Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) Read online

  “Pit Strider!!!!” he shouted bitterly, and the sheer volume of his voice made him jolt mid-climb. He had been expecting his voice to be drowned out by the waves and thunder, but through some previously undiscovered avenue of his wind striding gifts, the wind itself carried his voice as far as he had wanted it to go. What the Pit Strider himself most likely heard was more along the lines of:

  “PIT StriderRR!!!!!!!!”

  Unfortunately, the monstrous ice-beast heard it as well. Its ugly visage reared at the sound, then slowly (it seemed) turned to glare with blind eyes at Lauro. He felt all of his utter insignificance in that one blank glare.

  I’m going to die, he realized. The recognition of it calmed him, and he had the presence of mind to wonder what had happened to Gribly, Berne, and the rest of the crew he’d seen or met.

  Widening its maw into a grotesque parody of Lauro’s expression, it bellowed. The sound shattered the prince’s hearing and made his ears bleed with its force. Spittle and hail splattered him as the roaring torrent of water and wind ripped him from his hold on the rope and flung him backwards in an endless straight line- like an arrow from the string. By the time he had brought his own powers to bear and countered the wind with his own air blast, he was ten feet from the highest wave crest and a hundred yards from the beleaguered trireme.

  Fly away, a voice inside him whispered urgently. You know you can do it. You’ll live if you just leave them all behind…

  “NO!!!!!” he screamed at himself. “I won’t abandon my men!!!!!”

  Kicking his legs to remain airborne, he rocketed forward and up into the stormy sky, drawing his sword as he flew. If I die now, I die fighting… even if it’s a fight without a chance of winning. Rain stung his face and pelted his body all the harder for his speed. His flight was higher and farther than he’d ever tried to accomplish before, but rage and honor drove him to prevail.

  He had crossed half the distance when the furious sea monster finally snapped the Mirrorwave in two, one half of the hull in each icy-clawed fist.

  “NO!” Lauro screamed, but his powerful wind-voice had deserted him and the storm plucked the word away like a wilted flower in a flood.

  The beast howled an unearthly howl from innards not used to the action, shaking the Inkwell with its ferocity. Raising the two halves of the trireme above its head, the demonic beast hurled them at the attacking wind Strider.

  The wreckage arched towards him too fast to react. The first half he was able to dodge, twisting his body and soaring over it, buffeted by the passing hulk. As he flew by he seemed to see the world in slow motion- splintering wood, tearing canvas, rope whipping back and forth; even what looked like a lone tooth floating past his ear. Then it had hit the water behind him and he was past.

  The second came too fast and too hard. The broken mast clattered and spun into him, clipping his side.

  There was a bloody shock of pain and the rushing shock of hitting water.

  Time and motion disappeared under the torrent of the blackness.

  Chapter Three: Elia

  “Getting into trouble again, are we?” after so many extraordinary happenings, it really didn’t surprise Gribly to see the Aura and his mountain again.

  “You could say that. I call it adventure.”

  Traveller laughed. “Most people would call it crazy.”

  “True, but I didn’t send me on this crazy quest, did I?”

  “Be careful who you incriminate,” the Aura cautioned, but he seemed amused. “All the same, I can’t help you as I’d like… rules, you know.”

  “You’re practically a god. What kind of rules can you possibly have?”

  “The kind that stop me from pulling you out of the water so you don't drown... which is what you happen to need at the moment.”

  “I knew it- I’m going crazy.”

  “I already told you that.”

  Gribly waved him off. “So you’re not going to help.”

  Traveller laughed and tossed his staff up into the air. It sprouted wings and flew off into the clouds. Why doesn’t this surprise me anymore? The Sand Strider wondered. “I never said I wasn’t going to help,” the Aura explained. “I just said I couldn’t save your life.”

  “I fail to see how I’m helped at all by dying.”

  “You won’t die.”

  “That makes no sense!”

  “You’ll live…” Traveller stared off after his staff. “…I think. I pray. My prayers usually work, you know.”

  Gribly just kept his mouth shut. When the Aura didn’t continue immediately, he scanned the horizon for any sign of the flying staff. Eventually he looked back, only to find that Traveller was already gone.

  “Goodbye, ah… friend.”

  Gribly felt sleep coming on him again. He slumped in the grass, cradling his head. It hurt. He couldn’t breathe. His vision grew fuzzy and gray.

  He fell asleep.

  Then he woke up.

  ~

  “What the…” he moaned. Instead of drowning, or bleeding, or dying in any number of the horrible ways he’d imagined, he was lying on his back. Instead of the great white demon-thing he’d seen before being knocked out, all he saw was a cold blue sky. His whole body ached like he’d just run the gauntlet between twenty strongmen with clubs. Ugh… where was he, and why wasn’t he dead? Had one of the Aura reached out of heaven and snatched him away to live with them?

  No, his back hurt too much for that. And everything was so cold… and wet!

  “Ughhh…” he groaned, rolling onto his side. Ice. He was lying on one of the icebergs he’d seen before the ship was attacked. Ignoring the pain as well as he could, the Sand Strider rolled onto his stomach, then pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around. His mouth dropped open and he staggered clumsily to his feet.

