On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (2 page)

In the background the other two children mewled, as if lamenting the loss of their brother and sister.

The babes were laid in her arms, heavy in death. Their eyes had been closed, their mouths hanging slack, as if waiting for the first nursing that would never come.

Tears blurred her vision as she gathered the two children into her arms, and Dauin's body rocked with the first of many tears he would shed over the coming days.

As Sylvie gathered the children to her breast, she released her hold on the spirit within her physical confines. She was so close to eternal sleep as it was; the human shell that contained her angelic form had gone through more than it could bear that night. She had cried out to the Goddess to keep her alive long enough to birth these children. But that was over now. Her body was too injured, and had lost the will to continue.

Now she changed her prayer to the Goddess.

Please,
she whispered in her mind.
Glorious Pantasyl,
she named the mother aspect of the Goddess, using the name known only by the heavenly host.
Let these children live.

In answer she felt her body weaken.

"What are their names?" Dauin asked, his voice thick and broken.

"I like Angelica," Sylvie whispered, the strength ebbing from her voice.

"And Jovian." Dauin nodded in agreement.

"Lovely," Sylvie whispered, feeling the strength of her spirit split. She closed her eyes and felt the energy move from her body, and with the strength of the love she felt for the children, Sylvie willed her energy into Angelica and Jovian so that they might once more live.

As Sylvie lost consciousness and slipped into death, the babes in her arms let out their first broken screams. Air gasped into lungs that were previously thought dead, and eyes opened to their new, shared life.

"How do we do this again?" Astanel asked Mag.

"It's all there in the book," the short-haired sorceress told him, looking up from where she stood beside Sara's bed. There was a shuffling of papers as Astanel opened the bulky tome he could barely carry and looked over the words. The sun filtering through the large window in Sara’s bedchamber glowed off the boy’s golden hair in a halo of light.

"How do you read this?" he asked, clearing a lock of blond hair from his eyes. He needed a haircut, but there just hadn’t been time with everything that was happening. Mag realized just how young Astanel was, and that her role in training him would be partially as parent, as well as mentor. She needed to take more time with him, but she just didn’t have it, or the patience.

Mag sighed and closed her eyes.
Goddess, give me strength.

"You can't yet. The workings are far beyond what you’re currently capable of. In time you will be able to read more and more, but for now, that passage is hidden from you."

"So, how are you going to do this?" Astanel asked again.

"Preferably in silence." Mag leveled her gray eyes at the teenager, and he shrank away. She frowned at the guilt his actions brought to her. He had been used to abuse by one he looked up to before, when he was in the thrall of the grigori, before being rescued by Angelica, Jovian, and Joya. She shouldn't be so harsh with him, especially since she was to train him.

"Look, Astanel," Mag started, sinking into a chair at the head of Sara's bed. The red velvet robes of her new position as defense counsel whispered around her. She felt the cold of the granite floor through her silk slippers; they would have to get the room much warmer before bringing Sara out of her slumber. "I know this is all a lot to take in, and I know that I am to train you."

"But why? No one has even told me that yet," Astanel said. It wasn't whining; he was just as frustrated as Mag was.

"I am a lot like you," she told him. "Of course, where you were serving the grigori, and became an alarist through that bond, I was one by choice. Because of our former ties to Arael our wyrd is different, and we have different ways of controlling our powers. There is a divide in our abilities. I’ve given myself back to Goddess, as I am sure you have. For that reason, we have both light and dark sides of wyrd within us. In order to control our powers, we need to have a balance — we need to understand both. I'm the only person equipped to help you with that."

"But I know how to control my wyrd," Astanel argued.

"Alright, then." Mag stood, snapping her fingers at Astanel. "Read the first page of that book to me."

He balked, shuffling his feet for a moment, and then turned blue eyes back up to her, defeat written plainly in them.

"What's the matter? I thought you had all this control?"

Astanel scuffed the toe of his shoe on the floor.

"You were able to control your power through the grigori's link to you. You were being used, filled with his power and his will. He accessed your wyrd — don't think for a moment that you actually did any of those workings." Mag sighed. "Now, pile more wood on the fire, and start it up for me."

Given something to do, Astanel was able to hide his embarrassment, and went to piling wood on the coals as Mag inspected Sara more closely.

“And don’t do it like a human,” Mag mumbled over her ministrations when she heard Astanel trying to strike a spark. He sighed, and she felt the swell of wyrd through the room as he bent his focus into conjuring a flame with which to kindle the logs.

Over the last few days the Realm Guardian had been showing signs of improvement, color returning to her cheeks, her hair taking on a healthier sheen, even if she hadn't put back on any of the weight she’d lost in her sickness.

Mag shook her head in dismay. Sorcerers could become nearly skin and bone, with no muscle to support their frame, and still the wyrd coursing through them would keep them alive. As long as their head remained, they would survive.

Mag had thought, until recently, that the only way to kill a sorcerer was to take their head, but Sara had come very close to dying from the tea she’d been fed. Tea spiked with the fragments of the stone called Wyrders’ Bane.

Mag straightened, closed her eyes, and held her hands over the inert form of her Realm Guardian. She pushed aside her thoughts of the soldiers gathering in the barracks outside and what she would do with them, how she would fight what was to come. All that mattered now was Sara, and getting her Guardian better.

Mag drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, relaxing into the flow of her wyrd.

