Table of Contents

- Prologue: The Flight of Windfellow

- Chapter One: The Little Thief

- Chapter Two: Cleverly Disguised

- Chapter Three: The Sorcerer’s Scream

- Chapter Four: The Incredible Flying Thief

- Chapter Five: Pit Strider

- Chapter Six: Destiny Approaching

- Chapter Seven: Soldiers and Pickpockets

- Chapter Nine: Unexpected Ventures

- Chapter Ten: The Cleric of Ymeer

- Chapter Twelve: Unexpected Allies

- Chapter Seventeen: White Blade, Black Night

- Epilogue: Wave Strider Imperiled

Brother Thief

The Song of the Aura

Book One

A Novel by Gregory J. Downs

Copyright 2011

This book is dedicated to my parents,

Who helped me persevere.

And to my “favorite cousin”…

Because she wanted it so badly.

Prologue: The Flight of Windfellow

It was night, deep and dark, over the desert land of Blast. The sky overhead was leaden and gray, obscuring the stars behind a thick roof of clouds. Sand stretched all around, still hot from the blazing sun that pelted it during the day. Pits pockmarked the hilly desert, ominous and gaping. No birds called; no wind blew. All was still.

A dust devil, sleepy and slow, whirled across the space between two dunes. Pound. Pound. Far off, a small sound could be heard. A tumbleweed rolled past, pushed on its way by the little dust devil. Pound. Pound.

Suddenly the dead quiet of the desert night was shattered. The pounding grew deafeningly loud, all at once. A lone horseman raced in and out of the sandy hills, a billowing gray cloak flapping out behind him, a small mewling bundle clutched to his chest. His long felt cap whipped left and right as he galloped on. In seconds he was gone, and the desert was quiet once more.

A minute passed. Then two.

A darkness, blacker than the night, seeped out from between the dunes. A shriek broke out over the silence, long and high and horrible. The chase was on. Far ahead, the mysterious horseman kept riding, even with the dark presence behind him. His destination was close, and if he could only reach it in time…

The shrieks behind him grew louder. His enemies were gaining on him.

“Ainur Aeso, Wendfilo!” the horseman hissed urgently to his steed. Faster than a falcon, Windfellow. The horse neighed, tossed its head, and pushed on faster than before. It was in tune with its master; it knew his urgency and it knew what was at stake.

The sand rushed by on either side. Tufts of grass whisked by or were trampled; wind whipped Windfellow’s mane and tail as he flew across the desert. Shrieks cut the air behind them again and again. The darkness behind them was approaching rapidly, and no matter how fast the horseman rode, the shadows still gained. The horseman clutched his precious bundle securely to his chest, and chanced a quick look behind. What he saw confirmed his worst fears.

The black shadow was so near now that it had begun to solidify. It was taking shape. As the mass of darkness drew nigh, it split into almost a dozen separate parts, each of which could soon be seen for what it was: a beast like a horse, black-skinned and leathery, with spikes of hard iron protruding from its head and mane. Each of the creatures was several feet higher than the horseman’s mount, and each boasted long, sharp teeth and glowing red eyes.

“So close…” the horseman gasped. The bundle in his arms began to cry. “Shhhh, child,” he whispered, still trying to gauge the distance between himself and his pursuers. Terrifying as the demon-horses were, he was not afraid of them. Their riders, however… Their riders were hunched, black-robed, and almost invisible against their monstrous mounts, but under tough, studded hoods their black, wrinkled faces leered at him with hollow, shadowy eyes. “Pit Striders,” the horseman spat, and turned forward again, urging Windfellow on to a breakneck speed that would have killed lesser horses.

Then, far ahead, a light gleamed. The keen eyes of the horseman could just barely make out the high slate walls and towering structures of a lonely desert city. It was close, so close… but not close enough. The horseman’s pursuers shrieked again, but this time it was not a shriek of anger… it was a universal shriek of triumph.

The horseman rode in among a field of sandy dunes, barely visible in the darkness of the night. Without warning, another shadow, another monster blasted out from its cover, directly behind him. The sulfurous breath of its mount heated the back of the horseman’s head, almost enough to set his cap aflame. Windfellow whinnied in absolute terror and pulled ahead. For a brief few seconds, there was a respite. The bundle in the horseman’s arms began to wail.

“Enough!” he snarled. Balancing his bundle in one arm, he reached down with his other and seized a gnarled walking stick from among his saddlebags. Raising it above his head, he called on the power that he had been given and the name he carried in his heart. He spoke words that were sacred, words that he would use only when no other words would suffice.

His staff glowed for two full seconds, an intense red light like a shining ember in the fire.

Windfellow whinnied again, in fear and in joy. And Windfellow grew wings; great gray wings, feathered and strong. They were so wide that for a second they clipped the dunes on either side of him, and then lifted him and his rider up over the sandy hills and into the night sky.

The moon came out from behind the dark clouds. The wailing from the horseman’s bundle abruptly stopped.

“Like a falcon,” the horseman muttered, pleased. The Children of the Pit were far behind him now, shrieking in helpless fury at having lost their prey. Quick as their vile steeds were, they were no match for a falconhorse like Windfellow. The horseman rode on through the heavy night air, and as the desert of Blast rushed by under him, he allowed himself to feel just a bit more at ease. His destination was drawing closer every second. In a few short minutes he would be at the city walls.

The moment did not last. A black something blocked out the moon and cast a shadow over the falconhorse and rider.

It was the Pit Strider who had surprised them in the dunes. His mount had also sprouted wings: the wings of a giant bat, leathery and spiked like the rest of the demon-horse's body. The pursuer himself was taller than any of his brethren. He held himself straighter, and his black robes were flecked with dark red. His hood was thrown back from his hideous face, pale and sallow, glinting gold in the moonlight. A stringy gray beard was all the hair on his head, and in his hand he held a knotted black staff almost identical to the horseman's.

“Give up the child!” he growled. His hairless face was contorted in rage at his elusive quarry. His bloodshot eyes glowed with an unholy light. His voice was like a corpse being ripped to pieces by carrion-birds; like ice sliding over hard stone. It was far worse than the shrieks his kind used as language.

The horseman ignored him. His mind was frozen with fear, but he ignored his enemy and steered Windfellow into a steep dive. His enemy roared- a man's roar, not a shriek- and plummeted after him.

This is no Pit Child, the horseman realized. This is one of the Legion!

“Ainur Aeso! Ainur Aeso!” he hissed. Windfellow flew as hard as he could, but the beast above him was too large and nimble to be shaken off. When the falconhorse pulled out of its dive, the monster was there, kicking violently at Windfellow's wings and head and the head of his rider. It was a matter of seconds before the horseman and his steed were bludgeoned out of the sky.

Raising his staff again, the horseman focused his power until it glowed red. The next time the monstrous beast flew at him from above, he steered Windfellow sharply up, surprising his enemy and raking the top of his gnarled staff across the beast's belly. The thing kicked out, slamming its rear hooves into the horseman's back, and screamed as only a dying animal can.

“Down!” commanded the horseman, and Windfellow obeyed. Behind them the black demon-horse fell out of the sky, its red eyes dimmed from the bloody, flaming gash in its stomach. Ignoring the pain in his shoulders, the horseman smiled grimly. “We've done it, Windfe-”

His relief was cut short once again. From the falling wreckage behind them, the pale enemy flung his staff like a javelin. As it flew, the twisted wood grew hard and sharp, piercing Windfellow from behind, plunging into his haunch and up into his heart. The noble falconhorse whinnied at his master, and then he too fell out of the sky.

“Blast it!” cursed the horseman, and still holding the wailing bundle in his arms, he leaped off into the open air.

He never hit the ground. Small, enchanted wings unfolded from either side of his floppy, wool cap, and began to flap with a speed and power far too great for their size.

The horseman was carried forward through the air safely as his horse's body hit the sandy floor of the desert. The shrieks of the Pit Children had long since died away. The horseman had unhorsed their leader, and none of the others were close enough to continue the chase.

Minutes passed; a few more than if he had been riding Windfellow, but flying of any sort was still flying, and the refugee soon made it to his destination: the only city in all of Blast.

The mysterious traveler briefly alighted on the very top of the city's shale-stone walls, then kicked off and flew carefully down into the city beyond. When his feet touched the dusty ground, the wings on his cap folded inward and disappeared. He glanced around warily, making sure that none of the city's few wall-guards had seen him. They had not. The man slid into the shadows at the base of a little mud-daub house and was gone from sight.

As soon as he was sure that there was no chance of his being followed, the traveler halted, laid his staff up against the wall of a nearby house, and peeked inside his bundle. It had been some time since he had heard any sound from it. Inside was a baby boy, fair-cheeked, with just a bit of curling blond hair. He was cramped but alive, and sleeping soundly, as if he had forgotten all of the terrors of that night. At the feeling of cold air on his face, the baby woke and stared silently into the man's eyes.

“Hello, little child,” he whispered. “I've brought you to your new home. Welcome to the city of Ymeer.” The baby frowned, and such a serious look crossed its face that the man wondered if it understood him. He smiled and stroked the baby's face. “Sleep now, little one. Your life lies ahead of you.” At his words, the child fell instantly asleep.

The man smiled and continued on his journey through the city. In minutes he had found the house he was searching for. Checking once more to be sure he had not been followed, the man walked up to the door and carefully laid the bundled child on its step. He bent down, patted the baby on the cheek, then straightened his back, rapped sharply on the door with his wooden staff, and walked off into the night.

As he turned the corner and vanished from the street, he heard keenly the door open and a woman give a startled exclamation. He smiled, and hummed an old tune under his breath.

“When the king grows old and the world bleeds gold,

When all our hopes have come to grief,

Doubt not that we a savior need,

A brother and a thief...”

Anyone who could have heard him would have thought his song was nonsense. But it was much more than that.

“We will meet again, little one,” he whispered. “We will meet again, my little thief.”

The horseman had been called many names in his existence. The one he used now was Traveller. So be it... this would be the last of his travels, for a long time.

Chapter One: The Little Thief

The city of Ymeer was unbearably hot in the afternoons, but Gribly didn’t mind. He’d been living in the streets all his life, and though he never stopped feeling the heat, he had long since learned how to ignore it. In his sixteen years he had learned many things, and one fact was that the desert’s heat kept people inside… as well as guards. Therefore, the perfect time for a thief to move around the city was always during the haziest, hottest part of the day. Gribly was one such thief, and a reasonably good one. This afternoon, he was looking for something to steal… something specific.

Brushing sandy-golden hair out of his face, the youth loped down one of Ymeer’s shadowy back alleys, quietly alert for any sign of the city guard- or anyone, really. Gribly lived in the slums, near the city’s north wall, and at the moment he was sneaking near the houses of the rich; an action that could net him a day in the stocks, if he was caught.

As he neared the end of the alley, Gribly heard a startled exclamation from somewhere high above him. The houses where he lived were for the poor; small and sloppy. It was different here; the lords and ladies of Ymeer dwelt in high, square buildings insulated from the heat. Outside, the houses looked like enormous square sandcastles; inside they were pictures of luxurious comfort… comfort that the young thief intended to have a piece of before the day was out.

Looking up, he could clearly see who had cried out. The tall houses on either side of him were close enough to block out the sun’s brightest rays. A girl was leaning out of a window several stories up, mouth open, seemingly surprised that anyone so dirty as Gribly could possible exist in her world of sheltered perfection. Her face was painted pale and her lips were red… unnaturally red. Her hair was silky and curled, and her dress was puffy and ornate. Completely ugly, Gribly thought. He made a face at her and the girl squealed; disappearing into her house again all excited and terrified of him. Disgusting.

He heard her calling for someone- a maid, perhaps- but he wasn’t planning on finding out. With one last, contemptuous glance at the window, he slipped around the corner and away into another alley. It was unlucky to have been spotted so soon, but he doubted the girl would cause him any trouble. Just in case, he doubled back on himself two or three times before continuing on to where he wanted to go: the royal market. The heat stayed consistent, and he avoided the guards without much trouble until he got there.

Besides the fight pits or the dueling arena, the royal market was the only place in Ymeer or all of Blast worth visiting, in Gribly’s opinion. Most of the city’s poor had never seen it… but most of them were not thieves. Only once, Gribly had climbed those inner walls; he had sneaked in among the stalls and booths of a thousand exotic sellers and wares; he had seen the sights and smelled the smells of a hundred different lands he would never visit because of his low birth. It had been exciting all the same, and he had stolen several useful things, a magic oil candlelamp among them. Now that had been an interesting find.

In any case, he intended to peruse the royal market once more. He needed a healing balm for Old Murie back at home.

Ymeer was a bustling, dirty city by day, and a tomb-quiet, dirty city by night. Guards patrolled the streets at all hours, but that never prevented fights or drunkenness- it rather increased it. In such a place there was always the need for a healer and a sawbones, and no one sawed bones or patched cuts with more skill than Old Murie, the gypsy. She was an old woman; the oldest in Ymeer; and she was both greatly respected and greatly feared by the population at large. Children flocked to her: some to get help, but most to gape, and a few very stupid ones to hurl insults and mud.

Her appearance was strange enough. Greasy, stringy gray hair hung down in front of her face and in tangles at her back, covered in an elaborate shawl of her own stitching. Her clothes were too big, and though they had once been colorfully gaudy they were now so old that most of the color was leached from them. They hung from the old woman’s body like burial wraps, faded beyond recognition.

Old Murie walked with a limp and a hunch, an assortment of bags and bundles strapped to her ancient back, with numerous bits of odd, colorless jewelry swinging from her bent neck and arms. Her face reminded one of her clothes: not ugly, exactly, but worn beyond shape and usefulness. In days long gone Murie had been a pretty lady- now she was too old and tired to care about much more than her daily life of herbs, stitchery, droughts and medicines.

Gribly was her only exception. She had raised him ever since he had appeared on her doorstep as a babe, and he had repaid her by learning to steal the things she needed for her profession that were too expensive to buy. The healing balm he sought was one such thing, and though Old Murie was cautious about her adopted son’s sneaking, he knew that inside she was proud. Being a good thief was a respectable profession in the underbelly of Ymeer’s population.

And whatever else he might be, Gribly was an excellent thief.

Guards patrolled the tops of the inner walls that sealed in the royal market, but it had been so long since they’d had to deal with any real threat that they were usually asleep and always lazy. Nevertheless, before Gribly stepped out from his hiding place under the eaves of the tall houses, he scanned the battlements for any sign of movement. One could never be too careful…. As soon as he decided it was safe, the young thief looked both ways, then sped across the thin band of open street  towards the inner walls. His mission was an easy success, so far.

The hard sandstone walls stretched up infinitely above his head, but Gribly was not especially concerned: he had his secret.

“Speed. Silence. Stealth,” he recited to himself. An old pickpocket had given him the motto when he was eleven, and he had never forgotten it.

Slowly, shivering with anticipation, Gribly lifted his hands to touch the wall. Then things began to go wrong. The sound of tramping feet reached his ears from somewhere just past the closest bend in the wall. Guards. His eyes darted in all directions, looking for a sufficient hiding place, but there was nothing nearby. Thwarted but not afraid, he edged quickly along the wall in the opposite direction, hoping for opportunity to present itself.

Nothing. Soon he was nearing the gates into the royal market. Every survival sense in him was throbbing for him to flee, but something inside told him that this would be his only chance to get inside. If the guards were up and about so soon, there must be something special going on in Ymeer- a crackdown on the city’s criminals, perhaps. That would spell disaster for Old Murie  getting her healing balm.

Gribly continued on his course around the edge of the rounded wall, but in seconds he heard the frightening sound of booted footsteps again- from the direction he was headed for.

“Blast, blast, blast,” he growled, using the desert's own name as a curse. He was directly in front of the gates now, and with only seconds to act. Throwing his eyes upward and shielding them from the sun, he saw an unexpected way out. The gates were huge and solid, banded and hinged with spiked iron: impassable. But the gateway arch was just a smidgen too big; the gates were spiked at the top and didn’t fill up the space. If he could just climb up there…

Half a second before the two groups of guards stepped into view from either edge of the walls, Gribly slipped out of sight and into the recess where the gates stood. He stepped to the right edge, where the arch began at the ground and shot up straight before curving inward. It was time to use his secret. His gift.

The sandy-haired youth adjusted a saggy pouch hanging at his hip, then raised his arms and placed his palms on the sandstone where it was chilled by the gateway’s shadow.

Let it work, he pleaded in his mind. Let me climb fast and sure. Then he slid his palms up as high as they would go, and pulled himself up after them. His hands stuck to the wall as if they were part of it, and his feet followed suit. He climbed up the sandstone arch hand over foot over hand, like one of the myriad of small desert spine-geckoes that ran about outside the city and sunned themselves on sun-baked stones on the sand dunes of Blast. Gribly had always felt a connection to the tiny, speedy creatures. When he had discovered his gift, the connection had become almost certain.

Gribly’s gift was climbing. He could pull himself up the wall of a house as easily as any gecko, and, if the mood took him, he could even scramble across ceilings like a spider. It worked on many, but not all surfaces: stones, sand, and mud were all stickable, and because almost every structure in Ymeer had at least one of the three, Gribly was able to venture almost anywhere he wanted without discovery. Even Old Murie didn’t know about his gift; she only knew that he had a natural talent for pickpocketing or “borrowing,” as she preferred to call it. Gribly’s gift was also his secret.

He had strung his pouch from his belt so that it wouldn’t hang down when he reached the top of the arch. After a tense minute of climbing he neared the summit, and with a few more steps and reaches he was hanging in the small space between the iron-spiked top of the gate and the very middle of the arch above it. With ease born of long practice, he took first one foot and then the other off the sandstone, placing them in the space between two of the gate’s spikes. His hands followed, and in an instant he was perched, curled up in a ball, on the very top of the great double-doors, looking down into the other side of the gateway.

The tramp of guards’ feet was louder than ever. In a moment they would be at the gate. Gribly paused, his whole body tense. Everything depended on the next few seconds.

He leaned forward ever so slightly, but it was enough. He dropped off the other side of the gate, landing lightly on the huge, flat metal bar that served as a latch for the great double doors. Without pausing he sprung off again, twisting in midair to land in a perfect roll that carried him head-over-heels and launched him forward into the great sandy courtyard where the royal market was held.

Just as it had when he’d first come there, the market stunned him with its sheer magnificence. A wide lane led from the gate to the central tower of Ymeer. Heaped up haphazardly on either side was an unbelievable assortment of stalls, booths, displays and every sort of wondrous construction to block out the sun. Under the canopies buyers and sellers of every shape and size boasted, bargained, and wheedled. There were stalls for food and stalls for tools, stalls for pottery and smith-work, embroidery and artwork, armor, wigs, and candles.

Every kind of useful thing- and many that were useless- could be found there, and not just things, but animals too. There were cages far off to the right; they were out of sight, but Gribly could hear the roars, squeals, and general cacophony from the exotic beasts, which were sold for entertainment and sometimes as pets.

The young thief was lost amid the mercantile jungle in an instant, hiding himself in a large coil of ropes and nets near a stall where fish from the far-off Eastern Ocean were sold. The smell all around was awful, for the fish rarely kept well. Gribly knew he had less of a chance of being bothered there while he took a half-minute to gather his wits.

There were people everywhere in the market- which was actually good, now that he was here. The more confusion and chaos, the less chance of one of the nobles or well-to-dos taking offense at the glimpse of him, and the more chance of them not taking notice of him at all. Several dozen of the poor were always enlisted to assist the merchants with their wares anyway (for pitifully small wages), so he could blend in with the grunt-workers if he had to.

Gribly peeked out from his hiding place at the bustle of the royal market. It was a particularly busy day. Good! He had timed his trip well. The market was held every day for the convenience of the town’s rich, but only at certain times or on certain feast days would it be so truly crowded. The boy pushed his wild yellow bangs to the side to clear his vision, contemplating where to begin looking for Old Murie’s healing balm. He knew it was here… but where?

He decided to head further into the belly of the market. Waiting until the burly proprietor of the fish stall bent over to pick up a gutting knife he’d dropped, Gribly hopped out of his hiding place and sped to the next booth, where a tall, thin man with dark skin and an oiled mustache was selling fine onions and other bulb-plants to a fat, pompous cook in a white apron. As seller and customer were engrossed in a purchase, the nimble thief scrambled under one of the tables on the near side, where the dark man evidently kept his extra stock. Gribly crouched under the low wooden planks, staring through a stringy curtain of green and brown from bulbs that were piled precariously overhead.

For a few moments he allowed himself to rest, his back against the wood square while he listened to the monotonous tones of the two men near him and the raucous melody of the market beyond. His eyes were nonetheless wide open as he watched the feet of the onion-seller from under the table, waiting for an opportunity. As soon as he was certain from the position of the man’s feet that he was faced exactly in the opposite direction, Gribly snaked his hand out from under the table, felt around for a bulb, grasped one, and plucked it from its brethren. He quickly pulled his hand back under the silky fronds and examined what he’d stolen.

It was an onion, or something like it: papery white skin with a tint of green-brown, round as a ball, with withered, twisted strands a half-foot long growing off the top. He sniffed it, peeled a bit of the skin off, and bit into it cautiously. The lad had never eaten an onion before. The bitter taste surprised him, and he ate only a very little before stuffing the vegetable into his pouch for later. Perhaps he would be able to steal some cheese or bread to go along with it.

It was time to plan his next move. Gribly crouched lower under the table to get a better look of the stalls around the onion-seller, when his eyes began to water from the spiciness of the thing he’d just tasted. That in itself did not bother him, but he began to sneeze.

“Ahh… Ahh…” he gasped, trying to stay quiet. Inside he cursed his stupidity in trying the strange vegetable so close to trouble. Now he was in real danger. A sneeze would give him away, for sure. “Ahh…”

Quickly he pinched the place above the bridge of his nose; pinched hard, in spite of the pain, and closed his mouth in an attempt to suppress the feeling. He even squeezed his eyes shut, murmuring in his head the numbers Old Murie had taught him as a child. One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six… Eight- no, Seven… Eight… Nine… By the time he reached Fifteen, the sneeze had gone away and he could survey the world outside the onion stall in peace. It would be more difficult the farther in he got, but for the moment his only worry was where to go, not how.

Chapter Two: Cleverly Disguised

After determining where he wanted to go, Gribly lost no time in slipping out from under the table and away into the hustle and bustle of the market. He ran and hid; crawled and hid; slunk, rolled and hid- one or two or three stalls at a time. Finally he made it to the section where linens, clothes, and other accessories were sold… but it wasn’t easy. The farther in he went, the more people paid attention; the more they guarded their wares as the wares became more valuable.

Finally, while hiding behind several large, upright rolls of carpet, the thief was struck with an idea. Across from the upholstery booth where he hid was a stall specializing in long, fanciful cloaks: colorful and exquisitely embroidered, in every sort of variety and every kind of style. A pale man in a large silk turban was trying one such coat on, and the merchant assisting him was entirely occupied with it.

I could use a warm-up, reasoned Gribly. At that very second he saw a quick break in the throng coursing up and down the dirt lane between the stalls; in an instant he was through the gap and behind the cloak-merchant’s booth. Peeking past the striped canvas that made up the tent, he spied the merchant still fitting his customer’s order… and between them, rack upon rack of elaborate cloaks. It was time to take a chance.

~

The merchant heard nothing and saw nothing when one of his finest garments was stolen from out of his tent, not five feet behind him. He continued measuring the pale, black-robed nobleman in front of him, anxious beyond compare. This was a most unusual and highly affluent man he was serving, indeed. A voluminous black hood enveloped his head, and black silk was draped all around his body in a style that spoke of simple comfort only the richest could afford. With the merchant’s scarlet longjacket and collar over it all, the man reeked of arrogance and power. The merchant was afraid of him, yes, but the gold coins the man had jingled under his nose held too much appeal, and he was anxious to please.

Suddenly the mysterious noble stiffened, turning his head towards the merchant with an unnatural, jerky motion. The merchant, a portly, over-dressed man, glanced up from where he had been taking in the man’s cloak at his waist. The longjacket was bloody red, shot through with veins of silver. It was the merchant’s most expensive work simply because it was so strange, and it would bring him nearly three-hundred gold coins if the transaction went well. The merchant glanced up at the man to see what was wrong: all he caught was a glimpse of the sharp, pale skin and a strand of hair dyed unnaturally dark.

“Is something the matter, M’lord?” The man did not answer, but from the position of his hood he was keeping his gaze fixed on some point in the merchant’s tent. His jaw clenched with some violent emotion, but his face stayed shrouded in shadow. “M’lord?” repeated the uncertain merchant, unbending to look the man in the eye.

“He is here…” Had he imagined it? The merchant thought he heard the pale man speak, but his lips had not moved. Was this man a sorcerer? He seemed too young…

“My Lord?” The merchant quavered, suddenly and unreasonably afraid.

Without a word, the pale man hit the merchant with the palm of his hand. The unfortunate fellow was thrown back over his own table and into the racks of clothing beyond, snapping the central tent-pole and bringing the entire structure down on him as he fell. The sorcerer remained impassive, but the injured merchant under the tent could hear his voice as distinctly as if he were shouting.

“The thief is here…”

The terrified cloak-seller stayed perfectly still where he lay. He heard the sorcerer search frantically among the wreckage of the tent, and something heavy and hard smacked his hand where it lay protruding from the colored canvas. Hurried footsteps sounded nearby: first of the pale young man fleeing, then of a crowd of astonished onlookers coming quickly closer to see what had happened. When he was sure that the danger had passed, the portly, sweating merchant emerged from the mess that had become of his livelihood.

Slowly, painfully, he stood up. The crowd around him gaped at his ruined booth and the wounds from the blow he’d been given. Utter shock prevented the merchant’s giving any coherent explanation of what had happened, at least at first. When he looked at the heavy object that had hit him during the fray, however, his mood was infinitely improved.

The cloaked sorcerer had left behind his pouch of gold. The merchant quickly stuffed it into the pockets of his own garment, hoping no one would take much notice. This was turning out to be a most interesting day. He hoped the gold in the pouch was worth the trouble it had cost him.

