Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

When they sat around the fire with their cups, Luc spoke again. “There is a word in Ishmanti: invael. It means truth's antithesis. The opposite of truth. Not a falsehood, which is a sliding-aside of truth, a dodging of truth with truth at its core, but a direct negation of the very fundamental nature of truth itself, the heart of truth. The antitruth that devours true things, that spreads into the world and undoes what truth we forge.”

“Like the Starhunter.” Thalnarra's hackles raised as Vidarian said this, and Ariadel turned to him in puzzlement, but Luc was unfazed.

“Yes, the Starhunter is invael. But she is also truth. She is truth and its antithesis. She is the differentiator.” He turned toward Vidarian. “She is choice.” He took a long draw on his kava , pausing as if in meditation as he savored it. “And that, sir, is what emanates from you.”

“You'll find all manner of strange characters in these mountains,” Luc said, as their horses picked their way over a particularly intricate length of trail. The beasts were smart, thank Nistra-Endera must have known they would need to be for this territory. Vidarian's horse, according to the labeling on his gear, was called Feluhim, another Ishmanti word that he didn't know, but Luc, being from that sun-blasted place, did: it meant loyal son, but most often was used for horses, strangely. “We're on the fringe of civilized places. My father used to say, if a man lives where no others will, there's a reason why, in the man and the place.”

After the waypoint, they had moved again into the mountains, where they gauged the passage of time more by the phases of their hunger than by the light, which was fickle and pale. Steep walls rose to either side of them, and twice they had to detour around rockslides, adding hours to their days. The gryphons made ready use of their claws and talons in scaling rocks and boulders, but the horses needed clearer trails lest they risk slips and broken legs. High overhead, the perpetual storm that hung over the Windsmouth was their constant companion, now and then casting down a thick blanket of snow that further obscured the ground. The everstorm, as it was called by the Invesh guards, was what kept the gryphons from bearing them south by air-it was massive, beyond Altair's ability to tame, and extended so far to the north and south that any gryphon that had ever attempted to fly over it had never been seen again. All this the gryphons did not admit easily, and the storm was one of the few things Vidarian had ever seen the creatures universally respect.

And so they picked their way through the mountains by foot, holing up in caves when the storm grew fiercest. On their fifth morning in the mountains, they reached a split in the trail. One path descended-according to their maps, it traced a route to the southeast by way of descending altitudes. The other path led higher into the mountains.

“And here we part,” Luc said, “for your path is stranger than mine.” He smiled jauntily at this. They had not disclosed their final destination, nor their intent, but he'd seemed to divine something of both without being told. “Your journey leads up,” he said, and pointed to the trail that wound up the mountain. “There is a waypoint, the last known to the empire, at the top. I believe it's kept by water priestesses,” he nodded to Arikaree, who returned the gesture with some diffident surprise. “There ends my knowledge.” He clasped each of their elbows in turn, the parting gesture of the Ishmanti-Vidarian knew it from etiquette books, but had never experienced it. “I hope that we meet again. I'd like to know what lies beyond that mountain.”

“We hope to tell you,” Vidarian said.

“If you ever find yourself in the west sea, ask for me,” Ruby said, as she clasped Luc's elbow-clearly comfortable with the gesture in a way that obliquely irked (but didn't surprise) Vidarian. “I don't know how we'll get by without your brew every morning.” Now that she was on solid ground, Ruby seemed to be recovering more every day, though the presence of the poultice at her side kept them from forgetting her injury.

“I'd be honored to trade with the famous fleets of the West Sea Queen!” Luc exulted, and Ruby colored with satisfaction. The two had taken to rising earlier than the rest of the party, and Luc seemed to take particular pleasure in introducing Ruby to the various blends he kept with him, including those housed in vials Vidarian knew he didn't share with the rest of them. A developed palate, he claimed, was needed to appreciate them. He removed one of these from his wide-sleeved multicolored coat and presented it to Ruby with both hands. “You must take this as a token of my goodwill for our future business,” he said.

Ruby accepted the glass with reverence, turning it over in her hands and watching the flakes of bark rotate within. “No, you mustn't,” she demurred, then squinted more closely at the vial. Her breath quickened ever so slightly. “Is this-?”

Luc winked, then stepped back and gave a sweeping bow to the three of them. “Farewell, friends,” he said, then turned to mount his horse, a rugged roan that had fared better in the mountains than the taller horses Endera had provided. It seemed to eat anything, including the daily mouthful of kava bark fed it by its master. Luc clicked his tongue at the string of verali that bore his goods, and started down the long trail.

They ascended the mountain slowly, stopping frequently to water the horses. The air grew thin as it had when the gryphons had flown high over Cheropolis; Vidarian had never climbed a mountain so high.

By midday, another of the mountains’ heavy weather patterns began to move in, an arm reaching down from the everstorm. A familiar chill settled wetly into the air, and by late afternoon snow was falling in earnest, thick clumps of it that piled on their shoulders and quickly began to accumulate on the trail.

A thin light high above them at first seemed a mirage, but proved otherwise as they drew closer to it. The storm thickened and thinned by turns, obscuring the light, but as they reached a plateau on the trail they suddenly found themselves faced with a tower of stacked slate. A glittering limestone monument was thickly engraved with the emblem of the northern water priestesses.

“What is a water priestess doing so far from sea or river?” Ariadel asked, shaking snow from her hood.

// We are being surrounded by water , // Arikaree pointed out, snapping at a particularly large clump of snow as it spiraled toward the ground in front of him. // Water is having many domains, and each be holding a secret of elements. //

// This branch of the everstorm is perpetual , // Altair added. // It is a peculiarity of the Windsmouth. A relic, some say, of the long magic days. //

“PrimeAdepts,” Vidarian said, and Altair made a soft clicking noise in his throat, a gryphonic note of assent.

They banged on the heavy door to the tower, and shortly were answered by a short woman clothed in teal velvet. She waded out into the knee-high snow and led them to another door in the side of the mountain, which proved to be a warm and comfortable barn carved out of the stone. The verali and horses huddled inside without much prompting, and were soon settled with water and warm bran mashes.

The tower itself was considerably more spacious than it seemed from the outside. In a large vaulted receiving room at the base there was more than enough room for the gryphons, and after accepting an evaporation treatment from Thalnarra, each of them curled up on the plush carpets while the water priestess prepared tea.