Lance of Earth and Sky

Relief and exhaustion washed over Vidarian as he sighted the door to his rooms. He knew that the numbness in his skull signified shock; if he consciously brought the thought of war against Qui or shapeshifting sky steeds to the fore, raw terror would lance down his spine, debilitating. But left alone, the panic submerged beneath that blessed buzz of nothingness, at least for now.

He opened the door, intent on falling immediately into the lavish bed. But someone had other plans.

A woman's legs, crossed elegantly at the knee, emerged from the shadow of the sitting room. His first thought was that he'd come into the wrong room by mistake, or she had—but perched on those slim knees was the pup, tongue lolling, sparks firing lazily from its crest, absurdly happy.

Beyond them, taking up all of the space between the sitting room and the bed, was the largest gryphon Vidarian had ever seen.

The creature was black from head to tailtip, speckled with points of light—not white, but light, as in stars. As he watched, convinced his eyes were playing a trick on him, he saw a comet streak across the gryphon's left wing. Its eyes glowed the faint gold of distant suns.

Hard as it was to tear his eyes away from this, the woman favored by the pup was also unnaturally large, not just in height but in every dimension. And her eyes were darker than the deepest shadow, with neither white nor pupil. Her clothing was like none he'd ever seen, her mannish trews made of what appeared to be liquid metal, and her blouse a dizzyingly patterned affair of black, yellow, and green silk, marbled like an exotic insect.

He still might not have recognized her until she giggled. “Poor, poor Vidarian,” she said, and her voice set his head spinning for the third time that evening, heard as it was outside his head, rather than in. “We've been so hard on you.” She stroked the pup, who leaned into her touch. Vidarian scowled at him, and his ears wilted soulfully.

Don't blame him, she said in his mind, smiling, revealing unnaturally white teeth. Haven't you missed me?

“I've been—busy.” Vidarian felt behind him for the other armchair and sank into it.

“Oh, so have I!” The Starhunter stood and spun around with the pup in her arms, causing him to bark. She set him down on the carpet and proceeded to caper, dancing around the pup and laughing as he leaped and swatted at her with his paws. Then she spun toward the gryphon. “See?”

Vidarian looked at the gryphon again, trying not to be distracted by the twinkling of the stars on its feathers.

Then it spoke.

“They trapped me in ice,” the gryphon rumbled, its voice three times deeper than any human's, with a quality that vibrated Vidarian's breastbone and threatened to turn his knees to jelly. “Ice.” Then it laughed, an even stranger sound, a kind of clucking wheeze. “Kind of ironic, really.”

Being locked in ice for two thousand years has made him rather cranky.

“I can imagine,” Vidarian said, after two false starts around a dry throat. “You know—the rest of your kind—” he wondered if they really qualified as “his kind,” but barreled onward—“they don't speak…physically…anymore.”

The gryphon blinked, eyelids casting patches of darkness over the golden sun-glow of its irises. “Fled entirely into telepathy, then? How odd.”

A knock at the door set the pup barking madly again, spiking panic through Vidarian's veins. He stood and scooped the pup up in his arms, where it shocked him by accident, and then filled his mind with abject apologies. When he finally managed to convince it to stop barking—it shocked him twice more, but the jolts were decidedly losing force now, thank fortune—he turned back to the Starhunter and her gryphon.

But they were gone.

Get rid of him, the Starhunter said, and a shadow on the far wall moved, a slender hand making a very impolite gesture at the door.

Moving sideways, Vidarian shoved the pup under one arm—another shock, but a weak one—and opened the door just a hand's-breadth with the other.

A young man with nut-brown hair and eyes looked back at him, first hesitantly, then with mustering courage. “Are you Vidarian Rulorat?”

“I am,” Vidarian said.

The boy stepped into the room without invitation, and Vidarian was so surprised—and so intent on making sure he didn't stumble into the pup's spines—that he took a step backward and let him in before he quite realized it.

Now you've done it, the Starhunter tsked.

“My name is Farian Reyali,” the boy said, and a little chill sparked in Vidarian's heart. His oldest brother, lost to blood plague before Vidarian was born, had been named Farian. “Reyali” was almost familiar—a merchant family?

“What can I do for you?” Vidarian said, trying to maneuver the boy back around to the door.

“My father and grandfather belonged to the Court of Directors.” That explained the pain in his eyes, the barely controlled anger.

