Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two)

by Gregory J. Downs

  Just like that they were ready and had cast off, heading almost directly North with the intention of contacting the last two sea nymph tribes, warning them of any possible danger, and hopefully enlisting their help to reach the Grymclaw. There was only one change in plans: Cleric Amarand was sending his page with them- a small, scholarly fellow named Variand.

  ~

  By nightfall the shore was far behind the Mirrorwave, leaving all of South Vast as a shady, blotted line in the distance. The eastern end of the Inkwell was so far away it could not be seen, due to the enormous size of the bay. (It was so enormous, in fact, that Page Variand declared it a matter of heated debate among scholars and geographers everywhere. They were split between those who supported the original theory of the Inkwell being small enough for a bay, and those who contended that it was too large, and should be declared a Sea instead. At the end of the explanation Gribly wished he could toss Variand overboard and end the page’s boring chatter right then and there.)

  Captain Berne had early on given orders for the silverguard and Gribly to be integrated into his crew to keep them interested and sufficiently out-of-the-way. This they had managed to do rather well under the tutelage of the yet-unnamed first mate, who unbent his stiff manner when the travelers proved themselves able and quick to learn.

  Lauro wasn’t required to work because of his “noble blood” and “importance to the mission,” which Gribly figured must mean the prince had money and had bribed the captain. In any case the older boy spent most of his spare time poring over maps and manuscripts with Captain Berne, and when the day was done spent the evening in a cabin of his own. Little pig, Gribly thought, but he was getting along so well with the sailor-nymphs that he didn’t trouble himself about it and even decided in the end that it was necessary.

  With all the thoughts whirling around in his mind like one of his own sandstorms, the Sand Strider at last let himself be lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of the boat on the darkened, glassy sea under a midnight sky.

  This voyage is my first… it’s going so well… probably just too good to last, he thought before he closed his eyes.

  Chapter Two: The Demon Sea

  The next day proceeded much as the first had, as the Mirrorwave sailed ever deeper into the Inkwell. As time progressed, however, the more spectacular changes wrought on any ship entering the mysterious waters became apparent. The air got chillier and chillier until Gribly’s breath fogged as it came out and his fingers were numb and chapped from the cold. The bay itself seemed to grow steadily choppier and colder in just a few hours, freezing the barnacles above the vessel’s waterline and even coating the center-back of the trireme’s sail with thin ice.

  It was more than different for the Sand Strider- it was a bad dream or a nightmare. He’d lived all his life in the desert, where, for sure, they’d had freezing nights, but nothing like this had ever happened to him. His ragged hair froze in tangled streaks blown back from his forehead. He cut and scraped his fingers tying and untying knots for the Mirrorwave’s first mate. Everything seemed to move too fast around him, too quickly for his glazed mind and unsteady gaze to fix upon anything. Even after he was issued the long fur jacket standard to the nymph crew, the enchanted winter seemed to gnaw at his bones like the draik he’d killed at the Arches.

  Sleep should have been a welcome relief: when night came and Page Variand had recited an evening blessing over the ship, most of the crew came below and sprawled out on their hammocks under as many blankets as could be got; by asking, petitioning, or burglarizing. Gribly prided himself on having kept most of his former skill, and ended up with almost double the blankets the average sailor had, most of which he’d stolen from their rightful owners.

  But sleep did not come, and for an uncountable number of minutes he lay shivering, too affected by the cold and wet to be comfortable under his ill-gotten sheets. Time passed. The ship grew quiet around him, save for the rocking of the hammocks and the gradual swell and toss of the Mirrorwave across the rainy bay. Eventually he dozed, but it was an uneasy, half-dreaming sort of doze and he soon awoke from it. Images of men in gray cloaks and hats with wings lingered at the back of his mind.

  I must be going crazy, he decided. Rolling about and wrapping himself in the furs he’d been issued during the day, the Sand Strider slipped limply out from under the covers and right into his hide boots on the wet floor below, narrowly avoiding the snoring Variand where the nymph hung out of his hammock, swinging below Gribly’s own bed.

