The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) (33 page)

The little girl held out her pudgy, dirt-smeared hand to Cianna, and for the first time in what Cianna could tell was a long time she smiled, and Cianna’s wyrd reflected in the child. Impossibly, this little girl was a necromancer.

“How?” Cianna asked, but the little girl only smiled. It was a sad curving of the lips that seemed to be the first joy she had had in weeks. Cianna found herself wondering how long this little girl had been here among all the dead. She also wondered what had happened to kill everyone here so assuredly.

Before she could get an answer, however, she was pulled back from her dream into the darkness of the way station. She sat up with a gasp and saw Flora staring at her from the corner.

“What are you?” The old lady asked. “What kind of being are you to radiate wings of light?”

“Excuse me?” Cianna said quietly into the night. She realized as she sat up that the kelpies were no longer present and that her cramps had gone.

“Do you not know that you grew wings just now? They were not actual wings, but instead made out of wyrd. I was barely able to see them, but out of the corner of my eye they shimmered just on the edge of your back. What are you?”

“I’m a necromancer,” Cianna said.

“I know that, but what is your race? You are not human.”

“Because you saw something out of the corner of your eye?” Cianna pushed herself up on the waterbed set into the jade frame. “Sounds to me like you saw the kelpies by the window,” Cianna gestured to the window directly beside her bed.

“I know what I saw. I used to run with grigori, I know what it looks like when they use wyrd,” Flora leaned forward. “What I want to know is why you were using wyrd and what you were doing.”

Cianna sighed. There was no point in lying to this woman. “I will answer your questions if you answer mine.”

“You know I don’t have to, right?” Flora answered.

“And neither do I,” Cianna said, some of the flare coming back to her, some of the anger that she could so easily slip into these days. It was just such anger that saw her slaughtering countless chaos dwarves.

“But you will,” Flora said.

“I’m the child of Pharoh LaFaye and Arael,” Cianna said shortly. “Now you, what were you doing running with grigori?” Cianna thought this the more important question, for when someone said they ran with grigori it didn’t cast them in a positive light.

Flora seemed stunned into silence by Cianna’s proclamation, and made as if to disregard the woman’s answer. She looked deeper into Cianna’s face and a light of recognition seemed to come to Flora then.

“I fell in love with a grigori, one of the old ones, not like the Aralist version of the race. I got used to telling when he was using wyrd.” Flora sat back and watched Cianna. “Why were you using wyrd?”

“I wasn’t, or at least I didn’t realize I was.”

“What was happening to you while you slept?”

“I was dreaming of an extremely white woman adorned in gold and white. She took me through a veil of darkness and into a ruined town; beyond that I can’t tell.” Cianna could remember her dream vividly, she just didn’t feel like sharing it all with the woman. The meeting with the little girl was too intimate, too personal. For some reason, though the contact with the white woman was intimate, Cianna felt as though she needed to share it with Flora.

“That would be Mama Brigit,” Flora nodded knowingly. “She is what they call a loa in the Realm of Fire, where she is said to originate from. Others might call her an aeon, the race of angels that are higher than angels, but not as powerful as the Goddess. She is said to be the mother of necromancy. It is speculated that she was the first necromancer, but history doesn’t reach back that far, only speculation.”

“Where did you learn that?” Cianna asked. “I have pored over hundreds of scrolls and tomes, and various other writings on necromancy, and never heard that one.”

“Have you ever read
Necromancy: Through the Dark Veil
by the Liche Andreis Lupemore?” Flora asked.

“No, I passed that one up, it didn’t seem that impressive.” Cianna looked down into her lap, suddenly feeling rather foolish.

“I’m sure that if you had read it you would have learned countless valuable pieces of information about your gift. Though it’s no wonder you passed it up; it was such a small book it was a wonder it held as much enlightenment as it did.” Flora sighed and took a drink of something that Cianna hadn’t previously seen. Cianna, in turn, got up, wrapped a blanket around herself and joined Flora in another chair by the fire. “There’s an unspoken rule about wyrd. Your mind, Cianna LaFaye, will lead you right. If you passed up that book for another one, then there was obviously something else you needed to learn more than about Mama Brigit. It is that way with all wyrd. There is a reason for everything a wyrder chooses and doesn’t choose to do, Whether or not we know it at the time, we are letting our minds, our wyrd itself, choose our paths.”

It was the first time Cianna had ever been called by her full name. Cianna sat in awe for a time before she recovered enough for what Flora said to sink in. Hearing her full name being spoken seemed to hold such power. Just the mere mention of the name LaFaye to her caused a thundering of blood to ripple through her ears, so much so that Flora words were nearly drowned out by it.

“I think it would be wise, in light of the situation, that we accompany you to the Necromancers’ Mosque, don’t you?” Flora smiled and all Cianna could do was nod her head. “Good. Wake the others, I’m sure that if the wyrder hunters are serious about what they are doing they will not wait long after the kelpies stop their haunting to continue after us.” Flora stood along with Cianna, and started packing as Cianna roused a weary Pi.

Cianna went about the way station waking her companions, thinking the entire time about how odd and how fitting Flora’s choice of words were.
Haunting
, Cianna mused, feeling a strange vibration within her at the thought.

It was a few hours before first light when they started their journey again. They could still hear the plaintive braying of the kelpies far below, but Cianna knew somehow that they would not be making any more passes over the bridge this night. There was no longer that pulling sensation in her, which she had come to associate with the kelpies coming.

