The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) Page 15

  Grace closed her eyes against the glowing brilliance of the stones and her hand gravitated to her chest. As she held a hand to her heart, she thought of how she was in charge of all of these children, and now something was happening to Joya, something Grace could not comprehend, something as twisted and unknown to her mind as the stones within which she stood.

  When the Sylphids appeared, it was with a slight graze of air on skin like a lover’s hot breath on taught flesh, and the knowledge of being watched, which inspired the goose bumps they were all feeling. For all their transparency there was no doubt of their presence.

  “What is that?” Maeven gasped. His flesh tightened in a chill of sensation.

  But Grace could see it in his wild, semi-frightened eyes, if Maeven’s brown eyes could ever look anything close to frightened. He accepted these creatures and this place, but all his time studying arms and beast lore would not allow him to see them as anything but monsters.

  “Be still, Maeven,” Grace warned before he could act on the fear in his eyes. “They mean us no harm; remember we are intruding on them, not the other way around.”

  Maeven shook his head and swallowed hard. With a nervous laugh he responded, “I know. It just seems as of late there are so many things sneaking up on us … too many things.”

  Grace studied his eyes worrying her lip as she searched for the truth of his words. Content with what she found, Grace nodded and looked to Joya.

  The young sorceress appeared as if she was in nothing more than the grips of sleep. There was a healthy flush to her skin that had not been present since her Trial of Earth, and her eyes moved rapidly, orbs darting this way and that beneath the thin protection of her lids to attest the fact she might be sleeping.

  “She is stuck,” a whisper of many came to her ears. Even as the voice was made up of all the Sylphids present, Grace knew that it was only one that spoke with all their entwined voices. This was not her first run-in with Paralda, and she found herself mixed with wishing it would be the last, and hoping it was only the beginning of their relationship.

  Paralda was truly a pleasure to behold, as were all the Sylphids, but every time Grace came upon Sylphids something bad was happening. She hoped this time turned out better than the last.

  “What does that mean?” Jovian asked.

  “There were … complications,” Paralda responded with the combined voices of his Sylphids.

  “What kind of complications?” Grace asked.

  “An outside wyrd has intruded … her wyrd is trying in vain to reject this new threat.” Paralda responded.

  “Hence the bizarre storm,” Grace mused.

  “One guess who it is?” Angelica cast a worried look at Joya.

  “However likely it may be, I have never heard of this happening before,” Grace confessed.

  “It would not be a grand assumption for me to say there is much about sorcerers that you do not know, Grace,” Paralda said, and Angelica saw the old lady tense at the mention of her ignorance. “It does not happen often, though it is not completely unheard of.”

  “Is there anything that can be done?”

  “It takes one of strong wyrd to disrupt training like this,” Paralda confirmed.

  “I imagined that was the case, or it would be happening all the time,” Grace scoffed.

  “But still there is something we can do, though the chance of survival is not guaranteed. However, if we do nothing and let her frail wyrd fight this much stronger one, survival will then become obsolete.”

  “She is hardly powerless. Joya is a LaFaye,” Maeven countered.

  “A LaFaye that does not accept that she is such,” Grace reminded him. “She might as well be completely human.”

  “And she is an untrained LaFaye, facing a trained and powerful wyrd. Against such odds Joya might as well be powerless.” Paralda agreed with Grace.

  Grace groaned and placed a hand to her now aching stomach. She could no longer fight the growing anxiety in her core.

  “What needs to be done?” she asked finally.

  “There is nothing that you can do, Grace,” Paralda told her flatly.

  It was fear of the situation that she could no longer control and fear for Joya that made her scream: “THAT WAS NOT THE QUESTION!” In that one instant Grace lost all decorum as her face contorted into a mask of rage. “WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, PARALDA?”

  Paralda was silent for some time as if deciding whether to answer her or not. Finally, as Grace yielded to despair, he spoke.

  “She needs to be removed from her body. Without the host present the parasite cannot survive.” The childish voices of the Sylphids, of Paralda were no longer kind and happy but cold and agitated.

  “She will Spirit Walk?” Grace asked.

  “No, she will die.”

  “What is the difference?” Jovian asked even as the rest of them were silenced by Paralda’s proclamation.

  It was Paralda who responded, as none of the others were able to find their voices. “When you Spirit Walk enough of your mind remains to keep guard of your body so that it can keep it going and call the vagrant part of your soul back if danger threatens. Death, on the other hand, means you are no more. We need everything to vacate her body,” Paralda instructed clinically as one that had nothing vested in the situation could.

  “Her body will shut down,” Angelica protested. “She will die without anything inside her.”

  “We are removing her soul, not her brain.”

  “Then why do some remain dead?” Angelica countered.

  “It has to do with the mechanics of the soul,” he responded simply. “Sometimes once the soul is out of the body no amount of coaxing will get it back where it belongs.”

  “She has Amber to worry about; she will come back to us,” Jovian reasoned though it even sounded desperate to his own ears.

  “The soul is not concerned with earthly matters; she may look differently upon the situation once removed from it.”

