A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) Read online

  “So what have you been doing since we last saw you?” Angelica asked.

  “Oh, gosh, everything? Where do I even start?” Joya poured herself more of the wine and leaned back in her chair. At least the furniture here was much more comfortable than in the rest of the Spire. Angelica thought maybe the past Guardian didn't like visitors to stick around, but seeing how busy it was, maybe people lived here permanently.

  “I really don't even know how they managed for twelve years without a Guardian; they don't seem to be able to take care of anything themselves. I really don't want to bore you with specifics, but budgets, disputes, rivalries, appointing new governors, getting rid of ones that weren't doing a good job. See, pretty much everything. When I'm not dealing with that, they have me gazing into this orb that kind of implants the details of the history of the realm into my head. Very strange.” Joya drained her glass.

  “Wow,” was all Angelica could say.

  “But don't you have all of that knowledge in there already from the previous Guardian?” Jovian asked.

  Joya shrugged. “When I see the histories, it sparks memories and I can remember it in better detail through different eyes. It's really strange, and pretty creepy to be honest.”

  “So what happened to the last Realm Guardian?” Angelica asked.

  “Yeah, how does one lose their head when they’re the head of state?” Jovian wanted to know.

  Joya shrugged as she took another drink. “I can't really get any details from my memories of exactly how she died. I guess that might be too private for her to plunge into my head? Anyway, the Frement Uprising was a pretty bloody thing. That's when the last Guardian, Beatrice, lost her head.”

  “And what happened to the frement?” Angelica asked.

  “Well, they’re still around. I don't think they are bad — the other Guardian might not agree with me, but I think the frement had a good reason to rebel. They were being restricted in where they could live, being pushed further and further back by the humans. Similar to what the elves and dwarves worried would happen in the Holy Realm.”

  “And they’re nomads?” Angelica asked.

  “Yes, and apparently really crafty when it comes to machinery. They do have a central city, but not many stay there willingly. They’re a smart engineering race. Can you imagine how prosperous the Shadow Realm would be if everyone just worked together on this technology business?”

  Jovian shook his head in disbelief.

  “Where has Uthia gone?” Angelica wondered. Jovian frowned. He had forgotten about the dryad since she had taken to guarding Joya so much, but now that Angelica mentioned it, he hadn’t seen her at all recently.

  “She asked if she had my permission to go to her sisters in the Haunted Graveyard, see if she could talk them into helping with the chaos dwarf issues in the north,” Joya said. “I’m not sure how long that will take her, or when she’ll be back.”

  “What have you been up to?” Joya asked them.

  “Besides being shunned by everyone we come in contact with?” Angelica asked.

  “I'm sorry about that,” Joya said.

  “Do they even know you’re from the Holy Realm?” Jovian asked.

  “Yes. In fact, one of the first things I made sure of was that people from the Holy Realm would not be killed on sight when they crossed our borders. I’ve also sent a message to the Guardian of the Holy Realm to make sure she would work toward the same goal with people from the Shadow Realm. Who knows, maybe one day we will have peace.” Joya didn't sound like she believed that hope.

  “Maybe, if the two realms can stop blaming one another for the splitting of the world,” Angelica said.

  “Right? I think it’s a long shot as well.” Joya nodded.

  “So, we've been talking with Aunt Pharoh,” Jovian said.

  “Oh, your training! I completely forgot!” Joya moaned and slumped her head into her hands.

  “Don't worry about it!” Angelica said. “You've had more than enough to deal with.”

  “What did she say?” Joya asked.

  “No one knows what we are. We have wyrd of a kind, but have to draw it from energy sources around us.” Jovian toyed with the stem of his glass.

  “But she did teach us to tap into it. We even controlled the fire!” Angelica was having a hard time suppressing her excitement.

  “That's awesome! So much progress for your first time. Of course, I guess it's not really your first time, since you've done so many other workings already. Oh, I wish I had been there,” Joya said.

