Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) (25 page)

  
“Shut… mouth,” was all the half-breed could say. Scrabbling for his small, odd invention-weapon he placed it roughly in the boy’s hands before succumbing to a spasm that wracked his whole body. At last the fit subsided and he spoke again. “Find… pouch,” he groaned, patting his coat weakly.

  
The prince and three guards stood around nervously, wondering what was going on. Gribly placed the contraption aside, then felt the old man’s jacket until he came on a pocket on the inside, whereupon he removed a small leather pouch with a weight that belied its size. He showed it to Byorne, who nodded.

  
“Take it… take both… bring to Wande… he’ll know how… tell him… Byorne sent.”

  
“You know the Aura? You’ve been to the Grymclaw?” Apparently there was no end to the dying man’s secrets.

  
“Yes. Tell him… sorry… I failed. Tell him… he was… right. You
are
the one.”

  
“There it is again. What
am
I? Why are…” but his voice trailed off into a choked sob. Byorne’s eyes were glazed and his body was limp. The ranger had died.

  
“He may have been half man and half nymph,” Lauro solemnly stated. “But he was two-halves hero, in the end.”

  
Gribly tried not to weep like some blue-blooded little merchant’s girl when he replied. “Why in the blaze does everyone around me keep dying? It isn’t supposed to be this hard…”

  
Lauro gripped his hand firmly and helped him to stand. The prince had an unsettled look in his eye, as if he’d just seen the ghost of Allfar himself, the legendary wind-Aura. “It’s always this hard, Grib.” Strange, how in the crisis he had come up with the nickname for his friend. “And now I have a bad feeling this quest is about to get a lot harder.”

  
“Harder?” He could hardly imagine how it could be harder- no supplies, most of their escort gone, and a demonic Pit Strider on the loose summoning hellish monsters to attack them wherever they fled.

  
“Yes. Harder.”

  
“How?”

  
Lauro looked paler than usual in the moonlight. “I knocked the Pit Strider’s hood off while we fought.”

  
“Was it the same man that caught me back in Ymeer? But then, how would you know?”

  
“I wouldn’t know, but I’d guess... yes. Grib… that wasn’t a man, it was a boy. He had darker hair, maybe, but… he was
you
.”

Epilogue:
Wave Strider Imperiled

  
The sun had just begun to shine on the Berg when Elia slid out of her pool and onto the powdery ice floor. She could see the light outside of her tent, and reaching out her hand she could touch a sunbeam that filtered through a small hole in the ceiling. She put her hand over the hole, letting her fingers brush the warm hide and causing the tent to fall into darkness again.
Time to go,
she told herself.
There’ll be more than enough work to do.

  
Today was the Great Movement. In the summer her tribe- the Treele- lived on the Bergs in the north, but now winter was closing in, and the time had come to migrate to the southern waters like the slender, long-necked birds that flew overhead each day.

  
Elia shivered a little from the temperature change: Her sleeping-pool was warm, her tent was definitely
not
. She raised a hand to pull back the door-flap, and halted. Her fingers were longer than they should have been, and bluer… and clearer. She laughed at the odd sight her hand was.

  
“Heavens,” she giggled, “I’ve forgotten to change myself.” Steeping back into her pool to make the job easier, she lifted her face to the sunbeam and let it warm her cheek. For a whole long minute she just stood there, waiting. Then, finally, she felt the warmth of her other form, her elfin one, creep up past her ankles and legs, up through her belly and onto her shoulders. Lastly, she felt her face change from angular and sculpted to smooth and pale.

  
Looking down at herself, she knew the Change had gone perfectly. The wave-colored, shimmering garment of her sea nymph kind enfolded her in its sweet softness. Elia was proud of it, and knew she should be. It was a part of herself, just as her Swimmer Form was when she wore it, with its watery, translucent body and laughing, joyful countenance.

  
She knew if she ever had the chance to be born into a different race or body, she wouldn’t take it. There was simply nothing better in life than to have the two forms of a Nymph.

  
Shaking her still-damp hair, Elia opened the door-flap and stepped outside her tent. To the left stood her parents’ tent, identical to hers but larger to accommodate them both along with all their children who had not reached the age of the Change yet. Once they did, they would move into their own tents and be eligible for marriage, just like Elia. She had two older brothers who were already Changed and married, with families of their own to take care of. She herself would be the same some day… but not yet. She did not feel the need, and she liked the freedom her current position gave her.