  “Then do it and do it now,” Grace commanded.

  “Wait!” Angelica pleaded, fearful of the possibility of losing another sister. She remembered Jovian’s death when the danger and hurt were made all the more real. “So soon?”

  “Yes,” Grace told her firmly. “You heard Paralda. If we do nothing she will die. If we act now she has a chance, but I imagine the longer we wait the greater the chance of losing her increases. Is that accurate, Paralda?”

  “That is a correct assessment, Grace.” It was only then, with his answer, that the Sylphids became more than a voice in their ears.

  Threads of silver gossamer were Grace’s initial thought. Like thick wisps of spider silk floating independently, they eddied like fog on the currents of air that sustained them, gave all life, and on which they presided.

  Paralda appeared then, his willowy frame devoid of clothing, his honey gold skin glowing with an inner light that shined in the grey, storm-clotted air like the morning’s first ray of sunlight. Grace basked in the light he emanated as flora would after the long dark of night.

  Her eyes followed up his neck to his ears that extended well past his head like that of the elves, only longer.

  He walked toward Joya then, muscles rippling and bunching like a windswept field, golden with wheat and promising life. He lifted her off her horse, and laid her on the lush green grass in the center of the Sylph Monoliths.

  He lowered his head and kissed Joya’s forehead before rising to stand over her inert form. He raised his hands to the sky and let his head fall back, his dark gold mane of hair tumbling down his muscled back to toy at the swell of his buttocks.

  The other Sylphids responded to his stance and began to coalesce above him, swirling in a spiral starting high in the air and lowering down toward his hands. They were no longer individual cords of light, but instead they were now a great vortex of air spiraling like a tornado down toward their ruler.

  The vortex flowed between his hands, the tip of the miniature tornado touching Joya’
s chest. She gave a start then, her back arching, her arms flailing at the ground, beating at the earth even as her mouth twisted in a scream that could not be heard.

  In an instant the vortex was drawn into Joya, and then spat back out. Her body fell limp as all color drained from her once more. Darkness as black as anything they had ever seen pooled out of her body like cancerous blood flowing from her. In a moment the darkness was gone, seeped into the earth, and a new light joined that of the Sylphids who gathered around once more in their own forms.

  Joya smiled at them from where her spirit stood beside her body. It was strange for them to see her like this, disembodied, and no matter how long Angelica stared at her sister, one physical the other spiritual, she didn’t think there would be any getting used to it.

  Joya looked happier and healthier than they had seen her in a very long time. Her hair had shine again and was not the limp curls that hung from her body. Her smile was full and genuine, her skin creamy and flushed with life. She didn’t just seem to glow; Joya literally glowed.

  With a slight gesture Paralda broke the silence. “Come, this is not done yet. Wyrd intruded on your Trial of Air, and it is here that we will complete what was interrupted.”

  A ripple in the air behind Joya caught Angelica’s attention. There was a hum that accompanied the ripple of energy, a sensation that had nothing to do with the wyrded storm raging like a torrent from the Otherworld just outside the Sylph Monoliths.

  As Angelica watched she realized that there was another landscape forming within the ripples of wyrd. The landscape was impossibly green and bright with vivid colors that made the physical world around Angelica seem muted, cold, and less real.

  In this new world that formed just beyond her older sister there were no blustery storm clouds, not even a trace of hindrance to the blissfully warm sun.

  In a flash, the nimbus closed, and Paralda and Joya were gone. All that remained was Joya’s body—motionless and dead.

  “What!?” Angelica exclaimed and went to examine the place where her sister had just been standing with the King of the Sylphids. The Sylphids eddied and swirled in the air above them for a while before slowly fading into the atmosphere.

  “They have gone to complete her training. She is not back in her body yet from what I understand, so we will have to wait here,” Grace informed them while finding a dry, comfortable spot to sit.

  “But what about Beckindal?” Jovian asked. “Am I wrong in thinking it is him that is following us?”

  “No, I think you would be right, but the only thing we can do right now is wait for your sister,” Grace crossed her arms.

  “But the more we wait the closer he will get!” Jovian nearly yelled in fright.

  “That is the way of things. Thanks for pointing it out, Jovian. I would never have thought of it.”

  Her biting sarcasm irritated Jovian to no end. “So we just sit here and wait for him to show up?”

  “There isn’t much we can do presently. If he shows up I doubt he will be able to touch us in here.”

  “You don’t think he’d be able to enter? Is there anything you do know?” Jovian spat back.

  Grace silenced him with a look. Finally he shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, and she looked away and filled her pipe with smoking weed.

  “We can’t leave Joya,” Angelica chimed in upon finishing her inspection.

  Angelica was right of course, but none of them imagined that their wait would be so long. When the storm above finally abated, they were able to see they had been within the monoliths nearly a day.

  “How much longer do you think?” Maeven nervously scanned the path behind them. He had barely gotten the words out when the air above Joya’s body exploded with light.

  The light hung there for some time, brighter than anything they could have imagined but eventually it dimmed, shooting out tendrils of light here and there.

