The Bonds of Blood (18 page)

You mettle too much in my
affairs, Joya Neferis,
the man’s voice
said, and she felt a strange power entering her, taking control.
She was suddenly ejected from the door and slammed back into her
body, still gripped in the tingling, numbing pain.

She felt each vein in her body
protesting the intense heat of her blood boiling through them. She
again tried to scream, but now Joya could not draw even a single
breath. The strange, alien power within her twisted, wretchedly
pulling at her flesh.

She wrenched her palm from the door,
the force propelling her across the entryway. Her head cracked
sickeningly against the stone wall opposite the door, and Joya sank
into blackness.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

_A
ngelica sighed and let
her
head fall into her hands. Her feet
rested comfortably on the cold floor, and she relaxed at the edge
of her bed. The sting of the poison was finally leaving her body,
and Angelica felt as though she could sleep for a week as she was
now so weary from the struggle against the noxious onslaught of the
dark flower.

The events of tonight seeped into her
memory bank like some perverse nightmare. And also like a
nightmare, Angelica could not remember all of what had happened,
but slowly key events and phrases came back to her.

The memory of the cauldron made her
shiver, and with the memory came the reminder of the weakness they
had both felt just before they were whisked away from Baba Yaga.
She had given them something, an orb, but it wasn’t
physical.

Angelica furrowed her brow and tried to
remember why the orb had been so important then; the crone had said
it was the Will to do that which must be done, whatever that meant.
Angelica could not, for the life of her, figure out why the light
had been so important that Baba Yaga had desired an audience with
the two of them.

Suddenly Angelica remembered why they
had gone there, and she sat up in bed, realizing that the wind was
still howling viciously outside.

Maybe it was all just a
dream?
Maybe none of that was real, and it
was just a nightmare.
Hurling the thought
aside, Angelica shook her head, a little miffed that what Aramaiti
had forced them to do might have been all for nothing.
At any rate, I will talk to Jovian in the morning
about it and see what he thinks.

Angelica
, a voice suddenly came to her, and at first Angelica did not
hear it for it was so low and insubstantial that she thought it was
a product of her own mind.
Angelica
, it came again, and again
she resisted listening as it seemed to be nothing more than a
memory, or herself conjuring a voice. Fitfully she rolled over,
trying to calm her mind from the horrors she had witnessed in the
dream world.

It is me, Aramaiti; I am so
far from you now that I am weakening. Soon I will lose all contact
with you. Listen,
the voice, though
incredibly weak, was urgent and full of dismay.

“What? What is it?” Angelica suddenly
straightened up, her weariness all but forgotten in a wave of
adrenaline brought on by the urgent voice of the
Aramaiti.

Jovian is in mortal danger
and needs your help; go to him
. Before
Aramaiti could finish what she was saying, Angelica was on her feet
and running for her brother’s room. Her legs couldn’t carry her
fast enough down the hall and to his closed door. Angelica threw
open the door and rushed in.

Jovian lay lifeless, naked, and
peacefully on the floor, his body crumpled as if it had just
haphazardly fallen there. An extinguished candle lay next to him,
and his mug, on its side, bone dry.

Angelica fell to her knees beside him
and lifted him awkwardly to her. There was no time to think, only
to react. Angelica felt as though she were numb, as if a different
force was taking over her body, helping her do what needed to be
done now. With a bit of a struggle, she got him into the bed and
covered him with blankets.

“What now?” Angelica asked the
Aramaiti. “How do I correct the poison?” There was now no doubt in
her mind that the events of the night had not just been a dream.
But the Aramaiti must have already passed out of range to
communicate with her any longer, for the voice did not
answer.

Angelica thought back on what they had
been anxiously told when they were being whipped through the
darkness from Baba Yaga’s place to here.

“Water!” she exclaimed triumphantly,
and rushed from her brother’s side with his cup in hand.

Jovian felt sluggish, heavy. Nothing
made any sense, least of all why he should feel this way. The
memory of the last few hours was nothing more than a blur. He was
cold, despite the heavy coverings he felt on him, and he shivered
uncontrollably as feeling finally began returning to his numb
fingers. He tried to open his eyes, but he could not. Jovian’s
teeth chattered raucously in his mouth, and he wondered why he felt
so cold, how it could be possible at all.

There was a presence by his side,
sitting on the bed.

Images and thoughts came to him then.
There had been water. And his hair was wet. What had
happened?

He couldn’t remember anything after
taking the toxic brew, only that there was such brilliant light and
he had been pulled out of that, condemned to the worst type of fate
he could imagine.

Why was he so cold?

He tried to lift his hands to his moist
forehead, but that was still too much for him to accomplish, and in
spite of his attempts his arms continued to lie like heavy weights
over his stomach.

There was a hand, however, brushing
back his short golden curls, and he tried to open his eyes again to
see the hand that comforted him. His eyelids refused to
budge.

He knew this presence though; he sensed
a familiarity beside him.

Slowly his head was tilted up, and a
goblet was pressed to his lips.

Jovian felt a sweet wet liquid passing
over his lips and tongue, slipping down his throat to chase away
the bitter dryness in his mouth.