  “So, that brings us to another question,” Jovian sat up straighter, but just as he opened his mouth to ask if she would be coming along with them, a great commotion started up outside. The ground began rumbling, though being so high up in the tower they barely felt it. And there was a mechanical sound much like the sound of the train from earlier, but louder, and coming from multiple sources.

  “What in the realms?” Angelica asked.

  Joya went to the window, threw back the heavy curtains, and looked outside. She leaned against the pane and turned from left to right.

  “I don't see anything,” she shrugged.

  “Wait,” Jovian tilted his head to listen better. “It's coming from behind us, near the train station.”

  “Guardian.” The door opened and a red and black clad woman stepped in, her hand on the pommel of her sword. “The frement have arrived.”

  “Perfect timing,” Jovian said.

  “Hang on to something,” Joya said. She went to the window and pulled a lever. Jovian wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to grab on to, but he quickly found something as the spire began to turn.

  “What the Otherworld?” Angelica said, stumbling into the wall, where she grabbed hold of a wardrobe. The movement wasn't enough that they would fall without holding on to something, but in a building that was supposed to remain still, it was unsettling.

  Joya clasped the windowsill as the top of the spire turned, giving a complete view of all the lands around it. It was a neat trick, allowing the Realm Guardian to see in a complete circle around her room, but it was dizzying. Jovian wasn’t sure how it was managed, but he was certain that in the upper reaches of the tower was some kind of machine that allowed it to rotate.

  “It's just my level that moves, I'm told,” Joya said. She was standing expertly at the window. Jovian remembered hearing the mechanical grinding the last couple of nights, and figured Joya had been playing.

  “So the Spire of Night is a machine?” Jovian asked.

  “Apparently,” Joya repeated.

  “But how? If not with wyrd?” Angelica asked, and Jovian had the fleeting memory of visiting Baba Yaga and how her house had rotated similarly.

  “Steam power, milady,” the guard said, not losing her footing as Angelica and Jovian had.

  “Excuse me?” Jovian asked. “What is that?”

  “Engineering lessons later,” the guard said, and Joya shot a look over her shoulder at the woman. “I'm sorry, I mean, we don't have time for that right now, but perhaps later we can find someone to walk you through the details of our realm that you have questions about.”

  Jovian nodded. He hadn't taken offense to the guard's words, but Joya must have.

  “Guardian Joya, what would you like us to do about the frement?” the guard asked.

  “Nothing. They are a race of this realm, and I will greet them as I've greeted everyone else.” The tower rumbled to a stop, and Jovian found his footing once more, straightening his shirt.

  Angelica and Jovian joined Joya at the window. Now they could see the train station clearly: the long train docked at a platform, a sunflower-light illuminating the platform and the small building that stood on it, but more than that the large, box-like machines rolling toward the spire.

  Jovian had never seen such strange-looking wagons. In fact, he didn't even know if they could be called wagons any longer. They were shaped like wagons, but the wheels were larger and had some kind of studs on
them, as if the ground they traveled on wasn't always easy to ride across. Much like the train, they had a large chimney on them which issued out black smoke into the dark air. The more he saw of these machines, the more Jovian wondered if maybe the Shadow Realm was dark because of all the black smoke that the machines made. Unlike other wagons, these ones seemed to be made out of some metallic material.

  “I think crafty might be the wrong word to use when it comes to them and their machinery,” Jovian said as the army of metal wagons rolled to a stop and the first frement jumped out of the door.

  The creature was agile, which was to be expected since they were kind of like cats. Jovian wondered if maybe the entire uprising might have been solved with a ball of string. He chuckled to himself.

  “What?” Joya asked.

  “Nothing.” He pushed the thought aside to observe the newcomer. Only one frement stepped out of the wagon and approached the spire. He was clad in the same kind of armor they had seen in the painting, and a plate helm was held under his arm, making his calico head look strange on top of his winged armor.

