A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4)

by Travis Simmons

  A few more feet and Cianna could hear the weeping. The girl from her dreams was here, still intact and alive. Cianna sighed a breath of relief that she hadn't been aware she was holding. The girl was still alive.

  There were many alleys and walkways, leading down through different tents. All around the border of the makeshift village sat the same odd wagons with sled blades, like the walls of a city, keeping those within protected in some way.

  Though there were many alleys and lanes to get lost in, the white lady led Cianna true, taking her down certain lanes and avenues until Cianna was nearly lost. Before long, however, Cianna stood beside a charred tent, the fabric nearly completely burned, but no longer smoking as some of the establishments had been. It was a pink tent, with charred wood holding it up.

  The crying was louder here, and though Cianna wasn't sure if the structure would hold if she walked in, she still found herself picking her way through the rubble of possessions to the inside of the dark tent.

  Outside, the lady held up her hand and a ghostly white light appeared, floating above Cianna's head. She had seen lights like this before, when Sara had conjured one, but this wasn't the same; this light wasn't made out of wyrd, but with the aid of the dead. It was a ghost light.

  Now she could see the inside of the tent, and if it hadn't been mostly caved in, it would have been an absolutely huge structure containing four beds, a large clothes press, a sitting table and other amenities that Cianna didn't recognize because of fire damage.

  She followed the sound of the crying to a bed, and when she looked under it she saw the little girl from her dreams, her brown burlap covering smeared with smoke, her dark skin smudged with ash, and her hair dirty and matted from days, maybe weeks of not being washed.

  Cianna reached for the girl, but she shied away. Then, with a sob, the girl vanished. But not into thin air, as Cianna would have thought. Instead the girl vanished as smoke, which slithered across the ground, making its way to Cianna, and then merged with her energy.

  Cianna tried backing away from the smoke, but it was too late. She fell backwards, her back pressed tight against one of the ruined beams of the tent.

  Cianna had felt the energy of the dead course through her before, but this was different. With the girl's energy came power. This girl had been a necromancer, though not old enough to have been called yet.

  She stood on wobbly legs and tried to make her way out of the tent, but as she looked around her the tents and smoking rubble changed; the scene aged before her. What she previously thought had been a recent attack must have been done years ago. Most of the tents had been worn down by age and the elements. The fabric held very little color now, and most of the structures had actually become one with the desert again.

  It would make sense, Cianna thought. It must have happened before I was born. That would have been about thirty years ago. Maybe twenty. The thing that was strange about necromancers was they didn't normally waken to life until their mother had died. That was where Cianna was a little hazy. Did that mean the previous necromancer, in this case Ava, died as Cianna wakened? Or did she die when Cianna was birthed?

  She looked back at where the tent had stood moments before, a part of a burning village, now crumbled to ash and sand. If Ava's mother had died in that fire, did that mean Ava had lived for years before waking to life? Maybe her mother had died before.

  Cianna looked around for the white lady, but she was nowhere around. Vanished like the rest of the village, no doubt.

  But what happened? Cianna wondered.

  No sooner had the thought formed than Cianna was greeted by a vision out of other eyes. Ava’s eyes.

  She watched the children playing in the street, laughing and kicking around a leather ball. She wanted to join them, but she was sick, and her father told her she wasn't allowed to play, that she had to rest.

  She lay on her bed, watching out the doorway as people passed by about their daily business, greeting one another with kind words or lengthy conversations, and she dozed.

  It was later in the afternoon when the first of the screams woke her. There was the heavy smell of smoke in the air, and crying from scared lips.

  Her father ran in, a thin, sickly looking man, and pushed her under the bed.

  “Hide there, Ava,” he told her in a heavy accent. “They've found us.”

  A shadow fell across the door, and Ava's father's screams chased Cianna from the vision.

  Cianna knew from the memories of the child that it had been another caravan, a rival caravan. She didn't know there were such a things, caravans that warred among each other.

  She shook her head and stood. She wasn't sure how long she had been in the ruins, but she had to get out. It was dark, and when the white lady left, she had taken with her the ghost light.

  Here, a small voice said into her head.

  Cianna was shown the mechanics: how to call the spirits, bend them to her desire, and create wyrdings. She followed Ava's instructions. She felt the call of her necromancy go out, and the answer of a spirit nearby, willing to work her will. Cianna felt the ghost come to her. It gathered to her right. She sent out the willing of necromancy, urging the spirit to do as she desired.

  Cianna opened her eyes to see a thin tendril of light coalescing in her open palm, growing larger and larger until a white, ghostly orb hovered in her hand, casting light around the rubble almost as bright as any light Sara had ever conjured.

  She lifted her hand, and the light floated above her head, hovering in space.

  “What else can I do?” she wondered aloud, watching the orb hover languidly above her. She thought it was funny how the ghost light appeared to be just as tired as she was.

  Then Ava showed her other things she could do. Not only could she enact workings with the dead, but she could also channel the spirits of the dead into other kinds of wyrding: ghost bolts, ghost fire…most everything a sorcerer could do, she could do as well, but in different ways. It was risky, and the potency of the attack depended on the type of spirit channeled, but she could still do it.

