On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (20 page)

“So we stick to the battlements,” Sara said. “What’s the damage report to the keep?”

“The keep holds firm,” Joya said. “Caldamron did a survey today. Broken windows, mostly, some exterior damage, but the foundation holds.”

“Good,” Sara nodded. “Getting our wyrders better is paramount.”

Rosalee nodded.

“With the stone flushed out of our systems, and us drinking clean water, we should be able to use our powers once more,” Sara continued. “Joya, were you able to contact your realm?”

“Yes. I’m bringing dryads, frement, and dark elves. Armed with machines, and the lesser hell hound, I think we can strike fear into their hearts,” Joya said.

“Great. Fear is often a better weapon than steel. We will unbalance our enemy, make them nervous, throw them off, and then strike.”

“Is there anything else you’d like me to do for now?” Joya asked. “I have no further orders.”

“One doesn’t order around a Realm Guardian,” Sara said, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips.

Joya bowed her head in understanding. “Be that as it may, I’m not used to sitting around and waiting. What would you have me do?”

“Sit tight and wait until your people arrive.” Sara laughed. “We need to keep you in one piece. Mag is seeing to the soldiers outside, and Annbell is in the infirmary. Take this time to rest with your brother and sister. In a short amount of time, there will be plenty for you to do.”

She would not be sitting around. Joya LaFaye wasn’t the kind to sit back and wait for things to come to her.
At least not any longer.
Joya lifted her cup to her mouth and drained it. No time like the present to get to work on cleansing her system.

Angelica sat on the toilet, the tea of lady’s toe working overtime on her system. Rosalee said that the blood thinner would help to work the flecks of stone through her blood system, and then she would be able to pass them. She didn’t tell her that she would have to sit on the toilet nearly non-stop until that happened.

Dehydration being a real threat, Angelica tossed back the last dregs of water, and finished up.

The shadow was a constant companion now, with her at all times, feeling her, wondering what she was. At times its curiosity was almost an audible question.

She dipped her hands in the basin and sluiced clean water over her face. The bandage had been able to come off, but there was still a large lump on the side of her head, and it was tender to touch.

Since the shared dream of Baba Yaga’s mountain sister, Angelica had felt the pull of the Turquoise Tower stronger than ever before. It was a looming presence in her mind now, a monument of fear and destiny drawing her forth, beckoning her to come and see what was happening there, to get her wings and join with the host. To be a force against the darkness.

But there was another fear. To be one of the host. That sounded a lot like she was going to lose her identity, and just be a nameless face in some war of good against evil.

Angelica let the water drip off her face and checked her reflection in the mirror. The weak light of a small lamp beside the basin flickered in the mirror, casting shadows across the surface and distorting her reflection.

As she was lulled, the light of the lamp flickered again, and in the darkness of the mirror Angelica thought she could see the terrible transformative tower looming up, calling to her and pulling her angelic blood forth to its foreboding steps.

A shadow skirted across the surface of the mirror, and Angelica’s focus was broken. The moment she concentrated on the shifting shadow of Wyrders’ Bane in the mirror, the call in her blood vanished.

It was strange how she could look at the shifting figure of the egrigor in the mirror, yet she wasn’t able to see it straight on if she looked.

There wasn’t much she could see about the shadow, other than it honestly looked like the shadow of a person. There were no eyes, no defining lines, just the shape of a small human with an elongated head and willowy arms that it held crooked, like some earth-dwelling race about to pounce on its prey.

“What are you?” Angelica asked the egrigor. She was tired. Her lids drooped lethargically over her eyes, but she didn’t dare leave the bathroom.

What are you?
she heard in her mind. She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Could the stone communicate? Surely no one else had mentioned that. Maybe this was some side effect of the herb.

Angelica gathered her dressing gown around her waist and sank back down to the toilet.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, closing her eyes. When there was nothing to focus on visually, she was able to feel with her other senses, and that meant the feeling of Wyrders’ Bane in her head.

What are you?
It asked again.

“And we can’t use wyrd against you,” Angelica said ignoring the ghostly question in her mind. “So there’s no way to beat you.” She was talking more to herself than she was the egrigor. Still she felt the desire of the egrigor to know what she was.

“Why is it important to know what I am?” Angelica asked.

The egrigor vanished.

“How is she doing?” Cianna asked, placing a hand on Pi’s shoulder.

Pi sat holding on to Clara’s hand, watching the girl’s face. Clara was ashen, dead looking. Her yellow hair was lank and lacked any true luster. She had been in her trials for a long time now, and there was an even longer time between her last trial and now. Cianna didn’t want to voice that maybe something had happened to her in the trials, and that she had died. Flora insisted that kind of thing didn’t happen, that sometimes a sorcerer took longer with one trial than they did with another, but they all eventually passed them. But things were different now. There was Wyrders’ Bane.

“I saw her eyes move this morning,” Pi said.

