Table of Contents

- Chapter One: Mirrorwave

- Chapter Two: The Demon Sea

- Chapter Three: Elia

- Chapter Four: Wavechase

- Chapter Five: What Bernarl Saw

- Chapter Six: Fire, Ice, and Wind

- Chapter Seven: Speech of Mastery

- Chapter Eight: Steamclaw

- Chapter Nine: Menace from Afar

- Chapter Ten: Demon Talk

- Chapter Eleven: Footprints of Doom

- Chapter Twelve: Winter's Warriors

- Chapter Thirteen: Hellthunder

- Chapter Fourteen: Wind Tunnel

- Chapter Fifteen: Storm and Glory

- Chapter Sixteen: Battleheart

- Chapter Seventeen: Stormheart

- Chapter Eighteen: Names in the Nothing

- Chapter Nineteen: We Are Not Easily Destroyed

- Chapter Twenty: We Will Rejoice…

- Chapter Twenty-One: ...No Matter What

- Epilogue: Spared for Torment

Winter Warrior

The Song of the Aura

Book Two

A Novel by Gregory J. Downs

Copyright 2011

This book is dedicated to
The memory of:

J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
Brian Jacques
Robert Jordan

Four men who had the spirit of fantasy,
Knew it,
And used it.

Chapter One: Mirrorwave

Time was short. Too short. The two Striders and the three guards buried their fellows under the four great arches leading towards the Inkwell. Each grave was marked by that man’s sword stabbed into the turf at its head. The draik was left to rot and rust- none of them would touch it.

Gathering what they could from the piddling amount of rations and water left untouched by the draik’s attack, they sorted the remnant into five packs, one apiece for the survivors. Then they set off into the morning mist for the Zain encampment they hoped to find on the shore of the Endless Ocean, led on only by Byorne’s memory and the occasional sight of glittering water miles ahead of them.

By mid-morning the fog had cleared and the sun shone brightly on the travelers down between the mountains. The ominous depression Gribly had felt since Lauro’s unexpected announcement the night before lifted enough for him to question the prince about it.

“What do you think, Lauro?”

“About what?”

The thief snorted. “You know what.”

The prince was silent for a few moments as they hiked up a particularly rough patch in the old road. Once at the top, the five survivors could see that they were no more than three miles from the edge of the Inkwell. In the distance rose a number of indistinct dark shapes that could have been anything. “Zain,” he heard Lauro whisper hopefully.

“That doesn’t answer my question, princey. You saw the Pit Strider, so you tell me- why did it have my face?”

Lauro turned slowly, shielding his eyes with one hand as he scanned the horizon. Finally he lowered it and stared at Gribly for a while. “I don’t know,” he said at last, “I just don’t know.”

“Whaddya mean, you ‘don’t know’? You saw it- or him- or me, whichever it was!”

The prince shrugged uncomfortably. “It seems fanciful, now. I don’t know why I thought it, it’s just that… well… He didn’t just look like you, he fought like you.”

“Correction: He fought much better than me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I hope you’re not just saying this so you have a reason to get rid of me when we reach the water-nymphs.”

“No! Of course not!” the wind Strider seemed horrified at any such question against his honor.

“Then what are you saying??”

“I’m saying…” the prince paused in the middle of his sentence, narrowed his eyes at Gribly, then started up a new one. “Say, Grib… do you have any family?” This earned another snort from the thief.

“I’ve already told you the answer about five times since we’ve met: No. A gypsy raised me and I’ve never met my… oh.” The thought suddenly struck him as particularly appropriate. He hadn’t ever met his parents- or any brothers, uncles, cousins, whatever- that he might have.

“Go on ahead,” Lauro told the three silverguard. “We’ll catch up after we discuss this new development further.” His crisp, military tone elicited a quick bow-and-salute from each of the guards, who headed off as one down the hill, hoisting their shields across their backs and trudging forward with nary a complaint. The two friends followed some distance back, out of earshot.

“So you think I may have a brother or relative who pit strides and attacks innocent travelers in his spare time, eh?” Gribly smiled ruefully. “That’s justice for you- a brother thief and a brother sorcerer. Just who you wanted to know before you got crowned king, I wager.”

Lauro didn’t change his expression at all, besides frowning a little deeper. “I don’t exactly know if it’s true, but yes- it would make a certain sense, would it not?”

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

“…I mean,” the prince continued, ignoring him, “That I wouldn’t be surprised if you were stolen as a child instead of abandoned. That somewhere you have a family… people who can Stride just as well as you.”

For some reason that made Gribly sullen and quiet. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped. “And besides, I stride sand, not fire, or ash, and I can’t make little flame demons out of coal.”

“But you might be able to if you knew how,” protested the prince.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Ask Wanderwillow when we meet him, if we meet him, if it’s so important to you.” His tone was blank and low, but it stopped Lauro from inquiring further. Quickening their pace, the two young Striders soon caught up with the rest of the party.

~

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 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. 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…”

“But we beat him!” Gribly butted in. “You can’t refuse us just because he picked us to attack!”

“Did you?” the nymph looked suddenly thoughtful, rolling the staff in his hand absently. “Well…” he thought some more. At one point his eyes closed and Lauro believed he saw the cleric’s lips move in silent prayer. At last he spoke again. “I said we would not hide you, but we will aid you in whatever you need. I believe I now see why it is you have come, Lauro Vale.”

~

“Is it just me,” whispered Gribly to the prince during the short walk to the Zain camp, “or does every cleric I meet know more about us than we do?”

Lauro didn’t respond. It was too true, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

~

He wouldn’t have believed it from what he’d heard, but Gribly soon found that the Zain had their own cathedral; carved (or as the Strider suspected, stride-shaped) out of a dark brown wood and similar in appearance to the Highfast Cathedral in Ymeer. The quick walk through the sea nymph world had been eye-opening in itself.

After formally introducing himself as Cleric Amarand, the tall nymph had obtained a light luncheon for the group and sent the tired silverguard to rest in a guesthouse long kept by the tribe for just such a purpose but rarely used. Telling the prince and the thief that they had no time to loose, he had accompanied them around the right half of the Tribe Circle to the cathedral where a meeting would soon be held amongst the tribe leaders.

The Zain lived in circles- as did the other two sea nymph tribes, according to Amarand. The Tribe Circle was an enormous, thick-rimmed wooden dock set out on the edge of the Inkwell, named for its shape. Its middle was open to the sea, but catwalks and ramps led up to a central structure where the Zain chief- called a Sainarch- lived. The large roundhouse sat a good three or four yards higher than the rest of the village and was supported by thick hardwood pillars.

None of it was anything like Ymeer, which was the only habitation of any significance Gribly had seen, minus the old ruins. It was a good deal smaller, true, but after weeks in the desert it seemed large enough to be a legitimate city. The Sainarch’s roundhouse was identical to the three hundred or so buildings (huts, really, Gribly realized) that filled the Tribe Circle, but it was all so unfamiliar that the youth found himself gaping at every structure he passed.

And the people! Nymphs were not so different from humans in their physical appearance, it was apparent, and Zain were certainly the most human-like of the three tribes… but there was no hint of the oligarchy and suppression that had plagued Ymeer. Gribly had spent his life among peasants and his career as a thief among pompous nobles, but the Zain seemed to defy the characteristics of each. There seemed to be no visible leader or servant among them, even though each obviously carried out a different task and filled a different position.

They were, in short, happy. Some were more or less content than others, but it simply stunned the boy how they all seemed to get along (in general) as if it were perfectly normal. By the time Cleric Amarand had brought the two strangers to the cathedral they had drawn a few glances, but far less than Gribly had expected.

The cathedral was not the titanic monument that Ymeer’s Highfast Cathedral was, but it certainly fit the area. It was a smaller, darker copy of the older structure, but taller in proportion to its width. It looked less solid; more refined, with curling shapes and elegant designs shaped directly in the wood. The three walked promptly up the smooth front stairs to where a paneled double-door led inside, where they paused.

“Cleric Amarand?” Gribly addressed the nymph. “Was this cathedral built by Striders?”

Amarand nodded without looking at him. “Long ago, when the nymph tribes of Vast were not so estranged, wood-elves would do trade with us. Some still do, though not many, but in ages past they would also help us to build. M’tant Eave Striders did this, if know you must. They have not done anything like it for many a cycle.” With that he tapped his staff twice against the wood of the door and it opened inward into the cathedral’s brightly lit interior.

“Show-off,” muttered Gribly to Lauro as they followed Amarand inside.

~

The Sainarch and his four advisers were remarkably willing to cooperate, and it was quickly decided. With little explanation but much courtesy, Amarand arranged for the companions to set sail the very next day in one of the tribe’s fastest vessels: a trireme manned by an assortment of nymphs and molded by Eave Striders in a style similar to the Zain cathedral. It had one large sail and a triangular ram on the bow that could split an iceberg- or so its captain claimed.

The captain of the trireme was a slightly rotund man, medium-sized and hairier than any nymph Gribly had seen. His sideburns and conveniently short hair were white and given to curling, his jaw was large and given to laughing, while his arms constantly windmilled in the many and sundry gestures he used to communicate his orders and jokes to the crew. He wore a long coat of faded blue fabric, high brown boots, strange woven trousers and an open, billowing blue shirt. A long sickle strapped to his back and a curved dagger on his belt were the only items of his dress that belied his amiable appearance. His ship’s name was the Mirrorwave.

The trireme was docked on the Inkwell-facing side of the Tribe Circle, bobbing up and down in the mild current as if it knew how grand it looked next to the other, shabbier ships moored near it, and wanted to show its pride. The captain led the prince, the thief, and the silverguard up the gangplank and onto the spotless deck. His name was Bernarl, but his men called him Berne and he made it clear he expected his new passengers to do the same. “Crisp formality’s what’s expected,” he told them seriously, then grinned. “…By everyone but m’self, of course. Welcome aboard!” and with that he was off up on the rigging faster and nimbler than should have been possible, leaving his wiry, straight-faced first-mate to lead the newcomers to their rooms.

“Your names, gentleman?” the stately nymph asked them. Lauro replied for himself and for Gribly, faltering when he came to the three warriors beside them. He doesn’t know their names, the Sand Strider realized. He probably barely thinks of them as men, even now. I’d like to blame him, but how could I? I’m not much better. He did know their names, though, and as the men didn’t seem incredibly inclined to volunteer them he spoke up- out of turn again.

“This one is Avtar, this one Marmat, and this one Kell,” he said. The silverguard glanced at him with surprise, and he saw the flicker of a smile on Kell’s face. He’d been listening to them all across Blast, and had even tried to talk to them several times; enough to be annoying, for sure. It looked like they’d forgotten.

“Pleased to acquaint you all, I’m certain,” said the mate. Without offering his own name he turned and led them to their rooms below deck.

Just like that they were ready and had cast off, heading almost directly North with the intention of contacting the last two sea nymph tribes, warning them of any possible danger, and hopefully enlisting their help to reach the Grymclaw. There was only one change in plans: Cleric Amarand was sending his page with them- a small, scholarly fellow named Variand.

~

By nightfall the shore was far behind the Mirrorwave, leaving all of South Vast as a shady, blotted line in the distance. The eastern end of the Inkwell was so far away it could not be seen, due to the enormous size of the bay. (It was so enormous, in fact, that Page Variand declared it a matter of heated debate among scholars and geographers everywhere. They were split between those who supported the original theory of the Inkwell being small enough for a bay, and those who contended that it was too large, and should be declared a Sea instead. At the end of the explanation Gribly wished he could toss Variand overboard and end the page’s boring chatter right then and there.)

Captain Berne had early on given orders for the silverguard and Gribly to be integrated into his crew to keep them interested and sufficiently out-of-the-way. This they had managed to do rather well under the tutelage of the yet-unnamed first mate, who unbent his stiff manner when the travelers proved themselves able and quick to learn.

Lauro wasn’t required to work because of his “noble blood” and “importance to the mission,” which Gribly figured must mean the prince had money and had bribed the captain. In any case the older boy spent most of his spare time poring over maps and manuscripts with Captain Berne, and when the day was done spent the evening in a cabin of his own. Little pig, Gribly thought, but he was getting along so well with the sailor-nymphs that he didn’t trouble himself about it and even decided in the end that it was necessary.

With all the thoughts whirling around in his mind like one of his own sandstorms, the Sand Strider at last let himself be lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of the boat on the darkened, glassy sea under a midnight sky.

This voyage is my first… it’s going so well… probably just too good to last, he thought before he closed his eyes.

Chapter Two: The Demon Sea

The next day proceeded much as the first had, as the Mirrorwave sailed ever deeper into the Inkwell. As time progressed, however, the more spectacular changes wrought on any ship entering the mysterious waters became apparent. The air got chillier and chillier until Gribly’s breath fogged as it came out and his fingers were numb and chapped from the cold. The bay itself seemed to grow steadily choppier and colder in just a few hours, freezing the barnacles above the vessel’s waterline and even coating the center-back of the trireme’s sail with thin ice.

It was more than different for the Sand Strider- it was a bad dream or a nightmare. He’d lived all his life in the desert, where, for sure, they’d had freezing nights, but nothing like this had ever happened to him. His ragged hair froze in tangled streaks blown back from his forehead. He cut and scraped his fingers tying and untying knots for the Mirrorwave’s first mate. Everything seemed to move too fast around him, too quickly for his glazed mind and unsteady gaze to fix upon anything. Even after he was issued the long fur jacket standard to the nymph crew, the enchanted winter seemed to gnaw at his bones like the draik he’d killed at the Arches.

Sleep should have been a welcome relief: when night came and Page Variand had recited en evening blessing over the ship, most of the crew came below and sprawled out on their hammocks under as many blankets as could be got; by asking, petitioning, or burglarizing. Gribly prided himself on having kept most of his former skill, and ended up with almost double the blankets the average sailor had, most of which he’d stolen from their rightful owners.

But sleep did not come, and for an uncountable number of minutes he lay shivering, too affected by the cold and wet to be comfortable under his ill-gotten sheets. Time passed. The ship grew quiet around him, save for the rocking of the hammocks and the gradual swell and toss of the Mirrorwave across the rainy bay. Eventually he dozed, but it was an uneasy, half-dreaming sort of doze and he soon awoke from it. Images of men in gray cloaks and hats with wings lingered at the back of his mind.

I must be going crazy, he decided. Rolling about and wrapping himself in the furs he’d been issued during the day, the Sand Strider slipped limply out from under the covers and right into his hide boots on the wet floor below, narrowly avoiding the snoring Variand where the nymph hung out of his hammock, swinging below Gribly’s own bed.

The crew’s sleeping quarters were “fore o’ the stores and skyward of the rowing deck,” which Gribly had learned over the course of the day meant in front of the store-rooms and above the rowing deck. Soon he had traversed the length of the long chamber and reached the foot of the stairs leading up and out. Tramping despondently up the creaking boards, he struggled with the slanted trap door that led out onto the trireme’s deck.

Finally the blasted thing came open and he scrambled up and out. The rain that had been falling that evening had given way to a frosty, bleak night. The Mirrorwave was utterly silent except for the creakings and moanings that seemed inherent to any movement it made. The stars and moon were out in full force overhead, casting a pale light over everything, but there was no other illumination.

“Hoi, there,” called a hushed voice overhead. It was Captain Berne, waving casually at the Sand Strider from his place at the trireme’s tiller on a raised platform at the rear of the ship. “Join me on this lonely watch, will you?”

“All right.” Gribly was surprised at the captain’s amiableness. In his past experience he had learned all authority to lord it over their inferiors- to exploit their position. Berne seemed to defy that conception. The veteran sailor wasn’t afraid of his men’s company or their work, for certain. He even liked speaking to them, or so it seemed.

Gribly climbed the steep, sideways stairway to the place where Berne was. What was it called? He’d been told the nautical names for things so many times that he didn’t remember any of them- why couldn’t sailors say left side and backwards and rope like anyone else? Or was that just what nymphs called everything? When he joined the captain he intended to ask him, but Berne seemed preoccupied already. “Take the tiller, will ye?”

Nervous but obliging, Gribly took it and tried to hold it steady as the nymph showed him. “Like this?”

“Aye. Hold ‘er steady, maister Grib, and I’ll fetch us for sure something to pass the time… aye, and heat the cold, too.” Gribly waited while Berne rummaged in his many coat pockets. Finally the captain removed a small flask of something from the deepest one and took a swig. Passing it to the Sand Strider and taking the tiller back at the same time, he grinned a bit livelier than before. “Take a chug o’ that, maister. If that don’t warm yer innards, you 'aven’t gotten none!”

Something about the last sentence seemed odd to the thief, but he took the flask and lifted it to his lips, sipping tentatively. GAH! It was fire and ice! It was molten metal from a forge being poured down his throat! It was a thousand pounds of cane sugar and barrel of pickled desert-peppers! It was sweet and sour and a hundred other things, some good, some bad. It was intoxicating, and whatever it was, it drove out the day’s and night’s chill immediately.

“Whoah there (hic) maister Grib! Don’t be takin’ it all!” the jovial captain laughed and snatched the hide-bottle back. “Take too much o’ that and a few ‘ot coals is all that’ll be left o’ you…”

“What (hic hic) d’you mean?” Gribly questioned him. By Traveller, but was that stuff fast-working! It burned through his body like a pleasant pain.

“Izz fire-nectar,” Berne told him pouring some more down his own throat, “Az from them M’tant iz usink en the Black(hic)wood…”

“Oh (hic),” he replied. “Strong… ztuff…” the Sand Strider found it was suddenly very hard to stay on his feet.  “Haven’t had… (hic) ztuff this strong, since, since, the ol’ Pickpocket… Ymeer… (hic) since I pinched ‘is ztore-room wine.”

Glancing drunkenly aside, he suddenly and unnervingly found Captain Berne staring at him, as if the nymph was trying very hard to place his face or remember what he’d said through the fire-nectar’s haze. An awkward silence fell and stayed there for a long time. Gribly turned uncomfortably away and stared out over the deck into the watery distance beyond. White blotches, hundreds of them suddenly loomed ahead some distance away.

“What is…” he turned back to ask Berne, but the nymph interrupted.

“I knew the thing! I knew it! You’ll be from the alliance, like az not!”

“Excu(hic)se me?” the Sand Strider asked, surprised. Berne’s odd behavior was disconcerting.

“The alliance, young (hic) thief.”

Gribly was annoyed and, to tell the truth, mildly embarrassed. He had spent too much time among good people in the last weeks to not be. “I didn’t… I didn’t think any of you Zain knew about that.”

“I knows an alliance brother when ev’r I sees one.”

“No… (hic hic!) I meant about being a thief.”

“All alliance brothers and si-i-sisters are thieves, young maister.”

The drink-addled haze about the Sand Strider broke like an egg smashed underfoot. Young Maister? Brother Thieves? It called to mind a number of incidents in his past life, most noticeably his flight from the Pit Strider, his might-be relation, and… the merchant who’d used the old pickpocket’s saying.

Gribly took a chance. “Speed, silence,”

“Stealth,” Captain Berne finished. “So you’ve really met us before, ‘ave ye? Know yer own kind whenst ye see ‘em?” Instantly the nymph dropped his moony expression and replaced it with one of devious knowledge. “Too strong fer drink, too fast fer followin’… It’s another one of the alliance sayings, if you’ll mind the uncultured… ah… accent.”

Gribly only had a slight notion of what the slippery nymph was talking about, so he declined answering. He grinned instead.

“Ah, maister Grib,” the captain smiled warmly, “I’ve been a’watching you on this short voyage. You’ll make a fine member if ye survive this blood-riddled quest of your mate’s.” He clasped Gribly’s shoulder in a gesture of brotherhood, but before he could do any more explaining (and there was a lot of it, Gribly suspected), the entire voyage ended quite abruptly.

The trireme had gone untended for only a few seconds, but due to whatever special attributes it boasted it had already reached the white blobs that had stood out against the night sky. They were a veritable forest of icebergs- the beginning of the Inkwell Bergs, where Page Variand had earlier claimed was the home of the Treele, and, farther north, the Reethe.

Just as Captain Berne ended his speech to Gribly, the Mirrorwave clipped one of the icebergs slightly. A shudder went up the side of the trireme, shaking Berne’s hand off the tiller- the loss of control caused the vessel to veer directly into the Berg’s side. “Blast!” swore the captain, struggling to regain his stance and hold as the ship careened and tossed under his feet. Gribly reached for the tiller to help just as the full force of the crash hit him and threw both he and the hardy nymph on their backs.

A rumbling, low and loud, filled the Sand Strider’s ears. A shadow fell over the entire ship, darker than the midnight sky. Wide-eyed and terrified, he gazed up at the sight that met his eyes.

“What in Vast is that?!?!?” shouted one of them- himself or the captain, Gribly wasn’t sure which.

Then a darker, more violent blackness fell, and his mind collapsed to shut it out.

~

Lauro thanked the Aura he was a light sleeper after his time in the desert. The first quake that rocked the ship nearly threw him out of bed, but he was awake and scrambling for his cloak and sword before it was over. The prince slept with his boots on, to save time and keep him ready for anything. Well, if this wasn’t anything, he didn’t know what was. Tumbling out of bed and snatching up his pittance of belongings, he was ready and rushing for the cabin door before the second shock reached him.

When it did, it was like nothing he had ever encountered.

The whole room shook like a rabbit in a wolf’s mouth. A rapid series of deafening booms and crunches echoed from beyond the wall, farther down the ship. The floor started to sway and buck, throwing Lauro off his feet at least three times before he made it to the door. Hurling himself against the door-handle, the prince managed to snap the flimsy chain-clasp and knock the door open… just as the world turned sideways and tossed him out into the hall.

In a few seconds he went from stepping through a door to falling down a long vertical shaft. Shouting in surprise, he flung out his arms and managed by pure luck to catch hold of the left doorpost. Everything around him was spinning and spasming uncontrollably, ropes and tools and barrels careening down at him from above- refuse from what had been the back of the ship, and was now jutting up in the air.

“What in blazes?!?” he cursed, then added a few more tasteful exclamations not fit for reproduction. Hoisting himself up, he managed to grab the doorpost with both hands and climb partially back into the room before the trireme changed position again and dumped him out onto the now-diagonal floor. It was as if a wave of titanic proportions had picked the ship up and thrown it spinning end over end into the bottomless ocean.

More than confused, Lauro slid painfully fast down the tilting boards, past falling debris and even a screaming nymph sailor. When he tried to throw out his arms and legs to slow himself, hardwood splinter lodged themselves under his fingernails and poked into his boots. Cursing, he plummeted straight down past door after open door, right for the narrow end of the passage, which shaped the front end of the Mirrorwave.

It was a nerve-wracking two seconds, filled with the wails and curses of the crew so rudely awakened only to be injured or die from the random direction shifts. At the end Lauro bent his knees to absorb the impact.

Wham! His legs buckled as he smashed into the wood, then splayed out as the ship’s direction flipped over and tossed him up towards the ceiling- which was now the floor, and he was falling towards it. Wham! sounded again, and something hard and metal jabbed painfully into his lower back. Instinctively he reached under himself and grabbed at whatever-it-was. A trapdoor latch.

Without warning the mechanism snapped and the trapdoor popped open, spilling him out into the open night air.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!” he screamed in an extremely unprincely fashion. Spars, tethers, and hooks flew by him as he fell. It would take an hour to describe what he saw in half a second: the world turned topsy-turvy under him, the Mirrorwave hoisted upside-down a hundred feet above the churning waves and blocky ice-floes, the ship’s mainmast hurtling towards him at lightning speed- and the unimaginably huge creature that held the vessel in its grasp.

Without taking time to consider it, Lauro began to wind stride. He kicked his legs out and spread his arms, willing the harsh element of the sky under his power. His fall slowed as he wheeled his limbs every which way, desperately trying to stop himself from being crushed by the approaching mast. Arching his back, he managed to propel himself out of the wooden pillar’s way, but just barely. A flailing myriad of cables and ties snatched at him as he tumbled lower, slower… and slower…

…Until he was able to reach out and grab one of them. Jerking to the end of its reach, he found himself hanging once more, suspended under the Mirrorwave’s ruined hulk. A storm raged around the nightmarish scene, unexpected and deadly. That wasn’t the problem. Lauro almost lost his grip as he caught his first steady glimpse of the creature that was the cause of both the storm and the trireme’s position.

Big as the vessel was, it was a play-toy to the monster that held it in its grip. Tall as a mountain, the massive beast stretched up into the sky like one of the legendary giants from the frightening fireside tales he’d been told as a child. He almost thought that the monster was such a giant: it was the right shape, in general, though it seemed to be made of rushing water and churning, swirling tendrils of white ice.

But its head and face clearly marked it as some beast from the Blaze: long tentacles of the strange, almost-alive ice and snow sprouting from every part; a jutting jaw and hideous mouth that spewed sea-scum and a thick, red substance that might have been blood. Its mandibles writhed and snapped, but no sound came from its icy throat. Hideous, bulbous eyes were set in its head: silvery-white, lidless, and crisscrossed with webbed blue veins. Despite their menacing appearance, it struck Lauro that the demon-beast couldn’t see. He fleetingly imagined that it had spent its life at the bottom of the Inkwell, only to be woken by the Mirrorwave’s untimely passing.

Or had it? Lauro was too courageous to be paralyzed with fear; instead it galled him into action. He began to climb laboriously up the hanging tether just as a hideous screech broke across the thunderous sky above him.

The clouds parted for a moment, throwing a wide beam of moonlight on the sea-beast’s shoulder. High in the ether above it, a twisted black shape was flying. In a flash the light was gone and so was the shape, but Lauro’s keen eyes had picked it out before it faded: a black horse with tattered black wings spreading out from its shoulders. A robed, hunched figure rode on its back, face shadowed by the hood the prince had grown to know and hate.

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

“PIT StriderRR!!!!!!!!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time and motion disappeared under the torrent of the blackness.

Chapter Three: Elia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I knew it- I’m going crazy.”

“I already told you that.”

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

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

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

“You won’t die.”

“That makes no sense!”

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

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

“Goodbye, ah… friend.”

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

He fell asleep.

Then he woke up.

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lauro? She’s dragging Lauro?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lauro sat in shock. Gribly swore so hard it made the other two jump. “There go our plans to warn them,” he groaned.

“You were coming to warn my people?” Elia asked, surprised.

“Well… yes, among other things.” He wished he could think of a more comforting response. The nymph looked so beautiful and heartbroken. He wondered how he had missed it in her face when they’d met, that sadness that seemed natural to her after only, what- a week? Is that what she had said?

“I must hear your story,” the girl said, a little brighter than before, “but first I must finish my own. I have been fleeing these… these draiks for a short time, and have managed to largely escape them. This is my most recent sleeping place, and they have not found it yet. I reached it three days ago, and last night a dream of the Aura Viator came to me and told me to watch the sea. I did, and I saw your ship wake the Ice Demon that destroyed it.”

“Ice Demon? That’s what that beast was?” Lauro made a face.

“That is the name the Treele give it,” she replied.

“It fits,” Gribly said. She nodded.

“There are many of them in the Inkwell, though most do not awake until high winter. I do not think this one intended to wake- I think someone or something awoke it- and not your ship.”

“We know that much: it was a Pit Strider.” Lauro quickly told Gribly what he had seen, and Elia listened intently. It took moments, and she continued when he was finished.

“I did not see this person you speak of, but when the Ice Demon had gone back beneath the waves Viator spoke into my mind, telling me to find you and showing me your faces in my head. I had already seen you,” she told Lauro. “I saw what you did, attacking the Demon when you could have escaped. I have never seen the like of it.”

Gribly positively seethed, as much because he knew he would have fled in Lauro’s place as because of the admiration in Elia’s eyes for the older boy. It drove him mad to be reminded of his own cowardice, and he determined to try being better. The prince just tried to look surprised and keep his stupid pleased grin in check.

“I swam to you both in my Swimmer Form and did wave striding to get you ashore easier.” At this Lauro interjected and Elia quickly explained about her tribe’s ability to shape-shift.

“The Zain couldn’t do that, could they?” Gribly asked.

“No. In ages past they could assume a Second Form, stronger but not as sleek as my tribe’s. At present, though, they have lost the ability over generations of dwelling on land and building boats.”

“What is your other form for?” Gribly asked, feeling strangely intrusive, as if he was asking the girl how much she weighed or something as ridiculous.

“For surviving,” she said simply. “In the north the Reethe live in a fashion similar to ours. They have Other Forms made for living in Ice and Snow, for climbing and running instead of swimming.”

“Oh. So… you rescued us both in your Other Form, and brought us here?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find this place the first time?”

“I fashioned it with my gifts.”

“That’s… impressive,” Gribly said. “I’m not sure I could do the same thing if I tried, and I thought I was pretty good.”

“You are a Wave Strider?” Elia questioned him, wide-eyed.

“No,” he answered, “Not a Wave Strider. A Sand Strider. I stride sand. Odd, I know- I’m still getting used to the idea myself.”

“I am not sure I understand. Are you both Striders from some other place, then?”

“Yes,” both boys said at once. Gribly turned to Lauro.

“I think you’d better be the one to explain, m’prince. It’s your war we’re trying to stop.”

“War? Prince?” Now Elia was the one who looked bewildered. Gribly knew how she felt- he was still working out what she’d told them about herself.

“Well, I suppose we owe it to you to tell you everything,” the prince allowed. “But the tale will take a while. Do you have any more of these fruits, perhaps? I’m famished.”

