by Erin Hoffman
By night he found himself guarded by three balls of feathers and fur. When the gryphons curled up to sleep (and, birdlike, they grew tired as soon as the light faded), their wings hid any leonine portions of their body almost entirely from view, and the long, stiff feathers that ran along the back of their necks plumed upward as they buried their beaks between heavily muscled shoulder blades. One of them snored, and he wasn't sure which.
Perhaps reminded by his companions’ fluffy nighttime presence, he found his mind wandering to what had become of Ariadel's kitten. What could the Vkortha possibly make of it? Had they killed it out of hand? Inevitably his thoughts would venture into dark territory, and he heaved at them halfheartedly before at last settling into uneasy sleep.
The monotony of a blinding sun cast the basket in harsh, jagged shadows day after day and made the journey stretch into one long hypnotic noon. The pattern broke only once, causing Vidarian to start out of a bleary nap (one taken, as they had been for days, with the Book of Nistra open before him), when the gryphons began to angle downward in the sky-not at sunset, but with the sky still glaringly bright overhead.
“Priestess Thalnarra?” Vidarian mumbled, tucking the book back into his pocket and rubbing his eyes.
// We, or I should say they, can take you no further,// she answered, casting an obliquely apologetic glance over her shoulder. // We approach Vkortha territory. //
“How can you tell?”
One of the gryphoness's feathered ears slanted down at a sharp angle in his direction. // Listen. Feel. You will Sense it. //
He complied, carefully, but nearly before he had even been able to close his eyes, Vidarian became uncomfortably aware of a buzzing vibration that lingered in his mind. It grew steadily even as the party descended, as if they were passing into a great bank of fog, but the world to his mortal eyes remained disconcertingly mundane.
On the ground the woods were preternaturally silent. Whenever the gryphons landed a hush of the smaller forest creatures followed in their wake, but always there had been the ambient noise of distant activity. Not so, here. Either nothing lived in this forest, or if it did, it was being very careful to maintain an illusion of absence.
Under Thalnarra's supervision, Vidarian helped the gryphons separate provisions and particular supplies into a set of leather pouches that locked cunningly into brackets along the brothers’ harnesses. Thalnarra, though, made no move to collect the special herbs that Vidarian had come to recognize as exclusive to her use.
“Shall I help you pack, Priestess?” he asked, when at last the brothers were completing final preparations and there was little left to be done. Thalnarra's scarlet eyes pierced through his poorly veiled question.
// I intend to stay with you, Captain, for as long as I can. // She did not say more, but instead turned to the other gryphons, who abruptly stood at attention. Vidarian heard nothing, but by the narrowing and flaring of the creatures’ pupils, they were engrossed in a deep discussion. He turned away so as not to intrude even upon their expressions.
A heavy weight on his shoulder-one that, he noticed, bore a set of five-inch talons-surprised him out of his quiet contemplation. The claw was surprisingly warm-almost hot beneath the clean, dry skin. Vidarian turned slowly.
Ishrak's large golden eyes focused intently on Vidarian's for a long moment. Finally he uttered a strange, piercing call, and said, // Charnak; vikktu ari lashuul. // Then, as swiftly as he had come, he turned and paced away with casual, measured steps. Neither of the two gryphons looked back before they took to the air, the wind from their wings throwing leaves and dust in all directions.
When they were out of sight, Vidarian turned to see Thalnarra inspecting him with the tilted head and raised cheek-feathers that he had come to recognize as bemusement.
// I believe that would be the first time that a human mind has heard those words. You should feel honored. // Despite the amusement in her words, it was apparent that the gryphoness was quite serious.
“I do,” Vidarian said, watching Thalnarra carefully and folding his hands behind his back.
// It means, “be resolved; victory will find you.” It is the traditional parting phrase for a company of gryphons departing for war. //
Vidarian thought this over for a long moment, then nodded. “That's what we're doing, isn't it?”
Thalnarra did not answer, but her feathers, mantling up behind her neck as she sat down and gazed into the impenetrably dark forest to the west, spoke for her.
The buzzing hum continued to increase as they trekked further into the forest, rising into a palpable sensation of itching at the back of the brain. Frequently Vidarian caught himself shaking his head, a futile but reflexive response to the unnerving itch.
At length the forest gave way to a rugged, wind-blasted coastline. When they stumbled out of the trees and into the dubious grey light of the open shore, there was no warning-the trees, hung heavily with parasitic moss and vines, had blocked out any view no matter how close it was. Cold, sleet-fingered wind lashed at the tree line, whipping up out of the sea like the angry swats of a petulant cat.
Vidarian stared out over the open water, squinting at the hazy horizon.
// This confirms what we suspected but could not ascertain, // Thalnarra said, feathers rippling in the constant wind as she too squinted out over the waves. Her voice in his mind was not loud, a calm non sequitur in the maddening combination of thundering waves and buzzing Presence. // The Vkortha are on an island, or, if not an island, a peninsula whose bridge they have managed to hide from view. //
“An island?” Vidarian shouted, struggling to make himself heard. “How are we going to get to it?” Thalnarra cast him an unruffled glance.
