On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (30 page)

From behind its colossal trunk the light glowed, like a dream, soft and powerful, yet loving and knowing. As the light rounded the corner, it melted away into the tall form of a pregnant woman. Her hair was long and black, dappled with glittering points of stars. When she turned her eyes on Grace, the woman knew at once who she faced. The newcomer’s eyes were like the depths of space, black with swirling nimbuses of color and nebulae of bursting light.

“Star-eyed,” Grace fell to her knees. “Goddess.” She supplicated herself with the sign of the five-pointed star.

Goddess smiled, and motioned for Grace to stand.

“Moonchild, it’s been too long,” she whispered. In the name Grace felt an ancient memory stir, one of life among these fields, of living among the branches of her oak. This was
her
oak. This was the root of her knowledge and her power. She was connected to this oak as surely as it was connected to the field.

Grace looked up at her Goddess, tears standing in her eyes. The Goddess stood with one hand poised at the top of her belly, the other holding onto the bottom of her pregnant girth. In her stomach Grace knew she carried all of Saracin.

“There is trouble,” Goddess said, blinking her eyes. When she opened her eyes, the scene within changed. A hazy miasma drifted across the orbs of her eyes. When it cleared Grace could see constellations form. “Arael, Iblis, the Beast, is on the rise.”

The flowers shuddered at the name, and a chill raced across Grace’s spine. “We know, Star-eyed.”

“It will take all the strength the Great Realms have to face this threat, and his legion.”

Grace bowed her head once more.

“Stand, please,” the Goddess smiled.

Grace stood, clasping her hands before her to keep from reaching out and touching the radiant, glowing being before her.

“What shall we do?” Grace asked.

“That depends on you.”

“Me?” Grace asked.

Goddess nodded. “You have a large part to play in this. You must protect my name in the Realms.”

“But how?” Grace asked.

“The holy city will be the first place they attack.”

“Lytoria,” Grace said.

Goddess nodded. “It holds my power in the realms, my votaries, my training, my Silver Law. If the fallen strike there, they shake the belief in me. If the holy seat falls, so too will my power crumble. The realms will fall into chaos.”

“But how are we to fight them?” Grace asked. “I have no power now. It took all Joya could muster to kill the fallen she faced. Cianna struggled as well. How are mere humans to survive against them?”

“With faith,” Goddess said. She took one hand away from her belly and placed it on Grace’s chest. There she felt a whisper of power, a hum of something more than love, something akin to reverence. “Joya was able to kill her fallen because she realized one thing: if she didn’t
protect
the keep and those within, they would die. Those are holy attributes, protecting against evil. When she merely wanted to save herself, she couldn’t harm the fallen. But when she put her faith in me, and trusted, and thought of the greater good, then she was able to defeat the fallen.”

“So, in faith we are able to harm them?” Grace asked. “It changes our wyrd?”

Goddess nodded. “It changes everything. They are also operating from a place of faith. Their faith hasn’t been shaken. They know Iblis to be their true God, and that’s where their power lies.”

Grace looked to the shifting expanse of flowers behind the Goddess. Off in the distance, over the tops of snowcapped mountains, there wasn’t sky, but violet light. The lands of Goddess were there, her Kingdom, the Ever After.

There was something she was missing in what the Goddess said.

“But if the fallen are attacking Lytoria to shake our faith in you, then we can shake their faith in the Beast,” Grace said.

Goddess nodded.

“And if Joya found power in you, and was able to defeat her fallen, then we can strike at Arael, and shake
their
faith, rendering their attacks powerless?”

“Maybe not completely powerless,” Goddess said. “But certainly it would make you much stronger.”

Grace kept her gaze on the violet horizon as the words sank in.

“Then someone will have to travel to the Turquoise Tower and defeat him.”

Goddess nodded. “He cannot remain in the realms. His ilk will have to be slain. Moonchild, war is coming in the realms, of the angelic kind. First they will fight their war in the realms, and then in the Ever After.”

“Why hasn’t he done that yet?” Grace asked. “Why hasn’t he gone to the Ever After yet? He has found the Turquoise Tower, he has gained what he sought, he has his angelic form once more.”

“But,” Goddess said, holding up a finger. “He needs
faith
backing him. Just as Joya had power when she had faith, so too do angels and Gods receive power from those that believe in them.”

“So the more people who hold faith in him, the more powerful he is?”

“Precisely. He needs to gather his followers before he ever has a chance of striking at the Ever After and overthrowing me.” The Goddess looked off the way Grace had come. Grace looked behind her shoulder and saw a mist rolling in, crowding at the edges of the field. White, foggy fingers slunk into the meadow, reaching out toward Grace. In their reach she felt the stirring of her sleeping mind, pulling her dream form back to wakefulness.

