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

“We will place him to rest just there,” Lockelayter pointed a few yards ahead to a clearing. In the clearing sat a large white slab. It was the gathering table where celebrations were held, council kept, and the dead laid to rest. The large ivory table sat in the middle of the clearing so it would grant a clear view of the sky and the stars the elves revered. “He will be safe; the Mikak’e will guide him to your Mother Goddess. Death does not touch these lands, and therefore you have no worries of your Neferis boy having tangled with the Three Wisdoms. Even now I am sure the Radiant Ones are bearing him safe passage to your Mother.”

This did little to console Angelica. She didn’t care about any of that; she only cared that her brother, her best friend, was dead and gone; mutilated beyond recognition. Things unseen did not bother her, for who was to say anyone
ever
faced the Three Wisdoms? No one ever came back from death. What she knew now was what she could see physically. She forced herself to look back at his beaten, burned body with the mess for fingers. Was this her brother? Was this Jovian Neferis?

For a time it was hard for her to understand. She finally decided she couldn’t accept it. This was not Jovian lying there, this was not her brother. Something else must have happened to him, because this brutalized body lying before her was most certainly
not
Jovian Neferis.

Then another emotion came to her, an emotion that stirred a strange feeling inside. She felt energy well up inside of her, like something expanding at the base of her spine. As the energy stretched out through her flesh, the dots on the palms of her hands began to burn.

The feeling that smothered her entire being was vengeance.

Angelica hated the sorceress named Porillon, and she would see her dead. It wasn’t a vow she took, for she didn’t decide anything in her mind; it was an understanding. Angelica Neferis would be the one to slice that bitch’s head from her body, and she would bathe in her blood by the light of the Mother’s Moon.

With her hatred the power previously contained at her spine blasted through her body, taking her to her knees in a startling cry of pain. Her hands crippled in terrific cramps making her think the bones would break.

A shadow formed at the edge of her vision and she felt a larger, greater wyrd bearing down on her, enclosing her in an orb. Angelica’s thoughts were trapped, her anger inside the globe, as if this force was trying to smother it out. Through the orb she could hear nothing but a warning from Lockelayter:

“You would do well not to entertain your darkness’s here, young Neferis. This place is protected by old wyrd; all banes are eliminated. Calm yourself, and I will remove the shielding.” Lockelayter leaned down close to the orb of wyrd in which Angelica found herself writhing in pain. For a moment she was caught in the beauty of his strange, violet eyes that—almond shaped as they were—consisted of nothing but iris. “After all, that is what got you in this mess to begin with.”

At that moment Angelica sensed—uncomprehendingly—the elf had knowledge she was not privy to. She also knew he would not tell her what that was.

After a time, not yet able to shake her anger and hatred, Angelica settled for looking down at her brother’s ruined body. Instantly her anger was replaced with sadness and she felt, rather than heard, the moan that left her quivering lips. In an effort to stop the tears, she looked skyward into the canopy of silver-blue foliage through a veil of tears.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice thick with sorrow. “I don’t know how to live without him.” She looked back to the elf with pleading eyes.

“I know, human, but you will learn.” Most people would not have thought this reply helpful or soothing, but from such a magnificent creature as Lockelayter it was both, and much more.

As Maeven watched from the back of the group, he saw many more elves of the same multi-hued brown hair and shimmering golden skin step out from between the white trees. All of them were dressed with the white wraps of cloth that Lockelayter adorned. The men wore wraps covering from their waist down, the women from the chest down. As far as Maeven could tell, all their feet were bare, and so was the rest of their bodies save a circlet of vines around their heads and silver bands around their forearms and wrists. A woven silver sash held up their clothing.

At the edge of the woods they stopped. In silence they watched Lockelayter carry Jovian the rest of the way to the gathering table and laid him on it. Jovian’s blackened, charred flesh looked putrid against the pristine white of the table.

Lockelayter stepped back and looked down at the lank body of Jovian Neferis. Going to his knees, Lockelayter lowered his forehead to the ground, arms splayed out before him in respect. All through the trees, like a wind rustling leaves in a forest, each of the surrounding elves followed his example.

“Here lies the child of one who was greatly honored among us elves,” he said, rising back up to his knees. If anyone was waiting for more, it didn’t come.

The elves knelt with a statuesque grace no human could have mastered. Each golden figure with almond eyes of bazaar colors, pointed ears that nearly reached the top of their heads mingling with the wreath of ivy they all wore, posed as if they were carved from some metallic alloy. They neither moved nor spoke, but sent up prayers for the Mikak’e to bear this man to the arms of his Mother Goddess.

There was a swell of energy through the clearing, an energy so profound that it actually affected physical space. The energy came through the clearing, pulsing against their skin.

It was unmistakably a pulse of powerful wyrd. There was a distinct scent on this wyrd; not something sweet or acrid, not subtle or sharp, not floral or repugnant, but a bit of each. It was the smell of nature and power.

Joya heard leaves rustling and looked up to see that beautiful canopy quivering, not swaying in a breeze, but quivering as if from the quaking earth.

Then off in the distance across the clearing Joya saw a silver light bloom out of the darkness, like a torch, or a wyrders’ conjured light. The orb glowed with pulsing light that was both of this world and not.

