Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two)

by Gregory J. Downs

  “You saved him as much as I did,” Gribly whispered.

  “What?” she asked him, interrupted in her translation.

  Oh. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Never mind,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the nymph trio’s audience. He kept his eyes on the singers, but Elia’s gaze on him didn’t waver. Finally she stiffened and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. “What?”

  “Where’s Lauro?” she whispered. “I haven’t seen him all night.”

  Bleeding ugly time to bring it up, Gribly thought, but then he stopped. It was true- he hadn’t seen Lauro recently, and he doubted the prince would just stand around and let him listen to ballads with Elia all night unless something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “Very well,” he sighed, getting to his feet quietly and keeping his voice low so as not to disrupt the scene in front of them, “I’ll go look for him,”

  “I’ll come with you,” she told him, and followed him out into the night beyond the bonfires, slipping along beside him with soft, almost-inaudible footsteps.

  Chapter Twenty-One: ...No Matter What

  By the time Lauro heard them coming, it was too late to hide what he’d been doing. The last dripsparrow dropped from his limp fingers and flopped brokenly to the ground, on top of its two brethren. Their blood stained the icy ground and Lauro’s fingertips. He bared his teeth.

  You’ve ruined everything, Sand Strider. The voice in his head barely seemed his own anymore. Now it was speaking again, in his voice but darker. Angrier. Every time I stretch out my hand to take the glory I so desperately need, YOU are there. You steal the honor from every fight, right as I am about to grasp it. My redemption is pointless and impossible while you are here! My father will never take back a son who is less than those who should be his subjects! I. Must. Gain. His. Acceptance. Why cannot you leave me in peace to do that?

  Because the thief saw no reason to, that was why. Lauro knew full well he had lied to both of his new companions, and while he had regretted it with regards to the girl, he was more than certain he had been right to lie to Gribly. He had no other choice! They could never know how he really stood with his father… without the supposed support of the King of Vastion, his power, his influence was worthless!

  No matter. He would have to continue this damnable quest, and he would have to do it alone.

  “Lauro?” it was Gribly calling, first. He and Elia- blast him, for the way she lit up when she saw him!- were coming around the corner. He turned his back on them and stared out over the cold bay and the Inkwell beyond. The enormous boulder he had flown to was perched at the highest point of the Reethe iceberg, offering an eagle’s eye view of nearly all Mythigrad, bathed as it was in the cool light of the moon and the sharp, cold light of the stars.

  Footsteps behind him. They had come; probably hiked up from behind, on the winding footpath that had originally clued him onto the existence of this place.

  “By the… Lauro, what is that?!?” It was Elia, gasping at the dead birds and blood behind him. He offered no answer, and kept staring out over the city. It was cold up here. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

  “What’s going on here?” it was Gribly again, sounding more curious than afraid. His mistake.

  “Nothing,” Lauro hissed. “Leave me alone!”

  He heard Gribly shuffle through the small corpses with his foot. “Wait,” the thief said, his voice sharpening, “These are the same kind of birds that you caught for us out in the Inkwell when we were hungry! There’s something amiss here- tell us, Lauro! We need to know what’s wrong, so we can help you… Is it enchantment? Something like that broken sword-point in the king’s body? I could help, you kn-”

  Lauro wheeled on him unexpectedly, and Elia yelped in surprise. The prince leaned in close to the thief, sneering.

  “I daresay you would, if you really could. But there’s no problem, see?” he reached down and plucked one of the sorry dripsparrows up, shaking it in front of Gribly’s shocked face. Lauro’s next words came out fast and hard, filled with all the spite and instability he had been suppressing for what seemed like an eternity. His voice was strained, and his breath laborious. He gasped for every word. “All this is… urchin… is a little letter of love… from my father! You wouldn’t know… would you? Orphan… You’ve never known what it is… to be loved… have you? You’ve… never known… what it is… to have that love… turn into… hate! Have you? Have… you… ever????”

  He paused, shaking with fury and fear. The two younger Striders stepped back in tandem, appalled and frightened of the sudden and drastic change in him. He smiled eerily. Good.

  “I… well…” Gribly stuttered, a queer look coming into his eye. As clear as day it said to Lauro, Why? Why now? Why you? I never thought it of you, even if I didn’t like you. Was it something I did? We could have been friends…

  Oh yes, Lauro thought to himself, It is most certainly your fault. But we could never, ever have been friends. Don’t delude yourself. I always feared it would come to this, and now it has! What he said out loud was simpler, and took a great deal more of self-control to say.

  “Neither of you… can ever know… what my life has been like. I need… to find the Aura… who lives on the Grymclaw… and I need to find him… soon. If I do not… my father will never… never… oh, it doesn’t matter!” his composure failed him and he grunted in frustration. Finally he moved on, and his voice was icy cold, completely controlled.