Chapter Four: Wavechase

It took several more rounds of explaining between the three young people before they had worked it all out. In the end each knew each other’s story almost as well as their own, and had firmly decided it was in their best interests to follow on the youths’ original course, traveling back along the path Elia had taken from her tribe’s former home. If any draiks were encountered, she could wave stride out of trouble, and Lauro was fairly certain he could fly high enough to evade the beasts, even with Gribly hanging on his back.

It was a shaky plan, but with no place to go and enemies on every side the threesome could think of no other. So they wrapped themselves in the few seal-skins Elia had collected during her escapades and set out over the snowy terrain that very day, hoping to make it to the next Berg by nightfall.

The sun was just beginning to set, casting golden rays across the ice from their left and bathing them in a warm glow. Gribly thought it seemed to drive out the chill of the eternal winter, if only a little. The threesome had been tramping across a wide, flat part of the Berg for almost an hour, with the sea far ahead of them and the cliffs far from their backs.

“Blast!” he swore, a random thought striking him. “The weapon from Byorne! It was with my things back on the Mirrorwave!”

Lauro matched his stride and shrugged. “Nothing you can do about it now. It’s probably at the bottom of the Inkwell with the rest of the ship and crew.”

“Then…” his frown creased deeper. “Then how will we convince this Aura we’re hoping to find that we’re supposed to be friends?”

“The Aura will know,” Elia assured him. “The Aura know much more than any mortal, and their understanding of all things is deeper than ours. What was the name you had for this Aura?”

“Wanderwillow,” Lauro answered.

“Then I am sure Wanderwillow will know us when he sees us.”

For some reason Gribly couldn’t explain, he was irked by her unwavering faith in these mysterious beings that had so far only existed in dreams. He was about to object when a long, metallic screech rent the air at their backs, rising higher until it broke into a howling cacophony of growls and barks.

Elia turned white. “Draiks!” she snapped fearfully, looking over her shoulder as if she expected to see a horde of the creatures closing in on her at any moment. Maybe they would. Gribly wasn’t about to wait and find out.

“Come on!” he called, sprinting ahead of the other two Striders. “Let’s get to the water before they figure out we’ve gotten past them!”

The Wave Strider soon caught up with him, but Lauro passed them both easily on feet that barely touched the ground. “It’s… no use… to hide from… them,” Elia puffed as she kept Gribly’s energetic pace. “They’re made… to hunt… us.”

“Won’t matter if we can reach the edge of the iceberg in time!” huffed Gribly back at her, and increased his pace. Lauro let himself fall behind, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder. In a minute he urged the other two on with his voice.

“Faster, faster! I can see something behind us!” Despite the warning, Gribly couldn’t help but slow down as he tried to catch a glimpse of their pursuers. Black, fuzzy spots appeared in the haze that rose up from the flat expanse of ice behind them. In the evening light it was hard to tell, but they appeared to be getting bigger each second. Draik-calls echoed across the iceberg, louder and louder.

Gribly turned his full attention back on his pumping feet and pounding pulse. He felt the ice seem to melt away under him as he sped faster and faster across the Berg. The glimmering bay ahead came closer at an unbelievable rate- he felt like he had wings on his feet! He realized his friends must have been left far behind by now, and looked back to check on them… to find that they were right on his tail, going just as fast. Elia was wearing a look of utter surprise, and Lauro a mask of determination, his hands crossed in a double-clawed gesture in front of him.

He was striding wind.

“Yes!” Gribly yelled, turning back to keep his pace up. Lauro was wind striding to help them outrun the draiks! “Hah- HAH!”

“Shush,” grunted the prince, “I’m trying to concentrate!”

Gribly kept his celebration to a low chuckle, and ran as fast as he could, feeling the wind surge under and around him and at his back, manipulated by Lauro’s gifts. Now this was adventure! It could almost put his tower-jumping burglary escapes to shame!

~

The sun sunk lower and the light grew dimmer as the great chase progressed. Within a half hour it was almost dark, and with the aid of Lauro’s wind the three Striders reached the edge of the iceberg long before their hellish chasers.

“Whoah- call off that breeze, prince boy!” Gribly yelled, and the unnatural wind at their backs subsided, leaving the three breathless and panting on the edge of a several-hundred-foot cliff of ice that stretched down into the churning bay below. “That’d be quite a fall,” the thief commented drily. “How in Vast did you get us up here in the first place, Elia?”

The nymph girl smiled ruefully. “It wasn’t easy… But the shore is lower where I brought you aboard.”

“Aboard?”

“Well…” she paused. “It is a little like a ship; this great chunk of ice floating in the water like an island with no roots… It’s a wonder how none of them hit the sides of the bay. They sometimes hit each other, but not much.” She said it casually, but Gribly saw her rub her neck with a bitter face, as if she was remembering the ordeal of dragging him and Lauro out of the stormy bay after weeks of near-starvation and hiding, with nothing but a waking dream to guide her.

“Well,” he responded, “We won’t need your help so much now. Look. We can cross easy as walking- the next Berg is coming closer.”

It was. A huge iceberg shaped like a cluster of half-submerged mountains with patches of flat land in-between was veering in their direction, borne on a gradual swell of the waves.

“Viator guide me…” the girl breathed. “It can’t be…”

“What?” asked both of her companions at the same time.

“It’s the Treele Berg… It’s my home!” A short silence followed, broken by the far-off howls of approaching draiks. “That Ice Demon that woke… It must have disturbed the sea so much… maybe swam away to a different part and caused all the Bergs to shift…” she looked at Gribly, her face almost as fearful as if one of the titanic monsters were here now. “Unless… unless more of them are waking. Unless there’re more, causing more and more waves…”

“Whatever it is,” Lauro interrupted, “It’s not the problem now. Those draiks are getting closer, and soon our lead will be lost.”

“Not just that,” Gribly added. “If these two icebergs collide, the draiks’ll be able to cross just as easily as us.”

“That settles it,” the prince said. “We need to get across now. Now! This minute!”

Droplets of water wet Gribly’s hair and neck, causing him to look up. The sky was almost dark and it was beginning to rain. Ominous spiraling storm-clouds were forming where minutes ago there had been none. “I agree,” he said, “So… how do we get across? Elia, you can swim, Lauro can fly… but what about me?”

“We’ll just leave you here,” Lauro replied, so completely serious Gribly almost believed him, before the prince winked to let him know he was joking.

“But truthfully,” Elia said when she’d picked up the joke, “what will we do? Time’s running out…”

“I might be able to fly Grib across,” Lauro guessed, “But maybe not. I can’t know without trying, and I’d rather not make a mistake.”

“You’re sounding more like a commoner every day, y’know that?”

“Stoppit!” Elia cried, halfway between laughing and yelling. “This is not funny.” It wasn’t. Something about her voice shut them both up right away. “Now listen,” she told them when they were quiet. “I think I may know how to cross safely, if you’re not afraid of getting cold and wet, Gribly.”

“Getting dumped into the sea by a giant Demon tends to make one a little less afraid of water,” he answered.

“All right,” she said, taking his statement at face value. “Then here’s what we’ll do: I’ll change into my Swimmer Form and dive into the water. Then Lauro can fly you down to me without much trouble, and I’ll take you the rest of the way across.”

“Are your gifts really that strong?” Lauro asked. “Could you take him all the way?”

“I can’t swim, remember?” Gribly put in, before it occurred to him he hadn’t actually mentioned it before.

“I’ve thought of that,” Elia said without missing a beat. “And it’ll be hard, but not impossible… as long as you can hold your breath for a little while.”

“Sure,” he answered, though he wasn’t sure at all.

The draik howls grew louder. “We’re losing our lead…” Lauro snapped, clenching his fists.

“Right then,” Gribly said. “Let’s do this.”

Elia nodded and stepped back. Raising her arms to the heavens, she closed her eyes and brought her hands down in front of her as if she was pulling a heavy curtain down over her. Her form began to shimmer and sway, becoming watery and almost transparent. It looked almost like she was actually putting on another body; a slimmer, sleeker, almost fish-like one that was neither nymph-like nor spirit.

In seconds it was over, and Elia stood before them in the water-dwelling shape of her people. It was more angular and slightly taller than her nymph shape, and- Gribly hoped it didn’t show on his face- even more beautiful. Lauro merely nodded, seemingly unaffected.

“Can you talk in this form?”

“Of course… Different, yes? But still speech…” Her voice had undergone a change, too. It was higher and more musical- watery, just like the rest of her.

This is so strange, Gribly thought. Not for the first time during his journey he wished he could have had more of a choice.

Swimmer-Elia paused, waiting for any last words from either Strider. When they said nothing, she did another compulsive nod and ran to the edge of the cliff, throwing herself off in a perfect arching dive. Gribly rushed to the edge, Lauro right behind him. Together they peered into the water below, where Elia’s falling form was almost invisible against the waves. Eventually, though, they saw her leaping in and out of the sea like an excited dolphin or fish. She reminded Gribly of a mermaid, one of the legendary creatures from tales told by gritty sailors that sometimes drank at one of his old haunts in Ymeer.

“Well, she seems to like it,” he commented. Lauro looked at him strangely, but said nothing to the point.

“Let’s get this over with,” the prince said. “You may as well climb on my back and we’ll see if I can even get off the ground.”

“Fine.” The wind Strider bent over a little and Gribly clambered onto his back, almost choking him with his arms as he tried to feel secure in the idiotic thing he was about to do.

“Ugh… leth gho ath lithle…”

“What?”

“Leth… go…” Oh. Gribly let go a little. Lauro nodded and put a foot up cautiously into the air. He flexed his ankle and suddenly stomped, pushing the pair a few inches off the ground. They hung there for less than a second before sinking back down before Lauro could get another kick in.

“Well… that was productive,” Gribly said.

“Shut up.”

The predatory howls and barks behind them grew louder. Gribly felt that if he looked back he’d be able to see the draiks closing in behind them. Lauro tried wind striding again, without much luck. Then again. Then again.

On the fifth try the pair went airborne and stayed there. The prince pedaled furiously with his feet and leaned forward more than Gribly liked, but they moved slowly through the air until they had passed the cliff’s edge and hung suspended by nothing but Lauro’s powers over a drop of more than a hundred feet.

“Don’t lose your breakfast,” the wind Strider cautioned. Gribly was about to say that he hadn’t got any breakfast when Lauro pointed his toes and the pair shot down at a speed that ripped the thief’s scream right out of his lungs.

A long, drawn-out hisssssssssssssssssss was all that came from his mouth. The fall almost did make him throw up. Wind rushed by and the ever-thickening rain pelted them faster than they could fall away from it.

A second passed.

Then another.

This isn’t so different from house-jumping, Gribly realized, and stopped trying to scream. If he tried to forget they were about to hit the water, it seemed almost identical. By the time Lauro had slowed their fall to a steady careen, the waves were mere yards away. Time to show Elia the prince isn’t the only one with skill, he thought, and before he had even thought about it he was letting go of Lauro and pushing off in a backflip-dive into the water.

It was exhilarating, those two seconds before he hit the water. He wondered in a little-used corner of this mind if this was what Lauro felt like every time he strode the wind.

Then he hit the crest of a large wave and tumbled underwater, feeling himself sucked down like a rock beneath the curling surface. Suddenly he remembered he couldn’t swim.

Blast it.

For a few frightening seconds he was tossed about like a leaf in a waterfall, gulping in full breaths of water that choked him as he twisted to and fro, trying to find his way back to the surface. Where was up? Every direction felt the same, and the torrent was so strong he couldn’t have opened his eyes if he wanted to.

Then a smooth something wrapped itself under his shoulders and around his chest, dragging him back up to the free air like a fish caught on a line. The next second he broke the surface and found himself being carried by the silvery-skinned Elia, who seemed able to stay afloat and move in any direction without moving her limbs. As soon as she brought him up he began to cough up the water he’d inhaled, and two hands grabbed him roughly from above.

“Idiot! What in Vast did you do that for?” it was Lauro, flying horizontally to the waves, helping Elia keep him afloat.

Gribly didn’t bother answering. It was true.

“We don’t have time for tricks,” Elia said. That hurt much more than anything Lauro could say. Gribly just nodded. “Hold onto me, and try not to slip off.”

The Sand Strider obeyed stiffly, wishing there was another way. Lauro let go and flew on ahead in massive mid-air strides. Gribly tried to hold tight to Elia’s waist, and found it nearly impossible- like trying to catch hold of a river and ride it. The girl spread her arms out in either direction and they started to move forward unaccountably.

“Hold my shoulders,” she yelled over the sounds of the breaking storm.

He did, and felt her lean forward under him, making a sort of living raft. Evidently she had not idly boasted about her wave striding. The waves split on either side of her and the sea itself seemed to push her along through the water. Sea spray tickled Gribly’s nose and the wind lashed his wet, straggly mess of hair back and forth behind him. He felt exhilarated.

“Is this how you feel every time you swim??” he called to Elia over the roar of thunder overhead.

“This is nothing,” she replied without moving her head an inch. “I’ll show you something far better…”

Suddenly the largest wave yet rose in front of them and threatened to crash down and engulf them. Gribly yelped in fear and surprise when Elia moved right into it. One second they were swallowed, and the next they were shooting up in a massive pillar of water that hurled them up into the air over the iceberg they’d been heading for.

“WHAAAA!!!!!!”

He felt himself holler, but the pillar didn’t drop them like he’d expected. Instead it curled downward and splashed onto the ice and snow without harming them, becoming a sort of flowing river without banks or source. His feet banged against the ground and he ran with the flow until it subsided and drained away in multiple twisting rivulets, released from Elia’s power.

“That… was… was… insane! Wonderful! Fantastic! It… I…” Gribly talked too fast and had to pause for breath. Bending over, he sat down on the ice, shaking from sheer excitement. Elia walked over to him and helped him up again. She was smiling and back in her nymph form, pale-skinned and dressed in blue.

“It is what I live for,” She told him. Her voice was evidently the last thing to change back to normal, which it did mid-sentence.

“Incredible,” came a worried voice behind them, “But we don’t have time for frivolity.” Lauro hovered above them, slowly kicking his feet to stay in the air. “The draiks are right behind us.”

Gribly turned and saw the creatures line the cliff. Three massive draiks larger than the one he’d killed at the Arches lined the cliff opposite their position.

“Three…” Elia mused. “One’s missing. At least four have been hunting me since I last left home… and this iceberg, however it got here so sudden…”

“No time!” Lauro almost screeched. “Come on!” he dropped heavily to the ice and stumbled a little. When he had recovered, he beckoned again, and the Sand Strider and Wind Strider followed him up the snowy hill and deeper into the Berg.

“It’s… too… close,” Gribly gasped as he forced his aching, tired body into a run. “They’ll… catch us… at this rate… in minutes…”

“Maybe… not,” Elia contradicted. “If we can reach… the old Tribe Circle… we… might have a chance…”

“Wha…?”

“Have… idea…” she gulped past the rushing air as they fled. Gribly grinned wryly as Lauro moved behind them to boost their speed with his wind striding.

“Your ideas… are going to save us… or… kill us…”

Elia smiled in the dark next to him, and kept on running.

Chapter Five: What Bernarl Saw

Nymphs were hard to kill. Zain were even harder. And of all the strongest Zain, the hardest to kill was Captain Bernarl of the Mirrorwave.

It was a full day and half the next night before he pulled himself out of the churning waves of the Inkwell and onto an iceberg several miles from the wreck of his ship. He had been lucky enough to fall straight to the water when the Ice Demon had first picked up the trireme, and had been swimming underwater ever since. Hauling himself up onto the ice and springing up into a fighting stance, Berne checked for any immediate threats. When none presented themselves, he walked slowly forward up the snowy ground of the Berg, contemplating his near-miraculous escape.

What few of the Zain and even less of the outside world knew was that not all of the southern sea-nymph tribe had lost their ability to Change. Berne’s father had been able to shape-shift between an elfin form and a wispy, steam-shrouded body he had called his Ghost Form. None but his closest family had known it, and when his father had married a Treele girl from the northern waters it guaranteed that Berne would be able to Change as well. He could, though his Other Form took more after his mother’s than his father’s… a fact he was grateful for now.

“Not so easy to snip the thread on me,” he muttered defiantly as he climbed the ever-steepening snow-hill. It was an expression born of an ancient belief that one of the Aura determined who lived and who died by snipping purple threads.

Yes, it was not so easy to kill a Zain.

Berne reached the top of the hill and looked out over the cliffs of ice that stretched up into the night sky above him. No one and nothing seemed to be about, so he tramped cautiously down the other side. His uniform scratched painfully at his Other Form’s watery skin, but he hadn’t had time to do anything about it yet. His coat had been swept away long ago; now he tossed off his shirt and began to Change.

In seconds his face took on its old shape, his hair resumed its pale color, and his body reshaped itself into its usual form.

“Blasted cold,” he shivered, putting his fluttery shirt on again and wishing he still had his coat. His weapons were gone, too. Blast. He needed to find something- anything- fast, or he was going to starve before his sorry self had a chance to freeze to death respectably. With a resigned grunt he set out towards the icy cliffs.

~

The stars crawled slowly across the sky, little needles of light in the utter dark of the world’s dome. It took an hour of tedious wading through snow to reach the cliffs, during which Berne wished for a fire and hot beandrink no less than twenty-five times, stopped to listen for imaginary enemies fourteen times, and said “Blast!” fifty-two times. At last he reached his destination, found a fissure leading inward, and followed it. It led him through a labyrinth of natural paths and shallow valleys in the icy land before dumping him over the edge of a depressed clearing that seemed to be hacked out of the cliffs in a mile-wide circle. He grinned.

The clearing was filled with swirls and spires of ice, packed so thick that he couldn’t see past them. That wasn’t what made him smile.

Berne shuffled sideways twenty yards, until he came to another crack in the ice-cliff. It was nearly the same size as his crack, and leading from it was a string of smallish footprints clearly made by some nymph child or maiden. I’m not alone! was his first thought, and his second was to notice that the footprints went into the crowded hollow beyond. Thirdly, his sharp tracking eye picked out the large smudges and occasional drops of blood on the snow. The nymph had been dragging a wounded comrade- a survivor of the ship, perhaps? The nymph’s footsteps crossed over one another multiple times, as if whoever-it-was had trod the same path two or three times.

Berne slid down the side of the depression, following the prints into the forest of sculptures. It was darker than ever down among the fantastic shapes, and the captain made sure to go slowly and warily, always ready for a foe to present itself. It was in his nature to be distrustful, even of his own hope. That’s what comes o’ being a brigand, he thought. He had more than one secret to boast of.

He saw hints of a clearing in the spires ahead minutes before he actually reached it. The footprints and signs of a dragged body led him to the edge of a shallow, snow-filled bowl. The prints led across it, and after circumventing the bowl’s edge to keep from being spotted by anyone who might lie in wait, Berne followed them farther.

In the same roundabout fashion he was eventually able to follow the prints across to the cliffs on the other side, where the shapes ended and the ground sloped upwards. He climbed the hill cautiously, swearing under his breath at the cold wind that suddenly beat on his shoulders after the relative shelter of the ice-forest. At the top it leveled out before sloping down again a bit lower. Up and down, up and down he traveled until rounding one of the larger mounds. The footprints led around it and across a flat, snow-dusted area, stopping at a large crack in the cliff… a crack covered by one of the silky hides usually employed in Treele tribe-tents.

The nymph. Berne was about to rush across the exposed space and into the cave when a flurry of flapping noises from the night sky above him warned of something’s approach. Ducking back around the edge of the mound, he hoped the shadows would be enough to hide him from whatever was coming. It sounded big.

With a whooshing and screaming, a large dark shape landed clumsily on the ice between the snowy mounds and the cliffs. It looked vaguely horse-like, but it glinted like it was armored or made of metal, and it had tattered black wings. Skittering to a stop in front of the crack, it crouched low to let its rider off.

The moon was shrouded and the stars gave off little light, but Berne had no doubt he was seeing the Pit Strider the prince of Vastion had told him about. A black cloak hung about the upright frame of the man, whose proud bearing and stalking stride gave him away as a kind of person Berne knew well: a person used to killing, and ordering others to kill for him.

A spark flared in the blackness. A loud pop repeated itself three times, and a smell of sulfur and smoke reached Berne’s nostrils from across the span. He fought the urge to cough, but when he saw what had made the smell, he almost yelled outright. A bat made of flames had crawled its way out of the smoke billowing from the Pit Strider’s hand. It flapped its ghostly wings and launched itself screaming through the hide door.

The Pit Strider leaped to the side of the door as a terrific explosion rocked the cave and melted the ice with its force. Hot water sprayed almost as far as the smoke blew, causing Berne to cringe behind his cover. What was the madman doing- trying to attract every demon in the bay? Unless…

Unless he doesn’t fear them. Unless they’re on his side.

The Pit Strider waited until the explosion had subsided before entering the steaming, misty mess that had once been a cave. Berne’s instincts told him to run while there was still a chance, but he steeled himself and stayed put. He had to know what the danger was; had to know what wrathful evil his tribe had inadvertently attracted.

The steam from the hole the Strider had blasted in the cliff curled out in misty tendrils towards the snow mounds and up the face of the cliff, shielding the nymph’s enemies from sight. No use going into that, his sense told him. That killer’ll be on you before you can blink an eye. Better to wait.

So he turned and loped stealthily away from the scene, hoping the occupants of the cave hadn’t been inside when the Pit Strider reached it. It was obvious the searcher had seen the wreck of the Mirrorwave and come to the same conclusion as Berne: there were survivors somewhere among the icebergs. For now, the nymph captain realized he had to find food and shelter of some kind for the night. In the morning he would begin the impossible task of tracking a flying horse and its rider.

“Not so fast, my resilient friend…” A voice came out of nowhere. Berne spun around, fists raised. The darkness around him grew instantly more ominous and threatening.

“Show yourself…” he whispered.

“Fine,” someone said… right behind him.

Berne wheeled around to find a pillar of smoke rushing up from a crack in the ice that hadn’t been there before. Without waiting to see what it held, the valiant nymph-captain rushed forward, swinging his fists.

A shadowy form separated from the smoke and lurched to meet him. A white blade flashed in the moonlight as they slammed together.

Berne felt the Pit Strider’s sword plunge through his stomach and out his back. He felt the blood seep onto his shirt at both ends and knew he had seconds to make his mark before the pain and shock paralyzed him.

Before his enemy could pull away, Berne locked him in a deadly wrestler’s embrace, snapping the smaller man’s ribs and crushing the air from his lungs. One hand kept the Strider’s sword-arm pinioned while the other gripped at his hood and hair, trying for a grip that would snap his neck.

The Pit Strider made a strangled yell, trying vainly to break free. The yell turned to a garbled moan as he choked on his own scream, and the hood fell limply from his face.

“Brattle me…” Berne exclaimed, stunned. “Sand Strider! Is it you??”

The nymph’s surprise allowed his grip to loosen just enough, and the fight was over. The Pit Strider snarled and dug his free hand into Berne’s side. It was red-hot and burning, leaving a smoking brand-like mark in the nymph’s flesh.

Berne spat in his enemy’s face in parting before his wounds overcame him and he toppled soundlessly on the cold ice.

“What the… damnate you, nymph… Burn in the Blaze!” The Pit Strider stood over him, gloating but nearly fainting from his own wounds, swaying like a drunken man and clutching his right shoulder- though Berne couldn’t remember hitting him there.

Aura of the Creator, receive me into your golden heaven with open arms… find me worthy of paradise… I beg you this… In what he thought were his last moments, Berne turned to the simple prayers he had been taught as a child and promptly abandoned thereafter.

The Pit Strider above him curled his lip in disgust at his fallen foe. Roughly ripping the pale-hued sword from Berne’s body and stomped away, still coughing bile and blood from the encounter. His fading footsteps were the last thing the nymph heard before he slipped into unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness, but not death. Wounded as he was, forsaken as he was, Captain Bernarl of the Mirrorwave did not die.

His time had not yet come.

Chapter Six: Fire, Ice, and Wind

It was deep into the night by the time the three Striders reached the razed remnant of the Treele Tribe Circle. The trip had taken them over and around a veritable sea of gently rolling hills, which Elia called the Icewaves. By the time they reached their destination, Lauro felt as if he could fall asleep right then and there on the ice. His whole body was stiff and aching with the cold. His head felt light and the chill got less and less as he grew closer to total exhaustion.

“When do we sleep…?” Gribly wondered groggily aloud.

“Not ‘til we’ve escaped… not ‘til we find…” Elia trailed off into silence and stood wobbling a few feet ahead. Lauro tried to wake himself- the journey had been hardest for him, wind striding to keep them going faster than their hunters, but he needed to keep going or they’d all freeze out here!

“Come on, come on!” he urged them, “We’ve got to keep moving! We’re here already, now we just need to find those ships you talked about… Elia?”

The girl stumbled back limply and he caught her, trying to keep her on her feet.

“What… I…” she shook off the stupor and lurched forward again.

“You almost fainted.”

“Sorry. It’s just…” she shook her head violently, then stood a little straighter and looked more awake. “Sorry.” She looked around. “This is home, all right. I’m glad the stars don’t give much light- I wouldn’t want to see it all again.” She paused again, swaying. Lauro moved to catch her again if she fell, but it turned out she was just searching for the ships- with her eyes or some other sense, he never found out.

Lauro punched Gribly in the shoulder a little harder than was necessary to wake him up.

That was Elia’s plan: to find the Treele ships, which, hopefully, wouldn’t have been damaged by the draik attack days before. She hadn’t been descriptive, but the vessels sounded more like glorified canoes than anything that would be useful on the open bay. Lauro wasn’t used to having things so far out of his control- but he worked on keeping it in and trying to obey those who- he hated to admit it- knew better than himself.

“There!” Elia whispered excitedly, pointing beyond the farthest point of the wrecked Circle. There seemed to be a lighter shade of shadow there, but Lauro couldn’t see anything. Just allow her to lead, he told himself.

“Right. Let’s get moving.” He turned and shook Gribly, who was dozing again beside him. “Come on, Grib. We’re almost done.”

Just as he said it, a long, drawn-out howl came from the hills behind them. The draiks! The thief jerked awake, wide-eyed, and grabbed Lauro’s wrist painfully tight. The prince started, surprised at the younger boy’s strength.

“Traveller! What’s-??” Gribly began, then saw who he was addressing and looked away frantically. “Lauro! Where’s Elia??”

“Here,” the girl said. Gribly whipped around, totally disoriented, and almost knocked her over.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lauro groaned. “We don’t have time for more tricks!”

“No, no, no! I’ve had a dream- Elia, where’re the boats you talked about?”

“Nearby,” she answered, walking forward. The two followed her. Gribly was all of a sudden the most aware of the three.

“We can’t go there! It’s a trap!”

“Trap? There’s no-” Elia began.

“The Aura visited me again, in my dream,” the Sand Strider insisted. “We need to… GET DOWN!!!!” He leaped forward and tackled her to the ice.

Lauro’s acute senses told him to do the same, and he did, luckily. His warrior’s instinct saved his life.

The largest draik he had seen yet broke through the tattered remains of one of the tents in the Circle and leaped for the trio. Gribly’s tackle and Lauro’s duck saved their heads from being bitten clean off, as the beast sailed over them and crash-landed in the fragile skeleton of another burnt-out tent.

The prince immediately took command- or tried. “Get up, both of you! Get to the Treele boats while I hold this thing off!”

He kicked his feet up and landed standing, ready to die for his friends. Gribly scrambled up, white with terror, Elia clutching his arm.

The huge draik laboriously turned in a circle. Its gears shrieked as they ground together and its hide seemed brittle and cracked, like the skin of a dead thing. It looked as if the long chase through Winterland had taken its toll on the creature, but it was no guarantee of survival.

“No!” Gribly shouted back, pushing Elia behind him. “Traveller sent me a dream! He told me this would happen- you two have to go! I have to stay!”

“What!?!” Lauro argued, eying the snarling draik. It seemed to regard them with more apprehension than before, now that they had escaped its first ambush. “You can’t fight that thing! It’ll shred you!”

“You’ll do no better!”

“We can’t be having this conversation!!!!” Lauro nearly screeched. The draik back up, pawing the ground, ready to charge. It was all so ridiculous he could have laughed… had he not been about to die.

With a roar and a blast of yellow flame from its maw, the monster attacked. It was Elia who provided the best advice.

“SCATTER!!!!!” she yelled. The three Striders split up, leaping in different directions: Gribly to the side, Elia up one of the nearby Icewaves, and Lauro up into the air.

The draik missed the thief by inches as it swept by with claws and even a tusk. The ice made it hard to change direction, so the creature evidently fixed on Elia as the easiest target: straight ahead. She slid down the other side of the Icewave and turned to run around the Tribe Circle’s edge before she noticed she was the one being followed. With a shriek she tried to run faster, but there was little she could do without slipping and falling.

Gribly rolled up onto his feet and gave chase, screaming at the draik in a vain attempt to distract it. It’s up to me, then, Lauro thought.

He kicked his feet in a series of short, powerful bursts which propelled him high up in the air. Then he stopped moving entirely and let himself fall heavily through the night air towards the deadly chase below.

As he fell his body twisted upside down, and he soared head-first towards the unforgiving ground. The advantage was the few seconds he had to view the Tribe Circle in its entirety while still coming nearer to help Elia- and he made the best use of it he could.

Perhaps from some innate instinct, the nymph girl was running straight for the Treele vessels. His vision always seemed to improve when he took to the skies- he could see the boats now, slender, white-wooded craft made to hold five or six people each, with no oars or sails that were visible. He saw it all in less than a second and turned his attention back to Elia.

The gap was closing between her and the draik. At this rate she’d be caught before she even reached the boats. Lauro struck out with his arms and pulled himself through the air faster than ever. He had to land in that gap. He had to stop the draik no matter what.

