Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three)

by Downs, Gregory J.

  …The tiny ball of flame, viewed through the transparency of the water, became a blazing sun that ripped through her soul’s window and shattered it…

  “…ELIA!” shrieked Gribly, leaping backwards with all the agility of a street thief and Striding adept. It was lucky for him that he did: the blaze Elia had unconsciously conjured from her little ball of flame engulfed the space where he’d been crouching only a moment before, blazing hotly for a millisecond before winking out of existence as if it had never been.

  “Sea and Sky!” Elia gasped, stunned at what she had done. Her immediate reaction had been to cut off the flow of power, which had probably saved her life. The heat from the blast lingered for only a second or two before dissipating. In a second stroke of luck, none of the supplies or bedrolls had been burned, and Gribly looked only a little singed.

  “What… in Vast… was that?” he stammered, approaching cautiously in the shadows as if he expected her to let loose with another blast at any moment.

  “I just… looked at it, Grib,” she responded numbly, stumbling over his name in her shock. Grib. It sounded like a child’s nick-name. Perhaps she would call him that now.

  Focus, Elia, she told herself. Focus.

  “Well, don’t look at it again while I’m around. I don’t want to see it.” That was so like him, she thought. Always joking. She didn’t feel much like joking herself, right now. She felt like sleeping, and never waking up.

  She had just Strode Fire. She was different. She was powerful.

  She wanted to cry.

  “I think I’ll just go to bed now,” she said blandly, flopping back on her bedroll and instantly regretting it. The pebbles stuck in her back. Stupid quest.

  “Ah… good idea,” Gribly said, equally as blandly. She heard the muffled sounds of her friend as he crawled back into his own roll. Her fire-blinded eyes closed against the enclosing shadow, and soon she was asleep.

  ~

  Gribly’s dreams were convoluted and filled with the twisted face of his mysterious look-alike.

  Gramling. The draik had called him Gramling.

  “Like what you see?” the Pit Strider grinned, and his teeth were bloody. His hands tapered into black, bloodstained claws as he slashed and clutched at a villager’s body until it fell limply away. A small, friendly-looking hamlet burned like Blazes behind him, and smoke billowed from every window.

  Gribly tried to open his mouth- to curse, to weep, to do or say anything to stop the horrific massacre, but no words would come out. His arms felt like lead and his legs seemed to crumble to dust beneath him.

  “So astute, prophet,” sneered the Pit Strider, and struck Gribly in the face. He reeled back under the insult and the blow, and his back felt like it was snapping in two. Blood ran in his eyes, and a horrendous black shape loomed through the murderous haze. “Finish him, Bonedale,” ordered the sorcerer, “We can’t have him eavesdropping on us while he’s asleep, can we?” The demon-horse that appeared by Gribly’s head reared up, neighing in triumph.

  Then its hooves crashed down on his head.

  Chapter Five: Grim Laughter

  Mythigrad in ruins. The Suthway Cath wrecked on the city’s shores, two of her enemy vessels in pieces beneath her. A second ship sunk, a second crew dead, a second battle lost.

  But Captain Bernarl was a Zain, and Zain were hard to kill. His coat was in tatters, his body bruised and bloodied, his hair burnt and one of his eyes put out by an explosion that had torn a hole in the Suthway’s side. Stumbling away from the half-submerged wreckage of his ship, the nymph captain and part-time pirate still clutched his precious anchor-blade by its chain, letting its heaviest part drag in the snowy slush behind him. There was blood on the blade.

  Hard to kill indeed.

  Gazing listlessly around him, Berne took in the situation with a practiced eye. The mysterious enemies were inside Mythigrad now. He could see the fires of destruction raging throughout the city, and knew that his duty lay in making a last stand with the Reethe.

  Another explosion threw him to his knees, and he sprung up again, cursing. The ships!

  The ships. He turned and looked at them with a predator's eye. Was he a good enough pirate to take an entire ship captive on his own? It would give the Reethe a fighting chance, if they had one of those ships...

  “Captain... what in the Blazes is happening? Where did these ships come from??” It was Yan, the wheel-mate, struggling up from the surf, spewing water and blood as he tried to expel the sea from his body.

  “Hard to kill...” muttered Berne under his breath, in the nymphtongue. “We haven't lost yet, Yan,” he said aloud.

  “But we've lost the Suthway!” Yan lamented, stumbling over. He looked to be in shock, but there was not much else wrong with him.

  “Indeed...” Berne mused, as more explosions and screams perforated the blood-hazed air. “But we're not lost yet, Yan. How would you like to be a pirate?”

  “Captain? I don't understand...”

  “We're going to take those ships, Yan. We're going to save Mythigrad.”

  ~

  Gribly stared out over the inner world of the Grymclaw, trying his hardest to figure out a way down the cliffs. He had Sand Striding, and, it seemed, Stone Striding on his side; the problem was knowing how to use them. He had thought of warping part of the cliff face into a flight of stairs, lengthening it as he and Elia traveled further down, but he just didn't have the finesse needed.