“I'm very sorry,” Vidarian said. And he was.

His father was three hundred and twenty-nine years old. Don't be.

“I'm their only heir,” Farian said. “They've put me in the new Court. I suppose I should thank you.” This last he said bitterly, and looked away as he said it.

The pup started to growl softly, and Vidarian turned again, placing himself between boy and animal. He summoned what little energy he had, and met Farian's gaze honestly, hoping to convince him of his regret, his own anguish. “If I could do anything to ease your pain, or make right the injury to your family, I would,” he said.

For a moment, he thought he'd gotten through, that he'd be able to put the boy off to another time. But just as hope appeared, it fled, and Farian's face clouded over again with sorrow and rage.

“When you opened that gate, you had no idea what you were unleashing on us,” he said, voice lifting with every word. “My family has lived and worked in the Imperial City for twelve generations. With my grandfathers gone, our guild secrets are gone with them! Some of those secrets kept people fed and clothed!”

He's becoming tedious now.

“Whether you think of it or not, people have died since the Opening, and more will die before long.”

Honestly. Very bored.

A cold sweat broke out across Vidarian's brow, which the boy interpreted as guilt and an invitation to sail into another diatribe.

Sensing the Starhunter's impatience, but unable to cut through the boy's anger with reason, Vidarian tried entreaty instead. “Please—you should go—”

“I will not go! I will not let you hide away under your cushions from the consequences of your actions—”

Vidarian couldn't help himself. He launched forward and grabbed the boy by his shirtfront and hauled him close. “You genuinely,” he said, through clenched teeth and fist, “have no idea about the consequences of my actions.”

Ding! Egg's done!

Wait— Vidarian thought, then no! as he felt the Starhunter rush forward. He threw his own energy against her, holding her back.

For half an instant it worked. His mind and body strained against the weight of her will, and his elemental self, a twisting column of angry, confused sea and fire energy, flared bright, stretching to its limits.

Yes, that's amusing. Also pointless.

Vidarian felt himself casually pushed to one side, an alien chill in the “hand” that moved him.

Before Vidarian's eyes, the young man's face twisted from rage to surprise, then fear. He opened his mouth to scream, but it was too late. The Starhunter had opened up a void in the boy's chest, and first it seared him with star-fire, burning him from the inside out. His body became ash, which collapsed toward the floor—and vanished before it could mar the rich blue carpet.

Vidarian staggered backward, covering his mouth out of reflex, sickened by what he'd just seen.

Aaaah, the Starhunter sighed happily.

He carefully drew one breath after another. By the tenth, he was reasonably sure he wouldn't be ill.

By the twentieth, he started to think about the implications of Farian's death.

“They're going to blame me for this,” he said quietly. “The boy has a prominent family.” He couldn't yet say had. Even now he shoved the memory of the boy's body melting to ash behind the wall of numbness that was all, at the moment, that was keeping him sane.

So not my problem, the Starhunter replied. But I see you're going to be mopey about this. Toodles!

The shadows on the wall vanished, lightening the room. Not quite believing they were gone, Vidarian set the pup down and staggered to the wall, placing a hand on its cool, papered surface. He lost track in moments of how long he remained there.

* Is she gone? * Ruby, who had been silent the entire time, now gave the impression that she was creeping out from a cave. Vidarian had never heard her so disturbed.

“Yes,” he said, sinking down the wall and cradling his head in his hands. The pup whined and nosed his leg, and he dropped a hand down, carefully, to stroke its forehead.

* That's what you had in your head, all that time? * Now she was tentative, apologetic—also new.

“All that time.” He lacked the strength to do more than repeat her words. And before she could answer, he slipped, unknowing, into sleep, there on the plush carpet, the pup curled up at his feet.


Pain woke him.

A pounding headache dragged Vidarian from restless sleep. Opening his eyes made things much worse, so he closed them again, and clenched his teeth against the sear of agony that shot through his arms and legs.

Once the surge of red faded from behind his eyes, he cracked them open cautiously again, while pushing himself to a seated position.

Gingerly, and without quite knowing why, he reached out with his elemental senses—then immediately drew back as pain lashed him again. His subconscious fears were confirmed; he'd overreached, trying to resist the Starhunter's attack last night, and now those parts of his mind that controlled the magic were paying the price. He throttled them down, let go of the unconscious hold he kept on his abilities, and some of the pain dulled enough for him to think, if not clearly.

