“Have you ever been inside a Shrine, Gribly?” There, the Aura knew his name. And why not? He might as well tell the truth.
“No. The only one I’ve ever heard of is part of the Dunelord’s palace. No one goes there but the Dunelord himself. They say there’s a cleric inside- some sort of magician- but who can tell? I’ve never gone there.”
“The land you live in is harsh,” commented the stranger. “No wonder belief has foundered in Blast. Still…” he seemed to be the one thinking deeply now, looking deep inside somewhere. “If you have the chance,” he finally said, “You should visit the Shrine. In it you may find some of the answers you seek.”
“What answers?” questioned Gribly, but the Aura ignored him.
“Remember what I have told you. You are never alone. The Aura and the One who made the Aura will always give you aid when you need it most.”
“I… I’ll try,” the thief shrugged. He could feel the importance of what the stranger said, but he wasn’t sure of its significance.
“Gribly?” There, the Aura knew his name. How? Because it’s all a dream, he told himself, but he didn’t believe it very much.
“Yes?”
“Brace yourself. Adventures like yours can be dangerous.” Adventures? The gray-clad fellow suddenly stood, and Gribly followed suit. The man walked to the edge of the grassy bay and looked over it. “Goodbye… for now.”
“Goodbye? You mean this vision’s over? But I don’t know your name… even if you seem to know mine.”
“I am part of the Aura,” replied the stranger, his back still turned. “That is all you need know.” He touched his staff lightly and two fluttering, white wings like a dove’s burst from the end.
“But I want to know more,” Gribly argued, ignoring the odd sight. “I want to know your name. Can’t you tell me that, at least?”
The young man turned, and his face had on a grin like a man who has just remembered an old joke. “I have many names, in Vast and Realm and beyond. Men know me here as Traveller. Does that satisfy you?”
“I… I guess. Traveller. Goodbye, Traveller.”
“Goodbye, little thief,” grinned the Aura, and suddenly his staff flapped its wings, pulling him off the top of the mountain and into the open air. More wings sprouted from his cap and heels, and off he floated into the distance. Gribly felt suddenly very sleepy. He slipped to his knees and then lay down, sighing with unexpected tiredness. The grass felt soft and comfortable against his cheek and legs. He was so tired…
~
The Pit Strider plunged deep into the desert. Two days and three nights passed before he was far enough from Ymeer to contact the Golden One.
In the middle of Blast desert, a circle of jagged sandstone boulders shot up from the dusty ground like the crown of a buried king. Gramling knew instantly that here was the perfect place to rejuvenate his power and contact his master.
His master went by many names, but Gramling had only ever known him by one. “Golden One, Ruler of the World and Emperor of My All, show me your face! I require your aid!”
Crouching in the First Stance, Gramling began the melodious chanting that would reach across two continents and the sea between, whispering in his master’s ear no matter where he was or what he was doing. It was risky- his master was easily angered, and detested being interrupted- but he had no other choice. Moving into the Second Stance, he closed his eyes and let the river of time and speech drown him in its flow.
At the Third Stance his words were no more than a whisper; by the time he reached the Fifth Stance they were totally inaudible.
The Six Stance came, and the flow became too strong to bear.
Gramling opened his eyes again and stopped chanting. He was on a mountain, looking out over a thin sheet of clouds and the black land beneath. He stood on a shallow, flat shelf hacked into the rock near the mountain’s peak. Dead, gray grass whispered as a hot breeze blew it like fingering fronds across the toes of his boots. The air was suffocating and thick, even this high up.
The Goldenmount. As far as he knew, there was nothing golden about it. He had never seen it from the blasted sands below, of course… always from up here, where-
SO. It was one word, but it froze his mind with terror and awe, stopping his thoughts and catching his body in place like an invisible vise.
“Master…” he whispered. It was painful to speak- the vise of the Golden One’s will held his chest tighter than iron chains.
TURN, AND LOOK ON MY FACE.
Shuddering with fear and a sickening, thrilling sense of expectation, Gramling forced himself to turn from the edge of the cliff to look at the mountain peak behind him. There stood the Golden One, robed in the colors of blood and night, his face shadowed by a dark mantle.
“My Master,” whimpered Gramling, and fell on his face. The world was deathly silent. The Golden One’s presence blotted out all sound but his own footfalls as he came nearer. The sound was like the strikes of a ram on broken gates.
LOOK ON MY FACE.
The will of his master was simply too strong. Torn between fear and awe, horror and reverence, Gramling raised his head and looked into the shadowy depths of his master’s hood.
YOU LOOK WITHOUT SEEING.
The voice that thundered in his head was like the sound of a thousand deaths; corpses with weapons and empty eyes full of hate. Then the hood was rolled back, and Gramling saw.
