“Captain Rulorat,” Endera answered, her half-lidded eyes evincing no sympathy for his suffering. “My priestesses found you out cold halfway down the mountain, sprawled on the rocks. Care to explain?”
“I think one of your priestesses knocked me out,” he answered testily, rubbing at his left temple.
“That would be impossible,” Endera answered, folding her ceremonially robed arms. “There were no priestesses on your side of the mountain all night.”
“Perhaps you can be a bit more specific,” the first priestess said gently, placing a hand between his shoulder blades. It was warm. “Did she give you a name?”
“I think she called herself…San'vidara,” Vidarian said, eyes half closed as he attempted to clear his vision. He was looking at the first priestess just long enough to see her eyes do what a human's never would-the pupils rapidly shrunk and flared, pinning like an eagle's. All around him the whispers grew to a furor.
Vidarian turned swiftly to demand what was going on, but found his neck suddenly up against the edge of a dazzlingly shining knife. Endera's eyes were burning.
“So help me, Vidarian, if you dare to mock me at this time and place…” her growling tone promised the torture of a thousand deaths. Slow ones.
“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Priestess,” Vidarian grated, being very careful not to move.
“It would explain his appearance, Endera,” the golden-decorated priestess murmured, her voice half an octave lower than it had been, with a harmony like tolling bells. “Among other things.”
Vidarian looked desperately at his strange-eyed supporter. “She said the seridi called her that. And that the gryphons called her…Ella…Ele'chertoth. Or something like that.”
// He speaks the truth, // a new voice rumbled in all of their minds, and the priestesses drew back again. Even Endera lowered her blade. // Even if he had somehow learned the Seridan name for Sharli, the name Ele'cherath is protected among the scholars of gryphonkind. // The speaker stepped forward, a gryphon more massive than any of the three he'd seen before. She was tall and muscular, colored like a goshawk but with an array of golden designs painted on her wings. Fiery red eyes settled like burning coals upon Vidarian. // She gave you her other names, those that we call her by, because to hear her True Name would unmake you, // she explained, with a soft tone that nonetheless gripped his heart with ice. // Our goddess is ever one to toy with our own mortal makings, but still you are lucky to be alive. // The stunned and frightened looks of the younger priestesses confirmed the gryphoness's statement.
“I trust your judgment, as always, Thalnarra,” Endera answered, but kept one hand on the knife and looked as if she'd rather have it in Vidarian's gizzard. Or somewhere worse. But she only sighed, then gestured to two of the other human priestesses. “This will bear some explaining. Bring him.”
The two priestesses closed in around Vidarian and helped him to his feet, not unkindly. They then marched him down a hall that carried a faint aroma of smoke and honey, barely perceptible but daunting to his spirit nonetheless.
At length they passed through a marble hall, but none of the priestesses showed any signs of slowing. At the end of the hall in either direction sat a huge white marble altar topped by a massive gold chalice, squat and crowned with a circle of bright fire. Even with the lengths of cold marble between them, Vidarian could swear he felt heat on his skin.
“Are those…?” Vidarian trailed off, staring wide-eyed at the chalices.
“Yes,” Endera answered shortly, continuing her brisk walk ahead of them and not turning her head. “Those are the Living Flames of Sharli.”
Never in his life did Vidarian think he would see the Flames, revered by all followers of Sharli, no matter how meek. Even as they passed, he caught sight of elaborately robed priestesses attending the twisting flames, their garments in the characteristic wine red but rimmed at cuffs, hem, and collar with white ribbon. The Flames had not gone out in twelve hundred years, and likely longer-twelve hundred years merely marked the point at which the priestesshood began to keep count, nearly four dynasties ago.
Beyond the marble hall was a door, plain by comparison but carved of fine heavy ironwood. A young acolyte garbed in ashen grey rushed to open the door before Endera's sweeping feet, and then they were all inside.