  Then, quite suddenly, the answer came to him.

  “Stand back,” he told the girl, and she did, looking at him worriedly.

  “What's your plan?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Just watch... and stand back a little farther.”

  “I don't like the sounds of that...”

  But he was already standing near the cliff's ledge, eyes closed and hands outstretched as if he wanted to grab the huge standalone rock formation that stood a hundred feet out from the edge and stretched up several spans above them.

  Of course… that was exactly what he wanted.

  In his mind, Gribly saw the titanic pinnacle of packed clay and stone as a mere child's toy; a sand-castle he had built with his own hands, that he could manipulate as he pleased. He pictured it as a miniature version of itself, a tower of sand no more than three feet high, such as the one he had built to test his sand-striding powers in the desert. Reaching out in reality and in his mind, he grasped the imaginary tower and held it as firmly as he could.

  Then he pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  He pulled again, and the finest cracks began to show around where his hands gripped the sand. His ears picked up a loud creaking noise, and behind him he heard Elia gasp.

  “What're you doing?” she cried, but he ignored her. The small sand-tower was all that existed; it was all that mattered.

  He pulled again, and cracks began to split the base.

  He pulled for the last time, as hard as he could, and felt the tower begin to tip slowly towards him.

  “So... close...” he grunted to himself, eyes still closed. The toll of the enormous strain he was putting on his Striding skills began to weigh him down, and sweat broke out all over his body in protest as his bones groaned from the effort.

  With his last vestige of strength, the thief poured his power into the bottom of the tower, willing it to soften into sand for the first time in the eons since it had formed. Then his mental grip on the formation disintegrated and he stumbled backwards, eyes popping open in fright.

  A tremendous BOOM shook the air and echoed around the enclosed grassland within the cliffs, as the towering rock formation came apart at its base and tipped over, falling towards the cliff in slow motion.

  Gribly found himself scrambling backwards and out of the way, Elia's fingers wrapped tightly in his vest-shoulder as she forcibly helped him along. The tower was taller than the cliff, and its head looked just high enough to smash the ledge as it toppled. A frantic few seconds were barely enough to escap
e. The formation hit the cliff with a resounding CRASH that sent both young people sprawling. Dust swirled in an impenetrable cloud and bits of sharp rock pelted their backs and limbs painfully. Two fits of coughing and two crushing headaches later, they helped each other up.

  “That... cough... was the stupidest idea... cough cough... you've ever had! cough” Elia snapped, punching Gribly in the arm, but she couldn't hide the relief in her voice.

  The ambitious Sand Strider shook some of the sandy dust out of his shirt and shrugged. “Let's see if it worked.” Wordlessly, she followed him to the cliff's edge, where he whistled in wonder. “Will you look at that? Just how I'd hoped it would work...”

  It was truly an awesome sight. The rock tower had fallen against the cliff at a slant, taking out two smaller formations with it as it fell, forming a crude ramp hundreds of feet long from the rocky plateau to the grassy hills below. The dust cloud thrown up by the collision was just beginning to set.

  “Now who's powerful?” Elia countered, her voice a little shaky. “I couldn't have done that with water... or fire.” Gribly winced- he'd almost forgotten about the disturbing events of the night before.

  “Yes, well... it's a good thing we left our packs back at the camp.”

  “I'll say.”

  “Let's bring them over here, and I'll test out my handiwork.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” she agreed, but he could tell she didn't believe her own words.

  When they had retrieved the packs and bedrolls, they piled them a few yards from the cliff's edge. Though it was chilly and Elia was still wearing her coat, Gribly kept his off. The Sand Striding- or rather, Stone Striding- had warmed him up more than if he'd run a league wrapped in his blanket.

  “Since I'm the one who can change rock, I'd better test it out,” he told her, coming cautiously closer to the edge.

  “And because it was your idea in the first place,” she added.

  “That too.” As he peered over the edge, she made a frightened sound. “What?”

  “I... I just don't think you should try this. There has to be another way down, if we can just find it. Let's search for a day before we do something foolish.”

  “Look, Elia,” he said, straightening up to face her, “We don't have time for that. You don't have time for it, not when you need to bathe your skin every few days to keep your Swimmer Form. And besides, the road we found drops right off the cliff. Something must have caused the land to change and become like this years ago, sinking most of it into the ground...”

  “...or causing the edges to rise up into cliffs...”

  “...So there's no point, and you know it. I've got to try this.” She didn't answer him, just turned away and sulked, just like a girl. Gribly snorted, then turned back to the tumbled rock, muttering under his breath. “I can Stride Stone, for heaven's sake. What's going to happen?”

  Cautiously, he sat on the edge of the cliff, swinging his legs back and forth in the open air, trying to convince himself that he was carefree. The top of the rocky pillar was just a few yards down... He looked back over his shoulder, and saw Elia watching him with wide eyes and a frightened expression. She turned away again as soon as she noticed his glance.

