The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) Read online

  “I am not sure,” Maeven crouched beside him. “Let me see.” Maeven ran his fingers through the substance. He rubbed his fingers together, sniffed them, then licked the substance. Making a strange face he spat it back on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Jovian asked. “You’ve no idea what that is or how long it’s been here, not to mention how it got here.”

  “Yes I do. This is oil once used in basilicas across the Great Realms. It is completely harmless as it was made from non-toxic plants.” Maeven stood and rubbed his hands against his pants, then extended one to help Jovian up. “You were right though; it has been here for a while and tastes a little funny.”

  “Why didn’t it absorb?”

  “There’s no telling how long it has been here. Plus, I don’t know that this type of oil really can absorb.”

  “So you think this was some kind of temple?”

  “I honestly don’t know. It seems so,” Maeven confirmed.

  There was silence for a time as they searched the walls of the tunnel. The rainbow light pulsed in rhythmic waves around them as if a lake ebbed and flowed on the floor about their feet, casting their faces in purple, blue, green, and pink relief that shown brighter further back in the depths of the tunnel. It was some time before they found the next bit of evidence that led them even closer to the conclusion of what this cave really was, and it happened when Maeven’s booted foot crunched something under it.

  “I found something else,” he yelled to Jovian, who came closer, kneeling to inspect the findings.

  “What is it?” Jovian asked as Maeven held up the small branch. “Some kind of tree branch, it looks like.”

  “That would be because it is a tree branch, Jovian.” Maeven examined it in the light. “See this here,” Maeven indicated the top of the branch, “this is not an ordinary branch. The flowers on this branch grew in panicles—a lilac branch.”

  “Then this is a shrine?” Jovian said. It was the Goddesses sacred tree, after all.

  Maeven cast a glance further back into the tunnel where the light was glowing bright enough to show the end. Inside the wall, encased for all time, was a large silver box that reflected the light, the source for the brighter light: a tomb.

  “Would you like something to eat, Joya?” Angelica asked hesitantly as she neared her sister with some food.

  Joya did not answer, but only cast cold, steely eyes on her sister.

  “You don’t look so good. Are you okay?” Angelica prodded gently, coming to sit beside her sister.

  “Did you ever stop to think, Angelica, that I’m most certainly NOT okay?” Joya whimpered with a sniffle.

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “NO!” Joya snapped and stood to walk away from her sister. She stood staring in the direction that the boys had gone, her hands subconsciously rubbing her arms as something she glimpsed chilled her more than the storm outside ever could. “How would you feel?” she asked Angelica over her shoulder, “if you found out someone you trusted more than any other had betrayed you? How would you feel if one of your own siblings had withheld information from you that could help save the life of your most trusted friend? I would never keep information like that from you if it concerned Jovian.”

  “But I didn’t withhold information from you!” Angelica stood, her fists balled at her side.

  Grace anticipated a possible blow-up if she did not interject, but then she thought better of it. Maybe coming to blows was exactly what the two of them needed.

  “True, I never told you we had visited Baba Yaga, but that was largely due to the fact that I didn’t remember much of it at all.” She went to turn away, thought better of it, and rounded again on Joya. “You know, I don’t expect you to tell me all the changes you are going through, Joya, and I don’t expect you to need to know all of mine. We told you what you needed to know: where Amber was being taken. Jovian and I thought it best, given the circumstances, that we didn’t tell all that happened, but we told the most important piece of the voyage that we could: Amber was being taken to the Lunimara!” Angelica sucked in a deep breath obviously wanting to say something else more heated before swallowing it at the last moment.

  “What happened if we went in the wrong direction?” Joya asked scathingly. “Would you have told us then?”

  “I don’t know; we weren’t posed with that situation, now were we? We knew where we had to go, and we are headed there. Enough said. You didn’t need to know about Baba Yaga, so you weren’t told.” At her wit’s end with her sister, Angelica turned to leave and headed back to where Grace sat shaking her head at the entrance to the man-made cave, queer colors bathing her like an aura.