  The crew’s sleeping quarters were “fore o’ the stores and skyward o’ the rowing deck,” which Gribly had learned over the course of the day meant in front of the store-rooms and above the rowing deck. Soon he had traversed the length of the long chamber and reached the foot of the stairs leading up and out. Tramping despondently up the creaking boards, he struggled with the slanted trap door that led out onto the trireme’s deck.

  Finally the blasted thing came open and he scrambled up and out. The rain that had been falling that evening had given way to a frosty, bleak night. The Mirrorwave was utterly silent except for the creakings and moanings that seemed inherent to any movement it made. The stars and moon were out in full force overhead, casting a pale light over everything, but there was no other illumination.

  “Hoi, there,” called a hushed voice overhead. It was Captain Berne, waving casually at the Sand Strider from his place at the trireme’s tiller on a raised platform at the rear of the ship. “Join me on this lonely watch, will you?”

  “All right.” Gribly was surprised at the captain’s amiableness. In his past experience he had learned all authority to lord it over their inferiors- to exploit their position. Berne seemed to defy that conception. The veteran sailor wasn’t afraid of his men’s company or their work, for certain. He even liked speaking to them, or so it seemed.

  Gribly climbed the steep, sideways stairway to the place where Berne was. What was it called? He’d been told the nautical names for things so many times that he didn’t remember any of them- why couldn’t sailors say left side and backwards and rope like anyone else? Or was that just what nymphs called everything? When he joined the captain he intended to ask him, but Berne seemed preoccupied already. “Take the tiller, will ye?”

  Nervous but obliging, Gribly took it and tried to hold it steady as the nymph showed him. “Like this?”

  “Aye. Hold ‘er steady, maister Grib, and I’ll fetch us for sure something to pass the time… aye, and heat the cold, too.” Gribly waited while Berne rummaged in his many coat pockets. Finally the captain removed a small flask of something from the deepest one and took a swig. Passing it to the Sand Strider and taking the tiller back at the same time, he grinned a bit livelier than before. “Take a chug o’ that, maister. If that don’t warm yer innards, you 'aven’t gotten none!”

  Something about the last sentence seemed odd to the thief, but he took the flask and lifted it to his lips, sipping tentatively. GAH! It was fire and ice! It was molten metal from a forge being poured down his throat! It was a thousand pounds of cane sugar and barrel of pickled desert-peppers! It was sweet and sour and a hundred other things, some good, some bad. It was intoxicating, and whatever it was, it drove out the day’s and night’s chill immediately.

  “Whoah there (hic) maister Grib! Don’t be takin’ it all!” the jovial captain laughed and snatched the hide-bottle back. “Take too much o’ that and a few ‘ot coals is all that’ll be left o’ you…”

  “What (hic hic) d’you mean?” Gribly questioned him. By Traveller, but was that stuff fast-working! It burned through his body like a pleasant pain.

  “Izz fire-nectar,” Berne told him pouring some more down his own throat, “Az from them M’tant iz usink en the Black(hic)wood…”

  “Oh (hic),” he replied. “Strong… ztuff…” the Sand Strider found it was suddenly very hard to stay on his feet. “Haven’t had… (hic) ztuff this strong, since, since, the ol’ Pickpocket… Ymeer… (hic) since I pinched ‘is ztore-
room wine.”

  Glancing drunkenly aside, he suddenly and unnervingly found Captain Berne staring at him, as if the nymph was trying very hard to place his face or remember what he’d said through the fire-nectar’s haze. An awkward silence fell and stayed there for a long time. Gribly turned uncomfortably away and stared out over the deck into the watery distance beyond. White blotches, hundreds of them suddenly loomed ahead some distance away.

  “What is…” he turned back to ask Berne, but the nymph interrupted.

  “I knew the thing! I knew it! You’ll be from the alliance, like az not!”

  “Excu(hic)se me?” the Sand Strider asked, surprised. Berne’s odd behavior was disconcerting.

