Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three) (7 page)

For the first few seconds, nothing happened, and his thoughts drifted. Elia had told him of her conversation with Karmidigan during the battle with the Sea Demon, when she had joined forces with his Frost Striders to conjure an impressive thunderstorm to strike at the menacing foe. The master Frost Strider had explained a little of the history of Striders to her then, and more afterwards. In the distant past, there had been individuals who boasted power over multiple aspects of the world, though nothing quite like this.

Fire? It was unheard of. The only person Gribly had ever witnessed Striding Fire in some way was… was the
Pit Strider
.

His eyes snapped open before he realized they had even closed. For half a second he had seen the Pit Strider’s face again, the face that mirrored his own.

The sorcerer had been burning people alive… and he had been laughing as he did it.

~

Elia’s eyes slid slowly open, and immediately her gaze was drawn to her hands, now cupped together above the dying embers of the tinder-fire.

A tiny, writhing ball of flame, less than an inch across, was cradled in her hands.

Gribly stared slack-jawed at her, then seemed to come to his senses. “That’s… incredible,” he whispered. The night was now quite dark around them. “It’s unheard-of… You could be the most powerful Strider in the world!”

“Shhh,” she whispered, bringing her hands up closer to her face. The fireball was like a tiny burning lantern in her mind, a focused brightness in the farthest, blackest corner of her consciousness. Its feel was entirely different from that of Waves, or of the Storm she had controlled with Karmidigan’s help. Her mental focus was taken up entirely with that little ball of flame; with its heat, its light, its proportions and consistency…

With a curious, hungry gaze, she examined it in that place within herself that always felt connected to the sea, no matter where she was or what she was doing; the window looking out from her soul into the vastness of the Eternal Waves that constituted the source of her power…

…The tiny ball of flame, viewed through the transparency of the water, became a blazing sun that ripped through her soul’s window and shattered it…

“…ELIA!”
shrieked Gribly, leaping backwards with all the agility of a street thief and Striding adept. It was lucky for him that he did: the blaze Elia had unconsciously conjured from her little ball of flame engulfed the space where he’d been crouching only a moment before, blazing hotly for a millisecond before winking out of existence as if it had never been.

“Sea and Sky!” Elia gasped, stunned at what she had done. Her immediate reaction had been to cut off the flow of power, which had probably saved her life. The heat from the blast lingered for only a second or two before dissipating. In a second stroke of luck, none of the supplies or bedrolls had been burned, and Gribly looked only a little singed.

“What… in Vast… was
that?”
he stammered, approaching cautiously in the shadows as if he expected her to let loose with another blast at any moment.

“I just…
looked
at it, Grib,” she responded numbly, stumbling over his name in her shock. Grib. It sounded like a child’s nick-name. Perhaps she would call him that now.

Focus, Elia,
she told herself.
Focus.

“Well, don’t look at it again while I’m around. I don’t want to see it.” That was so like him, she thought. Always joking. She didn’t feel much like joking herself, right now. She felt like sleeping, and never waking up.

She had just Strode Fire. She was different. She was powerful.

She wanted to cry.

“I think I’ll just go to bed now,” she said blandly, flopping back on her bedroll and instantly regretting it. The pebbles stuck in her back. Stupid quest.

“Ah… good idea,” Gribly said, equally as blandly. She heard the muffled sounds of her friend as he crawled back into his own roll. Her fire-blinded eyes closed against the enclosing shadow, and soon she was asleep.

~

Gribly’s dreams were convoluted and filled with the twisted face of his mysterious look-alike.

Gramling. The draik had called him Gramling.

“Like what you see?” the Pit Strider grinned, and his teeth were bloody. His hands tapered into black, bloodstained claws as he slashed and clutched at a villager’s body until it fell limply away. A small, friendly-looking hamlet burned like Blazes behind him, and smoke billowed from every window.

Gribly tried to open his mouth- to curse, to weep, to do or say
anything
to stop the horrific massacre, but no words would come out. His arms felt like lead and his legs seemed to crumble to dust beneath him.

“So astute,
prophet
,” sneered the Pit Strider, and struck Gribly in the face. He reeled back under the insult and the blow, and his back felt like it was snapping in two. Blood ran in his eyes, and a horrendous black shape loomed through the murderous haze. “Finish him, Bonedale,” ordered the sorcerer, “We can’t have him eavesdropping on us while he’s asleep, can we?” The demon-horse that appeared by Gribly’s head reared up, neighing in triumph.

Then its hooves crashed down on his head.

Chapter Five: Grim Laughter

Mythigrad in ruins. The
Suthway Cath
wrecked on the city’s shores, two of her enemy vessels in pieces beneath her. A second ship sunk, a second crew dead, a second battle lost.

