When he opened his eyes, the man he now knew to be a sorcerer was gone, and the guards had been swallowed up by the sand… literally! Here and there an arm or leg or head stuck out, horribly burned. The whole area in front of the portcullis was a swamp of molten sand! Gribly had scarcely time to wonder how he had escaped the damage- he had to get out of here, and fast! Not only was he trespassing in the Royal Palace, but they knew he was in here! And to make matters worse, he had ignored and possibly caused the death of the Dunelord. One word was on the thief’s mind now: ESCAPE.
Struggling to his feet, the boy twisted the handle in the door behind him. It opened with ease and he ran through…
…straight into the arms of a burly palace guard.
“Hoi!” bellowed the man, and seized Gribly by the arm. His mistake. The sandy-haired lad kicked his dirty foot into the guard’s thigh, seizing up the muscle and causing it to cramp. The man howled in pain and his grip lessened: another mistake. Gribly ducked under the man’s arm while he was still being held, gripping it with both hands and twisting with all his might as he moved.
Pop! went the guard’s wrist, and the man let go of Gribly, crashing heavily into the side of the corridor. The boy was already past him and running away.
“Thief! Intruder!” screamed the injured soldier as he clutched his broken wrist. As Gribly continued on, the guard’s shouts were joined by others as several of his fellows hurried in from the doorway the thief had just left.
This’ll be close, he thought. Way too close.
Chapter Four: The Incredible Flying Thief
I hate being right, Gribly thought sourly. It was only minutes after entering Blast Palace, and he’d run into three different guard patrols, all of whom were after him, now that the mysterious sorcerer had disappeared and there was no one else to fight. It was far too close of a chase for comfort, even though he had managed to stay one step ahead of the guards so far. He was getting tired, and one false step, one wrong turn could end the deadly game forever. To top it all, he had been going upwards the whole way, and his chances of escape were getting lower and lower.
Then, quite suddenly, the game changed. Gribly rocketed up a tight, winding staircase, slipped down a side-corridor, and found he was at a dead end. There were five oakenstone doors on either side of the passage; he tried the first and found it was locked. So was the second. A few anxious moments passed as he tried the others: all locked. Then he put his hand to the final door, and it opened, just as a mob of very, very angry guards thundered into sight behind him. Without a thought, he ran through and shut the door behind him.
“What in the-” The thief’s oath died in his throat. He was standing on a tiny balcony that jutted out over a drop of untold hundreds of feet. He was on the edge of Blast Castle, looking out over the very peaks of the city. All of Ymeer’s tallest, sky-scraping towers and walls stretched out below him, lit up in the scarlet glow of the setting sun.
For a second he was confused: how could he have come so high and far without noticing? He had climbed a few staircases, yes… but this? The escape had unnerved him more than he’d realized, and he’d lost his sense of direction and height. He knew one thing: this delay would kill him if he couldn’t stall the soldiers long enough to figure out what to do.
Thrusting a hand into his precious pouch, past the healing balm and the bitter onion-bulb, he removed one of his burglary tools: a loop of hard wire with one end straightened into a prying finger. Jamming it into the door’s lock, he jiggled the tool around until he heard the signature snick of the lock engaging. There. That was a half-minute at least, unless one of the guards had a key. Rushing to the edge of the balcony, he looked out over the endless span of sandstone buildings.
Sandstone buildings.
My gift!
The door behind him shivered under a sudden rain of blows. The guards had arrived. Gribly looked to the nearest building, and guessed that it was at least fifty feet away and twenty feet lower than the balcony. It was a nobleman’s house, probably, and was so high that he could see a procession milling around at its base like a swarm of tiny black ants.
Impossible. He would never make the jump. It would be far easier to climb up the tower at his back.
The door shook again and again under repeated blows. At least none of the guards had a key…
Gribly spun around and glanced upwards. There was another balcony ten yards above him, and the wall stretched up towards it. It was made of stone. Stupid, stupid, STUPID mistake! He cursed himself. He could climb stone, but just barely. It was far too slow; the soldiers would catch him for sure. Do I have a choice? He decided not, and was just about to start climbing when he heard a sharp twang somewhere above. His reflexes kicked in immediately and he threw his body to the right.
An arrow splintered on the stone ground where he’d been standing a mere second before. The thief rolled to his feet and stared at the balcony overhead: two soldiers were leaning over the edge thirty feet above him, taking aim with short, clumsy bows. He could never climb the tower now!
The second archer fired his bolt, and Gribly flung himself in front of the door, where it would be harder for the guards to see him. The arrow missed him by inches, bouncing off the hard stone and skittering off the balcony’s edge to fall hundreds of feet below.
“GAH!” screamed the boy. A bronze spearhead had broken through the boards, mere centimeters from his ear. He ducked as the top of the door was finally hacked apart by the efforts of the guards behind it… and suddenly he knew what to do.
