Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) (15 page)

P

riestesses had a fondness for heights that continually baffled Vidarian. The climb to Sher'azar was steep, blasted by wind and sun alike, and treacherous. Thalnarra had parted with them at the mountain's base, and as they watched her climb into the sky, wings angled and embracing the wind, Vidarian got a glimmering suspicion as to why all of the great temples perched like rock gulls on barely accessible mountaintops. If what Thalnarra had said about the origins of magic was right…he wondered if the priestesses that inhabited the temples now knew they had been meant for gryphon perches and not human habitation.

This trip up a treacherous mountain, at least, bore stark and comforting contrast to Vidarian's lone trek up the unforgiving crags of Sher'azar. Though the wind bit, the warmth of their verali mounts and the soft shrouds of black wool given to them at the mountain's base kept them both warm and protected from the howl of Sher'azar's persistent winter.

The verali themselves seemed agreeable enough: lanky creatures with exceptionally long necks and legs. Their curled wool—black for Vidarian's, a kind of mottled rust-and-ochre for Ariadel's—had a strong smell to it, not entirely unpleasant, but carried by oil from their skin, and as such it clung to any who handled them for days after. It was the smell of them that Ariadel claimed drove her mad. Between being saddled with a verali and having to leave her kitten at the Gatehouse (Endera, it seemed, was allergic to cats and would not permit them on temple grounds), Ariadel had worked up a fine head of ire, and Vidarian kept as clear a berth as he could without drawing attention to his distance. Irrational Ariadel had been about that kitten from the very beginning, but Vidarian had to admit that leaving it behind hadn't been easy—the thing had made such a terrible fuss, seeming to know even before Ariadel did that it would not be coming with them.

When they stopped to make camp halfway up the peak, with the wind intensifying and threatening ice, the sun had already sunk low beyond the foothills, leaving only a smudge of ruddy light to carry its eulogy. When Vidarian slung himself down from the saddle, jolts of forgotten feeling speared his legs, and he reached for his mount to steady himself.

Something, he was never quite sure what, guided his hand to one side, away from the hold he normally took on the pack's open flap. Startled anew by his sudden lack of control over his hands, he was about to stretch out his legs to make sure no other muscles were failing when he caught the glint of something small and metallic out of the corner of his eye.

There, tucked into a fold of the pack, rested a tiny glinting spider, gold of body, its ten legs balancing it cozily on a network of gossamer stretched across the parted leather. Vidarian's sharp breath of surprise brought Ariadel to his shoulder, and when she saw what the pack contained, she let out a little cry of astonishment.

“These spiders were prized by the priestesshood decades ago,” she said, a flush high on her cheeks, all thought of verali or abandoned kittens forgotten. “We haven't seen one in all that time, and they were rare long before my mother was born. Endera will be ecstatic.”

“What do you want to do with it?” Vidarian eyed the spider, unsettled by its returning ten-eyed unblinking gaze.

Ariadel's forehead wrinkled as she considered the creature. “We can't leave it in there. One jolt and it'd be done for.” With a little turn that scraped gravel under her feet, she turned to her verali and dug into its packs. After a moment of rummaging she came up with a sheet of the thick, fragrant parchment the priestesses used as a kind of quick-flaming incense; when burned, it would go up in a rush of bright flame all at once, leaving behind only a column of richly scented smoke.

With deft fingers Ariadel began folding the parchment into a small but secure little box. “The acolytes used to practice at making paper figures,” she explained. “This won't be paradise, but it'll do.” She'd left one side of the box open and held it widely ajar as she returned to Vidarian's side.

The spider lifted its two front legs as her shadow crossed its vision, but otherwise did not move, not even when Ariadel, exquisitely careful, brought the box around behind it and scooped it, plus a good portion of web, gently into the paper box. She shut the lid by tucking its flap into one of the intricate folds, then cupped the box between her hands as though it were the warm egg of some precious bird.

