A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4)

by Travis Simmons

  There even seemed to be an option to revisit that point in time. All she had to do was shift her perception, and she could watch the entire Frement Uprising as if she had been there.

  Joya decided that might not be the best thing to do at the present time, not with such an audience as she had, and the hecklin and what they were calling to their aid so close at hand.

  She shivered and stepped out onto the black cobblestone road, raising her swathe of sunflowers above her head, lighting the way through the smoking field.

  Behind them, barely audible over the downpour of rain, came the telltale howl of the hecklin on the hunt.

  “They know where we are!” Angelica said. She was right. The hecklin had figured what had happened, and they were giving chase, which meant they were intelligent.

  “Hurry,” Joya told them.

  “We have the graveyard dirt,” Jovian said, but Joya didn’t pay him any mind.

  “Should I remind you that we are going in the direct opposite direction than we need to be?” Uthia asked.

  Again Joya ignored them, and started running, her tattered skirts whipping fitfully about her ankles. She knew the hecklin were on their trail, and she wasn’t sure they would make it to the spire before the beasts were on them.

  “Joya, we have the dirt!” Angelica said, as if to ask why they were running if they had some kind of protection already.

  “It’s not the hecklin I fear, but their riders,” Joya asked.

  “What do you mean?” Jovian asked, but he didn’t need to.

  The first hecklin crested the knoll the cave entrance was set into, and leaped into the dark air. A black-cloaked rider loosed an arrow at them, narrowly missing Joya as they ran.

  Joya started channeling her wyrd down the swathe of sunflowers she carried. She lashed the weed behind her, and from the light of the flowers pink orbs of light shot straight at the rider, surrounding it like angry bees until the figure slumped from the back of the hecklin, screaming. She had a brief moment to look back, and saw the figure clutching at its throat, skin glowing pink; then the light faded and took with it the life of the person.

  “What are they?” Angelica asked.

  Joya lashed out with the sunflower bundle a few more times; each time the pink orbs grew in brightness and determination. She heard several more of the riders scream in pain and hit the ground with a thud, but they were never going to make it. From the corners of her eyes she saw the hecklin outpacing them, shadowy figures firmly planted on the back of each beast.

  More arrows were loosed. They were coming right for her. Time seemed to slow for Joya a moment, giving her enough time to react. She lashed the sunflowers above her head, whirling them in a circle that called the arrows in, and drew them away from the humans. The arrows spun above her head for several seconds like they were caught in a vortex before violently ricocheting back at their shooters.

  She heard them hit their marks.

  But it was too late — they were surrounded. Joya pulled to a stop, chest thumping loudly as her heart beat double-time, and her lungs burning with air.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The hecklin wouldn’t come close enough to them for Joya to see who the riders were. One figure, taller than the rest and with a cloak much more ornately embroidered with shifting runes that glowed blue, slid off the back of his hecklin and crossed the expanse toward her.

  He stopped several feet from the group and pulled his hood back. Brown hair tumbled loose in silken waves down his back, pointed ears protruding from the sides of the long locks. Black eyes stared at her from blue skin, blooming here and there with blushes of green.

  “Ooslebed,” Joya whispered. A real, live dark elf.

  The figure smiled and drew his rapier. At his action, arrows nocked in bows and drew on the targets of Joya’s team.

  “What are you doing trespassing on our lands, Holy Realm scum?” The dark elf spat on the ground at Joya’s feet. He had a strange accent — though his words were the same they would use, and not a different language as they would have expected by the script in the tomb, his accent seemed more educated, more proper.

  A sharp pain tore through Joya’s palms like someone had stabbed her. She screamed out, startling the hecklin backward and knocking some of the dark elves from their perches in a clatter of bows, arrows, and rapiers.

  Angelica made to go to Joya’s side, but stopped short when an arrow found its mark at her feet.

  “We passed the protection at the border,” Jovian argued.

  “Don’t you think our kind pass the protection on your borders also? Only to be hunted down like dogs and hung up for dalua to take?” the elf asked.

  Joya couldn’t stop the burning in her palms. She turned her hands over, and moaned at what she saw. Her palms were smoking, as though a fire burned under the surface of her skin.

  She felt another intense wave of pain, and she fell to her knees, another cry tearing from her throat.

  At the movement their captor stepped back, a strange look knitting his eyebrows together as he studied her further.

  Through her tears she gazed back at her hands to see the white dots ripple, and then, like ink had been dropped in the center of each, riding waves out to the edges of the stigmata, the dots turned black.

  That other force she had felt before, the comforting one that would always be there, seemed to instruct her then. She stood, hands tense like claws, and faced the ooslebed.

  “What is one sorceress against a battalion of ooslebed?” the dark elf asked her. He gave a motion and arrows flew at her. But they never reached her, because the shadows obeyed her, sweeping up out of the ground like tendrils of smoke. Where the arrows hit the shadows they vanished, as if the shadows she conjured weren’t actual shadows at all, but portals to beyond the black gate.

