't any sense at all at the time.”

Ruby laughed, a sudden shock of brightness in what had been a dark journey. “As if you do now.”

Vidarian punched her knee, then regretted it, as the sapphire echoed with a new round of thunder. “You know what I mean.” He looked at the sapphire in his hand, attempting to fathom its nature anew, aware of the headache that was growing in the back of his head as he reached with his mind to control it. They were becoming more frequent. “I could try,” he said at last.

She passed the ruby back to him, and he slipped the sapphire back into its place in the pouch. He lifted the ruby, looking through it and to Ruby herself beyond it, then stretched his senses into the stone. As it was warm to the touch, so it was warm to his mind-alive with a flickering energy that perpetually sought…something. He felt a sudden urge to touch Ruby's hand, but knew that Endera had not done so when she'd bound the emerald to him, and so he worked to keep his free hand at his side. He reached through the stone with his senses until he encountered Ruby's energy-a familiar tumbling roar, an ever-moving pattern of the living sea that lived just beneath her skin.

Carefully, he curved his own sense, siphoning a piece of that roiling pattern back toward himself, and into the stone. It surged into it, and Ruby gasped, closing her eyes-feeling, he was sure, the dropping of her heart that he had felt when Endera bound him to the sun emerald. For a moment he was gripped with a terror that he wouldn't be able to stop the transfer of her essence into the stone, that it might take all of her-but the stone seemed to “know” how much it should contain, and released her of its own accord.

When Ruby opened her eyes, an echo of the ruby's energy glowed in her pupils, and he knew it was done.

The craft shuddered, and both of them reached for the support rails, riding out the sudden movement.

// VIDARIAN, // Thalnarra barked, and as he looked forward Vidarian saw that the disruption had come from her agitatedly beating wings. // Tell me you didn't just do what I think you did. //

“We were discussing it for the last several minutes,” he said, stung. “I thought gryphons had superb hearing.”

// This flying business is not as easy as it must look from back there, // she snapped. // I was focusing. //

“It's fine,” Vidarian said hotly. In fact, it was better than fine. He passed the stone back to Ruby, who looked at it with renewed wonder. Now that it was bound to her, it did seem to be paying more attention to her than to the sapphires, if rocks could be said to have attention. “Isn't it?”

// By luck only, // Thalnarra growled. // Binding magics can go awry more easily than you can imagine. And you knew nothing about that stone! Some elemental stones are extremely dangerous. //

// He is being the Tesseract, // Arikaree offered, though the hesitancy in his voice said that he, too, questioned the wisdom of what Vidarian and Ruby had just done.

// You're all going to be the death of me. //

“Whether or not we're the death of you,” Vidarian said, “I want to know how we hold Ariadel's fate.”

The sudden wave of sympathy that emanated from the gryphons caught in his throat. It was a sudden sensation of soft wings enclosing him, and for a long moment he wanted to sink into their strength. That desperate yearning opened the crevasse of reality before his feet; he wanted to unmake the last several weeks, to do anything if it would mean her illness could be averted.

// Her condition is grave, // Altair said.

“I'm told,” Vidarian said, forcing air past the lump in his throat, “that she can be cured by the opening of the gate.”

If Thalnarra's irregular wingbeat had disrupted the craft, the surprised pitching of all three of them nearly threw Ruby and Vidarian out of it entirely. They grasped for handholds, and Ariadel murmured in her sleep as the craft slewed first to one side, then the other.

“I really wish you wouldn't do that,” Ruby said between clenched teeth. He wasn't sure who she meant-probably all of them.

Once they recovered their flight pattern, all of the gryphons spoke at once: // Who told you this? // from Thalnarra, // When did this happen? // from Altair, and // It is deceiving, would tell you so, // from Arikaree.

“I think you know,” Vidarian said.

// The Starhunter, // Thalnarra said, and in her voice it was an epithet. // Have you learned so little, to listen to her? She has no domain of her own, and preys upon those of the four true goddesses. What else would she tell you? //

Nothing the goddess could have said would refute this, but her laugh, full of satisfaction, sealed its answer in Vidarian's heart.

“She knows I would do anything to deny her what she wants,” Vidarian said, his heart sunken, “except this.” He looked across the craft to where Ariadel slept fitfully, her face pale and body hunched in for warmth even beneath Thalnarra's warmth spell.

// Don't you think you owe it to her to ask if she would have you open the gate? // Thalnarra said, a hot anger simmering beneath the smoke of her voice. Betrayal, her thoughts whispered, with that cloud of concepts that lingered beyond human language.

Vidarian looked again at Ariadel. Did he know what her answer would be? “I-”

Ruby cried out behind him, stopping his thoughts. When he turned, she was pointing aft behind them, to the north.

There against the mountains, a dark cloud was rising, too fast and dense to be weather. As it spread out and came closer, tiny wings could be discerned on each particle. The sheer number of them set his stomach ill at ease.

“Gryphons?” Vidarian asked.

// No, // Altair said.

// Horses, // Thalnarra said. // Winged horses, and riders. //

“Sky knights!” Ruby breathed, turning to Vidarian. “From the empire? What are they doing here?”

“There was a disagreement,” Vidarian began, and Ruby's eyes widened with incredulity-which was something, coming from a renegade warleader whose people had been fighting the empire for over a century.

// And coming over mountains, // Arikaree added. Vidarian realized he was right-they hadn't taken the dragonspine tunnel, but had come up and over the mountain range. It shouldn't have been possible.

But the bottom line was: “Then they'll be exhausted.” He turned to each of the gryphons. “Can you fly higher?”

In response, they angled their wings again, gradually ascending.

“Make them work for it,” he said grimly.

The knights closed like an inexorable slow tide.

// They're carrying healers! // Altair exclaimed. The gryphons’ ability to see details of their pursuers long before Ruby or Vidarian could hope to was an advantage, but it was hard not to be unsettled by it. // They must be feeding energy to the horses-that's what's keeping them going. //

// I've heard it done, but it's reckless, // Thalnarra agreed. // With that endurance and one of the remaining relics of Siane, they could have opened the everstorm. The Company must mean to do anything to stop you. What exactly did you say to them? //

Everyone kept asking that, Vidarian thought irritatedly. As if saying something could cause an entity so large to empty its coffers trying to detain you. Or stop it from doing so.

His spirit sank within him as he took in their sheer numbers. They were close enough now for a human to count, not just a gryphon. Three flights closed on them-an entire wing, if his dull memory of imperial air organization held true; close to fifty horses and riders. And they couldn't have come from the imperial city-not this fast. Which meant they were bordermen, accustomed to rough conditions. Dangerous and hungry.