  It was one such strand of light that lanced out, straight into Joya’s chest. The orb was the essence of Joya and as they watched, her body began showing signs of life once more.

  It was surprising to no one when Paralda appeared again. He knelt beside Joya and lifted her. Carrying her like one would a sleeping child, he bound her to the back of Daisy once more and turned to all of them.

  “It is time you leave here. There is a menace on the path behind you that you will not be able to escape if you stay any longer.” He turned to Grace. “Take the most direct route to Fairview. Fare thee well, old friend.” He turned and walked away from them, and like fog scattering before a stiff wind, he was gone.

  None of them knew what he meant, and none of them bothered to ask. The next few hours were filled with as fast a pace as their horses could maintain fleeing the Sylph Monoliths.

  Maeven could feel the darkness on the path behind them. Sometimes the feeling was as if the beast that created the darkness was nearly upon them, while other times it felt as though he were being restrained—somehow banking his urge to be on them, corrupting them, consuming them.

  Fairview was a city of staggering heights and proportions. It sprawled in every direction in the form of a circle, its tallest buildings in the center of the town dubbed the business district. Jovian’s mind reeled at the enormity of the city. The most staggering of all were the buildings—most of them so high as to appear to be only supported by air, defying gravity as they reached proudly, unashamed to the sky.

  While Fairview was not the capital of the Realm of Air, that being Aralyn some leagues to the southeast, it was still a city of economical growth and great trade with the Realm of Earth, given its close proximity.

  To say that Fairview was lucrative was an understatement; to say that it was rich would have been more accurate. As it was not the capital, it had to rely on more than government to give it status and wealth. Many years ago Fairview (named for its stunning vantage point to the Sacred Forest) became the center of music and art in the Realm of Air, and eventually in all the Great Realms.

  As it was, they had arrived in Fairview two weeks after the Autumn Equinox when the festival of Saint Ismaidry (patron saint of art and music) took place every year. The one-week event was like nothing anyone had ever seen.

  In years past the Saint Ismaidry’s Festival celebrated musical competition and exhibition, but as the years passed, and Saint Ismaidry’s status evolved to include art as well as music. Soon the festival came to encompass all forms of art and friendly competitions, from music to jousting, wyrding exhibitions to crazier stunts such as breathing fire and leveraging one’s body from the ground by a series of hooks through the skin, lifted by pulleys.

  The travelers entered through the eastern gates to the city. The massive doors flung wide in greeting as it was seeing so many tourists for the grand Saint Ismaidry’s Festival that Fairview was renowned for. Flowers of every color in ceramic pots adorned every stoop and wrought-iron lamppost casting their perfume throughout the streets enhancing the ambiance of the setting.

  On their way to an establishment that Grace knew very well, they were gifted with so many flowers that eventually they had to turn offers down as they had no room to carry any more handfuls.

  Jovian couldn’t believe the amount of clamor a city could produce. Some sounds he had never heard before, and others he was sure he never wanted to hear again. Jovian much preferred his country home nestled in the middle of their bountiful fields with nothing but the melody of nature during spring and the color of new life and the smells that accompanied country air. Ashell’s dinner at the hearth, angelica herbs in the backyard, sun-warmed grass just freshly cut, and the rich smell of tilled fields. Jovian sighed with the memories.

  “What is the obsession with the fans on everyone’s doors?” Jovian asked, his brows creasing in thought as he saw yet another pattern of fans hanging on someone’s front door.

  “The fans represent many things,” Grace started, smiling at those that passed her on the cobbled streets, nodding welcome to a crone who offered yet mor
e flowers that she politely declined with a forestalling hand. “First, what one should look at is the grandeur of the fan in question, as this will represent the family’s station in society and their wealth. Generally bright fans represent wealth. Pale, ordinary fans represent poverty as dyes cannot be afforded to color the fan, or the dye is fading off fans they cannot afford to repair.

  “Secondly you have to look at the pattern they represent on the door itself. Fans are used as a means of communication to relay what is happening in the house, what the status is within. The pattern can display anything from a death or birth in the family to relaying messages of not being home, or being home but not accepting visitors. Really it is an amazing form of communication that the Ivory City has adopted, but they have replaced the fan with brooms.”

  Jovian didn’t say anything, but instead studied several passing doors to see if he could discern some of the messages. In time Grace helped him with the meaning of the symbolism in a light mood that was only increased by the generosity of those around them.

  “What I am more concerned with,” Angelica said to Maeven, “is why everyone seems so happy. It is unnatural.”

  He laughed at her. “I am sure it has to do with the festival. Everyone seems to get happy when there is promise of good food, liquor, and undoubtedly sex where it shouldn’t be.”

  “There is public sex?” She nearly yelled the words and again he laughed at her.

  “Not really public, but I am sure it will happen all over the place.” Maeven had piqued her interest and so the two of them passed the time by talking of the scandals and intrigue that happened seemingly only in cities.

  Moments later the troupe came upon an inn so large and grand it took up its own city block. Fairview Heights was such a large and profitable establishment that it had its own guards in dark yellow garb posted outside the open wrought-iron gate that led to the inn.