Sword of Fire and Sea tck-1

by Erin Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “But why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  All hell broke loose.

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

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

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

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

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

  The storm struck.

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

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

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

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