Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) by Erin Hoffman Page A
Authors: Erin Hoffman
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flanking the harnessed basket. Unlike Vidarian's recent carriers, Thalnarra's companions this time bore no gold on their wings—they were uninitiated into the rites of the fire priestesses, and as a result greatly deferred to her as a matter of course. She seemed to encourage this behavior.
The basket was considerably heavier this time, as well. Packed in with provisions of food for all parties (the gryphons planned to hunt, but Vidarian learned to his surprise that they preferred an assortment of supplementary foods that aided in health and meditation) was a tight packet of medical supplies, a strange navigational unit intended for air use, and, most interestingly, a small chest of carefully packed magical implements. Tucked into canvas pockets on two sides of the chest was a pair of leather—bound books, each no longer than his hand and roughly half as thick. The cover of one was a deep blue, the other a dark burgundy. After the gryphons had settled into a comfortable altitude, Vidarian weighed one book in each hand, looking between them with a mixture of trepidation and intense curiosity.
Both books had the exact same number of pages—a fact that he verified by checking the last carefully numbered page of each. Setting aside the burgundy volume, Vidarian opened the other and began to gingerly thumb through it. He paused when he reached a richly illuminated page that described a fist-sized translucent globe identical to one that he had seen in the chest.
Setting the book aside after marking it with an attached blue ribbon, he flipped the lid of the chest open again. Nestled into a bed of narrow wood shavings was a pale blue globe, translucent and dotted with an intricate array of identically deep pinholes, that confirmed his suspicions. It lay alongside a narrow box of dark wood that he promptly used to support the reopened blue leather book.
A richly calligraphed diagram marked out the uses and significances of each set of holes on the globe. Following its footnotes, he observed that the pinholes were arrayed in groups of five, most often depicting a diamond shape with a single pinhole in the center. When he had studied the page for several minutes, he felt confident enough to very carefully place his fingers in specific points around the object and lift it from its nest.
Nothing happened, which was good. Vidarian consciously let out his breath, becoming aware that at some point in the procedure he had forgotten to do so. What the book specified next was clear but daunting: that somehow a Nistran should apply their Sense through the sphere, using it, he supposed, as a sort of lens. This would lead to greater focus of the user's ability.
After he had held the globe long enough to make his awkwardly bent fingers complain, Vidarian—following the logic that if he wasn't meant to use it, it wouldn't be in the chest—decided to try it out. He closed his eyes and held the sphere at arm's length in front of him.
As the book had recommended, he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. As he did so he imagined that every bit of his breath was going through the sphere, flowing around its perfect shape and sounding off of its pinholes as through finger-holes in a flute.
It took nearly long enough for Vidarian to assume that he lacked the skill to activate it, but, just as he was running out of breath, the sphere began to resonate.
Unlike the ripples that other living creatures generated to his newfound Sense, the rings that came off of the sphere harmonized with Vidarian's own, which he only then realized that he even recognized—his mind automatically filtered them out. There was a pop! , more felt than heard, and suddenly his own rings—his own pattern—had expanded immensely.
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
The basket was considerably heavier this time, as well. Packed in with provisions of food for all parties (the gryphons planned to hunt, but Vidarian learned to his surprise that they preferred an assortment of supplementary foods that aided in health and meditation) was a tight packet of medical supplies, a strange navigational unit intended for air use, and, most interestingly, a small chest of carefully packed magical implements. Tucked into canvas pockets on two sides of the chest was a pair of leather—bound books, each no longer than his hand and roughly half as thick. The cover of one was a deep blue, the other a dark burgundy. After the gryphons had settled into a comfortable altitude, Vidarian weighed one book in each hand, looking between them with a mixture of trepidation and intense curiosity.
Both books had the exact same number of pages—a fact that he verified by checking the last carefully numbered page of each. Setting aside the burgundy volume, Vidarian opened the other and began to gingerly thumb through it. He paused when he reached a richly illuminated page that described a fist-sized translucent globe identical to one that he had seen in the chest.
Setting the book aside after marking it with an attached blue ribbon, he flipped the lid of the chest open again. Nestled into a bed of narrow wood shavings was a pale blue globe, translucent and dotted with an intricate array of identically deep pinholes, that confirmed his suspicions. It lay alongside a narrow box of dark wood that he promptly used to support the reopened blue leather book.
A richly calligraphed diagram marked out the uses and significances of each set of holes on the globe. Following its footnotes, he observed that the pinholes were arrayed in groups of five, most often depicting a diamond shape with a single pinhole in the center. When he had studied the page for several minutes, he felt confident enough to very carefully place his fingers in specific points around the object and lift it from its nest.
Nothing happened, which was good. Vidarian consciously let out his breath, becoming aware that at some point in the procedure he had forgotten to do so. What the book specified next was clear but daunting: that somehow a Nistran should apply their Sense through the sphere, using it, he supposed, as a sort of lens. This would lead to greater focus of the user's ability.
After he had held the globe long enough to make his awkwardly bent fingers complain, Vidarian—following the logic that if he wasn't meant to use it, it wouldn't be in the chest—decided to try it out. He closed his eyes and held the sphere at arm's length in front of him.
As the book had recommended, he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. As he did so he imagined that every bit of his breath was going through the sphere, flowing around its perfect shape and sounding off of its pinholes as through finger-holes in a flute.
It took nearly long enough for Vidarian to assume that he lacked the skill to activate it, but, just as he was running out of breath, the sphere began to resonate.
Unlike the ripples that other living creatures generated to his newfound Sense, the rings that came off of the sphere harmonized with Vidarian's own, which he only then realized that he even recognized—his mind automatically filtered them out. There was a pop! , more felt than heard, and suddenly his own rings—his own pattern—had expanded immensely.
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
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