Gradually the room came into focus. First, the pup was staring at him, his white-tipped ears pointed up and forward. Vidarian leaned out to pet him, and as pain roared in his head with the movement, the little wolf howled in sympathy.

Wearily he thought reassuring thoughts at the pup, which seemed to calm him down, then took a quick breath and levered himself to his feet all at once.

This time he was ready for the wave of black dizziness and did not stagger, and the pup whined rather than howling. His sight came back in patches, and with it, rational thought, beneath the layer of still-throbbing complaint from his entire body. Given the soft morning light filtering through the expensive curtains, enough time had passed that the pup should have rendered the rooms a disaster area, from hunger or any assortment of physical needs.

There was no such disaster. In fact, a sniff of the air revealed a faint aroma of mint and lemons. The polished stone floor of the water chamber across from the bedroom gleamed even at this distance, his clothes had been neatly folded and shelved in the wardrobe, and a small folding table had been set up with a steaming silver meal service discreetly placed at the foot of the bed. Vidarian's stomach growled at the sight of that last, and his feet took him there before he'd quite consciously decided to go.

He lifted the engraved silver cloche to find a robust morning meal of thick toast, oatmeal porridge, dried fruits, and piping hot kava. Accompanying the breakfast was a plate of finely minced raw meat and a small porcelain jar of pungent hangover remedy. Vidarian realized with a flush of embarrassment that a servant must have come to clean his room, seen him sprawled in the antechamber, and naturally assumed the cause.

Nevertheless, the remedy jar, packed with willow bark and arrowmenthe, was as good for headaches as for hangovers, and he swallowed its contents down gamely, quickly chasing the blindingly bitter flavor with a gulp of kava.

* One imagines they keep quite a few of those little jars on hand around here, * Ruby observed dryly. It seemed her newfound humility in the face of the chaos goddess would be short-lived.

Instead of answering her, Vidarian set the plate of meat on the floor for the pup, who had been noisily salivating from the moment the breakfast tray was unveiled. Before the plate touched down, he was already greedily gulping down mouthfuls of meat, and in moments had devoured all and licked the plate clean. He then looked back up at Vidarian, wide blue eyes expectant, tongue lolling.

Vidarian reached for his spoon and the pup whined, very softly, beseeching. With a sigh, Vidarian instead picked up one of the thick, butter-slathered pieces of toast, and was rewarded by a frantically thumping tail. He handed it to the pup, who took it delicately between his incisors, and trotted off to chew with great contemplation beneath the shelter of the sitting room's small writing desk.

“You need a name,” Vidarian told the pup. White-tufted ears swiveled toward him, but the rest of the pup's concentration remained on his toast.

* Pest, * Ruby offered. * Mistake. Death-wish. Dirt. *

“That's just mean,” Vidarian said. He took up the bowl of oatmeal, dropped a handful of dried fruit into it, and sat on the edge of the bed to eat. Between the arrowmenthe, the food, and the kava, he was shortly feeling more human again, though his muscles still complained from the unceremonious night on the floor.

* He's colored like old firewood, or ash, * Ruby offered grudgingly.

“Ash,” Vidarian said to himself, trying out the word, and suddenly the events of last night came pouring back into his mind. After swirling there for several moments they dropped like iron weights into his stomach, and he set aside what remained of the oatmeal.

The pup looked up at his distress and whined again, softly. He'd finished his toast, and after licking his paws and the carpet clean of crumbs came to settle at Vidarian's feet. Swimming out of his mental paralysis, Vidarian noted that the pup was quite a bit larger than he had been when he'd first found him, perhaps even twice as large.

When he'd found him. When he and Altair had killed the pup's pack. For an instant he fell into bleak self-pity: could he get nothing right? Was it his destiny to bring about destruction?

The pup whined again, deep in his throat. He lifted his head and rested his chin on Vidarian's knee, looking up with soulful cerulean eyes.

“Rai,” Vidarian said softly, and the pup—Rai—thumped his tail.

* ‘Blue’? * Ruby asked. * Is that Old Alorean? *

“Yes,” Vidarian agreed, reaching down to scratch the pup between his ears. “And ‘lightning’ in Qui, if I'm not mistaken.”

* It means ‘trust’ in Rikani. *

Vidarian blinked. “I didn't know you spoke any Rikani.”

