The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (20 page)

Their hands were fused together, like wax pooled beneath a candle. They were indistinguishable lumps of flesh and bone, bound together in some forge of power. Each of them, Angelica, Jovian, and one other person that his mind couldn’t quite see, were joined together by their hands. It bothered him that he couldn’t tell who the other person was, and every time he tried to make his eyes see who the person was, the ground would lurch dizzyingly.

But that wasn’t his concern. Maeven approached Angelica and Jovian with hesitant steps. He fell to his knees beside the two of them and reached for Jovian, who looked so peaceful in his slumber. That’s what it was, right? It had to be slumber. If he wasn’t sleeping, that meant. . .

Maeven’s breath caught in his throat, and when he exhaled it was a groan of pain so complete that he couldn’t believe any human could ever feel it without dying. It wasn’t a physical pain, but instead a pain like his heart was folding in on itself. His lungs were refusing to work, and there was a pressure building up in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow around.

His fingers traced the scar that split Jovian’s face diagonally. He brushed away an errant lock of golden hair and straightened the other man’s shirt around his shoulders. Maeven swallowed past the lump, making sure Jovian was comfortable before he did what he needed to do.

He closed his eyes and allowed his fingers to find Jovian’s throat, seeking any sign of life pumping through his neck. Jovian’s skin was cold, hardening, and there was no sign of life to be found.

Maeven folded forward, tears spilling unbidden out of his eyes. He balled his hands into the blood-crusted fabric of Jovian’s shirt and sobbed into his boyfriend’s chest, willing his tears to bring Jovian back to him, willing the wisdom of his calling to transcend the veil of death and call Jovian to his side.

His grief was like a different entity overriding his senses. Maeven shook and shuddered, wracked with pain and tears. His body was reacting to the pain as each and every nerve in his body convulsed with the realization that Jovian was dead.

He pulled Jovian into his lap, and the other two bodies were tugged closer, breaking the triangle they formed on the cold turquoise floor. Jovian rested in his arms like a doll. Maeven remembered one other time, in the Temple of Badock, when he thought Jovian was going to die. Even then he had known grief, but this was different, there was no nursing Jovian back to life and health. Jovian was beyond his ministrations.

Maeven pressed his wet face to Jovian’s dirty one, and his tears ran rivers over the blond’s forehead.

Finally, his head hurting, the sounds of battle no longer filling the air, and the rain of blood abating, Maeven calmed. He wasn’t sure it was possible for his body to create any more tears.

He rested Jovian back on the ground and bent to his lips. Maeven gave his lover one final kiss, his living lips to Jovian’s dead ones.

As he was pulling back, Maeven felt a stabbing pain in the side of his throat. He jumped back, but something held him tight, pinned him with a force as strong as stone. Suddenly the vision faded from his eyes, and he was looking up at the pristine spires of Vorustum-Apaleer.

Black wings opened up around him, sheltering him from sight, and from close to his ear he could feel a stinging pain, and the sounds of some beast of the Otherworld feasting.

In the darkening winter glade Jovian and Angelica saw a wisp of blue light before them. It flickered through the mist of snow, beckoning them forth. They knew this flame; it was the beginning of the trail to Baba Yaga. But they didn’t want to go to the hag right now, not when they were learning so much . . . from where? Jovian thought for a moment, trying to remember where they had been just before this, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember. From the look on Angelica’s face, neither could she.

“We really should return,” Angelica said.

“But where?” Jovian wondered.

“I don’t know. Jovian, what’s going on, why can’t I remember where we need to be?”

Jovian only shrugged. “I think we should just go along with it. Baba Yaga has never led us astray.”

Angelica nodded.

Jovian thought about the licking blue flame, just on this side of his vision from the darkness beyond. The moment he desired to be there, he was whisked through the intervening space and there he stood, before the bone-white torch with the blue fire on top of it. It was the same forest as always, but there was no doubt the trail would take them to something different. Each time they saw Baba Yaga, they were taken to a different place. The first time it was to the forest hag, the second time was the mountain hag.

“What do you think she will be this time?” Jovian asked when Angelica and he had jumped to the third blue flame.

“I don’t know,” Angelica said, and then let her thoughts carry her to the next flame as it wavered into existence.

Jovian followed.

“Do you think maybe we could just will ourselves to her doorstep, instead of to the next flame?” Angelica asked as she scanned the wintery forest for the next flame.

Jovian grumbled. When he saw the next flame, he jumped again. Slowly they were led out of the winter and into a green forest. There was still no sign of sunlight, and this forest was different than the dead forest they had been in the first time.

With each jump they made the forest became warmer and warmer until a haze of mist hung in the air, and vines dangled from the trees like velvety curtains.

“A swamp hag?” Jovian asked Angelica after they’d jumped again. Through the green air, they saw another flame kindle to life, and again they jumped. But this time when they stopped it was in front of a large tree, so large there was no way Jovian could see around it, or even where it started to bend. It was truly like a wall of bark and wood. But there was something strange about it. He could tell this was no simple tree.

“Do you think she lives inside?” Angelica wondered, walking slightly away from Jovian, looking for a way inside.

Jovian turned, waiting to see another blue flame, but no matter how long he looked there was no sign of another flame coming to life in the distance.

