Lance of Earth and Sky

The camouflage spell on Gryphonslair came down, and humans, gryphons, and seridi streamed from the tents there toward the Qui-Alorean prison camp. They carried food, blankets, clothing, casks of water—and before them rode Ariadel, Vidarian beside her, Raven's firebird shape revealing long, jewel-taloned legs that made her almost as fast on the ground as in the air.

Prison guards, grizzled mercenaries in Alorean Import Company uniforms, took one look at Rai and Raven and quickly abandoned any heroism they might have been considering. There was no Company official present, and so none to be the wiser when they went so far as to open the gates before them.

Even with the gates open, Rai went one better: he brought his spiked tail around in a punishing lash, crushing the gate to splinters. Behind them, the Gryphonslair resistance raised up a cheer.

The imprisoned Qui-descended—and not just Qui, but those of mixed blood alongside Rikani, pale Ishmanti, and even Maresh unfortunate enough to have been mistaken for Qui by the Aloreans—looked at the gate blankly, thoughts hidden behind masks of suffering. They turned to each other, waiting for someone to emerge; waiting to see if their release was another kind of trap.

Raven crouched, and Ariadel slid down from her back, rubbing the bird's dark beak as she descended. As soon as she had touched down and steadied herself, Raven melted down into her cat shape and leapt into Ariadel's arms, then climbed up to her shoulder, all of which sent murmurs through the gathering Qui. She walked toward them, searching their faces, and Vidarian watched her, his heart in his throat. As quietly as he could, he slid down from Rai's shoulder, dropping to the ground.

“Aloreans,” Ariadel called, stridently calling them by their nationality, not their descent; her voice cracked once, then came through stronger. “You have been imprisoned here by the Alorean Import Company, which acted without the authority of the emperor.” At this another murmur passed through the group, and more than one face was streaked with tears. “There will be justice for your capture! I promise you this!” Her voice rose, shaking but strong. “We will return you to your homes, and bring food and supplies so that you might recover for the journey. Heal, and be free.”

Healers and gryphon-wards bearing water, food, and blankets filtered into the crowd, distributing their goods to first hesitant and then grateful prisoners. Children materialized, brought from hiding places and pushed forward toward the food and water, their faces hollow and smudged with dirt.

It was a familiar voice that turned his head toward faces that at first were unrecognizable. A thin woman was nudging a younger girl before her toward a gryphon-ward laden with baskets of bread, and it wasn't until she spoke again, encouraging the child, that Vidarian recognized her.

“Ellara!” he called, running toward them. When their faces turned, blank and uncomprehending, he thought he'd been mistaken, but then they lit with recognition. Lifan and Ellara ran to meet him, and he knelt so that the young windreader could throw her arms around his neck. He embraced her, his heart sinking as his hands touched protruding shoulder-blades, a prominent spine; his teeth clenched, fury so raw that it misted his eyes with blackness in waves.

Carefully, Vidarian stood, wrapping his arm around Ellara as well, though with more surprise. “Ellara, how…?”

Lifan was half Qui, her heritage written on her black glossy hair and fine cheekbones, but Ellara was not. They were cousins, and, though Ellara was also dark of hair, even the most ignorant Company-man could not have mistaken her blue eyes and faintly freckled skin for Qui. Her jaw firmed, standing out against her cheeks in her thinness. “I told them they could take me with her or they could answer a blade, and we all would die.” She spat, but weakly. “Bloody cowards.”

“Did you know about this place?” A healer shuffled by them, and he touched her arm, then took an herbal tincture from the tray she carried, a health tonic, and gave it to Lifan.

“No,” Ellara said, and her eyebrows contracted with the memory. “I thought we'd be detained in Val Harlon for a day, perhaps two…and then they loaded us all on carts bound for the desert. I would have attempted escape, but we saw them behead a young man who tried.” When Vidarian's eyes widened, she added quietly, “I've seen things, Captain, that'll turn your stomach more than that. We 'scaped the worst of it, but plenty didn't.”

“I've never known a braver soul,” Vidarian said, gripping her shoulder, and meant it. He wanted to stay with her, but Ariadel was weaving through the crowd, searching. A stream of refugees were now being led back toward Gryphonslair, and he pointed in their direction. “Go to the camp, they'll have hot food and more clothing. I'll find you there.” Ellara nodded, first following his glance to Ariadel, then looking back at him with a surprised smile, before pressing her hand to Lifan's back to guide her toward the line.

