On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (4 page)

Angelica and Jovian looked thoughtful.

"But
why
did she do it?" Grace asked. "I understand that she loved them, but there just seems to be more behind this."

Cianna sighed in exasperation and leaned back in the chair. "I don't know," she shrugged with her hands.

"She's right," Jovian said.

"We feel it too," Angelica confirmed with a nod of her head. "It wasn't just her love for us that made her act. She felt something was coming that she needed to be here for."

"But
what?
" Grace asked.

"I don't know," Jovian said. "There's just this feeling. It’s been there for a while, just a sense that there’s something else she has to finish, some reason she needed to stick around."

"That doesn't make any sense," Grace said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

"Strange things have been happening," Cianna said, sitting back up. She leveled a gaze at Grace, as if the old lady knew what she spoke of.

"Sylvie wouldn't have kept her soul back just for a couple wayward attacks by washed-up alarists." Grace scowled.

"So you agree with Azra?" Cianna asked.

"About the growing darkness in the west?" Grace asked, sinking to the cushions beside Jovian. "No. About the attacks being alarist, yes. I think the Well of Wyrding brought them out of hiding, made them start thinking, and then they continued the attacks themselves."

"Wait, what's this gathering darkness in the west?" Angelica asked. Jovian looked up at the thrum of curiosity he felt down their link.

"Azra feels as though there is a darkness gathering in the west, some malignant force, but she can’t tell us more than that," Grace said, shrugging.

"There has to be more than that," Angelica said.

"There
is
," Cianna said, glowering at Grace. "Grace is being flippant about it. This darkness is gathering in the west, bringing the alarists out of hiding, and causing them to attack cities and towns, for reasons unknown."

"To the west?" Jovian said, realizing what had gotten Angelica all excited.

"Yes, why?" Cianna asked.

"We've been having dreams of a building in the west," Angelica said.

"The Turquoise Tower, and the Pale Horse with a dark-cloaked rider," Jovian finished.

Grace stopped, her pipe halfway to her lips. "You've seen the Turquoise Tower?" Grace asked. "I thought it was only a myth."

"But what is it?" Cianna asked.

"It's a building, a monument of sorts, where people of angelic blood can go and be restored to their angelic selves," Angelica told her. "Apparently it burns away their humanity, leaving only their true angelic side behind."

"This is . . . something, this is major," Cianna said, looking at Grace. "Has this ever happened before?"

Grace set her pipe down on the mantel and ran her hands over her face. "No. There was talk in the past that Arael was trying to find the Turquoise Tower so he could restore himself to his former glory in the Ever After."

"What would have happened if he had succeeded?" Jovian wondered.

"Who knows?" Grace said. "There was talk that maybe he would return to the Ever After and wage war there in an attempt to cast out the Goddess as she had done to him."

Jovian shivered.

"But they’re just dreams, right?" Cianna asked. "Nothing more?"

"We have been told, lately, that our dreams hold power," Angelica said, coming back to sit on her sofa. "We are anakim. Some people think that allows us to see things that haven't yet happened."

"Ah," Cianna said, leaning back again. "Foresight."

"This can't be good," Jovian said, not taking this as lightly as everyone else was.

"Certainly not," Angelica said.

"I refuse to believe it means a lot until we examine the facts more." Grace picked her pipe back up and puffed it back to life. "Let's discuss this with everyone else, and see what they think."

"I agree," Cianna said, cutting off any arguments Angelica and Jovian could give. "Annbell wants to have a meeting when Sara is well enough. I think we should discuss it more then."

Sara pushed herself up higher in the bed and wrinkled her nose at the stench heavy in the air. She sniffed inquisitively, realized the smell was coming from her, and made a noise deep in her throat.

A blond boy of about seventeen stirred beside the bed, coming awake in a very uncomfortable chair. Sara knew things about this boy; though she had never met him before, he was certainly no stranger to her. In fact, she felt like he was a part of her, an extension of sorts, but that was absurd. After a moment of scanning her body, she realized she was tethered to him by a tendril of magenta wyrd.

As the question of who the boy was formed in her mind, she automatically knew, as if it had been her name all along:
Astanel Lusmore.

"Strange," Sara said, struggling to push herself higher on the pillows.

Astanel rose and came to her side, helping her shuffle higher. With a groan of pain, she settled back on the down pillows.

"Thank you," she croaked, her voice dry. Sara reached for the water at the edge of the bedside stand, and stopped short. She pulled her wrinkled hand back and looked at the wasted fingers. The flesh sagged off her bones as if she were an old lady, not a sorceress frozen in time at the age of twenty-one. With shaky hands she reached for her face, and when she felt the cold, waxy wrinkles on her cheeks, her hands spasmed away.

Sara closed her eyes against the tears of fear that rushed to the surface. What did it mean?
I've aged,
she thought. But how? How did she age? She’d been fine before — the last she knew she still looked the same, just weaker.

A presence grew in the room, a form she recognized. At its coming, a sharp pain arose in her stomach and was mirrored by an equally sharp one in her head. Sara groaned and opened her eyes to see an evanescent shadow in the corner. When she tried to look straight at it, the shadow skirted away, as if it didn't want to be seen.

"Would you like a mirror?" the boy asked in a soft voice, as if he was afraid of breaking some reverent silence.

