Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (3 page)

“It’s your own fault,” he told himself, shaking his head. Shifting his weather-beaten gray cloak a little, he made his way warily into the Blackwood, stalking along with his ears perked for any hint of danger.

A little further in, and the forest seemed to close shut behind him. When he turned the curve of the road that he had seen earlier, the light around him immediately faded to a twilight-gray of shadows and shifting lines. It put him on edge, or should have, but his senses seemed dulled in the halls of the Blackwood. The wind carried him no clues, here, where there was almost no wind at all. But Traveller had foretold it would not. For the hundredth time he frowned, thinking about the many roads and treks of wilderness that still lay between him and his goal.

The Blackwood was only the beginning, though it might prove to be the most treacherous part. Beyond its far side lay a small southern strip of the Fellmere, the empty, windswept land at Vast’s northern tip. There should be no trouble there, though there was rumored to be bandits controlling nearly every road north of the Lost Walls… Very well. He did not need the roads, and if he did there was no bandit that could stop him.

Beyond that came the White Marshes. Bogs and pools miles wide filled all the land from coast to coast, stretching down from the Fellmere to where the Greenwood and the Spiral cut it off above Vastion’s northernmost reaches- places that did not really answer to the king of the Windy Halls any more. He knew it for a fact: Blast Desert, where he had met Gribly, had been one such place.

Gribly. Lauro trudged down the road, feeling more tired than even a full day’s walk merited. Where was the Sand Strider- no,
Stone
Strider, now, he kept forgetting- now? They had parted paths when Gribly went after the fiends who’d captured Elia, and if any quest could be grimmer than the one Lauro was on, it was Gribly’s. A Pit Strider and one of the mysterious Legion himself waited at the end of the young prophet’s journey. Could anyone, even a Strider as powerful as Gribly, contend with an archdemon?

Get a hold on yourself,
he thought.
You made your choice, and you’ve got to stick to it, now.
“I’m getting too soft,” Lauro said in a whisper. “This isn’t picking flowers, but it’s just too easy…”

Suddenly he jolted back to reality, his sword out and poised to strike. No sound had alerted him, but there was something definitely wrong.

No sound. No sound? This was a forest, and there were always sounds in a forest. Lauro turned in a careful circle, thanking the Creator that his pack was now almost empty and slung at his side: it would not restrict his movement much in a fight. “I’m getting lazy, too,” he grumbled.

Halfway through the circle, the prince stopped. Ahead, the road forked in two, one wider path continuing on straight, and a much smaller, rockier one sloping to the side and upward, into a hill that he had almost not noticed in his reverie. A little further and he would have missed it.

And what of it?
he thought.
That’s not the way I want to go… not North. South.
But something seen out of the corner of his eye drew him, and he turned left to start up the rocky path. Cautiously peering around, still bothered by the odd silence and shadows that should have been smaller, he examined what it was that had caught his eye.

A large stone lay in the middle of the northward path, right where it began. It was rough and many-edged all round, except for the very top, which had been sanded or carved flat in an area as wide as a man’s hand. Branded, or burned, or stamped into the flat space… was the hawk of Vastion.

“Rangers?” Lauro questioned under his breath. It had that peculiar shape; the sign of Wanderwillow’s secret eyes-and-ears, the men and women who walked among the population of Vast, finding information and passing it on ear-to-ear until the Brown Aura heard all he needed to keep his corner of the world safe… or that was how it had worked, before the
Swaying Willow
had burned and Sheolus, the rogue Aura, only free member of the Legion, had hurt the Brown Aura so badly he would no longer speak.

Glancing around to make sure no one and nothing was nearby, Lauro unlaced the top of the cloth shirt he wore, reaching for Wanderwillow’s gift where it hung on his chest. It was a small wooden hawk that hung on a leather string, made so intricately it seemed to have grown there instead of been carved. Perhaps it had.

The necklace matched the image on the stone as close as he could wish, and more. There was no doubt the two were connected.

“But how…?” Lauro murmured.

Snap!

The prince spun around, curved sword-blade shimmering in a rare beam of sunlight that fell through the thick roof of pine-branches above. Nothing moved that he could see, but the woods were so thick… and he was
sure
he had heard the twig break.

A few moments passed, but Lauro kept his breathing silent and his body unmoved, poised for battle.

He had just begun to think it was his imagination, when all at once the Blackwood was throbbing with noise. Birds called and beasts bellowed. Dark shapes on wing and hoof and paw rampaged just beyond his clear field of vision, coming from a silent who-knew-where, and every one of them charging closer.

“What in the…” For a moment he paused, undecided, as caws and screeches rang in the air around him. Then he chose, darting quickly up the rocky path and diving for cover in an overgrown fist of leafy vine-like plants that almost blocked the road farther up. Whatever was coming had not seen him yet, and he was in no mood to meet the Blackwood’s savage occupants so soon. Leaves crunched and flew as he burrowed into the undergrowth, twisting and turning to get in the most concealed spot possible without sacrificing his view.

He had not known what to expect, but what came still surprised him.

Down below at the road’s fork, the cacophony of noise rose to a thundering degree, and the next second a swarm of animals broke from the trees and rushed across the path, madly stampeding in their attempt to get away from what followed. Most of the birds were crows, most of the beasts deer; the sheer variety, though, was stunning. All were dark-colored, even the stray black squirrel Lauro thought he glimpsed, and all wore what came closest in a beast to an expression of sheer terror.

Not good. What in Vast could make them so…

And just like that, the animals were gone, their noises and scents and sight sucked up by the weighty shadows of the Blackwood. The trees seemed to eat sounds as well as light, and soon everything was as deathly quiet as before. Lauro’s mouth hung open for a moment in disbelief- had the animals been raging and trampling their own for
nothing?
Cautiously, the young Sky Strider began to rise out of the foliage.