~

With the long, flowing cloak and heavy, lumpy turban he’d stolen, Gribly passed off rather well as an aristocrat. Striding through the crowd with an affected swagger, he tried to make his face look cleaner and meaner- as if he really was rich and snotty, like those around him. He stayed towards the middle of the wide, crowded lane leading between the mishmash of shops, careful to blend in and not attract attention. It wasn’t hard, and soon he began to think he would make a very fine lord indeed, if he was ever given the chance.

“Lord Gribly, Prince of Thieves,” he snickered to himself under his breath. The title sounded good… very good. He whispered it to himself several times as he made his way through the mob of gentility towards Ymeer’s central tower, and in a short time he was confident enough to try a new plan. Why waste time looking for Old Murie’s balm if he could just ask for directions? He looked genteel enough, he hoped, that he could simply pose as a nobleman’s son and be directed to it, rather than waste time sneaking around looking for it.

A trio of guards in bronze helmets and breastplates sauntered past, hefting their short spears and complaining about the afternoon sun that the greedy market-goers seemed immune to. Gribly found himself hiding his face and detouring far out of their way to avoid any chance of being discovered. When he chanced to look up again, he was actually in the shadows of Ymeer’s highest tower, which sat in the center of the inner walls, behind the courtyard, leading the way into the great fortress of Ymeer: an infinitely high mountain of walls, palaces, and towers, all made out of the same pale sandstone that reacted so strangely to Gribly’s touch.

I’m in over my head, the young thief realized. Careful to remain in the enormous shadow of the royal fortress, he tilted his head back in an attempt to see the top. He could not.

“Young Maister?” a wheedling, wobbly voice called out to him. He looked down again; not ten feet from him was a portable wooden skeleton of a shop, with canvas stretched across the beams to stop the sun when necessary. The caller was a hunched little man whose skin was shriveled and red from a life spent in the desert. His wares were precious pearls and gems of every shape and color- mostly fake, if Gribly knew anything about merchants of this kind. He wore the puffy, complicated dress of a noble, bunched at the elbows and knees with tight, white boots and gloves to match. They looked over-worn and old, though well-pressed.

Gribly inclined his head slightly, as he thought a nobleman would, and stepped over to the jeweler’s booth. The wrinkly man rubbed his calloused palms together and then ran his fingers through thin, greasy brown hair flecked with white.

“Ah, Maister,” he began, “You looked, how I should say… a bit, ah, lost?”

“Not at all,” sniffed Gribly in his best nobleman’s accent. “I am merely looking… searching for a particular… a particular item which I hath not yet borro- not yet found.” The lad could have kicked himself for almost giving away his plans, but he thought his accent was well-pretended enough.

“Ah…” replied the wrinkled man, rubbing his chin now. He winked at Gribly in a way the boy didn’t like, almost as if he knew what was going on. “And this item, ah, might be it found here, among my humble collection?”

“I don’t believe it is so,” answered Gribly, and now he knew he sounded wrong.

“Ah…” shrugged the wrinkled man again, and the youth had just decided to make his escape when he began again. “You don’t, ah, seem to speak the tongue… quite like a lord, Maister. Why, ah, may that be?”

“I…” stuttered the thief.

“Could it be,” wondered the merchant in a lowered voice, “Ah… Maister is very bold, if he thinks he can get so far, and not be uncovered, ah, or discovered…”

Gribly turned to run.

“Wait!” grunted the wrinkled man, lurching across the table of jewelry to grip the turbaned lad on the arm. His grasp was iron-hard and impossible to break. “Wait,” he repeated, slower this time.

“What do you want with me?” Gribly hissed, dropping his pretended accent completely and hoping that no one nearby noticed what was going on. He would attack this man if he had to, but only if there was no other way out.

“Nothing, nothing at all, Maister,” smiled the jeweler deceptively., “But, ah, you may want something from me.” His voice was intensely serious now.

“Nothing comes to mind,” snapped Gribly.

“Then, Maister, you would not want to know… ah, that you have been discovered already, perhaps?”

“Well…” stalled Gribly, ready to brain the man.

“But not by me.”

“What?”

The wrinkled man pulled Gribly close enough to hear what he whispered next. “Speed. Silence. Stealth. Someone is coming for you, Maister. Leave before it is too late…”

Another thief? It wasn’t impossible, he decided. The youth turned his head, saw a flash of black in the seething crowd of colors, and turned back to the jeweler.

“What’s going on? Who’s found me?” The merchant glanced beyond him and his face paled.

“Too late…” he gasped, and gave Gribly a shove that propelled him backwards into the street, where he collided with another man, fell to the ground, and was swallowed up by the thronging crowd. It was not a moment too soon: as the youth struggled to his feet and slipped away, he could hear the wheedling, high voice of the jeweler protesting loudly behind him, something about “Never having seen the boy in my life.”

All at once, the protesting stopped. As Gribly allowed himself to be swept away by the current of market-goers, he chanced a glance behind him, hopping up and down to get a glimpse over the sea of heads. What he saw was the jeweler, white and trembling, held by the throat by a tall, ghostly man in a sweeping, blood-red jacket. The man was speaking, and even without hearing him, Gribly felt cold and afraid as he never had before. The jeweler’s head shook vigorously in the suffocating grip of his assailant. Finally he raised his finger and pointed… in the opposite direction.

In the next second he was lost to view, but not to thought. He’s helping me! Gribly was shocked. No one had ever risked their life for him before, and certainly not anyone from the higher parts of the city. But what puzzled him even more was that the jeweler, apparently, knew the same thieves’ motto he and the old pickpocket did. Could there be some sort of brotherhood between the two? Had the old thief who’d taught him somehow had connections with thieves in the noble and merchant classes?

It opened up all sorts of ideas for Gribly, and he would consider them later. The balm, and then escape, were his first priorities, no matter what kind of ghoul was after him.

Another tense, several minutes passed before the disguised thief found what he had been looking for. On the very edge of the courtyard where the royal market was held sat a huge, circular canvas tent as tall and broad as a house, striped gold and violet, with an endless array of ropes and thin cables spreading outward around it, each nailed into the sandy ground with wooden stakes. Behind the tent rose the third set of walls in Ymeer: Blast Palace, where Dunelord Ymorio kept court and ruled the city from his great golden throne.

The common people detested Ymorio, but his legion of guards and his friendship with the oppressive and powerful noblemen of the city kept him in power. He was a cruel but capable ruler, easily managing his land without much contact with the outer world, other than his contacts through trade. Gribly would have loved to see what wonders were contained in the Dunelord’s own palace, but even with his climbing gift he knew it was an impossible task.

As soon as he peeked inside the enormous tent-flap, he knew he had come to the right place. The herbs, potions, and delicacies sold inside needed more than mediocre cooling from the arid desert air, and so a veritable army of servants almost as snobbish as their masters had been enlisted to provide a constant stream of coldstones, ice, and ice-water from cellars carved a half-mile deep below Blast Palace’s foundation.

The tent’s interior held about twenty of the land’s most prosperous merchants, with their retinue and wares. Each one dealt only in the most volatile and rare objects any man, nobleman, or king could desire: exotic fruits and candied nuts, concoctions for skin and hair, beauty-potions and heartstringers, and, of course, the healing balm Old Murie needed so badly for her joints and wrinkles. All this, Gribly saw in an instant- then a bronze-clad guard saw him peeking in and addressed him gruffly.

“Hoi, lad! What’re you doing with your master’s cloak and turban? I’ll have you skinned!”

Foiled, the boy let go of the door-flap and darted away around the back of the tent, in the small space between the canvas and the wall of Blast Palace. Speedily and silently he pulled the turban off his head and allowed his wild yellow bangs to fall into his eyes again. Dropping the head-piece in the dirt, he quickly shrugged off the rest of his disguise, then straightened his simple serf’s tunic and britches, patting the pouch that still hung at his side. Deception had got him far enough; now it was time for some good, old-fashioned thievery.

Chapter Three: The Sorcerer’s Scream

The next minute was a blur of action. Gribly could do more with sand and stone than just climb them, and soon he had dug out a sizable hole in the ground under the tent’s side- ground that was too solid for a pick or shovel. His palms seemed to mold it at will, and after a few more scoops he could easily slip under the edge of the heavy canvas without being noticed. He had judged his digging spot correctly; there was no one near the place where he crawled in, and he was in luck, for he had crawled out behind the very display of healing concoctions he needed.

As soon as he saw the creamy, off-white balm in its transparent, multifaceted crystal sphere, the thief knew that being caught stealing it would bear the penalty of death. He had seen Old Murie use the last of her own sphere some time ago. She had said of it was that it was worth more than a king’s jeweled crown in some places- Ymeer being one of those.

“Then I’ll steal the king’s crown itself for you!” Gribly had roguishly declared, and the old gypsy had laughed.

The young thief was not laughing now. He was hiding behind a large, hollow stone cube upon which sat a giant candelabrum with sixteen glowing candles; behind him was the entry hole, and past a jumble of boxes and crates off to his right sat one of the most marvelous things he had ever seen: a stone fountain shaped like a man-high marble pillar with four marble chutes spreading out from its peak at the four points of the compass.

The chutes ended atop smaller square pillars, and were filled with ice. Amid the ice sat many different spheres, vials, and crystalline containers, each of which held some sort of balm or potion. Cold water bubbled up from inside the central pillar, ran down the chutes, cooling the balms, and disappeared into the square end-pillars. That was not what surprised Gribly. What did were the pipes, cranks, and gears that ran from pillar to pillar, from the center to the outside, and even up around the chutes to connect with one or two of the vials.

It was a machine, something a lad from the slums could never have imagined. The oddness of the whole thing caught him momentarily off guard, then he inched forward among the crates until he was mere feet away from the crystal sphere he needed. He had forgotten how quiet it was: few patrons were rich enough to afford the precious wares the tent had to offer. From behind a particularly large box he spied out over the deceptively peaceful scene: a few richly-clad lords and ladies with grotesquely painted faces browsing from one merchant to another. Many of the booths were empty of customers, and this, coupled with the watchfulness of the guards posted at intervals throughout the tent, made Gribly extremely cautious.

He inched forward another half-foot, and then his chance came. A trumpet blew loudly outside the tent, the door-flap was thrown back, and a crier could be heard announcing to all within:

“Make way for our sovereign ruler, Ymorio Highfast, Dunelord of Ymeer!”

The Dunelord- here? Suddenly Gribly was afraid that his plans might not run so smoothly after all. He peeked up over the crate where he hid.

A procession was entering the tent: two rows of four black-skinned guards in silver plate-mail, with wild, knotted locks of ebony hair and tattoos covering rippling, muscled arms. At their backs were slung wide, long scimitars made of beaten steel, and they carried heavy, painted wooden shields. Behind them walked the crier with his trumpet and strange pointed ears and high, nasally voice, and among them walked Ymorio himself.

Gribly never caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the man, and he could never after remember what he had looked like. Everything happened too fast: he edged forward, taking advantage of the universal distraction the Dunelord’s entrance caused. He was a foot away. He was there at the fountain. He had grasped the round crystal container; he had lifted it up out of the ice…

…A large, white hand gripped his arm from above. Sharp nails dug into his arm and drew blood. The lad jerked his head upwards and saw the very man he’d been trying to avoid: the noble with black-and-red robes and a face hidden by shadow. He held Gribly with one hand, and where his sleeve fell back from his pale fist the thief could see dark tattoos or brands. A sorcerer!

“You are mine!” hissed the apparition. The thief did the only thing he could think of: he screamed. Everyone’s gaze- including the Dunelord’s- was instantly drawn to the struggling pair. Gribly could not risk dropping the sphere and losing his prize, so he hopped up onto the fountain and pushed off with both feet. The ghostly man was not much taller or stronger than Gribly; his grip was broken and the lad sailed back into the crates five feet behind. It hurt, but he tucked the balm into his chest and rolled onto his feet. By now the tent was in an uproar, with merchants rushing to protect their precious wares and guards running to protect the Dunelord and guards running to attack the ghost-man and guards… guards…

Gribly stumbled back, slipping the balm into the pouch at his waist as he did so. His fingers fumbled with the buckle and secured it, then he was dodging a heavy-handed bronze-clad guard intent on stopping him. He leaped up onto a crate, then up onto another one, leaping off the top just as the angry guard smashed into the pile of crates, bringing the whole thing down on top of him. The young thief landed on his feet, dove onto his stomach (avoiding another guard), and slipped through the hole in the ground he’d made earlier.

As he pulled himself out and scrambled to his feet outside, a deafening BOOM shook the interior of the tent. He jumped at the sound and stumbled as the very earth under his feet trembled. Inside he could hear men roaring and swords being unsheathed with cries of “Protect the Highfast! Protect the Dunelord!”

A deep, commanding voice, probably the Dunelord's, cried above all: “Back, DEMON!”

Another explosion shook the world, then all was silent inside. Smoke billowed up from Gribly’s hole. The petrified thief stood stone-still, waiting for the outcome of whatever horrible conflict had happened. For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Then, with a horrible shearing noise, the canvas in the back of the tent not three feet to Gribly’s right began to burn. The clawed fingers of the demon-man were tediously ripping a hole in the fabric. What looked like red-hot, molten sand was dripping from the widening tear. The thing was still after him!

“By the Aura!” swore the thief. He had never encountered magic before- it was no more than mythology in Ymeer, aside from the few tricksters and harlequins who pretended to be able to tell futures or brew love potions. The city had a cleric, too, but he was on the Dunelord’s side. Whatever this demon in the shape of a man was, and whatever he wanted, Gribly had no desire to find out. Tightening his pouch, he ran like the wind as far away from the burning staff as he could get. As he made it around the tent, the door-flap, closed during the fight, was shoved open, and none other than Dunelord Ymorio himself stumbled out.

The Dunelord’s fancy, puffy leggings and boots were smoking and burnt. Only a small vest covered his muscled, sinewy chest, which was scarred and welted from whatever fight had gone on inside. His tanned face and lion’s mane of bright blond hair was wild and blackened, and blood seeped into his eyes from a gash in the side of his skull. Pointing the shattered blade of a scimitar at the young thief, he gasped out in pain and fear.

“Help me, boy!”

For a moment, Gribly was uncertain. The man was wounded, possibly dying- but he was an enemy! He was one of the oppressors, one of the aristocrats, one of the men who forced their subjects into poverty and crime just so they could have a few more sips of cold water on a hot day when no one else had the least bit of relief.

With a horrific riiiiiping sound, the ghost-man burned through the remainder of the tent. Guards from all quarters of the inner courtyard were running towards the source of the commotion now. Escape was impossible back the way he’d come, and the pale demon was in view now.

Gribly had but one choice. He left the Dunelord gasping in the dust and ran around the corner of Blast Palace. The great gate was still open; Ymorio and his attendants had only a minute ago come out. The youth sprinted for the opening just as someone intelligent in the gatehouse realized the castle was under attack, and took action. The huge iron portcullis was released and slid downward with a horrendous grinding and screeching of metal on metal.

Gribly used his gift in a way he never had before: he willed the sand beneath his feet to push him forward; to make him faster than he could go on his own. He was climbing- but climbing flat ground.

With a terrific leap, the young thief hurled himself forward and under the portcullis. He made it with hardly an inch to spare, rolling under the deadly metal spikes as they slammed into holes in the ground: an enormous iron grid that no enemy could possibly get past.

He sprung to his feet and bounded away. The ghost-man was not far behind. He looked around frantically, hoping the demon couldn’t burn through solid metal with those fiery claws of his. The lad found himself in a straight, high tunnel that ran on for several yards before coming out into a small courtyard surrounded by towers and ramparts of every kind. He pressed himself into a small, dark doorway in the tunnel wall, hoping the ghost man could not see him.

His pursuer ran up to the closed portcullis and glared inside. His dark, scarlet robes whipped about his ankles even without wind, and his dark hood lay about his shoulders. Gribly was shocked to discover that the sorcerer looked not much older than himself. His face was still mostly hidden in a mess of midnight-black hair that hung to his shoulders, and what showed was so covered in markings that he was unrecognizable. His mouth was contorted in a venomous snarl. He could not burn through iron after all, it seemed, and he stuck his face up to the bars, wildly searching the tunnel and courtyard beyond with his eyes only. They were bloodshot and had bags under them as if the man had never slept a day in his life.

“I will find you, little thief. I will find you and bring you down to the Pit where you belong. Your talents are needed by my masters… Come to me…” His voice, hollow and unnatural as it sounded, seemed to draw Gribly’s mind. He wanted to obey this ghost, wanted to submit himself and grovel in the torment he deserved for fleeing so long…

No! I cannot give in to this monster! The thief told himself, and bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed, hoping the pain would stop the influence of the demon’s mesmerizing voice. The blood trickling down his chin and the sudden clearing of his mind convinced him that he had succeeded.

There was a huge commotion outside- the guards who had reached the Dunelord were now rushing towards Blast Castle, swearing and shouting. The ghost-man peered through the portcullis bars one last time, spitting out his parting words as if they burned his lips.

“You have ignored your only chance for my friendship. When next we meet, your fate will be far, far more painful. You have crossed paths with a Pit Strider. Savor what time you have left!”

This is friendship? I’d hate to be your lover, then, Gribly thought. It was all the young thief could do to keep still. The sunken eyes of his enemy passed over him, and the icy hand of fear threatened to claw out his heart. At last the specter turned and faced the wave of bronze-clad guards, raising his hood again as he did.

Crack. The pale man slammed his staff on the ground in front of him, and the noise could be heard as loud as if he had shattered a stone. The rushing guards paused in the middle of their charge, suddenly very silent and uncertain. Who in Vast was this monster?

“Would you challenge me?” The skeleton of a man raised his free hand high in the air, gesturing as if he would sweep all the soldiers away in a single motion. “You do not know your danger. I am no simple sorcerer!” Suddenly he threw back his head and screamed at the sky. The sound was deafening, and carried all the horror of a thousand gruesome deaths with it. Gribly bit his lip again, clapping hands over his ears as he sunk down to his knees in the shadows. He squeezed his eyes shut, praying to he-knew-not-whom until the noise subsided.

When he opened his eyes, the man he now knew to be a sorcerer was gone, and the guards had been swallowed up by the sand… literally! Here and there an arm or leg or head stuck out, horribly burned. The whole area in front of the portcullis was a swamp of molten sand! Gribly had scarcely time to wonder how he had escaped the damage- he had to get out of here, and fast! Not only was he trespassing in the Royal Palace, but they knew he was in here! And to make matters worse, he had ignored and possibly caused the death of the Dunelord. One word was on the thief’s mind now: ESCAPE.

Struggling to his feet, the boy twisted the handle in the door behind him. It opened with ease and he ran through…

…straight into the arms of a burly palace guard.

“Hoi!” bellowed the man, and seized Gribly by the arm. His mistake. The sandy-haired lad kicked his dirty foot into the guard’s thigh, seizing up the muscle and causing it to cramp. The man howled in pain and his grip lessened: another mistake. Gribly ducked under the man’s arm while he was still being held, gripping it with both hands and twisting with all his might as he moved.

Pop! went the guard’s wrist, and the man let go of Gribly, crashing heavily into the side of the corridor. The boy was already past him and running away.

“Thief! Intruder!” screamed the injured soldier as he clutched his broken wrist. As Gribly continued on, the guard’s shouts were joined by others as several of his fellows hurried in from the doorway the thief had just left.

This’ll be close, he thought. Way too close.

Chapter Four: The Incredible Flying Thief

I hate being right, Gribly thought sourly. It was only minutes after entering Blast Palace, and he’d run into three different guard patrols, all of whom were after him, now that the mysterious sorcerer had disappeared and there was no one else to fight. It was far too close of a chase for comfort, even though he had managed to stay one step ahead of the guards so far. He was getting tired, and one false step, one wrong turn could end the deadly game forever. To top it all, he had been going upwards the whole way, and his chances of escape were getting lower and lower.

Then, quite suddenly, the game changed. Gribly rocketed up a tight, winding staircase, slipped down a side-corridor, and found he was at a dead end. There were five oakenstone doors on either side of the passage; he tried the first and found it was locked. So was the second. A few anxious moments passed as he tried the others: all locked. Then he put his hand to the final door, and it opened, just as a mob of very, very angry guards thundered into sight behind him. Without a thought, he ran through and shut the door behind him.

“What in the-” The thief’s oath died in his throat. He was standing on a tiny balcony that jutted out over a drop of untold hundreds of feet. He was on the edge of Blast Castle, looking out over the very peaks of the city. All of Ymeer’s tallest, sky-scraping towers and walls stretched out below him, lit up in the scarlet glow of the setting sun.

For a second he was confused: how could he have come so high and far without noticing? He had climbed a few staircases, yes… but this? The escape had unnerved him more than he’d realized, and he’d lost his sense of direction and height. He knew one thing: this delay would kill him if he couldn’t stall the soldiers long enough to figure out what to do.

Thrusting a hand into his precious pouch, past the healing balm and the bitter onion-bulb, he removed one of his burglary tools: a loop of hard wire with one end straightened into a prying finger. Jamming it into the door’s lock, he jiggled the tool around until he heard the signature snick of the lock engaging. There. That was a half-minute at least, unless one of the guards had a key. Rushing to the edge of the balcony, he looked out over the endless span of sandstone buildings.

Sandstone buildings.

My gift!

The door behind him shivered under a sudden rain of blows. The guards had arrived. Gribly looked to the nearest building, and guessed that it was at least fifty feet away and twenty feet lower than the balcony. It was a nobleman’s house, probably, and was so high that he could see a procession milling around at its base like a swarm of tiny black ants.

Impossible. He would never make the jump. It would be far easier to climb up the tower at his back.

The door shook again and again under repeated blows. At least none of the guards had a key…

Gribly spun around and glanced upwards. There was another balcony ten yards above him, and the wall stretched up towards it. It was made of stone. Stupid, stupid, STUPID mistake! He cursed himself. He could climb stone, but just barely. It was far too slow; the soldiers would catch him for sure. Do I have a choice? He decided not, and was just about to start climbing when he heard a sharp twang somewhere above. His reflexes kicked in immediately and he threw his body to the right.

An arrow splintered on the stone ground where he’d been standing a mere second before. The thief rolled to his feet and stared at the balcony overhead: two soldiers were leaning over the edge thirty feet above him, taking aim with short, clumsy bows. He could never climb the tower now!

The second archer fired his bolt, and Gribly flung himself in front of the door, where it would be harder for the guards to see him. The arrow missed him by inches, bouncing off the hard stone and skittering off the balcony’s edge to fall hundreds of feet below.

“GAH!” screamed the boy. A bronze spearhead had broken through the boards, mere centimeters from his ear. He ducked as the top of the door was finally hacked apart by the efforts of the guards behind it… and suddenly he knew what to do.

“One…” he whispered, shaking with tension. “Two…”

One of the door hinges popped off with a clang. The archers on the balcony above him leaned farther and farther, trying to get a shot at him.

“Three!”

Faster than a sniper’s bow Gribly sprinted the four steps from the door to the edge of the balcony. The door collapsed and a swarm of soldiers poured out, red-faced and furious, just as the archers above let loose their arrows, right at their own men. Gribly vaulted to the heavy stone railing and off into the empty air, propelled twenty feet forward by his powerful leap.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh……..” he screamed as he plummeted. Two guards behind him were felled by falling arrows, while the rest ran to the edge of the balcony and gaped as the thief plunged to his death.

But he did not die.

It was strange to be flying like this. The danger, the utter insanity of the flight went to his head and… and… he loved it. Arms and legs flailing, Gribly sailed down through the air, suspended hundreds and hundreds of feet between air and sky. The experience was fleeting, but it felt like hours.

With a heavy thud, he slammed into the side of the building, hundreds of feet lower than the tower’s top, and an infinite distance from the roofs, walls, and streets below him. At the moment of impact, Gribly thrust out his hands and feet, latching onto the sandstone with his gift.  Instead of bouncing off the wall, he stuck to it like a spine-gecko, saving himself from certain death.

The forceful contact tore the skin from his hands- or felt like it did. The youth slid another three yards before coming to a halt, saved by his unnatural ability.

“Ah… agh…” he gasped, his head sinking forward and resting on the hard surface. Blood dripped from under his palms, and there was a thin trail of it coming from each hand, stretching up to where he’d hit the wall. For half a minute, Gribly just stayed there on the wall, not fully comprehending.

I’m still… still alive… still… alive…

Far above him voices were yelling in astonishment and anger. The guards couldn’t tell if he was alive or not, but he had escaped either way. They were cursing and calling for gremlins, the small, vicious little green beasts used for spying on peasants and the occasional rebellious nobleman. Gribly ignored it all.

I’M ALIVE!

Suddenly it all made sense. He was meant to live! He had done the impossible! He had escaped a demon and the entire force of the Dunelord’s guard.

Even when the guards actually released the security gremlins after him, Gribly was unafraid. He knew he had already won. Climbing horizontally across the face of the building, he made his way to the nearest window and slipped inside, out of sight. In minutes he was on the roof of a smaller building, streaking away into the gathering dark before the gremlins had even caught his scent.

~

Gramling simply could not believe it. His first task, given to him by none other than Golden One himself- and it had seemed so simple! How in bloody Vast could he have failed? Somehow, someway, the dirty little urchin he’d been after had gotten wind of him. Could it have been that wretched merchant? He’d been a shady type, maybe even a friend of the urchin’s! Friend. How Gramling loathed the word. It spoke of weakness and cowardice. True power denied one the chance of friends. The urchin might be a Sand Strider, but he knew nothing of true power.

Well, then, the first task he would need to accomplish now was to find any friends the urchin might have elsewhere. The Royal Market was already closed for the evening, so the slimy merchant would be too hard to track. However…

Gramling slipped into a shady alleyway in the poorer section of Ymeer, his dark, black-and-scarlet robes swirling dramatically. When he had taken several twists and turns to ensure he was not being followed, he halted on the edge of a stagnant pool of refuse and raised his hand, palm up.

Blood stained his pale fingernails where they had dug into the urchin’s arm. By the gods, he had been so close! But it didn’t matter. The mongrel could only run so far, and hide so well… he would be caught, eventually.

Gramling stared at the blood on his nails as if he would boil it with his gaze… which, eventually, he did.

Pit Striding… so much more powerful, so much more potent than the pitiful Sand Striding he had done as a child. The blood dripped from his fingers and plopped into the filthy water at his feet. A small cloud of red steam spurted, wavered on the wind, and blew away.

