“Grace will never let that happen,” Aaridnay said.
“Oh, but she will not have a choice. Working through such a powerful vessel I can do more than her mind can conceive.”
“I will not let it happen!” Aaridnay demanded louder.
“The only way to stop it is to kill her, Aaridnay,” the voice seethed.
Grace’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “That is what he really wants,” Grace said. “Porillon is behind this I bet. She wanted both sisters and when she could not get both of them she settled for the death of one and the use of another.”
With a sickening feeling in her stomach Angelica knew that Grace was right.
“Then so be it,” Aaridnay concluded. Lightning flashed off the glint of silver as a dagger was extracted from Joya’s belt.
“JOYA!” Angelica yelled and her sister turned.
The rain had knocked strands of hair out of Joya’s bun to run in watery rivulets down her face. The water mingled with obvious tears, and the look in her sister’s eyes broke Angelica’s heart. Joya was deathly afraid of what was happening now, and having been the one it all happened inside of, Joya knew painfully well that Aaridnay and the voice of wisdom wanted her dead.
Joya’s lips quivered as she whispered Angelica’s name, and then a red glow came about her as a snarl of pure hatred twisted her face. Angelica was thrown back as the silvery glint of the knife came down, slicing through Joya’s wrist.
Slowly, as if the world had come to a near halt, Joya’s body began to crumple to the ground, only there was no ground where she was falling. Her body wavered, and then began falling.
“NO!” Angelica screamed holding out her hands as if she expected to halt her sister’s descent from where she knelt on the ground. With the sound of her voice came a searing, splintering pain in her palms. Angelica would have cried out in pain, but the immense amount of wyrd coursing through her slight frame would not allow it. The wyrd had taken over now, and Angelica finally knew what it was like to have been Joya in the clutches of her own wyrd for so long.
Suddenly the thunder stopped as did the lightning, and in a rush the last bit of rain fell before fading to silence. The only sound was the beating of Jovian and Maeven’s boots as they raced up behind Grace and Angelica.
The image in the glowing, pulsing rainbow light from the Ravine of Aaridnay froze them all. Joya hung in mid fall just out from the cliff, her hair and dress frozen in fitful tangles about her body, as if permanently stilled. As they watched, another image appeared and overlaid their companion. The image was that of a willowy blonde, and the longer they watched the stranger the image got. The face snarled and then changed to a hideous mask of pure rage and revenge, revenge that would never be had.
Suddenly the two forces warring over Joya separated from her body: one made of shadows, the other made of light. A violent updraft from the path below flung the two forces apart, and they drifted off into the night as particles of sand drifting in the wind.
“Maeven,” Grace said quietly, staring in amazement and Angelica. “Grab Joya.”
Getting Joya down from her perch was only slightly more difficult than it would have seemed. The difficulty was not in pulling her back onto the cliff edge, for she was only a hair over the edge and had not yet begun to fall. Rather, the trouble was that once Maeven touched her the wyrd holding her in place vanished and her body went limp as it began to descend. Maeven, ever quick to react, flung himself backward to keep from tumbling over the edge, Joya and all.
Once they were all settled back at camp Grace studied Joya’s arm thoroughly and proclaimed that despite what she saw, Joya had not sliced the wrist at all.
“See, she cut into the fatty part above the wrist, and that cut didn’t go very deep.”
From the other side of Joya Jovian held up a canteen. “Do you think she needs any of this?” Jovian asked as he took a healthy swig of the palisum liquor sent with them.
Grace scowled. “That will only serve in thinning the blood, and that we cannot afford.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Jovian said taking another swig. “What happened up there anyway?”
It took about an hour for Angelica to explain it all, and Grace filled in the gaps that Angelica could not remember. It had been an incredibly intense experience and Angelica had been taking in so much at once that she found it hard to conjure the details of everything that had transpired.
“I don’t think she will be coming back for some time,” Grace stated a while after she had finished stitching Joya up.
“What do you mean?” Maeven asked stunned.
“It seems as though the forces that were in conflict over Joya had kept her from her trials. Now that they are gone she has been dragged down into her training—her growth. This could be dangerous. When something odd starts happening to her, do not try to interfere, for it will only make things worse.”
Though they had all experienced Joya’s strange demeanor already, Grace knew it was just the beginning. When a sorcerer finally mastered one element, something resultantly happened to their wyrd. This change in their wyrd, this growth, would inevitably affect the physical space about the new sorcerer. Grace knew that when Joya pushed forward through this growth, her wyrd would not know friend from foe. She would potentially lash out at those that got too near. Though Grace knew this to be a kind of defense mechanism that kept the sorcerer safe while they are away from their physical form, there was no way to explain it to Joya’s siblings amidst the tension. For while Joya was unconscious, she would be unable to defend herself, leaving the wyrd to handle it … which wasn’t easily predictable.
Grace watched Joya’s eyes moving beneath her lids in apparent sleep. Seeing the rest of her group yawning from invaded sleep, Grace smiled. “I think it would be a good idea if we sat tomorrow out in light of what happened tonight. I think we could all use more rest.”
