The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (13 page)

She felt the weight of his eyes, his skeptical glare upon her. Her head bowed as tears wracked her short body. She was in such torment.

“It would all end if you would just take that which is offered. Grace spoke to you of accepting what you are, and that can never be done by denying how your power works. If you fail to go down this route, Joya, not only will your family be faced with the vision in the fire, but you may well be destroyed by your very own wyrd. Do you want that?”

“No,” she whispered hoarsely as silent tears streaked down her careworn face.

“But then I am not so sure. Your words lack the conviction a truthful person would have.” He made a clucking noise of disappointment and shook his head. “The daughter of the powerful Sylvie LaFaye is afraid of her own wyrd; what would your mother think? What would Amber think? What about Jovian and Angelica, or Grace and your father? What would all of them say if they found out you could not do this and left them to the fiery designs? You will fail them all, Joya LaFaye … if you are still worthy of such a powerful name.” Leaning down to her, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and soothed her as she cried. “I do these things only to help you grow. I don’t wish to harm you, but sometimes the best way to overcome fear is through pain and truth. Teaching is not always an act of love; we must show our students the darkness within them for them to face it and overcome.”

He rubbed her back, his cool hands sending tremors through her flesh. Then into the somberness he said the one thing that made all the difference: “After all, if you are not going to learn to protect them, you might as well kill them yourself.”

He fell back as she stood abruptly. The voice of wisdom slowly pushed himself to his feet watching his student.

Her sobs stopped suddenly and she lashed out in anger, hovering over the brightest wyrd in the clearing, the one with the strongest glow—yellow like the sun and shining nearly as brightly, mirrored by one off a ways beside the silver wyrd.

“Don’t draw in anger, Joya,” he cautioned, but it was too late … if she had been paying attention she would have noticed the sneer on his face …

“So what about you?” Jovian asked, shrugging off the air that suddenly seemed denser than before. “You are a mixture of a lot of things: votary, arms master, monster connoisseur. Why all the vocations, Maeven Beggets?”

“My interests are varied, and I feel the best way to serve the Goddess, other than ministering to the populace, is by freeing it of dalua,” he answered simply, setting his mug of cooling tea between his feet.

“So all that you are interested in is serving others?” Jovian questioned.

“No, it just so happens that my interests happen to help others. I do not follow the path of the votary just to help others; I do it to get closer to the Creator. My deeper link with her helps others in need.” He smiled at Jovian and rubbed his arms from the chill of the night.

“I am not sure I would like that much,” Jovian answered truthfully, tossing out the rest of his cool tea and setting the mug on the ground.

“And why not?”

“I’m not much of a people person.”

Maeven seemed taken aback slightly. “But you are so good with crowds. You seem to like everyone and get wrapped up in their concerns and lives.”

“I do, and that is a fault of mine. I don’t like people but I am sympathetic to them, if that makes any sense. I would much prefer a simple life of my own, free of others. They’re bothersome and needy, and I don’t like that. I don’t think I would be cut out for helping others like you do.”

“Like farming it is not a calling for all, but I think you lie, Jovian. I think the truth is that you wish you could not like people. I think underlying all that you really care, you genuinely want to help, but you just get frustrated with those that can’t help themselves and become too dependent on help from others.”

Jovian had nothing to say; so he didn’t say anything. He sat there for a time listening to the night around them, feeling the closeness that had come between him and Maeven within the last few days, the bond that they were even now sharing in the chill, summer night

He felt the wyrd in the air as well, heavy and unknowable. He shifted slightly as he, for the first time, realized that he could feel wyrd, that he could feel it in others around him. The wyrd didn’t feel pleasant. Instead it was very uncomfortable, like he was being watched, and as Maeven had just left to relieve himself of the effects of the tea, Jovian knew that he was not being watched … with physical eyes at least.

Goose bumps ran up his arms, and he turned to look behind him toward camp, only to see a twisting Angelica, held deep in the grips of some nightmare. Shrugging, he turned back to find Maeven walking back toward him, fastening the ties of his black trousers.

In the darkness of her mind Angelica dreamed of sweet things. The summer’s first yield of honey and the way it tasted on Ashell’s freshly baked biscuits. A crisp, chilled dandelion wine seasoned for years, freshly opened and taken on the porch overlooking a serene sunset painting the sky in beautiful relief above a golden sea of hay, shifting in a lazy breeze. She dreamed of yellows and greens, and how they blended together like a tapestry over the fields of wheat and corn that were her families crest and wealth.