But another occupant of the pack had been disturbed by the tearing of the gossamer web. It skittered across the back of the pack, tiny clawed feet clinging delicately to the leather. Vidarian took an involuntary step back as its motion caught his eye. “I think you're going to need another of those boxes.”

Ariadel rushed back to the pack, still cradling the paper box with fingertips touching it as little as possible. “Another one?” Her voice was dry with incredulity.

The second spider, as far as Vidarian could tell, was identical to the first, glittering gold body and tiny black eyes. “Looks like it. Is that lucky?”

Ariadel cast him a look that made him feel quite the cabin boy, but superstitions had never been his forte. “Not particularly.” She frowned. “Just very strange.” But she made another box, and it went next to the first, tucked with a cushioning nest of underclothing into the emptied case for their firebox. By the faraway look in her eyes Vidarian knew she was still contemplating the spiders as they set about making camp—Ariadel with the fire and cooking, Vidarian seeing to the verali.

It was the first night that they had spent together, truly alone, since the farmhouse and the storm. That quiet realization set in with the fading of the sky and the appearance of the first bright stars. Three moons brightened the sky, enough to show them both to each other clearly even without the golden light of the fire.

“Did you always want to be a ship captain?” Her soft voice barely rose above the crackling of the fire as it consumed the dark, pitchy wood that was all that was available on the mountain.

Vidarian stared into its quiet light a long moment before he answered. “I wasn't supposed to be,” he admitted finally. “The
Quest
was my father's ship, my grandfathers'…. They won her from the first Emperor.” He thought again of his ship, his crew, and here his feet further from the sea than they'd been in years. “I was born on her. But Relarion, my brother, was supposed to be her captain. He died when I was young.”

Concern wrinkled her forehead, and something more—a fear and a hesitancy. But she said only, “I'm sorry.”

He lifted his hands to the fire's warmth, shaking his head. “You never let go of a pain like that, but it's an old one. I became the captain I thought my father wanted from Rel.”

Ariadel smiled, a soft smile of quiet wonder and unfamiliarity. “We never had a ship, but…my family always thought that I was special,” her head tilted with shyness, “destined for something.”

His hand moved of its own and brushed her arm with the back of his fingers. “You are.”

Her eyebrows lifted a heartbeat before her laugh, high and sudden, but then her fingertips, cool with the night, were on the back of his neck, pulling. Vidarian moved to her with a quiet rush, filled his hands with her hair, drawing their faces closer, and when they met it was with electricity, searing memory and completion that shot straight down to his bones. His hands traversed the slender column of her neck, rested on her shoulders, thumbs tracing slim collarbones, before he opened his eyes again.

“This was where we left off,” Ariadel breathed, and her heart was a wild rhythm beneath his hands.

“Then it's a good place to pick up,” he said, and her arms tightened at his back, drawing them closer again, sliding to guide him to parts of her that were soft as summer waters, firm and smooth beneath his weathered hands. As their faces met again something dropped inside him, and every sensation doubled. When his hand slid down her arm the sweet rush of warmth was in his mind as in hers, felt as she felt, and when she drew quick breath, the same headiness quickened his pulse.
That's very interesting
, she breathed, in his thoughts. And pick up they did.

Vidarian woke, gasping.

They had made camp in the lee of a rocky prominence, a pocket in the stone sheltered from the wind. Here it seemed full night, but a red glow that just touched the stony path outside whispered of the oncoming dawn. Vidarian's eyes sought it out of reflex, reaching for light as he drew in a deep breath to still his pounding heart.

There, resolving with the slowly grown morning, was the curve of a slender foot disappearing beneath folds of velvet.

The red-haired priestess he had met on his first journey up the mountain stared coldly down at him for a long moment, then turned and left the niche opening. Her footsteps made no sound.

The command in her stare had been unmistakable, and Vidarian swallowed a groan as he levered himself up from the blankets. He moved carefully and watched Ariadel as he did so, but she did not stir.

The priestess stood facing the dawn, pupils reduced to pinpricks and rendering her golden eyes all the more unworldly. There was no sign of the splendor of images that had surrounded the goddess at their first meeting; only, for several long moments, her stony silence.

