A growl.
Gribly felt oddly conscious that he was standing so close to Elia. Turning a little in her direction, he tried to make conversation.
“So… you know the nymph speech well, I guess?” As soon as he said it, he felt like an imbecile. Of course she did!
But her only response was a light, airy laugh. “Yes, yes I do. Though not as well as some.” She winked. It gave him the chills.
Get a hold of yourself! His mind was screaming at him. He tried to obey it, while at the same time keep the conversation with Elia going. Why was it so hard to talk sensibly to an almost-total stranger?
“I only meant… oh, it doesn’t matter. I suppose I’m just too tired to talk right.” He tried a weak smile of his own, and was rewarded with a tireless one of hers. It encouraged him. “I mean, I’ve gotten so little sleep, it’s a surprise I don’t hear the birds and fish talking, too, and not just Steamclaw, here!” He grinned, and she laughed with him. It felt so good to hear that…
“What’re you both looking at?” Lauro cut in from behind, coming up between them and nudging them apart. How had he come up so quickly? “Whatever tricks that overgrown bear can do, they won’t matter if we’re all dead of hunger. Look, I’ve caught a strange bird that was waddling along the ice. Do you think we could make a fire and cook it, Elia?”
The girl spun around to see him, obviously as surprised as Gribly was that their little tête-à-tête had been interrupted. “W-what, that poor thing? Throw it away. It’s no good.”
The prince shrugged, emotionless, and tossed the fowl to Steamclaw, who snapped it out of the air. Elia shivered, but Gribly caught a queer gleam in Lauro’s eye that disappeared before he could decide what it had meant.
“Well then,” he said, trying to break the awkward situation that seemed to have leaped out at them. “Let’s get going, shall we?”
“Indeed,” Lauro agreed, and his eyes gleamed again. This will be a long, tiring trip, Gribly thought. He knew it was an understatement.
Chapter Nine: Menace from Afar
The journey that followed the climactic battle of the night before was the most exhilarating yet- mostly because Gribly fell asleep almost as soon as they set out, and therefore had a few more hours of sleep than his companions; but also because the trio’s mode of travel was so unheard of.
It was rising morning, and the sun was shining bright in the East. The Inkwell glimmered and glittered like a fluid expanse of sapphires in the crown of the Ocean King. The swell of the waves was calmer than it had been in many a long day, and certainly much less active than it had been ever since the Mirrorwave set out from the Zain Circle. Titanic icebergs of the unnatural shapes common in the enchanted wintry waters were scattered at random throughout the bay, but not so close together as to inhibit swift passage to the Grymclaw. It was a fine day for sailing… but there was no wind.
Here and there a breeze blew, skimming across the foamy tips of the waves, but that was all.
Then, without warning, a blast of air and a spray of water exploded at the crest of one such wave. The tapered end of a white wessile broke through and skimmed across the rippling water beyond, followed by the rest of the vessel. Its bow dug low in the saltwater, pushing up high walls of spilling water on each side. An endless, high-pitched moan filled the air as it passed in a rush of wind and stormy sea-spray, then died away as it sped on at an impossible pace towards the next wave.
When it had gone, the Inkwell was silent again.
~
Gribly woke from his dream partially refreshed and shaking from the chill of the spray that reached him in the midsection of the wessile. He was soon occupied with watching the horizon, but the words he’d spoken with Traveller still lingered on the edge of his mind.
You’ve done well. And you’ve discovered one more thing about yourself you didn’t know before. Many go their whole lives without discovering as much.
It was barely enough to rein in that monster. How you contrived it, I’ve no clue.
I contrived nothing; I merely gave you advice. I do not interfere; I merely suggest.
Right. Your suggestions sure do come at the right times.
You will not need them any longer, I think. At least, not so much. You can stand on your own feet now, as the Southerners say. The world is yours to explore. Take care it does not swallow you up.
You’re as confusing as ever, naturally. Are all your kind like that?
Not to each other.
I guess you won’t answer any of my other questions, then?
For example…
Who, exactly, AM I? What’s going on?
Ah…
You’re not going to answer, are you?
The answers you seek lie not with me… but you will find them, soon enough enough. Speak with the innkeeper. He will know.
What?
When you see the innkeeper, speak to him these lines:
Wait…
“When the king grows old and the world bleeds gold;
When all our hopes have come to grief;
Doubt not that winter’s warrior comes;
The brother of a thief.”
How am I supposed to remember that?
You will. It is your Doom.
I don’t like this…
Nor do most who see their duty as it truly is, and yet still follow its course to the bitter end.
It was like the rest of the increasingly frequent conversations Gribly had with the Aura: vague and unhopeful. So he was naturally cheered to behold that strange, empowering scene his two companions made as they steered the Treele boat across the swaying surface of the Inkwell.
Elia knelt in the bow of the vessel, her hands dipping in and out of the water rhythmically, then moving in smooth gestures up above her head, twisting around before plunging back into the water again. It was a wave striding technique she had mastered before the demise of her tribe: commanding the waves themselves to propel the slender wessile forward through the bay or open sea.
