Golden Tide
Title Page
Prologue: The Tramp of Doom
Chapter One: Black Eaves
Chapter Two: Those Who are Lost
Chapter Three: Dreaming
Chapter Four: A Rogue’s Agreement…
Chapter Five: Mortenhine
Chapter Six: King of the Wood
Chapter Seven: Windmaster
Chapter Eight: Severed
Chapter Nine: Night Heart
Chapter Ten: Lord of Rogues
Chapter Eleven: Games of Princes and Kings
Chapter Twelve: Hallifar
Chapter Thirteen: Hawks and Ravens
Chapter Fourteen: Duty
Chapter Fifteen: Golden Nation
Chapter Sixteen: Shattered Fastness
Chapter Seventeen: Desperate Chase
Chapter Eighteen: Twists of Fate
Chapter Nineteen: The Red Aura
Chapter Twenty: What Friends Are For
Chapter Twenty-One: Return of a Thief
Epilogue: The Dire Spark of Hope
ABOUT the AUTHOR and the BOOK
BOOK FIVE
BOOK ONE
Golden Tide
Song of the Aura: Book Four
A Novel by Gregory J. Downs
Copyright 2011
To my parents.
Is there any more one can say?
Prologue: The Tramp of Doom
Vail Kammerdan, Wind Strider of Vastion, had always dreamed of giving his life for his kingdom... he had just never supposed the chance would come like it did.
A storm was brewing on the horizon, darker and fiercer than any Vail had ever seen. It seemed as if the thunderheads were slowly eating away at the sky, consuming it mile by mile, ready to devour the heavens. Below him, the world crawled by at the mesmerizing rate he had come to know so well when flying.
For days the land of Vastion had been a carpet of rolling, forested foothills beneath him. As Vail kept watch, though, the foothills grew taller, higher, and stronger, until they were bastions of sharp-edged, flat-faced, blue-tinted stone: Stormness, the Rain Mountains. It was a sight to see, dark and forbidding under the gathering storm, but majestic enough to steal one's breath away.
Skreeeeeeeeeeee! The call of Windwing, the far-eagle that bore Vail and his companion, rent the air with its harsh beauty. The gigantic bird swooped almost low enough to brush the tops of the mountains, which had begun to be dappled by snow. The crisp, cold air at the roof of the world nearly ripped Vail's breath from his lungs, but he had long since grown used to the high altitudes.
“Silence, Windwing,” urged Vail's companion, “We know not what awaits us.” The far-eagle twitched its head as it felt the command with both hearing and mind, as well as through a gentle but firm tug on the steering lines. It ended the call and flew on in silence.
By now the far-eagle's flight was taking them between cliffs and peaks as both Vail and his companion scanned the landscape below them with practiced eyes. After several minutes had gone by, however, there seemed to be no sign of their destination.
“I see nothing, Windmaster,” Vail murmured without stopping his search to glance at his companion. Windmaster Karanel Winter had been his friend for years, and his master for even more, but she would spare him nothing if he let his attention stray, even now... especially now.
“How many times must I tell you, Vail?” his master sighed, shifting her position at his side, “You need more than your eyes to see...” Windmaster Karanel was scarce fifteen years older than he, and the youngest Windmaster in Vastion, but she never ceased to have something undeniably wise to say. As familiar as he was with her, Vail never lost the sense of awe he felt when in her presence.
“I'm not sure I understand, Ka- Windmaster,” Vail shivered in the chilly, rushing air, and tried to mumble his way past the slip in her title.
“Nor did you the last three times I told you,” Karanel said with mock ferocity. Then, to Vail's surprise, she turned from keeping watch and nudged him to look at her. With an awkward twist Vail brought himself into a rough kneeling position facing her, unsure of what would come next.
The Windmaster's pale braid whipped back and forth behind her as she pursed her lips, staring hard at her student while still keeping a ready hand on Windwing's steering lines.
“Wind Striding is more than just jumping higher and leaping farther than anyone else, Vail. It's more than just controlling the wind... it's listening to it as well. The sky has a voice... it has currents just like the sea- we can all feel them. It has colors, too, only most people can't see them. Listen to the wind, and then maybe you will finally see the sky for what it is.”
“I... I'll try,” Vail stammered, knowing he'd missed an important point and now had to have it explained to him.
“No, you'll do it,” Karanel told him, patting his shoulder with a free hand. “I know you can, Vail. Just keep trying- you have a fine future ahead of you.”
“But what if we've missed it talking just now?”
“We haven't,” was all she said before turning to scan the mountains again. Vail wondered how she could have sensed that- could she really be that powerful? He didn't doubt it.
Bowing his head, he moved back into his former position and let his eyes graze the swiftly moving landscape beneath them. The wind and floating snow seemed to rush at him from all angles, every solitary flake visible and vital in his heightened state of awareness.
The first snowflake brushed his cheek, carried by a winter breeze. Vail started violently, almost upsetting his place on Windwing, and causing the far-eagle to emit a high-pitched moan of distress.