From time to time Devenstar would fall back to the end of the line and raise his face to the breeze, which was working in their favor today and blowing the scent of those behind the group forward. He turned back each time with an increasingly less favorable look on his face. They instinctively understood that this meant the hunters were gaining on them.

“Deven?” Cianna asked. “Does the scenting, the using your animal side, take wyrd to use?”

Deven seemed to think for a moment and then shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so, and if it does it isn’t a large amount. There are some people who can change as part of their race, then there are others who are imbued with a more animal wyrd, and therefore can mimic the wyrd within them to change, that is the type I am. When I change it isn’t so much that I’m channeling wyrd to do so, but instead like my physical form is mirroring the wyrd flowing within me.”

“So you are saying your wyrd is more that of a cat than a human?” Cianna wondered.

“A panther, to be exact, and yes. It’s very rare. So rare in fact that you will be more likely to find a shape-shifter by race than by wyrd.”

“Shape-shifters are very rare indeed,” Cianna commented.

“Then you can imagine how rare I am,” Deven gave her a smile that was all show and she laughed at him.

“Yeah, you’re something all right,” she agreed.

“I have an idea of what he is,” Pi said, joining the conversation. “But I will go with politeness and say that he is indeed something.”

Cianna laughed again and they continued walking, keeping their brisk pace.

No matter how fast they walked, however, the wyrder hunters still caught up with them.

It was around midafternoon when an arrow shot out of the gathering fog behind them and penetrated painfully into Pi’s leg.

It was obvious that there was no getting away from the wyrder hunters as droves of them loomed out of the fog after Cianna’s small group. Instantly the rapier came to her hand, and in a fluid motion she brought her crossbow around to rest on her arm. The loading chamber that was fixed on her crossbow allowed her to fight with both bow and blade, and she danced through them like death itself, plunging here, unleashing a bolt there.

Around her the air sizzled with wyrd as lightning and fire and pure energy raged with a fury that Cianna had never seen alive before, even living with the Realm Guardians for as long as she had.

Devenstar was right beside her, moving with a grace that was as catlike as he claimed his wyrd to be. He lunged, slicing with a blade, spraying the muted jade bridge with a long slice of crimson blood, lending the bridge an even more ethereal look than the stone ever could.

They fought like a team as the other three behind them worked their wyrd. At the time, the wyrder hunters were a bigger threat than the corruption from the Well of Wyrding.

Cianna ducked blows and parried attacks while beside her Deven lunged and slunk, taking down men gracefully wherever he went.

Soon the bridge was bathed in blood and dead bodies, and yet the hunters still came. Cianna wagered that it was less like a mob and more like a small army. She was tiring fast, and from the slight fizzling of the wyrd coursing around her she knew that all but Flora were tiring as well. She wondered whether Chy was even able to join the melee, and she hoped that if he wasn’t that they had sent him running ahead, for he deserved life if they happened to fail.

Soon Cianna was joined by Clara, Devenstar’s twin. Clara had obviously worked her wyrd to near exhaustion and was now beside Cianna fighting sword to sword with a hunter. She was doing well, but before long she was lost from sight as their paths of battle took them further and further apart.

A large man loomed up before Cianna, but from behind her a bolt of red lightning burnt the air, and he fell, a large blackened hole in his chest, his mouth working for air that he could not seem to grasp.

The mob thinned enough for Cianna to glimpse Devenstar to her right, and Clara to her left. Cianna ran through one man and put a bolt through the eye of another as he charged up from behind his falling comrade. Pulling the rapier from her victim, she glanced left just as Clara faltered, stumbled, and took a stout blow in the chest with the heavy, spiked mace of the man she was struggling with.

She looked at the mace in her chest, gasped a few times, and stumbled backward as the mace was tugged free of her, tearing her flesh and nearly ripping her breast from her body.

Clara stumbled back against the railing and Cianna did her best to get to her, slicing through the men as she hadn’t before, filled with a hunger, and an anger that would not let her rest. Before Cianna knew it there was wyrd flying around her, clearing a path for her. Someone, she assumed, was helping her to get to Clara, and she figured by the startled sobs and angry shouts that this maniacal green wyrd was coming from Pi.

As Clara flipped over the edge of the jade bridge, Cianna ran for her. She bent over the railing, half expecting to lose her balance as she reached for the flaxen-haired woman. She didn’t know what she expected to do, for even if she were able to catch her the young woman’s chest had been caved in by the mace strike.

“No!” Cianna yelled, reaching further for the woman, and felt that telltale pulling within her stomach. Halfway to the ground Clara’s body stopped in midair, and slowly began to float back up toward Cianna. Cianna was confused beyond thought, for she had never been able to make a person float before. In fact, she had never known any necromancer that could cause physical flight without the aid of ointments and potions.

Then she saw the slight gossamer shifting in the air beneath the still form of Clara. Could Clara truly be dead? She was a sorceress after all, wasn’t she supposed to be immortal? Had she actually gone through her trials yet to make her immortal? Cianna’s eyes widened with awe as she heard someone come up behind her. She turned and ran the man clean through with her rapier. She smoothly slipped him over the side of the bridge as well and watched as he was caught in the same insubstantial netting that Clara was hoisted on.

Before the next man attacked her Cianna watched as gossamer threads of what looked like spider silk caught in the sun spun out of the mouth and nose of the man, but not Clara. She looked with her wyrd, this she knew. For the longest time Cianna had seen double, with her wyrd and with her eyes, as was the case with all necromancers. She knew what she was seeing was the soul leaving the recently dead body.