“When was the last time you slept?” Cianna asked, surveying her friend’s waxy complexion and the dark circles under her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Clara will be done soon, then I can sleep.”

“Why don’t you take some time now and rest. I’ll sit with her. It’s not like she’s going anywhere, right?” Cianna asked.

“But—” Pi started to argue.

“I insist,” Cianna said, firm resolve in her voice. “There’s a cot right here beside us, and if anything changes I’ll wake you immediately.” Pi looked like she was about to argue further. “Now, what if she wakes up? What then? You without any sleep and not able to take joy in her passing her trials? It’s better to rest now, so you can be fresh when she wakes up. Goddess knows if I woke up and saw my lover looking like you look, I’d think they were a corpse.”

“Do I look that bad?” Pi winced.

“Oh, Pi, I was sugar-coating it. You look like shit.”

Pi snickered. “I guess you’re right.” She shifted off the side of the cot and slumped down in the one Cianna pointed to directly beside them. “How are the other wyrders doing?” Pi asked, covering up with a military-issue navy-blue wool blanket.

Cianna’s gaze inevitably fell on Rosalee and Grace, dressed in their white healer’s aprons, administering their concoctions. “Good. We think we have a way of getting them better.”

“I was supposed to be out there,” Pi whispered. “Devenstar was.”

Cianna’s eyes snapped up to the other girl, but she schooled her features, not letting Pi know her worry for Devenstar. “Is he okay?”

“If you can consider what these people are going through as okay, then yeah,” Pi said, and then yawned hugely.

“Get some rest,” Cianna told her, but the command was largely unneeded since Pi had drifted off nearly before she could finish closing her mouth.

Cianna looked around the infirmary for Devenstar, but since they had to convert the basement of the keep into a makeshift hospital ward, the cots stretched on so far that most of them were lost in the shadows from where she was. Even the majority of what she could see were shapeless lumps of blue wool blankets.

She thought of going to look for him, but she couldn’t leave Clara, not after having promised Pi that she would stay with her. And, after all, Clara was more important to Devenstar than his own health, since she was his sister. Cianna figured the best thing she could do for both Pi and Devenstar was to sit here and wait for Clara to wake up.

But Cianna couldn’t quell her worries that Clara might never wake up. She had fallen a long way, and she had been amongst the kelpies. What if they had done something to her? She inwardly scoffed at herself. Clara had been fine after that, she’d even passed some of her trials. If Flora wasn’t worried, then Cianna shouldn’t be worried either. She put the thought from her mind.

But then, once the thought was gone, another intruded.

The dream of the Turquoise Tower.

She shifted uncomfortably on the stool and reached for Clara’s hand. Cianna listened to the whispers of the nurses and hospital staff, the shifting of humans on their cots, and the prickly rustle of the wool blankets. In the distance she even heard someone relieving themselves into a bedpan.

All human things, her heart told her. Not anything she would ever have to worry about when she got her wings. No more sickness, no more death, just life as a pure angelic being.

But that was a joke. Hadn’t the dream shown her something else? Hadn’t the dream given her black wings? And didn’t that mean chaos? She didn’t like to think that was true, but Cianna couldn’t hide from the fact that the dream
distinctly
showed black wings as being on the side of chaos, and white wings being the soldiers of Goddess.

She closed her eyes and saw her reflection in the tower room of her dream, standing beside Joya. She had felt the revulsion for her shorter cousin almost instantly when she saw her pristine white wings. She had pushed the feeling aside, but hadn’t there been a trace of loathing on Joya’s face as well, when she glimpsed Cianna’s black wings?

No,
Cianna thought.
It was just a dream, and while it was a summons to the tower, it isn’t completely prophetic.
But there was a nagging feeling inside of her. She might not be anakim and able to decipher the future like Angelica and Jovian, but she
was
able to tell that this was something that was going to come to pass.

Did that mean she was chaotic? After all this time fighting against one half of her heritage, was it going to win out after all? She’d tried for so long to forget who her father was, to deny what he had done and embrace the only blood in her veins she was proud of: Pharoh’s. But try as she might, Cianna couldn’t deny that she had felt her father’s presence to the west when Azra Akeed had mentioned it.

Cianna knew she was pure angel, even if she didn’t have her wings. She was full blood, not half-blood like the others she saw in the dream. But to remember that was to remember that more than Pharoh’s blood coursed through her veins.

It was something Cianna never thought she would have to face: her true lineage.

Even now she could feel him, and all she was doing was thinking of the tower. The tension of her thoughts built up in her neck, and her head began to hurt. Cianna rolled her shoulders soothingly, trying to work out the kinks.

“Hello dear,” she heard a whimsical voice behind her. Cianna jumped when a light hand touched her shoulder. She turned to see the glazed green eyes of Rosalee. A miasma of unruly red hair wreathed the woman’s face like an angry cloud. “She’s been given tainted water, and so she needs some tea as well.”