The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3)

by Travis Simmons

  “She is dead!” Grace said. “I lit her pyre myself. Believe me, Sylvie LaFaye is not rising again.”

  “But Pharoh lives on after her death,” Rosalee said.

  “In the form of the medallion!” Grace said.

  “And there was no form that Sylvie had that you didn’t know about?” Dalah asked.

  “No, there was no other form. Besides, Cianna,” again the same silencing air filled her throat when she mentioned Cianna, but Dalah and Rosalee knew who she meant by the formation of her mouth, “was the one who placed Pharoh in that medallion. Sylvie would have had no such entity to do the same for her.”

  “And it could not have been the same child that placed Pharoh in the medallion who placed Sylvie in something else?” Dalah asked.

  “No, I don’t believe it could have been.” Grace said.

  “Why?” Rosalee asked. “How do you know it wasn’t Cianna?”

  “Because I saw her as she grew older. When she was a baby she placed Pharoh in that medallion, though I’m not sure how. She must have had some control over her powers then. As she grew older things happened around her that are without explanation, but it was clear she was not able to do any necromancy of her own accord.” Grace sighed. “It seemed to come to her in times of great emotional stress. For instance, the death of her wolf Altavius. She brought him back, but that was through the catalyst of high emotion.”

  Dalah nodded. “It’s much the same way with sorcery.”

  “Are you sure that Sylvie is not among the dead?” Grace asked.

  “She is dead, for we are able to read of her life. She is not among the dead though. It was like her death was a second birth,” The Norns informed her. “For while she is dead it is almost like she was reborn.”

  “Then who is she?” Grace asked.

  “You see the dilemma now?” The Norn of the present shrugged.

  “Quite,” Grace agreed.

  “This’s doing nothing to help us,” Dalah said. “I find that I’m more confused now than I was before. We have come here to cleanse the Well of Wyrding.”

  “And we wish you luck on this endeavor. We have a wyr to hunt,” the Norn of the present said.

  “And how do you expect to find this wyr if you are not able to sense anything about its wyrd?” Grace asked.

  “We are able to feel them, like with the anakim Porillon brought with her,” the Norn of the present said.

  “You will help us,” the Norn of the present told them. “For we will help you cleanse the Well of Wyrding.”

  “I didn’t think you could,” Grace said. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to help the Norns hunt the wyr, for she was afraid that if it had a close bond to the anakim, it would have something to do with Sylvie’s children. She was also sure that the Norns were not going to throw a welcoming party for the wyr once they found it.

  “We cannot cleanse the Well of Wyrding, but we can help you,” the Norn of the past said. “Follow these roots to their end. There you will find the malaise that eats away at the fate of man.”

  “What is it?” Grace asked.

  “It will be an egrigor,” Dalah said. “That’s what it was last time.”

  “How do we kill it?” Grace asked.

  “We don’t. I do,” Dalah said.

  “How do you kill an egrigor?” Grace asked.

  “There are many ways, I’m just not sure which it will be. More often than not you don’t kill the egrigor, you have to best it in a wyrding competition and then it will do your bidding. It is easier to kill the egrigor, but then you have to create another to place its energy in, and I don’t have that skill.”

  “Come back to us when you are done with that, and we will help you to leave,” the Norn of the present said, but Grace was not sure that they would take that path of fate.

  “So, where are we going?” Uthia asked them a long week after they had left the Grove of the Averanym. She looked back at Jovian from her position in the lead, which she had taken some time ago. Days were all starting to blend together in the fog and monotony of traveling silently, not able to see farther ahead of them than a hand span. “I know we are traveling south-west right now, but where is it that we venture to?”

