“Vett!” The scarred nymph told Lauro in a high, grating voice. A meal? The black-clad jailor watched silently as his greasy companion laid a tray of food and a jug of water down on the floor, barely close enough for Lauro to reach, then bowed stiffly to the jailor and left, almost at a run. He’s afraid of me, the lad realized. And why not? He only wished the jailor were as easily intimidated by his icy stare. With a silent, threatening wave of his sword-spear, the nymph ducked out of the doorway and closed it behind him.
Click. That would be the lock. Shunk! That would be the bolt. He was well and truly trapped.
Lauro looked glumly at the food and water that had been set before him. Bah. They only thought him caught. But what did they know of Striding? In fact… he realized in another moment that they couldn’t know he was a Strider at all! He hadn’t had a chance to give himself away before he was captured, so…
“Fools,” he muttered. If they thought him idiotic enough to eat and drink his fill of drugged vittles, then they thought a lie. All he had to do was Sky Stride, call up wind to rip the door from its hinges and the chain from his neck…
…Reaching for the power of his native element, Lauro raised both hands. A splitting pain assailed his head, and he dropped them quickly with a gasp. Why couldn’t he touch the Sky? It was as if he had sprained a muscle in charge of Striding, and now had to wait for it to heal before he could use it again. Very well, he thought, I can wait. They can try to starve me, but I will wait… and I will Stride when I am ready. They will fall before me.
Rest was what he needed. Letting himself slump against the wall, absently fiddling with his metal collar, he let exhaustion overtake him.
~
Through his troubled, twilight dreams, Lauro heard a voice. Not the voice of the woman he had heard before his capture, but a voice with no origin he could determine, young or old, man or woman. It sounded worn and beaten, with a defeated tone that set his stomach on edge.
I have lived among them forever and beyond. They have worn me to the bone.
I tried to teach them the ways of the light, but they resisted. They would not be taught. Would not be tamed.
Why do I sit here in the dark, reciting prayers, when none of mine have been answered?
Tell me. Tell me, O Chained One. Do you bring news from the Openlands? News of hope?
I do not believe you do. You must be a harbinger, a sign. A symbol of doom.
They all are. Everyone who walks these gray halls.
You will die for your mistake, Openlander. And I will do worse than die for mine.
Do you know what it is to touch the face of the Creator, and then be cut off from Him forever?
Wake, Openlander. Wake, and face your doom.
~
“No…” Lauro woke, moaning, with sweat beading on his brow and dripping to the cold floor beneath him. The Power of Sky seemed too distant to touch, still, but he squeezed his eyes shut and tried anyway, curled up in a ball, with his fists clenched around the horrible chain that bound him to his doom.
Nothing. The Sky would not speak. He was alone, under the earth, with none of the power that had made him strong.
At last his eyes opened, and Lauro sat up as quickly as he could without jerking the chain, surprise paling his face. There was a man- no, a nymph, they were all nymphs here- sitting in the middle of his cell, too far to reach, with his back to Lauro. Another prisoner? But no… he was not chained. Was that-
“-my food…” Lauro grumbled, for no reason. “Why are you eating my food, Nymph?” A stupid question; he hadn’t been going to eat it himself; but it did look odd.
The nymph answered without turning, and to Lauro’s surprise he spoke the common tongue of men. “You are a fool to waste good bread like this, Openlander. Wastefulness is sinfulness, and it is sinfulness that kills us.”
Lauro gaped: it was the tired voice from his dreams. “Who… who are you, and how do you speak my language?”
“No one…” the nymph sighed, still facing away. It was a male, Lauro thought. Not it, he. “I am no one. I speak all languages. Do you see now? No one speaks all languages! Ha!” But the laugh seemed on the verge of tears. Was this nymph insane? Had they locked him in with a madman?
“Face me, bloody villain,” Lauro growled. “If you’ve come to kill me, then try it!” The anger that welled up in him ready to burst was frightening, and he was not sure where it came from. The despair in the nymph’s voice… it boiled his blood.
Slowly, deliberately, the nymph moved Lauro’s tray and jug aside. He appeared to be swallowing, and wiping his hands on the sodden robe he wore. Finally he turned, crouching, to stare Lauro in the face. “I have not,” he said. That was all.
Lauro calmed himself. The robed nymph had his hood thrown back, revealing a drawn face and glazed, listless eyes. He was not a threat. “Then answer my first question. Who are you? And while you’re at it, why was I attacked and brought here?”
“You were attacked because the M’tant glory in violence and darkness.” The nymph shook his head sadly, and strangely enough, Lauro believed he was sincere. Could one of the ferocious wood-nymphs be so… refined?
“Then you are not one of them?” he asked. The despairing fellow seemed not to hear, idly tracing his finger along the hard edge of one of the flagstones. “Hello?” Lauro said, a little louder, “Are you one of the M’tant, or not?”
The nymph’s head jerked up to stare at the prince, eyes shining for half a moment with what might have been fervor. “No.” But then the glaze returned and the stranger began tracing lines in the floor again. After a moment he dug within his robe for something, and rolled it along the floor to Lauro. As he did so, the prince noticed with surprise that wherever the stranger’s finger passed on the stone, a black mark like a burn was left behind.
