The Bonds of Blood (28 page)

As she ran, Joya wondered what the
upheaval was about. She was not as used to physical exertion like
the others in her group, so she fell back before long, winded. She
stopped and bent at the waist. At least she had made it to the end
of the alley to the fields. She saw the crowd of people and knew
that she was not going to be able to see anything anyway, so it
seemed alright to take a rest.

Look
down
, the wicked voice of the book said,
and Joya did as she was told. Looking down, she saw something long
and black in the tall grass. Gingerly she reached for it. She did
not want to latch onto it only to find out it was a snake too
late.
Take it,
the
voice instructed. Joya grabbed the object.

It was smooth, cool, and light. It had
a good weight to it, but not one that would impede movement. Joya
hefted it into full view. It was a cane. It didn’t have a handle
though, and for a moment Joya wondered how it could support weight,
for it seemed much more pliable than it should have been for a
cane. But then she realized that it was not a cane at all; it was a
thick switch.

Curiously she looked it over
testing it in her hands. She bent it with great effort, realizing
that this was a switch that could inflict great pain. Looking
around to make sure no one had seen her, Joya decided that she
should put it back. However, the voice had a different idea. As
Joya bent back down, the voice commanded into her head:
Take it. Slip it into your saddlebag; it will
just fit.

“But it is not mine,” Joya
protested.

It belongs to no one now;
take it. Trust me, Joya Neferis; you will need it before all is
said and done
.
Joya, never the one to like cryptic messages, straightened
back up and tried to conceal the switch in the folds of her dress
as she walked back to the house and hid it in her
saddlebag.

As Joya was placing her newly procured
switch in her saddlebag, her hand brushed the book from which the
voice came. She wondered then if it would have anything new to
reveal. It seemed that whenever she did anything out of the
ordinary, the book had a new message for her. The strange language
would allow itself to be read a little better with each phenomenon
she produced.

Slowly she slipped the book out,
looking around to make sure she was alone. Joya wasn’t sure why she
didn’t want anyone seeing her with the book, but before she could
open the cover, she heard the stones on the road behind her
crunching under several booted feet. Quickly, and angrily at not
being able to glean further secrets from the book, Joya slipped it
back into the bag, securing it in place.

“Are we ready?” Grace asked, and by her
voice Joya could tell that the old lady was less than happy. Grace
swung up on Holly and slowly rode out the gate of Rosalee’s iron
fence.

“What was it?” Joya asked, and it was
Angelica that answered on everyone’s behalf.

“We don’t know; we were never able to
get close enough to see. Grace has decided that we had best leave
now though; she said we can’t wait around to see.”

From the look of the old lady, though,
as she waited for them, sitting stiffly in her saddle, she knew
something the rest of them didn’t.

But that is nothing
new,
Joya scoffed as she mounted Daisy, and
with a pat she urged her mare out the gate followed at a distance
by Angelica and Jovian.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

_T
he storm released its
wrath as
they left Meedesville, and it
persisted for two days. Needless to say, life on the road for the
companions, and life at camp, was less than pleasurable.

During one of the few times that anyone
spoke, Grace had told them they would be turning southeast in
another day or so, traveling at the edge of the Forest of Life.
None of them had protested, because none of them had cared. They
had only wanted to get out of the damnable weather, get dry, and
have a good hot meal instead of dried rations.

“There is a way station up ahead!”
Grace yelled over the din.

“What?” Jovian asked, cupping his ear
to hear her better.

“A way station,” she yelled louder,
gesturing with her hand toward the faint light in the distance. “Up
there, about a half-hour ride.”

Jovian did not comment, and instead
nodded his understanding.

The following half hour was the longest
that any of them had ever remembered living through. The prospect
of having cots to sleep on, a warm fire, the possibility of warm
food, and a hot tub only heightened their desire to reach the way
station.

The small stone building came into
sight, and none of them wasted any time stabling their horses in
the lean-to out back.

The silence of the place was at first
overwhelming compared to the constant ringing in their ears from
the downpour outside. Before long, though, they had gotten used to
it and could hear the patter of droplets on the roof and the clap
of thunder rumbling the foundation as the full force of the storm
neared.

It was a fairly blank place. All of the
surfaces within had once been whitewashed, but time dulled
everything to a muted gray. Along two walls stood three cots, with
more piled in the back in case they were needed. A small door near
the back led to a bathing room.

Jovian wasted no time in attending to
the fireplace, and Grace unloaded the things she would need to make
dinner on the stone table next to the door.

It wasn’t one of the more splendid ones
they had heard of. Some way stations were maintained with wyrded
lights and a cleaning ward, but to them it was a palace.

Angelica took her bag and barricaded
herself in the bathroom, only opening the door when Joya begged to
be let in so she could change.

Jovian was happy that the kindling
caught flame quickly, and he soon started piling the dry wood to
the side in the fireplace, building up a large, hot
fire.

“I hate the summer storms,” he
commented, crouched down, his numb hands nearly in the fire to
return feeling to the fingertips.

Grace grunted as she added dried meats,
fresh vegetables from Rosalee’s garden, and water from a canteen
into a pot. “I share that sentiment.”