  The world had changed overnight. A blue-gray winter sky spanned from one end of the horizon to the other, dotted with low-flying, frosty-looking clouds in a myriad of shapes. The sun blazed overhead, but it seemed to give off cold instead of heat; a pale, wan sort of light that set everything to a bluish tint.

  Gribly had expected to see the Inkwell’s choppy waters on one side and the Bergs on the other, as he had seen them from the Mirrorwave’s deck. He had been off his mark: the landscape that surrounded him now resembled less a body of water than a forest of snowy spires and white-peaked mountains. He was standing in a small hollow, the edges of which rose higher in a series of strange mounds and shapes. Further up they changed to cliffs of white ice, and past that he could see no further.

  I’m in Winterland, he thought. He would have chuckled if his situation hadn’t been so grim. Somehow he’d survived whatever catastrophe had befallen the trireme and her crew, but now he was left with no food and no protection, completely alone. Suddenly he realized just how cold it was, and began to shiver uncontrollably. Without knowing why, he thought of Byorne, dead and buried back at the Arches. Byorne’d know what to do. He’d be able to call on Wanderwillow or Aura and get them to help. Or maybe not… but he’d get me out of here.

  Ice crunched underfoot behind him, and the noise caused him to spin around. He saw an indistinct shape or shapes coming closer through the labyrinth of snowy dunes and twisted spirals. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, he simply stayed standing and watched it, shivering as he waited.

  By the time the figure reached the clearing, he could see it- no, her- clearly. It was a girl around his own age, dressed in a flowing blue garment that seemed to move and shimmer like waves on the sea. Her hair was an odd brown color that glimmered blue now and then- though he couldn’t tell if it was from the wintry sunlight or not. She had the pointed ears and slim form of a nymph, and was obviously struggling to drag her weighty burden over the lip of the bowl. Gribly’s mouth opened slightly in surprise.

  Lauro? She’s dragging Lauro?

  Jogging somewhat stiffly over to her, he wordlessly gripped one of the unconscious wind Strider’s arms and helped the nymph girl pull him ov
er the lip and into the clearing. Second verse of the same ballad, he thought with grim humor. When the unlikely duo had dragged the body to about the same place as Gribly had woken up, they let him fall limp and straightened up to look each other in the eye.

  The girl had the prettiest face he’d ever seen. No paint on it at all like the ugly stuff on the noblewomen of Ymeer. He had an odd feeling in his stomach, as if he was standing in the presence of an angel or queen or someone far too noble and beautiful for him to look at. It unsettled him, and he looked away.

  “I am… glad you are awake,” she said. “I had feared you were dead, but I was called away before I was sure.” She put out a slender hand and touched his shoulder. “I am sorry for your friends.”

  She means the ship, he reminded himself. He forced himself to look at her again and found it bearable. More than bearable, actually. Pleasant. She-

  “Are you all right?” the girl was asking him. “You look like you’re about to faint.”

  “Ah… uh… no. At least I don’t think so. I…” but his tongue was tying itself in knots and he couldn’t speak right. She really was pretty…

  “Do you want to sit? Here, rest. I need to see what can be done for your friend.”

  Gribly gave up and let her sit him down. She moved over to where Lauro lay in the thin layer of powdery snow that coated the ice. He watched her inspect the prince in a sort of stunned stupor. The sudden shift from dying to living, staring into death, drowning to meeting yet another nymph in yet another fantastic place… it made him dizzy. How had he gone from being smashed like a toothpick on the ship to waking up healthy here? His thoughts engrossed him so that he hardly noticed Lauro gagging and choking back to life, rolling over and thrashing as if he thought he was still fighting draiks on the mainland.

  “Boy!” called the nymph girl, trying in vain to stop Lauro’s antics, “Come help me hold him down!”

  Gribly jerked back to the present. Scrambling over to the girl, he spread out over Lauro and held him still as much as he could. Between the two of them they soon subdued him until he fully awoke, but Gribly had a fat lip and a bruised leg and arm before it was over.

  “What?!? Fahthriblich…” were the first words out of the prince’s mouth. He spit a glop of something-or-other out on the ice and sat up, shaking and blue. “What’s happened?? Gribly, what’s… who’s…” He lapsed into silence and looked miserable and disoriented.

  Gribly just glanced at their extraordinary savior and nodded. Lauro turned his head and saw her; raised an eyebrow in that irritating way of his, and tried to stop shivering. But the thief read his face a little better, and saw a flush creep up at the prince’s cheeks despite the cold. He wondered if everyone had the same reaction, and it almost made him laugh. Almost.

  “I think I could ask some of your questions for you,” the girl said, laughing a little and standing up before she noticed the shivers of the two young survivors. “Oh,” she said, and stopped suddenly. “I’m too used to the cold myself. Come follow me and I will bring you to a warmer place where we can talk.”

  The prince and the thief got up and followed her as she turned and walked towards the edge of the clearing. “I hope you can tell us how we got here and what on earth is happening…” Lauro told her, hobbling along weakly only with Gribly's support.