“I miscalculated,” she said at last, and Vidarian tried to wrap his mind around that thought. The perpetual winds of Kara'zul seemed to rise at the sound of her voice. “We have all miscalculated. And now the hour is late.” Her eyes remained fixed on the rising sun, a steady gaze that would have burned the eyes of a human in moments. “You should die for what you bring into this world. I should have killed you, last you came here. I only want you to know that.”

No protocol that Vidarian had ever learned dealt with apologizing to an angry goddess. “If I have angered you, my—”

“Leave my mountain quickly,” she said. “You cannot anger me. But you are mine no more.”

I

n the morning Ariadel was as subdued as Vidarian felt, and he resolved then to mention the appearance of the fire goddess to no one. There had been no symbols for Endera to mine, and indeed no message for any but himself. As they packed in wordless cooperation, he wondered if somehow Ariadel suspected that the goddess had visited, and spent the remainder of the morning puzzling over how she could know, or, if she did, why she remained silent.

But Ariadel's mood seemed to lift as they closed in on the temple by midday, and Vidarian listened with genuine interest as she described the history of the various parts of the architecture and the paved road that led to it. It was a much finer way of approaching the temple, he decided, than being carried in unconscious.

Their welcome, too, differed night and day from his first visit. Acolytes stood waiting for them at the temple doors, panels of carved red ironwood that stood three times a man's height. One of them took the verali, leading them off to an outbuilding as soon as Ariadel had taken the paper spider boxes from the packs. She carried them gingerly and led the way through the temple doors.

“I'll need to see Endera right away.” She turned apologetically to Vidarian. “But they'll have prepared quarters for us both.”

“We have,” the remaining acolyte said, and her eyes were round and blue and large as she addressed Vidarian. “Lady Endera has prepared a private banquet in honor of your arrival, my lord—”

“It's Captain.”

“—my lord Captain,” the acolyte corrected with a deep bow of apology, and Vidarian swallowed a sigh. “If you'll be so kind as to follow me, I can escort you to our bathing house, and your quarters.”

Vidarian lowered beseeching eyebrows at Ariadel, but she only lifted the spider boxes gently in encouragement. “Some hot water would do us both good,” she said. “I'll see you at dinner, Captain.”

“All right.” He surrendered with lifted hands. “Lead the way.”

By the time he was seated at the alabaster banquet table, Vidarian was glad indeed of the temple's opulent bathhouse, though he could swear he still detected a hint of verali musk on his skin. Perhaps Ariadel was right about the smelly creatures. He found himself smiling as he thought of her reclining at the Lustrous Pearl, and mastered his features with conscious effort.

Endera joined them some time after Ariadel arrived, accompanied, rather to Vidarian's surprise, by Thalnarra. Despite the presence of the huge gryphoness, the four of them were dwarfed by the high-ceilinged banquet hall and vast alabaster dining table, and their voices echoed. The two golden spiders had been invited as well, it seemed—each occupied a mesh terrarium filled with thick green-leafed branches.

“Welcome, Captain,” Endera said, bringing her hands together in a gesture of goodwill before she sat at the head of the table. “You return to us an invaluable treasure.” She touched Ariadel's arm gently, and Ariadel gave a demure bow of her head, but Vidarian did not miss how her eyes searched Endera's expression beneath lowered eyelashes. Vidarian himself had not known what to expect from the Sher'azar priestess, now that he was…what he was. But he allowed himself a measure of cautious relief that Endera's demeanor toward him had not changed.

“As agreed,” he said, watching her. “A Rulorat does not fail a contract.”

“Indeed not.” Endera's teeth glowed in the candlelight with her smile. She lifted a hand, and a pair of robed acolytes entered, one moving to turn over each diner's teacup and the other filling them with a pale steaming drink from a silver urn. When the first had turned over all of the cups, she lifted the cover from a porcelain bowl set between them, revealing a heap of wine-red sun cherries, and bowed out of the room with the tea carrier.

