“There it is again. What am I? Why are…” but his voice trailed off into a choked sob. Byorne’s eyes were glazed and his body was limp. The ranger had died.
“He may have been half man and half nymph,” Lauro solemnly stated. “But he was two-halves hero, in the end.”
Gribly tried not to weep like some blue-blooded little merchant’s girl when he replied. “Why in the blaze does everyone around me keep dying? It isn’t supposed to be this hard…”
Lauro gripped his hand firmly and helped him to stand. The prince had an unsettled look in his eye, as if he’d just seen the ghost of Allfar himself, the legendary wind-Aura. “It’s always this hard, Grib.” Strange, how in the crisis he had come up with the nickname for his friend. “And now I have a bad feeling this quest is about to get a lot harder.”
“Harder?” He could hardly imagine how it could be harder- no supplies, most of their escort gone, and a demonic Pit Strider on the loose summoning hellish monsters to attack them wherever they fled.
“Yes. Harder.”
“How?”
Lauro looked paler than usual in the moonlight. “I knocked the Pit Strider’s hood off while we fought.”
“Was it the same man that caught me back in Ymeer? But then, how would you know?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I’d guess... yes. Grib… that wasn’t a man, it was a boy. He had darker hair, maybe, but… he was you.”
Epilogue: Wave Strider Imperiled
The sun had just begun to shine on the Berg when Elia slid out of her pool and onto the powdery ice floor. She could see the light outside of her tent, and reaching out her hand she could touch a sunbeam that filtered through a small hole in the ceiling. She put her hand over the hole, letting her fingers brush the warm hide and causing the tent to fall into darkness again. Time to go, she told herself. There’ll be more than enough work to do.
Today was the Great Movement. In the summer her tribe- the Treele- lived on the Bergs in the north, but now winter was closing in, and the time had come to migrate to the southern waters like the slender, long-necked birds that flew overhead each day.
Elia shivered a little from the temperature change: Her sleeping-pool was warm, her tent was definitely not. She raised a hand to pull back the door-flap, and halted. Her fingers were longer than they should have been, and bluer… and clearer. She laughed at the odd sight her hand was.
“Heavens,” she giggled, “I’ve forgotten to change myself.” Steeping back into her pool to make the job easier, she lifted her face to the sunbeam and let it warm her cheek. For a whole long minute she just stood there, waiting. Then, finally, she felt the warmth of her other form, her elfin one, creep up past her ankles and legs, up through her belly and onto her shoulders. Lastly, she felt her face change from angular and sculpted to smooth and pale.
Looking down at herself, she knew the Change had gone perfectly. The wave-colored, shimmering garment of her sea nymph kind enfolded her in its sweet softness. Elia was proud of it, and knew she should be. It was a part of herself, just as her Swimmer Form was when she wore it, with its watery, translucent body and laughing, joyful countenance.
She knew if she ever had the chance to be born into a different race or body, she wouldn’t take it. There was simply nothing better in life than to have the two forms of a Nymph.
Shaking her still-damp hair, Elia opened the door-flap and stepped outside her tent. To the left stood her parents’ tent, identical to hers but larger to accommodate them both along with all their children who had not reached the age of the Change yet. Once they did, they would move into their own tents and be eligible for marriage, just like Elia. She had two older brothers who were already Changed and married, with families of their own to take care of. She herself would be the same some day… but not yet. She did not feel the need, and she liked the freedom her current position gave her.
The entire Treele tribe was organized like that: families together, with the younger adults in their own, smaller tents. Elia let the door-flap fall closed behind her and looked out over the wide, flat space of the Berg. Her tribe’s tents were all in the same place, pitched in a wide circle around the tent where the tribal leader slept with his family and relatives. Elia’s mother had been one of those relatives before she’d married Elia’s father and moved out into the circle’s rim. That had been twenty years ago, four years before Elia had been born. Only this year had she undergone the Change and discovered her other form, allowing her to move out and enter the world on her own.
Right now, the wide circle of tents was almost completely silent. It was still earlier than most Treele rose, but right on time for her. She liked the feeling of being the only one alert and ready, and the joy of a misty, quiet morning spent in reflection. With a confident will she started out over the ice, hoping to reach the Sacred Place before anyone else. It was the last time she’d see it until the tribe returned next summer.
~
“Master of Wind and Rain,
Master of Cloud and Wave,
Master of Sea and Sky…”
Elia sang the Praises in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, sending the holy melody echoing quietly around the confines of the Sacred Place. She knelt on the white ground with her hands clasped gently in her lap, her eyes closed while she mouthed the words. She was in the center of a small, snowy circle surrounded by eleven pinnacles of ice that shot up from the ground like enormous frosted teeth. Their shapes looked vaguely human or elfin- in fact, they had once been carved to resemble the eleven spirits in service of the Creator. That was why this place was so precious to the Treele- it was that much closer to the One they worshiped.