As she watched transfixed, the light came closer and closer until one of the most magnificent creatures Joya had ever seen stepped from the bleached trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

The horse was the most pure white she had ever seen. So white, in fact, that it nearly hurt Joya’s eyes to gaze upon it. She tried once to look into its quicksilver eyes and found that she could not force her gaze to meet those pools of wyrd, for that truly was what it must have been. Joya knew if she had looked into its eyes, she would have been shown the very making and unmaking of the universe; it was a truth Joya Neferis did not want to know.

In an attempt to avoid the eyes she so desired to see, Joya found the source of the source of light. Between those unknowable eyes sat a long slender horn that spiraled out of the creature’s head a good two feet. At the very tip of the horn the light rested.

Off in the distance, where the light had originated from, more lights bloomed out of the darkness. It was hard enough to imagine one of these creatures being part of this world, but to think of many (hundreds by the telling of all those orbs) of these creatures existing outside the realm of fantasy and dream was almost too much for her mind to comprehend.

The lights pressed closer, but only close enough to illuminate the surrounding trees and elves so that wood and flesh both glowed in the presence of their light. The other horse-creatures stayed out of sight.

The first creature picked its way across the lush grass of the clearing to the stone slab in the center where Jovian lay dead.

“Can you help him?” Angelica asked. A collective gasp rose from the lips of the elves gathered. They all rose and looked at Angelica as if she were a blasphemer, but she paid no attention; only Lockelayter kept his head bowed in silence. “I know what you are,” Angelica stepped forward, her hair rippled from the force of this horse-creatures wyrd. “You are one of the fabled nependier these mountains are named for. You can help him; I know you can.”

She stopped on the other side of the table staring straight at the creature over her brother. Her body was tense, but not from fear. Angelica rested her hands on the table and watched the creature watching her. “The question is not if you can help … the real question is will you help?”

The nependier stood staring at Angelica as if weighing something in its mind, calculating a decision about her worth—if Jovian was worthy enough to help, if it would make a difference in the lives of the nependier if this man stayed dead or not.

Fear not,
came a strange voice into Angelica’s mind. The voice was so strong and so powerful that it made her knees shake. She would not show frailty, she would not collapse from the power the voice exuded over her.
The time for this Neferis’ death is not now. There are many things he must do before his time is up.
The creature bowed its head in acknowledgment of her question.

Then with a startling pop that resounded through the clearing, huge, feathery wings snapped open from the nependiers’ body.

Angelica watched in amazement, the worry of her fallen brother melting away as soft silver light began to grow at the joint of wings and body. The light traced its way along the edges of each feather until they were all ringed with silver luminescence. Finally the light grew in intensity, so concentrated that they all shielded their eyes.

Elven eyes, however, were much stronger than human ones so there was no need for Lockelayter to protect his eyes, and so he watched the transformation take place. The nependier bent its head down to rest its horn to Jovian’s forehead. The light extended from the horn and through the man’s body tracing across each line and crack in the skin, each break of flesh, each protrusion of bone until both creature and human shone with a light that was completely ethereal.

Fingers became whole once more, no longer a ruined mess of lumps and blood. His skin softened, moistened, and mended back together. His hair grew once more, as did the beard that had been there before the lightning strike. All traces of blood and death raced from his body leaving a shockingly beautiful being laying on the table, no longer in his final sleep, but instead in a deep restful sleep.

Lockelayter studied the soft cream of Jovian’s skin, no longer charred and cracked, the natural blush of his cheeks, the pale curve of lush lips, and sharp bridge of a previously broken nose. His soft blond hair lay in lank curls around his head, not the shriveled mess it had been. Under his soft lids eyes danced in the midst of dreams, now renewed and pleasant in this place where harm could not touch body or mind.

He looked to the creature, wondering why it had interfered where they had never interfered before. The nependier nodded once, closed its wings, and turned away from them all.

Angelica watched the creature retreat with awe. She had expected it would bring Jovian back from death but she had not expected it would remake him anew.

Tears once more graced her cheeks, but this time not from sadness; this time from happiness and relief. Everything seemed good and right once more. She reached down and took one of Jovian’s smooth hands in her own and touched his soft hair with the other.

Deep in his sleep, Jovian moaned and shifted his head.

As Angelica was joined by the rest of her friends, the elves backed away into the trees once more, leaving Lockelayter with the group. Angelica began to weep openly holding her brother’s hand close to her heart.

I
t took three days for Jovian to return to the waking world. Three days of constant vigils were held by Maeven and Angelica. The elves that attended him were much different from those they saw the night when they first entered Whitewood Haven. Angelica began to see them as a very fun loving race that could be stern when need called for it, but most certainly not choosing to be so all the time.

Jovian was washed and tended to each day, his face shaved by Maeven, as the elves, having no body hair anywhere on their body, didn’t know how to properly shave a face, and his body clothed in a soft white wrap much like the garb the male elves wore. In fact, they all now wore such clothing. Maeven looked out of place with his dusting of chest and stomach hair in a sea of smooth skin.

Jovian had not been moved from his spot, and so neither did Maeven and Angelica, only when bathing and dressing required it. Even eating and sleeping were carried out at Jovian’s bedside, and those were the only times either of them let go of his hands. They feared the longer they left contact with him the further he would slip away, as if their hands in his would keep him from death’s pallor.