“Okay, so we need to get inside of this tree?” Jovian wondered. “Is there a door?”

“No,” Angelica said, squinting at a specific part of the tree. “Come here; can you read something here?”

Jovian joined Angelica where she was staring at a specific spot in the bark that looked pretty unremarkable to him. But just as he was about to give up, something changed. As if being burned into the surface of the wood, words began to form in a slanting script that was just barely legible.

“Seek the secrets held in steel and stone, only then will you know courage,” Jovian read. Again, he read it over several times, because it seemed as though the words were changing even as he read them.

“What does that even mean?” Angelica asked. “Can’t she just say, ‘Hey, do this and I’ll let you in’?” Angelica tossed her hands into the air.

“I suspect it wouldn’t be as fun for her,” Jovian agreed.

“Alright, so the secrets held in steel and stone.” Angelica turned away from the tree, deep in thought. But she didn’t have long to think, because just then there was a rattle and a resounding pop behind them.

Jovian jumped and looked away from the tree. There was movement out there in the swampy forest. He squinted to get a better look, but it was just a shadowy lump moving toward them.

“What do you think—?” Angelica started, but there was another loud pop, and then rustling movement from behind them.

Jovian reached for his shin-buto. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but this wasn’t a friendly entourage coming to greet them. “Get ready,” he told Angelica. “I think we’re about to be attacked.”

“Is that even possible? We aren’t even physical, are we?” she wondered. Jovian pinched her arm, hard. “Ouch, ass!”

“If that hurts, I’m sure an attack would hurt too.”

Angelica scowled at him, rubbed her arm gingerly, and then drew her shin-buto. Immediately it radiated a cold blue light. Jovian only gave it passing consideration before directing his attention back to the shape coming toward them.

He drew his own blade, expecting it to glow somehow, but if it did, he couldn’t see it. If anything it felt heavier in his arms, and the feeling of a shield infused his bones. He scowled at the blade, wishing it was shining like Angelica’s, but then tossed the juvenile thought aside.

“Whatever it is, it moves slowly,” he told Angelica as she took up a position at his back, facing the direction they could hear the other movement coming from. But as he stared, Jovian saw the thing in front of him materialize out of the shadows. Instinctively he stepped back.

“Treant,” he whispered. They hadn’t learned much about them from Destra.

It was as tall as a giant, and oddly human-shaped, but in a very tree-like way. He thought of dryads, but this was much larger, much cruder, and more masculine. It lumbered toward him, lifted a gnarled knob Jovian imagined was a fist, and brought it crashing down. Jovian grabbed Angelica and darted to the side. The ground where they had been was decimated by the heavy blow. Swampy earth and weeds spouted into the air from the force to shower down around them.

But there was no time to waste; the other treant was rounding the large wall-like tree, and coming for them. Its lack of speed was an advantage for Angelica and Jovian. As one treant made to strike a powerful blow again, Jovian darted between its legs and hacked at the back of the creature’s knees. As he suspected, it did nothing other than produce a sticky sap that coated his blade.

“This isn’t going to work!” Jovian yelled to Angelica, who was even now rounding on the other treant. “Try wyrd!” The treant turned back to him, and Jovian focused on fire, felt the heat, felt the burn, channeled it down his arm and to the hand that wasn’t holding the sword. He opened his channel to the wyrd that came from the earth around them, and not the well, as was usual.

As the holy power flooded his being, he felt the fire racing through his veins and out into his hands. His arm lanced up and the fire blasted out from his fingers. Jovian opened his mouth in pain and watched the blood-red fire consume the treant.

The ferns, vines, and fibers that sprouted from the treant were consumed in a rush of dry heat. Jovian allowed himself a moment to relax, catching his breath, but then, amazingly, the treant shook itself off and stepped out of the cloud of fire Jovian had conjured.

Jovian backed up, but a maelstrom of purple lightning, fire, and ice burst from Angelica, hammering the treant before her backwards.

The treant he had been facing lifted its foot and made to stomp down on Angelica. A rush of panic fueled Jovian’s feet, and with speed he’d only ever seen conjured from wyrd, he raced to her aid, placing himself between the giant foot and his sister.

All that was on his mind was the need to protect Angelica. Then, miraculously, something happened. Where his hand touched the pommel of the shin-buto, Jovian felt a second consciousness awaken, unfurl, and infuse his being, like the sword and Jovian’s intentions were becoming one. The sword was now so much more than a sword, and instead like an extension of his will.

The foot came crashing down at Jovian, like a large boulder hurled through the air to plummet on anyone foolish enough to be in its way. Jovian closed his eyes, but that wasn’t necessary—where his sword and the foot met, splinters showered across the ground.

There was the concussion of something large hitting the earth, and a wash of swamp water coursed around Jovian’s ankles. When he opened his eyes, Jovian saw that he was standing in the center of a ring of splinters that had once been the foot of the treant.

“I killed it?” Jovian asked, but he hadn’t. Angelica was hacking and slashing away at the treant behind her, and she was doing damage to the creature, just as Jovian had. But suddenly the treant lashed out with tendrils of tree, which wrapped around Angelica. It gave a giant heave, and Angelica was pulled away from Jovian and thrown deeper into the swamp.