“Other tower,” Cianna said.
Devenstar stopped and turned to look at her, his brown eyes taking her in. She felt something churn deep inside of her. She cleared her throat, willing it to stop, but had to avert her eyes before her stomach would settle.
“You said the right tower,” he told her.
“Yes, right as you’re coming in. The tower your rooms are in,” she told him, itching the back of her neck to distract herself.
“You’ve been stalking me?” he said, pulling her in the other direction, through throngs of soldiers and up the stairs.
“No, it’s just that most visitors and non-government officials stay in the right side of the keep.”
He nodded. “What floor?”
“Up,” she said.
“Right, but what floor?” he asked, teasing her.
“All the way up,” she said.
“Damn, you people and your towers.” He sighed and kept climbing. Along the way he lost some of his zeal, going slower as he walked until finally they trudged to the top.
Cianna opened the door, her eyes taking in her messy bed, the clothes still on the floor, and the multitude of ale cups on her bedside stand. She blushed, itching the back of her neck again in embarrassment as Devenstar strolled in.
“Nice!” he said. “I didn’t know a man lived here.”
Cianna’s blush deepened, and she looked to her feet. Devenstar walked further in.
“So this is where you sleep, with a dragon by the looks of your bed.” He smiled at her.
“I meant to make that,” she said unconvincingly.
“Sure,” he said. “So, this is where we’re doing it?”
“What?” she asked. Her head snapped up, and heat flooded her skin.
“The fighting,” Devenstar said, leveling a look at Cianna. “Out this window?”
He was now standing in front of her window, looking out at the courtyard below.
“Oh, yeah.”
She walked over to stand beside him and looked out on the courtyard as the wall vanished and a wave of trolls and chaos dwarves spilled in.
“That’s our cue!” Devenstar said, pushing open the window.
Multitudes of various-colored lightning and fire streamed down from the higher reaches of the keep, showering the enemies below. The wyrd cut through the forces: dwarves fell, and trolls stumbled, but the trolls were harder to kill.
On the ground, the soldiers prepared for the collision.
Beside her, Devenstar hooted, and let loose twin bolts of lightning, golden, one from each hand. He moved his hands, the constant stream of lightning cutting twin swaths through the dwarves.
But there was something else Cianna was looking for. She could feel the alarist’s wyrd in the courtyard below, calling to the side of her that shared blood with Arael. He was the true threat here. Cianna saw him easily; he was the only human walking among the dwarves and trolls. Focusing on him, she readied an attack, knowing there was no true way to kill a sorcerer without taking their head from their body.
Angelica, she heard in her mind. Her eyes were focused on the courtyard, standing where she was in Jovian’s suite. They were the only ones in the room, since only two could stand comfortably in the window. In the common room were Shelara and Caldamron, the window open, their weapons trained on the enemy forces below. In Joya’s room were Dalah, Grace, and Joya.
She tried to push the voice aside. It wasn’t Jovian’s, so that only left one alternative, her mother. Angelica wasn’t sure how to feel about her mother now, knowing what she had done. A sea of emotions filled her, and at the helm there was confusion, closely followed by anger at not being able to have her own life, despite what people said. She might be Angelica, but what fueled her was Sylvie. Time and time again she had felt her mother’s influence, once, in the Mirror of the Moon, even being controlled by Sylvie. Following the anger, she was grateful that her mother had made the sacrifice, allowing her to live at all.
Angelica, the voice of Sylvie came to her again.
“Angie,” Jovian said. “Do you hear her?”
Angelica nodded, focusing on the courtyard, refusing to listen to what her mother said.
“I understand the feeling,” Jovian said. “I’m mad too, but she might have something useful to tell us.”
Angelica sighed and let her mother in.
Angelica, you can’t let the alarist reach the doors. If the doors vanish, the keep will fall.
What should I do? Angelica asked. Now that she had let her mother in, a flood of love filled her. She knew that her mother loved her. What she had done for Angelica and Jovian had been done mostly out of love, and to keep them safe. She shook her head. It was foolish to be mad at her mother.
Thank you for that, Sylvie said. But right now we have bigger problems. You’ve dealt with this once before.
“No I haven’t,” Angelica said out loud.
“She’s right!” Jovian said. “In the Ravine of Aaridnay.”
“The Tall Stranger!” Angelica remembered.
Yes! You need to remove the wyrd from this sorcerer. There’s no way to get close enough to him to kill him; the only way to do it is to steal his wyrd.
“Perfect!” Angelica said. She smiled but her smile failed as the wall came down. It was easy for her to refuse that an alarist could do such a thing until she saw it.
“Yes, perfect. Now you just have to remember what you did,” Jovian said, no longer sounding sure.
“No, we can do this,” Angelica assured him.
“But I’ve never done it,” Jovian corrected, watching the sea of dwarves flood into the courtyard. Angelica heard the blast of Caldamron’s gun shoot from the common room window, and a volley of arrows and multi-hued wyrd streamed down on the enemy.
“I know, I need to focus,” Angelica said, closing her eyes.
Jovian shrugged, opened the window, and started showering those outside with red fire.