Vidarian lifted his tea to stop himself from gaping at the fruit. He had never seen more than a handful of them in the same place in his life, and knew none who had. Endera plucked about that many from the bowl with a set of silver tongs and proceeded to spoon a frothy sugared cream over them with staggering familiarity. He waited until Ariadel had taken a portion before setting down the tea and selecting his own, resisting the urge to put a price on each thumb-sized fruit that hit his plate.

The flavor was extraordinary, as it always was. The summer intensity and gentle sweetness of them took him back to nearly forgotten early childhood, when his mother had strong-armed his father into purchasing three of them for his birthday. And, he had to admit, the cream balanced their vivid tartness perfectly.

“No one,” he said at last, “has really explained to me just what the Tesseract is.”

Thalnarra's crushed-paper chuckle brought the hair on the back of his neck up, much as he should have been used to it by now. The gryphoness had been watching the cherry bowl dwindle with what Vidarian assumed was a mild curiosity, but at Vidarian's question she reached across the table and, with surprising delicacy, lifted a cherry between two hooked claws.

//
The Tesseract seals the Great Gate
, // she said, as she had on the
Sunstar
, //
because he bridges Substantive and Ephemeral magics.
// With a disregard for fabric that made Endera stiffen ever so slightly, Thalnarra pierced the cherry and proceeded to draw a diagram on one of the table's cloth napkins. The juice stained the white fabric scarlet, and she doled it out with gentle claw pressure until a diamond shape emerged. //
Air
, // she indicated the top corner of the diamond with a droplet of juice, //
Earth
, // the bottom, //
Fire
, // the left, //
Water
, // the right. //
And this is you.
// She rent the cherry deeply then, drawing a stream between the left and right points of the blurry diagram. //
Centuries ago, the Great Gate was closed, but as the years pass the influence of what lay behind it grows. You represent that change, and have the power to seal the gate.
//

The emptiness in the center of the diagram, crossed by “him,” somehow turned Vidarian's guts to water. “What's in the middle, there?”

“It is theoretical,” Endera still looked slightly sour for the ruining of her napkin. “Referred to as ‘void,’ and described in some connection to telepathic abilities, and other magics since lost.”

“The other elements have goddesses,” Vidarian blinked against a moment of lightheadedness. “Who is the goddess of the void?”

Ariadel laughed, and her merriment was a flash of silver in Vidarian's thoughts. “There is no goddess of chaos.” She twinkled with mirth, visibly lingering over the absurdity of Vidarian's suggestion—and clearly unaware, as Vidarian was not, of Endera's hands subtly clenched around her teacup. He met her eyes, only briefly, and the grip eased, smoothly, as though without thought.

Vidarian cleared his throat, then took up his tea and sipped it. One of his eyebrows leapt up in curiosity toward Endera before he could quite help himself. The tea was delicate but unsophisticated, surely no prize leaf from the surrounding mountains for which the temple was so renowned—and yet both Endera and Ariadel tipped their cups carefully, as though it were priceless.

“Simplicity, my dear Vidarian,” Endera said only. “We are but a simple priestesshood.”

“And what does this simple priestesshood want of me, Endera? For I suspect all this—“ he took in the hall with a swept hand “—is not merely trapping for the delivery of my sun rubies.”

The priestess smiled. She tapped her knuckles lightly on the table, and the acolytes returned, bearing covered platters that trailed wisps of curling steam. Seeming by chance, but surely it wasn't, the acolytes lifted the silver covers in order: Thalnarra, Endera, Ariadel, and finally Vidarian. Beneath was an artfully arranged spiral of sliced meat—runnerbird, he thought, in a light herbed oil.

“We merely wish to advise you,” Endera said, as they picked up forks, “to prevent you from making, shall we say, avoidable mistakes.”

