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

  “Yes,” Uthia said. She plucked a few more of the sunflowers and started rubbing them into the vines and leaves that cascaded from her head like hair.

  Joya could feel the flower traveling to her stomach, like a pleasant warmth spreading through her. Surprisingly, it took the edge off her hunger too.

  “They are great food for travelers. Here, have some more.”

  As she reached for more, Joya noticed the luminescence on her fingers, where the oil of the flower had rubbed off. After five or so more flowers, Uthia told her she could stop.

  “A few flowers a day should replace what you would normally get from the sun,” she told them.

  “Joya, is this flower in your herb book?” Angelica asked, tentatively taking another flower from its vine. She didn’t eat this one, just looked at it.

  “Do I have time to look?” Joya asked, and Uthia nodded.

  She took the book out of her pack and sat down, thumbing through the frail pages until she made it to the “s” section. It wasn’t there, and Joya made a mental note to add it that night when they settled in for bed.

  But as they started travel again for the day, Jovian wondered how long this near-peaceful feeling would follow them. They had three possessed women after them, as well as Porillon, and the as-yet-unseen dark forces of the Shadow Realm. For some reason the thought made him think of the Pale Horse, and the battleground of bone it rode upon.

  The day passed in silence. The truth was that all of them were far too engrossed in this alien realm to speak. Occasionally they would tap each other and point off into the distance, where the sunflowers were illuminating a strange creature or beast they had never seen before. Once spotted, the beasts would normally flit or lumber away. They saw other strange things, too. Through the day they had spotted fairies like Tegaris, but the size of a gnome, with wings as large as an eagle. There had been a herd of deer that could stand on their hind legs, and who had one single horn curving up from the center of their head. There were also pixies the size of Angelica’s hand who lived in the trees, and even more things Angelica couldn’t completely explain.

  There was also the darkness, always present, always pressing in on them. Angelica began thinking of the darkness more as a being rather than an atmosphere. It seemed to shift and move just out of her sight, always making her feel on edge when they left one pool of sunflower light and headed for another, as if something lurked in the darkness, waiting for the right time to pounce.

  “Border wards,” Uthia said, noticing the uneasy set to Angelica’s shoulders and the skittish glances she cast at the shadows before leaving one puddle of light.

  “The same we ran into before? That made us stop breathing?” Jovian asked.

  “Yes, the same. You are strangers here — the border must keep watch on you, make sure whatever it felt that let you pass was true, not a farce.”

  “I don’t want to know what would happen if it considered us a threat,” Angelica shivered.

  “You really don’t,” Uthia agreed.

  Out of the corner of her eye Angelica saw Joya grimace and itch her palms furiously.

  That night — or maybe it was day, Angelica couldn’t really tell — they made camp at the base of a large tree, sheltered in the light of the sunflowers. Uthia gathered flowers for their dinner while Jovian hunted for something to eat to supplement them. Uthia cautioned against taking life or spilling blood in the forest. Jovian couldn’t tell if it was Uthia’s aversion to his hunting her charges, or if there was something about the Haunted Forest that would react badly to his killing.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about something for a while,” Angelica said once they had settled down around the fire. Joya was taking notes in the back of her herb book about the sunflower, even trying, poorly, to draw an image of it.

  “Wait a minute — you think?” Jovian asked.

  “Very funny. But seriously, if we are anakim, we can’t be the only ones, can we?”

  “I never really thought about that,” Joya said, frowning at her pitiful sketch.

  “Well, there are the four of us, and then there are the nephilim, and the rephaim, right?”

  “I’m sure we aren’t the only anakim,” Jovian added.

  “I agree; I think there could be many of us out there. I mean, the only grigori we know about are those that fell in line with Arael, there could be countless others who had children,” Angelica said.

  “I suppose so,” Joya agreed. “And maybe even grigori that didn’t follow Arael. The grigori are also called the watchers, right? The name didn’t become perverse until Arael became one of them. So that means he wasn’t the first — there were watchers and grigori before him. I can’t imagine all of them fell in line with him.”

  “You’re right, he only had twelve followers.” Jovian hadn’t really thought about it before.

  “Exactly; yet the Carloso tells us that the Goddess sent down many, right?”

  Jovian nodded.

  “I would like to meet them some day,” Angelica said. She looked up above her. She longed for nothing more than to see the stars in the night sky, but even those were blotted out by the darkness. The glowing clouds, like wisps of spirits floating to the Otherworld, should have done something to alleviate the darkness encroaching on her mind, but they only succeeded in putting her more on edge. Angelica never thought she could get used to living in this realm. She was happy she was only passing through. She settled for imagining that the winking lights of the sunflowers above were the stars she so longed to see.

  “Except the rephaim,” Jovian said. “They are supposed to be evil, dead half-breeds.”

  “Do you think they are all dead?” Angelica asked.

  Joya shivered.

  “There’s no telling. Anakim are supposed to have long necks, right? And nephilim are supposed to be giants?” Jovian asked.

  “I think it has more to do with their power,” Joya contributed. “Like, maybe the anakim having long necks just means they’re more prone to seeing further into the future, like you two can do.”