Angelica tried to remember what she had done, what she had felt in the ravine when she had stolen the wyrd from the Tall Stranger. She’d been afraid, but there was something more, something within her fear that she had felt, that she had done. It had all gone so fast. Joya was standing poised at the edge of the cliff, and then she was falling over the edge. Angelica had lashed out, somehow controlling her wyrd for that brief moment, and the storm had stopped.
But nothing was coming back to her. She opened her eyes and saw the bald sorcerer in the sea of dwarves, making his way to the doors of the keep.
Alright, focus, Angelica told herself. But as she thought more about what she had to do, and wondered if she could do it, she became tense to the point that she couldn’t even feel her wyrd. Was it even something she had done with her wyrd? Or was it something else entirely?
She watched the sorcerer near the door. She screwed her eyes shut, and held out her hands, willing her wyrd out, to harm the man, to steal his wyrd. Angelica felt her wyrd slip from her body, down her arms, out her hands like waves of water, oozing from her flesh. She opened her eyes, sure she was doing something, but her hands just glowed. Her wyrd didn’t know how to respond.
“What are you doing?” Jovian asked, tossing a glance her way before shooting another bolt at those gathered below. “I think the wyrders will tire before long,” he said offhandedly. She noticed the strain around his eyes. They had all been working themselves to the max the last few days.
“I can’t get it to work!” Angelica said, shaking her hands, as if the problem lay there.
“Well you better hurry, Angie, he’s getting close.” Jovian changed his attack to the sorcerer, trying to distract him from his current course. The sorcerer turned to look at them, and raised his hands.
“Dear Goddess,” Jovian said. “It’s not the doors he’s going to attack.”
Angelica had a moment to react, pulling Jovian to the floor before darklight wyrd licked across the surface of the keep like seeking tendrils from beyond the Black Gate.
�
��Will the keep hold?” Jovian asked.
Angelica looked behind her at the window, but it was gone, vanished. The wall held, though. There was a commotion in the common room. She started crawling toward the door leading out into the adjoining chamber.
“Everyone alright out there?” Angelica asked.
“Yea,” Shelara said. “Thanks to Caldamron’s fast reflexes. The window’s gone, though.”
“What about Grace?” Jovian called.
“We’re here,” they heard her faint response from Joya’s chamber.
Angelica crawled back to the window, watched the seeking threads of wyrd lick over the surface of the keep. “Why isn’t the keep vanishing?” she asked Jovian.
Her brother shrugged. “Maybe it has something to do with protective wyrd?”
It was Angelica’s turn to shrug. She couldn’t really focus on what her brother was talking about, because she couldn’t stop thinking about the archers and the wyrders higher up in the keep that were being struck by the darklight tendrils and how they were winking out of existence one by one.
But then there was a huge clap of thunder that shook the entire keep on its foundations and the courtyard was lit with a blast of darklight.
Mag ducked out of the way as a bolt of darklight raced up to the top of the keep, where she held position on the parapets just beneath the offices of the Realm Guardian. There had been a sorcerer there with her. One moment he had been there with Mag, readying another attack, and the next, he was simply gone, without a trace that he had ever been there to begin with.
She closed her eyes and began to pray. It was something she hadn’t done in a long time. Given her past, Mag didn’t feel right about praying, like the Goddess was judging her, snickering whenever the former alarist chose to talk freely to her. But this time she needed to pray, needed to let the Goddess know what she was about to do, or attempt to do, wasn’t who she was anymore. Mag only did it to keep the people in the keep safe.
And then she gave in to the voices in the back of her head that she hadn’t heard in ages. It was surprising how quickly the perverse language of chaos swam to the forefront of her mind, infusing her brain with its unknowable chanting. She felt it slither through the folds of her mind, caressing her wyrd like a lover. No, Mag thought, not at all like a lover. More like bugs.
She shivered, but didn’t shirk away from the feeling as she had the very first time the grigori had conjured the link to Arael in her mind. In time she had given herself completely to the power of the alarist, basking in the feel of chaos in her mind, like a companion who lurked within her subconscious.
The power of the darklight was like a drug to her, one she had backed away from ages before. And now she was going back to it, pledging herself, even if for a time, to the power she had refused to touch for many years now.
But I’m doing it for good, she argued with herself. But it didn’t matter, her mind was made up. She had already called the power to her, and it was inside of her now, filling her up, waiting for release. All this arguing with herself wouldn’t stop it from coming; it had already come. Second-guessing herself would only make her working weaker.
Mag screwed her eyes shut, listening to the screaming of the people around her. Some of the screams suddenly stopped, and she knew they were now echoing beyond the Black Gate, inciting bloodlust in whatever terrors lurked there.
She hardened herself, dropped her shields, knowing that darklight couldn’t exit them, and stood. She held out both of her hands, focused her intent on the sorcerer below, and let the wyrd loose.
She heard the myriad of tortured screams in her head as the darklight bolt left her joined hands. It was thick, like the trunk of a tree, and connected her hands to the ground, right where the sorcerer had been. His darklight stopped abruptly. And then a loud clap of thunder resounded all around them.
And snow began racing down from the peaks of the mountains again.
