On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (16 page)

So now she felt every ache, every pain of her advanced years. She tried not to show it around the others, but as she stood staring down the stairs that lead to the entrance hall, she groaned.

Maybe I can steal some of their white willow bark,
Grace mused, but she wasn’t sure it would work. Placing a hand on the railing to steady herself, she started the slow trek down the stairs. Voices rose up from below to greet her before she reached the bottom. She could hear Maeven yelling commands, and distantly she heard other voices too. With any luck there wasn’t a lot of snow out there, but avalanches this far up in the mountains weren’t anything to joke about.

She saw the snow before she reached the bottom. When the doors had been opened to the courtyard, a lake of it had flooded in. Most of the entrance hall was covered. Near the doors it was the height of a child, but the further back it went, the less it became until nothing but a thin dust of snow covered the farther recesses of the hall.

A wisp of wind blew in, ruffling the hem of her dress and making her shudder with the freezing temperature of the clear night. It would figure that on a night like this, with a clear sky and no clouds to insulate the realm and keep the warmth in, there would be an avalanche.

“Have they made it out of their barracks?” Maeven yelled.

“Yes!” came a distant response, muffled by the snow.

“Good.” Maeven turned back to the people in the hall. “We need more people, three at least, making paths to the barracks. We need to get them out. Fill up those buckets and take partners. Partners, carry the buckets in, set them in the back as far back as you can. Take shifts at the shovels.”

Grace snatched a young girl by the collar as she ran by. She was too small to be any help, but she was anxious to do anything that would aid their efforts.

“What’s your name, child?” Grace asked. She wanted to crouch down to eye level, but Maeven was watching her, and she refused to let him see the pain in her eyes that the action would provoke. Instead she bent a little to gaze into the girl’s eyes.

“Maddie,” the girl said.

“Maddie, would you be a dear and go to the healer. Have them give you these items.” Grace handed her the slip of paper Rosalee had given her. “Tell them it’s for Grace.”

“Okay,” the little girl whispered, her eyes wide but determined. She raced off.

“Bring them to the second floor when you get them,” Grace called after her.

“Everything okay?” Maeven asked, coming to her side. He placed a gloved hand on her arm to help her stand. In times past Grace would have shaken off the support, but she needed it now more than she liked to admit, so she let Maeven help her to a chair. He eased her down and uncoiled the wool scarf from around his neck, handing it to her.

She took it gratefully and wrapped it around her neck.

“We think we might have a way to make it better. I do need some snow, for water,” Grace told him. Maeven grabbed a bucket from a man walking by and handed it to Grace.

“Sit for a while,” Maeven told her. “You’ve been very busy.”

Grace grumped at him, but smiled to lessen the blow. For some reason she’d never been able to lie to Maeven, so she wouldn’t tell him that she didn’t need the rest. But at the back of her mind she kept wondering what the drafts of cold air would do to her joints.

As if reading her mind, Maeven picked up a shovel that stood beside the door and started filling buckets from the snow inside the hall so they could close the doors up a little.

“Someone get a fire in the last fireplace back there; it’ll help melt the snow,” Maeven barked. A woman obeyed.

“Sir,” a voice yelled from outside. “One of the roots are free, what would you like them to do?”

“MAG!” Maeven yelled. Grace heard the woman speak from outside. “What should the soldiers do?”

“Assemble,” Mag said, striding onto the scene. “We need all roots armed and manning the ramparts. The dwarves won’t rest with one attack. We pushed back the ladders, but I’m sure that’s not all they have in store for us. We need a group of people digging paths to the ramparts also, making way for us to maneuver.”

“You heard her!” Maeven yelled. “Two groups, start making a path to the ramparts. Go to the right side of the court; the snow isn’t as deep, less digging to get them up there.”

Before Grace knew it the little girl was back, pressing a paper packet into her hands. Grace smiled at the child and gathered the bucket to her. Maeven saw the movement and came to her side.

“Let me carry that for you,” he said, trying to take the bucket.

“Dear, we all have our parts to play,” Grace told him. “While I’m thankful for the offer, you’re needed more here than you are carting snow for me.”

Maeven frowned, but nodded.

“We are doing all we can for Jovian,” Grace said. “He’s in good hands. Your aunt knows what she’s doing.”

As if hearing that Rosalee was also helping Grace soothed his worried mind, Maeven nodded and picked his shovel back up.

“Maddie,” Maeven said. “Why don’t you stay in here and help carry my buckets to the back by the fireplace?”

Maddie nodded.

At a snail’s pace, Grace made her way back up the two flights of stairs to the room once more.

“Perfect,” Rosalee said, taking the bucket of snow and setting it beside a fire she’d obviously built up while Grace was out. The window stood open, venting out some of the heat so that Angelica’s temperature didn’t rise with the warmth of the room. Rosalee was bundled up in another blanket, worn around her shoulders like a cloak. The room was drafty, but markedly warmer than the entrance hall had been.

“What do you need me to do?” Grace asked, handing the packet of herbs to Rosalee.

“Put some snow in a kettle and set it on the fire; it will heat faster.” Rose spread the herbs out on the table. Using a knife, she chopped a small section off the bone-white winter root. As Grace scooped the snow into a metal kettle, she watched her friend pulp the root with the flat of her blade until she decided it was tender enough. She nodded and placed the flattened-out segment in a small glass.

