The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) (27 page)

“Would then manipulate Pharoh’s wyrd,” Angelica said with a gasp.

“But why Joya?” he asked again.

“I don’t know, Jovian!” Angelica nearly yelled at him, becoming frustrated with all his questioning and none of his helping. “I think this line of thought bears some pondering though. It is the most plausible reasoning for wanting both of them. If there had been any desire to destroy the bloodline the Tall Stranger would have killed me when he had the chance; did any of you think about that? We have no reasoning for their wanting both Amber and Joya unless they are going to manipulate Amber with Joya.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Jovian said. “Amber is smarter than that,” he protested, but his words lacked conviction.

“What if it was you and I and we were in their situation?” Angelica asked skeptically and he only looked down at his feet as he ambled them around. “I would do anything to keep you safe.”

“This sucks,” he flopped on the bed with a sigh.

“It does, but who knows—it could be a diversion.”

“I don’t know … it makes the most sense out of anything we have heard, given who we are and who our forebears are.”

“Unless Porillon was counting on Grace telling us of our past, or our demanding to know after her suggestion of it in the Foothills of Nependier. Maybe they are trying to get us to look one way, you know, think they want to manipulate the medallion when really there is something else going on below the surface,” Angelica hazarded.

“That sounds a little far-fetched, Angie.”

“I am not so sure, not where Porillon is concerned at least. I don’t think we should rule out any possibility where she is concerned.”

“I agree,” Jovian said.

“Jove?”

“Yes, Angie?”

“I am scared,” and in those words were all the weakness she felt.

G
race had not done this in some time, but when she had done it in the past the times had been numerous. She removed the jar from her pack and sat it on the small table in her room, staring at it for several moments. Rama had come in while they were all dining and lit the fire so Grace’s room was beginning to warm sufficiently, which was good; the fire and warmth were both key elements in this particular ritual.

Still she stared at it. Taken too many times, the Flying Ointment could have serious consequences on the user; Rosalee was a testimony to that. Grace had stopped using it when signs of addiction blossomed in Rose.

The jar looked innocent enough. Only Grace knew better. The green paste looked good enough to eat, but in its depths were toxins that, once entered into the bloodstream, would release the mind from its physical trappings, and allow the soul to soar free.

With a sigh she stood and disrobed and  uncoiled her hair, which was a chore in itself, and stared into the full-length mirror by the fire. The blaze cast golden light on pale, wrinkled skin.

Reluctantly she uncorked the bottle and began smearing the pungent ointment over her skin. She would not be using this if it was not an absolute emergency she do so. An emergency was the precise reason she had wanted this, to see what was hidden, to walk the realm of light and find that which eluded her.

With the ointment smothered on, Grace lay before the fire and let the cracking, fragrant blaze lull her into a near dreaming state. She knew that when the light tickling came to her body she must not move. Grace had not done this in a while, but when the toxic mixture of herbs began to work, its mingling with the blood always felt the same. Even if Grace had not Spirit Walked in a hundred years, she would never forget the feeling of lightheadedness as one body became two and the mind conceived of both forms forcing itself to be in two places at once. Then with a feeling like cold silk sliding over her face, Grace was lucid of more than just the physical trappings, the mortal coil.

Grace was made of light, made of color. She felt her mind disengage from her body, felt her consciousness take form into its true identity. She floated above her naked body before the roaring fire, and looked down at herself on the black and white rug, her body now more wrinkled and aged than the last time she had done this.

She allowed her Body of Light to float downward until her feet touched the floor. To those sensitive enough to this type of working she may appear as a spirit, a ghost, but to most she would appear as nothing more than empty air.

She reached deep inside of herself and searched for the memory of the Tall Stranger and how he had felt when they first met him in the Ravine of Aaridnay. It didn’t take long for that oily feeling to come to her, and when it did it filled her with a shudder of pure disgust.

During Spirit Walking it was very simple to travel. Most often all one had to do was project an urge into their mind such as “I want to go to the roof,” and they would instantly be on the roof. It was also feasible for one to say “find the Tall Stranger,” and by using the memory of the person’s feel—the feeling one got from that person—they would instantly be transported to that person’s presence. Going to a person you had never seen before or been in contact with was difficult at best, nigh impossible at worst.

So it was that Grace used her memory of the Tall Stranger, coupled with the command, “Take me to him.” Her mind found nothing.

She nearly staggered. No person had nothing about them.

What was happening?

Maybe she did it wrong?

“Find the Tall Stranger,” Grace commanded again, watching her younger reflection in the mirror as the eyebrows creased together as it urgently tried to obey her command.

Still nothing.

Maybe it was because she was not using his name?

No, that wasn’t it. She often referred to Rosalee in the Spirit Walk as “that crazy old coot,” and so forth, and she was always taken to her. The mind did not need a name to know where you really desired to go, so “Tall Stranger” should be all she needed.

How could he not be? He wasn’t dead, and even if he was he would still leave behind him a residual wyrd. Everyone had wyrd, even if only wyrders could manipulate it. It was wyrd that allowed one to find another in the Spirit Walk. How could she not find him? Unless …

The answering thought, the one that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was true, nearly made her lose her grip on the Spirit Walk, despite the drugs that induced it.

