by Erin Hoffman
“Why?” Vidarian blurted, hands moving to grip the arms of his chair convulsively. His heart rebelled against the question, but he asked, “Why is Ariadel so important that your goddess herself would intervene through a simple sailor?”
At this Endera raised a hand to her temple, her half-closed eyes going again to the still flame of the oil lamp. Vidarian did not know if she did this out of a need to focus on her Element or out of a simple desire not to look at him, but the unwavering light did seem to calm her.
“Sharli told us many months ago that Ariadel Windhammer would be the most influential priestess to grace our world since the Third Age.”
Vidarian stared, trying to count the thousands of years that that implied, and failing. Endera glanced up at him, a flash in her eyes condemning him for everything from birth to breathing, but she said, “Well, that's not exactly what she said. She appeared to us as a glowing beacon with eyes of two typhoons centered with cyclones, a burning elderberry bush in her left hand, and a silver truncheon in her left.”
Vidarian's throat was too dry to allow for a good splutter, but he coughed. A sharp glance from the priestess warned him not to question her authority. He didn't. Instead, he moved to pick up the leather pouch that rested atop the desk. Thumbing it over in his fingers, he slipped the sun emeralds out of their nest and into the palm of his hand.
They were as beautiful as he remembered. One now seemed to shudder with the rhythm that pulsed within it, a storm roiling within the small gem, but the other…
The other emerald still bore its dancing flame, brighter now to his sight…and as it rested against his hand he felt a resonance of energy between himself and the stone. Sharli had been right-they were tied together. And the rhythmic waves that pulsed out of the stone, out of the air, and out of Vidarian himself had never been so strong to him. They reverberated throughout his awareness. Unthinking, he raised the emerald, and suddenly the resonant waves circled into completion. Through the morass of pulsing energy some buried intuition took the three points-his location, what he could only assume was Ariadel's, and the emerald's, though it was so close to him-and told him exactly where they all rested in relationship to each other. The result was a beacon so bright in his mind that he could almost see it with his mortal eyes.
Quickly he slipped the stones back into their pouch, banishing the vision, and stood. Endera slid to her feet as well, looking at him in dark-faced confusion. He only held up the leather bag in a slightly quaking hand.
“I know where she is.”
The priestess stared at him long and hard for a moment. “You know that this is beyond our contract,” Endera said, her voice for once candid and subdued. Vidarian did not answer. The priestess only nodded, after a moment, then said simply, “I am gratified to know you are the man I thought you might be.” With that, she led the way back to the temple entrance.
Once again Vidarian was borne into the sky by a trio of gryphons, but this time he was awake, and each of the gryphons bore a pattern of gold painting on their wings. The patterns danced as they flew, tessellating back and forth from images of leaping fire to stars that spangled across the white feathers.
Vidarian sat toward the front of the carry-basket, Ariadel's emerald lifted high in his left hand. With his eyes closed he explored his new Sense, trying to focus and nurture it as quickly as he could. Now and then he experienced an intense urge to do more than simply take in the “surroundings” painted before him by his new ability-an urge to move the ripples that pulsed in his mind. Determinedly he shoved these aside, keeping his metaphysical hands behind his back, and the sweat that beaded along his forehead with the effort grew icy cold in the high-altitude winds.
In remarkably short order the basket began to descend, and he remembered to work his jaw as pressure began to mount in his ears. The gryphons dropped swiftly, at times seeming to plunge almost vertically downward, and Vidarian wondered every few hundred feet if his stomach had been left behind among the clouds.
They landed in the courtyard of Sher'azar Temple, and such was the control of these gryphons that they made his previous landing at the mountain's foot seem a child's first stumbling walk. As the great creatures removed their harnesses he recognized the leader as Thalnarra-and if his guess was right, the rapid flare-and-pin of her pupils only very thinly disguised a smoldering anger. He followed her blazing gaze to a collection of three priestesses that stood hesitantly at one of the many temple archways.
