RUN, said a voice in his head. It was the voice of Cleric Argoz... Dunelord Argoz... the nymph.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered quietly, increasing his pace to a jog. Lauro looked at him like he was crazy.
“Hear what? It's silent as a grave out here.”
TIME IS RUNNING OUT. The voice called. Gribly cursed under his breath.
“Something's wrong,” he told the others. “Something's... happening. I can't tell what, but we need to get back to the palace... now.”
Lauro opened his mouth, but Byorne cut him off with a curt nod.
“Let's go,” the old ranger said. “Run first, questions later.”
And they did.
~
Dunelord Argoz met them at the gates of Blast Palace with ten of the silverguard at his back, bearing full provisions for a journey of many leagues.
“What's all this?” Lauro questioned the nymph.
“Have you found a guide?” Argoz asked Gribly, ignoring the prince. “Your quest has run out of time.”
“Here,” Byorne said grimly, stepping forward. Quickly Gribly explained all that had happened, and the Dunelord took it all in hungrily, acknowledging the ranger with a curt nod.
“You must all set forth at once,” he said. “Here are ten of my best warriors... they will replace any of your hired men. Visions have come to me... war rises in the south, and a terrible evil is preparing to assault my nymph brethren dwelling in the Inkwell. You have no time to lose!”
“Ten silverguard can't hold a candle t' two of my rangers,” Byorne said, grimmer than ever.
“Nevertheless, you are all out of time,” Argoz insisted. “I will agree to whatever demands you require, and your men will hold high favor with me when they come... only leave, all of you... this very moment!”
A tense silence followed, during which all eyes turned unexpectedly towards Lauro.
“You're the one who started this,” Gribly told the prince. Lauro ignored him, musing quietly for a minute, then spoke.
“We will go before the sun rises.”
“Now,” Argoz countered.
“No,” Lauro said. “First, I will visit the Highfast Shrine. Any help I can get, I'll need later on... even from the Aura.”
“Then you will go?”
“Then we will...” Lauro confirmed, “But only then.”
Chapter Fifteen: Sand Striding Stone
“Just our luck,” grumbled Byorne, spitting a wad of the dark green leaves he chewed onto the dirt. “Looks like the mountainside just broke off and tumbled down here in pieces. The road’s blocked, for sure.” The Longstrider looked every inch a ranger-guide. He was tall, gray and grizzled, wrapped in his battered, forest-green cloak and sporting a small silver ring in his left ear.
When pressed for more information, he had revealed that he was from the dirtlands directly south of Blast, on the edge of the Highwood. He smelt like a garbage heap and talked like one too, most of the time, but Gribly didn’t complain- he’d found the way here, hadn’t he? Leading ten of Argoz's new silverguard warriors here all those leagues from Ymeer, not to mention a Vastic Prince and a street thief who smelled no better than he did, spoke of the man’s skill at path-finding… and the immense reward he’d been promised from Dunelord Argoz to aid the two adventurers.
“Is there no other way to the Arches?” Lauro spoke up, brow furrowed as he tried to find a solution to their dilemma. They had followed the main road North from Ymeer until it veered sharply West to avoid the mountain range known as the Spiral. There Byorne had taken them off the beaten path and through a windy stretch of white sand in the Northeast.
He had soon located the nearly abandoned roads used by the merchants and seafarers in the bygone age when Vastion had ruled the entire continent. They had picked their way among those dusty, rocky roads until they came to be where they were now: a nearly-forgotten mountain pass in the Spiral. Here they had been foiled: the pass was blocked with sandstone boulders that seemed to have fallen years before. Their time to solve the dilemma was limited: in the desert they had been attacked by bandits more than once, and once they had come upon a band of Vastic soldiers with their throats cut and burned to a crisp.
“Not likely,” responded Byorne, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin. He did that so often Gribly wondered that he didn’t rub it all right off his face. It was a sign of annoyance; on the rare occasion where their guide felt intimidated or scared, he rubbed his spiky gray hair instead. “I know all the paths from here to the Greenwood to the Greyfeld and back again. I know every mountain from Ymeer to the Blackwood, and if this isn’t the only pass within an hundred miles, I’m boarbait.”
Gribly held back a snicker at the ranger’s heavy accent and slang. His own speech was hardly better, even with Old Murie’s instruction back in the old days. What made him laugh was that language of any kind annoyed Lauro. Lauro, with his cultured tongue and careful words…
“Fine then,” the prince conceded, gesturing helplessly towards the pile of debris blocking their path, “Is there any possibility of moving all this out of our way?”
“None I can see,” shrugged Byorne. “From the looks of these here rocks, they’ve been here for years and years. Isn’t no way through ‘em that I can see.”
Up until now Gribly had been paying only partial attention to the conversation, but when a sudden thought struck him he raised his hand like a child in school.
“What is it?” inquired Lauro, suppressing exasperation for the thief’s antics.