After Jovian listened a few moments to
the sounds of chopping of food, the rumbling of thunder, and the
popping of wood in the fire, blood returned to his body, and he
stretched. Gathering up his pack, he moved to one of the cots, out
of Grace’s way as she placed the pot on a hook over the fire to
cook.

Joya came out of the bathroom, followed
some time later by Angelica. They sat in the back corner of the way
station talking and combing each other’s hair.

Gathering dry clothes Jovian proceeded
to the bathroom to change.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he
saw Grace sitting at the table nursing a tankard of ale and puffing
on her pipe. A cloud of smoke already hung over her head, implying
that her lungs had gone to work on the pipe shortly after Jovian
went into the bathroom.

In the warm way station, surrounded by
the thunder and rain, it felt like they were alone in the world. In
fact, it felt like there was no world any longer outside the door.
It was only them in the forsaken storm, and they were alone and
stranded with nowhere to go. Jovian wished they could stay here
longer as he joined the other three at the table.

Grace appraised them all and pointed
with her pipe to a barrel in the back. Jovian took the silent
command in stride, and soon they were all nursing mugs of a
vinegary brew.

Grace pulled out a piece of parchment
and scribbled indiscernible words on it while they all conversed
about various things. Laughter and joking was shared, and before
long Grace was handing them all a steaming bowl of stew.

All conversation stopped as they
spooned mouthful after mouthful of stew. The sounds of wooden
spoons clunking in wooden bowls filled the room.

After dinner Angelica and Joya washed
the dishes, and Grace pulled a silver box out of her bag. The box
was thin—Jovian estimated that it was barely in inch deep and a
foot square.

“What is that?” he asked as Grace
opened the embossed lid and slipped the piece of parchment in that
she had written on before.

“This is a form of rojo,” she said
simply.

“A what?” Jovian asked furrowing his
eyebrows as the silver box glowed a soft red, and then fell cold
once more. Grace opened the lid and he saw the parchment was no
longer inside. “What in the Realms happened to it?” he sat up
straighter. “Was it incinerated?”

Grace laughed. “No, the rojo are
teleportation systems. This happens to be one specifically made for
correspondences. It is called a telfetch; it glows red when the
letter is sent.” Angelica and Joya had, by now, joined them, and
they seemed to be just as interested in the telfetch as Jovian was.
“The receiving telfetch will glow red when the letter is received
and will continue glowing until it is removed.”

“Who did you send it too?” Joya
asked.

“My sister,” Grace said, stowing the
box back in her pack and resuming interest in her pipe and tankard.
“Speaking of which, have you checked your book lately?” Grace
asked.

Joya sat up straight and looked into
her lap, as if the answer was hidden in the folds of her skirt.
“No.”

“Maybe you should. I am assuming that
after that task with the Hobbedy’s Lantern it will have something
more to tell you.” They all looked at her quizzically, but she kept
her eyes on Joya.

“How did you know that I could not read
it?” Joya asked curiously.

“Check the book first.”

Joya retrieved the book and sat on the
stone bench staring down at it reverently.

The binding creaked as Joya nervously
lifted the front cover. Joya shivered as she stared at the image
mirrored on her and Amber’s necks, the lemniscate as she had come
to know it since receiving the book on her birthday.

She looked down at the curving figure
on the page and had the same sensation she had when she opened the
book for the first time to peer at the image. The sense of tunnel
vision occurred again as everything around her seemed to disappear.
Joya was no longer aware of the way station around her. Her eyes
could see nothing other than the convoluted form of the lemniscate
pulsing before her eyes.

She was distantly aware of moving the
hair at the back of her neck and rubbing the image that now seemed
an annoyance as it pulsed in time with the lemniscate on the page.
Joya took in the blocky letters that seemed to blaze below the
figure of the lemniscate, and she read aloud:

“Lemniscate or Stigmata of the … Dear
Goddess—” The book slipped from her hands and fell closed on the
floor.

Joya was slammed back into her
surroundings, and she found that her hand lay motionless on the
pulsing birthmark on the back of her neck. She stared, terrified,
into Grace’s eyes. The old lady nodded.

“The book will only allow it to be read
by those in your … condition,” Grace said cryptically. “It will
also only reveal certain words and phrases as you grow more
powerful. For instance, that working you did with the Hobbedy’s
Lantern’s, that was more than you had done before, so therefore
more of the book was revealed to you.”

Joya had suspected that
already.

“Then that means your sister is also
…?” Joya faltered, not wanting to say the word out loud, almost as
if saying it would somehow make it real.

“Yes,” Grace muttered around the pipe
in her mouth.

“What?” Angelica frowned. She had
waited for a long time to hear what Joya could read from the book,
and now Grace and Joya seemed to be talking in a sort of code that
only they could understand. “What did it say, Joya?” she asked,
growing impatient.

“It says ‘Lemniscate or Stigmata of the
… Sorcerer.’” Her hand slipped from the mark on the back of her
neck.

Angelica’s hand went to her mouth, and
Jovian let out a low whistle as he leaned back in his
chair.