“I have to talk to them,” he said, and the three gryphons at once sent him a pulse of surprise and unhappiness. They were afraid, he realized, with a shock like ice water. On even footing, a gryphon wouldn't fear even a flight of Sky Knights-but here, harnessed to the flying craft, they were vulnerable themselves, to say nothing of the wingless passengers. “We're too far from the ground,” he argued. “They could knock all of us down. If I can talk them into landing, we have a chance.”

// Their intentions are not peaceful, // Altair warned, and Thalnarra and Arikaree radiated agreement.

“You can read that from their thoughts?” Ruby asked, surprised; an edge of her previous suspicion toward gryphons had returned to her voice.

// The horses, // Thalnarra said. // We can smell their readiness. The riders encourage them for battle. //

How exciting! the Starhunter whispered. Vidarian managed to ignore her. “I have to try,” he said only. The gryphons were not pleased, but also not arguing. Vidarian's ears were popping as they continued to ascend. The knights’ horses were following, but slowly. Gradually, the gryphons leveled off, allowing the knights to catch up.

When the group drew close, one of their number split off and approached, guiding his horse up within a few wing-lengths of the port bow. It was not the commander; she was still flanked by a chevron of knights in the center of the wing, distinctive by the gold pauldrons at her shoulders and the glimmering purple iridescence of the coat and feathers of the royal she rode.

Their approacher rode a young beast-a grey, its feathers still banded. His armor was provincial, not standard to the imperial city, confirming Vidarian's suspicion that they'd sent a border wing. He signaled his mount to hover, which it did with a toss of its head and feathered tail, and lifted his visor.

“Second Vadron Illinsvar, Imperial Sky Knights, Hawkstorm Wing.” When he named the wing, the knights behind Illinsvar lifted their lances and gave low shouts that were picked up by the rest. The lieutenant smiled slightly and Vidarian cursed to himself. A young, stupid cowherd with ambitions. Fantastic. He was eyeing the gryphons with speculation and excitement.

// He doesn't know we're intelligent, // Thalnarra growled in his mind alone, anger and satisfaction coloring her words. // Don't enlighten him. //

“Greetings, Captain,” Vidarian called, intentionally mistaking his rank to puff his ego. “How can we assist you?”

“The Hawkstorm wing is dispatched to escort one Vidarian Rulorat to the imperial city. If you are he, I am instructed to take you into custody.”

“I'm afraid we can't agree to that,” Vidarian said. “Perhaps we could discuss this on the ground?”

“To allow you to land would be allowing you further progress toward the gate,” the knight said, with another irritating half-smile. Thalnarra fixed his horse with one sharp red eye, and Vidarian knew only he and the horse heard the word // Snack // she directed at it. The beast tossed its head, backwinging, and Thalnarra clicked her beak at it. The knight snarled. “You should control those creatures!”

“I apologize,” Vidarian called. “They're just impossible sometimes.” He directed unhelpful thoughts at Thalnarra.

“We are instructed first to negotiate with you and seek a peaceful solution,” Illinsvar said. “But my orders are clear: we are to detain you by any means necessary. No living knight is permitted to allow you to reach the gate.” The way he emphasized “living” made Vidarian's skin crawl.

“Why?” Vidarian called. “What are they afraid I'll do?”

The knight pulled back on the reins of his mount, which tossed its head and snorted in response, backwinging. “Why should the empire-”

“You mean the Company!”

“-allow one man to decide the fate of millions?”

He doesn't know, the Starhunter whispered. Leave the poor toy alone.

“This from you?” Vidarian muttered.

“Will you come peacefully?” the knight called, lowering his lance. The others along the forward line behind him followed suit, facing the Destiny with an arc of knife points. Illinsvar kneed his mount, and it hovered closer to the flying craft, bringing the tip of his lance closer to Arikaree's flank.

Thalnarra hissed, and the horse's mane and tail burst into flame. The creature shrieked in unison with its rider's angry shout, and the knights behind them wasted only a moment on raw shock before charging forward.

// Climb! // Thalnarra shouted, and the three gryphons immediately angled their wings and began ascending. Thalnarra herself aimed upward at the sharpest angle, and the craft tipped steeply. Ruby and Vidarian scrambled for safety holds, and as he did so Vidarian leaned forward across the craft to check the safety straps around Ariadel. For a blessing, they held, and though Ariadel's forehead creased and she murmured uncomfortably in her sleep, she was not otherwise disrupted.

Arrows were hissing around them as the gryphons rose higher in the air. In the commotion among the knights-acrid smoke still rose from beneath them, with the scent of burning horsehair, and the panicked screams of the inflicted animal-they'd gained several lengths on their pursuers in altitude, but not clearance. The gryphons were strong, but the knights had the advantage in both encumbrance and number. Soon, Vidarian knew, their breath would begin to labor at this pace.

“You have to get me to their commander!” he shouted. “They won't fight without her!”

// We can't maneuver the craft so close to her, // Thalnarra argued, then released a shriek and a lance of searing fire as a knight passed beneath them, firing a bow up at her. She twisted, catlike, in the air, and snatched the arrow, breaking it in half between her talons before it could touch her, and the craft lurched sickeningly with her movement. // I can't move in this bloody thing! // she cursed.

// There is a way, // Altair said, // if you have the heart for it. //

“Tell us!” Vidarian shouted, untying a ballast bag from the craft's side and slinging it down at the pursuing knights.

// The craft can be maintained by two gryphons, // Altair said, and Vidarian's stomach plummeted as he realized what the gryphon was suggesting. // With the aid of the Breath of Siane, I can carry you to the knight-commander. //

// Madness! // Thalnarra barked.

// No, // Altair said with icy calm. // Madness was lighting that beast's hair on fire within range of their lances. //

// Only an air-brained- // Thalnarra began.

“I'll do it!” Vidarian shouted, pulling the whistle from his shirt and clenching it in his fist. “What do we do?”

By way of answer, Altair twisted in the air, and, to Vidarian's horror (and Ruby's, by her cry of shock), sliced through the primary harness strap that bound him to the craft. The craft tilted sideways for a split second, but then the riven strap slithered through a set of rings in the rigging below, caught, and swung the craft to the right. Arikaree gave a squawk of surprise as they slid into place before him-the craft itself now rested between him and Thalnarra. They slowed, but mostly out of surprise.

Thalnarra snarled something menacing and incomprehensible at Altair.

Altair ignored her and shouted to Vidarian. // Jump! //

“He's got to be kidding,” Ruby breathed.

“He's not,” Vidarian said, knowing it through his core. He took a deep breath, unhooked his safety harness, and vaulted over the side of the craft.

He fell, and instinctively spread his arms and legs. The craft disappeared over his head, and below him ranged the clouds, astonishingly lovely, and the advancing Sky Knights in their formations.