  “So you're like a guide?” Cianna asked as she made her way out of the ruin. There was a positive feeling inside of her, like Ava was answering yes, or nodding her head. “Interesting. A child teacher.”

  She had the impression then that being a child didn't mean ignorance, and that death granted much knowledge.

  Angelica was with him in the dream again. Before Jovian was even aware of the dream-scape, he was aware of her presence beside him. Without form, without substance, they existed in the space between sleep and wakefulness. Two bodies, one mind in the realm of dreams. Even though their single-mindedness was starting to leak through to their waking life, Jovian knew it would never merge them as seamlessly as it did in the dreams.

  Before them the darkness parted like a curtain, and there stood an ebony woman, a long, silken veil attached to her bald head and trailing down to form her robe. In one hand, she held an iron torch above her head, the flames frozen in time as if they were part of a statue. To her lips she held a skeleton key. Around her arm slithered a vibrant orange snake.

  Angelica had never seen her before, and only Jovian's memories of her reassured her slightly. Jovian knew what this dream was of, and the memory of that dream did little to calm Angelica.

  Come and see, they heard in their minds.

  Against their wills, they saw.

  Behind the woman snapped open impossibly large wings. The feathers were long, emerald green, with large blue circles at the end, as if they were a fan of eyes, all looking down at Angelica and Jovian.

  The darkness receded more, and as it fled across the land they could see a barren wasteland. It appeared that a battle had happened here in the past. Fog clung to the ground, and there were bones, bleached white from the sun and the elements. They couldn't determine where they were, but they didn't have time to consider, either, for another figure came into their line of sight, farther off and small from the distance — but
they knew what the bone-colored shape was.

  The Pale Horse.

  Death.

  Without thought, and without desire, they rushed across the ground toward the bone-colored horse, and there on top of him sat a rider.

  It was a female, that they could tell. She was swathed in black from head to toe, and there was something familiar about her, but beyond that feeling, they didn't recognize her.

  On her back rested a shin-buto like the ones Angelica and Jovian carried, but this one was different. Where Jovian and Angelica's radiated with positive energy, with light, this one seemed malignant, chaotic.

  The figure pointed toward the distance where the darkness was still receding, and again they sped across the cracked earth until they stood on a cliff, looking down at a sea of many people, gathered and chanting reverently at the Turquoise Tower.

  Come and see.

  In a cold sweat, Jovian came gasping awake. He sat up in bed, the blankets falling to his naked lap. The fire had burned down to glowing coals, and the darkness of the Shadow Realm intruded through the window and into his room.

  The bed creaked under him as he adjusted his weight.

  He picked up the white globe beside his bed, gave it a couple shakes to illuminate the room, and looked to the clock on the wall. He would never be able to tell if the time was morning or night, and it made him feel strange. He was always tired in the Shadow Realm, and though the clock said he’d had enough sleep, his body and mind protested.

  Without thinking about it Jovian grabbed a handful of sunflowers out of the bedside drawer and popped them into his mouth, hoping they would help.

  He crawled out of bed, stoked the fire, and then pumped some water into a basin. It was cold, but it helped wake him up.

  His pack was open beside the basin, and he pulled out gray trousers and a tight-fitting blue tunic. Well, it had been tight-fitting when he bought it, but with all the traveling and lack of proper food, it fit him rather loosely now.

  Angelica would be waiting for him in the sitting room across from their rooms. They had had several dreams since coming to the Spire of Night, and they couldn't decide if it was because of the Realm of Shadow, or if it was part of their anakim power showing them things to come. They had reached a point where they just didn't talk about the dreams any more. They were often confusing, and possibly irrelevant.

  Aunt Pharoh mentioned the Turquoise Tower, Jovian thought as he laced his black boots. That didn't mean anything, though; they could be dreaming about it because they had heard of it before, and the title sounded like a place of note. They would have to find some place where they could research it, or some people who knew something about it.

  Angelica and Jovian had spent many hours searching for a library, and when they found it they were forlorn, because everything was written in the same blocky script as the plaques at the tomb.

  Jovian opened his door and saw Angelica already waiting for him in the sitting room. Each day they made an appearance in the lower portions of the spire in hopes of seeing either Uthia or Joya, but the dryad had taken to guarding Joya, and Joya was never anywhere in sight.

  Over the last few days they had been there the spire had started coming to life, as it might have been when the last Realm Guardian had been there. Jovian and Angelica found themselves swept to the side as a tide of governors, realm officials, and other staff surged into the spire.

  All of the activity was centered on Joya, carrying her away from them and into secluded meetings where Goddess only knew what was happening. Since there was nothing for them to do, they took to exploring the spire. But it seemed wherever they went they were in the way of some person either consulting with others, conversing with people they hadn't seen in ages, cleaning rooms that hadn't been used in years, or preparing some hall for a reception.

  They had found a room just off the entrance hall near the front door, but still out of the way, one that had already been tidied and didn't seem interesting enough for people to gather in.