  “The alliance, young (hic) thief.”

  Gribly was annoyed and, to tell the truth, mildly embarrassed. He had spent too much time among good people in the last weeks to not be. “I didn’t… I didn’t think any of you Zain knew about that.”

  “I knows an alliance brother when ev’r I sees one.”

  “No… (hic hic!) I meant about being a thief.”

  “All alliance brothers and si-i-sisters are thieves, young maister.”

  The drink-addled haze about the Sand Strider broke like an egg smashed underfoot. Young Maister? Brother Thieves? It called to mind a number of incidents in his past life, most noticeably his flight from the Pit Strider, his might-be relation, and… the merchant who’d used the old pickpocket’s saying.

  Gribly took a chance. “Speed, silence,”

  “Stealth,” Captain Berne finished. “So you’ve really met us before, ‘ave ye? Know yer own kind whenst ye see ‘em?” Instantly the nymph dropped his moony expression and replaced it with one of devious knowledge. “Too strong fer drink, too fast fer followin’… It’s another one of the alliance sayings, if you’ll mind the uncultured… ah… accent.”

  Gribly only had a slight notion of what the slippery nymph was talking about, so he declined answering. He grinned instead.

  “Ah, maister Grib,” the captain smiled warmly, “I’ve been a’watching you on this short voyage. You’ll make a fine member if ye survive this blood-riddled quest of your mate’s.” He clasped Gribly’s shoulder in a gesture of brotherhood, but before he could do any more explaining (and there was a lot of it, Gribly suspected), the entire voyage ended quite abruptly.

  The trireme had gone untended for only a few seconds, but due to whatever special attributes it boasted it had already reached the white blobs that had stood out against the night sky. They were a veritable forest of icebergs- the beginning of the Inkwell Bergs, where Page Variand had earlier claimed was the home of the Treele, and, farther north, the Reethe.

  Just as Captain Berne ended his speech to Gribly, the Mirrorwave clipped one of the icebergs slightly. A shudder went up the side of the trireme, shaking Berne’s hand off the tiller- the loss of control caused the vessel to veer directly into the Berg’s side. “Blast!” swore the captain, struggling to regain his stance and hold as the ship careened and tossed under his feet. Gribly reached for the tiller to help just as the full force of the crash hit him and threw both he and the hardy nymph on their backs.

  A rumbling, low and loud, filled the Sand Strider’s ears. A shadow fell over the entire ship, darker than the midnight sky. Wide-eyed and terrified, he gazed up at the sight that met his eyes.

  “What in Vast is that?!?!?” shouted one of them- himself or the captain, Gribly wasn’t sure which.

  Then a darker, more violent blackness fell, and his mind collapsed to shut it out.

  ~

  Lauro thanked the Aura he was a light sleeper after his time in the desert. The first quake that rocked the ship nearly threw him out of bed, but he was awake and scrambling for his cloak and sword before it was over. The prince slept with his boots on, to save time and keep him ready for anything. Well, if this wasn’t anything, he didn’t know what was. Tumbling out of bed and snatching up his pittance of belongings, he was ready and rushing for the cabin door before the second shock reached him.

  When it did, it was like nothing he had ever encountered.

  The whole room shook like a rabbit in a wolf’s mouth. A rapid series of deafening booms and crunches echoed from beyond the wall, farther down the ship. The floor started to sway and buck, throwing Lauro off his feet at least three times before he made it to the door. Hurling himself against the door-handle, the prince managed to snap the flimsy chain-clasp and knock the door open… just as the world turned sideways and tossed him out into the hall.

  In a few seconds he went from stepping through a door to falling down a long vertical shaft. Shouting in surprise, he flung out his arms and managed by pure luck to catch hold of the left doorpost. Everything around him was spinning and spasming uncontrollably, ropes and tools and barrels careening down at him from above- refuse from what had been the back of the ship, and was now jutting up in the air.

