Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) (13 page)

V

idarian 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.

//
Change the world, of course.
//

At midafternoon the following day they made port in Val Harlon to bid farewell to the
Stormswift
and board a lighter rivergoing craft. Val Harlon was unrivaled in splendor, as always—its white filigreed arches gleamed in the sun, visible far from the shore. Even at this distance it was possible to make out the strange famed sculptures that perched atop the spires—shaped like a human, but completely feathered, and winged like a gryphon. Fishing “farms” spread out in narrow fingers to either side of the channels that led to and from the port, crisscrossed with floating walkways woven from white reed.

The
Sunstar
, yet another Sher'azar-commissioned vessel, sat alarmingly low in the green water, its black hull set with thick glass in portholes that looked out no more than a handspan above the river's surface. She was sleek and narrow, which meant for smaller sleeping quarters, but to Vidarian the sight of her trim deck and precise three-cornered sails more than made up for the inconvenience. He also didn't spend much time below, in the first place.

The river fascinated. Vidarian had never liked rivers; even on the largest ones, the land crowded in too closely, and the calmer land waters gave berth to indolent but deadly creatures; somehow that combination struck Vidarian as cosmically wrong. Now, though, he sensed how the water changed; he felt it in his veins. Though thinner and tamer, the water here was of a purer source, absent the salt that gave the sea her body and wildness—it was clean and alive. Even the lush greenery that drank the river's essence from the shore pulsed with the presence of water itself, flavoring the very air. Vidarian spent many hours each day simply sitting in the shade of the mainsail, drinking in the new flavors of the elemental energy around him. He would return below only for meals and to sleep.

Though small, the
Sunstar
boasted more amenities than the
Stormswift
, being something of a luxury vessel and never intended for the abrasive salten sea. Vidarian grudgingly admitted that a few of her fittings outshone the
Quest
, and a small handful, such as the clever mirrored light fixtures that spun to distribute tension but never tilted, he memorized for adaptation onto his family's ship. If he could have discerned it, he would eagerly have learned what allowed the
Sunstar
to boast such elegant interiors while remaining as light and fleet as a sailfish on the water.

Vidarian spent two days perched at the bow of the small river-ship before the smooth separation of the green waters before the knifelike prow began to wane in its wonder. The other occupants of the small vessel had left him to his peace, perhaps wisely recognizing his need for quiet with the magics at war within him, but on their third day on the river, Thalnarra came and sat next to him, her muscles shifting with the gently swaying deck.

“How did she do it?” Vidarian asked, without turning his head to look at the gryphoness. Thalnarra chuckled.

//
You refer to the fish incident
, // she said, as if that was any explanation, but she continued before he could contradict her. //
Healers maintain an internal balance of all four elements, at least insofar as we can tell. To tell you the truth, I don't know if anyone completely understands it. It is an ability that they display from an early age, and it is instinctive.
//

“Why did it keelhaul me like that?” Vidarian folded his arms and consciously smoothed the scowl from his expression as he turned to regard Thalnarra, leaning against the carved, upswept “flames” that formed the
Sunstar'
s bow.

//
Only because you've never seen it before, while Kindled. Exposure to Healing strikes us all differently. Most air magicians smell it; water magicians hear it; fire magicians see it; earth magicians taste it.
//

Vidarian's brow furrowed. “But…I'm almost certain I
felt
it, crawling around…” He rubbed his hands on his shirtsleeves, trying to shake the memory of the strange sensation from his fingertips. The gryphoness did not answer, though she flicked a momentary scarlet glance at him before returning her focus to the parting river below. Vidarian clenched his teeth. He had come to conclude that not all magicians had such a flare for the dramatic—just the Fire ones. “Who feels it, Thalnarra?”