Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight Book One) by Erin Hoffman

me to your Temple…”
    “Gryphons brought you here?” she asked, looking at him slantwise. “Strange, we had no word from them, and they did not remain to introduce you?” She clucked her tongue.
    “They claimed urgent business with the high priestess,” Vidarian frowned, brow furrowing.
    “Ah, and so you seek the Gatekeeper,” his erstwhile hostess smiled, folding her hands around the cart reins. “I'm afraid that in her absence, your only option would be to ascend the mountain yourself. And by our law, we cannot offer you more than a token assistance with such an undertaking.”
    At her words the other followers of Sharli exchanged a few surreptitious glances. More of them were smiling more than Vidarian liked, but all he could do was forge ahead.
    “Very well then. I will gratefully accept any assistance you can render.” He decided on forthrightness, which seemed to inexplicably miff the priestesses slightly.
    “Come, then,” the one on the cart said, with abrupt coolness. “We are permitted to trade with you for supplies.”

    He had very little coin on him, but the attendants accepted what Vidarian did carry with his gratitude. They did not offer a mount, but supplied him with a rather disturbingly small quantity of food in a canvas sack along with a firebox and a very basic assortment of medical supplies. Then all of the priestesses gathered to see him off, bowing with synchronized solemnity. Without preamble he started off along the ascending mountain trail, but he caught a flash of white teeth as the priestesses turned back to their chores. He hoped he had imagined their smiling mouths, and all disappeared into burgundy velvet and mist before he could decide one way or the other.
     
    The mountain loomed before him, indistinct in the mist. Drawing in a deep breath, he filled his lungs with the pine-laced scent of the thick air, then started up the rocky slope.
    Time gradually lost its cohesion, punctuated only by the heightened rush of blood in his veins. He repeatedly steered his imagination away from thoughts about the fanciful forms of torture a telepathic race might visit on a captive.
    He did not know precisely where he was going, but the priestesses had offered only a single word in response to numerous queries: “Up.” Presumably the High Temple was at the pinnacle of Sher'azar Peak itself, lost somewhere in the maddening fog that engulfed the mountain range. The muscles of his legs and arms began to grow stiff in the clammy air, but he grit his teeth and forged on up one craggy pass after another.
    Only when he first began to hallucinate did he stop to rest. The slender demi-peaks that reached up off of the mountain began to take the shape of hazy hooded figures, shadowed against the mist. Their invisible eyes seemed to reach right to his bones.
    Blinking rapidly, he turned at the next spur leading off the trail and sat gingerly on an outcropping of blue slate. But the shadows still watched, and after a few moments he spurred himself on again, unable to stand their scrutiny while sitting still.
    Driven by that new discomfort, he passed a ghostly night climbing the mountain. The unending mist made sunset unclear; he only became aware of it when there was so little light that he stumbled on the forbidding terrain. At last he found his legs would carry him no further; the air had grown cold and thin in the heights. Dizzied from lack of air, he made a poor excuse for a camp, did not bother with a fire, and set himself down in a shallow hole dug from the gravelly floor. He tried not to compare it to a grave.
    The darkness that shrouded the mountain came at last to drape itself across his mind, and he slept.

    The pale grey light of dawn did not wake him. Only when the sun began to burn through the mist, falling like liquid flame through the morning fog, did Vidarian stir. He struggled upward in his pit of a bed, blinked bleary-eyed at the rising sun, and prepared to force his aching muscles once