The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (17 page)

“There will be no need,” Joya said. At the touch of her hand, really a light grazing of fingertips, the faux wall slid neatly, quietly to the side and residual water coursed out of the slanting tunnel surrounding their feet.

“Or that would work,” Maeven commented as they fell into place behind Joya.

For three days they climbed. Three days of treading that convoluted, uneven path. They never had to worry about total darkness, for they could see the rising and falling of the sun as well as the rainbow glow that was beginning to irritate Joya to no end.

With the help of the glow, they were able to see the floor. At times, however, vertigo would hit when they looked down for it appeared they were walking on nothing but air.

The storm had abated sometime during the second day, only to return at night as if in warning. The Tall Stranger could see them no doubt, and wanted them to know that he was waiting for them to emerge. Yet Joya was not scared.

Angelica and Joya did not resolve their animosity toward each other during the time, and if anything the mere presence of the other seemed to nettle them more. With each tense moment Grace worried that soon they would come to blows once more.

Needless to say, the animosity between the two sisters made camp life difficult at best and if Grace sought conversation it was typically with one of the two men as they were more than happy to talk to someone other than each other. She had watched through the past weeks and saw that the two of them were steadily growing closer than she could ever have expected. Even with their new friendship, however, they were still eager for conversation that did not consist of only them.

Sleep came fast that night, even to those keeping watch. It was as if a wyrding web had fallen over them and sleep was not far behind. It wasn’t until late at night that the rainbow lights of the Ravine of Aaridnay pulsed around them when Grace woke with a start, sure that something was amiss.

Quickly she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Off in the distance thunder could be heard rumbling menacingly.

She knew something was wrong. Grace studied the sleeping forms of each of her companions and started to settle back down when an urgent pressure came to her again. She knew wyrd when she felt it, and the feeling of it brought her to her feet, then prodded her to search the bed rolls one by one. Finding one unmistakably empty, it appeared to have had an occupant upon visual inspection—but Joya was nowhere to be found.

“Wake up!” Grace hissed and instantly they all jumped up, obviously alerted to the strange feeling on the air as well as she was.

“What is it?” Maeven asked, reaching for his sword.

“Joya is gone!” Grace said rushing to where her stuff was kept and retrieving her silver dagger. “I am not sure which way she went, so we will have to split up. Jovian, Maeven, you search back down the tunnel. Angelica and I will search further up.”

“Maybe she threw herself off the cliff edge like Aaridnay did,” Angelica pondered aloud as they headed out.

“You had best shut your mouth, Angelica LaFaye, before I stitch it shut for you!” Grace warned her and they traveled the rest of the way in silence.

The reverberating of thunder increased as they traveled further up, so it was no surprise when they exited the tunnel to the soft patter of rain that had just started to dampen the diamond surface. The stars above were being blotted out as dark clouds scattered across the surface of the sky, first lacey and insubstantial, but soon becoming denser as flashing storm clouds, raced closer.

When they did finally find Joya some miles ahead, it was with rain pouring down in heavy sheets, and lightning flashing wildly. Joya moved as if possessed, writhing in the night, hands clawing at the elven fabric that would not tear, mouth screaming out at the haunted sky. Angelica was afraid for her sister, and as they neared she found the reason for Joya’s malaise.

Neither of them knew that Joya had, for some time now, three forces warring over her: Aaridnay, the voice of wisdom, and her own wyrd all struggled for dominance of its yet untrained mistress. Because of the struggle, Joya had not been able to enter her trials yet, a fact that would prove not only dangerous for herself, but for the members of her own group when it finally came, stronger and harder than it should have. Neither of them knew this until they witnessed what left them both stunned and shaken to their core.

“I will not kill them!” Joya screamed. “You tried to make me kill her once; it will not happen again!”

“I did not try to make you kill her, Joya,” a male’s voice said coming from Joya’s mouth. As soon as his voice began to come from her parted lips, her erratic movements halted, as if with his voice came calm understanding. The voice made Angelica shiver with its suave malignancy. “I warned you not to draw on wyrd when you were angry; it was you that did not heed the advice.”

“You told me it was the only way!” Joya screamed again. “You said nothing would happen to them.”

“I said nothing would happen to you if you followed my advice and sought training from me instead of the voice of wyrd. You did not; you drew in anger and therefore compromised your family and the safety of those you love. I do not wish you to kill Angelica; I only wish for you to draw on her immense power again. She will not miss a little of it.”

“Don’t do it, Joya,” a female voice argued from Joya’s mouth. “He will use you until he has no further use for you. He corrupts the mind. He will toss you aside once you are broken and seek another to use.”

“She’s possessed,” Angelica whispered. Grace nodded her agreement and gestured to stay silent

“She is right,” Joya sobbed finally gaining control of herself again. “Aaridnay is right. This is not the way.”

“But this is the way all sorcerers work, whether they know it or not. All sorcerers draw on that which is around them to work their wyrd; I can show you how. I can help you save your family from the horror the fire showed you.”

“It will not work this time Sah—” but a loud boom of thunder blotted out all trace of the name Aaridnay was about to speak from Joya’s mouth.

“Oh but it will. Already the young sorceress has doubts about what is right and what is wrong. How is she to trust what you say to be true? After all, you are the opposition to one train of her thoughts.”

“It would not have been that way if you allowed the voice of wyrd to do what she had to do.” Aaridnay yelled over the din.

“Of course that would not have been possible if the book had not helped her stave off my intrusion upstairs. When I touched the books wyrd I caught Baba Yaga’s trace, and it was then I was able to mimic it. Once I had the taste of her wyrd I was able to work against it, block it from Joya’s mind.” Somehow the revelation that Baba Yaga was the voice of wyrd effected none of them in the slightest. “I had to use the door because I knew that Joya would not let me in any other way, so when her mind was weak, when she had fully succumbed to the door, I was able to slip in.”

