The wave found Ariadel, bound only by magic that was quickly dissolving around her but unable to avoid the crashing pulse of water energy. It cascaded down over her, and the light within her soul went out.
Time slowed to a crawl. Amid the roar of the diminishing storm that raged around the island, Vidarian felt the stone in his breast pocket go cold. In that very instant, when despair would have taken him, the fire that lived within that rare stone leapt into Vidarian's heart-and found tinder there.
Vidarian fell to his knees in the waterlogged basket, his will sundered by the fire that roared up in his spirit. The sword in his hand began to glow, then incandesce. Just at the moment when he thought the flames would consume him-and when he would go willingly to their opiate embrace-an eagle's shape dropped out of the sky (…too big to be an albatross…) and dove down upon him. Thalnarra's aura covered his own and soothed his depleted spirit.
She stayed with him as they struggled to the shore of the island. There was no sign of the Vkortha; the ones that had survived the blast of the amplifier had fled. Absent the terrible storm, the island was quite mundane: white beaches dotted with brush and palm stretched to the east and west. And to the north, a crumpled figure lay still on the sand.
Weak in body and mind, Vidarian staggered across the sand, his feet sinking in dull thuds as the beach fought his passing. When he reached Ariadel's fallen body, he dropped to his knees and reached to turn her toward him. Blood flowed renewed in a strangled heart when he saw that she still breathed.
But there was accusation in those tormented eyes-eyes that had so long struggled against madness, and now had their last bastion taken from them. Gone was the mysterious beauty he had met so long ago, and in its place was a creature of shadow and a mind that did not recognize him.
He whispered her name, but she could not hear it. Helplessness turned rapidly to anger-the last of his energy was not spent. In a fury he turned his gaze to the sky itself, and throughout the core of his being screamed as he had not known he could: HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
But there, in the heart of his rage, a spark jumped from the inconstant flames that had taken hold in his soul. It flickered, jumped, landed-and found tinder.
Golden light roared up in Ariadel's eyes, and consciousness returned with them. Thalnarra, silent so long, hissed audibly behind them and rushed forward, spreading a wing over the once-broken priestess and extending her magic to feed the burgeoning new flame there-magic that Vidarian could now sense.
The sun moved far in the sky as they sat silently on the beach recouping their strength. Gradually warmth returned to their bodies, and Vidarian settled down into the sand, trying to make some sense of the energy that now swept without rhyme or reason through his body. A sudden sound-an angry “Rrrawl!”-distracted him momentarily from observing the turmoil inside his spirit.
The gangly kitten, looking even more emaciated than usual with its fur slicked down from the rain and sea spray, clawed its way out from under a broken plank, where it had apparently been nesting since the capture. The look in Ariadel's exhausted eyes said that she had not expected to see the little creature again. Gingerly and silently she picked the tiny cat up; even sitting where he was, Vidarian could smell the tinge of garbage and old fish oil that clung to the wet fur. Even as his nose wrinkled, he smiled, an expression that quickly faded when a surge of flashing colors swam across his mind again.
The magics there were arguing. Fire and water did not easily coexist. But it was a manageable struggle-in the scope of recent events, it was almost comforting.
When Ariadel spoke at last it was with a voice choked by disuse. “You-Quenched me. How?” Vidarian stared at her for a long moment, wondering how to answer.
Thalnarra, settled next to them with her wings spread out under the sun like a vulture, took up the answer without opening her eyes. // He had the amplifier and your fire was already low-the Vkortha had worn you down, the better to sense attacking fire magics. As for Vidarian-// one red eye revealed itself in a narrow slit between her heavy eyelids, // I have matched him to another of our prophesies, though I thought not to live to see this one: the warrior of fire and sea. //
Ariadel blinked dully, though with obvious recognition, as the kitten squirmed in her arms. “The Tesseract? Then…that would…”
// One revelation at a time, my dear. // Amusement colored Thalnarra's voice, obliquely reassuring Vidarian despite the irksome nature of her words. // He is a Kindler-and that is enough for him to know for now. //
“And then…where can we go now? We can make a boat from what remains of the Vkortha settlement here…but the last of them have surely gone elsewhere, and they will not take this defeat well.” Ariadel frowned, still struggling against the fragility of her body but gaining in cogency rapidly.
Thalnarra did not answer and Vidarian pulled himself slowly to his feet. He looked out over the calm, ordinary waters as they lapped against the shore. The sky was a deep sapphire blue as day made its steady journey toward evening-and where it met the sea could not be told for certain, so similar in shade was the distant horizon. Brushing sand from his beard, he turned back toward gryphon and priestess and folded his arms. “For now,” he said, “I think we go home. I have a matter of sun rubies to settle.”
Vidarian Rulorat's hands rested with soft confidence on the lacquered prow of the Stormswift, a sleek black ship with the banner of Sher'azar snapping from its highest mast. A gilt bronze weathervane overhead creaked with movement as the vast sea, incarnadine in the twilight, rippled with a change in the wind. The waters were as mesmerizing as they had been for Vidarian on the day he first remembered watching the waves. No matter where he was in the world, the water was his constant: one mother, one mistress, one life. She was eternal.
Vidarian? The sudden voice in his mind snapped him out of contemplation of the sunset reflections below. She's starting. You might want to see this.
Try as he might, Vidarian couldn't quite suppress a start when Ariadel spoke in his mind. He'd gotten used to Thalnarra's telepathy perhaps more easily because she never spoke with a physical voice. That, and she didn't speak inside his head the way Ariadel did.
