The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  EPILOGUE

  What Now?

  Sneak Peak of A Plague of Shadows

  About Travis

  Copyright © October, 2014 by Travis Simmons

  The Revenant Wyrd Saga Book Six:

  The Turquoise Tower

  Published by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Cover Design by: Najla Qamber Designs

  Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Editing by: Word Vagabond

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Steuben rushed into the house, worry etched in every line of his dark face. “Mr. Daydren, you need to come look at this,” he said, holding the door of the plantation house open with one leg.

  “What is it now?” Garrett Daydren mumbled, following the young man out of the house and down the knoll to the sun-bathed pastures beyond.

  “Maple just finished birthing, and . . . you just have to see this.” The younger man vaulted the wooden fence and dashed some hundred yards to where Garrett could barely see the white lump of the goat, lying on her side in the swaying hay.

  Being older than Steuben, Garrett wasn’t able to jump over the fence as Steuben had, so he climbed over, groaning against the pain it caused his hips. Why couldn’t he have used the gate? Garrett frowned.

  “What is this about?” Garrett asked. Just last week they had a problem with all of the milk from their cows coming out of the udders rancid. He was still waiting for that to stop. In all of his time working the family farm, he had never known anything like that to happen.

  He huffed his way to the goat and followed Steuben’s stare to the twisted form on the ground. At first all he saw was a stillborn baby goat lying in the hay, covered in blood and mucus.

  “Dear Goddess,” Garrett whispered, hand going to his mouth. His eyes couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. Or rather, his mind couldn’t fully comprehend it. Not one gray head and pink nose, but two. The baby goat had an extra neck, and an extra head. The second one looked oddly human, with a shorter snout, smaller, lidless eyes, and a wicked human grin on its lips. The skin around the skull was shrunken down, tight to the bone, giving it a withered, rotten appearance.

  He couldn’t help it — he’d never thought of himself as a weak man, but in that moment Garrett averted his eyes. Only then did he see that the baby didn’t have a lower half like most goats. Its midsection gave way to scarlet red scales, which were nearly lost in the blood oozing from its mother. He squinted, crouching down to see the thing closer; he couldn’t think of this malformed being as a baby goat.

  “Is it being eaten?” Garrett asked. Reuben couldn’t answer and instead shook his head. Likely Garrett wouldn’t have believed the other man if he had told him. With the tip of his boot he moved the baby goat. The corpse slopped to the side, boneless. But no, it wasn’t being eaten by a snake, it was part snake. “How in the Realms does this happen?” he wondered, taking an involuntary step back.

  He’d seen enough. He turned away from the dead form of Maple and her misshapen, stillborn baby.

  What was happening to his farm?

  “Any news from the Grant Farm or Siclen Plantation, about whether they’re having any issues?” Steuben asked.

  Garrett shook his head. “I haven’t gotten word back yet.” With the debacle of spoiled milk coming from the cows, Garrett had thought it might be something in the soil, or maybe a sickness the cows were catching. He had written his nearest farming neighbors, but hadn’t heard back yet what was going on.

  But before he could think further on what to do, or what might even be happening, a scream split the still morning, shivering across his skin. It was coming from the barn.

  “Strange things are happening in the mountains just west of here,” Steuben told him, as they rushed for the barn. “And it’s getting worse here.”

  “Steu, there’s nothing west of here but the Barrier Mountains,” Garrett scowled. His farm was on the western-most reaches of the Realm of Water. Beyond his lands were nothing but treacherous mountains. To think anything could be within them other than animals was absurd.

  Together they entered the cool darkness of the barn.

  “No, in the mountains,” Steuben said, leading him down a hall to where they’d heard the scream come from. There was all kinds of commotion now, buckets slamming, raised voices, and panicked farm hands. Garrett was nearly knocked over as one young woman brushed past him, her face an unreadable mask of horror, her fist clamped over her mouth.

  Garrett frowned. If Steuben had mentioned the rumors of what was happening in the mountains to him just a week ago, he would have scoffed. But he’d never known milk to go rancid in a cow’s udders, nor what he’d just witnessed with the baby goat. Now he was susceptible to believe any bit of heathen rumor.

  The Turquoise Tower, Garrett thought. That’s what Steuben was speaking of. Everyone was talking about it now, as if it were something that actually existed. He didn’t believe it for a minute.

  He pushed through the gathered farm hands to where they congregated around one cow, Margie, lying on her side, breathing labored. Garrett let out a moan. This was his late wife’s favorite cow. On shaky legs he neared the cow. Someone had tipped over the wooden bucket of milk in their haste to be away from the scene, spilling the foul milk over the ground. It ran in white clumps in a way he hadn’t seen before now. There hadn’t been lumps of rotten milk in the udders before.

