Lance of Earth and Sky

The Starscape was massive and slow to turn, even as a skyship, being a stocky imperial titan and not one of the agile, fast frigates favored by pirates, like the Viere d'Inar. She was a long time coming around, long enough that the Knife and the Sunray loosed multiple volleys, tearing the wide wingsails and snapping the leading edge off of the great keel-mast that kept the ship balanced. The frigate might have them on crew and armament, but she was headless, likely in disarray.

Vidarian thought it was going quite well, and then the firepipes opened.

Shuttered doors like square gunports opened near the base of the hull, below where a sea-going ship's waterline would be, giving way to long metal tubes, also like cannon but narrower. From these slim pipes poured fountains of fire, raining down on the ships below.

The Sunray was too close, and fire cut across her nose. Bright as it was, it incandesced even more brightly to Vidarian's vision, burning against his elemental sight. It did not explode on contact, for which he thanked every goddess there was, but it seared and consumed, melting through the Sunray's deck like hot water through snow.

When imperial ships had fought the Qui off Isrinvale, they'd had cannonballs treated or forged with elemental fire energy inside them, weapons Thalnarra had called “fireshot.” This was a completely different kind of weapon, somehow a flowing liquid that contained condensed fire energy, energy that was angry and charged—fire that hungered.

Plumes of steam poured up from the seared hull of the Sunray as the liquid fire met the surface of the ocean. With a sickening lurch Vidarian realized that this meant it had eaten through the entire face of the ship. With that realization came confirmation, as the Sunray took on water and began to dip downward from the fore.

Men and women swarmed across the decks of both Sea Kingdom ships. The Kadari Knife was coming around, heeling hard to port in an attempt to bring its rail close enough to rescue leaping sailors abandoning the Sunray. The two young captains shouted encouragement to their crew, brandishing their swords at the looming Starscape high above them in a spectacular dearth of any self-preservation.

The streams of fire had stopped, but the Starscape was turning in an arc, readying itself for another deadly pass.

Vidarian turned to the controls of the little skiff, searching through the cryptic markers that were ancient indicators of the strength of the elemental power source. From the slow speed with which it had ascended, he extrapolated how many sailors it might hold—how many he might rescue from either ship. By his quick calculations, the answer was not nearly enough.

The Starscape had nearly made her turn, and the other two skyships were tipping into position to unleash their cannon on the Sea Kingdom ships. If either of them had fireshot, the Knife would be lucky to last minutes.

Vidarian looked up again, desperately gauging the distance between the sea ships and the belly of the Starscape. Then, before he could remind himself that it was completely insane, he thrust his entire awareness down into the ocean.

Cold shocked him first, followed by a rush of water energy, the electric tang of salt and the cataclysmic depth that only the open ocean could provide. Voices filled his mind, distant, indecipherable—thousands of voices echoing throughout the sea. A tiny part of him that remained Vidarian wondered who they were, and why he had never heard them before. He tried to call out to them, but his voice only echoed, swallowed up by wave and sea life.

Other parts of him darted away, and he began to lose his grip on himself and his consciousness. The bits that were Vidarian spilled away like grains of sand, dancing through the sea. He strained so hard after them that, far away, hanging in the sky, his body gasped, his chest compressing. And this pulled him back, helped him draw a line around the bits that were him and push away the seeming-infinite bits that were not.

When he had circled himself, he reached out to grip the ocean itself, and pulled.

Vidarian opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed and nearly fell to the deck in a rush of doubled vision and nausea. He closed his eyes again, gritted his teeth, and pulled harder, lifting the sea itself. He reached deep into the heart of the water, down as far as he could go, and then farther.

And the sea rose. It climbed into the sky like the top of a bell, curving upward and taking the sea ships with it.

The weight was enormous, stretching Vidarian to his limits. And at the heart of his being, his fire magic curled like a venomous snake, a parasitic worm, eating away at his spirit with flame and tooth now that he was consumed by water.