A hundred feet. The air whistled so shrilly in his ears that he couldn’t hear the sounds of the monster or the frantic cries of Gribly far behind.

Fifty. The pounding of his pulse eclipsed all else.

Ten. He kicked his legs forward and curled up in a ball.

One. He hit the draik with all the force of his flying momentum behind him, right on the point where its skull was fused to a wide metal crest that jutted up above its head. The monster’s head snapped to the side and it slipped on the ice, wildly snapping at its attacker and blowing a jet of flame. Lauro was ripped out of his fetal position by the impact and went sprawling painfully on the ice.

He managed to protect his head, but just barely. His nose banged into his knee and started to bleed, then his legs twisted under him and he rolled over and over, slowing only when he slid partway up one of the smooth Icewaves. Before he could slide back down again he rolled onto his feet and scrambled up, ready to take to the air again if the draik attacked him.

The monster roared as it staggered forward. Something in its neck had shattered when the wind Strider hit it: its head was permanently tilted to one side, making its appearance even more grotesque. Lauro wiped blood from his face and stepped back to begin wind striding, but a painful jolt shot up his left leg and prevented him. Blast it, what’ve I done to myself? He tried to think straight through the cold and the pain- had he twisted his ankle? Broken his leg? It all seemed possible at the moment, and he had bigger troubles to worry about.

The draik charged, and Lauro instinctively raised his arms to defend himself. When he did, a blast of cold air rushed by under his palms and hit the draik full on. It slowed the beast but didn’t stop it. He had used his gifts! That was it! Lauro spun in a tight circle on his uninjured foot and thrust his arms out at the beast. The air shimmered as a torrent of wind blasted the draik much stronger than he had intended, pushing it onto its hind legs and almost picking it up off the ground.

I’m getting stronger, Lauro realized. He hadn’t had much energy to practice wind-striding on this journey… not since he had left home, all that time ago.

“For Vastion!” he cried, lifting his arms and whirling them all around to conjure more wind. Was it possible? Could he defeat this thing by himself? The air around him felt electric and alive. He felt alive- more so than he had in months. It was as if his powers were maturing to their full potential all in this one moment. The draik slammed back down on four legs and howled, trying to come back at him, but the wind kept it from moving more than a few feet at a time.

Streams of ethereal color seemed to form in the air around him. Pink, green, and yellow, blue and gold, white and scarlet red. The murmuring of the wind was a cataclysmic battle-cry in his ears. It filled him and rushed out in all directions like an ember filled to bursting with a fiery energy.

“For the Aura!” he shouted, drawing his hands behind him in a complex series of motions, then unleashing the gathered wind with his palms thrust out, throwing a shooting spear of air out in front of him.

Chains ripped from their anchors on the draik’s face and flew backwards in pieces. The monster was ripped into the air and hurled onto its back ten feet away. Gears popped from slots in its shoulders and went bouncing away on the ice; steam puffed in great bursts from its nostrils and a pipe jutting from its side; blood spilled and pooled on the ice under its metal-and-hide back.

Lauro smirked triumphantly and wrung his arms to get the feeling back into them. Wind striding was tiring work, and he needed to be ready for-

-But he never finished the thought. The draik recovered faster than he had thought it could, twisting in a way no natural animal could to get on its feet and charging again. He hurriedly conjured a blast of wind and swept it up towards the monster’s head to lift it off balance again, but the draik dug its iron claws into the ice and kept its head low, riding out the whirlwind and charging forward again as soon as it was done.

It can’t reach me in time, Lauro knew, raising his arms for a grand finale of striding. But the draik knew it too, and it didn’t have to reach him to do what it wanted. Before it could be pushed back again it sucked in the cold night air and blasted it out in a hellish inferno of white flame that engulfed the stout prince immediately.

“No!” he shouted, cowering, but the torrent never reached him. It was diverted on two sides by a dark form that sprang in the way at the last second, black against the evil light of the flames. Even then Lauro was knocked flat by the heat and the air that accompanied them. “NO!” he shouted again, “ELIA!”

Chapter Seven: Speech of Mastery

Elia had just reached the wessiles; pale-hulled wave-riders unique to the Treele; when she realized the draik was no longer following her. Spinning around, she caught sight of the wind Strider boy flopping head-over-heels across the ice, the monstrous draik struggling to rise to its knees with a twisted neck from the impact.

What does he think he’s doing? She wondered frantically, but she already knew. He’s giving me a chance to escape. He’s trying to save me. He was no coward, for sure. Foolish, but brave.

For a moment she stood, undecided, wanting to flee and make good her escape but knowing she could never live with the death of her new friend. While she rocked nervously between the two ideas, she noticed a darker shade of night behind the shadows of the draik and the prince. Gribly! The hapless thief was running up behind the monster, still yelling at his friend to stop. What was wrong with him? He was going to get them both killed!

“Father of Sea and Sand, protect me,” she whispered, setting out at a run up the slight incline of the Berg to reach her friends before it was too late.

As she ran, she tried to gather her thoughts for her next move. Her only chance was her gifts, but so far she had little to no luck wave striding with snow, let alone ice. Picking up her pace, she tried to imagine the ground beneath her molding to her feet and pushing her forward a little faster than she could go on her own. She thought she could feel her speed increase, but then again… she knew she could be imagining it.

Either way, it wasn’t fast enough. Up ahead Lauro was being charged by the draik, and some wound or injury was keeping him from flying away.

“STOP!” she screamed, but at that moment Lauro began to summon wind and use it to fight the predator. Her voice was drowned out in the shrieking gale the wind Strider brought to bear on his enemy. The sheer power of his attacks surprised her so much she slowed down, gaping at the scene with little comprehension.

What Lauro apparently didn’t see when he threw the weight of his wind striding against the draik was that Gribly had almost reached the duel. The force of the wind knocked the Sand Strider down at the same time it flipped the draik on its back. Gribly fell and didn’t get up. Elia forced herself to go faster despite the burning in her lungs and the pounding blood in her ears. She had to get there- had to do something!

A hundred feet between her and the deadly battle, she pushed herself to cross the last distance faster than she had run since her home was burned.

Fifty feet. The draik seemed to be resisting the wind better. Lauro paused in his attack and the beast surprised him with its speed and resilience.

Ten. The draik clung to the icy ground and withstood the wind Strider’s powers without injury and opened its maw to blast the prince with fire. On the far side of the combat, Gribly sat groggily up, and his eyes locked with Elia’s.

She never knew afterwards just what in the boy’s face made her do what she did. Without thinking, riding on an instinct that had never been there before… she flung herself in the way. She hurtled forward, sailing through the air and landing between the monster and its prey. Flames gushed out of the draik’s open jaw, swirling in deathly patterns around her and rushing at her from all directions in a hypnotic display of light and heat.

Cringing, she threw her hands up in front of her face, wrists crossed. Her arms and splayed palms burned like they had been dipped in molten rock, but the rest of her stayed strangely cold. Her chest heaved manically as the shock of the blast threatened to overwhelm her. Then, as suddenly as they’d started, the flames stopped. She looked up, shaking and frightened.

The inferno hadn’t touched her. She was standing in a pool of steaming water where the fire had melted the ice, but the flames had left her unharmed.

“How in…” Lauro gaped behind her, rattled at her sudden and startling intervention.

She turned back to him. “I don’t… I… I don’t know.”

“LOOK OUT!” he shouted, and she spun back to the draik, just as it leaned back and delivered another, stronger blast.

With nothing else to guide her, Elia threw her palms outward again, crying “No!” in her shrill, frightened voice.

Once more, the flames parted mere inches from her hands and spurted to each side, searingly hot on her arms and hands but ultimately harmless. The second burst lasted longer than the first, but she waited it out. Though it hurt her eyes she kept them open, to convince herself that she really was, apparently, stopping the flames.

“Impossible,” she breathed, but there it was- she was staring death in the face and yet… not dying. She lowered her arms experimentally- no more than an inch- and immediately felt a fatal increase in heat. She quickly returned to her former position, wondering how much longer she could stand it.

How was she doing it? She had no idea, but it seemed similar to… No, it couldn’t be. Could it?

Was she striding fire like she did to water? Was it even possible to stride more than one thing? She could think of only one way to test it.

When the draik lessened the flow of flames to see if she had succumbed, Elia kept her arms angled toward the last of the torrent as it shot off to either side. Squeezing her fists shut, she tried to imagine that it would obey her and stay lit where it was. For a moment the flames coalesced into two separate balls of fury, whirling in on themselves- then they went out. It had lasted only a second, but it had been enough to convince her. I can stride fire!

~

A hundred yards. Gribly kept running and shouting, hoping against hope his friends would hear him.

“Stop! You have to stop! It’s too strong! I’m the only one who can stop it in time!”

Fifty yards. It wasn’t working. Lauro was too high to hear and Elia was too far. If he could only reach the draik before it hurt either of them! Why couldn’t he run fast enough, blast it?!? He was pushing himself so hard he thought his heart might pound itself right out of his chest. The wind whipped his hair back in a fluttering flag of pale yellow behind him as he sped through the night, pumping his legs and slamming the ice with each foot as they fell faster and faster. One-two-one-two-one-two-one!

Twenty yards. He raced on and on, ignoring the pain from the hard ground against his soles. Whatever footwear the Zain had given to him he had lost in the Ice Demon’s storm. Now only rags bound his feet, but he was used to such conditions from his life in Ymeer.

Ten yards. Thirty feet. Lauro was battling the draik with wind, but it could only last so long. He could stop it, if only he reached the prince in time!

Ten feet. Gribly whisked paste the charred skeleton of a Treele tent and bounded the last few steps towards the battle.

He reached the draik and was about to do as his dream had shown him when Lauro threw a stormy gust of wind across the empty space and blasted the draik off its feet. The force of the gale flipped the Sand Strider on his back like a helpless beetle, and he cracked his head hard against the cold ground.

The world shuddered and went all red-black. Gribly thought he had died until a fresh burst of pain from his skull and the return of his sight assured him he was not.

“Gah…” he sat up unsteadily and leaned on one arm. The stars danced circles in the sky above him as he struggled to stay upright. His stomach heaved and he gagged over the ice, but nothing came out. Haven’t eaten in days…

His friends needed him! Forcing himself to his knees, he looked up just in time to witness the draik roast Lauro in its belly-fire.

“No!” he shouted hoarsely, “Stop!” But his wavering voice could not be heard over the wild fighting. He tried again: “STOP!” But again he wasn’t loud enough. Blast- blast- blast!

He scrambled weakly to his feet just as the draik let its fire die. He expected to see the charbroiled corpse of his friend, but instead he rubbed his eyes, sure he’d seen wrong. Not only was Lauro alive and ugly as ever- but Elia was there too! The nymph was standing between the wind Strider and his monstrous opponent, bent over slightly as if she had just stopped the fire herself.

No…

She had stopped the fire herself!

Gribly watched in something between wonder and horror as the draik let loose another torrent of fire that engulfed the girl. A few tense seconds passed, and when the fire abated Elia was still unharmed. More than that- it looked like she was actually controlling the flames! She was striding them!

The draik roared angrily when it saw it had been foiled twice. Gribly woke from his stupor with a jolt, realizing he had only seconds to act. Elia was more powerful than he had realized, obviously, but she couldn’t stop the draik’s charge. Lauro was sprawled out behind her and had just scrambled to his feet when the monster barreled forward.

Elia lifted her arms and flung up a wall of water from the melted ice in a futile attempt to slow the beast, but it splashed through and thumped her hard with its snout. It must have been an accident- the thing had obviously meant to claw her or kill her- but she flew back into the wind Strider, knocking them both down in a topsy-turvy pile.

“NO!” Gribly screamed, sprinting after the draik. “STOP! I COMMAND YOU!!!”

Silence. Elia and Lauro were slow in moving, dazed from the melee. The draik halted mid-charge, skittered to a stop, and wheeled on Gribly, snorting in disbelief and anger.

“I COMMAND YOU TO STOP!” he yelled, and now his voice was clear and loud. “By the Throne and the Aura, I command you to HALT!”

The draik screeched loud and long, and the sound was like an army of spears scraping across a rough stone floor. Gribly winced, but pointed at the beast as bravely as he dared.

“SILENCE! I command you now!”

Unbelievably, the draik fell silent. Its glowing eyes dimmed and it hunched down lower, almost as if it was afraid of him.

“Gribly! What’re you doing??” Lauro sat up woozily and squinted, unable to comprehend the scene. The Sand Strider didn’t answer him- didn’t even glance in his direction. This was hard enough without interruption.

“Draik of Bleeding Gold, Child of the Pit, obey me! By Chance and Courage, by Fate and Fear- do as I command!”

Traveller had told him he would know the words to say, when he needed to say them. What came out just sounded like gibberish, but it made the draik cringe and utter low, guttural growls, swaying to each side nervously. Suddenly and fearfully Gribly realized he didn’t know what to say next. The flow of words had left him.

“Ah… Now! I… I command you to kneel! Yes, KNEEL!” he shouted, on a whim.

To his utter surprise, the beast knelt. Even so, its monstrous head and frightening eyes were still level with his face. Its sinew-and-metal legs were folded clumsily beneath it, and its hairy, spike-studded back stretched up in an arching mountain of beast-flesh behind it.

And yet it obeyed him.

“Walk in a circle!” he told it, and it did.

“Melt this Icewave!” he shouted, and it blasted the icy mound with fire until it was nothing but a steaming pool of water. Its eyes stayed on the thief the whole time, as if it would say I’ll roast YOU next if it could.

That gave him an idea. As Elia and Lauro walked to him, giving the draik a wide berth and coming up behind him with open mouths and stunned faces, he prepared his next command.

“Draik of Bleeding Gold! I now order you to SPEAK!”

The Berg grew totally quiet. Wind formed ripples on the pools of water now dotting the battlefield. Gribly noticed several things: that it was lighter, almost morning; that the draik was making strange, grotesque expressions at him; and that he and his companions were all holding their breath.

“IT IS AS YOU WISH, MASTER GRAMLING.”

The draik had spoken, but it had spoken a name that was not his.

Chapter Eight: Steamclaw

“I can’t believe this.” Lauro shook his head for the thousandth time.

“Which part?” Gribly asked him, eying the scene in front of them. “The part that I have a fire-breathing, ice-breaking, bone-shattering new pet? Or maybe the part where it can speak, too? Or is the part where it calls me somebody else’s name? Or could it be that it’s actually doing what I say?”

Lauro shook his head and frowned… again. “All of it. I just can’t believe all this is really happening- I mean, how many times should I have died by now? Four? Five?”

“You outta die for just being ugly,” Gribly snickered. The prince ignored him and kept his eyes fixed ahead.

“Elia doesn’t seem to mind, does she?”

“Don’t know,” Gribly shrugged, “You can’t tell with her most of the time. Nymphs are hard to understand.”

“You mean women are hard to understand.”

“Whatever.”

Suddenly Lauro stiffened, sat up rod-straight, and pricked his ears.

“What is it?” Gribly asked, jumpy.

“I…” the prince started. His eyes seemed to be watering. “I’ll be back,” he finally said, and leaped up, taking off for the ice dunes behind them like thirty draiks were hot on his tail. In less than six seconds he was gone, wind-striding to go faster.

Well, thought Gribly, befuddled, I guess when you’ve got to relieve yourself that badly, speed is of the essence. He chuckled to himself at the crudely sophisticated joke.

~

That sound… most people couldn’t hear it, and it had been so long since he’d heard it himself… but it really was unmistakable. If it was what he thought it was… Drat. He’d hoped it would never find him.

Lauro raced through the ice dunes, his gift propelling him along faster than he could have done on his own. Still, it tired him out, and by the time he reached the little hollow where he thought the sound was coming from, he was panting with exertion. The recent stressful events didn’t help, either.

There it was. At the center of a little depression in the snow, surrounded by icy hills with barely enough space to fit between them, lay a little heap of gray feathers, throbbing in curious spasms each time it emitted the dreadful sound. The noise it made was like a woman’s wail and a hawk’s hunting cry, blended together in one long note that started high and ended so low it rumbled like miniature thunder. And all of that from a small gray fowl, little bigger than a dove.

A dripsparrow. That’s what it was. They had been used to carry messages back and forth between commanders on the front lines of the war. Lauro had seen them when he was younger, before they had been used for the battles and only for the battles. Before he could stop himself, he remembered what it had all been like…

~

...High in the castle, he had waited urgently all day on his bedroom balcony, hoping for the message. It came as the sun was just beginning to set, flying on small gray wings, calling its strange, high-pitched call and landing on the stone railing of the terrace. A dripsparrow. His father the King always sent him messages of his love and affection this way, whenever he traveled abroad on missions or duties that his little son could not participate in.

Young Lauro smiled at the bird, stroking its back the way it always liked. Every dripsparrow looked almost identical, but he liked to imagine that this one carried all the messages his father sent him. It made the slightly frightening prospect a little more intimate. A little more friendly.

“Have you a message for me, little friend?” Lauro asked the dripsparrow, rubbing its tail tentatively. The small fowl bobbed its head in a curious sort of nod, turned to him, and opened its beak.

“Hello, son.” It was his father’s voice, exactly as he had always known it. A lump grew in the young prince’s throat, and he smiled.

“Hello, father,” he answered, even though he knew the dripsparrow wasn’t ready for his replying message yet.

“I love you, son. Lauro. I hope you’re having a pleasant time back in the old musty castle. Have Head Cook Smallword make you a treat tonight, all right? Do you hear me? It will be good to hear your voice out here. The negotiations with the Rain Cave folk haven’t gone very well. I’ll rest better knowing you’re happy where you are. Do you understand? So have some fun tonight, Lauro. Even princes need to play sometimes.”

“I will, father!” Lauro called. Foolishness- the dripsparrow wasn’t done the message yet- but he couldn’t help himself. His young heart nearly burst with concern for his father. He hoped the King would find a way to help the Rain Cave folk see wisdom. Why wouldn’t they cooperate? Didn’t they know what a wonderful opportunity it was to be offered a place at Vastion’s table of allies?

“I wish you were here, son. Or better- I wish I was with you where you are. I love you, and hope you’ll send a long, long message back as soon as you can. I’m a lonely old king, Lauro, and need to hear my son’s voice. Goodbye, son. I’ll be waiting for your response.” The dripsparrow finished its message, and told him so with a little croaking noise in the back of its throat. All dripsparrows did that.

Lauro shivered with excitement. He knew just what to say to his father. “Little friend… I have my message ready. Remember what I say, and bring it back to Father King Larion, all right? Good. Here’s what you’ll say to him…”

~

…That had all been so long ago. Many things had changed, and none for the better.

Lauro walked as stealthily as he could over to the rumpled dripsparrow lying in the snow. Flakes crunched under his foot, and the little bird heard him, twisting painfully onto its back, its wings pinned beneath it, to stare beady-eyed up at him. He could have sworn it was laughing. The glow of its eyes bathed its body in a pale light. The sun had not quite risen yet.

“Well, well,” he said to it, placing his foot close to its body threateningly. “What have we here? Are you bringing little messages of love from my father?” He knew it was not so before it even opened its beak.

“Message…” it croaked. Blazes, it sounded as if it were dying. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t have to hear the message. The long flight here must have been too much for even its supernatural stamina.

No such luck. It rested for a second and its eyes dimmed, then they lit up again and it began.

“This is Larion Vale. Yes, your King wishes to speak with you, even with all you’ve done. Even with all you haven’t done.” Ugh. Lauro wished he had the will to smash this blasted bird under his foot. It was still managing to imitate his father’s voice, despite the fact that it was clearly on death’s door. “I want you to know, Lauro, you still have a chance. If you return now, and make recompense for your cowardice, I may yet deign to-”

“Shut up! Die in a pit, stupid old warmonger! I hate you! You haven’t given me a real chance… EVER! Shut up!” The sound of his own yells surprised him, and he stopped his tirade as it hissed violently through his teeth. In the middle of the dripsparrow’s message, he put his foot out and stamped on its neck, silencing it forever.

His father’s replicated voice cut off mid-sentence with a gargling squeal. Lauro stood there, panting, and realized his forehead was sweating. Cold sweat. Freezing water. Blast, even sweat froze out here!

He drew in a sharp breath. What had he done? Killing one of the king’s messenger birds was illegal, and punishable by the cutting off of one’s hand in most places. A prince was immune to that fee, of course… but he knew he was no longer so immune as he had been.

“I’ll make up for it, father,” he whispered. “I promise I will. When I save your kingdom, you will be proud of me. I’ll prove it.”

Bending down slowly, he picked up the dead dripsparrow in two cupped hands. Perhaps they could cook it and eat it. Meat would taste heavenly after such a harrowing experience. What are you becoming, Prince? a voice mused in his head, but he ignored it.

~

If he listened very intently, Gribly fancied he could hear agitated noises coming from where Lauro had vanished to. He grimaced to think what they might be. It was early in the morning, and there was just enough light to work by. In the short time since the deadly fight with the draik, Elia had picked out the best of the Treele wessiles to take out on the ocean. Gribly had commanded the draik to help her get it into the water, which it was now doing as carefully as it could, dragging the vessel off the grounded snow and carefully down a steep, sloping decline, using its metal claws to dig in and stop from slipping.

Elia jogged up and sat beside Gribly where he was seated on a mat he’d salvaged from the decimated Treele camp.

“We can leave once the wessile’s in the water,” she said cheerily. The girl never seemed to get exhausted- Gribly felt like he could sleep for a week right then and there, if the threat of more attacks wasn’t looming over him. “Have you found anything of use?” she asked.

“Yeah… right over there. Big pile o’ rags and tools and things. Even found a little food.” Gribly couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice as he gestured to the sack of varying provisions laying off to her side. And rightfully so- he and Lauro had gathered it during an hour of picking through the mess that used to be the Tribe Circle. It had been gloomy work, and he was pleasantly surprised with the results. “Saved some vittles for you. They’re on the top.”

“Thank you.” She dipped her head a little in thanks and got up to get her share. He watched her go, marveling. He wasn’t usually one to gawk, but everything about Elia seemed to draw his gaze and thoughts to her. Her talking, her moving, her thoughts… they all seemed streamlined and beautiful. Not in a superficial way, of course- if he could have found the words and courage to say it, he would have told her that she glowed, in a metaphorical way: she radiated friendliness and made his heart stop with an odd kind of homesickness he couldn’t define.

Blast it all! What was happening to him? He couldn’t actually be infatuated with this girl, could he? Gribly forced himself to stand and walk to the edge of the low embankment, where the draik had just vanished with the boat.

Peering over, he saw the beast swimming leisurely around the wessile where it bobbed in the current the draik created. He wondered how the seawater didn’t rust the monster’s body apart, if it was really half-machine like it looked.

Looking back over his shoulder, Gribly caught Elia staring at him as she ate. Her gaze was like daggers… a pain that felt good. The look on her face was thoughtful… or perhaps something else. She saw him looking back at her and suddenly diverted her eyes to what she was doing, in an attempt to make it seem like a casual glance. It didn’t convince Gribly, and it gave him an uneasy- but not unpleasant- feeling, as he turned away.

“Draik!” he called, feeling a little embarrassed. “Keep the vessel as it is, and do not harm it!”

“YES, GRAMLING, MASTER.IT SHALL BE SO.”

Gribly shivered. He’d never get used to the way that thing talked. He turned to join his friends again and tell them it was time, but an odd thought popped into his head and he looked down at the draik again. “Draik!” he shouted, “I have heard what you call me- Gramling. Now I ask: What shall I call YOU?”

The draik was silent for a long time, continuing its slow swimming course around the Treele boat. Finally it answered in its same, unnatural tone.

“MASTER CALLS THIS DRAIK… NEBULEKEF.”

“Nebuleh?” It was Elia, coming up beside him with that unshakeable poise and gracefulness that seemed to come so naturally to her. Stoppit, Gribly! He told himself. You’re going to say something out loud that you’ll regret! Well, in any case, she was taking their new companion rather well, considering it had probably murdered her kin. “That means steam in nymph. Or mist. Kef is claw. That would make you Steamclaw, wouldn’t it?”

A growl.

Gribly felt oddly conscious that he was standing so close to Elia. Turning a little in her direction, he tried to make conversation.

“So… you know the nymph speech well, I guess?” As soon as he said it, he felt like an imbecile. Of course she did!

But her only response was a light, airy laugh. “Yes, yes I do. Though not as well as some.” She winked. It gave him the chills.

Get a hold of yourself! His mind was screaming at him. He tried to obey it, while at the same time keep the conversation with Elia going. Why was it so hard to talk sensibly to an almost-total stranger?

“I only meant… oh, it doesn’t matter. I suppose I’m just too tired to talk right.” He tried a weak smile of his own, and was rewarded with a tireless one of hers. It encouraged him. “I mean, I’ve gotten so little sleep, it’s a surprise I don’t hear the birds and fish talking, too, and not just Steamclaw, here!” He grinned, and she laughed with him. It felt so good to hear that…

“What’re you both looking at?” Lauro cut in from behind, coming up between them and nudging them apart. How had he come up so quickly? “Whatever tricks that overgrown bear can do, they won’t matter if we’re all dead of hunger. Look, I’ve caught a strange bird that was waddling along the ice. Do you think we could make a fire and cook it, Elia?”

The girl spun around to see him, obviously as surprised as Gribly was that their little tête-à-tête had been interrupted. “W-what, that poor thing? Throw it away. It’s no good.”

The prince shrugged, emotionless, and tossed the fowl to Steamclaw, who snapped it out of the air. Elia shivered, but Gribly caught a queer gleam in Lauro’s eye that disappeared before he could decide what it had meant.

“Well then,” he said, trying to break the awkward situation that seemed to have leaped out at them. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

“Indeed,” Lauro agreed, and his eyes gleamed again. This will be a long, tiring trip, Gribly thought. He knew it was an understatement.

Chapter Nine: Menace from Afar

The journey that followed the climactic battle of the night before was the most exhilarating yet- mostly because Gribly fell asleep almost as soon as they set out, and therefore had a few more hours of sleep than his companions; but also because the trio’s mode of travel was so unheard of.

It was rising morning, and the sun was shining bright in the East. The Inkwell glimmered and glittered like a fluid expanse of sapphires in the crown of the Ocean King. The swell of the waves was calmer than it had been in many a long day, and certainly much less active than it had been ever since the Mirrorwave set out from the Zain Circle. Titanic  icebergs of the unnatural shapes common in the enchanted wintry waters were scattered at random throughout the bay, but not so close together as to inhibit swift passage to the Grymclaw. It was a fine day for sailing… but there was no wind.

Here and there a breeze blew, skimming across the foamy tips of the waves, but that was all.

Then, without warning, a blast of air and a spray of water exploded at the crest of one such wave. The tapered end of a white wessile broke through and skimmed across the rippling water beyond, followed by the rest of the vessel. Its bow dug low in the saltwater, pushing up high walls of spilling water on each side. An endless, high-pitched moan filled the air as it passed in a rush of wind and stormy sea-spray, then died away as it sped on at an impossible pace towards the next wave.

When it had gone, the Inkwell was silent again.

~

Gribly woke from his dream partially refreshed and shaking from the chill of the spray that reached him in the midsection of the wessile. He was soon occupied with watching the horizon, but the words he’d spoken with Traveller still lingered on the edge of his mind.

You’ve done well. And you’ve discovered one more thing about yourself you didn’t know before. Many go their whole lives without discovering as much.

It was barely enough to rein in that monster. How you contrived it, I’ve no clue.

I contrived nothing; I merely gave you advice. I do not interfere; I merely suggest.

Right. Your suggestions sure do come at the right times.

You will not need them any longer, I think. At least, not so much. You can stand on your own feet now, as the Southerners say. The world is yours to explore. Take care it does not swallow you up.

You’re as confusing as ever, naturally. Are all your kind like that?

Not to each other.

I guess you won’t answer any of my other questions, then?

For example…

Who, exactly, AM I? What’s going on?

Ah…

You’re not going to answer, are you?

The answers you seek lie not with me… but you will find them, soon enough enough. Speak with the innkeeper. He will know.

What?

When you see the innkeeper, speak to him these lines:

Wait…

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

When all our hopes have come to grief;

Doubt not that winter’s warrior comes;

The brother of a thief.”

How am I supposed to remember that?

You will. It is your Doom.

I don’t like this…

Nor do most who see their duty as it truly is, and yet still follow its course to the bitter end.

It was like the rest of the increasingly frequent conversations Gribly had with the Aura: vague and unhopeful. So he was naturally cheered to behold that strange, empowering scene his two companions made as they steered the Treele boat across the swaying surface of the Inkwell.

Elia knelt in the bow of the vessel, her hands dipping in and out of the water rhythmically, then moving in smooth gestures up above her head, twisting around before plunging back into the water again. It was a wave striding technique she had mastered before the demise of her tribe: commanding the waves themselves to propel the slender wessile forward through the bay or open sea.

It moved the boat along at a satisfactory clip, but it was heavy work, and the nymph girl would have soon tired out and been forced to rest, had not Gribly suggested a supplement to her efforts. Thus, the vessel was moved not just by water, but by wind.

Lauro Vale stood in the stern, balanced perfectly and looking every inch the prince he was. His arms were raised to the open sky in a constant, slow series of movements that plucked the wind from the sky and yoked it under his command. In this way he was able to literally ‘sail’ the ship with more speed and accuracy than could have possibly been accomplished with wave-striding below.

It was glorious freedom, especially knowing that the Pit Strider’s minions were stranded on the Bergs far behind them, too slow and too distant to ever catch them again.