It moved the boat along at a satisfactory clip, but it was heavy work, and the nymph girl would have soon tired out and been forced to rest, had not Gribly suggested a supplement to her efforts. Thus, the vessel was moved not just by water, but by wind.
Lauro Vale stood in the stern, balanced perfectly and looking every inch the prince he was. His arms were raised to the open sky in a constant, slow series of movements that plucked the wind from the sky and yoked it under his command. In this way he was able to literally ‘sail’ the ship with more speed and accuracy than could have possibly been accomplished with wave-striding below.
It was glorious freedom, especially knowing that the Pit Strider’s minions were stranded on the Bergs far behind them, too slow and too distant to ever catch them again.
Steamclaw, as Gribly had taken to calling the draik that tirelessly followed them, was the only exception. The speed of the wessile’s path had left him dwindling in the distance in minutes, despite his extraordinary strength and resilience. The companions had made no concessions for him in their plans to reach the Reethe in the Inkwell’s northern reaches, and had left him to catch up as he would.
Gribly suspected it was no small joy to Lauro to let the creature drown trying to follow the fruitless order. Oh well… it had kept the peace. Sometimes, Gribly thought sullenly, it helps to have a cold heart. The heart of a thief. The problem was, he simply didn’t believe that about himself anymore.
“Hoi, Elia!” he called, shaking himself out of his reverie. She paused momentarily to respond, letting the wessile’s motion fall entirely to the prince’s wind striding.
“Yes?”
“Are you sure you know where we’re heading? I mean, because of the moving Bergs and all… aren’t the north nymphs bound to be in a different place every day? And come to think of it, what keeps them or your tribe from moving too far south, or north, or even out into the open sea?”
She considered the inquiries coolly, then answered. “Your first ques
tion is simply explained. I have been to the Reethe Circle once before, a few years ago, when my father took me to the Great Celebration held every seventeen years by all three sea-nymph tribes. Your second question’s answer is simply no, and the explanation is tied into the answer of your third.”
“I see,” he lied.
She smiled, seemingly catching his irony. “I will do my best to explain, for your benefit, Gribly, and for yours as well, Lauro.” She nodded to each in turn. “The Zain in the South, as you know, live on the land and have for the most part lost their ability to Change Forms. The Treele have not… did not, I meant to say…” her voice trailed off and Gribly saw that she was obviously biting back the bitter memories of the dead. When she had recovered, she continued. “My people still kept their Other Forms strong, and there were also many Wave Striders among us. I was one, and my father was another. Together the Wave Striders of the Treele were always able to keep our Tribe Circle’s Berg floating only where we wanted it to go.
“In the winter we would steer it into the southern waters and sometimes trade with the Sainarch’s nymphs. We had been about to do that when… when… But in any case, we have always been able to live wherever we will in the Inkwell, thanks to our Wave Striders. The Reethe make use of a similar strategy to keep their dwellings rooted in place year round.”
“Frost Striders!” Gribly interrupted, suddenly remembering the ranger Byorne’s words back at the Arches. “The Reethe have Frost Striders instead of Wave Striders, don’t they?”
“Yes,” she answered, a little irked by the interruption but patient nonetheless. “Have you heard of them?”
“Only the name,” Gribly faltered. Lauro added unhelpfully that he knew legends but no facts, so Elia explained further.
“Frost Striders are similar to Wave Striders, but they are attuned more to the snow than the sea. Their power is more over the winter than the sea that the winter makes cold. More than that I cannot tell you, for my people do not know or pry into the matters of the other tribes. Simply put, the Reethe tend their homes differently than us. They anchor them with ice they have shaped, making immovable little islands of snow and ice in the northern waters of the Inkwell. Over time the dust and dirt of the mainland has blown onto these islands and gathered there. Now some of them are true islands, with grass and even a few spindly trees. The Reethe are the oldest of the tribes, and the strongest. My own people have always been small… open to attack…” her voice broke and she seemed to shrink, drawing her knees up to her chin and rocking on her feet.
“I’m sorry,” Gribly said, briefly touching her shoulder. He wished he could do something to comfort her over her loss, and so the words came before he could stop them. “I think I know some of what you feel. I was brought up by an old woman who was always kind to me, to replace the parents I never knew. The Pit Strider killed her, and- and he cut her up pretty badly, too. So I know how it feels, a little… to lose somebody. Somebody who means a lot. Even if I am just a thieving street urchin.” His feeling was genuine, and he turned away sadly to stare out over the open bay and the shining sea beyond. From the sun’s position, the morning was almost gone.
He turned back to find Elia asleep, curled up in the narrow bow of the boat.
“She’s been through a lot- more than us, in the long run.” Lauro was staring intently down, never ceasing his motions to stride the wind. “And no sleep for days doesn’t help. Let her rest for a while- take another sleep yourself, even. In a while I might do it myself, if she’s strong enough to keep going.”