“What about food?” Angelica asked as they all settled down in their bed rolls.
“I am sorry?” Grace queried.
“How will she eat or drink while she is gone?”
“The sorcerer’s body will sustain itself somehow while it is not able to consume physical food.” Grace hunkered down to sleep as well. “Now no more questions; go to sleep all of you.”
The wyrded storm had not just been stopped. Down on the path below the Tall Stranger writhed in pain as his wyrd surged back from the convoluted clouds above. The storm had shattered, and the pieces of his wyrd had floated about before finally finding their way home. It was within his mind that the storm now continued. Having no other outlet to finish the way he had intended, it had fled back to the place that had created it, and there it culminated, searing the part of his mind that granted him access to his wyrd. If he had not been in more pain he would have felt the flare at the base of his skull as the lemniscate that pronounced him a sorcerer drifted from his skin like smoke into the night.
Anger at Joya had now been replaced by fear and worry. Angelica found that sleeping was hard to come by and resting was certainly out of the question.
For most of the night she sat up watching Joya, and when she was not watching Joya her eyes were fixed on the way ahead, afraid that the shadow which had been the presumed voice of wisdom was still lurking out there somewhere, waiting for one of them to succumb to it the way Joya had.
Underlying her concern for Joya was her fear of what this could mean for her. Angelica had never worked anything resembling wyrd before. She knew she wasn’t a sorceress, she didn’t have the markings. She also didn’t know of any wyrder who manifested the pain in their palms, along the stigmata’s.
What am I? she wondered.
No matter how she tried thoughts of what she had done kept cropping up in the strangest places. She wondered if Jovian had something like this happen to him, but Angelica was almost certain he hadn’t.
That night she couldn’t sleep, no matter how she tried. Constant questions fogged her mind, chasing away dreams.
In her mind—convoluted by disturbing thoughts—she swore she could see green eyes glowing softly in the night. The thought brought the image of Jovian, broken legged and infirm in his bed, telling all three of his sisters of the ape-faced hyena creature that had attacked him on the hunting trip.
She shivered as the thought of the Black Shuck stuck in her mind, and though the eyes faded in time, the thought clung to her and soon every shadow she saw resembled some dalua dog from beyond the black gates coming to get her.
With a mere couple hours of rest, the next day did not provide the renewed energy they might have hoped for. All of them, despite their late night, woke earlier than they wished. Unable to sleep any longer, concerns weighed heavier by the light of day preventing any trace of relaxation.
Jovian was puzzled how things that seemed so lax to a sleep-muddled mind were now much more dire, and it was this thought that carried him through the morning routine which now included getting Joya safely aback Daisy and tied to her saddle.
Not only did Joya appear dead, but she was as cold as death also. Jovian shivered and wondered if maybe the wound from last night was not worse than Grace had originally reported.
By evening they were out of the tunnel and some way along the path. Grace reported that within the next day and a half they would be off the Ravine of Aaridnay and headed to the first town in the Realm of Air.
Jovian didn’t know what to expect really. He had never been to the Realm of Air, and had only read a little about it. If he was expecting there to be a difference in the way the Realm of Air felt compared to the Holy Realm, he was soon relieved of this notion. The Realm of Air, depressingly enough, was no different than the Holy Realm, except that the air did smell a bit sweeter. When he mentioned this aloud, Grace pointed down to where he was walking, and the image of sweet grass and clover being crushed below Methos’ hooves chased him back to dismay. No, the Realm of Air was not much different than home.
The first town they came to along the way was a small town, though still a goodly bit bigger than Meedesville in the aspect that it was large enough to have a few blocks and more than one central street. Still, it was considered a small town by Grace’s standards.
Naolyn was so named for the unquenchable oil that was gathered from the plants that grew there. It was said that the mayor Suidious Narban held the monopoly on the plant, and one look at the splendor of the houses informed them that this was most likely true.
Though built atop of a rocky plateau, Naolyn was surrounded by fields of the small pink flower that secreted the oil by night. The town’s prosperity was all owed to the little pink flower. If one did not gather the oil by night, then one worked in the plant where it was refined; and if one did not work in the plant, then one worked in the distribution center where the product was tested and packaged. Almost all jobs held in Naolyn were centered around the oil, and as there was a high demand for the oil, there were always jobs to be had.
Naolyn may have at one time been as small as Meedesville, but it was no longer so.
As they rode Voyager’s Pass into town, they listened to Grace explain the economics of Naolyn oil, and the fiscal flow within the village. Largely this bored them to no end, and Jovian was more than happy to place his attention on the splendor of a place that harvested such a mysterious product as this unquenchable oil.
It was as Jovian would have expected from the town: tall iron lamps, similar to those in the Ravine of Aaridnay, encircled the town perimeters, the insubstantial flames of the unquenchable fire fluttering in the day’s brisk wind. From below each of the lamps snapped pinions in various colors depicting the family crests that had founded Naolyn and those that still called it home, now rich off their discovery.
