Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (12 page)

“
ENOUGH!” Lauro roared, drowning himself in the screaming power of the cold sky. Avarine’s cloak of Spirit burned away like ashes as he struck out with his hands, obliterating the branches in a surge of lightning. The terrified
Segrethe
stumbled back, but he wasn’t finished. There was no time to think. Power electrified his veins. He reached for the sky and a bolt of energy crackled down to meet his hand. With a wordless snarl he hurled the bolt into the nymph’s chest, burning a hole through his enemy’s body and throwing the body back into the waiting arms of a tree.

A sickening squelch broke the dead silence that followed the brutal fight. The
Segrethe
hung impaled on the sharpened branches of the pine. Avarine looked at the corpse for a moment, then stared hollowly at Lauro, mouth closed and face unreadable as blood dripped into her eye. He felt suddenly empty, acutely aware of the cold seeping into his bones, and the horrible thing that he had done.

Avarine’s nymph attacker had lost his hood in the fight. Lauro peered closer… and sucked in his breath violently.

It was a woman.

All at once Avarine was in his arms, shaking uncontrollably, face pressed into his shoulder. He blinked, and then she had stepped back to look at him, her face a mask of swirling emotions.

“
I…” Lauro’s voice caught. He was too hoarse to continue. Instead he put out a tentative hand, moving stiffly and uncertainly, as if some other force moved for him.

His fingers brushed the dark wound where the woman-
Segrethe
had struck her. Wind like cold fire rushed through his body and into hers, chilling and burning at the same time. Sparks danced from his hand to her face, and she drew back with a strangled cry.

“
No! I didn’t mean to-” he gasped, and stopped. Avarine shuddered, lifting a hand to touch the place by her eye.

The wound was gone.

“
Th… thank you,” she said. “I did not know you could…”

“
Neither did I,” he said. His throat hurt too much to say more, except… “What do we do now?”

“
They’ll come for us, now,” she said, smiling coldly. “What do we do now, Lauro Vale? We
run
.”

Within the hour, Gribly Gramson met his father for the first time- alone. Captain Berne objected, of course… but he objected to most things, nowadays. Karmidigan, surprisingly, was silent. It seemed the Reethe had different ideas of what was proper and honorable than most. Not that Gribly cared much.

He tried to look the part of “The Prophet.” He truly did. But it wasn’t easy to look dignified while walking those cold northern hallways, bent staff in hand and tattered clothes swinging like an old beggar man. It had been a rough trip so far…

Oh well
, he thought,
It’ll be over soon, for good or ill.
Good or ill? Blast, he sounded like Lauro too often nowadays. Stealing a glance to the side, Gribly noticed a distinct look of unease on Lord Danner’s face. Good… he felt slightly better, knowing he wasn’t the only one ill-at-ease.

The pirate Wave Strider had left his swarthy pirate guards behind at the door to this forsakenly long hallway. It appeared no different to Gribly than had the first hundred or so they’d entered, but Danner insisted that this was the entrance to the Lord of Rogues’ chambers. “He will not suffer disturbance, save from myself,” the ratty man had explained, “…and from you, of course, now that he knows.”

Perhaps it was all the time he’d spent among warriors and important folk, but Gribly saw something disorganized about the whole thing. How much power did his father have? And how much did Danner? It was enough to make his head hurt.

At the end of the hall they stopped. Two huge stone doors, intricately carved, stood closed ahead of them, in utter contrast to the rough-hewn tunnels they’d traversed so far on the Sunken Isle. “What…?” Gribly began to question, but a sharp movement from Lord Danner cut him off.

The wiry man lurched forward in a half-kneeling motion, hands outstretched, fingers clawing the air. Gribly had seen someone else do that, once… Elia, when she was summoning…

Water
. From two holes at door’s top, where the archway met the ceiling, water came gushing out in matching rivulets. Danner sinuously directed both with his arm-and-hand movements, conducting an elemental concert as the water swirled through the grooves in the doors, lacing them with glittering blue. In moments it was done, and the water, amazingly, held in place. Lord Danner glanced at Gribly, a self-sufficient smirk barely contained on his face.

“
A gate into the unknown, able to be opened only by the Power of Sea,” he explained. “There are others like it here, built by Creator-knows-who. Only those with the most skill in their element can use them. Sea, Stone, Sky… and ones we cannot decipher.”

“
Then… why isn’t it opening?” Gribly asked, raising an eyebrow. Danner looked annoyed.

“
It takes two, Son of Gram. The Lord of Rogues himself must move the inside piece… hence, none can enter without his acceptance.”

As if his very words had triggered the Pirate King’s response, Gribly heard a rustling, crunching sound from beyond the doorway. He had seen Wanderwillow use the Power of Stone to move trees and growing things- was that how the Stone portion of the door worked?

Slowly, as if they were tired of their task, the doors inched open. Danner warned Gribly with a glance- how was it the man conveyed so much in a
look?
- and they both waited until the doors had swung open all the way before they entered.
Hello father,
Gribly thought nervously,
remember me?
Powers of the Aura… this was going to be hard.

The chamber of the Lord of Rogues was so impressive, so
vast
, that it was some time before Gribly’s eye even made out the Pirate King himself. Danner and he had entered by one of three huge doorways spaced at even intervals along the chamber’s circular wall. The chamber itself was an open dome carved from rock, at least as big as the entire Highfast Shrine had been.

