Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) (23 page)

“
Come… on… only… paces… to… go!” He spat through bloody, ragged breaths. The machines closed in about him, chittering and hissing mechanical words that had no meaning, and the fear and rage swept over him like a hurricane his power could not hold a candle to.

DRINK DRINK SAP GUT STEAL STAB LIFE DEATH WISPS DEMONS EVERYTHING WE KNOW…
He could hear the evil babble of the monster that had taken Mudlo. Now he knew what the blasted thing was: a Wisp Demon!

“
ENOUGH!” Lauro screamed, shoving his halfsword into the stone of the bridge. It shattered in a flash of milliontide shards, each a bolt of the purest white lightning, hurtling outward faster than the eye could follow. The explosion radiated out from him, perfectly controlled in the midst of his raging emotion, incinerating the metal-and-oil abominations that dared attack him, while sparing Mudlo, who lay nearby. When the fizzling, violent mist of the Sky Stride dissipated, Lauro dropped the burnt haft of the weapon and stumbled over to Mudlo, falling to his knees. Nothing more moved to attack him.
How many times will I lose my weapon before this nightmare is over?

“
Lauro…” moaned the ranger, trying to lift himself up and dropping on his face from weakness.

“
What… where did…?” Lauro began, sputtering.

“
I… forced it out… into…” Mudlo said, but his eyes jerked open and he writhed in pain. “Agh! It hurts… it still tears… my heart…”

Beside the ranger, Steamclaw began to stir, a hideous whisper dribbling forth from the motionless jaws of the draik.

“
You have
got
to be joking,” Lauro snarled as the once-dead pit beast began to push itself standing again. No… that was not right. It wasn’t alive anymore… the eyes were jet black! But it was moving, and ready for a fight. “Blast!” Lauro said, pulling Mudlo out of the way as quickly as he could, with the ranger still limp and coughing his lungs apart.

The prince only managed to drag his friend back ten feet onto the bridge when the Not-Steamclaw shook itself, moaning in a way that was all Wisp Demon and no draik, and then screamed. Not a howl, but a
scream
. An almost-but-not-quite human scream, that wavered, reached a crescendo… and died away.

Lauro stepped over Mudlo, planting his feet apart and nervously preparing to Sky Stride like he had never done before. Who knew what the draik could do now, with a new master in its head?

“
Just you and me again, Beast,” he snarled, remembering the dreadful night on the iceberg, what seemed ages ago. Only… he had lost, then, or would have without Elia. And Gribly.

The Not-Steamclaw shrieked again, and charged. Lauro purged all thoughts from his mind, opening himself to the Power of Sky…

…
and felt nothing. The draik bore down on him, smashing into his chest at full tilt, batting him to the side with one armored claw. Pain burned in his side as he flew, crashing through a pile of metal devices heaped at random on one of the closest platforms.

Light flashed, and Lauro felt himself slipping downward at a surreally slow pace. The world a blur of red and black, he lashed out for any kind of grip. His hand felt a hold, and the next second he jerked to a stop. The platform had tipped sideways, anticipating his arrival with the fiendish intelligence of all the other attacking machines.

He hung over an infinite drop into boiling magma, suspended only by the thick metal cable he had been lucky enough to grab.

With a seething, inhuman cackle, the Not-Steamclaw stalked to the edge of the bridge, eyeing the prince with those disturbingly lifeless eyes. Lauro’s mind raced frantically to find a way out of his predicament… but he could not think with those
eyes!
No Sky Striding at a time like
this
… and no way out.

“
Blast you, Automo. Blast you Wanderwillow and Traveller! You could’ve at least given me a
chance
to fix my mistakes!” Lauro howled his defiance to Fate, preparing to try a desperate leap for the edge where his enemy stood-

-when Mudlo hit the Not-Steamclaw from behind in a blur of blue and gray, bowling him over the edge so quickly that Lauro barely had time to register the sight of the ranger and the draik hurtling past him into the fiery depths together.

A flash of flame, and a wisp of smoke that died in the flaming winds that swept the abyss…

…
they were gone.

Inch by burning, seething inch, Lauro pulled himself up to the tipping platform, scrabbling for handholds when he reached the top. His hand latched onto something, but it gave way just as the platform began to tip right-side-up again. Lauro leaped, sailing between fire and stone for a tense moment, before landing heavily and falling to his knees, the metal
something
still clutched in his grip.

With the demise of the Wisp Demon, it seemed that the workshop had decided he was not worth the fight. Mere seconds after he tumbled onto the stone walkway, the platforms began to drop back into the abyss, pulled down by gravity as their pillars of fire rapidly receded.

“
May your soul shelter in the arms of the Aura, Medlore Hallifar Silverpaw,” Lauro breathed, watching the Red Aura’s forge fall apart around him, “and may you come at last to the everpeace of the Creator.” Climbing laboriously to his feet, the prince gazed down at the thing he had grabbed from the platform’s wreckage.

It was a long, jagged piece of machinery, with two long shards of metal that resembled a blade, pressed together, and a sort of jumbled mechanical apparatus that looked vaguely like a crossguard, handle, and pommel. It
was
a sword, he realized. Providential. Simply providential.

“
You’ve taken something of mine, Automo,” he fumed, “and now I’ve taken something of yours.” Before he knew it, he was striding towards the stone doors again, all sorrow ignored beyond a wall of fiery, determined anger. “The prices have been paid, Traitor,” he growled, “but we won’t be equal until I’ve taken the Midnight Sword from you and cut off your head with it. That blade for your head, and this one for your black heart… a fair price, don’t… you… think!”