The houses were all magnificently built of wood, still a rare substance even in the Realm of Air, as one of the only forests they called their own was the Floating Forest, whom none would harvest wood from. Above each door was not only carved a family crest or coat of arms, but also an iron lamp that burned the same fire as the torches around the town.
In the center of town, instead of a court or park as was generally the norm, sat the mayor’s house, itself grander than any of the houses around. When asked if they were going to meet the mayor, Grace laughed and replied with a quick no; when questioned why, she offered no answer. As was normal for Angelica, when she did not get an answer to a question (no matter how insignificant it was) she would devise a way to find out what she wanted to know.
It was in a tavern named Jack-in-the-Green that they found themselves staying in that night. The rooms they were shown to seemed far more lavish than their meager pay could have afforded. It was a series of apartments more than rooms that they found themselves in, and this time they didn’t even have to share a room. That in itself had become unfamiliar to them after their travels, having a bed all alone, with no one to contend with at night.
It was that night in the common room between their suits that Angelica got the answer she was looking for. After nice hot baths had been procured, they all lounged in comfortable chairs gathered around a food-laden table in sleeping robes, Angelica’s hair still damp from the bath.
“Oh alright, if you must know,” Grace said finally, giving in with a clatter of her discarded fork on her plate. “I called his wife an insufferable cow.”
The shock on Angelica’s face was mirrored by those around her, except Joya who sat lethargic and by all accounts dead in a chair near the corner.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But why?” Maeven asked.
“Because it is true; needless to say, not everyone we meet is going to be fond of me.”
“That wasn’t very tactful, Grace,” Angelica scolded as Jovian chuckled around a forkful of food.
“I know, but tact is lost on stupid people, my dears. Remember that.”
And that was the way dinner passed. Before long they were all yawning widely, content with nourishment and thoughts of suitable beds.
“Is there something on your mind?” Grace asked Angelica as she lingered in the common room of the suite long after the men found their beds. Angelica was silent for some time, her thumbnail busily picking at a stain in her linen.
“What is wrong with me, Grace?” Angelica asked.
With a sigh Grace rubbed her weary eyes and looked straight into Angelica’s worried ones. “There is nothing wrong with you, dear. It is not abnormal that you possess wyrd; just look at who your ancestors were,” Grace reasoned, her voice sounding as tired as she felt.
“I know all that, Grace. I understand that I am a LaFaye, even if I can’t bring myself to completely believe it yet.” Angelica’s frustration was apparent in her voice. “What I want to know is what am I? What, if anything, is Jovian? I have gone through all the lists of wyrders, Grace, and I can’t think of anyone except a sorcerer that can do what I did, but I am not marked.”
Grace merely stared at Angelica as she heard the words that so mirrored her own thoughts.
“Even not being marked as a sorceress, Angie, you worked a type of wyrd that completely negated his wyrded storm, if wyrded it truly was. That is something no wyrder can do; not even a sorcerer, no matter how powerful, can get rid of a spell another has fashioned. No wyrder can destroy what another has created. None.”
The use of Angelica’s nickname did nothing to calm her as Grace had hoped because Grace had told her the one thing she had been dreading: Grace didn’t know what was happening and therefore no help would come from the crone’s way.
Angelica stared at the bleached circle in her palms for a while and then spoke. “You have to be wrong,” she said simply. “I am sure others have done what I did but it was not recorded.”
But Grace knew she was not mistaken. She smiled encouragingly though, to calm Angelica’s nerves and bid her goodnight.
As Grace lay in bed that night sleep was hard to come by. She could not help but think Angelica and maybe even Jovian were some kind of new wyrder
the world had never seen the likes of.
The implications terrified Grace.
There was no doubt the two of them were destined to be powerful, for there was not a single person in their family so far that had not turned out to be so. But if they were to be this powerful, how would they use the power they were entrusted? Grace could only hope she had instilled the right values in them. She knew what she had taught them, but she also knew the children, and their parents. Grace could only hope they weren’t as stubborn as their forebears.
This would mean she would have to watch Jovian. With a sardonic smile at his pigheaded nature, Grace finally fell asleep.
In Angelica’s room rest was a thought that didn’t occur. Instead she sat on her dark-blue draped bed, and flipped through the book Philosophy gifted to her on her birthday.
But no matter how hard she tried, or how deep she dug, Angelica didn’t even find an obscure reference to what she had done. So it was with nerves no more calmed than they were before that Angelica forced herself to turn out the lamp and lie down. She lay wide awake for several hours staring at the ceiling. The next morning, the sun streaming down on Jack-in-the-Green and burning off the heavy fog that had found them late that night, Angelica woke to her blue room painted in honeyed light, surprised that she had slept at all.
Morning came sooner than any of them had been dreading and before the sleep had completely cleared from their eyes they were saddling their horses and preparing for another.
Before long Naolyn existed in their memories as they wound their way through the twisting cobbled streets, the hooves of their horses clattering on the stone. In an hour they were meandering their way down from the plateau and back to the reality of their nomadic lives.
The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) Page 12