  She exhaled and pushed her hands forward, and the shadows snaked across the ground. The hecklin tried to flee, but the shadows were faster, rooting them in place, throwing their dark elf riders to the ground where they, too, were ensnared by shadows.

  The shadows gathered around the dark elf facing her, who had not moved an inch, frozen in amazement at what was happening before his very eyes. The shadows wrapped around his legs like vines growing from the earth.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he fell to his knees. All around them the hecklin began to whimper and shy away from the group. A commotion went up from the throats of the other dark elves, cries of pain and wonderment.

  Something was happening, and the dark elf before her was trying to speak, but he couldn’t find his voice through the thrall of power taking over his muscles.

  “Speak,” she commanded him, and the shadows receded from his throat enough to allow such an action.

  “Guardian,” the dark elf whispered in reverence. “You’ve returned.”

  “What?” Joya asked, stepping back, her hands falling to her side. Instantly the shadows working her will vanished, and dark elves and hecklin all around them slumped to the ground. “I think you have the wrong person.”

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Jovian said.

  “How, exactly, does that explain a lot, Jovian?” Joya asked testily.

  “Well, the strangeness lately,” he muttered.

  “Oh, you’ve seen many Realm Guardians get chosen?” she asked.

  The dark elf cleared his throat, drawing the attention back to him.

  The hecklin were still unsure of the group, but sensing power in Joya, they took a less aggressive pose, some lying at the feet of their dark elf riders, others sitting down on their haunches; a very strange action, since Joya knew they could run on two legs.

  “My lady, forgive my attack,” the dark elf said, bowing to her. “Let us escort you to your tower.”

  Joya nodded. She didn’t know what to do, to be honest, but the feeling she got from the realm was that these creatures were sincere.

  “It’s been twelve years since a Guardian last graced the Spire of Night; the attendants will
be happy to see you’ve returned,” the dark elf told her. “Forgive my rudeness,” he said. “My name is Dawnstar.”

  “No last name?” Joya asked.

  “Ooslebed have only one name. We have no individual families; we are all one family,” he told her.

  “Sex must get kind of creepy,” Jovian whispered, and Joya hid a smile.

  “I’m Joya LaFaye,” she told the elf, holding out her hand to shake his. He stared at her hand, unsure of the gesture.

  “Nice to meet you, Guardian LaFaye,” he nodded to her.

  “And you are the leader of the dark — the ooslebed?” Joya asked, changing the title and hoping that dark elf wasn’t a rude name to them.

  “We go by both dark elves and ooslebed; we know what we are, just as we know how we came to be apart from our Nependier brethren. I am not the leader,” he told her. “I am but the commander of this battalion. First Daughter Ooveck is the leader.”

  “First Daughter?” Angelica asked in wonder. “How is that even possible? She is still alive?”

  “Lady, we are damned,” he said in his slow, enunciated accent. “We have been since we left the Mountains of Nependier.”

  “What does that even mean?” Angelica asked.

  “We are a cursed breed, and though we may grow weak and old, and even choose to die, we will never know the peace among the stars that is granted to our cousin elves.”

  Joya cast her eyes up, hoping she might glimpse the stars in the barren wasteland that held the Spire of Night, but they weren’t there, blocked out of view by the darkness of the realm. She thought then how strange it really was that this realm was always dark. Would people be able to see the blackness stretching all the way to the sky from the Barrier Mountains? Or was it more like an orb surrounding the land?

  “I think we are all cursed in this realm,” Joya said, never taking her eyes from the heavens. “We have all been outcast here for one reason or another.”

  “And why have you been exiled here?” Dawnstar asked her.

  Joya shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “Well, now you are here, and so you shall stay. We aren’t allowed in the other realms,” he told her.

  “And why is that?” Joya asked.

  “They won’t have us,” he answered simply. “We are outcast.”

  “That will have to change,” Joya told him.

  “I hope the Guardian is right,” he told her.

  “What about the frement?” Joya asked and she saw Dawnstar straighten.

  “What does the Guardian wish to know about them?” He sounded a little terse.

  “When will I meet them?” Joya asked.

  “They are a wandering race, but around this time of year we put aside our differences and come together in observance of the Goddess entering the Otherworld for her time of darkness.”

  “So we are entering Inverno?” Angelica asked. It had been so long since they had the ability to see a calendar or even wonder what month they were in. It had started to snow when they were leaving the Realm of Earth, so they figured they were nearing the end of Morte.

  Dawnstar nodded.

  “So there is some kind of celebration here?” Joya asked.

  The dark elf smiled. “We of the Shadow Realm do not celebrate.”

  Joya frowned. But there was no more time for questions, because they were nearing the Spire of Night. As they drew closer, Joya noticed exactly how tall the spire was, having to lean her head back so far she almost lost her footing in an attempt to see the top of the tower.

  There was the sound of pressure being released and a crank of metal. The large double doors started to part, and the group came to a stop. Dawnstar gave the command for his battalion to stay outside, and the rest of them entered the Spire of Night.

  The entrance hall was a large round room that took up almost the entire ground floor. The floor itself was made of warm brown and honey-colored tiles. A black iron staircase sat on the opposite side of the hall. Ten steps led up to a dais, and from there to a lift of sorts.