  “And the nephilim just have greater power?” Angelica asked.

  “And the rephaim might just deal with death,” Joya agreed with a nod.

  “Like Cianna,” Jovian said.

  “Except Cianna isn’t a half-breed — she was born of Arael and Pharoh, she is full angel,” Joya reminded them.

  “But the power would be similar, wouldn’t you think?” Angelica said.

  “I really couldn’t tell you. I imagine the rephaim would have some dealing with death, but not like a necromancer,” Joya said. “I have the feeling we wouldn’t really want to find out, though; maybe they gain power from death.”

  Jovian stared at his older sister for a time, trying to think of how to bring up what he had been wanting to ask her since meeting up with her again in the Mirror of the Moon, but he had never had time. He’d stopped thinking about it for a while, since she had seemed like the regular old Joya, but lately something had been changing in her.

  “What’s it like?” Jovian asked. “Being a sorceress. How do you know some of the things you know?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Joya sounded as if she had been expecting the question. “Before my trials I had the book, and at times the Voice of Wyrd would speak to me, tell me things that I should know, and at other times just take me over completely. Now that I’ve gone through my trials, that voice is constantly with me in my head, but it isn’t a voice, it’s knowing what I have to do, or the truth of a situation.” Joya set her book down for a moment, her gaze distant. “I guess you could say it’s almost like a universal consciousness that all sorcerers can tap into.”

  “Like having the world’s largest library in your head, and you can access any of the information inside it by just wanting to know it?”

  “A mental library?” Joya thought about that for a moment. “I guess, but I mean, my knowledge isn’t endless. Maybe that comes with time?”

  “Odd,” Angel
ica said, screwing up her face. “So this Voice of Wyrd is actually a part of you now?”

  “So it would seem,” Joya said. “I don’t hear it like I used to, but I still feel it with me. Maybe since I’ve joined with my wyrd, it’s more a part of me now than it was.”

  “What were the trials like? Grace told us they were very personal, and that most sorcerers wouldn’t speak of it,” Jovian pried, hoping that maybe it wasn’t so private that Joya wouldn’t share it with them.

  “She was right, they are very private. But I can tell you that when I finished, I met the Voice of Wyrd, and she gave me something — an orb of sorts. She told me that it would help me, that this would give me the strength to do what had to be done. It was sorcery, it was the power to draw on wyrd whenever I had need of it.”

  Angelica and Jovian shared a telling look.

  “And I know now that Baba Yaga isn’t bad. Baba Yaga is the Voice of Wyrd, and I know she met you two. I know that’s how you knew about the Mirror of the Moon.”

  “We wanted to tell you,” Jovian said sheepishly.

  “That doesn’t matter now; you did what you thought you should.” Joya sighed, and her face twitched uncontrollably from the touch of the verax-acis, which seemed like it had happened ages ago, though it had only been a few short weeks. When she had it back under control, she took a deep breath. “I also know that you two are different — how different, I’m not sure. I can only imagine it has to do with our parents and the fact that we are all a little strange.”

  “Joya, do you think you could do something for us?” Angelica asked when their sister resumed her entry to the herb book.

  “What’s that?” she asked distractedly, trying to get the petals on the flower she was drawing to match the waning sunflower lying on the ground beside her.

  “You said Jovian and I are different. We have wyrd. We’ve even used it at times, but we haven’t been able to learn to call it at will. It took all we had back with the gnomes to do anything at all.” Angelica eased forward. “Do you think you could teach us to channel our wyrd?”

  “I don’t see why not. It shouldn’t be much different than how I cast mine.”

  “Perfect,” Jovian said, and smiled.

  Finally they were going to learn how to use the wyrd inside of them.

  Maeven didn't think he would ever get used to the way Annbell traveled. When the black maple tree erupted out of the ground and Maeven fell from the grips of the branches which previously held him in place, he staggered. He hated the feeling of traveling like she did. She gathered him into her arms, and then he felt his body shift to pure energy, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like he was entering his grave early when the ground closed around him, while he still drew breath. Granted, he didn't need to breathe when they were traveling, but he couldn't help but feel like he wanted to, and the earth surrounding them made that impossible.

  "It would help next time if you didn't panic," Annbell said disapprovingly, shaking off the last bit of bark that clung to her black fur wrappings as her tree form melted into her human form.

  "Is that something I'm going to have to do as a druid?" he wondered, hoping she would say no.

  "Only Guardians can travel through their Realms in such a way. Druids cannot."

  He exhaled a sigh of relief. But when he was with her, he knew they would be traveling like that, so Maeven would have to get used to the cold embrace of the earth while they darted from here to there on official business between lessons.

  He took several deep breaths and looked around, willing his eyes to focus. He couldn't get the feeling off his skin of sliding through the earth, interrupting a nest of snakes, and feeling worms and bugs skitter across him.

  "You’ll get used to it," Annbell said distractedly, surveying the place before them.

  Maeven pulled his thoughts away from the earth and around to the bustling activity of the place before them.

  "Where is this?" he asked, peering around at the wreckage of a large building. Maeven couldn’t imagine the destruction that had happened here, but they were already rebuilding, clearing away rubble and reconstructing walls that appeared to have been blasted apart.