Could he have made the Ranger Mark, back in the forest? Lauro wondered. Then he saw what the nymph had rolled to him. It was a white candle, worn with much use and dirtied by time and neglect. It looked familiar, but where had he seen one like it?
Putting out his hand, Lauro touched the candle… and images flashed before his eyes. A vision of sandy hills and a great sandstone city. Rocky beaches on the edge of a mountain range he somehow knew to be the Spiral. Nymphs he had met in the Inkwell… men he had known and revered, back in Vastion…
Startled and disturbed, Lauro tossed the candle back to the nymph man as if it burned him. The vision ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the nymph caught the flying candle without looking up. Not so unaware, after all.
“You…” Lauro gasped, “You’re a cleric! Just like the Dunelord, Argoz… and Amarand of the Zain… and Cleric Lithric, from the Shrine of the Sanquegrad…”
“Brothers…” the nymph whispered, “But no longer… My mistakes are too many… my sins too heavy…”
The dream. Lauro vaguely remembered the dream, and the words this nymph had spoken. “Can you help me, Cleric? Can you-”
“No!” spat the cleric, violently punching a fist into his palm. “No! I will not! I cannot! I have failed!” With a jerky motion he clambered to his feet, turned, and stumbled toward the door, cradling the dirty candle in his hands.
“Wait!” Lauro called, “I meant no offense! Don’t just…” But the words died in his throat as the cleric walked straight through the heavy wood-and-metal door, melting out onto the other side as if it were a mere specter. In a second Lauro was alone again. “Blast!” he swore, using Gribly’s favorite curse. Two of the friends’ threesome were prisoners now, and he would be the first to die if he couldn’t Stride soon enough. Had that cleric been a ghost, or a hallucination? Was he still dreaming?
No. Lauro saw the bread from his tray half-eaten, and some of the water gone. The cleric had been there, all right. He had eaten and drank. That walking through the door… the High Cleric in his father’s castle had been said to have that ability, but Lauro had never believed it. Spirit Striding, the commoners called it.
Lauro sh
ivered. That had not been Striding, whatever it was. His eyes shifted over to the food again. Something in his gut said the cleric had not lied about it… about anything.
“Might as well,” he sighed, and reached for the tray.
Chapter Three: Dreaming
It was night over the seas North of Vast. The clouds that stretched across so much of the island-continent did not reach far enough to block out the stars… not here, not now… maybe not ever. Gribly hoped so. Captain Berne and Karmidigan, the Reethe Frost Strider in charge of powering the Invincible, both used the heavens to navigate. Even one cloudy sky could mean disaster, especially now that they had all but lost track of their quarry.
Making his way down a hatch and through the haphazard corridors of the strange vessel, Gribly was careful to use his staff for traction; one good fall on the ice that coated random surfaces in the ship had been enough to convince him. Funny, how he already thought of it as his staff. It was Traveller’s, really. A gift.
A gift he had no idea how to use. Examinations by both him and the nymphs had shown nothing special about it, but he was convinced it was powerful in some way. Why else would the Gray Aura himself have given it to him? Sighing with frustration- at what, exactly, he couldn’t be sure- Gribly paid cursory visits to both Berne and Karmidigan, then went to his chamber. There weren’t many nymphs on the ship, since it was powered by Sea Striding, and he was the only human.
Setting the staff beside his cot, Gribly lay down and pulled as many tattered blankets over himself as he possessed. These chilly Northern nights were not so cold as in the Grymclaw, but he could get used to neither. Ymeer and Blast Desert were so very far away… not that they had been much of an improvement over this. Too hot or too cold, too early or too late… that was his life. Ugh.
Despite the temperature, his eyelids began to slip closed, midway through a prayer he was hesitantly composing in his head, asking the Creator to help Lauro and Elia, wherever they were. Without warning, the ship tilted ever so slightly to one side, and his staff slipped and fell on him. Vaguely he touched it, ran a hand over its smooth, polished surface, and gripped it sleepily.
Light exploded in his face, and the visions began to pour in like a waterfall. He could not stop it, or slow it… a thousand images from the realm of his dreams, molding him, teaching him… changing him.
Everything was changing. Everything.
~
Lauro Vale. Prince of Vastion. That was who he was… but where was he? His mind did not feel right. Where was the cold wind in his thoughts… the slippery, soothing power of the Sky that he could grasp if he tried hard enough…
It’s a dream, Lauro. You’re dreaming. The voice spoke to him in his head, but it was not his own. It belonged to… to… someone he was sure he knew. A boy. Someone. Someone close. A prophet, he remembered. Why couldn’t he think right?
I’m not good at this yet. It’s hard, reaching this far. I can’t s… hold s… Lis… The voice faded, then returned stronger than ever. LAURO.
“What!?” he said aloud, jumping. The force of the voice had scared him. “Where am I? What’s going on?”