"No," Sara shook her head. "Just tell me, how old do I look?"

Astanel frowned, and studied her face. "Not old, just . . . sick."

Sara held her hand up before her face again, and now that he mentioned it, her skin didn't look so much old as it looked like she had been deprived of nourishment. She pulled back the covers, and lifted her gown.

Astanel cleared his throat and looked away. Through the tether of wyrd, she could feel his embarrassment.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, but didn't stop. She pulled her gown up and looked at her body underneath. Sure enough, she wasn't old, just very thin and wasted-looking. With a sigh Sara pushed her dressing gown back in place and pulled the heavy covers back up over her frame, feeling the weight of them pressing against her tired bones, sinking her further into the feather bed.

"How long have I been out?" Sara asked. She ignored the pain in her stomach, and the shadowed figure in the corner that seemed to cause it.

Astanel shrugged. "Mag should be here in a little bit; she comes every couple hours to check on you."

"What happened?" Sara asked insistently, even though Astanel seemed reluctant to answer. The shadow in the corner pulsed with the question, and then settled once more. Her stomach roiled painfully, drawing a moan from her throat. When Astanel looked at her, she waved a hand as if to say she was fine. Sara didn't believe she was, but the boy shouldn't worry about this. He was obviously too young to have gone through his trials yet. Matters of wyrding shouldn't be his concern yet, since he had no power to help. Even if he was helping right now with the tether connected to her, that was likely the work of a far more powerful sorcerer. She doubted he was able to read the wyrded words that comprised the entry in the tome of sorcery.

"Something about Wyrders’ Bane, whatever that is, and poisoned tea. Mag had to do a wyrd transfusion on you."

Sara nodded and closed her eyes. Wyrd transfusions weren't easy things to do, and she had no experience with performing one herself. Mag was be the only other person Sara could think of in the keep who would be strong enough to perform it. There were many other sorcerers at hand, but none of them that Sara thought could pull off the intricacies of a wyrd transfusion. She felt as though she’d started to drift off when Astanel shifted in his chair and brought her attention back to the present.

Sara's eyes studied the low flames of the fireplace. It was getting cold in the room, the panes of the window frosting up, fogging, letting her know the temperature outside was much colder than it was inside. She studied the falling snow for a time. It always surprised her that they could get such heavy snows and not be completely snowed in up to the higher peak of the keep.

"Would you mind stoking the fire?" Sara asked, her voice still weak.

Astanel stood and went to the fire. Sara reached for her glass of water. With weak hands she clasped the small glass and tried to draw it to her mouth, but no sooner had she lifted it from the stand than it tumbled out of her hands and smashed in a wash of water and glass across the granite floor.

Astanel jumped. "Are you alright?" he asked, and then realized what had happened. "I have some broth there for you if you’d like some?"

Sara nodded. "Fire first," she told him, and lay back in the bed.

The wood was stacked in the corner, nearest the shadow. Sara knew she couldn't watch the shadow directly, so she observed it out of the corner of her eye. When Astanel went to gather some wood, the shadow shifted, but didn't move. When the boy drew close, it almost felt to her wyrd like the shadow was feeling the boy's energy, like it was sampling him.

Astanel stepped back, gripping his stomach. The shadow swelled, and then fell still again, and whatever Astanel had felt in his stomach seemed to abate. He gathered the wood and started stacking it in the fireplace.

"What was that?" Sara asked. "Are you sick?"

"No Guardian, just a pain. It's gone now," he told her, crouching beside the hearth, waiting for the wood to catch.

When the fire was crackling loudly, and Sara desired nothing more than to fall asleep watching it, Astanel gathered the broth from the table against the wall and brought it to her. He placed the cold bowl to her lips and tilted it slightly. Sara took a deep drink.

The shadow flickered. Sara ignored it and the pain it brought to her midsection.

Pork broth. She closed her eyes with a moan, and drank deeply and hungrily. Sara’d had no idea how hungry she really was until the first bit of broth splashed in her empty stomach and her digestion growled to life.

As if on cue, the door opened just as the last bit of broth crossed her lips. Mag stepped in, her short dark hair looking frazzled, the red robes of her station gaping open in the front, showing her black dress underneath.

"You're awake!" Mag said, closing the door behind her.

"And it looks like Annbell has been doing some promoting since I was out," Sara said, and then smiled. "That office looks good on you, but with the upcoming skirmish, you might want to lose the red. It makes you stand out too much."

Mag smiled and shrugged out of the robe, folding it over the end of the bed. She went to Sara and checked her over. Sara could feel Mag's wyrd scanning through her body.

"All better," Mag said.

"You could have fooled me," Sara remarked.

"You will get back to full health. At least that corrupt wyrd is gone," Mag said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "And it looks like your link to the well has been re-established." There was relief in Mag's eyes.

"There was a question it wouldn't?" Sara asked.

"The book never said," Mag told her. The other sorceress placed her hand over Sara's heart and pinched the air there. There was a moment where Sara felt her breath hitch and her heart stutter, and then it was over. Mag pulled her fingers away and secured the magenta tether back to the lemniscate on the back of Astanel’s neck.

Sara could no longer feel the boy's presence beside her mind.

"What happened?" Sara asked.