“One…” he whispered, shaking with tension. “Two…”
One of the door hinges popped off with a clang. The archers on the balcony above him leaned farther and farther, trying to get a shot at him.
“Three!”
Faster than a sniper’s bow Gribly sprinted the four steps from the door to the edge of the balcony. The door collapsed and a swarm of soldiers poured out, red-faced and furious, just as the archers above let loose their arrows, right at their own men. Gribly vaulted to the heavy stone railing and off into the empty air, propelled twenty feet forward by his powerful leap.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh……..” he screamed as he plummeted. Two guards behind him were felled by falling arrows, while the rest ran to the edge of the balcony and gaped as the thief plunged to his death.
But he did not die.
It was strange to be flying like this. The danger, the utter insanity of the flight went to his head and… and… he loved it. Arms and legs flailing, Gribly sailed down through the air, suspended hundreds and hundreds of feet between air and sky. The experience was fleeting, but it felt like hours.
With a heavy thud, he slammed into the side of the building, hundreds of feet lower than the tower’s top, and an infinite distance from the roofs, walls, and streets below him. At the moment of impact, Gribly thrust out his hands and feet, latching onto the sandstone with his gift. Instead of bouncing off the wall, he stuck to it like a spine-gecko, saving himself from certain death.
The forceful contact tore the skin from his hands- or felt like it did. The youth slid another three yards before coming to a halt, saved by his unnatural ability.
“Ah… agh…” he gasped, his head sinking forward and resting on the hard surface. Blood dripped from under his palms, and there was a thin trail of it coming from each hand, stretching up to where he’d hit the wall. For half a minute, Gribly just stayed there on the wall, not fully comprehending.
I’m still… still alive… still… alive…
Far above him voices were yelling in astonishment and anger. The guards couldn’t tell if he was alive or not, but he had escaped either way. They were cursing and calling for gremlins, the small, vicious little green beasts used for spying on peasants and the occasional rebellious nobleman. Gribly ignored it all.
I’M ALIVE!
Suddenly it all made sense. He was meant to live! He had done the impossible! He had escaped a demon and the entire force of the Dunelord’
s guard.
Even when the guards actually released the security gremlins after him, Gribly was unafraid. He knew he had already won. Climbing horizontally across the face of the building, he made his way to the nearest window and slipped inside, out of sight. In minutes he was on the roof of a smaller building, streaking away into the gathering dark before the gremlins had even caught his scent.
~
Gramling simply could not believe it. His first task, given to him by none other than Golden One himself- and it had seemed so simple! How in bloody Vast could he have failed? Somehow, someway, the dirty little urchin he’d been after had gotten wind of him. Could it have been that wretched merchant? He’d been a shady type, maybe even a friend of the urchin’s! Friend. How Gramling loathed the word. It spoke of weakness and cowardice. True power denied one the chance of friends. The urchin might be a Sand Strider, but he knew nothing of true power.
Well, then, the first task he would need to accomplish now was to find any friends the urchin might have elsewhere. The Royal Market was already closed for the evening, so the slimy merchant would be too hard to track. However…
Gramling slipped into a shady alleyway in the poorer section of Ymeer, his dark, black-and-scarlet robes swirling dramatically. When he had taken several twists and turns to ensure he was not being followed, he halted on the edge of a stagnant pool of refuse and raised his hand, palm up.
Blood stained his pale fingernails where they had dug into the urchin’s arm. By the gods, he had been so close! But it didn’t matter. The mongrel could only run so far, and hide so well… he would be caught, eventually.
Gramling stared at the blood on his nails as if he would boil it with his gaze… which, eventually, he did.
Pit Striding… so much more powerful, so much more potent than the pitiful Sand Striding he had done as a child. The blood dripped from his fingers and plopped into the filthy water at his feet. A small cloud of red steam spurted, wavered on the wind, and blew away.
“Show me the one whom this blood runs quickest for,” he hissed. The pool seethed and bubbled, protesting against the dark power he was infusing it with. The resistance lasted only a few seconds; then the pool quieted and smoothed itself into an unbroken, ebony mirror. Gramling leaned forward, expectant. Who would his powers show? A parent? A sister? A lover? The boy was only his own age, but…
…No, it was none of those. The old woman whose wrinkled features the pool showed him was old enough to be the urchin’s ancestor, much less his grandmother or mother. She had the worn look of a scholar whose knowledge is useless in their walk of life, and her dress was that of a gypsy, far-traveled and many-sighted. A cluttered emporium of nick-knacks and remedies could be seen behind her, and her crooked staff bore a medallion with… with none other than the white hawk sign of Vastion! She was no gypsy, then- she was one of the king’s agents!
She had power, too. Shaking her head as if it hurt, the old crone massaged her forehead with one hand, then looked up straight into Gramling’s eyes. He knew without thinking it that she could see him now as well as he could see her.