When he touched Ariadel's arm, she turned quickly, hope in her eyes that dimmed when she saw him, though the swiftness of her embrace took any sting out of it. Once more he carefully drew his arms around her, careful both of her body and Raven, who still curled protectively around her shoulders. She turned again, searching, and he followed her, one hand on her shoulder.

Beneath his fingers, her muscles tensed almost immediately, and she dashed ahead.

The crowd parted before her, giving way to a grey-haired woman whose eyes and oval face were nearly a mirror for Ariadel's. Like her companions, she was also terribly thin, her skin darkened to leather by the desert sun, but it dissolved into a welcome smile and no few tears as she caught sight of Ariadel.

The two women embraced, the elder exclaiming over Ariadel's condition, and Ariadel in turn interrogated her mother over her own health, stopping a passing healer for a restorative draught and pressing it into her hands. The older woman tried to wave it off, but Ariadel would not be deterred, and demanded she drink the entire vial then and there. She did so stubbornly, and as Ariadel explained what they had done, turned to Vidarian with an expression full of welcome.

“Lady Whitehammer,” Vidarian said, offering his hand to her. He'd learned her proper name this time, aiming not to repeat the embarrassing assumption with which he'd introduced himself to Ariadel's father assuming he bore Ariadel's surname.

“Len Tsai was my family's name,” the woman smiled, and Vidarian's heart sunk at the correction. “I called myself Whitehammer in Alorea in deference to Alorean culture. I will be using my Qui name from today.”

“It's a great honor to meet you,” Vidarian said. “Your daughter has moved heaven and earth to find you.”

She smiled even more widely, her eyes disappearing into wrinkles. “I am unsurprised.”

Back beyond the gate, Rai's head was peeking into the camp as he craned his long neck. He caught sight of Vidarian and gave a tiny yip of greeting that turned heads in his direction. Brother, he said, and Vidarian jumped, surprised he could hear the dragon's voice from so far away. There is a man here looking for you.

Vidarian turned back to Ariadel, who shooed him. “We'll manage,” she said. He thought of insisting on staying with her, but Rai yipped again, and she pushed at him. “Go! Don't be ridiculous!”

Reluctantly, he bowed over both of their hands, then turned to slip back through the crowd and to the gate. Rai's ears were down with apology, and he reminded himself not to be annoyed; the shapechanger could be terribly sensitive.

“I'm sorry to ask for you, Captain,” the messenger who awaited him said—a lean man, one of Marielle's sailors. “But we've captured an officer of the Alorean Import Company. Queen Marielle thought you should be present.”


Rai became his wolf self and followed, padding along at Vidarian's heels. And halfway to the Luminous, his tail started to wag.

It's over now, right? the Starhunter said. You're ready to help me?

“Still a bit busy,” Vidarian murmured, trying to avoid the attention of the messenger. Eventually, they reached the ship, and the sailor saluted and took his leave. Vidarian climbed down the main ladder and deliberately took a wrong turn, then two more, navigating to a remote part of the ship.

“All right,” he said, sighing. “I said I would help you.”

Great! It's about the other goddesses.

Vidarian's stomach sank. Chances were even she was about to ask for something proximate to a high mortality rate. “The other goddesses?” he asked. “They don't much like you. The two I've met, anyway.”

We-ell, that's the thing. I think the others might be gone.

“Siane?”

And Anake.

Of all of the elemental artifacts, the fire and water ones had been the easiest to recover. In fact, he wasn't even sure he'd seen a single earth artifact. It was distressing, now that he thought about it, in fact it made the skin on the back of his neck squirm, but he was hardly the one to investigate such a thing. “Why are you asking me this now?”

Because you can find them now, silly.

“What? How?”

Because of him, duh! She manifested a shadowy hand and waved it at Rai.

“Rai? How is he supposed to find the goddesses?”

You're impossible. She filled his head with another sigh, then twirled in a circle. When she stopped, her head was a pelican-gryphon's, specifically Arikaree's. ‘Being a lance of earth and sky,’ she said in the gryphon's voice.

Vidarian stared.

Oops, gotta go, she said. Those icy bastards never know when to quit.

And before he could ask what that meant, she was gone.