  “I should have killed you,” Joya whispered, but Angelica had heard it all too clearly.

  “What did you say?” she asked stepping closer to her sister, anger making her voice quiver. Joya turned hateful eyes on her. Angelica gasped, stepped back once, and then surged forward as she recognized those cold, hateful grey-blue eyes.

  Joya inhaled a quick breath as the first slap rang out over the din of the storm. The powerful blow from the much more battle-trained sister knocked the black-haired woman to her knees. She cried out as blood sprang to her lips. Furiously blotting it away with her hand, Joya snarled at Angelica and stood once more.

  Joya clenched and unclenched her fists at her side, a faint red imbued them as they began to glow with power, with wyrd that was even now coursing through her, ready to be freed, ready to strike.

  “Are you going to try to kill me now, Joya, when I am able to face you? Or wouldn’t you rather wait until I am asleep so that you don’t have to worry about a fight?” Angelica spat, slapping Joya down again. But this time it didn’t go without retribution. Before Angelica could withdraw her hand from the blow, Joya had unleashed one of her own. The blast that came from her threw Angelica into the nearest wall, and crackling energy held her there as Joya, moving almost faster than the eye could see, rounded on her.

  “Touch me in anger again, and you will meet your end!” Joya raged, pointing a shivering finger straight at her sister. Angelica slid to the floor as Joya released her wyrd and stalked away from her.

  Just as Angelica thudded to the rock floor, Maeven and Jovian came sprinting back up from the tunnel, nearly running into a peevish Joya on the way. The near collision awarded them with choice curses. Jovian watched his sister stalk down the tunnel and looked to Grace for an explanation that never came.

  “Grace, you should see what we found,” Maeven exclaimed, panting with excitement and exertion.

  “What is it?” The old lady stood as a flash of lightning froze everything in white light outside the entrance that was positively drenched with torrential rain.

  “I think we found where Aaridnay was buried.”

  “But that is impossible. No one has ever found her before.” From the sound of her voice, however, Grace was having a hard time believing her own protests to the contrary.

  “I know, but I think we just have.”

  “Which begs the question of why she is appearing now?” she said, pushing past the two boys and down the tunnel. It wasn’t long before Grace was standing before the brightly shining diamond wall that encased the silver embossed casket.

  “Why would she not have been burned?” Angelica asked as she followed, standing as far away from Joya as the tunnel would allow.

  “Back when she died it was not customary to burn the dead. Instead they thought it was more fitting to bury the dead in the earth so that they would become one with the mother again, and feed the plants that would give others life,” Grace informed them. “It wasn’t until the first dalua attacks after Aaridnay’s death that bodies began to be burned, consumed by the light instead of given to the dark earth.”

  “So this is Aaridnay?” Jovian asked, gesturing to the wall.

  “That cannot be proven of course,” Grace said, her voice quivering with delight. “But I believe it is.”

  And so di
d Joya, who stood staring straight at the wall, recognizing the screaming form before her, encased in the wall with her silver casket, her face merging perfectly with Joya’s reflection.

  “I think we should stay here the night and figure out what to do later,” Grace suggested, going to the left side of the tunnel and crouching. “Did either of you notice this water here?”

  “No,” Maeven answered for them both as the two men approached her.

  She pressed her hand to the wall and nodded when it came back wet. “There is water collected here at the end of an airtight diamond tunnel? I think this is a fake door; tomorrow morning we will try moving it.”

  Through the majority of the first watch Joya managed to ignore the image of Aaridnay pacing back and forth within the diamond wall. Aaridnay’s every movement matched Joya’s frantic ones, her dead, unfocused eyes following Joya like a wild cat.

  All it took was a glance at the image. Within that glance seconds slowed pace to minutes, minutes seemed hours, and even those hours lagged on until time was something of mental construct, and Joya knew no such concept.