Finally one of them approached, reluctance emanating from her body language. “Thalnarra,” she said, bowing, “It has been-quite some time since you visited us here…” Then she caught sight of Vidarian and inhaled sharply. “You…”
// Priestess Alshandra, // Thalnarra growled, punctuating each of her words with biting anger. // May I introduce Captain Vidarian Rulorat, whom our goddess delivered to the Temple of Kara'zul. //
“Sharli…” The priestess backed away a step, her eyes going wide. “We thought…”
// You thought she would kill him, // Thalnarra finished for her, sitting down on the gravel and coiling her tail snakelike about her feet. // You sent him up the mountain at night knowing that the goddess permits no mortal uninitiated to see dawn on Kara'zul Peak. //
“W-we thought he was an interloper-”
// You did not think, girl, at all. // Thalnarra's mental voice rose to a crackling thunder and Vidarian winced at the sudden pain in his head. // Gryphons bore him to you, yet you did not send any of your messengers after them. The temple was unattended or they would have spoken with you themselves. Have you any idea who this man is? //
The priestess did not answer, and Thalnarra pounded relentlessly on, each of her words more forceful than the last. // He is the sole assigned protector and sole remaining hope of Ariadel Windhammer, if we ever do see her again since her fall into Vkorthan hands. //
It was too much for the chastened priestess, and she broke into tears. “Thalnarra, please don't send me to…”
// Oh, do shut up, girl. // The gryphoness sighed, lifting her beak and giving a tiny disgusted shake of wing feathers that glittered golden in the pale sunlight. // I will be reporting the misbehavior of the priestesses here to the high temple, and they will be responsible for you. Perhaps they will send you up the mountain to see what the Dawn Goddess thinks of your actions. In the meantime, I have escorted the captain to Sher'azar to see that he has the proper equipment for his journey. I will be accompanying him on his quest and both of us will need proper provisions. //
Vidarian started at her words, but could not argue-and strangely enough, all of the priestesses of Sher'azar were suddenly extremely cooperative.
That evening they were back in the air again, Thalnarra leading with two hand (claw?)-picked gryphons flanking the harnessed basket. Unlike Vidarian's recent carriers, Thalnarra's companions this time bore no gold on their wings-they were uninitiated into the rites of the fire priestesses, and as a result greatly deferred to her as a matter of course. She seemed to encourage this behavior.
The basket was considerably heavier this time, as well. Packed in with provisions of food for all parties (the gryphons planned to hunt, but Vidarian learned to his surprise that they preferred an assortment of supplementary foods that aided in health and meditation) was a tight packet of medical supplies, a strange navigational unit intended for air use, and, most interestingly, a small chest of carefully packed magical implements. Tucked into canvas pockets on two sides of the chest was a pair of leather-bound books, each no longer than his hand and roughly half as thick. The cover of one was a deep blue, the other a dark burgundy. After the gryphons had settled into a comfortable altitude, Vidarian weighed one book in each hand, looking between them with a mixture of trepidation and intense curiosity.
Both books had the exact same number of pages-a fact that he verified by checking the last carefully numbered page of each. Setting aside the burgundy volume, Vidarian opened the other and began to gingerly thumb through it. He pause
d when he reached a richly illuminated page that described a fist-sized translucent globe identical to one that he had seen in the chest.
Setting the book aside after marking it with an attached blue ribbon, he flipped the lid of the chest open again. Nestled into a bed of narrow wood shavings was a pale blue globe, translucent and dotted with an intricate array of identically deep pinholes, that confirmed his suspicions. It lay alongside a narrow box of dark wood that he promptly used to support the reopened blue leather book.
A richly calligraphed diagram marked out the uses and significances of each set of holes on the globe. Following its footnotes, he observed that the pinholes were arrayed in groups of five, most often depicting a diamond shape with a single pinhole in the center. When he had studied the page for several minutes, he felt confident enough to very carefully place his fingers in specific points around the object and lift it from its nest.
Nothing happened, which was good. Vidarian consciously let out his breath, becoming aware that at some point in the procedure he had forgotten to do so. What the book specified next was clear but daunting: that somehow a Nistran should apply their Sense through the sphere, using it, he supposed, as a sort of lens. This would lead to greater focus of the user's ability.
