Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

“They're exhausting you,” Ruby said, pointing at the pouch.

Vidarian looked at her closely, wondering if he'd been unwittingly projecting his thoughts, but then realized they must have been written across his face. He nodded, moving forward and sitting down on one of the leather benches.

Ruby took a seat beside him, a thoughtful expression on her face. “If you gave the rubies to me, would they harass you so much?”

He blinked again, surprised. And again he searched her eyes for motivation, even as he felt a pang of regret for doing so. There was only a friend's concern in her eyes. “I'm not sure,” he said, opening the pouch. He reached inside slowly, touching the stones one at a time, and withdrew one of those that pulsed warm to his fingers. “Keeping them in separate packs doesn't seem to help.” Carefully, he extended his hand, holding it out to her.

Ruby accepted the stone with equal care, cradling it between her two cupped palms. She looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. “Any better?” When he shook his head ruefully, she grimaced and turned her attention back to the stone. As she pressed it between her palms, her eyes lit with surprise at its warmth, and she lifted it to the light, staring into it. “What are these things?”

“I've wondered that,” he said, drawing one of the storm sapphires from the pouch and resting it on his palm. By far the sapphires were the most volatile of the three types of elemental stone he'd seen firsthand. Physically they were identical in size to the rubies, but to his mind they felt “bigger,” as if they had more space inside them, however that was possible. “If they opened the mountain, and can open or close the gate, they must be keys of some sort, but it's related to their energy patterns, not anything physical.”

She snorted. “You sound like a priestess.”

“Or a gryphon,” he agreed, and she gave him a sharp look.

“Your sun emerald,” she said, before he could pursue the look, “the one you left with An'du.” Ruby's eyes had looked fit to pop out of her head when they'd told her, in the hospital, about their trip to the An'durin. “You said that it was bound to you, somehow.” He nodded cautiously, and she continued, “Could you bind this one to me?”

The swirl of his thoughts echoed through the storm sapphire, which flashed with ricochets of internal lightning.

“It's going to be mine anyway,” she said lightly, mimicking avarice. Then her voice lowered with seriousness. “And if it were bound to me, I suspect I could control it. You're going to need all the mind-strength you can get for what's coming, I'll wager.”

“I've only seen it done once,” he warned, “and I hadn't any sense at all at the time.”

Ruby laughed, a sudden shock of brightness in what had been a dark journey. “As if you do now.”

Vidarian punched her knee, then regretted it, as the sapphire echoed with a new round of thunder. “You know what I mean.” He looked at the sapphire in his hand, attempting to fathom its nature anew, aware of the headache that was growing in the back of his head as he reached with his mind to control it. They were becoming more frequent. “I could try,” he said at last.

She passed the ruby back to him, and he slipped the sapphire back into its place in the pouch. He lifted the ruby, looking through it and to Ruby herself beyond it, then stretched his senses into the stone. As it was warm to the touch, so it was warm to his mind-alive with a flickering energy that perpetually sought…something. He felt a sudden urge to touch Ruby's hand, but knew that Endera had not done so when she'd bound the emerald to him, and so he worked to keep his free hand at his side. He reached through the stone with his senses until he encountered Ruby's energy-a familiar tumbling roar, an ever-moving pattern of the living sea that lived just beneath her skin.

Carefully, he curved his own sense, siphoning a piece of that roiling pattern back toward himself, and into the stone. It surged into it, and Ruby gasped, closing her eyes-feeling, he was sure, the dropping of her heart that he had felt when Endera bound him to the sun emerald. For a moment he was gripped with a terror that he wouldn't be able to stop the transfer of her essence into the stone, that it might take all of her-but the stone seemed to “know” how much it should contain, and released her of its own accord.

When Ruby opened her eyes, an echo of the ruby's energy glowed in her pupils, and he knew it was done.

The craft shuddered, and both of them reached for the support rails, riding out the sudden movement.

// VIDARIAN , // Thalnarra barked, and as he looked forward Vidarian saw that the disruption had come from her agitatedly beating wings. // Tell me you didn't just do what I think you did. //

“We were discussing it for the last several minutes,” he said, stung. “I thought gryphons had superb hearing.”

// This flying business is not as easy as it must look from back there , // she snapped. // I was focusing. //

“It's fine,” Vidarian said hotly. In fact, it was better than fine. He passed the stone back to Ruby, who looked at it with renewed wonder. Now that it was bound to her, it did seem to be paying more attention to her than to the sapphires, if rocks could be said to have attention. “Isn't it?”

// By luck only , // Thalnarra growled. // Binding magics can go awry more easily than you can imagine. And you knew nothing about that stone! Some elemental stones are extremely dangerous. //

// He is being the Tesseract , // Arikaree offered, though the hesitancy in his voice said that he, too, questioned the wisdom of what Vidarian and Ruby had just done.

// You're all going to be the death of me. //

“Whether or not we're the death of you,” Vidarian said, “I want to know how we hold Ariadel's fate.”

The sudden wave of sympathy that emanated from the gryphons caught in his throat. It was a sudden sensation of soft wings enclosing him, and for a long moment he wanted to sink into their strength. That desperate yearning opened the crevasse of reality before his feet; he wanted to unmake the last several weeks, to do anything if it would mean her illness could be averted.

// Her condition is grave , // Altair said.

“I'm told,” Vidarian said, forcing air past the lump in his throat, “that she can be cured by the opening of the gate.”

If Thalnarra's irregular wingbeat had disrupted the craft, the surprised pitching of all three of them nearly threw Ruby and Vidarian out of it entirely. They grasped for handholds, and Ariadel murmured in her sleep as the craft slewed first to one side, then the other.

“I really wish you wouldn't do that,” Ruby said between clenched teeth. He wasn't sure who she meant-probably all of them.

Once they recovered their flight pattern, all of the gryphons spoke at once: // Who told you this? // from Thalnarra, // When did this happen? // from Altair, and // It is deceiving, would tell you so , // from Arikaree.

“I think you know,” Vidarian said.

// The Starhunter , // Thalnarra said, and in her voice it was an epithet. // Have you learned so little, to listen to her? She has no domain of her own, and preys upon those of the four true goddesses. What else would she tell you? //

Nothing the goddess could have said would refute this, but her laugh, full of satisfaction, sealed its answer in Vidarian's heart.

“She knows I would do anything to deny her what she wants,” Vidarian said, his heart sunken, “except this.” He looked across the craft to where Ariadel slept fitfully, her face pale and body hunched in for warmth even beneath Thalnarra's warmth spell.