Joya grasped Jovian’s arm in a talon-like grip. “No,” she whispered.
“What?” Maeven asked.
“I think Wyrders’ Bane just attacked,” Jovian said, watching as wyrders stumbled, and then fell, some into the snow of the courtyard, some pitching over the other side, and others crumbling to the floor of the battlements, clasping their stomachs and screaming in pain.
“There!” Shelara said triumphantly. “All patched up.”
Jovian turned at her words to see Angelica, sleeping as if she hadn’t just been rendered unconscious when the blow to the keep came. A white bandage wrapped the top of her head, and blood was drying on the left shoulder of her gown.
“Joya,” Jovian said. “Go see if Grace needs help.”
But as Jovian spoke he felt a twinge in his stomach, a sickness that crept into the darker recesses of his mind and flared with pain. He lurched, fell into a cabinet beside the window, and stumbled to regain his footing.
“What’s going on?” Maeven leapt to his aid, bringing Jovian over to the other sofa, the one Angelica had woken on after the dream of their mother.
“I think I felt the sickness everyone else is feeling,” he explained.
“Is this the first time?” Joya asked, resting a hand worriedly on his shoulder. Jovian sunk into the embrace of the couch. Leaning back, he placed a hand on his stomach, as if that would chase the sickness away.
He nodded.
In her slumber Angelica gasped, and another twinge struck Jovian. He doubled over, his stomach churning. He gagged and tried to vomit, but nothing came up.
“What do we do?” Joya asked.
“Why aren’t you sick?” Shelara asked.
“What kind of question is that?” Maeven asked.
“Go get Grace,” Joya said. Unsure what to do, she turned to the one comfort left to her in this uncertainty. The old tutor she had known her entire life. The one who always had the answers.
“She can’t do anything,” Jovian said. Another gasp tore from his lips, and Angelica writhed on the couch.
“What’s happening?” Shelara asked.
“Wyrders’ Bane?” Joya asked, looking to the window.
“But it’s never bothered them before,” Shelara argued.
Maeven shook his head. Uncertain what to do, he went in search of Grace.
“I don’t know!” Joya said.
“But you aren’t sick,” Shelara said. “And Jovian has done nothing with his wyrd.”
“It’s not coming from me,” Jovian said, when the pain lessened between flaring stabs in his intestines long enough to form words. “It’s from Angelica.”
“And Maeven got sick,” Shelara said, looking around her at what could have caused it.
“What are you thinking?” Joya asked Shelara.
“Touch this,” Shelara said, holding out the water.
“Why?” Joya asked.
“Just do it,” she said.
Joya reached her hand toward the water, stained pink with her sister’s blood. Too much of their family’s blood had been spilled already, and her stomach churned at the thought of touching the water. With firm resolve, she placed her hand in the bowl.
“Okay?” Joya asked, but then the pain bit into her hand, traveled up her arm, and came to roost in her stomach. She gasped and pulled her hand out of the water.
“That’s what I thought!” Shelara said. “When the pain in your stomach eases, we have to find Sara and let her know.”
“What?” Joya asked.
“The water,” Jovian breathed.
“That’s not mineral deposits, it’s flecks of the stone!” Shelara said.
“Wyrders’ Bane is in the water?” Joya asked.
Jovian doubled over in pain, and then slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Help me get him on the couch,” Shelara said, taking him under the shoulders. Together they wrestled Jovian’s large frame onto the couch and covered him with a blanket.
Together he and Angelica whimpered, slaves to the pain of their unconsciousness.
“Go find someone, anyone,” Joya told her. “See if you can locate Dalah or Rosalee. I need them to sit with Angelica and Jovian. We need to tell Sara what we know.”
Shelara fled the room, nearly faster than Joya could track. She sat on the coffee table between her brother and sister, listening to their shared moans of pain, and tears slipped down her face. She was alone in this. The last known survivor of the Neferis name, if Jovian and Angelica didn’t wake. Was this what she would have to get used to? The death of everyone she loved?
At least until my head is removed, she thought. She was cursed to a life of watching those she cared for wither and die around her, and there was nothing she could do, no wyrd in all the realms that would stop the hand of death and his three wisdoms.
“We’re here,” Rosalee said, rushing into the room, her slippered feet whisking across the tiled floor. She crouched beside Angelica and placed a hand on her forehead. The red-headed woman closed her eyes, and Joya could nearly feel the older woman’s consciousness merging with her sister’s. With a hiss of pain, she pulled back out and looked at Joya.
“Wyrders’ Bane.”
“Why didn’t it affect you?” Shelara wondered.
“My mental abilities aren’t wyrd,” Rose smiled sadly.
“Would you sit with them?” Joya asked. “We need to tell Sara what we know.”
“Of course,” Rosalee told her, nodding her head. She took up a spot in the chair at the head of the couches, and motioned for Joya to leave.
“Of course,” Sara said, having listened to what they told her. “It would make sense; they were testing it out on me, seeing how it would affect someone who drank it. We should have figured this. That’s why people are getting sick.”
