The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (10 page)

If she had access to her wyrd she could have flown perhaps, lightened the air around her, causing her descent to be slowed. But she didn’t have access to her powers. The iron bands around her throat and wrist were wyrded in such a way as to stop the flow of wyrd through her body. She didn’t know the implications; would she start aging? The last time she’d been under arrest for the use of her alarist powers, the bands had caused her to age. It was a small secret among wyrders that certain things could make a sorcerer appear older than they were: too many close calls to what would cause a mortal death; other wyrding; corrupt wyrd worked for too long; and certain kinds of imprisonment.

These bands were similar to the ones that had aged her in the past, before she had turned over a new leaf and given herself back to the Goddess.

A gentle breeze played through her short black hair, and she let the wind carry away the worries of the day. But as her mind drifted, she couldn’t help but feel the pulse of alarist wyrd within her. She had tapped into something old and dark during the battle with the chaos dwarves. Something she hadn’t used in ages, but had to call upon for help when nothing else would save her people. Now the power was with her again, calling to her, throbbing through her body like a lover’s touch. If she listened closely enough, she could almost hear the power whispering through her mind with the perverse language of Chaos. It reminded her of screams, of thousands of tormented cries for help.

It made her blood run cold.

The thought of the Guardian’s Keep made her think of her family. Her mind turned to her husband and her children, and the danger she faced. Never had Mag thought they would have to live without her, being a sorceress and all, but with what had happened today. . .

Her eyes drifted to the destroyed bazaar, and though she couldn’t see it from this vantage point, she tried to find the place where they’d pulled Dalah and Rosalee out of the wreckage. The accident had made very real the danger they were all facing.

Against her will, her eyes also traveled to the places she could see where the darklight-forged rubble had landed around the city. A tremble crept up her back. Never before had her wyrd worked against her like that. Even when the Well of Wyrding had been corrupted, she hadn’t had to face the threat of her alarist power coming out.

But now she was facing something she’d never thought she would, after starting her new life and turning her back on her old ways: death. True death for a sorcerer. Beheading. Suddenly the iron band around her throat felt heavier, like the blade of an executioner’s axe.

Her husband was a sorcerer, but only one of their three children were. The heartbreak of being a sorcerer parent was watching your child grow old and die.

Mag sighed, and tried to push the troubled thought away. Dark thoughts allowed the alarist power she had reawakened a tighter hold on her. The darkness of the power would feed off her need, off her despair, and offer promises of things it could never make good on. And then you were addicted.

The work crews were toiling away at the bazaar, even in this late hour, shouting commands and floating large chunks of debris out of the way with wyrd. But as she watched, a shadow grew in her mind. She could see it out of her peripheral vision, down in the street. At first she didn’t pay it any attention, but as the darkness in her mind grew, her alarist wyrd responded.

Her first thought was Wyrders’ Bane, but Angelica and Jovian had transmuted that. No, this was different.

Lazily she let her gaze drift to the darkness, and when her eyes fell upon the figure, swathed in black, her heart knew fear. There was something familiar there, something reaching out to her from her past.

The tortured screams Mag had come to associate with her darklight wyrd echoed into her mind. Underneath the tormented cries was the perverse, twisted language of Chaos, calling out to her blood, infusing her with power.

Mag closed her eyes and started to pray, willing the power of the Goddess to protect her, but if there was any answer, Mag didn’t feel it. All she did feel were the eyes of some predatory animal on her. When she opened her eyes and looked down, she saw a glint of amber from within the shadowed hood.

And just like that, the figure vanished, along with the pull on her alarist wyrd. In a whisper the voice of Chaos left her awareness, and Mag was once more able to breathe comfortably. A peace infused her mind when the figure left. But she knew, without knowing how she knew, that it would be back. This wasn’t the end.

A knock on her door made Mag jump, and a startled cry drew the attention of several passersby below. She turned around to the shadowed room as the guards opened the door, and her blond charge, Astanel, stepped inside the chamber.

“I’m surprised they let you in here,” Mag said, stepping from the chill night air and into the room. She shut the balcony doors behind her and the small fire began to warm the room almost instantly.

Astanel didn’t speak, only went about stoking the fireplace for her, and lighting the lamps with a turn of a knob on the wall instead of with his own wyrd. The golden room brightened and seemed to chase away some of Mag’s dark thoughts.

“What happened today?” Astanel asked, sitting in a large red chair near the curtained balcony doors.

Mag sighed. “I honestly don’t know.”

“They’re saying you attacked them,” Astanel told her, casting his eyes down to where his fingers fidgeted in his lap. “I thought you were different.”

“Don’t you even think about challenging my change of heart,” Mag warned him.

“Or you’ll what? Use your darklight on me?” Astanel asked. “You were my hope that I could shake the alarist grip on my wyrd.” He whispered the last, not wanting anyone to hear what he had to say.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Mag said. “We were moving the debris, and suddenly the rubble shot out everywhere. It was like the darklight slipped into the weaving without my knowing it. No one sensed it before it attacked.”

“I’ve never had that happen,” Astanel said. Mag wasn’t sure if he was being helpful, or if he was still accusing her.

“Neither have I,” she told him.

Astanel was silent for a while before he spoke again. “What caused it then?”