But Captain Bernarl was a Zain, and Zain were hard to kill. His coat was in tatters, his body bruised and bloodied, his hair burnt and one of his eyes put out by an explosion that had torn a hole in the
Suthway’s
side. Stumbling away from the half-submerged wreckage of his ship, the nymph captain and part-time pirate still clutched his precious anchor-blade by its chain, letting its heaviest part drag in the snowy slush behind him. There was blood on the blade.

Hard to kill indeed.

Gazing listlessly around him, Berne took in the situation with a practiced eye. The mysterious enemies were inside Mythigrad now. He could see the fires of destruction raging throughout the city, and knew that his duty lay in making a last stand with the Reethe.

Another explosion threw him to his knees, and he sprung up again, cursing.
The ships!

The ships. He turned and looked at them with a predator's eye. Was he a good enough pirate to take an entire ship captive on his own? It would give the Reethe a fighting chance, if they had one of those ships...

“Captain... what in the Blazes is happening? Where did these ships come from??”
It was Yan, the wheel-mate, struggling up from the surf, spewing water and blood as he tried to expel the sea from his body.

“Hard to kill...”
muttered Berne under his breath, in the nymphtongue.
“We haven't lost yet, Yan,”
he said aloud.

“But we've lost the
Suthway
!”
Yan lamented, stumbling over. He looked to be in shock, but there was not much else wrong with him.

“Indeed...”
Berne mused, as more explosions and screams perforated the blood-hazed air.
“But we're not lost yet, Yan. How would you like to be a pirate?”

“Captain? I don't understand...”

“We're going to take those ships, Yan. We're going to save Mythigrad.”

~

Gribly stared out over the inner world of the Grymclaw, trying his hardest to figure out a way down the cliffs. He had Sand Striding, and, it seemed, Stone Striding on his side; the problem was knowing how to use them. He had thought of warping part of the cliff face into a flight of stairs, lengthening it as he and Elia traveled further down, but he just didn't have the finesse needed.

Then, quite suddenly, the answer came to him.

“Stand back,” he told the girl, and she did, looking at him worriedly.

“What's your plan?” she asked hesitantly.

“Just watch... and stand back a little farther.”

“I don't like the sounds of that...”

But he was already standing near the cliff's ledge, eyes closed and hands outstretched as if he wanted to grab the huge standalone rock formation that stood a hundred feet out from the edge and stretched up several spans above them.

Of course… that was exactly what he wanted.

In his mind, Gribly saw the titanic pinnacle of packed clay and stone as a mere child's toy; a sand-castle he had built with his own hands, that he could manipulate as he pleased. He pictured it as a miniature version of itself, a tower of sand no more than three feet high, such as the one he had built to test his sand-striding powers in the desert. Reaching out in reality and in his mind, he grasped the imaginary tower and held it as firmly as he could.

Then he pulled.

Nothing happened.

He pulled again, and the finest cracks began to show around where his hands gripped the sand. His ears picked up a loud creaking noise, and behind him he heard Elia gasp.

“What're you doing?” she cried, but he ignored her. The small sand-tower was all that existed; it was all that mattered.

He pulled again, and cracks began to split the base.

He pulled for the last time, as hard as he could, and felt the tower begin to tip slowly towards him.

“So... close...” he grunted to himself, eyes still closed. The toll of the enormous strain he was putting on his Striding skills began to weigh him down, and sweat broke out all over his body in protest as his bones groaned from the effort.

With his last vestige of strength, the thief poured his power into the bottom of the tower, willing it to soften into sand for the first time in the eons since it had formed. Then his mental grip on the formation disintegrated and he stumbled backwards, eyes popping open in fright.

A tremendous
BOOM
shook the air and echoed around the enclosed grassland within the cliffs, as the towering rock formation came apart at its base and tipped over, falling towards the cliff in slow motion.

Gribly found himself scrambling backwards and out of the way, Elia's fingers wrapped tightly in his vest-shoulder as she forcibly helped him along. The tower was taller than the cliff, and its head looked just high enough to smash the ledge as it toppled. A frantic few seconds were barely enough to escape. The formation hit the cliff with a resounding
CRASH
that sent both young people sprawling. Dust swirled in an impenetrable cloud and bits of sharp rock pelted their backs and limbs painfully. Two fits of coughing and two crushing headaches later, they helped each other up.

“That...
cough
... was the stupidest idea...
cough cough
... you've ever had!
cough
” Elia snapped, punching Gribly in the arm, but she couldn't hide the relief in her voice.