“Now then,” Endera began, settling down at her desk. Her eyes were clear as they looked up at Vidarian. “You've spoken with our goddess. It seems that she wishes you to pursue this quest.”
“I intend to rescue Ariadel, Priestess, no matter what it takes,” Vidarian managed, taking a step forward ahead of his attendants.
“Mm,” the priestess murmured, sliding open the top drawer to her desk and withdrawing a sheet of slick ivory parchment. “If it is the will of Sharli, we will certainly assist you. Even now my priestesses are sending for gryphons to carry you as far as you will go.”
“Sh-Sharli did instruct me to do one other thing,” Vidarian began, then plowed ahead before Endera's abruptly sharpening eyes could stop him. “She told me to retrieve from you the sun emeralds. She seemed to think they would be my key in locating Ariadel.”
For a fire priestess, Endera could pull off an incredible icy glare. Straightening as he would against a torrential wind, Vidarian steeled himself for the worst. In the end, though, Endera only reached once more into her drawer and withdrew a black leather pouch. It clinked softly on the desk when she dropped it.
“Sit down, Captain,” Endera said, so sharply that Vidarian did as he was told before even thinking about it. The priestess glanced up for a moment and the two other priestesses bowed out of the room. When the door clicked shut, Endera spoke again. “You're here now to give me a detailed report of your encounter with our goddess.” When he did not answer, she continued, but her tone slanted upward warningly. “The goddess comes to us in many forms, and, rather than waste her time in speaking, delivers her word on many matters through nuance of her appearance and slightest gesture. You are to recall to me as much as you possibly can.” Suddenly Vidarian became aware of how absolutely strained Endera was-he conjectured that he must have been the first of the uninitiated to give such a report. Maybe even the first man.
Endera glanced up from her parchment, lifting her pen from the paper and making that small gesture seem the greatest weighty annoyance. “You had better get started, Vidarian. I don't think you have much time to spare.”
The priestess grilled him until his head swam with fatigue, pursuing points on the tiniest possible detail yet telling him to skip entire sections of their dialogue. Finally he had described it all to her satisfaction, right up to a detailed account of the drowning sensation that immediately preceded his waking.
Endera abruptly dropped her pen, splattering black ink across the neatly lettered page. She did not move to pick it up. “You felt-what?”
Vidarian's brow furrowed. “I felt as though I was drowning-swimming through a sea, yet all was too thin for me to breathe. I gasped.”
“You were blue when we found you,” Endera said, retrieving the pen and absently sliding it back into its case. “But we thought it was from the cold.” She did not speak again, but stared for a long time into the tiny flame that topped the ornate oil lamp to one side of her desk. Finally she looked back up at him, golden eyes dark with tense confusion. “She's kindled you,” she said, then turned her head back to the flame, “but not to her own fire.”
Silence gaped wide between them as Vidarian stared at her in confusion. “I take it that's unusual?”
Endera glared at him, then returned her gaze to the candle, saying nothing.
“She said I was a Son of Nistra,” Vidarian thought aloud, and the priestess returned her burning gaze to him with alacrity.
“That you are, Captain. In more ways than you even know. Sharli has kindled-or, the Nistrans would call it awakened-in you the water magic of Nistra. We did not know she would ever do such a thing…though obviously it is possible.” Restlessly the priestess stood, the hem of her robes brushing the slate-tiled floor.
“Priestess,” Vidarian said abruptly, realizing something. “If I am kindled, or awakened, or what-have-you…do I have a life flame?”
Endera blinked. “No, certainly not. You-” she paused and sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “There is much more information-theory if you will-to it than this, but what the Nistrans have that we do not is called the Sense. They sense the presence of living things in their vicinity, and further away when trained, through an ability to home in on the rhythm of the Sea that abides in all living things.”
“A rhythm. I heard a rhythm, when I woke-I felt it all around me.” He listened for it again and found it as it had been, pulsing softly in the background. If he let his mind wander, he imagined that he could feel the presence of every priestess in the temple, their ripples reaching him as those from stones dropped into still water.
