The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (35 page)

“What side do we need to be on?” Jovian asked.

“The Lunimara is on the eastern side. Come here now and let me put this ointment on your face so that it doesn’t heal all scarred.”

Jovian obeyed.

“So I guess we scout the land then?” Maeven suggested. They all groaned, for that was precisely what they did not want to do.

“If only it wasn’t for this damned fog,” Angelica complained. “We would not have to wonder where we have already been and if we are lost or not. At least we would have a little vision to go on, but with this there is no telling.”

And there wasn’t any telling either. Jovian thought that by the time they found their way, Fog Month might be over. For endless days they wandered, not even knowing if they were making fruitless circles much less if they were going in the right direction.

More and more Grace was beginning to think her idea to come to the Mirror of the Moon from the direction they had come was a bad idea, especially given the circumstances the Well of Wyrding was currently in.

What if the Well of Wyrding, in its current state of flux, was corrupting Joya? Why had she not reached her final trial, the Trial of Fire? Was it due to Grace’s suspicions about the Well, or was there another reason. In her current state, there was no telling if Joya was even still alive.

She didn’t know if she would be able to neutralize the Well of Wyrding once she got there. Grace had thought Rosalee was behind them, but now she was not sure since she could no longer feel her friends wyrd behind them.

But even if Rosalee was somehow behind her without her knowledge, there was still the problem of not having a sorcerer that was able or willing to help them. Grace wasn’t sure what was to happen when she made it to the Well of Wyrding, and there was a very real possibility that she would have to go it alone, and die trying to rid it of its current affliction.

Neither Angelica nor Jovian had told Grace exactly what had happened with the Hobbedy’s Lanterns and instead left her to deduce a lot of it herself. She tried with all her might to wring an answer from them, but this time they eluded her somehow.

So it was that Grace didn’t notice the warning smells or signs before the singing came. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts and worries that she didn’t realize the trap had been sprung until it was way beyond repairing the situation.

The singing was like nothing they had ever heard before. It started out low in the trees, and spoke to them in more than words. As they listened to the beautiful tenor, they felt as though their souls had sprouted wings and were being lifted higher than the clouds. They were soaring higher than any bird could think of climbing. The singing spoke to them of home in a way that words could not express. It took all of them back to their childhood, made them no longer yearn for what was past, for it took them there.

With each change in the music, so too did their emotions change. With it the images flashed before their eyes, and before long they all felt the need to rest. Without argue they dismounted and made a hasty camp not realizing this was something not of the norm. All of them were being woven so deeply in wyrd they had never felt before that they didn’t realize the subterfuge until long after they woke to find how they had been slighted. But until that moment of realization, they would naively lower themselves to the ground without care or worry about where the singing was coming from or who was doing the singing.

In the deep of their sleep they dreamed dreams induced by the singing, and within them they were taken back to the places of their youth, places they had once known and longed for. The wyrd, had they known it as such, didn’t seem malignant, and neither would they have thought of it as such with the serenity it brought to them.

It was Maeven who woke first to an urging that was mirrored in the woman’s voice that sounded so close, yet which he knew to be miles and realms away.

“Maeven Beggets, you wake up this instant!” his Aunt Rosalee’s voice scolded. As he had just been dreaming of home, nothing seemed amiss with this, and instead he waved his hand in the direction the voice had come from in protest.

“NOW!” the voice of his less than sane aunt thundered through his head, and at once the music was broken and Maeven sat up with a start.

“WHAT?!?” he yelled perplexedly, his outburst breaking the music of Grace’s dream too. In actuality she had been struggling with breaking it herself, and found that she could not without help. Maeven’s bellow had provided the help she so desperately needed to cast aside the mantle of dreams.

“What is it, Maeven?” Grace asked, trying to rise in the fog-clogged air, but finding it hard with her protesting bones and joints.

“I think you know what it is, Grace,” Maeven said. “Wake the others.”

“Yes,” she said moving to Angelica, albeit sluggishly and slapping her sharply across the face.

Angelica was quickly jolted awake.

“A simple yell would have sufficed, Grace,” Maeven reminded her as he made his way to Jovian, bent low to him, and in a moment the other boy was stirring.

Grace fumbled her way back to Holly and retrieved from inside her saddle bag an old candle that she began carving with a knife. There was something amiss. Something she wasn’t seeing.

“Joya!” Grace said. “Where is she?”

“Look for her!” Angelica yelled, starting to scramble around the area looking for her sister.

“What could have done this?” Jovian asked, obeying his sister.

“It was sirens,” Grace said. She handed them all chunks of wax. “If they come back, put these in your ears, if you can’t hear the music, it won’t affect you.”

But they didn’t come back, and they didn’t find Joya.

A
round them the fog positively glowed like moonlight.

As the sun rose, intruding on the time of dreams, the orbs that may have been their salvation or their demise seemed to sigh as one by one they shuddered and then winked out of existence until, finally, the only light around them was the dim golden glow of the sun.

“Was that them?” Angelica asked, scrambling out of her bedroll barely awake to search the surrounding fog for whatever had been lighting the area.

“Do you really think that is wise?” Grace asked as Angelica darted in and out of the fog like someone possessed with a need she could not explain.