But this was no shrine. The entire floor, except for a wide swath of stone around the edge, was submerged in a pool of water so deep Gribly could see no end to it. Danner quickly led him forward to stand at the edge of the pool, where the young prophet saw three stone
somethings
jutting up above the waterline. One was directly in front of him, one was across the pool to his left, and one across to his right. They formed a perfect triangle, and at the middle rose two slanted stone ramps that led up to two identical stone thrones.

The thrones were suspended on those arching tongues of rock with no support that Gribly could see. Immediately his pulse began to pound with the sense of some power here, even greater and older than Striding. His eyes were drawn to the right throne, which was empty; then, with a reluctance he could barely overcome, his vision moved to the left throne. Someone sat there, but it was so far away his eyes could barely make out
who
. He had to strain his eyes to catch a glimpse of the person- he could barely think of him as his father, not until he could see a face- raising an arm, and beckoning slowly.

“
Your… father… awaits,” Lord Danner said, and to Gribly’s surprise the pirate bowed to him stiffly.

He looked back to the thrones at the sound of a splash, and sucked in his breath at the shock: a thin lane of stone now led from the edge of the swath, past the rock formation in the pool, and up to the ramp on the left. So that had not been a summons… it had been Stone Striding.

“
Go…” Danner hissed, still bowing. Gribly felt as if his feet were made of stone themselves, but he cautiously walked forward onto the narrow bridge his… the man on the throne had made, and began to cross it.

Halfway across, and he began to make out the shape of the man on the throne. Gribly dropped his eyes, looking at his feet and the pool, or anywhere he would not have to meet the eyes of the Pirate King… yet.

Nearly there, he looked back at the rock formation he had passed, then at the other two. With a start he realized that they were
symbols
, meant to be viewed from the thrones above him. His mind raced, as his gaze was drawn unavoidably to the top of the ramp he was about to climb.

Three symbols, carved from stone, in a bed of water, with air in a dome above. The first symbol like an open circle, hard spikes protruding out and a swirling pattern bursting forth from the middle like a seed-bud. Nearest to him…
Stone.

The second symbol; a full circle, with a wavy line cutting through the middle, a wave above, a wave below. To the left…
Sea.

The third symbol, almost a circle, all sinuous curves, with three sharp slashes to crown it. To the right…
Sky.

The realization had taken Gribly the length of the ramp to reach. He was at the top… and facing the Lord of Rogues, on his throne overlooking the three elements. A muffled
boom
echoed around the space as doors shut somewhere far behind. Danner had left.

Their gaze met. Thief and pirate, prophet and king. Gribly did not know what to think.

The man on the throne only barely resembled the version of his father he had seen in the vision from Wanderwillow’s book. The huge throne only just fit King Gram’s huge bulk. His entire body seemed bloated from the excesses of his appetites, and the enormous black coat that wrapped his hulking form was stretched tight. A yellow shirt, like Lord Danner’s but infinitely more ornate, bulged beyond the thick belt of leather and metal studs that wrapped Gram’s waist. His pants were deep brown, and stained with innumerable wine-spills.

And the face… Gribly almost cringed. It was the same face as in the vision, but distorted and bloated like the rest, and missing most of the hair. How had sixteen or seventeen years changed his father so much? Never mind that Gribly didn’t know Gram’s age- he didn’t know his own, either- but he was sure no one aged that fast. The man’s eyes were glazed and tired-looking, and he absently tapped one ring-decorated fist on the side of an enormous war hammer that lay against the side of the throne.

It was not until Gribly had stood in the awkward silence for a moment that Gram seemed to recognize him. The king’s dull eyes became suddenly bright with interest… and hunger.

“
They told me you had come,” he said, and his voice was as strong as Gribly remembered. “I did not believe them… quite. I am still not sure I do.” Silence fell again. Gribly felt oddly calm, but it was the calm of deadness. This… this
man
was his father? He opened his mouth, ready to blurt anything to kill the horrible silence, but Gram spoke again. “Catch this, boy.”

Before he knew what had happened, the Lord of Rogues had picked up the metal hammer and tossed it effortlessly into the air. It flew in a lazy arc, handle spinning ‘round the head, right for Gribly.

He put out his hand instinctively and caught the weapon by the handle- almost to drop it the next second. Whatever it was made of, that hammer was the
heaviest
bloody thing he’d ever touched! It was like catching the weight of a mountain on his palm!

Without thinking he shifted his feet and gripped the leather-wrapped handle in both hands. A surge of Stone Striding rushed through him, meeting concussively with the oppressive heft of the hammer. All at once, the weight was gone… and he
knew.

The hammer
was
heavy as a mountain. It was something as old as these halls… something as much a part of the Stone element as the mountains themselves. Without Striding… it must be impossible to lift. Now, Gribly was still aware of the titanic power behind the weapon, but it felt less like weight and more like
strength
… a strength that was his alone, and that he could direct wherever he wanted.

With this… I could have defeated Sheolus! I could have saved…
but his fantasy was cut off by Gram’s hearty laugh, which sounded eerily hollow echoing around the huge chamber.

“
I’ve met my share of Stone Striders, Gramlen,” the Lord of Rogues chuckled. “Rock Striders, Sand Striders, even bloody Eave Striders like some of the wood nymphs out East! None of them has ever been able to hold that hammer. Ever.” He paused, shaking his head, still amused. “You’re my son, all right. Gramlen, since there’s no way the other…”

Gram’s voice trailed off. With a start, Gribly realized his father was on the verge of tears. “Father…” he choked out, finally. “Father, I…”