The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (9 page)

The man blanched — Sara could tell because his face momentarily returned to a healthy shade.

“What do you suggest?” the man asked, wringing his hands together.

“We need to network our wyrd together, form it into a web, and lift the entire mass out of there,” Rowan said. “We will need a place for all the debris. Where are you currently putting it?”

The man pointed further north and Sara could see rocks floating over to the large park at the base of the Falls of Nependier. “For now, that’s the largest open space we have.”

“Alright. Us Guardians are used to working together. Give us a couple more strong sorcerers and we will get this accomplished.” Rowan straightened the wrap of green wool around her body with a sniff. Sara could feel the weave of orange wyrd slipping across Rowan’s body as she called upon her power. They had all worked their wyrd together many times, and so they understood the flavor of their individual wyrd. Linking their will together was no harder than clasping hands.

Grace came huffing up to the top of the stairs, resting heavily on the railing when she crested the top. It took a moment for her to catch her breath.

“Next time,” she said in a serious voice. “You might consider helping me out? I know you could have made me travel just as fast.”

“Mag,” Sara said, ignoring Grace and going to the Realm Defense Counselor.

“Yeah, I saw her along the way, I thought you could use her.” Grace waved her hand dismissively and went to the edge of the hole to study the wreckage. “Not many survivors,” she commented.

“Are you able to help us with the rubble?” Rowan asked Grace. “You do control earthen wyrd, right?”

“I can try,” Grace nodded. “My wyrd isn’t as strong on earth that is out of its natural habitat. These stones don’t have a lot of their natural energy in them. What do you need?”

Rowan seemed to be considering what exactly Grace could do. “Can you make the stones attracted to one another? Link them in a way so they can’t shift out of balance?”

“Like lode stones?” Grace furrowed her brows. “I’ve never tried it.”

“Try it now,” Rowan said. Another sorcerer came up to her then and Rowan moved away.

Sara watched the look of concentration come over her sister’s face and waited with bated breath while Grace worked. Finally, after Rowan had assembled a small troupe of sorcerers to help the Guardians, Grace’s face took on a relieved look.

“Alright, I think that will do,” Grace said.

“Do you have to hold it?” Sara asked before Rowan could.

“No,” Grace said. She motioned to the stones below. “I just asked them to stick together.”

“And that worked?” Rowan asked.

“Seems to. I felt them respond.”

“Alright,” Rowan said loudly. The assembled sorcerers stopped what they were doing and turned to her. “We have a group of sorcerers who are going to help lift this mass out of the way. We need the rest of the wyrders to help the constables. Seek out the chief and tell him you’ve been assigned to him.”

As a procession of wyrders headed toward the stairs, Rowan turned back to her group.

“Sara, would you like to lead this wyrding?” Rowan asked.

Sara nodded. Rowan wasn’t as good at teaching these techniques.

“Alright, get in a line,” Sara instructed. The sorcerers obeyed, and Grace stepped away. “Has anyone worked with meshing energies?”

A few nodded, but most of them shook their heads no.

“Ok, we’ll work like this. Link hands with the person beside you and pulse a little of your wyrd into their hand. Get a feel for the wyrd flowing through you, taste the difference of your own, feel the rhythm and the personality.” Sara joined the line and closed her eyes. She felt Mag pulsing her energy into her own palm, and felt the nervousness of the counselor. Sara pulsed back, and there was an answering recognition from Mag’s wyrd.

“Now, once you have a good hold on the wyrd of everyone here, let your mind drift. I’m going to implant an image into my wyrd; you should see it. I want you to put your wyrd into the working, strengthen the vision as it comes to you, put all of the wyrd you can muster into strengthening the image.”

Sara didn’t waste any time. She conjured the image of a network of wyrd, braids of all of the colors of wyrd of all the sorcerers present. She wove the wyrd underneath the wreckage of the bazaar. She felt all the minds of all the sorcerers gathered placing their wyrd into it, and as they worked, different threads of certain colors strengthened their glowing in Sara’s mind.

“That’s good, keep going,” she encouraged. It took a while for all of the threads of wyrd to be of the same strength. She couldn’t instruct them further until all of the binding webs were the same. If one was weaker, it could cause the entire network to fail.

“Alright,” Sara said as the last thread glowed in tandem with the rest. “Now, on my mark, we’re going to lift that mass out of the hole. Ready? Go!”

Each of the wyrders assembled lifted with their minds, and the rocks below groaned with the pressure of the wyrd. Now was the part of the grouping that took more of Sara’s strength than any others. As the mass of stones lifted clear of the hole, floating in a tangled heap in front of the line of sorcerers, Sara directed a thread of wyrd into the mass, and pushed with her mind in the direction of the park.

The mass started to move haltingly through the air, but move it did. Cheers rose up from below, and Sara felt some strands of wyrd faltering.

“Steady, just hold it strong,” she cautioned. “Don’t pay attention to them, just listen to my voice and follow my instructions.”

The shuddering in the weaving stopped. But then, just as the mass of blocks was halfway in its journey, a violent wave of malevolent wyrd shifted the assembled stones in their wyrded womb. The stones knocked together cacophonously.

