Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

He didn't have long to enjoy it, though, because at that exact instant his vehicle began to fall out of the sky.

The plummeting (quite naturally, he thought) jolted him out of his experiment with the sphere, and he threw it unceremoniously back into the chest and occupied himself with hanging on for dear life.

Gradually the craft evened out in the air, but Thalnarra was practically molting with anger. Her head snapped around and she looked Vidarian full in the face, still pulling the basket and maintaining her wing-speed. Absently he realized that he didn't know her neck was quite so agile-it was disturbing in a way, but less so than her angrily widened eyes.

// What in the True Names of all that's holy did you think you were doing? // Her telepathic voice thundered in his head and he strangled down the distinct urge to hide under the cargo.

“I was following an exercise in the Book of Nistra-”

// You sent out a “welcome, please make yourself at home!” beacon to anyone with a lick of Sense in a two-hundred-mile radius! And doing exactly what you did, unannounced, would have Quenched a lesser priestess than I! //

Vidarian blinked. “I didn't know anything about Quenching…”

// Then perhaps you shouldn't be meddling about with the Book of Nistra. I suppose you looked up the amplification sphere in it without even reading the basics of Nistran magic, much less the Five Magics and how they interact? // Her thick wings beat violently at the air as she grew increasingly incensed, causing the basket to rock unsettlingly.

“I thought-”

// Maybe you had better start at the beginning , // she said acidly, then turned her beak back forward, feather-tufted ears swiveling away from Vidarian as if to pointedly deny his existence. Trying to make as little sound as possible, he withdrew the Book of Nistra and closed the little chest, going so far as to latch it securely before settling back to read-this time from page one.

An insidious sense of futility crept over Vidarian as he toiled through the book. At intervals he pulled out Ariadel's emerald to assure they were still on course-but with the gryphons’ sharp eyes for navigation, they always were, and it was mostly an excuse for him to stop reading. But every return to the neatly lettered pages was more daunting, and in the end he gave it up, choosing instead to stare vacantly across the cloud-traced sky.

// I apologize for snapping at you. // Thalnarra's clipped words jolted Vidarian out of an unintentional reverie, and he jumped.

“No harm done.” He smiled weakly, peering up at the lead gryphon. Although she continued to face forward, her ears had swiveled back to catch his movements and speech.

// Not by me, I hope. You do realize that what you did was tremendously dangerous? //

“I think so. But I still couldn't find anything in the book about Quenching.”

// It would have been in the Book of Sharli. But I can tell you. // Several moments passed, punctuated by the steady beat of the gryphons’ wings, before Thalnarra spoke again. // The Five Magics are arrayed in opposition and balance , // she began, her tone taking on a lecturing hint. // There are a number of…classifications, shall we say, between them, but the most important for you to know is the difference between what we call Substantive magics and Ephemeral magics. Earth and water are Substantive; air and fire are Ephemeral. That is why the greatest danger for you is to apply your new ability to manipulate Nistra's gift to “physically” touch the world-because water is Substantive, anything you touch in it will reverberate throughout the entire universe. On a universal scale this is insignificant, but locally it can have dramatic detrimental effect. The danger of an Ephemeral magic user is different, because we cannot actually move any of the elements, only apply energy to them, which is not quite the same thing. Moving for us is much more difficult than it is for you, and much more complex-but it is very easy for a beginning fire priestess to push the balance of energy within her, and this can be dangerous in a variety of ways. //

“You mentioned five magics-what is the fifth?” The whole of it made sense to him, but Vidarian wanted to know everything before he began drawing parallels in his mind.

// We call the fifth element aether, and it is really more theoretical than actual, from a magical perspective at least, because we have no one who can manipulate it. But it is in a third class of magic called Subtractive, whereas all the other four are considered Additive. Try what we may, the very nature of Substantive and Ephemeral magics both dictates that we cannot actually destroy substance or energy-only manipulate it. Aether has the power to destroy. //

“Can it also create?” A dry, humming click sounded in Vidarian's mind, and he gathered from the faint rush of emotion that followed it that Thalnarra was chuckling.

// Clever. Yes, in theory, aether can create. But we assume that its basic nature is to destroy, the same way that an Ephemeral's basic nature is to generate energy-so to create is probably much more difficult than destroying. Creation is the domain of the gods. //

“What is it that the Vkortha do? Where does that magic fit in?”

Thalnarra's tone grew dark. // The Vkortha do not practice magic. They are telepaths, and telekinetic-we do not consider these as part of the magical hierarchy. The way I am speaking to you is telepathic, and among gryphonkind it is considered mundane. There is some dispute, given the Vkorthan's recent activity, as to whether the old books should be changed to include their…activities. But we know so little about them, which is one of the reasons Priestess Windhammer was assigned to study them-we believe that their “magic” is actually a clever use of the mundane telepathy in conjugation with certain tools. // After a moment, she added, // We are not altogether certain what those tools are. //

Again they passed a length of time in silence, with Vidarian wondering, not for the first time, just what he'd gotten himself into. The thought that perhaps he was the one to solve it, since he knew nothing of the details and was therefore theoretically undaunted, was cold consolation.

The group rested by night, with the gryphons angling downward in the red twilight once they sighted a clearing appropriate for a safe landing. Each night one of the gryphons disappeared into the darkness and returned one or more hours later dragging a fresh kill. Thalnarra took her turn in this, and in each case Vidarian joined in their dinner-though he found that he still preferred his meat cooked.

During their brief meals he gradually came to know the other two gryphons that had volunteered to escort him. They were brothers-brown-plumaged and long-legged harrier gryphons whose loyalty to Thalnarra bordered on outright fanaticism. Their body language and sharp eyes reflected a spaniel-like demeanor whenever she so much as spoke one of their names. It was almost disturbing.

The older brother, Kaltak, took to telling Vidarian stories of the lairs and hunting grounds of the Cherath’kettu'ssa, or “children of Ele’cherath” as they referred to themselves. A friendly rivalry existed between Sharli's two gryphon subspecies, and both agreed that it was probably well that the harriers had little interest in the goshawks' territory, since their own was more than large enough.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kaltak (with the occasional side note provided by his brother) painted a portrait of a very warlike society-or, at least a society that would be warlike if not carefully mediated by the fire priestesses, called Shamans in their home. Each gryphon underwent a maturation rite before being accepted into the pride as an adult, and these two were in Thalnarra's service for a full preparatory year. Ishrak, though two seasons younger than Kaltak, had passed a test that allowed him to enter training in tandem with the older gryphon. In another species this would have incited cockiness, but Ishrak seemed to have nothing but respect for his older brother. Vidarian knew of few societies save those of pirates and merchants on the high seas, and the gryphons’ intricacies fascinated him. He listened avidly to their tales of adventure and lair life, sometimes understanding little about the details but gaining volumes of new regard for gryphon culture. Even had he accepted the existence of gryphons before he had seen one, “culture” was not a word that would have occurred to him even at the bottom of the deepest wine bottle. That disbelieving self, so unwittingly narrow in experience, seemed more than a lifetime away.