He continued to lift, blinking as sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes. He hoped that the Knife and even the Sunray had enough sense to train their cannon on the imperial ships as Vidarian pulled them into range.

They did. Cannonfire sounded, plumes of black smoke climbed into the air; high above, wood shattered and sailors cried out as holes opened up on the Starscape and the other two ships.

The echo of the cannonfire pushed the Sea Kingdom ships against the upward-curving sea—and Vidarian lost his grip.

All at once the ocean slipped away from him, sliding through his “hands” like wet silk rope. The sea began to churn and roar as he accidentally set it free, and he flailed after it, but it was too late. Already resenting being held even for a moment, the water churned, and high above, storm clouds closed in over the battle.

They all sank back to the natural surface of the water, Vidarian exhausted beyond thought and falling to the deck of the skiff. The shadow of the Starscape passed over them, and Vidarian prepared to meet death.

As the sea ships tipped up and down in the water, the Sunray more than half sunk below the green waves, a bugle call sounded, high and far, from the sky to the south.

Gathering mist parted, and the white sails of the Luminous, spread like bird's wings, its keel-mast an elegant tail, swept toward them, one of the most welcome sights of Vidarian's life. Around the ship were Caladan and his handful of Sky Knights, an honor guard for Lirien. And behind them—

Behind the Luminous, its new wing-masts bright in the morning sunlight, supple steel and translucent airsilk, was, impossibly, the Viere d'Inar.

As the fast frigate of Vidarian's childhood drew closer—he could not see her without feeling a blow to his heart, for Ruby and for her mother before her, who would never see this strange and wonderful sight—the method of her flight revealed itself. Altair stood, legs braced and wings spread, atop the forecastle, winds of his own making spinning around him and lifting his feathers. In the center of the main deck, the tube and clockwork device Vidarian had seen earlier glowed like a great blue beacon, and all of the gryphon's attention was centered on it, keeping them aloft.

Even as it advanced, the Viere started to turn, bringing its wide body around to present its gunport-studded side to the Starscape. It opened fire, and the sound shattered the air, knocking Vidarian off his feet.

More holes opened up in the now-overmatched Starscape, and this time sailors spilled from them, plummeting toward the water. Though Altair was bound to the Viere, another gryphon leapt from the rail—Thalnarra—arrowing out over the water and then angling around an updraft, carrying herself high and fast. She proceeded to harry the Starscape's surviving crew, lashing out with lances of fire energy even as she swooped and dove, pulling men from the rigging and dropping them into the sea.

Relieved, Vidarian pointed the skiff toward the Luminous and laid on its power, sending them scudding through the air toward the relay ship.

Cannons tore the air as he sped for the Luminous, the Viere opening with all guns on the three ships. A great shadow slanted across the sea as the Starscape tilted to port in the sky, its wing-mast snapped in half on that side. The two other ships returned fire, but chaotically, thrown into disarray by the looming collapse of their flagship.

Vidarian had just pulled upon the Luminous, rising along her starboard hull, when the ripples hit him.

He dove to the deck, pulling Rai down with him. The hammer of water energy preceded by the rippling warning tore through the skiff's single mast, snapping it and slamming them into the hull of the Luminous. Rai screeched, leaping upward, throwing out his wings, and Vidarian was lifted off his feet, carried upward.

The skiff fell beneath them, cracking its keel as it bounced off of the larger ship, and Rai's wings were pumping, lifting them into the air. Panic had given him strength, but after two wingbeats he began to falter, not strong enough to carry Vidarian's weight. Despite the long fall that awaited, Vidarian prepared to push himself away from Rai, to save him from being pulled down with him.

Rai snarled, not with anger, but determination, hissing Stay! into Vidarian's mind, mimicking a command Vidarian had often given him, and renewed his desperate wingbeats, throwing himself—and Vidarian with him—at the Luminous. Even as his wings worked, he reached out with his forepaws, swiping at the wooden hull with claws extended. They sank into the wood, but Rai kept moving, clawing his way upward with Vidarian clinging to his neck.