The Golden One did not bear his name without reason. His head was like that of a man’s, bulbous and hard, with skin the color of dusty gold. It seemed stretched, as if there was not enough flesh to cover the skull beneath. There was no hair on his head, but a thinning mustache and beard drooped down to his collar. His eyes burned with an inner fire that shook Gramling like a leaf, stifling his mind and throwing his body into convulsions: yet he found he could not look away, no matter how hard he tried.
TELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
“I… I…” Gramling swallowed his fear like so much rotten fruit, forcing himself to claw his way into a kneeling, then standing position. “I have failed, O Golden One.”
Then, word by choking word, he forced himself to tell the tale. As he spoke, the fear drained from him with astonishing quickness, almost causing him to pause. The more he spoke, the less he felt. At the end of his tale, his mind was blank and his heart was dry. He was not afraid or angry or sad or confused. He just was. He existed, and that was all. And all along, his master looked on.
Finally he had finished, and the Golden One had not spoken once. The fiery eyes had been reduced to smoldering coals in the golden void of his face, and his ebony mantle once more enshrouded his features. The fire in him seemed to have died, but the darkness that was his Power had grown.
After an eternity, the Golden One spoke.
FIND THE SAND STRIDER.
HE IS WORTH MORE THAN YOU KNOW, DEAD OR ALIVE.
TO DO THIS, YOU MUST SUMMON OUR ALLIES: THE DRAIKS OF BLAST.
KEEP ONLY ONE FOR YOUR USE.
OUR PLANS MUST BE ACCELERATED.
USE THE OTHERS TO START A WAR.
The torrent of commands left Gramling broken and shuddering, but in the end he was still alive and very ready to begin the next stage in the grand chase that was sure to follow. His muscles screamed with sudden, ensorcelled energy, and his mind felt clearer and sharper than it had in all his short, dark years of life. He could manage but one response.
“Yes, Master.”
NOW GO.
The last order to pass the unmoving lips of the Golden One filled Gramling’s veins with a fire that would not abate. The Pit Strider’s neck stiffened and his back arched in expectation so intense and painful that he slipped down onto one knee, his radiant face turned towards the rocky ground in utter submission. The last sensation to pass his ears was the Golden One’s echoing, haunting laughter. Gramling had never heard him laugh before.
~
When he looked up again, Gramling found himself kneeling amid the broken desert sto
nes of Blast once more. Gathering his slightly battered but still serviceable cloak around him, the Pit Strider rose and began the ritual of calling. There was no time to waste, especially now that he was impossibly still in the favor of his master. The center of the stone circle was hollow and sandy… the perfect place.
Gramling stood stock still, letting the shadows of the desert fall across him, empowering him. A minute passed, then five. Then half an hour.
Gramling flung his arms out and his head back, howling at the sky. He screamed the words of the pit beasts of the world, words that no one knew but he and his master and those his master chose to train in the Pit Striding. There was no translation for such speech, but the meaning was clear to any who were unlucky enough to hear it. It spoke of horror and suffering, agony and despair, malice and hatred and the vengeance of things that have been chained under the earth’s crust for so long they have forgotten how to do anything but kill, and hate those they wish to kill but cannot.
Gramling went on with the ritual for an hour, then stopped, his throat raw and constricted. No time to slow, no time to stop. The calling was finished. Now for the Beacon. Gramling leaned back, bending his body until his spine formed a step arch and his elbows almost brushed the ground.
Fire, he thought, forcing his will into being, Flames and smoke, sparks and ash, fury and power and FIRE!
With a great spring, he whipped himself upright and leaped into the air, pumping his fists and kicking off his legs. Red flames sprung up from every crack in every rock in the circle, spiraling upwards around him and forming a pillar of fire that shot up into the sky with a terrific WHOOSH!
Seconds later it was gone, and he landed back on the ground in a blanket of hazy black smoke. His pit-striding had sent up a flare into the sky, a bolt of scarlet flame that would be visible in both the physical world… and the other, darker places where the minions of his master lurked. All he had to do now was wait.
When it was over, he wheezed and slipped to the ground, then forced himself to stand again. He would need that strength. The ones who would answer his call… they could not be allowed to see weakness, or they would rip him apart like chaff. He must be strong… strong.
He gripped the edge of the rock with his hands and pulled himself up in one motion. Yes, yes, pain… it was the first step towards strength. A strange kind of adrenaline coursed through his veins when he was attempting something too hard for him to do… and that usually meant he was about to succeed.
Yes, he did. He was up now, up on the top of the jagged stones, perched like some legendary monster of the night, poised to leap down on an unsuspecting world with fire in his claws: a shadow with wings of smoke that devoured everything. The Golden One had promised him that such would be his power, if he succeeded. And he knew he would succeed.
There! Off in the distance, a muted howling and screeching faintly reached his ears, punctuated with growls and bellows of a particularly disgusting nature.