“You whom none can name,
Send your Aura down below,
Guide my people through the rain,
Into the land of crystal snow…”
It was strange verse she had begun to sing; part of something she’d made up herself. Mother and Father encouraged that kind of thing for those of their children who could do it. Father always said, “Pray the prayers you know; then, when you’re finished, you can sing the ones you don’t.” She hadn’t understood his words then, but now she knew that he’d meant for her to pray on her own. In her own words.
“Listen quietly,” her mother had told her once. “If you’re silent long enough, you can hear the Creator Himself.” So, sitting there among the worn, faceless shapes of the Aura, she did what she had done every morning as long as she could remember. Elia ended her song and ended her prayers… and she listened.
And listened.
And listened. And heard a voice. “Wave Strider,” it whispered.
Elia’s eyes jerked open with surprise before she could even realize they’d been closed. She stood up quickly and glanced around the Sacred Place, then up at the cold morning sky above her. Nothing.
“Hello?” she called nervously. “Who’s there?”
“Wave Strider…” the Voice whispered again, and this time she heard it from every direction. This was no Nymph, so unless she was imagining things…
“Is it really you… Creator?” she called a little louder.
CRACK! The sound deafened her. Light flashed behind her and a wave of energy knocked her off her feet. She was too nimble to fall on her face; she sprung off her hands and landed on her feet facing in the opposite direction, wondering what in Vast could have just happened.
“Wave Strider,” echoed the Voice, but this time it came from someone she could see. A young man in a long gray cap stood where a bolt of lightning had struck in the middle of the Sacred Place.
“Me?” Elia answered his call this time, deathly afraid but wonderfully excited as well. She recognized him from the stone-hewn statues in the Sacred Place in the southern waters. He was one of the Aura, and it seemed like he knew her as well.
“Yes,” the Aura replied, idly switching his knobbed staff from hand to hand. His face was impassive. “In the lands beyond your Berg that is what men and women like you are called.”
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“I know. Father told me once how it works on the mainland. He told me that in the kingdoms there are very few Striders, and so they are all kings and queens. Is that true?”
“Almost,” nodded the Aura. “It is about to be true here as well.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You will,” he replied. There was a long, awkward pause as he looked at her steadily and she kept her eyes on his feet. She was beginning to feel afraid.
“Will…” she began quickly, then stopped. She started again, slower this time: “Will you come meet my family? They- our whole tribe- would want to meet you if they knew you were here. We are all followers of the old beliefs.”
“You cannot go back.” The Aura kept still but his eyes seemed to glow with intensity.
“Why?” Elia asked, afraid to hear the answer. “Is something wrong?”
“It is not for you to know. Stay in this place until it is night. Only then will it be safe for you to return. Until the sun falls, stay here.”
A sickening feeling crept into her stomach. Something was obviously wrong. “Please,” she gasped, at a loss for words and breath, “I’ve never spoken to one of you… ever. I’m sorry if I don’t understand what’s going on, but can’t you please tell me what’s happened to my family?”
The man cinched his blue belt tighter around a travel-stained gray cloak. “I can stay no longer. In this place only are you protected. Do not leave until it is dark. If you must go to your family then, so be it. You will find only sadness. Your world, Wave Strider, has changed. Grown darker. You are the only hope now.”
“Only hope??” Elia nearly screamed. “Why are you telling me this??? There are at least three others like me in the tribe! Have they died?? Has everyone died?? Please, tell me! What is going on?!?!”
The Aura sighed. “Do not go back, young one. You have a part yet to play in this story, and so you have been spared. Do not disobey and risk your own death. We have spoken. Goodbye.”
He raised his staff, and Elia covered her eyes, expecting another flash of lightning. The wind blew and whirled the snow-dust around her feet, but nothing else moved.
Then she woke up. She was sweating profusely and lying on her back in the center of the Sacred Place, and the sun was setting behind her.
“What…” she started. The realization she had been dreaming came on her, and she got up. Her back hurt from lying down for so long. Had she been here all day? And if she had, then had it all really been a dream?
The tribe! She suddenly recalled. The other Wave Striders! MY FAMILY! If she hadn’t really been dreaming, then they were all in grave danger!
Her mind told her it was impossible- that nothing as horrible as her dream seemed to foretell could have happened while she was gone. Nonetheless, she needed to know. It would mean disobeying the Aura who had visited her in her dream, but… but she had to do it. She had to be sure.
Elia took three steps across the ice and stopped. At her feet were two footprints. Not her own small, shoeless feet, but big booted ones that sank into the thin layer of snow over the ice.
No one in her tribe wore those kind of boots… but the man in her dream had.
The young sea nymph uttered a small, panicked cry. Then she set off at a dead run across the ice and snow away from the Sacred Place, letting her gift aid her momentum.
