Mag shrugged. “It's not that she was staring into the orb that concerned me. What did bother me was that the Beast was staring back out at her.”
Maeven sat back with a hiss on his lips. Annbell's eyes darkened.
“Do you think the orb is bad?” she asked.
“No,” Mag shook her head for emphasis. “But I do think that it foretold something. I grabbed Sara's riding cloak and threw it around the ball, and something fell out of a pocket. A parchment with a list of names on it, with ages scribbled beside them. It took me a while to decipher it, but when I did, this is what I found.”
She took the paper from the deep pockets of her velvet robes and slid it across the table to her Guardian. Annbell opened it and read it over. The expression on her face didn't change, but her eyes grew intent on the paper.
“Are you sure that you deciphered it properly?” Annbell asked her without looking up.
“I do.” Mag folded her hands in her lap.
“And what do you make of this?” Annbell asked.
“What do you make of it?” Mag asked.
Annbell stood and turned to the large floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk. She leaned against the window frame and looked out at the Barrier Mountains beyond. She was silent for some time as she watched the snow fall, her arms clasped over her chest, her shoulders hunched in the black fur robes.
“I think the attacks on the towns aren't from the caustics. I've thought that for some time,” Mag told her.
“I’m not sure I agree with this paper, or with Azra. It doesn't feel the same,” Annbell said, talking about the time before the splitting.
“Do you not agree with Azra because of fear, Guardian, or do you truly think the alarists aren't on the rise again, waiting for their master to govern them once more?” Mag asked.
Annbell turned to her.
“Oh, I didn't say I didn't think alarists weren't in charge of the destruction, but it doesn't feel like Arael is back.”
“Have you sensed this growing power in the west like Azra said she has?” Mag asked.
“I haven't been able to; it is beyond my reach, which tells me that it isn't part of the land, or I would be able to feel it.”
“It is beyond the lands of man, it is in a space between,” Mag told her.
“You've felt it?” Annbell asked, coming to stand behind the chair, studying Mag.
“I have.”
“And what do you think?” Maeven asked her.
“I think the paper is right.”
Annbell worried the side of her mouth, and sat heavily down in the chair.
“You would know his power better than I,” Annbell said. “We have much to do, and not much time to do it before the tide of war breaks upon our mountains. We need you to question Van. How long do you think that will take you?”
“Not long at all,” Mag said.
“You sound confident,” Maeven said, and swallowed hard.
“I have my ways. He will talk quickly,” Mag said.
“And if I can figure out that accursed telfetch, I will send word to the other Guardians with what we’ve found out. I have no idea how to convince them of what you found on the paper, or how to even frame that. Who in their right mind would believe a puzzle on a paper? Where did it even come from?” Annbell wondered.
“I think we won't know that until Sara is awake again. It did come from her cloak,” Maeven pointed out and Annbell nodded.
“I will get to work, that is where our journey starts,” Mag said, and Annbell dismissed her with a nod of her head.
“Do whatever you will with him afterward, I have no further use of him.”
The door hissed shut behind Mag. Having been in the brightness of Sara's office a few moments before, the darkness of the room was near-blinding. She channeled her wyrd into a light and tossed it to the center of the room, where it bobbed angrily above Sara's bed, giving an eerie green cast to the bedchamber.
Van stirred immediately.
“I will talk!” he cried out, seeing Mag standing there, hands folded into the large sleeves of her dark red robe.
She sighed. This isn't going to be fun. Mag sat down on the edge of Sara's bed, and motioned for him to continue.
“It is dust from the stone called Wyrders’ Bane. Someone high up with the chaos dwarves was giving it to me to put in her tea.”
Mag's head swam. Wyrders’ Bane. How in the Realms was that going to be cured now that it was in her bloodstream?
“I didn't know she was bad at first,” he said. “The dwarf told me that Sara was sick, and that this herb would help her. She wouldn't tell me what herb it was, and I wasn't going to give Sara any of it, but she did seem to be ailing, so I slipped a little into her tea. When she got worse, I thought it would take a little bit of time for the medicine to kick in, so I kept giving it to her. It was then the dwarf told me what it really was. By that time Sara was addicted and it got to the point if she didn't have any regularly, she would start getting really sick, so I had to keep giving her more and more until…”
“She was at the edge of death?” Mag asked quietly, looking up at Vanparaness. He was young, reminding her so much of her oldest son.
He took a deep breath, and let it out in a near sob.
“I didn't know,” he pleaded.
Mag believed him. By the time he had figured out what was happening, it was already too late.
“I was to meet with her again on the day of the full moon, in the Guardian's Garden. She is supposed to bring more.”
“Who is she?” Mag asked, standing. He flinched back.
“I think she is known as the Looker,” he told her.
“So the dwarves have a seer,” Mag said to herself. “Very interesting.”
“Are you going to kill me?” Van asked.
Mag didn't answer; she opened the door, and with a tug of her wyrd, she dragged him along with her into the office.
“That was fast,” Maeven commented.
“Don't get excited, I didn't have to do anything. He gave up his information willingly,” Mag said, and Maeven smiled.