“Show me the one whom this blood runs quickest for,” he hissed. The pool seethed and bubbled, protesting against the dark power he was infusing it with. The resistance lasted only a few seconds; then the pool quieted and smoothed itself into an unbroken, ebony mirror. Gramling leaned forward, expectant. Who would his powers show? A parent? A sister? A lover? The boy was only his own age, but…

…No, it was none of those. The old woman whose wrinkled features the pool showed him was old enough to be the urchin’s ancestor, much less his grandmother or mother. She had the worn look of a scholar whose knowledge is useless in their walk of life, and her dress was that of a gypsy, far-traveled and many-sighted. A cluttered emporium of nick-knacks and remedies could be seen behind her, and her crooked staff bore a medallion with… with none other than the white hawk sign of Vastion! She was no gypsy, then- she was one of the king’s agents!

She had power, too. Shaking her head as if it hurt, the old crone massaged her forehead with one hand, then looked up straight into Gramling’s eyes. He knew without thinking it that she could see him now as well as he could see her.

“What?” the gypsy mouthed, apparently surprised and shocked that anyone with such power could be spying on her. She mouthed a name- what was it? Was it his? No, even though the pool did not carry sounds, he could tell what it was. Gribly. That was the name. Was that the urchin?

Now she was shaking her head. A word of prayer was on her lips- he had to stop the connection before it reached him!

Stumbling backwards, Gramling clapped his hands together, and the image in the pool vanished. Still, the tail-end of the gypsy’s prayer slapped him in the face hard enough to chip a tooth. He cursed and spit it out. Very well. He had seen all he needed.

Chapter Five: Pit Strider

Leaping from rooftop to rooftop; climbing, running, leaping and falling, Ymeer’s new best thief made his way home to Old Murie triumphantly. His hands ached from the strain he’d put on them, and they still bled a little- but the pain was worth it. As the sun set and night fell over Ymeer, tales would be told of a dangerous, handsome thief who had waltzed into Blast Palace, evaded the Dunelord’s entire army, and escaped at last by walking on air! Gribly could almost taste the success of every single one of his future endeavors. It did not matter that he would be known by every guard in the city now, for they were all afraid of him, and probably couldn’t catch him anyway.

~

It took half an hour, but Gramling found it. The gypsy’s house was almost indistinguishable from the homes near it, but he found it anyway. It sat on the corner of a block, too solid to be in the slums and too small to be part of the Inner City. No signs distinguished it from its twins, other than a small marking in white chalk over the door: a bird with its wings raised on either side, beak pointed downward and neck arched.

Whoever this woman was, Gramling knew she would expect him to try to bypass the ward. No sorcerer wanted to brave the Vastic White-Hawk… but Gramling was not a sorcerer.

He would walk right through that door, and the ward wouldn’t stop him. The gypsy would never expect it.

Bowing his head and cracking his knuckles, the Pit Strider strode purposefully under the sandstone arch. These peasants didn’t even have doors. As he passed blood rose to his ears and his head throbbed, but other than that the ward over the door gave him no trouble.

The interior of the building was dimly lit, but that offered no barrier to Gramling’s eyes, used as they were to the tunnels and dungeons of his home. He was in a small, bare room, devoid of any furnishings save a rack where two old, weather-beaten coats hung. There was a wooden door sealing an entrance into the rest of the house, and that looked more promising. There were no signs or runes on it- apparently the gypsy had not expected him to get even this far- but behind it he could feel a hot wrath and uneasy power growing: a will that wished him dead. The gypsy- it had to be.

Gramling knew it would be idiotic to try opening the door. It was probably already locked and held fast by some of the gypsy’s illusions or charms. Instead, he resorted to Pit Striding to gain him entrance.

Raising his right hand, he snapped twice. Smoke poured from his closed left fist. Smacking his fist with his right hand, he summoned fire. Sparks flew where his hands struck, leaping from air to ground and multiplying as they went, until he had a cascade of fire pouring from his fist. The action drained him, but he steeled himself for the battle ahead and ignored any exertion he might feel.

The falls of flame stopped falling. Instead they twisted, writhed, and shaped themselves into the rough form of a large bird or flying beast. To be specific, a firebat. One of the first Forms of Fire taught to him, and one of the most useful.

Gramling clapped his hands, and the smoke vanished. The firebat squealed in unearthly delight. He clapped again, and the infernal creature took to the air on flaming wings, zooming ahead straight for the wooden door.

Gramling closed his eyes momentarily, to keep them from being blinded by the resulting explosion. When he opened them a second later, he blinked to keep out the tears that sprung up to irritate him. Acrid black smoke billowed out from the glowing cinders that were all that remained of the door. Time to make his move.

He skipped forward and dove through the open entrance, his robes billowing out behind him. A flash of fire and smoke, then he was through, bringing his hands up in a defensive posture, eyes scanning the room for sign of hostility.

He was in the gypsy’s shop- the jumbled assortment of things and trappings both ancient and new, arcane and mundane, convinced him of that. The old crone herself stood defiantly in the corner, hands raised in front of her.

“You!” she said, her ancient voice quavering. “Who are you, to trespass here when I have done you no harm? I have not challenged you, if you wish to make this city your domain.” He only partially knew what she was talking about. Mages and their ilk, all amateurs, usually competed for territory whenever there were other beings of power nearby. A barbaric practice, and one he would eliminate if half the rewards he had been promised by the Golden One came true.

“I am not here for that,” he spit. “I am here for answers.”

The gypsy’s face hardened. “Does that require breaking down my door with a fire-demon, young one?”

In answer, Gramling swept a white-bladed sword out of its sheath where it hung at his side, concealed beneath his robes. The woman jumped at the unexpected noise and fairly trembled at the unveiled weapon. Runes of darkness and unmaking were graven on the thin white blade from crossbar to tip, glowing faintly in the dim light.

“Where is the Sand Strider, gypsy? You have sheltered him here, or I am gravely mistaken. Where can I find him? Speak quickly, or your death will be painful and prolonged.”

The old woman shook violently, as if a fit of sickness were coming upon her, but she stood her ground. Her eyes gleamed as if he had confirmed a hidden belief or suspicion of hers, and she took a shaky step forward. “There is nothing to say. I know nothing of any Strider. There is only one in this city, and he rules it. Go to the Dunelord for answers!” She spit in his direction and glared at him as if she would skin and roast him where he stood.

Gramling stayed silent. To kill her or not was the question. She wouldn’t answer him if she were dead, but she might slow him down or warn the urchin if she was left alive.

“What do you know of the Aura, gypsy?” he questioned her suddenly.

She said nothing.

“Would you like to know something, gypsy?” he continued. “I serve one who is more powerful than any Aura that walks in the heavens. One who will bring them all and every fool who serves them to their knees. They will die in pain, begging for mercy that they do not deserve and shall never be granted. Are you such a fool? Then ANSWER ME!” He roared the last two words, shaking his weapon in her direction.

“I do not pretend to be wise, young one, but even I can see you are misled.” Not the answer he’d expected. Gramling decided words had gone far enough.

“Wrong choice,” he snarled, and threw back his hood. The gypsy gasped.

“It is you… I… no, no, it isn’t! You’re not Gribly! You’re… you’re…”

Gramling leaped towards her, his sword kindling into flame. He impaled her, but as he did her body transformed into indigo smoke and disappeared. His blade clanged off the corner of the wall, jarring his grip.

He spun around to find her behind him, staff swinging, as athletic as if she were twenty and not a hundred-and-twenty. The wood caught him in the side of the head, and the medallion on the end swung tightly around his neck, choking him. The metal slapped into his cheek and burned like a hot iron. He dropped to his knees, coughing. The smoke from where she’d stood a moment ago clung to his robes and began to eat them away like acid.

Enough! He swung his sword and slashed the medallion from its cord. The metal dropped to the floor, spinning like a top, and the gypsy gasped as her power fled away. Aha! Gramling thought triumphantly, She is nothing without her weapon!

“Mercy!” the old woman cried stumbling and falling onto her back. Gramling stood quickly, pulling the wrapped cord from his neck with a jerk, and lowered his sword to her neck.

“Tell me everything,” he growled.

The gypsy closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I have nothing to tell.”

Gramling sneered and bent lower until he was a foot from her face. “You will when I am finished with you, crone.”

~

But she didn’t, and by the time he was done with her he was almost convinced she really hadn’t had anything to tell him.

“You’ve… made… mistake…” she gasped through swollen, parched lips. Her eyes were sealed shut with burns and she did not open them, but somehow she was managing to find the strength to speak.

“I doubt it,” he shot back, twirling his sword deftly from hand to hand. It was ridiculous, the amount of pain this old woman could handle. Nothing seemed to make her feel it, and she was still alive where hardier men had died under such torture. Gramling knew. He had done many such interrogations in order to find this city, anyway.

“There… will be… penalty…” the gypsy moaned, managing to raise her arm despite its multiple breaks and fractures. For the first time since he began, Gramling noticed that her fist was closed, a bit of black string dangling out from it.

What was she talking about? He kicked her hand and took up the small object that had been clasped in it. Turning away from her, he eyed it suspiciously, eager for any clues.

Behind him, the gypsy breathed her last. He felt her life end and her existence wink out like a candle with nothing left to burn.

Only then did he really comprehend what he was looking at. Clutched in his hand was the gypsy’s medallion, but now a skull had replaced the hawk it had originally bore. What the-

His hand burst into flame. Screaming, he tried to drop the trinket. It stuck to his palm.

Steam hissed up from cracks that began to appear in the floor. Wind whistled in his ears, cursing him with an angry voice. Plants that hung from the ceiling in the shop grew out of their pots and reached for him with thorny, clinging arms.

“No! No! NO!” he shouted, howling in pain and fear. What had his killing the old woman unleashed? Without pausing to fight back, he bolted for the door. It was whole again, and bore no signs of his violent entry only minutes before. Cursing, he kicked it. Nothing happened. “Crath nadt Calimá!” Gramling screamed, resorting to the Nymphtongue that made all Pit Striding easier to do.

A burst of flame and lightning hit the door as he kicked it a second time. This time it fell into cinders.

As he rushed out of the house, the medallion finally dropped from his hand, leaving an angry scarlet mark shaped like a skull. It oozed blood.

Shrieking, he ran out of the house. Smoke billowed from the doorway and fire licked the arch. Gramling flew down the street, furious and afraid of being spotted by the wrong people. This had not gone as planned, no, not at all.

“It shouldn’t be this hard, blast it!” he cursed under his breath. The Golden One would have to be consulted, and a new plan formed. Until then…

~

After crossing and re-crossing his own path, taking several short-cuts and long-cuts, and dodging in and out of different houses to confuse any lingering gremlin pursuers, the proud youth climbed through an empty back window in the second story of the house where he and Murie lived. Here Murie kept shop when her services were needed by the destitute.

It was dark outside; even more so in the house. Shadows crisscrossed everything, temporarily blinding Gribly and forcing him to sit on the window’s edge until his eyes adjusted.

“I’m back, Murie! You won’t believe what I’ve copped for yuh!” he sang out happily.

No response. That was odd, perhaps she was asleep. Then again, she usually left an oil lamp burning for him in his room… this room, the one he always came through when he was late after a day of pick-pocketing and “borrowing”.

There was no lamp, and no sign of Old Murie. As Gribly’s vision adapted to the unnatural dark, his survival instincts immediately kicked in and he dropped to the floor, hunched over and completely alert.

His room had always been sparse, but now it was desolate. Someone or something had blown it apart, ripped it to pieces… shattered it. There were cracks in the walls, and everything in the room was utterly destroyed: chairs were shredded and his small straw palate was torn to pieces and strewn about the room. His few personal possessions were broken, some pounded into powder, and stacked up in the middle of the room. What was left of them suddenly burst into blood-red flames, then vanished with a sound of crazed laughter and one, long scream.

The demon. The Pit Strider had done this, whoever he was. A horrible, horrible thought crossed Gribly’s mind.

“Murie!” he bellowed, and raced out the door into the rest of the house.

~

He found the old gypsy’s body at her loom in one of the rooms downstairs. He had seen enough violence in his short life to know that there had been a brutal fight. Murie had dealt out a fair share of damage, heaven only knew how, but she had lost. It looked as if she had been interrogated, and died from the questioning. For a long time he could do nothing but kneel by the corpse and stare, vainly wishing for tears to come.

Wading through the destruction of the house with her crumpled, limp form in his arms, Gribly could feel nothing but a deep, aching sense of longing for the way things had been. He did not wonder how the demon sorcerer had found his house. He did not thank the Aura or any other spirits for letting him survive. He did nothing but mourn. Trembling under the weight of the body but hardly noticing the strain, he stumbled out the front door.

It was late evening now, and the streets were crowded with the usual mob of peasants, beggars, and do-nothings. None of them took notice of him, and few even saw him. He took only the least-traveled roads and loneliest of alleys: in short, the briefest route possible to the edge of the city, and Ymeer’s great outer wall.

Just minutes before nighttime would grasp the land completely, the young thief shuffled down the wide, main road out into the wilderness and gray desert of Blast. Two soldiers stood at either end of the highway, and two more mounted the stairs that led to the battlements, where the great bronze mechanism sat that would close Ymeer’s gates for the night. No one else was near in the hour of shadows.

“Hoi, boy!” cried the youngest soldier, a youth not much older than Gribly. “If you leave now, you’ll be shut out all night.” He and his fellows were on easy terms with the thieves of the city.  So, though they were interested in the strange sight he made, they made no move to stop him.

“It doesn’t matter,” snapped the lad, violently tossing his head. “I’m not coming back.”

The guards laughed at him, and the young one loudest of all.

“Be careful, brat, or the dust devils will get you! You don’t want to be caught outside the walls when the Children of the Pit come out to play!” Towards the end, the young guard’s voice changed, as if he half-believed the superstitions he was spouting.

Gribly ignored them all. Soon he was through the gate and the gate was closed behind him. He was swallowed up instantly by the inky blackness of the desert night.

~

On and on he walked, off to the left of the beaten path that led back to the city. Murie’s body grew abominably heavy in his arms, and at last he was forced by his aching limbs and buzzing head to put her down. He laid her carefully, reverently on the sand, made a short, inconsequential prayer to whatever god ruled the afterlife, and then began his work.

He used his gift, the gift he had never told Old Murie about while he still had the time. He used it like he never had before.

He dug out a pit ten feet deep and three feet wide, scooping up the hard, caked ground like it was shapeless sand on a dune. He ran his hands up and down and across the sides, willing the sandy earth to harden so that no beast or worm could intrude. Afterward he tediously lowered Murie’s body into the hole.

Standing over the grave, looking down on her cold, gray face, he said his final goodbyes. Then he took the hard soil he’d dug out and poured it slowly, solemnly over her. It changed as it passed through his fingers, though he barely noticed a thing. As he held the hard chunks of earth they melted into a shimmering mass of sand that fell glittering into Murie’s grave, covering her in what looked like a sea of tiny crystal shards.

Finally the grave was filled to the top, and Gribly walked back and forth over the low mound to seal it. Where his feet touched, the strange, shining sand hardened into the solid desert soil again.

An unmarked grave of wonders, he thought. A diamond in the rough.

Rest in peace, old friend. You were like a mother to me, and none shall take your place.

~

Just as he turned away from Murie’s resting place, one of Blast’s rare desert storms shook the earth from crown to foot.

Dark whirlwinds formed in titanic ovals high up in the atmosphere. Black, rumbling clouds formed bastions and fought wars overhead. Lightning screamed in arcs from the sky to the earth, sending up plumes of white fire wherever they touched. Rain fell to the desert sand in sheets, turning the entire land into a sopping, sorrel mess.

Gribly had never dealt with the desert storms before. For some reason they never struck the city- at least not this hard. Water blasted him seemingly from all directions, blinding him and knocking him to the ground with unforgiving force. In seconds the world was transformed into a whirling, clashing mass of light, darkness, and the wet in-between.

The sand was now the sea.

Struggling back up to his feet, the battered youth kept walking… and walking…

Finally he stumbled against a steep incline and knew he had arrived at a dune. Stooping low under the pouring, thrashing rain, he used his gift to scoop a hole in the wet sand, at the same time shaping it into a sort of shelter for himself. The process took several minutes; all the more difficult because the sand, his native element, was wet.

In the end it was done, and he slumped inside his strange shelter with sopping clothes and wet limbs, not wishing or caring if he made it through the furious storm, nor conscious that he had done more with his gift tonight than he had ever done before. None of it mattered, now that the only person who had cared for him without expecting any return was dead… and without any way for him to take revenge.

Revenge. As he fell asleep to the relentless pattering of the rain on his shelter, his thoughts were filled with it. For a long time he dreamed of it.

Chapter Six: Destiny Approaching

Amid the dreams and vengeful fantasies of Gribly’s tormented mind, one dream stood out. It was not like the others. In it, he stood on a grassy, flat space amid a circle of tumbled boulders. On his right rose the crest of a mighty mountain, peaked in snow. To his left the mountain dropped off into a sea of clouds that his sight could not penetrate. The sun was warm on his back, while the breeze cooled his face and moved his hair. He felt peace like he had never known, mixed with the glory of being so high above the rest of, well… everything.

“Well done,” said a voice behind him. He turned and saw… what did he see? He wasn’t sure for a minute. Was it a bird? A snake? A man? The whatever-it-was seemed unsure what shape to be. Finally it became a man and stayed that way; a young man in a long, gray traveler’s cloak and scarf, with a faded blue-gray cap so long that it hung down his back. A knotted, wooden staff was in his hand, and a pair of worn, brown sandals was on his feet. “Well done, indeed,” the man said again. “You have passed your first test.”

The sight was so strange that Gribly could only mumble, “Test?”

“Test,” the man-thing repeated. “Today you met the first of your many enemies.”

“Enemies?” Gribly felt like a parrot, repeating everything his master said. He’d never even seen a parrot.

“Yes, enemies,” said the man cheerily. The idea didn’t seem to phase him. “Because you are who you are, you will always have enemies. Today you encountered one of the worst, but more will come. You escaped one Pit Strider, but what about the next? Or the next?”

Bewildered, Gribly interrupted the babble. “Pit Strider? What’s that? And why is it- or them- after me? What did I do?”

“You were born,” the stranger answered simply, and sauntered over to take a seat on a large, flat rock nearby. He motioned for Gribly to sit next to him, which the lad did hesitantly. He sensed the man was a friend, but his mind was confused and blurry. The stranger gestured with his staff out into the sea of clouds circling the mountaintop. “You are alone in the world, Gribly, much like you are now, up on this mountain in the sky. But just as I am with you here, I am with you there, down below, and you are never really alone.”

The thief absorbed it all without complaint, wondering… and thinking. Finally he spoke.

“You must be one of the gods, then, to be giving me this vision.” Truth be told, he had never thought much of gods or visions, but then again- he hadn’t thought much of sorcerers before today, and he’d met one anyway…

“No.” The stranger’s cap swiveled as he shook his head. “There are no such things as gods. I am part of the Aura, and the Aura serves only the Creator.”

“The Aura!” exclaimed Gribly. “But… that’s just a myth! And besides, in all the old stories, the Aura is just a word to mean the earth, or, you know, the things the earth is made out of.”

“More correctly, the beings behind the earth’s creation.”

“Yes…” Gribly decided. “That’s what the stories said. I couldn’t put it into words.”

“Well,” said the Aura, or whatever he was, “The old myths were partly true. The Aura were the tools the Creator used to create.”

“My head hurts,” Gribly mumbled, “Even though I’m just dreaming this, and none of it’s real.”

“Dreams are always real, when we haven’t woken up from them yet,” smiled the stranger.

“I’m not going to pretend to know what that means. But if you serve the Creator... is he a god?”

“There are no gods,” he continued, “The Creator is the One who made this world, and every other world. He bows to none, and if there were gods they would serve him. He is, well… He Is. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think I do.” Gribly shifted in his seat, wondering where this dream was taking him. “Why haven’t I ever heard of the Creator before? He’s not in the old stories.”

“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 stones 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 this. 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.

When he reached the shape, it resolved into the prone figure of a man in travel-stained clothes. Gribly rolled the fallen traveler onto his back, and stared. It was a young man only a few years older than himself, his face caked with dried mud and his hair a wild tangle of walnut-brown. He looked stronger and harder than Gribly had thought a youth could look, but weak moaning came from inside him, and his eyes stayed shut. It was odd, but none of it surprised the would-be rescuer more than the short stabbing-sword belted at the young warrior’s waist.

It occurred to him briefly that he could take the weapon and any other valuable thing the traveler might have, then run. But he knew he could never leave the young fellow to die- why, he might be in the same position if he hadn’t been able to use his gift last night. What puzzled him was how in Vast the warrior-boy had gotten here in the first place…

With a sudden rush, his dream of the mountain and Traveller came back. This is the adventure, isn’t it? he realized. If I save this soldier, I’ll never be able to go back to normal life. For a second he was scared. Then…

Normal life? There’s no such thing anymore. There never was. Out loud, he said, “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I’m going to save your life. Then maybe you can tell me why my life is falling apart, eh? You’d better be worth it.” He grunted, trying to lift the young man off the road. He was heavy, blasted heavy. There was a pack of some kind on his back, but there was nothing in it except a letter in a language Gribly couldn’t read.

“All right Sleepyhead,” the thief grumbled, “I’ll have to bring you into town the hard way.” Gripping the muscled young soldier by the wrists, he began to drag him down the road.

~

By the time he lugged the soldier’s dead weight all the way to the city gates, the sun had made its way across half the sky. It was hellishly hot, and only the grit of hardened desert living kept Gribly from collapsing on the way. He could only wonder how the mysterious warrior had made it so far from… wherever he’d come from. By the time he made it to the gates, they were wide open and guarded. A caravan was coming out at a snail’s crawl: a bulky train of carts pulled by Rhine Horses and weighed down with packaged wares and colorful tent-cloth.

Gribly waited until the guards were distracted, inspecting the cargo of one of the carts, before he dragged his burden past them and into the city. He had seen inside one of the canopied carts, and it had held strangely shaped metal machinery like the contraptions he had seen inside the tent the day before. The thief had no wish to be recognized, if any of the merchants or their servant caught a glimpse of him.

At the rate he was going, it would have taken too long to reach his burned-out shell of a home. So instead, Gribly pulled the unconscious soldier a short way into the slums, to the corner where he knew the old pickpocket who trained him lived.

He wasn’t exactly afraid of the slums, but the time he had spent there in his childhood soured his memory and made him nervous ever to return. That was why he had stayed with Murie so long, and taken what he could from the houses of the rich. The streets in the outer city were lined with low, poorly built homes and shops. Thieves, brigands, and robbers lounged side by side with the common folk who were too poor to live anywhere else.

Keenly aware of the spectacle he must be making, Gribly stayed out of sight as much as possible. In and out of the alleyways he pulled his burden, past alehouses and sooty, tumbledown inns; past the low, round buildings where the destitute gambled away what small earnings they had on cock fights and death matches; past the houses of ill repute. Finally he made it to the old thief’s corner: the edge of two streets that intersected, where a group of burglars held sway over a small, cheap wine-shop.

A pair of burly, hairy men stopped him at the entry arch.

“What’s your business here, whelp?” one of them growled.

Gribly let go of the soldier’s hands, letting the body slump as he leveled his gaze with the men and replied. “I’m looking for the Old Pickpocket,” he answered.

The men sneered. “Costs yuh two bronze t’ see him now,” one of them growled.

“The blaze it does!” shot the thief, determined not to show weakness. “I know the old ‘un better than any!”

“Don’t matter if yer his own long-lost son!” snapped the bouncer, his face reddening with anger.

“Come now, Crutus,” someone said disapprovingly, “yeh wouldn’t hurt my own son, would yeh?”

It was the old pickpocket, poling himself through the door to the wine-shop on his long wooden crutches. His twisted, useless legs hung beneath him as he used the crutches to walk. A wiry gray beard splayed out from his chin as he grinned mischievously. Gribly barely suppressed a sigh of relief at seeing him.

“He… why…” sputtered the angry man, but thought better of it and turned away, growling like a beast. His companion, smirking, followed him.

“Come inside,” the old pickpocket ordered Gribly. The boy grabbed the wrists of his burden again and obeyed, dragging the body as carefully as he could across the threshold and into the wine-house’s shadowy, chilled interior.

Chapter Eight: Lauro

The pickpocket led him past the small main room, threading through patrons and tables, behind the heavy clay counter, and finally into a small, deserted storeroom in the rear of the building.

“Throw the goods up on this,” instructed the old man. Gribly tediously lifted the body up onto the waist-high table indicated, spreading it out comfortably and checking for a pulse.

“Whoever this is,” he told the old one, “He’s tougher than the desert. He’s still alive after being dragged all this way.”

“Where in the blazes ‘ave you been, though?” drawled the pickpocket. He moved forward as if to embrace the lad, who stepped back with a raised eyebrow.

“You really think I’m so soft after all this time? I’m not about to let an old thief near me, not while I’ve got what I’ve got!”

“What ‘ave you got, then?” asked the pickpocket, backing off. “I can’t exactly ‘elp you without some sort o’ payment. After all this time away, yeh bring in some half-dead brawler from… wherever, an’ expect me to fix ‘im up? For free?”

Gribly snorted. “Of course not. I’m not such an urchin myself, you oldskin… Neither of us are simple thieves anymore.” The pickpocket furrowed his brow, skeptical. To belay his suspicions, the youth reached into his nearly-forgotten pouch and removed the rough crystal sphere he’d sacrificed so much for. “Do you know what this is?” he asked the sour old thief.

“Eh…” the pickpocket mumbled, reaching out for the balm. Gribly tentatively handed it over. Balancing the crutches in his armpits, the old one felt all around the sphere, inspecting it with experienced hands and failing eyes.

He looks like an ape, Gribly thought. He had seen a few of the fabled forest-dwellers in the animal cages at the Royal Market.

Gradually the old pickpocket’s eyes grew wide with wonder. “Where in blazes did yeh get this, Grib’? This’s worth more n’ a bag o’ gold!”

“Don’t try to fleece me,” cautioned the younger thief. “We both know it’s worth much more than that. I want this man here healed completely, and I want food and lodging here until he’s fixed. Even then you’ll be getting far more than you deserve. Don’t pretend.”

