Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) (9 page)

  
“What answers?” questioned Gribly, but the Aura ignored him.

  
“Remember what I have told you. You are never alone. The Aura and the One who made the Aura will always give you aid when you need it most.”

  
“I… I’ll try,” the thief shrugged. He could feel the importance of what the stranger said, but he wasn’t sure of its significance.

  
“Gribly?” There, the Aura knew his name. How?
Because it’s all a dream,
he told himself, but he didn’t believe it very much.

  
“Yes?”

  
“Brace yourself. Adventures like yours can be dangerous.”
Adventures?
The gray-clad fellow suddenly stood, and Gribly followed suit. The man walked to the edge of the grassy bay and looked over it. “Goodbye… for now.”

  
“Goodbye? You mean this vision’s over? But I don’t know your name… even if you seem to know
mine
.”

  
“I am part of the Aura,” replied the stranger, his back still turned. “That is all you need know.” He touched his staff lightly and two fluttering, white wings like a dove’s burst from the end.

  
“But I want to know
more
,” Gribly argued, ignoring the odd sight. “I want to know your
name
. Can’t you tell me that, at least?”

  
The young man turned, and his face had on a grin like a man who has just remembered an old joke. “I have many names, in Vast and Realm and beyond. Men know me here as Traveller. Does that satisfy you?”

  
“I… I guess.
Traveller
. Goodbye, Traveller.”

  
“Goodbye, little thief,” grinned the Aura, and suddenly his staff flapped its wings, pulling him off the top of the mountain and into the open air. More wings sprouted from his cap and heels, and off he floated into the distance. Gribly felt suddenly very sleepy. He slipped to his knees and then lay down, sighing with unexpected tiredness. The grass felt soft and comfortable against his cheek and legs. He was so tired…

~

  
The Pit Strider plunged deep into the desert. Two days and three nights passed before he was far enough from Ymeer to contact the Golden One.

  
In the middle of Blast desert, a circle of jagged sandstone boulders shot up from the dusty ground like the crown of a buried king. Gramling knew instantly that here was the perfect place to rejuvenate his power and contact his master.

  
His master went by many names, but Gramling had only ever known him by one. “Golden One, Ruler of the World and Emperor of My All, show me your face! I require your aid!”

  
Crouching in the First Stance, Gramling began the melodious chanting that would reach across two continents and the sea between, whispering in his master’s ear no matter where he was or what he was doing. It was risky- his master was easily angered, and detested being interrupted- but he had no other choice. Moving into the Second Stance, he closed his eyes and let the river of time and speech drown him in its flow.

  
At the Third Stance his words were no more than a whisper; by the time he reached the Fifth Stance they were totally inaudible.

  
The Six Stance came, and the flow became too strong to bear.

  
Gramling opened his eyes again and stopped chanting. He was on a mountain, looking out over a thin sheet of clouds and the black land beneath. He stood on a shallow, flat shelf hacked into the rock near the mountain’s peak. Dead, gray grass whispered as a hot breeze blew it like fingering fronds across the toes of his boots. The air was suffocating and thick, even this high up.

  
The Goldenmount. As far as he knew, there was nothing golden about it. He had never seen it from the blasted sands below, of course… always from up here, where-

  
SO.
It was one word, but it froze his mind with terror and awe, stopping his thoughts and catching his body in place like an invisible vise.

  
“Master…” he whispered. It was painful to speak- the vise of the Golden One’s will held his chest tighter than iron chains.

  
TURN, AND LOOK ON MY FACE.

  
Shuddering with fear and a sickening, thrilling sense of expectation, Gramling forced himself to turn from the edge of the cliff to look at the mountain peak behind him. There stood the Golden One, robed in the colors of blood and night, his face shadowed by a dark mantle.

  
“My Master,” whimpered Gramling, and fell on his face. The world was deathly silent. The Golden One’s presence blotted out all sound but his own footfalls as he came nearer. The sound was like the strikes of a ram on broken gates.

  
LOOK ON MY FACE.

  
The will of his master was simply too strong. Torn between fear and awe, horror and reverence, Gramling raised his head and looked into the shadowy depths of his master’s hood.

  
YOU LOOK WITHOUT SEEING.

  
The voice that thundered in his head was like the sound of a thousand deaths; corpses with weapons and empty eyes full of hate. Then the hood was rolled back, and Gramling
saw
.

