Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three) Read Free

suspecting that an enemy would be entering from the inside.
     
    Poking his head through the door, Lauro slid inside and quickly made his way down the flight of wide, shallow stairs carved directly into the cave’s ice. The chamber was too dark for him to see the corners, but judging from the echoes of his small movements it was probably larger than he’d expected. A faint light came from a large culvert at one end, which he knew led past several more chambers before coming out of a sort of postern gate in the rear of the Reethe iceberg.
     
    Squinting through the shadows, Lauro called on the wind to aid him. Immediately he became aware of sensations and currents no normal human or nymph could feel; shifts in the wind that told him everything he needed to know about his surroundings. He could tell distances and dimensions in a second simply by how they felt in the air. His hearing sharpened immensely as the wind carried its whispered tidings to his ears from distances near and far.
     
    The prince was smug. His powers were progressing at a prodigious rate, pushing the limits of Wind Striding to their maximum capability. He still had a ways to go before he would be able to challenge his father, King Larion, but it was only a matter of time… and not much of it, at this rate.
     
    At the edge of the pier, which he found to be constructed of the same strange stone-and-ice materials the Reethe used in all their strongest structures, Lauro felt a shift in the wind currents he knew to originate from the vessel he needed: a Wave Chariot. He had seen many of the Reethe use them on short trips between Bergs, and even taken a day to learn the art of piloting one. Though they were usually propelled by wave-striding, he felt confident he could do the same and more in one of the slender, shark-like craft using his own wind-striding techniques. The wooden fins could be moved with air just as well as water, and he could skim across the surface of the Inkwell and be away before anyone realized he was gone.
     
    Suddenly, an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. They would know he was gone, and it would be his own idiotic fault. As soon as Gribly woke enough to figure out that the sleeping “body” in the opposite bed was a decoy, the hunt would be on!
     
    “Blast, blast, blast !” the prince muttered under his breath. There was no time to fix his mistake now. He’d have to improvise, and hope these were the only short range vessels the Reethe had.
     
    Moving stealthily in and out of the boats moored to the long dock, Lauro went to work with his newly acquired cutlass, putting slashes and holes in the pale, luminous blue-white wood of the Wave Chariots. Not too large, of course, but just the right size that would start to sink a boat once it was out on the open sea. Brilliant. Lauro almost chuckled to himself. A bit of piracy worth every jibe he’d ever endured from Gribly, the self-styled “master thief.” At last there was but one Wave Chariot left. Grinning inwardly, Lauro climbed aboard.
     
    The swell of the water gently rocked the platform beneath his feet. Closing his eyes to the world, the prince opened himself to the flow of energy buried in his mind, and began to wind-stride. In his mind’s eye he saw the currents of air as twisting, writhing, insubstantial shapes in the black mist of reality. Reaching out, he plucked one, grasped it tightly, and willed it to grow stronger. As it obeyed, its light grew brighter and brighter, a throbbing, pulsing blue that lit up his mind’s vision. When it was ready, he cast it at the part of the blackness where he knew the Wave Chariot’s rearmost fins would be.
     
    The shard of wind caught, then whisked the serpentine fins in a never-ending circle, propelling the vessel forward. Lauro opened his eyes abruptly, and the colors still swam before them. Power. He had it, and loved it. Stretching his hands out to summon more of the wind, he lifted the bolt from the chain-lock that held