The old pickpocket searched the youngster’s expression for a while before replying. “Well, well… I guess I’ll ‘ave to take you up on that. ‘Course, it might be ‘ard ‘aving yeh here while haf’ the guards in Ym’r are out lookin’ fer the one who near killed Lord Ym’rio…”

“Keep the balm,” Gribly snarled, “And just do what I want.”

“Whate’r the little lord wants,” shrugged the aging thief. “An’ just t’show I feel no ill will t’ward yeh, I’ll start right now!”

Bending forward with practiced ease, the pickpocket uncorked the balm, swiped one wrinkled, dirty finger inside, and spread the creamy mixture on the unconscious traveler’s face. It was only a little, but it did its job in seconds. Gribly had stolen well.

No sooner had the old pickpocket stuffed some of the balm in the fallen man’s nostrils, then the almost-dead came back to life, sneezing and coughing in his sleep. Next the old thief snatched up a jug of water nearby: cool, sweet, precious water… and dumped it in the poor soldier’s face.

Gasping and wheezing, the young man shot up straight, spitting and snorting, swinging his hands everywhere as if he fancied himself under attack. That was simple, Gribly thought. Both the thief and his old master jumped back, waiting for the stranger to wake up entirely.

“What in… where… who…?” choked the youth. Finally deciding he was not about to die, he regulated himself to wiping the wet slop off his face and clearing his eyes. When he was done, he slapped his palms down on the table and looked over to where Gribly and the old pickpocket stood.

“I…” he began, glaring at them. Then he tried again. “I suppose I owe you two my life. Well, thank you for it.” He lapsed into silence again, watching the two intently. When the pause became awkward, the older thief left the room, swinging his crutches resolutely forward, the healing balm safe in a pouch of his own. The resurrected stranger started at the sight of the pickpocket's injured legs, looking to Gribly for an explanation.

“He fixed you up,” the young thief said. “I brought you in from the desert where I found you. We’re going to try and help you if we can.”

“If you found me,” wondered the young man, “Then… I must have made it! Where are we?”

“This is the city of Ymeer,” Gribly stated. “The only civilized place in Blast… which isn’t saying much.” He decided to introduce himself. “That old man is the owner of this house. I don’t know his name- no one does- but my name is Gribly.”

He held out his hand as he had seen the noblemen do on his trips to the Inner Walls. The stranger hesitated, then completed the motion by grasping his wrist. They shook hands, then the soldier-youth kicked his legs out over the edge of the table so as to be sitting, facing Gribly.

“My name is Lauro. I live in Vastion, in the south, and I am a soldier in the King’s army. I am here on a mission of the utmost importance, and if you value your life or freedom… you will help me.”

~

The long and short of the young warrior’s message was easy to follow, but hard to believe. The soldier-messenger who called himself Lauro apparently did not understand how the world here worked.

“What do you mean, the Dunelord won’t see me? I’ve traveled uncountable leagues with a message from King Larion Vale himself! Lord Ymorio has to see me, if he’s got any sense or loyalty at all!”

“You can’t just walk up to the Dunelord and talk to him,” snorted Gribly. The young soldier was barely three hours back from the dead, and already he was putting on the airs of a nobleman from the southlands… or from the Inner City of Ymeer, for that matter. His cultivated accent wasn’t exactly what Gribly thought of as “soldierly,” either. He stood facing out the small window of the room the old pickpocket had rented to the pair, watching the blood-red sunset settle over Ymeer’s edge, with his hands clasped behind him. His hair was combed (but not washed- there wasn’t enough water), and he looked like a prince in exile.

“Why not?”

“Why not??? Because you’ll be torn apart, that’s why! His guards won’t let you into the noble sectors, much less the Dunelord’s own palace.” And besides, the thief added to himself, no one cares about the outside kingdoms anymore, not even big ole’ Vastion. He kept his mouth shut on the last comment, but Lauro forced the issue. He turned with a raised eyebrow as if he believed Gribly’s story less than the thief believed his.

“What?” he asked. “Have Ymeer and the rest of Blast forgotten their old masters?”

“Not forgotten,” Gribly frowned, straightening to look the messenger in the eye. “Ignored. The southlands don’t matter to us here… none of them.”

The change in Lauro’s face was remarkable. He turned scarlet and seethed silently for a full minute before he could respond, and when he did his cool composure and unreadable expression was stronger.

“The Dunelord will see me,” he persisted. “And you will help me.”

“Suit yourself,” Gribly snapped back, “But count me out.” He was about to continue when something- something disturbing- changed his mind. The resurrected soldier looked ready for a fight, and he was ready to comply. Then, over Lauro’s shoulder where he couldn’t see… something flickered.

The shape of a man in a gray cloak and faded blue cap.

“Traveller…” murmured Gribly.

“What?” snorted Lauro. Gribly ignored his puzzled look for the moment: the Aura had given him a message, and he was desperately wondering what it could mean. Finally he answered the soldier, his mood changed.

“Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is how I’m going to get you into Blast Palace to see the Dunelord.”

Relief registered on the soldier’s face. “You’ll help me then?”

“I will… for a price.”

“What price? You know I have no money, and I believe you would have already taken it from me if I did.”

“I resent that,” Gribly snapped, but his tone was half joking.

“Live with it,” Lauro shot back, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Unexpectedly, strangely, the two boys found that they were friends.

“All right. I’ll name my price before either of us hurts our pride anymore,” retorted Gribly, really grinning this time. A plan was beginning to form in his mind, and now that he had seen the Aura- or part of it- outside of his dreams, he was sure that it wanted to help him.

“Well, out with it,” urged the young soldier.

“I can get you close enough to the Dunelord to talk, if you’re sure he’ll listen to you. Getting around unnoticed is my specialty, so that’s not really the problem. What is the problem is that only yesterday I was chased around the palace grounds by some sort of sorcerer or demon… or something, and now every city guard is going to be on the lookout for me. They think I tried to kill the Dunelord.”

“You don’t exactly look like the trustworthy type. Did a demon really chase you? I’ve heard of Blast’s dust devils- everyone in the south has- but I’ve never seen one.”

“No… It wasn’t like that. It was a man, maybe even a boy. He didn’t look much older than you or I, and he called himself a Pit Climber… I think.”

“Pit Strider,” corrected Lauro. His face had turned slightly paler, and his lips were set in a thin line.

“Yeah… that. What- have you heard of him? I’d love to know where that scumface lives- he killed my… well, the old woman who took care of me before.”

Lauro frowned sadly, and put a hand on Gribly’s shoulder, startling him. “I am sorry for your loss, and yes, I have heard of the Pit Striders. They’re usually thought of as myths, but then again...” He frowned again, but thoughtfully this time. He suddenly took his hand off of the thief’s shoulder and reached back to rub his opposite shoulder blade, as if he had a wound there that pained him. When he noticed what he was doing, he stopped and spoke to Gribly again. “It sounds as if the old myths are becoming more real all the time, aye?”

“Aye.” Gribly nodded ruefully, thinking quietly of his dream of Traveller… and, strangely, his gift. Could the two be connected? They must be.

“So,” the soldier prodded, “What exactly do you need from me?”

“If you succeed in this wild quest of yours, the Dunelord’ll be ready to listen to anything you say. I want you to tell him I’m innocent, and I want you to convince him to pay my way out of this dung heap of a city.”

“Tall order,” remarked Lauro.

“Yes it is. Can you do it? Can a simple messenger like you really get the ear of Dunelord Ymorio? That’s the question now, isn’t it?” The young warrior seemed to perk up at that, smiling with a knowing look.

“Oh, he’ll listen to me easily enough. It’ll be hard convincing him you’re not a demon bent on killing him, though… not once he sees your ugly mug.”

“You know,” said Gribly as he turned to leave the room and get some food for them both, “That was almost funny. Keep working at it, and you might sound like a normal person.”

He left without waiting to see the absurdly pleased smile on Lauro’s face. Soldier? The thief shook his head as he walked briskly down the hallway outside. Aristocrats are the same everywhere, even in the south. Blast me if this messenger isn’t a nobleman’s son, sent to the army to knock the attitude out of him. Rolling his eyes and chuckling to himself, he sneaked downstairs to demand food from the old pickpocket.

He had no idea how right he was.

Chapter Nine: Unexpected Ventures

“WHAAHOO!!” Gribly whooped, soaring across the space between two houses. When he’d told Lauro about his plans yesterday for scouting out the Dunelord’s shrine, the young soldier had wanted to come. Now that he felt the full power of his gift, Gribly was glad he’d made up the excuses for the other lad to stay behind.

He landed on the roof of the next house, right where it began to curve upward into an onion bulb-shaped pointed dome. His feet instantly stuck to the grimy sandstone surface, and he vaulted to the top of the roof in three jumping strides. Gripping the long, pointed tip of the bulb-shape with his wide, dry palm, he swung in a full circle, taking in the view on every side. The homes of noblemen and favored merchants formed an infinite labyrinth around him on every side, and the sun cast a bold golden gleam on the whole world.

This is the life I was meant to lead, he thought contentedly, only somewhere else. Somewhere that appreciates me. Gribly skipped down the other side of the rounded roof and leaped at least ten feet high, onto the square, flat roof beyond. It wasn’t hard at all; not when every bit of the walls and roofs and sand felt like it was part of his own body. The nearest live person was hundreds of feet below him, too far to notice. Down there, I’m just a boy.

Up here, I’m a god.

Unbidden, the voice of the Aura named Traveller came back to him. There are no gods.

Then I’m a bird, he reasoned. An eagle or bloodhawk that flies so high the other birds can’t see it. No one knows what I can do. No one knows how powerful I am! To prove it to himself, he tried to walk across the side of the next wall he came to. It almost twisted his ankles off, but he was confident that with enough practice he could do it.

A glimpse of bronze caught his eye far below. Guards. He stayed crouched in the corner of one of the roofs for a while, just to be sure they wouldn’t see him, and his mind wandered back to Lauro.

It was abnormal how fast that soldier was healing. Only the day before he was barely able to walk, and today he had declared he could fight his way to the Dunelord if need be. It had taken several horror stories of what Blast Palace’s gremlins did to strangers to convince him it was safer back at the old pickpocket’s wine-house.

When he was sure there were no more guards below, Gribly continued his leaping half-flight from rooftop to rooftop, until he reached his destination: the Highfast Shrine, where the Dunelord and his household worshiped who-knows-whom. The Creator, perhaps? If any such being existed, Gribly hoped to find answers here- as Traveller had told him in the dream.

That was his other reason for coming here and not bringing Lauro. He would help the messenger, yes, but he had motives of his own to follow through. I’m still a thief, no matter who I’m stealing for, he told himself, and smiled inwardly.

~

The Highfast Shrine was built entirely out of a white, stony substance that gleamed in the noonday sun. It was seamless, as if it had been built by giants who used the stone like sculpting clay. The dome at its near end was the highest structure in the city besides the Dunelord’s own palace, and by far the oldest. Whispered rumors overheard by the thief as he gathered news from those who had been there told that it had existed a thousand years before Ymeer was built. The rumors said that the entire city had grown around it, as thousands of pilgrims traveled there each year to worship, gape, take back relics, and, in some cases, settle down.

Superstitions, Gribly had always thought. Superstitions that no one believes.

Now, though? He wasn’t so sure. Very few people worshiped anything, anymore… was that the reason so many things were going wrong? Was that why Vastion was no longer in control of the world? Was that why hundreds starved or died of sickness every year in Ymeer’s slums?

Gribly intended to find out.

The front of the Shrine resembled a sky-scraping, enormous round tower with a carved, flawless dome at the top. From the bottom of the dome, wide, swirling shapes of the same white stone corkscrewed out to form what looked like a titanic pillar of water, frozen mid-fall. The dome was a half-sphere, not like the onion-bulbs of the palace and houses of the rich. At its peak there had once been some sort of statue- its ankles were still there- but now there was nothing to say who the sculpture was.

There were windows in the dome, Gribly saw as he clambered to the edge of a high arena near Blast Palace. He could get in that way…

Between him and the shrine was mostly open space… hundreds upon hundreds of yards of it. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he made his way around to the mass of buildings directly behind the sacred edifice until he stood precariously on a crude sandstone gargoyle carved on the side of some nameless tower… a hundred feet from the Shrine roof, and almost ten times that distance from the ground.

That’s a long way, his sense told him. And the Shrine’s stone. It won’t stick to you fast enough when you hit it.

I can do it, he assured that sense. I’ve done it before. What could go wrong?

You’re going to be a bloody blotch on the street, that’s what!

Quiet, he told himself. It’s going to work.

Cautiously, he backed up on the gargoyle until his right heel banged up against the tower wall. In his mind he was tallying up all the things he needed to do for the jump to succeed. As much room as possible? He’d done that just now. Concentrate? He was pretty sure he was concentrating. What about my gifts? To test his power, he willed the sandstone under his toes to bend and stick. When he tried to move his feet, they wouldn’t obey. Good.

He needed to do this thing before his mind rebelled again. Without waiting any longer, he released the sand’s grip on his feet, took two long, leaping strides, and jumped off the gargoyle’s sandy head. The substance under his feet pushed off of him as much as he pushed off of it, launching him higher and farther than any poor mortal could possibly hope to leap.

Suspended for a few precious seconds between earth and sky, Gribly hollered in joy, for once not caring who heard him. Even though he was falling down and forward in seconds, the utter hugeness of everything around him made it seem as if he was floating in one place. Only the rushing wind around his body and on his face told him he was about to crash headlong into solid stone.

He hadn’t leaped far enough. He was going to miss the edge of the roof by several yards.

“No!” he barked, but it was too late to do anything. It was too late before he had even jumped. In half a second the rear wall of the Shrine had filled his whole vision and he slammed against its side- nowhere near the top.

But it wasn’t what he expected. The wall looked like marble, but it felt like sand. It was impossible for him to put into words what the difference felt like to him, other than that his gift worked on the wall. It actually worked. Instead of bouncing off the hard surface and falling to his death, his feet and hands sunk slightly into the smooth whiteness. It was like a rock dropped into almost-dry mud: he stopped, but only after sinking an inch.

Before Gribly could even begin to consider that he was somehow still alive, an electrifying wave of energy pulsed through his veins from the marble-sand beneath him. The stone, or whatever-it-was, was alive. Or almost. In the next few seconds the thief realized that he was no longer sinking- he was climbing, climbing without thinking, and climbing faster than he had ever thought possible.

His gift- the Shrine was powering his gift! In twenty seconds he had cleared the edge of the roof and crouched at the end of the thin, flat area that ran from end to end of the Shrine’s rear building, with the flawless roof sloping down sharply on either side. He turned while squatting, and in one sweeping glance covered the whole structure with his eyes.

Hesitatingly, he put his palm down flat on the marble-sand. Power surged up his arm and into his body, tingling where his feet touched it in a different place.

Change, he told it. Serve me. It did. It molded into a roundish glob under his fingers, and soon he held a perfectly round, perfectly hard sphere of the stuff in his hand. He had scooped it from the Shrine itself.

Everything made unexpected sense.

People like ME built this! He realized. Men or women with the same gifts as me must have shaped the sand and stone before anyone else lived here! Just like I did to Old Murie’s grave, they did to a whole mountain of sand!

He put the glob of marble-sand back where it belonged and flattened it out. It wasn’t perfect, but he doubted anyone would see or care about the difference. With the exhilarating feeling produced by touching the Shrine, he was soon crouched low and scooting along the roof towards the great dome ahead of him.

They must have been so powerful, he thought, so strong and skilled! I can only shape sand a little- maybe they were able to do the same to rock! It’s almost as if they made their own kind of earth… their own element, and used it to build this place. Unbelievable.

Maybe they were giants.

In a minute or two he was standing next to the dome. It arched up above him at least fifty feet, and even though he stood atop the rest of the Shrine, just this part made him feel small and helpless.

There were designs carved in the dome’s unmarred white marble-sand. Warriors, horses, monsters and machines did battle in effigy, carved by the Shrine’s mysterious forgotten creators around four luminous, round windows set at the four corners of the compass.

It was the work of a moment for Gribly to climb up to the one that faced him. He didn’t want to waste time, and he was now acutely aware that the afternoon was wearing away. Not that night held any unnatural fear for him… but he didn’t like to be caught out after dark. No one in Ymeer did, whether it was instinct or superstition too deeply rooted to be removed.

He stood in front of the window, where it stretched up three times his height. He was in a shadowed, shallow windowsill of sorts that curved up around the window’s round edge in a perfect circle. The window itself was made of an infinitely thick, rough colored glass that seemed to emanate light without actually getting any brighter. Wrought iron held the pieces together and ran around its edge and across it two ways.

“How do I get in?” the thief wondered. The answer came to him unbidden, as if someone else had put it into his head.

Glass is sand.

“Oh,” he said. Putting his hand out, he tested the idea.

The pane of red glass in front of him bubbled and melted away from his touch. A hole formed in accordance with his unspoken wish, spreading outward in a bleeding wave of liquid, red glass.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever done with his gift, and by the time he had melted enough of the huge pane away to step through the hole, his brow was drenched in sweat and the sun was low in the sky behind him.

I bet all the snot-headed nobles would get their robes in a twist if they knew what I’m doing to their prized building! That thought alone gave him the fortitude to change the glass. After gaining entry he turned and made sure the hole would stay open so he could escape the same way.

Without another thought he began the careful, dangerous climb down the inside of the Shrine walls.

~

Only when he reached the bottom was he able to really see what the inside of the Shrine looked like. He was stunned.

The enormous rectangle had a carved, arching roof supported by a veritable forest of marble-sand pillars. Alcoves in each wall housed giant statues of men and women with kind, thoughtful faces- and sometimes no statue at all, but a large, rounded, unshaped hunk of marble-sand that would one day be carved like the others.

In the open space between the walls sat rank upon rank of long, white benches that were one with the rest of the structure. Three separate rows stretched back into the soft shadows, leaving open two lanes that ran up to the circular, open space where Gribly now stood, unnoticed.

The Shrine’s round tower was as wide as the stone-gable roof behind it, slightly higher, and just as sparse in its furnishings. Gribly presumed the ancient builders had not bothered much with the useless fanciness and trappings of the modern nobles, and that suited him just fine. The vibrantly colored windows sent a cascade of heavenly light down on everything under them. And it was that everything that took Gribly by such surprise.

Smooth, empty iron chandeliers hung down from the high ceiling. Steps began at the edges of the circular space and proceeded higher and higher until they flattened out on a round space that was man-high and ten yards wide every way. An unfurnished, square altar was set there, adorned only with a small stone angel carved on each corner.

Ringing the steps and the altar, lit up in the glorious light from above, were a number of stone statues three times man-high. They depicted saints or spirits, human but elfin too, and each bore inscriptions at their feet. Most were male, but a few were female. Some were dressed as warriors and some as scribes, some as kings and some as beggars, but each looked divinely inspired.

Gribly was speechless with fear, but the fear felt good… holy.

What IS this place? He wondered. His frantic, small mind felt smaller already: confused, but happy, too. It made no sense, and he gloried in the nonsensicalness of it all.

No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t what he was feeling. What was going on????

Then, as he cowered in the shadows, too happy to stay and too scared to approach the altar, he recognized one of the farthest statues as something he knew. Someone he knew.

“Traveller!” he gasped, and quickly sped around the round steps to the other side of the tower, where he fell to his knees in front of the statue. “It’s you! I mean, it’s not you, but…”

Turn around, something inside told him. And REMEMBER.

He turned, stood up, and took in the sight of the altar, statues, and Shrine again. And then Traveller’s words came back:

I am part of the Aura, and the Aura serves the Creator.

So that was it. That was what the Shrine was: the house of the Creator. The other statues were the other parts of the Aura! If the thing the Creator had created was so powerful that it manifested itself as multiple beings, then how much more infinitely powerful was the Creator Himself!

I need time to think, his tired mind told him. This is too much. All of it- my gift, this place, these statues and this elusive Creator- all of it is too much to take in a day. Traveller can answer my questions if I see him again…

“Come on, Dunelord,” he grumbled under his breath, feeling exhilarated but exhausted. “I need to find you. Lauro needs to get at you. Where is the best place to meet you?”

“Right here,” rasped a voice behind him. “The Dunelord would love to meet you here…” Gribly jumped so high he landed on the marble-sand steps with a whump and lost his breath. A passage behind the statue had opened up and two men had come out without him noticing.

The one who had spoken was tall and thin, in white robes and long gray hair, with a yellow cinch at his waist and a small wax candle in his hand: the Shrine’s cleric. Gribly had heard he existed, but no one had ever seen him. The other man was Dunelord Ymorio, strong and muscled, wrapped in a silky cloak to hide the effects of his near-assassination. His face still bore scars and his hair was cut shorter to rid it of the parts that had been blackened and shriveled with fire. The Lord of Ymeer wore an expression of amused confidence. He was the supreme power here.

“Hello, little thief,” he smiled confidently. Without thinking, Gribly threw all his power into a flying leap off the marble-sand, using the potent substance to aid his gift and throw him higher. He intended to hit the wall and make an instant escape up the inside wall again.

He never made it. Dunelord Ymorio leaped up to meet him, striking him in the gut with enough force to make him throw up any food he might have eaten in the past week… which was next to nothing, of course.

The thief’s frail body slammed to the ground again, but instead of crumpling on the hard ground, the floor softened and sucked him into itself, wrapping around him like a living thing.

At first Gribly thought the floor itself was attacking him, until he saw the Dunelord’s pleased expression as he landed, molding the marble-sand with perfect skill and throwing it on his prey to encase him.

The Dunelord has sand gifts too! The revelation woke him up just enough to open his mouth in awe.

“Wha…” mumbled the boy, but his body was on fire with pain, begging him to let unconsciousness take control. He tried feebly to fight the Dunelord’s power, but the older man was far too strong. It was if Gribly didn’t have a gift at all.

The sickening, soft-hard substance forced him into the ground and covered his face. Moaning weakly, Gribly stopped fighting and let himself black out.

One last thought pierced his mind. Traveller, help me. Creator, if you’re as real as the things you create… save me.

Chapter Ten: The Cleric of Ymeer

He hadn’t expected to wake up again, but he did. The realization wasn’t encouraging.

Darkness covered him almost absolutely. What little light he had came through a tiny, barred window in a heavy iron door some distance away. The pitiful illumination showed him that he was chained to the ceiling of a dry stone cell with no windows. His arms felt numb and his wrists were purple from lack of blood. His feet dangled a half-foot from the floor, so that he couldn’t touch it any more than he could climb the chains and touch the ceiling.

Slowly, the memory of his painful, sudden capture came back to him. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the pain in his arms as he remembered.

The Dunelord was like him- he knew that now. The man had the gift of sand, just like him, and was far better at using it. Though Gribly couldn’t think of a reason why the Dunelord had let him live, he thought he now knew why he was in this cell. No sand, he acknowledged, looking around the room in vain. No way out… easily, anyway. He realized that this room was probably built for the sole purpose of caging people like him- why else would it be here, when he’d never seen more than two stones together in the city?

And as he looked closer at the walls around him, another realization dawned that strengthened his assumption: there were no cracks or fissures in the walls. They weren’t stone and mortar- they were solid! The prison cell had been carved straight out of the rock!

I wonder if there really are more people out there like me, Gribly thought. They might all have been hunted down by Dunelord Ymorio, or maybe even other Dunelords before him! Maybe he has these powers like me- like us- and doesn’t want anyone else with them to challenge him!

The thought was frightening. He was still musing over it when the door to his cell screeched on protesting, rusted hinges and tediously inched open.

Four of the Dunelord’s silver-armored bodyguards marched through the portal, once it was open. Their strange, coal-black skin and red lips made Gribly more than a little nervous, but he was soon beyond caring. The loss of blood, the constant hanging, and his imprisonment of who-knows-how-long was finally taking a toll on him.

His thoughts became fuzzy and dispersed; he barely noticed the guards unchain him, drop him to the floor, hoist him up and chain him again. His mind only partially registered it when they dragged him out the door and carried him down a maze of hallways, careful not to let him touch the familiar sandstone. His dying, muddled mind was all that stood between his common sense and total, uncontrollable panic.

They were taking him to die, and he knew it.

~

At least, he thought he knew it. It came as a mild surprise when they carried him not to the Dunelord, but to the cleric who had been there at his capture. The thin, emaciated man sat on a simple, three-legged stool in a white-walled room with little furnishings, dressed in the same pale alb and yellow belt, hands folded on his lap and hood flung up over his head, flushing his gray-framed face in shadow.

The black-skinned guards tossed Gribly to the floor in front of the cleric, chains and all, then left, closed the door, and positioned themselves equally on either side of it. When they had done so, the cleric spoke.

“The Dunelord’s guards will assure that no one disturbs us. We may now speak as we please.”

The battered thief lay still, his face pressed into the gritty floor of the room, too afraid and too tired to respond. Many spoke of the cleric of Blast, but no one had ever seen him and almost no one even believed in him, much less in the powers he claimed to serve. What legends still circulated about his kind were scarce and terrifying. Gribly would never have been inclined to believe them, had he not met Traveller, seen the Highfast Shrine, and been tossed at the feet of the mysterious man himself.

The cleric spoke again when he saw that the boy was not moving. His voice was smooth and sweet, like aging honey.

“This room is hewn out of the desert, young one. Draw on its power as you have taught yourself to do, and it will give you strength.”

The meaning of his words only half-reached Gribly through the haze of his mind, but he understood enough to reach into the sand around him with his mind and draw from it what he needed. The power of the wide, wild desert filled him and sustained him like it never had before. He felt as if he was back in the Shrine, being lifted up on waves of energy that wasn’t his own. It was freshening, but exhausting at the same time.

Soon he rolled reluctantly onto his back and slowly tried to sit up, fighting the heavy weight of the chains around him. At last he did it, slouched over and supported by one arm, but upright nonetheless. He looked into the cleric’s eyes, deep and gray and full of hidden knowledge… and stared.

Gribly knew eyes and could read them better than anyone he knew. He could tell emotion and intentions easily enough: whether a man was angry or afraid, friendly or malicious. And looking into the cleric’s eyes, Gribly knew one thing for sure:

The cleric was not a man.

Oh, he was male, right enough. He certainly wasn’t a woman. But those eyes, those gray eyes that seemed to be open wide and staring even when half-lidded… those eyes weren’t human.

“Who… who are you?” He questioned.