“Where did they go?” she asked excitedly. She obviously had not hear a word Grace said.

“Angelica, come on and get some breakfast. We have to leave.” Grace prodded as she made her way to the fire and started preparing breakfast.

“We are not going anywhere,” Angelica told her resolutely. “We are not going anywhere until we find out what they are. We have been traveling for days searching for them. We can’t leave now that we have found them.” As long as they weren’t more Lantern’s.

As the sun set the orbs once more began to illuminate the woods around them, lighting in the way they had extinguished. They seemed to shiver, as if waking, and flickered a few times before they lit up the surrounding fog in what might be called a symphony of light.

The lights danced and pulsed around them, much livelier now than they had been earlier. The orbs seemed to play with one another, darting here and there, a few of them seemingly chasing one another.

Grace thought that she could possibly hear little laughter, like tiny silver bells tinkling in the wyrded wind.

Then, finally, one of the orbs darted into the path where they had set up camp and stopped dead in front of Angelica. It quivered there, looking up at her even as she stared down at the bewildered fey.

The orb hesitated for a moment and then darted away, back into the group. The playing suddenly ceased and all the orbs huddled together in a tighter circle around the humans, buzzing with light, murmuring as if they were conversing with one another, or better yet trying to figure out what the humans were and if they posed a threat.

Slowly, uncertainly, one orb at a time would emerge from the fog, buzz around the clearing in a maniacal, rapid movement, and then dart back out. The orbs would buzz again with what Grace assumed to be conversation.

“What are they?” Jovian asked as more and more of the orbs came toward them.

“They are fairies,” Angelica said breathlessly, feeling their presence at the edge of her mind like another consciousness pressing in on her, trying to be aware of what she was, how she thought, and most of all if she was sincere.

One of the fairies landed in Angelica’s upturned palm directly above the stigmata bathing her hand in opalescent moonlight. The cool weight of the fairy lounged in her hand as if it belonged there and her hand was made only for its sitting. Its presence felt like a cold pebble where its light radiated.

Then, as if by a collective mind, the fairies all about her suddenly stopped what they were doing, as if they were halting, listening to instructions that only the fey could hear. As one they hovered further into the air, while the one in her palm shifted slightly so that it could take flight. Together the bright orbs of light shot back into the fog where they had come from.

For a time it looked like the fairies might leave them.

“Wait!” she exclaimed. Her hand reached out then quickly retracted where it clutched one wrist held tightly to her chest. Her need was apparent not only in her face but her eyes as well. “We are lost and need to be led to the Mirror of the Moon,” she told them, her elven ring glimmering slightly in the faltering light of the fairies.

“What is that?” a tiny voice asked from behind Jovian.

“What is what, Taranis?” another voice answered.

“The glimmer on the Tall One’s finger!” the first voice said in exasperation.

“It is a ring gifted to my mother from the Elves of Nependier,” Angelica told them. “My mother was Sylvie LaFaye, and my aunt Pharoh LaFaye. I know that they did all kinds of good for the preservation of wyrd, but there is one … person that remains who would put asunder all they had worked for. We struggle in finding this person, the one who now occupies the Mirror of the Moon, to stop the tyranny that she seeks to unleash upon the Great Realms.”

“So it is that you seek the dark one that has caught hold of the Mirror of the Moon and the very fabric of our existence?” a female fairy asked, her light slightly brighter than all the others. The new fairy parted the fog and hovered forth, and the other fairies followed in her wake. “I am Telsara Lightdancer, Mugwump of the Light Dancer Mushroom Ring,” she informed Angelica.

“I am honored to meet you, Mugwump Lightdancer,” Angelica greeted, going to her knees before the hovering orb that was no bigger than her fist. “We beseech your guidance to the Mirror of the Moon to set this travesty right.”

“And our help you will have. Tegaris will lead you to where you need to go. You have gotten off the path some ways and need to be led back, but you should be aright in a week or so.”

They were all shocked that they had gained the help of the fairies so quickly, a feeling that Telsara noticed and commented on. “It is not because of your sterling words, but instead for the fact that you are the children of the Hairy Woman.”

“Now,” the Mugwump’s voice rang out clearly over the conversations that had arose from the meeting, “we have much space to travel and not much time to do it in if we wish to stop the negative affects on wyrd that the Well of Wyrding is causing. We also don’t have much time to save the other LaFaye daughters before they have succumbed too much insanity to come back from.”

The humans began packing up their belongings as she spoke realizing that this was heralding the beginning of their journey with the fairies.

“The Lightdancer Ring will accompany them back to the Lake Mirror where Tegaris will finish taking them the rest of the way.”

Though the light of the fairies aided them, it was still dark, the kind of dark that would drink in light, not allowing it to illuminate much more beyond the space the light occupied. Everything else lay in shadow, and Angelica soon began to feel claustrophobic.

The night seemed to drag on endlessly, but before she knew it grayness of day was lighting the darkness around her, and she could feel the weariness it brought in every fiber of her being.

The fairies led them to a large clearing that provided ample room for a fire that wouldn’t be needed and space for the horses without requiring the travelers to bed down on one another. Angelica was as happy as she could be in light of the situation.