“I think… I think I might be able to help, at least partially. You can too, Lauro, if what I’ve got in mind works. Hear me out?” Byorne shrugged noncommittally again. Lauro raised an eyebrow and inclined his head. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he grinned, and quickly outlined his plan for carving a path through their obstacle. At the end of his animated speech, an expectant smile tugged at the prince of Vastion’s mouth. Even the rugged ranger wore a grin of anticipation.
“You’ve got one blaze of a head on those shoulders,” chuckled Byorne, cracking his knuckles. “Let’s give it a bleedin' shot and see what happens, eh?”
~
Gribly stood less than a foot from the mass of boulders and chunks of cliff piled in his way. He was flanked by Lauro, Byorne, and eight silver-armored guards, each with their swords drawn. The guards carried round, gilded shields in addition, ready to move on the thief’s command. Two of their brethren stayed behind with the pack animals the group had brought to carry their supplies and the horses they’d all ridden. Everyone wore the same expression: tense expectation.
Stifling any last-minute doubts, the novice Sand Strider leaned forward and pressed his hands softly against the large boulder directly in front of him. All or nothing, he told himself. Now or never. Gathering his thoughts and directing them to that barren place in his mind that gave him control over the desert around him, he gently pressed the hard surface.
The surface of the boulder trembled, growing less and less solid with every moment he kept contact with it. The effect rippled outward along the surface of the debris, like a pool of water that has had a pebble dropped in its middle. The whole face of the rock-slide shimmered and swayed… ever so slightly, but it was enough.
“Quick!” Gribly grunted to his compatriots, “Hack at it!” For that was his plan: to have the larger men dig a tunnel through the obstacle while he kept the sandstone soft. It worked exceptionally well, the prince and his nine men sweeping thick portions of the manipulated substance away with their swords and shields.
The men on either side of him strode forward, a scything wall of metal blades that slashed the sandstone and flung it aside. Red-brown gunk splattered everywhere as the warriors each foraged forward, carving a living tunnel through the moving rock. When they had pushed forward five feet or so, Gribly was left holding onto a thin pillar of the stone- all that was left of the boulder after the men had tunneled all around it.
“Out, out, out!” the thief yelled,
and out they ran, stumbling and holding their weapons over their heads as if they expected the newly dug tunnels to collapse on their heads as they fled. Nothing of the sort happened; Gribly let go of the sandstone and it lapsed into its former hardness.
“Here’s the test,” Lauro murmured behind him, out of breath. Gribly nodded- if the tunnel collapsed, the plan was probably no good, but if it held…
The assembled company held its breath. Nothing stirred. The rudely hacked passage only extended one man-height into the rock-slide, with the feeble bit of stone he had held on to for his sand striding.
Gribly walked over to it and kicked it with his foot, nudging it with a touch more of Striding. It collapsed into dust, leaving standing the space they’d hollowed out: five feet deep, ten feet wide, and six feet high. He walked into it and punched the ceiling with his fist.
“Tryin’ to get yourself killed?” came Byorne’s rough voice from the outside. The thief ignored him.
“Looks safe,” he called out to the group. It was obvious from their faces that most of them (besides Lauro) didn’t trust him, so he began to jump up and down, hollering at the top of his lungs and pounding on the walls and ceiling of the hollow with all his might. Nothing happened. At last he stopped and looked out helplessly to the prince and the ranger. “You’re the big shot here, Prince Lauro. See this? Tell them it works!”
The wind strider wiped some of the gritty grime from the tunneling off his face and turned to the reluctant silverguard. “He’s right, and I as your commander will not tolerate cowardice. Let us proceed.” The prince stomped into the hollow with Gribly without even checking to ensure he was being followed, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The silverguard followed him, to a man.
“All right,” he said in a very un-prince-like manner, “Let’s get digging!”
Smiling, Gribly pressed his hands to the back of the hollow and began to Sand Stride. “Y’know, Lauro, you almost sounded normal when you said that.”
~
It was a long, tedious day of work before the group had carved a serviceable tunnel through the sandstone, but in the end it was done. The two men who stayed with the mounts took their turns as well, so that by the time they were through all but Gribly had had some sort of break. The process was slow and demanding, like wading through tar. Meanwhile, the Sand Strider’s powers began to take a toll on him.
His arms grew leaden and heavy, his head buzzed, and he began to see stars. Just when he thought he was going to pass out and make a fool of himself, a slash from Byorne close to his left scooped the sandstone right out from under his hands. He stumbled forward and skinned his knee as his palms smacked the ground in front of him. A bright light blinded his eyes used to the red dark of the tunnel.
For a few seconds he stayed where he was, fallen forward with his eyes squeezed shut. Then he looked up.
He had stumbled out on the far side of the enormous rock-slide. In front of him, the old stone road ran between two cliffs, sloping gently down for miles upon miles until it reached a glittering mass of water far away. The sea. All around him the silverguard and Byorne sat, crouched, or just threw themselves down to rest. The old ranger pulled himself over to Gribly on his hands, grinning.
