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

  "Get ready," Grace told Dalah and Rosalee where they watched in some distant place that was both of their minds, and outside their minds at the same time. "Something is about to happen, I can feel the wyrd."

  When the attack came it was like a gale force wind blowing through their minds, carrying away the pollution of the Norns that had plagued them. Grace slipped back into her form like slipping into a comfortable pair of trousers. She felt at home, welcomed, and at peace once more.

  She owed her life to Angelica, Jovian, and Joya. She had put them in danger, but it was the only way she knew how to save Dalah, Rosalee, and herself. Logic said if the Norns feared them, there was reason to believe they could defeat the fates.

  Grace came to with a gasp. She had been aware of fates as they passed over the minds of the Norns. She had seen what had become of Dauin. Grace had even tried to spy what had happened to Amber, but because Amber was of angelic blood, her fate was hidden from the Norns.

  A moan went up from the lips of the three women, and they sank to their knees. There was a force then that escaped them, flying from their bodies like wythes on the wind to a distance north and east of where they stood.

  When next Grace looked up at the youths, it was with the watery blue eyes of the tutor they had known all their lives.

  “Children,” she said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I'm so sorry about your father.”

  Morning in the mountains was different than morning on the ground. It came earlier, and so much brighter than normal. The clouds were low that day, and Cianna was actually above them, so when she looked down toward the rest of the Realms, all she saw was a blanket of cloud coverage.

  She had to dress warmly, covered with nearly everything she had in her pack, which made her traveling hard. The air was lighter, which meant she had to take frequent breaks, because she easily lost her breath. But when the morning came, it made it all worth it. The sun rose, bright and glorious in the night sky, far to the east, and she rose early to watch the bend of the horizon as the sun rose brilliantly.

  Cianna thought, if she listened close enough, she might be able to hear the moment when the sun rose through the gray stillness of pre-dawn quiet. The whisper of the dead near at hand drew her back from her morning ritual. Cianna turned her attention to the dead, and the news they brought. They told her of the attacks in the Realm of Fire, and though they were bad, she had seen some of them firsthand, and didn't need to know about them. What she had wanted to know was about the attacks on the Realm of Earth, and after finding out the Wyrder’s Academy was the only place they knew of that had been attacked with malignant wyrd, Cianna relaxed. At least nothing had befallen the Guardian's Keep other than Sara’s sickness.

  Cianna sent a prayer up to the Goddess that Sara would get better.

  The dead had told her of Greenwood as well, but that hadn't been destroyed by malignant wyrd; some kind of battle had taken place there. The dead murmured that it had the feel of angels, and Cianna wondered if it was her cousins, or some other angel roaming the area.

  Are there other angels? she wondered.

  But now the dead returned again, with news of another sort. This time she had sent them far west, where the darkness was growing.

  The spirit of a young boy kneeled before her, whispering news of the kind she wanted. He reached out his hand to her, his dead wyrd rising like smoke from the silhouette of his body.

  When he touched her forehead images bloomed to the surface. A figure, cloaked in black, walked alone across the field toward a giant tower made of turquoise. It rose out of the ground, as if grown from the very gem that lent it color. One main tower stretched up, with two smaller ones like flames, or wings, curving high above the center tower.

  Cianna watched the figure climb the stairs, and the doors open to admit them.

  The tower glowed brighter, as if hit with the sun. When the light cleared, there was a miasma of darkness which hung like curtains around the tower.

  Cianna blinked, and in that moment of darkness hundreds of bowed bodies manifested on the planes surrounding the tower, bowing and chanting a cacophonous noise towards it, supplicating themselves.

  She felt the darkness spread, and though not all of the figures were receptive to the malignant wyrd, some of them eagerly drank it into themselves, whether knowing that Chaos rode the wyrd they took in, or ignorant of the transformation it would spark in them.

  The light of the tower flashed again, and a great scream went up through the crowd. When the light cleared two other figures kneeled beside her, one female, and one male. They were both blond, and they had blood and chunks of flesh about them.

  From their backs stretched brilliant wings.

  She knew who these two were. Cianna could feel it on their wyrd. These were her cousins, Angelica and Jovian.

  With a gasp she came back to herself.

  The boy nodded, as if he understood what she felt, and then vanished with the mists of the morning. Cianna sat back, no longer paying attention to the sun that bathed her in its early morning brilliance, and looked to the west. All she could think of was the darkness around the tower, and the chaos she felt within the figure who infiltrated it.

  Cianna was pulled from her contemplation when the swelling of pain in her head told her the Necromancers’ Mosque would wait no longer. Once she started gathering her things, the pain abated, and she was soon on her way.

  That day her trip was spent in silent reflection of the life she was leaving behind. Cianna wasn't sure why she felt like nothing would be the same after she entered the mosque, but there was a certainty within her soul that once the doors closed behind her, the person she was now would no longer exist.

  She also turned her mind to the path ahead of her. How many other necromancers walked this path before her? How many other boots had watched the same ancient sun rise over the Barrier Mountains, and thought of the life they were leaving behind them?