  As he neared the spire, guards stepped out and halted him. They weren't sure what was being said, but Joya didn't like it. She pulled a metal arm down from beside the window, flipped a switch at the base by the window, and spoke into a mesh ball at the end of it.

  “Let him pass,” she said, and her voice was amplified outside of the spire, able to be heard clearly over the grumbling of the wagons. The guards looked up to her window, saluted by placing their hands flat against their faces, and stepped aside so the envoy could enter the spire.

  Joya affixed the voice amplifier to the window once more and turned to them.

  “Shall we go see about this?” she asked.

  Jovian nodded eagerly, wanting to see the frement up close. He wasn't used to such an exotic race, and what stories it would make when he got home to tell his father!

  “There's a back entrance?” Jovian asked as they followed their sister out of the sitting room and into the hallway. Like the rest of the walls in the Spire of Night, the hallway was paneled in black wood. The drapes and the rugs were in shades of purple and gold. Jovian thought the color was a little overbearing, but Joya didn't seem to mind it, so he didn't say anything.

  “Yes, it goes right into the council hall,” Joya told him.

  They passed several armed guards, who fell in line behind them on their way to the central sitting room on the Guardian’s floor, which contained the lift. There were a few chairs and a small table to the left of the lift, but Jovian wasn't sure how often they actually got used.

  Once on the lift, Joya threw a lever and they began to descend. Jovian lost count of how many floors they went down on their way. In fact, he had to close his eyes and forget that he was traveling straight down the spire, afraid that the lift would give way and they would plummet to their deaths.

  Jovian didn't open his eyes until the lift had stopped moving, and when he did it was to the sight of the entrance hall filled with terrified people.

  “You would think these frement were the monsters under the bed,” Angelica whispered.

  “No kidding,” Joya said. She smiled encouragingly at the people.

  “What did the frement do?” Jovian asked.

  Everyone stood in silence, watching Joya and the other two as they walked down the iron steps from the lift, turned left, and headed down another hall, which curved around the outermost wall of the spire.

  The only people Jovian saw who weren't scared were a few of the dark elves, here and there among the crowd in their dark garments. Their eyes smoldered with hate.

  “They are advanced in machinery, and at the time they hadn't really offered much of their knowledge to help the realm, so everyone was basically at the whim of the frement when the uprising happened, and their machines caused catastrophic loss.”

  “What made them stop when they did?” Angelica asked.

  “Who knows?” Joya asked. “I think people have kind of been living in fear of the frement since the last Guardian died. The humans stopped restricting the frement, and the frement left them alone after a time.”

  “So the dark elves are good here, and the frement are bad,” Jovian made a mental note.

  “I don't really think the frement are bad,” Joya reasoned. “But yes; you would think the ooslebed would be the ones to steer clear of after what we learned in Nependier.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Angelica asked.

  “I guess we will see when we get there, won’t we?” Joya said.

  They stopped before the large black doors to the council hall, and the two guards stationed there gave Joya a moment to school herself before they opened the doors. When the doors were fully opened, Joya stepped into the room.

  It was surprisingly bright in the hall, paneled in a lighter wood with rich red carpets and red drapes.

  A horseshoe-shaped table took up the entire inside of the room, with a podium in the center of the open space it created. At the open end of the table, directly in the center and on the near side of the room, rested a large iron chair on a podium. Jovian imagined this was meant for the Realm Guardian, but Joya didn't sit in that chair — instead she walked to the right and chose a chair there, sitting at the same level as the frement.

  The frement lounged as much as possible in his plate armor at the other end of the hall, his foot propped up on the table. Joya didn't say anything about it.

  “You aren't like the rest,” the frement said in an impossibly deep voice that was as smooth as velvet on Jovian's ears.

  “I’m glad of that. Maybe I can keep my head?” Joya asked. If she felt fear in the presence of a frement, who had seen the demise of the last Realm Guardian, she didn't show it.

