Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three) (2 page)

At a rack of thick cutlasses in black sheathes, Lauro finally stopped. Here was as close to his old sword as he was likely to find, and they were not so different from some swords of which some scouts in Vastion’s army were fond. He unhooked one and found that it was meant to be strung across one’s back instead of from the waist. He smiled mischievously.
Interesting. The Reethe have pirates among them, do they?
He took the straps that came with the scabbard and buckled them correctly, feeling the assuring weight of the sword at his back.
Well then, I’ll be a little bit of a pirate myself.

Ready at last, Lauro began to look for an exit other than the one, by which he had come in. If someone by chance had seen him enter with Patnel, it wouldn’t do to have him seen exiting without the guard. In a second or two, he located what he needed.

One stop down, one more to go. Freedom was almost within his grasp.

~

In his bed in the lonely tower deep in the hidden Sanquegrad fortress, Gribly tossed and turned violently, tearing at his pillow and striking the post with his bare hand. In alarm, he rolled over and sat bolt upright, suddenly awake. Had he heard footsteps outside his door? Horrific dreams of the Nothing, where he had battled a Sea Demon in the form of his Pit Strider enemy, tormented his mind.

Sleepily he let his head roll to one side, watching Lauro’s bed with blurry, squinting eyes. The last few days- or weeks, he couldn’t think which at the moment- had been nerve-wracking, as he tried to keep an eye on the Wind Strider prince every waking second, and miserably failed more than half the time. Had his dreams been about Lauro? Was the prince trying to escape? Try as he might, Gribly could only vaguely remember the nightmare that had seemed so vivid to him only a second ago.

Through the haze of his vision he saw the lumpy shape of Lauro’s sleeping form stretched out beneath his sheets. No, it hadn’t been the prince.
That
was lucky, at least. Another day of watching and waiting was ahead of him, then.

Gribly let himself fall back on the soft pillow beneath him with a heavy
whump
. Instantly he was deep in dreamful sleep again.

~

He was lying on his face in a green, grassy space, on the edge of a gray cliff, near the top of a mountain, amid a sea of white clouds. He knew this place, of course. Traveller’s mountain. The place where an Aura brought him, whenever there was something important- and usually painful- for him to know.

Gribly let his face sink into the grass, closing his eyes. He wanted to make the best of his time in this restful place, before he was called upon to learn some vital element of his quest, or to argue yet again about his supposed destiny as a prophet… whatever that entailed.

“Get up, Sleepy.” He recognized the voice, of course. Traveller. Not the most impressive-looking god-spirit he’d ever met, but still powerful enough to merit obedience… “Now.”

“Coming,” he mumbled, forcing his eyes open, his arms straight, and his body upwards. Finally he stood face to face with the weather-beaten, gray-cloaked Aura who had guided him wisely- if erratically- through his last adventure.

“What a pleasure to talk to you again, Gribly,” Traveller smiled. Light gleamed from his mouth whenever he opened it.

“Likewise,” Gribly said, rubbing his eyelids, “But could you turn down the sunbeams a little?”

Traveller frowned, but the next time he spoke there were no more flashes. “Ungrateful mortal.” He poked Gribly with the end of his knobby staff. “You should show more respect.” Nevertheless, the Aura seemed on the point of smiling, as always. It seemed too much to hope that Traveller’s immortal brethren would all be the same, but still… one could always hope.

“It’s only been a week or two, Traveller,” Gribly pointed out. The Aura shrugged.

“I only thought I would give you some advice before you set out on the next stage of your quest.”

“Oh no. No. Not yet. It’s only been a week!” Gribly felt a familiar sensation of rushing wind pass his ears; the feeling he always had before he was about to leap between buildings or run up a wall, back in his home territory of Ymeer in the desert.

“Don’t blame me,” Traveller shrugged again, “It’s the princeling’s fault, not mine.”

“Lauro.” Gribly almost spat. “What’s he done now?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Gribly, listen closely.” The Aura smoothed his battered cloth cap back and stepped a foot closer, lowering his voice and almost glaring at the uncomfortable thief. “You’re going to be tested, my boy. You’ve defeated a demon of the Ancient World, and come a long way towards accepting your inheritance as a prophet of the Most High, it is true… but your trials are only just beginning.”

“That’s exactly what I needed to hear to brighten my day,” the reluctant Sand Strider grumbled. “I don’t even know who this ‘Most High’ is, or what it means to be a prophet, or… or… or
anything
. You gods are so confusing, I could scream!”

Traveller rolled his eyes. “We’ve been over this: I am not a god, the Most High is just another name for the Creator, and to be a prophet is to… well, I don’t suppose I’ll answer that quite yet. You’ll find out for yourself, soon enough. It’s the journey that counts, not the destination, as I’m fond of saying. Though come to think of it, that’s not entirely true…”

Gribly shouted in sheer exasperation.

“…But back to my topic. You’ll find the answers you seek with Wanderwillow, another aspect of the Aura whom you shall meet if you survive long enough to make it to his abode on the Grymclaw.”