The chaos dwarves seemed to know what the sound was before the humans did. It was a rushing sound like water cascading down a steep surface. They began to flee, but not all of them would make it. As snow flooded the courtyard and continued down the slope of the mountain, the dwarves were picked up like pebbles in a waterfall, and they tumbled and flew down the slope, riding the frozen wave. Many were dashed to death on the stones and outcropping of rocks as they passed, and yet others spilled uninjured back where they had made camp.
Even more were buried under the first onslaught of snow that had fallen. The doors of the keep were unbarred, and soldiers flooded in to the entrance hall.
Mag sagged against the parapet, snow cascading down the lower part of the keep. She didn’t have any fears now of being rushed off the tower — there didn’t seem to be as much snow up on the peaks after their last avalanche, but it was enough to give them a small reprieve from the dwarves and the trolls.
Annbell sat beside the chief of the giants, Torchef, in an elegant cave in the highlands of the Realm of Earth. Whenever she visited the giants, she was amazed at their grace, their splendor. Many tales of giants got them confused with trolls. Giants were thought to be monsters of creatures, tall, thick, lumbering, and crude. While that was true for trolls, the only truth it held for Giants was their height.
They were slender, graceful if a little clumsy from their height, and well-learned. Their homes resembled nothing of the caves they were built within, often being carved into more permanent rooms, rather than rough rock chambers. Murals were painted on their walls, fireplaces built into their walls, artful carvings adorning their pale wooden furniture, and their cups and plates were formed of colorful rock.
If it wasn’t for the fact that giants were wary around other races, Annbell would insist on living in the highlands with them year-round. But their wariness came from fear of their height, and how fragile smaller races were.
Giants stood four to five times taller than a tall human, and often didn’t think about where they were setting their feet when they walked, giving no mind to things lower than them. Animals knew to get out of their way, as humans would learn to. But if they were integrated into human society, it would spell disaster for the humans, who would live in fear of being crushed, and the giants, who were kind-hearted creatures and wouldn’t want to live with the grief of killing their human allies.
But contrary to the giant’s more artistic nature, they knew how to defend against war, and war is what the trolls brought to them now. Annbell knew the battalion of trolls that attacked were nothing more than a distraction for what was going on lower in the realms.
Annbell had forgotten how much wyrd went into the lives of the giants. They didn’t use wyrd to fight — thinking it a gift of the Great Stone Mother, they used it instead to create, just as she had used it to create them. They wouldn’t use a power so reverent to take life, only to create. And so nearly everything that stood in the chamber around Annbell had been created with giant skill, augmented by wyrding ways.
Torchef sat beside her on the floor, and though Annbell sat in a chair, one sized for a human, which they kept around for her visits, the chief towered over her still. Above the round stone table that could easily sit a hundred people wavered a wyrded screen of sorts, displaying the war that was drawing to an end outside.
“Did I ever tell you how the trolls came to be?” Torchef asked. His voice vibrated through Annbell. Though he spoke softly, his timbre was all bass.
“No,” Annbell said. Her chair made her feel like a child, even though she was tall among the humans. In order to reach the table, they had made her chair tall, only accessible by a ladder they had built into the side. It was either climb to the top, or have a giant lift her up every time she came here, and Torchef refused to degrade the Realm Guardian in such a way. She sat her dainty cup on the table. Annbell-sized, they called the things they made for her and Sara. The chair was Annbell-sized, and so was the cup.
“When the world was still young,” Torchef started. “The Great Stone Mother desired
a race of her own. She was lonely in her confinement in the highlands. For many years she lived here alone, treading the highlands, talking to herself, talking to the animals, the trees, the sky, even talking to stones. In her loneliness, she found a stone the size and weight of what she imagined a baby would be, and carried it with her, tending to it like she would a child, caring for it, swaddling it against the frigid winter winds, and even putting it to rest at night in a cradle she had fashioned with her own hands.
“Great Stone Mother didn’t realize the amount of wyrd that went into her actions, and first thought she was losing her mind when the rock began taking on features that we giants now have: a nose, a mouth, ears and eyes. When the rock first cried, Great Stone Mother thought she had gone mad completely.”
Annbell’s eyes found the mural on the wall of the chief’s chamber. The scene was laid out before her, a giant of a woman, crouched over a crib, tending to a lump of rock swaddled in furs. The light of the fire cast golden shadows on the wall. The artwork was so lifelike Annbell almost thought she could see the image move. She looked at her cup again, not sure if the heavy brew of the giants was creating the illusion in her mind, or if the artistry was really that grand.
“When she realized what power she possessed, she created another, and then another,” Torchef told Annbell. “In time she had created an entire tribe out of stones from all around the highlands. In pairs she took them and left them where she had gathered them, and so the family tribes of giants were formed.
“But there were some who turned their back on the Great Stone Mother, and gave their souls instead to Chaos. They lost the way of the earth that the Great Stone Mother gave to us. They turned their wyrd to destruction, rather than creation.
“Do you know who the Great Stone Mother was, Annbell?” Torchef said.
“I don’t,” Annbell told him, gazing down at her hands.
“Baba Yaga,” he said simply.
On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) Page 22