"The fire is ready," Astanel said, shattering the trance Mag was nearly in.

"Perfect, now be very silent," she said, restraining herself from silencing the boy with wyrd. Again, she followed the steps, relaxing herself and opening the channel to her wyrd. It was easier this time, the wyrd washing up around her like a cool lake welcoming her in the heat of summer. Slowly she opened her lids and looked down at Sara with new eyes, eyes infused with wyrd. This way, Mag was able to see maladies of wyrd.

Sara's wyrd was still blocked, still corrupt. Where most sorcerers maintained a constant link with the Well of Wyrding, it appeared Wyrders’ Bane had blocked that link in Sara, establishing a new link with itself. Mag could see the blackened, corrupt wyrd still coursing through Sara's body, but the stone wasn't anywhere around, so there was no link any longer. It had severed the link to the Well of Wyrding, but once the stone had been removed, there was nothing for Sara to link to any longer, nothing for her to draw power from. Could that be why the Realm Guardian was so close to death? She wasn’t being fed a constant stream of wyrd, and wasn’t the wyrd they channeled what made a sorcerer immortal?

But what would have happened if she had continued drawing from the stone?
Mag wondered.

Mag's stomach shifted painfully, and when the pain came to her stomach, she saw the corrupt wyrd inside Sara pulse brighter, as if welcoming something. From the corner of her eye Mag saw a shadow take shape in the corner. No sooner had Mag taken notice of the shadow than it vanished in a puff of smoke, which she could feel tremble along the threads of her wyrd.

Mag shook her head, sweat blooming on her upper lip. The pain had been like the pain she felt the day she sensed a problem with Sara's tea. Mag cleared her throat.

This had to be a rare case, she was convinced of that. Maybe because Sara had been consuming parts of the stone, instead of just having it close by.

Mag wiped away sweat from her brow. What was happening to her? Why was she feeling sick suddenly?

Focus,
she scolded herself.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting Sara better.
She owed the Guardian that much. After Mag had left her alarist past behind her, Sara and Annbell were the only ones who would give her a second chance, granting her amnesty and setting her up under their protection in Montaria, where she quickly became a senator. No, she needed to make sure Sara lived. Her own discomfort could wait.

The book said that the afflicted sorcerer, in this case Sara, had to be tethered to one who had wyrd flowing through their body. The transfusion would access the link the healthy sorcerer had with the Well of Wyrding, bleeding out the bad energy and welcoming in the new, until the corrupt wyrd was gone. At that point, the well should re-establish the link with Sara.

That's where Astanel came in. Mag hated the thought of using the boy, given everything he’d been through, but everyone in the keep had too much on their plates right now to spare even a few hours for such a thing, let alone however long it would take to restore Sara.

Mag pulled the chair closer and motioned for Astanel to sit beside Sara.

"You remember what I told you, right?" Mag asked.

Astanel nodded. He unbuttoned his sky-blue jacket to make himself more comfortable, and sat at the Realm Guardian's head.

"She looks so weak," he whispered, staring into her wasted face.

"We’re going to make her stronger, okay?" Mag asked, staring into Astanel's eyes. He nodded his understanding. "Alright." She walked around to the other side of Sara and knelt. As she sunk to her knees, she drew her wyrd around her like a second robe, shielding herself for the work ahead, blocking out all negativity.

She felt the shadow at the edge of her awareness again, and with its coming there was another pang in her stomach. Mag closed her eyes and breathed deeply until the cramp passed. When she opened them, Astanel was staring at her.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

She waved away his concern. "I’ll be fine."

Mag pulled herself back to the task at hand. The book said the line of wyrd connecting one to the well originated at the back of the skull. Mag imagined it would be around where the lemniscate was, so she surveyed that area with her mind.

The first time her wyrded gaze passed over the area, she didn't see anything. The second time, she
felt
with her wyrd as well as looked. Mag felt a patch of rough wyrd overlaying Sara’s lemniscate. When she surveyed the area again, it looked almost like a wound that had been cauterized. Her channel to the well had been cut off so completely as to appear burned out.

The book said to reroute this channel to the earth, to drain the corrupt wyrd into the soil to be transmuted. It was Mag's hope that once the channel had bled all the wyrd out, it would then re-establish with the Well of Wyrding automatically.

Mag reached deep into the ground, several stories beneath them, and sifted through the flows of natural wyrd she felt there. Finally she felt a strong tendril of wyrd in the ground and grabbed hold of it. She pulled it back up to her, clutching it in mental hands. She affixed it to the lemniscate on Sara's neck. Mag felt the tendril suction on to the Guardian's neck, welcoming the contact with the Realm Guardian as a flower would welcome the touch of the sun.

In her slumber, Sara sighed, and Mag thought she saw the ghost of a smile spread across her mouth. That was a good sign. It was the first stirring of life she had seen in Sara in a long time.

But she wasn't done. Mag channeled her own wyrd, honing it into a blade of sorts. Reaching behind Sara's neck, she punctured the burned-out channel with the tip of her green wyrd.

Thick black wyrd, like dirty oil, leaked from the wyrded wound to drip down the channel Mag had established with the earth. Mag pushed to her feet and rounded the bed. The room was warming up now, which would help Sara regain strength. She would have to have someone come up with broth later, double the amount today that they had been spooning into Sara's mouth.