  When the evening came, it ushered in her first sight of the Necromancers’ Mosque, short and wide, like a pyramid of gray stone. Outside rested torches, lit by some force other than fire, burning blue in the evening twilight.

  Along the path winding toward the obelisk, the torches pulled her on, almost urging her toward the mosque. As she neared, a stone door slid open from the center of the pyramid, and beyond was only blackness.

  Cianna balked, not wanting to enter the darkness beyond, afraid of what she might find, but when she paused, the throbbing in her head nearly drove her mad as it pulsed in time with her heart. Only when Cianna was setting one foot in front of the other did the pain abate.

  She stepped into the darkness of the mosque, and the door slid shut behind her.

  It hadn't taken as long as Mag thought it would to get her family to the Guardian's Keep and their new quarters set up. It had been a busy week, arranging their new lives. It was strange for Mag to not have to worry about the running of Montaria, where she had previously been a senator.

  Thankfully her husband Jack had taken over settling their children in and setting them up with the tutors in the keep, which left her free to organize the barracks, get the large groups of soldiers, who called themselves roots, organized, and start conversing with the commanders on battle strategy.

  It was giving her a headache. But honestly, if they all holed up here, there wasn't much option for an attack from behind, since the keep was built into the Barrier Mountains. There was always the threat of the trolls coming down from their mountain home, but everyone was in agreement that the giants would probably take care of them.

  She looked out the window and the sun was nearly at its zenith. Vanparaness had said the Looker came to him near the evening time for the exchange, and Mag intended to be there before her.

  Mag set down her work and rubbed her eyes. She had been a senator for the longest time and never had to deal with battles and war. But then again, no one in the realms had had to deal with battles and war in almost thirty years, so it wouldn't be easy
on any of them.

  She still didn't understand why, now, the chaos dwarves would choose an attack. Mag figured something was up. Azra Akeed kept mentioning a rising darkness in the west, and then all of these attacks. It wasn't random, that was for certain. She hadn't had time to discuss it with anyone other than Annbell, but the paper and the riddle of it came back to her mind. Mag shuddered when the memory of the Beast swam to the forefront of her head.

  Yes, something was happening, and this wasn't an ordinary attack. Something else had to be behind it.

  She made her way out of her office and headed for the other side of the keep where Sara's rooms were. As she walked, the same thoughts that had been plaguing her the last five days inevitably kept her company.

  What was behind this attack? She knew the chaos dwarves wouldn't be organizing themselves, they had fallen into tribal rifts frequently, and often couldn't agree on one thing, or be in the company of another tribe without fighting taking place. For the longest time they hadn't been a threat at all. But now they were gathering together with their minds on a single goal: taking back the keep.

  And that didn't make any sense. Something else had to be behind it, someone other than the dwarves had to be organizing this. But what was she to do? All any of them could do was protect their home. Despite the fact something else was inevitably taking place behind the façade of war, they couldn't deal with that when there were crazed dwarves headed this way.

  Mag shook her head. The thoughts weren't helping the headache any, but she couldn't make them go away. It was true, there was no proof something else was happening under the surface, but she couldn't help feel in the back of her mind that this was a cover for something.

  She cleared the thoughts from her mind as she pushed through the doors to Sara's office. Annbell looked up over the rim of her glasses where she sat behind the desk.

  “Aladestra tells me that a rather large squadron of verax-acis were allowed to escape last night,” Annbell said.

  The news drew Mag up short.

  “They should never have allowed any of those monsters to live,” she said, venom in her voice. “What in the realms possessed them to keep them?”

  Annbell leaned back and spread her hands wide. Annbell and Sara had lost a great deal to the hands of the verax-acis, the death of their sister Tori and the momentary insanity of Grace, whose mind had been twisted by the monsters into killing her sister.

  “What are we going to do?” Mag asked. “Do you think they’re going to aid the chaos dwarves?”

  “There's no telling, but I can't help but think of what Azra said.” Annbell looked down to her folded hands.

  “Any news from the other Guardians about the note?”

  Annbell shook her head no. It was silent for a few moments before either of them spoke again.

  “I just can't help but think he used them last time, you know?” Annbell said.

  “And last time we had help in the form of Pharoh and Sylvie,” Mag agreed.

  “What do you think will happen?” Annbell wondered.

  “If he isn't stopped?” Mag asked. She couldn't help picture the realms at the feet of the Beast. Cities ruined, new laws in place, alarists running the show. A life not worth living, with no freedoms and no Goddess.

  “That's what I thought too,” Annbell said, reading the look of loss on Mag's face.

  “How is she?” Mag asked, nodding toward Sara's door.

  “Better, so the nurses say. She isn't as weak as she was before, but still no idea of when or if she will come out of it,” Annbell told her. She placed her glasses back on her face and started sifting through notes again.

  “I wanted to check in on her before I went off to deal with the Looker,” Mag said, standing.

  “Do you need any help with that?” Annbell asked her, not looking up from the letter she was drafting.

  “No, it should be simple enough.”

  The Guardian's Garden was cold, and there was nothing Mag could do to make it warmer for herself, since any presence of wyrd outside of the simple cloaking wyrd she’d worked, might give her away. She didn't know what kind of powers for detecting wyrd the Looker might have, and she didn't want to trigger anything before she attacked. Whatever bit of wyrd she used now she hoped was brushed aside as coming from the keep.

