Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One)

by Gregory J. Downs

  Chapter Nine: Unexpected Ventures

  “WHAAHOO!!” Gribly whooped, soaring across the space between two houses. When he’d told Lauro about his plans yesterday for scouting out the Dunelord’s shrine, the young soldier had wanted to come. Now that he felt the full power of his gift, Gribly was glad he’d made up the excuses for the other lad to stay behind.

  He landed on the roof of the next house, right where it began to curve upward into an onion bulb-shaped pointed dome. His feet instantly stuck to the grimy sandstone surface, and he vaulted to the top of the roof in three jumping strides. Gripping the long, pointed tip of the bulb-shape with his wide, dry palm, he swung in a full circle, taking in the view on every side. The homes of noblemen and favored merchants formed an infinite labyrinth around him on every side, and the sun cast a bold golden gleam on the whole world.

  This is the life I was meant to lead, he thought contentedly, only somewhere else. Somewhere that appreciates me. Gribly skipped down the other side of the rounded roof and leaped at least ten feet high, onto the square, flat roof beyond. It wasn’t hard at all; not when every bit of the walls and roofs and sand felt like it was part of his own body. The nearest live person was hundreds of feet below him, too far to notice. Down there, I’m just a boy.

  Up here, I’m a god.

  Unbidden, the voice of the Aura named Traveller came back to him. There are no gods.

  Then I’m a bird, he reasoned. An eagle or bloodhawk that flies so high the other birds can’t see it. No one knows what I can do. No one knows how powerful I am! To prove it to himself, he tried to walk across the side of the next wall he came to. It almost twisted his ankles off, but he was confident that with enough practice he could do it.

  A glimpse of bronze caught his eye far below. Guards. He stayed crouched in the corner of one of the roofs for a while, just to be sure they wouldn’t see him, and his mind wandered back to Lauro.

  It was abnormal how fast that soldier was healing. Only the day before he was barely able to walk, and today he had declared he could fight his way to the Dunelord if need be. It had taken several horror stories of what Blast Palace’s gremlins did to strangers to convince him it was safer back at the old pickpocket’s wine-house.

  When he was sure there were no more guards below, Gribly continued his leaping half-flight from rooftop to rooftop, until he reached his destination: the Highfast Shrine, where the Dunelord and his household worshiped who-knows-whom. The Creator, perhaps? If any such being existed, Gribly hoped to find answers here- as Traveller had told him in the dream.

  That was his other reason for coming here and not bringing Lauro. He would help the messenger, yes, but he had motives of his own to follow through. I’m still a thief, no matter who I’m stealing for, he told himself, and smiled inwardly.

  ~

  The Highfast Shrine was built entirely out of a white, stony substance that gleamed in the noonday sun. It was seamless, as if it had been built by giants who used the stone like sculpting clay. The dome at its near end was the highest structure in the city besides the Dunelord’s own palace, and by far the oldest. Whispered rumors overheard by the thief as he gathered news from those who had been there told that it had existed a thousand years before Ymeer was built. The rumors said that the entire city had grown around it, as thousands of pilgrims traveled there each year to worship, gape, take back relics, and, in some cases, settle down.

  Superstitions, Gribly had always thought. Superstitions that no one believes.

  Now, though? He wasn’t so sure. Very few people worshiped anything, anymore… was that the reason so many things were going wrong? Was that why Vastion was no longer in control of the world? Was that why hundreds starved or died of sickness every year in Ymeer’s slums?

  Gribly intended to find out.

  The front of the Shrine resembled a sky-scraping, enormous round tower with a carved, flawless dome at the top. From the bottom of the dome, wide, swirling shapes of the same white stone corkscrewed out to form what looked like a titanic pillar of water, frozen mid-fall. The dome was a half-sphere, not like the onion-bulbs of the palace and houses of the rich. At its peak there had once been some sort of statue- its ankles were still there- but now there was nothing to say who the sculpture was.

  There were windows in the dome, Gribly saw as he clambered to the edge of a high arena near Blast Palace. He could get in that way…

  Between him and the shrine was mostly open space… hundreds upon hundreds of yards of it. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he made his way around to the mass of buildings directly behind the sacred edifice until he stood precariously on a crude sandstone gargoyle carved on the side of some nameless tower… a hundred feet from the Shrine roof, and almost ten times that distance from the ground.

  That’s a long way, his sense told him. And the Shrine’s stone. It won’t stick to you fast enough when you hit it.

  I can do it, he assured that sense. I’ve done it before. What could go wrong?

  You’re going to be a bloody blotch on the street, that’s what!

  Quiet, he told himself. It’s going to work.

  Cautiously, he backed up on the gargoyle until his right heel banged up against the tower wall. In his mind he was tallying up all the things he needed to do for the jump to succeed. As much room as possible? He’d done that just now. Concentrate? He was pretty sure he was concentrating. What about my gifts? To test his power, he willed the sandstone under his toes to bend and stick. When he tried to move his feet, they wouldn’t obey. Good.

