Golden Tide (Song of the Aura, Book Four) Read Online Free Page A

mouth was too dry. Blast. How long had he been unconscious?
     
    The only light spilled through the holes in a heavy metal grate in the cell’s only door. It had a greenish tint that unsettled him. Then his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and it was all he could do not to shudder.
     
    The four walls of the cell were lined with manacles and collars like his. They were each empty, but the dank air that hovered about in the cell was tinted to his Sky Strider vision. Black, blacker than shadow, meant death. Red, and brown, and new, dark colors with no name. They all had meanings… scents… it was like a vision of the past.
     
    He was aware of everything that had recently happened in the cell: beatings, wailings, murderous prisoners and equally murderous captors… and fear. Rancid, blood-raw fear. Men and women and children had died here. Some had taken their own lives, the currents of air wept… they had strangled themselves against the iron collars to escape what was coming…
     
    With a sudden creak, the door to the cell slid open. Lauro jumped so fast he jerked to the end of his tether again and slumped in a fit of coughing, pounding the floor with his fist in frustration. He hadn’t even heard them approach…
     
    The first person through the door was the biggest nymph Lauro had ever seen. He ducked under the mantle silently, his pale, pointed ears twitching. His eyes were yellow and slitted, like a cat’s, but below that his face was masked with black cloth. Black leather armor seemed to cover every inch of him, surmounted by a dark cloak hanging to one side. Lauro grimaced in the shadows. A commander, then. Head of the prison.
     
    The bulky nymph was light on his feet, for all that. Once inside he slid smoothly to the right, holding his weapon in a way that casually suggested he would run Lauro through the first chance he got. The weapon itself was like the ones the prince had seen in Mythigrad’s armory: a dark, polished-wood handle too long for a sword and too short for a spear, with a slim blade at the top, shaped like a sword’s, but shorter and somehow curvier. Everything’s so… dark, here, Lauro thought, grimacing.
     
    Tearing his uneasy gaze away from the masked warrior, the prince watched agitatedly as another nymph entered the cell, emerald light illuminating him from behind. It was a greasy-looking fellow with shifty eyes and a dirty smock that identified him as a spit-turner, or whatever nymphs used as one. His hair hung in graying locks around his ear tips, and his mouth seemed twisted in a perpetual half-grin- ‘til Lauro saw the curving scar that slashed from his lips to his ear. It was infected.
     
    “ Vett!” The scarred nymph told Lauro in a high, grating voice. A meal? The black-clad jailor watched silently as his greasy companion laid a tray of food and a jug of water down on the floor, barely close enough for Lauro to reach, then bowed stiffly to the jailor and left, almost at a run. He’s afraid of me, the lad realized. And why not? He only wished the jailor were as easily intimidated by his icy stare. With a silent, threatening wave of his sword-spear, the nymph ducked out of the doorway and closed it behind him.
     
    Click. That would be the lock. Shunk! That would be the bolt. He was well and truly trapped.
     
    Lauro looked glumly at the food and water that had been set before him. Bah. They only thought him caught. But what did they know of Striding? In fact… he realized in another moment that they couldn’t know he was a Strider at all! He hadn’t had a chance to give himself away before he was captured, so…
     
    “Fools,” he muttered. If they thought him idiotic enough to eat and drink his fill of drugged vittles, then they thought a lie. All he had to do was Sky Stride, call up wind to rip the door from its hinges and the chain from his neck…
     
    … Reaching for the power of his native element, Lauro raised both hands. A splitting pain assailed his head,