On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5)

by Travis Simmons

  “And here we thought our woodland sisters were prudes when it came to the more mysterious arts of the dryad.”

  Before Uthia could answer, they had rounded another bend, and stood facing a clearing. Against a large slab of rock, standing straight up out of the ground, a centaur was tied, his arms behind him, his side pressed against the stone where thick strands of vines held him in place.

  He was young. Uthia could smell his fear in the air. She could almost feel it whispering to her in a maddening sort of way. When his wild eyes locked on hers, she had to look away from the pleading she read in them.

  Her eyes landed on a fire roaring in the center of the clearing, casting honeyed light on the centaur and the ebonwood dryads who stood too close to it. Uthia shivered. She would rather her sap freeze solid in the winter than stand so close to a fire. She remembered her aversion to Jovian using live wood in their fires, wood that hadn’t completely died in the forest. She could hear the screams of the wood as it took light. It was something she expected from a human, and though it saddened her when Jovian had burned wood that still had life in it, it made her near-crazy to think her darkwood sisters would go out into the forest and bring back living wood for their bonfires. To the darkwood dryads, any tree that couldn’t walk and talk was little better than the victims they blooded each night.

  Her attention was drawn away from the fire only when Uthia noticed that Pushta was no longer beside her. The ebonwood dryad was sauntering through the crowd, and it parted before her like a black sea before a boat. When she neared the centaur, she slapped his rump, and when he jumped she laughed. The centaur turned wild eyes on the dryad. Uthia imagined he was already too far gone with fear of what would become of him to be saved. She kept her head up as though she was watching, but averted her eyes.

  “This centaur has injured one of our sisters!” Pushta intoned, and the throng of darkwood dryads went silent. “Plucking fruit from her branches after she had gone to root! Daselbag is blind now, thanks to his attack.”

  Uthia realized there was no such thing as a mistake when it came to the darkwood dryads. Each night there was a different victim tied to the stone, and each night their blades ran red with blood. Uthia’s eyes fell to the bottom of the rock, which was stained with years of blood from the dryad’s nightly rituals.

  “What should we do with him, sisters?” Pushta asked, holding her hand out to the centaur as if she were exhibiting a prize.

  “Death! Death! Death!” The chant started quietly, and then grew in strength until it nearly blotted out the drum beats.

  “Just as I thought,” Pushta said, and then smiled. “Sister of the north, would you do the honors tonight?”

  “No,” Uthia answered. The clearing went silent. “My blade,” Uthia said, trying to think quickly so her words didn’t offend the sisters she sought aid from. “It is not a leechblade, it will gain nothing from his blood.”

  “Ah,” Pushta said. “How soon I forget. Very well.”

  Pushta held her right arm down to her side, the fingers pointed like an arrowhead. Uthia observed the transformation, how Pushta’s arm lengthened and shaped into a blade. The sword popped out of her arm, and her ebonwood fingers closed around it. Uthia knew the feeling well, that moment when her wooden sword was fast in her hands, like a child born of her arm. Then a transformation Uthia wasn’t familiar with came over Pushta’s wooden sword. Fine hairs, like silken threads, grew from the blade’s edge, shivering in the drum beats.

  A reverent silence fell over the clearing. Pushta stepped forward. Now that the dryads were silent and the drumming had stopped, Uthia could hear the crackling of the fire, the moans of the living wood burning to death. She could hear the centaur grunt, trying to be free of the corded vines that held him to the blood slab of stone.

  As Pushta lay her sword across his haunches, he grunted louder, and the vines moaned under his flailing.

  Uthia looked to her feet once more. She wanted badly to help this centaur, but she couldn’t. She knew if she tried, it wouldn’t end well for her. Uthia knew they wouldn’t attack her, because all dryad swords reacted to cutting wood the same way: by harming the attacking dryad. But there were other things they could do to her. Her eyes found the fire again, and she shivered. Again she felt like a prisoner, even though she was free to go whenever she wished.

