NO! You will not take him! It was the voice of the prophet, loud and clear. Light blossomed in Lauro’s eyes, blinding him. He felt as if he were being torn apart…
~
Lauro woke with a yell, thrashing his arms as if to ward off an attacker. When he realized where he was, and that he was no longer dreaming, he slumped against the wall, limply shaking his head. I can’t keep this up. Why are they waiting? Will I live, or die? He knew not how he knew, but he was sure that was what the woman’s voice had been pleading for. His life. And Gribly- Gribly had protected him! He had to be the one who had sent the dream.
“Little good it does me, if his dreams kill me…” the prince grumbled, letting his hands drop to the ground.
A gust of wind blew across the cell, dissipating some of the death on the stale air. Lauro’s eyes widened until he thought they might pop. Yes! I can use the Sky again! He straightened up a little, rubbing his cold-numb hands together, already planning how to escape.
Without warning, the door burst open, and the black-garbed jailor entered, his strange half-spear slung across one shoulder. Behind him were two nymphs almost as big as he, dressed almost identically, with black masks like executioners.
“Blast…” Lauro grunted.
Chapter Four: A Rogue’s Agreement…
Cold water splashed across Gribly’s face, jolting him awake. “What the…?”
“Will you never wake, boy?” Karmidigan was grunting. He had thrown the water, it seemed, and he looked a bit too happy about it. “It’s almost noon! You’ve slept half the day away, and now the Captain needs you… urgently.” The seriousness in his voice belied the humor he seemed to have at splashing Gribly. The thief sat up on his cot, still gripping the staff as he had in his sleep, like his life depended on it.
“I… I was dreaming. I think I’ve discovered one of the powers this staff has.” He looked up at Karmidigan, and saw confusion lining the nymph’s face. “Things of the Aura,” he explained. “The staff lets me get into other people’s dreams… or send dreams to them… or a mix of both. I don’t really know.”
Suddenly Karmidigan was all concern. “I hope you did not hurt yourself. Is your mind… all as it should be?”
Gribly assured him it was- though he was not really so sure. His head hurt, and he felt as if he had slept one hour instead of twelve. All the nymphs seemed to regard him with a strange awe, courtesy of the title “Prophet” the Aura had bestowed upon him. He was confused and uncertain about it, himself, but it seemed to give them all hope, so he kept his doubts silent. “Let’s go meet Berne. What did you say he wanted me for?”
“I did not say,” Karmidigan told him as they headed for the exterior of the vessel. “Captain Bernarl has not told me why… though I suspect he means to bring the Invincible underwater again.”
“Why?” Gribly grimaced. “It takes all the energy and Striding power you and the other Reethe have just to submerge us for a minute or two.”
“We have rounded the Northwest Edge in the night, and are approaching the Sunken Isle now,” Karmidigan explained. “There must have been pirates lying in wait, for now a fleet sails in on us from all sides. There may be battle done soon.”
“What?” Gribly exclaimed. “Blast! How will we ever catch Sheolus and Gramling?”
Karmidigan shrugged silently, but his face was grim as they opened the hatch leading onto the large platform that ran around the topmost section of the vessel. Stepping out and up, Gribly was once more confronted with the Invincible’s odd appearance of half-warship, half-metal war machine. It was a measure of his urgency that he barely noticed it enough to comment. Instead, he made his way to the railing and leaned over, staff in hand, searching the horizon with his eyes. Karmidigan was not far behind.
Ships- not the smoke-belching death-traps from Sheolus’s fleet, luckily- swarmed the water to their side. Turning his gaze, he saw more pirates closing in behind, as well. Was there no escape from this abominable luck?
“Don’t know what I was thinking, sailing these waters as if I hadn’t a care,” Berne said angrily, coming up beside him. Bernarl of the Zain, dressed in a long blue coat with his unique, anchor-shaped blade strapped across his back, cut a dashing figure as he stamped along in huge metal-studded boots to match his mood, even if he was slightly portly for a former pirate. His voluminous white sideburns blew wildly in the wind, and he was tugging the young beard that had grown during their trip. No nymph had ever grown so much facial hair as he.