“You made it, sonny. You’ll make a name for yourself yet.” The former fight-pit champion spat to the side and called loudly and rudely for Lauro. The prince came a minute later from his turn watching the mounts, he and the coal-skinned warrior who’d been with him. They led the animals out to meet their recovering companions, and the company proceeded down the cracked, mossy stones into the distance.
As they marched along, Gribly wheedled a drink of water from Byorne, who’d become the group’s unofficial cook and rations tyrant. Uncapping the bulging skin, he put it to his lips and gulped the cool, refreshing liquid down like a famine.
“Water tastes best in the desert,” Lauro commented wryly, the look on his face telling Gribly he was thinking of his earlier, harrowing journey up from the south that had ended with his collapsing and Gribly’s rescuing him.
“Sure does,” the thief warbled through the clear wonderfulness in his mouth. He swished and swallowed, then passed the water-skin to his friend. In like manner it moved through the company until everyone was refreshed.
In the hour or so of silent walking and sporadic riding that followed, Gribly took in the sights around him with the vigor of a street boy who had never seen anything other than desert in his life. He’d heard of mountains and he'd seen mountains from a distance, but here he was walking among them, with the Endless Ocean itself shining off on the horizon. It was as if he’d stepped out of the tunnel into an entirely new world.
The sandstone cliffs of the desert soon became higher and harder and grayer, until they stretched up on either side in high, jagged walls that became the mountains themselves. Their peaks were so high Gribly couldn’t see them against the sun; they dwarfed even the highest tower of Ymeer. The road Byorne intended to lead them on had been carved between two of these mountains in ages past, and during the height of Vastion’s reign over the land it had been well-traveled and paved.
Now the stones were almost all gone, leaving the dirt and rocky ground to show where the road had once been. Pillars stood on either side every few miles, most broken or toppled. The going was so rough that the horses had to be led over it most of the time, and the companions only rode for short spurts on flat ground that had fared better and had more paving stones.
During one of these spurts Gribly found himself astride one of the smaller horses, riding at the head of their small column with Byorne beside him, a look of wistful recollection on the ranger's grim face. Byorne caught the thief staring and raised an eyebrow.
“You… Have you been where we’re going before?” Gribly asked, fumbling to explain himself. Byorne smiled, a strange sight in his usually cynical face.
“Aye,” the ranger replied. His mind was in some happy memory. “’Tis from here I came, long afore’ my wanderin’ days. I’m half-nymph, If you can believe it.”
“What?!” Gribly gaped.
“Aye,” Byorne repeated again. “Not many know it, but what no one knows is how’abouts I got to livin’ like I do.” He fell silent, and it was some time before Gribly had the courage to inquire further.
“My father was one of the Zain,” explained Byorne eventually. “They’re a tribe o’ water-nymphs that live by the bay which the Prince here calls the Inkwell.”
“That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it?” the boy asked, recalling plans made with Lauro and Dunelord Argoz the week before.
“Sure is. The prince hopes to get their help. He plans on gettin’ one o’ their boats to take him to the Grymclaw.”
“Oh. And… will you be coming with us?”
“I’ve come this far, haven’t I?” Another silence. Gribly’s thighs hurt from even the small amount of riding they had done that day. Their desert journey the week before had taught him to ride, but not expertly by any means.
“Well,” he began after a while, “I suppose all this’ll be more than worth it, once we meet Wanderfellow or whatever his name is.”
“The Aura?” Byorne raised an eyebrow. “His name was Wanderwillow in the old tales from my father.”
“He’s right.” Lauro had ridden up to join them. “Wanderwillow the Wise, Aura of the nymphs. He is said to be present in his chosen abode on the Grymclaw, where any who are worthy may speak with him.”
“That’s saying something, for sure,” Byorne observed, “Seein’ as the Grymclaw isn’t the easiest place to get to… or live in…”
“Indeed,” Lauro nodded. Both he and Byorne seemed subdued by the mere mention of the place. Gribly had seen a musty old map Dunelord Argoz had given them a glimpse of back in the city- it showed the Grymclaw to be a barren, curving strip of land jutting off of Vast’s eastern coast. He couldn’t imagine what was so terrifying about it, but before he could ask Byorne cried out.
Chapter Sixteen: Linole
n
“There they be, youngsters! The Arches of Linolen! Gateway to the Inkwell!” Their guide had climbed the next ridge ahead of them on his stallion, and now he was looking back to them, pointing and gesturing energetically. The thief and the prince spurred their mounts forward to join him, the mounted silverguard not far behind.
Cresting the hill, Gribly looked out on the most impressive sight he’d seen since the Highfast Cathedral. Down the slope and no more than a half mile ahead the cliffs opened wider to form a clearing amid the sheer mountainsides, and in that clearing were ruins.
What had once been a proud fortress was now a forest of moss-ridden pillars and crumbling stone walls connected to nothing. The scarlet sun dipped low beyond them, bathing the ruins in a majestic, eerie light. Half-toppled towers-of-the-guard blazed orange in the sunset, wisps of grass blowing in the wind out their windows, and knobbly olive trees pushing outward at their bases.
Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Page 13