Grym Prophet Song of the Aura.

A Novel.

by Gregory J. Downs.

This book is dedicated to my family, Who give me strength; To my friends, Who give me support.

And to the Lord, Who gives me inspiration.

Chapter One: Broken Boundaries.

Lauro's eyes eased open as his last, violent dream ended and his mind came into wakefulness. He lay in the bed the Reethe had given him, staring at the ceiling and listening to the snores coming from Gribly, where the reformed thief lay at the other end of the room.

The time had come. He would make his move tonight, and with any luck would never hear those snores again.

Lauro closed his eyes, but did not fall asleep. His consciousness was bright and alive, fueled by adrenaline and kept sharp by the rigorous exercises he had kept up during his stay with the Reethe. Gribly kept snoring beside him, unexpectedly bringing back memories of the time when they had still been allies, fighting to stay alive in the sand arenas of Blast Desert. Though he still knew what he was about to do was necessary, some part of him still regretted the friendship he was about to sever.

And, of course, there was Elia.

Lauro opened his eyes again, listening. Gribly's breaths remained even, so he slipped out of bed, fully clothed and prepared for a long, wet journey. Elia. Lauro sneered, more at himself than her. He would not go down that path, not now.

From the smooth white floorboards beneath his bed, Lauro produced a tough gray satchel and slung it over his shoulder, then bent down and brought out an extra pillow and heavy blanket. With these he soon created a pa.s.sable imitation of a p.r.o.ne body, which he stuffed under his sheets and covered with the lip of another blanket. As good a decoy as could be made.

Straightening, Lauro headed for the door with a grin on his face, taking care not to make sounds that could wake Gribly. Time for another quest- and this time, he would not fail.

Two more stops, and he'd be free.

Sliding down dark, frosty hallways and quietly descending drafty staircases, the prince was soon at his first destination: the Reethe armory.

"Wind Strider?" the guard's voice was curious but unafraid as Lauro approached from down the wide, frostrock hallway.

"Hail, Patnel," the prince answered, bowing slightly. "Sleep escapes me tonight. How goes your watch?" He had spent a large amount of his time befriending this and other members of the fortress guard who dwelt in the Sanquegrad, all in preparation for this one night. Now his efforts would pay off, if he kept his head.

He was soon deep in casual conversation with Patnel, who seemed as willing as any man to have jovial company in the lonely night's watch. Soon, seated at a low whitewood table in one corner of the armory, they shared a bottle of the strange blue wine perfected by the Reethe. As they talked animatedly of the events that had so recently rocked the Reethe city of Mythigrad to its core, Lauro stealthily scanned the tall racks of weapons and armor that lined each wall of the armory, twenty feet high, twice as wide, and almost four times as long. There was no doubt at all in his mind that he could find a suitable weapon here to replace the shortsword he had lost in the wreck of the Mirrorwave almost two weeks ago.

"aAs I was saying," Patnel continued in the high-pitched, slow accent most nymphs who could speak the common tongue acquired, "there isn't much we can know- or hope to know, really- about the Aura who dwells in the Grymclaw. We Reethe have had few enough dealings with the outside world in the past, and even fewer now that we've split with our M'tant brethren in the Blackwood. Not to mention the fact that no one's actually ever met one of the Aura beforea it's only rumors that say one lives in the Grymclaw at alla" And on and on.

Lauro had heard most of it already, and from more reliable sources than Patnel. There were few towns and no cities in the bleak peninsula of the Grymclaw, but if he was to survive he would need to find at least one of them. He thought he could, without much trouble; then it would just be a matter of time before he could figure out from rumors where the legendary being was said to abide. With his ever-increasing powers over the wind, he could easily move on from there.

"ado you suppose?" finished Patnel, sitting back and propping his feet up on the table, obviously waiting for an answer to his question. Lauro's mind raced- what had the guard been saying? Suddenly, the answer came to him, and he almost laughed.

"I don't know about the others," Lauro answered, a little too quickly, "But my wind-striding will help me find the Aura the quickest, for sure."

"How so?" Patnel asked, raising an eyebrow and swigging more wine from a whitewood tumbler. Lauro sipped at his own, eyeing Patnel's for a second before meeting the nymph's eyes.

"You're draining the drink rather quickly, aren't you?" Lauro chuckled, and Patnel grinned, his teeth stained blue. "More?"

"Indeed- hic!" smiled the guard, pa.s.sing his cup. Lauro swayed as he took it, acting more inebriated than he actually was. When he grasped for the wine bottle, it fell on its side, spilling out over Patnel's side of the table. The nymph cursed good-naturedly, hiccupping as he righted it. Two seconds for his gaze to be distracted, but it was enough. Lauro took the bottle from him and poured the rest of its contents into Patnel's tumbler before pa.s.sing it back. "Thankee," the nymph grinned, sounding for all the world like any common human drunk that Lauro had ever encountered. The prince nodded shakily, acknowledging the thanks, and mopped up the spill with a rag lying nearby, usually used to polish blades.