Steamclaw, as Gribly had taken to calling the draik that tirelessly followed them, was the only exception. The speed of the wessile’s path had left him dwindling in the distance in minutes, despite his extraordinary strength and resilience. The companions had made no concessions for him in their plans to reach the Reethe in the Inkwell’s northern reaches, and had left him to catch up as he would.

Gribly suspected it was no small joy to Lauro to let the creature drown trying to follow the fruitless order. Oh well… it had kept the peace. Sometimes, Gribly thought sullenly, it helps to have a cold heart. The heart of a thief. The problem was, he simply didn’t believe that about himself anymore.

“Hoi, Elia!” he called, shaking himself out of his reverie. She paused momentarily to respond, letting the wessile’s motion fall entirely to the prince’s wind striding.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you know where we’re heading? I mean, because of the moving Bergs and all… aren’t the north nymphs bound to be in a different place every day? And come to think of it, what keeps them or your tribe from moving too far south, or north, or even out into the open sea?”

She considered the inquiries coolly, then answered. “Your first question is simply explained. I have been to the Reethe Circle once before, a few years ago, when my father took me to the Great Celebration held every seventeen years by all three sea-nymph tribes. Your second question’s answer is simply no, and the explanation is tied into the answer of your third.”

“I see,” he lied.

She smiled, seemingly catching his irony. “I will do my best to explain, for your benefit, Gribly, and for yours as well, Lauro.” She nodded to each in turn. “The Zain in the South, as you know, live on the land and have for the most part lost their ability to Change Forms. The Treele have not… did not, I meant to say…” her voice trailed off and Gribly saw that she was obviously biting back the bitter memories of the dead. When she had recovered, she continued. “My people still kept their Other Forms strong, and there were also many Wave Striders among us. I was one, and my father was another. Together the Wave Striders of the Treele were always able to keep our Tribe Circle’s Berg floating only where we wanted it to go.

“In the winter we would steer it into the southern waters and sometimes trade with the Sainarch’s nymphs. We had been about to do that when… when… But in any case, we have always been able to live wherever we will in the Inkwell, thanks to our Wave Striders. The Reethe make use of a similar strategy to keep their dwellings rooted in place year round.”

“Frost Striders!” Gribly interrupted, suddenly remembering the ranger Byorne’s words back at the Arches. “The Reethe have Frost Striders instead of Wave Striders, don’t they?”

“Yes,” she answered, a little irked by the interruption but patient nonetheless. “Have you heard of them?”

“Only the name,” Gribly faltered. Lauro added unhelpfully that he knew legends but no facts, so Elia explained further.

“Frost Striders are similar to Wave Striders, but they are attuned more to the snow than the sea. Their power is more over the winter than the sea that the winter makes cold. More than that I cannot tell you, for my people do not know or pry into the matters of the other tribes. Simply put, the Reethe tend their homes differently than us. They anchor them with ice they have shaped, making immovable little islands of snow and ice in the northern waters of the Inkwell. Over time the dust and dirt of the mainland has blown onto these islands and gathered there. Now some of them are true islands, with grass and even a few spindly trees. The Reethe are the oldest of the tribes, and the strongest. My own people have always been small… open to attack…” her voice broke and she seemed to shrink, drawing her knees up to her chin and rocking on her feet.

“I’m sorry,” Gribly said, briefly touching her shoulder. He wished he could do something to comfort her over her loss, and so the words came before he could stop them. “I think I know some of what you feel. I was brought up by an old woman who was always kind to me, to replace the parents I never knew. The Pit Strider killed her, and- and he cut her up pretty badly, too. So I know how it feels, a little… to lose somebody. Somebody who means a lot. Even if I am just a thieving street urchin.” His feeling was genuine, and he turned away sadly to stare out over the open bay and the shining sea beyond. From the sun’s position, the morning was almost gone.

He turned back to find Elia asleep, curled up in the narrow bow of the boat.

“She’s been through a lot- more than us, in the long run.” Lauro was staring intently down, never ceasing his motions to stride the wind. “And no sleep for days doesn’t help. Let her rest for a while- take another sleep yourself, even. In a while I might do it myself, if she’s strong enough to keep going.”

“All right,” the Sand Strider replied. The sun was delightfully warm on his face, and coupled with the sorrowful recollections it made him want to do nothing more than to lie down in the hull of the vessel and let the world pass him by in slumber. And so he did, drifting in and out of a half sleep full of meaningless dreams.

~

Don’t forget, sandchild. Tell the innkeeper. Tell him the rhyme and he will show you what you didn’t know you wished for.

Tell him.

~

Gribly awoke with a startled yelp. The wessile was rocking unsteadily, and briny water had spilled over the edge of the wessile and splashed on his outstretched hand. It was colder and darker than it had been when he’d gone to sleep last… early evening, perhaps. Lauro had just woken in similar fashion behind him, jerking upright so violently it almost upset the boat. Simultaneously both boys turned to see what had caused the disturbance. Elia had leaped up and abandoned her wave striding, surprised by something she’d seen on the horizon. She was pointing and telling them something, but Gribly couldn’t hear what. The whole world seemed to have turned gray and muted.

When did she and Lauro switch places? I don’t remember that… He’d been sleeping longer than he should have… The sky was dark and a funnel of storm-clouds were churning far ahead. far ahead. Elia was pointing, was pointing to…

A thunderous CRACK split the sky and blurry arcs of lightning slashed upwards into the mantle of clouds that seemed to have been thrown across the sky like a stifling blanket. Scattered bits of sound made their way to Gribly’s battered ears, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of total disorientation.

“Ice Demon! It’s… Sky… Spells… Reethe… Need to… Wind!”

Gribly tried to gain his balance and understand the frantic girl. A roaring of wind muffled the sounds of the storm ahead, then every other sound died away.

“There!” yelled Lauro from the stern. “We’ll have to raise our voices, but it’ll keep out whatever mischief that storm is sending our way! What kind of sorcery is it now??”

Gribly glanced back and saw the prince wind striding, forming claws with his hands and pushing them out in all directions away from his body, in great curving arcs that somehow kept the wind around them in a rough sphere that blocked out all other noise. The Sand Strider could see its outline indistinctly, from the bits of snow and spray that were caught in the bubble and whirled all around its outside.

“What’s happened?? Where did this storm come from??” he asked Elia as loud as he could without straining his voice.

“It’s not a storm!” she shouted back. “It’s another Ice Demon!”

“Again?!?” Lauro shouted from his position, never letting up his wind-stride. “Why don’t we just sail away, or take a longer voyage around it?? We won’t survive another encounter with one of those hellspawn!!”

“We can’t!” She threw her arms up helplessly. “We were almost to our aim when the Demon came down right where we needed to go!”

“What does that…” Gribly started to say, but his objection died in his throat when he realized what she meant. Elia saw his hesitation.

“Exactly!” she called shrilly over the rushing wind, “We can’t go out of its way! It’s attacking the Reethe Tribe Circle!”

Chapter Ten: Demon Talk

It was amazing how the bay changed- Gribly had stopped calling it that in his head; now he just called it the sea. It was too big, too furious for anything smaller. In minutes the sky had gone from blue to leaden gray, from calm to storm, from light to darkness. In the short time since the horrible revelation that the last nymph tribe was under attack, the waves had gone from mildly ferocious to horrifically tempestuous, and even with the combined efforts of Lauro and Elia the wessile they rode barely kept from capsizing.

The air around Gribly crackled with electricity, the only noise, now that Lauro had stopped wind striding his protective shield and concentrated on keeping the boat upright. Elia had told them briefly before riding into the storm that Ice Demons actually wove enchantments around themselves as they went into battle. How they did or what exactly they were, no one knew. It was rumored they were of an older kind of creature such as had flourished before man or nymph ever set foot in Vast; half-intelligent, half-animal brutes made from the primordial stuff at the Edge of the World.

Whatever the blasted thing was, he hated it. He hated every stupid red-eyed monster that had gotten in his way since Ymeer; the world was chock-full of them! They’d hardly let up since he’d left his dingy excuse for a home: bandits in the desert, draiks in the Pass, demons in the sea, draiks on the ice- did this ever let up?? If you can hear me out here, Traveller, he thought bitterly, I want to tell you how much I am certainly NOT enjoying this pitiful, grimy ‘adventure’ of yours.

He got no answer, of course, and soon he had more pressing things  to think about.

The Reethe snow-island where, Elia assured them, their largest and strongest settlement lay, was a small, well-planned city of a curious icy substance formed by the Frost Striders over long periods of time, able to withstand the heat of a fire and the endless tread of nymph feet. It was coupled with the same white wood found on strange undersea plants that the Treele used in building their skiffs and wessiles. The city was enclosed by two curling arms of ice-cliffs that formed a wide bay, which Gribly could barely glimpse through the dense shroud of sparking, roiling smoke sent up by the Demon’s attack.

As it turned out, he was the only one with time to look at all. Elia and Lauro were still Striding frantically to keep the boat on a steady course for the bay’s narrow entrance. We’re heading straight for the Blaze, he groaned inside. Whatever was going on inside that seething blackness, it was probably too late to stop. They were all going to die if they tried.

“This is pointless! We’re going to get ourselves killed!” he screamed again and again, but no one heard him- the strange, booming silence of the Ice Demon’s spells ripped his words away into the heart of the wicked storm. He had half a mind to leap over the side into the churning sea, but that would kill him for sure. He gestured frantically to Lauro, who shook his head and looked grimly on ahead, crouching and standing, crossing and uncrossing his arms, swinging and punching and stamping to keep the wind under his control.

Without warning, a thunderous darkling voice broke through his mind and shattered it with its malice.

WE DO NOT WANT YOU, PROPHET. LEAVE US TO DESTROY OUR ENEMIES IN PEACE. IF YOU COME NEAR, WE SHALL SLAY YOU, AND THOSE YOU BRING.

Those weren’t the words, exactly- in fact there were no words. The voice that broke his mind had no language more than a soundless, mindless, screaming, roaring, gnashing, grinding. It filled him with its void, but he knew exactly what it meant. It knew him and he knew it: the Demon, roused from slumber and ready to devour him if he intruded. How it managed to convey its message was a mystery, but it was nothing compared to his own shock and horror. Prophet? Does it know what it’s saying? What’s… ARGH! GET OUT! I CAN’T… CAN’T… can’t…

The Demon stared at him in the red-black broken shell of his mind, a vast, crushing evil from the bowels of Kerbus, the Underworld of legend. For that fleeting moment of awareness, Gribly the simple street thief saw one of the Eldest powers of the world as it appeared in the realm beyond realms. In a frightening way, it felt like looking at Traveller in one of his dreams, though smaller and larger at the same time. There were no visible shapes in that realm, but he saw it, none the less horrific for not being clear.

The Demon laughed, a chilling horror and bleeding pain that shot up Gribly’s spine and burst like a thousand splinters of iron into his skull. LEAVE, PROPHET, it not-told him in its dark not-language. OR I WILL CRUSH YOU AS I HAVE CRUSHED THE FOOL WHO WOKE ME. Through the numbing, all-consuming, suffering pain, Gribly saw a face that looked like his staring at him through a mane of black-and-blond hair, weeping and screaming in desperation.

Some corner of his mind told him he was seeing the Pit Strider, lost and broken and failed in his mission. How it had happened he never found out before the Ice Demon let go of his small mind with a crackling gruesome laugh and his senses came back to him agonizingly slow. One thought and one thought only remained.

Prophet? Why did he call me that? Why did he speak to me?

~

Numbly he was aware of salty, freezing-cold water and blood in his mouth and water drowning him and hand pulling at him and something hard striking against something harder and splintering wood and a girl screaming and a boy screaming at him and a hard wetness biting at his back. Retching and yelling in agony at the same time he turned over and fell limply on...

…Ice. He was on ice. Sensations joyously painful barged in on his blind thoughts and told him where he was. Ice. Water. Wood. Smoke. Haze. He was crouched, blubbering like a baby, on the snowy icy shore of the Reethe bay. The wessile he’d come in was smashed to splinters behind him, and his two friends were laid out next to him, panting and uttering strange angry groans from the trials and horror they’d undergone to drag him to safety. Blast and Joy! They’d made it. Somehow they’d done it.

Gribly scrambled to his feet, unlooked-for energy surging through him. “Come on!” he shouted, and was surprised to find he could hear his own voice again. “Get up! Lauro! Elia! We need to help the Reethe!”

Dragging them upright, he grabbed them each by the hand and fairly pulled them through the veil of smoke that permeated the air. Closing his mouth and eyes, he stumbled blindly ahead through the haze. The three of them traveled that way silently for half a minute, until the veil suddenly ended and they fell to their knees on open ground, coughing up the fumes they’d inhaled. Again, strangely, Gribly saw he was the first to recover. Looking up at their surroundings, he gasped in shock.

The Reethe city lay along the water’s edge, running in terraced slopes up to the cliffs that ringed the bay. The three young Striders were crouched at the north arm of the city, where a low wall and many domed ice-houses were, with a crumbled watch-tower on the corner. The outskirts were silent, but farther Inward and Westward the center of the city was booming and shuddering with the noise of battle, and the central buildings were on fire. Tall flames licked in spirals and plashing pillars up along the high walls and palaces of the nymphs- it was from there that the smoke came, billowing up into the sky and coming down again in a dome that enclosed the whole iceberg. It looked as if the Reethe city was doing its best to imitate one of fiery mountains of legend: the volcanoes and forges of the fire-gods.

“There should be more noise,” Lauro frowned, shakily coming up behind Gribly. “And where’s the Demon?”

“I don’t know. I can hear the battle, though,” he replied.

“That’s no battle,” Elia said, squinting at the violent sight ahead, “That’s a lamentation. The Reethe are calling for help!” The houses were silent and no bells tolled in the crystalline steeples and towers. The city would have been beautiful even with the destruction and flames, had the smoke above not cast a milky, sickening shade on the ice and snow and white wood. The only sound was the clashing, discordant notes coming from the wreckage of the central fortress. Listening more carefully, Gribly found that Elia had been right.

“What’ll we do? I can’t hear the Demon anymore,” he complained.

“Hear the Demon?” she asked in awe.

“It…” he suddenly felt it would be profane and deadly to say anything to his friends. The Ice Demon should be kept in his head, where- No! That was just its influence on him. He had to tell! “On the boat,” he managed finally. They had been looking at him concernedly. “When we came into the bay it spoke in my head, telling me to leave… It was horrible. It almost killed me, I think.”

“So that’s why you went down thrashing,” Lauro murmured, frowning deeper. “It spoke. To you? Why?”

“I don’t know. It called me ‘prophet’ and said it would kill us if we came closer. I don’t know, maybe I was hallucinating?”

“Did you…” the prince began, but a scream cut him off. The trio whipped around to witness an emaciated nymph woman with wild eyes and gray-black hair stumble back through the breach in the wall she’d come through, hands over her mouth in surprise.

“Don’t run!” Lauro said quickly, vaulting over to her in a single wind-stride. “We’re friends! What has happened here, and is there anything we can do to help?”

The woman cowered, sobbing brokenly, as the other two Striders caught up with Lauro. Elia came beside her and touched her shoulder, speaking gently in the nymphtongue.

“Lei Yuvatarr contu vey, Mella. Oma sorortu: ei Treele. Succurtu canstnos fen tu’n  isdrist?”

The woman slowed her sobs and looked up in surprise at hearing her own tongue spoken. Answering back in a wobbly voice, she said, “Lei lithi O graciwan pertu, Soror. Ei Lekion vrayas nadt hre lumbres nadt blash’das nost hremes nadt blashwan waynis!” Near the end her words squealed too high and Elia had to calm her down again in a low voice.

“Rounda ainud lumbre? Nadt rsen?” she finally asked.

“Ai sre…” began the woman feebly, but a roaring boom and a tremendous flash over the shattered Reethe fortress drowned her out.

“We don’t have time for this!” snarled Lauro, “I’m going in!” With a kick and a leap he took to the air and flew towards the burning ice of the inner buildings.

“No! We can’t just-” Elia began but he was gone before she could say what she needed. More booms echoed over the fortress, accompanied by more flashes.

“Venviator! Ken dyia fre skri-helme sre plasse!” gasped the nymph woman, a look of startled rapture on her face. Elia pressed her for directions and she gave them, haltingly and still shaking with fright- but compliant, nonetheless.

“We’ll have to follow the foolish princeling on foot,” the Wave Strider explained to Gribly. “Now I know the fastest way to the battle, if there still is one. The way this woman’s going on… it sounds like it was a massacre.”

“How could it be anything else?” Gribly pointed out. “In case you hadn’t noticed, these Demons happen to be very large and verrrry unfriendly. Who could even challenge the bleeding’ thing?” The harshness of his own voice surprised him, and he realized just how rattled he really was- the Demon’s voice and vision had shaken him badly.

Elia sighed unhappily and shrugged. “We’ve got to do what we must, I suppose.”

Gribly nodded, equally uncertain. Elia spoke a few more words in the nymphtongue to the jittery woman, who became more and more excited. Finally she nodded several times and ran off back into the city, crying out, “Lei viatres vrayan! Achillais perlei Suthway! Compet nebenden!”

“What’s she doing? Don’t we need her help?” Gribly flung his hand out, gesturing towards her. He talked quickly and quietly to Elia as the two ran past the gap in the wall and into the outskirts of the city.

“She’s going to gather what survivors may still be scattered throughout the city. She seems to think we’re all-powerful warriors come to save her people. I won’t correct her if it gathers more men for the fight.”

“If there are any to gather. What’d she say?”

“She said: ‘The Striders come! Heroes from the South! Fight on!’ it is a line from an old ballad common among her people and mine. I do not understand why. We need-”

Her voice fell and they both halted instantly, skidding to a stop and gaping at what they saw: the high white buildings leveled and melted away; a wide, ragged space blasted into the cityscape; and a giant footprint steaming and red-hot in the midst of it all: clawed but- strangely- cloven-hoofed as well.

“Ei Lekion…” breathed Elia, a tear sliding down her cheek. It was one of the few times Gribly had seen her show emotion. He guessed ‘Lekion’ meant ‘Demon’.

Bodies floated, smashed and bloody, in the steaming pool; some small, some large. That blasted thing is huge… shriving huge… Gribly thought. His body felt numb and he wondered absently if Lauro had seen it. The thing had to be almost twice the size of the demon that had smashed the Mirrorwave! Elia was crying without a sound next to him.

He reached out and wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll kill the bloody thing if we have to melt it down in inches,” he assured her.

“But what if we don’t make it out?” she whimpered. No, not exactly… it felt stronger than that. Whispered, maybe.

“Then I want you to know… That…” Gribly stopped his mouth from running off with him almost too late. He had been going to say…

“That what?” Elia whispered. He let go of her and stepped back, taking her hand. Oh, forget it...

“That I'll miss you most if we die,” he said quickly. Before he lost his nerve, he leaned in, darting a quick kiss at her cheek, then let go of her hand and walked away. To his surprise she said nothing, but simply followed him in silence.

Finally she broke the silence. “It comforts me to know it.” Gribly looked back at her hesitantly, and saw the hints of a blush on her face.

Feeling something similar creep up on him, he turned away again, not sure if he'd made a good impression or bad. “Let’s see if we can find the prince and make something of this mess. Perhaps the Ice Demon has gone already.”

They both knew it couldn’t be true, but they agreed anyway and headed further into the ruined city; skirting the blood-tinted mist and the footprint and the pool, searching for any sign of Lauro as they jogged inward. After the first series of booms and flashes there was no immediate sign of the Demon, but shouts and cries of “Lekion!” and “Achillais perlei Suthway!” echoed around the strangely quiet streets. Despite the spreading news, they saw no survivors and only a few corpses before they reached the Reethe fortress.

Chapter Eleven: Footprints of Doom

Lauro kept his legs in constant motion, soaring through the air faster than any bird could fly. It felt almost like swimming, but quicker and smoother through air than water. The wind whistled coldly over and around him, whipping the stringy, bedraggled hair on the top of his head back across his exposed neck and shaved temples. He hadn’t the time to fix his warrior’s topknot, and likely never would.

Faster, Vale, faster! He heard his father call gruffly out through the halls of his memory. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Lauro increased his speed, lowering his brow and bulling forward through the sky. The Reethe city sprawled out beneath him, high and silent. It’s so odd… there ought to be more sound. Where’s the battle? Why aren’t Elia and Gribly following? Why did I leave so quickly? What is happening here?

The scene below and around him blurred with the speed of heated or cooled air. His power was increasing like it had while battling the draik. Steamclaw was Gribly’s ridiculous name for him. It sounded absurd and childish, as one might name a pet. Lauro had never had a pet. He passed on into unhappy memories of his childhood, only to be brought out of them again by a gigantic spurt of white flame that shot up from the royal palace, which he’d almost passed over in his breakneck flight. A gust of hot air blew him off balance and he spun upwards into the clouds.

The watery vapor soaked him for the second time that day. Windmilling his arms and drawing his legs up to his chin, he managed to steady himself, but there was little wind up here to stride with. He hadn’t intended to go so high… hadn’t ever gone to this height before in all his life. If he wasn’t careful he could fall to his death.

An off-key crackling caught his ear. He descended slowly to the fluffy grayness of the cloud below him, taking a moment to view his surroundings. Everywhere were pillars, hills, and walls of gray cloud, and coming from all of them was that unsettling noise. He drifted into a position parallel with the nearest cloud and reached down to stroke it. Blue sparks arced up to his fingers and sent a jarring jolt up his arm and into his body.

“AGH!” he shouted, involuntarily kicking his legs and sending him skimming across the cloud’s edge. More jolts came. “AGH! AGH! AGH!” He tumbled over the edge of the fluffy mass and fell out of the sky, biting his lip in pain so hard it bled. As he plummeted, he caught glimpses of bigger, brighter arcs of light zipping from one cloud to the next. Snow began to fall in tufts as he wildly moved to stop his fall. What little he knew of weather told him this was no natural storm, and he would be dead if he didn’t get away in time. Flash after flash lit the underside of the ominous cloud-head, and he fell faster than ever.

“Blast,” he muttered. He stopped fighting his momentum and instead used it to flip himself upside down, speeding towards the city below him unbelievably fast. It was lucky he did, for a few seconds later a brilliant flash lit him from above and deafened him with its sound. Small pellets of hail pelted him as he fell faster… and faster…

Just as he was close enough to the inner buildings of the city, the wind around him became sufficient for what he wanted to do. Pushing his arms in front of him in a diver’s stance, he suddenly spread them wide and bent them in L shapes: the universal sign to STOP. If the wind obeyed him, it would form a cushion large enough and strong enough to stop his fall. A difficult trick, but a useful one. He’d never done it himself before- only witnessed it.

The wind in his vision turned from deep red to glowing blue and formed a cohesive bubble of wild energy underneath him. His head was whipped to the side and his body flung out spreadeagled on the air-cushion, which spun him around in endless circles until he thought he would throw up from dizziness. But he had stopped falling.

With a few energetic strokes he brought himself to a sort of standing position, and found himself hovering more than a hundred feet above the shattered hulk of the fortress that had formed the central hub of the city. Directly below him was the roofless skeleton of a Cathedral. It had been the main target of the Ice Demon’s attack, it seemed- the roof had been blown off, two of the corner-towers crushed, and the walls half melted into steaming slag. It made Lauro sick to see the ruined place of worship.

But there! Down among the wreckage! Nymphs! Ten of them stood on a wide, snow-frosted pedestal, moving and motioning. Frost Striders! They paid no attention to him, but a group of nymphs in dull armor and shabby weapons were frantically pointing and yelling in their heavy native tongue.

“I am a friend!” Lauro shouted down to them. A large, hard ball of ice soared up at him from the group, turning off its course and getting flung with a crack into the east wall of the Cathedral. Chunks of ice and stone fell in a small avalanche; Lauro’s cushion had shielded him. The prince cursed. His clever bit of striding was rapidly weakening and wouldn’t stand another hit. It appeared there were more Frost Striders among the nymph soldiers, and evidently they hadn’t heard him. “I AM A FRIEND!!!!” he shouted above the roaring wind. The storm above him flashed again, and as he ducked in surprise at the sound, another ball of ice broke through the air-cushion and clipped his leg.

He yelped in pain and fell the last hundred feet. He missed the edge of the broken wall by a mere foot and slammed unceremoniously into its side, throwing up a small explosion of snowflakes and rock shards. His heels scraped the hard packed surface and he fell like a rock to the top of a large pile of debris. WHUMP. The breath was knocked out of him and he tumbled down the snowy side, bouncing from boulder to icy boulder like a rubber ball rolling and bounding down cold, rough stairs.

Finally he crashed to the ground. Snow blurred his vision and melted in his mouth. He choked and spat, rolling painfully over. The sky was gray as ever, and the snow just as cold. Nothing about his situation had changed, other than it hurt more now. The Frost Strider who had blown him from the sky ran up warily and stopped a few feet from him, hands forward in a defiant stance.

“Do not move, Strider. I will kill you before you can fly again.” The man’s voice was heavily accented, but at least he spoke the commontongue. “Sit up. Slowly. Do not try to stride.”

Lauro obeyed. He was too breathless to argue and too tired to fight- besides, he had come here to help these people, not attack them!

He scrutinized the Frost Strider from half-lidded eyes. The man was muscular and pale-skinned, of middling height, and he wore a warm white tunic underneath curious, silver-plated armor. His boots were tough and shod with iron, and his under-cloak had a great, fur-lined hood that was thrown back from his head. He had a short beard and mustache of jet shot through with silver, but his skull was shaven clean. The only other hair on his face were his bushy eyebrows; the same color as his beard. His ears were large and pointed like every nymph’s.

Lauro Vale knew a warrior when he saw one. This was most definitely such a man, even if he bore no weapons that the prince could see.

“Do not rise,” the Frost Strider commanded. “State your intent. Why have you appeared in this dark hour? Are you in league with the Lek… the Demon?”

“Of course not!” the prince snorted. “I am here to help! My companions and I have traveled far to warn you of war… though I see that it is unnecessary now. If you’d be kind enough to not smother me in ice and snow, I may be able to help you.”

“I see no companions,” was the simple reply. The Frost Strider kept one eye on Lauro and used the other to glance at the sky. The weird half-gaze disturbed him, but something else had occurred to him as well. Something about this nymph’s speech… he was royalty of some kind, or Lauro didn’t know what was! The prince began to speak, using the superior tone and proud demeanor he had almost-unconsciously suppressed since meeting Gribly.

“My companions are not able to fly, as I am. They are not wind Striders. One is a nymph like your noble self: a Wave Strider of the Treele tribe. The other is a human boy, a Sand Strider and… and a prophet.” The description of Gribly came unbidden to his mind, from what the boy had told him earlier. It evidently startled the nymph, whose hostility instantly lessened.

“You… I see.” He shifted his stance to be more welcoming, even reaching out a hand to help Lauro up. “I have mistaken you. You are a friend, I see. Welcome to the Cathedral of Mythigrad, stranger. I am Karmidigan, Frost Strider and Sworn Warrior of the House of the One.”

Chapter Twelve: Winter's Warriors

Gribly and Elia encountered three more footprints of the Ice Demon. They avoided each, though it took them longer to reach the Reethe fortress because of it. The time was eaten up by Gribly’s thoughts as he berated himself. Shouldn’t have told her all that. Should have kept it hidden. But his mind was conflicted. She didn’t mind. Just brush it off. You’ve got worse things to worry about. In short, it was driving him crazy.

“I wish there was sand somewhere in this forsaken city,” he grumbled to Elia. “I feel like useless baggage in every battle, with you and Lauro doing daring deeds all the time while I sit around with no sand and no striding.” It was a joke, almost, and the nymph girl caught it. She smiled, and it encouraged him. “I hope we’ll be on land soon,” he added. “If I don’t feel solid earth under my feet soon, I think I’ll turn into a fish!” To that she actually laughed, throwing her head back as the pair passed under a broken arch of white stone. Anything to break the suffocating silence of death that hung about the hollow buildings and thin, dripping alleyways.

“Humans have never been at great peace with the land,” Elia commented. “But they have ever been the stronger race. I don’t know why, but I suppose it’s meant to be. As are all things.”

“Everything?” Gribly sounded incredulous even to himself. They turned a corner and headed down a long, wide white street strewn with wreckage. There were spots of dark nymphish blood on the snowy pavement, but no bodies could be seen. “Even this?” he asked.

Elia’s smile disappeared. “Yes. This, too. I can’t explain why… no one can… but there’s a purpose. I believe it.”

“I’m not sure I do,” he answered. Instead of running around a fallen pillar of the strange, icy-hard substance so common in the Reethe dwellings, he vaulted over it. Behind him, Elia simply summoned a jet of water to carry her up and over it effortlessly.

“Your loss. But I think you will, one day. Everyone does, eventually, even if it’s on the last day of their life. That second before you pass into the nether, I think everyone really does believe in a purpose. In the Aura. In the One.”

Gribly shrugged noncommittally and kept running. He didn’t have time for this, either, even if his heart was becoming more and more accustomed to the living legends that seemed to drive the world forward.

They made it to the end of the street and turned left, according to the directions the nymph woman had given them. Shuffling through a winding alley, Gribly followed Elia out onto an open, circular space, at the end of which stood the mighty walls of the Reethe fortress. They were cracked and broken, melted in places and frozen into dripping, plunging shapes like a giant candle that had melted into an ungainly wall of bubbly wax. Before their demise they should have been at least a hundred feet high- now they were two-thirds that.

“Will you take a look at that!” Gribly gasped, pointing. Part of the wall- probably one of the main gates and the guardhouses beyond- had been melted into a runny gray slag by whatever black spells the Ice Demon had attacked with. “How much heat would it take to raze this fortress? Haven’t the Reethe ever been attacked before?”