  “We’re going home,” Joya told Uthia, and thought it was amazing that Uthia knew which direction they were traveling in at all. To Joya it all looked the same, and she had stepped over so many downed trees and pushed aside so many thorn bushes that she imagined they were going in a circle. Her legs burned and she desired nothing more than to sit down, take a deep drink of water, and catch her breath. She was able to get the drink of water, and she drank deep of the water skin, not minding when some of the old water sloshed out of her mouth and down her throat to seep into the neck of her dress. She was hot, despite the fact that they were in the northernmost realm so close to winter. Earlier she felt the prickles of sweat, and she was reminded how much she hated sweat. She pushed a damp lock of hair off her forehead, and matted it in with the other hair in a loose bun.

  “And that might be where, precisely?” The dryad asked, brushing her way gracefully through underbrush. Jovian was wondering if there was any path to be had through the Sacred Forest. He didn’t remember the way to the Mirror of the Moon being this hard traveling, yet here they were constantly fighting their way through thickets, thorn bushes, and just plain clutter. It gave him the impression that Uthia didn’t know where they were going. He wished that she would have just let him lead.

  “We’re from the Holy Realm,” Angelica said, batting aside a branch Uthia let swing back into her face.

  “Ah, so we go through the Shadow Realm?” she asked, striding effortlessly over a fallen tree. She patted it lightly as she passed and whispered some kind of condolence. They hoped that she wasn’t going to make them sprint through the Shadow Realm like she was making them rush through the Realm of Earth.

  Jovian had the sense to not complain too much about their pace, for he had the sinking feeling that they were being followed, and by more than Porillon. That the dalua sorceress was following them was a certainty. By now she would know they had the medallion, and she would be in hot pursuit. No, it wasn’t Porillon that he felt, but instead an anxiety, an uneasy feeling not only in his belly but also in his mind. He wondered if maybe what he felt was the verax-acis, but dismissed the thought. Wherever Beckindal was, it wasn’t close to them, for if he was close he would have been on them.

  He wished there was a way he could tell for certain what was behind them, and that made him think of Maeven.

  Jovian missed Maeven desperately. He missed him for more reasons than his newfound feelings for the man; he missed him for the advantage of knowing a path, knowing the land with that intuition he had. Jovian wanted to know more than anything where Porillon was. Without Maeven he didn’t know if she was weeks behind them, if she would happen out of the fog at their backs, or if she had circled around and was coming straight for them. He guessed it was a plus that they had forest creatures such as Uthia, Tegaris, and the Germinant Gob with them. With any luck Porillon had gotten lost as soon as they had left the path.

  He hadn’t considered that he could have asked Tegaris to scout her out on one of his mysterious nightly excursions. At the moment he couldn’t, however, for the fairy now lay in suspended animation in the muslin pouch around Angelica’s waist. Jovian would have to wait until the light of the moon woke the fairy before making his request.

  As if the thought of light had conjured it, for the first time in Jovian couldn’t remember how long, the sun broke through leaves obscured by fog and glowed off the moisture in the air, making seeing even harder.

  The fog was another problem. Uthia and the Germinant Gob continued to say that fog month was nearly over, but unless it ended abruptly Jovian didn’t see much change in the density of the atmosphere. He thought once in a while upon waking that maybe it was lighter, maybe the fog was not as all-consuming, but by midday all those hopes had fled.

  “Yes, I b
elieve the fastest way home would be through the Shadow Realm,” Joya said around the aversion in her stomach. Thinking of that accursed land conjured images of the people from the Shadow Realm hanging from stakes on their earlier journey. She didn’t want to become a bounty to be hunted. She desperately wanted to get home, to see her father, to settle back into a normal life, even if life couldn’t be normal for her ever again. Thoughts of the Shadow Realm also brought to the front of her mind the dalua that scurried forth to snatch the dying victims from those poles, and she shuddered. There was no doubt they would meet those very same dalua on their travels through the realm.

  “That’s a dangerous place for ones such as you,” Uthia commented.

  “We know,” Angelica said.