“What?” the gypsy mouthed, apparently surprised and shocked that anyone with such power could be spying on her. She mouthed a name- what was it? Was it his? No, even though the pool did not carry sounds, he could tell what it was. Gribly. That was the name. Was that the urchin?
Now she was shaking her head. A word of prayer was on her lips- he had to stop the connection before it reached him!
Stumbling backwards, Gramling clapped his hands together, and the image in the pool vanished. Still, the tail-end of the gypsy’s prayer slapped him in the face hard enough to chip a tooth. He cursed and spit it out. Very well. He had seen all he needed.
Chapter Five: Pit Strider
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop; climbing, running, leaping and falling, Ymeer’s new best thief made his way home to Old Murie triumphantly. His hands ached from the strain he’d put on them, and they still bled a little- but the pain was worth it. As the sun set and night fell over Ymeer, tales would be told of a dangerous, handsome thief who had waltzed into Blast Palace, evaded the Dunelord’s entire army, and escaped at last by walking on air! Gribly could almost taste the success of every single one of his future endeavors. It did not matter that he would be known by every guard in the city now, for they were all afraid of him, and probably couldn’t catch him anyway.
~
It took half an hour, but Gramling found it. The gypsy’s house was almost indistinguishable from the homes near it, but he found it anyway. It sat on the corner of a block, too solid to be in the slums and too small to be part of the Inner City. No signs distinguished it from its twins, other than a small marking in white chalk over the door: a bird with its wings raised on either side, beak pointed downward and neck arched.
Whoever this woman was, Gramling knew she would expect him to try to bypass the ward. No sorcerer wanted to brave the Vastic White-Hawk… but Gramling was not a sorcerer.
He would walk right through that door, and the ward wouldn’t stop him. The gypsy would never expect it.
Bowing his head and cracking his knuckles, the Pit Strider strode purposefully under the sandstone arch. These peasants didn’t even have doors. As he passed blood rose to his ears and his head throbbed, but other than that the ward over the door gave him no trouble.
The interior of the building was dimly lit, but that offered no barrier to Gramling’s eyes, used as they were to the tunnels and dungeons of his home. He was in a small, bare room, devoid of any furnishings save a rack where two old, weather-beaten coats hung. There was a wooden door sealing an entrance into the rest of the house, and that looked more promising. There were no signs or runes on it- apparently the gypsy had not expected him to get even this far- but behind it he could feel a hot wrath and uneasy power growing: a will that wished him dead. The gypsy- it had to be.
Gramling knew it would be idiotic to try opening the door. It was probably already locked and held fast by some of the gypsy’s illusions or charms. Instead, he resorted to Pit Striding to gain him entrance.
Raising his right hand, he snapped twice. Smoke poured from his closed left fist. Smacking his fist with his right hand, he summoned fire. Sparks flew where his hands struck, leaping from air to ground and multiplying as they went, until he had a cascade of fire pouring from his fist. The action drained him, but he steeled himself for the battle ahead and ignored any exertion he might feel.
The falls of flame stopped falling. Instead they twisted, writhed, and shaped themselves into the rough form of a large bird or flying beast. To be specific, a firebat. One of the first Forms of Fire taught to him, and one of the most useful.
Gramling clapped his hands, and the smoke vanished. The firebat squealed in unearthly delight. He clapped again, and the infernal creature took to the air on flaming wings, zooming ahead straight for the wooden door.
Gramling closed his eyes momentarily, to keep them from being blinded by the resulting explosion. When he opened them a second later, he blinked to keep out the tears that sprung up to irritate him. Acrid black smoke billowed out from the glowing cinders that were all that remained of the door. Time to make his move.
He skipped forward and dove through the open entrance, his robes billowing out behind him. A flash of fire and smoke, then he was through, bringing his hands up in a defensive posture, eyes scanning the room for sign of hostility.
He was in the gypsy’s shop- the jumbled assortment of things and trappings both ancient and new, arcane and mundane, convinced him of that. The old crone herself stood defiantly in the corner, hands raised in front of her.
“You!” she said, her ancient voice quavering. “Who are you, to trespass here when I have done you no harm? I have not challenged you, if you wish to make this city your domain.” He only partially knew what she was talking about. Mages and their ilk, all amateurs, usually competed for territory whenever there were other beings of power nearby. A barbaric practice, and one he
would eliminate if half the rewards he had been promised by the Golden One came true.
“I am not here for that,” he spit. “I am here for answers.”
The gypsy’s face hardened. “Does that require breaking down my door with a fire-demon, young one?”
In answer, Gramling swept a white-bladed sword out of its sheath where it hung at his side, concealed beneath his robes. The woman jumped at the unexpected noise and fairly trembled at the unveiled weapon. Runes of darkness and unmaking were graven on the thin white blade from crossbar to tip, glowing faintly in the dim light.
Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Page 4