  “Do you feel that, centaur?” Pushta asked, stroking her hand down his sides as if trying to soothe a horse. The gesture was almost loving, but Uthia knew that to a creature far more intelligent than a mount, it was mocking. “My blade yearns for your blood. You harmed one of my sisters, gaining strength from the fruit of her flesh. Now we will gain strength from you.”

  Pushta didn’t kill the centaur; there were many more dryads that needed to feed. She took the blade and slid it into his flesh, aiming to maim, instead. She closed her eyes in ecstasy.

  Uthia glanced up as the centaur screamed. Pushta moaned. Where blood should have been spilling across the earth, instead the blade turned red. Slight veins within the ebonwood pulsed, drawing in the blood through the little hairs that were now spines, buried deep in the creature’s flesh, sucking his blood along its length. The veins throbbed with the intake of blood, coursing up the length of the sword and into Pushta’s arm.

  “Such flavor,” she cooed.

  Uthia wanted to be sick. She looked down at her feet. She didn’t hear the sword pull free from the centaur, but Uthia did hear the blades popping out of the arms of the darkwood tribe, waiting for their turn when their leader was done.

  And then they were on the centaur, its wails carrying up to the moonless sky. With a laugh, Pushta stumbled up to Uthia, lurching into her as though she was drunk. She wrapped her arms around the woodland dryad, pulling her into a dance under a wash of sunflowers.

  “Sister, you really should try it sometime!” Pushta crowed. She looked up to Uthia with eyes gone pink with blood.

  Uthia’s lips pulled into a tight smile. Pushta stepped back, inhaled a deep breath, and her sword grew backwards into her arm. “And be at rest,” Pushta said. “We never planned on aiding your realm, until this afternoon when our new Guardian contacted us.”

  Uthia had long figured she was wasting her time with them, but hadn’t been certain until that moment. “And you do her bidding?”

  “Certainly,” Pushta nodded. “We may seem heathens to you, but we have the utmost respect for our Guardian.” Pushta’s mouth grew into a coy smile. “And she promised us all the troll and dwarf blood our leechblades could drink”

  As if to punctuate her words, the centaur let out one final cry. Uthia looked in his direction, barely able to see him past the throngs of dryads. His neck arched and then lost all strength, collapsing. The vines cried under his dead weight.

  Pushta hooted a call, raising her hands high above her head. The darkwood sisters stepped back, stumbling. Most of them eased themselves down to the ground, drunk on the power of the blood. Others danced with one another, whirling about in a frantic, chaotic fashion.

  Uthia shivered.

  “Bloodlust again, sister?” Pushta mocked. She knew well that Uthia didn’t approve of their customs.

  “When do we head out?” Uthia asked.

  “Tomorrow. We are to meet the ooslebed and the frement, and together travel north. You should go to root, get your rest.”

  Uthia nodded. She turned from Pushta and made her way back to the field of Averanym. They were the only thing about this forsaken land that felt like home.

  As she walked, she thought of the various creatures she had seen slain by the dryad’s leechblades since she came here, and Uthia vowed that if they continued the practice in the Realm of Earth, she would see them all dead.

  “What’s this?” Sara asked, accepting the cooling cup of pale tea from Rosalee.

  “Tea of lady’s toe. It will help flush the remnants of the stone from your system,” Rosalee told her. She gathered her wispy green dress around her and sat back down. Picking up a
glass of snow water, she took a tentative sip. “I think I might go to drinking melted snow; much more refreshing than regular water,” she commented.

  “Just don’t drink the yellow snow,” Dalah said. Grace snickered. Rosalee looked bewildered.

  “Do we have enough of these herbs to go around?” Sara asked, leaning back in her wheelchair behind her desk. The window behind her framed mountain passes and dips and valleys that they hadn’t seen out there before the avalanche.

  Rosalee shrugged. “I just started making the tea; I would have to check with your healer.”

  “Alright, I’m putting you and Grace in charge of getting our wyrders back on their feet. Let me know what you need, and we will see if we can make it happen,” Sara said.

  Rosalee nodded. “Just make sure any wyrders who aren’t currently sick don’t use their wyrd until the herb has run its course.”