  The cat-man smirked.

  “Factions within factions,” he said. “Delion and his cohorts have been tended to, their heads were also removed.”

  Jovian assumed Delion was the one who killed Beatrice.

  “But there are still concerns,” Joya said. “Ones that we might be able to come to a peaceful agreement upon.”

  Jovian couldn't say how astonished he was by how grown-up his sister had become in just a few short days.

  I guess that happens when you have an impossibly old sorceress rattling around in your head.

  “Of course there are concerns,” he said. “But first, introductions are in order. I am Calnaron, of the Cal clan.”

  “I am Joya LaFaye,” Joya told him.

  “The LaFaye blood?” Calnaron asked, sitting forward.

  Joya nodded.

  “Your ancestors were very fair ladies,” Calnaron said.

  “So we are told.” Joya folded her hands on the table. “Are all frement united behind the Cal clan?” Joya asked.

  “We do not see one clan as in power over the others, but we are in agreement with my coming here.”

  “And is that the combined clans outside in those machines?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Parts of each clan. There are five of us in total.”

  “And you are their ambassador?” Joya asked.

  “In your language, yes,” he said.

  “What are the terms of your joining us in peace?” Joya asked.

  “We only desire peace, but humans insist on forcing us from our lands. Lands that we were roaming long before the blight of humanity came to these shores.” Calnaron apparently had an issue with humans.

  Joya just stared at him.

  “Sorry, Realm Guardian,” Calnaron bowed his head. “We wish only for the humans to leave us in peace, and we will not harm them.”

  “I can't tell you that there won't be animosity for a while, but we will work something out. Tomorrow the Senate is meeting again; I would very much like if you and a group of your people could join us in drafting an agreement.”

  “That would be very wise,” Calnaron bowed his head again.

  “I’m sorry there aren’t accommodations inside the spire for all of
your people,” Joya told him, standing.

  “We much prefer to sleep outdoors anyway,” Calnaron said, also standing. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Guardian.”

  “Disaster averted,” Jovian said as they left.

  Joya smiled. The followed her to the lift, and she turned back to address the people gathered in the hall, waiting to hear from their Guardian about the danger of the frement. Many of them seemed relieved that she had come back to them, and Jovian wondered if they had thought she would have met her demise right there, at the hands of the cat-man.

  "A new Realm Guardian!" a voice crowed mockingly from within the crowd. "And none other than a LaFaye."

  Joya turned and surveyed the crowed. The people parted and there stood a young man, disheveled and looking in desperate need of a shave and a scrubbing. "Oh, and look at the lovely medallion. Master would like that, no doubt."

  "Another caustic?" Angelica asked. She remembered the old lady from Greenwood and shivered. Joya shook her head ever so slightly.

  "No, my dear," the man said. "My wyrd isn't chaotic by accident."

  "An alarist," Joya said, turning fully toward the man. "How charming." Her voice dripped sarcasm. The crowd shuffled further back from him, most finding refuge in random rooms along the edges of the hall. Before long, few others remained in the hall with the alarist other than Joya, Jovian, and Angelica.

  "Oh dear Goddess," Jovian said. "Aren't they all dead?"

  "We are far from dead," he said grandiosely.

  Joya didn't wait for him to finish. Quicker than Jovian was able to see, his sister channeled her wyrd and launched a pink bolt at the man. The man was faster than her, and conjured a shield up in time to absorb her wyrd.

  He held out his hand and a geyser of emerald fire spouted from his hands, taking the iron stairs by storm. The green fire slithered up the steps, licked at their faces, and roared up like a wall of fire before them, pressing closer, pushing them back. Jovian held out his hands, tapped into the earth energy nearby, and blasted the power back out at the man. The force of his red wyrd bent the blast of fire back on the alarist, and the crowd screamed, retreating further back into the rooms off the main hall as plants, drapes, and other ornaments combusted or melted in the heat of the wyrded fire.