The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) (31 page)

“How do we stop it?” Angelica asked.

“Thankfully you have help. Even now three women travel to undo what has been done to the Well of Wyrding, something that will gain the Goddess a great advantage. The only thing that you can do, truly, is understand your wyrd, for it’s there that all the answers lie. All that you desire to know can be revealed by your wyrd, by your mind. Trust your wyrd, and do not doubt what it tells you, for even failures can lead to victories,” Sylvie said.

“Why didn’t you kill him that night, the night he killed Aunt Pharoh?” Angelica asked pulling her mother back to the story she had been about to tell them. “Why did you wait until later?”

“I said that I had hated, not that I had become stupid. He had just killed your Aunt Pharoh, and with such a slaying comes power.” Sylvie’s eyes were looking off into the distance, into the past. “I’m assuming that Pharoh would not have been killed, but she was weakened by her love for him and the recent birth of Cianna.

“I had enough sense to know that I should not fight Arael then, not after the power he had gained from my sister’s death, nor while I was so filled with raw emotion. Years of fighting and teaching taught me how to control my anger, how to channel it. In order to do this, a true fighter must learn when to fight and when to cultivate what they are feeling into a weapon itself. My hatred was raw and consuming, yet I had to learn how to control it. If I truly wanted retribution for Pharoh’s death I would have to make that hate into a weapon to wield with the shin-buto. Yet so melancholy was I from the death of my other half that I could barely care for myself, let alone Cianna. Thankfully there were still some of the Shadows Grove, despite torture at the hands of Arael or despair verging on insanity at the Splitting of the World, that were able to take her in and raise her well, knowing what she was.”

“Insanity?” Jovian asked. “Why insanity?”

“I would not expect you to understand, for you have never felt inborn wyrd suddenly torn from you. It leaves a hole in your mind. You know something should be in this void, something you were once able to touch, and something you would still be able to touch if you could reach but a bit further, but you can’t, for your perception will no longer allow you to reach that far.

“There was also the branding of the stigmata of the Realms. People felt their flesh burning, saw it smoking as if burned by some white-hot brand they could not see but could feel and see the results of nonetheless. It took weeks for the pain to fully subside from their wounds, and when it was gone they were left with those.” She leaned forward, and setting her goblet on the low table between them, Sylvie tapped the stigmatas on each of her children’s upturned palms. Jovian and Angelica stared at their palms for some time, trying to imagine the pain, and Angelica wondered briefly if that was why she felt the heat in her palms when she used her wyrd, yet she did not want to ask her mother. She had a feeling that Sylvie already knew her question, for she watched her daughter knowingly over the brim of her goblet.

“Ask what’s on your mind,” Sylvie instructed Angelica.

“I can feel the heat in my palms,” she said after a few moments. “When I use wyrd I can feel heat in my hands; it’s painfully warm like hot needles pricking my flesh.”

“It’s the branding,” Sylvie said. “You are able to touch a force that all were once able to touch but are no longer able to.”

“Is that what I am?” Angelica asked. “Is it just that I’m able to control the elements?”

“You already know that answer,” Sylvie said, shaking her head.

“No, that would not be it, Angie, or you would not have been able to take the Tall Stranger’s wyrd from him, and I would not have been able to kill the hobbedy’s lanterns with just one wyrding,” Jovian said.

Angelica looked at their mother for an explanation that was not forthcoming. Instead Sylvie continued on with her story.

“As if that were not enough for one person to take, there was also the case of Spirit leaving the land,” Sylvie said. “Everyone felt it leave, taking with it their wyrd. They could feel the shaking in the earth, they could feel the Great Realms crying out in mourning as the most precious of lands were taken from them, leaving in their place the realms of the opposite extremes; you know them as the Shadow Realm and the Holy Realm.

“You were born after the Splitting of the World, and so were not forced to feel these pains, but that night I fled the Ivory Tower I will never forget stumbling through the streets. The rebellion which had broken out hours earlier came to a sudden halt as everyone fell to their knees screaming out in pain as they stared at their glowing, smoldering palms. For minutes that seemed like hours all I heard were screams that slowly died to crying and moaning, then to deafening silence, before I finally made my way out of the Ivory City.

“Now maybe you can understand something of the hate I felt for Arael,” Sylvie whispered this last.

No matter how many times Jovian had heard it, he still had a hard time believing that before that fateful night which saw the Splitting of the World everyone was able to use wyrd.

“The books then go on to tell how I hunted down dalua after I had slain Arael. The truth was that hunting dalua was the thing that allowed me to harness my anger before I killed Arael, though I did find it a great pastime after I had finished him off. There was one dalua, however, that I had wanted even more than Arael, the same dalua that even now hunts you: Porillon.

“She was the one, the traitor that allowed Pharoh to be killed, that gave him the secrets of the Shadows Grove, that also showed Arael the way to enter the Well of Wyrding. Everything that you are now facing holds a startling resemblance to the last time Arael was in power. It was the Well of Wyrding that he had corrupted then, after Porillon had shown him the way in. You can imagine how that affected the Great Realms then, with everyone being able to control wyrd, having seen what it is doing now.

“It seemed longer than it truly was for me to harness my hatred. Really it took me a matter of days before I was trudging my way through the Sacred Forest once more and facing Arael. Perhaps that is why everyone supposed that I had slain him the night that he had killed Pharoh, for it was not long after before I found myself chasing him back to the Otherworld. The battle was long and hard, we seemed evenly matched in skill, but as everyone knows I was the one victorious, and Misha,” she indicated the silver wolf, which slowly appeared at her side as if conjured from the very air itself. “She was a great help. She and I finished him off, but I made a grave mistake,” Sylvie informed them, holding her finger up.

