A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) (13 page)

When he thought of leaving, something inside him mourned the loss of this hedge witchery, as most votaries would call it. Simple knowledge that spoke more truth to him than any passage out of the Carloso had.

And it wasn’t like he was giving up on the Goddess; he hadn’t turned his back on her. Quite the opposite. If he had learned only one thing in his time with Annbell, it was that druidry was more closely linked to the Goddess than any votary could hope to understand. In druidry he studied the Goddess herself, not her book. He worshipped as he felt she deemed, not as he was told to worship by a leading votary. Maeven was accountable for his own actions, and worked in accordance with nature, with the Goddess.

He tossed back more of the caracaff and threw another bundle of sage on the fire.

Outside, the crunch of snow underfoot alerted him to another presence.

And great, now I’m going to be food for some creature,
he scowled. He hadn’t been allowed to bring any weapons. Weapons could scare away that which came to guide him.

He waited a few more moments, breath held, wanting to see what it was that lurked outside the entrance of the cave. He peered through the opening, wondering what could be out there. Whatever it was had sounded large, depressing the snow with a crunch that something the weight of a human would produce.

When nothing showed itself, Maeven relaxed. Whatever it was had probably been scared away.

Maeven threw another handful of sage on the fire, igniting it higher.

He was very tired, but he knew there was folly in sleeping in such cold temperatures. He figured inner reflection and some of the meditation he was taught as a votary wouldn’t harm such a situation, though.

He took another pull off the flask of liquor and tried to find a comfortable spot on the hard rock of the shallow cave. Despite his near-freezing body, with some trained breathing he was able to slip into the meditation easily enough.

He matched his breathing with his heart and slowly relaxed his body from head to toe, feeling as though hot water was running over his head, easing the cramps and pain from every muscle as it made its way languidly down his body.

He slowed his mind, cleared it of all thought and worry, even tried to expunge from it the feeling of extreme cold. As he blanked his mind, the numbness seemed to abate.

With one giant exhale, he pushed his mind away from his physical form and deeper into his subconscious.

He was flying. Maeven had never flown before, but he knew he was flying. Out of the cave entrance and down the white peaks of the Barrier Mountains. He could see the Guardian’s Keep, warm and welcoming, with its honeyed lights illuminating the falling snow.

He felt the currents of air in his feathers. His wings held still, gliding through the updrafts, carrying him on his way further through the realm. He could taste meat in his mouth, the coppery taste of blood and the old rot of flesh in his throat. It was enough to make him gag as he got used to this new form.

There was something he sought, but he wasn’t precisely sure what it was. The form he resided in knew, however, and it carried him ever on.

Before long the creature had found what it sought, wheeling back toward the Guardian’s Keep. It perched on a window and looked in. The eyes of the bird he resided in were better than his eyes, and he looked in to Sara’s chamber as she slept, huddled in a ball under the red velvet covers. The bed seemed impossibly large for her, and he noted the fire was nearly out.

But that wasn’t what he was there to see. Inside of her he knew the realm existed. He wasn’t sure
how
he knew this, but the Realm of Earth was linked to the Realm Guardian even as he was linked to this new body.

There was a darkness surrounding Sara, illness of a wyrd kind, not anything natural at all. He watched as the darkness ebbed and flowed around her body. Whatever was making her sick was also making the realm sick.

Distantly he was aware that Annbell had said something about this, had said something about the realm being sick and being unsure how it was becoming ill. Now he knew.

With a gasp Maeven came to himself, the coldness of the cave chilling him once more in a way that was more startling than the discovery of what was making the Realm of Earth ill. He shivered, closed his eyes and willed his body and mind to meld once more.

There was another crunch of snow outside, but Maeven could hardly care at that point. Again he practiced his breathing. He focused on his breath, in and out, and each thump of his heart, until his mind felt comfortable inside his own skin again, instead of the figure of the creature he had just flown inside.

Distantly he was aware of a high-pitched squeak. Almost like the sound a puppy would make, but more avian than that.

He tried to push it from his mind, but it kept intruding, demanding attention.

Maeven’s eyes fluttered open, and with a cry, he pushed back against the wall of the cave.

The beast on the other side of the fire was the largest bird he had ever seen. In fact, Maeven didn’t even know birds could get as large as the golden eagle that stared at him from across the tendril of sage smoke twisting into the air.

And it was gorgeous. When he thought of eagles he never thought of something as beautiful as the bird before him. In fact, he didn’t even think the name bird could apply to this creature.

Its feathers were a dazzling mix of brown and gold, seamlessly blended so that a shift of lighting would chase away the brown and make the bird glow golden, as if carved from the metal. Words couldn’t describe what he felt when he saw the creature.

Maeven stared into its honey-colored eyes and felt an awareness inside himself that he had never known before, as though he had unlocked a door that had been there all along without him noticing it.