“That,” the cleric replied smoothly, “Is not an easy question to answer. Few really can answer it in their lifetime. I certainly do not know the whole or even most of the answer.” Gribly tried to understand what that meant; this cleric talked like Traveller, riddles and all. Soon he continued. “If, however, you refer to my odd appearance, then your question would better be phrased: what are you? Not: Who. The answer to the what is twofold.

“One: I am a cleric of the Most High, one of the few still alive in this chaotic age.

“Two: I am a nymph of Greenwood Forest in the west, hence, I do not look to you as a fellow human would. I suspect this is the answer you are looking for, no?”

“Well…” Gribly stuttered. A nymph? A wood-child? Those are… ah, legends, naturally. And all the legends Gribly knew were starting to crop up alive and real, far too often for his liking. The nymph tipped back his hood for a moment, revealing long, pointed ears that were tied tightly to his skull to hide them. “Yes,” the thief finally said, “That about settles it.”

“And now, I assume,” said the nymph, “you will want to know why you have been brought here, instead of the arena where you belong. Am I correct?”

Gribly thought. “Yes,” he answered again, “It makes sense you blotchers would put me in the arena to die. What I don’t understand is why you’ve bothered bringing me here to heal.”

The cleric’s mouth tightened at the curse, but he declined to comment on it. “The answer the Dunelord would give is simple: he wants you to die fighting. In style. The answer I would give is more complex.”

“What?” the thief spat.

“You may have deduced by now how Dunelord Ymorio has kept himself in power for so long.”

“He kills all the other people like me- people who can play with sand.”

“Play with sand…” the nymph mused. “Humorous, and true. Ymorio has learned that with every Sand Strider he defeats, his own power grows and the Ymeer comes one step closer to being completely under his control.”

Gribly had been watching the cleric’s eyes as he said this, and had noticed the irritation- or was it stronger than that?- in his eyes.

“So having my gift makes me a Sand Strider, and the Dunelord kills Sand Striders. That doesn’t make you happy, eh? Even though you’re the Dunelord’s pet hermit?”

“I am not… his… pet.” The cleric unfolded and folded his hands several times, agitated. “He has kept me here long past my time, and I have endured his tyranny for one reason only.”

“And that is…?”

“You, little thief.”

“Me? You don’t know me, oldskin!”

The nymph smiled ruefully. “No, I do not. I had hoped you would be different… but I suppose this is to be expected… You have never learned of my kind, or the Aura, or even-”

“I have, actually.”

“Have heard of the Aura?”

“And the Creator. I saw you about to say his name. I’ve even met one of the Aura, I think.”

“You have?” gasped the thin man, his eyes wide under his hood. Gribly hadn’t expected his story to get such a reception, and it confirmed his idea that the Aura, the Creator, and the clerics were real and terribly important. He nodded to the nymph. “Then you must be the one,” the older man said. “You have no parents, yes?”

“Everyone has parents,” Gribly snapped. “I’ve just never met mine.”

“I’ve already seen you change the sand to suit your will. That would leave one thing…”

“What are you talking about??” Gribly demanded. “If you don’t explain to me why I’m here right now, I’m going to use all this sand to dig you a living grave!”

“No, you won’t,” returned the cleric, and Gribly had to admit he wouldn’t. This was too interesting, and his naturally enormous curiosity was peaked. “You have met the Wind Strider, then?”

“Wind strider? You can’t mean… Lauro? That brat?”

“Lauro?” asked the cleric, suddenly even more interested. “Is that his name?”

“Sure,” Gribly said, “But he isn’t a… whatever. He’s some nobleman’s son… I think, probably sent into the army as punishment. He claims he’s got a letter for the Dunelord himself, and… and…”

The cleric was bent forward, eyes hungry for more information. Gribly could have kicked himself: how had he been so careless as to let so much out? Some professional thief he was, telling the Dunelord’s right-hand man his secret so easily…

“You’re just going to tell all of this to the Dunelord, aren’t you?” the thief snapped. “You’re only pretending to be on my side to trick me. I’ve met your kind before.”

The cleric leaned back and smoothed his robes carefully. “I think it is safe to say, Gribly, that you have never, ever met my kind before. And I am not reporting this to Dunelord Ymorio as you suppose. He is at the arena preparing your doom, and does not know of our meeting.”

The brazenness of the cleric’s assertion surprised Gribly as much as the sudden use of his name. He didn’t think he’d mentioned it to the nymph. “But those are his guards outside, aren’t they?”

“Naturally,” the cleric told him. “But I control the silverguard and half the bronzeguard, in addition to managing most of Ymorio’s martial duties. He does not know of my plans to defeat him, and I will do it without bloodshed if possible… but there you have it. I am not loyal to him.”

“Then what’ll you do if I tell him about you?” tried Gribly.

“You won’t get the chance,” the nymph answered smugly. “He won’t speak to a peasant like you, even if you are a Sand Strider. He knows nothing of the prophecy.” Immediately the cleric bit his lip, as if he’d said something he hadn’t meant to. That more than anything made Gribly believe he really did intend to overthrow the Dunelord, even if he wasn’t an ally.

“Prophecy?” he prodded.

“It is beyond your need to know,” answered the cleric as he stood and smoothed his robes again.

Chapter Eleven: Prince of the Arena

At the cleric's word, the door behind Gribly opened and the four guards in silver came through. “Thank you for your cooperation,” the old nymph smiled as the thief was hoisted between the four men again. “If it is possible to secure your safety when I make my final move, I will certainly do so. The prophecy I spoke of does not concern you; it concerns your friend. If I find him in time, you may live through the ordeal Ymorio has planned for you to undergo.”

“What?!” yelled Gribly, and was gagged by one of the guards in return.

“Ymorio has no knowledge that you have been allowed to touch sand and clear your mind for the combat. I have allowed it so that you will at least have a fighting chance against your foes in the arena. Live long enough, and you may be rescued. Your life is in your own hands. Goodbye.”

The guards carried Gribly’s chain-entwined body away, quickly trotted down the deserted corridors of the prison section of the palace, and strung him up in his cell.

It intrigued Gribly that they removed his gag, and it intrigued him more when they left him chained loose enough for his feet to touch the ground. As they left, one of the big coal-skinned men grabbed his head in a vise-like elbow as if to beat him.

Instead, he stealthily shoved a hunk of sweet, heavy bread into Gribly’s mouth.

Then all four guards left, locking the door behind them.

~

Gribly drifted in and out of a troubled sleep all night. He didn’t dream, not really, but when he woke he seemed to remember hearing a voice and seeing a face that belonged to Traveller.

You have done what is needed, the voice said soothingly. All you need do now is survive.

It didn’t exactly give him the kind of encouragement he wanted.

~

In the morning six of the silverguard- different men then the day before- fetched Gribly from his cell and transported him to a dusty room far from the prisons that resembled an underground stable. In keeping with the cleric’s plans, he pretended to be as hurt and befuddled as he had been before meeting the strange old nymph. A spark of hope had kindled in the young thief the night before, and he had nurtured it until it was small but strong.

People would die today, and he didn’t plan on being one of them.

The dark, warlike men unbound him entirely except for his hands, eyed the large double-doors at one end of the stable intently, and waited. Gribly wasn’t allowed to move or speak, and they made sure that he stood on thick, prickly hay instead of sand. Thunder rumbled overhead, or what seemed like thunder.

With a startled twitching of the ears, Gribly realized he could hear applause. It wasn’t thunder above him- it was the sounds of an arena!

Ymeer had an arena, of course. Like clothes and food and pets, death matches and war games were high-paying enterprises for merchants and nobles alike: the merchants supplied capital, slaves, and animals, and the aristocrats sold their weight in gold to watch daylong blood-baths in the arena every month.

So this is how he would die. It just figures that I’m caught during the monthly games, the youth complained internally. He was still wondering exactly who or what he’d be forced to fight when he noticed that the guards had stepped back from him and let go of his arms.

“How kind,” he told them, turning slightly. With a loud boom, the doors in the opposite end of the room parted and swung open. Two men in bloody armor had just been dragged off the field through identical passages. The largest guard lifted a strung bow and aimed a long, black arrow at Gribly.

“Your time… here. You go…now,” he growled in a deep, throaty accent.

“But I was having so much fun,” Gribly protested sarcastically. The guard made as if to fire, his face still expressionless. “All right, all right,” he responded, “I guess we’re not friends, then.”

He raised his manacled hands, and the guard shook his head no. I’m fighting crippled, then. Turning to face the open doors and the bright, open arena beyond, he hoped the man didn’t plan on putting a bolt in his back when he ran.

Stooping low so that his fingertips brushed the hay at his feet, Gribly bent his knees, then shot forward and sprinted past the doors into the blinding sunlight.

The world changed instantly from dark to light, cold to hot, quiet to jarringly loud. The sun burned his eyes and kept him from clearly seeing the gathered crowds seated in circular stands around him, but he heard them without a doubt. Roaring, shouting, screaming and calling out names, they jeered at what they probably thought was a sorcerer and an enemy doomed to die at the hands of some gladiator or wild beast.

At the other end of the open space, a terrifying guttural sound came from the blinding brightness. It was a beast, then.

Come on eyes! Work! Gribly pleaded. Rubbing didn’t help, and his vision was coming back too slowly. A large dark shape was bounding towards him, huffing and snarling, but he just couldn’t tell what it was.

It was almost on him. Hoping the sand would answer his call, the boy dove left, letting the arena floor mold around his heels and push him off faster than he could have done on his own. Sand sprayed where he had been a second ago, and the whatever-it-was plowed through empty space, teeth snapping closed on nothing. The crowd cheered with excitement, none of them having noticed his sand-playing.

Gribly hit the ground, rolled, came up, and cart-wheeled into a fighting position. His street fighting was good enough, but he doubted it would help him. His point was to survive as long as possible, and if anything had a chance of prolonging his life, he would try it.

In those few, tense seconds, his vision cleared. He saw the beast that was his executioner: a greyhound-like animal the size of a horse, with long, floppy ears, wide, slavering jaws, and a hide that seemed to be rotting off its bones. Its legs were muscled and almost catlike, and there were six of them, each ending in five long claws. Blood dripped from its teeth and barbed tail.

“Traveller, if you or your Creator are out there watching… I could use your help.” The monster whirled on him, angry at being evaded, and charged. “HELP! NOW!” screamed the wiry thief, stepping backward and banging his heel up against the arena’s side.

Nothing happened immediately, and the hellish dog-thing was still coming. Desperate, Gribly crouched low and shoved his hands into the sandy ground, inventing a new use for his gift on the spur of the moment.

The hell-dog leaped at him. He ripped his hands out of the ground and stood up, causing the sand directly between them to shoot up in a hard wall higher than he was tall. The monstrous beast slammed face-first into it, crashing partway through and tumbling to a halt. The sand collapsed around it.

The crowd shut up like a charm, completely silent from shock. Whispers of “sorcerer!” made their way around the stands, and somewhere above him Gribly heard the harsh laughter of Dunelord Ymorio himself; the only one not cowed by the performance.

“An admirable try,” the power-hungry Sand Strider’s voice called out, “but useless. You’re going to die, little thief…”

Gribly spun around and stared into the stands. Near the top, Ymorio himself stood under a canopy with his fat, over-painted advisers and silver-clad bodyguards. His arms were crossed across his chest and his scars from his encounter with the mysterious assailant days before were prominently displayed. A hideous grin split his face. He knew he was going to win, no matter what.

Gribly spun back. The hell-dog was struggling to its feet, madder than ever.

Now would be a very good time, Traveller! No response. Time was up. The monster was up, snarling and coughing blood.

Coughing blood?

Gribly leaped forward, hoping to have the advantage of surprise. His feet were coated in heavy sand: perfect weapons with the help of his gift, that connected solidly with the hell-dog’s muzzle and knocked it to the ground. Gribly landed lightly, leaped over the animal’s prone form, and started to run away.

That was way too easy… he thought, and he was right. He spun around, ready for the next attack, and saw that his timely strike hadn’t hurt the beast at all.

A short, sharp bronze sword was lodged in the hound’s skull, thrown from above.

The lad noticed it at the same time as everyone else in the arena, including the enraged Dunelord. As one, hundreds of eyes looked to the sky, bewildered as to what had happened.

High overhead, a dark, flying shape plunged into the arena stands. It collided with the Dunelord and soon the two were locked in an intense struggle, man to man. Gribly stepped back, stunned, as he and the rest of Ymeer’s spectators watched Ymorio’s head snap back at an awkward angle and his body topple to the ground, mangled and crushed by the strength of his killer.

Lauro the messenger stood, unharmed, in his place.

The Dunelord’s bodyguards didn’t react immediately, either from shock or, as Gribly suspected, because they were on the nymph cleric’s payroll. In any case, Lauro was up there without a weapon, and Ymorio’s scimitar was caught under his limp corpse. The young soldier dodged a spear-thrust from one of the silverguard, then hopped nimbly up onto the raised fence in front of the royal canopy before leaping up into the air.

He didn’t fall, but instead kept leaping higher and higher, buoyed on strange, billowing gusts of air. So he’s some sort of wind strider after all, Gribly thought. He gaped, amazed that he had never seen it before: that confident gleam in Lauro’s eye, the way he treaded air like water. It wasn’t flying- not exactly- but it was close. Lauro would jump as high as he could, and the wind would carry him. When his motion slowed he would sink back to earth unless he could twist his body and make another lunge, mid-leap.

After three such maneuvers, the young warrior dropped out of the sky right next to Gribly, landing solidly (and, in the thief’s opinion, a bit off balance), arms splayed out and knees bent to absorb what little impact there was. Yes, indeed: Lauro was the wind strider.

“That, my friend,” Gribly exclaimed, “was way, way too close.”

“You’re welcome,” Lauro replied, walking over to the dead hell-dog and pulling his sword out of its head. Gribly stayed close in case some over-zealous guard got the wrong idea and attacked them. He’d stayed alive this long, and it wouldn’t pay to take any chances this late in the game.

He had never felt so relieved and so nervous at the same time. Thank you, Aura. Thank you, mysterious Creator I can’t see… To Lauro, he said, “I guess the old nymph came through, huh?”

“Nymph?” the soldier asked, looking surprised. “The cleric is a nymph?”

“Oh, guess he didn’t tell you that,” the thief smiled smugly. “I figured it out on my own and he had to show me.”

“Well, nymph or not,” Lauro acknowledged, “He’s come through well enough. I’m not sure I like this- overthrowing the rightful authority, and all- but I did it to save your sorry skin, and because where I come from we respect clerics as much as kings. I hope you’re satisfied.”

In the seconds they had spent talking, the arena stands had quietly been filling with bronze and silver-clad soldiers in the service of the Highfast cleric. What little resistance was met from the loyalist guards and nobles was put down quietly and efficiently.

“I’m fine so far, thanks for asking,” Gribly grinned nervously. “It’s what comes next that has me worried.”

Chapter Twelve: Unexpected Allies

The announcement of the Dunelord’s death was made to the public the next day. As many of the general population as could be gathered was huddled in the now-empty Royal Marketplace, hushed and bristling with excitement; some hostile, some expectant, and some just glad for a holiday, no matter the cause.

The cleric himself stood surrounded by his new silverguard on a balcony high above the massive throng, robes neatly straightened, belt neatly tied, and hair combed back behind his shoulders. His ears were left untied, proudly proclaiming his break from Ymorio’s tyranny… and shouting his own supremacy, no doubt. That was what Gribly thought as he stood behind the guards, next to Lauro in the passage behind the new ruler.

The nymph slowly raised his hands above his head, gazing out over the gathered crowd. They remained silent, wondering what to think of this inhuman character few had seen and not many believed in.

“I will waste no words,” the cleric said. His voice wasn’t loud, but the crowd’s reaction told Gribly they could hear the speech as well as he. “You know the cruelty you have endured; you, the ones on whose shoulders Ymeer was built. You know the injustice you have suffered.”

Not exactly true, the boy told himself. The injustice was real, of course, but he knew most of the poor wouldn’t lift a finger to build anything the higher class wanted built. They were comfortable being beggars, even if it made them miserable in the end. From the cries of support that echoed around the courtyard, though, it seemed as if the masses were eating up every word. This man- I mean nymph- could be an even more dangerous enemy than the Dunelord, if he wasn’t our friend… and we don’t even know that much, really. Gribly shifted uncomfortably, drawing a contemptuous glance from the perfectly composed Lauro.

The thief rolled his eyes at the uptight wind-boy, then turned back to concentrate on the cleric’s speech. He’d missed quite a bit of it in his musings.

“…And that is why, my people, that I have done what I have done. Under my rule you will prosper, not wallow in decay! I, Dunelord Argoz Greenwood, will bring the glory and brightness of the Forgotten Age to Ymeer. You, its people, will be the ones who stand fast and proclaim your freedom and power to the world! Stand now, and shout to the skies for this new age that I bring you!”

They’ll be standing, all right. And you’ll be standing on their shoulders, no doubt. This man was establishing himself as the next Dunelord, then. Well enough, if he would come through on his promises.

The impassioned cleric concluded his speech and motioned to his men situated in the square below. Gold coins and sweet-treats were hurled out in sparkling showers over the crowd, who scrabbled for the prizes like farm chickens after grain. He certainly knew how to manipulate the public.

~

That night, a day and a half after Lauro had killed Dunelord Ymorio, the real orders of business were discussed. Lauro and Gribly waited patiently while Cleric Argoz dealt with the few nobles who still chafed under the sudden change in authority. He had a way with words, that was for sure. The thief had never seen a man- well, not a man, he knew now- who seemed so ready to please, and succeeded, yet always seemed to come out on top of any deal, any discussion, or any argument. He was a politician as much as a holy man.

“That will be all, my lords,” the aging nymph told the assembled aristocrats. He nodded cordially to them all, and the majority of them nodded back, satisfied. He commands them while still pretending to be their friend, Gribly noticed for the hundredth time. Perhaps he even believes what he tells them. He’s a visionary, too… or just too controlled to let his motives show.

As the line of sober noblemen and important traders filed out of the room, Gribly allowed his eyes to wander for the first time since coming there.

The assembly had met in a spacious chamber directly under the rear of the Highfast Shrine. The marble-sand walls almost sparkled under the brilliance of a thousand candles lit in a ring around the circular space. The myriad of little lights cast a flickering, somber shade over everything, splitting the line between light and shadow. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling with more candles; smaller versions of the ones in the Shrine above. A low, wide stone table in the shape of a circle was the only furniture, surrounded by an identical stone bench.

The perfect lair for this cleric, Gribly thought. He smiled, thinking sneakily of the empowering element in every inch of the hollowed chamber. It’s the perfect lair for a Sand Strider, too. A Sand Strider like me. Even now he could feel the enlivening current that seemed inherent in all marble-sand, pulsing excitedly beneath his roughly-sandaled feet.

Whatever happened tonight, he planned on winning. Looking over at Lauro’s grim, confident expression, he knew the wind strider had the same thought. It occurred to him quite suddenly and in a way he hadn’t thought of before, that, if it ever came down to a game of survival again, he absolutely needed the young warrior on his side.

With a clang, the iron door that led out of the chamber closed, leaving only the two gifted youths and the elfin cleric inside.

“Keep the entrance open,” Lauro said in a low voice. Cleric Argoz raised a bushy eyebrow at him. “I’m not taking any chances with you, Dunelord,” the soldier-messenger explained. “Cleric though you be, you’re a nymph and therefore inclined to just this sort of trickery. If I err in our dealings, it will be on the side of safety- not naivete.”

“Trying to convince ourselves, are we?” smiled Argoz unnervingly. He stared through a flame at the two wary youths. In his hands he gripped what looked like a golden staff; a sort of elongated candlestick with a white candle affixed to the top, ringed with thin gold loops and tiny curving shapes. “Despite the insult of your mistrust of my kind, I understand your urge for caution. Open,” he intoned deeply, and tapped his staff on the ground once.

The door behind him ground open and outwards, then all was still as he shambled over to the marble-sand table. The three of them now sat equal distances apart, looking for all the world to Gribly like a council of magicians or sorcerers plotting to rule the world.

When he said as much out loud, Lauro rolled his eyes in a very un-lordly fashion. Argoz smiled indulgently and answered his statement.

“None of us here are sorcerers, young one, me least of all. For one: if we were we would not be able to stand this place… especially this room. My bringing the nobles of the city- and, consequently, both of you- was to ensure that neither you nor the prince was a sorcerer or Pit Strider in disguise. That kind has tried to trap me before now, and will do so again in the future if I am not so careful.”

“Me or the prince?” Gribly gaped. He just wasn’t getting used to all these secrets, even now…

“Yes,” the nymph replied, “The prince. Only a man living in this Aura-forsaken desert wouldn’t know the name and characteristics of Lauro Vale, Prince of Vastion. When you spoke his name in my chambers two days ago, I became convinced you had met the prince himself. I excused myself from Ymorio’s presence and went searching for him at once- and, I might say, you were lucky I found him when I did.”

“You’re a prince????” was all Gribly could ask the older boy.

“Yes,” Lauro said simply. “But the fewer who know it, the better.”

“Indeed,” the cleric agreed calmly. “In this troubled time, the agents of chaos and disorder would spare no time in trying to take your life… if they knew where you were.”

“So, my friend,” Gribly commented dryly, “you’re on the run too?”

“Not exactly,” Lauro explained. “My father, King Larion, decided that this would be the best way for me to prove my royal blood… and my courage. He was right- Argoz has agreed-”

“Wait!” the thief interrupted. “You’ve been talking behind my back! Both of you!”

“We’re nobility,” shrugged Lauro, “We don’t have to tell you any of this.” His face was serious, but his tone was joking and friendly. Perhaps he wasn’t really so stuck up as he sounded most of the time.

“But our deal-” Gribly protested.

“-Is taken care of.” The cleric finished. “The prince and I have spoken some already, and while I cannot say we are friends, we have at least agreed to be uneasy allies.”

Very uneasy, if he’s asking you to keep every door open and every weapon in sight, the thief thought to himself.

“Well,” he began, “That’s… good, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” the cleric nodded, and turned his attention to the wind strider. “But the question still remains, Prince Lauro: why are you here? I am honored with your visit, however stealthy. I can even guess at your intentions from what I know of the prophets. But what is in your message you have not shown me, and I suspect it carries more importance than any of my guesses.”

Gribly’s head started to spin almost as bad as it had when talking to Traveller in his dream. Politics and Religion were too much for him to handle.

“You are truly foresighted, if you can guess my motives,” Lauro responded in his fancy nobleman’s talk. “I think now the time has come.” Drawing from the battered pack he still kept near him, he removed the complicated, dirty scroll Gribly had seen before, and handed it to Argoz. “This message was meant for Dunelord Ymorio, of course,” the prince told the nymph, “but as he has forsaken the natural order my forefathers established for all of Vast, I trust you will be better able to set that order in place once more.”

“I am a loyal cleric, my prince, in spite of my methods. You may trust me.” The nymph rubbed the tips of his long ears in anticipation, taking the scroll from Lauro and reading it hungrily. His face grew grayer and grayer the farther he read.

“Can you read Old Vastic?” Lauro asked Gribly aside. His tone didn’t suggest he expected a yes.

“No. I can understand common-write, but that’s my limit,” he responded, trying to act as if he was proud of the fact. Lauro snorted but didn’t comment. A long pause followed while Argoz read.

When the cleric finished scanning the document, he looked up, face ashen. Carefully rolling it up with precise movements of his long, pale hands, he returned the parchment to Lauro.

“I was aware that Ymeer had been overtaken by corruption long before now,” he said gravely, folding his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe. “That is why I chose to come here after the old, sad man who was the Highfast cleric before me died. It has been my mission to save the city in any way since then.” The nymph took a long, hard look at the prince. “I was not aware that this… sobering state of affairs was so widespread.”

Gribly was watching Argoz as the cleric spoke, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Lauro flinch. “What does he mean?” he asked his friend. It was some time before the older youth responded.

“He means that the content of my father’s letter is disconcerting.”

“I know that, Prince Pudding-face. What’s in the letter to make you both so glum?”

The prince of Vastion took a deep breath before answering. “Once, long ago, my ancestors ruled nearly all of Vast, including the Giant’s Isle in the far west. Of course our supremacy is no longer so complete, but over the past several generations, the situation in the south has dangerously deteriorated. Our kingdom is now at the point of breaking apart, with men like Dunelord Ymorio hacking out small kingdoms of their own inside our borders, while pirates and barbarians harass us from without. It’s a volatile time. My father…” here his voice almost broke, and Gribly could clearly see the struggle it was for him to continue. Finally he managed it.

“My father is a strong man, but he is dying of age and sickness,” said the prince. “In this last, desperate year a new threat has steadily become the worst: Monsters and hellish abominations worse than the one you fought in the arena are leaking out of Blast’s chasms and pits, and they are wreaking havoc on our allies in the Greenwood and Greyfeld. In response, my father… King Larion… had sent me with a message to persuade Dunelord Ymorio, the last and most powerful Sand Strider in this part of Vast, to aid us in our time of need.”

“Fat chance of that. He probably would’ve had you killed if we’d gone with your plan for meeting him,” Gribly commented. Lauro shrugged.

“My father wasn’t a fool. The message asks only that I be guaranteed safe, guarded passage north to the Grymclaw. Nothing more.”

“The Grymclaw…” Dunelord Argoz nodded, lost deep in thought while the two lads spoke together. “King Larion has not entirely forgotten the old beliefs, I see.”

“He has kept the Statutes better than any nymph!” declared the prince hotly.

“I don’t understand,” Gribly interrupted, hoping to stop whatever age-old argument the other two were about to renew. “Why would the southlands king risk his own son to make the journey all the way up eastern Vast, just to make some sort of pilgrimage?” Not the best way to prod, but he hoped it would do. Apparently it did- both Argoz and Lauro calmed down and looked at him seriously.

The wind strider prince answered first.

“There are two reasons I’m making this pilgrimage,” he told the thief. “The first is simple: my father has no one else to send. No one trustworthy can be spared from the border wars except me.” He glanced knowingly at Argoz, seated on the other side of the table. “As to the second reason, I believe our loyal cleric is better suited to answer.”

