Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) (17 page)

   
He fidgeted uncomfortably in the warm skins Karmidigan’s men had brought him. All the Reethe who’d heard him were all staring, so he quickly became interested in the subtle makeup of the suit: slick trousers and coat with matching boots, comfortable without restricting movement. Lauro was clad in the same manner, and Elia had been given a light hooded cloak that went over her dress. She barely seemed to mind the cold.

   
“I… I am honored to meet one such as you, Prophet Gribly,” said Karmidigan, bowing low. Lauro and Elia looked shocked when all the nearby Reethe imitated their captain.

   
“Oh
please
,” Gribly snorted, “I’m
not
a prophet. I don’t have visions or anything, I’m just a…” but he
had
had visions, hadn’t he? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure he even knew who he was. Karmidigan looked up from his bow, confused.

   
Then the Sea Demon attacked.

Chapter Thirteen: Hellthunder

   
The first tremor threw Lauro flat on his face before popping him upright and flipping him on his back like grease beads on a hot pan.
How many times will this happen to me?
The prince struggled to his feet and stumbled first right, then left, then in a circle as the snow-laden ground heaved beneath him. All around him, his friends and the Reethe warriors were faring little better, tumbling over themselves and falling as if they had no bones in their legs.

   
All except Karmidigan and the other Frost Striders. They moved their feet in strange circular shapes, somehow managing to stay upright no matter what ripples or shudders came their way. When the tremor had subsided, they were the only ones on their feet. Lightning flashed in the dark sky overhead.

   
“Take my hand, Prince Vale,” Karmidigan grunted, taking his hand in an iron grip and pulling him upright.

   
“Thank you.”

   
“It is nothing. Prophet Gribly? Lady Elia?” the Frost Strider quickly had his two friends standing again. The other nymphs were scrambling to their feet and clutching at their dropped weapons. One had sprained his ankle and another had cut himself on his own sword. He tossed it to another and retreated behind one of the debris-piles to bind his wound. There weren’t many swords in the Reethe arsenal; Karmidigan had only been able to offer Lauro a pike, which the prince hastily picked up.

   
“Karmidigan!” he called, “We’ve got to find out how it’s making these quakes! Could it be the storm?”

   
The Frost Strider shook his shaven head wisely. “Of course not. The smoke is from the Demon. The storm is from
us
.”

   
“What? How can-”

   
A deafening
CRACK
sounded from somewhere out towards the inlet. A massive explosion of snow and ice and everything Mythigrad was made of burst up at the sky. Water sprayed up hundreds of feet, fire spurted in blinding spirals out from the tempest, and over all a shuddering, creaking sound that drowned out all else. Lauro was ready this time. Before the ground could quake again and throw him off his feet, he snatched his pike off the ground and vaulted up into the air, kicking his feet and ascending rapidly. Before he had even risen to the height of the Shrine’s front wall, he saw what had happened.

   
The city of Mythigrad was slowly being plowed aside by a gray-white
something
of titanic proportions. The thing moved steadily forward as it rose foot by foot by hundreds of feet from the surface of the inlet, completely disregarding the iceberg that stood in its way. The icy ground and the buildings atop it seemed to offer no resistance, cracking and peeling, thrusting upward and to each side like hard soil broken by a farmer’s plow.

   
“By the Aura… What in Halla
is
this creature?” Lauro felt the wind around him suddenly die away, and he frantically tried to climb higher in the air to avoid falling. The Sea Demon was many times as large as the Ice Demon that had attacked the
Mirrorwave
, and it was relentlessly pushing its way towards the Shrine, intent on obliterating the last vestige of Reethe resistance. How the damnable Pit Strider had summoned it, Lauro couldn’t imagine. He knew only one thing: it was his task to send it back to hell.

   
Lauro spun the pikestaff above his head and found he could use it to help him wind stride.
You never told them, you know
. His inner voice had chosen just the wrong moment to speak, as usual.
If you die trying to prove yourself, they’ll never know why it was you did it.
So what? He didn’t intend to die, and he especially didn’t intend to let Gribly know how much of a liar he was. Elia neither. No, he couldn’t tell them. The old fear and hurt was freezing in his chest, and he needed to chase it away with the heat of battle.

   
“For Vastion!” Lauro screamed. Channeling all his power, he summoned the greatest blast of wind he had stridden yet. It picked him up and tossed him towards the oncoming behemoth with the speed of a dead leaf in a winter’s storm.

   
I
will
redeem myself,
he thought.
And my father
will
be proud.

~

   
“Bre Spectansis! Lei Lekion-Scorr terminas! Preterons per climactue!” Elia heard the Frost Strider shouting above the deafening roar of the monster’s approach.
By Allfar! The Sea Demon has returned! Prepare for battle!
The accent of his nymphspeech was new to her, but it wasn’t too hard to comprehend… luckily.