  But for now, they traveled together to the ground floor where they could sit and watch people come and go, and maybe see their sister, though it was unlikely.

  “Do you ever long for the way things used to be?” Jovian asked Angelica, sitting beside her on the uncomfortable high-backed sofa.

  “Only all the time,” Angelica said, trying to find a comfortable spot. Her face showed the same tiredness Jovian felt every minute he stayed in the Shadow Realm. He didn't know how anyone could get used to it.

  Even a handful of sunflowers in the morning didn't help.

  “At least this place fits right in with Joya,” Jovian looked around at the tall windows, the sweeping drapes, the prim and proper seating, the fireplace with its crackling fire.

  “Yes, everyone here seems to fit in with her style, which is odd. How do they know what clothes are popular in the rest of the Realms?” Angelica wondered.

  “It's strange — almost as if their clothes have been in style here for longer than they have been at home. Remember when we were leaving all those silly gowns were just starting to show up?”

  “You mean the ones with so much fabric on their asses that they have trouble sitting down?” Angelica asked.

  “Well, at least maybe then the furniture would be comfortable,” Jovian said.

  Angelica laughed. “You're right,” she said. “Here that's the way everyone dresses, at home people are just starting to catch on.”

  “And what about their machines?” Jovian asked.

  “I know, I was thinking that too. I remember the air ship being a big deal because we’d never seen anything like that, but here…”

  Angelica trailed off. The people had been arriving in droves, and in machines that weren't pulled by horse like Jovian was used to, but coming to a station behind the spire in something Jovian and Angelica had never heard of. It was loud, like a storm of wind and wreckage, and pumped out black smoke into the air. The people who lived in the Shadow Realms told them it was called a train.

  “Could it be that they are more advanced than the rest of the realms?” Jovian asked.

  “In only thirty-some years?” Angelica asked.

  Jovian shrugged. “What other explanation is there?”

  “What I want to know is if someone is coming from the Shadow Realm and bringing all of this new style and invention to the rest of the realms?”

  “I guess it's possible,” Jovian said.

  “This realm is so much stranger than I would ever have guessed,” Angelica said.

  Jovian only nodded.

  Their small chamber was just off the entrance hall, so they were able to watch more and more people come and go. Jovian could never understand the purpose of some of the hats the women wore: small, perched on the front of their head, and not serving any function he could understand.

  He remembered how fond of corsets Joya had been back at the plantation, and he thought for sure people wouldn't make it a lasting trend, but it seemed every woman wore them in the Shadow Realm. He wasn't sure if men wore something similar or not, but almost all of them seemed much thinner than men in the other realms. Of course, if they had machines to travel in, maybe they had machines that worked for them and they weren't slaves to hard labor.

  Apparently it was also a trend for the women to smear the sunflowers on their skin, rather than eating them. Most of the women and a few of the men shimmered with a light somewhat dimmer than the sunflower, but they shone in the night like a beacon coming from way off. He remembered what Uthia had told them about being easy targets for predators, and at any moment he envisioned a large beast of prey would dart out of the night to gobble up a glowing victim.

  “It's all so formal,” Angelica said. He wasn't sure if she meant the style of dress, the furniture, or everything. It was truly much more formal than he ever imagined the Shadow Realm being. Though he wasn't sure what he expected: a realm full of ghouls, wythes, and dalua?

  “Do you think this is where Joya leaves us?�
�� Jovian asked the real question that was on both of their minds.

  “I really don't know. I would like to think not, but there have to be so many responsibilities that comes with being a Realm Guardian, and they have been without one for twelve years. How can she leave?”

  “But I don't think all of that would keep her from finding Amber, do you?” Jovian asked.

  “No, I think you're right.”

  “And what are we going to do about the wyrd thing? She is so busy now she has no chance of showing us how to channel it. Do you think she’ll even have a mind to help when we’re gone?” Jovian wondered.

  “Well, we had to call on it once before with the gnomes,” Angelica pointed out. “We could always remember what we did then.”

  “The problem is, I don't know how I did it then. I remember they made me mad, and then it just happened.” Jovian saw a servant ply newcomers with greetings and drinks, and he looked down at the table before them. Angelica and Jovian weren’t treated with the same courtesy, being from the Holy Realm. No matter that Joya was their sister, they were still shunned. There were glasses he and Angelica had used yesterday, but that was only after they had gone and found something to drink for themselves. It was the first time he’d hated being from the Holy Realm — and to think, he’d actually wanted to come to this realm.

  “But I'm sure you did something more than just get mad,” Angelica said.

  “I'm sure too, but it happened when I was angry, and I can't remember what I did.”

  “We can start working on it,” Angelica sounded determined. “I wonder if we can reach Aunt Pharoh like we did before.”

  They had communed with their aunt before, when they thought she was just a guardian spirit they had named Aramaiti. Then all it took was the medallion being within a certain range of them, not actually being worn by them.

  “It's worth a shot. We have wyrd, we just don't know how to use it, and that’s the issue.” Jovian toyed with his lip, thinking. “If there was only a room around here that wasn't being used.”