Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two)

by Gregory J. Downs

  As it turned out, he was the only one with time to look at all. Elia and Lauro were still Striding frantically to keep the boat on a steady course for the bay’s narrow entrance. We’re heading straight for the Blaze, he groaned inside. Whatever was going on inside that seething blackness, it was probably too late to stop. They were all going to die if they tried.

  “This is pointless! We’re going to get ourselves killed!” he screamed again and again, but no one heard him- the strange, booming silence of the Ice Demon’s spells ripped his words away into the heart of the wicked storm. He had half a mind to leap over the side into the churning sea, but that would kill him for sure. He gestured frantically to Lauro, who shook his head and looked grimly on ahead, crouching and standing, crossing and uncrossing his arms, swinging and punching and stamping to keep the wind under his control.

  Without warning, a thunderous darkling voice broke through his mind and shattered it with its malice.

  WE DO NOT WANT YOU, PROPHET. LEAVE US TO DESTROY OUR ENEMIES IN PEACE. IF YOU COME NEAR, WE SHALL SLAY YOU, AND THOSE YOU BRING.

  Those weren’t the words, exactly- in fact there were no words. The voice that broke his mind had no language more than a soundless, mindless, screaming, roaring, gnashing, grinding. It filled him with its void, but he knew exactly what it meant. It knew him and he knew it: the Demon, roused from slumber and ready to devour him if he intruded. How it managed to convey its message was a mystery, but it was nothing compared to his own shock and horror. Prophet? Does it know what it’s saying? What’s… ARGH! GET OUT! I CAN’T… CAN’T… can’t…

  The Demon stared at him in the red-black broken shell of his mind, a vast, crushing evil from the bowels of Kerbus, the Underworld of legend. For that fleeting moment of awareness, Gribly the simple street thief saw one of the Eldest powers of the world as it appeared in the realm beyond realms. In a frightening way, it felt like looking at Traveller in one of his dreams, though smaller and larger at the same time. There were no visible shapes in that realm, but he saw it, none the less horrific for not being clear.

  The Demon laughed, a chilling horror and bleeding pain that shot up Gribly’s spine and burst like a thousand splinters of iron into his skull. LEAVE, PROPHET, it not-told him in its dark not-language. OR I WILL CRUSH YOU AS I HAVE CRUSHED THE FOOL WHO WOKE ME. Through the numbing, all-consuming, suffering pain, Gribly saw a face that looked like his staring at him through a mane of black-and-blond hair, weeping and screaming in desperation.

  Some corner of his mind told him he was seeing the Pit Strider, lost and broken and failed in his mission. How it had happened he never found out before the Ice Demon let go of his small mind with a crackling gruesome laugh and his senses came back to him agonizingly slow. One thought and one thought only remained.

  Prophet? Why did he call me that? Why did he speak to me?

  ~

  Numbly he was aware of salty, freezing-cold water and blood in his mouth and water drowning him and hand pulling at him and something hard striking against something harder and splintering wood and a girl screaming and a boy screaming at him and a hard wetness biting at his back. Retching and yelling in agony at the same time he turned over and fell limply on...

  …Ice. He was on ice. Sensations joyously painful barged in on his blind thoughts and told him where he was. Ice. Water. Wood. Smoke. Haze. He was crouched, blubbering like a baby, on the snowy icy shore of the Reethe bay. The wessile he’d come in was smashed to splinters behind him, and his two friends were laid out next to him, panting and uttering strange angry groans from the trials and horror they’d undergone to drag him to safety. Blast and Joy! They’d made it. Somehow they’d done it.

  Gribly scrambled to his feet, unlooked-for energy surging through him. “Come on!” he shouted, and was surprised to find he could hear his own voice again. “Get up! Lauro! Elia! We need to help the Reethe!”