The nymph didn’t protest. “Though it is not expressly stated in the king’s message, I can think of only one reason the prince would desire to visit the Grymclaw.” He pushed his bushy gray eyebrows into a furrowed “V,” scrutinizing Gribly closely. “You have demonstrated exceptional perception thus far, young one, so I will assume your claims to knowing the Aura are true.”

“Would I lie about something that crazy?” Gribly laughed, suddenly and strangely excited.

“No indeed,” smiled the cleric ruefully. He stood up and backed away from the marble-sand table.

“Wait!” the thief cried, pieces falling together in his mind. “Are you saying the Grymclaw has something to do with the Aura and their Creator?”

“Even better,” burst Lauro, quietly but emphatically. “If the old, secret beliefs are true, it’s where one of the Aura lives.”

Chapter Thirteen: Fighting Legends

“Your plan is crazy... blasted bloody crazy,” Gribly said, shaking his head as he and Lauro wound their way through the dirty crowds of the city's underbelly. They were both dressed similarly to the poor folk around them. This, coupled with the hubbub of noise that enveloped everything here, was sufficient to disguise anything out of the ordinary about themselves or their conversation.

“Then why did you agree to help me?” Lauro asked, grunting with displeasure as a burly butcher in a bloody apron shoved his way between them and was lost in the crowd. The prince was obviously not used to such mistreatment, and Gribly had to stifle a chuckle.

“What, help you on your mad quest past the known limits of the world, to find an ancient imprisoned spirit and use his knowledge to save a kingdom I've never seen in my life? Who wouldn't want to do something like that?”

“You,” Lauro said simply. Gribly led him around a tight corner, where they hopped down into a sunken, cracked pathway that ran between two tall mud-daub buildings. No one followed them, and the way was empty except for two men at the far end.

“Honestly?” Gribly answered, quieter than before. “I'm doing this because you saved my life. And because... well... I have my own questions to answer, just like you.” An awkward silence followed as they neared the end of the alley. Just when Lauro was about to speak again, Gribly interrupted, feeling strangely hesitant for their talk to go any deeper. “Here we are, m'lord,” he said jokingly, stopping a few yards from the end of the pathway.

“Don't-” Lauro began, but something made him stop.

Gribly could imagine what. The two men at the end of the alley were striding towards them, enormous arms bared, hefting clubs the size of small trees. One was tall and broad, the other short and immensely stocky.

“What're yuh here fer, blotching little boy?” the larger of the two brutes asked gruffly, poking his club in Gribly's direction. Lauro gave a start, as if he thought they were about to be assaulted, but Gribly knew better.

“I'm here to see the fights,” Gribly said, grinning widely. The men stepped closer to him, dark sneers on their faces.

“Yuh got th' pay for that?” inquired the shorter man, in a tone that suggested he strongly doubted the likelihood of such a  thing.

Gribly simply nodded and produced three shiny gold coins he had acquired courtesy of Dunelord Argoz. “And this is all there is, so don't bother clubbing me, gents... I've nothing more for you to take.”

The piggy eyes of the bouncers bugged out in astonishment, and the smaller one licked his lips. “Got more fer yer friend? He ain't talkin' much.”

“This'll take care of us both, I'm sure,” Lauro said, stepping up beside Gribly. His voice held just a hint of malice. The bouncers looked the companions up and down, eyed Lauro's steady hand where it rested on his sword hilt, and decided a fight was not worth it.

“S'pose it will,” grunted the taller man, reaching for the coins. Gribly tossed the money  towards the bouncer, who easily caught all three coins in his huge hand.

“C'mon, Lauro,” Gribly called, striding between the two huge men as if he had not a care in the world. Nervously the prince followed him, and they passed out of the alley into a whole new part of Ymeer. “Even the Dunelord's guards know better than to come down here,” he told Lauro, winking.

The prince was not impressed. He didn't look quite afraid... just grim. Very grim. “Then why are we down here?” he asked in a low voice as they passed several high piles of refuse. A group of rag-clad children, stained with soot and dirt, scampered away from them and hid among the labyrinth of trash heaps.

Gribly frowned as memories of his childhood in places like this came back to him. “You and Argoz want a guide, right? Someone who can take you not only past the mountains of the Spiral, but all the way to the Inkwell? Well, hack it all, this is the best place to find one! Don't argue so much.” The sharp intake of breath beside him warned him to push the proud older lad no further, but Lauro's only response was a rather subdued question.

“But... the fight pits? Why would any kind of guide be in the business of fighting lowlifes?”

As he spoke, Gribly led the way around the burned-out shell of an abandoned slum. There before them was a high palisade of wooden stakes, woven tightly together with cords nearly as thick as the thief's wrist: an impenetrable wall to all weapons and most men.

“Look at this, Lauro,” Gribly answered as he led the Wind Strider parallel to the palisade. “Almost a legitimate fortress within the Dunelord's own domain. There's no better place for someone with the skills we need to hide from the Dunelord's service. You see?!” Towards the end, his voice had to be raised for the other boy to hear him. A thunderous volley of frenzied shouting had suddenly erupted from within the wall. “Quick!” he called over the noise, “the fights must be starting for the night! Let's find an entrance and get in to watch!”

~

Cramped as he was among the hundred or so dirty bodies surrounding one of the smaller fight pits, Gribly couldn't help but grow excited along with every other urchin, slave, and streets-man. The air of this place was foul, but it seeped into one's blood quicker than wine, dulling the senses and quickening the pulse.

This was a place of combat and strife, where the baser instincts of men prevailed. Try as might not to succumb, Gribly liked watching the fights. It wasn't war... it was sport.  He could tell the Lauro felt the same way as he, try to hide it as he might. Glancing to one side, he saw the prince's tightly-drawn face over the head of a short, sour-faced girl who had squeezed between them to watch some minutes before the last duel had ended.

“When'll they start the next fight?” grumbled the girl to herself, pushing her matted mess of auburn hair to one side and shivering. Her clothes were threadbare, and the evening was giving way to a cold desert night. The torches being set up around the edges of each pit weren't enough to warm her. Gribly wondered why she was here- this was certainly no place for a woman of any reputation, much less a girl who looked younger than he was.

“You have something riding on this fight?” Gribly asked her, offhandedly as he could. “If you've bet on Longstrider, you shouldn't even have to watch. I've seen him before- he's likely the best fighter here.”

The girl had ignored him in the beginning, but at his last words she jerked her face upwards at him, eyes wide and face pasty-pale in the dying light. To her side, Lauro finally noticed the conversation and began to watch silently. “Are you sure?” the girl asked, biting her lip.

She'd seemed unhealthy before- now Gribly thought she looked as if she was about to drop dead on the spot. “Pretty sure,” he said, feeling apprehensive.

“Oh Aura,” the girl moaned, turning away from him and hugging herself with skinny arms. The thief saw a glinting tear run down her cheek right before her tangled curtain of hair fell in the way.

“Why, did you bet on Shadow?” Gribly asked, a heavy knot in his throat. “He doesn't stand a chance...” The contestants had been announced at the beginning of the fights, and he had just caught their names as he and Lauro entered the rough-and-tumble interior of the fight pit palisade.

“Not me,” the girl whimpered, “My un... uncle... wh... who I live with...” She was definitely in tears, Gribly could tell... and he thought he knew why.

“What did he bet on this fight?” Lauro asked, interrupting. His voice was strained, and Gribly caught a look in his eyes that told him the prince had guessed the same. Perhaps he wasn't so spoiled after all...

The girl looked up at Lauro fearfully. He obviously intimidated her, and she could barely choke out an answer.

“M... me.”

Suddenly a huge, beefy man with food-encrusted sideburns elbowed his way through the crowd and seized the girl roughly by the arm, dragging her away and cursing.

“Don't ever, ever run off on me again, you hear? Blast you, girl, you little restavek-” but the end of his tirade was cut off as the crowd surrounding the pit began to roar with excitement. The next fight was about to start. Gribly stiffened in shock as the man turned and stormed away, still swearing, the girl stumbling along in his grip, tearful but silent. In seconds they were lost in the press of the crowd. Restavek. Dirty slang for child slave.

The thief met his new friend's eyes as they were thrust together again, the mob instantly pushing to fill the tiny spot the girl had once stood in. Lauro's expression was white... but not with fear.

“Damnable man,” the Wind Strider hissed, enraged, and twisted around with an effort, intending to rescue the girl despite the pressing mass of people. Gribly stopped him with a fist pressed hard against the youth's chest.

“You can't do anything,” the thief said urgently. “This happens every day here, prince,” he snarled, anger at the senselessness of it all making him fiercer than he intended. He felt like crying or fighting, himself, but he knew it was useless. “Nothing can change that. Not a new ruler, not a new city... not a new hero. Nothing. So don't try! We don't even know her name...”

Lauro turned on him angrily, almost shouting over the noise of the crowd. “Then why are we here, Gribly??? Why are we watching any of this???”

“Because we've almost found what we want!” Gribly yelled.

“How?”

“Watch this fight,” the thief answered, right before the shouts of the crowd gave way to utter silence. “The winner is the one who can guide us to the Inkwell.”

Surprised at the sudden halt in noise, Lauro obeyed Gribly and turned to watch the fire-lit fight pit again. The two combatants had already entered, throwing the crowd into a frenzy. Now they were circling each other warily, waiting for an opening to exploit, and the bystanders were deathly silent in anticipation.

Longstrider was a man of prodigious talent and reputation, Gribly knew. Despite his pity for the nameless girl he'd just met, he knew anyone challenging the fighting legend of Ymeer's underworld was as good as dead. He'd actually even met the man once, when, to his utter surprise, the mysterious fighter had appeared in Murie's shop. In fact, Longstrider was the one who had provided Old Murie with her first sphere of healing balm.

This, among other facts, was a the reason for Gribly searching Longstrider out again, after all his years of keeping away from the seediest sides of Ymeer. If anyone could do what Lauro and Argoz needed, it would be Longstrider.

Swallowing down his unease about the slave girl, he forced himself to watch the fight.

Longstrider was a grizzled man of uncertain age. His hair and beard were doused with gray and cut short. His face reminded Gribly of a man aged beyond his years... or an old man who looked younger than his years... or both. He wasn't sure. The man had on great soft, leather boots, baggy pants, and an open, floppy canvas shirt that was cut off at the shoulders. Not exactly war gear, but Gribly knew from experience how many weapons could be hidden in such an outfit.

The only visible weapons Longstrider carried were the knife strapped to his chest, and the curious short staff he held in both hands, which sported a blade at the end. His face was the very mask of calm, but his eyes spat fire at his ill-fated challenger. Gribly didn't know who Shadow was, but one look at the newcomer told him all he needed to know, as the old street-smarts he had once memorized so well at the fight pits gradually came back to him.

The challenger was swathed in black clothing that was both comfortable and concealing. A mask of dark fabric veiled Shadow's face, and he carried a short, curved scimitar in each hand. This appearance, coupled with the dramatic slinking and sword-flourishing Shadow was doing, convinced Gribly that Longstrider's opponent was all show and little skill.

A few more seconds of tense anticipation followed as the two combatants edged slowly nearer, then apart, then nearer again.

Without warning, Shadow lashed out, leaping across the center of the pit with a high-pitched yell, his swinging blades glowing scarlet in the firelight. The crowd roared with applause, curses, shouts, and general mayhem.

Longstrider was there to meet his challenger, knocking the attack away with his pole-blade and swiftly retaliating. The next few seconds were a barely-discernible blur of sparks and shadows, grunts and calls as the two fighters danced the deadly dance of pit duelists. Shadow weaved and slashed, cut and twirled; Longstrider blocked and evaded, swung and stabbed.

In seconds, the veteran had gained the upper hand. Soon Shadow was being pushed steadily back across the open center of the pit, accumulating a number of painful cuts and harsh bruises inflicted by Longstrider's crude poleaxe. During one of his elaborate spinning maneuvers, the masked challenger had been caught across the neck with the haft of his opponent's weapon, ripping the black fabric and exposing a ragged tuft of longish brown hair.

Finally Shadow made a last-ditch lunge at his enemy, but the Longstrider easily knocked first one, then the other scimitar away, climaxing with a swift blow with the butt of the weapon to his opponent's shoulder. Shadow was thrown on his back so forcefully that he somersaulted and flopped over on one side, vainly struggling to rise under the pain of what was probably a broken collarbone. Longstrider was there in a moment, the blade of his weapon held confidently under his downed enemy's chin.

“KILL! KILL! KILL!” screamed the crowd. Gribly shook his head, and met Lauro's angry eye with a sad shrug. That poor girl is as good as sold.

Suddenly the cheering, hooting, screaming mob fell silent, and Gribly turned back to the pit. Longstrider had drawn back from his opponent with a look of surprise and confusion on his normally placid face.

The force of Shadow's tumble had shaken the mask down from his face.

Shadow wasn't a he... long, disheveled brown hair tumbled down the back of the black robes, and there was no beard... Shadow was a woman.

“What the... what kind of place is this?” Lauro said, disgusted. The crowd, momentarily stunned, erupted into shouts of bloodthirsty vigor again.

“KILL HER! KILL THE WENCH!”

“Blast!” Gribly snarled. “I forgot how much I hated this place!” Any pit fighter who disobeyed the general whims of the spectators usually fell out of favor, and too many such losses could cost a man his life, down here. What in Vast was wrong with that woman, that she had challenged the leading fighter? Gribly doubted even Longstrider would let her live.

But he was wrong. The grizzled fight veteran stepped over the unmasked woman before she could get away, but instead of slaying her he merely stabbed his blade into the ground near her head.

Then he bent down and helped her up.

“At least someone has decency here,” Lauro growled in Gribly's ear.

Breathless from the excitement of the fight and the shock of its finale, the thief only nodded. “C'mon, let's get to the edge of the crowd. We need to catch Longstrider before he leaves the palisade- and that'll be hard enough without all these rabid fanatics swarming around.”

Chapter Fourteen: Fortune Favors Rangers

The winning duelist was not swarmed by the crowd, after all. Gribly and Lauro found him moving slowly along towards the gate-like palisade exit from shadow to shadow, shunned by the crowds. They would have missed him, Gribly knew, if it hadn't been for the fact that he was supporting the injured Shadow on his arm.

“Hoi, Longstrider!” called the thief, jogging to catch up with the pair before they left the palisade. The fighter halted, helped Shadow to stand upright, and looked back grimly at the thief.

“What d'you want, boy?” the fighter snarled. “Throw stones at me like yer half-wit friends, an' I swear I'll cut yer throat!”

“No, it's not like that at all,” Lauro interrupted, coming up behind his friend. “We need your help, and we're willing to pay...”

It was the wrong thing to say. Longstrider grimaced and began to walk away with Shadow on his arm. “I've already been 'elping too much, lad... an' look where it's gotten me? Hated by th' idiot mob, 'is what.” Another second, and he was gone in the shadows beyond the palisade.

“But you knew Old Murie,” Gribly protested. “I thought...” he trailed off as the shuffling feet of the two wearied fighters halted immediately.

“Old Murie?” came a voice from the darkness.

“Yes, Old Murie,” Gribly repeated, relieved, “she raised me.”

Silence. Then...

“Follow me- you an' yer friend, too. We may 'ave t' talk.”

“Thank you, Longstrider,” Gribly said, not wanting to kill his chance.

“Byorne,” the man said, stepping back into the torchlight and extending his hand. “You kin' call me Byorne.”

~

The silent fight champion led the thief, the prince, and the woman Shadow past the garbage hills and through the slums, to where he and others like him made their quarters. It was not much more than a wide back-alley walled off by several wooden huts and a lean-to, but it was cleaner and snugger than the majority of the city. Along the way, Gribly and Lauro told him their needs, but he made no reply.

When the companions were seated around a low-burning bonfire, in the middle of a clearing between the shelters, and when the injured woman had been laid down on a rough blanket nearby, Longstrider- or, as he now wished to be called, apparently, Byorne- disappeared. It was several minutes before he returned, during which almost no noise reached the ears of the three silent folk by the fire.

When he came, he was dressed in a weather-beaten green coat thrown over what looked like hunting garb; a curious contraption weighed down his belt, and a dull, well-used longsword was in his hand. Two men in similar array followed closely behind him, hoods masking their faces.

Lauro, volatile as ever, immediately leaped up with sword in hand. Gribly snorted.

“If he'd wanted to kill us or capture us, he could've done it a long time ago, Lauro.” The prince didn't acknowledge the comment, but kept staring daggers at Byorne.

“Relax, soldier,” chuckled the grizzled fighter, stabbing his sword into the hard-packed ground by the bonfire and sitting heavily down beside it with a thud. “It's bain quite th' long year since I picked up this ole thing. T'aint even sharp.”

Muttering under his breath, Lauro sat down again uneasily. “Then why have you brought it, and who are these men with you?”

Byorne chuckled. “Yuh should know yerself, m' prince. Yer from Vastion, aren't yuh? Yuh mean t' tell me yuh haven't seen a Kingsman before?” Reaching inside his coat, he removed several loops of silver chain with a heavy round medallion on the end. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it over the tops of the flames to Lauro, who caught it deftly and stared at it in utter astonishment.

Lying prone on her blanket, Shadow suddenly lifted her head in interest. One of Byorne's companions seemed to notice her only then, and was soon by her side. In a few minutes he had treated her broken bone and was hard at work constructing a rough litter. After a moment, his fellow disappeared back into the night.

Gribly could bear the strange silence no more. “Well,” he asked, “what is it, Lauro?”

The prince opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “It's a white hawk: the symbol of my father's realm.” The prince's face was raised now, and the firelight sent ghostly patterns across his serious face as he scrutinized first Byorne, then his companions. “These men are Vastic Rangers.”

Gribly stayed silent for as long as he could, but when the ranger and the prince did nothing more than stare at each other intently, he had to speak.

“And a ranger is...?”

Byorne broke of the staring match and smiled roguishly. “Scouts, mostly. Spies, of'n as not. Thieves, sometimes, jus' like you. But we've ties to th' king of Vastion...”

-“Not very strong ties...” Lauro mused sourly-

“...But ties none th' less,” Byorne countered. “The separation 'tween Vastion an' th' order of rangers is significant nowadays, but 'twas stronger of old.”

“So which are you?” Gribly asked, “Spy? Scout? Soldier? Thief?”

Byorne grinned, tugging absently at a silver ring in his ear. “Fightin' champion, is what... and I don't think yuh'll deny it?”

“Certainly not,” Gribly said, “But I still don't see how that relates you to Old Murie... and you said that was the reason you'd help us, didn't you?”

Byorne frowned. “Didn't th' ole girl wear her white-hawk medal 'round the shop, boy?”

Gribly's jaw dropped open in surprise- partly at Murie being called something as familiar as “ole girl,” but mostly because he suddenly understood what Byorne was talking about.

“She did have a medallion like that! Wait... are you saying she was a ranger?”

Byorne considered the question a moment before answering. “Well, she was an odd 'un, Murie was... not 'xactly one of us... but she knew us better 'n most...” his voice drifted off, and for the first time that night Gribly realized that somehow, the news of Old Murie's death was not a shock to the ranger.

The morose silence that followed lasted more than a minute, when Lauro finally ventured to break it.

“So you'll help us, Byorne Longstrider? The fate of Vastion could be in your hands.” Gribly thought the prince's voice sounded wrong somehow, but he couldn't tell exactly why. The gray-haired ranger stared intently at Lauro from across the fire, then nodded slowly.

“Aye, I will. But a price'll have t' be paid... Dunelord Ymorio 'asn't made life h'easy these past years.”

At that moment, two things happened simultaneously. Shadow, silent up until now, struggled to rise, her mouth open, about to speak. At the same time, the third ranger reappeared and whispered something into Byorne's ear that made him frown darkly.

“Show me,” he urged in a low voice, rising smoothly from his seat by the fire. His ally nodded and stalked away. Byorne followed without a word.

Gribly stared in curiosity and confusion after the two departing figures, who were soon lost in the shadows. Lauro muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath, and when the thief turned to raise an eyebrow at him, he sucked in his breath with surprise instead.

“Shadow?” he exclaimed, “Are you all right?”

The woman was trembling, but not from fear or embarrassment... rather, from anger. Gribly was worried, and something prickled in the back of his mind. Did he know this woman?

“My brother,” the injured woman spat, but Gribly barely heard her. The word uncle had sprung into his mind.

“What in...” the thief began, but suddenly there was a loud crash from the shadows at the far end of the rangers' hideout, followed by sounds of a tussle and loud cursing in a voice Gribly thought he recognized. He shook his head in astonishment at Shadow's anger-twisted face. “It can't be...”

Suddenly Byorne and his companion were back, dragging a large, groaning man between them. Byorne wore a smug smile, but the other ranger was snarling and wore an ugly bruise over one eye.

“Well, well, well,” sneered Lauro, standing in tandem with Gribly as they both recognized the rangers' captive, “If it isn't the man who bets on the lives of children...”

The burly man looked up with two streaming punch-swollen eyes, but his hateful glare went straight past the two friends to rest on Shadow, who stared back with equal venom.

“Had t' knock 'is two friends out an' leave 'em behind,” Byorne called across the bonfire to Shadow. “Ee kept askin' for yuh, so I figured bringin' 'im couldn't hurt... now.”

“No... I can't thank you enough,” the injured woman-warrior said, voice shaking with emotion before she could control herself enough to address the captured man. “I can't believe you were stupid enough to come looking for me, Crutus,” she told him, lip curling in disgust.

Crutus. Gribly searched his mind for to scratch the itch in his memory. He knew that name... where was it from?

“I should have died back there,” Shadow continued, “if these men weren't decent enough to help me. Were you wanting to get rid of me, too- like you did to my daughter? She was fourteen, you fool! You knew I couldn't win that fight! Where is she? Where is she?” The woman was so enraged that she tried to rise again, failing to succeed with a sharp cry of pain.

Daughter... uncle... brother...So this man the rangers had captured really was the one who had bet his niece on Shadow winning the fight against Longstrider... and Shadow was the girl's mother!

“Burn in Ker-” Crutus began, but Byorne's companion cuffed him hard in the side of the head, cutting off his oath. The black-jowled ruffian spat out a tooth, snarling. “The poor l'ttle urchin's already gone, Shele.”

“So 'Shadow' has a name,” Lauro mused from the side, still frowning irritatedly at Crutus.     “What exactly is going on here?” Gribly interrupted, trying desperately to figure out how he knew the man.

“I owe this brute everything,” Shadow- or Shele- said bitterly. “After my husband died... I'm  a thief, not a warrior... the others wouldn't help me... and now he's made me fight, because I can...” she fell into a fit of coughing and flopped back down on her rough litter, cursing through her pain. The third ranger frowned, but still said nothing.

With the lost girl's mother admitting defeat, Crutus began to laugh darkly. “There ain't no knowin' where the ol' pickpocket I lost 'er to'll take 'er,” he said. “In a city so big? Who knows?” his laugh ended abruptly as Byorne and the other ranger dropped him face-first in the dirt.

The old pickpocket?!?

Snapping his fingers, Gribly nearly leaped in the air. “You're lying, scum!” he laughed in Crutus's face as the fat man scrambled to his feet. “I know you... you guard the pickpocket's wine-house! That's where the girl is!”

“You know where my daughter is?” exclaimed Shadow.

“You know what he means?” Byorne said at the same time.

“Ha! I think I follow you!” Lauro added.

Excited, Gribly reached into his satchel, which still hung at his side, and removed a handful of golden dune-coins, much like the ones he had insisted he didn't have to the guards of the fight pit alley.

Shadow's eyes grew wide as the thief leaped right over the bonfire, Sand Striding to aid his gymnastics, and knelt next to her in the same movement. “What are those for?” she whispered quietly.

“I know where your daughter is, Shadow... er, Shele,” Gribly said, “And I have the money to set her free.”

~

One ranger took Shadow-Shele immediately to find and reclaim her daughter. The other was tasked with binding and gagging Crutus and his companions somewhere where the bronzeguard would be likely to pick him up on their morning rounds. Both were told to take care of their business swiftly, then rendezvous with Byorne, Gribly, and Lauro at Blast Palace.

“By the time your men reach it,” the prince assured Byorne, “We'll have been there at least an hour- more than long enough to convince Argoz to accept the rangers as an official part of Ymeer's soldiery- just as you want.”

“Indeed,” the weathered veteran mused. After giving low-voiced instructions to his two men, he turned back to Lauro. “Well, young Striders... what're we waitin' for?”

Nodding silently, the prince turned to Gribly. “Lead the way, friend,” he said.

The Sand Strider could tell it was an effort for Lauro to unbend his pride enough to admit he didn't know the way.

“Of course.” Winking roguishly, Gribly turned and loped off into the darkness quickly. The ranger and the prince following behind.

~

The night-guard on the ramparts overlooking Ymeer's main gate jolted awake at the muffled curses and rustlings that suddenly burst out below. Shaking his head to clear it, the man yawned widely and nervously hefted his bronze spear. Was he imagining things? The captain of the watch would beat him to a pulp if he...

No, he wasn't imagining things... there was someone or something thrashing around on his side of the gate!

The guard was an experienced man, else he would never have gotten away with dozing on duty for so long. He knew rushing down the wide-hewn stairs would expose him to whoever was at the gate before he could get a glimpse of the miscreant... therefore he crept stealthily to the edge of the battlements, bent over, and hazarded a glimpse down over the steep drop to the shadowy sand below.

What he saw almost made him tip forward and fall right off the rampart to his death. It took him a moment to comprehend, and another to actually believe. When he did, he quickly rose and ran to the top of the wall stairs descending them as quickly as possible, spear clutched in the crook of his arm. It took all his composure not to laugh when he reached the bottom, from sheer confusion at the humorous oddity he witnessed.

The commotion inside the gate came from a hefty, red-faced man, bound and gagged tightly. He hung from a chain twined 'round his bloated stomach that stretched up behind him, where it was secured to the thick wood of the gate by several deeply-embedded crossbow quarrels.

The night-guard shook his head, staring up at the enraged captive, who fumed and shook, trying with all his might to break loose... without success.

“What in Vast...” he wondered.

The gagged man saw him then, and immediately fell silent and still. The guard cautiously checked all the surrounding area for any sign of the culprits (cursing himself inwardly for not doing so sooner), but no sign presented itself.

Turning back to the entangled captive, the guard saw something glinting in the moonlight, hanging from the man's neck. Warily, lest the ruffian lash out at him if he got too near, he put out his spear, lifting the crude necklace with the weapon's tip. The light fell on the design engraved on a large silver medallion.

