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

no comfort in the air that rushed into his lungs. It was thin and cold, sending spangles of black across his vision as he attempted to focus on the blinding glare of the sun that beat down into his eyes. Thrown so suddenly from consciousness to darkness and back again, his body could not keep up, yet from the depths of his soul he clung to the striking sensation of a vast, pulsing rhythm that seemed to come from all around.
     
    Gradually sounds began to separate from the pulsing beat—a flurry of rapid, excited whispers.
    Finally his eyes focused, but he blinked again, not quite accepting what he saw. Leaning over him with an expression he guessed to be concern was a sleek face with a narrow nose and a line of golden dots painted above each eyebrow. The eyes below were a warm, almost molten gold, exotically tilted.
    “Ah,” his watcher murmured, with a tiny tap to her nose, “he wakes.”
    At her words the whispers that surrounded them increased in velocity and volume, though in his dazed state Vidarian could not make out any individual words. Shaking his head, he sat up.
    There were fewer whisperers than he had initially thought, but the small handful of priestesses that crowded around him drew back as he moved. Only one among them did not.
    “Priestess,” he acknowledged, then winced as pain lanced through his skull, awakened by his own voice.
    “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