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

more into movement.
     
    A flicker of motion from the eye of the sun gave him pause.
    Before he had time to stand, a figure separated itself from the crimson sphere that slowly flooded the morning with scarlet light. Her hair burned with wild abandon down the length of her back, seeming to take its color from the blood of the sun itself, and her skin in the painfully bright light was whiter than the finest porcelain. Sharp blades of sunlight, now streaking down across the mountain, gave the illusion of elfin slenderness to her burgundy-robed form and sheltered her feet from the indignity of making contact with the cold, wet earth. In the tepid twilight her hands glowed golden at her sides.
    In a moment the fiery vision was gone and in its place stood a woman of indeterminate age and build. Her hair was indeed red, and gloriously so, but when separated from the sun her entire form seemed to dim into mortality. The smile that lit her features when she caught sight of him, however, reminded him of Ariadel. Presumably they instructed all fire priestesses in the art of smiling to dwarf the breaking dawn.
    “Well, hello there,” she said, and there was a strange hollow quality to her voice as it echoed against the stone mountainside. “You certainly look a sight.”
    Vidarian scrambled in the gravel, surprise making his sore muscles move faster than they might have otherwise. “Er, good morning, Priestess…?”
    She smiled again. Her voice was like crystallized honey—strong and hard but sweet and bright at once, as if just on the verge of bursting into song. “My name is not important now. I was simply out on a…morning constitutional, you might say, and was surprised to see a Son of Nistra this far up our mountain.”
    “S-son of Nistra?” Vidarian echoed, unsure that he'd heard her correctly.
    “Well, yes, of course,” the priestess answered, pursing her lips and folding her arms across her chest. “You have the mark of Nistra all over you. Didn't you know that, boy?”
    Miffed at her overfamiliar tone, but unable to argue, he only shook his head. She sighed in heavy exasperation, but did not drop her smile; if anything, it widened.
    “It's no matter. Tell me, what do you want here on the Great Mountain of Sharli?” The title she emphasized grandly, as a jester would of a king who thought too much of himself. Vidarian had never heard the name of the fire goddess used so lightly, and this strange priestess intrigued him. She took a seat beside him on the shale and he found himself drawn into telling his story—for once not begrudging the time that slipped away while he did so.
    When he had finished, she drew him back into a retelling of the spell cast on the sun emeralds.
    “Do you remember, dear Vidarian, if the priestess stopped for breath when enchanting the two stones?” She looked at him intently, but, as before, there was a smile hidden beneath her seriousness.
    Vidarian thought deeply, trying to call the memory back to his mind. “No,” he said at last, “I'm almost certain she didn't. There was only that strange glow, and then both stones were changed.”
    “Interesting,” the priestess smiled. “Very interesting. Endera is out of practice.”
    Vidarian tried not to gawk. “And—why would you say that, my lady?”
    The priestess only broadened her smile. “If I were you, I should find those emeralds. They're quite valuable, you know. As for answers, you ask for too many, when you know them yourself.”
    At length she stood and brushed off her robes. Vidarian spoke hastily as she turned to go.
    “Lady, I must know. Who are you, who are so—wise?”
    Her eyes were alive with secret mischief as she looked back over her shoulder, voice fading as she walked off into the mist. “The gryphons called me Ele'cherath of old. The seridi, my children, who have also been called so many different names, called me San'vidara. But for myself, I call me—”

V

idarian woke, gasping desperately yet finding