Using all of his effort, his eyes
rolled open, and through blurred vision he looked up at a woman
crouched beside him, her hand holding the goblet poised at his
mouth. She was little more than a blur, and in the darkness Jovian
could not make out a single feature about her except for her white
gown.

He moved his head away, and the liquid
stopped. “Aramaiti?” he whispered, and the figure shook its
head.

“No, Jove, it’s me,” came Angelica’s
anxious voice.

“Angie? Am I dead?” he
asked.

“No, not any more, though you almost
stayed that way,” she said. “You must sleep now though,” Angelica
said, rubbing her hand over his forehead. And without another
thought, Jovian drifted off into restful sleep.

Chapter
Fourteen

_T
he sun had just
crested
the horizon, bathing the sky in
hues of pink and purple. As the painted clouds passed over the
Mountains of Nependier, the first of the morning birds started
their lament to the day. The sun burned off most of the mist that
clung to the plains of the Holy Realm. In its warm light the
morning glories and other flowers perked up tiredly as they were
roused from their nightly rest.

The sun painted the tops of the towers
and spires in the Ivory City, and rushed across the Chaundebar
Plains. The ancient wise trees of the Forest of Life (who most
people said possessed a consciousness far beyond that of mortal
men) seemed to yawn and stretch their massive branches in greeting
to their oldest of friends. Even the Pillar of Light near the
center of the Holy Realm seemed to greet the sun, though it shined
a light of its own through even the darkest of nights.

In Meedesville the baker began opening
his shop as the town slowly came to life with fires being stoked
and tired eyes being rubbed. The golden light didn’t stop at
Willabanter Ford, and instead continued on. Far on the western
reaches of the Holy Realm, in a large stone plantation, the day had
begun some hours ago, as that is when the house had risen to make
the last preparations for the journey the young Neferis’s and Grace
would make that day.

No matter how much Grace argued with
Joya about the clothes she wanted to bring, she could not get the
girl out of the loose-skirted cotton dress.

“Look,” Joya argued, “the sleeves are
open enough that I’m not restricted by movement.” Grace gave up
after the umpteenth try. At least Joya had not insisted on wearing
her corset, and the outfit did make her look more like a peasant
than an heiress to the Neferis Plantation.

Joya smiled at Angelica, quickly
binding her hair up as she looked over her younger sister,
positively dressed like a man in her tunic and trousers of pale
hunting green. In fact, Angelica was dressed much the same way as
Jovian was, the only difference being Angelica’s tunic was a bit
more formfitting than Jovian’s, showing the undeniable fact that
she truly was a woman.

“Are we ready?” Grace asked as they all
gathered in the parlor. “We have everything then? Bags loaded,
weapons sheathed, money purses?”

They all nodded affirmative, and Grace
turned to Dauin.

“Take care of them,” he said quietly.
His eyes widened with intensity as he met the old woman’s
gaze.

“Dear Dauin,” Grace said with a
careless smile, trying to make light of a situation that they both
deemed full of doom, “I would think of doing nothing
less.”

He sighed.

“Now,” she said, snapping her fingers
behind her, “go prepare your horses and make sure all is ready.”
Once they left, she took both of Dauin’s hands in her own. “You
know that no harm will come to them as long as I draw breath,
right?”

He nodded.

“And you know that I have a lot of
breath in me?”

He smiled and nodded again. “There is
no doubt that you are full of breath, Grace.”

A crease parted her lips, popping up
more wrinkles than before. “Good, and you know that Arael himself
would have one bitch of a time keeping me from protecting your
heirs right?”

“Arael himself di—” but whatever Dauin
was going to say was cut short by Destra clearing her throat as she
came into the parlor.

“I wanted to see them off,” she
announced.

“They are in the stables now, Destra,”
Dauin said, trying to decide if he should let her see them through
the first day or not. The look in Grace’s eyes told him that this
would not be a wise decision, for Destra venturing only part of the
way would be worse than not letting her go at all.

Destra left through the front door
instead of through the series of corridors and chambers the others
had just taken. A gust of wind rustled Grace’s long silver hair
before Destra shut the door firmly behind her.

“Yes, Dauin,” Grace said, picking up
the conversation where they had left off, “I will keep them safe,
and Chaos itself would tremble at the fury I would unleash if it
tried to stop me.”

Dauin’s slumped shoulders straightened
a little before he bowed his head and pulled the woman into a tight
embrace. For so long he had thought of Grace as his mother, and now
she was leaving him. His children leaving were one thing; Grace and
his children were almost more than he could bear.

“I love you, kid,” Grace said
affectionately, rubbing his back.

He pulled away and took her gloved hand
as he helped her through the corridors to the stables.

“—
and the weapons are
properly sheathed?” Destra was asking Jovian as Dauin and Grace
entered the brightly lit stables. The doors were wide open,
inviting both the sun and stiff wind that still lingered outside.
Grace’s dark green robes blew about her as she fastened her gray
cloak over her packs on the back of her horse.

“Are we ready, Holly?” Grace asked the
young mare lovingly as she patted her back. The mare snorted and
tossed her head energetically, ready to be off stretching her legs.
“That’s a good girl,” the old lady affirmed, feeding her a carrot
that Holly chomped down hungrily.