   
Most of the nymph soldiers were still trying to keep their feet on the buckling, bucking ground. Elia managed to get upright for a second and used the opportunity to jump a few feet off the ground, spreading her mind out around her like a net, catching water-particles in the air to lend her buoyancy as she hopped around lightly, avoiding the tremors when they came. Karmidigan and the far-off brigade of chanting, swaying Frost Striders didn’t seem to be having a problem.

   
“Girl! Lady Elia!” called the shaven warrior, waving at her frantically. He had obviously noticed that she could keep her feet. “Come! Follow me if you can! We will have need of your gifts!”

   
She didn’t trust herself to speak, so much was she shaking, but she nodded and made her way nimbly across the heaving snow towards him. On the way she passed Gribly, crouched low, a snarl written across his mild face. He seemed able to hold his own against the earthquake, but he hadn’t gotten farther than staying on his feet. Following her was out of the question.

   
“Are you all right?” she called to him, and just as she feared her voice cracked with unsteadiness. This was a new kind of fight for her.

   
“I-I’m f-f-f-fine,” he stuttered, hopping and falling to his knees and jumping up again each time the ground heaved. “G-g-go o-on and s-s-see what h-he w-w-wants…”

   
She nodded and continued on. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared, but she could barely hear it above the tumult that boomed around her on all sides. The whole scene was so utterly noisy it was a wonder she could even hear what Gribly said. It occurred to her they had both been yelling over the noise, and then she was face to face with Karmidigan.

   
“My Lady!” he called. Snowflakes whirled in the air and formed an insubstantial tunnel around his mouth whenever he spoke. He was casting his voice, somehow. She nodded, carefully spreading her legs to withstand a small shockwave that hit them suddenly. Karmidigan put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. When he spoke again, it was in the nymphtongue.
“We have to slow this devil down. It is the only way. If we can slow it, mayhap we can stop it. Our cleric is with the Raitharch, healing him, so we can expect no help from his power. However, we have been preparing for this next attack ever since the first came. Come.”

   
He was just turning away when a new series of jolts shot through the ground, shaking the Shrine like a straw hut in a hurricane. Elia went flying- literally- but Karmidigan caught her in his huge arms easily. Without waiting, her held on to her and sped away towards the rear of the structure, riding the heaving snow like a ship on the waves. Frost striding.

   
“T-thank y-you,”
Elia said in her own language, shaking. The Frost Strider grimly nodded.

   
All at once, the tremors stopped. She looked up and saw that they had arrived at the raised platform of soft-stone where the other Frost Striders were. Karmidigan put her down gently, and she thanked him again.

   
“It is nothing. Look! The prince buys us time!”
the man pointed behind her. Elia turned and saw the top of the Sea Demon’s sludge-gray form rising just over the fortress wall. It had stopped moving and rising, and an almost indecipherable black shape whizzed back and forth in front of it. Faint cries came across the air.

   
Lauro. He was actually attacking the thing, and throwing his voice with the wind like she had seen him do from afar when he had tried to save the Zain trireme.

   
“Crazy lad,”
Karmidigan groaned, but he was smiling as he said it.
“Come, My Lady. I will now show you the Strength of the Reethe.”

   
With a tremendous leap he jumped onto the snow-dusted platform, then reached down to help Elia up after him. She shook her head. The snow under her new boots had begun to melt, and she called on the water it formed to spout under her feet, effortlessly raising her up to the platform’s level, where she immediately stepped forward to join the astonished Karmidigan.

   
“Truly you have the skill,”
he said, still using nymphspeech.
“I hope it will be sufficient.”

   
“Sufficient?”
she broke in.

   
“To help us cast our storm,”
he told her. In the few swift seconds it took them to walk to the center of the platform, he explained his plan to her. All around them, the loose circle of ten or so Frost Striders took no notice, continuing their endless routine of arm-and-hand motions, putting the full energy of their body and will into their conjuring.

   
“They have been shaping a snow-storm in the heavens for hours now. There are too few Striders here, too few.”
Karmidigan stopped in the center of the circle.
“We hope to slow the Demon with our power, and the storm should do that for us. However, until now we had no hope of controlling it. We have the power of Winter at our command, but the water of the skies evades us. Our storm has strength but no momentum. I had hoped when I saw you that you would be able to help us control it. Make it grow. Throw rain and lightning at our enemy with your wave striding. Is this within your power?”

   
“I do not know,”
Elia answered him simply. It was almost incomprehensible to her how important this all was. How deadly. She was being asked to combine forces with other Striders- to control a thunderstorm, no less! It was something that should be far beyond her power… but it was what she’d always dreamed of! And then again, there was the battle with the Pit Strider’s draik…
“I may be able to do it,”
she said finally.
“At least I will try.”

   
“Good. Good,”
Karmidigan said, nodding grimly.
“Have you combined energies with other Striders before?”