It was a white hawk.

~

The old pickpocket was slightly worried that Crutus had not returned that night, but he let the other brutish guards of his wine-house leave for home at the usual time.

“Prob'ly jus' off getting' hisself drunk again,” the old man grumbled to himself, moving awkwardly down one of the darker corridors of his establishment on dual crutches. As he passed a large, heavy oaken door, the sounds of piteous weeping could be heard coming from just inside. Frowning, the old pickpocket rapped hard on the wood twice with his crutch, calling out, “Shut yer trap, girl!”

The weeping stopped abruptly.

Chuckling meanly, pickpocket-turned-slave-owner turned to hobble off again. Without warning, a gloved hand shot out of the dark, roughly slamming him into the sandstone wall and pinning him by the throat. Gargling in shock and fear, the old pickpocket dropped both crutches and clutched vainly at the hand that strangled him.

“If you ever want to move again,” growled a low man's voice, “You will open that door and release the girl immediately... in the name of the King of Vastion.”

~

Gribly and his companions were two-thirds of the way to Blast Palace when it happened.

RUN, said a voice in his head. It was the voice of Cleric Argoz... Dunelord Argoz... the nymph.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered quietly, increasing his pace to a jog. Lauro looked at him like he was crazy.

“Hear what? It's silent as a grave out here.”

TIME IS RUNNING OUT. The voice called. Gribly cursed under his breath.

“Something's wrong,” he told the others. “Something's... happening. I can't tell what, but we need to get back to the palace... now.”

Lauro opened his mouth, but Byorne cut him off with a curt nod.

“Let's go,” the old ranger said. “Run first, questions later.”

And they did.

~

Dunelord Argoz met them at the gates of Blast Palace with ten of the silverguard at his back, bearing full provisions for a journey of many leagues.

“What's all this?” Lauro questioned the nymph.

“Have you found a guide?” Argoz asked Gribly, ignoring the prince. “Your quest has run out of time.”

“Here,” Byorne said grimly, stepping forward. Quickly Gribly explained all that had happened, and the Dunelord took it all in hungrily, acknowledging the ranger with a curt nod.

“You must all set forth at once,” he said. “Here are ten of my best warriors... they will replace any of your hired men. Visions have come to me... war rises in the south, and a terrible evil is preparing to assault my nymph brethren dwelling in the Inkwell. You have no time to lose!”

“Ten silverguard can't hold a candle t' two of my rangers,” Byorne said, grimmer than ever.

“Nevertheless, you are all out of time,” Argoz insisted. “I will agree to whatever demands you require, and your men will hold high favor with me when they come... only leave, all of you... this very moment!”

A tense silence followed, during which all eyes turned unexpectedly towards Lauro.

“You're the one who started this,” Gribly told the prince. Lauro ignored him, musing quietly for a minute, then spoke.

“We will go before the sun rises.”

“Now,”  Argoz countered.

“No,” Lauro said. “First, I will visit the Highfast Shrine. Any help I can get, I'll need later on... even from the Aura.”

“Then you will go?”

“Then we will...” Lauro confirmed, “But only then.”

Chapter Fifteen: Sand Striding Stone

“Just our luck,” grumbled Byorne, spitting a wad of the dark green leaves he chewed onto the dirt. “Looks like the mountainside just broke off and tumbled down here in pieces. The road’s blocked, for sure.” The Longstrider looked every inch a ranger-guide. He was tall, gray and grizzled, wrapped in his battered, forest-green cloak and sporting a small silver ring in his left ear.

When pressed for more information, he had revealed that he was from the dirtlands directly south of Blast, on the edge of the Highwood. He smelt like a garbage heap and talked like one too, most of the time, but Gribly didn’t complain- he’d found the way here, hadn’t he? Leading ten of Argoz's new silverguard warriors here all those leagues from Ymeer, not to mention a Vastic Prince and a street thief who smelled no better than he did, spoke of the man’s skill at path-finding… and the immense reward he’d been promised from Dunelord Argoz to aid the two adventurers.

“Is there no other way to the Arches?” Lauro spoke up, brow furrowed as he tried to find a solution to their dilemma. They had followed the main road North from Ymeer until it veered sharply West to avoid the mountain range known as the Spiral. There Byorne had taken them off the beaten path and through a windy stretch of white sand in the Northeast.

He had soon located the nearly abandoned roads used by the merchants and seafarers in the bygone age when Vastion had ruled the entire continent. They had picked their way among those dusty, rocky roads until they came to be where they were now: a nearly-forgotten mountain pass in the Spiral. Here they had been foiled: the pass was blocked with sandstone boulders that seemed to have fallen years before. Their time to solve the dilemma was limited: in the desert they had been attacked by bandits more than once, and once they had come upon a band of Vastic soldiers with their throats cut and burned to a crisp.

“Not likely,” responded Byorne, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin. He did that so often Gribly wondered that he didn’t rub it all right off his face. It was a sign of annoyance; on the rare occasion where their guide felt intimidated or scared, he rubbed his spiky gray hair instead. “I know all the paths from here to the Greenwood to the Greyfeld and back again. I know every mountain from Ymeer to the Blackwood, and if this isn’t the only pass within an hundred miles, I’m boarbait.”

Gribly held back a snicker at the ranger’s heavy accent and slang. His own speech was hardly better, even with Old Murie’s instruction back in the old days. What made him laugh was that language of any kind annoyed Lauro. Lauro, with his cultured tongue and careful words…

“Fine then,” the prince conceded, gesturing helplessly towards the pile of debris blocking their path, “Is there any possibility of moving all this out of our way?”

“None I can see,” shrugged Byorne. “From the looks of these here rocks, they’ve been here for years and years. Isn’t no way through ‘em that I can see.”

Up until now Gribly had been paying only partial attention to the conversation, but when a sudden thought struck him he raised his hand like a child in school.

“What is it?” inquired Lauro, suppressing exasperation for the thief’s antics.

“I think… I think I might be able to help, at least partially. You can too, Lauro, if what I’ve got in mind works. Hear me out?” Byorne shrugged noncommittally again. Lauro raised an eyebrow and inclined his head. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he grinned, and quickly outlined his plan for carving a path through their obstacle. At the end of his animated speech, an expectant smile tugged at the prince of Vastion’s mouth. Even the rugged ranger wore a grin of anticipation.

“You’ve got one blaze of a head on those shoulders,” chuckled Byorne, cracking his knuckles. “Let’s give it a bleedin' shot and see what happens, eh?”

~

Gribly stood less than a foot from the mass of boulders and chunks of cliff piled in his way. He was flanked by Lauro, Byorne, and eight silver-armored guards, each with their swords drawn. The guards carried round, gilded shields in addition, ready to move on the thief’s command. Two of their brethren stayed behind with the pack animals the group had brought to carry their supplies and the horses they’d all ridden. Everyone wore the same expression: tense expectation.

Stifling any last-minute doubts, the novice Sand Strider leaned forward and pressed his hands softly against the large boulder directly in front of him. All or nothing, he told himself. Now or never. Gathering his thoughts and directing them to that barren place in his mind that gave him control over the desert around him, he gently pressed the hard surface.

The surface of the boulder trembled, growing less and less solid with every moment he kept contact with it. The effect rippled outward along the surface of the debris, like a pool of water that has had a pebble dropped in its middle. The whole face of the rock-slide shimmered and swayed… ever so slightly, but it was enough.

“Quick!” Gribly grunted to his compatriots, “Hack at it!” For that was his plan: to have the larger men dig a tunnel through the obstacle while he kept the sandstone soft. It worked exceptionally well, the prince and his nine men sweeping thick portions of the manipulated substance away with their swords and shields.

The men on either side of him strode forward, a scything wall of metal blades that slashed the sandstone and flung it aside. Red-brown gunk splattered everywhere as the warriors each foraged forward, carving a living tunnel through the moving rock. When they had pushed forward five feet or so, Gribly was left holding onto a thin pillar of the stone- all that was left of the boulder after the men had tunneled all around it.

“Out, out, out!” the thief yelled, and out they ran, stumbling and holding their weapons over their heads as if they expected the newly dug tunnels to collapse on their heads as they fled. Nothing of the sort happened; Gribly let go of the sandstone and it lapsed into its former hardness.

“Here’s the test,” Lauro murmured behind him, out of breath. Gribly nodded- if the tunnel collapsed, the plan was probably no good, but if it held…

The assembled company held its breath. Nothing stirred. The rudely hacked passage only extended one man-height into the rock-slide, with the feeble bit of stone he had held on to for his sand striding.

Gribly walked over to it and kicked it with his foot, nudging it with a touch more of Striding. It collapsed into dust, leaving standing the space they’d hollowed out: five feet deep, ten feet wide, and six feet high. He walked into it and punched the ceiling with his fist.

“Tryin’ to get yourself killed?” came Byorne’s rough voice from the outside. The thief ignored him.

“Looks safe,” he called out to the group. It was obvious from their faces that most of them (besides Lauro) didn’t trust him, so he began to jump up and down, hollering at the top of his lungs and pounding on the walls and ceiling of the hollow with all his might. Nothing happened. At last he stopped and looked out helplessly to the prince and the ranger. “You’re the big shot here, Prince Lauro. See this? Tell them it works!”

The wind strider wiped some of the gritty grime from the tunneling off his face and turned to the reluctant silverguard. “He’s right, and I as your commander will not tolerate cowardice. Let us proceed.” The prince stomped into the hollow with Gribly without even checking to ensure he was being followed, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The silverguard followed him, to a man.

“All right,” he said in a very un-prince-like manner, “Let’s get digging!”

Smiling, Gribly pressed his hands to the back of the hollow and began to Sand Stride. “Y’know, Lauro, you almost sounded normal when you said that.”

~

It was a long, tedious day of work before the group had carved a serviceable tunnel through the sandstone, but in the end it was done. The two men who stayed with the mounts took their turns as well, so that by the time they were through all but Gribly had had some sort of break. The process was slow and demanding, like wading through tar. Meanwhile, the Sand Strider’s powers began to take a toll on him.

His arms grew leaden and heavy, his head buzzed, and he began to see stars. Just when he thought he was going to pass out and make a fool of himself, a slash from Byorne close to his left scooped the sandstone right out from under his hands.  He stumbled forward and skinned his knee as his palms smacked the ground in front of him. A bright light blinded his eyes used to the red dark of the tunnel.

For a few seconds he stayed where he was, fallen forward with his eyes squeezed shut. Then he looked up.

He had stumbled out on the far side of the enormous rock-slide. In front of him, the old stone road ran between two cliffs, sloping gently down for miles upon miles until it reached a glittering mass of water far away. The sea. All around him the silverguard and Byorne sat, crouched, or just threw themselves down to rest. The old ranger pulled himself over to Gribly on his hands, grinning.

“You made it, sonny. You’ll make a name for yourself yet.” The former fight-pit champion spat to the side and called loudly and rudely for Lauro. The prince came a minute later from his turn watching the mounts, he and the coal-skinned warrior who’d been with him. They led the animals out to meet their recovering companions, and the company proceeded down the cracked, mossy stones into the distance.

As they marched along, Gribly wheedled a drink of water from Byorne, who’d become the group’s unofficial cook and rations tyrant. Uncapping the bulging skin, he put it to his lips and gulped the cool, refreshing liquid down like a famine.

“Water tastes best in the desert,” Lauro commented wryly, the look on his face telling Gribly he was thinking of his earlier, harrowing journey up from the south that had ended with his collapsing and Gribly’s rescuing him.

“Sure does,” the thief warbled through the clear wonderfulness in his mouth. He swished and swallowed, then passed the water-skin to his friend. In like manner it moved through the company until everyone was refreshed.

In the hour or so of silent walking and sporadic riding that followed, Gribly took in the sights around him with the vigor of a street boy who had never seen anything other than desert in his life. He’d heard of mountains and he'd seen mountains from a distance, but here he was walking among them, with the Endless Ocean itself shining off on the horizon. It was as if he’d stepped out of the tunnel into an entirely new world.

The sandstone cliffs of the desert soon became higher and harder and grayer, until they stretched up on either side in high, jagged walls that became the mountains themselves. Their peaks were so high Gribly couldn’t see them against the sun; they dwarfed even the highest tower of Ymeer. The road Byorne intended to lead them on had been carved between two of these mountains in ages past, and during the height of Vastion’s reign over the land it had been well-traveled and paved.

Now the stones were almost all gone, leaving the dirt and rocky ground to show where the road had once been. Pillars stood on either side every few miles, most broken or toppled. The going was so rough that the horses had to be led over it most of the time, and the companions only rode for short spurts on flat ground that had fared better and had more paving stones.

During one of these spurts Gribly found himself astride one of the smaller horses, riding at the head of their small column with Byorne beside him, a look of wistful recollection on the ranger's grim face. Byorne caught the thief staring and raised an eyebrow.

“You… Have you been where we’re going before?” Gribly asked, fumbling to explain himself. Byorne smiled, a strange sight in his usually cynical face.

“Aye,” the ranger replied. His mind was in some happy memory. “’Tis from here I came, long afore’ my wanderin’ days. I’m half-nymph, If you can believe it.”

“What?!” Gribly gaped.

“Aye,” Byorne repeated again. “Not many know it, but what no one knows is how’abouts I got to livin’ like I do.” He fell silent, and it was some time before Gribly had the courage to inquire further.

“My father was one of the Zain,” explained Byorne eventually. “They’re a tribe o’ water-nymphs that live by the bay which the Prince here calls the Inkwell.”

“That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it?” the boy asked, recalling plans made with Lauro and Dunelord Argoz the week before.

“Sure is. The prince hopes to get their help. He plans on gettin’ one o’ their boats to take him to the Grymclaw.”

“Oh. And… will you be coming with us?”

“I’ve come this far, haven’t I?” Another silence. Gribly’s thighs hurt from even the small amount of riding they had done that day. Their desert journey the week before had taught him to ride, but not expertly by any means.

“Well,” he began after a while, “I suppose all this’ll be more than worth it, once we meet Wanderfellow or whatever his name is.”

“The Aura?” Byorne raised an eyebrow. “His name was Wanderwillow in the old tales from my father.”

“He’s right.” Lauro had ridden up to join them. “Wanderwillow the Wise, Aura of the  nymphs. He is said to be present in his chosen abode on the Grymclaw, where any who are worthy may speak with him.”

“That’s saying something, for sure,” Byorne observed, “Seein’ as the Grymclaw isn’t the easiest place to get to… or live in…”

“Indeed,” Lauro nodded. Both he and Byorne seemed subdued by the mere mention of the place. Gribly had seen a musty old map Dunelord Argoz had given them a glimpse of back in the city- it showed the Grymclaw to be a barren, curving strip of land jutting off of Vast’s eastern coast. He couldn’t imagine what was so terrifying about it, but before he could ask Byorne cried out.

Chapter Sixteen: Linolen

“There they be, youngsters! The Arches of Linolen! Gateway to the Inkwell!” Their guide had climbed the next ridge ahead of them on his stallion, and now he was looking back to them, pointing and gesturing energetically. The thief and the prince spurred their mounts forward to join him, the mounted silverguard not far behind.

Cresting the hill, Gribly looked out on the most impressive sight he’d seen since the Highfast Cathedral. Down the slope and no more than a half mile ahead the cliffs opened wider to form a clearing amid the sheer mountainsides, and in that clearing were ruins.

What had once been a proud fortress was now a forest of moss-ridden pillars and crumbling stone walls connected to nothing. The scarlet sun dipped low beyond them, bathing the ruins in a majestic, eerie light. Half-toppled towers-of-the-guard blazed orange in the sunset, wisps of grass blowing in the wind out their windows, and knobbly olive trees pushing outward at their bases.

As wonder-struck as he was, it was not the decrepit castle that awed the thief; it was the Arches. There was no doubt it was them- huge monuments at the entrance and exit of the space between the mountain-cliffs, shaped from a darker sort of the precious marble-sand Gribly supposed the ancient Sand Striders to have used in Ymeer’s cathedral. There were four arches at each end of the clearing, and strange runes were set in the sides and at the peak of every one. Statues of haughty, dignified nymphs in flowing robes and holding tridents stood at the very top, one to each arch.

“The Wave Striders and Frost Striders of the nymph tribes,” explained Byorne as the company passed quietly under the titanic arcs, awed into total silence. Seeming determined to break the ominous spell, the ranger continued.

“There are three tribes who live in the Inkwell or on the edge o’ the Endless Ocean. My father was from the southern tribe- the Zain, I’ve told you before. They live not a day’s march from here, at a port they’ve owned since ‘long as anyone can remember. Aside them there be, oh, two more, if memory serves me. Treele live in the North and a bit farther East, on the edge of the Ocean. Then, even more northerly than that, you’ll get Reethe. Reethe live on enormous clods o’ Ice even bigger than the icebergs o’ the Treele.”

“Complicated,” Gribly managed, staring up at the arch above him and wondering tentatively if he could Sand Stride with it. He hardly dared try. Maybe tomorrow. He doubted it, somehow- everything seemed too sacred and serious to meddle with.

“For sure, for sure,” Byorne agreed, smiling a gap-toothed grin. He rubbed his stubbled chin. “See them statues on the far side?”

“No, I’m not tall enough. The ruins are blocking them.”

“No matter. Anyhow, they’re bound to be Reethe Frost Striders. They don’t stride water… just ice. They’re the strongest, or they wouldn’t a’ be able to live where they do.”

“Something I’ve never understood,” Lauro commented as they moved out from under the arches and into the ruins, “is why the Inkwell is so cold, almost eternally in the winter season; yet only a few leagues to the west is the Blackwood, where the nymphs live. Winter is normal there, or so I’ve heard.”

“Ah,” Byorne breathed wisely. “That’d be the Grymclaw, for sure. They say that a great demon imprisoned Wanderwillow the Wise there, thousands on thousands o’ years ago. That’s why ‘tis so hard to find head or tail of the Aura. I’d’ve thought ye was told that in Vastion, where so many clerics still be.”

“We’ve only got four or five in the kingdom,” Lauro responded, his voice a bit grim. “And my father is one of the few who still remember the old ways.”

“Did the King say anything ‘bout the demon?”

“No,” the prince sulked, frowning. Gribly thought he saw a gleam of resentment. “But I’m willing to risk it, if it means meeting one of the Aura and restoring Vastion.”

But you don’t really believe any of it, do you? Gribly thought to himself. He wasn’t sure he believed it himself, but anything was better than running from this or that Dunelord or sorcerer back in Blast.

Thinking of that got his mind back to the strange man who’d called himself a Pit Strider. When he asked Lauro and Byorne about it, they said there was no such creature- at least not for hundreds of years- in all of Vast, and the prince began cursing the dark days his realm was undergoing. The thief tuned out the tirade and retreated deep into himself and thought vengeful thoughts against Old Murie’s mysterious murderer until the group halted on the northern edge of the ruins.

It was later, but still light enough to see clearly when the party dismounted in a smoothly paved circle of stones between three mossy stone ramparts. A colonnade ran around the length of the circle, but it was full of gaps and mostly destroyed. The fourth wall had fallen and now lay like a giant’s bridge into what had formerly been a dining-hall or throne room, or both; before the fortress had fallen into disrepair.

When the horses and mules were fed and tied and Byorne had gone off to find fresh water (the half-breed could find a streamlet or spring in the desert if he wanted- so Gribly thought), Lauro endeavored once more to teach the Sand Strider how to wield a sword. He’d taught Gribly the basics during their trip across Blast, but the thief had no great love for fighting any more than he had for reading or cooking.

“Up, Gribly, up!” called the prince, throwing a quick stroke at the boy’s shoulder with one of the sturdy olive-branches the pair was using for weapons. “Keep your stick up to block!”

Gribly blocked, but not very well. Lauro seemed to delight in bruising and battering him every which way- just to embarrass him, the thief was sure. Fending off a lazy series of slashes from the older youth, he backed up again and again until he had come to the edge of the stone circle.

“Come on,” the prince groaned, after Gribly made a particularly awkward attempt at parrying and had his branch smacked forcibly out of his hand. “You’re not even trying. Now look- it’s done like this, and this, and this! (‘Ow! Ow! Stoppit!’) No, I won’t.” He sounded like a pompous little nobleman’s brat… which was exactly what he was. “At least not until you’ve learned it right.”

Gribly protested loudly, but to no avail. Even the normally impassive silver-armored guards began to chuckle to one another at his expense, gathering around at safe distances to watch his humiliation progress. Infuriated by their throaty, foreign-sounding laughs, the thief decided to strike back at Lauro… but in his own way.

Moaning softly to keep up his whining charade, he stumbled drunkenly to where his sword lay at the foot of one of the colonnade’s pillars. Stooping stiffly to reach it, he noticed some sand at its foot: perfect for what he had in mind.

“Get going!” Lauro fairly shouted at him, irked to distraction by his complaints. “We’ll never finish at this rate!”

“We’re already done!” snarled Gribly, whirling around and hacking at his opponent with the olive branch. Lauro lifted his own to stop the blow, and as the two heavy sticks clacked together, sand that had been caked on Gribly’s with a stealthy bit of sand striding came off and exploded in the prince’s face.

“Agh!” Lauro cried. To his credit he didn’t drop the stick, but he turned his head away blinking profusely. It gave the thief all the time he needed to thwack the prince in the stomach and sweep him violently off his legs. “Cheat!” fumed Lauro, writhing as he tried to clear his vision. Gribly moved to hit him again- but he’d forgotten about Lauro’s Wind Striding. The prince smacked his feet against the pavement, pushing him up into Gribly before the boy could react. They fell to the ground as a pair and the older lad quickly wrestled him into submission. The wind strider had his fist drawn back in a punch when a sharp, commanding voice called out.

“What are you, bleeding little boys who fight in the schoolyard? Get up out of the dust, little prince! You too, urchin!” It was Byorne, returned from his trip with a skin of water placed beside him, looking red and angry.

Both youths separated sulkily. The half-nymph treated them to a lengthy, profanity-laden speech worthy of both parts of his blood, before setting them both to gather wood for a fire while he cooked a mountainhorn he’d caught by the spring he’d found. The watching silverguard retreated beyond the smooth circle and sat quietly together tossing dice, unwilling to provoke the feisty old ranger to anger.

Gribly went about his chore with a torn lip and a throbbing pride, but he was used to such tongue-lashings. Lauro, it was obvious, was not, but he bore it remarkably well. It’s a rare old man who can tame the prince himself and make him behave, he thought. Perhaps King Larion was the same, and that was why Lauro obeyed. It wouldn’t surprise him; despite Byorne’s rough, uncultured exterior, he had a sort of chiseled, natural dignity the street-thief from Ymeer had never seen in a real nobleman. Any country’d be lucky to have Byorne as their king. He’d do it right, even if he did it too harsh.

With such thoughts in mind, Gribly was moving briskly as he dumped his bundle of dry, shriveled olive branches and bark at the old ranger’s feet and shook hands with Lauro, who was done first. The prince seemed to have come to a similar conclusion, and even though he wouldn’t speak to the other boy his attitude was civil enough.

~

“I hope you’ll both act like men, now that you’re on a man’s mission,” Byorne cautioned over a low fire after dinner that evening. Gribly nodded reluctantly, as did Lauro- Byorne had conjured some excellent mountainhorn soup from what little ingredients he had, and it had gone a long way towards improving everyone’s spirits. After drawing straws it was decided that Byorne would take the first watch that night, then Lauro, then Gribly in punishment. After the young Sand Strider would follow three of the silverguard. The boys would each take double shifts in punishment for their fighting- a prospect neither liked but both agreed to obey.

It was remarkable, Gribly mused as he wrapped himself for the hundredth time in the worn traveler’s blankets brought from Ymeer’s finest markets before the company left. Truly remarkable how that old half-breed can lead us all. Before he could think on it further, his tiredness caught up with him and his mind faded into dreamless sleep.

Once in the next few hours he awoke briefly. All he saw was Lauro, perched at the top of a broken pillar he’d Wind-Strode up to, watching the stars. Laying back, he slept once more.

Chapter Seventeen: White Blade, Black Night

Peace, blissful peace. Gribly slept without disturbance, oblivious to the world and undreaming.

Then came a dream, and his world, the world, was never the same.

He was looking down into a deep pool. Dark water lapped his feet. Leaning over, he glanced in. His reflection was there, but it looked changed. His face was longer, leaner, and paler. Dark lines ran under his eyes, and a shock of dark hair shadowed his brow. It was him… but harder. Angrier. Spiteful. His good characteristics (heaven knew he didn’t have many) were submerged, while his evil traits were foremost and dominating.

All that from a face. His face.

“What have I become?” he mouthed silently. But the face in the pool… it didn’t move. Is it not me after all? He wondered, leaning forward even more to see the image clearer. Suddenly the spiteful face in the pool began to laugh.

“Ah… ha! Ha! Ha! Hah…….” He could hear it! Startled, Gribly tipped forward and fell in.

Water splashed his face…

~

…And he woke up. His face and shirt were drenched in cold water from a slashed water-skin. The mule that was carrying it had been braying madly and leaped over his body to keep from trampling him as he slept. The water had sloshed out and spilled on him, forcing him out of his dreams.

“What the-” he sputtered, sitting up. It was deep night, and other than the maniac donkey charging off into the shadowy ruins there was no other sound. He shook of the unsettling nature of his sleep and tried to clear his mind. Was this Lauro’s idea of a joke? Was the prince trying to get back at him for cheating during their sparring match? “This isn’t funny, scumface!” Looking around and up to the pillar where he’d last seen the older boy, Gribly realized with a start that he couldn’t find him.

Deciding against more insults (it’d risk waking Byorne- something neither of them would want), he got disgustedly up. Intending to surprise Lauro, the thief crept around the back way and into the abandoned, roofless guards’ chambers where the company had tied their mounts. Climbing nimbly to the top of a crumbling stony wall, he craned his neck to look inside.

The animals were dead. Slaughtered wholesale.

He almost fell back off the wall in shock. Lauro might be a pig-head, but Gribly knew the prince would never do something like this. Cautiously he eased himself up and over the wall, dropping down into the soft grass to get a closer look.