“Not like this, I’d think,” Elia groaned. “I do hope we haven’t come too late to do something!”

“Wait! WAIT! Ha ha! Hah!” Gribly couldn’t help but laugh for joy. Impossible!

“What’s so funny?” Elia inquired, frowning at his unexpected outburst.

“Look!” he cried, starting forward over the open clearing, “The stone’s turning colors! It’s throbbing like it’s alive!”

“I don’t understand,” she protested, running up beside him. “There’s nothing there. Are you feeling all right?”

“All right? I feel better than ever! I can feel the stone again! The melting’s made it almost sand-like! Look- I think I can stride it!”

By now he had crossed most of the distance. The heap of crumbling, lumpy stone stretched up like a grim hill in front of him, and he leaped straight at its sheer side, kicking out with his feet. The stone, or sand, or whatever-it-was-now, obeyed him! The wall morphed and followed his hands as they swept back, jutting out onto the ice and shaping themselves into a rough ramp, which he ran up. It was exactly as steep as he wanted, and just as smooth. As he landed, the soft-stone formed a flat shelf for his feet.

Gribly bent his knees to absorb the shock, landed, then thrust his palms outward at the imposing face of melted rock ahead. It shook and cracked, trembling under his harsh command. But at last it yielded, flattening and parting like water under a strong wind, forming a sort of slanting U-shaped path up to the top of the hill and down beyond. The bottom of the path was smooth and straight.

“AHA!” he yelled, then jump-turned and glanced back down at Elia, who stood dumbfounded at the bottom of the wall.

Gribly stood nearly thirty feet above her on the path he’d made, which stretched up another thirty feet before dipping down out of sight. The fortress was almost as thick as it was wide.

“By-Aura,” the Wave Strider breathed, swaying to look up at him. She gaped and shook her head. “I never would have guessed it. You can stride stone just as well as sand!”

Timidly, almost fearfully, she walked slowly up the slanted path, keeping her hands on the sides as if she feared it would give way under her like it had to Gribly. But it wouldn’t, he knew now. The stone obeyed him!

“I guess I can, now, can’t I?” he grinned, the feeling of helplessness diminishing within him until he easily quashed it. “I must be getting stronger, just like you and Lauro. Though I must say, Fire and Water seem much more useful than-”

BOOM! CRASH! He was cut off by a bone-shaking tremor that rocked the walls and fortress and most of the city. No lightning flashed, but off beyond the huddled buildings an enormous jet of water leaped high in the Reethe bay, so tall they could both see it where they stood nearly a half-mile inland.

“The Demon!” Elia gasped. “We’re out of time! Come on!”

It was a deadly and simple race. Gribly turned and ran up his gently sloping path, over the rounded top, and down the other side. He hadn’t done the job perfectly; the path dropped off the sluggish soft-stone at about ten feet. No matter- he flipped off the edge and landed lightly on his feet, slipping to one knee and crouching low, looking quickly around for any possible threats. Elia leaped a few seconds after him, but water from a pool to one side leaped into the air and formed a glittering slide for her to descend upon.

“Show-off,” Gribly grumbled at her, but he was smiling and saw she knew he didn’t mean it.

“There!” she called, pointing ahead. “There’s only one part of the fortress left standing!”

“By Halla,” Gribly murmured, then a grin split his face. “It’s the Cathedral!”

The Cathedral’s roof had collapsed, but two of its four towers and most of the ice-stone and soft-stone sculptures ringing its circular walls had survived. There was an entrance at each point of the compass; Gribly and Elia entered by the East doors, which were made of a beautiful blue-white stone and would have opened outward. They were thrown off their hinges and shattered on the wide flight of stairs that led up to the entrance.

At the top of the stairs the two young Striders passed under a tall arch and came into the bleak interior of the Reethe Cathedral. Lauro was there to greet them, along with the only remaining host of Reethe warriors still resisting the Demon’s attack.

“Stay your attack, Karmidigan,” he advised the gruff-looking nymph beside him. “These are the companions of whom I spoke. They may be our only hope of defeating the Sea Demon.”

Gribly noticed instantly the change in Lauro’s tone and demeanor. He was cold and noble again. Blast. All that progress gone to waste. Unless… Lauro nodded ever so slightly, spreading his hands to keep back the horde of nymphs that clustered behind him with pikes and axes at the ready. Ah. He’s pulling rank on these people. They respect his strength. Smart move.

The prince turned to the warrior beside him, grunting something about ‘gear’ and ‘position.’ The nymph seemed to be a ringleader among the Reethe: he nodded and began issuing orders to his soldiers. Gribly found himself and Elia surrounded and helped speedily down into the Cathedral and behind the protection of a large pile of snowy boulders. Only then did it occur to him how utterly exhausted he was.

“Let’s get you ready to fight,” Lauro said. His face almost smiled, but not quite. “While Karmidigan and his men find appropriate adornment for you, I will tell you their story. You’ll most certainly want to hear this...”

~

The elusive figure of the Pit Strider was haunting Gribly’s life. According to Lauro, the hooded man had arrived at the Reethe city a day before, demanding an audience with Varstis, the city’s Raitharch, or Snow-King.

“Mythigrad is a proud city. We are a proud people,” Karmidigan interjected. “But even we were unsure of this stranger. He had a Dark Power, but he was weak and weary. The Raitharch is a compassionate man, but he is not a warrior. He allowed the Black Man an audience, and it was his undoing. I was not there, or I could have stopped it.”

What exactly the Karmidigan thought he could have stopped was unclear. Lauro explained what the Frost Strider had told him as well as he could: that the Pit Strider had made outrageous demands of the Raitharch. He had claimed to have lost the trail of several desperate criminals, sorcerers who pretended to be ordinary Striders.

“It seems that when the Raitharch wouldn’t agree to detain us if we came,” Lauro went on, “The Pit Strider threatened to summon a Sea Demon. The Raitharch laughed in his face, so the Pit Strider attacked him. Karmidigan tells me it was a brief, violent struggle. The Raitharch didn’t die, but he’s wounded badly. The city was in an uproar when it found out. The Pit Strider escaped on some sort of flying steed.”

“Like the one you saw?”

“Exactly like. Anyway, today the bloody Sea Demon itself appeared, hours before we got here, and started smashing everything it could find. The thing’s blasted huge, if Karmidigan tells me right.”

“He does,” Elia grimaced, “We saw some of its tracks on the way here.”

“In any case, it suddenly stopped attacking just under an hour ago: right about when we arrived. The smoke-shroud that follows it around is still here, but other than the occasional earthquake there’s been no sign of the Sea Demon.”

“Wait…” Gribly interrupted, “Sea Demon? Is that somehow different than an Ice Demon? I thought that’s what it was.”

Lauro looked confused. “I’m not sure.”

“I can explain,” Elia said. “My people have more knowledge about the devils of the sea than most. I should have figured it out before now, actually. Sea Demons are just Ice Demons or Foam Demons from the bay or deep ocean that are bigger than normal. Since the monsters don’t die of old age, they just keep growing until they’re killed. The longer a Demon lives, the bigger and stronger it gets. The oldest can control the whole sea, not just ice or water. That’s why they’re called Sea Demons.”

“Um… what?”

“Big devils live on ice and waves. Bigger devils live in the sea. This one’s bigger than bigger. Got it?”

“I think so,” Gribly said. “At least enough to know how horribly dead we’re going to be when this thing attacks again. What confuses me is why it doesn’t just crush us all right now. It seemed pretty powerful when it talked to me.”

“It spoke to you?” exclaimed Karmidigan in surprise. “But… but Demons do not speak! Unless… unless you are…”

“A prophet, maybe?” Gribly saw in the nymph’s face that he was right. “Yeah. That’s what they all keep telling me.”

He fidgeted uncomfortably in the warm skins Karmidigan’s men had brought him. All the Reethe who’d heard him were all staring, so he quickly became interested in the subtle makeup of the suit: slick trousers and coat with matching boots, comfortable without restricting movement. Lauro was clad in the same manner, and Elia had been given a light hooded cloak that went over her dress. She barely seemed to mind the cold.

“I… I am honored to meet one such as you, Prophet Gribly,” said Karmidigan, bowing low. Lauro and Elia looked shocked when all the nearby Reethe imitated their captain.

“Oh please,” Gribly snorted, “I’m not a prophet. I don’t have visions or anything, I’m just a…” but he had had visions, hadn’t he? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure he even knew who he was. Karmidigan looked up from his bow, confused.

Then the Sea Demon attacked.

Chapter Thirteen: Hellthunder

The first tremor threw Lauro flat on his face before popping him upright and flipping him on his back like grease beads on a hot pan. How many times will this happen to me? The prince struggled to his feet and stumbled first right, then left, then in a circle as the snow-laden ground heaved beneath him. All around him, his friends and the Reethe warriors were faring little better, tumbling over themselves and falling as if they had no bones in their legs.

All except Karmidigan and the other Frost Striders. They moved their feet in strange circular shapes, somehow managing to stay upright no matter what ripples or shudders came their way. When the tremor had subsided, they were the only ones on their feet. Lightning flashed in the dark sky overhead.

“Take my hand, Prince Vale,” Karmidigan grunted, taking his hand in an iron grip and pulling him upright.

“Thank you.”

“It is nothing. Prophet Gribly? Lady Elia?” the Frost Strider quickly had his two friends standing again. The other nymphs were scrambling to their feet and clutching at their dropped weapons. One had sprained his ankle and another had cut himself on his own sword. He tossed it to another and retreated behind one of the debris-piles to bind his wound. There weren’t many swords in the Reethe arsenal; Karmidigan had only been able to offer Lauro a pike, which the prince hastily picked up.

“Karmidigan!” he called, “We’ve got to find out how it’s making these quakes! Could it be the storm?”

The Frost Strider shook his shaven head wisely. “Of course not. The smoke is from the Demon. The storm is from us.”

“What? How can-”

A deafening CRACK sounded from somewhere out towards the inlet. A massive explosion of snow and ice and everything Mythigrad was made of burst up at the sky. Water sprayed up hundreds of feet, fire spurted in blinding spirals out from the tempest, and over all a shuddering, creaking sound that drowned out all else. Lauro was ready this time. Before the ground could quake again and throw him off his feet, he snatched his pike off the ground and vaulted up into the air, kicking his feet and ascending rapidly. Before he had even risen to the height of the Cathedral’s front wall, he saw what had happened.

The city of Mythigrad was slowly being plowed aside by a gray-white something of titanic proportions. The thing moved steadily forward as it rose foot by foot by hundreds of feet from the surface of the inlet, completely disregarding the iceberg that stood in its way. The icy ground and the buildings atop it seemed to offer no resistance, cracking and peeling, thrusting upward and to each side like hard soil broken by a farmer’s plow.

“By the Aura… What in Halla is this creature?” Lauro felt the wind around him suddenly die away, and he frantically tried to climb higher in the air to avoid falling. The Sea Demon was many times as large as the Ice Demon that had attacked the Mirrorwave, and it was relentlessly pushing its way towards the Cathedral, intent on obliterating the last vestige of Reethe resistance. How the damnable Pit Strider had summoned it, Lauro couldn’t imagine. He knew only one thing: it was his task to send it back to hell.

Lauro spun the pikestaff above his head and found he could use it to help him wind stride. You never told them, you know. His inner voice had chosen just the wrong moment to speak, as usual. If you die trying to prove yourself, they’ll never know why it was you did it. So what? He didn’t intend to die, and he especially didn’t intend to let Gribly know how much of a liar he was. Elia neither. No, he couldn’t tell them. The old fear and hurt was freezing in his chest, and he needed to chase it away with the heat of battle.

“For Vastion!” Lauro screamed. Channeling all his power, he summoned the greatest blast of wind he had stridden yet. It picked him up and tossed him towards the oncoming behemoth with the speed of a dead leaf in a winter’s storm.

I will redeem myself, he thought. And my father will be proud.

~

“Bre Spectansis! Lei Lekion-Scorr terminas! Preterons per climactue!” Elia heard the Frost Strider shouting above the deafening roar of the monster’s approach. By Allfar! The Sea Demon has returned! Prepare for battle! The accent of his nymphspeech was new to her, but it wasn’t too hard to comprehend… luckily.

Most of the nymph soldiers were still trying to keep their feet on the buckling, bucking ground. Elia managed to get upright for a second and used the opportunity to jump a few feet off the ground, spreading her mind out around her like a net, catching water-particles in the air to lend her buoyancy as she hopped around lightly, avoiding the tremors when they came. Karmidigan and the far-off brigade of chanting, swaying Frost Striders didn’t seem to be having a problem.

“Girl! Lady Elia!” called the shaven warrior, waving at her frantically. He had obviously noticed that she could keep her feet. “Come! Follow me if you can! We will have need of your gifts!”

She didn’t trust herself to speak, so much was she shaking, but she nodded and made her way nimbly across the heaving snow towards him. On the way she passed Gribly, crouched low, a snarl written across his mild face. He seemed able to hold his own against the earthquake, but he hadn’t gotten farther than staying on his feet. Following her was out of the question.

“Are you all right?” she called to him, and just as she feared her voice cracked with unsteadiness. This was a new kind of fight for her.

“I-I’m f-f-f-fine,” he stuttered, hopping and falling to his knees and jumping up again each time the ground heaved. “G-g-go o-on and s-s-see what h-he w-w-wants…”

She nodded and continued on. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared, but she could barely hear it above the tumult that boomed around her on all sides. The whole scene was so utterly noisy it was a wonder she could even hear what Gribly said. It occurred to her they had both been yelling over the noise, and then she was face to face with Karmidigan.

“My Lady!” he called. Snowflakes whirled in the air and formed an insubstantial tunnel around his mouth whenever he spoke. He was casting his voice, somehow. She nodded, carefully spreading her legs to withstand a small shockwave that hit them suddenly. Karmidigan put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. When he spoke again, it was in the nymphtongue. “We have to slow this devil down. It is the only way. If we can slow it, mayhap we can stop it. Our cleric is with the Raitharch, healing him, so we can expect no help from his power. However, we have been preparing for this next attack ever since the first came. Come.”

He was just turning away when a new series of jolts shot through the ground, shaking the Cathedral like a straw hut in a hurricane. Elia went flying- literally- but Karmidigan caught her in his huge arms easily. Without waiting, her held on to her and sped away towards the rear of the structure, riding the heaving snow like a ship on the waves. Frost striding.

“T-thank y-you,” Elia said in her own language, shaking. The Frost Strider grimly nodded.

All at once, the tremors stopped. She looked up and saw that they had arrived at the raised platform of soft-stone where the other Frost Striders were. Karmidigan put her down gently, and she thanked him again.

“It is nothing. Look! The prince buys us time!” the man pointed behind her. Elia turned and saw the top of the Sea Demon’s sludge-gray form rising just over the fortress wall. It had stopped moving and rising, and an almost indecipherable black shape whizzed back and forth in front of it. Faint cries came across the air.

Lauro. He was actually attacking the thing, and throwing his voice with the wind like she had seen him do from afar when he had tried to save the Zain trireme.

“Crazy lad,” Karmidigan groaned, but he was smiling as he said it. “Come, My Lady. I will now show you the Strength of the Reethe.”

With a tremendous leap he jumped onto the snow-dusted platform, then reached down to help Elia up after him. She shook her head. The snow under her new boots had begun to melt, and she called on the water it formed to spout under her feet, effortlessly raising her up to the platform’s level, where she immediately stepped forward to join the astonished Karmidigan.

“Truly you have the skill,” he said, still using nymphspeech. “I hope it will be sufficient.”

“Sufficient?” she broke in.

“To help us cast our storm,” he told her. In the few swift seconds it took them to walk to the center of the platform, he explained his plan to her. All around them, the loose circle of ten or so Frost Striders took no notice, continuing their endless routine of arm-and-hand motions, putting the full energy of their body and will into their conjuring.

“They have been shaping a snow-storm in the heavens for hours now. There are too few Striders here, too few.” Karmidigan stopped in the center of the circle. “We hope to slow the Demon with our power, and the storm should do that for us. However, until now we had no hope of controlling it. We have the power of Winter at our command, but the water of the skies evades us. Our storm has strength but no momentum. I had hoped when I saw you that you would be able to help us control it. Make it grow. Throw rain and lightning at our enemy with your wave striding. Is this within your power?”

“I do not know,” Elia answered him simply. It was almost incomprehensible to her how important this all was. How deadly. She was being asked to combine forces with other Striders- to control a thunderstorm, no less! It was something that should be far beyond her power… but it was what she’d always dreamed of! And then again, there was the battle with the Pit Strider’s draik… “I may be able to do it,” she said finally. “At least I will try.”

“Good. Good,” Karmidigan said, nodding grimly. “Have you combined energies with other Striders before?”

“No. I have had little real training that did not come from my Father.” The memory almost choked her, sudden and striking amid the clash of coming battle.

“Then I will show you the way,” the Frost Strider confidently told her. “I sense a Power within you. It shall not be hard for you, I think.”

“Then let us begin.”

Chapter Fourteen: Wind Tunnel

It saw him. He felt sure it saw him. Lauro couldn’t see any eyes on the Demon, but when it had risen head and shoulders out of the sea he noticed two large indentations where its eyes might have been. There was no mouth and no nose, either, but for some reason the effect was even more terrifying than the tentacle visage of the Ice Demon from the southern part of the Inkwell. At least the sheer size of the thing made it slow… he hoped.

The air around him crackled with energy: his energy. He was striding the wind like never before. The rushing, soaring, flashing feeling intoxicated him; made him feel strong enough to beat this enormous thing on his own. In some corner of his mind, he knew it wasn’t possible, that he could and most likely would die if he attacked it… but somewhere along the line he’d simply stopped caring.

“Take this, father!” he spat at the wind. It rushed around him, pushing him forward faster and faster through the air while continually building a cushion of pressure under his feet. The Demon slowly eased its gray, shapeless head back, and Lauro realized that it was following his movements, after all. Good. Maybe I can slow it down.

It was hard to judge distance while flying, especially when the size of everything below was so large. Buildings toppled and collapsed as the Sea Demon tried to raise one massive shoulder through the iceberg. If it gets an arm… or tentacle… near me, I might as well kill myself for all the luck I’ll have getting away. It’ll catch me like a fly. The prince soon realized he needed to get somewhere the monster couldn’t immediately reach him.

His decision was made in a second. Gripping the pike he still carried in both hands, he held it parallel to his own body while twitching his feet ever so slightly. The effect was instantaneous: the wind flipped him onto his back. With the heightened vision his gifts gave him, he could see the spiraling currents of air growing stronger at his feet. When he released them, they would shoot him through the sky at a ridiculous pace- one he wasn’t sure he could physically handle, but one he knew was necessary to foil his enormous foe.

Grunting with the exertion it took to move against his own momentum, Lauro spun the pikestaff to be perpendicular with his torso; all while still flying backwards towards the Sea Demon as it grew ever taller. The movement temporarily slowed him: in his mind he was bottling up the gathered wind, preparing for a mighty Wind-stride. He needed more power; more energy; more pressure.

He waited a second. The colorful strands of wind-energy visible only to him were growing stronger as he gathered more of them in.

Another second. If anyone had been close enough to see him, they would have seen that he had slowed almost to a stop. Any slower and he would fall right out of the sky.

A third second passed. To Lauro’s vision, there was a whirlwind of crimson churning beneath his outstretched legs, held back by his own will and the pike he was using as his tool.

At that moment there was a frightful roar and explosion from below. It was if both the prince and the Sea Demon had been moving slower and slower in time, stretching it farther and farther, building tension until it finally snapped and released them both at a supernatural speed. The Demon suddenly raised itself up to almost its full height, breaking through what remained of the shattered Reethe city and rearing up so that its head seemed as if it was about to touch the clouds.

Its arm, a grasping, slimy thing with less than normal fingers and a hideous sludgy quality, shot up at hundreds of miles an hour, trying to crush Lauro just as he had imagined it would… like a fly. But just as the fly oftentimes eludes the housewife by the sheer virtue of its small size, so the prince survived what else might have killed a larger creature. By luck or quick thinking, Lauro spun onto his stomach and thrust the pike forward just as the Demon struck. The enormous pressure and power of the wind stored at his feet was released all at once.

Like an arrow from the bow of the Allfar, Lauro shot across the sky and out of the Demon’s reach. It was a close race: the monster’s claw passed like a thunderbolt not more than ten feet from his side, but he barely noticed it.

The wind tore the hair from his head and melted his skull and turned his body into jelly… or at least it felt like it. He felt his whole body wracked with the pain of moving faster and farther and in a shorter time than was ever intended for the human body. White lights and black lights searing his eyeballs until it felt like he had none. His lips were forced back onto his face like the peeled skin of a fruit; his tortured eyelids tried to force themselves shut and couldn’t. His whole body was crushed under the inconceivable force of the wind he had tried to tame. The pike was ripped from his grip like a twig and his arms were plastered to his sides. There was no steering and no sight. His ears were dead.

Then, suddenly, it was over. The wind died away to almost nothing, and he felt the air around him grow absolutely still. The only noise his ears could hear was a faint fluttering and rustling, as if he was flying near a small group of starlings. If any could fly so high, he thought.

He noticed several things at once: one, he was not controlling his own flight. He had the general idea he was flying but the energy wasn’t going out from him like it normally would if he were wind striding. Two, the reason for his confusion was that he still couldn’t see. The world around him had calmed down, but his eyes were streaming with salty tears and even a bit of blood. The bowshot flight he’d taken was still taking its toll on his sight, making him virtually blind. His eyes blinked open and closed rapidly, trying to heal themselves by a constant flow of liquid. While it happened, he was helpless.

Finally they cleared, and his vision returned. What he saw amazed him.

The Sea Demon stood below, standing or swimming at its full height, completely stopped and strangely still. At least, that was how it appeared- he couldn’t know for sure. The entire scene was whirring by at a tremendous pace below him. Despite the out-of-place calm feeling he had, it seemed his speed hadn’t decreased at all: in fact, it had increased.

He was in a tunnel. Yes, that was the best way to describe it: a tunnel of wind. He caught glimpses of the rest of it behind him whenever he turned his head: a fleeting, ghostly apparition of white; a charged, sparking space where no snowflake fell and no raindrop landed. It shouldn’t have been possible, even with all he’d learned about his gifts so far in life. But there! It was happening, wasn’t it?

It made him feel powerful, in control of the battle; and, what was more, it utterly confused the Sea Demon. How he knew that he was wasn’t sure, but from the sight he gleaned of it as he flew the hundreds-of-feet-wide circle around its head, he assured himself that it was, indeed, holding perfectly still. How the hellspawned thing worked and thought he had no idea, but so far it didn’t seem to understand him or his powers. Good: the longer it was confused, the longer it would take to reach the center of Mythigrad and the longer the Frost Striders in the Cathedral would have to conjure up some form of resistance.

The fluttering noise he’d heard when he’d first “entered” the tunnel grew louder, and something smacked hard into his knee. Looking down, the prince found it to be nothing more than his pike, which for some reason seemed to have entered the tunnel and continued flying alongside him even after it had been forced from his grip by the wind. Reaching out to grab at it, he felt the tunnel start to slow and his own body to slip out of the safe zone. The wind tugged at his cheeks again and threatened to collapse his tunnel.

Quicker than thought, he snatched the pike and returned to his former posture: arms at sides, legs flung out straight behind, face forward and body flat. The weapon’s haft was tucked neatly under one arm, and the wind-tunnel’s grew stronger again until there was no more danger of its collapse.

The world sped by in circles. Lauro found he could tighten or loosen the noose of his tunnel with slight alterations in his spreadeagled posture, or by moving the blade of his pike ever so slightly, so as to act as a sort of hyper-sensitive rudder for his voyage in the sky. He needed the skill, too. Once and only once did the Sea Demon try to stop him: it raised one heavy arm again and attempted to block his path of flight.

It almost worked, too. He was moving so fast he had barely a second to react, but a quick jab-and-twist with his pike shifted the tunnel’s current enough to get him out of the way in time. It nearly snapped his spine and wrenched him out of the tunnel entirely… but it was worth it. He was gaining new power and new experience every minute that he held the Demon at a standstill. It didn’t try to stop him again, at least not in the same way.

At first he thought his sight was deceiving him, or that he had accidentally flown higher than he intended: the monstrous enemy seemed to be getting farther and farther away. The next second he realized that just the opposite was happening: the Demon was sinking back into the sea. Impossible. Could I really have driven it off so easily? He couldn’t let it out of his sight. Lower and lower he circled, keeping an ample distance between him and his enemy, but never letting the space grow too large. A closer vantage point confirmed his first guess: the Demon really was submerging itself again.

Good, was his first thought. Then he thought better of it. What if it breaks up through the ice at a different point? This city’s still populated… it could kill hundreds of nymphs! Unbidden, he heard in his mind what his father might have said. Good. Let them die. They sit on the edge of the world and work magic against us. They rob and fight and steal. They are worse than animals.

He’d never agreed with the king on that. He’d never agreed with the king on anything, but especially not that. I can’t let these people die! You’re not the kind of king I want to be, Father. I don’t care that these aren’t my people, and I don’t care that they’re not even the same kind of people. I’ll risk anything to save them.

Chapter Fifteen: Storm and Glory

Lauro was circling so low above the city now that he could see the jaggedly broken edges of the structures where the Demon had broken through, as clearly as the rapidity of the wind-tunnel would allow him. The last sight he caught of the monster was the top of its bulbous head slipping beneath the midnight sheen of the waves. Only when it was gone and the world grew significantly darker did he realize that it had been giving off a sort of dead luminance. The air was hotter where its body had passed, as if the mucky ice-substance it was made of somehow projected the heat of the Blaze from which it had been born.

A tense minute passed. It couldn’t have just gone, could it? Lauro quickly flew in higher circles until he could see into the far-off Cathedral. He needed to warn Karmidigan and the others, just in case the Demon was preparing to attack from under the ice at a different point. Time to take a risk.

When he judged the point was right, Lauro straightened every part of his body, thrusting his pike forward in a gesture of forward! and willing himself to break the circular cycle. Wham! For a second it felt as if he’d been struck in the chest with a heavy boulder, the breath gushing out of his lungs with an angry whuufing noise. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes from the unexpected pain. By the time he looked down, the Cathedral was a mere wide blue streak below him. The wind tunnel traveled fast.

“No!” he barked, realizing he was about to pass it over. His control must have been improving: the verbal command worked, and the tunnel died around him with no more resistance than a slight tug at his clothes. He was suspended, almost motionless, over the roofless Cathedral. Warriors milled below, and the Frost Striders were still at their places. There was no sign of Gribly, but Elia had joined the Reethe Striders on their stone platform. A vicious storm whipped and churned in the sky overhead.

“Blast it!” he grunted. In the wind tunnel he hadn’t been able to hear or feel: now he heard the deafening thunder of the storm and felt the pelting, heavy drops of its rain. Winds almost too strong for him to control attempted time and again to buffet him out of his path. His energy was almost depleted in seconds- not least because of the strain his new powers were having on him.

Swooping lower over the Cathedral’s walls, he alighted smoothly on the northernmost one. Something in his mind; a built-in gauge for danger, perhaps; warned him he didn’t have much time to warn the others. More wind-striding was called for, even if it made him so tired he fell off the wall. He was nearly tired enough, anyway- no food, no sleep, in how long? But he was digressing.

He put his hands up to his mouth, cupped them into a trumpet-shape, and blew as hard as he could, clicking his tongue as he did so. It was a Stride he’d learned only days ago, on the spur of the moment…

“KARMIDIGAN!” He saw nearly everyone in the Cathedral jump at the amplified sound of his voice. He understood- it had taken him by surprise the first time, too. Several of the nymphs raised bows and slings at him, and he thought he saw the chief Frost Strider’s shorn head below. “IT IS I, PRINCE LAURO!” he called.

Down below, Karmidigan was bellowing at his men to lower their weapons. Lauro continued. “THE SEA DEMON HAS GONE BELOW THE WAVES. I WILL FLY UNTIL I FIND HIM. BE WARNED! HE MAY ATTACK HERE NEXT!”

The nymph warrior was easy for him to see now, standing head and shoulders taller than most of his soldiers. He flicked his wrist in a queer gesture, and snowflakes whirled about his mouth.

“Understood, Prince! We will hold our own until your return. The storm is here at our bidding, as a weapon; and the Cathedral is built on solid ground. To reach us the Demon would first have to dislodge this city from its foundations.” His voice was being thrown! Could all Striders do it in their own way? He’d thought it was just wind. In any case, what Karmidigan told him was encouraging.

“Good!” he called down, trying to control the volume of his voice. It worked- roughly. It irked him to have this nymph be better than him at his own trick. “We meet in Halla, my friend!”

Lightning crackled overhead. Lauro leaped up and flipped back off the wall, twisting and coming back up in a wide flying arc towards the gray sky. At points the smoke that had encased the Reethe iceberg was breaking up. That couldn’t be bad, could it?

He had flown no more than a hundred meters North when the sound of screaming and an ear-splitting explosion from behind told him he was wrong.

~

Elia had never felt anything like this. She was no mean talent when it came to wave striding; in fact, she was one of the best. But even her unexpected experience controlling the draik’s fire was worthless compared with what she felt now.

“You feel it, do you not?” said Karmidigan, still speaking in the nymphtongue. “The water in the air… the air itself… the clouds that are made of hundreds upon thousands of little water droplet… the world of the Above, as no nymph has known it since our ancestors walked in the halls of Halla and spoke with the Allfar and his Sky Ravens. It is our blessing.”

Her eyes were closed, and she was only dimly aware of her surroundings. She was standing, arms lifted high, in the middle of the ten Frost Striders. And she was striding a storm.