  He needed to do this thing before his mind rebelled again. Without waiting any longer, he released the sand’s grip on his feet, took two long, leaping strides, and jumped off the gargoyle’s sandy head. The substance under his feet pushed off of him as much as he pushed off of it, launching him higher and farther than any poor mortal could possibly hope to leap.

  Suspended for a few precious seconds between earth and sky, Gribly hollered in joy, for once not caring who heard him. Even though he was falling down and forward in seconds, the utter hugeness of everything around him made it seem as if he was floating in one place. Only the rushing wind around his body and on his face told him he was about to crash headlong into solid stone.

  He hadn’t leaped far enough. He was going to miss the edge of the roof by several yards.

  “No!” he barked, but it was too late to do anything. It was too late before he had even jumped. In half a second the rear wall of the Shrine had filled his whole vision and he slammed against its side- nowhere near the top.

  But it wasn’t what he expected. The wall looked like marble, but it felt like sand. It was impossible for him to put into words what the difference felt like to him, other than that his gift worked on the wall. It actually worked. Instead of bouncing off the hard surface and falling to his death, his feet and hands sunk slightly into the smooth whiteness. It was like a rock dropped into almost-dry mud: he stopped, but only after sinking an inch.

  Before Gribly could even begin to consider that he was somehow still alive, an electrifying wave of energy pulsed through his veins from the marble-sand beneath him. The stone, or whatever-it-was, was alive. Or almost. In the next few seconds the thief realized that he was no longer sinking- he was climbing, climbing without thinking, and climbing faster than he had ever thought possible.

  His gift- the Shrine was powering his gift! In twenty seconds he had cleared the edge of the roof and crouched at the end of the thin, flat area that ran from end to end of the Shrine’s rear building, with the flawless roof sloping down sharply on either side. He turned while squatting, and in one sweeping glance covered the whole structure with his eyes.

  Hesitatingly, he put his palm down flat on the marble-sand. Power surged up his arm and into his body, tingling where his feet touched it in a different place.

  Change, he told it. Serve me. It did. It molded into a roundish glob under his fingers, and soon he held a perfectly round, perfectly hard sphere of the stuff in his hand.
He had scooped it from the Shrine itself.

  Everything made unexpected sense.

  People like ME built this! He realized. Men or women with the same gifts as me must have shaped the sand and stone before anyone else lived here! Just like I did to Old Murie’s grave, they did to a whole mountain of sand!

  He put the glob of marble-sand back where it belonged and flattened it out. It wasn’t perfect, but he doubted anyone would see or care about the difference. With the exhilarating feeling produced by touching the Shrine, he was soon crouched low and scooting along the roof towards the great dome ahead of him.

  They must have been so powerful, he thought, so strong and skilled! I can only shape sand a little- maybe they were able to do the same to rock! It’s almost as if they made their own kind of earth… their own element, and used it to build this place. Unbelievable.

  Maybe they were giants.

  In a minute or two he was standing next to the dome. It arched up above him at least fifty feet, and even though he stood atop the rest of the Shrine, just this part made him feel small and helpless.

  There were designs carved in the dome’s unmarred white marble-sand. Warriors, horses, monsters and machines did battle in effigy, carved by the Shrine’s mysterious forgotten creators around four luminous, round windows set at the four corners of the compass.

  It was the work of a moment for Gribly to climb up to the one that faced him. He didn’t want to waste time, and he was now acutely aware that the afternoon was wearing away. Not that night held any unnatural fear for him… but he didn’t like to be caught out after dark. No one in Ymeer did, whether it was instinct or superstition too deeply rooted to be removed.

  He stood in front of the window, where it stretched up three times his height. He was in a shadowed, shallow windowsill of sorts that curved up around the window’s round edge in a perfect circle. The window itself was made of an infinitely thick, rough colored glass that seemed to emanate light without actually getting any brighter. Wrought iron held the pieces together and ran around its edge and across it two ways.

  “How do I get in?” the thief wondered. The answer came to him unbidden, as if someone else had put it into his head.

  Glass is sand.

  “Oh,” he said. Putting his hand out, he tested the idea.

  The pane of red glass in front of him bubbled and melted away from his touch. A hole formed in accordance with his unspoken wish, spreading outward in a bleeding wave of liquid, red glass.

  It was the hardest thing he’d ever done with his gift, and by the time he had melted enough of the huge pane away to step through the hole, his brow was drenched in sweat and the sun was low in the sky behind him.

  I bet all the snot-headed nobles would get their robes in a twist if they knew what I’m doing to their prized building! That thought alone gave him the fortitude to change the glass. After gaining entry he turned and made sure the hole would stay open so he could escape the same way.

  Without another thought he began the careful, dangerous climb down the inside of the Shrine walls.

  ~

  Only when he reached the bottom was he able to really see what the inside of the Shrine looked like. He was stunned.