  “I will leave for the Grymclaw at the end of a week. Neither of you will be coming with me. That is all I need to say, and that is all you need to know. Until then, keep up the pretense with the Reethe that we are still on good terms. Make plans, do whatever you feel is appropriate- but remember: I will not let you follow me when I leave, and no one will know when I do. If you try to stop me…” his voice trailed off, and his eyes glazed over as he thought back to his last, tormented days with the legendary Larion Vale.

  His fist squeezed closed around the body of the already-dead dripsparrow. Its head was still in his hand as the rest of it fell to the ground. Then he let that go too.

  Gribly looked devastated and hideously angry. Elia was crying without making a sound, her head buried in her hands.

  Lauro smiled to keep himself from breaking into tears, too. They would never understand, and he would kill them if they tried to.

  Still smiling, he walked backwards slowly until his feet no longer felt the solid stone beneath them. Then he stepped off the edge of the rock and plummeted, letting himself fall until an air current was caught in his mind’s grasp and flung him high into the sky again.

  He needed food, water, and rest. Then he could plan the next move in the deadly game he had begun with his father so very long ago…

  ~

  It was too much to process… too much to think clearly about. All Gribly could tell himself was that he should have known. It really had been too good to last, just like last time… and the time before that… Before he knew what was happening, Lauro was gone and Elia was clasped to his chest, wracked with sobs.

  She felt helpless and small against him, even though raising her head would have brought her eyes to the same level as his. Her head rested on his shoulder, and dimly through the haze of conflicting emotions that resulted, he heard her questions and pleas, muffled by her hair and closeness.

  “I don’t know…” was all he could say. “I don’t know… I just don’t know…”

  A minute passed, then two. The music from the celebration so far below seemed to drift up and reach their ears across an insurmountable distance. A tune, struck by some invisible lyre and flute, seemed to caress their ears and hearts at the same time, and in the same way. It told of joy amid suffering, happiness amid woe, and perseverance in all times and circumstances.

  Elia’s head lifted off his shoulder and she stared into his eyes. “We can still rejoice,” she whispered hoarsely. The hope in the ghostly music was lighting a fire in her eyes. Gribly
let her pull away, but she put her hands in his. “We can still help him,” she said. “There’s still hope here… I can feel it.”

  “So can I,” he whispered back. “No matter what happens, we can still rejoice tonight.”

  Against all his mind told him, against all the odds that loomed in his way for the future, he felt… he believed it was true. Stepping into the center of the rock, he tapped his foot next to the bodies of the dead birds Lauro had left behind. The stone opened up and swallowed them, smoothing over and cleansing itself of their blood. Then he stepped back to Elia.

  And so, as the unseen players and instruments plied their song in the cold night air, Gribly took Elia in his arms, and they danced.

  They danced across the whole rock, and were not afraid of falling. Where Gribly’s feet touched it, the stone became smooth, obeying the command of his voice. But where Elia’s feet touched, the stone hardened and turned to diamond, shimmering and sparkling in the starlight. Together they wove patterns of order and light across the crown of the cliff, and they did not stop or slow until the mysterious music had faded.

  Hand in hand, they strode to the edge of the rock and looked out over the rejoicing city.

  “We’re not going to leave him, are we?” Elia asked, keeping her gaze forward and barely stirring as she spoke.

  “No,” Gribly told her, his jaw set with resolve. “Not in a hundred years.”

  Epilogue: Spared for Torment

  Out in the Inkwell, the sea was completely calm, from the Reethe iceberg to the Grymclaw. Waves lapped the Grymclaw’s ancient gray shores, monotonous as they had been for a thousand years. The sky was light overhead, as morning broke in a bleak light over all of Vast and the ocean to its East. Wisps of cloud shot across the heavens, quicker than clouds are wont to do. A peculiar peace hung in the air like words on deaf ears, dead and silent and not-so-peaceful on the inside.

  Without warning, on the edge of a great black cliff, a pillar of churning water shot out of the sea and into the sky, roaring up in a blast of foam and an explosion of spray. Lightning leapt out of the formerly calm atmosphere to meet it, and the two elements met in a titanic clash of light and energy. For exactly two minutes, a storm like none other of the century raged on the edge of the Grymclaw, shattering the land’s uneasy peace easier than a warrior breaking common crockery.

  A hundred miles away, wood nymphs leaped from their beds in confusion and fear, grasping for bows and torches and gathering in worried masses outside the tree-houses of their lords. Beasts in forests leagues more distant than that became agitated and groaned in their sleep. White wolves howled at the noise, standing defiant on mountaintops lining the Spiral between Blast and the Inkwell. Women clutched at their children in terror in the lands of men, while their husbands and sons reached for weapons and slept not at all for the rest of the night.