They were coming. When next he met with the Sand Strider from Ymeer, there would be no escape for the urchin. The draiks were coming. They were answering his call. The Golden One’s commands echoed in his mind, reverberating off the inside of his skull like the thunderous voices of a thousand giants.
~
The first creature to answer the summons and reach him turned out not to be a draik at all. Instead, it was something far better.
As Gramling crouched on the edge of the rock, the night sky came alive above him, swooping down on wings darker than shadow and passing not a foot from his head. Like a dark comet, the creature collided with the ground and whirled around in a single motion. The perfect landing, made by the perfect beast of the air. It was a falconhorse, one of the few winged mounts in all the world, coveted by kings and denied to all who did not know their secret.
The creature glared at Gramling with eyes of fire. Its wings stretched out above it for twenty feet from tip to tip, leathery black and pitted with holes as if in the middle of rotting. Metal spikes were embedded in its head, and its teeth were far too large and sharp for a natural beast. Gramling smiled grimly. His master could have sent no clearer message. He had been given the best of the best with which to dispatch or capture the Sand Strider… failure would bear a penalty worse than death.
But I will not fail.
Chapter Seven: Soldiers and Pickpockets
As soon as the sun’s first rays broke over the horizon, the storm subsided as quickly as it had come. Awake now, but still unwilling to do anything, the young thief stayed huddled in his shelter while the sun rose. The great fiery orb leaped up into the sky in minutes, drying the desert so fast that the wet ground quaked and cracked audibly. The sand he’d constructed around him grew whiter and whiter as the water was leeched from it, until it too began to crack.
Gribly rolled out from under it just as the entire structure collapsed in a spray of white dust. He wondered if it was because of the water, or because he had built it with his gift.
His gift. He had only used it when he had to, back in Ymeer, but now that he was using it more often it seemed to be… increasing? Spreading out? Getting more powerful? He wasn’t sure which was right. In any case, he could do more with it now.
Bending to the hard ground, he decided to test it. His fingernails bit into the hard earth, which melted away under his grip as if it were soft sand again. Then, slowly, he stood up again, willing the sand to do as he wanted. When he straightened his back and looked at his work, he had raised two thin pillars of hard yellow soil under his hands.
“Strange,” he mumbled, pleased at his handiwork. He kicked one of the stalagmite-looking-things down with his sandal, and it melted away into sand again. He took the second spire in his hands and bent it into a loop, willing it to become hard and immovable. That ought to confuse the spine-geckoes for a while, he thought to himself. Amused, he put a hand over his eyes to shade them as he gazed at the desert around him.
To the left and right, the land of Blast stretched out to incalculable distances. Here and there he thought he saw the gray smudges of a few lazy dust-devils, but that was all. He looked behind him: far off and to his right lay the sea of dunes that rose on either side of the road to Ymeer. Nothing extraordinary. What had the traveler fellow said in his dream? An adventure? Not likely.
Last and most reluctantly, Gribly turned back towards the city. Its four high walls pushed up from the desert as if they had always been there. They were the same color and texture as the land around them, with a tower at each corner built out of the same material. It was a strange sight from out here. Gribly had been outside the walls a few times, but never so far or for so long. He had never had a reason.
But what to do now? Old Murie was dead and he had buried her himself. He had nowhere to go except back to the streets, which was something he had promised himself never to do. He was a good thief and could make his living there, for sure, but most of Ymeer’s underworld were true criminals; hard-bitten, vicious men (and some women) he could never befriend or compete with.
Could he brave the desert? No, not a chance. Not unless…
An idea formed in his mind and quickly took hold of it. Gribly began the long, slow walk back to the city, pondering it.
Staying permanently in the city was too distasteful. Murie’s death had opened up an opportunity for him to leave, but he could never do it on his own. With the Royal Market still in full swing, he could return and live off what he could steal for days; then, when the foreign merchants left for their homelands, he could talk or buy his way into their company. They would be his ticket out. If they wanted service, he could provide it until they came to another city, then break free. If they wanted money… well, money was no object when you had broken into Blast Palace and survived.
The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. His only trouble now was finding the road again and watering his parched throat. The sun beat down on him with unnatural fervor. It was always hot inside the city, but never like thi
s. It must be like the storms, he decided. Fierce inside, but far worse outside.
As he mused on the weather, the lad failed to notice how close he was to the road. He tripped over the raised pathway and fell onto his knees on the dusty lane. When he had regained his composure and stumbled to his feet, he found himself staring down the main road to Ymeer. It was much farther away than he’d thought. How did I come so far last night? It puzzled him that he could not remember, but soon his thoughts were taken up with another problem.
A single, pained moan wafted over the wind to him from farther up the road. He saw a dark shape like a man lying on the ground between him and the city, almost a quarter mile away. Frowning, he jogged towards it, wondering what idiot in all blazes would be sprawled out in the middle of the desert like that.
Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Page 6