// Blow the whistle! // the gryphon shouted, breaking him out of his astonishment.

Vidarian blew into the crystal whistle, a long breath that echoed in his ears, in his blood, in his skin. A gale swept through him, and out of reflex he tried to shape the energy, but it flowed through him like wind itself, slipping through his fingers unmoved. Altair caught the energy, wrapping himself around it and dancing with it, teasing it into going where he wanted.

// Beautiful, // the gryphon whispered, and then, as an afterthought, it seemed, juggled Vidarian into the reach of the wind's grasp. They stopped falling, and Vidarian arced in a curve, “flying” as if of his own volition just above Altair's wings. He drifted downward, featherlike, until he was touching the gryphon's back, taking a hold on the thick feathers at the base of his neck. The sphere of energy that surrounded them, allowing Altair unnatural strength in the air, was the clearest and most exhilarating Vidarian had ever breathed.

Then he looked down. The ground was awfully far away.…

// Try not to think about it, // Altair advised. Vidarian nodded numbly.

“We need to distract them!” he shouted over the roar of the wind, and Altair sent a wave of agreement.

// This will be a little dodgy, // Altair warned, then dove before Vidarian had a chance to answer.

They plummeted through the knights, who had stopped advancing when they saw Vidarian leap from the craft, and Vidarian's heart flew into his throat. Altair, loose, had unnerved the knights, indicated by their raised lances-but Altair, diving, claws outstretched, utterly scattered them. Feathers, horseflesh, and plated armor slid past them, and as their sphere of Air passed through, knights fell to either side in its wake. One was unhorsed, and plummeted, screaming-his horse dove after him, and they disappeared together into the clouds.

Then they were below the formations, and the sky opened up beneath them. Far below, the ground was green and wreathed with rivers, bizarrely peaceful, wisps of white cloud streaking by Altair's wings. He backwinged, slowing, and gravity flattened Vidarian against the gryphon's back. Then Altair folded one wing entirely, rolling sideways in the air. Vidarian clung for his life, his grip tight around the thick feather-shafts, knowing the sphere of air would adhere him to Altair but hardly trusting it.

The gryphon's wings opened again as they came to the side of the amassed knights, which as a group had reoriented upon them as the greater danger-and Vidarian as their instructed target. Altair whistled, and the sphere of energy seized around them again, and lifted them. His wings rowed the air, and they shot up above the knights; Altair extended a claw as they passed, tearing open the flank of a black horse that screamed in response and fell away from the group, its wings faltering.

Now they were above the group, again, and as Vidarian looked down over Altair's strongly pumping right wing he saw that the gryphon had positioned them squarely over the commander. This was it. For a split second his mind reeled at the sight of something few westerners had ever seen: a Sky Knight commander and her royal mount, its black coat glittering with signature iridescence, its feathered wings, crest, and tail bright with fierce health. The creature's body dwarfed the commander, who was no small woman-it was easily a quarter again the size of the other horses.

// Remember that you must control the beast once you're upon it! // Altair shouted. The “hand” supporting Vidarian suddenly fell away, and Vidarian was plummeting toward the horse and rider.

The commander and the knights surrounding her were looking up as Vidarian fell toward them, their swords and lances raised. Vidarian bent himself to one side, turning in the air, getting his feet underneath him-and only just managed to swerve to one side of the commander's arcing sword. An arm of wind whistled by his head, and the commander shouted as her sword was struck from her grasp, her wrist snapping back painfully in an attempt to retain it. The weapon spun through the air, disappearing below them.

Vidarian fell heavily onto the rear of the horse, which shrieked and kicked in response to his weight. He threw his arms around the commander's waist, grappling with her for the reins. Her armored elbow came up in a defensive maneuver and nearly knocked him senseless, and then she was swiveling in the saddle to bring her other fist around in a punishing strike. He managed to dodge that one, but was quickly losing his balance.

Around them, the other knights were shouting, and she shouted something back at them, then dug her heels into the horse. It leapt forward in response, and she shouted another command, sending it into a dive. Her practiced legs clamped around the beast's barrel, but Vidarian felt himself lifted out of the saddle, and grabbed the nearest object to hand-the commander's helmet.

She jerked her head, and the helmet came free, leaving him hanging in midair as she clung like a barnacle to the horse's back and directed it to roll beneath her. Horse and rider spun to one side, and Vidarian curled into a fetal position in the air to protect himself from the flashing hooves that now lashed out at him.

An aquiline shriek, and Altair swooped by him, white feathers a blur. Then he flared his wings, rising beneath Vidarian, supporting him with the shield of air.

Vidarian had just started to breathe again when the grip of the energy sphere began to falter.

A flash of strength blew Vidarian away from Altair, and then he was falling again, striking the gryphon's back-and the sphere went out entirely.

He fell onto Altair's back again, and the gryphon squawked with frustration as Vidarian's weight bore them steadily toward the ground. His wings labored, but only for a few fruitless moments-he was simply not strong enough to bear a full-grown man on his back.

Above them, the knights were rallying, and one group of them followed Vidarian and Altair while another broke off to pursue the craft. Vidarian gave a yell of despair, for the moment thinking more of Ruby and Ariadel, helpless in the craft, than of his own dire predicament.

They were falling relentlessly. Altair held out his wings, but only in token-fearful, Vidarian knew, that if he fully extended his wings, their combined weight would snap them, sending them both into a deadly spiral toward the ground. Vidarian pulled the whistle from where it flapped beside his head on its strand, and blew it, but to no response, its power spent.

// Hold on! // Altair shouted, somewhat extraneously, Vidarian thought. But then he was squashing his own impulse to ask if they were about to die. Instead he did as he was told, gripping Altair's neck-feathers tightly again.

Overhead, a scream-an animal one, as it turned out. Half of a black wing dropped past them, followed by a spray of blood-and a plummeting horse and rider. The cut was clean, a precise cut from a sword. Ruby, it would seem, was not entirely helpless in the craft above. Even under the circumstances, the thought was comforting.

The ground swooped closer below them. Altair was drawing his wings and limbs closer to his body now, controlling their fall, angling them forward. The tops of trees came clear beneath them, deadly arms reaching up to catch them, and not kindly.

// BRACE YOURSELF! // Altair's voice thundered in Vidarian's mind, uncontrolled, and as they whipped past the first branches of the tall trees, the gryphon let loose a blast of raw air energy, pushing toward the ground, cushioning them.

They crashed into the undergrowth, slowed by the expanding radius of Air, but hardly stopped. Branches whipped past Vidarian's face, tearing at his skin, and then the ground hit them, knocking the wind from his chest and blackening his vision.

All was still.