  The enormous rectangle had a carved, arching roof supported by a veritable forest of marble-sand pillars. Alcoves in each wall housed giant statues of men and women with kind, thoughtful faces- and sometimes no statue at all, but a large, rounded, unshaped hunk of marble-sand that would one day be carved like the others.

  In the open space between the walls sat rank upon rank of long, white benches that were one with the rest of the structure. Three separate rows stretched back into the soft shadows, leaving open two lanes that ran up to the circular, open space where Gribly now stood, unnoticed.

  The Shrine’s round tower was as wide as the stone-gable roof behind it, slightly higher, and just as sparse in its furnishings. Gribly presumed the ancient builders had not bothered much with the useless fanciness and trappings of the modern nobles, and that suited him just fine. The vibrantly colored windows sent a cascade of heavenly light down on everything under them. And it was that everything that took Gribly by such surprise.

  Smooth, empty iron chandeliers hung down from the high ceiling. Steps began at the edges of the circular space and proceeded higher and higher until they flattened out on a round space that was man-high and ten yards wide every way. An unfurnished, square altar was set there, adorned only with a small stone angel carved on each corner.

  Ringing the steps and the altar, lit up in the glorious light from above, were a number of stone statues three times man-high. They depicted saints or spirits, human but elfin too, and each bore inscriptions at their feet. Most were male, but a few were female. Some were dressed as warriors and some as scribes, some as kings and some as beggars, but each looked divinely inspired.

  Gribly was speechless with fear, but the fear felt good… holy.

  What IS this place? He wondered. His frantic, small mind felt smaller already: confused, but happy, too. It made no sense, and he gloried in the nonsensicalness of it all.

  No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he was feeling. What was going on????

  Then, as he cowered in the shadows, too happy to stay and too scared to approach the altar, he recognized one of the farthest statues as something he knew. Someone he knew.

  “Traveller!” he gasped, and quickly sped around the round steps to the other side of the tower, where he fell to his knees in front of the statue. “It’s you! I mean, it’s not you, but…”

  Turn around, something inside told him. And REMEMBER.

  He turned, stood up, and took in the sight of the altar, statues, and Shrine again. And then Traveller’s words came back:

  I am part of the Aura, and the Aura serves the Creator.

  So that was it. That was what the Shrine was: the house of the Creator. The other statues were the other parts of the Aura! If the thing the Creator had created was so powerful that it manifested itself as multiple beings, then how much more infinitely powerful was the Creator Himself!

  I need time to think, his tired mind told him. This is too much. All of it- my gift, this place, these statues and this elusive Creator- all of it is too much to take in a day. Traveller can answer my questions if I see him again…

  “Come on, Dunelord,” he grumbled under his breath, feeling exhilarated but exhausted. “I need to find you. Lauro needs to get at you. Where is the best place to meet you?”

  “Right here,” rasped a voice behind him. “The Dunelord would love to meet you here…” Gribly jumped so high he landed on the marble-sand steps with a whump and lost his breath. A passage behind the statue had opened up and two men had come out without him noticing.

  The one who had spoken was tall and thin, in white robes and long gray hair, with a yellow cinch at his waist and a small wax candle in his hand: the Shrine’s cleric. Gribly had heard he existed, but no one had ever seen him. The other man was Dunelord Ymorio, strong and muscled, wrapped in a silky cloak to hide the effects of his near-assassination. His face still bore scars and his hair was cut shorter to rid it of the parts that had been blackened and shriveled with fire. The Lord of Ymeer wore an expression of amused confidence. He was the supreme power here.

  “Hello, little thief,” he smiled confidently. Without thinking, Gribly threw all his power into a flying leap off the marble-sand, using the potent substance to aid his gift and throw him higher. He intended to hit the wall and make an instant escape up the inside wall again.

  He never made it. Dunelord Ymorio leaped up to meet him, striking him in the gut with enough force to make him throw up any food he might have eaten in the past week… which was next to nothing, of course.

  The thief’s frail body slammed to the ground again, but instead of crumpling on the hard ground, the floor softened and sucked him into itself, wrapping around him like a living thing.

  At first Gribly thought the floor itself was attacking him, un
til he saw the Dunelord’s pleased expression as he landed, molding the marble-sand with perfect skill and throwing it on his prey to encase him.

  The Dunelord has sand gifts too! The revelation woke him up just enough to open his mouth in awe.

  “Wha…” mumbled the boy, but his body was on fire with pain, begging him to let unconsciousness take control. He tried feebly to fight the Dunelord’s power, but the older man was far too strong. It was if Gribly didn’t have a gift at all.

  The sickening, soft-hard substance forced him into the ground and covered his face. Moaning weakly, Gribly stopped fighting and let himself black out.

  One last thought pierced his mind. Traveller, help me. Creator, if you’re as real as the things you create… save me.

  Chapter Ten: The Cleric of Ymeer

  He hadn’t expected to wake up again, but he did. The realization wasn’t encouraging.