“Where are we, exactly?” Gribly asked. He trusted the captain’s nautical abilities totally- he had to.
“’Twixt the Sunken Isle and mainland Vast,” Berne grunted, planting his palms heavily on the twisted iron railing. “Haven’t sailed here for many a year, meself… but there oughtn’t to be pirates or rogues this far North… at least, not this many!”
“But can’t we out-sail them?” Gribly asked. Berne shook his head, pointing across a wooden section of the deck, to where the sea could be watched without obstruction. At least five more vessels closed them in from that end. They looked bulky and slow to Gribly’s eyes, but he knew Berne’s judgment had to be correct. “Well… should we go underwater, then? I’d rather not have to ram them and send any number of men or nymphs to their death.”
Berne shrugged. “Mayhap. I expect it would be good to have you and your Striders ready, Brother Karmidigan…just in case, that is.”
“Why not as soon as we’re within range?” Gribly asked, when the Reethe had vanished belowdecks. He thought he could guess why, and knew Karmidigan was none too keen on such things.
“Well, I’ve a mind to chat with these pirates, is the thing,” Berne said. “It could get us through even easier than dodgin’ about underwater, and I wasn’t lying when I said I’d try to get word to Gram. He leads a large band of rogues, you know.”
“I thought you might,” Gribly said. Part of him said no to the idea, and part of him said yes. News, any news at all concerning his father, he was both afraid of… and eager for.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve in mind,” Berne said. “You get just inside that there door. I’ll hail the brigands, and if I think we’ve got to make a run- er, dive- I’ll give you the words so that they won’t know I’m giving ‘em. I’ll say… ‘For the love of the Aura, good sirs.’ Got it? That’ll be your sign to get us movin’. If I says nothing of the sort, then we’ll be safe.”
All at once Gribly became aware how silent and hot the afternoon was. He squinted, considering the plan. It would be very, very touch and go. The ships were almost encircling them now, where the Isle or the Main didn’t close them off. His mind was getting sharper every second… more alive.
Just like it had during a raid, as a thief.
“Do it,” he said, nodding.
~
Karmidigan was not at all pleased, just as Gribly had suspected. The Frost Strider accepted Berne for what he had been, a pirate, but in general, he did not like those who were outcasts or lawbreakers, and he absolutely refused to believe Berne’s insistence that he had once sailed on a brigand’s rig together with Varstis, the Raitharch of Mythigrad. Nevertheless, he agreed to the plan, more for obedience to “the Prophet” than to Berne, Gribly was sure. Oh well… at least the title came in handy sometimes. He was still a thief himself, in some ways.
Stealthily positioned behind the diagonally tilted hatch, ready to pass on any problems to a non-Striding crewnymph down the hall, Gribly listened to Berne address the ship that first came closest to the Invincible. He had hoisted a large, floppy gray flag somehow- Aura knew where he’d got it from- but it seemed to have slightly mollified the pirates before they even came near.
“Hallo!” Berne called. Gribly cracked the hatch an inch, and tried to watch what was happening from the odd angle. “I am captain of this vessel, and I mean you no harm!”
The nearest pirate craft, which Gribly took to be a flagship of sorts, seemed mostly devoid of activity. He guessed its men were prepar
ing for battle. A tall, black-haired man in high, black boots and a billowy, flagrant, white shirt had come to his ship’s railing, swaggering along with his hand on the pommel of an ornately-wrought silver cutlass. Two very sun-tanned men without shirts flanked him, hefting large, hooked axes. Their shaven heads were in sharp contrast to their leader’s wild, black locks.
“Do you, now?” the white-shirt said, leaning forward with an exaggerated expression. “An’ I s’pose that all our ships your Golden Nation sunk in th’ South, an’ all our taverns yuh burned… that wasn’t ‘arm, was it? No… yuh mean no ‘arm to th’ Alliance at all.”
