A Guardian of Shadows (Revenant Wyrd Book 4) (23 page)

Flora could only shake her head.

Endless days and nights they seemed to travel, wondering all the while if they would come upon another ruined caravan — which they didn't — but even when they saw friendly caravans of people welcoming them to stay the night, or merchant caravans hawking wares, they were leery of entering. Finally there came a day when they could see the spires and towers of the distant capital city on the horizon.

They drew to a halt and passed around the water skin. Flora was taking the traveling hard, the sun a constant adversary for her, and the cold nights raising havoc with her joints.

“Right there,” she said, gasping for breath. “That's Bahagresh, the sparkling city of light in the south.”

After so long, finally there was an end in sight. Cianna couldn't believe it. They had seen mirages in their travels, but this time Flora sounded so sure of herself. Cianna figured she was right, because the Barrier Mountains could be seen rising red and cracked behind the hazy image of the city.

“How is Clara doing?” Cianna asked, passing the water on to Flora.

“Good,” Devenstar said.

“Any idea where she is in her trials?” Cianna asked.

“No one will know until she passes one,” Pi said, looking down at the blonde girl lying in the sand. They hadn't seen any more activity from Clara since her incident with the kelpies. Cianna thought at times that Clara might be dead, for as little movement as she made. She would sit for hours at night, waiting to see Clara's eyes dart around in dreams, but nothing ever happened. At times she had to scan her to make sure she was still alive.

“Is it natural for it to take so long?” Cianna asked.

“Some people go faster, others slower. It doesn't mark how good the sorcerer is. Actually, no one can really tell the reason some take longer than others,” Flora said. “She's fine, no need to scan her.”

Cianna smiled at the old teacher and turned back to look at the skyline of the city. In the waves of heat rising from the sand, it was hard for Cianna to tell where the city ended and the peaks of the Barrier Mountains behind it started. As she watched, she thought she could see the shimmering domed tops and sharp points of buildings.

“Is it really made of soapstone?” she wondered.

Flora was nodding and squinting into the distance.

“How can they build with that? Wouldn't it collapse?” Cianna asked.

“No idea really, they haven't yet.”

There was little conversation, because even talking seemed to take energy. At night they would rest around a fire, bundled up despite how hot they had been earlier, and sometimes fall fast asleep before they had even finished eating.

The next day as the sun rose Flora made them all stop.

“This is the best part.”

As the sun rose in the east, the city before them came to life with a dazzling display of light that Cianna could almost hear singing through the air. The uppermost tower in the Guardian's Palace shimmered to wakefulness and refracted light across the ground, dancing its way over the dunes and toward them.

Cianna stood for several moments, basking in the light of the tower. The sight was almost enough to make the weeks of traveling through the infernal sands worth it.

With the aid of the movement spell Flora and Pi placed on them, they reached the Red Gates early in the afternoon. The guards there stopped them, seeing Clara on the litter.

“What's wrong with that one?” the guard on the right asked. They were dressed in long white coverings over chain-mail armor. To their side hung swords, and in their hands they held pikes, barring the way for Cianna and her company.

“A sorceress, in her trials,” Flora said, and Cianna wasn't really sure that meant anything to the guards, but when they shared a look she began to wonder.

“We can't allow you to enter,” the left guard said. “The Realm Guardian isn't allowing sorcerers in the city.”

“But the Realm Guardian
is
a sorcerer,” Cianna interjected.

“Azra Akeed is my
aunt
,” Flora said.

“I'm sorry,” the guard said.

“I am too. If you’ll forgive me, I think my old bones need to rest here for a moment,” Flora said.

“By all means,” the right-hand guard said, and they stepped back to their watch.

Flora sat down, and Cianna looked around at the Red Gate and the surrounding wall keeping the city closed off. She’d always thought soapstone was supposed to be green, and some of the buildings inside appeared to be green, but most of the stone was orange. She couldn't see much inside except the hardened sand that made a road leading in and curved sharply to the right and out of sight.

“What are you doing?” Pi asked, drawing Cianna's attention away from the inspection of the city beyond the wall.

“I need to talk to my aunt, and they won't let me, so I’m sending her a message.” In her hands Flora conjured a red orb. As she spoke into it Cianna could see the words she uttered slipping over the surface of the orb. She was entranced that she could read parts of the message even as she heard Flora request an audience with her aunt.

Once finished, Flora sealed the orb with a puff of breath, and tossed it in the air above her head. The orb whizzed away toward the uppermost tower of the green Guardian's Palace and vanished from sight through an open window.

“Now we wait,” Flora said.

It didn't take long for a response. A dazzling red orb came back out of the tower, floated down to Flora, and the old sorceress caught it. She popped it with a fingernail and a melodious, feminine voice came from within.

“We have had much trouble with uprisings regarding sorcerers since the corruption of the well. I cannot grant you leave to stay within the city walls, but I will allow you to rest for a night here. Please understand, niece, it is for your own protection that I will not permit you to stay.”

Flora sighed and rested her head in her hands.

“Randolph will bring you to the palace,” the orb continued. “From here we have a rojo prepared to take sorcerers to the Desert of the Trostly’n, where all sorcerers from the capital have taken safe haven during these times.”

The message drew to a close, and the guard on the right, supposedly Randolph, nodded once, though he didn't look happy about the orders.

Randolph led them into the city and around the sharp bend Cianna had seen earlier. It wasn't until they were around the corner that an impossibly large city opened up before them. The front half of the city was so tall that Cianna got dizzy just looking up at some of the buildings. In the middle, nearest the Mountains, was the Guardian's Palace, a towering building with many domed roofs, blazing green in the hot sun.