The relay room of the Luminous was full to bursting again, this time with two gryphons—Thalnarra and Meleaar—in addition to Marielle, Iridan, Khalesh, Isri, and Endera. It was an unlikely council, gryphons and fire priestess and sea queen and miraculous machine—but Vidarian was surprised at the swelling of pride and gratitude he felt upon seeing them there around the glowing relay sphere. The captured officer sat bound in an ornate chair at the front of the room, an empty wall behind him. Despite the expensive scented oil in his hair and the fine weave of his white shirt and black coat, he was naturally young, not one of the merchant princes who extended their lives with healing magic. With a spark of disgust Vidarian realized that no one even close to the directors would have risked themselves on the front line—save Justinian, who had trusted his safety to the automaton Veda and escaped.

Meleaar, however, was an unexpected addition, and when Vidarian took his seat and looked between the eagle-gryphon and Thalnarra, the latter explained:

// Meleaar is one of seven currently known gryphons in the world to be possessed of what our ancestors called a ‘mindlink.’ He is an exceptionally powerful telepath, but beyond that, mindlinks can speak with any other gryphon bearing the mindlink no matter where they are located. Through our mindlinks, gryphon societies have been able to keep a single connected mother culture for thousands of years. Gryphonslair is deeply fortunate to have him. //

At her words, Meleaar gave an almost sheepish nod of his beak, and Vidarian looked closely at him, reevaluating all of their conversations.

// Obnoxious, isn't it? // Thalnarra continued, when stunned silence answered her, // Brawn, beauty, and an exceptionally rare talent. // Then, privately to Vidarian: // You didn't think we kept him around just because he's pretty, did you? //

Actually, I did, he thought back at her, not knowing if she would hear, but she, Meleaar, and Malloray all chuckled.

“Continue with your story, sirrah,” Marielle said, idly spinning a curved sharkskin-handled knife by its pointed tip on the table. The lacquer would be the worse for it, but it had the desired effect on the officer, who swallowed.

“I've never seen the device myself, obviously,” he said, stretching for arrogance and reaching only awkwardness with his wrists bound behind him. “I've seen diagrams. If you bring me parchment…?” He eyed the stack of paper at the empty secretary's place at the table.

“Why should we believe you?”

The officer sputtered, a single hopeless note that ended in a shake of his head. “Why not? They won't come back for me. I'm as good as a fugitive now.” He tilted his head to one side. “And if I give you what you want, you'll remember and reward me.”

“Don't be so sure,” Marielle said dryly, spinning the knife again.

The rest of them exchanged looks, and Isri leaned forward, staring at the man. She stood and approached him, picking up a sheet of the paper and a wrapped stick of charcoal beside it. The officer beamed, twisting in his chair to bring his wrists toward her, but she gently shook her head. When she reached him, she placed her left hand on his forehead and took up the stylus with her right. “Imagine it,” she said.

Flummoxed and flushing from it, the man looked about to reply, then took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said.

They both closed their eyes, and Isri's charcoal began to move, tracing a diagram of an elemental device onto the parchment. Gradually it began to emerge: tubes and crystal spheres and elemental gems, as well as a marking that indicated placing a strap from it around the arm of a seated human. Isri drew for several minutes, setting down one line and then another, erasing yet another line and redrawing it with a swipe of her pencil.

At last the charcoal stopped, and Isri set it aside, nudging the parchment across the table to Khalesh. The big man accepted the parchment, then turned it around twice, looking at it from one angle after another.

“Mothers protect us,” Khalesh whispered. Vidarian wanted to ask him what on earth he meant, but his eyes were riveted to the page. “If this is right—these two devices together could be used to wipe out an entire race. Or more than one race.”

The table erupted in intense conversation. It went on for several moments before Marielle banged on the table with the lapis pommel of her knife. “Come now!” she chided them. “But aye, Khalesh, I admit I'd like to know what you mean by that. What do you mean by ‘race’? Which two devices? And destroy them how?”

Khalesh spun the parchment on the table, pushing it toward them. He indicated two spherelike devices on it, each dotted with holes. “You see these? They're relay spheres.” He tapped three more points. “And an elemental triangulation system. They've bridged two known devices.” And then the strap. “This connects to a given person's essence.”

They all continued to stare at him, and he tapped the parchment hard with a huge forefinger. “This is a location device, a finder, but with this kind of power, it's meant to find not just one other person, but every person who is like the person they connect to it. Or,” he looked to Isri and then Thalnarra, misery heavy in his eyes. “Species, I think. If the species is nonhuman.” Silence fell again, and he jabbed the parchment once more. “Don't you see? The only reason you would have for locating every single member of an entire species is to attach a weapon to this device, which they appear to have modified it to create.” He indicated another part of it.

