The Bonds of Blood (41 page)

Without another word Grace started
checking Maeven’s wounds.

“How far up is the way blocked?”
Angelica asked trying to look ahead in the now diminished torch
light.

“There is no telling. We will just have
to see when we get there.” Grace said.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

_I
n the darkness of her
mind
Joya dreamed. Dreams brought on by the
wyrd that she could still feel coursing through her being, burning
her soul with its intensity, its need. It was then that Joya
realized wyrd had its own agenda, its own wants and needs. She was
aware of people before her, wyrders, who had gone mad with the
power because they could not control it, because they had let it
control them too many times.

The power gave her such abilities as
she had never before thought possible, but on the other hand she
felt as though she was slowly losing herself. She was no longer the
girl she had once been, concerned with dresses and hair, all the
finery that went with being a lady of station.

Now she was in a struggle for her life,
while she struggled to save the life of her best friend and sister,
Amber Neferis.

She wondered if Amber was experiencing
the same thing. She, too, had her book, but was the book taking
control of her as well?

Joya wished that she would never have
to allow the wyrd in again, not until she could control it. At the
same time, she knew that this was not possible for the wyrd was in
her now. The act that she just undertook assured her that.
Something new was awake in her, crawling beneath the surface of her
skin, swimming in her blood, making it seem hotter, and making Joya
feel the very vessels of her life’s blood coursing through every
vein in her body.

For the first time in her life Joya was
completely aware of her heart’s beating. She could feel her very
core moving with it; could feel it thundering in her chest, sending
ripples of blood jetting through her body.

In the darkness of her mind Joya
dreamed. She had the feeling of another presence with her, a shadow
that she could not see but could instead sense; a force that was
hypnotic and malicious. Joya was both afraid of it and drawn to it
with morbid curiosity.

For a time Joya thought that it was the
wyrd that still throbbed in her, as it was the same sense she
received from the book, but this was slightly different. The power
of the being within her dream was slick, like water polluted by
oil—refreshing and yet repulsive.

This was not the book; this could not
be the wyrd that had possessed her moments before. Joya would not
let herself believe that this was the voice she heard all the time.
This force, this convoluted distortion of the wyrd she felt, was
something else, something darker. While the wyrd was in her, this
force was apart from her.

This was not her wyrd, not the good,
true wyrd she tapped into.

“But yet I am the same,” a voice said
in a deep hypnotic baritone. There was a sense that the shadow was
laughing, not out of contempt, but out of jubilation. “The wyrd you
use and I are from the same root. All things, Joya Neferis, come
from the same source,” the man informed her.

“The Mother Goddess,” Joya whispered,
knowing that she was right.

“One could say that,” he
confirmed.

“Who are you?” she wondered
aloud.

“I have been with you now for some
time,” the man confirmed in his unhurried, velvety smooth
voice.

“That does not answer my question,”
Joya said. “Who are you?”

“Brassy I see, one might think it runs
in your blood.” The man sighed as if he knew something she did not.
“As I said, I am a force that has been with you for some time,
lying below the surface, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Joya
asked.

“For you to come into your own, of
course.”

“You mean for me to come into my
sorcery?”

“You might suggest that I have been
waiting for the … potential to awaken within you.”

“What do you want of me?” Joya
asked.

“I want nothing from you, only to …
observe … help, that is, if I can.”

“Why do I feel malice from you if you
wish only to be so helpful?”

“Like all powerful beings, power is in
the eye of the beholder. Wyrd, as your schooling calls it, knows
neither good nor evil.”

“Wyrd might not know the difference,
but those who can sense it do,” Joya fired back.

The sensation of laughter came
again.

“Are you suggesting that a person can
choose which Wyrding Way they use, Joya Neferis?”

“I am suggesting only that you do not
feel as though you have chosen the right Way.”

“But which Way is right and which is
wrong?” the voice cooed, and Joya was brought up short; she didn’t
know the answer.

“That which helps is right, that which
harms others is wrong.” She was sure of her answer.

“You say that with such conviction in
your heart; I can feel it, you honestly believe that, Joya, don’t
you?”

“Yes, that is the right
Way.”

“Surely it is, but who is to choose
that which harms and that which helps? Surely the wyrd you
unleashed moments ago helped keep you all safe, even allowed you to
win a grand battle, Joya.”

She could not help but beam slightly
under such compliments.

“However, you harmed many to a great
extent, did you not? You saved your lives, yet you destroyed so
many more in the process. Would it not be better had five died
instead the many others that perished instead?”

“That was not life that I killed; they
were dalua, and they deserved death!”

“But who makes that
decision?”

“The Goddess has decided
that.”

“Ah … her,” the voice said with
amusement. “You would be surprised what she does and does not agree
with …”

“How would you know?” Joya
asked.

“Just think on what I have said, Joya,”
the voice artfully avoided her question.

“Hmm,” Joya grunted. “You still haven’t
supplied me with a name; I’m not given to considering what faceless
strangers tell me.”

“And yet you take for granted that
which the voice of wyrd tells you time and again without second
thought.”

“That is different!”

“How so?” the man asked.

“Because her presence is soothing and
yours is not.”

“Might it be that my presence is not
soothing to you because what I suggest is so foreign to your way of
thinking? Change is never an easy thing, Joya. Oftentimes that
which goes against popular belief is deemed Chaotic and
wrong.”