“And that’s why the egrigor is in the keep,” Grace said. “The stone isn’t whole any longer, it’s inside the keep, so the egrigor has been released from its prison.”
“How are Angelica and Jovian?” Annbell asked.
“Rosalee is sitting with them,” Joya said.
“I don’t know what to do,” Shelara said. “Some of the sediment must have gotten into Angelica’s wound.”
“It will wear out,” Sara said. “It would have run its course in me if I hadn’t been given a dose daily. They’ll return to consciousness soon.”
“So this means that even if people aren’t affected by it normally, they can be if it gets into their bloodstream?” Grace wondered aloud.
“But then why didn’t people get sick just from drinking it?” Shelara asked.
“How long has the sediment been in the water?” Joya asked Sara.
The Guardian shrugged. “There are normally minerals in our water this time of year; there’s no way of telling how long it’s been in the water.”
“But it should’ve effected people before now, right?” Shelara wondered, the green blush coming to her skin more frequently with her fast train of thought.
“Probably,” Sara said.
“But the egrigor wasn’t in the stone,” Grace said.
“And the egrigor must be what causes this sickness in the wyrd,” Annbell agreed.
“So what was it doing?” Sara wondered.
“Getting a taste for their wyrd, and getting comfortable, waiting for the perfect time to act,” Joya said. Somehow she knew this to be true.
“That’s it!” Grace said, snapping her fingers. “People got sick initially, but it didn’t really last because the power of the egrigor wasn’t in the stone any longer. Now that it has attacked, it is reaching in to those people.”
“But no one else is sick,” Annbell argued.
“But no one else has used their wyrd,” Maeven said. “Those wyrders on the battlements must have been drinking this water for a while now, and when they cast their wyrd, the shadow attacked them, slipping in and taking control, because parts of the stone were still in the body for it to reside in them.”
; “Hmm,” Annbell said. “That’s possible.”
“I know you like proof, sister, but this is as close as you’ll get to it,” Sara said, her voice annoyed. “Wyrders work by hunch. There’s a common element, and strange activity from an egrigor that should be enslaved in a stone.”
“I didn’t argue,” Annbell said, spreading her hands wide and stepping back.
“What do we do?” Maeven asked.
“We need to get people out there, bringing in snow to melt down for water. We also need to get the barracks unburied as swiftly as possible,” Sara started giving orders from the confines of her wheelchair. “Don’t use wyrd to do it, that would only bring the bane to people, I fear.”
“So by hand,” Grace said.
“Yes,” Sara nodded. “We need to get to those people on the battlements, and we need to hurry. With us incapacitated by the avalanche, the dwarves can slip up over the walls and into the keep unless we have our men free and out the doors soon.”
“We need to mount an offense before they can get too close. We need to get our soldiers out there to face them.”
Maeven left in search of keep staff members he could get on shoveling duty.
“Joya, contact your people as soon as possible. It will take them a few days to get here, and we need all the help we can get and we need it yesterday,” Sara said.
Joya nodded, and left the room.
“Grace, you and Rosalee tend to Angelica and Jovian. Figure out something that will help rid their bodies of the corruption fast, so we can know what to use on our wyrders when they come back,” Sara said.
Grace nodded.
“We’ll try to contact the other Guardians and see what they can do to help us,” Annbell said, though her voice didn’t hold much hope.
“Rose,” Grace called, stepping into the rooms she shared with Angelica, Jovian, Joya, and Maeven. “We have work to do.”
Her red-headed friend snapped to attention. Standing, she tightened the belt of her green robe.
“What is it?” She asked.
“We need an herb. Something that will lessen the strength of the stone and bolster those afflicted with it.”
“But all the known herbs have been tried, and no one knows anything that would work.”
“Well then, we need to try something less conventional.” Grace said.
“Like what?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,” Grace huffed.
“Right.” Rose snapped her fingers and started thinking. “Well, all of the known herbs supposedly did nothing against the power of the stone, according to legend. So, would we be thinking something to bolster the ailing person?”
“That could work. Anything to make it pass out of the system faster. Assuming that it isn’t there to stay.”
“You need to explain to me in better detail what we’re trying to accomplish here, Grace. If we’re talking something to strengthen their spirits, there are any number of herbs we could use. If we want something to make them pass it, like bad food, then there are other things we could use.”
“Alright, apparently people have been ingesting fragments of the stone,” Grace said, checking over the bandages that Shelara had placed on Angelica’s head. Smelling a bit of white willow bark and mossgrass, Grace nodded her approval. Pain-killing and antiseptic. “Sara thinks that the fragments inside their system are giving the egrigor a foothold.”
“So we’re looking for something that would make them pass the fragments. Something to aid in bowel movements?”
“Yes. But in Angelica’s case, it’s directly in her blood stream.”
Rosalee tapped her lips in thought. “There’s nothing I know of that can cleanse the blood like that. If the fragments are large enough, it shouldn’t have gotten much into her blood; we might be able to remove them from the wound.”
“If that were the case, the flow of blood wouldn’t have let them penetrate,” Grace argued.