Distantly, the cries of the battle above them raged on, while Vidarian grasped for consciousness. Some lengths away, something crashed to the ground-a Sky Knight, and a dead one, he hoped. Beside him, Altair was struggling to his feet, and gave a high and piercing scream of pain as he did so.

Vidarian's vision came back slowly, and he moved each of his hands and feet, groaning as he did so, but with relief when they moved as he asked them to. “Altair?” he gasped, his breath still not recovered.

// Right wing, // the gryphon mumbled. // Broken, I think. //

Something else crashed into the forest some distance from them, this time to the left.

They began to realize slowly that there were too many cries in the air. Horses couldn't make those noises-and there were only two gryphons.

Vidarian looked up slowly.

High overhead, framed by the gap they'd made in the brush with their fall, a battle was raging in the air.

The flying craft was angling toward the ground, forgotten. Above it, at least twenty gryphons were diving upon the knights, slashing with beaks and claws, wreaking havoc in the sky.

// Thalnarra's pride, // Altair said in wonder, relief drowning out pain.

They stared at the sky, transfixed, as the gryphons darted in among the knights, falling upon them from above like stooping hawks. It was unlike anything Vidarian had ever seen. The gryphons writhed in the air like fighting cats, but swooped and spiraled like falcons, building momentum with powerful wingstrokes in order to bring their tearing claws down upon the knights. For their part, each horse and rider had the advantage of mass on the gryphons-and their lances and swords here and there found marks in gryphon flesh.

But for each hit the knights scored, the gryphons took three more-and in spite of the lieutenant's bold “death before retreat” claim, the commander evidently thought differently, and called a retreat when a third of her riders had fallen and only two gryphons had been injured. In spite of their violence, Vidarian almost pitied them when the gryphons moved to give chase to the fleeing riders-but one of the gryphons gave a screeching command, and those pursuing fell back with the group.

The gryphons above had moved into a circling perimeter when a rustling thump some distance away drew Vidarian and Altair's attention back to the ground. Altair started to move, then cried out in pain as his wounded wing convulsed. “Stay here,” Vidarian said, and foraged through the brush.

The presence of the gate pulled on his mind. The storm sapphires, since they had crashed into the brush, had been a constant dull roar of activity, pulling the energy of the gate toward them. A rolling susurrus filled his thoughts but he blinked past it, bearing down with his will. But they were close, and the stones yearned to fulfill their function, whatever it might be.

He came upon the Destiny in an open meadow, where it had landed and now tilted to one side. Ruby was outside the craft unharnessing Thalnarra and Arikaree with one hand. Her other hand was at her side, where it staunched blood around the poultice-her wound had reopened in the action. Vidarian leapt over the knee-high grasses and ran toward them, taking Ruby's place in the unharnessing. She gave a gasp of relief when she saw him.

“We saw you go down,” she said, looking him over for damage.

“I'm fine, but Altair is injured,” he said. “He thinks his right wing is broken.” With the gryphons unharnessed, he leaned over the rim of the flight craft, checking Ariadel's safety straps and blankets. Her eyes fluttered open, and his heart leapt, but moments later she closed them again, sound asleep.

// We are watching Ariadel, // Arikaree said. Vidarian turned to him and started forward when he saw the blood seeping sluggishly from a shallow wound at the pelican-gryphon's shoulder, but Arikaree waved him away with a gesture of his long beak. // He be needing you more now. Be taking medical kit from craft. // Vidarian followed his instructions and fished a leather satchel of medical supplies from the Destiny.

// Show me, // Thalnarra said, shaking out her feathers. Vidarian looked at Ruby, who nodded agreement, and Vidarian foraged back through the grass toward Altair, following the trail of flattened foliage he'd left moments before.

When Thalnarra caught sight of where Altair crouched, his wing crumpled at his side, she surged ahead of Vidarian and began inspecting the other gryphon. She crouched at each of his sides and moved her talons over him, looking but not touching. Both of their eyes pinned and flared in silent conversation.

// Now who's crazy? // Thalnarra said, probably for Vidarian's benefit, and for a second Vidarian was swallowed in the traumatic memory of their fall from the sky. He gave a shake of his head and opened the medical satchel.

Under Thalnarra's guidance, Vidarian gave Altair a dried pod of some vegetable from the satchel that within moments had the gryphon disoriented and relaxed. They maneuvered his broken wing into a proper fold with only the occasional yelp of pain-loudest when they moved the large bone between his wrist and shoulder back into alignment. As painful as it was to have broken that bone, Thalnarra seemed relieved-the more delicate pair of bones at the leading edge of his wing, she said, would have created a much more serious break.

At length they splinted the now-straightened broken bone with a cut sapling, then folded Altair's wing against his body and bound it there with lengths of silk bandage. When they were done, he hadn't yet recovered from the dried pod medicine, so Thalnarra waited with him in the forest while Vidarian returned to the downed craft.

When he came upon the meadow, he found not just one pelican-gryphon waiting there, but a goodly portion of Thalnarra's pride-including Kaltak and Ishrak. The rest of the gryphons were goshawk-type-it was startlingly like seeing a dozen Thalnarras until their minute differences became clear-and so the brothers stuck out with their brown feathers and long feathered legs.

The two young gryphons bounded up to Vidarian as soon as he crossed into the meadow. They clearly had been cleaning themselves up, but the remnants of blood shone red-black on their talons and beaks. Vidarian had seen them with fresh-killed prey before, but never with the heightened blood of battle, their ruffs puffed out, their eyes flashing. He wondered how much of the blood on their talons was human, and decided he'd rather not know.

// Greetings, brother! // Kaltak chirped, his tufted ears flicked forward in happy excitement.

“Good to see you, my friend,” Vidarian said, holding out his hand for Kaltak to press his beak to in greeting. The smooth, curved killing instrument felt familiar now, and Vidarian realized how much his life had changed. His gaze drifted to the other gryphons, shocked again at how very much like Thalnarra they looked-though, if it was possible to be sure at this distance, none of them seemed to have her red eyes. But in form and size they were as similar to her as the brothers were to each other.

They weren't always like that, the Starhunter whispered. Everything has come so far apart. Separated. Boxes, little boxes… She started humming an extremely annoying tune, and Vidarian tried to block her out.

// Ishrak has had his first battle! // Kaltak said, and the younger brother dipped his head in acknowledgment. // We aren't Thalnarra's pride, but she allowed us to join them for Ishrak's sake, and on account of us knowing you. // The young gryphon was practically garrulous, his energy clearly excited by the action they'd seen.

“Congratulations,” Vidarian told Ishrak, not sure what else to say.

The smaller brother's cheek-feathers puffed out in shy pleasure. // We should return to our duties, // he said. // They're clearing the field and setting up a camp. // Kaltak looked disappointed but couldn't argue, and the brothers turned back to their tasks.