As he looked into the eyes of the eagle, he became aware of another vision overlaying his own. Oddly, he could see the eagle through his eyes, and see himself through the eyes of the eagle. They felt like kindred, he and the eagle; one in a way that Maeven couldn’t explain.

He knew that when he’d traveled as the eagle moments before that he hadn’t borrowed a body, but had stretched his own into his second shape, a form he had been born with but hadn’t known existed until the sage and caracaff unlocked it.

If only he could figure out how to do it again. But then, as he thought it, the eagle wavered like smoke, and vanished in a glowing spiral of fog out the entrance of the cave, lost to the snow.

He gathered his things, stamped out the fire, and on tired, aching legs, made his way from the cave.

“Here,” Annbell said, pressing the mug of hot cocoa into Maeven’s hands. He would always feel like a child drinking the brew, but never complained. The way the druidess made it, it was some of the best he’d ever had — a somewhat spicy recipe she told him she had picked up while visiting the Guardian of the Realm of Fire. “Tell me again what you saw.” She folded herself into the chair across from Maeven, wrapping herself in her heavy green dressing gown.

Maeven told her again what he had seen and experienced, from the beginning to the very end, though she seemed most interested in the information about Sara.

“Now, forgive me for a moment, but what you’re telling me about my sister is more important than lessons right now, for it concerns realm security.”

He told her everything he had seen, and the impressions he’d gotten. “She is linked to the realm; both of you are. I can’t help feeling that this sickness could even spread to you if the realm gets much worse.”

Annbell looked out the window at the falling snow. The small sitting room in Maeven’s suite was decorated in a mishmash of colors and fabrics, nothing fine and swanky like the rest of the keep.

“I fear you’re right. I never considered that a Realm Guardian could affect the land so. It would make more sense that Sara was getting ill because the land was sick, but then why wouldn’t I get sick as well?” She was thinking out loud, so Maeven didn’t bother answering.

“Alright.” She took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes and sat up straighter. “You found a totem animal then?”

“More than found a totem animal. Honestly Annbell, it felt like I was
one
with this being. It felt like the eagle was me, and I was the eagle. How is such a thing possible?” Maeven asked.

“Well, normally it doesn’t happen this soon, but I guess it could be different for each druid. Druids have the ability to change shape into another creature.”

“I can’t really say I’m surprised,” Maeven said. “It makes sense, after being inside the form, and feeling what I felt there.” But still, he was stunned. He had expected that Annbell would tell him that, but it was so much to take in. Another shape.

“When can I learn to change at will?” Maeven asked.

“You can do that on your own, with no official training. It just takes some deep meditation at first, once you’ve been granted the initial change, as you were. Once you’re more used to it, it will take only a change of thought. Much like slipping into clothes, you will desire to change, and slip your mind into the mind of the creature. Spend time with your second shape; once you know it better, you will change faster.”

“Can only druids shape change? Can’t Sara change too?” Maeven asked.

“Sara can only change because we are linked together. No, druids aren’t the only ones that can change shape, but it is extremely rare for non-druid people to be able to shape-change.”

“So that’s it then. What happens now?” Maeven asked.

“What do you mean?” Annbell wondered.

“With Sara. How will we help her?”

“Well, now that we know she is making the realm sick, we can focus all of our efforts on one issue, getting her better. We have to know what is making her sick first, so we can make her better. You might still be able to help with that, but until we have a clear direction, we are all useless.”

C
ianna had seen this ivory woman before, gliding forward on the wind through the darkness of her dreamscape. Last time she had dreamed of the child necromancer, as if being called onward toward the destination where the girl was. Cianna stood up out of her physical body and nodded to the white woman with the tall golden top hat and white sequined dress.

This time there was no traveling. The woman pushed forth her delicate hand, tipped with golden fingernails, and separated the night like a curtain.

Cianna gazed out of the darkness at the ruins of a city and heard faint crying. She was standing inside a smoldering, shredded skeleton of a city which she didn’t recognize. But Cianna knew from the strange suddenness of the town, the haphazard way it seemed to have just been established with colorful tents among sand dunes, that she was within an encampment inside the Realm of Fire.

Though the fires crackled with life among the pinions and flags of the tents, that was about the only life Cianna could feel about her. There was a coldness to the air that had her rubbing her arms and shuddering in the night, despite the fires consuming homes and dead bodies. Cianna knew that the coldness she was feeling was the chill of death.

Then she lost all control she’d had of the dream, and slipped back into its embrace.

A sudden pop of fire and crackle of wood as a tent collapsed made Cianna jump. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before moving on.

Again she heard a faint crying, and ambled her way through makeshift streets, the sand hardened to a road of sorts, to where she could hear the weeping clearest. The noise she heard, so full of despair, so longing for life, came from a little girl who immediately reminded Cianna much of herself when she was a youth.