“Is that even possible?” he asked, finally.
“Supposedly. But I have no idea how to go about doing it. They do not teach us how.”
“But why?”
“To throw off the pursuit. It's trained to the signature of my ability- which now brings danger to us all.” She grew thoughtful again, and her grim contemplation put an end to conversation for the next several stretches of terrain. At last Vidarian called a halt, and they feasted, though with tense gaiety, on the provisions that comprised their “trade” shipment: foods that did not fare well in ship's storage but would be welcomed further inland. Marks waylaid two portions of the small crew into setting and tending cook-fires, and prepared their meal himself. In short order he had fresh fish crackling with butter and garlic on iron skillets and two rounds of creamy white cheese sliced onto soft bread. Fruit juice, nonintoxicating but a treat nonetheless, rounded out the meal.
In due course they were back on the road and Vidarian reflected briefly that land travel would never cease to annoy him. The mule's stubbornly slow pace grew maddening at times, and the surrounding territory, while lush compared to most, seemed dull and lifeless against the endless flow and mysterious depth of the open sea. He spent some time mentally critiquing the landscape, until finally they arrived at their destination.
At a tiny town, really more a trader's waypost than a settlement, the crew halved and parted ways. One cart continued on to collect the promised red teak and trade the rest of their goods further east, while Vidarian, the priestess, and three crewmen stopped at the town. For any natural pursuer it would have been a neat plan, but Ariadel did not seem reassured.
A handful of coin bought them dinner and beds of sweet hay in a farmer's barn, both cheerfully delivered by a family only too happy to see silver come into their hands. When captain and crew adjourned to their lodgings armed with large bowls of ham and pea soup, the farmer's children were gleefully discussing what they'd purchase at the next coastal faire.
After dinner, the crew divided up the rest of the night into separate watches. The red-painted barn, though small, boasted a small tack room that they allocated to the priestess. A few carefully arranged bales of hay ensured that no one would gain entry to the makeshift safehouse without the knowledge of whomever stood guard beyond the door.
Vidarian took the last watch. In the late evening a storm blew into the valley, beginning as a squall and gradually increasing in intensity. Having spent only his early years on land, Vidarian had seen many storms rage across the open sea, but never one that spent such fury past the coastline. Stinging rain came down in solid sheets that turned immediately to ice upon striking the ground. Lightning crackled with strobe-like frequency in the lightless predawn, illuminating the deranged spires and windblown shocks of ice that formed along walls, doors, windows, and anything that showed itself above the ground.
The old barn creaked in the howling wind, but within all was quiet, and the structure had been built well-their hay remained dry. Accustomed to their smaller berths aboard the Empress, the crew slept solidly in the comparatively larger space of the barn's loft-but in the tack room a light still shone when Calgrath woke Vidarian for his watch.
Squinting at the glow beneath the door, Vidarian paced each long wall of the barn, then came to sit in the pool of golden light. The storm thundered on and yet the light did not waver, and after two hours Vidarian turned, venturing a glance between the door's hinges.
Inside, sitting on a pile of furs loaned her by the farmer's wife, Ariadel stared fixedly into a tall candleflame that neither wavered nor consumed the blackened wick on which it rested. Fascinated by its stillness, Vidarian found himself staring into the flame as well-and when he came back to himself with a start, he gave an involuntary jerk of his right arm, thudding it soundly into the door. Cursing to himself, he stood and continued to peer inside.
The priestess blinked slowly, a dreamer ascending gradually from a deep sleep. Bit by bit she came back to herself, first moving her hands to touch the furs with marked unfamiliarity, then finally standing and squinting myopically at the door. Moments later she stirred again and moved to open it.
“Good evening, Captain,” she whispered. Her color had improved yet more and seemed almost entirely back to normal.
“Good morning, Priestess,” Vidarian answered, sotto voce and abashed by his accidental movement. “I did not mean to disturb you.”
She smiled tiredly. “Sometimes one wishes to be disturbed. Please come in, I would not wake the crew.”
Still not fully apprised of himself, Vidarian could only nod, then duck inside the tack room at her invitation.
As the door clicked shut the storm receded even further from hearing, muffled by stacked bales of hay that insulated the tack room against noise from beyond the exterior wall. The scent of leather still lingered in the warmer air, although the tack itself had been shut away in storage chests before its many meticulously polished buckles, bits, and cinches could betray the priestess's presence.