It was no mean thing, it turned out, to support an entire pride of gryphons, even for a largely under-hunted wild area that had known no gryphons for some time, perhaps even centuries. To Vidarian's horror, they proceeded to eat the slain horses, though mercifully not within sight of the camp. The riders they buried, those that they could find-after a quick calculation Vidarian was quite sure that more still lay fallen. He wasn't much for prayer, but considering that she'd been instrumental in saving his life, he said a brief blessing for the knights to their air goddess, Siane.

Much good she did them, the Starhunter chuckled.

As if you're doing better, he thought viciously at her, even as he berated himself for letting her get to him.

That's hardly my fault, she said, and the hurt in her voice seemed oddly genuine, if-as all things seemed to be with her-fleeting. They locked me back here. How am I supposed to do anyone any good? I can hardly think with these irksome bird-people everywhere.

Though she'd been given to exaggeration, such a specific fabrication tugged at his mind as unlikely. There are gryphons back there? But surely Thalnarra would not oppose the gate opening if she knew there were gryphons trapped…

Not gryphons! she snapped. Then I might have had some conversation. Just…well, look!

She seized his mind, and Vidarian abruptly found himself somewhere else.

It was dark, and the darkness receded into infinity, a shadow that came from nowhere. Surrounding them, just out of reach, were glimmering presences, fascinating little lights. He found himself reaching toward them, stretching himself, expanding.

No, no, a voice said crossly. This!

And there they were, thousands of them, millions! Uncountable faces, bodies, almost human-but covered with feathers.

See! Bird-people! What are you calling them now…

Their faces were haunted, tortured. Some of them seemed to see him, others did not. A collective murmur rose up from them, and when those nearest caught sight of him, the murmur increased into a roar.

Oh, great, the Starhunter sighed. You'd better go back.

And then he was back, the sounds of the meadow sudden in his ears, the smell of the earth, the warmth of the sun on his skin, chased by a moist forest breeze.

Back in his own mind, he also realized what he'd seen, if indeed it was real. Statues of winged humans littered Val Harlon, beaks on their faces where noses and mouths should be, their hair wrought in fanciful plumes that stood up from their foreheads like crests. Could the world have forgotten an entire people?

Thalnarra stepped into the meadow, holding back a branch with her beak so that Altair could gingerly follow. He winced as he stepped into the sunlit meadow, his eyes still wide from the pain medicine.

The world hadn't forgotten, Vidarian realized. Humans had.

He reached out with his Sense as easily as he would have with his hand, but this reached much farther, brushed up against Thalnarra's presence at the meadow's edge. She flared up instinctively, a shield of fire energy lifting around her, ready for attack. Vidarian was already walking toward her, but stopped a stone's throw away.

“Tell me about the bird-people, Thalnarra,” he said. “Tell me what else the gryphons know and have kept from us.”

Her aura dimmed as she took in his question, then dropped entirely, metaphysical arms falling to her sides.

// They made a decision, // she said, and Vidarian already disliked where this was going. // Centuries ago. When the gate was closed, they went in before the Starhunter-all of them. It was the only way to trick her inside. //

“And they're still there.”

// Presumably they would be. Though what would be left… //

“How many, Thalnarra?”

// Two million, we believe, // she said, the words pulled from her.

Sounds about right. Though some of them aren't right in the head, the Starhunter giggled. Maybe they count for halves? In that case it's only one million.

“And they suffer.”

// No one knows that. //

“I can hear them, Thalnarra!”

The gryphoness bridled, undaunted. // Would you undo their sacrifice? All that they gave to win peace in our world? //

“A peace in which the strong prey upon the weak, and power is relegated to a chosen few.”

// She fills your head with lies! //

“So far,” Vidarian said, “I don't think she's lied to me yet.”

“Vidarian,” Ruby was calling-and the edge in her voice quickened Vidarian's pulse. He ran toward the Destiny, where Ruby bent over the rim of the craft. Within, Ariadel was trembling, her skin sickeningly pale. “She's fading,” Ruby said, pain lacing her voice. “It takes them so fast. I'm sorry, Vidarian.”

His jaw tightened. “I need to get to the gate.” He looked up at Ruby, and she nodded, wordless.

They emptied the craft of all its contents save Ariadel and her blankets, lightening it enough to lift between them like a large gurney. Vidarian buckled his sword at his side, stowed in the craft for flight. While they worked, the gryphons were circled in intense conference of some kind, a passionate one punctuated often by clacking beaks and flared wings. When Ruby and Vidarian lifted the craft, Vidarian pointed them toward the east, where the sapphires told him the gate waited. He expected Thalnarra to follow, expected the burst of renewed fury that was sure to come with her-but the gryphons only watched him, and when they did follow, it was at a distance, peaceful but ominous.

At the forest's edge the trees thinned and disappeared entirely into a golden plain that ran in undulating hills to the horizon. This stand of trees was deceptively small, large for a small human standing inside it, but a pocket seen from the air-one that had grown up around the ancient stones of the Great Gate.

The wild land that had grown up here in centuries of civilization's absence had consumed almost everything save the gate. Stacked sandstone originally shaped flat and precise had been worn down by wind and rain at all its edges, and dry sun-loving creepers wrapped its base to the height of Vidarian's eye. The gate itself-an empty thing, a frame only-extended thrice the height of a gryphon, and was twice as wide. The remnants of stone foundations littered the ground a respectful distance away, and the ground at their feet was once paved with clay bricks, but few remained to fight the invading grasses.

Vidarian and Ruby carried Ariadel to the gate's threshold, and as they drew closer to it the sapphires increased their constant rumble of satisfaction and anticipation. By the strain written across Ruby's face Vidarian knew the red gems treated her similarly. When they gently lowered the Destiny to the ground, Ariadel's eyes fluttered open, focusing clearly for the first time in days. Vidarian's fledgling fire sense felt hers questing outward, awakened by the sudden flash and rumble of the rubies and sapphires. He knelt at her side immediately, taking one of her hands in both of his. From behind them, he heard Thalnarra's hiss of indrawn breath.

When Ariadel's own fire sense touched his, she flared up in his awareness, for a split second bright and strong as she had been the day they first met. But it was a flash, momentary only, collapsing even as it reached the edges of her faltering attention. “Where are we?” With their senses entwined, he could feel the plague raging within her, the elements that made her at war with each other. He knew how much each word cost her.

“We're at the gate,” he said softly, and felt the jump in her awareness as she comprehended his words. She tried to lift her head, but only for a moment-as her strength fled, so too did her sense, and she dropped away from his mind. He recklessly threw himself after her, nearly reaching out with the water magic that longed to break free inside him. With a grasp of will that darkened his vision for a split second, he held it back, to the fury of the still growling sapphires. He closed his eyes, mastering them, snarling inside his mind, then brushed his thumbs across her fingers and said, “I'm going to open it.”