  Dragging them upright, he grabbed them each by the hand and fairly pulled them through the veil of smoke that permeated the air. Closing his mouth and eyes, he stumbled blindly ahead through the haze. The three of them traveled that way silently for half a minute, until the veil suddenly ended and they fell to their knees on open ground, coughing up the fumes they’d inhaled. Again, strangely, Gribly saw he was the first to recover. Looking up at their surroundings, he gasped in shock.

  The Reethe city lay along the water’s edge, running in terraced slopes up to the cliffs that ringed the bay. The three young Striders were crouched at the north arm of the city, where a low wall and many domed ice-houses were, with a crumbled watch-tower on the corner. The outskirts were silent, but farther Inward and Westward the center of the city was booming and shuddering with the noise of battle, and the central buildings were on fire. Tall flames licked in spirals and plashing pillars up along the high walls and palaces of the nymphs- it was from there that the smoke came, billowing up into the sky and coming down again in a dome that enclosed the whole iceberg. It looked as if the Reethe city was doing its best to imitate one of fiery mountains of legend: the volcanoes and forges of the fire-gods.

  “There should be more noise,” Lauro frowned, shakily coming up behind Gribly. “And where’s the Demon?”

  “I don’t know. I can hear the battle, though,” he replied.

  “That’s no battle,” Elia said, squinting at the violent sight ahead, “That’s a lamentation. The Reethe are calling for help!” The houses were silent and no bells tolled in the crystalline steeples and towers. The city would have been beautiful even with the destruction and flames, had the smoke above not cast a milky, sickening shade on the ice and snow and white wood. The only sound was the clashing, discordant notes coming from the wreckage of the central fortress. Listening more carefully, Gribly found that Elia had been right.

  “What’ll we do? I can’t hear the Demon anymore,” he complained.

  “Hear the Demon?” she asked in awe.

  “It…” he suddenly felt it would be profane and deadly to say anything to his friends. The Ice Demon should be kept in his head, where- No! That was just its influence on him. He had to tell! “On the boat,” he managed finally. They had been looking at him concernedly. “When we came into the bay it spoke in my head, telling me to leave… It was horrible. It almost killed me, I think.”

  “So that’s why you went down thrashing,” Lauro murmured, frowning deeper. “It spoke. To you? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It called me ‘prophet’ and said it would kill us if we came closer. I don’t know, maybe I was hallucinating?”

  “Did you…” the prince began, but a scream cut him off. The trio whipped around to witness an emaciated nymph woman with wild eyes and gray-black hair stumble back through the breach in the wall she’d come through, hands over her mouth in surprise.

  “Don’t run!” Lauro said quickly, vaulting over to her in a single wind-stride. “We’re friends! What has happened here, and is there anything we can do to help?”

  The woman cowered, sobbing brokenly, as the other two Striders caught up with Lauro. Elia came beside her and touched her shoulder, speaking gently in the nymphtongue.

  “Lei Yuvatarr contu vey, Mella. Oma sorortu: ei Treele. Succurtu canstnos fen tu’n isdrist?”

  The woman slowed her sobs and looked up in surprise at hearing her own tongue spoken. Answering back in a wobbly voice, she said, “Lei lithi O graciwan pertu, Soror. Ei Lekion vrayas nadt hre lumbres nadt blash’das nost hremes nadt blashwan waynis!” Near the end her words squealed too high and Elia had to calm her down again in a low voice.

  “Rounda ainud lumbre? Nadt rsen?” she finally asked.

  “Ai sre…” began the woman feebly, but a roaring boom and a tremendous flash over the shattered Reethe fortress drowned her out.

  “We don’t have time for this!” snarled Lauro, “I’m going in!” With a kick and a leap he took to the air and flew towards the burning ice of the inner buildings.

  “No! We can’t just-” Elia began but he was gone befo
re she could say what she needed. More booms echoed over the fortress, accompanied by more flashes.

  “Venviator! Ken dyia fre skri-helme sre plasse!” gasped the nymph woman, a look of startled rapture on her face. Elia pressed her for directions and she gave them, haltingly and still shaking with fright- but compliant, nonetheless.

