The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (41 page)

The lightning hit her square in the chest, flipping her over the throne to land unceremoniously in a cluster of blue pillows, drapes, and gray-blue skirts. Her hair spreading a silky silver sea around her, and when she pushed herself upright once more, her flesh smoking but not burned in the slightest, her eyes portrayed her displeasure.

“That was highly uncalled for,” she said. She straightened her dress around her once more, patting her hair back into place. “For that I will now destroy you.”

T
hey were locked together; her wyrd against his steal. And it was only by the grace of the Goddess that they had not killed each other yet. Wyrd burned the night even as the metallic clank sang through the air, each attack, miraculously not touching the other.

Joya attacked with wyrd she never knew she had, such power that she was staggered. Still Maeven lived, dodging her bolts, jumping the balls of fire she flung at him, fire that even now lit foliage and thrashed at the graphite stone of the temple, useless.

She was filled with speed, speed like the night they had faced the torzul, but this time it came, like all of her wyrd, without the aid of her book.

Maeven swung at her head, and she darted out of the way, crouching down and rolling behind him to come up swiftly, jabbing him in the back, an attack that caused him to stumble. As he was busy regaining his footing, a fireball sprang to her hands.

She launched it at him, but he jumped out of the way allowing it to glide past him to burst fruitlessly against the skin of their captor.

And still the music continued, corrupting, poisoning, and twisting their minds into a darker image of what they had been. The music was like the night they had dreamed, that being the fight existed not because of the music or in juncture with it, but instead that the music provoked the fight, elicited the emotions of revulsion they felt. It was this that instigated the very need to destroy one another.

They were pawns to the music, Joya knew this. Part of her rebelled against what was happening here, knowing that it was not right, that it was out of order. The same wyrd she felt her Aunt Pharoh give her suddenly flared to life, giving her reason and motive to be free of the music that assailed them.

Joya knew there was something not right about what was happening here. She remembered Maeven; she knew who he was and what he meant to all of them. In a short amount of time he had become to her like a brother.

So why was she trying to kill him?

It was that simple question that broke the wyrd of the siren’s song.

Maeven swung at her, his blow heavy and lethal but at the same time slow and clumsy in the grip of the Siren’s song. For a moment Joya wondered what it must have been like to have such complete control over one’s life as the siren did when she sang, for her melody had created the thread of their battle together.

Steel slashed at her face, and Joya stumbled backward, the twitch coming to her body again as it had not within the power of the siren’s song. She knew that he could not kill her, not unless his sword connected with her neck, but that was not what the siren had in mind. Instead the siren meant for Joya to kill Maeven, for he was largely unneeded in Porillon’s grand scheme of things.

A blast of air wyrd blew Maeven away from her crashing into the far wall as his sword clattered to the ground

Maeven finally stood, and when he did it was with a killing rage in his eyes, and he charged at her, his sword swinging. She stood still, except for the now constant nervous twitching in her body, waiting for him to come within range.

When he did, decimating flower beds as his boots threw dirt every which way, she did something the siren had not intended.

The wyrd came to her like it had many times before, yet this time it was at her bidding and not at the request of some outside force. The power quickly bloomed at the base of her spine and spread like wildfire up her back to the base of her neck. She tossed her head back, breathing in the night air even as the motions around her seemed to slow to a snail’s pace.

There was only now, there was only her and what she had to do. She was no pawn in someone else’s game and she would show them precisely how well she played. She was sick of being used. She would now prove that never would she be used again. Joya LaFaye was better than any siren, and she would display her power now.

It was a simple change, one that barely caused as much as a ripple of air in the switch. She saw Maeven charging at her slowly in her heightened state of mind. Behind her she was aware of the siren, smug, standing resolutely, her head turned to the sky, her gaping maw opened wide with song issuing forth.

It was all within her desire. A simple change really. What she needed was someone, only one person to be other than where they were. She could do it to herself, make the siren come forth to take her spot, but that wouldn’t work for it would be too difficult to move a form that channeled its own wyrd. She could move herself, but that would not work that well, for by the time Maeven charged far enough to reach the siren she would notice that Joya had moved and that she was in danger now.

No, she chose instead to move Maeven.

Once her mind was made, the wyrd blasted out to do her bidding, leaving her nearly void of energy, falling to her knees on the ground, gasping for air that stung her throat and chest. In her current state of distress, Joya barely had time to turn and see Maeven charging at the Siren from behind. His sword slashed once, decorating the surrounding flowers in black, corrosive blood that disintegrated the delicate foliage as the head tumbled from the Siren’s shoulders, the music stopping as abruptly as her life had ended, as swiftly as the gore had come.