// The flight basket is watertight. The ride won't be pleasant, but we can make it. //
“Make it to where?” He tried not to sound too alarmed.
// We'll see, won't we? //
There was no help for it. Vidarian trudged back into the dense forest, working to manage his dread at the notion of sailing literally blind into the unknown. He realized for the first time his dependency on the usual navigational implements-charts, compasses, sextants, and the few precious little charms that made the vast openness of the sea and sky at least somewhat manageable.
The thought of navigational tools made him pause. There was that strange tubular tool packed in with the magical implements, an air navigator-could it be used to guide them? At that point Vidarian would have clung to any hope of a useful instrument with ferocity. He asked Thalnarra about it as they wove their way through the tangled vines and rushes that seemed to have grown back in duplicate force since they had last passed through.
// It would work, // she answered, giving a nod of her beak as she leapt over a fallen log. // It's not ideal, but I can recalibrate it to the coast and we can, at the least, have some idea of where we are in relationship to land. //
That gave them a way back, if and when they needed it, which was enough for Vidarian. He plowed through the foliage with renewed vigor.
Although he had not considered it before, the seaworthiness of the gryphons’ basket became immediately apparent as Vidarian and Thalnarra slid it out onto the rocky sand. Vidarian wondered if perhaps its boatlike construction had subconsciously comforted him on that first harrowing ride.
Catching sight of his expression, Thalnarra nodded to his thoughts. // Rather than reinvent the wheel, so to speak, we based the baskets off of the design of a small boat. What slides through the water also slides through the air. It works in our favor all the more, now. // Without waiting for assistance, the tall gryphoness braced both foreclaws solidly on the basket's “hull” and gave a tremendous shove. The vessel slid wetly across the grey foam and slime that marked the waterline, and then it was afloat. Vidarian hopped in quickly as the tide took hold.
Before launch Vidarian had loaded a pair of long, supple branches into the basket. He now grabbed the first of these and used it as a poor but effective pol
e. Once he felt confidence in the method, he looked around, wondering where Thalnarra could possibly fit.
But she was already high above him, feathers twitching constantly to battle the erratic wind. // Take your bearing, Captain-I will follow the craft. // She held the recalibrated air navigator in one claw, having detached it from its place hooked to her chest strap.
Pulling in the pole and relying on the tide to wash them out, Vidarian carefully extracted Ariadel's emerald from a pouch around his neck. For a brief moment he closed his eyes, focusing on the faint, flickering presence of the emerald and the distant fluttering that called to the stone, far past the horizon. Swallowing a flood of emotion as he noted both the increasing strength of the emerald and what seemed to be a decrease in Ariadel's “signal,” her true life flame, he tucked the stone back into its nest and lifted his branch-pole unerringly south-by-southwest. Thalnarra gave a quick answering cry from overhead and angled away in that direction. Vidarian roughly thrust the branch back into the water, guiding his erstwhile craft toward the towering bank of dark clouds that marked their destination.
The first attack came by night, when the clouds overhead became menacing shadows that blotted out the stars and the sea was an expanse of cold, shifting mountains of glass that stretched into forever. Vidarian and Thalnarra, caught between the two, soldiered on against the onslaught of wind and wave, but at times it seemed they made no progress, and twice Vidarian swore that the shifting water was actually pushing them backward toward the shore.
Vidarian had poled his craft across the angry waves throughout the night, eventually reversing it to use the leafy end as a makeshift oar, but no dawn showed on the horizon. His muscles were reaching their utter limits-he had thought this perhaps a dozen times in the past several hours, but now he knew with a sallow dread overtaking his stomach that he was rapidly losing ground to fatigue.
He was just about to call a halt when Thalnarra gave voice to a chilling hawklike cry overhead. // Stay! // The single word flung itself into Vidarian's mind and took several moments to percolate, after which he shifted his weight and began fighting not to move onward but to keep the basket-boat in the same place. Thalnarra darted forward and upward, disappearing into the cloud cover.
Whether he succeeded he did not know, but Thalnarra appeared overhead before he could so much as wonder where she had gone. Her wings twitched in a rapid pattern as she kept herself hovering in place over the basket.
// Throw me the amplifier! // She placed a strange emphasis on the last word, and Vidarian knew what she meant. He moved to the chest, dropping the oar to the basket's wet deck and trusting the gryphoness to keep pace with the now-moving vessel. After fishing inside the opened wooden container for a moment or so, he froze; what was Thalnarra going to do with the sphere, and how in the world was he going to throw it to her? But the priestess's sharp eyes caught his hesitation and she let out another shriek, this one impatient and an inarguable demand. Vidarian picked up the sphere.
He hesitated again as he hefted the solid weight of the globe. // Just throw it! // Thalnarra's sharp words triggered the movement of his hand more than Vidarian's own will did. He wound up and slung the globe up into the air with as much force as he could manage.
It wasn't a good throw, but, with a stunning display of agility, Thalnarra dropped like a gull and snatched the globe out of the air. The sharp, ringing clack of her formidable talons against the glass of the amplifier carried faintly over the howling wind.