* I didn't know I did either. *

Before he could press to discover whether she was joking or serious, a knock on the door startled him to his feet. He nearly knocked over the breakfast tray in the process, and the pup barked and rushed toward the door.

Deeply conscious of his rumpled appearance, Vidarian took a last swallow of kava and crossed the room. He pushed Rai to one side, glaring a warning against further barks, and opened the door.

A black-liveried messenger bearing the crest of the Alorean Import Company waited outside, his neatly oiled hair gleaming and accentuating the look of deep disapproval he gave Vidarian's rumpled attire. He made a token effort to mask his sigh, and said, “Captain Rulorat, my master requests the gift of your presence at luncheon today, to discuss certain matters of mutual concern.”

Despite the man's attitude and clear assumption of compliance, the ice that shot down Vidarian's spine prevented him from even attempting defiance. Surely this “master” wished to discuss Farian's disappearance. “Have I a few moments—to prepare?”

The messenger eyed Vidarian up and down, then raised an eyebrow. “Take your time. The master takes luncheon in the Arboretum. Two marks.” Then, without waiting for dismissal, he turned—almost lazily!—on his heel and left.

Two marks was long enough for Vidarian to scrub himself clean, severely trim his unruly beard, and throw himself into a set of clothes. What he'd found in the wardrobe was a mix of formal and working-wear, and the neckerchief he'd selected seemed uncomfortably tight no matter how he adjusted it.

When he asked passing servants for directions to the Arboretum, the looks they gave him, as though he knew something he shouldn't, further added to his discomfort. By the time he turned down the last hallway, with scant moments to spare, he was sweating, and not from exertion.

The doors to the Arboretum were of heavy cast iron, cold to the touch. Despite their size, they opened easily on well-oiled mechanical hinges—and brilliant sunlight poured through them, blinding.

Gradually his eyes adjusted, and he shifted his hand, which he'd brought up to shade them without thinking. As details began to resolve, he caught the silhouettes of tall, slender trees flanking sand-floored pathways, cast-iron benches, a bubbling fountain. Tiny birds too fast to identify flickered from tree to tree, their calls echoing.

As his eyes traveled upward, adjusting even more to the light, a chill rippled through his veins—for although there was sunlight, they were not outside. The glass panels that formed an octagonal ceiling far above also reflected diamond-white light that shone from a sphere hanging at their center.

“Astonishing, isn't it?” The voice behind him was muffled but close, and when he spun to confront it, heart hammering, he drew back without thinking. Painted eyebrows and a serenely smiling mouth looked back at him from a white porcelain mask, its eye sockets set with blue glass that hid even the wearer's eye color. The masked face tilted upward at the sun-sphere, then returned. “It ignited when you opened the gate, and as you can see…” he gestured eloquently with a black-gloved hand, “…the gardens have quite overgrown.”

In his awe at the sun-sphere, Vidarian in fact hadn't noticed, but the masked man was right; vegetation spilled out of alabaster pots and carved stone beds, spread across sanded paths, and climbed the walls overhead.

“All will be attended to in time,” the muffled voice added, and in its diction Vidarian almost recognized it, a memory that darted away as soon as he grasped after it…“But such details can wait. I did invite you to dine, after all.” He could hear the genuine smile beneath the painted one, which unsettled him all over again.

Vidarian followed as his host led the way down one of the many branching paths, and they wove through sprawling vegetation until he utterly lost his tenuous sense of palace direction. It didn't seem possible that the room could contain so many twists and turns; the lush greenery must have made it seem smaller than it actually was.

They came upon a table draped with white linen, striking in the shaded vegetation. Glowing blue lights accompanied elegant silverware and glass dishes, providing light here where the tree canopy all but blocked out the artificial sunlight.

Without ceremony, his host—still masked—sat down and began lifting lids and serving out portions of food onto two plates. Aromatic mashed hornroot with peppery rockthistle seeds was joined by a savory lamb curry and chopped watercress and almond salad; the man apparently had a taste for Ishmanti delicacies. A dainty silver tray of imported sweetmeats confirmed this, as did the deep red tea served with the meal.

All this was carried out nearly before Vidarian could take his seat, and so shortly his host was lifting his spoon—then: “Ah,” again the real smile beneath the painted one—and he cupped the mask with his left hand and pulled it free.