“Oftentimes it is!” Joya was beginning
to anger.

“But!” the voice exclaimed.
“Sometimes that which goes against what is commonly accepted is the
only truth there is. That which is deemed Chaotic is often the
highest good; the only true light. My presence only feels wrong to
you because you are not yet ready to fully grasp that which is
real, or
right
as
you say it.”

What he said echoed so much what Grace
had said to her before, about accepting truth. Joya was
speechless.

“For now you can call me the voice of
wisdom.”

With that the voice of Wisdom was gone,
along with the oily shadow, and Joya only knew true
sleep.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

_“W
hat is that?” Jovian asked
some
time later. They had been riding for a
while now, and both Maeven and Joya were fast asleep. The rumbling
in the earth had stopped, as did the shuddering ground. Just now,
however, Jovian had caught a flicker of blue light illuminating the
way ahead.

“The exit?” Angelica asked hopefully as
she watched the blue incandescence dance along the wall a few paces
ahead. Grace pulled up short motioning for all of them to
halt.

The old lady squinted in the ever
dimming light of their torches and looked contemplative as if not
quite sure what created the light. “I do not think that is the
exit. I think it might be another room; it looks like it is lit
with an unnatural light.” She cast furtive glances up and down the
corridor to see if there might be another way. “Maeven did say the
way was blocked ahead of us …”

It wasn’t long before they came to the
area where the light was the brightest.

It was a separate room, as Grace had
surmised, that sat off the main tunnel just before the way they had
been following came to an abrupt end. Whoever had created the
tunnel stopped short here.

“What is it?” Angelica asked as she
dismounted and surveyed the thin sheet of what looked like murky
glass that covered the entrance. It was now that she was aware of
the reason for the dancing lights they had seen beforehand. The
blue incandescence came from the room behind the glass, but the
glass was so flawed and cloudy that it refracted the light,
throwing it in various patterns on the walls around them as if
reflected off water.

Tentatively she reached for the lighted
wall. The coolness of the surface pierced her fingers like the bite
of frost.

She inhaled deeply, but instead of
pulling her hand away, Angelica pressed the tips of her fingers
more firmly into the surface. Pin pricks of light flooded the tips
of her fingers, swelling through her hand as if blood were rushing
to a spot that had previously been cut off from
circulation.

Angelica made a strange sound; half
moan of pain and half laughter, for as the power made the bones of
her wrist throb, the light that had been refracting off the glass
was now coalescing in a knotted pattern around her fingertips, as
if the light were drawn to her heat. The light was centered on her
hand, and there it glowed intensely around her instead of beaming
nonsensically around the tunnel.

“The glass is cold,” Angelica said over
her shoulder to the other two. “You should feel it,” she said with
wonder in her voice.

“I do not think that is wise,” Grace
cautioned, dismounting with a swiftness that belied her age.
“Besides that isn’t glass, it is crystal.”

“Maybe we could smash it?” Jovian
suggested.

“No!” Angelica said turning on him with
a look of outrage. “It is too beautiful; you can’t maim
it!”

“The crystal, Angelica, is not what is
responding to you; it is the light that is called to you, and
therefore it is the light that you are drawn to, not the crystal,”
Grace reasoned. “At present I see no other way to get beyond this
obstacle. There is no time to think of another solution; we do not
want to be here should the Torzul or the Golem put in an
appearance. I think smashing it might be the only choice we
have.”

Grace stepped aside gesturing Angelica
to follow her. Reluctantly she also stepped away so that Jovian
could do what had to be done.

Taking a deep breath, Jovian stepped
into the path of the light. Now that he was directly in the
presence of the light he could understand why Angelica had
misgivings about smashing it. The light danced around him almost
playfully, as if it possessed a conscience. He didn’t want to harm
the light, but at the same time he had seen lights that were
playful and welcoming before; they had nearly led him astray, and
Joya was not capable of saving him this time.

With new resolve Jovian raised his
mother’s sword high above his head and felt the power in the blade
mirror his own resolve, giving him courage, steeling him for what
had to be done. With a new savageness that Jovian felt was born of
the sword, he brought the blade down with all his might smashing it
forcefully into the crystal doorway.

The sound of steel on steel echoed
deafeningly through the tunnel and a force like nothing Jovian had
ever felt before lifted him off his feet and flung him through the
air, sending him crashing into the opposite wall. Jovian landed on
his feet, swayed and then fell back on his rump, his ears ringing
and his head swimming from the blow and the intense
noise.

When the ringing in his ears subsided,
he realized that Grace and Angelica had not heard the sound as he
had. Slowly he looked up, trying to regain his bearings, and
noticed that there were other light patterns on the opposite wall
besides the crystal door.

The new lights were concentrated in
central spots that did not move like the ones beyond the door. In
three spots this new light glowed, and if it were at all possible
it was of a more intense blue than that beyond the
crystal.

Two of the lights stood, one on either
side of the crystal door, in circular patterns about the height of
a man’s head. The energy of the blue swirled and eddied through the
circle like one would expect fog to react to movement. The light
seemed to be fixated on the wall but at the same time not part of
the wall. It seemed to exist in a spot just before the wall, as if
hanging in the space before the wall instead of appearing projected
on the unyielding earth.