“Listen to the storm, Elia Treelese. Amar Undun. It will tell you the story of the nymphs. We, who are Eldest and Youngest. One and Ten. Placed here for a purpose. We hear the words of Wind and Rain, and we understand them. We listen to the speech of Wood and Stream, Grass and Tree, Earth and Sand, and we know what it is they speak of. Even Fire once spoke in a tongue we knew, and we alone.

“We taught the humans, we did; the doughty, dire humans. They learned of us all the tongues but Fire. They learned to walk the paths of Wind, Wave, Wood and Storm. They learned to Stride. All this we taught them, for we have always been closer to the land than they. Our people have always known the speech of the land. We were put here to speak to it and to stride down its paths.

“Yes, Elia, you understand. You are right. We did not come here: we were placed. We were placed here by the One who knows us best. The One who created us. The One who taught us the tongues of the World, of God’s Scepter. The Creator.

“Yes, Elia. We were Created by the Creator. Do you know what you are doing, when you listen to the storm? You are speaking the language of God!”

“YES!” she screamed into the sky, in her mind and in her native speech and in the Common Speech she had learned so young. She did it all at once. And she felt it. “Come alive,” she whispered, to Whom she knew not, exactly. “I will speak this tongue. I will walk this path.”

“Good,” Karmidigan’s voice rumbled beside her, or inside her head, or somewhere deep in her mind. She did not open her eyes, but she kept her hands raised to Halla and the One Thereabove. “Praise the Creator, Elia. Then you will have taken the first step on the path we all must stride to reach our goal.”

She praised. And the storm that raged above her suddenly seemed not so far distant. It was remote no longer. It was near her, around her, filling her…

…It was under her.

Her mind was floating above the storm, on wings she couldn’t see, with the flight of a heavenly bird. She felt or saw the electric chill of the gray-white clouds; the silvery black of the sky; the exhilarating magnitude of the rumbling thunder; the enlivening shock of the graceful lightning as it leaped from cloud to cloud like a summer fowl on the branches of a shapely tree.

Then came the rain. It was like a torrent, it was like a flood. It was a flood; a flood that poured down from the heavens and swept all things away… all things that she wished it to. All things that she told it to.

She was connected to the storm. Its wisps were her hands, its winds her hair. Its sky was her mantle and its lightning her heart. Her praises were its thunderclaps and her words were the melody of its furious glory. With it under her command, she was really, truly powerful.

Then she saw… no, felt the others. Like vast wells of thought and memory, and of meditation, shot through with the freezing ice of pride and the fierce strength of a thousand years spent among the waters of the snowy North Sky.

Frost Striders, uncloaked and in the form they were born to inhabit.

And yet, she did not feel ashamed to be among them.

~

A blindingly bright presence, yet one that was at the same time remote and collected, wise and strong, was beside her. So you have strode down our path, Young One. It spoke to her, and its voice held an emotion that did not fit it: surprise.

It… it appears I have. But I am not sure how, Karmidigan, or why.

All will be revealed in time, to those who do not ask.

I do not understand.

You are not asked to. But I will answer you, at least in part. In the past, all who strode the paths of Wind, Water, and Wood could learn their secrets and speak their tongue, if they strode long and far enough. From these first few nymphs who did so came the Striders. The skills they learned ran so deep that not only they but their descendants gained the gift. A fewer number of humans did the same, and with a similar effect.

As time passed, less and less ‘became’ Striders. Many were born of the first Striders’ descendants, but their skill was weaker. Less potent. The path of Fire and its language has been forgotten, and none have since learned it anew. Other paths have become more scarce. Once, to know one path was to know them all. Now the only Striders left are the sons and daughters of the descendants of the First. They are limited to the path their life takes them down: Wave, Sand, Rock. Sand, Wind, Frost and Mist. Only in such places where our paths mix in the cascade of the elements do we grow more powerful: such as in this storm, where Frost and Wave and Wind meet and are Strong Together.

I… she began, wanting to interrupt- to tell him that he was wrong, and she could stride fire. And Gribly! He could stride stone and sand! If it really was so rare, then…

Wait, his voice said quickly, and it seemed farther away somehow. An enemy may be approaching below.

But I… He was gone. She soon forgot him and reveled in the storm. She could actually stride it! He was right: where the elements met, so did the strings of power buried deep within her. She could feel a heat in her belly, or what part of her mind felt like it. Fire. Her fire. The fire she knew she had in her. Was it possible that she could walk the paths of Wind and Wood as well? It was arrogant to think of it… but…

I have returned, came Karmidigan’s voice again. He needn’t have told her. There will be trouble. Deadly trouble. The wind Strider has returned from his venture against the Sea Demon. He thinks-

But she never learned what Lauro had thought. Into her world of Storm and Sea, a hideous darkness thrust itself, all aflame and bristling with malice. The Frost Striders had been expecting it: they were ready and strong enough to resist, and she was not.

Her fragile hold- oh, so fragile!- on the striding of the storm simply broke. Her consciousness plummeted back into her body.

~

Elia came to herself amid an all-consuming roar of noise. Thunder boomed and ice cracked; lightning flashed and wind howled. The dying light of the sky was eclipsed by the unholy light of the Sea Demon’s luminous body as it smashed its way through the Cathedral floor. Its eyes burned with blue fire and its mouth belched acrid smoke that clung to the shattered world around it like a strangling shadow.

The final struggle was beginning.

Chapter Sixteen: Battleheart

Everyone was caught off guard- even Karmidigan and the other Frost Striders.

Just when I was remembering how to walk again, too, Gribly complained to himself. He had clambered out from the snowdrift that had fallen on him as soon as the earthquake stopped, and had been able to witness Lauro’s return and his fancy little voice trick. His first thought was selfish as usual- to run to Elia and make sure she was safe, just to make himself feel better. Blast. He’d kept the wrenching feeling inside him tamed for so long he hadn’t even known he felt it. Why was it acting up again, especially now?

He’d made a fool of himself back in the city. He wasn’t even sure he meant most of what he’d said, and now he couldn’t take it back. Bah. Quests and mystical dreams were all fine if they didn’t mess with your head… but that’s what this quest and these dreams were doing. They were making him sick. He’d always imagined he was more noble than the average thief, but now he was finding it hard just to stay with his friends… if he could call them that.

But it would all have to wait. He’d probably die now anyway.

“Whaaaaa!” he yelled as the ground pitched up in front of him. This was no mere earthquake: this was the end of the world! The flat floor of the Cathedral had suddenly broken into pieces, and his piece had tipped up and hurled him skyward with a painful jerk. For the two seconds he was in the air he wished he could wind stride like Lauro… Then for the single moment it took to plow into the snow and debris behind him he wished he could frost stride like Karmidigan.

Oh well. Can’t have it all, I guess.

He dug his way out of the mess just in time to see what it was that had caused the explosion of the Cathedral floor.

“Oh, gypsies,” he chortled in horror. The massive bulk of the Sea Demon had appeared out of nowhere, taking up almost the entire space between the building’s four walls. Chunks of ice from the very ground were flying everywhere, like pebbles tossed in a hurricane.

One was coming his way: a massive shard of ice and rock.

Swearing colorfully, Gribly dived to the side as fast and far as he could. The chunk hurtled past him and disappeared in the obscuring cloud of snowdust it generated when it slammed full-speed into the north wall of the Cathedral. For a moment the entire world was blank and white, punctuated with the screams of the dying he couldn’t see with his eyes.

Coughing the wet slop out of his mouth, he crawled toward the scene of the hit. The shard had opened a mammoth hole in the side of the Cathedral, which he saw as the snow cleared.

Escape. It was his, and only feet away. For a brief moment he was horribly conflicted.

Come on, you can’t do anything about them. They all probably died when the Demon broke through. RUN FOR IT.

Fine, he told himself. I’ll get away, but once I get my bearings… I’ll be back. Hoping he’d convinced himself, he leaped up, ready to run and climb through the hole in the wall as he had done countless times in Ymeer.

The shattering and mayhem was still going strong behind him. A tremor threw him face-first into the ground, then he scrambled to his feet and leaped up on the low edge of the hole in the wall. He slipped going out the other side, skinning his knees when he fell on his face for the third time in as many minutes.

I like the taste of snow on a good day. This is NOT a good day. He leaped up, bloody knees ignored, and barreled forward into the fog that billowed out from the hole and quickly engulfed his surroundings in a shapeless gray shroud.

As the fog surrounded him, he thought he could feel it penetrate past his skin, chilling his bones with an unearthly cold. An unsleeping malice.

PROPHET, thundered a voice in his head. I KNOW YOU ARE HERE. YOU HAVE IGNORED MY COMMAND. FOR YOUR IGNORANCE YOU WILL DIE.

The Sea Demon. It had found him!

Without a thought for his friends, without even a shred of dignity or honor, Gribly let his mind surrender to fear.

He screamed, and for the millionth time in his short, miserable life, he ran away.

He ran from danger. He ran from fear and pain. He ran from everything that hurt inside, that he had been bottling up and suppressing from Ymeer to Mythigrad.

Old Murie’s death. The killing he’d witnessed when Cleric Argoz took control of the desert city, and the scattered death and sodomy he’d seen in his life as a street thief. The death of Byorne. The death of Captain Berne. Elia’s family… massacred.

All because of him. And because of the ever-elusive, damnably mysterious sorcerer who wore his face! It was unbearable, so on he ran. And on and on the Demon’s rant pursued him, without ever pinpointing exactly where he was. The Demon felt him as he felt it, probably: nearby, unsettlingly so, but not close enough to see. If Demons saw.

He ran on and on, until he had outrun the evil fog and reached the hollow shells of the abandoned Reethe homes that been smashed by the Demon in its first attack. He ran until his face was bluer than cold and his body was crippled with cramping pains. He ran until he fell, then he got up and ran again.

He ran until he turned a corner in the silently screaming city and ran smack into a large, hideously hairy head infused with metal plates. His nose bled at the impact and he crumpled, crying from fear and shame. It was a draik!

He was going to die… He was going to die… It was going to kill him like the coward he was…

But it didn’t. And when it didn’t and he had lain there shaking for a minute and his nose had stopped bleeding, he looked up. And… he laughed. He laughed long and loud.

It was Steamclaw. The draik who talked. The monster who obeyed his command.

“I HAVE COME. THE SEA CANNOT STOP ME. I AM YOURS TO COMMAND UNTIL I PERISH.” His rasping, guttural speech still seemed unnatural to Gribly's ears. But it didn't matter now.

“You can't help, Steamclaw,” the thief told the beast reluctantly, “Not unless you know how to kill Sea Demons.”

There was a pause.

“You don’t know how to kill them, do you? You can’t!”

Another pause, and something suspiciously like a snort from the hulking, dripping-wet draik.

“You do? You know how to kill Demons?”

“I AM A DEMON. OR AT LEAST WHAT MASTER CALLS A DEMON.”

“But you know how- I mean you can- You can kill the Sea Demon??”

“NO. BUT I CAN SHOW MASTER HOW.”

“You can?”

“I CAN.”

~

“Calimá! Lei Tempstre nadt Calimálei!” Lauro heard Karmidigan shouting below. The Frost Strider was gesturing wildly to the conjured storm above. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed in the heavens, faster and faster, growing more wild every second.

With a jolt Lauro realized Karmidigan was talking to him. He swerved in mid-air, angling down around the luminous hulk of the Sea Demon as it thrashed its way up through the surface. It was so big…

“What? What?” he yelled, trying in vain to understand the nymph’s speech.

“Calimá! Lightning! Get out of the sky!”

Oh, the prince thought. That’s not-

Before he finished the thought, twenty hands slammed palm-down into the stone platform as the ten Frost Striders who had been conjuring the storm pounded the ground. Lightning streaked out of the sky in a thousand crackling arcs, and Lauro was caught right in the middle of them. He didn’t even have time to scream.

White flashed and heat washed his body in a roaring flood of pain. Instantly he jerked his head up and saw he was lying on his back near one of the ruined Cathedral walls. What just happened? Wasn’t I flying? Where did everyone go? Why aren’t I dead? He struggled to bring his memory up to speed. He had been hit- then he had woken up! What had happened in between?

He raised himself up on his elbows and was surprised to find the pain in his chest was bearable. The world around him was chaos. The Sea Demon had risen out of the ground up to its waist now, and the Cathedral was in ruins around it. The storm that had knocked him out of the sky was hovering at the Demon’s head, striking it with lightning and fire, crackling with the energies of snow, ice, and rain, smoke, mist, and wind. The hideous monster was striking at the clouds in earth-shattering anger, trying in vain to brush the insubstantial mass away like it would any normal, solid object. The Frost Striders had not failed, apparently.

The rest of the scene was almost as chaotic. Little white creatures scurried and hopped about at the Demon’s flanks, attacking it furiously with their claws and teeth like little insects on a hostile animal, even crawling up its slimy body in some places. What on earth they were, Lauro had no idea. Blast. His head was throbbing like an open wound. He put his hand to the base of his skull and felt wet, hot blood. Not good. He felt something else, too: a liquid coolness that seemed to be gathered at the center of his wound, protruding outward from the back of his head. What the-

He felt a blessed cessation of pain as his wound knitted itself back together seamlessly, leaving nothing but dried blood behind. The coolness left, and he turned his head to see what it had been.

Elia. The nymph girl’s face wavered in the light, and he could almost fancy he saw through it into the space beyond. Of course! She was in her Swimmer Form, translucent as the waves themselves. She had healed him, somehow. “Lauro?” her voice was high and tinkling, like a stream in the summer hills of the Greyfeld. “Thank the Aura, you’re all right!”

“How in Vast did you do that?” he gaped. “You just put my head back together like it had never been hurt!”

“In my second form I am much more attuned to the natural world,” she explained, casting a glance over her shoulder as she did so, as if any time the moment of respite might pass and an enemy see them. “Healing comes naturally to most Treele nymphs… or did. Thankfully your wound was not deep, or there would have been nothing I could do. I don’t know how you survived that fall.”

“My fall,” said Lauro, sucking his teeth regretfully and sitting up. “What happened? I just woke up here with no memory of how I fell.”

“The storm hit you, and you came flying out here. You should be dead, but you’re barely injured. I happened to be near and saw it. I’ve no idea where Gribly is, but I’m afraid for him. He may have been hurt or killed when the Demon broke through.”

“It doesn’t matter at the moment,” Lauro frowned, standing unsteadily up. Her mention of the younger lad irked him for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint. “What happened to you? Why are you in your Other Form anyway?”

“When the Demon broke through, I was knocked over by the shock, and for some reason it triggered the Change. The same thing happened to most of the Reethe- look! They’re in their Snow Forms now!” So that’s what the white creatures were… Reethe. Insane. They were actually trying to fight the Demon hand-to-hand.

“Blast!” he groaned, “Where’re the Frost Striders?”

“Behind us. Who do you think controls the lightning storm now?”

He turned and stared, open-mouthed. The stone platform was behind them, and atop it stood the ten Frost Striders, barely fazed, pumping their fists and shouting words of power into the air as they manipulated the elements to create the storm that harassed the Sea Demon. “Holy Sight!” exclaimed Lauro, “They’re unbeatable!”

“Not for long- look!”

He looked, and saw the Sea Demon claw great heaps of the ground up and hurl them up into the sky. Its sickly hue was growing brighter and brighter, shining with the power of the underworld that was housed within. “Oh no!” Lauro cried, “That debris will come right down on us!” And it did. He dove sideways and avoided the deadly missile as it sailed down onto the platform behind. The second followed, and soon a third and fourth as the Demon smashed more and more of the ground in an effort to beat off the tormenting storm.

When the swirling snow finally cleared and Lauro was on his feet again, he shouted in anger and fear.

“Elia! Elia! Where are you? Has it hit you?” She was nowhere to be seen. “ELIA!” he shrieked, and leaped a heap of debris from the Demon’s reckless fury. The barrage from above had buried half the platform in snow and ice, but near the ground he thought he saw a bluish forearm and soft hand protruding from the pile.

“ELIA! NO!” he fell to his knees amid the thunderous sounds of battle and screamed her name again and again. He took the hand and felt a pulse- thank the Aura, if they existed! Stumbling to his feet, he yelled again, in the unlikely case she could hear him. She seemed to have slipped into her normal form again. “I can get you out! I’ll save you! Just hold on!”

He stepped back and conjured the strongest wind he could in a short time. Plunging his hands into the snow, he drove the wind into the miniature avalanche with all his might. Snowflakes flew and ice cracked, but Elia was not uncovered.

Nothing, or almost nothing. He would have to try again. Raising his hands, he swung them in a circle and swept up a handful of snow. The wind followed his motion, blowing at the snow with all its strength.

Still nothing.

“ARGH!!!” he screamed, and kicked the pile with all his strength, nearly two feet above Elia’s hand. The deepest reserves of his power and anger went into the kick, and in the farthest corner of his mind he felt an unseen, yet-undetected barrier shatter and fall into ashes.

A lightning bolt materialized out of the air and blasted the place where his foot struck the snow. Smoke sprung up and filled his nostrils; flames licked his boot for half a second and then vanished. The bolt had been small, but its energy tore open every nerve in his body and flung him back six feet.

Horrified, imagining he had killed Elia, he scrambled forward and leaped onto the pile, digging furiously. Most of the debris were gone: hurled away or incinerated by the bolt. In three seconds his fingers brushed her matted-wet hair; in five he had gripped handfuls of her dress and tattered Reethe cloak and was pulling her out; in nine he was laying her out on the rough ground and checking for signs of life.

She was breathing. She wasn’t dead! Her chest heaved in and out laboriously, and could have shouted for joy, as undignified as it would have looked. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened. Her lips parted; she sucked in air and seemed about to say something.

“You’re all right!” he grinned, “I can’t believe I almost…”

“The Demon…” she whispered hoarsely. “Oh Heavens… the Demon!”

He spun around. A series of blinding, sulfurous flashes lit up the leaden sky, illuminating the catastrophic scene at the center of the Cathedral.

“It’s not possible…” he murmured. “It just can’t be…”

Chapter Seventeen: Stormheart

Perched precariously on Steamclaw’s back, Gribly raced into the heart of the battle. Hanging on for dear life amid the iron spikes and bristling hide of the draik, its words to him only moments before ran through his mind again and again.

Every creature of the Beforetime carries a Power within themselves. In some it is stronger, in some it is weaker. In all, it grants them life and strength most humans would consider unnatural. Defeat that Power, and the monster or Demon will die. Simple… except it’s not.

The draik’s plan didn’t sound easy. It called for climbing the Sea Demon’s back, boring inside its body, and finding its core, or heart of sorts, which Steamclaw insisted housed the Power that gave it life. It all sounded sick and impossible to Gribly, but he saw no other way to redeem himself. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to. I’ll never be able to look Elia in the face if I run away now. Never.

So he was riding straight into hell, hoping against hope that he would somehow be able to conquer an enemy hundreds of times his size, simply because it thought he was some sort of prophet.

But then again, he had thought… it could have just been a mirage or a hallucination, but back outside the Cathedral, he could have sworn that behind Steamclaw had stood a thin man in gray robes and a long cap. It couldn’t have been, but then… it might have.

The intensity of the emotions inside him drove out the cold and the discomfort as Steamclaw bore him through a hole in the Cathedral wall and into the heat of the battle. He barely noticed the Demon as it fought the storm that its enemies had summoned. He barely saw the stunning sight as the Frost Striders brought more and more energy to the fray. He hardly felt the fear that enveloped the carnage-strewn field as the Demon wrecked havoc on the Cathedral as its agony and confusion increased.

He didn’t see Lauro fall out of the sky, or Elia heal the prince’s wounds. He only saw the pulsating, sludgy side of the Sea Demon as it grew closer and closer… and closer. Gribly snapped back to reality when the draik spoke to him for the first time during the ride, with his mouth or mind, the thief wasn’t sure.

“THE STRUGGLE BEGINS, MASTER. IF YOU ARE NOT GRAMLING, AS YOU INSIST, YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST HIS STRENGTH, OR YOU WILL DIE. HOLD ON… TIGHTLY.”

“Wait!” Gribly called, “You mean the Pit Strider’s name is Gramling?”

He never got an answer. The draik leaped into the air, farther and higher than any mortal beast could go, and dug its bladelike claws into the Sea Demon’s luminous flesh. A gruesome squelching sound reached Gribly’s ears, and the massive body steamed where the draik had landed. Its flesh or skin was like half-melted snow, yet it held together as if it were completely solid. The snowman from hell, Gribly thought, and the joke gave him a grim, sort of confidence.

“Let’s see what this rotten thing is made of, aye Steamclaw?”

No answer, but he thought he picked up a satisfied tone to the draik’s grunts as it clawed its way up the Demon’s dripping back. With every second that passed, he felt as if he understood the beast better. It was empowering and frightening at the same time.

The Sea Demon was utterly huge. Its true size wasn’t even comprehensible until one got close up, where it was apparent that the monster was almost as wide as the entire Highfast Cathedral in Ymeer! Thank Traveller the Reethe place of worship was so much larger.

Agonizingly slow, the boy and beast crawled up the Demon’s back. It was tough going, and Gribly was infinitely glad he’d taken the draik’s advice and held on tightly. Strangely enough, the Demon didn’t seem to notice them, small as they were to it, but that didn’t stop the buckling and rumbling of the battle from almost throwing them off several times. Once, minutes later, when they were almost halfway up its back, the Demon shouted into his mind again.

PROPHET!

He cringed and almost fell off Steamclaw. The huge draik halted and slipped down the slimy side of the Demon for several feet. PROPHET? He asked telepathically. Gribly gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and didn’t answer- he was riding out the wave of mental pain that always accompanied the Demon’s voice.

Finally the voice lapsed into senseless roaring and angry images, and Gribly realized it still didn’t actually know where he was. Good.

“Keep… going…” he moaned hoarsely, and slumped over a protruding metal plate on Steamclaw’s back. The draik probably couldn’t hear him over the noise of the fray, but it understood his intention well enough. Claws dug into sludge-like flesh, spikes poked holes in luminous gel, and teeth fastened themselves onto the vertical mountain of the Demon’s body. The climb began again, and did not stop until the unlikely pair had reached the place directly below where the titan’s massive shoulder blades should have been.

Gribly had the disconcerting feeling, though, that this creature had no shoulders, or head, or arms or even a body. It was as if the Power he was intent on destroying had taken the raw elements of the world before it was fully shaped, and molded them into a rough shell for it to dwell in, the better to wreak vengeance on the world that had imprisoned it. It would at least explain why every movement of the Demon looked so unnatural; why it reminded him not so much of a giant as of a giant doll or puppet, moving to the command of unseen strings stretching out to the netherworld.

Steamclaw turned his head unexpectedly, twisting his metal-jointed neck at an odd angle to stare at Gribly with one bulbous, blood-red eye. The meaning was clear without words. READY?

I hope so. The thief nodded, gulping uncertainly. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the blasted beast was grinning.

The heavy neck swung back, the thorny-hide back arched, and the draik opened its maw wide.

A deep-throated popping noise rose in the beast’s throat, then died on its tongue. “Nice try, Steamclaw. Is that all you can do- blow steam! Hah ha… ah…” Gribly shut his mouth when he saw the look the draik was giving him. It repeated the motions and tried again, roaring in frustration and anger.

PHWOOOOOOOOSH! A gust of red flames shot from Steamclaw’s mouth, drenching the Sea Demon’s flesh in a deadly heat. A horribly hot, sticky substance that burned like acid splattered on Gribly’s face and arms and chest. He flung his head and shoulders over Steamclaw’s side and threw up as a wave of nausea choked him. Disgusting! Demon fat! He thought.

For some reason, that set him laughing, and he was still chuckling when Steamclaw burnt its way into the Demon’s body.

~

The Sea Demon’s screech was so loud, and the shockwave of power that came out of it so great, that Lauro and Elia were both thrown to the ground again.

“Look at it!” the prince shuddered. “It’s clawing at its back as if a giant bee had just flown up and stung it! Look at those arms! It’s like they’re not attached to anything!”

“Working by themselves, you could say…” Elia agreed, in a quiet voice.

“Allfar! Look- it’s stopped moving… it’s just hanging there like it’s too tired to fight! The flames! It’s head is all in flames!”

Just then, Karmidigan rushed up beside them in a whirlwind of sleet and frost. “Look, my friends,” he smiled grimly, “The Demon is under attack from more than us! Someone has taken the battle to the inside!”

“Impossible!” Lauro nearly shouted.

“You’ve been saying that quite a lot today,” Elia observed wryly. That shut him up.

“I must strengthen our defense. Whoever and whatever has joined our cause, he must be aided. The fury of the Frost Striders will be a thing to sing of in days to come!” The burly nymph threw his head back and roared to the sky. Whiteness appeared in blotches on his face and grew to cover his whole body in seconds. In a quarter-minute he was in his Second Form, bounding away over the churning, icy earth.

“There’s a man if I ever saw a nymph worthy to be one,” muttered Lauro respectfully. Louder, he said, “I wonder who could have gotten to the Demon like that. I thought we were dead and gone, for sure.”

“I think I know, or could guess,” Elia replied, softly, but to him it looked like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She looked thoughtful… too thoughtful for a battle.

“Well, whoever he is, he’ll need help. I’m going up there.” Lauro braced himself for flight before a sudden memory stopped him. “Blast! Where’s my pike?”

~

Time did not exist; there was only slime and heat and pain and ugly horror.

It could have been a minute, it could have been a year. All Gribly knew was that at last Steamclaw had stopped and he was tumbling off its back onto the gummy, nasty floor of the tunnel the draik had burned into the Sea Demon’s flesh. He slumped there motionless for a minute, his palms and knees sinking deep into the ooze.

“MASTER. THE DEMON IS AWARE OF US. WE MUST MOVE QUICKLY.”

“Right…” he mumbled, spitting and trying to dislodge the awful taste in his mouth. Finally he looked up. “What next?” He didn’t bother standing; he wasn’t sure he could if he tried. In answer, Steamclaw let loose a final spurt of flame. It melted away the portion of the sludge directly in front of them, revealing a rounded surface that looked to be made of stone. “Oh.”

With an effort he found he could stand without wobbling too much. Stumbling forward, he pressed his hands against the rough hardness. It was stone after all, scored and burned deeply all over with various runes and symbols, none of which Gribly understood. In fact, where he ought to be frightened he felt only a strange sort of apathy. The whole battle seemed so unreal he had a difficult time training his focus on the task ahead. He only hoped he could still maintain his unlikely connection with the stone enough to stride it.

Grunting, he pushed his palms against the surface, willing it inward. Nothing.

“MASTER. TIME IS RUNNING OUT.”

The Sand Strider gritted his teeth. “Right, then. Let’s try something else.” His patience was running thin, and he felt more anger than fear. Stepping back, he pushed the cuffs of his heavy Reethe cloak up to his elbows. Then, with a cry, he leaped forward, bringing his fists into a double-strike on the stone’s surface. Before, he had been trying to mold the element to his will. Now that it had failed, his only thought was to break the power that held the stone together with a greater power of his own.

His fists struck the stone with tremendous force, bloodying his knuckles and cracking something in his right hand. But the move worked: thin cracks spider-webbed out from beneath his fists and rippled outward like a miniature earthquake. The stone began to flake and peel like dead skin on a scaly reptile.

Gribly stepped back. “That’s all? Nothing else?”

Suddenly the cracks were lit from within with a fiery light. The stone shuddered, shook, and split right down the middle.

“That’s better,” he huffed, but his voice shook. Bloody light poured from the crack and bathed him in its murderous glow. Yet even so, the interior of the stone seemed dark and forbidding, unlit by its own luminance.

The tunnel shuddered as the Sea Demon tried to shake them out.

“GO! ENTER THE SHELL! THE DARK POWER IS HOUSED WITHIN!”

“Do I have to?” he wheezed, the full extent of what he was about to do threatening to choke him. I can’t know what’s in there… It’ll probably kill me, or drive me mad! Steamclaw turned a bloodshot eye on him. “All right, all right… I’m going.”

With a deep breath, the reluctant hero dove into the darkness.

~

“Found it!” Lauro exclaimed, dislodging his weapon from under a fallen block of ice. “Now I can-”

“Hail!” called an unsteady, high-pitched voice behind him. “Lord Prince!”

“What?!?” he yelled, “Who is it now… oh…” he wheeled on the interloper, only to find himself staring at a scrawny old nymph with ridiculously large ears and stringy gray hair, dressed in the most voluminous blue robes he had ever seen on anyone. A sash around his thin body bore the rune of the clerics, and he gripped a polished white staff in his hand with a lit candle affixed to the top. The flame was the color of sapphire, unwavering and bright.

“Are you the Cleric of Mythigrad?” asked Elia breathlessly as she ran up.

“Lithric is my name,” the nymph nodded, gripping his staff in both hands for support as the ground heaved. “The care of this Cathedral is my task in life, as is the Healing of Ills and the Binding of Wounds. And I would have you know your peril!”

Excitable old goblin, isn’t he? Lauro thought. “Peril, good Cleric?”

“Peril! Yes! You must not go up to the Dark Power, Lord Prince!”

“Why not? I need to help whoever’s up there fighting the Demon. And how do you know my title?”

The cleric ignored the second question, and his answer to the first was vague. “The One who fights Inside is not your concern. His fight is his fight Alone: A battle of the Mind and Soul. He will have all the Aid he requires. A destiny is on him. A Prophesy is his, and he is… a Prophet!” During the speech, the cleric’s eyes had drifted shut. Now they shot open, in alarm or excitement.