  And what’s that? He thought, kneeling beside the cow to inspect one of her tits. Is that a worm? Sure enough, wriggling out of Margie’s tit was a thin, white worm. As he inspected the udder he could see that it was moving, roiling underneath as if it was full of the worms.

  He looked at the milk and realized now that it was rife with worms, slithering around the floor, seeking purchase in the cow once more. Margie turned a large black eye up to Garrett, begging him to help her, save her from the pain and horror inside of her own body.

  “Steuben, go get my axe,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on Margie.

  As Steuben turned to leave, the udder shuddered and split down the center, spilling milk, blood, and thousands of the white worms out onto the hard dirt floor. Garrett jumped away from Margie’s flaili
ng feet as her pain-filled mewling swelled through the air.

  The farmhands backed away from the mass of worms spilling over the ground, slithering toward all of them.

  “Don’t let them touch you!” Ray, one of the older farmhands declared. Garrett frowned, but figured that was sound advice.

  The barn broke into panic, and Garrett was knocked into a wall as farmhands and servants alike rushed from the milking room. He knocked his head against the wall and staggered forward, slipping on curdled milk and landing on Margie, who had now fallen still, dead.

  He could feel the worms on him, slipping up his pant leg, and burrowing into his flesh like tongues of fire. Garret could feel the teeth of the worms — and he hadn’t even known they had teeth, but he could feel the bites as they ate tunnels into his flesh and slipped into his bloodstream.

  Up his body they went, and he could feel them, somehow, swimming through his blood, up his legs, through his stomach, into his heart, where they were pumped back out in a rush of blood.

  When the first worm reached his brain, Garrett knew the blackness of death.

  Steuben watched everyone fleeing the barn; he didn’t know what was happening. He raced back in with his master’s axe, ready to stand by his side while he ended Margie’s life, even if all of those cowards had fled. But what he saw when he stepped into the room was something he wasn’t prepared to handle.

  Garrett lay on the cow, his clothes soaked with blood and pungent milk. At first he didn’t think there was anything wrong. Garrett had been attached to the cow since Ruby had died last year. It had been her favorite cow. Most likely Garrett was just overcome with emotion, knowing what he had to do, knowing that he had to kill the cow.

  But then he saw more blood, thick like syrup and so red it was almost black, ooze out from under his master’s body, mingling with the milk, turning it pink save for the curdles, which looked now like white stones in a sea of blood.

  “Garrett?” Steuben said, stepping forward hesitantly.

  Garrett rose up and turned toward Steuben. He took one labored step toward his farm manager and reached for him. Steuben held up the axe, handing it to his master, not seeing the emptiness on Garrett’s face, or the blood gushing out of his mouth as the master of the plantation gnawed on something.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Steuben told him, his eyes locked on the dead gaze of Margie. “I’ll stay here with you while you do it.”

  But firm hands on his shoulders made Steuben look up. By the time he realized that something else had come over his master, it was too late to run. Maggots and white worms writhed in Garrett’s mouth, burrowing into the lump of flesh therein.

  Steuben opened his mouth to scream, but Garrett buried his stinking maw in Steuben’s neck before he could make so much as a sound.

  Steuben fell, and Garrett tumbled along with him, never breaking his mouth from Steuben’s neck. As the light slipped from Steuben’s eyes, worms slid out of Garrett’s chomping mouth and into the open wound.

  Hours later the dark-skinned Steuben and the gray-bearded Garrett shambled out of the barn. In their wake, trailing corded lengths of intestine after her, slumped Margie. They made their way north-east, into the mountains.

  Inside their brains the worms were fast at work, taking over their hosts with the need to find the Neferis.

  Angelica watched as Shelara’s blue skin bloomed with a green iridescence. She thought the blush came and went as the dark elf’s mood dictated, but she wasn’t sure if that was true or not. If Angelica’s skin blushed in time with her emotions, she imagined she would be mostly green, and very little blue.

  She was a strange blend of emotions right then, all of which added up to nausea. The trip ahead of them was the last leg of their journey. Angelica felt it with a certainty in her bones. At the end of this road, they would find their sister, Amber. So why was she nervous?

  Her eyes followed the path to the west, through the snow-laden Barrier Mountains, which Annbell told them was the quickest route for them to take. At the end of that path was the darkness Azra had spoken about to the Realm Guardians.

  And they all knew who that darkness was. If they’d been smart, they would have read the foretelling of the nymphs back so long ago, when they thought it was a simple seek-and-find.

  Arael lives.

  That’s what the dead nymphs had been trying to tell the group.

  The Beast, Angelica thought. She shivered, her blood running cold. She checked the lapis shin-buto on her back, to make sure she could draw the sword quickly if needed. They were still gathered with the group, saying their farewells, so attack was unlikely, but it was always good to be prepared.