// And they have this device already? // Thalnarra said, skeptical. // Why haven't they used it? //

“They don't have it yet,” the officer said. “But they know how to build it. They're missing some of the parts. I don't know which.”

“Ariadel said the rumors were they were going to test a weapon on the prison camp.” Marielle said, her voice harsh with dismay.

Vidarian rested his forehead in his hands. “And Tepeki feared something exactly like this. A killing weapon that could annihilate his entire clan.” When he raised his head again, he looked around the table, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “We need to get to it before they do.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Endera asked.

“We ask the entire empire. Both empires,” he added. “We use what they don't have—numbers.” Pushing himself to his feet, Vidarian circled the table, taking up a pair of relay glasses. “Malloray, Iridan, Meleaar—can you make this sphere reach every relay sphere on the continent?”

Man, gryphon, and automaton exchanged glances, measuring. They were silent for several long moments, and then Iridan nodded. “We can.” He placed a polished brass hand on the relay sphere in the center of the table, and Vidarian's glasses began to glow. Malloray joined him, closing his eyes.

“At your leisure,” Iridan said at last.

“Citizens of Alorea,” Vidarian said, willing strength into his voice, reaching into his memories of Lirien's imperial addresses. “Citizens of the world. Most of you do not know my name. Neither do you know the names of the men and women who have taken it upon themselves to decide the fate of our world in secret, to seize power and destroy entire populations for their own gain, to rule in small numbers over an enslaved people unfortunate enough to be born without wealth. You do not know the names of the imperial citizens that the Alorean Import Company imprisoned against their will, leaving them in the southern desert to die.” He paused then, knowing every moment of silence across the sphere would seem an eternity, but needing to gather his thoughts.

“A great shadow is upon us,” he continued, looking into the sphere. “We will need every hand, every eye. The time for division is over. A new age is upon us, one in which we must decide whether we choose a life tailored to a chosen few, or a life that can sustain, a life where people across Andovar can live in peace with one another, not as all-powerful bearers of force, but as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, human and gryphon and seridi and shapechanger. I ask you to look beyond the barriers that separate us and look to each other, for strength and healing in our changing world.

“Will you join me?”



What an amazing and strange year this has been.

Sword of Fire and Sea appeared in June 2011, and, like its predecessor, this book owes its existence to a cast of many at Pyr: Lou Anders, editorial director (2011 winner of the Hugo Award for long-form editing!); Catherine Roberts-Abel, Jacqueline Cooke (art department), Jade Zora Ballard, and Bruce Carle in production; Jill Maxick in publicity and Lisa Michalski in marketing. I'd also like to thank Steven L. Mitchell, editor in chief, Jon Kurtz, president, and the rest of the fine folk at Prometheus Books, for continuing to fan the flames. Beyond Pyr, Gabrielle Harbowy lends her eagle-gryphon-like copyediting eye, and Dehong He honors us with yet another amazing cover.

This book is dedicated to my grandparents: Nellie and Harry, whom I did not know but whose influence permeates and sustains my father's family today, and Dorothy Lee and Masato Asakawa. I am incredibly lucky to have grown up knowing grandparents who were not only strong and loving, but truly heroic. My grandfather grew up on a pier (literally on a pier; there are photos) in San Diego, and in 1942 at age sixteen was sent to the Japanese Internment Camp in Poston, Arizona. While it would be easy for the events of the next several years to calcify a person's life, it is my grandparents' reaction in the decades following that define them to me as heroes: an absence of bitterness, a joy in life, and a deep knowledge that we are every day responsible for creating and fighting for the society that we live in. I inherit from them a good part of my overactive sense of justice and a lifetime of inspiration.

Lastly, of course, my husband Jay was instrumental in my surviving the writing of this book. The perils of a second book are many, but that's a story for another time (and another place: say, erinhoffman.com?).

Some of you joined the journey early on, and, as promised, I'd like to thank you here. What follows is the list of the first one hundred members of the World of Andovar page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/andovar.world). As of the writing of this author's note, the page's membership is at 2,135, and by the time you read this hopefully it will have continued to grow. Thank you all for joining the great gryphon cause of 2011…and beyond!