  “Very well, that is where we will go then. The Sacred Forest travels right to the edge of the Shadow Realm. I’m under the impression that we would be safer to travel through the remainder of fog month and the density of the trees. This will keep us safer from that which hunts us than being out in the open of the plains would.” This was the first time that Jovian had heard her mention their safety in regards to Porillon, and his ears perked up. “With Gob and I in charge you shall be relatively safe, though we will have to face the dangers from those that have been corrupted by the wyrd. And remember not to speak any unfavorable beings’ names while we are in the forest.”

  It was a good thing that she had said that, for the feeling of being listened to had not bothered them as much lately as it had when they first entered, and they had completely forgotten about the strange conjuring affect the well had on their words.

  The day passed in relative silence, all of them absorbed in their own thoughts, and the effort to conserve what energy speaking would have expended for the harsh terrain which Uthia led them through. If it was to keep them safe, none of them would protest where she took them.

  As the day wore on the ill-will Jovian felt hunting them increased, occasionally raising the small hairs on the back of his neck and his lower back. He shivered despite the heat and the sweat which matted his clothes to his body.

  The night was fast and deep. They slept as if they were dead, for they were so exhausted when Uthia finally called a halt that they barely finished consuming their dinners before passing out. At night Jovian was sure that he could see the barest glimpse of stars through the fog and the lessened canopy of the clearings in which they stayed. This made him hopeful, and he asked Uthia if that was what he was seeing. She confirmed and went to root before them, stretching her arms wide into leafy branches, her feet becoming deep roots into the earth, and her face becoming less distinguished among the bark of her skin.

  Above, Tegaris circled, his job now to keep watch since they had other wyrded beings to lead them through the daylight hours.

  The next day weather conditions did change. They woke to the steady patter of rain falling on the canopy above them. It took an hour of raining before the moisture had accumulated on the leaves enough to drip through the branches and start wetting the travelers. Instantly the smell of the forest greeted them, and Jovian took a deep breath of the wet pines and crushed foliage beneath their feet.

  Uthia wrinkled her nose at the smell, and Jovian laughed, for he could only imagine that what he found so alluring a smell in the forest might be something akin to body odor for the dryad.

  The heat from the previous day eluded them, and while they grew warm it was nothing that couldn’t be remedied by losing a cloak. Jovian went a step further and removed his shirt as well, hoping that maybe the moisture might help to clean some of his smell away.

  Around midday they started seeing signs of life, or at least signs that there had been life in the area at one time. Stone structures that could have been sign posts at one point rose up out of the ground here and there. Eventually Jovian realized these were not sign posts, but instead markers, but for what he was not sure. After a while they broke into a large clearing that could have been a field within the forest. The idea was absolutely stunning, and nearly as beautiful as the reality was. Above they saw a clear image of the stormy sky, the air nearly devoid of the fog, which had been lessened from the rain. Closer to evening, Jovian realized that the stone pillars were a walkway, leading from part of the forest up to a large, circular stone wall.

  Uthia stopped and appraised the stone wall within the large clearing. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and to the west the barest glimpse of blue lightning illuminated the tumultuous clouds. A storm was coming.

  The wall was larger than Uthia was tall, and at nearly eight feet that meant it was very tall. She stood back and looked up at it, one white and black-barked hand going to her ebony lips. She made a calculating sound and snapped her fingers. Instantly the Germinant Gob appeared beside her, and they conferred for some time about the wall.

  Jovian put his shirt back on and removed his backpack to sit beside his sisters on the slope of gently shifting hay. They looked out at the tops of trees. They were on a rather large ridge and could see a lot of the clearing from there. Jovian studied what appeared to be a valley to the north, which cradled at its base a winding river where he could see wildlife dashing about.

  “Okay, we stay here the night,” Uthia said, and led them halfway around the wall, where there was an entrance. The stone embrasures of the door were tangled with vines and wildflowers, which only added to the beauty of the place. Inside they saw that at one point in time this had been a manor of some considerable size, but now it had collapsed and remained little more than framework and doorways with skeletons of stone walls reaching up to the night sky. The rain had washed many of the surfaces and turned the surroundings a gray so dark it was nearly black.

