Lance of Earth and Sky - By Erin Hoffman Page 0,14

or malice. // And everyone for leagues senses your thrashing. //

He kept a tight rein on a sharp retort, lest he prove her point for her. And clung to the reminder that the gryphons might be rough, but they were unfailingly true, more than his own people had been. That, too, stung. But he said instead: “Where should I begin?”

// How does a fire start? // Her tone was gentle, neutral. Too neutral.

He started to answer, but before the words passed his lips he realized the uncomfortable truth: he had no earthly idea, not where it counted.

// There is an art to fire, and a logic. Contain it; think of it mathematically, but not by your simple sailing-merchant reckoning. // She touched his mind more closely then, enough that he could suddenly feel the warmth of her wing muscles as they beat the air. Striking as that was, more so was the image she pressed on him—a formula, a garble of numbers and letters of the kind treasured by scholars. It meant nothing to him, and so she said, // Think how a tree grows, how an avalanche begins. //

Vidarian realized with a flush of sharp humility that he did not deeply understand either of those things. Thalnarra read the discomfiture in his thoughts and tried again.

// Think how love kindles. //

That, at the moment, he knew all too well. It began out of nothing. Troubadours sang of a “spark,” of mystical connection, but he knew it to be alchemical even without the learning of alchemy. It was potential, which was nothingness, and from that nothingness a curl of possibility, thin beyond realizing. Up it climbed while you were busy not realizing, until suddenly you were aflame, all at once, a burst of spectacular and devastating light, undeniable as rain or stone. In that moment it was as if it came from nowhere, but then the subtle and inevitable path revealed itself before you, right down to the beginning of all things.

// That's it, // her voice was a whisper, a thread of woodsmoke. // Hold that in your mind. Understand it. Summon your power only when you have it carved into your bones. Practice. //

Vidarian cupped his hands, then dwelt for several long moments on what she had said. He thought of his own acid emotions, his regret and longing. He stepped back from them, saw the avalanche, saw the tree growing. He did not breathe, but let the energy roll out from him, the barest possibility tipped only just into being.

A small, clear, bright flame flickered just above his palms. Unlike any other that he'd summoned, it wasn't torn from him all barbs and anguish. It simply was, a breath of possibility unfolding. And what was more, in that clean place of possibility and action, the weight of all his decisions seemed a little less heavy.

// There, // Thalnarra said, and warmth like fresh toasted bread radiated from her. // You see there the heart of ephemeral magics. All is a process. A change of state from one to the next. Love and spirit, fire and wind. One thing always becomes another, and it does so in its own time. You merely suggest to it what it may become. //

“Thank you, Thalnarra,” Vidarian said, cupping his hands around the warmth of the tiny flame. Then something else welled up within him, forceful and immutable. It pushed the tiny flame out of being, filling him with dread and dissonance. “What was that?” he gasped.

Now Thalnarra's voice was wavering hickory smoke. // Your water sense. I have never seen one's element seem to have a will so outside of its wielder's control. But I had never met a Tesseract before you. //

“What can I do?”

// Only a far older gryphon than I might be able to tell you, and perhaps not even they. Practice. //

Vidarian set his teeth, placing his fingertips together, calling back the memory of warmth. He began to practice.

The first fat drops of a cold rain broke him out of his reverie, the first real solace he'd had in days. A dull headache clung to the back of his skull and his eyes would focus only with deliberate effort. But where his mind faltered with exhaustion, his spirit rested for the first time in weeks, perhaps months. Still, exhausted as he was, he had no reserves with which to fend off the deep chill of the rain.

When he looked up over the bow, coal-black clouds rolled along