In the rush of adrenaline that came with their recent standoff with the Vkortha council and the shock that followed, no one had noticed that, beyond being dehydrated and shaken, Ariadel had taken a strong blow to the side of the face and suffered a broken jaw. When cooler realization had set in and the fire faded from her veins, the lower right part of her face had started to swell, and soon she had joined Thalnarra in silence, if by a more painful route.
When Vidarian turned to walk quickly to the Stormswift's cabin, another banner caught his eye-the white torch insignia of the Sher'azar Healers floated from the crow's nest of the smaller ship that brushed sides with the greater black corsair. Sher'azar's reach was long-when their ordeal was over, Thalnarra stretched her mind to contact her fellows on the shore, who in turn relayed swift messages to the Fire Temple. Within three days the black ship that now bore them had appeared on the horizon, and two days later they met up with the smaller Greyvale in the northern waters off Val Harlon.
The Greyvale was a stout, stable rig with an expansive array of wide, square masts and a low waterline. She had three decks, though her aft quarter combined those three into a single chamber for a gryphon healing station where the creatures’ instinctive dislike of closed-in spaces could be mitigated. Right now it was full of ballast: huge bales of straw weighted down with lead, the former of which could either be thrown overboard or broken open and spread across the deck for a warm makeshift den. Thalnarra had declined the comforts of this hideaway in favor of a sleeping nest atop the main deck of the Stormswift, ostensibly because she preferred the cool sea air, but in reality to spare the healers the trouble of breaking open straw bales that they would then have to discard later as unsanitary. That, and having a fire magess in the back hold of a ship atop a bunch of kindling was probably not the healers’ idea of safety and sanity.
Inside the forecastle of the Stormswift Vidarian caught an odd medley of scents: the faint sweet nut-spice of Thalnarra's feathers, varnish from the dark wood paneling the walls, and an odd, grassy aroma that he couldn't identify. Thalnarra's tail thumped sedately on the deck just ahead of him, curled out from the threshold to the captain's cabin. Quiet nods met him as he entered the cabin's anteroom-the doorway into the cabin proper was open, and Ariadel perched on the edge of the captain's bed, bracketed by the captain herself (a burgundy-uniformed fire magess) and an adjunct healer from the Greyvale.
The strange smell seemed to be coming from a platter of crushed plant material that rested on a steel tray to one side of the bed. The healer, a vastly wrinkled woman with grey hair and nimble fingers, held a linen poultice of the stuff to Ariadel's jaw.
It's cactus, Ariadel thought at him, and she smiled, then immediately winced, from her perch. There was no separation of her thought from his-it was as if he'd thought it himself, only he had no idea what a “cactus” was.
She realized this, too. It's a plant from the plains-desert south of the Windsmouth range, they thought together. By the ruins? (This time it was actually his thought.) Even past the ruins, came the answering thought. Far, far south. That would explain why he'd never seen it before-it must be tremendously rare. The volcanic Windsmouth Mountains were beyond treacherous-some said they had swallowed up entire civilizations. And a series of skeletal reef-islands that confounded even the most learned navigator barred access to the southern continent by sea. Naturally it was the fascination of every dreamer and dusty-nosed archivist north of Cheropolis, and many more to the south.
The healer had rolled up her sleeves-apparently the strange green pulp wasn't the only act in the show tonight.
Vidarian felt an abrupt tightening in his chest, a sensation he had come to recognize as the precursor to someone wielding elemental energies in his immediate vicinity. Strange green lights that his eyes told him he saw but he knew had no real “light” of their own danced out from the healer's fingertips, ribbons of energy that filled the air with a refreshing crispness, almost like the scent of pine needles. The ribbons were joined by bands of blue, red, and gold so quickly that Vidarian was not able to identify any of the matching changes in the air, though he knew they were there, and a strange harmony thundered in his ears.
Then, suddenly, all of the energies were one, and they flickered out of his sight. Vidarian staggered and leaned into the doorjamb-it felt like something was crawling under his skin, swimming just below the reach of his consciousness. A sickening coppery taste filled his mouth.
All at once it was over; the healer was folding her sleeves back down and Ariadel was carefully testing the mobility of her healed jaw.
// Fish go down straight, not sideways, // Thalnarra offered helpfully.
Vidarian felt his eyes bulge further. “What?”
// Nothing. You look like you're having a bit of trouble there. Remember to breathe. //
“Right,” was all he could manage, around concentrating on pulling air into his lungs.
// It gets easier the more you see it. What did you sense? // The gryphoness's piercing red eyes sharpened on him, their pupils pinning and flaring briefly.
“Like something…crawling…” He rubbed compulsively at his forearm.
// So you can feel it. // There was distinct satisfaction in Thalnarra's voice. // Some only experience a ringing in their ears, or a paling of the energy-light. //
“No, I felt it, all right.” Belatedly he remembered his manners and turned to the healer. “Thank you, Mender, for your help.”
The old woman smiled, baring a set of surprisingly white, strong teeth. “It's an honor to make y'r acquaintance, er-sir-”
“Just Vidarian, please, Mender,” Vidarian said quickly. The healer only smiled and bowed out of the room.
You should let them say it, Ariadel chided with Vidarian's mind. They are getting the chance of a lifetime, to meet the Tesseract. The word had rapidly become a trigger for cold chills up Vidarian's spine.
I just don't think any good can come of spreading big titles around….
“No good can come of trying to hide what you are, either,” Ariadel said, testing out the flexibility of her jaw.
// She speaks true, // Thalnarra addressed all of them, then tilted her head to fix Vidarian with a scarlet eye that once more flashed light and dark with her scrutiny.
// How can you do what you must if you are balked by a mere word? //
“And what must I do?” He couldn't quite keep the impatience out of his voice, having lost count of how many times he'd asked the same question.
But this time Thalnarra answered, black pupils flaring to fill her eyes.