  “We’ll have to follow the foolish princeling on foot,” the Wave Strider explained to Gribly. “Now I know the fastest way to the battle, if there still is one. The way this woman’s going on… it sounds like it was a massacre.”

  “How could it be anything else?” Gribly pointed out. “In case you hadn’t noticed, these Demons happen to be very large and verrrry unfriendly. Who could even challenge the bleeding’ thing?” The harshness of his own voice surprised him, and he realized just how rattled he really was- the Demon’s voice and vision had shaken him badly.

  Elia sighed unhappily and shrugged. “We’ve got to do what we must, I suppose.”

  Gribly nodded, equally uncertain. Elia spoke a few more words in the nymphtongue to the jittery woman, who became more and more excited. Finally she nodded several times and ran off back into the city, crying out, “Lei viatres vrayan! Achillais perlei Suthway! Compet nebenden!”

  “What’s she doing? Don’t we need her help?” Gribly flung his hand out, gesturing towards her. He talked quickly and quietly to Elia as the two ran past the gap in the wall and into the outskirts of the city.

  “She’s going to gather what survivors may still be scattered throughout the city. She seems to think we’re all-powerful warriors come to save her people. I won’t correct her if it gathers more men for the fight.”

  “If there are any to gather. What’d she say?”

  “She said: ‘The Striders come! Heroes from the South! Fight on!’ it is a line from an old ballad common among her people and mine. I do not understand why. We need-”

  Her voice fell and they both halted instantly, skidding to a stop and gaping at what they saw: the high white buildings leveled and melted away; a wide, ragged space blasted into the cityscape; and a giant footprint steaming and red-hot in the midst of it all: clawed but- strangely- cloven-hoofed as well.

  “Ei Lekion…” breathed Elia, a tear sliding down her cheek. It was one of the few times Gribly had seen her show emotion. He guessed ‘Lekion’ meant ‘Demon’.

  Bodies floated, smashed and bloody, in the steaming pool; some small, some large. That blasted thing is huge… shriving huge… Gribly thought. His body felt numb and he wondered absently if Lauro had seen it. The thing had to be almost twice the size of the demon that had smashed the Mirrorwave! Elia was crying without a sound next to him.

  He reached out and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll kill the bloody thing if we have to melt it down in inches,” he assured her.

  “But what if we don’t make it out?” she whimpered. No, not exactly… it felt stronger than that. Whispered, maybe.

  “Then I want you to know… That…” Gribly stopped his mouth from running off with him almost too late. He had been going to say…

  “That what?” Elia whispered. He let go of her and stepped back, taking her hand. Oh, forget it...

  “That I'll miss you most if we die,” he said quickly. Before he lost his nerve, he leaned in, darting a quick kiss at her cheek, then let go of her hand and walked away. To his surprise she said nothing, but simply followed him in silence.

  Finally she broke the silence. “It comforts me to know it.” Gribly looked back at her hesitantly, and saw the hints of a blush on her face.

  Feeling something similar creep up on him, he turned away again, not sure if he'd made a good impression or bad. “Let’s see if we can find the prince and make something of this mess. Perhaps the Ice Demon has gone already.”

  They both knew it couldn’t be true, but they agreed anyway and headed further into the ruined city; skirting the blood-tinted mist and the footprint and the pool, searching for any sign of Lauro as they jogged inward. After the first series of booms and flashes there was no immediate sign of the Demon, but shouts and cries of “Lekion!” and “Achillais perlei Suthway!” echoed around the strangely quiet streets. Despite the spreading news, they saw no survivors and only a few corpses before they reached the Reethe fortress.

