The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) (28 page)

T
hey had been found!

Angelica knew that with a sinking feeling when she felt the dalua power in the air. She knew moments before Porillon appeared in the center of the clearing that there was no hope for escape, they must fight what they dreaded to fight.

The realization that they had been found hit Angelica about the same time the thunder concussed the air. She saw lightning flying from a spot in the center of Greenwood that had previously been empty.

Attached to the other end of the multitude of bolts rending the air in silver-blue relief was Porillon.

Before they had time to react the Germinant Gob materialized into the air before them, falling lightly to the ground. He let out a grunt, and they saw before them a shield of powerful, crackling green opalescence appear in the air, deflecting the lightning attack. The lightning, however, hit against his shield with such force that it visibly pushed him backwards. Angelica and Jovian’s legs kept him rooted to the ground.

Joya was quicker this time, the wyrd still coursing through her, speeding her movements. A pink, membranous shield flowed around her moments before the lightning struck. However, when the force of Porillon’s fury slammed against Joya’s shield, it took the young LaFaye off her feet, tumbled her over a large mushroom unceremoniously, and then continued on, destroying the fungus and tearing bark off the surrounding trees as it sought Joya. The shield seemed to have confused the wyrded bolt for a time, and it ambled around, sparking off the foliage, destroying the quaint beauty of Greenwood as it went.

Joya managed again to pull her pink shield up, and this time it glowed more forcefully, as did the Germinant Gob’s.

Uthia had lifted her Cataresh up, and the one bolt that struck her sword separated and shot off in two different directions, shattering the homey trees of Greenwood behind the dryad.

The onslaught continued, and Porillon lifted off the ground slightly, the bolts spinning and striking off from her. The whole time Angelica and Jovian expected the other presence that had helped them against Porillon to swim back to the surface and help them this time, but it didn’t. Jovian actually went so far as to mentally search for it, trying to raise its presence in him like gorge, but it wouldn’t come.

It was no use. Angelica tried tapping into her wyrd, but as the only thing she was feeling was fear. The wyrd within her eluded her. She wished she had better mastery of her gift, but she didn’t, and she couldn’t control anything to do with her wyrd. She stood transfixed by the wyrded battle before them.

Porillon was like death unleashed upon them, and there was nothing they could do but stand and watch her, and defend themselves as long as their convictions would last against such force.

She had them, and this time the dalua sorceress was not going to let them go easily. Angelica saw Joya easing toward them; the bolt had found her again, but her shield was holding up.

Porillon came back to the ground and released the bolts. When next her attack came, it was in the form of flames spraying out at each of them as the lightning had. Uthia had made it a few steps toward her in the interim, but when the flames started sizzling the warm autumn air, Uthia had to dive for cover. Not even the Cataresh could withstand flames. The weapon had barely been able to handle the prolonged lightning attack; the fire would instantly consume it like tinder, and continue on to her.

Uthia fled into one of the nearest tree homes, and they lost sight of her as the flame which sought her bounced uselessly off the tree into which she had fled. The smell of burning, wet moss filled the air, and Porillon let that stream of fire stop, turning her attention instead to the other companions as Joya neared Jovian, Angelica, and Gob.

“Joya, what are you doing?” Angelica asked. “For the time being her attack is separate; once you are here she can concentrate it.”

“But we have to be together,” Joya said. “We have to get away from her, and stay together.”

Their sister was right. Besides, Joya was holding her own against Porillon, so she figured that the combined shields would hold against the concentrated attack.

Joya was with them, and the two shields of the Germinant Gob and Joya meshed together, forming a sick green-pink color as they snapped into place. Joya wanted to attack, but now there was one stream of fire battering against the shields, and it was all Joya could do to keep her shields up. She shifted the wyrd flowing through her shields so that more water wyrd was within it, quenching the fire with less effort on her part, but she still couldn’t get the upper hand to attack.

Uthia had made her way back out of the tree and was easing her way gracefully toward Porillon. She knew the attack would not come, and that Porillon would sense her long before she got there, but she had to try something.

There was nothing for it, Porillon was more than they could handle. They couldn’t get away, they couldn’t run, and against her fury they could only defend, not attack. Suddenly the air shifted a mere span before Porillon, and a very familiar sight appeared.

Grace stepped out of the wavering air, and in one fluid motion drove her dhast straight up through Porillon’s head. The air suddenly went silent but for the dalua sorceress’s gurgling, frantic clawing at the blade. Incomprehension filled her face and she stared at Grace, as if she couldn’t fathom the crone had done such a thing, or where she had gotten such power.

The moment the dhast had been blooded it shattered, spreading its shrapnel through the inside of Porillon’s head. The hilt fell useless to the ground at the two women’s feet.

When they no longer had to defend themselves, they took the moment to run. They knew that Grace would catch up with them, for they could see her even then turning toward them. She looked horrible, but there was no time to think about that. They turned and began running. Within moments Uthia had caught up to them.

Grace threw out her hand, and fire sprang from her fist, crackling through the air with a fury of its own, and surrounding them in a ring of fire. They all came up short, the intensity of the wyrded fire instantly drawing sweat to their bodies.

Before them they saw two other figures appear out of the forest, one shorter and heavier, the other tall and redhaired. Grace came around to join Dalah and Rosalee, and she turned and looked at them at the same moment the other two did.

