The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (14 page)

“I don’t know,” Jovian said shifting uncomfortably.

“Ah, but you do know, Jovian LaFaye, and you will tell me.”

He bristled at that remark and sat up a little straighter. Jovian did not like being ordered to do anything. “If I’d something to tell, I most certainly wouldn’t tell you!”

That dangerous glint came into Grace’s eyes again, and Jovian knew that he was treading on very thin ice with her.

“Oh, I think you will.” The fierceness in her voice reminded him of the old Grace he feared so much at the plantation; but that was a long time ago, and much growing had happened since then.

Jovian opened his mouth to speak when a dizzying touch halted his words. Angelica’s voice was accompanied by the buzzing that drowned out the noise of the crackling fire.

Save face, Jovian. Things are already tense enough around here without picking a fight with her. We knew we would have to tell her something eventually; she knew already when she tested the wheat just at the edge of our property. She knows that something is happening and she should know. After all, she might be able to make more of it than we can.
Angelica’s voice conjured up images of that long ago dream in which they found themselves before the rotating house and the bone-wood forest. Almost as if fog were lifting from his mind, Jovian could see the blue-fire torches lining the way to her abode, and he nodded slightly.

And so they told them of their visit with Baba Yaga and what had happened then.

“And you never told us?” Joya asked, more than anger making her voice cold steel in the dark night. “You never told us of what could help Amber. Why?”

“There was no need at the time. We had decided the way to go was toward the Mirror of the Moon, and we gave little reason as to why we should go there. Honestly, we thought you’d think us queer if we told you, and now, looking at your face, despite all we’ve been through, I can see you still think we’re odd.”

“I don’t think you are odd for what you’ve seen and experienced. I think you’re daft for keeping something like this from us when it could save Amber!” Joya nearly shouted, and stormed off into the darkness toward where Jovian had seen the green eyes vanish moments before.

“You did a very stupid thing,” Grace scolded and then sighed. “However, my curiosity outweighs my anger, and I have questions.”

“Questions we probably can’t answer.” The reality of the here and now chased away his visions of the past. The details of the experience had become a fog in his memory, and even as he forced his mind to the past, her words grew dim. “There were many things she did not tell us, and the few things she did tell us we can easily point out now.”

“The vessel, for instance,” Angelica said.

“Is Astanel,” Maeven said quietly nodding.

“And the Mask is Porillon,” Grace contributed.

Angelica and Jovian nodded to both. “We didn’t have as much contact with Astanel as you, Maeven, but after having been to Meedesville, we’d agree with you.”

“But who’re the Two?” Jovian asked. The question as to who or what the Two were nettled him now as much as it had then. “That’s something I never understood. Baba Yaga mentioned them as if they’re people, and then she said they were forces that we would meet along the way.”

“It could be Joya and Amber,” Maeven suggested not believing it himself.

“I tend to side with the concept that it is
not
someone they already know, Maeven the wise,” Grace taunted, all traces of good humor gone from her now. Just when she was starting to treat them like adults, not they had to go and mess it up. “I would have suggested the Two being Sylvie and Pharoh, but I do not think it would be them either. The truth is the concept of the Two is not something that I have much considered; I never before thought they would be forces as they would be people.”

“Why would a prophecy mention the Two if they were not something important?” Maeven asked.

“I am not one bit happy with either of you, and do not think that my gratitude for
finally
hearing of your visit with Baba Yaga overshadows my anger at being left out of this much needed information.” She looked behind her to where Joya stood, her back to them all. “I will not storm off as Joya did, but I can side with her anger. You should have told me of this before; your tied tongue could have gotten Amber killed. At least now we know for certain where we are going.” She sighed and looked around. “It is nearly time for second watch; Maeven and Jovian you had better get some rest.”

The two of them found their beds with little complaint.

E
vening came upon them once again on the last leg of the Wyrd Holdings. The Ravine of Aaridnay stood like a huge canyon of glass that caught and reflected the light of the dying sun in a brilliant rainbow display of color that played across the ground before them like the Sky Lights that were said to illuminate the winter in the Realm of Earth.

Despite their current dislike of one another, none of them could help but stare in awe at the display before them, thinking of the woman whom the ravine had been named for, and how she had taken her very life within it.

Instinctively Jovian knew they would come to the end of the Holy Realm and the Wyrd Holdings, and soon enter the Realm of Air.

Though nothing was said as camp was set and chores taken, Jovian did not resist feeling content with where they were, staring into the blazing lights of the Ravine of Aaridnay that still shone even after the sun had set.

From what they had been taught, Aaridnay Alistrain’s life had begun in anger, and so, too, had it ended in the Great Realms far from her home continent of Darovian in which she escaped the tyrannical rule of her father.