No sooner had Thalnarra touched the sphere than a wave of energy pulsed outward from her, intensely hot and carrying with it the faint but pungent odor of astringent smoke. Vidarian could see it with his eyes-a bright, blinding circle of red shot out across the waves. But the ring did not disappear into the distance as he thought it would. It stopped perhaps six gryphon-lengths away before pulsing back toward the center and simultaneously shooting up into a half-dome in the air.
The wind died away. Vidarian found himself acutely aware of Thalnarra's presence, from the steady beating of her wings overhead to the thump of her heartbeat. But the waves beyond the circle grew indistinct, as if seen in a dream.
“What did you do?” he called, voice echoing in the abrupt quiet.
// Shielded us from the Vkortha, // came the answer, and the gryphoness sounded very, very tired. // It won't last for long. // She dropped the amplifier back into the basket and Vidarian tucked it into his sash absently.
“Why now?”
// Because we're passing out of the storm-it's a barrier around their island. I can see the break in the clouds from here. //
The swift, cold water carried them toward the break so quickly that by the time Thalnarra completed her sentence they were breaking into a patch of open sky. Vidarian staggered forward as the water itself grew abruptly still, nearly pulling the oar from his hands. He stared blankly over the opaque, glossy water that seemed to have no depth as it reflected a sky that had no clouds. It took several moments for him to realize that palpable in the air was another stillness, this one strange: Thalnarra's mind, over the course of his time with her, had developed a certain “static”; he found that he could sense when she was nearby. No more-she hovered on the wind, wings beating regularly to keep her aloft, but the presence of her mind was far astray.
Then-
// Wait…I'm losing it…brace yourself- //
“For what?” he shouted, then winced at the booming volume of his own voice in the silence; he was too long accustomed to the thunder of the waves. But Thalnarra was gone.
Stars spangled in front of Vidarian's vision as if he'd taken a massive blow to the head. A strange whiteness clouded his eyes, and he blinked rapidly, raising arms that did their best not to respond.
“Vidarian, I'm so sorry.”
A shape clothed in golden silk gradually resolved to his left. Endera was seated next to him in a silver-chased mahogany chair. Her large green eyes were tight with grief and sympathy.
“Priestess?” Speaking sent lances of pain through his dry throat and caused his head to spin.
“Ssh, don't speak. You are safely returned to the temple now and in the hands of the Goddess.” Her hand on his shoulder was cool. He shivered.
“Ariadel-“ Vidarian choked out her name, hoping it was recognizable. Endera's brow contorted and she looked away. Her voice came as though from a great distance.
“Lost. She was lost. And before we even sent you from the Temple. We couldn't call you back in time, and when our forces could finally reach you, you were caught in a Vkorthan mind-trap. Their silisva had you ensnared in-”
“Their what?” Each word seemed to cost him more, but the priestess's words hammered him. Ariadel was dead? Loss, profound and blinding, swept through his veins like black oil in a stream.
Endera paused and looked at him, hard. “The silisva. Surely you remember.”
Anger sparked somewhere deep within him; it fluttered like a moth, but grew wings of flame. Though his throat felt filled with broken glass, he spat at the priestess, “You said…knew nothing about the Vkortha. You said Ariadel told you nothing…to protect…Temple.” Grinding out Ariadel's name set him back, but only for half a second, and at last he broke through the agony in his throat; the pain faded to numbness and he felt strength returning to his arms in a haphazard rush. He wrenched himself upright and took in the strange white walls that enclosed the small room. At first his mind boggled at the absence of any door-but then he blinked, and it was there, with the memory that it always had been. He turned in the bed, pulling cotton sheets into disarray, and threw himself at Endera, who leapt back like a doe. There was panic in her eyes.
“This isn't right,” he said, advancing on legs that were at once strong and in the next instant weak as water. “None of this…” he winced as his vision lurched, “is right.” Staggering sideways, he swept the silver-chased chair onto the floor. It clattered as it hit. “Sharli's colors are gold, not silver. No temple room would miss both a window and a c
andle.” He lifted his gaze to Endera, who was backing up slowly. “Your eyes are not green.” As he stared at the priestess, her eyes widened-and began to change color. They slid from green to turquoise to blue, and then through purple-but Vidarian had already turned away. He charged at the bare wall with a primal scream ripping from his lungs.
The ground swept away under his feet and he almost stumbled-but Vidarian Rulorat had never so much as placed a foot wrong aboard ship, and would not do so now.
The waves of the An'durin, green and deep, rocked the Empress Quest as her captain gazed out over the cloudless waters. It was an unnatural sea, they said-the An'durin suffered no living creature within it, save one, and so its waters were clear as autumn air. Shifting white sandbars were visible hundreds of feet below the glassy surface.
There was something he was supposed to remember…
Vidarian shook his head. An item left at port, perhaps. Some trinket his mother had asked for. He could find her another; ports dotted the shores of An'durinvale like gulls on a pier. He could not turn the Empress around now, with the wind so full in her sails and the sky so ripe for conquest.