Light poured into their eyes as they reached the top of the rail. Rai curled his paws around the beam, kicking furiously with his hind legs to push them the rest of the way. In a tumble they rolled onto the deck, and Vidarian pressed the sanded wood with his hands, breathing deep to calm his pounding heart. Rai stood over him, claws sunk into the deck as if he expected it to fall out from beneath them, his tail lashing. When Vidarian looked up, Rai lowered his head and licked Vidarian's cheek with a large sandpaper tongue. Vidarian reached up to bury his hand in the thick fur of the underside of the cat's neck.

A crash followed by shouts split the air, and Rai hissed again, crouching. Vidarian pushed himself to his feet and went to the rail, searching.

Another fist of wild water energy—seawater pulled up from the still-rolling ocean—had thundered into the Viere d'Inar, tearing a wide hole in its starboard wing-mast. The ship pitched to the side, and sailors yelled, sliding across the deck. Two of them rolled off the side, crying out in horror before their lifelines snapped taut, suspending them in the air.

Vidarian traced the residual water energy up into the air, expecting to see one of the imperial skyships. Instead, a seridi, only a silhouette against the gathering thunderheads, hovered there, her eyes unseeing as she turned and unleashed strike after strike of water energy.

Thalnarra landed beside them, breathing heavily with exertion. Patches of feathers were ragged, and blood flowed sluggishly from a shallow sword cut on her left flank. // She must have been drawn by your trick with the waves, // she said, gesturing with her beak to the seridi, then moving to the rail and looking down.

Below them, the Viere was angling unsteadily toward the water. She struck the sea with a boom that rippled the water's surface as far as the eye could see. Her lack of keel-mast now was an advantage as she took to the water and quickly reoriented.

Behind, from the aftcastle of the Luminous, Isri burst into flight, shedding her black cloak behind her as she took to the air. She flew directly toward the attacking seridi, reaching out with her hands as she flew.

The seridi turned toward her, crest raising with alarm. As the mad ones did, she seemed to see and not see her at the same time. It was clear that she saw something, but it was not Isri. Whatever she saw caused her to lift both hands and draw water from the sea so forcefully that it compressed Vidarian's chest even at this distance.

Isri continued hurtling toward her, even as another arm of water lifted itself from the sea. Sweat broke out over Vidarian's forehead as he watched, waiting. She was too far away, and her hold on the water too strong, for him to simply overpower her at this distance—he would have to wait until she released the water, and hope that he could deflect it in time.

When Isri saw the water, she turned in midair, and for a moment Vidarian hoped the strike would miss her entirely. But the other seridi tracked her with mad eyes, curving the water even as she released it.

Vidarian strained, reaching out to touch the flying water, hundreds of lengths away though it was. He almost touched it, and then his own fire sense roared up within him, even angrier than it had been before. It had become a living thing, almost its own consciousness, and snapped at him, eroding his grip.

A rolling growl sounded beside him, and he had no time to decipher whether it was anger or annoyance. But Thalnarra's own fire sense reached into him and crushed his, creating a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach, but freeing his water sense to knock the blast of seawater explosively to one side just before it reached Isri.

The two seridi collided in midair, the mad one—Treune, he could almost hear Isri saying—snarling like an animal and fighting Isri with fingers crooked into claws. But as soon as Isri touched her forehead, the other seridi fell limp.

Altair, watching the engagement from below, and now no longer needed in keeping the Viere aloft, leapt into the air, his wide wings a flash of white against the dark wood and sea. He flew arrow-swift toward the two seridi, reaching out with air magic to stop the unconscious one from falling. Isri fluttered, her wings strained, but the three of them soon glided toward the Luminous.

Though the arrival of the mad Treune seridi had distracted the imperial ships—she had struck blindly, and so had damaged one of the smaller ships in addition to striking the Viere and the Luminous—it had done little to pause their onslaught. Cannonfire still shook the air, and the Viere, once it settled on the sea, rejoined the fight, adding its thundering guns to the exchange.