Mag thought of the shadow she had seen in the streets below. She didn’t want to think it, but because of all of the legends she’d heard, and the feeling she had gotten from some alarists in her past, she wondered if what she’d seen was an extension of Arael. But golden eyes? It wasn’t beyond his power to weave illusions. She’d never actually met Arael, but she couldn’t help wonder if she had seen a shadow of his power that night.

“I think it’s the Beast,” she told Astanel.

“But why you?” he asked. “And will this happen to me as well?”

“There’s no way I could know that,” Mag said, spreading her hands wide. “And I don’t know why it’s happening to me. Maybe because I’ve escaped his grasp before, and he’s calling me home?”

“That’s not home. Home is with the Goddess,” Astanel said fervently, leaning forward.

Mag itched her head and turned away. “I have to believe that.” But at the mention of the Goddess, something cancerous twisted deep inside of her.

“There’s no reason you can think of that he would choose you?”

“There are many reasons,” Mag said. “I saw him in the Orb of Aldaras; it’s not hard to imagine that he saw me as well. Plus, I’m on this side. Did you know that we’re going to Lytoria?”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

Mag ignored the question. “We’re going to Lytoria because the Council of Guardians think that’s where our final stand will be.”

“Okay?”

“It’s possible that he’s trying to use me on the inside, working against the group.”

“Then why would he have done that with the wreckage today?”

“Who knows the mind of Chaos?”

“That sounds like a weak excuse.” Astanel sighed. “Alright, it’s all we have to go with now.”

“No, not us. Me. You aren’t part of this.” Mag turned back to Astanel. She kneeled on the floor before him and took his hands into hers. “You have to promise me you won’t let anyone know what you are.”

“Sara and Annbell know.”

“Yes, but they trust me, and they know that you can change. They have faith that you are willing to change.” Mag studied his silvery blue eyes, looking for confirmation that she was right and he was willing to change. “Don’t touch your wyrd, not until we’re in Lytoria. Then, at the height of battle, come to me. It’s then you will use your darklight to get these trappings off me, and then we attack.”

Sara stared out at the moon, rising high above the peaks and domes of the buildings in the Ivory City. It made her homesick; she missed watching the moon from the serenity of her own keep, far from people and high in the mountains where she was surrounded by nothing but nature. Here there was too much noise, too many people. But here she was, gathered with the other Guardians in Aladestra’s personal conference room, trying to determine the fate of a woman she trusted and loved more than she did the people in this very room.

“The point is, she’s a danger,” Azra Akeed said.

“To call her a danger is to bring into question my ability to govern,” Sara spoke quietly from the window. Her words cut through the room like a well-tempered blade. She turned back to the purple room, lit with soft lamplight. It was a large room, affording a lot of space to relax, but the Guardians were all gathered around the green marble table in the center of the room.

“No one is doing that,” Aladestra said, placing her hand on Azra’s arm to calm the other Guardian.

They were split. Rowan and Azra wanted Mag dead, while Sara and Pyang knew Mag and believed she wasn’t a danger. They both wanted her to live. Aladestra, as usual, was the mediator.

“So where do we stand?” Pyang asked.

“She attacked the capital city,” Rowan argued for the umpteenth time.

“No, you know as well as I do that there was no alarist wyrd in that weaving,” Sara said, refusing to sit. She felt standing gave her some kind of advantage, even if that wasn’t true.

“I didn’t feel it either, not until it was too late.” Pyang nodded agreement.

“And unless she is skilled enough to hide her working from five Realm Guardians, I doubt it was intentional.” Sara leaned against the back of her chair.

“How did you even come to have her in your council?” Aladestra asked.

“She was an alarist, back when Arael was in power before. We had captured her and were trying her. She was one of the few who expressed interest in devoting herself back to the Goddess. We gave her that chance,” Sara said simply. “She’s never made me question her faith. She’s defended me even when it would benefit an alarist not to. It was she who found I was being poisoned not too long ago, and it was she who dealt with the threat. She successfully ran our campaign against the chaos dwarves.”

“And she’s never used her darklight power?” Rowan asked.

“Only once that I know of,” Sara said. “When we were fighting the chaos dwarves an alarist came through the courtyard and was attacking the keep with his darklight. We were all trapped. The only way we defeated him was through Mag’s connection to her alarist power. Maybe that one working after so long opened up some kind of channel she’s having a hard time closing.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to close it,” Rowan speculated. “Maybe all of her good deeds were a way to gain your trust so she can deceive us in the end.”

Sara wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. She’d often heard Mag refer to the darklight power as being addictive, like a drug. Could it be that she was slipping back into that addiction?

“Biding her time, waiting for the opportune time to strike.” Azra nodded in agreement.

“Oh, come on,” Aladestra said, slapping her hands on the marbled table top. “I know I’m supposed to be impartial in these things and come to a fair conclusion, but even I have to say that summation is absurd, Azra. You are always looking in the shadows, waiting for some new horror to jump out at you. By chance you were lucky in guessing about your shadow in the west, but this is ridiculous.

“If Mag was waiting for the opportune time, why would she have used such a minor incident as clearing up wreckage to attack? What did she gain? She’s locked away in her room, shackled and bewyrded against using her powers. What did that gain for Arael?” Aladestra leaned forward, fire in her eyes, and her grip firm on Azra’s wrist.