With a force that would have thrown her to her feet had she the strength, Ariadel writhed in the flight craft, every fiber of her being shouting resistance. When her energy fled again, she collapsed back, again winking out of his awareness-then slowly flickering, fighting back up again. “The gate…” she trembled as she fought to get the words out, “…must…not…be opened!” Her body had nothing left, had burned through its reserves in their passage to the gate, yet in the depths of her soul's urgency was the strength to fight.

Vidarian was quiet for a long moment, consumed by the sound of her breathing-knowing as he had never known any other truth that he was not capable of hearing it cease. “Ariadel,” he said finally, “you'll die.”

“If I die, I die in a world I understand, by the teachings that have shaped my entire life. You don't know what you're asking me for,” she said. Even as the strength had welled up within her, now it fled, leaving her a swiftly collapsing shell.

“I'm asking you to live,” he said.

“Not at this price,” she whispered. “No one life is worth this price.”

“You don't…!” He stopped himself and breathed, swallowing the flash of sudden anger, warned by the renewed pulsation of the storm sapphires. “You don't know the price,” he said. “We only know what we've been told. I know that this is right.”

Her eyes were fading, exhaustion settling across her features. She shook her head as her eyes drooped. “I can't be this,” she said, her eyes pleading for understanding he couldn't find in himself. “You have to let me go.” And then her eyes shut, her consciousness pouring through his Sense's grasp, flowing down into darkness.

“How can you ask me to let you die?” he whispered. And a whisper in his mind answered-

What are gods for, Vidarian, if not for cruel choices?

Her spitefulness bounced harmlessly off of the wall of his grief. “It wasn't the Quest,” he choked, seizing Ariadel's hands in his, “it was you.” He looked up and into Ruby's ashen face. “I'm losing her!” He lifted her in his arms and stood, turning toward the gate.

// I can't let you do that, Vidarian. // Thalnarra's voice was quiet smoke in his mind.

He turned back.

// We came to support you, // the gryphoness said, indicating the gryphons behind her. // But not in making catastrophic decisions. I did not aid you so that you could do this! //

“But you aided me,” Vidarian said. “And for that I thank you.” As gently as he had ever moved in his life, he laid Ariadel in the blankets again. Her pulse fluttered under his hand, time escaping. He stood, swift, and drew his sword.

The gryphons behind Thalnarra hissed in promised menace, but she flicked her beak, warning them back. // Do you know what you're doing? // she asked.

Her simple question, untouched by emotion, nearly undid his resolve. As Ariadel had writhed under the weight of her priestesshood, so too did he falter under the specters of his father, his mother, his legacy. Regardless of its outcome, he knew his family's dynasty to have ended here, the thought of which threatened to still his hand. “What I have to,” he said only.

// If you think that I'll hold back out of pity, you're wrong, // she warned.

“I'd be insulted if you did.”

She leapt at him, claws outstretched, lashing out with a whip of searing fire energy. Vidarian fell to one side, half canniness and half clumsiness, stunned by the sudden leap. He spun away from her claws, but yelled as the flames washed over him, searing his face. Had he been in the center of the fire lash, he'd no longer be standing.

He pivoted hard on his right knee, darting in just behind the flames with a fast overhead slice of the sword, pairing it with a surge of water energy that leapt ahead of the blade and reached for the heart of her fire. But as his water sense extended away from him, the sapphires surged up, dizzying him, knocking him back. He aborted his attack and spun again, regrouping, while wrapping his mind around the sapphires.

Thalnarra gave him no time. In she lunged again, black talons as thick as his wrist flashing out for his intestines. This time the pulse of her energy was round, a cylinder of force large enough to swallow him entirely. But preceding the deadly heat itself was an aura of electricity, a warning, defining its periphery. Vidarian dove away and felt the edge of the attack just clip him, hot enough to curl the ends of his hair and fill his nose with the smoke of its burning. He had dodged her twice, but knew he couldn't be so lucky again.

Vidarian seized the sapphires with his mind and shook them, jolting them into furious action-and released their energy directly into Thalnarra's face. She roared in astonishment and fury, recoiling her own fire energy in a barrier against the stones’ onslaught.

“I never asked for this,” he said. “Your people had to throw prophesy into it.”

// Humans, // Thalnarra said, and the thought was rimed with insult beyond his comprehension. // Shut up and fight. // She leapt at him again, the powerful spring of her hind legs bringing her to him instantly, a thousand pounds of deadly creature with equally deadly mind oriented on his defeat. His heart and animal mind cried out in terror and urged escape, but he held them back, raising his sword before him like a talisman, a wreath of water energy wrapping the blade. The wave of elemental attack she directed at him this time was a sphere of fire energy that exploded into lethal spines as it neared him- in desperation he threw up the strongest wall of water energy he could summon, recklessly spending the fury of the sapphires into it as well.

Their energies met, resisted each other-and Thalnarra fell back, her wings flaring.

There in the moment, his mind and body tuned for survival, his spirit screaming out with the need for victory, he caught Thalnarra's gaze, and was stricken with the sensation of staring deep into her very being. Where he was attuned for the precision of his purpose, his every thought directed toward opening the gate to save the life of the woman he loved, Thalnarra was divided; distracted. She questioned. In that instant he knew the purpose of the gryphon battle ritual; it was much more than a barbaric grasp for dominance.

Truth bloomed, and the world dropped away while he seized it like an iron brand.

Something within him snapped, and both the storm's mad energy-a roar of water-and the fire's spiraling heat poured out of him, melting together, becoming one, becoming nothing. Before him, coiling around his blade, that nothingness opened up, a gulf that tore at reality. Here the Starhunter seized, boiling up from the opening. Thalnarra stared, transfixed as the Vkortha had been, and the goddess of chaos reached for her existence.

With a growl, Vidarian held her back, threading the energies apart again with his mind, but he seized on Thalnarra's distraction. When his sword arm came up, one of the gryphons screamed, an eagle's defiance, nearly startling him into dropping his wrist the full length. Instead, he stopped the arc of the blade with the strength of his arm and the reach of his water energy, seizing it in place. The edge hovered less than half a handspan from Thalnarra's exposed throat. He looked up at the remaining gryphons.

“Will you all stand against me?”

“Would it stop you?” Ruby asked, and her smile, full of sharpness and grief, filled his eyes with sudden water. She walked to him, the confident sway of a ship captain in her step, and placed the rubies in his hand.

“No,” he said, “it wouldn't.” And he willed the gate open.