With the last word he shouted, stabbing the mechanical sword at the doors. The Power of Sky surged in him, distant no longer, and lightning shattered the haughty stone portal into a thousand glowing pieces. There was no thought, no action: his anger simply blazed, and the obstacle was unmade.

The red glow of the dying day flooded in, bringing with it the sights of war and mayhem. On the slopes of the Giant’s Mount, a force of golden golems and coal-skinned warriors did battle with men and nymphs in ragged coats, gaudy blades, and murder in their eyes. Beyond, in the waters around the Giant’s Isle, golden steamships spewed fireballs at a swarm of wooden vessels bearing black flags. Everywhere the Golden Nation fought, and everywhere its superior force was brought to bay by the overwhelming number of bandits and rogues who suddenly swarmed the island from all sides.

“
By the Aura,” Lauro breathed. Only one person could possibly have brought this force here. King Gram, Lord of Rogues…

…
or…

“
Gribly!” Lauro shouted, pumping his sword-arm in the air. “For the Prophet, and for Vastion!” He charged down the steps toward an oncoming surge of gold fiends, laughing heedlessly as lightning sizzled on the edges of his blade.

The Golden Tide would be beaten back yet… and he would have his vengeance, if he had to tear down the Golden Nation with his own two hands to do it!

~

Gribly hurtled down the tunnel, Traveller’s staff in his hand, lighting the way. It had led towards his destination unerringly, ever since he had left the
Invincible
, back in the cavernous bay where Berne’s Ghost Form had led them. The hybrid warship was fighting in the battle now, and he had no doubt it could single-handedly turn the tide of the sea-war.

That is, if I can get to the root of this problem before the Red Aura destroys us all with his arrogance and idiocy.
The visions had become clearer, the closer he came to wherever the staff was leading him. He could almost
feel
Fate unraveling, like a cluster of nerves being slowly severed, one by one, at the back of his neck. It hurt, like the pain of an old wound being re-opened, searing, and somehow giddy, too.

“
Where are we headed?” gasped Gram behind him, racing along as hard as his bulk allowed, sweating and panting and tossing his hammer from hand to hand.

“
To wherever the staff shows me, Father. I already said… wait. It’s here. Right beyond this door.” The door was solid iron, closed tightly with no way Gribly could see to open it. The staff burned like the day in his hands, easily illuminating the entire doorstep. “How do we get in?” he worried. “I can
feel
the suffering beyond it… This is where I’m supposed to be.”

“
Step aside, Boy,” Gram told him, “We don’t have time for delays, if your friend is really in there!”

Gribly stepped aside. Gram swung his hammer, and the door shivered like liquid, rippling, cracking… and simply melting away.

“
How?”

“
Stone Striding, Boy. You don’t know everything, see? Metal has much the same substance as the rest of the Stone element, only far more complex. Beatable. Like everything else.”

Metal and Stone… the same thing? That could mean such cataclysmic change for Striding… why doesn’t anyone else know?
Gribly forced the thought from his mind. There wasn’t time now!

“
Into the Pit, then,” he said aloud, staring at the scarlet light beyond the door. “Are you still with me, Father?”

“
To the death,” the Lord of Rogues swore. The hammer glowed yellow-hot in his hands.

Gribly charged into the darkness, staff aglow.

~

Lauro stabbed his blade down between the Coalskin’s eyes, feeling no joy at the shock on its face as blood splashed and the golem it was controlling toppled to the ground. The prince leaped free before the wreckage could pin him, bounding over to where the golem’s victim lay in the shallow brine of a tide pool, his own blood coloring the water around him.

“
Wake up, Man! Don’t fade!” Lauro cursed, diving to his knees beside the pool, gripping the groaning pirate by both sides of his head. “LIVE!” screamed the prince, and lightning flashed from his palms, penetrating the man and sparking along the water where he lay, behaving like no lightning ever did in the natural world. “BE HEALED!”

The man woke, gurgling, from the near-slumber that would have ended in death mere seconds later. In seconds the healing was finished, and Lauro heaved the man out of the tide pool, pushing down on his chest and expelling water from his lungs. Soon it was over, and he allowed himself the smallest measure of relief. Another life saved. Another bit of vengeance taken on the Red Aura.

“
Th… thank you,” gasped the man, shivering weakly, but alive. His long dark hair was plastered across his face. He wiped it away, flicking his wrist to expel the water in a single glob of liquid that floated away on the breeze. A Sea Strider, then… and one not long used to the powers that were increasing in every Strider Lauro had met so far.

“
All for a friend,” Lauro responded, helping the man up best as he could. There was no need to mention Mudlo’s name… the world was chaotic enough already. This battle was tearing the Giant’s Isle apart. “What’s your name… Friend?” he asked the pirate.

“
They call me the Waterpike,” the man said, fingering the blue hoop in his left ear as if it were a badge of some past honor. “Danner Waterpike.”

“
Well, Danner,” Lauro said, trying not to collapse suddenly from exhaustion, “Let’s find another to save… and another… and another. One by one, we’ll build this army of rogues back up, and re-take this island.”

~

Traveller’s staff led Gribly to a hollow stone sphere; a chamber like the one under the
Swaying Willow,
but much larger. He nodded grimly, having expected as much, and let the staff’s light show him what lay within.

Three stone blocks, as before… and one of them occupied. Automo, the great Red Aura, lay on the centermost block, eyes closed, his huge body at least twelve feet long when laid out flat.
Or so he chooses to appear
, Gribly reminded himself. For a split second he was tempted to ram Traveller’s staff between the traitorous Aura’s eyes… but he knew that would not kill Automo, now. Only in the Otherworld could a being of that sort be permanently harmed.