Annbell didn't look up from the pile of letters in front of her. The silver telfetch sat open at her elbow, and she had a pair of glasses resting on her nose, reading over the papers.
“Aladestra sure writes a lot of silly letters,” Annbell commented. “You would think sometimes she can’t take hold of her own realm, and is seeking council from all of us on what she should do.”
"More letters from Aladestra?" Mag asked.
"I wish it was just frantic letters from her. Attacks seem to be happening more and more frequently, and in each Realm. We seem to have gotten off lightly, with only the attack on the academy."
"Lightly," Maeven said from the corner. "That's the word for it."
"Considering we are facing a battle with an unknown outcome, I side with Maeven," Mag said. Annbell made a vague noise that could have been either agreement or dismissal.
"Five in the Realm of Air; Nanta in the Realm of Water; several caravan towns in the Realm of Fire; and our academy." Annbell leaned back, looking out the window at the surprisingly clear day.
"Five in the Realm of Air?" Mag whistled. "And the capital city of the Realm of Water. What is Pyang going to do?"
"No word from him yet. I'm assuming he lived, since he can travel through water as I can earth."
Maeven shivered.
"What happened?" Maeven asked.
"Someone brought the roof down. The entire Nanta Lake flooded the city."
Mag closed her eyes and shook her head. She had friends that lived there. She could only hope they had made it out, or died quickly. "Nothing in the Holy Realm?" Mag asked.
"Nothing that we’ve been informed about," Annbell conceded. "There's always tomorrow I guess."
"What are we going to do?" Mag asked.
"We are upping security in our cities. With Greenwood already destroyed by a caustic, we are able to shift a few people around to other place
s. I guess we will just wait and see, but try to be proactive. The guards and constables know what to look for."
Mag nodded. Annbell was vague, but at least she had a grip on it.
She tossed the stack of letters onto the desk and leaned back in the chair. She rested her head against the cushion and looked lazily at Vanparaness.
“What are we going to do with him?” Mag asked.
“Kill him,” Annbell said flippantly.
“No, please!” Van begged, and again, he would have fallen to his knees if Mag's wyrd hadn’t held him erect.
“But I know you believe in the sanctity of life now,” Annbell said to Mag.
“While I no longer take a life easily, I would do so if my Guardian wished.”
“You said he talked willingly?” Annbell said.
“I didn't even have to say anything before the floodgates opened.”
“We will have him taken to the dungeons,” Annbell said. She pulled a cord beside the desk, and a guard stepped in. “Please see Mr. Vanparaness out of this office.”
The guard nodded. Mag loosened her wyrd, and Van left the office compliantly, with a long list of thank-yous until the office door cut off his trail of words.
“He was poisoning her with dust from Wyrders’ Bane,” Mag started, and told them all of what Van had told her.
“That's the stone that Sara has been talking about?” Maeven asked.
“The one they used to torture Cianna,” Annbell confirmed.
“If she was drinking that…” Mag said.
“What are you thinking?” Maeven asked.
“It's not good,” Mag told them. “I've been thinking about it, and she will most likely need a complete wyrd transfusion.”
“And how is that done?” Annbell asked.
“I will research it. I know the steps, but not the ritual,” Mag told her. “It isn't a simple working like sorcerers are used to; it will take a magic circle and proper timing. The wyrd needs to be drained from her, and a conduit opened to the Well of Wyrding for fresh wyrd to flow in.”
“Mag, you have been more help than I would ever have hoped for,” Annbell said. “On behalf of the Realm and both Guardian Seats, I would like to promote you to defense counselor.”
Mag didn't know what to say. Living here with the Guardians, in charge of all Realm defense? Her head swam. She would be in charge of the military and the upcoming war.
She looked for a chair and sat down heavily.
“I know it is a lot to ask, since we haven't had to use that position in a while, but you seem most fitted for it, and we will need help with what is to come.”
“I accept,” Mag said. “But what about my family?”
“We will have them brought here, and I will make sure your suites are ready to accept them in a few days’ time. But for now, you have research to do on this transfusion, and I would like you, as defense counselor, to take care of this Looker situation.”
“I think I can meet her at the arranged time, and see to it that she will never come back,” Mag agreed.
The ebony figure stood before them, the orange snake twisting around her arm — the only moving thing about her until the blue and green wings with eyes at the tips snapped open. She opened her eyes, and she seemed to radiate light from beneath her skin. Turning, she pointed behind her with the hand not holding the iron key to her lips.
The blackness behind her parted like a curtain onto a barren field. Unlike their normal dreams, the field wasn't filled with the bones of the dead, but the hunched figures of hundreds of people. They bowed deeply in supplication to something Angelica and Jovian couldn't see yet.
Behind the ranks of hunched backs clopped a bone-white horse, its eyes illuminated with death, and on its back rode a black cloaked figure. The rider of the Pale Horse.
Angelica and Jovian shivered, and their trembling was mirrored through the hunched backs of those gathered past the Pale Horse. As if in response to the feelings running across their skin, the figure turned, and from within the shadowed cloak, they were able to see a hint of gold, which quickly shifted to a noxious green.