“What’s going on?” Rowan asked, her voice strained from the concentration. Other wyrders, however, weren’t able to hold the weaving, and Sara watched as some strands of wyrd snapped, and the stones shifted dangerously.

“I’m not sure,” Sara said. She retracted her intent of moving the mass, and instead sought out the shadow of wyrd that rippled through the rubble. “Something dark.”

There was a hint of paranoia in the wyrd coming from Mag’s hand.

“Mag?” Sara whispered to her friend, but as soon as she said it there was an unholy blast of wyrd, and people screamed.

Sorcerers along the wall fell to their knees screaming as the tendrils of their will were snapped from their working and burned down the channels into their bodies.

The debris of the mass shuddered and then exploded outward, shining an unholy black.

“Darklight!” Rowan said. “MOVE!”

But not everyone was fast enough. Sara knew what was happening. Somehow the darkness of Mag’s past wyrd had slipped into the working, corrupted it, and charged each and every stone with its power. As stones rained down around the city Sara watched in horror as people, buildings, swatches of grass, and segments of bridges vanished beneath the weight of individual boulders, carried beyond the Black Gates by the alarist wyrd that infused every piece of debris.

Sara didn’t know what to say. She stood, transfixed at the destruction. Gaps in roads appeared, whole groups of people vanished, no doubt mindless of the horror raining down on them.

“No,” Mag cried, falling to her knees. The wind tore at her dress, and carried screams to her ears. “What have I done?”

“Alarist,” Azra seethed. “Guards, take this woman to the dungeons!”

“No!” Sara said, stepping in front of Mag. “I can explain. It wasn’t intentional.”

“How do you explain this?” Rowan asked, waving her hand out to the destruction. “She did this, didn’t she?”

“How do you know it was her, and not something left over from the fallen angel?” Grace asked, stepping up beside her sister.

“We were linked, Grace, we know it was her,” Rowan snapped.

“Oh,” Grace said, looking to her sister. “I’ve got nothing.”

“I can explain,” Sara said.

“Then you had better start,” Aladestra said, stepping up to the top of the stairs.

“Lily, come away from there,” Shirley called to her daughter. The neighbor’s dog wasn’t something she wanted her daughter around. There had been too many reports of the mutt attacking people. She couldn’t take the chance that they were only rumors.

Her daughter skipped back across the street toward Shirley. She relaxed back in the chair, looking up at the cloudless sky and basking in the warmth of the winter day. It was unseasonably warm in the Holy Realm today, and she was taking advantage of it before the extreme cold of mid-winter set in and chased her indoors for months.

Confident that Lily was out of trouble, playing with something in the snow, Shirley turned back to her book and kept reading. Quickly she was drawn back into the adventure and romance the pages of the book promised. A smile spread across her face with every page she turned.

She hadn’t realized how much time had passed until darkness started to fall. With a sigh, she marked her page and looked up to her daughter. But there were people in the street, pointing up at the sky. A cry went up from farther down the street, and Shirley watched the crowd thin as people ran to their homes, shutting themselves inside.

“What in the Realms?” Shirley said. But before she could look back up, Lily screamed out in pain.

The book fell from her lap and into the snow as she trampled over to her daughter. “What happened?” Lily was holding her hand to her chest, so Shirley struggled it away from her and looked at the festering bite.

Shirley saw the thin strand of white mucus on her daughter’s thumb and reached for it, but it was too slick for her to get hold of. The tendril spasmed and slipped out of Shirley’s grip, vanishing into Lily’s thumb.

Lily whimpered.

“It’s okay,” Shirley said. “Come on, let’s get inside.” She helped her daughter to her feet and steered her toward the door of their house.

But they weren’t to make it. Overhead the darkness condensed, and the sound of clattering wings accosted her ears. Shirley stopped and looked up as the plague of locusts descended on the small town of Terranceville. She batted at them and stumbled through the biting insects. She pulled Lily along behind her, and her daughter stumbled with her mother, screaming at the fire each infernal bite brought to her flesh.

Shirley could relate. She felt the bugs biting, nesting into her skin, wriggling their way in deeper. She fell to her knees, pushing her daughter before her and toward their house. Lily had to live, even if Shirley didn’t. It was that thought that prompted her to her feet. She grabbed Lily and darted toward the house.

They never made it. Within seconds the town was decimated under a swath of locusts. An hour later, the town in ruin and all of the people dead, the locusts moved on.

As the sun was setting that evening, Shirley began to move once more. This time not with life, but in death. Her body shuddered, jerked, and yanked up into the air, listing to the side, her footing unsure in her death. She turned south-east and began walking.

Soon the entire town had reanimated and were lumbering along behind her, one thought shared among them, urging them forward, calling them to their destination: Lytoria.

High in her tower balcony Mag was afforded a glorious view of the city’s sparkling lights, the towering heights of the mountains, and the constant rush of the waterfall. From the street below, the evening bustle swelled up to her ears. In the distance were shouting workers and the noise of their toil. Mag knew she wasn’t shuttered in this out-of-the-way room because she was an honored guest, but instead she was under a kind of arrest. Guards were posted at her door, and her balcony had no way of escape, unless she wanted to plummet a couple hundred feet to the cobbles below.