Had he not heard it coming, he would have risen all the way and been spotted. But a long, guttural growl rang in his ears like a warning bell, and he dropped back down a bare second before the largest draik he had ever seen slid out from the trees lining the road with more stealth than he would have thought possible for a creature so large, had he not fought and killed such before.

But that was not the thing that shocked him.

“Steamclaw…” he hissed, barely loud enough to mist the cold air in front of him. Steamclaw… the draik who had helped Gribly defeat the Sea Demon attacking Mythigrad. Lauro had always distrusted the speaking pit beast, and though he had spent far less time with it than had Gribly, he still thought he recognized the way this draik’s eyes flickered as it crossed the path. It was taking its leisurely time, because it knew that it could catch the fleeing forest-animals whenever it chose. Blast the thing.

Soon it too was gone under the black eaves. Lauro cursed silently. He couldn’t afford to lose time, not when Gribly and Elia and thousands of men and nymphs needed him to find the Red Aura. But Steamclaw or any other draik
here
, in the Blackwood… he had to find out what was going on… Not to mention, a draik on the loose could end in his death later on, and most assuredly would if he wasn’t careful.

Slowly, warily, he eased himself out of the underbrush, then stood, half-crouching, with his sword sheathed but ready to be drawn again at a moment’s notice. Brushing himself off, he double-checked everything from his belt to his shaved temples and back of his head. He had given up wearing the Vastic warrior’s topknot- now the long hair on the top of his head hung at his back, longer than he had ever let it grow before. He looked like a savage, and now he would go hunting like one.

Without warning, something pierced him painfully in the neck. The sting was like the longwasp’s sting, but when he whirled and clapped a hand to his neck there was no stinger embedded, only a curiously smooth sliver of dark wood, which he pulled out quickly and examined.

“Not thish,” he said… but his words were already slurred. “Noth… thish…” his mouth felt numb, as did his head… and neck…

As he collapsed backwards in the loam and brush, he caught a glimpse of someone swinging down from the tree above him. His vision was growing dark, and he was too numb to move his head. Panic enveloped him, but he couldn’t scream. Sleep, and maybe something deeper and worse, clung to his eyelids, forcing them closed.

Darkness came, and with it a woman’s voice. “Mistake, Openlander… you’re going to die for your mistake.”

Was it just his imagination, or did his killer have a note of sympathy in her voice?

“Burn…” he started to curse, but his tongue would not obey him, and his mind felt crushed under the weight of a single command.

SLEEP.

“Ghhh!” Lauro came out of the black sleep and lurched upwards, trying to stand, but a violent tug at his throat threw him back again. Coughing and reeling, his head ablaze with pain, the prince clawed desperately at his throat. Something was choking him; his fingers felt out hard metal, and with a shock he realized he was collared and chained to a wall. Darkness shrouded everything, but he had seen enough to know where he was.

A dungeon. He’d been captured, probably by wood nymphs. No one else could have sneaked up on him like that. Poison darts… that was how they had done it. He remembered now. Aura! His head hurt as if he’d been smacked with a hammer. In the windowless dark, his hands found where the chain from his neck met the wall. Three feet, maybe, was all the room he had. Rage filled him: how
dare
these savages keep him chained like some common mongrel! Even criminals in the dungeons of Vastion were not treated so.

Then another thought struck him: were they treating him as an animal because to them he
was?
Were they going to tear his flesh and eat him like cannibals? It was said, in some seedy inns back home he knew he should not have visited, that all nymphs ate their enemies. He knew it not to be true… but even the Sea Nymph tribes of the Inkwell had cut off contact from their wood-tribe brethren, so savage were the M’tant. He wouldn’t put it past the blasted cowards to eat humans.

Well, let them try it. Lauro tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry. Blast. How long had he been unconscious?

The only light spilled through the holes in a heavy metal grate in the cell’s only door. It had a greenish tint that unsettled him. Then his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and it was all he could do not to shudder.

The four walls of the cell were lined with manacles and collars like his. They were each empty, but the dank air that hovered about in the cell was tinted to his Sky Strider vision. Black, blacker than shadow, meant death. Red, and brown, and new, dark colors with no name. They all had meanings… scents… it was like a vision of the past.

He was aware of everything that had recently happened in the cell: beatings, wailings, murderous prisoners and equally murderous captors… and fear. Rancid, blood-raw fear. Men and women and children had died here. Some had taken their own lives, the currents of air wept… they had strangled themselves against the iron collars to escape what was coming…

With a sudden creak, the door to the cell slid open. Lauro jumped so fast he jerked to the end of his tether again and slumped in a fit of coughing, pounding the floor with his fist in frustration. He hadn’t even heard them approach…

The first person through the door was the biggest nymph Lauro had ever seen. He ducked under the mantle silently, his pale, pointed ears twitching. His eyes were yellow and slitted, like a cat’s, but below that his face was masked with black cloth. Black leather armor seemed to cover every inch of him, surmounted by a dark cloak hanging to one side. Lauro grimaced in the shadows. A commander, then. Head of the prison.

The bulky nymph was light on his feet, for all that. Once inside he slid smoothly to the right, holding his weapon in a way that casually suggested he would run Lauro through the first chance he got. The weapon itself was like the ones the prince had seen in Mythigrad’s armory: a dark, polished-wood handle too long for a sword and too short for a spear, with a slim blade at the top, shaped like a sword’s, but shorter and somehow curvier.
Everything’s so… dark, here,
Lauro thought, grimacing.