After he had held the globe long enough to make his awkwardly bent fingers complain, Vidarian-following the logic that if he wasn't meant to use it, it wouldn't be in the chest-decided to try it out. He closed his eyes and held the sphere at arm's length in front of him.
As the book had recommended, he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. As he did so he imagined that every bit of his breath was going through the sphere, flowing around its perfect shape and sounding off of its pinholes as through finger-holes in a flute.
It took nearly long enough for Vidarian to assume that he lacked the skill to activate it, but, just as he was running out of breath, the sphere began to resonate.
Unlike the ripples that other living creatures generated to his newfound Sense, the rings that came off of the sphere harmonized with Vidarian's own, which he only then realized that he even recognized-his mind automatically filtered them out. There was a pop!, more felt than heard, and suddenly his own rings-his own pattern-had expanded immensely.
He didn't have long to enjoy it, though, because at that exact instant his vehicle began to fall out of the sky.
The plummeting (quite naturally, he thought) jolted him out of his experiment with the sphere, and he threw it unceremoniously back into the chest and occupied himself with hanging on for dear life.
Gradually the craft evened out in the air, but Thalnarra was practically molting with anger. Her head snapped around and she looked Vidarian full in the face, still pulling the basket and maintaining her wing-speed. Absently he realized that he didn't know her neck was quite so agile-it was disturbing in a way, but less so than her angrily widened eyes.
// What in the True Names of all that's holy did you think you were doing? // Her telepathic voice thundered in his head and he strangled down the distinct urge to hide under the cargo.
“I was following an exercise in the Book of Nistra-”
// You sent out a “welcome, please make yourself at home!” beacon to anyone with a lick of Sense in a two-hundred-mile radius! And doing exactly what you did, unannounced, would have Quenched a lesser priestess than I! //
Vidarian blinked. “I didn't know anything about Quenching…”
// Then perhaps you shouldn't be meddling about with the Book of Nistra. I suppose you looked up the amplification sphere in it without even reading the basics of Nistran magic, much less the Five Magics and how they interact? // Her thick wings beat violently at the air as she grew increasingly incensed, causing the basket to rock unsettlingly.
“I thought-”
// Maybe you had better start at the beginning, // she said acidly, then turned her beak back forward, feather-tufted ears swiveling away from Vidarian as if to pointedly deny his existence. Trying to make as little sound as possible, he withdrew the Book of Nistra and closed the little chest, going so far as to latch it securely before settling back to read-this time from page one.
An insidious sense of futility crept over Vidarian as he toiled through the book. At intervals he pulled out Ariadel's emerald to assure they were still on course-but with the gryphons’ sharp eyes for navigation, they always were, and it was mostly an excuse for him to stop reading. But every return to the neatly lettered pages was more daunting, and in the end he gave it up, choosing instead to stare vacantly across the cloud-traced sky.
// I apologize for snapping at you. // Thalnarra's clipped words jolted Vidarian out of an unintentional reverie, and he jumped.
“No harm done.” He smiled weakly, peering up at the lead gryphon. Although she continued to face forward, her ears had swiveled back to catch his movements and speech.
// Not by me, I hope. You do realize that what you did was tremendously dangerous? //
“I think so. But I still couldn't find anything in the book about Quenching.”
// It would have been in the Book of Sharli. But I can tell you. // Several moments passed, punctuated by the steady beat of the gryphons’ wings, before Thalnarra spoke again. // The Five Magics are arrayed in opposition and balance, // she began, her tone taking on a lecturing hint. // There are a number of…classifications, shall we say, between them, but the most important for you to know is the difference between what we call Substantive magics and Ephemeral magics. Earth and water are Substantive; air and fire are Ephemeral. That is why the greatest danger for you is to apply your new ability to manipulate Nistra's gift to “physically” touch the world-because water is Substantive, anything you touch in it will reverberate throughout the entire universe. On a universal scale this is insignificant, but locally it can have dramatic detrimental effect. The danger of an Ephemeral magic user is different, because we cannot actually move any of the elements, only apply energy to them, which is not quite the same thing. Moving for us is much more difficult than it is for you, and much more complex-but it is very easy for a beginning fire priestess to push the balance of energy within her, and this can be dangerous in a variety of ways. //
“You mentioned five magics-what is the fifth?” The whole of it made sense to him, but Vidarian wanted to know everything before he began drawing parallels in his mind.