The gate was a gaping maw, a depthless ocean, an unmaking. Here at the threshold between worlds the gemstones in Vidarian's hands warred against each other, arcs of electricity crackling between them and the gate as their energies flared and flickered.

Set me free, she whispered, and the sound vibrated from the gate, prickling every inch of his skin. Set us free, Vidarian. Her presence loomed just beyond the gate, her energies pressing it outward in an urgent bubble of near emergence.

It was a mouth between worlds, a maw in the face of the universe, and before it all thoughts threatened to slip away from Vidarian. As he stared into the opening it was as if he looked into the night sky, doubled and tripled and quadrupled and onward into infinity, endless universes of which theirs was the tiniest speck.

You see, the Starhunter said. There are plenty of stars to eat. I really don't understand the problem with taking a few. If I wasn't supposed to eat them, they wouldn't be so delicious. And there before him one of the stars very deliberately winked out.

It was his own mortal terror that drew him back into the moment and gave him the consciousness to release what the gate had held, back into the world.

A concussive force knocked him back, and he curled his body just enough to shield Ariadel with his chest and arms. The ground impacting his head sent a new kind of stars blasting across his vision, and all was black. By her yell of warning and the thud beside them, he knew Ruby had fallen near as well. Above them, the thundering of wings-thousands upon thousands of wings flooding outward from the gate, the wind of their passage rushing outward and pinning him to the ground.

Storms opened up around them, tearing after individual pairs of wings and the creatures that bore them. The sky broke with lightning centered in halos around individual flying figures, while others were wreathed in circles of fire. Most destructive of all, but thankfully rarest, some of them tore at the earth with powerful magic that effortlessly ripped trenches into the ground deep enough to swallow them all alive.

Then, just before the gate, the ground rose up, and Vidarian wrapped his arms around Ariadel, gathering himself to leap. He looked at Ruby, who knelt beside him, ready to take cover as well. But the clay and rock, still topped with the grass that had been below them a moment ago, swung up in a protective curve, sheltering them from the destruction.

A creature that was almost human but significantly not so ducked under the arc of the protective mantle with them. She-somehow he knew it was a she-was covered with brown and black speckled feathers, a pair of massive wings folded at her back like a great cloak. As she crouched, he saw that her feet terminated in birdlike claws, and her hands also bore more delicate ones. Large golden eyes, twice again too round to be human, looked out at the chaos atop a compact black-tipped beak. Her clothing was an ancient style he'd never seen before, a kind of wrap that accommodated her wings, and a gold pendant hung suspended in the middle of her forehead.

When she was satisfied that the wall of earth would protect them, she turned to him. “Isri,” she said, and he wondered how they would understand the creatures’ language, but she said, “My name is Isri,” in clear, unaccented trade-tongue. “I am elder mindspeaker for the Treune seridi. You are gate-opener. We've been expecting you for some time!”

“Pleased to meet you,” he shouted, and at the sound of his voice Ariadel stirred in his arms.

Her eyes slowly opened, unfocused at first, then fixing on him. His heart leapt and his eyes stung. Then her soft expression of love as she saw him, so welcome and familiar, transformed with the arrival of conscious thought to horror, and betrayal. Her hand came up, shaking, to touch his face. “Vidarian,” she whispered, her voice rasping, “what have you done?”

A gurgling cough behind them turned both their heads. When Vidarian looked up from Ariadel and saw Ruby's ashen face, and how she fought to remain standing, his heart shouted astonished denial.

All things, the Starhunter whispered, returning to his mind with ease and solidity, and their antithesis.

The wound at her side was darkening with blood, suddenly overcome as if it had been ripped open anew. Out of some instinctive reach for power, Ruby extended her elemental sense-a massive arm of it that lit her face with shock. Vidarian automatically raised his own in a shield-and was crushed to the ground under the weight of the energy that poured out of him. He stemmed it back, and even in restraint it was as if the sea energy poured from him in a torrent, wild and near uncontrollable.

“It's…” Ruby gasped. “The healing magic…it's all wrong…. ” And at once Vidarian realized that the infused poultice would now have its energies thrown out of balance by the same shift that had many-times multiplied their own elemental energy. And it was killing her.

Ariadel, by contrast, was rising under her own strength, leaning toward Ruby, her eyes streaked with tears. Vidarian turned to Ruby, and the breath stopped in his throat.

“No sentiment, please,” Ruby said, her neck straining. “But I did tell you…I wanted to die on my ship,” she said, and fell to the ground. Vidarian dove after her, his head swimming, looping his arm under her neck. Her muscles were slack, her eyes shut, her head lolling. And there, as Vidarian clasped her nerveless fingers, the Queen of the West Sea departed the world, the rush of her powerful elemental presence winking out before him.

“She's gone,” he said.

They returned to the clearing and the gryphon camp. Ariadel had lapsed into a silence from which she could not be moved. The gryphons-including Thalnarra, to Vidarian's surprise-had quietly rallied around him. // Your truth was stronger than mine, // Thalnarra had said only, and would speak no more of their duel. They'd bound Ruby's body in bandages. Her last words weren't precisely a request to be returned to her crew, but Vidarian knew it was what she would have wanted.

The camp's activity had now doubled with the arrival of the seridi, and only the fast organization of their leaders kept it from tripling or more. Like the gryphons, the seridi seemed to be organized by element and led by elders; these, wearing pendants like Isri's, clustered around the gryphons from Thalnarra's pride, conferring. Catching up, Vidarian thought, on two thousand years of gossip. Meanwhile, thousands more of the creatures were spreading out in all directions, hurrying to create or find shelter and sustenance for over a million refugees. Small mixed teams of gryphons and seridi were dispatched to the gryphon prides and the priestesshoods.

Except for Isri, the seridi uniformly deferred to him to the point of stopping whatever they were doing, and so Vidarian eventually distanced himself from the camp. His pursuit of solitude eventually returned him to the gate and the little flight craft that still sat beside it, nearly forgotten. By some silent agreement the gryphons had sent Altair and Isri to follow him, and he couldn't bring himself to stop them.

Vidarian went to the craft and rested his hands on the bow. Just below its curved surface, encircling the entire craft, was a row of stones he'd never noticed before; he'd assumed they were large nails. But now each of them glowed softly with an internal energy, a pale blue light. As he knelt to examine them more closely, Isri joined him at the craft's side.

// It was a skyship, long ago, // Altair said.

“That's right,” Isri replied, her hands passing gently over the ship's hull as if swallowed by a memory. She seemed to delight in every physical sensation-the wind, the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the scent of the trees. Now she hopped adroitly into the craft and knelt, inspecting wooden cases set into the shallow deck. Vidarian had thought that they contained ballast or some kind of stabilizer. But when Isri flipped a series of catches and opened them, she reached in and pulled up a slender mainmast made of a light, flexible metal Vidarian had never seen. Still rigged to it was a sail made of light translucent silk, and when she straightened the mast, it snapped loudly-and firmly-into place. Intrigued, Vidarian climbed into the ship after her to get a closer look.