  She didn’t feel the wyrd seeping into her. Joya stood transfixed for that eternal second and didn’t feel the possession happen. If she had, Joya LaFaye would surely have noticed that this was the way a true adept wyrder worked—not by convoluting the mind to believe what it wanted to believe.

  It happened with a flash. A flare of rainbow light burned Joya’s eyes and she instinctively covered her head with her arms trying to blot out the pulsing, burning light even as it chased her vision behind shut lids. When she opened her eyes there was nothing left of Aaridnay within the wall save her coffin. The only face that Joya saw now was her own staring back at her.

  In an instant she felt one wyrd meet another inside, and the pain of the confrontation sent her head spinning.

  Joya fell to her knees with a gasp; she felt two forces warring inside her. And despite the internal struggle that made her wish nothing more than a long retch on the floor, Joya smiled for the first time in weeks, and felt at peace with herself and her companions for the first time since the voice started visiting her.

  “So you think this storm is wyrded?” Angelica asked of Grace the next morning. Though further back in the tunnel the sound of the storm was lessened, it was obviously not any weaker for the time.

  Though it was true that the Realm of Air occasionally saw some magnificent storms, much to rival the Holy Realms Summer Storms, they were normally of the wind variety and included little else. Certainly not demonstrating such power as they witnessed now. Grace looked into the concerned eyes of Angelica. “Yes, it is my assumption that this storm is wyrded.”

  “So how do you suppose we get through that wall?” Jovian asked.

  “Why don’t you try pushing on it?” Grace said sweetly, packing up their meager camp.

  Maeven gave a couple stout pushes, and when nothing happened he turned to Grace. “It will not budge. I think we will have to break through.”

  “There will be no need,” Joya said. At the touch of her hand, really a light grazing of fingertips, the faux wall slid neatly, quietly to the side and residual water coursed out of the slanting tunnel surrounding their feet.

  “Or that would work,” Maeven commented as they fell into place behind Joya.

  For three days they climbed. Three days of treading that convoluted, uneven path. They never had to worry about total darkness, for they could see the rising and falling of the sun as well as the rainbow glow that was beginning to irritate Joya to no end.

  With the help of the glow, they were able to see the floor. At times, however, vertigo would hit when they looked down for it appeared they were walking on nothing but air.

  The storm had abated sometime during the second day, only to return at night as if in warning. The Tall Stranger could see them no doubt, and wanted them to know that he was waiting for them to emerge. Yet Joya was not scared.

  Angelica and Joya did not resolve their animosity toward each other during the time, and if anything the mere presence of the other seemed to nettle them more. With each tense moment Grace worried that soon they would come to blows once more.

  Needless to say, the animosity between the two sisters made camp life difficult at best and if Grace sought conversation it was typically with one of the two men as they were more than happy to talk to someone other than each other. She had watched through the past weeks and saw that the two of them were steadily growing closer than she could ever have expected. Even with their new friendship, however, they were still eager for conversation that did not consist of only them.

  Sleep came fast that night, even to those keeping watch. It was as if a wyrding web had fallen over them and sleep was not far behind. It wasn’t until late at night that the rainbow lights of the Ravine of Aaridnay pulsed around them when Grace woke with a start, sure that something was amiss.

  Quickly she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Off in the distance thunder could be heard rumbling menacingly.

  She knew something was wrong. Grace studied the sleeping forms of each of her companions and started to settle back down when an urgent pressure came to her again. She knew wyrd when she felt it, and the feeling of it brought her to her feet, then prodded her to search the bed rolls one by one. Finding one unmistakably empty, it appeared to have had an occupant upon visual inspection—but Joya was nowhere to be found.

  “Wake up!” Grace hissed and instantly they all jumped up, obviously alerted to the strange feeling on the air as well as she was.

  “What is it?” Maeven asked, reaching for his sword.

  “Joya is gone!” Grace said rushing to where her stuff was kept and retrieving her silver dagger. “I am not sure which way she went, so we will have to split up. Jovian, Maeven, you search back down the tunnel. Angelica and I will search further up.”