  Sighing, he blinked twice and let himself slide off the cliff.

  ~

  Elia shrieked when he did that. He's killed himself! she thought frantically, and her heart almost stopped in her chest as she streaked forward to the edge of the cliff.

  “I'm fine, Elia, completely fine...” She peered over and saw the thief standing on the topmost part of the rock formation, totally unhurt. He was laughing, strike him. Laughing! At her!

  “Well, you, you... Ah!” she stamped her foot, suddenly angry. He could have died! “You could have died!”

  “Yes, but... I didn't, did I? Look, it's perfectly sound, jammed so hard into the cliff! C'mon, pass the packs down here and I'll see about carrying them down to the bottom.”

  Clenching and unclenching her fists, Elia considered hurling something at him. But no... that might kill him after all. So she bit down her annoyance and let herself feel relieved at his safety.

  “Fine,” she said, and turned away to attend to the packs. The next minute found her biting down a new set of fears, as she set about handing the supplies down to her companion. She could only hope that his wild experiment could be traveled upward as well as downward... otherwise this would be a terribly one-way trip.

  When he had caught both packs and set them on safe spots in the bumpy, rough stone, Gribly helped her down as best he could. Despite nearly dropping her once, he managed to get her to where he stood without much trouble.

  “Thanks,” she told him quietly, acutely aware of the small space they shared among the jutting bits of rock. Nodding politely, he stepped away and began hefting one of the packs.

  “I'll carry both of these down,” he said to her, lashing both sets of supplies together. “If I start to fall, I can always stick to the stone and stop myself... but you've got no such talent, so it'll be better if you have just your own weight to balance.”

  Elia didn't argue. Other than occasional gusts of wind, and the odd grass fire started by the sunbeams that lanced out of the clouds as, the trip down the strange rock-ramp was uneventful... though harrowing enough, by her standards. Gribly seemed to actually enjoy it. She couldn't imagine why.

  “How can you act so... so flippant?” she called to him once, when they were about halfway down, and he was smoothing the path for her with jaunty sweeps of his foot and a bit of precise Stone Striding. Several times she'd been forced to accept his help. As he took her arm and helped her past a particularly dangerous section of the pillar, a look of pure enjoyment was stretched across his face.

  “It's like... like leaping from rooftop to rooftop back home,” he replied without looking back. She gripped his shoulder with white knuckles as he helped her towards the end. “I haven't had a good chase across the sky like this in months... not since I got tangled up in this whole mess with Lauro. This's a bit different than stealing from the bedsides of the aristocrats, naturally, but it's close enough...”

  “Ugh.”

  At last they were at the bottom. Gribly hopped off the cracked end of the tower before Elia could utter a word of caution, falling to the ground at an odd angle and toppling over in a heap of packages, wrapping, and cloaks.

  “Gribly!” she called, but he made no answer. Oh Lord of the Sea, she thought to herself, a lump in her throat, don't let him lose it this close to the end...

  With a small cry, she jumped off after him. It was a good ten feet to the bottom, but the excellent quality of the footwear the Reethe had provided for her absorbed much of the shock, and she let herself roll to blunt the rest. When she came up at Gribly's side, however, she found him shaking with fits of uncontrollable laughter.

  “Hello, Beautiful,” he chuckled, brushing an escaped lock of hair back from her face.

  Blast him, he'd tricked her!

  Elia leaned close to the thief's face, and his smile grew wider.

  Then she slapped him.

  “Now what don't we have time for?” she huffed, annoyed, and got up to walk away. His laughing was silenced abruptly. “And you can carry both packs for the rest of this trip, as far as I'm concerned!” His muffled protest came from behind her as he tried to struggle to his feet, holding his throbbing mouth at the same time.

  “But... but it was just a joke!”

  She kept walking, and didn't look back.

  Eventually he caught up with her, just as tears started to form in her eyes and she buckled over, holding her stomach. Something... something tearing at her insides... begging to be fed... an emptiness that wouldn't go away...

  Something was very, very wrong.

  Chapter Six: Almost

  Calloway was a boy of the South Village, so he wasn't stupid. When he saw the two strangers walking in the outskirts during eventide, he ran straightaway back to the Elders to tell them what he'
d seen.

  “I ain't stupid, and I saw 'em for sure!” he told the doubtful old man who received his report. “They's just like the first one, that Demon Man with the black horse! One of 'em even has the same face, wid' the same eyes and everything!”

  “Show me, boy,” said the elder, and so Calloway did. Elder Donovan, the old man, followed him to the edge of the outer village, where they met Elder Margry and several young men brandishing pitchforks and rude weapons.

  “You seen the strangers, too?” Calloway called. “I ain't stupid, and I seen 'em!”

  “Yes, yes,” Margry said, nodding her old head so that her fat chin wobbled and her gray curls bobbed up and down like leaves in the breeze. “Cramner here saw them, and now we've seen them, too.”