  “How will we know when we can use our wyrd?” Mag asked.

  “You’ll stop peeing,” Rosalee said. “When you drink tea of lady’s toe, it will cause your body to produce urine until all of the illness or foreign debris is out of your body. In this case, just don’t use your wyrd until you return to normal. Also, drink plenty of water to help that out.”

  Sara nodded. “Mag, what about the battlements and our soldiers?”

  “All but two battalions are dug out, and we’re getting them in place and armed. However, I don’t think we’ll be able to get soldiers out to face them in time — the dwarves and their armies are too close for us to get out of the gates without potentially letting them in.”

  “So we stick to the battlements,” Sara said. “What’s the damage report to the keep?”

  “The keep holds firm,” Joya said. “Caldamron did a survey today. Broken windows, mostly, some exterior damage, but the foundation holds.”

  “Good,” Sara nodded. “Getting our wyrders better is paramount.”

  Rosalee nodded.

  “With the stone flushed out of our systems, and us drinking clean water, we should be able to use our powers once more,” Sara continued. “Joya, were you able to contact your realm?”

  “Yes. I’m bringing dryads, frement, and dark elves. Armed with machines, and the lesser hell hound, I think we can strike fear into their hearts,” Joya said.

  “Great. Fear is often a better weapon than steel. We will unbalance our enemy, make them nervous, throw them off, and then strike.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like me to do for now?” Joya asked. “I have no further orders.”

  “One doesn’t order around a Realm Guardian,” Sara said, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips.

  Joya bowed her head in understanding. “Be that as it may, I’m not used to sitting around and waiting. What would you have me do?”

  “Sit tight and wait until your people arrive.” Sara laughed. “We need to keep you in one piece. Mag is seeing to the soldiers outside, and Annbell is in the infirmary. Take this time to rest with your brother and sister. In a short amount of time, there will be plenty for you to do.”

  She would not be sitting around. Joya LaFaye wasn’t the kind to sit back and wait for things to come to her. At least not any longer. Joya lifted her cup to her mouth and drained it. No time like the present to get to work on cleansing her system.

  Angelica sat on the toilet, the tea of lady’s toe working overtime on her system. Rosalee said that the blood thinner would help to work the flecks of stone through her blood system, and then she would be able to pass them. She didn’t tell her that she would have to sit on the toilet nearly non-stop until that happened.

  Dehydration being a real threat, Angelica tossed back the last dregs of water, and finished up.

  The shadow was a constant companion now, with her at all times, feeling her, wondering what she was. At times its curiosity was almost an audible question.

  She dipped her hands in the basin and sluiced clean water over her face. The bandage had been able to come off, but there was still a large lump on the side of her head, and it was tender to touch.

  Since the shared dream of Baba Yaga’s mountain sister, Angelica had felt the pull of the Turquoise Tower stronger than ever before. It was a looming presence in her mind now, a monument of fear and destiny drawing her forth, beckoning her to come and see what was happening there, to get her wings and join with the host. To be a force against the darkness.

  But there was another fear. To be one of the host. That sounded a lot like she was going to lose her identity, and just be a nameless face in some war of good against evil.

  Angelica let the water drip off her face and checked her reflection in the mirror. The weak light of a small lamp beside the basin flickered in the mirror, casting shadows across the surface and distorting her reflection.

  As she was lulled, the light of the lamp flickered again, and in the darkness of the mirror Angelica thought she could see the terrible transformative tower looming up, calling to her and pulling her angelic blood forth to its foreboding steps.

  A shadow skirted across the surface of the mirror, and Angelica’s focus was broken. The moment she concentrated on the shifting shadow of Wyrders’ Bane in the mirror, the call in her blood vanished.

  It was strange how she could look at the shifting figure of the egrigor in the mirror, yet she wasn’t able to see it straight on if she looked.

  There wasn’t much she could see about the shadow, other than it honestly looked like the shadow of a person. There were no eyes, no defining lines, just the shape of a small human with an elongated head and willowy arms that it held crooked, like some earth-dwelling race about to pounce on its prey.