  “Maybe she threw herself off the cliff edge like Aaridnay did,” Angelica pondered aloud as they headed out.

  “You had best shut your mouth, Angelica LaFaye, before I stitch it shut for you!” Grace warned her and they traveled the rest of the way in silence.

  The reverberating of thunder increased as they traveled further up, so it was no surprise when they exited the tunnel to the soft patter of rain that had just started to dampen the diamond surface. The stars above were being blotted out as dark clouds scattered across the surface of the sky, first lacey and insubstantial, but soon becoming denser as flashing storm clouds, raced closer.

  When they did finally find Joya some miles ahead, it was with rain pouring down in heavy sheets, and lightning flashing wildly. Joya moved as if possessed, writhing in the night, hands clawing at the elven fabric that would not tear, mouth screaming out at the haunted sky. Angelica was afraid for her sister, and as they neared she found the reason for Joya’s malaise.

  Neither of them knew that Joya had, for some time now, three forces warring over her: Aaridnay, the voice of wisdom, and her own wyrd all struggled for dominance of its yet untrained mistress. Because of the struggle, Joya had not been able to enter her trials yet, a fact that would prove not only dangerous for herself, but for the members of her own group when it finally came, stronger and harder than it should have. Neither of them knew this until they witnessed what left them both stunned and shaken to their core.

  “I will not kill them!” Joya screamed. “You tried to make me kill her once; it will not happen again!”

  “I did not try to make you kill her, Joya,” a male’s voice said coming from Joya’s mouth. As soon as his voice began to come from her parted lips, her erratic movements halted, as if with his voice came calm understanding. The voice made Angelica shiver with its suave malignancy. “I warned you not to draw on wyrd when you were angry; it was you that did not heed the advice.”

  “You told me it was the only way!” Joya screamed again. “You said nothing would happen to them.”

  “I said nothing would happen to you if you followed my advice and sought t
raining from me instead of the voice of wyrd. You did not; you drew in anger and therefore compromised your family and the safety of those you love. I do not wish you to kill Angelica; I only wish for you to draw on her immense power again. She will not miss a little of it.”

  “Don’t do it, Joya,” a female voice argued from Joya’s mouth. “He will use you until he has no further use for you. He corrupts the mind. He will toss you aside once you are broken and seek another to use.”

  “She’s possessed,” Angelica whispered. Grace nodded her agreement and gestured to stay silent

  “She is right,” Joya sobbed finally gaining control of herself again. “Aaridnay is right. This is not the way.”

  “But this is the way all sorcerers work, whether they know it or not. All sorcerers draw on that which is around them to work their wyrd; I can show you how. I can help you save your family from the horror the fire showed you.”

  “It will not work this time Sah—” but a loud boom of thunder blotted out all trace of the name Aaridnay was about to speak from Joya’s mouth.

  “Oh but it will. Already the young sorceress has doubts about what is right and what is wrong. How is she to trust what you say to be true? After all, you are the opposition to one train of her thoughts.”

  “It would not have been that way if you allowed the voice of wyrd to do what she had to do.” Aaridnay yelled over the din.

  “Of course that would not have been possible if the book had not helped her stave off my intrusion upstairs. When I touched the books wyrd I caught Baba Yaga’s trace, and it was then I was able to mimic it. Once I had the taste of her wyrd I was able to work against it, block it from Joya’s mind.” Somehow the revelation that Baba Yaga was the voice of wyrd effected none of them in the slightest. “I had to use the door because I knew that Joya would not let me in any other way, so when her mind was weak, when she had fully succumbed to the door, I was able to slip in.”

  “Let her go, dalua,” Aaridnay said horrifically low. “Leave here now!”

  “I will not!” the voice of wisdom raved at Aaridnay, and as he laughed Angelica watched the worse transformation come over Joya’s face. It went from pain and helplessness to ruthless tyrant. “The only way I can leave is when she does, and she will not. Already I have her mind; all it will take is a slight twist. With that old bitch out of the way the others will be easy.”