Taking a seat on one of the bales, Vidarian squinted in the low light of the candle whose glow had so entranced him from outside the little room. As before, it neither wavered nor dimmed-but up close it was vastly more fascinating. Within the tapered flame he imagined that he could see dragons twisting sinuous in bands of ochre and gold, braided with the image of a phoenix rising with burning wings atop them. The flame danced rhythmically without altering its light, pulsing with such regularity that it achieved an eerie steadiness that seemed to cast no moving shadow.
“It is a life flame,” Ariadel murmured, and regarded the little candle with motherly fondness. The flame, which continued its pulsing dance, had moved on to other refrains, now depicting a fiery horse galloping across a field of ever-curling clouds. How he saw these things he did not know, but somehow they emanated from the steady, almost iridescent light.
“It's beautiful,” he said quietly, without thinking. He felt more than saw Ariadel blink beside him, awakened slightly from her reverie at the intensity in his words. An apology on his lips, he turned back toward her, but her eyes were shut. With strange fluidity she began an intricate gesture, hands darting to and fro like leaping flames. The candleflame began to twist, and finally at the height of her movement it darted away from its wick, speeding swiftly between her fingers like a fleeing will-o'-wisp.
Ariadel's eyes burned golden as she opened them again. In that moment every image Vidarian had seen dancing through the life flame shone eclipsed by the depth in her dark eyes. Memories, not his own, rushed into his mind-the waiting fury of the Vkortha as a tangible weight on every inch of his skin; a pair of burning eyes searing into his soul from a distance too great to contemplate; a surge of catastrophic power (enough, he somehow knew, to level an entire city); a flickering flame small and vulnerable surrounded by the terrible, gushing sea. Then he returned to himself, reaching at the fleeing memories as a child after dancing butterflies.
Vidarian froze. He had closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he found he had indeed reached-and his hand rested upon the priestess's face. Slowly he registered the smooth, cool skin beneath his thumb, softer still at her neck where his fingers rested, and the silken locks of her hair brushing the back of his palm. Shock coursed like ice through his veins and he stuttered for a moment, darting to withdraw. But Ariadel only smiled, smoke on a sunset horizon, and closed the distance between them.
Her embrace was flame rushing into being where there had only been ember and tinder, but her lips were warm and real when they met his. Vidarian had only a fraction of a moment to reel in shock, and then he was lost again, falling through a world of singing fire.
Ariadel's hair shone in the light of the life flame just before it engulfed them both in sweet darkness, falling down to pool around Vidarian's head as they fell softly onto the pile of furs. The scent of her skin, a peculiar aroma of mingled cinnamon and sandalwood, soared into his senses, revealing a dizzying depth to the tantalizing hints that had come to him before always from a distance. Hesitant but compelled, his hands slid down around her slender waist, drawing her closer. Her teeth flashed white in the sporadic candlelight as she smiled again, and then his eyes slid closed as a rush of ecstasy accompanied her questing lips’ discovery of the hollow of his throat.
Moving to meet her, and driven beyond thought, he turned roughly on the furs, smiling.
Then there were two sounds, both so simultaneous as to be forever inseparable in his mind. Ariadel's smoky chuckle, a promise and a challenge at once-and the metallic hiss of his sword, forgotten, sliding loose from its scabbard as he moved.
All hell broke loose.
The storm that raged outside lurched tangibly, air pressure shifting with a nearly audible pop as its attention centered on the tiny farm. Vidarian and Ariadel, blinded by the shining light from the Rulorat sword, heard the crash of the two outer barn doors as the storm thundered down on its target. Less than a second later, the unnatural wind and punishing ice found the tack room and ripped away its door with a gut-wrenching creak of twisting metal and the snap of splintering wood.
Rolling to protect the priestess, Vidarian strong-armed the sword back into its place and staggered toward the back corner of the room, Ariadel under his arm. In raged the screaming storm, but it stopped when the light from the sword ceased, and curled like a predator reorienting on the scent of its prey. With a knowledge he did not understand, Vidarian sensed that the storm was not intelligent of itself, but was being driven, at great cost, from far away.
In frozen terror they watched as the spinning wind and frozen rain lashed out systematically, literally combusting the bales of hay stacked up around the back wall. Distant shouts sounded from beyond as the crew woke, but the eye of the storm now rested in the threshold to the tack room, and all beyond was consumed in a shrieking vortex.