Between the Sacred Place and the Tribe Circle were the icewaves: dense, small, rolling hills of smooth ice. She sped in among them, making her way to the other side as fast as she could without slipping and cracking her head open. The only sound was her own forced breath, warm and moist as it fogged up the air in front of her. Elia felt so scared she could cry.
Then she made it out of the icewaves and stopped abruptly. She stood on a wide, flat sheet of ice that stretched out between her and what was left of the tents. The tents! They were gone, and in their place were piles of charred hide and yewlimb, the pliable branches sea nymphs used as skeletons for their homes.
Flames licked up to the sky here and there, and smoke blew along the ground towards her like an inky mist, not rising upwards on the wind like it should have.
“No!!!!!” she screamed. How could this have happened?!?!? Her cry was the only sound in a quiet, dead world. There were no noises of children playing or men working or women laughing… just silence, complete and devastating. Without a thought for her own safety, Elia sprinted towards her home, tears streaming down her face.
Please, please, please don’t let them all be dead. Don’t… don’t let this be real… Don’t let the little ones be killed. Don’t let them all be burned…
“Please, Maker of Sun and Moon,” she prayed hoarsely as she ran, “Please let me find them alive…”
~
She did find one of them, actually, but when she did she almost wished she hadn’t. The scene as she stumbled fearfully into the Treele camp was horrific, and it only got worse the farther she went. Most of the tents were razed, leaving nothing behind of their occupants except ashes and burnt skeletons. Elia thought she might faint with the pain she felt every time she passed a home she knew, and saw the marred husks of bodies inside.
Whoever or whatever had done this had done it soon after Elia had left: the Treele had been massacred in their beds. Those who had fled their tents in time had been cut down with deadly precision. Blood pooled in a hundred different places on the pale ice.
But the most frightening thing were the marks. They were sunk in the ice and the corpses of those who’d been slain; they crisscrossed back and forth frantically all over the Tribe Circle. They were footprints of huge beasts, but the claw-marks were long and chiseled, as if they had been made by metal beasts or stone dragons. Were there such things? Elia had seen an Ice Demon once, and only once- and it had scared her so that she had had nightmares for weeks afterwards.
Finally, horribly, she reached her own tent. It was burned to a shriveled crisp, her sleeping pool evaporated into thin air.
Her Father’s and Mother’s tent was beside her own. A quick glance told her all she needed to know, before she looked away and began to weep. Long, rending sobs wracked her as she sunk to her knees in front of the tattered tent and put her head in her hands.
They had all been killed. Her whole family.
Covering her face, she cried her heart out- and was still doing it when a loud snarl broke through her broken world and reached her ears. Her head shot up- the sound had come from beyond the Tribe Circle, directly ahead of her a hundred feet where the iceberg dropped off into the ocean. As she did so, her eyes caught the sight of large footprints leading past her family’s tent and off towards the edge of the Berg. Blood was on each one, and not far behind was the heavy tread of whatever monster or monsters had inflicted this ruin on the Treele.
It all looked fresh. Trembling with fresh horror and a morbid desire to know what exactly had happened, Elia rose and followed the sound of whatever awaited her.
It took her a minute to make her slow, faltering way to the ice cliffs, all the while enduring the unearthly howls originating from some invisible point in front of her. Looking down into the ocean, she saw a sight that chilled her bones more than any of the terrors she had already seen.
A small hunk of ice had broken off from the main Berg. On it laid one of her own kind; a man in his Swimmer form, broken and cold where he’d evidently tried to leap into the ocean to escape. Watery blood seeped from ugly gashes all up his side and head. He was motionless, probably dead. Over him crouched the ugliest creature she had ever laid eyes on. Hair and matted fur overlapped with iron plates bolted to the thing’s flesh. Gears whirred in its shoulder and through a slash in its hide the young sea nymph thought she saw blood-soaked clockwork.
She didn’t know what it was, and even if she had it wouldn’t have made sense. Elia shuddered and turned away as the metal-and-flesh beast began to feast on its prey. She turned to go, fighting to hold back the panic that was growing inside her yet again.
Beh
ind her, crouched just outside the Tribe Circle, were three more identical monsters.
“Oh no, oh no… no… no…” she whispered. The beast closest to her growled. Its head was partway between a wolf’s, a bear’s, and some sort of reptile. Its eyes glowed molten red.
Suddenly it threw back its head and roared at the sky. Then it and its companions charged, thundering across the ice intent on devouring the one nymph who’d somehow survived their massacre.
Something inside Elia’s head- or heart- clicked. She knew her chances of surviving were almost nothing, but the monsters had no way of knowing about her gifts- so it wasn’t impossible. She had seconds left.
Three… She spun around and ran to the edge of the iceberg. The waves churned violently all those feet beneath her.
Two… The monster on the ice-hunk below her looked up and snarled, eyes flashing with bloodlust and hunger.
Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) Page 16