“Time grows short,” Goddess said. “You will wake soon. Victory is at hand, and you must lead this next leg. Moonchild, don’t expect people to believe you and to follow you. Don’t try to argue what I’ve told you with people who won’t believe you. There are allies, though, and you can muster a formidable guard for Lytoria. There you will make your final stand, and hope that your emissaries to the Turquoise Tower are successful. For now, I need to give you something you’ve been too long without.”

Goddess walked to the great oak, running her hand along the girth, slipping her fingers over the blackened bark until she found a knothole. She slipped her hand within, and when she did, a subtle green glow burst forth from the hole. She drew her hand back out, pulling a silver dagger from the depths of the tree.

“My dhast!” Grace said. She stepped closer to Goddess. “But it was blooded; it is ruined, and so is my wyrd.”

“But as my sacred warrior, I can grant the power of the dhast back to my dhasturin at any time.” Goddess smiled and held the blade up so it glinted in the light of the full moon. As it shimmered, it changed form, melting and folding in on itself until Goddess pulled back an orb of quicksilver power. “Moonchild, hold your arms out, and welcome my holy gift.”

Grace tilted her head back, opened her arms, and stared up at the cloudless sky. The Goddess reached toward her disciple and pressed the orb to the old woman’s chest. Grace felt a pulse of energy beneath her, in the roots of the ancient oak, and within her body she felt the power of the dhast respond, like the echo of a heartbeat.

Grace came to with a gasp. Around her lay the sickbeds and soldiers moaning in pain from the recent skirmish.

Just a dream
, Grace thought. But the name, Moonchild, seemed to fill her with power, and she felt the strength of the earth in her bones once more.

When she stood, Grace felt no resistance from her bones and joints. She wanted badly to test her wyrd, but the lady’s toes hadn’t finished working through her system, so she didn’t try it. But she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the earth wyrd was strong in her body once more.

Deftly her fingers sought out the sheath at her side, where she still kept the powerless dhast even though it had been blooded. But it was gone. Thinking maybe she had taken it off before she went to rest, which was not like her at all, Grace checked all around the cot, and even the stand that stood between her cot and the cot that Rosalee slept on during her shifts of rest.

The dagger wasn’t there.

She sat on the edge of her cot and stuffed a pipe full of weed. Lighting it with a taper, Grace took a deep inhale of the intoxicating smoke. She let her mind drift on the billows of smoke wafting through her lungs and throat. She remembered the meeting with Goddess, and it sent a shiver through her. There was no doubt in Grace’s mind that it had been real. She felt the presence of the oak in the back of her mind now, huge and reassuring, like a friend who had been with her through her entire life, and she only now realized. Then her memory drifted to what happened under the boughs of the oak, and she recalled the Star-eyed. The Goddess had pulled a silver dhast out of the tree, and then reformed it in energy. Energy she had coaxed into Grace.

The moment she thought that, Grace felt the thrill of earthen power deep inside of her, as if answering an unasked question.

Her dhast now lived within her.

“And we have noticed what, exactly?” Sara asked Mag.

“They are unloading a rather large contraption off a wagon, into the center of the field of battle,” Mag told her. “It hums with wyrd.”

“It’s not familiar?” Sara asked.

Mag shook her head. The entire war council was assembled in Sara’s office and were looking at the two of them. Sara crossed to her chair, the rhythmic thump of her cane the only sound in the room. She eased into her chair with a groan and surveyed the people around them.

“Maeven, has Annbell communed with you about the giants?” Sara asked him. He seemed to shake himself out of his near trance, wondering, as they all were, what the dwarves could be up to now.

“She thinks they are to make their way down the mountain passes in the coming days. I’m to meet them later, scout the way ahead, and help them make haste.”

Sara nodded. “Before you go, I’d like you to go see what this is the dwarves have. I would go myself, but my second shape would surely be noticed by them.”

Maeven nodded.

“Joya, how far off is your army?”

“I was hoping to talk to you today and figure that out.” Joya eased forward in her chair, clasping her hands in her lap.

“Right, get with me after the meeting and we’ll check. Flora, see if you can make room in the keep for half of the soldiers. I have a feeling that before long the rest of the wall won’t hold, and we’ll need to retreat. Mag, hold off on moving them just yet, I want to make sure I’m right. In the meantime, get some more archers and wyrders on the ramparts. Have them attack whatever’s in range. We need to end this fast; I’m tiring of this already.”

Sara stepped up to the window in her room; the one that faced out toward the realm, not toward the mountains. Her legs ached from the work she had put them through, but she pressed on, leaning heavily on her cane.

Joya stood in front of the window looking out, surveying the wall below and the spot where the mixed wyrd held the breach closed.

“Are you ready?” Sara asked, and Joya jumped.

“What’s Grace doing?” Joya asked.

She looked down and saw the silvery head of her older sister crossing the courtyard to the wall. “Goddess only knows with her. She has a mind of her own, and when she sets it to something, there’s no stopping her.” She studied Grace further, and then saw the other two women following her. “And there are Rosalee and Dalah, too. Probably up to some kind of trouble.”

Joya smiled a toothy grin, and Sara smiled back at her.