She dreamed of her family and holy days together with feast and drink, laughter and communion. All this she dreamed, and all this she loved. So realistic was the dream that she thought for a moment it was other than a dream, that it was real, her father’s hand in hers as they strode the fields on High Summer’s Day following the procession led by Candalyn as he made devotions to the Goddess, blessing the field. She could almost feel the grain dolly in her hand as she shook it, a symbol of releasing the Goddess’s blessing and protection on this year’s crop.

She dreamt of nights with Jovian, sitting up and talking for hours when they should be fast asleep. Curled up on her bed with a book, laughing with her best friend as the cold of winter seeped through the glass panes of her window, chilling the quilt even as it warmed her … she thought of how the barren chill of winter could make one long for romantic summer nights.

Then her dreams flashed to scenes of death and blood, and the fields turned irrevocably black without the help of fire or blight. The skies darkened and the lands were battered by a Chaotic storm.

A pair of eyes stared at her as Angelica stood on the porch, staring out across the dead, barren fields, the lashing wind and biting rain tearing at her yellow silk gown. Grey-blue eyes watched her in the distance, impossibly large and cold, not like the person that normally housed those eyes. Watching her from within the clouds, the eyes were transparent but unmistakably there, gazing at her, as if weighing her worth in wyrd.

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched those eyes, both as large as the moon, which was not in attendance. She held cold, numb fingers to her chapped lips and moaned, tears coming to her eyes: hot, mingled with the freezing of the rain.

And the wine turned like vinegar in her throat, and heaviness came to her chest as if her heart were beating much too swiftly. She tried to suck in breath against the weight, against the power looming down on her from those eyes, but she could not.

Frantically Angelica clung to her chest and felt there something compressing her, sitting on her chest, constricting her of the one thing she desired most in the world: air. The eyes loomed closer and she felt herself weakening—her life, her wyrd leaving her in a sardonic, painful tug that continued and continued.

Don’t draw in anger,
she heard a voice caution from somewhere, and she looked around her as those eyes loomed brighter, angrier, and hungrier than ever before. She wondered where the hypnotically beautiful yet deviously Chaotic voice came from, but it was only a fleeting thought. Her need for air suppressing all other sensations.

She was soon on her knees, beating weakly at the stone porch, trying to draw in oxygen that seemed as elusive to her as the will of the Goddess.

The high-pitched buzzing came to his ears again, this time more prominent, more urgently than it had come before, completely drowning out the words Maeven was speaking. Jovian watched Maeven’s mouth moving, though he could not make out any words he was speaking. One thought came to him, and that was that Angelica was in danger, being the only person that ever gave him this vertigo and buzzing in his head.

He stood quickly, nearly turning himself back onto the ground, and looked around.

The noxious green eyes were not hard to see as they faded back into the darkness beyond a seething Angelica. In panic, Jovian sprinted on unsteady feet back to his sister, knocking into Joya’s prone figure in his dizziness.

Grey-blue eyes opened as Joya sat bolt upright, and Angelica finally sat straight up gasping for air that had been obviously deprived her. She looked around frantically, clutching at her chest as she inhaled and exhaled laboriously.

“What happened?” Jovian asked as he knelt beside her, Grace coming to her side as well. Maeven caught up, his sword drawn and his stance taught and ready for battle. “I saw green eyes just over there,” Jovian told him as he pointed in the distance. Maeven frowned and nodded that he had seen them as well and left the huddled group to investigate.

Angelica was plied with a mug of water, and after she had drank nearly all of it, she brushed her sweat-matted hair out of her face with a quivering hand. As Maeven came back shaking his head that he had not found anything, she seemed ready to talk.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she said simply while scanning the area, fear in her eyes telling them much more than she was verbally willing to share. “I don’t remember what I was dreaming, only something about home. I was happy, and then frightened, and then there was this great weight on my chest, drawing at my energy. That is when I couldn’t breathe. I tried battering the beast off me, but it would not move. It actually felt like something was sitting on me, and it was hungry, angry, it wanted to harm me; that was evident.”

“A hag,” Maeven said looking around again, and standing once more.

“Come now, Maeven, if it really were a hag she was obviously riding the night, and steel will do little to ward her off,” Grace scoffed.

“And you said that she had nothing to do with the wind that decimated your home,” Maeven accused.

“Who?” Grace asked. “Baba Yaga?”

“Yes, we were talking of her tonight,” Jovian said. “Maeven was convinced that she was the one responsible for destroying our livelihood, and I disagreed with him.”

“Hmm,” was the response that came from Grace, and she studied his face as if she knew something that he did not. “But for some reason you do not seem to share that sentiment?” Grace asked, which was more an accusation than it was a question.