  The garden was round and small with brick walls. Numerous plants and bushes that were now skeletons of what they once were created pillow-like lumps of powdery snow all around her. A small walking path ringed a fountain in the center, and two benches, both facing toward the fountain. It was a clear day, which only made it colder. On the left-hand wall stood the only door that led to the outside. It wasn't open, but it never was unless Van was seeing the Looker, he had told them.

  Mag considered sitting down on one of the benches, but as they hadn't been cleared off, and there were only a few footprints around the snow-covered garden. She didn't want to risk the Looker seeing the depression where she had sat. Instead, she made her way around to the only outside entrance, opened the door, and then hid beside it, only moving enough to brush out her footprints.

  Now she waited.

  When the Looker approached, Mag could feel it in her stomach, as she had when Van brought the tea in for Sara. It wasn't the crippling pain it had been the day Vanparaness had been captured. Mag figured that something probably interrupted the power of the Wyrders’ Bane the Looker brought with her, so that people wouldn't notice it as much.

  As the pain intensified, Mag could hear the Looker crunching through the snow up toward the garden. Alerted to the Looker’s presence, Mag loosened the knife on her belt, gently easing it out of the sheath. The Looker stopped for a moment, and she must have been directly on the other side of the wall from Mag, because the sorceress could hear her sniffing, like a dog scenting a trail, and then grunt.

  “Filthy wyrders,” she grumbled, and rounded the corner into the small garden. The Looker stopped, and as she surveyed the garden, Mag had a moment to survey her.

  She was a short creature, and covered in lumps and dirt. What hair could be seen coming out of her cloak was wiry and messy. Her clothes were made of some coarse material Mag had never seen before, but it was moth-eaten and nearly threadbare in some spots. How it kept her warm, Mag didn't know.

  “Damnable child,” the Looker grumbled. “Late as usual.”

  Then she became suspicious, looking around as if the walls themselves might have eyes to spot her. Mag could almost feel how uncomfortable the Looker felt, being here, waiting where anyone could see her. But Mag couldn't move yet; there was no room to slip around the Looker.

  Mag didn't believe in long battles. Secreted away with wyrd and shadows, she waited until the Looker stopped peering around her, and then let herself be known.

  The invisibility wyrd crumbled around her, and Mag stepped out of hiding behind the Looker. She grabbed the top of the dwarf’s head and drew the blade across her neck, opening up a jagged second mouth beneath her chin. A stream of blood shot strongly from the wound, painting the snow and fountain in crimson revenge.

  The dwarf lashed out, struggling against her assailant, but wyrd strengthened Mag's grip, and the dwarf couldn't batter her way out. Mag held her still as she convulsed. Before long, the Looker slumped in her arms, and Mag let her fall face-first into her own gore.

  Stepping around the dwarf, she lifted her hands and started forming her wyrd. With a twist of her mind she captured the image of the dead Looker in the message orb. She spoke into the wyrd.

  “Come for us. We don't need wyrd to slaughter you,” she said coldly. The words swirled over the bloody image of the Looker inside the green orb. Without thinking, Mag tossed the ball into the air, and her message sought out the camp of the chaos dwarves.

  Cianna pressed herself back against the closed door and willed her racing heart to slow.

  From what she could tell, reaching out to either side, she was in some kind of hallway. She sensed, without really knowing how, tha
t this hallway opened up to a single room. And it was extremely cold inside. The chill in the air was noticeably different than that outside. It was the chill of death, the dank embrace of an ancient grave.

  Cianna cupped her hands to her face and blew hot air into them in an attempt to warm her fingers. She reached for her necromancy, hoping she could start a ghost light by which to see, but she couldn't feel her necromancy any longer.

  “This is a test,” she heard a woman say before her. Cianna was disorientated. There was an echo to the voice, like the woman was far off, yet at the same time she felt the woman's breath upon her cheek. A moment of panic flared through her when she realized there was no telling what was even in the room. She suspected she was in a hallway, and that there was a chamber before her, but she could really be standing on the edge of a cliff, and the puff of air on her face might really be an updraft, not breath.

  “What kind of test?” Cianna asked, reaching forward to see if she could feel the woman, but there was nothing immediately in front of her. It made her dizzy, thinking she could be moments away from plunging into an abyss. Or worse, there could be untold horrors lurking for her, just out of range of her fingers. Cianna pulled her hands back to her chest.

  “A test to see if you are worthy of your gift.”

  “And what happens if I fail?” Cianna asked.

  “Our walls can always use more insulation,” the woman said indifferently.

  “Right, don't fail,” Cianna said quietly.

  “Come,” the woman told her.

  “I can't see where I’m going,” Cianna complained.

  “Then you must trust the dead,” the woman said.

  “But I can't feel them,” Cianna countered.

  “Nonsense; you are talking to the queen of all the dead now,” the woman said. Instantly Cianna saw in her mind the woman with the shapely lips, the tall golden top hat, and the skeletal tattoos.