As the body fell in seeming slow motion it began immediately decaying so that when it finally landed on the soft earth it was little more than a smoking lump of black gunk.

As the threat of the Siren passed, Joya was aware of another presence just at the edge of her awareness. She watched Maeven long enough to see that he was now coming out of his song induced stupor before she turned to where the woman was forming in the doorway.

“Come, Joya,” the image of her Aunt Pharoh said. “Angelica and Jovian are in danger, and it is time that you recover my body from where your sister left it.”

The room was in chaos.

Angelica and Jovian, now being more their separate selves than they had been moments before, were able to think more like themselves, and they reasoned that maybe pissing Porillon off was not the wisest thing they could have done.

Since she had stood back up, their role had taken the defensive as they dodged her attacks around the room, barely escaping the wrath of her anger, which was more than they could say for the décor singed around them. It smoldered from the wyrded fire, lightning, and various other catastrophes set upon them by the Alarist, catastrophes they had narrowly escaped.

Why were they on the defensive? Angelica’s thought was fleeting as she remembered who it was that they were fleeing from. It was within that thought that the other consciousness gripping them laid, and no sooner had Angelica thought that one thing than that other force took control and she stood, a spray of fire coming directly from Porillon to consume her.

The flames licked around her body, feeding off the clothing that refused to burn, consuming hair that refused to char, trying to dry moisture that refused to yield.

Angelica held her hands out; manipulating the very wyrd that Porillon had cast at her. The sorceress stared at her, shock on every glowing line of her face as the flames coalesced around Angelica, writhing from the floor in a whisk all the way up her legs, her waist, and her arms to form in two giant orbs in each hand.

To an outsider it would have appeared as though Angelica had extinguished the flames and conjured her own, but instead she had used what was already present, bending the wyrd Porillon had cast at her to her own will. Angelica had called it from all around her, forcing it to gather in two central spots.

The stigmata in each of her palms hummed.

This time Porillon was the one frightened, and for good reason, for Angelica unleashed upon the dalua her very own version of the Otherworld.

The fire was all consuming, as it had not been when Porillon first fired it. It spread as quickly as wildfire, and destroyed with a heat ten times hotter than that same fire. Metal brackets were twisted, melted in the obscene heat. Draping turned instantly to ash. The stone of the floor blackened with only a moment’s touch of the wyrd.

Porillon made it to the basin at the Goddess’ feet before the fire reached her. Dipping one hand into the water, she gripped it like one would the folds of a gown, lifting it like it was not separate particles but instead like it was a cloak.

Instead of wrapping herself in the water, she threw it straight toward the white hot fire, creating before her a wall of water wyrded into position, wyrded to protect against the heat.

Soon the fire was out, and Jovian was on his feet charging for Porillon, his Shin-Buto raised, but she would have none of that. She flicked a hand and Jovian crashed into one wall, a flick of the other hand saw Angelica pinned to the opposite wall.

“Now it is my turn!” Porillon scorned, her voice not betraying the rage they could feel as her raw wyrd flared through them, bringing a scream to both of their lips.

Outside of the room Joya heard the scream, and reached for the door.

“No, not yet,” her aunt’s voice said behind her. “There is a stone right there.” She pointed to the right hand side of the door. “It sticks out slightly further than the other stones.”

Joya nodded and wasted no time pulling the jagged rock from the wall. It was humorous that Amber would have used a place so obvious to hide something so hazardous. The ploy had been affective, however, as Porillon had not yet found it.

The golden medallion tumbled out of the crevice and into her waiting, eager palm. The metal was cool to her touch, heavy in her hands as she had never remembered it being before.

“Now put it on; you may need my help,” Pharoh instructed, and when Joya turned her aunt was no longer in her wake. Quickly she did as she was told and she felt her aunt’s presence with her again. Her aunt was no longer behind her, but she was with her just as she imagined it would feel when Grace told them of the medallion and what it housed.

I am with you,
Pharoh assured
. Now, your brother and sister need your help.

The wyrd she tapped into was stronger than anything she had ever felt before, so strong that she thought she would lose her mind within it. Her Aunt Pharoh, she realized, was as all consuming, if not more, than the voice of wisdom had been, or the touch of the being she had faced back at the plantation. Pharoh was like a drug to her senses, and for a moment she understood the wyrd her aunt had controlled, the wyrd her aunt had unleashed. Though it was powerful and deadly, Pharoh had used it to teach, she had used it to such peaceful ends that one could almost think that her aunt had had little wyrd instead of the vast stores she now gave to Joya.