  "The Realm of Earth Wyrder's Academy," Annbell said. "Or it was." She started walking, and raised her hand in greeting to a hardened old man with bushy white hair and a haggard look. Maeven figured his harried look was due to the mess he was dealing with.

  If this had been a wyrder's academy, Maeven figured it was no longer functional. At one point it appeared to have been a two-story building spread out over an open plane. From a central tower, four halls stood out like spokes on a wheel. Now the top of the tower lay in a heap on the eastern-most hall, crushing the roof and littering the ground with debris. The western hall had been burned nearly to the ground, the bones of the foundation sticking out in smoldering spines. The northern and southern halls had their ends blown off, like something large had smashed through there. Here and there through the windows he could see blood, but nowhere around could he see any evidence of dead bodies.

  "Headmaster Farrack," Annbell said. "I'm sorry it's taken so long to visit you in person."

  "No worries, Guardian, your correspondences have been most helpful," the old man said by way of greeting. His voice was deep, almost haunting in its cadence.

  "What is your opinion on what happened here? Caustics?" Annbell asked as she surveyed the wreckage.

  Maeven drifted closer to them in part to hear what was going on, and also because he was a stranger here and felt out of place away from Annbell.

  "At first we thought it had to do with the Well of Wyrding, but we aren't so sure now, after hearing of the other attacks taking place around the Realms," Farrack looked to Annbell to make sure she knew what he was referring to. Maeven didn't, but Annbell nodded as if she did.

  "So you’re thinking this was something else?" Annbell asked.

  Farrack motioned toward the academy, and they started walking toward the northern hall, the one that still seemed mostly intact. They stepped through the rubble into the hall. Maeven could tell that no door had been there originally, but whatever attacked the academy had made one. The cherry-paneling of the hallway had scores down its surface, like something had clawed its way down the hall. If he concentrated, Maeven imagined he could still hear the screams.

  "It’s a malignant wyrd, that is most certain. It stinks of chaos," he said, drawing to a halt. He took a deep breath, as if testing his hypothesis.

  Annbell looked around her, and touched one of the large depressions in the wall. She rubbed her fingers together with a disdainful look.

  "But not a caustic?" Annbell asked.

  "There were too many of them, and they seemed very focused in their attack," Farrack said. "I don't want to say it was an alarist attack." He didn’t want to say it, but Maeven could tell he believed it was alarist. Farrack stepped closer to Annbell as workers rushed past with debris from somewhere deeper in the academy. They had been working hard — the corridors in the northern hall were nearly cleaned out, with only charred walls, scrapes, and stains of blood telling Maeven an attack had happened here.

  They must have already cleaned up their dead.

  "I wouldn't jump to that conclusion yet either," Annbell said. "But it is a possibility we aren't ruling out," she conceded.

  "I hear Azra believes they’re on the rise," Farrack said, clasping his hands behind his back and walking deeper into the academy. Annbell didn't answer, but busied herself with peeking into various rooms. This hall seemed to be largely dormitories. Maeven figured the central tower would be where classes were held.

  As they neared the end of the hall it opened up into a circular room, which was the base of the tower. Stairs disappeared downwards in a spiral, and the same twisting staircase went further up into the tower. Maeven looked up to see what lay above, but all that greeted him were a couple of landings and open sky. What little remained of the building above him had been destroyed in the attack. Presu
mably that was where the fallen tower used to sit.

  He really wanted to see what was underneath the academy, but as a lot of workers were coming and going by way of the downstairs staircase, Maeven could picture the wreckage.

  "I don't want to keep you any longer," Annbell said to Farrack. "I can only imagine the work you have before you. I will send whatever aid I can to help you rebuild, and enough finances to get the academy up and running as quickly as possible."

  Farrack nodded. "How is your sister?"

  "Good," she answered shortly, tucking a lock of auburn hair behind one ear. "She will be fine; thank you for asking, Farrack." The old man nodded and took that as his dismissal. Maeven distantly wondered if the man was a sorcerer, and why he looked so old if he was. Weren't sorcerers supposed to be immortal?

  Maeven had to admire Annbell; she had broad shoulders on which she carried a large weight, and she would not show others weakness in any form. Sara wasn't doing fine, Maeven knew that, but Annbell wouldn't show others that Sara's health was failing.

  Maeven wasn't sure what Annbell was looking for as she strode around the central room, so he took the time to look around himself. He didn't actually venture down any of the halls, mainly because the northern hall was the first to be attended to, and the other halls, especially the eastern hall which supported the weight of the tower on its roof, weren’t fit to walk safely down.

  From the sweet smell thick in the air, there were still bodies they hadn't been able to get to.

  "We’re done here," Annbell said as she stood from a heap of rubble. She tucked a piece of wood into the folds of her cloak and led him back down the northern hall and into the dismal day. Maeven took a deep breath of the crisp air, grateful to be out of the musty academy with its smell of carnage and death.

  Annbell held open her arms, and he groaned. She smiled.

  "None of that; we have to see what Sara thinks of this," she told him. He stepped into her embrace and screwed his eyes tight against the suffocating embrace of the Realm of Earth.