“Let her go, dalua,” Aaridnay said horrifically low. “Leave here now!”

“I will not!” the voice of wisdom raved at Aaridnay, and as he laughed Angelica watched the worse transformation come over Joya’s face. It went from pain and helplessness to ruthless tyrant. “The only way I can leave is when she does, and she will not. Already I have her mind; all it will take is a slight twist. With that old bitch out of the way the others will be easy.”

“Grace will never let that happen,” Aaridnay said.

“Oh, but she will not have a choice. Working through such a powerful vessel I can do more than her mind can conceive.”

“I will not let it happen!” Aaridnay demanded louder.

“The only way to stop it is to kill her, Aaridnay,” the voice seethed.

Grace’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “That is what he really wants,” Grace said. “Porillon is behind this I bet. She wanted both sisters and when she could not get both of them she settled for the death of one and the use of another.”

With a sickening feeling in her stomach Angelica knew that Grace was right.

“Then so be it,” Aaridnay concluded. Lightning flashed off the glint of silver as a dagger was extracted from Joya’s belt.

“JOYA!” Angelica yelled and her sister turned.

The rain had knocked strands of hair out of Joya’s bun to run in watery rivulets down her face. The water mingled with obvious tears, and the look in her sister’s eyes broke Angelica’s heart. Joya was deathly afraid of what was happening now, and having been the one it all happened inside of, Joya knew painfully well that Aaridnay and the voice of wisdom wanted her dead.

Joya’s lips quivered as she whispered Angelica’s name, and then a red glow came about her as a snarl of pure hatred twisted her face. Angelica was thrown back as the silvery glint of the knife came down, slicing through Joya’s wrist.

Slowly, as if the world had come to a near halt, Joya’s body began to crumple to the ground, only there was no ground where she was falling. Her body wavered, and then began falling.

“NO!” Angelica screamed holding out her hands as if she expected to halt her sister’s descent from where she knelt on the ground. With the sound of her voice came a searing, splintering pain in her palms. Angelica would have cried out in pain, but the immense amount of wyrd coursing through her slight frame would not allow it. The wyrd had taken over now, and Angelica finally knew what it was like to have been Joya in the clutches of her own wyrd for so long.

Suddenly the thunder stopped as did the lightning, and in a rush the last bit of rain fell before fading to silence. The only sound was the beating of Jovian and Maeven’s boots as they raced up behind Grace and Angelica.

The image in the glowing, pulsing rainbow light from the Ravine of Aaridnay froze them all. Joya hung in mid fall just out from the cliff, her hair and dress frozen in fitful tangles about her body, as if permanently stilled. As they watched, another image appeared and overlaid their companion. The image was that of a willowy blonde, and the longer they watched the stranger the image got. The face snarled and then changed to a hideous mask of pure rage and revenge, revenge that would never be had.

Suddenly the two forces warring over Joya separated from her body: one made of shadows, the other made of light. A violent updraft from the path below flung the two forces apart, and they drifted off into the night as particles of sand drifting in the wind.

“Maeven,” Grace said quietly, staring in amazement and Angelica. “Grab Joya.”

Getting Joya down from her perch was only slightly more difficult than it would have seemed. The difficulty was not in pulling her back onto the cliff edge, for she was only a hair over the edge and had not yet begun to fall. Rather, the trouble was that once Maeven touched her the wyrd holding her in place vanished and her body went limp as it began to descend. Maeven, ever quick to react, flung himself backward to keep from tumbling over the edge, Joya and all.

Once they were all settled back at camp Grace studied Joya’s arm thoroughly and proclaimed that despite what she saw, Joya had not sliced the wrist at all.

“See, she cut into the fatty part above the wrist, and that cut didn’t go very deep.”

From the other side of Joya Jovian held up a canteen. “Do you think she needs any of this?” Jovian asked as he took a healthy swig of the palisum liquor sent with them.

Grace scowled. “That will only serve in thinning the blood, and that we cannot afford.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Jovian said taking another swig. “What happened up there anyway?”

It took about an hour for Angelica to explain it all, and Grace filled in the gaps that Angelica could not remember. It had been an incredibly intense experience and Angelica had been taking in so much at once that she found it hard to conjure the details of everything that had transpired.

“I don’t think she will be coming back for some time,” Grace stated a while after she had finished stitching Joya up.

“What do you mean?” Maeven asked stunned.

“It seems as though the forces that were in conflict over Joya had kept her from her trials. Now that they are gone she has been dragged down into her training—her growth. This could be dangerous. When something odd starts happening to her, do not try to interfere, for it will only make things worse.”

Though they had all experienced Joya’s strange demeanor already, Grace knew it was just the beginning. When a sorcerer finally mastered one element, something resultantly happened to their wyrd. This change in their wyrd, this growth, would inevitably affect the physical space about the new sorcerer. Grace knew that when Joya pushed forward through this growth, her wyrd would not know friend from foe. She would potentially lash out at those that got too near. Though Grace knew this to be a kind of defense mechanism that kept the sorcerer safe while they are away from their physical form, there was no way to explain it to Joya’s siblings amidst the tension. For while Joya was unconscious, she would be unable to defend herself, leaving the wyrd to handle it … which wasn’t easily predictable.

Grace watched Joya’s eyes moving beneath her lids in apparent sleep. Seeing the rest of her group yawning from invaded sleep, Grace smiled. “I think it would be a good idea if we sat tomorrow out in light of what happened tonight. I think we could all use more rest.”

“What about food?” Angelica asked as they all settled down in their bed rolls.