“Yes, that's it.” The priestess sighed, settling back into her chair. “You hardly have time for an ecclesiastical education, but two things I can and must tell you: The first is that water magic is just as complex as fire magic, but it is substantively different. Water, along with earth, forms a side of energy called Substantive energy. Fire and air are on the balancing side of Ephemeral energy. Water works through manipulating the tiniest pieces of water that live everywhere-in the air, in your body, in the very ground. Fire, conversely, can act on these pieces, but of itself has no material property. This is what will differentiate your magic from anything I could possibly tell you about ours; water I only understand in theory, not in practice.”
Vidarian nodded slowly, wrapping his mind around the concept. “And the other thing?”
The priestess leaned across her desk, boring into his presence with her own. To his fledgling Sense she suddenly flared up into a towering flame. “What you now wield is more dangerous than any sword, any spear, or indeed any physical weapon you could possibly imagine. It is imperative that you understand this. The ripples that you can create by moving water will reverberate throughout the entire world, and as their ripples pass outward, they can potentially grow in size and cause catastrophic effects. As one new to the craft your own mind will limit you from doing most damage, but you must be aware of your potential.”
Then, like a candle snuffed, she dwindled to all his perception and fell back against the soft leather cushion of her chair. Vidarian only stared, an insidious chill seeping through his body.
“Ordinarily you would have the guidance of a Nistran priestess,” Endera muttered, gazing off toward the door. “I can only assume that Sharli gave you this gift-and understand that it is a great gift indeed-so that you could use your Sense to amplify the effect of the sun emeralds and locate Ariadel.”
“Why?” Vidarian blurted, hands moving to grip the arms of his chair convulsively. His heart rebelled against the question, but he asked, “Why is Ariadel so important that your goddess herself would intervene through a simple sailor?”
At this Endera raised a hand to her temple, her half-closed eyes going again to the still flame of the oil lamp. Vidarian did not know if she did this out of a need to focus on her Element or out of a simple desire not to look at him, but the unwavering light did seem to calm her.
“Sharli told us many months ago that Ariadel Windhammer would be the most influential priestess to grace our world since the Third Age.”
Vidarian stared, trying to count the thousands of years that that implied, and failing. Endera glanced up at him, a flash in her eyes condemning him for everything from birth to breathing, but she said, “Well, that's not exactly what she said. She appeared to us as a glowing beacon with eyes of two typhoons centered with cyclones, a burning elderberry bush in her left hand, and a silver truncheon in her left.”
Vidarian's throat was too dry to allow for a good splutter, but he coughed. A sharp glance from the priestess warned him not to question her authority. He didn't. Instead, he moved to pick up the leather pouch that rested atop the desk. Thumbing it over in his fingers, he slipped the sun emeralds out of their nest and into the palm of his hand.
They were as beautiful as he remembered. One now seemed to shudder with the rhythm that pulsed within it, a storm roiling within the small gem, but the other…
The other emerald still bore its dancing flame, brighter now to his sight…and as it rested against his hand he felt a resonance of energy between himself and the stone. Sharli had been right-they were tied together. And the rhythmic waves that pulsed out of the stone, out of the air, and out of Vidarian himself had never been so strong to him. They reverberated throughout his awareness. Unthinking, he raised the emerald, and suddenly the resonant waves circled into completion. Through the morass of pulsing energy some buried intuition took the three points-his location, what he could only assume was Ariadel's, and the emerald's, though it was so close to him-and told him exactly where they all rested in relationship to each other. The result was a beacon so bright in his mind that he could almost see it with his mortal eyes.
Quickly he slipped the stones back into their pouch, banishing the vision, and stood. Endera slid to her feet as well, looking at him in dark-faced confusion. He only held up the leather bag in a slightly quaking hand.