The words echoed in her mind, Angelica telling her:
“He also told me that I would not have to worry about him attacking me with his wyrd because someone had stolen it from him.”

“Great Mother Goddess,” Grace gasped. “That is not possible!”

She could hardly believe it. For someone to be so completely devoid of wyrd that they seemingly did not exist was unbelievable; for someone to have taken all that wyrd from another person was unfathomable.

It didn’t take long for Grace’s mind to jump to who the thief might be.

“Angelica broke his spell that night,” Grace reasoned with her reflection. “That has never been done before, but what if she did more than that? What if the storm was not broken, but turned inward back at him, and burned out his wyrd?” She studied her face in the mirror. “Is that even possible?” she asked herself, and for a moment she honestly expected an answer.

An answer she got, but instead of the answer about this mystery of the Tall Stranger and his wyrd, another answer found her.

The real person you seek has more than enough wyrd for her to be found on the Spirit Plane.
Her reflection told her with a smile.

“Joya!” Grace smiled back. “She I can find.” And no sooner had she said this but she did, her mind swirling through the inn searching for Joya’s wyrd that was so like that of her Aunt Pharoh’s.

A blessing and a surprise struck her then. Joya was still within Fairview Heights, albeit two floors lower than Grace was, but still within the establishment, which meant Dalah also harbored the Tall Stranger.

“But it is not her fault,” Grace said coming back to her room once finding the location of his room, the room where Joya was held captive. “She could not feel his wyrd so she didn’t know who he was.”

Shouldn’t that have risen all kinds of warning though? If Dalah could not feel his wyrd, shouldn’t she have known something was off? Of course there were hundreds of explanations why she didn’t think anything strange about this, and the first and most obvious was money. Dalah was a business woman and so needed to be non-discriminative when it came to tenants.

But if he had no wyrd, could he be affected by it? Grace didn’t know, but Goddess willing she was going to find out—tonight.

The sensation of merging with the physical body after having been the Body of Light was one of trepidation and discouragement as Grace began to feel heavier and heavier, coming to settle once more in the physical body with all its limitations.

Once coming back to the body, the drug wore off fast, though it was still necessary to wash it from the body to stop a relapse from happening. Grace gathered her white cotton bathing robe and hurried across the empty common room to the bathing room, not bothering to dress in her haste.

She drew a bath just deep enough to wash in, and wasted no time scrubbing the last of the pungent ointment off her flesh. Once done with that she donned the robe, leaving her silver hair free to cascade down her back, and made her way back to her room.

Grace selected a black dress from her closet and dressed quickly.

The transformation one simple change could make on her was astonishing. Grace was no longer the warm old woman that many saw her as; instead she looked as pale as one of death’s three wisdoms, and she intended to inflict pain like one as well. Her silver hair both silky and shimmering looked even more like the cold metal it resembled resting against the black, her flesh like white parchment—an effect that made the lines of her face less warm and more cold. This was the reason Grace never wore black. She looked less like the loving grandmother and more like the dalua sorceress that lived in the woods, waiting to consume the flesh of so many children. In this regalia even her watery blue eyes looked more piercing than normal, angrier, lethal.

Grace closed the wardrobe and placed her one weapon, the silver dagger, in the sash of her robe.

The common room was still blissfully deserted, though lights still burned in Jovian and Angelica’s rooms. A brief stop at the smoldering fireplace gave her opportunity to retrieve a lit oil lamp, though her other hand would remain free for other options.

The hall, she noticed, was nearly as devoid of life as the main room of her suite had been, with the exception of servants and attendants making their way from rooms where they cleaned, or served, to other work-related destinations. There was slight nodding in Grace’s direction when she passed, a gesture more polite than scrambling away from this wythe that stalked the halls.

If she had been more observant than she was, Grace might have noticed Rama trailing her silently through the hall. Most assuredly she was curious on behalf of her mistress as to where this guest was heading dressed in such a fashion so soon after one of her charges had come up missing.

Two flights passed faster than Grace would have expected, and before long she stood outside the door of the Tall Stranger, an eerie blue glow coming from beyond the door in such a fashion as to backlight the jam and spill out into the hall, bathing Grace’s bare feet in icy fire.

A crash in the room instigated Grace’s urgent attempts to open the door.

“Go away. I am fine,” came the oily voice of the Tall Stranger from beyond.

“Oh, you won’t be,” Grace said removing the long dagger from her belt. Aiming it at the door, she whispered one word, one of the most lethal words she could have spoken at any piece of wood: “Splinter.”

The door blew inward in fragments by the thousands. They were caught up in the torrent of the room, whirling around the blue air like a horrific tornado. There was something akin to smoke in the air.

Joya lay bound and gagged to the bed, her feet and wrists lashed to foot and headboard, as if she would be able to get free in her current comatose state. The sight instantly infuriated Grace, and she took a step into the room, the wood of the floor shuddering in fright at her passing. Here was one that could control and manipulate the very fabric of wood itself.

“What have you done to her?” she raged, her eyes quickly finding where the Tall Stranger sat in the darkest corner, one finger lazily toying with his lower lip, his legs crossed casually at the knee.