“No…” Lauro shook his head. “You can’t mean Gribly… He’s not…”

“What?” Elia glared at him. “Not what? A hero?”

“Well…” Lauro bit his lip. It was exactly what he’d been thinking. “Well, he’s not a warrior… he’s not very strong… and… and he’s a thief! He didn’t want to help me when I met him… and he’s only helping you because he’s smitten with you!”

“He is not!” Elia retorted, but her face was uncharacteristically red.

Wind Strider and Wave Strider stood face to face, inches apart, smoldering eyes locked on each other. Lauro felt a not-uncommon emotion flooding his chest: envy. He couldn’t deny he was furious at Elia for defending Gribly, and he also knew that deep down… he was jealous of them both. Gribly had never known his parents, and Elia… she had known and loved them with all her heart, before they’d died. Either choice was better than his: a mother dead from the pain he’d caused her in birth, and a father who had rejected him.

“Silence!” groaned Cleric Lithric, standing nearby with a sorrowful expression. He raised his staff. “It is not for you, Prince, or you, Lady, to determine who is heroic in this world. No, that would be too deep a task even for me, old as I am. All that you or I can decide is who we shall follow, and what we shall do with our time. And at the moment… there is nothing for us all to do, but wait. The die is cast; the game is begun. This is but an early move. Wait, and see how it will be determined. In the meantime, Be Silent!”

His voice grew deeper with each syllable. Lauro dropped his gaze from Elia’s eyes and looked away. What he saw shocked him: the old nymph was growing taller, brighter, and whiter with each passing second! He was, in fact, Changing. For some reason it had not occurred to the prince as something a cleric would do; now it stunned him and silenced him better than any words could have.

At the end of the Change, Cleric Lithric stood seven feet tall, slim and shimmering in a frosty coat of his snow-like second form. He looked stately and regal, so totally unlike his former appearance that Lauro almost gasped.

“Lay aside your disagreement, Young Ones,” the snow nymph advised solemnly. His voice was deep and melodious, like the voice of the earth or great mountains themselves. It sounded again, like a bronze gong in a deep cave of the earth. “I must meditate, and cast my thought towards the heart of the battle. For good or evil, the outcome of this battle will mean much for the cause of the Aura, and the One Whom they serve.”

“Waiting…” Lauro shook his head and grumbled sullenly to himself. “There are few things in life I despise more…”

Chapter Eighteen: Names in the Nothing

Shadow, all-consuming and all-penetrating. It gnawed at the boy’s mind like a corruptive worm. He no longer knew his name or who he was. He knew only one thing, and that was why he had come: to kill the Demon.

SO, PROPHET. YOU HAVE COME. YOU WERE WARNED. NOW YOU WILL PAY.

That voice! It was the Demon, wasn’t it? He could not see where it came from. There were no distances here, no shapes or hues, no smelling or seeing or tasting or touching. The Demon had called him Prophet, hadn’t it? Fine then… a prophet he would be.

-I will not fail, Demon. I will send you back to the underworld. I will banish you to the depths of Kerbus where you are utterly powerless to harm another innocent being… ever again. This is my prophesy.

The Demon did not immediately respond. Instead, the suffocating hostility of its presence receded, and Gribly found himself suddenly aware.

Aware of air around him, and earth under him.

Aware of sight returning, and hearing, and smell. The air smelled dead. The earth felt hard and polished. Like stone. He heard the heaviness in the air and smelled the cloying odor of decay.

The nothingness in his eyes turned to deep Black, then faded to a dark Gray. It grew lighter and thinner every second, until at last a new and terrifying world rushed in on him in a single moment.

The sky was dark and cloudy overhead. Lightning flashed higher up and unseen, but the sky remained unbroken in its shroud. There was no wind.

All around, farther than the eye could see, the land was completely gray, dark and pitted with slag and craters full of waste. Smoke billowed up in fuming, milky-white spires here and there, but there was no other break in the darkness.

The prophet shuffled his foot, and sand moved beneath it. He looked up, saw where he was, and turned in a circle to see it all.

He stood in the middle of a paved stone circle, ringed with broken pillars and ruined walls, shattered arches and cracked, headless stone statues. It reminded the prophet of somewhere he had been, someplace he had seen and walked in the midst of… He couldn’t remember where.

-I will slay you for this reason only, Demon. You’ve taken away my Inside. You’ve washed my mind clean of its memory.

The Demon spoke, and this time its voice had a source. It came from behind him. YOU ARE A FOOL, PROPHET. THIS IS YOUR INSIDE. IT IS MINE. IT IS THE INSIDE. THERE IS NO OTHER. THIS IS MIND. THIS IS SOUL. THIS IS SPIRIT.

-No. I will not believe it. There is more, and I will find it when I kill you.

The prophet turned, and faced the Demon. It had materialized near him as if it had always been there, proud and tall, with a face both proud and cruel. It had the face of a young man, but it its features were twisted into a shape they did not belong in, as if the Dark Power within was using them for its purpose, and then would discard them… and they knew it.

The prophet felt he should know that face. It was familiar, even more so than the ruins around him. Its dulled, light-colored hair, its sunken eyes…

Then the prophet knew. It was him. It was his face.

-What more can you steal from me, Demon? I will destroy you!

YOU WILL NOT. I WILL SUCK YOUR SPIRIT DRY AND CHAIN IT TO MY WILL AS I HAVE DONE TO THIS ONE BEFORE YOU.

The Demon and the prophet stood face to face, inches from each other, fists clenched at their sides. The prophet held back his surprise. The one before him? Was this some other prophet the Demon had taken control of? Some poor soul whose face was the same as his own? The notion nagged at some forgotten corner of his mind and would not go away. This was important, even vital- he just knew it! But there was no way to know how, or why.

Unless he defeated the Demon. Unless he chained it, and made it tell him all it knew.

-Go to the doom prepared for you, Demon. I will break you. This I prophesy!

I WILL NOT!

The Powers clashed, one Light, one Dark. The prophet struck at his foe, and the Demon struck back. They caught each other’s blows and renewed their attacks faster than the prophet had thought could be done, calling out as they fought.

-It is my lot to say what the future brings, Demon! It brings your death!

YOU ARE AS USELESS AS YOUR GODS, FOOL! NO MORTAL CAN CHALLENGE ME AND LIVE! YOU WILL BE DAMNED AS DARKLY AS I HAVE BEEN!

-You are nothing, Demon. I will make it your name: you are Nothing, and the power in me is Everything! There are no gods! I serve… I serve…

YOU SERVE A FALSE HOPE. YOU SERVE WEAK, HELPLESS ANGELS ON BROKEN WINGS.

-No! I know Whom I serve! I serve the Aura! I serve the One who sent them! I serve the One Who made Mortal and Immortal alike!

The prophet kicked out at the Demon he had named Nothing. The blow sent his enemy reeling, and he was on him in less than time, striking again and again, with vengeance burning in his heart. Nothing was quick to retaliate. Fire blazed on his palms and in his eyes; he thrust his fists into the prophet’s stomach, throwing him back roughly and crushing his breath from his lungs.

He landed on his back at the edge of the circle. Stone and sand bit into his shoulders, and a biting pain ate at his body. For a reason he could not fathom, the ground under him felt cool and comforting against that burning pain.

THE UNNAMEABLE ONES WILL NOT HELP YOU HERE. YOU ARE LOST, PROPHET. LOST FOREVER. I WILL KILL YOUR BODY AND YOUR SPIRIT. GIVE UP. YOU ARE LOST.

Nothing rushed across the space, wringing his arms and chanting in a dark, violent tongue beyond comprehension. A fire blazed up on the prophet’s chest, spreading to his limbs and engulfing him in deadly agony. He screamed as Nothing poured his power and malice into the fight.

He screamed again and again as Nothing reached him and began to kick him; in the side, in the head, in the arms, and all over. Everywhere Nothing’s boot hit, new pain and new fire blossomed like a ghastly flower that strangled all it touched.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW, PROPHET? WHERE ARE THE ONES YOU THOUGHT WERE AT YOUR SIDE? WHERE HAVE THEY GONE? THEY HAVE ABANDONED YOU, FOOL, AND NOW YOU WILL DIE!

There was no way to fight back. Nothing was right, and he was going to die.

-Aura! Aura! the prophet called, writhing and shuddering on the hard ground.

Without knowing why he thought of it, or why it came to his mind at his time of greatest need, the prophet remembered a name- a name that, perhaps, was worth more than Nothing. And without knowing why he said it, the prophet screamed the named into the windless air.

-Traveller! Traveller! Viator! Succurye fen isdristye!

They were strange words, and meant no more to him than the curses of Nothing. And yet…

“My child.” It was the first real voice in this nothingness. These were first two words that fell on his ears instead of his mind. The burning in him melted away like ice in the warm summer sun.

The prophet looked up through his streaming tears. Nothing had fallen to his knees, and was covering his face. Flames licked between his fingers where his eyes were covered. Over him stood a thin man in a tattered gray coat, holding a knotted wooden staff. His free hand was reaching down in kindness, ready to grasp the prophet’s and pull him up. He was a traveler. The traveler.

-Traveller? Is it you?

“It is I. Get up, Gribly. Your suffering has been heard. Speak now with your true voice.”

Gribly. That was his name, the prophet realized. He was Gribly. He was a boy. He was a prophet.

Gribly took Traveller’s hand, and the Aura pulled him to his feet. Behind him, Nothing gave a hideous wail.

“Traveller. It’s you! I mean… you came! You’re here! In the… the…”

“The Nothing. The graveyard of the spirit. The only place where Nothing is stronger than Something. Not anymore. See?” Traveller gently moved Gribly to the side, and stepped forward to face the groveling Nothing. The Demon who had seemed so strong.

CURSE YOU, SPOKEN-NAME! CURSE YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND! I KNOW WHO YOU ARE! I KNOW THE ONE YOU SERVE! I KNOW YOUR NAME! I KNOW YOU- But Traveller cut off the Demon’s ranting with a quick rapping of his staff on the ground.

“Enough,” he said, and the wraith-like enemy spasmed once, then lay still. “Begone,” he ordered, and the Demon threw itself into the air, screaming horrible curses and blasphemies and breaking into a thousand sparks of bloody flame that winked out one by one until the screams could no longer be heard…

…Smoke billowed, curled, and disappeared. When it had gone, the body remained, spread on the ground in a swathe of dark cloth. The light had gone out of the youth’s eyes, which stared blankly up at the sky, sightless and clouded.

“It is a hard fate that one so young should fall so easily into Pride, and thereby Evil,” Traveller mused. “Yet he is in your power now, Gribly. Will you leave him alive, and give him the chance for redemption he does not deserve? Or will you put an end to him? He is indeed the one who has been stalking your steps since you left your city.”

Gribly stared hard at the body lying in the dust of the stony ruins. In another time, in another life he might have done away with the Pit Strider- for that was certainly who it was. But now he was not so sure. For one thing, killing the youth now would not help his quest for his past at all. For another, he had called upon the Aura and they had answered. This merciless killing would defile that honor, and he would be heartless to carry it out.

“No,” he whispered, with a curious effort. The words were harder to say than he’d expected. “No. I will not end him. I am not such a prophet as to tell his destiny. Who am I to say whether he should live or die? Are there any worthy enough to condemn their enemies? I do not know.” The words sounded sad and weary to him, even as he spoke them.

Traveller took him by the shoulders and stared deep into his eyes. The Aura’s eyes were indescribably beautiful, but frightening, too. It was like looking through a window out into the dreadful Beyond, and seeing empty space filled with the light and knowledge of uncountable years. Yet beyond even that, there was a glow that seemed to come from Nowhere and Everywhere at once, giving hints of a Power even greater than the Aura themselves. Greater than Traveller. Greater than anyone.

“No, Gribly, there are none worthy enough, save the One who sits Enthroned Above. You have chosen wisely.” Finally the terrible, wonderful eyes looked away, and the hands left Gribly’s shoulders.

Traveller turned away, moving forward and kneeling at the head of the Pit Strider’s prone form. Touching the tip of his staff to the youth’s forehead, he whispered words too soft for Gribly to hear, and small white wings fluttered out at the head of wood.

The Pit Strider looked younger than he had at any of their previous encounters. So young, Gribly imagined that placed together by a mirror, they would never know the difference in their own faces. It moved him, but it disturbed him as well. He looked away, and when he found the strength to look again, the body was gone and Traveller was coming towards him.

“Nothing is banished, and so will cease to exist. Take care that it finds no hold in your own mind, Gribly. It will seize you and grow until it is stronger than your own will. Stay strong yourself, so that it will never have that chance. Seek the truth, Gribly, and you will never stray. Peace be with you always,” he ended, and turned to walk away.

“Wait!” Gribly called out. “How do I get out of here? And where are you going? And why am I the prophet? I don’t even know what that means!”

Traveller had somehow gotten to the edge of the ruins in less than four strides. His name, apparently, was not given idly. He smiled as if contemplating some hidden joke.

“As for leaving, did I not already tell you? Nothing no longer exists! As for where I am going… well, you will follow me, shortly enough. The path your feet are on will take you many places, Gribly Gramson. If you take care, you will learn all you wish to know… perhaps even more. Goodbye!”

And with that, he was gone.

“But… but…” Gribly stammered, his head whirling with more questions than he had had in the beginning.

No, it was no illusion, his head really was spinning. Or was it that he was standing still, while the whole wasteland of Nothing whirled around him?

He sat down, hard. It hurt. His head was throbbing.

Wind blew in his face, and Nothing really, truly vanished.

~

In his mind, he was wading through dead, wet ash as deep as his waist. His feet stumbled, and he almost tumbled in, but the great beast at his side kept him upright with a nudge of its foreleg. Noises throbbed in the back of his head, and sights bombarded his blinking eyes like too much sunlight after a rainy morning.

No, no, it wasn’t just in his mind it was real. It was all real. There was sunlight, but not too much. It had come through the clouds at last, thank the One! Yes, he knew that now. He knew Whose side he fought on. He knew his name was Gribly, and that the beast at his side was Steamclaw, enigmatic and dangerous, but ultimately his ally. Not a friend, but close enough.

“Gribly! Gribly!” a girl was calling him in a high, sweet voice. She skated across the top of the mess as if it didn’t exist, coming towards him with her arms outstretched, a heartwarming smile on her face. It warmed him, all right. Elia. That was her name. The nymph with power over the waves, who had saved his life. Now he had returned the favor, in a way.

“Elia…” he mumbled, but his mouth wouldn’t work right and his words felt weak and lisping. He stumbled forward, but this time Steamclaw didn’t catch him. Elia did. She hugged him and pulled him up straight, speaking to him in a soft voice and acting for all the world as if she never wanted to let him go.

“You did it, Gribly. You’re a hero, after all! I knew it was you… I knew you could. I knew it, I knew it, I…” her voice trailed off. Too bad. He had enjoyed it. She stepped back, embarrassed, and glanced over her shoulder. A frown replaced her smile, and his heart almost broke wishing it would come back. Why was he feeling this? What was wrong with him?

More than anything, that frown brought him back to reality. His mind was still fuzzy, but he knew it now and stood straighter to hide his confusion. A boy, older than him, was flying towards the two of them with a sharp, hafted weapon in his hands. He landed with an unpleasant squelch in the sopping ash, and glared a bit at Elia. Then he turned, and flashed a confidant half-grin at Gribly.

“Welcome back to the living, Grib. If Elia’s right, we have a lot to thank you for. I must say I didn’t expect it. A job well done, indeed. You’re quite the warrior now, aren’t you?”

Lauro- yes, that was his name, Gribly remembered now- extended his hand towards the dazed boy. His smile did not fade, but it seemed colder than Gribly remembered it being before. Less sincere. He did not take the hand.

“Not a warrior,” Elia shot back, “A hero. They’re not the same.”

Lauro shrugged as if he didn’t care about either of them, and turned to greet two nymphs who had waded up to meet them. Karmidigan was the name of the one, Gribly recalled, but he did not know the name of the other. His gaze involuntarily drifted back to Elia, and floated on her features.

Hero, she mouthed to him, and looked even unhappier than before.

When Traveller banished the Nothing, I thought my troubles would end, Gribly thought. I suppose I was wrong. They’re really only beginning.

Chapter Nineteen: We Are Not Easily Destroyed

For better or worse, the young trio of Striders had saved the Reethe. Gribly was still in a daze as Karmidigan and the old nymph led them out from the ash-pool of the ruined Cathedral and down the muck-strewn front stairs. The mess was all that was left of the Sea Demon, apparently. He couldn’t agree or contradict- he still had no memory of his passage out of the Nothing and into the real world. For one thing, no one seemed to have seen Steamclaw, and the draik was nowhere to be found. Eventually he allowed himself to forget about the beast, hoping against hope that it had found a home for its tormented spirit.

Now, though, he was conflicted. This world felt no more or less real than the Nothing, where he had fought a demon and expelled him. What made it more substantial? Was it, really, at all? More had happened to him in the last few minutes than in all his life, and he felt so drained he thought he’d collapse at any moment. The fight in the spirit-world had felt like an eternity. The path he now walked was only an afterthought.

In the part of his mind that still clung to consciousness, he vaguely heard Karmidigan recounting the battle. The tale unfolded as the group passed around the side of the Cathedral and trod deeper into the clustered huddle of ruined towers and halls that formed the Reethe fortress. The other survivors of the fight straggled behind, organizing themselves and tending to the wounded.

“It was a sight the like of which has never been seen in our Archdom before,” Karmidigan said solemnly. He repeated the impression often, accompanying it with much head shaking and beard-stroking.

When the Sea Demon had stopped moving, the Frost Striders had increased their attacks tenfold, but no lasting damage could be caused. The desperately brave nymph warriors had Changed themselves and thrown their frost-armored bodies against it again and again, but there seemed to be nothing they could do. At last Cleric Lithric (the old nymph, Gribly was told at last) had prevailed upon them all to simply stop attacking and wait. The will of the Aura was bent on the Demon, he said, and the battle was out of their hands.

It had taken, in all, about an hour before anything happened. This confused Gribly, but he was too tired or disturbed to mention it. For all he knew, time in the Nothing meant nothing to time in this world. It was one of the downsides, one of the many downsides to having the power he did. It wasn’t a gift anymore, so much as a burden.

In any case, there had been no sign of anything changing, and messages had been sent to the Raitharch on his sickbed, explaining in the quickest way possible what was happening. Then, suddenly, the Sea Demon had burst into brilliant blue flames, and melted into ash, dispersing in the air as thick as a blizzard and settling on anything and everything on sight. The clouds had broken at last and rain had come, drenching the field and melting the ash into a kind of foul stew. But it had been worth the price: the city had been saved.

“I don’t understand,” Lauro was saying when next Gribly roused himself enough to listen. “We saw almost no one on our way through the city, and it looked as if the Demon had wrecked, well, almost all of it. It had even stepped out onto the ground, if those footprints were anything to go by. That must have been terrifying. How many people died in the first attack?”

“Not as many as you may guess,” was Karmidigan’s response. “But then, the Reethe are not entirely unused to such things. I must confess I have hidden a good deal from you about us, in the interest of secrecy. It was needed, for I did not know if I was able to trust you or not. But of course Cleric Lithric’s words, not to mention your own actions, have since convinced me of your valiance and worthiness.”

“Wait a moment,” Elia interrupted, “What do you mean by that? What haven’t you told us?”

“Not told,” said the old nymph, speaking for the first time Gribly had heard. His voice was weak and unsteady, but it held a hidden weight that drew the listener to its words. “Not told,” he repeated, “Shown.”

As the conversation had progressed, the party had passed into a shadowy ruin. Now they entered a dark tunnel, high and wide enough for a herd of cattle three stories high. The cleric’s voice rumbled curiously in the dark, open space.

Gribly uttered a startled exclamation.

“The light will reveal all. Patience,” Cleric Lithric announced.

~

Without warning, the night of the tunnel changed into bright, beautiful day. Gribly started and blinked furiously, rubbing his eyes. He heard gasps from his friends beside him, and when his vision returned, his own were added to the chorus.

There was another fortress, carved from the iceberg itself in high halls of white and blue, with marble cores and whitewood doors that peeped out here and there like gems in a nobleman’s coat. It was simpler than the city outside, but it held a rugged beauty of its own. Sunlight glinted off the rounded rooftops and sleek sides of the awe-inspiring structures, pouring over the fortress like a golden cascade tinged with scarlet, setting in the west beyond the crown of the world.

“Mythigrad, nost hreme, nadt nost sanquegrad,” breathed Cleric Lithric, closing his eyes and breathing deep. His arms raised to the sky and his mouth parted in a contented smile. “Always has this been our place of healing, strength, and refuge. Always it has remained hidden from sight and thought of any who wish to harm it. Never has it failed us before, and never will it… ever.”

“As I said,” Karmidigan agreed, “The Reethe have not been attacked by such a powerful enemy in many years. But we have kept ourselves wary, watching for just such a tribulation. Even had the Sea Demon broken the frost Striders and all of our Outer City, it may not have found the Sanquegrad. At the first sign of trouble, nearly all of our people removed into the Holy City. Only the large part of our warriors, with the frost Striders, and a select few others too stubborn to flee remained.” The burly warrior turned to Gribly, a glowing look of respect painting his solid features. “You, prophet, have indeed saved our people, and our city as well. We are forever in your debt.”

The young Strider saw Lauro roll his eyes at the title, but he only nodded and stayed unruffled. It was not for him to say whether or not he was, after all. Until he knew for sure what was going on… it would be better to befriend these people, and not to contradict them. There was an odd tone to the frost Strider’s words, though, and it brought him to a quick assumption which he voiced aloud, trying hard to imitate the aloof kind of speech that came so easily to the wind Strider prince.

“I thank you, Karmidigan. But… aside from gaining our trust, there is another reason you’ve brought us here, isn’t there? Is there some other thing we can do for you? Something else you would like to show us?”

The frost Strider’s eyes widened just enough to show his surprise. Ahead, the old nymph cleric chuckled.

~

Varstis, King of the Reethe and Raitharch of the city, lay dying on his bed, side by side with the victims of the first demon attack. It’s a good lord who takes no better treatment than what his people get, Gribly thought. It gave him a favorable impression of Varstis before even meeting the nymph. The only thing that gave away his rank at all was the grizzled nymph guard sleeping at his post by the Raitharch’s bed.

“My prayers have been answered only in part,” Cleric Lithric told him as they moved along the row of rough beds on which the Reethe casualties lay. The sunlight streamed down in crimson rays through the high, arched windows of the Hall of Healing, where Lithric had taken Gribly alone. His companions had gone to speak with Karmidigan. This, it seemed, was the last request the Reethe had: they wanted the young prophet to help their king. “Varstis is still among the living,” Lithric explained, “But he grows worse with each passing hour. Ever since the Pit Strider attacked him, he has been losing blood from a wound which we cannot stop or heal.”

Gribly nodded grimly as they approached the king’s bed. He noticed abstractly that the cleric seemed to refer to Varstis as a friend, rather than a liege-lord. It meant that Lithric had a personal reason for wanting the Raitharch to survive, as well. All the more pressure, then, to do something he had no idea how to do. That, and the stench of death and suffering that assaulted Gribly’s nostrils as he tramped through the Hall of Healing, woke him up better than any food or drink might have. What he wouldn’t give for a full week’s rest, though…

They arrived at the bed. He felt his throat constrict and his palms sweat at the pitiful condition of the nymph under the coverlet.

Varstis was a nymph of medium build and height, with a broad chest and wide, capable-looking hands. He must have been a healthy individual before, but now his skin was pasty and pale, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes sunken deep into his skull, shadowed by the pain he had obviously endured, and was still enduring. A lump in his sheets indicated where his side had been wrapped in bandages. Scarlet tainted the white from the wound underneath.

“At least he rests undisturbed,” Lithric sighed, shaking his head.

Gribly grimaced and tried not to look as helpless as he felt. “Let’s see the wound.”

It was ugly. The old cleric woke the apologetic guard to unwrap it.

“Didn’t know… I… sorry for…”

“It is all right,” Lithric told the nymph, “We’ve all been taxed heavily, and luckily no harm came to your lord while you slept. Make up for it, and help us to look at him.”

Just then, a familiar voice broke in on the three gathered at the sickbed.

“Wait for me! I think I can help, if you’ll let me.” It was Elia. She apparently had followed them from minutes after they had left. “It didn’t hit me until you had left, but my Second Form allows me some power in healing. I may be able to help the Raitharch, if…” she broke off and looked at Gribly suddenly embarrassed. He understood.

“In case I can’t do anything? Well, we’ll just see about that,” he huffed, turning to Varstis’s side again.

The blow had been dealt with a blade- that much even he could see. As the folds of cloth were carefully peeled back from the Raitharch’s body, a violent-looking, inch and a half-wide hole was revealed, dark and bubbling with the nymph’s blood. It was in the lower part of his trunk, where Gribly supposed a person’s stomach probably sat, on the nymph’s left side (Gribly’s right). The sheer volume of blood on it and the sheets was astounding. He almost choked, and Elia made a scared, sickly sort of noise behind him.

“H-how hasn’t he bled to death yet? And why isn’t his wound closing?” Gribly spoke quickly and sharply to keep himself from feeling sick. Cleric Lithric rolled his tongue in his mouth, musing on an answer.

“Though I have not the elemental might of a Strider, Prophet Gribly, I am granted power of a different kind by the Aura and the One Whom they serve. I have been bending all my will and the strength of my prayers towards keeping Varstis alive, and my wishes have been granted. As for the wound, I am utterly at a loss. Our healers are few here, but such as they are they have been able to find no solution. It bleeds and yet does not heal or scab, and it will not dry on his flesh.”

“Ah… uh… I think…” Gribly stammered, feeling bile in his mouth. “Woulth you minth if I thpit thomewhere?” he finally managed. Lithric raised an eyebrow, and Gribly felt the cleric both understood him and was not surprised.

“By the head of the bed,” he motioned, and Gribly stepped across him to see. Behind the bed was a hole in the ground, raised up almost a foot and descending downwards into a shadowy depth that could not be measured. Water splashed and slapped below.

Gribly spit, then returned to the side of the bed, feeling woozy. Elia had changed into her Swimmer Form, and was staring impassively ahead. He hoped he hadn’t made her mad, but he couldn’t tell.

“I don’t get sick as easy, this way,” she said, as if to no one.

He looked at the wound again. It was thin, but almost triangular.

“Does it come out the other side?” he asked.

“Yes,” Cleric Lithric nodded, looking gray.

Gribly felt a cold, soft touch on his shoulder. Elia.

“Please, would you mind if I tried to heal him?” she asked. “I’ve never worked with anything this serious before, but I’d like to try.”

He searched her face, anxious for some sign that she cared or was angry with him. It was just too hard to tell, when she didn’t look like a human. He sighed and nodded, stepping aside. What did he know, anyway? The Wave Strider stepped forward, wincing a little at the still-flowing blood, and put her hand out towards the wound. Her fingers quivered with tenseness and, likely, fear. The watery translucence of her hand entered the wound, and the result shocked those who saw it so much there was a collective yell.

Steam hissed up from where her fingers touched the blood. A loud hiss broke the silence that had crept up on them all in anticipation, and Raitharch Varstis woke with a scream. “AHH!”

Elia hiccuped in fright and stumbled back, almost into Gribly’s arms. He steadied her, shaking from the unexpected scream himself, trying to look as if it hadn’t fazed him. She shrugged off his arm as soon as she was steady again, frowning at him. That one look cut like a wound, and Gribly quickly looked away…

…Straight into the wild eyes of King Varstis. The panicked Raitharch snatched his elbow before he had time to think, and pulled him closer to the bed- an impressive move for an invalid.

“Help me, Prophet!” he rasped, his eyes bloodshot and spittle flying from his lips. “It’s gotten inside of me and I can’t get it out! Help me… help… me…” Then the nymph’s grip relaxed and he fell back on his pillows, unconscious and shaking with illness and pain.

Silence. Complete, total, depressing silence. Gribly looked around and found all present staring at him hungrily. Gazing, afraid and expectant. Waiting for him to save their king.

“I…” he started, then turned sharply away. He couldn’t do this! He didn’t even know what he was supposed to do!

Reaching out tentatively, on a morbidly curious whim, he touched the wound as Elia had.

An image flashed before his eyes and mind, more real than waking: the young Pit Strider with the same face as he, glaring venomously at him as flames devoured his face.

Then it was gone, and he found himself tipping over from a whole new wave of exhaustion. He heard cries of “Quick, he’s going to fall! Catch him!” and “Look! By the Powers, there’s something in the king’s body! It’s moving!”

Strong, rough hands caught him and held him upright. It was the sleeping guard. Ever practical, Lithric issued instructions from behind. “Keep his hand on the wound! There, yes! Yes! It’s coming out! Gracio lei Yuvatarr! I’ll deal with this!”

Gribly felt something sticky and hot poke his thumb where it rested on the Raitharch’s wound. Then a wave of nausea hit him, and he fainted.

Not again…

Chapter Twenty: We Will Rejoice…

The cycle repeated itself: Sleep, Dream, Wake.

Sleep: Gribly felt nothing, not even pleasure as the sleepless days of toil were washed into oblivion. He was too deep in the flow, and the aches of his journey were slowly falling from him, one at a time, bringing relief and peaceful rest.

Dream: When at last he did, it was of Elia. Elia as he knew her, and Elia as he wished she would be… Pleasant, but fuzzy and unreal. He knew, somehow, that they were all dreams. All except one: a dream of her, standing by his bed, bathed in moonlight from a high window. She was crying in that dream. It played itself out over and over again, always a little differently than before.