At first Vidarian stared at the man's face without recognition. His white hair and lined face, pale blue eyes that were almost gray—but then, a hint of agelessness, especially when he gave that superior smile, as he did now—

“Justinian,” Vidarian said, so quiet he barely heard himself.

His host smiled again, droll this time, almost bored, agreeing. He gestured with a gloved hand, encouraging Vidarian to continue.

The man's smug satisfaction lit ire in Vidarian's heart, but his astonishment, and accompanying curiosity, still won out. “Oneira—the emperor!—they said you were dead. And you're…”

“Old?” Justinian offered, and now his irritating smile was reptilian. He jovially spooned up a mouthful of hornroot and gravy, ate it, and pointed the spoon at Vidarian. “But not dead. And that's the trick, isn't it?”

“You must have been—”

He waved the spoon again. “Six hundred and twenty-nine. Yes. Still am, actually.” He dug into the curry this time, mocking Vidarian's lack of appetite with his elaborate flairs of the spoon. “You're wondering how I survived. It's fairly simple. Your little adventure did not eliminate healing magic, merely—severely—dampened it. I simply ensured I had sufficient concert-trained healers in my employ to offset the damage.”

Vidarian took up his porcelain teacup and drank, taking courage from the hot liquid and trying to rally his senses. Justinian was showing a remarkable lack of desire to kill him. “And the rest of the Court?”

“Certifiably deceased, I assure you. A regrettable price, but so many prices have been paid, it hardly seems fair for the Court of Directors to be spared, don't you think?” Even for a Company man, this last was too glib, and it raised Vidarian's hackles.

“And your fellow directors—did they know about this ‘price’?”

“The directors were unified behind the cause of moving our world into its next great stage,” Justinian said. By now he had cleaned his plate; Vidarian's remained untouched.

“You didn't answer my question.”

Justinian's pale eyes suddenly became flat and serious. “Let's not be naive, sirrah. Truth be told you did me a great favor, upending the Court like that. And I know my compatriots,” his lip curled, ever so slightly, but the harshness in his voice was almost a kind of regret. “I held knowledge they did not, and I won our little gamble of world-changing events. They lost, and I am due the spoils. Things are as they should be.”

“And now?” Vidarian gestured with his teacup at the porcelain mask.

The look that came over Justinian then was part cleverness, part victory, and part ecstasy: a wild kind that he had last seen in those who claimed to follow the chaos goddess. Destruction inevitably resulted. “Now—I have ascended.” He wiped his fingers on a linen napkin and took up the mask again, tracing its painted eyebrows. “Our world is in shift, and these shifts have always seen the Company at its best. Now, though—” he cradled the mask between his two hands, running his thumbs along its cheeks as if to smooth it. “Now we wield the power to shape an entire age.” He looked up. “An age in which you play an important role, Vidarian.”

Even as he knew the familiarity of his given name was meant to agitate him, Vidarian had to work to contain the swell of outrage that lit in his chest. He stared at Justinian, and said nothing.

“Do you know why elemental magic faded from the world, until you opened the gate, Vidarian?” Justinian's voice was quiet, and still he looked at the mask, not across the table.

“The absence of the Starhunter—” Vidarian began, but knew his uncertainty to be obvious. None of the priestesses, or the gryphons, had ever answered that question.

Justinian shook his head ever so slightly, but enough to interrupt. “Population,” he said, and now he looked up, lifting the mask to point at the overgrown greenery. “Human populations. Gryphon populations. Sentient populations—growing, thriving—blocking out the light.” He looked back at Vidarian, and his eyes, old, but too young for the thoughts behind them, were piercing. “The Starhunter opens up the elements, channels energy between them, refreshes them—but only for a while. She is not a solution.”

Vidarian pushed himself to his feet, suddenly aware of where Company logic would lead this line of thought. He wanted no part of it.

But Justinian rose also, smoothly, as if he'd intended to all along. “Imagine a world without suffering,” he said, reaching across the table to pick up one of the glowing blue lights. He set it behind the porcelain mask, causing eerie blue light to pour from its glass eyes. “Imagine this garden, properly pruned, where sunlight touches every leaf, and every plant flowers and fruits.”

A dull rumble sounded from the ground below their feet, and Vidarian jerked, looking for its source. When he returned his attention to Justinian, the man was smiling again—and holding out his hand to an adjacent alcove.

“Right on time,” Justinian said, and started in that direction. “Follow me.”