Jovian gasped, and Angelica felt it mirrored in her mind.
Black shuck! Jovian said and Angelica thought at once.
The figure laughed, a female laugh, and while they recognized it, they couldn't place where they had heard it before. But wherever they knew it from, this laugh was a perversion, a mockery of the laugh they had known.
“Who is it?” Jovian asked. Angelica shook her head that she didn't know, but she did — somewhere inside of her, she knew who this was. This person, so powerful, so into their own, not who they had once known, that was for sure, but whatever name was on the tip of her tongue wouldn't pass her lips.
“I don't know,” she admitted.
“But you feel they are familiar, right?” Jovian asked.
“I know them like I know myself; I just can't figure out who it is,” Angelica said.
The figure turned and pointed, like the ebony lady with the orange snake. Angelica and Jovian looked past the Pale Horse and its rider, and the fog parted like a dream, and there stood the terrible Turquoise Tower.
It flared with light, and Angelica fell to her knees. There was an impact beside her, and she knew that Jovian had also fallen. But she couldn't think about him then, because there was a pain so terrible in her back that Angelica felt she might tear apart at any moment.
She screamed, and her scream was echoed by the hundreds of postulant throats gathered before the monument. The light strengthened, and she felt something tear free from her back. Bones that hadn't ever been stretched found the breath they had been waiting for.
They were like arms behind her, stretching out — the pain of muscles cramped from holding position finally able to relax and unfurl.
The coppery smell of blood reached her nose, and the sound of something heavy and wet landing on the ground around her. It was her flesh, she knew.
The light faded, but the pain of growth still dulled her vision. When she came to, lying on the ground, panting through the pain, she saw black feathers floating through the air, and she turned her pained face up to see the hundreds of figures stretching to their full height. No longer were they human, but angels, black and white wings stretching higher and higher. And then they knew war, as black-winged angels and white-winged angels clashed in a battle that had seemed to wage since before the world was fashioned.
The Pale Horse and its rider clopped over the ground toward her, and she noticed the rider now had a full set of black wings which cast Angelica and Jovian in shadows, protecting them from the painful, transforming light coming from the Turquoise Tower.
The figure laughed again, and with the figure's laughter came tears. Angelica felt the fear and the dread they had felt over the last few days bubble up, and as the sound of sobbing came from behind her, her own tears spilled over her lids and made tracks down her cheeks.
As tears blurred her vision, the image of the warring angels faded in a gust of smoke.
They were no longer in the field before the Turquoise Tower, but the field they were in was still a wreck.
“What is this place?” Angelica asked.
Jovian stood from the ground, and Angelica was relieved at least not to see wings sprouting from his back. He eased the cramped muscles in his back and looked around. As another gust of wind billowed the smoke, the scene was revealed.
Joya stood, her back to them, crying. A figure lay on the ground before her, a pool of blood gathering around its head, matting long black hair to the withered grass. Snow, or ash, had started falling, soaking into the bloodied ground.
No matter what happened here, the world didn't care. The snow still fell as if there was no difference between this carnage and the streets of Meedesville.
“Jovian, is this…?” but he hushed Angelica as he neared Joya.
As Jovian touched her arm, a rusty kitchen knife fell from her hands and stabbed into the ground. It was covered
in blood. Blood dripped from Joya's lax hands and she turned, burying her face in Jovian's shoulder.
As she moved, Angelica was able to see past her brother and sister to the figure on the ground.
Alhamar.
Angelica sat straight up in her bed.
“We have to leave, now!” she said. Joya and Jovian weren't so hard to wake up. In fact, at her pronouncement that they had to leave, Jovian and Joya stood as one and started preparing their departure.
If Caldamron and Shelara thought it was strange, they made no mention of it. Caldamron was still too worried about falling out of the sky to say much of anything. He helped pick up camp with a steady gaze fixed on the clouds, as if making sure the sky held its position and he wouldn't get sucked out into the blueness beyond.
“What did you see?” Uthia said, materializing out of the forest.
“Something isn't right at home.” Angelica felt a surge of fear at even saying it, like whatever was in her chest was bigger than her words, and threatened to sneak up behind them, carry the words back into her throat and hold them captive there.
They passed the Rayakshas’ and the Zandelos’ homes that day without a thought for either family. Both houses were shut tight, as if warding out whatever malignancy might be on the road.
And all the while the smell of smoke got stronger and stronger, until it fused with the rising bile at the back of her throat. When Angelica saw the black smoke rising over the next hill, she couldn't help herself: she rushed to the edge of the road, and threw up.
Jovian came to her side then, rubbing her back as she retched up everything she had eaten for the last week, or so it felt. When she was done, Angelica realized the tears in her eyes had nothing to do with the vomiting and everything to do with the understanding of what lay ahead.
“Nothing will ever be the same again,” she sobbed.
“Come now,” Jovian said. “It could just be them burning in the fields.”
“What, do you think I'm a child?” Angelica asked. There was anger in her flooded eyes when she looked up at Jovian.
“There's no time for this,” Joya barked. “There might still be survivors.”
A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) Page 19