“Vail! What's wrong?” Windmaster Karanel was instantly responsive, but he could not answer her.
The frost... the wind... it felt like fear. It smelled of blood and iron, and it... it was menacing him. It was darkening... the sky was darkening... On the edge of his hearing, he thought he could hear screaming... What was happening?
“The wind...” he whispered hoarsely. “It's... it's...”
“Blast!” Karanel swore, and Vail winced at the Northland curse. “I can feel it! By Halla...”
“Wait, wait... I... I can see the wind! I can see it!” Vail could barely contain himself at the surge of mixed pride and fear. Whatever horrible thing had happened, the wind was bringing him news of it! He could see the currents like living things, flows of color and sound with individual meanings, instead of formless, howling bursts of air.
“Wind of the gods!” Karanel shouted, sending Windwing into a steep, right-turning dive. “There must be a battle raging in Amestone!”
Vail's face felt hot despite the cold that seared his body as the far-eagle shot towards a nearby mountain at a nearly vertical angle. The leather straps holding him and his master to their winged mount snapped taut but showed no signs of breaking, and he thanked the Creator in silence for it.
The stream of livid, horror-tainted wind should have been visible only to a master of Wind Striding, and somehow Vail knew there was something very wrong here... but Karanel was bent on completing their task, and he would obey her to the end.
He tried to speak, but the wind ripped his voice from his lungs and he gave up. The blue stone of the mountain began to darken the farther down they flew, until in the next moment it suddenly opened up in a phalanx of massive cavities that seemed to have been literally scooped out of the close-knit rocks. It looked like an enormous beehive, riddled with huge holes, open to the sky. Vail knew it to be the work of long-forgotten Stone Striders, a monument to a more powerful age, but he was too nervous now to care. What had happened to Amestone?
The chur
ning, screaming wind carried a new voice, now. A new scent, too.
“Karanel!” Vail shouted over the noise, ignoring formality, “I smell smoke!”
“I don’t,” she hissed, leaning forward over Windwing so far he thought she might fall. “But I see it… look!”
Vail saw it now, and cursed his own inattentiveness. A thick spiral of sooty blackness was being carried on the wind, up from a cavity in one of the mountains nearest to them. Windmaster Karanel clicked her tongue and tugged on the lines, sending Windwing swooping towards it.
YOU ARE TOO LATE, SKY-CHILDREN. The thunderous voice broke through Vail’s mind like a mattock through ice, and he screamed involuntarily, arching his back and clutching at his skull as if he thought he could rip the alien presence out of his head. Dimly he heard Karanel whimpering- and that more than anything broke him down.
TOO LATE TO SAVE THEM.
Up ahead, the billowing smoke had begun to sway and condense. A great dark shape was forming, vague but growing more solid by the second. It was almost man-shaped, taller than five castles, with glittering points of fire where the eyes should have been. Vail could spare no thought for where it might have come from; his only thought was how he might escape the agony of its horrible voice.
TOO LATE, it told him, and he screamed again.
Dimly aware of himself as he was, he felt the tethers binding him to Windwing begin to slip, strain and pop loose, as the far-eagle’s wings beat slower and slower. No! Vail forced himself to think, must stay on… must keep Karanel safe… must… must…
FLEE FROM ME, FOOLS…
“Wh… Wisp… Demon…” came the Windmaster’s fearful voice. Vail turned his head, staring at her uncomprehendingly. She was crouching stiffly, hands clenching and unclenching, face paler than snow… and the lines had dropped from her shaking hands. There was blood on her nails.
FLEE, OR I WILL END YOU.
Vail choked, clutching at his head, shuddering, and looked away… he couldn’t bear it… couldn’t bear her… couldn’t bear the voice in his head….
TOO LATE.
When he looked up, the fiery eyes of the smoky titan were staring at him, piercing him to the soul.
“No… no…” he whispered. The sky and earth ran circles in his vision… his sight grew dark…
His restraints snapped, and he slipped off Windwing into the cold, open air.
TOO LATE.
~
“Ugh…” Vail groaned, coming out of suffocating blackness into excruciating pain. “What… was… that?” He was lying face-down on cold stone, and there was blood in his mouth. He tried to rise and found that the effort was too much, so he flopped back down, surrendering to death.
“It was a Wisp Demon,” said Karanel’s voice, somewhere above his prone form. He was dimly aware of her crouching near him, though he felt too tired to turn his head and look. “It’s gone now,” the Windmaster said, her voice wavering slightly, “gone as if it was summoned… we never would have lived through a fight with it.”
Demons… fights… flying… Vail’s eyes opened in shock as the memories poured back. He had fallen off Windwing! “Wha…” he exclaimed, trying and failing to rise a second time. He contented himself with rolling onto his side. “How ‘m I alive? Where’s Windwing?” His speech felt garbled through his aching, raw mouth.
“Windwing is… gone,” his master said, shifting her gaze uneasily. Strands of her fair hair, almost white-pale, had come loose from her braid and kept falling into her face. She brushed them away absently, attention on Vail. “His valiant eagle’s heart must have broken under the strain. It was all I could do to save you and myself from the fall.”