“Such as?” Vidarian asked, scooping up and eating a polite forkful of the sliced meat. And then dropping the fork with a clatter he saw but did not hear, as unbelievable spice roared up to close his throat and even his ears as he coughed instinctively—managing only with the aid of years of diplomatic drilling to avoid spraying meat and sauce all over the table. His eyes filled with water and the room vanished into heat and color.

“Lambwillow tea,” Endera was saying, when his ears finally cleared enough. “It has certain pepper-amplifying properties.”

“We drink it so often, I'd forgotten,” Ariadel was apologizing, and her own cheeks were flushed, whether with an echo of his pain or mere abashedness, he wasn't sure.
Truly, I'd have warned you
, she insisted in his mind, and he thought forgiveness at her, but wasn't sure if their connection worked that way.

“These ‘avoidable mistakes,'” Vidarian began.

The doors to the dining room banged open, an admirable feat for such large panels of wood, and what stepped across the threshold threw Vidarian to his feet before he quite knew what he was doing. His sword, brought for ceremony, sang from its sheath, then, exposed, leapt with energy—fire and water, this time his own.

“So it's true,” the first hooded figure said, throwing back her black velvet headpiece to reveal blonde curls and piercing grey eyes. “He is the Tesseract—and you've kept him from us, Endera.” The look she—Vkortha? Priestess?—turned on Vidarian made his stomach turn: fervent. Mad.

Endera, too, was on her feet, standing in Thalnarra's path, which seemed altogether unwise. The gryphoness had summoned a halo of blinding fire energy, visible now to Vidarian's kindled sight, but without this, her pinning eyes and near-vertically stiffened feathers told any wise prey animal to find another acre as far away as possible. “This was not our agreement, Aleha.” Endera's voice was tightly controlled, pitched low to avert gryphon murder.

It didn't work. //
Your
agreement? // Thalnarra thundered, and reared, flaring her wings in spite of the closed space. One of the spider terrariums was caught by an outflung primary and clattered to the floor, its spider sent scuttling from the room.

Endera, Aleha, and her still-hooded attendant fell back toward the door, and only Vidarian's voice stopped Thalnarra from leaping upon them: “Explain yourself, Endera. Quickly.” As they moved, his swordpoint remained trained on the Vkortha who had spoken. In the dance of fire and water about the blade, crackles of energy snapped between his aura and Thalnarra's.

“There are no Vkortha. These women are Nistran priestesses, envoys from Zal'nehara,” Endera said.

“No. We serve the Starhunter now, Endera,” Aleha said.

Endera spun, her eyes wide. “Madness!” she hissed, and in spite of her betrayal, the sheer alarm in her voice chilled Vidarian's spine. Aleha's eyes were wild, ecstatic.

In the chaos, Thalnarra's voice was acrid smoke in Vidarian's mind alone. //
I knew nothing of this. Endera has made a fatal error. I am making arrangements. Their minds slip from mine like fishguts
, //—the last in frustrated disbelief.

“They'll not have Ariadel, I don't give a damn the reasons why,” Vidarian began.

“Your mistake, Vidarian, is in thinking she is half so valuable to us as you are,” Endera murmured, and Ariadel choked—her thoughts radiated confusion, heartache, fury. “And you'll not abandon her here, we both know it.”

“No,” Ariadel said, her voice distant, numb. “He won't.”

//
This is a deep betrayal, Endera.
// The word “betrayal” had a cloud of thoughts connected to it, smoky tendrils of a complex language altogether inhuman.

“I am sorry, Thalnarra.”

//
You have no idea yet how sorry.
//

Ariadel looked across the table at him.

Vidarian
, the name was a whisper in his mind, a quickening of his being. “
Run.
” They breathed the command together.

Vidarian leapt across the table, and Thalnarra let out a deafening shriek that nearly stopped his heart. Thalnarra, Aleha, and the other Vkorthan priestess staggered away from the door, and Vidarian and Ariadel fled through, Thalnarra quick on their heels. Ariadel grabbed Vidarian's hand and led him at a run through the maze of temple passageways; Endera's voice echoed behind them, a command to her acolytes:
“Control this situation!”