Brother Thief (Song of the Aura, Book One) (6 page)

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

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

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

  
Sandstone buildings.

  
My gift!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  
“Three!”

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

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

  
But he did not die.

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

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

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

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

  
I’m still… still alive… still… alive…

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

  
I’M ALIVE!

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Five:
Pit Strider

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

~

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

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

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