Most of the people of the Great Realms were of a single mind when they agreed that the Rayaksha family had been the key to her undoing. In this new realm she had hoped to establish a government of peace, love, understanding, and diversity, but she ended up failing in her pursuit as people fought and warred. It was then that the Rayaksha’s allegedly bent her ear into believing that the Chaos of her father’s rule had followed them to the Great Realms. Chaos had indeed followed them, but it was not in the form of her father or his rule, but instead in the very wyrd of the Rayaksha family.

In this very ravine she had come to an abrupt end, flinging herself from the highest peak to lie bloody and broken on the trail below. In her death the wyrd she had commanded took root in the walls of the ravine, bleaching all color out until it was no longer earth and stone but diamond that stood between the now Holy Realm and the Realm of Air.

Her intentions in life had shown through in this new extension of the Wyrd Holdings. The precious stone of the ravine caught the light of day, holding on to the elusiveness that she hoped to harness and help rule with, and displayed a rainbow of colors at night that was said to represent the diversity and love she sought so fervently to impress upon her people.

If it was love that she was said to have portrayed, then the dreams of that willowy, blond-haired blue-eyed sorceress that lived so many ages ago could not be proven to Joya. She woke in the middle of the night from a nightmare of Aaridnay so terrifying that she did not sleep again that night. Yet it was not to the peaceful night of camp life that Joya woke to, rather to the ghostly image of Aaridnay screaming before her face: “DALUA!”

So it was when early morning came around Joya was hesitant about entering that glimmering canyon of diamond. Something within her writhed and seethed, wishing to escape her fleshy prison and be rid of this place. That other part of her that breathed anger and hatred through her body at those around her wished nothing more than to go anywhere other than this place, this path of endless eyes that conjured the feeling of being watched, studied—the same feeling that made her suspect that it was plotting her demise.

Aaridnay appeared to her frequently that first day, and the days after that, each time becoming more and more hateful, screaming words of condemnation for that which hated within Joya. She tried, oh how she tried, to silence her anger, to be rid of it, and to forgive those around her for all that they had held from her, but she couldn’t. Each time she thought she mastered her anger, something else would happen—a pleasantry would be shared between Angelica and Jovian—and the anger would flare back up, causing another torrent of verbal abuse from the spirit of Aaridnay.

Soon her mood turned blacker than it had ever been, and Joya LaFaye did not see the wonders of the Ravine of Aaridnay around her as the others did. So intent was she on ignoring the face of the ancient sorceress that appeared before her that she soon lost all desire to see the wonders surrounding her.

The rest of the travelers, on the other hand, were not plagued by the same visions that Joya was, and so their senses were clear to what lay before them. Needless to say, they saw things entirely different than Joya did that morning.

From the moment the sun rose on that awe inspiring place, all of them were enamored by the beauty as the diamond ravine shined with a light that could almost be heard singing in the air as each beam of sunshine was drank in by the stone to glow colors that most of them could not imagine having a name.

It wasn’t until they entered the Ravine of Aaridnay that they got to see the splendor that human hands had crafted.

The Realm of Air was attributed with one material that gained it wealth from all the realms: a special oil. Both the eastern realm and the western one used the unquenchable oil, but the Realm of Water nearly depended on it. The Realm of Air used it to keep fires burning without being blown out; the Realm of Water kept their flames from being quenched by the heavy rains and fogs that realm was known for. The way one would tell a fire was lit by this special oil was its near transparency, appearing not as a roaring flame but as a ghost of fire until the sun went down and darkness brought the fire to life.

It was this same oil that burned in iron lamps set thirteen feet high on each side of the wall dotting the ravine from the entrance in the Holy Realm to the exit in the Realm of Air. Angelica and Jovian stared in wonder as the wind shifted the pale flames in their bed of black iron, but didn’t so much as diminish its size.

The light was not only held by the walls around them, but also refracted off it as dancing, shimmering light on the ground around them both outside and inside the ravine. It gave the sensation of not walking on ground, but instead walking on water, for the ground seemed to ripple and pulse with the shimmering, incandescence of this most wyrd of lights.

It was only later in the day, after their eyes and minds had been dazzled enough, that Angelica pointed toward the wall to their right where she exclaimed that they could see clear through the ravine to the fields beyond that tossed goldenly in the breezy day.

Grace made a point to inform them that it was windier the closer you got to the border of the Realm of Air.

Joya thought it might be safe to look through the diamond as the others were, to see beyond where the sun graced the wheat fields. She strained her eyes, but all she could see was the image of Aaridnay, encased in the wall, her body unnaturally distorted as if underwater, her mouth gapping open in a repugnant scream:

LEAVE THIS PLACE, DALUA!

G
race did not normally dream, so when her friend Rosalee appeared to her in the night like a wythe from the inky abyss of dreams, she was rather perplexed.