"Well, now," the guard finally said, "about that power of yours." He leaned forward, an eager glint in his eye.

"What of it?" Lauro asked as innocently as he could. Patnel's face was turning a bit red. Good.

"Do you really think you can find the Aura on your own?" The abrupt nature of the question caught Lauro off guard.

"Well, yes, I do," he admitted.

"You really mean to run off, then?" questioned the guard.

The prince leapt back from the table, aided by a gust of wind he summoned in his surprise. His chair clattered to the floor. "Wha- what do you mean?" he stuttered, his chest constricting with the realization that he'd been caught.

"Augh, come now," Patnel smiled coldly, pushing himself up from his seat and leaning forward conspiratorially, "Think you that you had gone so unnoticed? Pulled the wool over our eyes, as humans say? Your own friends are too clever for that. The Raitharch's been listening to them, and they've been telling him to keep an eye on youa which he has, through mea and others. Your willingness to ply me with drink and your obvious travelling clothes are just two more condemnations, my friend."

With an ease that belied his slim looks, Patnel slid the table aside with his right hand. His left was raised slightly, and when he snapped it a cold breeze chilled Lauro's bones. A Frost Strider. Patnel the armory guard was a Frost Strider.

"Well, well," Lauro sighed, "You've figured me out, then, haven't you? Will you stop me, then?"

"By Sea and Sky I will, if you give me trouble," Patnel said, raising his chin, "But now-" Suddenly, his head lolled back and he collapsed in a dead faint on the cold floor of the armory.

"Whoops," said Lauro, rolling his eyes, and walked past the body. What luck it had been to befriend the nymph woman who ran the Raitharch's kitchens. She might have been spying on him too, but not closely enough to stop him stealing a pinch of her most potent herbs. Patnel would wake in no less than five hours, and his head would throb like a thunderstorm, but he would be otherwise perfectly healthy. A slight-of-hand trick worthy of a street performer, the prince thought proudly to himself. Gribly would be awed. This gullible fool never even suspected me.

Letting the nymph guard lie, Lauro headed down the armory's rightmost aisle, searching the impressive display of bladed weapons for a sword that would suit his fancy. A spear would be nice, too, but he needed a quick, silent escape from Mythigrad, and such a weapon would be too c.u.mbersome. He must have a sword, and it must be light and quick. The sleek Reethe claymores were nonetheless too heavy and unwieldy, so he pa.s.sed them by. Scimitars were out of the question, as he had little experience with them, as were the stubby cleaver-like swords held by infantrymen here. He took a short, white-bladed dagger and clipped its sheath to his belt, but he needed something more.

At a rack of thick cutla.s.ses 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 a.s.suring 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, gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce, 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 gra.s.s, 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 propheta whatever that entailed.

"Get up, Sleepy." He recognized the voice, of course. Traveller. Not the most impressive-looking G.o.d-spirit he'd ever met, but still powerful enough to merit obediencea "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 k.n.o.bby 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 stilla 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 pa.s.s 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 truea 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, ora ora or anything. You G.o.ds are so confusing, I could scream!"

Traveller rolled his eyes. "We've been over this: I am not a G.o.d, the Most High is just another name for the Creator, and to be a prophet is toa 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 truea"

Gribly shouted in sheer exasperation.

"aBut 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 riddlesa if I survivea Grymclawa 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 testeda" whispered a voice on the wind, and Gribly's world tilted back on itself. He felt himself fallinga And fallinga ~.

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 timea 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 cutla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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.

I am free.

Chapter Two: Pirates?.

Gribly awoke to someone shaking him by the shoulder as he lay still in bed. It was Elia, and she looked worried. He sat up groggily, rubbing his bleary eyes. It'd been a bad night for sleeping.

"Ye-ahh!" he exclaimed, trying to greet her and being interrupted by a yawn. When he had it under control, he shook his head to clear it and looked at her again. "What's wrong? You don't look very happy this morning. Course', neither would I if I woke up as early as you doa"

"Stop chattering on like that," she snapped. He stopped immediately- this wasn't like Elia at all- or if it was, it was the part of her he didn't like. "Look around," she told him.

He did.

"Oh noa" He almost leaped out of bed in his hurried dismay.

"Oh yes," Elia countered unhappily, "Lauro's run off while we were sleeping last night."

"How did you know?" Gribly inquired, throwing on a heavy, fur-lined coat that Karmidigan had given him, and fervently wishing that he was wearing more than knickers in front of Elia. As he pulled on st.u.r.dy Reethe boots, she answered him.

"He drugged one of the guards last night and made off with a weapon or two from the armory. Patnel- that's the guard- woke with a splitting headache this morning and immediately raised the alarm." The nymph girl was practically pulling him along, out of his room and down the hallway towards the inner sanctum of the Raitharch's dwellings, where they were both quartered.