The muffled cry of a cat sounded over the wind nearby as the foundling grey kitten darted from cover, seeing its hay bale ripped away into the storm. It staggered, crying piteously, still half asleep and stumbling in the wrong direction-toward the door.
To Vidarian's horror, Ariadel gave a dismayed shout and dove after the creature. He shouted in denial and warning, but it was too late.
The storm struck.
All was darkness, ice, and wind as the vortex leapt at its quarry. Ariadel's hands had just closed around the terrified kitten when the cyclone lifted her from the ground. Her scream came back to Vidarian as he strove with every muscle in his body to run toward the eye of the storm-then bellowed in panicked frustration as it only drove him backward.
And then it was gone. In a single moment the wild gale had fled with its prize, leaving a thundering silence in its wake. Rain-ordinary rain-began to fall outside the barn.
Vidarian's momentum carried him out of the tack room when the resistance of the cyclone disappeared out from under him. There he fell to his knees, landing hard on his upflung wrists and clenching the sodden earth of the barn floor in shock, anguish, and rage.
Dimly Vidarian became aware of the silent eyes of his crew, who gathered around him in a haphazard half circle, questioning fear in their eyes. This alone would not have fazed him, but Ariadel's absence and the accompanying tide of guilt somehow dragged at his very soul. It took a long moment for him to master himself.
Finally he stood, shaking dirt from his hands and water out of his eyes. His haggard voice was soft but implacable.
“Pack the carts. We're going after her.”
The crew was tense and quiet as they carried out Vidarian's command in the pale light of false-dawn. Every minute that passed itched at him to be on the road, but the storm had left more than significant damage, and he could not in good conscience abandon it to the farmer's repair. Finally, and with reluctance, he again split the crew, leaving behind one of the carts and six men to assist with repairs and then return to Westhill and the Empress Quest. To compensate for those repairs that could not be made without the purchase of additional hardware, he left the entire stock of goods from both carts-in the end, the farmer would make out handsomely, and did not complain.
Four men sat in silence on the road east, and three of them did not know where they were going. Neither did they ask.
At a tall sycamore marked along half its length with an ancient lightning scar Vidarian turned the cart onto a narrow trace that led up a steep and rocky hill. After an hour punctuated by the crackle of rocks that rolled away in the cart's wake, lush grapevines began to fill the fields around them as they passed from wild lands into tame. Now and then they caught sight of a female worker toiling among the trellises, but none offered a greeting.
They crested the hill and a sprawling but symmetrical structure of white stone came into view, mostly composed of columned terraces open to the air. Women moved among the simple courtyards and passed in and out of the buildings, but no one acknowledged the cart that trundled into their midst. The banner of Sharli snapped in the wind over the tallest column.
Swinging down from the cart, Vidarian handed the reins to Calgrath and strode toward the center building, passing undaunted through its towering supports. There, however, he stopped-he had no idea where to go from here. Long ago he had learned of this settlement of the fire priestesses, but only as a speck on a map.
More women passed through this central hall, most wearing the grey raiment of novices. They passed him a few veiled glances, but their eyes darted away when he tried to catch them. Finally he addressed them all, “I must speak with a priestess on behalf of a Daughter of Sharli. She is in great danger.” Tension sharpened his words, but it was only with the strictest discipline that he refrained from simply grabbing one of the novices and shaking them into cooperation.
He did not know when they appeared, or how long they had been watching, but there were three burgundy-robed women standing in the colonnaded threshold to one of the other buildings. They stared at him evenly and he noticed that the passing novices now gave him a wide berth. A very wide berth.
Clearing his throat self-consciously, he said, “I come to you on behalf of Priestess Ariadel Windhammer. She took passage with my ship under the authority of the Priestess Endera. This morning she was abducted by the enemy she fled, and even now is in their custody. I seek your help.”
“A clever ploy for a bandit, sir, even if you do carry the names of two of our sisters.” The priestess furthest to the right, shorter than the other two, eyed him coolly. Fury rose, but he schooled it, lifting a hand to mimic the gesture he had seen Ariadel perform to summon her life flame. As his hands moved from memory he ground down on the abrupt convulsion in his heart, the freshened recollection burning guilt into his mind anew.