“You see, this entire time I was channeling my hatred, making it work for me, and that was where I made the gravest mistake, which could now see the Great Realms plunged into Chaos forever.”

“But what was the mistake? You killed him, didn’t you?” Angelica said, sitting on the edge of her seat.

“That I did, but in hatred his power lies,” Sylvie said to them both.

“So you are saying that you gave him more power?” Jovian asked.

“Not exactly,” she said. “You believed more than anything that you were indeed hunted by a black shuck?”

“Angelica believed that; mostly I was too scared to think on what it was,” he admitted, gaining a smile from his mother.

“Why did you stop believing that it was a black shuck?” she asked again.

“I think it had to do with Grace’s insistence that it was not. She told me that in order for the black shuck to be roaming the realms again Arael would have to be alive once more.”

“See, my hatred did not kill him; instead it sustained him. Where my sword had killed his physical body, my hatred allowed his essence to live on.
That
is what my hatred did, and that is the consequence of my one wyrd that you will have to face.”

With a startling realization Angelica and Jovian knew what their mother was getting at. “You mean he is back?” Angelica asked as goose bumps rippled up her body with a physical shudder.

“We knew it all along!” Jovian exclaimed.

“Now let’s not dwell on that. The truth is he is not yet back; you can still stop that by stopping Porillon. The potential for him to be back is great indeed, and that is why she needs the blood of the LaFaye line, specifically my children, to bring him back. You see, as it was I that killed him, she needs the blood of my offspring to bring him back. I cursed you more than one way the day my hatred killed him. My blood will see him alive once more. She lost the chance to use me when I died, but my blood lives on in you, however much diluted it may be.”

“So she does mean to kill Amber?” Jovian wondered.

“And more, if she could get her hands on it. I’m sure that if one death would do, her logic would tell her that more deaths would be better.” Sylvie nodded her agreement.

“Then why did she want the medallion?” Angelica asked.

“That I’m not sure. It could be for differing reasons. One line of logic would say that her desire for the medallion is purely selfish. She long coveted the power your aunt possessed — it could be that she has now decided to claim it for her own, and thinks that through my blood that she can find the key in harnessing its power.” Sylvie looked skeptical.

“But you do not believe that.” Jovian read the signs on her face.

“No more than you do. What I believe is that with the medallion she will restore Arael to power.” That made much more sense. “The medallion will be drained, filling Arael with power and restoring him to his former glory.”

“But we have the medallion now,” Angelica said.

“Just another reason she seeks to kill you, for the two of you have foiled her plans well thus far.” Sylvie smiled, a look that said more than words that she saw herself in them and their actions. “With you dead and out of the way she will have nothing to stand in her way. This is, however, another reason she hunts you, for the medallion.”

“She knows we have it?” Jovian asked, to which his mother only nodded.

Sylvie nodded.

Jovian and Angelica did not know what to say. They were, truly, in more danger now than they had been before, and their plight to find Amber was ever greater, for now they knew the reason for her abduction.

“But Grace said that Porillon could not do something like that. Porillon could not call a spirit from beyond the veil into the world of life,” Jovian declared.

“Who is to say that he is beyond the veil?” Sylvie asked. “He killed Pharoh, and I’m dead as well, and yet we are here, we have not crossed the veil.”

To this neither of them had anything to say.

“But for now, let me finish my tale. I have told you about the wyrd of hate, and what it did for your futures, now I will tell you of my wyrd of love that gave you something more powerful than Arael can imagine.

“As he feeds on hate and contention, he knows not of love, and love confuses him. This is, I must admit, one wyrd that Pharoh and I had that he could never understand.

“However, of all the acts of love I committed, giving my life so that you might live was the strongest. See, death holds great wyrd in it, for that is the release of the spirit from the physical trappings. When a life is given through love, the wyrd is manipulated, turned to something good, a force that can be used and applied for the wyrd of the one the life was given for.

“But as with my wyrd of hate, this one also held a double standard. My love brought you back to life, gave you abilities that were prophesied, wyrd that no one had ever before wielded. Yet at the same time it placed a heavy burden on you. You are to face many heartbreaks, many moments of doubt, times in your life when the world itself seems against you, when the wyrd you prolifically wield will seem a curse more than a gift, and one thing above all others — you will be forced to finish the task I was sent here to complete, maybe not in this lifetime, but in time you will have to complete what was laid before me the night Pharoh died.

“There are many forces you wield that will help in your endeavor. The shin-buto, which literally translates to Sacred Blade, will help you more than you can imagine, only first you must unlock its powers. However, I told you that in order for you to succeed you must understand your wyrd. I think that I have given you enough back-story to continue on now with what you are.

“Not much has been written about what you possess, and yet at the same time great volumes have been filled with nothing else.” If there was any way that their mother could have confused them more, she’d just done it.

“What do you mean?” Jovian asked, letting his confusion show on his face.

“Well, you have both displayed differing forms of wyrd,” Sylvie pointed out with a slight wave of her hand. “You, Jovian, have used necromancy.”

“Yet Cianna is the necromancer now,” he pointed out, a fact that made Sylvie merely nod in agreement.

“And you, Angelica, have taken someone’s wyrd from them so completely that they would not even appear as a normal person. You so effectively took away his wyrd so that he had no future, only a shell by which to carry out desires of others and himself.”

“But that is something dalua do, not good sorcerers,” she said glumly.

“That is something
no
wyrder can do.”

“And yet we are marked for no field of wyrd,” Jovian protested.

“Exactly, instead you are marked for all of them.” Silence rung in the air following Sylvie’s proclamation.