  “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” the Sand Strider drawled at him, rolling his eyes a little.

  “I will explain all I know to the best of my ability,” the nymph responded. She flashed another unreadable smile. “So hurry up, before your toes fall off from frostbite!”

  They passed the edge and came among the icy thicket of curls and mounds. “That’s twice she’s shut you up since you woke up,” Gribly snickered to Lauro. The prince bit his lip and frowned, annoyed.

  ~

  The girl really did seem intent on going wherever she meant to without explaining or even introducing herself. Past the forest of sculptured ice shapes, she led them to the high face of an ice cliff and a large crack in the bottom. It was about two breadths wide and one man high, and a rough sheet of fur was stretched across it. The nymph brushed the makeshift door aside and ushered them in.

  Inside, it was the strangest home Gribly could have imagined. The walls and ceiling were ice like the rest of the cliff, but the sun’s rays made their way through just enough to light the single room, giving the Sand Strider the impression that he was at the bottom of the ocean, staring up at the surface. Even though he’d never been in such a place, it struck him as unnatural, and he decided that it must have something to do with the Grymclaw’s enchantments, just like the eternal winter that seemed to lie on the Inkwell.

  The chamber in the ice was roughly as big as one of the slum huts back at Ymeer: just enough for one or two people to eat and sleep comfortably. Even three made it feel cramped, but after the relative hardship of drowning and being revived, neither Gribly nor Lauro seemed to mind much. It was warm, too.

  “The ice keeps the cold out,” the Wave Strider told them as they marveled at the (almost) heat. Gribly thought that made no sense, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. The girl instructed them to stand near the entrance, while she rummaged in a pile of this-and-that in one corner. The Sand Strider thought it odd that she lived in apparent poverty instead of with whatever tribe she was from, but he waited for her delayed explanation. At last she pulled a large, round stone from its place under a pile of rags and rolled it into the middle of the floor.

  There was a small, round depression in the floor where she placed the stone, and Gribly soon saw why. It let off a faint heat that made little rivulets of water appear under the rock as it warmed.

  “Heat stone from the bottom of the sea,” the girl explained. In a minute any latent chill had gone and the stone glowed a very slight red. She turned to the two and addressed Gribly first. “Your clothes must be taken care of. I have none to replace them with, so…” she seemed to be thinking, “Ah. Boy, raise your arms.”

  Why does she call me that? He wondered, but he obeyed. The nymph thrust both her arms out at him and felt a wumpff take the breath from his chest. He thought something was tugging at the back of his shirt, but when he looked down he found that instead all the water had been leached out of his sopping garments and thrown behind him.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. The girl shrugged and repeated the motion on Lauro, who had clenched his teeth in anticipation when he saw it done to Gribly. She’s wave striding, Gribly realized. It gave him the chills to see another person use gifts similar to his so easily.

  “There,” the girl said, and instructed them to sit around the heat stone with her on smooth patches of what she called sealskin, though the thief didn’t know what she meant. Without further ado, she handed to each a large, bluish fruit with hard skin.

  “Now may we be told who you are and why you have saved us both?” Lauro again, interrupting. Gribly wished he’d keep his mouth shut and eat- the fruit was wonderfully cold and sweet at the same time. He wondered if it grew on the icebergs, though he didn’t see how it was possible.

  “Now, yes,” the nymph said. She folded her hands in her lap, and as her guests ate she began her story.

  “My name is Elia, and as you guessed, I am a Wave Strider. Until a week or perhaps a little more ago, I lived with my tribe, the Treele, on one of the Bergs several leagues north of here. One day, while I was praying in my usual place some distance from our Tribe Circle, I was visited by one of the Aura. He did not give his name then, but I guessed he was Viator, the Aura of travelers and pilgrims. My father has said that men call him Traveller, after his patronage.”

  She halted, waiting for confirmation. Lauro nodded that this was true, and she continued.

  “Viator told me that I must stay in the Sacred Place until nightfall. He told me that my tribe had been attacked and that it was not safe for me to return. I was frightened and wanted to go anyway, but he cast a sleep on me and I awoke late in the evening. When I returned to t
he Tribe Circle…” her voice broke and she gnawed at her cheeks, looking down and blinking as if the memory was too painful. Finally she went on. “When I returned to the Tribe Circle, it was burnt to the ground. Monsters of a kind I have never heard of before had attacked it… set fire to it… and killed everyone in it.”

  “Wager I could put a name on that monster,” Gribly interrupted, and hating himself for it. The girl- Elia- looked up, startled out of her reverie. “Draik,” the thief said, trying to sound consoling. “Was it a draik?”

  She nodded, then paused and shook her head. “More than one. Four, or five. I do not know. They were still there when I came, and they chased me off the Berg and into the sea, where I out-swam them. They followed as best they could, never far behind, but at least one drowned. The others pursued me to the next iceberg, and then the next, and then on and on. I have been fleeing them since then. They are always a day or two behind me when I swim between Bergs, but when they find me on land I must always flee again.”