Behind the palace, cut deep into the face of the mountain, lay the rest of the city. Trails and paths led back into the mountain at ground level, creating a hidden city of sorts. Up the face of the mountain traced roads and openings where there were more homes, open on the face of the mountain with nothing but curtains keeping those that walked the paths from the houses.

Everywhere Cianna looked the buildings were open, with nothing but vibrantly colored cloths shifting in a slight breeze.

“Don't they ever worry about rain or thieves getting in?” Cianna asked.

“It's not something that happens. People here help one another. The desert is an unforgiving creature; they work more like a family than like separate households,” Flora told her.

Nearly an hour later, traversing the winding, downhill roads toward the city center, the guard led them to a small yard surrounding the palace. It was the first bit of green grass that Cianna had seen yet, and it encircled the entire palace. Beyond the gate, inside the yard, there was a large white fountain where people could come and gather water as they needed it.

Randolph stopped before a palace guard, and charge of Cianna's group changed hands. The guard pushed aside the golden curtain that served as a front door and led them inside.

They went up so many halls and stairs that Cianna nearly got lost, before they stopped at one room that held a set of the only doors Cianna had seen since entering the city.

The doors opened, and there was a small sitting room beyond with a table that took up nearly the entire length of it. Standing, framed in the red glow of a curtained window, was Azra Akeed, the Guardian of the Realm of Fire.

Her clothing was light, her upper half barely covered in a bright orange fabric, while voluminous skirts of gauzy material hung from her waist. Her feet were bare, and her curly brown hair was swept back and twisted down her back with yellow and orange scarves intertwined with the locks of her hair.

She turned when they entered, her full red lips parting in a smile as she saw her niece. She stepped down from the window frame and came to them, setting a stone goblet on the table as she passed.

“Flora!” she said, embracing her niece. “It is so nice to see you!”

“Aunt, I have missed you,” Flora said, returning the embrace.

“It has been too long,” Azra agreed. “Come, you must all be famished.”

It was only when the Realm Guardian mentioned it that Cianna noticed the table was set with stone plates, goblets, a decanter of crystal clear water, cold meats and fresh fruits.

Devenstar made sure to place Clara in a chair at the table, even though she wouldn't be eating. It was difficult for Cianna to think of Clara as a living person in her catatonic state, and it made eating with her that much stranger because Cianna couldn't help feel like she was dining with the dead.

Cianna tried hard to school herself as she sat down at her spot. She didn't overload her plate with food as Devenstar and Pi did. Though she went back several times, Cianna ate slowly so she wouldn't embarrass herself or make herself sick.

“There is a restlessness,” Azra said, setting down her goblet of water. “Do you feel it, Flo?”

“I suspected it was the Well of Wyrding,” Flora answered her aunt.

“That's how it started, but the well is cleansed now. Meditate on the restlessness tonight and tell me what you feel. To the west gathers a great power. A dark power. And many people have been spotted traveling there, past the Barrier Mountains.”

“But past the Barrier Mountains is nothing but mist and ocean!” Flora argued.

Azra nodded. “Yet there is something more. Something not of the realm of man. I feel it like a dark annoyance on my conscious, though the power itself isn't chaotic. It is unknowable, enigmatic.”

“What do you think it is?” Cianna asked.

“Something I've never felt before, energy of a sort much alien to mankind,” Azra told her. “And there is more.”

“More?” Flora asked.

“The other Realm Guardians have reported uprisings concerning sorcerers much like I find here. Sorcerers aren't welcome in cities, even now that the well is mending. Something is coming. Something dark.”

Flora closed her eyes. “We have seen nothing of this hostility toward sorcerers.”

“Of course you wouldn't, you are but travelers without a web of intelligence at your fingertips. Us Guardians sense something is out there, a gathering force. The well brought back the caustic sorcerers, but there are alarist too, and they are coming into the light, laying waste to small towns and villages.”

“How could we not have known?” Flora asked.

“How could you have?” Azra asked. “It is for this reason I will not allow you to stay here. I fear you aren't safe even within my walls.”

“So tomorrow we head to the Desert of the Trostly'n,” Flora said, resigned to staying somewhere away from her aunt. “Maybe after a short rest we can make our way back to the school.”

“But the school was destroyed,” Pi said. “What if we go back and it’s a trap, full of those hunters?”

“Then we take it back,” Flora said. “I'm sure it didn't fall completely; we will need to help rebuild. There will be plenty of things we can do.” Flora sighed deeply. “We should never have left.”

“There is word from the north that even a Guardian there is under some kind of attack,” Azra said.

“What?” Cianna asked, nearly coming to her feet. “I stay with them, they are my mothers.”

Azra nodded. “Sara Bardoe is ailing; there is talk that she might not make it.”

“But she is a sorceress — how can she die?” Deven asked.

“The only way I know of is by beheading, but her health fails more and more every day.”

“I need to get back to her,” Cianna said. “I need to leave now!”

“But you can't!” Pi said. “The Necromancers’ Mosque is so close! You have to finish!”

“Necromancer?” Azra asked, looking sidelong at Cianna. “That is about a day’s travel from here, into the mountains.”

Cianna sat speechless.

“I can send an escort with you,” Azra said.

“No, I need to go the last way alone.” Cianna wasn't sure how she knew that, but she did. The last leg of her journey into the mountains had to be alone.

“In other news,” Azra said, trying to change the conversation for the better. “It appears the Shadow Realm has a new Guardian also. She has actually sent word to us!”