  “That lift will take you all the way to the top of the spire if you so choose,” Dawnstar told her.

  Around the hall sat orbs which contained hundreds if not thousands of the sunflowers, lighting the hall with an eerie white light. A door to the left of the hall opened up, and the attendants came filing out, bowing to Joya and forming a line along the wall.

  “But you must be tired; they will show you to your rooms if you would like to rest and freshen up,” Dawnstar told her.

  “That would be nice. Who takes over here when I’m not within the realm?” Joya wanted to know. “I’m on other business now, and I will have to leave.”

  “While it isn’t advised that you leave the realm, you can choose a representative to speak on your behalf when you aren’t here. There’s also a stone you can carry with you, which will allow direct contact to your representative.”

  Joya nodded.

  “If at all possible, I would like to meet a representative of each race when I awaken.”

  “The frement and the ooslebed are the only races in your borders who deal in human affairs, so they will be the only ones who will answer such a call. As Guardian, you govern humans and make sure the other races are kept safe; the races don’t answer to you,” he informed her.

  “Why are the dark elves and the frement so entwined in human affairs?” Joya asked.

  “We live among the humans, and so it has been since the forming of the Shadow Realm that we have worked alongside the Guardian in government.”

  Joya nodded. “I will take the rooms now,” she said, not sure she would be able to sleep at all, but hoping that she could at least enjoy the comfort of a bath.

  The cave was cold and dark. High in the Barrier Mountains, the snow swirled outside, wind screaming along the jagged outcroppings of rock. There was little shelter, even inside. His fingers were like ice, and his nose had gone numb hours ago. He was allowed a small fire, only large enough to throw a handful of sage onto when the smoke from the previous bunch grew thin. Not even the pungent caracaff liquor that aided in vision quests was doing much to warm him.

  Maeven had been given a fur-lined jacket with a large hood that was more than enough to keep his midsection warm in the late-night temperatures, but did little for his hands. He cupped them around the tiny fire, hoping for any kind of warmth to return feeling to his extremities, but it didn’t happen.

  He wished the vision would come; then he could leave this place, trek the half hour back down the slopes to the Guardian’s Keep, and warm himself up. Annbell said the cold would help to put him in the required state for the vision to come to him. He rolled his eyes. He had never been asked to do something this extreme in votary training, and that was something he wanted. He was still unsure about this druid business.

  He chugged another mouthful of caracaff liquor, wincing at the burn it trailed down his throat and into his belly.

  Annbell said there weren’t that many druids left in the world, that they were a dying breed. Bards, the keepers of tales and histories; ovates, the herbalists, healers, and prophets. Witch doctors, keepers of the knowledge of nature, observers of the stars, diviners, and wise women, that was who he belonged with now. So stark in contradiction to what he was used to. Why couldn’t he have just been a votary? That made sense. There was order there. With druidry there was too much guesswork.

  When he had brought this up to Annbell she seemed offended, and he guessed she had a right to be. She responded that he needed to trust his gut more, and then there would be no guesswork. Again, he thought that sounded like more uncertainty. If he trusted his gut, he would give all of this up now and head back to Lytoria, the center of his order. He would tell them what had happened, that he lost his way. He would take the year of seclusion, of prayer and meditation, in hopes that at the close of those eight months the High Votary would grant him induction back into his pilgrimage.

  He closed his eyes as the caracaff c
aused the mountains to tip dramatically underneath him.

  Maeven had considered seeking asylum for a while now, and each time something held him back. He was in love with the simple knowledge that Annbell gave him, how her words, however few, could grant such clarity to any situation. He envied her schooled nature, her way of knowing. He wanted to know the things she did; he wanted to know precisely what herb to use that would cure almost any ailment. He longed to know the stories she told, the ways of the past, the keeping of histories.

  When he thought of leaving, something inside him mourned the loss of this hedge witchery, as most votaries would call it. Simple knowledge that spoke more truth to him than any passage out of the Carloso had.

  And it wasn’t like he was giving up on the Goddess; he hadn’t turned his back on her. Quite the opposite. If he had learned only one thing in his time with Annbell, it was that druidry was more closely linked to the Goddess than any votary could hope to understand. In druidry he studied the Goddess herself, not her book. He worshipped as he felt she deemed, not as he was told to worship by a leading votary. Maeven was accountable for his own actions, and worked in accordance with nature, with the Goddess.

  He tossed back more of the caracaff and threw another bundle of sage on the fire.

  Outside, the crunch of snow underfoot alerted him to another presence.

  And great, now I’m going to be food for some creature, he scowled. He hadn’t been allowed to bring any weapons. Weapons could scare away that which came to guide him.

  He waited a few more moments, breath held, wanting to see what it was that lurked outside the entrance of the cave. He peered through the opening, wondering what could be out there. Whatever it was had sounded large, depressing the snow with a crunch that something the weight of a human would produce.

  When nothing showed itself, Maeven relaxed. Whatever it was had probably been scared away.

  Maeven threw another handful of sage on the fire, igniting it higher.