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

"Astanel, would you give us a moment?" Mag asked. The boy nodded and left. After the door thumped shut, Mag continued. "Van was poisoning you with fragments of Wyrders’ Bane in your tea. I found out the day you went under, and figured out where he was getting his supply."

"You took care of it?" Sara asked.

Mag nodded. "I killed the dwarf supplying it, one they called the Looker. Van is in the dungeons, and you are feeling better."

"The Looker." Sara nodded approvingly. "That must have dealt them a heavy blow."

"She is someone of note among them?" Mag sat on the edge of the bed.

"They’re counselors to the chief of each tribe. Only one per tribe — if there are more born with the powers, they are put to death, unless the current Looker is nearing death. Then she will train the new one before she passes on."

"Why would they kill them off?" Mag wondered.

"Because they have wyrd," Sara told her. "It isn't anything the dwarves would admit, but the Lookers have wyrd."

"Then won't they be affected by Wyrders’ Bane?" Mag wondered.

Sara shrugged. "Maybe there's a way around it. But Wyrders’ Bane is still here," Sara said. She touched Mag’s pale hand. "You aren't looking so well yourself.'

"It's just tiredness," Mag said. Sara sent her awareness to the shadow in the room, but it was oddly still.

"And you are the only one feeling it?" Sara asked. "Anything else happening? Maybe you would like to tell me about the shadow in the corner?"

Mag's hands shook slightly, and she cast a glance over her shoulder where Sara knew the shadow stood, observing them.

"There is that," she whispered. "I don't know what it is."

"But you feel the pain it brings? The sickness?" Sara asked, trying to study the shadow out of the corner of her eye, but now that they were talking about it, it wavered like smoke, both there and not there at the same time.

"What is it?" Mag clasped Sara's cold hands, trying to rub warmth back into them.

Sara shook her head. "I have no clue yet, but I suspect it’s an apparition of what afflicted me."

"The stone?" Mag asked.

"The power behind the stone."

Mag set Sara's hand down and looked into her eyes. "An egrigor?"

"I believe so," Sara told her.

"Then we should fight it."

"How can we fight an egrigor that corrupts our wyrd when it touches it?" Sara asked.

"There has to be a way," Mag mused.

The shadow stirred in the corner.

"Maybe we should discuss it when it isn't around."

Mag nodded. "I will think on it."

"Just remember, I think if we touch it with our wyrd, it can harm us."

"Why did it harm you before without touching your wyrd?" Mag wondered.

"It was inside me, who knows what it was doing in there."

"And Cianna — you said she told you she was getting sick just by being within range of the rock," Mag pressed.

Sara shrugged. "Maybe there is no longer any stone? Maybe it was all shaved away to give to me."

"Do you think they would use all of it on you?" Mag asked.

"No, I think that would be a big waste. I think they were testing out a theory, and now. . ." Sara didn't know what would come after that.

"Now they’re putting a plan into action?" Mag asked.

"Yes, but what? Is the shadow here because of me? Is that the wyrd you drained off from me?" Sara asked.

"Egrigors aren't normally parasitic." Mag worried the edge of her lip in thought.

"Not usually, but that doesn't mean they
can't
be."

Mag shook her head. "What I drained off from you went directly into the earth. It can't be the corruption from you. I’ll have to research it."

"There’s enough on your plate; get another wyrder to compile information. It doesn't take talent to research, just the ability to read."

Mag laughed at that. "Point taken."

Sara grabbed both of her hands. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for the Realm of Earth. We will get through this. We will beat this. Now I should rest up, and think on the problem at hand."

"Don't try anything, you’re much too weak for that. We don't want you over-extending yourself and burning out your connection to the Well of Wyrding," Mag warned.

"Yes, Mother," Sara joked.

Mag stood and shrugged into the red velvet robe, letting the weight settle around her. "I’ll get something else so I can't be seen from the battlements, but it’s drafty in these halls," she explained.

"Something all the other sorcerers are wearing. Blend in," Sara told her.

"They likely couldn't kill me," Mag said. "They’d have to get close to do that."

"But being peppered with arrows wouldn't make for a fun day," Sara countered.

Mag nodded. "I also had the Orb of Aldaras removed from your office."

"Why?" Sara asked, confused.

"When I came in one day, you were sitting before it, communing with it, and inside, I saw the Beast."

Sara's blood ran cold. "The Beast?" she whispered.

"In his true form." Mag told her, cinching the robe about her waist, showing very little of the heavy black dress underneath.

"Not as the man?"

"No. But you should rest now. Annbell wants to call a meeting when you’re well enough to attend," Mag told her.

"I'm feeling better, really. But they should gather in my office when we have it, there's no telling when I’ll be well enough to leave this floor."

Mag nodded. "Rest for now. We’ll get things set up and I’ll let you know."