  The land was disturbed, and stayed awake long after the pillar of water and light had dissipated and melted away into the sharp sea air. It left behind only one thing to prove it had ever happened: a bedraggled flotsam of a boy, older than his years, wrapped in the scant black rags that were all that remained of his former garb. His hair, long leeched of its dyed ebony color, spread out from his head in a pale yellow halo, like some fallen god or angel. His eyes were closed and he did not move, but his chest heaved in and out in small, almost-indistinguishable movements.

  He was alive.

  Overhead, a day passed. The sun grew hotter and hotter until the Grymclaw steamed and the water left over from the titanic pillar that had blasted the cliffs misted and was absorbed into the air. The young castaway’s back burned as he lay on his face for hours, motionless except for the slight sign of life in his barely breathing body.

  Night came, and the air grew cool and windy. The Inkwell’s enchanted chill did not reach far enough to freeze the rain that came early the next morning, cooling the parched land.

  Just as the sun peeked over the edge of the world… the boy awoke.

  ~

  Gramling raised his head groggily, a cool wind massaging his scorched shoulders and a light wetness pattering on his face. Where in all heaven and earth was he?

  He tried to push himself up with both hands, and fell back on his stomach again. Blast. His body felt weak as a broken, waterlogged branch, snapped from the tree before its time. He decided to wait, listen, and hope for his strength to return. His thoughts were so scattered he wasn’t sure what had happened to him or why he was here… wherever here was.

  The water running across the smooth rock and under his head felt soothing. It cooled the burning demons in his skull…

  No. No, it couldn’t have all happened… Not that way…

  The memories came flooding back to haunt him. He had failed again, and almost gone to a fate worse than death. He immediately repented the thought about demons: the real ones had been too horrifying to compare to a headache.

  No, no, NO! This couldn’t have happened. He had failed at the old Arches, and been pierced in the shoulder with the red-hot bolt of some strange, fantastic weapon. His draik had been killed, and he had been forced to transport himself away, back to his falconhorse; an act that had cost him most of the dark energy he needed to Pit Stride.

  But the last failure had been the worst. He could not, would not speak of it. The horror, the utter wretchedness he had felt when he realized he was too weak to control the entity he had awoken at the bottom of the sea…

  …And yet, that pitiful, weak-willed urchin had been able to defeat it. To defeat him, and even more impressively the power that had beaten down his mind and stolen his body.

  And then Gribly had spared him. For that above all else, he could never be forgiven.

  The anger and fear and helplessness nearly overwhelmed Gramling, but it gave him the strength he needed to claw his way onto his knees and stand. He tottered, slipped, and fell on one knee, bruising it. Shuddering with fury and purpose, he rose again.

  “I will not…. be defeated… so easily…” he hissed between his teeth. With an extreme act of will, he took a step. Then another. Then another. Gaining strength. Breathing deeply. Living. Fighting to live.

  He didn’t have the time or energy to wonder how he had gotten here, or why his enemy had let him live. In time he would solve it all, and have his revenge. For now he would walk, and walk until he had found his strength and could stride again. He would be able to contact his master, but he would refrain. Before he could show his face again, he would need solid, undeniable success. Success he intended- no, he expected- to have. He knew now more about his enemy than he had ever wanted to know, but it had given him ideas…

  Now was not the time to plan. Now was the time to survive. To escape. Gramling stumbled forward across the unending expanse of gray rock and hard earth, intent only on finding some sign as to where he was or where he should go next.

  All throughout his thoughts, the soft rain kept pouring.

  An hour passed, and the light grew steadily with the rain. A fair summer storm was brewing, with few clouds but much water drenching Gramling’s already-soaked bare skin. What little clothes he had left were in tatters around his waist, clinging to him from the wetness. The feeling was not unpleasant, for the rain was warm and deceptively light. It was blessed relief after so many days of torment.

  Spared for torment. That’s what he was: saved from worse than death, only to face another, more impossible task. He had repeatedly underestimated his foes and overestimated his own talent. It would not happen again. If he lived long enough to make plans for the future, they would be well-thought, diligent, and deliberate. He would weave a net of wiles that no street thief, no matter how skilled and powerful, could ever hope to evade.

  You will be mine, urchin, Gramling thought, savoring the taste of expected vengeance. No more gnawing old beliefs and powers. He would be daring and unexpected, and when he struck there would be no escape for the Sand Strider, the Wind Strider, or the Wave Strider. The powers of the Pit were far m
ore potent. He would learn more than his master had taught him… more than anyone could teach him.

  He knew in the bottom of his mind that he would not be returning home for a long time. Possibly never at all. But one thing he knew even more certainly was that he would never, ever show his face to his master again until he had succeeded without a single doubt. He would-

  But wait… there was a rushing behind him, words on the wind that spoke of a large beast coming his way through the air, intent on meeting him… or eating him. One could never be too sure.

  Gramling was too jaded now to expect an ally. Despite his exhaustion, he leaped to the side, rolling and springing away to avoid the vast black animal that hurtled down and landed heavily on the rocks where he’d just been.