  In the plains down below, the frement war machines were heading out in a clatter of mechanics and hissing of steam. What was left of the darkwood dryads followed them. Angelica looked to her side, at the gun she had been gifted by the cat people from the Realm of Shadow known as the frement. She had used a crossbow before, and wondered if it was the same. Caldamron told them he would teach them all how to use the weapon, but that they were best for long-range fighting since they had to be loaded after each firing.

  Grace walked up to her, breaking her train of thought. Without saying a word, Angelica bent and hugged the old lady to herself. Silent tears streaked down her face. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt it would be the last time she hugged Grace. It was a sense of knowing, like Angelica got in her visions.

  I can’t bear to lose her too, Angelica thought, pulling the crone tighter.

  “Easy now, you’ll break me,” Grace whispered into her ear. Her frail shoulders bounced with a chuckle.

  “Be careful,” Angelica said, reluctantly releasing her old tutor. She dashed her tears away. Grace cupped Angelica’s face in her waxy, wrinkled hands.

  “We face fallen angels, Angelica, we must all be careful. This isn’t a walk in the park, but I’ll do what I can to return safely to you.” Grace smiled at Angelica, and her watery blue eyes looked up to her. “Now, you guys remember?” Grace stepped back and addressed Angelica and her group. “When you’re done, return to the keep. We will meet here once more, and celebrate our victory.”

  Grace sounded so sure of herself that it was hard not to believe they would be victorious.

  They all nodded.

  Angelica looked around at all of the people she’d come to know as friends. Devenstar stepped away from Cianna. His eyes were red, but he wasn’t crying. Clara, just freshly wakened from her elemental trials, stood beside Pi, holding her tight, biting her lip and refusing to look at Angelica’s group.

  Angelica had to look away; she couldn’t face all of these people she might never see again. She’d rather remember them as happy, as they were when they defeated the legion of chaos dwarves, not as they were now, mournful at another parting. Possibly the last, for some of them.

  “Now, if we’re going to do this, it has to be now,” Sara said, stepping up beside Grace, barely leaning on her cane any longer. Angelica wasn’t sure if the dark-haired Realm Guardian was using wyrd on her withered muscles, or if she’d already healed. “Be safe, and Goddess speed.”

  Angelica nodded and fell into step behind Jovian as her group separated from those who were staying behind. Ahead, Joya and Cianna were chatting amongst themselves, but Angelica couldn’t hear what they were saying. Not that she wanted to, not with the emotions running through her body.

  Shelara had her thin blade in hand, scanning the road ahead and to either side of their path, which had been cleared recently for their departure. Once they were high enough in the mountains, Sara told them they would find routes kept open by the giants.

  Jovian and Maeven walked hand in hand in front of her, and behind her Caldamron brought up the rear, his gun held loosely at his side. While she still could, Angelica looked behind her just in time to see Grace vanish from sight around a corner, and down the path to the keep. From there, her group had their own mission: to travel to the Ivory City and help Alad
estra with the recent attacks.

  As Grace passed out of sight, Angelica felt the last true connection she had to her old life vanish with her. Now it was just them. They were adults, and they had to make their own decisions. There wasn’t anyone there to guide them, no one helping them or even giving vague instructions. This was up to them. In this Grace knew as much as they did. Their old teacher could no more help them defeat Arael than she could breathe water.

  It was a loneliness Angelica hadn’t thought she could feel. With her family completely destroyed, save the brother and the sister she traveled with now, and the mother that resided in her body, no one was left.

  Angelica sighed and turned back to the path.

  An hour later, swathed in their warm clothes and their wyrded cloaks, the group found the first of the trails kept open by giants. They stopped and rested, looking out to the south. The sun bathed the plains below them in a river of honey, shining majestically off the snow-covered reaches of the Realm of Earth.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Caldamron asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Angelica said, brushing her blonde hair behind her ear.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of wonders in your travels,” the cat-man said, passing a canteen of water to Angelica. She took a swig, swished it around in her dry mouth, and then swallowed several more mouthfuls.

  “But never anything as natural as this. The wonders I’ve seen were man-made. This was Goddess-made.” Angelica looked up at the black furred cat-man.

  Caldamron laughed, a deep rumbling bass, and nodded his head in understanding.

  “I never thought I would see the sun at all, let alone this glory,” he told her. “Look, if you peer hard enough, you can almost see the dark border of my homeland.”

  Angelica tried to see the border of the Shadow Realm, the land her sister Joya now ruled, but she couldn’t make it out. His eyesight had to be better than hers. Or maybe he was just hoping he could see his home, something that was familiar in this unfamiliar land. Angelica nodded anyway, as if she could see it as well.