Berne seemed taken aback. “The Alliance? I’m part of the Alliance, Man. I’d never betray ‘em! This ship I’ve cobbled together from me own poor vessel, and one o’ those golden killer craft I sunk.” Gribly grimaced- this was obviously not going as planned. He made ready to signal the crewnymph.
“Part o’ the Alliance?” White-shirt seemed to consider it for a moment. “Why!” he exclaimed at last, drawing the word out, “That must make you… a… traitor!” He screamed the last word, beating the air with a clawed fist, and suddenly there was a wall of water, a too-tall-and-thin wave, hovering over the Invincible, ready to pound Berne into oblivion.
The pirate’s a Wave Strider! Gribly realized, shocked. He had not really considered the truth that other men besides he and Lauro could Stride, and he had certainly never suspected there were men who Strode the Sea. All the Sea Striders he had known, Wave or Frost, had been nymphs.
“For the love of the Aura!” Berne shouted, “Get control of yourself, Man! We’re not foes!”
The signal! Gribly realized, but something held his tongue. Something…
“You are trespassers on the domain of King Gram, Lord of Rogues!” screamed White-shirt, flexing both arms. A second wave bludgeoned the Invincible from the opposite side. “You are fools, to think you can so easily trample the Alliance, Traitor! Now you will-”
“Wait!” Before Gribly knew what he was doing, he had burst out of the hatch and was running to Berne’s side, staff swinging as he sprinted across the deck.
“Wha- did you-?” Berne sputtered, as White-shirt fumed up on the pirate ship. Gribly ignored him, raising his staff and bellowing as loud as he could.
“I am Gramlen the Prophet, Stone Strider of Blast Desert and son of King Gram!”
The silence following his proclamation was oppressive. With a full view of the scene, Gribly now realized that crewmen from White-shirt’s ship filled the deck. They had all paused in their work to watch the confrontation, and now everyone looked at him with varying expressions: incredulity, awe, anger… and, he was shocked to notice, fear. White-shirt himself looked particularly taken aback.
Then Gribly felt heat on his hand- the hand holding Traveller’s staff. Glancing up, he quickly tried to stop his face from showing his shock.
The staff was glowing, hotter than a white-hot coal, brighter than the noonday sun.
“Impossible…” White-shirt began, moving his hands and preparing to attack with Wave Striding.
Gribly was barely aware of cutting the man off with an enraged shout. His arm moved of its own accord; he was pointing the staff at White-shirt’s ship like a sword, and yelling. The Power of Stone surged through him in quantities he had never thought possible, reaching and grinding and molding the world to his will- No. Not his will. The Aura’s. The Creator’s.
With a terrific BOOM the pirates’ flagship was lifted into the air and held fast by a crude fist of rock that jutted up from the water, gripping the wooden hull in stubby stone fingers. White-shirt and his cronies fell to the deck along with the whole pirate crew. In one second flat he was up again, and in and two, one of his bodyguards had joined him; the other had been pitched into the sea with a scream, and had not come up.
Gribly stood on the deck of the Invincible, shuddering with the magnitude of what he had just done. The staff still glowed in his upraised hand, but it was rapidly fading back to normal. Trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice, he shouted across to the pirates.
“Do you believe me now? I come to meet my father, Pirate, and I will not suffer any of your kind to stand in my way!” High-sounding words, for sure. Lauro would approve. The thought made Gribly grin, despite his predicament. Lauro was probably on his merry way across the White Marshes by now… saving the world in a blast of fire and glory.
“It… it cannot be!” gaped White-shirt, cowering at the rail. Gribly raised the staff threateningly. “But… but… I see the resemblance, I do… I believe… arrangements can be made. Yes. Indeed they can. Would you-?” The pirate gestured to his ship, lifted above the waterline at an awkwardly tilted angle.
Berne had been thrown off his feet by the force of the whatever-had-happened, too. He scrambled up sullenly, muttering. “Best to leave ‘em there. Teach ‘em a lesson, that would.”