  “What are you?” Angelica asked the egrigor. She was tired. Her lids drooped lethargically over her eyes, but she didn’t dare leave the bathroom.

  What are you? she heard in her mind. She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Could the stone communicate? Surely no one else had mentioned that. Maybe this was some side effect of the herb.

  Angelica gathered her dressing gown around her waist and sank back down to the toilet.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, closing her eyes. When there was nothing to focus on visually, she was able to feel with her other senses, and that meant the feeling of Wyrders’ Bane in her head.

  What are you? It asked again.

  “And we can’t use wyrd against you,” Angelica said ignoring the ghostly question in her mind. “So there’s no way to beat you.” She was talking more to herself than she was the egrigor. Still she felt the desire of the egrigor to know what she was.

  “Why is it important to know what I am?” Angelica asked.

  The egrigor vanished.

  “How is she doing?” Cianna asked, placing a hand on Pi’s shoulder.

  Pi sat holding on to Clara’s hand, watching the girl’s face. Clara was ashen, dead looking. Her yellow hair was lank and lacked any true luster. She had been in her trials for a long time now, and there was an even longer time between her last trial and now. Cianna didn’t want to voice that maybe something had happened to her in the trials, and that she had died. Flora insisted that kind of thing didn’t happen, that sometimes a sorcerer took longer with one trial than they did with another, but they all eventually passed them. But things were different now. There was Wyrders’ Bane.

  “I saw her eyes move this morning,” Pi said.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Cianna asked, surveying her friend’s waxy complexion and the dark circles under her eyes.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Clara will be done soon, then I can sleep.”

  “Why don’t you take some time now and rest. I’ll sit with her. It’s not like she’s going anywhere, right?” Cianna asked.

  “But—” Pi started to argue.

  “I insist,” Cianna said, firm resolve in her voice. “There’s a cot right here beside us, and if anything changes I’ll wake you immediately.” Pi looked like she was about to argue further. “Now, what if she wakes up?
What then? You without any sleep and not able to take joy in her passing her trials? It’s better to rest now, so you can be fresh when she wakes up. Goddess knows if I woke up and saw my lover looking like you look, I’d think they were a corpse.”

  “Do I look that bad?” Pi winced.

  “Oh, Pi, I was sugar-coating it. You look like shit.”

  Pi snickered. “I guess you’re right.” She shifted off the side of the cot and slumped down in the one Cianna pointed to directly beside them. “How are the other wyrders doing?” Pi asked, covering up with a military-issue navy-blue wool blanket.

  Cianna’s gaze inevitably fell on Rosalee and Grace, dressed in their white healer’s aprons, administering their concoctions. “Good. We think we have a way of getting them better.”

  “I was supposed to be out there,” Pi whispered. “Devenstar was.”

  Cianna’s eyes snapped up to the other girl, but she schooled her features, not letting Pi know her worry for Devenstar. “Is he okay?”

  “If you can consider what these people are going through as okay, then yeah,” Pi said, and then yawned hugely.

  “Get some rest,” Cianna told her, but the command was largely unneeded since Pi had drifted off nearly before she could finish closing her mouth.

  Cianna looked around the infirmary for Devenstar, but since they had to convert the basement of the keep into a makeshift hospital ward, the cots stretched on so far that most of them were lost in the shadows from where she was. Even the majority of what she could see were shapeless lumps of blue wool blankets.

  She thought of going to look for him, but she couldn’t leave Clara, not after having promised Pi that she would stay with her. And, after all, Clara was more important to Devenstar than his own health, since she was his sister. Cianna figured the best thing she could do for both Pi and Devenstar was to sit here and wait for Clara to wake up.

  But Cianna couldn’t quell her worries that Clara might never wake up. She had fallen a long way, and she had been amongst the kelpies. What if they had done something to her? She inwardly scoffed at herself. Clara had been fine after that, she’d even passed some of her trials. If Flora wasn’t worried, then Cianna shouldn’t be worried either. She put the thought from her mind.