The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (33 page)

Before long they were once more surrounded, and this time the blood of one of their fallen had made them thirsty for more, and the smell of the Graveyard Dirt was doing little to keep them at bay.

Suddenly a light flared straight ahead of them, a silver light so intense that it glowed off the fog in near blinding proportions. The Hecklin instantly stopped, and Grace wondered what kind of knew horror was waiting for them in the deep fog.

I am near enough to you now, children, that I can help in little ways. Again, don’t expect wonders from me for Porillon thinks the medallion is still silent, that it has not yet woken.

There was no doubt in Angelica and Jovian’s mind now; the Medallion was the house for the Aramaiti, and the Aramaiti truly was their Aunt Pharoh.

They covered their eyes against the bright flare and silence so absolute they thought for a moment that death had descended on them.

Before long the light faded, and they were able to uncover their eyes.

“What in the Otherworld was that?” Grace asked looking around. “And where did they go?” she wondered aloud as the horses calmed and scanned the surrounding area for the Hecklin, but not seeing anything other than the fading silver glow that had nearly blinded them all.

Angelica, do not fear the orbs. Go to them for they will help you, as you have already figured. Also, there is something approaching. Do not fear what will happen, for it is needed, and you are not to blame; enjoy the music.
And with nothing more than that cryptic message the Aramaiti was gone from their minds once more.

“M
aeven, what lies ahead?” There was a puzzling silence, and a moment later Maeven came leering out of the fog to her right, Jovian behind him. The look on his face matched the silence. He indicated that he didn’t know.

Remember what Aramaiti said?
Jovian asked.

She told us to trust the orb,
Angelica responded in answer.

Maybe we should tell Grace?

That wouldn’t do any good,
Angelica reminded him
. She is bound determined nothing in this wood is any good. I doubt  she will change her mind, and I am not willing to let her know that we have been in contact with Aunt Pharoh at any rate.

At least not yet,
Jovian said
.

You are right; there might be a time that we have to tell her, but for now I think we should hide that secret like we are hiding this very one.

Jovian had gotten so used to being able to communicate with Angelica mentally that it took a moment for him to realize that the secret she spoke of was their growing bond. There was a slight chance, he mused, that Grace might be able to help more with Angelica’s wyrd and its source if she knew all of the changes she was going through instead of bits and pieces, but he did not press the issue.

“What is it? Why can’t you tell what is ahead?” Grace asked Maeven.

“I am not sure. I think it might be the fog and the fact that I cannot see the path?” he guessed. “The truth is that I have never really understood that particular ability, and never really tried to train it; it was always something that was just there unbidden, but now … I just don’t know, Grace.”

“Now what?” Angelica asked.

“We move forward,” Grace answered.

“I am not going anywhere until this fog lifts,” Jovian said. “We will only get lost in this accursed forest.”

“I agree,” Angelica responded.

“Me too,” Maeven put in.

“That might be a very long time,” Grace said.

“But we could be lost for a lot longer than that,” Jovian rejoined.

“I have a suggestion,” Angelica said and Jovian’s laughing voice came into her mind.

Smooth, Angie, really smooth.

Grace grunted for her to continue.

“I think we should see what the orbs we have been seeing are all about.”

“No good,” Grace said. “Remember what else we were talking about the other night? We will never know now if the orbs are them or the things we have been seeing. Who knows—the orbs we have been seeing might even be them.”

“I am not so sure, but in any case we beat them once.”

“We beat them with the help of your sister who is, at the moment, well beyond being able to help.” Grace had her there.

“I still think it is our best possibility.”

“You may be right,” it took a lot for Grace to admit that.

“Besides, that thing we are not mentioning inhabits watery places, like bogs and marshes,” Maeven pointed out.

“Yeah?” Grace asked as if she had not known something so obvious. They all noted her sarcasm. “And that other thing we somehow got rid of by a flashing light was not indigenous to this realm either, but the Shadow Realm.”

“Yeah, but that other thing is not restricted to the Shadow Realm. It is only the place it prefers,” Maeven fired back.

“As that may be, I feel compelled to point out that the air here has become very heavy, and if it is water that other thing thrives on, it is a very real possibility that fog this thick will work as well as any bog or marsh,” Jovian added. “I am all about finding out what these orbs are. I think it is our best way of getting out of here. However, I think we should find a way to ward off the other possibility as well.”

“What do you suggest?” Angelica asked.

“Well, what do we know about them?” Jovian asked to get everyone thinking. Tossing a glance around, he suddenly felt the familiar listening quality return to the forest.

“They were once thought to be helpful spirits: traditionally a short, hairy, naked house spirit. They specialize in certain domestic chores, but here is where they differ from the creature in question, for they were benevolent and tied to a family or location. The creatures we now speak of were corrupted by … we all know what does the corrupting,” Maeven said, catching himself before he said Chaos.

Though Chaos was not so much an entity as a state of being and mind, Maeven didn’t want to take the chance and call insanity into the Sacred Forest as well.