  Straight ahead of them was a large stone platform connected to the house, and from the looks of it, it had been the veranda. This was where Uthia intended to spend the night.

  Fortunately the rain had stopped and they wouldn’t have to worry about getting wet, unless the storm found them, and then who knew. It wouldn’t have been the first time they had spent a miserable night together, and Jovian was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

  They shifted their gear off their shoulders and began setting up camp. Tegaris rustled around a little and finally burst free of the muslin pouch as the last rays of the sun died away. He was still a little sluggish and wouldn’t gain a lot of energy until the moon rose, but Jovian motioned him over nonetheless.

  “Tegaris,” Jovian said as he bent to gather some wood.

  “Not that one, Jovian,” Uthia said, coming to him and slapping the partially living wood out of his hand. “Go for the dead ones.”

  “This one will be dead enough soon,” Jovian said.

  “Yes, but it is not dead yet,” Uthia scoffed. “How would you like it if they lit your pyre below you before you were dead? After all, it would be the same, right? You would be dead soon enough.” Jovian rolled his eyes and dropped the wood. They had been through this several times. Uthia scolded him every time he grabbed a piece of wood that was even close to being alive. Clear up the dead ones first, it will allow that which struggles for life better chances to grow and live. Don’t grab that one, there is still a little life in it yet, I don’t want to listen to the tortured sobs of a fallen comrade all night while you sleep. So it went nearly every night. If he did happen back to camp with one she considered too close to living, it would quickly get tossed aside. This meant that each night Jovian had to gather double the dead wood, for it burned faster.

  This also meant that they lived mostly on rations, which were quickly running out, for Jovian had no time to hunt. That’s if Uthia would even allow hunting. It was a topic that hadn’t arisen yet.

  “What is it, son of the Hairy Woman?” Tegaris asked in his surprisingly deep voice.

  “We are being followed,” he told him.

  “Ah, very perceptive you are,” Tegaris said, coming to rest more fully on Jovian’s shoulder. “I see that not all of your mother’s intelligence was lost on you.” It
was not a compliment, and Jovian didn’t take it that way. Before, he would have thought fairies were the most peaceful and loving of creatures; he was quickly realizing how sarcastic and rude the diminutive creatures were.

  “I was wondering if you knew, or if you could find out where Porillon is,” Jovian came back to camp with his arms full and stacked the wood near the fire. Tegaris was a faint glimmer of light on his shoulder which slowly grew brighter the darker it got and the higher the moon rose. Uthia began rummaging through his pile, tossing aside pieces she found unacceptable.

  “I know not where she is, but I will start scouting at night,” he informed Jovian, and launched himself up into the air to come to rest on an apple tree near the veranda.

  “Jovian, that was five pieces that didn’t pass.” The first night Uthia had said this Jovian thought she was joking. Now he wondered why they had brought the damn tree with them.

  “‘Jovian, that was five pieces that didn’t pass,’” he mocked. “If you are not careful I will chop you up in the middle of the night and use you as fuel, you big-mouthed, overbearing, good-for-nothing bird-holder.” It was childish, he knew, but Jovian was not in the most amiable of moods. Five pieces of wood, as large as they had been, was nearly all of what he had carried back to the camp.

  They traveled fast and hard the next day, though due to the fact that they traveled downhill they were not as tired at the end of their hike as they had been before. All in all, they made good progress. That night they camped by a river, which allowed them to refill their stores of water with a fresh supply, and also to bathe.

  Jovian paid special attention to the scrapes on his shoulders where the backpack had rubbed his skin red and irritated the day before. When he dressed in fresh clothes he felt nearly like a new person.

  That night was the best they had slept in some time, and when the next day dawned it was bright and clear, devoid of fog, though the sky threatened rain.

  “Another two weeks, I would hazard, and we will be out of the Sacred Forest,” Uthia told them, and though they were happy to finally see the end of their travels in the woods, they were not at all looking forward to the threat of the Shadow Realm.