Altair and Isri landed on the deck, gently setting the unconscious seridi down between them. Her feathers were an iridescent dark blue, streaked with black. A pair of medics ran across the deck from the forecastle, but Isri waved them away.

“Altair, my friend!” Vidarian lifted his hand, and Altair tiredly pressed his charcoal beak into it. “You have already done more than these ships could have imagined, but I must ask you—can you get me up there?” He pointed to the more intact of the three skyships, the smallest vessel that hovered to the rear.

Altair shook out his feathers, but nodded. // I can. // Then, without preamble, he lifted Vidarian into the air, just before leaping off the deck himself.

Coming too, Rai said, and leapt after them. It was strange to see him flying side by side with Altair. Vidarian knew he was big, but here he nearly matched the gryphon for length, if not for height or girth.

Now that he'd done this before, Vidarian liked to think he was a little better at balancing his body atop Altair's. It was not riding a gryphon, per se—he quailed to think of how Altair would respond to such an idea—but by flattening himself close to the gryphon's back and using his arms to balance, he could make the flying easier on his tired friend.

// Where shall I drop you? // Altair asked. A cannonball flew by them and he twitched his wing, swinging effortlessly out of the way, though sending Vidarian's heart convulsing.

“Near the prow,” Vidarian shouted over the wind. “Get us to the front, if you would. Then tell Malloray and Yerune to get the Luminous up next to us!”

They were coming fast upon the smallest of the three ships, though it was still larger than the Luminous herself. Altair brought them swiftly in, banking in a wide arc, and the ship loomed large before them. Tall letters on its side marked it the Argentium. Vidarian drew his arms and legs inward, preparing for a rolling landing, and his stomach gave a lurch as Altair's air touch released him. He hit the deck feetfirst and rolled, drawing his sword as he regained his legs. Beside him, Rai landed as well, snarling.

Sailors ran toward him, shouting, but both their shouts and their attacks were exhausted, demoralized. Vidarian shouted back at them: “Drop your weapons and surrender! I am Captain Vidarian Rulorat, and I act under the authority of your emperor, Lirien Aslaire!”

One of the men fired a musket at him, and he reached out with an arc of fire energy, which leapt snakelike at the flying ball, relishing being released at last. He brought the fire down in an arc, disrupting the curve of the shot and sending it flying aside into the deck. Rai snarled, advancing on the men, but one of the other sailors was already pulling the musket from his comrade's hands.

A blast of wind carried smoke into all of their faces, and they turned toward the port rail. Beyond it, and far below them, the Starscape had caught fire in earnest, and her sailors were losing their battle against the flames. It pitched even further toward the water, nose first, and sailors spilled out of it by the dozen.

The defending party of the Argentium threw down its swords, and Vidarian lowered the tip of his blade with relief. One of the sailors, a slender Ishmanti, pointed behind Vidarian and shouted.

Vidarian turned, dreading yet another unexpected enemy. But it was the Luminous, drawing upon the final ship remaining in the air and fighting. Caladan's Sky Knights flew out in front of them, surrounding the imperial ship.

The three ships were close, and at the prow of the Luminous Vidarian could easily recognize Lirien. The sailors of the Argentium recognized him too, and a murmur of shock and dismay rippled through them. A scuffle broke out toward the rear, as three of the sailors wrestled a sword out of the hands of a Company commander.

Lirien called out to the final ship, beseeching its sailors. “Men and women of the empire! Do not spend your lives so needlessly! Put down your weapons, and renew your loyalty to Alorea and its emperor!” Aboard the other ship, sailors turned, the tips of their swords dropping, incredulous as to what they were hearing, responding to the voice of their sovereign.

As Lirien drew breath to shout again, Tepeki came to stand beside him, waving to the other ship.

Vidarian only saw the flash of a blade, and then the knife's bone handle, protruding from Lirien's side.