  
The entire Treele tribe was organized like that: families together, with the younger adults in their own, smaller tents. Elia let the door-flap fall closed behind her and looked out over the wide, flat space of the Berg. Her tribe’s tents were all in the same place, pitched in a wide circle around the tent where the tribal leader slept with his family and relatives. Elia’s mother had been one of those relatives before she’d married Elia’s father and moved out into the circle’s rim. That had been twenty years ago, four years before Elia had been born. Only this year had she undergone the Change and discovered her other form, allowing her to move out and enter the world on her own.

  
Right now, the wide circle of tents was almost completely silent. It was still earlier than most Treele rose, but right on time for her. She liked the feeling of being the only one alert and ready, and the joy of a misty, quiet morning spent in reflection. With a confident will she started out over the ice, hoping to reach the Sacred Place before anyone else. It was the last time she’d see it until the tribe returned next summer.

~

  
“Master of Wind and Rain,

  
Master of Cloud and Wave,

  
Master of Sea and Sky…”

  
Elia sang the Praises in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, sending the holy melody echoing quietly around the confines of the Sacred Place. She knelt on the white ground with her hands clasped gently in her lap, her eyes closed while she mouthed the words. She was in the center of a small, snowy circle surrounded by eleven pinnacles of ice that shot up from the ground like enormous frosted teeth. Their shapes looked vaguely human or elfin- in fact, they had once been carved to resemble the eleven spirits in service of the Creator. That was why this place was so precious to the Treele- it was that much closer to the One they worshiped.

  
“You whom none can name,

  
Send your Aura down below,

  
Guide my people through the rain,

  
Into the land of crystal snow…”

  
It was strange verse she had begun to sing; part of something she’d made up herself. Mother and Father encouraged that kind of thing for those of their children who could do it. Father always said, “Pray the prayers you know; then, when you’re finished, you can sing the ones you don’t.” She hadn’t understood his words then, but now she knew that he’d meant for her to pray on her own. In her own words.

  
“Listen quietly,” her mother had told her once. “If you’re silent long enough, you can hear the Creator Himself.” So, sitting there among the worn, faceless shapes of the Aura, she did what she had done every morning as long as she could remember. Elia ended her song and ended her prayers… and she listened.

  
And listened.

  
And listened. And heard a voice.
“Wave Strider,”
it whispered.

  
Elia’s eyes jerked open with surprise before she could even realize they’d been closed. She stood up quickly and glanced around the Sacred Place, then up at the cold morning sky above her. Nothing.

  
“Hello?” she called nervously. “Who’s there?”

  
“Wave Strider…”
the Voice whispered again, and this time she heard it from every direction. This was no Nymph, so unless she was imagining things…

  
“Is it really you… Creator?” she called a little louder.

  
CRACK!
The sound deafened her. Light flashed behind her and a wave of energy knocked her off her feet. She was too nimble to fall on her face; she sprung off her hands and landed on her feet facing in the opposite direction, wondering what in Vast could have just happened.

  
“Wave Strider,” echoed the Voice, but this time it came from someone she could see. A young man in a long gray cap stood where a bolt of lightning had struck in the middle of the Sacred Place.

  
“Me?” Elia answered his call this time, deathly afraid but wonderfully excited as well. She recognized him from the stone-hewn statues in the Sacred Place in the southern waters. He was one of the Aura, and it seemed like he knew
her
as well.

  
“Yes,” the Aura replied, idly switching his knobbed staff from hand to hand. His face was impassive. “In the lands beyond your Berg that is what men and women like you are called.”

  
“I know. Father told me once how it works on the mainland. He told me that in the kingdoms there are very few Striders, and so they are all kings and queens. Is that true?”

  
“Almost,” nodded the Aura. “It is about to be true here as well.”

  
“I don’t understand…”

  
“You will,” he replied. There was a long, awkward pause as he looked at her steadily and she kept her eyes on his feet. She was beginning to feel afraid.

  
“Will…” she began quickly, then stopped. She started again, slower this time: “Will you come meet my family? They- our whole tribe- would want to meet you if they knew you were here. We are all followers of the old beliefs.”

  
“You cannot go back.” The Aura kept still but his eyes seemed to glow with intensity.

  
“Why?” Elia asked, afraid to hear the answer. “Is something wrong?”

  
“It is not for you to know. Stay in this place until it is night. Only then will it be safe for you to return. Until the sun falls,
stay here
.”

  
A sickening feeling crept into her stomach. Something was obviously wrong. “Please,” she gasped, at a loss for words and breath, “I’ve never spoken to one of you… ever. I’m sorry if I don’t understand what’s going on, but can’t you please tell me what’s happened to my family?”