“When it whistles, pour enough of the hot water on the root to just cover it,” Rosalee said.

Grace nodded. She knew how much water to steep roots in so they didn’t lose any of their medicinal properties, but Rosalee was better versed in medicine than Grace was, so she deferred to the other woman’s instructions.

Rosalee started humming and opened up the nalium. White powder puffed out of the packet in a cloud. Rosalee turned her head away from it. When it cleared, she took a pinch of the powder and placed it in a delicate ceramic tea cup with paintings of cherry trees and jade dragons on it. Rooting around in the packet, Rosalee came back out with another herb, which was long and delicate and looked to be knotted in two places.

“No child cap?” Rosalee asked. “Lady’s toe isn’t as strong, but it will work.”

She placed the root on the table and started to mince it. It looked much softer than the winter root had, and diced up perfectly. Rose gathered it up in a tea ball on the cup’s saucer and set it back beside the cup.

As if on cue, the kettle began whistling. Grace grabbed it out of the fire, using the hem of her dress to absorb the heat. The water steamed in the cool air as she placed a small portion on the root, and a larger portion in the cup.

She set the kettle back by the fire as Rosalee submerged the tea ball.

“And now we let it steep until it’s cool,” she said.

Grace sat in the chair at the head of the couches and watched Angelica and Jovian, tossing and moaning in the grips of some pain she didn’t know, and now that she was bereft of her wyrd, a pain she would never have the displeasure of knowing.

Angelica was aware of the pain in her head, like one was aware of a mosquito buzzing in their ear. She felt it, but it was easy to ignore within the fabric of the dream. Before her spread a forest of dead trees, their white wood stretching, parched, to the night sky. The ground, which she couldn’t see through the heavy veil of fog that surrounded her, was wet and slimy beneath her feet. Twigs lay beneath the corroded leaves, giving the impression of bones under rotting flesh. She wished her feet weren’t bare, but her entire body was naked.

“The realm of the dead, again,” Jovian said, stepping out of the darkness of his pre-dream to stand beside her.

“Baba Yaga calls to us again,” Angelica said. She was wreathed in fog from her neck down; she wore a miasma of it like a shimmering robe of smoke, covering her form. Jovian was also naked, and the fog clung to him as well.

“What do you suppose she has to tell us?” Jovian asked. In the distance an animal barked into the night, making Angelica jump.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to calm her racing heart. To her left a twig snapped, and she thought a she saw a shadow darting out of her line of sight. “I just wish she didn’t have to put us near death to do it.”

“Well, she is kind of the warden of the dead, isn’t she?” Jovian reasoned.

Angelica nodded. Before them a blue light flickered into existence. Angelica remembered the pull she had felt before, when they’d ventured into the hag’s realm.

“At least now we know how to get into her house,” Jovian reasoned, taking a step forward.

“But you must have forgotten how to travel here,” Angelica said, and then laughed. “Like this.” She let her gaze linger on the blue flame, wafting in the still, foggy night before them. The desire of seeing the flame, supported on its bone white pillar, formed in her mind, and in an instance, she was there, standing before the torch and gazing up at the brilliance of the deathly flame.

“Oh, yeah,” Jovian said, still a distance back, his voice getting lost in the fog. In a stirring of mist, Jovian materialized beside her.

“Do you really think the trees are made of bone?” Angelica asked, remembering their first journey here.

“You can touch them again, if you need the clarification,” Jovian shrugged.

“I think I’ll pass,” Angelica said, studying the white torch before her.

“Look,” Jovian said. Angelica looked to where her brother pointed, and there, blooming up around a bend, was another blue light, calling them forward.

“What do you think they are?” Angelica asked, and they jumped to the next blue light.

“Who knows?” Jovian said, waiting for the next one to bloom into being. “Maybe the souls of the departed?”

“Some kind of necromancy?” Angelica wondered, seeing the next blue light flicker to life. They jumped to that one.

“Necromancy, maybe, or it could be something else. Remember, we used to think this was fog,” he gestured around to the fog around them. Angelica remembered the first time she had seen the dilapidated house of the forest hag and how out of the chimney billowed the smoke which snaked out along the ground, coating the forest.

“So if she was boiling the sin off the souls in her cauldron,” Angelica said. “The fog might be their sins?”

Jovian shrugged, jumping to the next wavering light. Angelica followed. “It seems likely,” he told her. “But you know how sorcerers can create lights.”

“True. It’s probably just some guiding wyrd, leading us to her.”

They continued to jump until the forest grew thicker, and the distances between the torches grew shorter. The jumps didn’t carry them so far now, and some kind of underbrush tickled their legs while they stood, waiting for the next light to guide them forward. Angelica shivered to think about what the underbrush could be, and she wished she could see it through the fog.

“I don’t remember coming this way last time,” Jovian said.

Angelica nodded, and shivered again. It was growing colder, and in three more jumps, a light snow started to fall around them. As the snow thickened, and their jumps once more grew further apart, the trees thinned until they finally gave way to a field of dense snow. High above them a full moon hung in all its glory, making the field glow with an eerie, mystical blue light that was both romantic and bone-chilling in its splendor.

“This isn’t the way we came before,” Jovian said.

Angelica shook her head, wrapping her arms around her chest. Though the fog was thinning, it still clung to their bodies like garments; however, it did nothing to warm them.