“I just had an idea!” he sputtered, sending the topic off track for only a moment. “But I will tell you about that in a minute. That which we speak of reside near water such as lakes and bogs and the like. When they illuminate it is to lure a human toward the body of water where they will be lost to the depths. When a human is surrounded by them, they no longer appear pretty and alluring, but instead shed their guise and appear in the corrupted form they were given. Wyrd is the only thing that can affect them; swords and the like will not work.”

Grace looked at Joya, “And with our source of wyrd currently comatose, I doubt if Angelica will be able to act in her stead.”

“Well, seeing how they kill by leading people into water, I don’t think there is much to worry about. As far as we know there is no body of water around us.”

“But also as far as we know we could be standing on a shoreline,” Jovian commented. “Besides, the night they called me away from the group they were trying to kill me, not just lead me to water to drown. They wanted to eat me, I think.”

“You are a yummy morsel, after all,” Angelica joked.

“And your thought?” Grace asked bringing them back to the topic at hand.

“I thought maybe we could think of something good, a creature that might protect us against them. If we are calling things to us that we speak of, maybe we could use the corruption to our advantage.”

“We risk the chance of whatever we call being corrupted by this new wyrd,” Angelica pointed out. “Maybe we are thinking of the wrong way around this?”

“So then what? We can’t stand around here until the fog clears. Dear Goddess, Fog Month just started! We surely would be dead by the time it ended, or possibly something worse than dead. We can’t stand around here indefinitely,” Grace said heatedly.

“I know! We throw caution to the wind and charge headlong into all the glowing balls we see!” Jovian said.

“You can’t be serious?” Grace said.

“Why not? It beats standing around here, and there is a good chance that the next gathering of orbs we see will not be the ones we are planning for. After all, we have been seeing the good ones this whole trip.”

“Maybe good ones,” Grace pointed out. “And we don’t know if they really were good because we never came in contact with them.”

“That is not completely true,” Maeven said. “We were surrounded by them that night, and they never harmed us.”

Grace rubbed her forehead in frustration. If they were all in agreement about this, she was grossly outnumbered and had no choice but to go along. “So am I to believe that you would be willing to do the affirmed charging?”

“If it gets us moving again then yes, I would,” Jovian said.

“I don’t like this,” Angelica warned as they readied to leave.

“What choice do we have?” Jovian asked. “We can’t just wait, not with all that is at stake now,” and mentally he said,
Besides, she has never led us astray yet. What would make us believe she would now?

“What if we get lost?” Maeven asked.

“Then we wander around until we stumble across those orbs,” Jovian said.

When they did spot the orbs some six days after discussing them, they rode up to them in caution, lest they find that it was again not what they sought. This time, however, the orbs stayed in one general spot. The fog was thick enough that gray evening to make the orbs look less like separate objects and more like a singular glowing beyond a veil that separated the group and their potential salvation, or demise—which one it was had not been decided yet.

“If that is help, then it might just be the luckiest thing that has happened to us so far this journey,” Jovian commented.

But it wasn’t help that he walked straight into. He figured he had a better chance of getting out of a dangerous situation if he rode Methos in, barring the horse stumbling and breaking a leg.

Jovian knew instantly that he made a mistake. He could not turn back. They had already surrounded him, their glowing changing from white to angry red in an instant as they began buzzing around him like a swarm of large angry bees intent on exterminating that which threatened their hive.

The only sign of a problem the rest of them saw was the change in color.

Noise drifted to them, muffled by the fog. A buzzing that sounded as angry and intent on human flesh as the glowing portrayed. Jovian screaming glow enveloped him. Methos whinnied, and there was a loud splash.

Jovian’s dappled stallion came racing out of the fog toward them as if Chaos itself were fast on his trail, and if not for Maeven’s quick reflexes and strong arm that caught the reigns, jerking down hard on them to halt Methos, the horse would have bolted from the spot, most likely never to be seen again.

The splashing told them that Jovian had, in fact, found a body of water and that he was struggling with something, possibly to swim, or possibly warding off the Lanterns. They didn’t know, and that was a fact that scared them more than they had been when faced with the Hecklin.

Through her terror of what might be happening to Jovian, Grace could not help her mind trying to recall bodies of water in the Sacred Forest.

“What’s happening?” Angelica asked.

“They will nettle him until they drive him to deeper water where they will drown him if their burning touch does not force him below water before then,” Maeven reported.

“Well
do
something!” Angelica insisted.

“I am thinking!” Maeven snapped. She had never heard Maeven angry before.

“We are close to our destination,” Grace told them. “There is only one large body of water in the Sacred Forest and that is this one which is close to the Lunimara,” she said with sudden energy.

“Thank you for the completely
useless
deduction of where, precisely, Jovian is going to drown. I am sure we will not be able to find any pretty horses to bring him back this time,” Maeven said scathingly.

“I can’t just stand here and let him die,” Angelica said near tears. When she found her footing and tried to run, Maeven caught her up in his strong arms, losing his grip on one of the horses, a grip that Grace quickly took up. Angelica screeched at being held back, and as Jovian continued screaming she began crying. “Let me GO!” she screamed.