// We call the fifth element aether, and it is really more theoretical than actual, from a magical perspective at least, because we have no one who can manipulate it. But it is in a third class of magic called Subtractive, whereas all the other four are considered Additive. Try what we may, the very nature of Substantive and Ephemeral magics both dictates that we cannot actually destroy substance or energy-only manipulate it. Aether has the power to destroy. //
“Can it also create?” A dry, humming click sounded in Vidarian's mind, and he gathered from the faint rush of emotion that followed it that Thalnarra was chuckling.
// Clever. Yes, in theory, aether can create. But we assume that its basic nature is to destroy, the same way that an Ephemeral's basic nature is to generate energy-so to create is probably much more difficult than destroying. Creation is the domain of the gods. //
“What is it that the Vkortha do? Where does that magic fit in?”
Thalnarra's tone grew dark. // The Vkortha do not practice magic. They are telepaths, and telekinetic-we do not consider these as part of the magical hierarchy. The way I am speaking to you is telepathic, and among gryphonkind it is considered mundane. There is some dispute, given the Vkorthan's recent activity, as to whether the old books should be changed to include their…activities. But we know so little about them, which is one of the reasons Priestess Windhammer was assigned to study them-we believe that their “magic” is actually a clever use of the mundane telepathy in conjugation with certain tools. // After a moment, she added, // We are not altogether certain what those tools are. //
Again they passed a length of time in silence, with Vida
rian wondering, not for the first time, just what he'd gotten himself into. The thought that perhaps he was the one to solve it, since he knew nothing of the details and was therefore theoretically undaunted, was cold consolation.
The group rested by night, with the gryphons angling downward in the red twilight once they sighted a clearing appropriate for a safe landing. Each night one of the gryphons disappeared into the darkness and returned one or more hours later dragging a fresh kill. Thalnarra took her turn in this, and in each case Vidarian joined in their dinner-though he found that he still preferred his meat cooked.
During their brief meals he gradually came to know the other two gryphons that had volunteered to escort him. They were brothers-brown-plumaged and long-legged harrier gryphons whose loyalty to Thalnarra bordered on outright fanaticism. Their body language and sharp eyes reflected a spaniel-like demeanor whenever she so much as spoke one of their names. It was almost disturbing.
The older brother, Kaltak, took to telling Vidarian stories of the lairs and hunting grounds of the Cherath’kettu'ssa, or “children of Ele’cherath” as they referred to themselves. A friendly rivalry existed between Sharli's two gryphon subspecies, and both agreed that it was probably well that the harriers had little interest in the goshawks' territory, since their own was more than large enough.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kaltak (with the occasional side note provided by his brother) painted a portrait of a very warlike society-or, at least a society that would be warlike if not carefully mediated by the fire priestesses, called Shamans in their home. Each gryphon underwent a maturation rite before being accepted into the pride as an adult, and these two were in Thalnarra's service for a full preparatory year. Ishrak, though two seasons younger than Kaltak, had passed a test that allowed him to enter training in tandem with the older gryphon. In another species this would have incited cockiness, but Ishrak seemed to have nothing but respect for his older brother. Vidarian knew of few societies save those of pirates and merchants on the high seas, and the gryphons’ intricacies fascinated him. He listened avidly to their tales of adventure and lair life, sometimes understanding little about the details but gaining volumes of new regard for gryphon culture. Even had he accepted the existence of gryphons before he had seen one, “culture” was not a word that would have occurred to him even at the bottom of the deepest wine bottle. That disbelieving self, so unwittingly narrow in experience, seemed more than a lifetime away.