Tepeki, the snarl on his face far older than his years, yanked the knife free—blood arced across the deck of the Luminous—then struck again, slicing across the emperor's stomach, then a third time, sinking the blade into his chest.

Rai leapt from the deck of the Argentium, roaring, wings spreading—and Vidarian, caught up in the strength of Rai's emotion again but not consumed by it, dropped his sword to the deck and leapt with him.

The sea opened up beneath them, hundreds of lengths below. Vidarian's heart flew into his throat, and he scrambled in midair toward Rai, even as he knew the big cat could not support both their weight. He drew breath to shout for Altair, but then, as his hands came down to grip the base of Rai's feathered wings, Rai began to change shape again.

The feathers beneath his hands flattened, hardened, spread. Before him Rai's neck stretched long, his striped spines growing even longer, protruding knifelike from a long, swanlike neck. His head was stretching too, along length and width, and a crown of horns erupted from his forehead. The cat's face narrowed, eyes stretching, and his skin everywhere had become rough, pebbled with scales.

Even as Vidarian clung to the now-broad back, leathery wings stretching three times as long as Thalnarra's to either side of him, Rai roared again, a bone-rattling reptilian sound, and dove at the Luminous.

The dragon's roar became a hiss, and the hiss became an explosion, a flash and a crackle as Rai discharged a bolt of lightning, this time very directed and deliberate, that struck the ship moments before his massive body crashed against it.

Tepeki blanched pale as soon as he saw Rai transform, dropping his knife to the deck. He flung himself over the rail, diving for the sea.

Rai pushed away from the Luminous, cracking wood with his claws, and dove after Tepeki, hurtling headfirst toward the water. As he fell, Tepeki changed, becoming the otter, dwindling in the air and darkening, far smaller than Rai's head alone.

The otter slipped into the water with hardly a splash, only moments before Rai struck down with a titanic one, his neck flailing and wings buffeting the surface as he scrambled after his small quarry. Vidarian fought to keep his seat, sliding on the scaled back, but able to wrap his legs around one of the huge spines that rose from Rai's back.

Furiously Rai thrust his head beneath the water, searching, but Tepeki was gone. The dragon roared, and electricity crackled from his body, arcing out across the water. Sailors that had fallen from the ships but survived in the sea now writhed, their bodies wracked by electricity.

“He's gone, Rai!” Vidarian shouted, now beyond shock, a numbness creeping through his entire body. He thumped at the dragon's shoulder, not knowing if, in this new shape, and in his state of rage, Rai would even recognize him.

The dragon's head whipped around, spines roused, hissing—

But when he saw Vidarian, he drew back, huge eyes clouding with confusion. He hesitated, then growled, a preternatural reptilian sound.

“Can you get us back to the Viere?” Vidarian asked. “Back to Marielle?”

Rai's head tipped down in a nod, and he flapped his wings, striking the water with each movement, but lifting them into the air. As had happened when he had first turned into the winged cat, he seemed to have trouble speaking, perhaps even trouble forming his own thoughts. This close to him, Vidarian felt the waves of grief, confusion, and fury that rolled off of him, and in moments his own cheeks were cold, chilled as the wind blew against the tears he did not know he was shedding.

Only the Viere was large enough to bear Rai's weight now, and even still the ship listed as he landed at the bow. The two gryphons were there, uncertainly taking in Rai's new shape, and so was Marielle. Malloray stood beside her, his face red with emotion; the Luminous had no doubt already relayed what had just happened.

“We've seized the remaining ship,” Marielle said. Her face, through the soot of the cannon battle, was tear-streaked. “Her crew put up a token resistance only.” As well they might, seeing their emperor, unexpected in the first place, cut down before them. “We don't dare return to Rivenwake,” she said. “With all this commotion, we'll be lucky if they don't find it as it is. We need to travel far, distract them.”

// We can lead you, // Altair said. The gryphon's exhausted mind-voice, pale as sawdust, turned all their heads toward him.

“To where?”

// To friends, // Thalnarra said, and Altair tipped his beak in a weary nod.