The fall… Vail’s eyes grew wide. She had saved them from that? He doubted even King Larion was a strong-enough Wind Strider to stop two bodies from a fall as high as theirs had been. Windmaster Karanel… she was a prodigy, but… impossible. Could she be one of the Aura in disguise? Only they could accomplish such a feat.
He shook his head numbly. “I don’t feel so… ugh… why can’t I feel my legs?”
Karanel’s pale face grew paler, and for the first time Vail’s exhausted mind grasped how utterly spent she looked. There was blood running from her right eye, which was bruised black, and she looked terrified. Terrified. He hated to think it, but that was the only explanation. Maybe she was no goddess, after all. Vail felt sick.
“I… I healed your legs, Vail… with the power of Sky.” The words poured out of her and her arms shook as she touched his motionless shin. “Not just Wind Striding… Sky Striding. Something that hasn’t been done in a thousand years… I don’t know how. It just happened. Sparks, blue sparks, like a storm… I only wanted help…” her voice trailed off. Vail was visibly shaken at her loss of composure, and his mind spun in circles trying to find an answer. Hadn’t he gained a strange power, earlier? One only a master should have? Was it happening to both of them?
Karanel wasn’t finished. “It was too much for me… I couldn’t control it… I’m so sorry…”
What’s she blathering about? Vail grumbled internally, didn’t the healing work? She’s the most powerful Strider in Vast, now! Why is she crying? In an instant he was shocked at his own thoughts… this kind of experience would shake anyone, and it was a wonder he himself hadn’t gone crazy.
Or had he?
“It’s all right,” he soothed her, managing to sit up. “I’m feeling better already. Why, my legs feel… my legs feel…” An odd tingling in his thigh stopped him. He put out a hand towards his leg, and turned back the seam that had ripped apart in his trouser. What he saw, he could barely understand. His leg had turned black, and shriveled, like a grape left out for a week under the sun of Blast Desert, sprinkled with ash and flaky, like aged bark. “Oh, Creator… no… this can’t… can’t…”
Windmaster Karanel, beautiful Karanel, looked at him with wild, despairing eyes. Then her gaze flickered to something over his shoulder, and she leaped up with a scream. An empty stone building behind him collapsed in a fountain of snow and chards of rock, as a huge golden something bulled through the ruins of Amestone toward them.
To Vail, it seemed all Blazes had broken loose, and demons were walking the earth. He stared for a second in disbelief as two, then three enormous titans joined the first, glittering gold in the cold mountain light. The next second he felt Karanel throw her arms around him, dragging him up off the ground and up, up, up into the sky. She was cursing disjointedly, fright seemingly forgotten, but he was still too shocked to register it.
In seconds they had cleared the tops of the smoking wreck that had once been the Amestone cathedral. In the back of his mind Vail still wondered if they would ever know what had happened. Demons and golden-metal beasts in Vastion? It couldn’t be!
“Never… gone this bloody fast… before…” Karanel was hissing, when one of the huge golden animal-machines let loose an earth-shaking thunderous screech, accompanied by a ball of red fire that streaked through the air toward them.
“No!” screamed Vail painfully, his throat so raw he could barely speak. But instead of being snatched away on the wind, his cry ballooned into a bellow that equaled the golden monster’s, spiraling out in waves of blue-tinted air that only a Wind Strider could see. Vail had wind-strode, without knowing it.
He knew it now. Fire met air, and Vail’s scream snuffed out the flames like wind to a candle. I’m not a Wind Strider, now, he realized. I’m a Sky Strider. “Windmaster!” he called to Karanel as she flew higher, “Did you see what-”
Harsh cries broke the air, and suddenly bolts of metal were streaking the air around them both, hissing violently as they passed, as if the metal was hot. Vail heard a wet thunnk, heard Karanel scream, thought she’d been hit…
…Until he looked down at himself, and saw the crossbow bolt embedded in his stomach; saw the crimson blood leaking onto his hand; heard the world go deathly quiet. Karanel was swerving, trying to dodge the arrows, trying to save them both, trying
to land…
The world became a blur of white and red, and when it settled he was lying in the snow again.
“We’re trapped,” he heard Karanel say. “Those pit beasts can fly…” the Windmaster was pale but calm… deathly calm. He pushed himself upright, biting back a scream at the pain, and saw that they were. Walls of rock hedged them in on each side, with a single slim opening ahead. Skywards, the mountain was suddenly seething with gold and black, as more and more of the treacherous metal demons poured down their sides to end their flight forever.
“Pit beasts, this far south?” Vail managed through grating teeth. “These aren’t from the pit. Look at the metal. This is… is… war.” He coughed and shuddered. They had seconds left, and he was too hurt to speak. Reaching for the powers of Sky, he forced himself up to face Karanel, standing. His side ached abominably, but he ignored it. “Listen,” he coughed, and the Windmaster gasped.
“You’re… you’re floating, Vail!” And he was. Fire laced the sky above them: the monsters were closer.
Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) Page 1