“Another spirit who speaks in riddles…
if
I survive… Grymclaw… You’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?”

Traveller shrugged. “I’m almost done, now.”

“What else is there?”

The Aura thought for a moment, tapping his staff against the ground animatedly. “Ah, yes,” he said, remembering. “A word of guidance to you: Wanderwillow, one of me, or us, or however mortals would say it, can only be reached one way. You must travel the length of the Grymclaw until you come to the
Swaying Willow
inn. Once there, you must trust that he will find you himself, or contact you through one of his. They are mortals who make journeys for him in the wide world, since he does move through dreams as often as I.”

Gribly’s head spun as he processed the information, but when he looked up from his concentrated frown, Traveller was already gone.

“You will be tested…”
whispered a voice on the wind, and Gribly’s world tilted back on itself. He felt himself falling…

And falling…

~

Lauro’s final destination was the great ice caves where the Reethe kept their fleet of sleek, white-wooded boats moored. It was the work of a few moments to sneak into the side-chamber where he had learned they kept their smaller vessels. No guards were about, as the Reethe kept a vigilant watch on the outside of their harbor, never suspecting that an enemy would be entering from the inside.

Poking his head through the door, Lauro slid inside and quickly made his way down the flight of wide, shallow stairs carved directly into the cave’s ice. The chamber was too dark for him to see the corners, but judging from the echoes of his small movements it was probably larger than he’d expected. A faint light came from a large culvert at one end, which he knew led past several more chambers before coming out of a sort of postern gate in the rear of the Reethe iceberg.

Squinting through the shadows, Lauro called on the wind to aid him. Immediately he became aware of sensations and currents no normal human or nymph could feel; shifts in the wind that told him everything he needed to know about his surroundings. He could tell distances and dimensions in a second simply by how they felt in the air. His hearing sharpened immensely as the wind carried its whispered tidings to his ears from distances near and far.

The prince was smug. His powers were progressing at a prodigious rate, pushing the limits of Wind Striding to their maximum capability. He still had a ways to go before he would be able to challenge his father, King Larion, but it was only a matter of time… and not much of it, at this rate.

At the edge of the pier, which he found to be constructed of the same strange stone-and-ice materials the Reethe used in all their strongest structures, Lauro felt a shift in the wind currents he knew to originate from the vessel he needed: a Wave Chariot. He had seen many of the Reethe use them on short trips between Bergs, and even taken a day to learn the art of piloting one. Though they were usually propelled by wave-striding, he felt confident he could do the same and more in one of the slender, shark-like craft using his own wind-striding techniques. The wooden fins could be moved with air just as well as water, and he could skim across the surface of the Inkwell and be away before anyone realized he was gone.

Suddenly, an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. They
would
know he was gone, and it would be his own idiotic fault. As soon as Gribly woke enough to figure out that the sleeping “body” in the opposite bed was a decoy, the hunt would be on!

“Blast, blast,
blast
!” the prince muttered under his breath. There was no time to fix his mistake now. He’d have to improvise, and hope these were the only short range vessels the Reethe had.

Moving stealthily in and out of the boats moored to the long dock, Lauro went to work with his newly acquired cutlass, putting slashes and holes in the pale, luminous blue-white wood of the Wave Chariots. Not too large, of course, but just the right size that would start to sink a boat once it was out on the open sea. Brilliant. Lauro almost chuckled to himself. A bit of piracy worth every jibe he’d ever endured from Gribly, the self-styled “master thief.” At last there was but one Wave Chariot left. Grinning inwardly, Lauro climbed aboard.

The swell of the water gently rocked the platform beneath his feet. Closing his eyes to the world, the prince opened himself to the flow of energy buried in his mind, and began to wind-stride. In his mind’s eye he saw the currents of air as twisting, writhing, insubstantial shapes in the black mist of reality. Reaching out, he plucked one, grasped it tightly, and willed it to grow stronger. As it obeyed, its light grew brighter and brighter, a throbbing, pulsing blue that lit up his mind’s vision. When it was ready, he cast it at the part of the blackness where he knew the Wave Chariot’s rearmost fins would be.

The shard of wind caught, then
whisked
the serpentine fins in a never-ending circle, propelling the vessel forward. Lauro opened his eyes abruptly, and the colors still swam before them. Power. He had it, and loved it. Stretching his hands out to summon more of the wind, he lifted the bolt from the chain-lock that held the Wave Chariot to the dock, then let it fall into the water before it could jerk tight and stop his momentum.

In a few seconds he had passed out of the dark cave into a slightly lighter one, closed at the end with a solid metal portcullis that was just beginning to rust at the bottom where it dipped into the water.

With a barely restrained battle-cry, Lauro thrust out both hands towards the crisscrossing bars, wove strands of wind in and out between them, then punched the air above him with all his strength. The wind responded to his Stride, and the portcullis flew upward into the ceiling with a
clang!
, locking in place once it was there. The clear night sky was just visible at the end of the tunnel beyond.

No more stops,
Lauro thought, satisfied.
Nothing can any longer hold me here.