Watch. Watch what happens. I’m not sure what it is, or what it means… just do it. I can only send you dreams once in a long, long time… the voice grew fainter… so don’t waste it…
Then the voice was gone, and it did not return. Strange. Lauro was sure it had meant something. This was like no dream he had ever had before… He seemed to be floating, bodiless, over a green field under a gray sky, where wind breathed across the land unceasingly, and rain had just begun to drizzle down from the heavens onto the prairie and blue-shaded mountains beyond.
He knew this place. Here lay the lower reaches of the Greyfeld, where Vastion’s king held sway, and the Rain Mountains stretched their northernmost tips. He- or the part of him that saw into the dream- was drifting down through the air, closer to the ground, and closer to the gray stone structure he knew to be a dalheim, a Vastic outpost usually only manned in wartime. It would be manned now, he knew, though there was no war. Vastion was uneasy. War had not come, but it was coming…
The dalheim’s small, circular wall was within his grasp, now; or would have been, if he had had hands to grasp it. His floating came to a halt just beyond the outward gate, where he hovered… and watched. He had not control over himself; where he went, or what he saw; but it did not frighten him. He did not know why. The gate opened outward, and a troop of armored men began to move through, spears and shields and helms tinted gray by the clouds overhead. At their head rode a bare-headed captain in a scarlet cloak, his spirited bloodbay stallion stamping and rearing, ready for a charge.
“Forward!” the captain cried, and spurred on his steed. He led his men through the gate at a lively march, but suddenly called, “Halt!” and drew out a beaten brass spyglass. He gazed at something far ahead in the grasslands beyond the dalheim, then replaced it. His warrior’s topknot swung wildly as he turned his horse about. The wind picked up, drowning out all that he said to his men, at least to Lauro’s ears. One word alone did he hear:
“Windmaster.”
The world seemed to bend, and change. Either time flowed more quickly, or it slowed to a halt. Either could have happened, but the captain and his men seemed not to move at all. Gradually Lauro became aware that someone else was joining the group of men outside the dalheim’s gate. A woman sped across the open field, running in great leaps and bounds that carried her hundreds of feet at a time. It was not flying, not exactly, but it was close. The Windmaster! Lauro realized. A Strider like me.
The woman reached the captain and his men in minutes, skidding and slipping to a halt so clumsily that she fell, rolled, and did not get up. The captain did not wait for his men to react, but leaped from his stallion and landed beside the woman, helping her to her feet and lending her his support. She could barely walk, and blood caked her face and side.
The wind began to howl. Lauro could hear nothing of what the Windmaster told the captain, but he saw her pale braid swinging back and forth excitedly and fearfully, saw the captain cringe and the woman point wildly behind her, to where the mountains of blue and gray rock rose up to block out the sky. Reluctantly, as if some other force directed his gaze, Lauro turned his head to see where she pointed.
Time shifted, and spaces became irrelevant. Lauro’s eye could see for a hundred miles, straight across the Greyfeld and to the Rain Mountains beyond. What he saw, he could barely comprehend.
A tide was rising, spilling, and flowing out of the mountains. Not a tide of water, though- of men, and beasts, and machines… an army. An army armored in gold. Huge, nightmarish animals with joints of metal gears and skin of plated gold, with eyes of red flame and teeth of steel. Soldiers in glittering mail, with black veils and masks of gold. And Pit Striders. Black-skinned, red-eyed, Pit Striders, who rode horses of fire and summoned draiks to fight for them.
They were all about to come crashing down on Vastion. His home.
“No!” screamed Lauro, and suddenly he floated up and away again, and the world beneath him was fading as the golden tide poured over it.
The dream changed. He found himself floating now, over a wide cavernous room lit by flickering torches set on long poles in the ground. Treasure and statues were scattered about, glinting in the torchlight, but the shadows hid the corners of the chamber. Beneath Lauro was a huge wooden throne that seemed to have grown out of the floor. Wickedly pointed iron spikes poked through the top, giving the image that the throne was constantly in pain.
A man sat on the throne, robed in dark green, with a hood thrown up over his face. No, not a man: slits cut in the hood showed the tops of long, pointed ears. A nymph, then. Only the nymph’s mouth was visible beneath the shadows of his hood, twisted cruelly into a brooding frown. He was listening to something, or someone.
From the darkness at the side of his throne came a voice. It spoke in words foreign to Lauro, harsh and grating, high-pitched, but he recognized it
all the same. It was the woman who had hit him with the dart; the one who must have brought him to this Aura-forsaken place.
Perhaps it was the power of the dream, but he could just barely distinguish the meaning of what was said. The woman, who he now saw crouching beside the throne, was pleading. Pleading for something… or someone…
The nymph on the throne had just begun to nod, agreeing, when his back stiffened and his head jerked up…
…to stare Lauro directly in the eyes. Somehow, the nymph could see him. Black eyes glittered up at him, full of rage and hate. The nymph reached out a hand, and Lauro felt a black claw of horror grip his heart and squeeze. Pain lanced through the body he did not have, held back from killing by one thing…
Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) Page 3