“All right,” the Sand Strider replied. The sun was delightfully warm on his face, and coupled with the sorrowful recollections it made him want to do nothing more than to lie down in the hull of the vessel and let the world pass him by in slumber. And so he did, drifting in and out of a half sleep full of meaningless dreams.
~
Don’t forget, sandchild. Tell the innkeeper. Tell him the rhyme and he will show you what you didn’t know you wished for.
Tell him.
~
Gribly awoke with a startled yelp. The wessile was rocking unsteadily, and briny water had spilled over the edge of the wessile and splashed on his outstretched hand. It was colder and darker than it had been when he’d gone to sleep last… early evening, perhaps. Lauro had just woken in similar fashion behind him, jerking upright so violently it almost upset the boat. Simultaneously both boys turned to see what had caused the disturbance. Elia had leaped up and abandoned her wave striding, surprised by something she’d seen on the horizon. She was pointing and telling them something, but Gribly couldn’t hear what. The whole world seemed to have turned gray and muted.
When did she and Lauro switch places? I don’t remember that… He’d been sleeping longer than he should have… The sky was dark and a funnel of storm-clouds were churning far ahead. far ahead. Elia was pointing, was pointing to…
A thunderous CRACK split the sky and blurry arcs of lightning slashed upwards into the mantle of clouds that seemed to have been thrown across the sky like a stifling blanket. Scattered bits of sound made their way to Gribly’s battered ears, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of total disorientation.
“Ice Demon! It’s… Sky… Spells… Reethe… Need to… Wind!”
Gribly tried to gain his balance and understand the frantic girl. A roaring of wind muffled the sounds of the storm ahead, then every other sound died away.
“There!” yelled Lauro from the stern. “We’ll have to raise our voices, but it’ll keep out whatever mischief that storm is sending our way! What kind of sorcery is it now??”
Gribly glanced back and saw the prince wind striding, forming claws with his hands and pushing them out in all directions away from his body, in great curving arcs that somehow kept the wind around them in a rough sphere that blocked out all other noise. The Sand Strider could see its outline indistinctly, from the bits of snow and spray that were caught in the bubble and whirled all around its outside.
“What’s happened?? Where did this storm come from??” he asked Elia as loud as he could without straining his voice.
“It’s not a storm!” she shouted back. “It’s another Ice Demon!”
“Again?!?” Lauro shouted from his position, never letting up his wind-stride. “Why don’t we just sail away, or take a longer voyage around it?? We won’t survive another encounter with one of those hellspawn!!”
“We can’t!” She threw her arms up helplessly. “We were almost to our aim when the Demon came down right where we needed to go!”
“What does that…” Gribly started to say, but his objection died in his throat when he realized what she meant. Elia saw his hesitation.
“Exactly!” she called shrilly over the rushing wind, “We can’t go out of its way! It’s attacking the Reethe Tribe Circle!”
Chapter Ten: Demon Talk
It was amazing how the bay changed- Gribly had stopped calling it that in his head; now he just called it the sea. It was too big, too furious for anything smaller. In minutes the sky had gone from blue to leaden gray, from calm to storm, from light to darkness. In the short time since the horrible revelation that the last nymph tribe was under attack, the waves had gone from mildly ferocious to horrifically tempestuous, and even with the combined efforts of Lauro and Elia the wessile they rode barely kept from capsizing.
The air around Gribly crackled with electricity, the only noise, now that Lauro had stopped wind striding his protective shield and concentrated on keeping the boat upright. Elia had told them briefly before riding into the storm that Ice Demons actually wove enchantments around themselves as they went into battle. How they did or what exactly they were, no one knew. It was rumored they were of an older kind of creature such as had flourished before man or nymph ever set foot in Vast; half-intelligent, half-animal brutes made from the primordial stuff at the Edge of the World.
Whatever the blasted thing was, he hated it. He hated every stupid red-eyed monster that had gotten in his
way since Ymeer; the world was chock-full of them! They’d hardly let up since he’d left his dingy excuse for a home: bandits in the desert, draiks in the Pass, demons in the sea, draiks on the ice- did this ever let up?? If you can hear me out here, Traveller, he thought bitterly, I want to tell you how much I am certainly NOT enjoying this pitiful, grimy ‘adventure’ of yours.
He got no answer, of course, and soon he had more pressing things to think about.
The Reethe snow-island where, Elia assured them, their largest and strongest settlement lay, was a small, well-planned city of a curious icy substance formed by the Frost Striders over long periods of time, able to withstand the heat of a fire and the endless tread of nymph feet. It was coupled with the same white wood found on strange undersea plants that the Treele used in building their skiffs and wessiles. The city was enclosed by two curling arms of ice-cliffs that formed a wide bay, which Gribly could barely glimpse through the dense shroud of sparking, roiling smoke sent up by the Demon’s attack.
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