“Alright, let me think.” Rosalee sat down and lowered her head into her hands. Grace paced back and forth before the fire, waiting for her friend to think of something useful. “Winter root is a good blood thinner, which might help cleanse the poison faster.”
“Do you think it will work?” Grace asked.
“If we need it to pass through the bloodstream, then yes. Winter root is strong, and should get the job done quickly.” Rosalee stood. “We’ll need water, and some of the root. We’ll soften the root in a small amount of boiling water, and then place it under her tongue for it mix with her saliva and do its job.”
“Should we also give her something to make it pass out of her system faster?” Grace asked.
“Child cap will do the trick there, a cool tea of it will help her to pass it. In fact,” Rosalee looked like she had an idea. “That should help all the other people too. The minerals of the stone might be digested, right? If that’s the case, it would have entered the bloodstream too.”
“We can try, but I’m not sure this can be digested,” Grace said. “Let me get some snow, and send for winter root. If they don’t have any, are there alternatives?”
“Black bark for the blood thinner; it’s not as strong, but it’ll do the trick,” Rosalee said, crouching down to feel Angelica for fever. “Lady’s toe will also help her pee. Have them give you some nalium dust also, we’ll mix it with her tea to help her fever. Here,” Rosalee said, going to the stand by the door. She pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled the names of the herbs and their alternatives on it. She handed the paper to Grace.
Grace nodded, and the door thumped shut behind her. Her bones were tired, and she was even more tired. For years she had relied on the power of the earth that her dhast could conjure to help her muscles and strengthen her bones, but the truth was, she didn’t feel the power in the dagger any longer. She had attempted to use it since the fight with Porillon, but the dagger wouldn’t answer her. Even though it had been molded back into shape, it had also been blooded. Grace knew what that meant. When a dhast was blooded, it would no longer produce any wyrd.
So now she felt every ache, every pain of her advanced years. She tried not to show it around the others, but as she stood staring down the stairs that lead to the entrance hall, she groaned.
Maybe I can steal some of their white willow bark, Grace mused, but she wasn’t sure it would work. Placing a hand on the railing to steady herself, she started the slow trek down the stairs. Voices rose up from below to greet her before she reached the bottom. She could hear Maeven yelling commands, and distantly she heard other voices too. With any luck there wasn’t a lot of snow out there, but avalanches this far up in the mountains weren’t anything to joke about.
She saw the snow before she reached the bottom. When the doors had been opened to the courtyard, a lake of it had flooded in. Most of the entrance hall was covered. Near the doors it was the height of a child, but the further back it went, the less it became until nothing but a thin dust of snow covered the farther recesses of the hall.
A wisp of wind blew in, ruffling the hem of her dress and making her shudder with the freezing temperature of the clear night. It would figure that on a night like this, with a clear sky and no clouds to insulate the realm and keep the warmth in, there would be an avalanche.
“Have they made it out of their barracks?” Maeven yelled.
“Yes!” came a distant response, muffled by the snow.
“Good.” Maeven turned back to the people in the hall. “We need more people, three at least, making paths to the barracks. We need to get them out. Fill up those buckets and take partners. Partners, carry the buckets in, set them in the back as far back as you can. Take shifts at the shovels.”
Grace snatched a young girl by the collar as she ran by. She was too small to be any help, but she was anxious to do anything that would aid their efforts.
“What’s your name, child?” Grace asked. She wanted to crouch down to eye level, but Maeven was watching her, and she refused to let him see the pain in he
r eyes that the action would provoke. Instead she bent a little to gaze into the girl’s eyes.
“Maddie,” the girl said.
“Maddie, would you be a dear and go to the healer. Have them give you these items.” Grace handed her the slip of paper Rosalee had given her. “Tell them it’s for Grace.”
“Okay,” the little girl whispered, her eyes wide but determined. She raced off.
“Bring them to the second floor when you get them,” Grace called after her.
“Everything okay?” Maeven asked, coming to her side. He placed a gloved hand on her arm to help her stand. In times past Grace would have shaken off the support, but she needed it now more than she liked to admit, so she let Maeven help her to a chair. He eased her down and uncoiled the wool scarf from around his neck, handing it to her.
She took it gratefully and wrapped it around her neck.
“We think we might have a way to make it better. I do need some snow, for water,” Grace told him. Maeven grabbed a bucket from a man walking by and handed it to Grace.
“Sit for a while,” Maeven told her. “You’ve been very busy.”
Grace grumped at him, but smiled to lessen the blow. For some reason she’d never been able to lie to Maeven, so she wouldn’t tell him that she didn’t need the rest. But at the back of her mind she kept wondering what the drafts of cold air would do to her joints.
As if reading her mind, Maeven picked up a shovel that stood beside the door and started filling buckets from the snow inside the hall so they could close the doors up a little.
“Someone get a fire in the last fireplace back there; it’ll help melt the snow,” Maeven barked. A woman obeyed.
“Sir,” a voice yelled from outside. “One of the roots are free, what would you like them to do?”
“MAG!” Maeven yelled. Grace heard the woman speak from outside. “What should the soldiers do?”
On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) Page 10
