Lance of Earth and Sky

The next morning Ariadel was nowhere to be found. The camp was large, and the surrounding area even larger, more accommodating to a person who did not want to be found than to the one searching. His companions knew not to press him as Vidarian let the minutes of the morning slip away, but when the sun crested even the tallest trees surrounding the camp, and he had checked their supplies five times, he motioned for them to depart.

* I'm sorry, old friend, * Ruby said, with a quiet hollowness that reassured Vidarian in spite of his sadness. Her sympathy felt deep and real, less fractured than her earlier thoughts. He thanked her wordlessly as he headed for the skyship.

Alain, the messenger, had left at first light, aiming to get as far ahead of them as he could. “So they don't misinterpret the gryphons back home,” he'd said, giving Vidarian a chill, but certainly the old man and his horse would be glad enough to get some distance between themselves and the pride of giant predators.

Somewhat to his surprise, Isri had packed her own bag and was loading it into the Destiny.

“I hadn't thought to ask you to leave your people,” Vidarian said.

“And so you did not,” she replied, the tiny feathers around her beak lifting with mirth. When they settled again, her eyes were bright. “They are well equipped to attend to those still lost. With your help, we have already subdued the most dangerous of my brethren who remained within a day's flight. I do my people a greater service by meeting your emperor—if you will have me.”

“I am honored by your company, of course,” Vidarian said, with genuine relief. He insisted to himself that he had not come to rely on Isri, but the thought of her calming presence made the coming journey substantially more bearable.

At a fast pace it would take three and a half days by air, the gryphons said, to reach the Imperial City. It would be the farthest from the western sea Vidarian had been in all his adult life. Once, as a boy, he'd traveled with his mother to her family's holdings south of the capital, and so he had a dim memory of that rolling country nestled against the great walled city. Then, he had thought it a place of culture and excitement, of intrigue and luxury—but as the taxes grew and he took on the burdens of adulthood, it seemed only a far-away place that caused more problems than it solved.

Word of their departure had traveled around the camp, and the steady trickle of gifts, more than anything else, drove Vidarian at last to loose the Destiny from its moorings. The seridi had been extremely, if typically, thoughtful: travel rations for humans harvested out of the forest (he wondered, belatedly, what Calphille ate), dried venison bound in strips like firewood for the gryphons, a collection of medicines also distilled from the forest by way of their ancient knowledge, and even leaf-wrapped packets of meat softened with root vegetable mash and wild chestnut milk for the pup. The longer they stayed, the more elaborate the gifts became, which was as good a reason as any to be leaving.

The gryphons took off first, followed by Isri; only Calphille and the pup would ride with him in the small ship. Stuffed with one of his special meals from the seridi, the pup was dozing on the floor of the craft even before they'd taken off, and Calphille, for her part, seemed content to leave Vidarian to his morose thoughts, at least for the beginning of the journey.

Thalnarra, however, was not so inclined, and set upon him nearly as soon as they passed above the first cloud layer and leveled out into a gliding pace. He'd been unable to pull his mind from obsessive mulling about the consequences of his recent actions, and was hard-pressed to pretend objection.

// Your elements, // she began. // They fight inside you. //

It wasn't a question, but she seemed to want an answer. “They do.” They'd done so every moment since he rescued Ariadel and kindled himself on her lost fire, but the opening of the Great Gate had more than tripled their ferocity.

// You were never trained in the proper control, // she said, and the iron rust of her assessment was not unkind.

“I fared all right against you,” he couldn't resist reminding her. “And against Isri's mad brethren.”

// Brute force, // she replied, without sympathy or malice. // And everyone for leagues senses your thrashing. //

He kept a tight rein on a sharp retort, lest he prove her point for her. And clung to the reminder that the gryphons might be rough, but they were unfailingly true, more than his own people had been. That, too, stung. But he said instead: “Where should I begin?”

// How does a fire start? // Her tone was gentle, neutral. Too neutral.

He started to answer, but before the words passed his lips he realized the uncomfortable truth: he had no earthly idea, not where it counted.

// There is an art to fire, and a logic. Contain it; think of it mathematically, but not by your simple sailing-merchant reckoning. // She touched his mind more closely then, enough that he could suddenly feel the warmth of her wing muscles as they beat the air. Striking as that was, more so was the image she pressed on him—a formula, a garble of numbers and letters of the kind treasured by scholars. It meant nothing to him, and so she said, // Think how a tree grows, how an avalanche begins. //

Vidarian realized with a flush of sharp humility that he did not deeply understand either of those things. Thalnarra read the discomfiture in his thoughts and tried again.

// Think how love kindles. //

That, at the moment, he knew all too well. It began out of nothing. Troubadours sang of a “spark,” of mystical connection, but he knew it to be alchemical even without the learning of alchemy. It was potential, which was nothingness, and from that nothingness a curl of possibility, thin beyond realizing. Up it climbed while you were busy not realizing, until suddenly you were aflame, all at once, a burst of spectacular and devastating light, undeniable as rain or stone. In that moment it was as if it came from nowhere, but then the subtle and inevitable path revealed itself before you, right down to the beginning of all things.

// That's it, // her voice was a whisper, a thread of woodsmoke. // Hold that in your mind. Understand it. Summon your power only when you have it carved into your bones. Practice. //

Vidarian cupped his hands, then dwelt for several long moments on what she had said. He thought of his own acid emotions, his regret and longing. He stepped back from them, saw the avalanche, saw the tree growing. He did not breathe, but let the energy roll out from him, the barest possibility tipped only just into being.

A small, clear, bright flame flickered just above his palms. Unlike any other that he'd summoned, it wasn't torn from him all barbs and anguish. It simply was, a breath of possibility unfolding. And what was more, in that clean place of possibility and action, the weight of all his decisions seemed a little less heavy.

// There, // Thalnarra said, and warmth like fresh toasted bread radiated from her. // You see there the heart of ephemeral magics. All is a process. A change of state from one to the next. Love and spirit, fire and wind. One thing always becomes another, and it does so in its own time. You merely suggest to it what it may become. //

“Thank you, Thalnarra,” Vidarian said, cupping his hands around the warmth of the tiny flame. Then something else welled up within him, forceful and immutable. It pushed the tiny flame out of being, filling him with dread and dissonance. “What was that?” he gasped.

Now Thalnarra's voice was wavering hickory smoke. // Your water sense. I have never seen one's element seem to have a will so outside of its wielder's control. But I had never met a Tesseract before you. //

“What can I do?”

// Only a far older gryphon than I might be able to tell you, and perhaps not even they. Practice. //

Vidarian set his teeth, placing his fingertips together, calling back the memory of warmth. He began to practice.