  
The Golden One did not bear his name without reason. His head was like that of a man’s, bulbous and hard, with skin the color of dusty gold. It seemed stretched, as if there was not enough flesh to cover the skull beneath. There was no hair on his head, but a thinning mustache and beard drooped down to his collar. His eyes burned with an inner fire that shook Gramling like a leaf, stifling his mind and throwing his body into convulsions: yet he found he could not look away, no matter how hard he tried.

  
TELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.

  
“I… I…” Gramling swallowed his fear like so much rotten fruit, forcing himself to claw his way into a kneeling, then standing position. “I have failed, O Golden One.”

  
Then, word by choking word, he forced himself to tell the tale. As he spoke, the fear drained from him with astonishing quickness, almost causing him to pause. The more he spoke, the less he
felt
. At the end of his tale, his mind was blank and his heart was dry. He was not afraid or angry or sad or confused. He just
was.
He existed, and that was all. And all along, his master looked on.

  
Finally he had finished, and the Golden One had not spoken once. The fiery eyes had been reduced to smoldering coals in the golden void of his face, and his ebony mantle once more enshrouded his features. The fire in him seemed to have died, but the darkness that was his Power had grown.

  
After an eternity, the Golden One spoke.

  
FIND THE SAND STRIDER.

  
HE IS WORTH MORE THAN YOU KNOW, DEAD OR ALIVE.

  
TO DO THIS, YOU MUST SUMMON OUR ALLIES: THE DRAIKS OF BLAST.

  
KEEP ONLY ONE FOR YOUR USE.

  
OUR PLANS MUST BE ACCELERATED.

  
USE THE OTHERS TO START A WAR.

  
The torrent of commands left Gramling broken and shuddering, but in the end he was still alive and very ready to begin the next stage in the grand chase that was sure to follow. His muscles screamed with sudden, ensorcelled energy, and his mind felt clearer and sharper than it had in all his short, dark years of life. He could manage but one response.

  
“Yes, Master.”

  
NOW GO.

  
The last order to pass the unmoving lips of the Golden One filled Gramling’s veins with a fire that would not abate. The Pit Strider’s neck stiffened and his back arched in expectation so intense and painful that he slipped down onto one knee, his radiant face turned towards the rocky ground in utter submission. The last sensation to pass his ears was the Golden One’s echoing, haunting laughter. Gramling had never heard him laugh before.

~

  
When he looked up again, Gramling found himself kneeling amid the broken desert stones of Blast once more. Gathering his slightly battered but still serviceable cloak around him, the Pit Strider rose and began the ritual of calling. There was no time to waste, especially now that he was impossibly still in the favor of his master. The center of the stone circle was hollow and sandy… the perfect place.

  
Gramling stood stock still, letting the shadows of the desert fall across him, empowering him. A minute passed, then five. Then half an hour.

  
Gramling flung his arms out and his head back, howling at the sky. He screamed the words of the pit beasts of the world, words that no one knew but he and his master and those his master chose to train in the Pit Striding. There was no translation for such speech, but the meaning was clear to any who were unlucky enough to hear it. It spoke of horror and suffering, agony and despair, malice and hatred and the vengeance of things that have been chained under the earth’s crust for so long they have forgotten how to do anything but kill, and hate those they wish to kill but cannot.

  
Gramling went on with the ritual for an hour, then stopped, his throat raw and constricted. No time to slow, no time to stop. The calling was finished. Now for the Beacon. Gramling leaned back, bending his body until his spine formed a step arch and his elbows almost brushed the ground.

  
Fire
, he thought, forcing his will into being,
Flames and smoke, sparks and ash, fury and power and FIRE!

  
With a great spring, he whipped himself upright and leaped into the air, pumping his fists and kicking off his legs. Red flames sprung up from every crack in every rock in the circle, spiraling upwards around him and forming a pillar of fire that shot up into the sky with a terrific
WHOOSH!

  
Seconds later it was gone, and he landed back on the ground in a blanket of hazy black smoke. His pit-striding had sent up a flare into the sky, a bolt of scarlet flame that would be visible in both the physical world… and the other, darker places where the minions of his master lurked. All he had to do now was wait.

  
When it was over, he wheezed and slipped to the ground, then forced himself to stand again. He would
need
that strength. The ones who would answer his call… they could not be allowed to see weakness, or they would rip him apart like chaff. He must be strong… strong.

  
He gripped the edge of the rock with his hands and pulled himself up in one motion. Yes, yes, pain… it was the first step towards strength. A strange kind of adrenaline coursed through his veins when he was attempting something too hard for him to do… and that usually meant he was about to succeed.