Lance of Earth and Sky - By Erin Hoffman Page 0,13
the morning.”
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.”