  “What in blazes?!?” he cursed, then added a few more tasteful exclamations not fit for reproduction. Hoisting himself up, he managed to grab the doorpost with both hands and climb partially back into the room before the trireme changed position again and dumped him out onto the now-diagonal floor. It was as if a wave of titanic proportions had picked the ship up and thrown it spinning end over end into the bottomless ocean.

  More than confused, Lauro slid painfully fast down the tilting boards, past falling debris and even a screaming nymph sailor. When he tried to throw out his arms and legs to slow himself, hardwood splinter lodged themselves under his fingernails and poked into his boots. Cursing, he plummeted straight down past door after open door, right for the narrow end of the passage, which shaped the front end of the Mirrorwave.

  It was a nerve-wracking two seconds, filled with the wails and curses of the crew so rudely awakened only to be injured or die from the random direction shifts. At the end Lauro bent his knees to absorb the impact.

  Wham! His legs buckled as he smashed into the wood, then splayed out as the ship’s direction flipped over and tossed him up towards the ceiling- which was now the floor, and he was falling towards it. Wham! sounded again, and something hard and metal jabbed painfully into his lower back. Instinctively he reached under himself and grabbed at whatever-it-was. A trapdoor latch.

  Without warning the mechanism snapped and the trapdoor popped open, spilling him out into the open night air.

  “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!” he screamed in an extremely unprincely fashion. Spars, tethers, and hooks flew by him as he fell. It would take an hour to describe what he saw in half a second: the world turned topsy-turvy under him, the Mirrorwave hoisted upside-down a hundred feet above the churning waves and blocky ice-floes, the ship’s mainmast hurtling towards him at lightning speed- and the unimaginably huge creature that held the vessel in its grasp.

  Without taking time to consider it, Lauro began to wind stride. He kicked his legs out and spread his arms, willing the harsh element of the sky under his power. His fall slowed as he wheeled his limbs every which way, desperately trying to stop himself from being crushed by the approaching mast. Arching his back, he managed to propel himself out of the wooden pillar’s way, but just barely. A flailing myriad of cables and ties snatched at him as he tumbled lower, slower… and slower…

  …Until he was able to reach out and grab one of them. Jerking to the end of its reach, he found himself hanging once more, suspended under the Mirrorwave’s ruined hulk. A storm raged around the nightmarish scene, unexpected and deadly. That wasn’t the problem. Lauro almost lost his grip as he caught his first steady glimpse of the creature that was the cause of both the storm and the trireme’s position.

  Big as the vessel was, it was a play-toy to the monster that held it in its grip. Tall as a mountain, the massive beast stretched up into the sky like one of the legendary giants from the frightening fireside tales he’d been told as a child. He almost thought that the monster was such a giant: it was the right shape, in general, though it seemed to be made of rushing water and c
hurning, swirling tendrils of white ice.

  But its head and face clearly marked it as some beast from the Blaze: long tentacles of the strange, almost-alive ice and snow sprouting from every part; a jutting jaw and hideous mouth that spewed sea-scum and a thick, red substance that might have been blood. Its mandibles writhed and snapped, but no sound came from its icy throat. Hideous, bulbous eyes were set in its head: silvery-white, lidless, and crisscrossed with webbed blue veins. Despite their menacing appearance, it struck Lauro that the demon-beast couldn’t see. He fleetingly imagined that it had spent its life at the bottom of the Inkwell, only to be woken by the Mirrorwave’s untimely passing.

  Or had it? Lauro was too courageous to be paralyzed with fear; instead it galled him into action. He began to climb laboriously up the hanging tether just as a hideous screech broke across the thunderous sky above him.

  The clouds parted for a moment, throwing a wide beam of moonlight on the sea-beast’s shoulder. High in the ether above it, a twisted black shape was flying. In a flash the light was gone and so was the shape, but Lauro’s keen eyes had picked it out before it faded: a black horse with tattered black wings spreading out from its shoulders. A robed, hunched figure rode on its back, face shadowed by the hood the prince had grown to know and hate.