Gribly threw his head back and laughed. He sounded like a madman, but he didn’t care. “Very well, Pirate. I will release your ship.” A bit tricky, that would be, as he wasn’t sure how he had caught it in the first place. “But first, what is your name?”
“Danner,” spoke White-shirt. “Lord Danner the Waterpike. Second-in-command to King Gram, Lord of Rogues.”
“Southern sea rogue lord, last I heard,” said Berne in a low voice. Gribly raised an eyebrow. “Seems he’s sworn allegiance to yer father.” Berne grimaced, caught Gribly’s eye, and shrugged. “Gram might be head of the whole Alliance, now… if he’s got Danner Waterpike as his man. Never heard o’ the ‘King of Rogues’ ‘til now, either.”
“Well, Lord Danner,” Gribly said, “Take me to my… to King Gram safely, and no harm will come to you or your men.” He cringed. The second bodyguard had still not surfaced, and probably never would. This staff was trouble.
Lord Danner nodded, and scurried away from the brink of his vessel as quickly as he could without losing all dignity.
Gribly tried to ease the ship back into the water. It wasn’t easy, now that the staff seemed to have lost the urge to help him. Disgusted, he handed it to Berne and tried molding the rock holding the ship. It was nearly impossible from a distance, but in two minutes he had done it. The vessel eased into the water. Flags of different gaudy colors ran up and down two tall poles set at one end of the ship, and the process was repeated on every craft that surrounded them. In minutes all but the pirate flagship had disappeared into the distance again, awaiting their next victim.
Berne summoned the nymph crewman to tell Karmidigan of what had occurred. He and Gribly stayed on deck, in case Lord Danner gave any more trouble. He did not, but it was his bodyguard who appeared on deck again to talk.
“You are to follow us to port at the Sunken Isle,” the man boomed in a deep quartermaster’s voice. “From there, the one who calls himself Son of Gram will come with us to meet the Lord of Rogues. None others may come.”
Berne protested, but Gribly silenced him. Odd, how they seemed to bend to his will sometimes, and other times not at all. “No, Captain. This is my father… and my fight alone, if it comes to that. You must stay with your ship. There is no knowing what could happen.” To the pirate, he shouted, “Agreed!”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Boy,” Berne said ruefully. “Pirates and rogues are no easy folk to deal with.”
“Like you?”
“Like me.”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Gribly chuckled, hiding his doubt, “I’m a rogue, too. Remember?”
Berne winked. “Aye. That I do. Just be sure it doesn’t get yuh killed.”
The thief smirked. “I don’t plan on dying today, Berne.”
No. Not today. But what of tomorrow?
Chapter Five: Mortenhine
Escape was not an option; at least, not at the moment. Calming himself as best he could, Lauro allowed the M’tant nymphs to unlock his collar and drag him upright. Thick, black manacles soon adorned his wrists, and his captors had him between them as they m
arched down dimply lit halls with the strange greenish light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“What is-?” Lauro began, but the bulky jailor lifted his blade threateningly under the prince’s chin. Fine.
The foursome trooped up a twisting, narrow flight of stairs, down a corridor, through a wide entranceway on the right, and up and down numerous flights of stairs, all carved from earth and rock, unnaturally smooth. Lauro had seen enough Stone Strider work in Vastic castles to know that the M’tant must have their own Striders, an unpleasant thought. At least they still gave no sign that they knew what or who he was.
Then came the time when the guards pushed him down a side passage, and stopped as still as if they’d been struck. Lauro blinked: torches like the ones in his dream lit the way for the first time, illuminating a slim figure at the end of the hallway. It was a girl, Lauro’s age or younger, dressed in soft clothes that hung in loops and flaps and tatters, mimicking a hundred shades of bark, leaf, and bush. Her ears were nymph-ish, but smaller than Lauro had ever seen in a nymph, besides Elia. Shadows cast dark lines on her ravishing features, framed by straight, hanging locks of bright red.
Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) Page 4