As if this weren't enough, while he inspected the main, Isri proceeded to open two more cases hidden in front of the benches to the fore of the craft, unpacking two more sails and even slimmer masts. These folded out over the sides, unmistakably mimicking birds’ wings.

The little skiff was hardly the Quest, but suddenly it was a piece of something like home.

“May I?” Vidarian managed.

In answer, Altair raised a foreclaw, and the blue cabochons set into the hull pulsed into life one by one as his magic touched them. With a soft groan, the craft lifted just off the ground beneath Vidarian's feet, and he scrambled to take hold. There was no wheel, but a slim capstan just before the galley had yet another clever catch system that, when opened, revealed a control mechanism shaped to fit a human hand.

The ship was rising, and he only had a few seconds to decipher the controls. One was clearly a barometer, and another delicate device set beside it he suspected was an altimeter, this one built into the ship. Now the ship was higher off the ground, its bow even with Altair's head. Vidarian touched a cylindrical switch at the bottom of the panel and heard a clunk below and aft. A long rudder-more a fourth sail, composed of a springy metal spar and another sail-had unfurled below them, steadying the ship. Vidarian thought about the Sky Knights and how they had dominated the air, giving the Alorean Empire unprecedented advantage over the surrounding territories. “This changes everything,” he breathed.

// You changed everything, // Altair said, then dipped his beak in a small salute. // Good flying, brother. // The title lifted Vidarian with a surprising flush of pride and affection.

When they reached the tops of the trees, Isri shocked him by leaping over the starboard rail. He kept his hand on the rudder control to steady the craft, then ran to the side while it floated. Below, the seridi had snapped open her barred wings and was soaring gently over the forest canopy. While he watched, she gave a few powerful flaps of her wings and glided ahead, then up, riding the wind.

They were still rising, and Vidarian returned to the controls, finding one that seemed to increase the power of the air-stones, propelling them forward, and another that lessened it. There were none at the capstan for turning the craft or changing its altitude, and it took him a few moments to realize these were controlled by the three sails and traditional shiplike rigging. Managing the ropes and sail, drawing them back and checking knots, the scents of rope and wood and wind, dropped him in gentle, old memories.

Long ago, his family had owned a skiff not unlike this one, a small training vessel on which his father had taught Vidarian and his brothers how to sail. If he looked out over the bow, out instead of down, he could imagine he was on the sea, not in the sky.

Shortly he had the craft leveled out and floating. The side-sails were new to him, but after a few alterations in the rigging he found that a slight backward curve and a low propulsion setting allowed the ship to float gently where it was, teased by the breeze but not moved. Below, the world unfolded; forest melted into grassland, grassland rose into hill, hill spread into jagged coastline. And the sea-which had so shaped his existence, he'd thought-crashed there, distant and strange.

A pulse of wings on air drew his attention back to the here and now. Beside him, out in the air, Isri hovered. Her feathers were lifted in what he'd learned meant excitement in a gryphon, and her breathing was fast but steady. Watching the glisten in her eyes, Vidarian found a sudden jealousy for her and the gryphons’ direct experience of the exhilaration of flight.

“May I?” she called, her wings beating twice every few seconds to hold her in the hover.

“Please,” Vidarian answered, doing his best to hold the craft steady in the high wind.

He thought the mechanics of landing on a ship that floated in the air would be complex, but she must have done this before, and he stopped himself from the dizzying contemplation of when that might have been. With an ease she hadn't shown on takeoff, she dove and then looped in a quick arc, bringing herself directly on top of the Destiny. Then she folded her wings and dropped, one foot outstretched and the other ready to brace for impact, into a neat landing on the bench beside Vidarian. She gave one quick flap to steady herself, mantling like a hawk, and then her wings flipped back and closed with a whisper of soft, sleek feathers. With a lightness that spoke of birdlike bones, she hopped into the bench seat next to Vidarian. Her feathers smelled of sun-warmth and spice.

Vidarian was looking at the sun, staring into the sun where it now sunk into the sea in a pool of searing, liquid light, and for a long time Isri followed his gaze silently. But as the spots it burned into his eyes turned deeper and darker, he realized he was trying rather pathetically to punish himself and looked away, tracing his returning vision up the coast.

In the distance, a flash of unnatural lightning that came from near the ground revealed the location of one of the seridi that had flooded out of the gate, wreaking havoc wherever they passed.

“Why are they doing this?” Vidarian asked, his throat dry from the altitude.

“They're mad,” Isri replied. “For every year that my people remained trapped with the Starhunter, it seemed one of us lost the battle to retain our sanity. Her massive and chaotic mind eroded our own.”

“Why would you give yourselves to such a thing?”

“We didn't know we would survive the passage into the gate,” she said. “When we lured her through, we thought it was to certain death. None had ever survived passing into the gate when a destination had not been opened on the other side. The Starhunter kept us alive-we were her bargaining chip if she were to ever be released again.”

“And I fell into her hands,” he said, remembering Ariadel's silence like a knife between his ribs. “The gryphons and magic-users here insisted that the gate should be sealed, not opened.”

She turned to him, her pupils pinning like a gryphon's with shock. “And leave us trapped there for eternity, all condemned to the slow descent into madness?” When he didn't answer, she said, “You have set us free. Whatever paths lay ahead of you, you must know that you have the gratitude of an entire race, trapped for untold time between worlds.”

For the first time since the awakening of his magic-and it now felt to be wholly his magic, as it never had-the weight of the Starhunter was lifted from his mind. A hollowness he felt in the world itself said that she was there-her ambiguity, her truth-but she was no longer his alone to bear. And he wondered if it was this relief he had sought all along. Had he really opened the gate for Ariadel? Had the Starhunter herself contaminated his thoughts?

In the quiet that had settled on his mind, he knew the singularity of purpose that had filled his being for that one moment. It was Ariadel's life that had compelled him, for good and for ill. And he knew that if it were left to him again, he would again release chaos into the world if it meant correcting an imbalance that he'd known in his heart threaded reality itself without her.

“It's beautiful,” Isri said, looking out at the sunset spilling light and brilliance across the distant ocean far below and to the west. She closed her eyes, and the gentle wind lifted the feathers around her face.

The future was nebulous-two thousand powerful magic-wielders released into the world, the disruption of healing magic, ships that could fly-but suspended as he was among the clouds, the deep blue sky filled with fire and light, the richness of a new land spread beneath them…in that moment, at least, Vidarian agreed.