  Chapter Eleven: Footprints of Doom

  Lauro kept his legs in constant motion, soaring through the air faster than any bird could fly. It felt almost like swimming, but quicker and smoother through air than water. The wind whistled coldly over and around him, whipping the stringy, bedraggled hair on the top of his head back across his exposed neck and shaved temples. He hadn’t the time to fix his warrior’s topknot, and likely never would.

  Faster, Vale, faster! He heard his father call gruffly out through the halls of his memory. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Lauro increased his speed, lowering his brow and bulling forward through the sky. The Reethe city sprawled out beneath him, high and silent. It’s so odd… there ought to be more sound. Where’s the battle? Why aren’t Elia and Gribly following? Why did I leave so quickly? What is happening here?

  The scene below and around him blurred with the speed of heated or cooled air. His power was increasing like it had while battling the draik. Steamclaw was Gribly’s ridiculous name for him. It sounded absurd and childish, as one might name a pet. Lauro had never had a pet. He passed on into unhappy memories of his childhood, only to be brought out of them again by a gigantic spurt of white flame that shot up from the royal palace, which he’d almost passed over in his breakneck flight. A gust of hot air blew him off balance and he spun upwards into the clouds.

  The watery vapor soaked him for the second time that day. Windmilling his arms and drawing his legs up to his chin, he managed to steady himself, but there was little wind up here to stride with. He hadn’t intended to go so high… hadn’t ever gone to this height before in all his life. If he wasn’t careful he could fall to his death.

  An off-key crackling caught his ear. He descended slowly to the fluffy grayness of the cloud below him, taking a moment to view his surroundings. Everywhere were pillars, hills, and walls of gray cloud, and coming from all of them was that unsettling noise. He drifted into a position parallel with the nearest cloud and reached down to stroke it. Blue sparks arced up to his fingers and sent a jarring jolt up his arm and into his body.

  “AGH!” he shouted, involuntarily kicking his legs and sending him skimming across the cloud’s edge. More jolts came. “AGH! AGH! AGH!” He tumbled over the edge of the fluffy mass and fell out of the sky, biting his lip in pain so hard it bled. As he plummeted, he caught glimpses of bigger, brighter arcs of light zipping from one cloud to the next. Snow began to fall in tufts as he wildly moved to stop his fall. What little he knew of weather told him this was no natural storm, and he would be dead if he didn’t get away in time. Flash after flash lit the underside of the ominous cloud-head, and he fell faster than ever.

  “Blast,” he muttered. He stopped fighting his momentum and instead used it to flip himself upside down, speeding towards the city below him unbelievably fast. It was lucky he did, for a few seconds later a brilliant flash lit him from above and deafened him with its sound. Small pellets of hail pelted him as he fell faster… and faster…

  Just as he was close enough to the inner buildings of the city, the wind around him became sufficient for what he wanted to do. Pushing his arms in front of him in a diver’s stance, he suddenly spread them wide and bent them in L shapes: the universal sign to STOP. If the wind obeyed him, it would form a cushion large enough and strong enough to stop his fall. A difficult trick, but a useful one. He’d never done it himself before- only witnessed it.

  The wind in his vision turned from deep red to glowing blue and formed a cohesive bubble of wild energy underneath him. His head was whipped to the side and his body flung out spreadeagled on the air-cushion, which spun him around in endless circles until he thought he would throw up from dizziness. But he had stopped falling.
>
  With a few energetic strokes he brought himself to a sort of standing position, and found himself hovering more than a hundred feet above the shattered hulk of the fortress that had formed the central hub of the city. Directly below him was the roofless skeleton of a Shrine. It had been the main target of the Ice Demon’s attack, it seemed- the roof had been blown off, two of the corner-towers crushed, and the walls half melted into steaming slag. It made Lauro sick to see the ruined place of worship.

  But there! Down among the wreckage! Nymphs! Ten of them stood on a wide, snow-frosted pedestal, moving and motioning. Frost Striders! They paid no attention to him, but a group of nymphs in dull armor and shabby weapons were frantically pointing and yelling in their heavy native tongue.