Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (2 page)

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,
hiss
ing 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.

“
We don’t have time for this,” he hissed. “You can make it out without me. Out-fly them. Yourself. I know you can. Leave me. Vastion must be warned. The king…” he keeled over and hacked until he thought he would choke, but he did not fall down. The air kept him upright.

“
No!” Karanel said. “You are my apprentice. I won’t-” One of the huge golden beasts dropped down from a cliff above, sending a fireball roaring towards them from its maw.

“
NOW!” Vail said, shoving Karanel aside. The Sky engulfed him with sweet, sickening power, and he leaped into the air, ignoring his shriveled, useless legs. The wind propelled him towards the fire, shielding him and granting him strength beyond any mortal’s.

Everything is changing,
he realized.
The world… Striding… everything.

The Power of Sky filled him and burst through his skin in a storm of white lightning. The pain was incredible, the satisfaction terrifying.

He met the ball of fire and clove through it, streaking towards the metal golem beyond like the bolt of the gods. His life ebbed as the price of Striding so much power burned his body away.

In the last second before he died, blasting the golem and himself into oblivion, Vail had time for one thought:
Karanel, make it out alive.

Then his world ended…

…
but in the blackness between the world and the void, a vision came, of a sandy-haired boy in a muddy cloak, with eyes that burned with holy fire. Vail thought his mind would shrivel at the beauty and pain of the deathly apparition.

Then the world was gone, and the blackness gave way to an everlasting light, where no pain was.

Lauro Vale, Prince of Vastion, had traversed the length of the Grymclaw. He had battled wolves and thrown down the tyrant leader of the North Village. He had taken on a quest from the Gray Aura, and he would do anything to see it through.

And yet, he was afraid.

The fear was nothing tangible, nothing he could grasp or point to. It was just a feeling… a sense of foreboding that he had become all too used to these past days. He had barely given it a thought before- his was not a pleasant task, after all- but now the stench of fear was strong enough to make even him pause.

The Blackwood was no friendly place. A mile yet still lay between him and the forest’s darkened eaves, stretching from east to west farther than the eye could see, hedging in the Grymclaw and cutting it off from the mainland of Vast. A foreboding place, if ever there was one, and the home of the fierce wood-nymphs known as M’tant. Wanderwillow, the Brown Aura, had given him a token that should carry him through such places safely… but none of the Aura had left their ancient homes before Gribly…

Before Gribly called on them. Before they heard the Prophet’s plea. It made Lauro shudder. If Wanderwillow had been in the Grymclaw for so long, how could he know what would keep one safe in the world anymore? He had never asked, of course. The Brown Aura never spoke anymore, except to Traveller, his brother-spirit, and even then it was in no words Lauro could understand or even hear.

“Everything is changing,” Lauro sighed aloud. It was true… and not just of the world, but of himself, too. Lifting a hand off the sword-pommel where he’d been resting it, the prince snapped his fingers in the air, calling on the power of Sky.

Tiny arcs of electricity danced between his fingertips, yet he felt no pain. Lightning.

Everything
was
changing. What had been impossible only weeks ago he could now do with ease. Grinning, he let the power go, and began to walk again. The Blackwood would hold him in no fear… it was the Blackwood that should fear
him
.

He had set out before dawn, so he reached the Blackwood just before high noon. Up close, it was not so intimidating: just a ragged line of tall, dark-needled pines that gave off a stuffy, dusty scent. The road Lauro had kept to since the North Village plunged into the depths of the forest, soon turning a corner and disappearing. He paused for a moment, in the middle of the path.