Wake: When he finally did, Gribly found it to be not-so-different from his dreams. Moonlight. A round tower of warm stone, stretching up above him into a domed roof. A comfortable bed, and a fire in the hearth. A fire… ah, that was good. It had been too long since he had felt real warmth, and now he was immersed in it. Too good to be true. It had to be another dream. Elia stood by his bed in nymph-form, brushing the coverlet with her hand.

When she saw he was awake, her wistful expression turned to a slight frown and uneasy eyes. No, this was not a dream after all. It was real, for better or worse.

“Where am I?” Gribly heard himself saying, before his thoughts had caught up to his situation.

Elia’s face lost a little of its coldness when she heard his voice shake. “You’re in the Tower of the Stars. Menstron Lithi. It’s Cleric Lithric’s personal chamber.”

“The Cleric’s?”

“Yes. He was gracious enough to lend it when you collapsed back in the sick room.”

“How long have I been… asleep?”

“A day and several hours. Lauro and I were given quarters too, and we’ve been sleeping in them for most of that time. We were all so tired…” her voice trailed off and her eyes lost their focus. She doesn’t look like she slept much, Gribly thought, and he wondered why that was. “Raitharch Varstis is alive, and getting better,” she said, speaking as if it was an afterthought. There was a pause.

“Well,” he said finally, to break the awkward silence, “I don’t feel very tired now. In fact, I feel like celebrating! It looks like all our troubles so far have turned out for the best…” a memory of Byorne came to him then, bleeding and dying. He gulped. “At least… better than they could have been.”

Some of the girl’s serenity returned as she answered him, smiling. “Yes, I suppose. In fact, there’s a celebration going on right now, right in the place where we- I mean, you- defeated the Sea Demon. The Reethe are hard to scare, I guess. They’ve cleared away all the ash and built beautiful white canopies to have feasts and games and dances under. The celebration hasn’t stopped since it started half a day ago. It’s glorious.”

Her eyes glowed when she said that, looking off into the distance as if savoring a sight she could see but not touch.

“Haven’t you gone down to it, then?” he asked, sitting up and propping himself up on the mountain of paleswan’s feather-pillows at his back.

“No,” she said. “But Lauro has. He’s there now.”

Odd. He calmed himself and tried to keep from thinking why that all might be.

“Well, I think I’ll go down there now. I feel hungry enough to eat a dozen roast beasts!” he exclaimed. What he had said jerked him back to another, dangerous thought. “Wait… Elia, what happened to Steamclaw? In all the ruckus after the fight… Oh no! I don’t even remember when I last saw him! He could be anywhere now!”

“I don’t think it-he’ll hurt anyone. He left almost as soon as he saw you were all right.”

“How do you know?”

She paused and looked uncertain. “He told me… or at least, I think he did. It was strange, but I got the feeling he’s just waiting for us to leave here so he can join us again. It’s like he sensed you were all right, and knew he could leave for a while. But I’m sure he’s fine. Let’s not talk about it.” She looked more unhappy with each sentence. Gribly wanted to scream, but instead he tried to smile as friendly as he could.

“Well, no use moping. What do you say we go down and join this feast? Maybe even dance? I could use some not-life-threatening exercise for once.”

His grin quickly faded. Blast it! What’d he gone and said now? Elia was blushing and fidgeting at his mention of dance. Why couldn’t he have just kept that to himself? He hadn’t even really been serious… Ugh.

But something odd happened. She shook her head, and he slumped back down, thinking he had been defeated.

“Much better now,” she said, rubbing her forehead and pushing back her shimmering hair. He looked up and her face was less sad than before… more open, perhaps. She looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry if I’ve been acting strange. Everything’s just been a bit much, is all. I’d love to go to the celebration now, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

He smiled, and slipped out of the bed. He found warm, light shoes with high tops and a buckle on each to wear. He found he had been dressed in a white garment that allowed free movement while still keeping him warm. It looked decent, and he smiled at Elia when he was ready to go.

“I know I’m just a street boy, Elia, and I know I’m not worthy of all the good luck that’s come my way… but…”

“There isn’t any such thing.”

“As what?”

“As luck. There is no luck. Only the will of the Creator, and the Aura who obey him.”

“Oh.” He stopped and frowned. And why not? He smiled again. “Then in that case… I’d say their will was for us to forget the blazes we’ve gone through to get here, and enjoy the blessing of all these good friends and noble warriors. What do you think?”

She smiled back at him. There was sadness in that smile, and hurt, too. But she meant it, and that was all that mattered to him.

“Fine,” she agreed, “Let’s go.”

~

“Years of toil endured across the realm,

Years of war and ruin;

And he laughs like a child with his tone always mild;

Yet our peace barely won is his doing.

Hither he goes, thither he goes,

Telling us naught of his homeland;

But stories he'll tell- of the fair and the fell;

And deeds done by a hero's hand.

He pays every inn-fee with legends;

Tales of valor his right-of-way,

Taking his sup as the fire leaps up-

He tells through the night into day.

Men do not fear him, their welcome is sure,

They know him, and welcome his charm,

Through wastelands he delves, meeting goblins and elves,

Even the evil ones dare do him no harm.

Always he travels- has he no home?

Many lives of great men has he wrought,

But little they know- it has always been so,

For a life all-immortal he's bought.”

The poem sounded wonderful to Gribly, more because it was about Traveller, the Aura who seemed determined to be his guide, and even more so because it was Elia humming it to him. They were seated on thick, colorful mats laid out on the smooth space in the celebration circle, listening to two nymph women and one man sing in smooth, sweet harmonies, stunning even without music, and powerful without being loud, hauntingly melodious in the ancient tongues of the first Reethe to build homes from the ice with their hands and their frost-striding gifts. The girl was translating it to him in a soft voice, even managing to make the words rhyme. A bonfire blazed happily behind the singing trio, and candlelit tables overflowing with food and drink stretched away behind the Singing Canopy, still occupied by countless nymphs.

Gribly had never been so happy in his life.

Elia had unbent towards him a good deal during the feast. It had lasted all through the night, and even now the gray dawn was slowly creeping into the eastern sky. During the meals (and there were many), he had completely lost track of time.

Gribly had stolen a hefty amount of food in his life, and though most of it had been no better than the shriveled onion he’d pinched at the Royal Market, what seemed like an eternity ago, a goodly amount had been scrumptious enough to satisfy a nobleman’s daughter… who was exactly the person he’d stolen it from, incidentally.

The Reethe celebration put all of it to shame. How the nymphs grew such delicious items in what he could only think of as a barren, ice-crusted wasteland was beyond him.

Fruits he had never seen, arrayed in dishes and arrangements he’d never imagined! Meat from a hundred different succulent, thick-muscled animals and fish, spiced with flavors that tantalized the tongue and made the mouth water nonstop, just from the smell! Green plants that tasted sweet and sour and wholesome, all at the same time! Breads and pastries of all shapes, sizes, textures, and flavors!

There was course after course and dish after dish, all made from ingredients totally foreign to him… and totally palatable, of course. Not to mention the drink: ales, wines, and meads of a hundred different flavors, and varying levels of potency. Gribly drank some, but not much, preferring the sweet, cool, fruit-distilled drinks given to the younger feast-goers.

In Ymeer, there had been no distinction between wine and water- in fact, wine had been cheaper, and even more so was the flat, brown ale gulped down by the barrel by every citizen, poor or rich. Gribly found it interesting that the Reethe did not allow their young ones to drink- perhaps they knew more than they boasted about raising families. It looked like a good practice- there certainly were more and healthier children about, and almost every family was large, boisterous, and happy.

So events had gone, and now were coming to a close. The celebration would continue on until the Raitharch ordered a stop to it, but Gribly felt a restlessness growing inside him that he couldn’t quell. Morning would bring on a newer and stranger chapter in his quest, he was sure. He thought like that now- always ahead, always perceiving things he hadn’t before- bad as well as good. All the more confirmation that there was something powerful and ominous about his new role as a prophet… whatever that might entail.

For instance, Raitharch Varstis.

They had gone to visit him, Elia and Gribly, before they attended the feast. He had been pale and thin, but alive and growing stronger every moment. The jagged tip of a white-bladed sword had been removed from his wound, wriggling out in what Cleric Lithric hinted later could have been an attempt to pierce Gribly himself, as he touched the wound. It had been disposed of, and now the Reethe King was making a miraculous recovery. Elia had stepped in once the blade tip had been removed, and found that her powers finally had an effect.

“You saved him as much as I did,” Gribly whispered.

“What?” she asked him, interrupted in her translation.

Oh. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Never mind,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the nymph trio’s audience. He kept his eyes on the singers, but Elia’s gaze on him didn’t waver. Finally she stiffened and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. “What?”

“Where’s Lauro?” she whispered. “I haven’t seen him all night.”

Bleeding ugly time to bring it up, Gribly thought, but then he stopped. It was true- he hadn’t seen Lauro recently, and he doubted the prince would just stand around and let him listen to ballads with Elia all night unless something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Very well,” he sighed, getting to his feet quietly and keeping his voice low so as not to disrupt the scene in front of them, “I’ll go look for him,”

“I’ll come with you,” she told him, and followed him out into the night beyond the bonfires, slipping along beside him with soft, almost-inaudible footsteps.

Chapter Twenty-One: ...No Matter What

By the time Lauro heard them coming, it was too late to hide what he’d been doing. The last dripsparrow dropped from his limp fingers and flopped brokenly to the ground, on top of its two brethren. Their blood stained the icy ground and Lauro’s fingertips. He bared his teeth.

You’ve ruined everything, sand Strider. The voice in his head barely seemed his own anymore. Now it was speaking again, in his voice but darker. Angrier. Every time I stretch out my hand to take the glory I so desperately need, YOU are there. You steal the honor from every fight, right as I am about to grasp it. My redemption is pointless and impossible while you are here! My father will never take back a son who is less than those who should be his subjects! I. Must. Gain. His. Acceptance. Why cannot you leave me in peace to do that?

Because the thief saw no reason to, that was why. Lauro knew full well he had lied to both of his new companions, and while he had regretted it with regards to the girl, he was more than certain he had been right to lie to Gribly. He had no other choice! They could never know how he really stood with his father… without the supposed support of the King of Vastion, his power, his influence was worthless!

No matter. He would have to continue this damnable quest, and he would have to do it alone.

“Lauro?” it was Gribly calling, first. He and Elia- blast him, for the way she lit up when she saw him!- were coming around the corner. He turned his back on them and stared out over the cold bay and the Inkwell beyond. The enormous boulder he had flown to was perched at the highest point of the Reethe iceberg, offering an eagle’s eye view of nearly all Mythigrad, bathed as it was in the cool light of the moon and the sharp, cold light of the stars.

Footsteps behind him. They had come; probably hiked up from behind, on the winding footpath that had originally clued him onto the existence of this place.

“By the… Lauro, what is that?!?” It was Elia, gasping at the dead birds and blood behind him. He offered no answer, and kept staring out over the city. It was cold up here. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

“What’s going on here?” it was Gribly again, sounding more curious than afraid. His mistake.

“Nothing,” Lauro hissed. “Leave me alone!”

He heard Gribly shuffle through the small corpses with his foot. “Wait,” the thief said, his voice sharpening, “These are the same kind of birds that you caught for us out in the Inkwell when we were hungry! There’s something amiss here- tell us, Lauro! We need to know what’s wrong, so we can help you… Is it enchantment? Something like that broken sword-point in the king’s body? I could help, you kn-”

Lauro wheeled on him unexpectedly, and Elia yelped in surprise. The prince leaned in close to the thief, sneering.

“I daresay you would, if you really could. But there’s no problem, see?” he reached down and plucked one of the sorry dripsparrows up, shaking it in front of Gribly’s shocked face. Lauro’s next words came out fast and hard, filled with all the spite and instability he had been suppressing for what seemed like an eternity. His voice was strained, and his breath laborious. He gasped for every word. “All this is… urchin… is a little letter of love… from my father! You wouldn’t know… would you? Orphan… You’ve never known what it is… to be loved… have you? You’ve… never known… what it is… to have that love… turn into… hate! Have you? Have… you… ever????”

He paused, shaking with fury and fear. The two younger Striders stepped back in tandem, appalled and frightened of the sudden and drastic change in him. He smiled eerily. Good.

“I… well…” Gribly stuttered, a queer look coming into his eye. As clear as day it said to Lauro, Why? Why now? Why you? I never thought it of you, even if I didn’t like you. Was it something I did? We could have been friends…

Oh yes, Lauro thought to himself, It is most certainly your fault. But we could never, ever have been friends. Don’t delude yourself. I always feared it would come to this, and now it has! What he said out loud was simpler, and took a great deal more of self-control to say.

“Neither of you… can ever know… what my life has been like. I need… to find the Aura… who lives on the Grymclaw… and I need to find him… soon. If I do not… my father will never… never… oh, it doesn’t matter!” his composure failed him and he grunted in frustration. Finally he moved on, and his voice was icy cold, completely controlled.

“I will leave for the Grymclaw at the end of a week. Neither of you will be coming with me. That is all I need to say, and that is all you need to know. Until then, keep up the pretense with the Reethe that we are still on good terms. Make plans, do whatever you feel is appropriate- but remember: I will not let you follow me when I leave, and no one will know when I do. If you try to stop me…” his voice trailed off, and his eyes glazed over as he thought back to his last, tormented days with the legendary Larion Vale.

His fist squeezed closed around the body of the already-dead dripsparrow. Its head was still in his hand as the rest of it fell to the ground. Then he let that go too.

Gribly looked devastated and hideously angry. Elia was crying without making a sound, her head buried in her hands.

Lauro smiled to keep himself from breaking into tears, too. They would never understand, and he would kill them if they tried to.

Still smiling, he walked backwards slowly until his feet no longer felt the solid stone beneath them. Then he stepped off the edge of the rock and plummeted, letting himself fall until an air current was caught in his mind’s grasp and flung him high into the sky again.

He needed food, water, and rest. Then he could plan the next move in the deadly game he had begun with his father so very long ago…

~

It was too much to process… too much to think clearly about. All Gribly could tell himself was that he should have known. It really had been too good to last, just like last time… and the time before that… Before he knew what was happening, Lauro was gone and Elia was clasped to his chest, wracked with sobs.

She felt helpless and small against him, even though raising her head would have brought her eyes to the same level as his. Her head rested on his shoulder, and dimly through the haze of conflicting emotions that resulted, he heard her questions and pleas, muffled by her hair and closeness.

“I don’t know…” was all he could say. “I don’t know… I just don’t know…”

A minute passed, then two. The music from the celebration so far below seemed to drift up and reach their ears across an insurmountable distance. A tune, struck by some invisible lyre and flute, seemed to caress their ears and hearts at the same time, and in the same way. It told of joy amid suffering, happiness amid woe, and perseverance in all times and circumstances.

Elia’s head lifted off his shoulder and she stared into his eyes. “We can still rejoice,” she whispered hoarsely. The hope in the ghostly music was lighting a fire in her eyes. Gribly let her pull away, but she put her hands in his. “We can still help him,” she said. “There’s still hope here… I can feel it.”

“So can I,” he whispered back. “No matter what happens, we can still rejoice tonight.”

Against all his mind told him, against all the odds that loomed in his way for the future, he felt… he believed it was true. Stepping into the center of the rock, he tapped his foot next to the bodies of the dead birds Lauro had left behind. The stone opened up and swallowed them, smoothing over and cleansing itself of their blood. Then he stepped back to Elia.

And so, as the unseen players and instruments plied their song in the cold night air, Gribly took Elia in his arms, and they danced.

They danced across the whole rock, and were not afraid of falling. Where Gribly’s feet touched it, the stone became smooth, obeying the command of his voice. But where Elia’s feet touched, the stone hardened and turned to diamond, shimmering and sparkling in the starlight. Together they wove patterns of order and light across the crown of the cliff, and they did not stop or slow until the mysterious music had faded.

Hand in hand, they strode to the edge of the rock and looked out over the rejoicing city.

“We’re not going to leave him, are we?” Elia asked, keeping her gaze forward and barely stirring as she spoke.

“No,” Gribly told her, his jaw set with resolve. “Not in a hundred years.”

Epilogue: Spared for Torment

Out in the Inkwell, the sea was completely calm, from the Reethe iceberg to the Grymclaw. Waves lapped the Grymclaw’s ancient gray shores, monotonous as they had been for a thousand years. The sky was light overhead, as morning broke in a bleak light over all of Vast and the ocean to its East. Wisps of cloud shot across the heavens, quicker than clouds are wont to do. A peculiar peace hung in the air like words on deaf ears, dead and silent and not-so-peaceful on the inside.

Without warning, on the edge of a great black cliff, a pillar of churning water shot out of the sea and into the sky, roaring up in a blast of foam and an explosion of spray. Lightning leapt out of the formerly calm atmosphere to meet it, and the two elements met in a titanic clash of light and energy. For exactly two minutes, a storm like none other of the century raged on the edge of the Grymclaw, shattering the land’s uneasy peace easier than a warrior breaking common crockery.

A hundred miles away, wood nymphs leaped from their beds in confusion and fear, grasping for bows and torches and gathering in worried masses outside the tree-houses of their lords. Beasts in forests leagues more distant than that became agitated and groaned in their sleep. White wolves howled at the noise, standing defiant on mountaintops lining the Spiral between Blast and the Inkwell. Women clutched at their children in terror in the lands of men, while their husbands and sons reached for weapons and slept not at all for the rest of the night.

The land was disturbed, and stayed awake long after the pillar of water and light had dissipated and melted away into the sharp sea air. It left behind only one thing to prove it had ever happened: a bedraggled flotsam of a boy, older than his years, wrapped in the scant black rags that were all that remained of his former garb. His hair, long leeched of its dyed ebony color, spread out from his head in a pale yellow halo, like some fallen god or angel. His eyes were closed and he did not move, but his chest heaved in and out in small, almost-indistinguishable movements.

He was alive.

Overhead, a day passed. The sun grew hotter and hotter until the Grymclaw steamed and the water left over from the titanic pillar that had blasted the cliffs misted and was absorbed into the sir. The young castaway’s back burned as he lay on his face for hours, motionless except for the slight sign of life in his barely breathing body.

Night came, and the air grew cool and windy. The Inkwell’s enchanted chill did not reach far enough to freeze the rain that came early the next morning, cooling the parched land.

Just as the sun peeked over the edge of the world… the boy awoke.

~

Gramling raised his head groggily, a cool wind massaging his scorched shoulders and a light wetness pattering on his face. Where in all heaven and earth was he?

He tried to push himself up with both hands, and fell back on his stomach again. Blast. His body felt weak as a broken, waterlogged branch, snapped from the tree before its time. He decided to wait, listen, and hope for his strength to return. His thoughts were so scattered he wasn’t sure what had happened to him or why he was here… wherever here was.

The water running across the smooth rock and under his head felt soothing. It cooled the burning demons in his skull…

No. No, it couldn’t have all happened… Not that way…

The memories came flooding back to haunt him. He had failed again, and almost gone to a fate worse than death. He immediately repented the thought about demons: the real ones had been too horrifying to compare to a headache.

No, no, NO! This couldn’t have happened. He had failed at the old Arches, and been pierced in the shoulder with the red-hot bolt of some strange, fantastic weapon. His draik had been killed, and he had been forced to transport himself away, back to his falconhorse; an act that had cost him most of the dark energy he needed to Pit Stride.

But the last failure had been the worst. He could not, would not speak of it. The horror, the utter wretchedness he had felt when he realized he was too weak to control the entity he had awoken at the bottom of the sea…

…And yet, that pitiful, weak-willed urchin had been able to defeat it. To defeat him, and even more impressively the power that had beaten down his mind and stolen his body.

And then Gribly had spared him. For that above all else, he could never be forgiven.

The anger and fear and helplessness nearly overwhelmed Gramling, but it gave him the strength he needed to claw his way onto his knees and stand. He tottered, slipped, and fell on one knee, bruising it. Shuddering with fury and purpose, he rose again.

“I will not…. be defeated… so easily…” he hissed between his teeth. With an extreme act of will, he took a step. Then another. Then another. Gaining strength. Breathing deeply. Living. Fighting to live.

He didn’t have the time or energy to wonder how he had gotten here, or why his enemy had let him live. In time he would solve it all, and have his revenge. For now he would walk, and walk until he had found his strength and could stride again. He would be able to contact his master, but he would refrain. Before he could show his face again, he would need solid, undeniable success. Success he intended- no, he expected- to have. He knew now more about his enemy than he had ever wanted to know, but it had given him ideas…

Now was not the time to plan. Now was the time to survive. To escape. Gramling stumbled forward across the unending expanse of gray rock and hard earth, intent only on finding some sign as to where he was or where he should go next.

All throughout his thoughts, the soft rain kept pouring.

An hour passed, and the light grew steadily with the rain. A fair summer storm was brewing, with few clouds but much water drenching Gramling’s already-soaked bare skin. What little clothes he had left were in tatters around his waist, clinging to him from the wetness. The feeling was not unpleasant, for the rain was warm and deceptively light. It was blessed relief after so many days of torment.

Spared for torment. That’s what he was: saved from worse than death, only to face another, more impossible task. He had repeatedly underestimated his foes and overestimated his own talent. It would not happen again. If he lived long enough to make plans for the future, they would be well-thought, diligent, and deliberate. He would weave a net of wiles that no street thief, no matter how skilled and powerful, could ever hope to evade.

You will be mine, urchin, Gramling thought, savoring the taste of expected vengeance. No more gnawing old beliefs and powers. He would be daring and unexpected, and when he struck there would be no escape for the Sand Strider, the Wind Strider, or the Wave Strider. The powers of the Pit were far more potent. He would learn more than his master had taught him… more than anyone could teach him.

He knew in the bottom of his mind that he would not be returning home for a long time. Possibly never at all. But one thing he knew even more certainly was that he would never, ever show his face to his master again until he had succeeded without a single doubt. He would-

But wait… there was a rushing behind him, words on the wind that spoke of a large beast coming his way through the air, intent on meeting him… or eating him. One could never be too sure.

Gramling was too jaded now to expect an ally. Despite his exhaustion, he leaped to the side, rolling and springing away to avoid the vast black animal that hurtled down and landed heavily on the rocks where he’d just been.

It was sopping; it was bedraggled and half-dead. It was the best, most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

It was his black falconhorse.

“HA!” he yelled, swaying and almost toppling. The mount whinnied in surprise and reared back, then shot forward with a flap of its wings and put its neck under his arm before he could fall. “Yes,” he moaned weakly, “Loyal to the end. You survived, slave. I need you still.”

The falconhorse blew a raspberry, as if to say You’ll die without me and you know it. I deserve more. Fine. Gramling decided he could live with that.

Stepping back, he managed to stand on his own feet. “We will be equals, you and I, falconhorse. I know you have the power of speech, as do all enchanted beasts. So my first desire as an equal is this: tell me your name.”

The falconhorse neighed, rearing up and pawing the air madly. Almost in a scream, it yelled out in a tongue almost identical to human speech.

“I AM CALLED BONEDALE, MILORD! COMMAND ME, AND I WILL CARRY YOU WHEREVER YOU WISH. TO KERBUS OR HALLA ITSELF I WILL BEAR YOU! NONE WILL BE STRONG ENOUGH TO WITHSTAND US BOTH!”

Gramling laughed, long and loud. This was a better start than he ever could have hoped for. “Hell’s bells, Bonedale! If all falconhorses are as well spoken as you, I wonder how you were ever enslaved to humans in the first place!”

Bonedale did scream, then: a horse’s scream, deafeningly loud and ear-shatteringly high. Then he stood stone-still, and his red eyes glowed too brightly to look at.

“Aura,” he said simply, and his voice dripped hatred- an overwhelming display of emotion in a usually unemotional animal… though Gramling now doubted Bonedale was simple enough to be classified as such. He grinned.

“You’ve given me the inkling of a plan. Where are we, Bonedale?”

“Hammerdrankdulaiin to my Air-born brethren. You would call it the Grymclaw.”

“Good, I suspected as much. Fly me away from here, Bonedale. We will need food and shelter until we have both regained our strength and I have replenished my power.”

“And then?”

“Then, my vengeful wingéd friend, we will hunt down an Aura.”

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. Winter Warrior is the second 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.

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.

Fourthly, I thank all the people who saw and loved the cover for Winter Warrior. You guys and gals gave me the motivation to keep on ‘doing it myself’.

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 second 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 third 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 Winter Warrior, 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 THREE

-GRYM PROPHET-

Chapter One Sample

…From the smooth white floorboards beneath his bed, Lauro produced a tough gray satchel and slung it over his shoulder, then bent down and brought out an extra pillow and heavy blanket. With these he soon created a passable imitation of a prone body, which he stuffed under his sheets and covered with the lip of another blanket. As good a decoy as could be made.

Straightening, Lauro headed for the door with a grin on his face, taking care not to make sounds that could wake Gribly. Time for another quest- and this time, he would not fail.

Two more stops, and he’d be free.

Sliding down dark, frosty hallways and quietly descending drafty staircases, the prince was soon at his first destination: the Reethe armory.

“Wind Strider?” the guard’s voice was curious but unafraid as Lauro approached from down the wide, frostrock hallway.

“Hail, Patnel,” the prince answered, bowing slightly. “Sleep escapes me tonight. How goes your watch?” He had spent a large amount of his time befriending this and other members of the fortress guard who dwelt in the Sanquegrad, all in preparation for this one night. Now his efforts would pay off, if he kept his head.

He was soon deep in casual conversation with Patnel, who seemed as willing as any man to have jovial company in the lonely night’s watch. Soon, seated at a low whitewood table in one corner of the armory, they shared a bottle of the strange blue wine perfected by the Reethe. As they talked animatedly of the events that had so recently rocked the Reethe city of Mythigrad to its core, Lauro stealthily scanned the tall racks of weapons and armor that lined each wall of the armory, twenty feet high, twice as wide, and almost four times as long. There was no doubt at all in his mind that he could find a suitable weapon here to replace the shortsword he had lost in the wreck of the Mirrorwave almost two weeks ago.

“…As I was saying,” Patnel continued in the high-pitched, slow accent most nymphs who could speak the common tongue acquired, “there isn’t much we can know- or hope to know, really- about the Aura who dwells in the Grymclaw. We Reethe have had few enough dealings with the outside world in the past, and even fewer now that we’ve split with our M’tant brethren in the Blackwood. Not to mention the fact that no one’s actually ever met one of the Aura before… it’s only rumors that say one lives in the Grymclaw at all…” And on and on.

Lauro had heard most of it already, and from more reliable sources than Patnel. There were few towns and no cities in the bleak peninsula of the Grymclaw, but if he was to survive he would need to find at least one of them. He thought he could, without much trouble; then it would just be a matter of time before he could figure out from rumors where the legendary being was said to abide. With his ever-increasing powers over the wind, he could easily move on from there.

“…do you suppose?” finished Patnel, sitting back and propping his feet up on the table, obviously waiting for an answer to his question. Lauro’s mind raced- what had the guard been saying? Suddenly, the answer came to him, and he almost laughed.

“I don’t know about the others,” Lauro answered, a little too quickly, “But my wind-striding will help me find the Aura the quickest, for sure.”

“How so?” Patnel asked, raising an eyebrow and swigging more wine from a whitewood tumbler. Lauro sipped at his own, eyeing Patnel’s for a second before meeting the nymph’s eyes.

“You’re draining the drink rather quickly, aren’t you?” Lauro chuckled, and Patnel grinned, his teeth stained blue. “More?”

“Indeed- hic!” smiled the guard, passing his cup. Lauro swayed as he took it, acting more inebriated than he actually was. When he grasped for the wine bottle, it fell on its side, spilling out over Patnel’s side of the table. The nymph cursed good-naturedly, hiccupping as he righted it. Two seconds for his gaze to be distracted, but it was enough. Lauro took the bottle from him and poured the rest of its contents into Patnel’s tumbler before passing it back. “Thankee,” the nymph grinned, sounding for all the world like any common human drunk that Lauro had ever encountered. The prince nodded shakily, acknowledging the thanks, and mopped up the spill with a rag lying nearby, usually used to polish blades.

“Well, now,” the guard finally said, “about that power of yours.” He leaned forward, an eager glint in his eye.

“What of it?” Lauro asked as innocently as he could. Patnel’s face was turning a bit red. Good.

“Do you really think you can find the Aura on your own?” The abrupt nature of the question caught Lauro off guard.

“Well, yes, I do,” he admitted.

“You really mean to run off, then?” questioned the guard.

The prince leapt back from the table, aided by a gust of wind he summoned in his surprise. His chair clattered to the floor. “Wha- what do you mean?” he stuttered, his chest constricting with the realization that he’d been caught.

“Augh, come now,” Patnel smiled coldly, pushing himself up from his seat and leaning forward conspiratorially, “Think you that you had gone so unnoticed? Pulled the wool over our eyes, as humans say? Your own friends are too clever for that. The Raitharch’s been listening to them, and they’ve been telling him to keep an eye on you… which he has, through me… and others. Your willingness to ply me with drink and your obvious travelling clothes are just two more condemnations, my friend.”

With an ease that belied his slim looks, Patnel slid the table aside with his right hand. His left was raised slightly, and when he snapped it a cold breeze chilled Lauro’s bones. A Frost Strider. Patnel the armory guard was a Frost Strider.

“Well, well,” Lauro sighed, “You’ve figured me out, then, haven’t you? Will you stop me, then?”

“By Sea and Sky I will, if you give me trouble,” Patnel said, raising his chin, “But now-” Suddenly, his head lolled back and he collapsed in a dead faint on the cold floor of the armory.

“Whoops,” said Lauro, rolling his eyes, and walked past the body…