Their eyes were alive with Chaos.

J
oya turned and looked behind them, making sure that Porillon was still down and out. She wasn’t. The dalua sorceress was even now rising straight up, lifting off the ground to her feet as if pulled by some force that couldn’t be seen. She held her hand a few inches before her face and writhed her fingers as if they were claws, pulling something out.

Her jaw was a bloody mess that was even now healing before Joya’s eyes. Her hands, however, pulled at something else, and hundreds of little cuts appeared on her face as the shrapnel of the shattered dhast worked to the surface of her skin at her hands’ insistence. The metal worked through bone, muscle, and flesh with a strange, sickening sound. In moments it was over, and the blue tattooed face of Porillon was once more healed.

“That HURT!” she screamed at Grace, and Joya stood so that she could see both attackers.

Why was Grace doing this?

“So sad, it was meant to tickle,” Grace said, but it wasn’t her voice, or at least it wasn’t all her own voice.

Porillon yelled and sent the shrapnel whizzing through the air at Grace. Grace held her hand up and the shrapnel stopped mere inches before her face. A slight glowing, milky white and pearlescent fog came from Grace’s hand and wrapped around the shrapnel. The individual pieces of metal began to melt and then reformed in midair into her dhast. The hilt at Porillon’s feet whizzed through the air toward Grace, and with a metallic clink it snapped back onto the blade. The silver dagger was once more whole.

“That was weak even for you,” Grace said. It was the wrong thing to say, for just then Porillon released the malaise of her full power.

The three older women began floating up into the air with Porillon’s help. She then frantically began weaving her hands through the air, and the three women scattered around Greenwood, bouncing off trees and thundering through fungi until Porillon had battered them bloody.

She released her hands, and they fell nearly a hundred feet to the ground. They each landed in broken heaps, little more than lumps of flesh.

The ring of fire was gone in an instant, and Porillon made ready yet another attack on the youths and their fey companions. Joya looked ahead and tried to push her companions into the forest, but there was a swirling shadow beginning to take form before them, just within the underbrush at the edge of the forsaken village.

“Great,” Joya muttered, and she and Gob turned back, pulling up their shields before the full force of Porillon’s wyrd slapped into them. What she had unleashed was a pure bolt of unadulterated wyrd. They were not sure what would have happened to them once the glowing black, Chaotic wyrd had overcome them, and they didn’t want to know. For now the shield held, and Joya hoped that it didn’t fail them. She didn’t want that wyrd to touch her.

They were driven backwards, away from the clearing and toward the swirling mass coalescing behind them, and Joya didn’t know which one she preferred to touch, the shadow behind, or the glowing black bolt flying at them.

Angelica had seen too many people appear and disappear that day to be heartened by the blackness behind them growing in the sunlit reaches of the Sacred Forest. It wasn’t just tied to one spot, but crept toward them through the entirety of the forest. It was almost as if every shadow created by the sun on every tree, every flower, and every boulder was slithering through the leaf-littered grass toward them, to form a remote shadowy wall within their reach.

Angelica thought of the malaise of the Well of Wyrding and shivered. This could not be good. She tried to think if she or any of her companions had said anything about any dalua, and decided they hadn’t.

Angelica readied her mace, and Jovian took an attacking stance beside her. Uthia looked from Porillon to the shadow whooshing up before them in a great, black fogbank and decided that Angelica and Jovian probably could use more help against the unknown than Joya and Gob could against Porillon. There was nothing Uthia could do to help them anyway; she had no wyrd like Joya and the Germinant Gob did.

Suddenly the bolt stopped, and when Joya looked up, her black hair scattered before her eyes and sweat streaming down her red face, she saw that Porillon’s head was half caved in by a large rock which protruded from the cavity it created in the back of her skull.

“Don’t you bitches ever die?” Porillon screeched, removing the rock from the back of her head. The caved-in part of her skull expanded with a popping force. She turned back to Dalah as Grace and Rosalee stood, their bones popping and grinding as they reformed themselves.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jovian said.

Step into the darkness, Joya,
Pharoh spoke to her through the medallion.

“There,” Joya pointed at the gathering shadows outside the clearing of Greenwood. “Aunt Pharoh says to use the shadows.”

She placed a hand on the backs of Jovian and Angelica as the ground of Greenwood was torn up by Grace, showering Porillon, and she in turn used the exposed roots to lance the three women through their chests, fixing them to various trees around the clearing.

She turned back to her original quarry to see them fleeing to the shadows.

“Where are you going?” Porillon asked, sending tendrils of darklight wyrd at them, darkness they were sure would be the death of them. Joya could see Chaos in the very fabric of the wyrd Porillon used now, and she knew if any of those tendrils touched them they would be plunged beyond the Black Gates and into the Otherworld.

They made it to the safe shadows first. The shadows slithered up around them, consuming them, caressing them and blotting out the vision of Greenwood. They heard Porillon scream and the air shuddered with her fury. It was a nameless attack from Dalah, holding her hands out to their enemy. Porillon fell to her knees as unseen pain crippled her.

For good measure Joya sent a bolt of pink lightning into the fray. It hit Porillon square in the chest and flipped her backwards, just as the other three women were being released from the trees at the insistence of Grace’s silver dagger.