She opened the door to leave.

"Mag?" Sara asked, nestling down in the bed. The shadow was no longer in attendance. Maybe he was a messenger? Mag turned back to her Guardian. "If possible, I’d like to know more about the stone at the meeting."

"No pressure?" Mag asked, and smiled.

"No pressure." Sara agreed.

Root Commander Krouner of the wyrders’ battalion examined the contents of his tin cup in the feeble light of a flickering lamp in the sorcerers’ barracks.
Always settlement
, he thought.
Why can't I get clean water?

He drained his cup and thumped it down on the scarred tabletop. He tossed a black jacket over his shoulders, a red lemniscate with three lines under it marking his leadership of the wyrders’ battalion. The wooden planks creaked under his heavy boots. Battle wyrders, the soldiers that made up his battalion, huddled in groups around fire pits in the common room, trying to keep warm while catching up. The wyrders’ battalion was always a strange one; many of the soldiers knew one another from times past, sometimes having been acquaintances for centuries. Whereas other soldiers had to mingle and get to know one another almost every time ground defense was called, wyrders were so long-lived they often knew one another already, creating a brotherhood that was much tighter than other battalions.

Krouner pushed through the door and out into the bright light of the winter morning. Snow fell in soft flakes around the courtyard of gathered barracks.

Russel wasn't too far away, dealing with the horses and overseeing the general upkeep of the paths between buildings.

"Sapling Kensley," Krouner barked, fastening his black jacket against the cold of the day. His stomach twinged painfully, but he muscled through it.

"Yes, Root Commander?" Russel said, coming to attention before Krouner.

"Where in the realms do you get our water from?" he asked, pulling the dark-haired man between two of the barracks, which sat in a circle around the central courtyard.

"Where I was told to, from the community well at the top of that rise," Russel pointed off in the distance, where drinkable water was able to be gathered for the houses.

"Do you shovel dirt into the buckets before you bring it back?"

Russel shook his head.

"Do you clean them before putting water in?"

Russel nodded. "Each time, sir."

"Then how can you manage to get so much silt in the water that I have to clean between my teeth after each cup?"

"I don't know, sir. I’ll do better next time, sir." Russel said.

Krouner grunted. "Go back to what you were doing," he told him.

Russel saluted, and went back to overseeing the horses.

As the brightness of the sun burned across the lands of the Shadow Realm, Joya covered her eyes. She had resided in the shadowy land so long that her eyes weren’t used to the sunlight, and it nearly blinded her.

Slowly she cracked her eyes open and peered out of her tower window. The scenery outside had changed. No longer was Joya looking out at the wasted land outside her tower, but instead over the edge of a cliff, at a sea of winged creatures below.

Cianna stepped up next to her from where she stood beside the window.

“What’s that?” her cousin asked, pointing off to the horizon.

Joya shook her head. She saw it too: the darkening clouds, with the bloom of light before them, like some prophecy coming to them in a rush of noise and light from the twisting clouds of an approaching storm.

The light flashed again, and the two raven-haired girls screamed out in pain as their backs lurched and bones split, moving to the side, making way for something larger.

Joya gasped in pain, and when she exhaled, bile flooded past her lips, painting the floor of her tower suite.

Distantly she was aware of another flash of light from the horizon, but the pain quickly pushed all other thoughts aside. Joya’s back lurched again, the skin rippling as bones and sinew repositioned themselves under her muscles. And then, with blinding pain, the skin tore and blood splashed over the floor, mingling with her bile. Chunks of flesh sloughed from her body.

Panicked, Joya tried standing, but the pain was too much, her knees too weak, and she fell face-first back into the gore on the floor. She tried to breathe through the pain, but it didn’t work. In time the agony went away, or else she got used to it, she wasn’t sure. But then she was aware of something else, a growth along her back that she could feel like any other appendage.

She pushed to her knees, slipping in her bile and blood. Steadying herself, Joya stood and looked at the glass door of her suite. Staring back at her was her reflection: white dress soaked with yellow and crimson, her black hair tangled about her shoulders. And there, arching above her head, were large, sinewy wings, still growing their membrane and flesh. With a prickling sensation she watched feathers blossom to the surface like morning glories coming to wake in the morning sun.

She heard a gasp to her right, and she turned to look as Cianna stood.

“Joya,” Cianna said. “Your wings!”

“And yours,” Joya said, but she wasn’t excited, because where her voluminous wings were white, Cianna’s were black as night. Revulsion swam in her stomach, but she shook the thought away.

“Look at the horizon,” Cianna told her, coming to stand beside her. Through their reflections Joya could see a tower molded of turquoise stone. It was ancient, yet spoke of a time far more advanced than her own. Alien almost, like something she would see from a land other than the Great Realms, one where the frement technology had blossomed for hundreds of years.