Byorne’s own white stallion he’d claimed to have raised from a foal was lying twisted on a broken stone, its throat cut and scarlet blood seeping in ugly trails all over its pale neck. The other animals had fared even worse- sides punctured and manes torn apart, bloody holes perforating every part of their corpses.

Shaken with fear but held by a strange, morbid desire to know what had happened, Gribly stooped forward to examine one of the marks. Without knowing why, he found their origin easy to guess.

“Teeth.” He breathed. What kind of animal kills thirteen steeds and lets one escape, all without making a single sound? If there had been a sound, he hadn’t heard it, and neither had… “Lauro, blast it all!” he swore under his breath, straightening. Was the prince dead? Or had he run away like a- no, he wouldn’t have. He hadn’t run from a hell-dog, he wouldn’t run from whatever this was.

Nothing prepared Gribly for what was about to happen.

A stealthy hand reached out over his shoulder from behind and clamped over his mouth. In half a second he was pulled into the shadow of the corner, gagged and held crushingly tight around the gut. A hoarse voice that seemed about to scream- or cry- spat quietly in his ear.

“Don’t move a scraping’ muscle, Grib. Another one’s coming.” It was Lauro. He was white-faced and grim as death. Letting go of Gribly slowly he put one gloved finger to his mouth, then pointed to the door-less arch across from them with the other. It was bathed in moonlight and both lads could clearly see what was beyond.

A shadow passed outside; a loathsome mouth and fangs dripping with blood swung and breathed harshly just beyond the entrance. A huge head swayed back and forth; a huge, ugly nose with more nostrils than should have been there sniffed for prey.

At first glance Gribly thought it was a bear, only far, far too large. Then he decided it was a wolf or direwolf, such as he’d only heard about in ghost stories and legends. Finally he decided it was neither. Hair covered its face and neck, two bulbous red eyes protruded from its head, lidless and glowing with malice. Its lower jaw jutted out like a reptile’s and its tongue lolled out hideously long, like a dragon’s. A dragon-wolf-bear, then? It was so large that only its head and hairy shoulders were all that was visible.

Drool hung from its cracked, bony lips, and slime oozed from its blank eyes. A gleam of something caught Gribly’s attention away to the space just below its gnashing jaw- metal: rusty and old, but tough enough to shine a little, still. It was bolted to the monstrous beast’s throat and chest as far as the frightened thief could see. He shuddered, wondering what kind of abomination had skin of iron.

The hideous thing caught the movement, slight as it was, rearing its ugly head higher and staring at the pair hidden in the shadows. Both boys tensed, holding their breaths. A low growl, a sort of demented purr, broke from the monster’s throat. Its eyes seemed to grow redder and fill with blood as it tried to see them.

Aura of the Creator, Gribly thought in the deepest part of himself he could find, deliver me.

The hellish creature turned and lumbered away, content that there was nothing in the ruined chamber but dead horses and their stench. Thank the Creator for that awful smell, Gribly thought. It’s masking our scent. As the monster passed, he caught glimpses of more metal, a gear and chain or two, and several wicked iron spikes. It was terrifying.

The prince and the thief stayed still for a long minute after the thing had gone. Finally Lauro let out a quick breath and turned to Gribly.

“We need to get back to camp,” he hissed as silently as possible. “Warn the others.” Gribly raised an eyebrow, as if to ask where he’d been if not at his post. “Came when I heard the mule,” the wind strider explained. “It was the only one. Blasted draik got the rest. Disappeared when I came. Blast’d things can do that.”

“Draik?” whispered Gribly as they crept over to the doorway.

“Monster. Breathes fire. Comes from pits. Lots of them on the border wars. Part of our problem.”

No more was said as they shuffled stealthily by empty back-ways and came back to the paved circle where the camp was held.

Lauro behind him, Gribly peeked out of a dwarf-sized hole in one of the walls.

“Scrapped. There’s someone there, Lauro.”

The wind strider followed the direction of his cautiously pointing finger. Out in the clear lay Byorne and the ten black-skinned silverguard, wrapped in various blankets and traveling cloaks, their weapons close at hand. Two encounters with bandits in Blast had taught them that. The cook-fire Byorne had put out was dead and ashy. No one snored or even moved.

But out of the shadows cast at the far side of the colonnade stepped a slim figure in black robes tinged with scarlet. A hood was thrown over its head, obscuring its face, but Gribly knew instantly who- or at least what- it was: the Pit Strider who’d murdered Old Murie.

“Blast you…” Gribly snarled in a low tone. His fingers gripped the chalky edge of the hole in the wall, whitening the knuckles with the force of his anger.

“Is that…?” whispered the prince behind him. He nodded, curses forming in his mind for this specter who’d ruined what little life he had before and was trying to do it again. “Let’s-” began Lauro, but before he could continue the Pit Strider stepped up to the cold fire ring and snapped his fingers.

The dead embers blazed and fire leaped up from the ring. The flames gnawed at the air as if they were at war with the wind, twisting and reforming in a hundred meaningless shapes. And then, as if the Pit Strider was molding them with his mind… they began to resolve into the shape of a creature… a large vampire bat, or some similar horror.

The firebat shrieked and skittered out of the flames that had formed it, fluttering its fiery wings and swaying on its fiery haunches. The noise woke Byorne, who sat up not five feet from the Pit Strider, blinking and scrabbling for his sword.

“Who’s that?” he called angrily. Gribly saw what was about to happen and tried to warn the ranger.

“Byorne!” he yelled, but it was too late. With inhuman speed the Pit Strider leaped the distance to the old half-breed, unsheathing a glittering white blade and plunging it into Byorne’s body. With a guttural scream the ranger writhed under the strike; the Pit Strider kicked him off the blade and spun to meet his enemies.

Gribly vaulted through the hole in the wall and charged at the murderer who’d taken everything away from him twice. It took Lauro a few seconds longer to climb through, but soon he was up and racing forward, his bronze stabbing-sword drawn. The Sand Strider raced across the open space towards the interlopers; as he did, he conjured his allied element from the ground as he attacked, lifting it up in a whirlwind and throwing it forward. The Pit Strider’s firebat leaped into the air with a shriek and was sucked back down again by the vortex.

Using the grains beneath his feet as a springboard, Gribly somersaulted over the whirlwind and kicked out at his enemy as he fell to the earth. The man couldn’t raise his blade in time; the thief’s feet connected solidly with his shoulders and threw him violently to the stones. Gribly tumbled into another somersault and rolled away from his foe- despite his speed, the Pit Strider had kicked up his legs and leaped to his feet fast enough to attack him the next second.

With his concentration shaken, Gribly let his conjured sandstorm fall apart, leaving nothing behind of the firebat except a pile of ashes. Lauro crushed it underfoot as he charged to engage the Pit Strider, rescuing his weaponless friend. The black-robed fighter whipped up his pale sword and parried the prince’s blow, then returned with one- two- three of his own. It was a deadly duel, during which neither combatants seemed to find the spare energy to Stride.

At the sound of clashing swords, the sleeping silverguard seemed to wake, each one rolling up and shaking off drowsiness with varying degrees of success.

“Wake up! Wake up, guards!” the Sand Strider screamed at them. “We’re being attacked!” Glancing frantically around for a weapon, he spied Byorne’s sword, still sheathed by his side. Reaching for it, he heard the wounded man gasp in pain. He’s still alive! The Pit Strider didn’t kill him! “I’ll be back for you,” Gribly told him, drawing the ranger’s sword with a glittering shiiing. Then he turned to fight, shouting for one of the guards to help their guide.

Lauro seemed almost exactly matched with the mysterious attacker. Clang! The metal in the prince’s sword was a kind of tempered surebronze that could hold up against any steel. Grunting and gasping for breath the two warriors strove against each other, spinning and slashing and meeting each other sword for stroke for sword.

Gribly watched from not far off for a few seconds, then lunged forward with the heavy longsword he’d taken from Byorne. The Pit Strider merely turned slightly, knocked away the attempt, and turned back to the duel. Again and again the well-meaning but clueless lad tried to intervene and help his friend, but each time it was no use. I’m just in the way, he grumbled sourly to himself.

That was when he heard the roar. Retreating and looking around, he found that all the noise had attracted the draik they’d forgotten about in the fray. Out of nowhere the metal-and-hide beast charged onto the paved circle, clipping the edge of one of the pillars in a spray of stone-dust.

By now most of the silverguard had stumbled to their feet. Their quickest had dragged Byorne’s expiring body out of the way, while their slowest was still crawling out from under his blanket. With an unearthly howl the draik leaped on the man and bit off his head before he could react. Chomping heavily down on the decapitated body, it shook it violently before flinging it off to the side, where it smacked against another pillar and spun off into the shadows.

“What in the crimming blazes is that???” burst one of the serious-faced soldiers. It was the first and last time Gribly had heard him speak on their journey. The draik pounced on him as he screamed piteously and vainly hacked at its metal-plated foreleg with his elegant silver scimitar.

Chapter Eighteen: The Stuff of Heroes

Three of the men fled- Gribly didn’t blame them. Five stayed, brandishing shields, four swords and a halberd.

“Prince Lauro!” one shouted in his deep accent. “What do we do?”

“Fight!” the embattled prince called over his shoulder. Spinning wildly, he managed to wind-stride up in the air to come crashing down on his opponent, scoring a blow to the man’s shoulder and forcing him back. “Gribly!” he yelled as he fought, “Lead them!”

Lead them?? The concept stunned him for a second, but he was roused by a hoarse shout from behind him. Byorne. Byorne was pointing at him from the shadows.

“Do it!” the old ranger called. Do what? Could he mean…

Gribly turned back just as the draik charged him. Without waiting for his doom, he turned and ran. The silverguard scattered as the beast chased the Sand Strider across the moonlit circle to the pillars on its edge- in fact, the same pillar where the two youths had sparred the day before.

There was still a deposit of sand at its base. Gribly called on it as he ran, and for a brief second the sand shot up into the air in a weak, insubstantial sort of staircase. Leaping up onto one burst of sand, then another, he made it halfway up the column before the draik slammed into the stone under him, toppling it.

The young Sand Strider jumped off the last burst of sand just high enough to land with one foot on the roughly broken edge of another pillar. Bellowing in rage at being foiled, the angry draik spit fire up at him for the first time. Leaping higher to the next column, Gribly barely evaded the scalding torrent, the tail of his shirt smoking and sparking.

Behind the monster, the silverguard was finally taking action. The bravest one had begun to stab at the thing with his halberd. Infuriated, the draik turned and snapped the end of the weapon off with its teeth. The shivered haft fell from the guard’s limp fingers as he stumbled back, surprised at the brute strength of the beast. Two of his fellows bravely ran up with him, swords drawn, to assist.

Perched where he was high above, Gribly had a few precious seconds to peruse the circle. Lauro was quickly proving to be the Pit Strider’s superior at swordplay, but unless the draik could be killed or driven off in the next minute it wouldn’t matter. The five remaining silverguard had hemmed it in, swinging their swords wildly and uttering coarse war-cries in their native tongue, then retreating behind the safety of their enormous shields whenever the monster breathed fire.

If I could just get these pillars to fall on it without killing my men, Gribly thought, glancing around for inspiration. It didn’t even occur to him that he thought of them as his men now.

Reaching down with his mind to the bottom of the pillar he crouched on, Gribly attempted to find sand to stride with. Nothing, or not nearly enough to do anything with.

One of the silverguard leaped forward to attack the draik and missed his timing; the monster swung a metal-clawed limb and crumpled the man’s armor in like paper. One down, four to go.

This has to end in seconds, Gribly told himself, or we’re all going to die. Then he did something incredibly brave and unbelievably stupid. He jumped on the draik’s back.

It would have been perfect if he had been wearing some sort of armor, or if the beast was made completely of flesh instead of gears and spikes. It made the roof-jumping thief’s landing awkward as he tried to avoid the sharp metal edges of the draik’s exposed spine, Byorne’s longsword waving wildly in his grip. With a slip and a shout, he tumbled off onto the ground, landing like a cat, the blade sparking as it clanged off the stones.

It hadn’t gone as he’d planned, but it had saved the life of a slow-moving silverguard, who now brought his scimitar down across the draik’s neck as it stumbled from the force of Gribly’s landing. Sparks flew and blood spurted from a huge gash, but the unfazed monster batted at the warrior with a paw, sending him head over heels. Then it spun on its haunches and let loose its flaming breath at its unlucky ambusher.

But the Sand Strider wasn’t there. Confused, the draik lumbered around to face the three men still moving closer. Then fire and gore erupted at its belly, and it reared up howling in pain. Gribly rolled out from under it, ripping away at its guts with his sword. The guard who’d been knocked out of action jumped forward then, hurling his scimitar right at the monster’s throat. It bounced off one of the metal plates and cut an awkward line across the draik’s unprotected jaw.

All four silverguard leaped forward, bashing the creature with their shields and hacking at it with their swords. On its hind legs the draik was twice as tall as any of them, but they bravely fought with every ounce of strength they had.

The beast gave a hideous roar and threw itself down on all of them, blowing the men aside with power and flame. It fell heavily forward onto its front legs- right onto Gribly’s blade.

He felt a horrible jolt and blood on his face; then the world turned black and the feeling disappeared.

~

Lauro had never fought so hard before. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but the prince had the vague notion that his enemy was in much the same position. Heartened by this, Lauro began to experiment.

Wind-striding a foot or two higher to gain the advantage of height worked reasonably well. He leaped as if to come at the Pit Strider overhead, then wind-milled his legs to stay aloft, putting his opponent off-balance as he moved to counter a blade that wasn’t there. Lauro would slash and stab from his higher point for a few seconds, then drop quickly out of the air, confusing his enemy once more.

Despite his small success, it was no easy fight. The Pit Strider was too occupied to do any striding of his own, but his blade was longer and thinner than Lauro’s, and his greater speed and agility exactly evened the odds. A flash and a clang and the two separated, then spun together again in the deadly dance, all other threats forgotten and ignored.

Lauro had often wished for a broadsword or a greatsword like the one his king father carried. He had been disappointed terribly when his first weapon was the streamlined, small thing he carried now. King Larion had said, A true warrior relies on skill, not strength. This blade is sharp and sturdy, smaller and quicker than any in my own armory. You will need all your lessons to master it, and it will not fail you.

Frantically stabbing, then cavorting around and around in a series of complicated thrusts and parries, Lauro found to his utter astonishment that it was true.

The continuity of the fight was somewhat jarred when one of the colonnade pillars crashed to the ground with a tremendous BOOM. Flicking his gaze to where Gribly was leaping from column to column, Lauro let down his guard no more than an inch. It was enough for the black-robed attacker to get under and knock the sword out of his hand.

Reacting faster than he knew how, the prince dove past his opponent’s swing and tackled him head on before he could make use of his weapon. It was a tense few seconds as they grappled, he trying to wrench his enemy’s sword away and his enemy trying to get free enough to stab him. Once the strider threw off his arm and the prince used the space to throw a punch at the man’s chin, snapping back his head and throwing off his hood.

Lauro stopped midway through another blow. He knew that face! It was paler and meaner and had the wrong hair, but…

The Pit Strider spat out a bloody tooth onto the moonlit pavement. Leveling his sword, he rushed forward to pierce the prince through the neck; but the hit he’d taken had clouded his head and made him slow, so Lauro was ready. Ducking, he grabbed at the fool’s arm with his left hand and bulled into his stomach with his right shoulder. The Pit Strider gasped as the wind was knocked out of him and he sailed up and over Lauro’s body to land smack down on his back, his pale sword and arm twisted at a nasty angle under him.

The prince had no time to gloat. Something horrible had happened over where Gribly and the silverguard battled the enormous draik- the thief was sprawled out in a pool of blood, unconscious next to a dead warrior the monster had trampled as it staggered drunkenly away, Gribly’s sword buried in its gut. Immediately the remaining three guards chased it, slashing and striking in a desperate attempt to bring it down before it fled. Fire burst from its jaws, nostrils and cracks that split the metal plates on its neck and back. Smoke billowed from every aperture and wound.

“Blasted demon!” Lauro swore. He turned away to finish off the injured Pit Strider- and found no one. Cursing, the prince spun in a full circle. His opponent was gone! A roar behind him said the draik wasn’t far away. Spinning to face it, he saw the unfortunate Pit Strider loping wildly for Gribly, his sword clutched uneasily under his ruined arm. “No!” the prince bellowed, hurling his sword at the limping man. It missed by a foot, clattering off into the shadows.

Suddenly a loud report sounded through the empty night. The Pit Strider stumbled back and to the side, landing on his side in the mucky fire-pit, clutching a bleeding shoulder.

Flames leaped up from the once-dead fire, licked all along the Pit Strider’s body, and consumed him in a flash and sparking explosion. Byorne tumbled out of the shadows where he’d been dragged and left for dead, a smoking contraption of wood and metal in his hand. Dropping to his knees, the half-breed swung with his strange weapon at the spot where the black-robed attacker had lain, but to no avail- the Pit Strider had vanished. Whether it was dark magic or Pit Striding or bloody luck, Lauro had no idea- and it wasn’t time to wonder. The draik was still coming.

The prince waited until the creature was mere yards from him before skipping backwards and wind-striding. He stepped into the air, ran his feet up in front of him, stretched out to touch one of the pillars with his fingers, then twisted his body until he could push off with his feet, launching him over the head of the demented draik as it lumbered crazily into the column.

THUD. The sound was ugly, but it was nothing compared to the hideous scraping and cracking as the pillar the beast had plowed into broke and fell across it. CRUNCH. The draik screamed hellishly as it was pinned and its insides collapsed. As Lauro wind-strode in circles overhead, he saw its eyes explode and spew flaming gunk every which way. One of the pursuing silverguard caught some on his unarmored leg and howled in agony, trying to scrape it off with the end of his shield.

Finally the draik expired and stopped moving. A scummy gear popped out of a slash in its neck and rolled to Lauro’s feet as he landed.

Then, even more suddenly than it had begun, the attack was over and the only sound was the exhausted breathing of men who have just fought the battle of their lives.

Lauro took no time to rest. Calling for the last three guards to help him, he rushed to where Gribly and Byorne both lay close together; the Sand Strider crushed by the dying draik and the ranger bleeding from his mortal wound.

Creator save them, the prince pleaded. This had all gone so horribly, horribly wrong…

~

Gribly woke to find he was laid out on a bloodstained cloak, next to the old half-nymph who’d saved his life. Lauro explained in a hushed rush how Byorne had used his mysterious contraption to stop the Pit Strider, and was now dying from the exertion on his wound, which had been bound with a strip of clean cloth but lacked any real treatment.

“No, no, no…” the thief trembled, rising to his knees and crawling to the ranger’s side. It was unthinkable- to lose their only ally just as he had begun to mean something… “Byorne,” he called softly, “Can you hear me? Can you feel anything?”

“Shut… mouth,” was all the half-breed could say. Scrabbling for his small, odd invention-weapon he placed it roughly in the boy’s hands before succumbing to a spasm that wracked his whole body. At last the fit subsided and he spoke again. “Find… pouch,” he groaned, patting his coat weakly.

The prince and three guards stood around nervously, wondering what was going on. Gribly placed the contraption aside, then felt the old man’s jacket until he came on a pocket on the inside, whereupon he removed a small leather pouch with a weight that belied its size. He showed it to Byorne, who nodded.

“Take it… take both… bring to Wande… he’ll know how… tell him… Byorne sent.”

“You know the Aura? You’ve been to the Grymclaw?” Apparently there was no end to the dying man’s secrets.

“Yes. Tell him… sorry… I failed. Tell him… he was… right. You are the one.”

“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.”

“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.

Behind 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.

One… She leaped with all her strength, using her Wave Striding to let the ice push her off like an arrow from the bow. At the same time, the beast below leaped up incredibly high, sharp metal claws outreached to tear her apart. Behind her, its three companions launched off the iceberg as well.

As she flew forward, Elia’s mind concentrated on one thing: staying in the air.

A second passed as she soared onward. The world around her seemed to move in slow motion as she willed the tiny water particles in the evening air to cling to her, buoying her up a precious few seconds longer.

Then her weight grew to be too much. She wasn’t skilled enough and her plan worked only partially. Arching her back in a perfect dive, she fell towards the rolling waves below her.

The monsters behind her fell short: they were too heavy to jump so far.

As Elia dove, she willed her body to change and morph into her Swimmer Form. Her shape became slimmer, clearer, almost spirit-like. By the time she could see the bubbly foam on the crests of the waves, she was the translucent, watery color of a full nymph.

In an abstract way, she noticed that the sun was gone and it was almost night. She had just enough time to hope that the beasts after her couldn’t swim…

...when she hit the waves and plunged beneath the surface.

Father of nymphs and men, protect me with Your Aura.

The greatest chase of her life had begun.

To Be Continued...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Well, this book has been a journey. It began as a short book, which became a long book, which became another short book, which became a very long book, which was split into three parts. My trilogy has become a series of nine parts. Brother Thief is the first of those parts, and I have several special people to thank for helping it get to the point it's at.

Firstly, I thank God. He's given me my talent, and He's swept me off my feet with what He can do.

Secondly, through God, I've had the grace to work with some amazing people, who I'd like to thank individually.

My mom: for doing an incredible job refining and pruning my story to a readable point.

My brother: for being the first reader and the first fan.

Nathanael: for reading through and pointing out the dumb mistakes that slip by me constantly.

Thirdly, I thank the teen writing workshop members from the spring program at my library: they don't know it, but without them the character of Gribly would never have been invented... and there would have been no story to tell.

Lastly, I thank all the people and groups who gave me support and fellowship on the path of writing: my friends, my family, my heroes, my helpers. We're Striders together, all of us...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gregory J. Downs is the author of several novels, including the standalone Arthurian novel Mordred, as well as the Song of the Aura series, of which this book is the first part. Having grown up reading the likes of Tolkien, Jacques, Lewis, and Jordan, it was only a matter of time before his imagination grew too explosive to contain, and one day it spilled out onto paper as the first lines of his first story. Hundreds of thousands of words and several years later, he is glad to present you with this, his second self-published novel.

Gregory is homeschooled (yes, he's still in school) and professes himself to be radically Christian and unshakably Catholic. If you can stomach that, he also believes in writing only the best, most epic fiction he possibly can.

Gregory hopes you've enjoyed this book- but whether you liked it or hated it, he values your opinion. To review Brother Thief, go to the Amazon page where you bought/downloaded it. Thank you, and may the great Creator of the world send his Aura to protect you!

To visit the author's blog, go to www.epicbloggjd.blogspot.com.

To become a fan of the Song of the Aura series, go to www.facebook.com/songoftheaura.

To become a fan of Mordred on Facebook, go to www.facebook.com/Excather.

PREVIEW OF

-THE SONG OF THE AURA-

BOOK TWO

-WINTER WARRIOR-

Chapter One Sample

About midday the ragged band tramped out of the mountain eaves and onto a wide band of pebbly sand that ran to the edge of the water. The blotches of color they’d seen from the Arches of Linolen were indeed the dwellings of the Zain. Apparently the survivors had been spotted by the nymphs, who sent a greeting party of equal number out to meet them in the middle of the beach.

“Greetings, travelers of Beyond,” called the tallest nymph as the two groups approached each other. His hair was light brown and wavy, flowing back from his head like the sail of a ship, bound by a silver circlet with a white diadem on his brow. His gaze was steady and his speech kingly, if a bit odd. A blue tunic and bound sandals gave him the appearance of a simple peasant, but Lauro knew better. His circlet identified him as a cleric, as did the slim gray staff with an unlit candle affixed to the top.

“Greetings, holy one,” the prince returned, placing a hand on his heart and bowing low. His companions repeated the gesture behind him, carefully imitating his composure.

“There is but One who is Holy, and He is not I,” replied the nymph cleric, frowning. His companions, shorter but dressed in serviceable leather armor and carrying javelins, hung about uneasily.

“My apologies. I meant no disrespect,” Lauro assured him. Gesturing to Gribly and the three silverguard, he explained their plight. “My men and I hail from the lands south of here. We journey with all haste to Grymclaw, bearing news of trouble and a plea for advice to the Aura rumored to make his abode there. Our party is much diminished after an attack last night, and we would seek aid from your people if you can spare it.”

“We have not had news or sight of our allies from Beyond for some time. The mountains have been barred to travelers for many cycles of the planets. Have you proof of friendship with the Zain?”

Lauro was at a loss until Gribly piped up impertinently from the side. “We were guided by Byorne the half-nymph.” The cleric turned his head slowly to gaze at the thief.

“Know you Byornleo Hallifar, the Longstrider?”

“If it is the same man as brought us this far, then yes,” the prince told him.

“Then where walk he now?”

“Nowhere.” It was Gribly again, fumbling in his pack for something. “He died in the attack on our camp, only last night. He gave me this, with a message to deliver it to Wanderwillow when we met him.” Out from his satchel he brought the wood and metal contraption Byorne had passed on to him, the white hawk medal wrapped around its end. Gingerly holding it in his hands, he stepped forward to allow the Zain cleric a closer look. One of the nymph soldiers moved to intercept him, but the cleric stopped him and took the device carefully from Gribly.

“This comes from the Longstrider.” He said at last, “But it tells me not how it came to you. If Byornleo is truly dead, then tribulation will not far off be… Tell me, how did such a mighty ranger such as he perish whilst you, young one, did not?”

“He was attacked while still sleeping,” Gribly explained, attempting to hide his sorrow behind a stony face. From Lauro’s perspective, it didn’t look like he was succeeding. All the better- they needed emotion to convince this nymph they were truthful. “Even with his death-wound, he managed to save my life. He was a hero,” the boy concluded.

Sensing the reality of the words, the cleric handed back the weapon and allowed Gribly to replace it before spreading his hand wide in a gesture of welcome. “Then you are friends and allies of the Zain, as you were of the Longstrider.”

Bravo, Grib! thought Lauro, though he would never say it to the lad’s face.

“Tell me,” inquired the cleric, “What manner of enemy assailed you?” At that Gribly frowned and let the prince answer in his place.

“A draik,” announced Lauro grimly, his hand absently rubbing his sword-pommel at the ugly memory. “And a man who called himself a Pit Strider. He had powers to match a sorcerer’s, and it was he who dealt the death-blow to Byorne… Byornleo.”

“Xibalba Cameetza!” swore the cleric, suddenly and harshly. “If such a man there be, then not even the Zain may hide you…”