She had eventually stopped thinking. She knew she had to move on, but she couldn’t with the souls gathered about her.
“I can’t do anything for you!” Cianna screamed at the stars one night as the tortured whispering of the dead closed in on her. She watched the stars whirl through the night through a haze of tears. No longer were they dead spirits — now they were wythes, hateful of the living and bent on consuming her. She could not let that happen.
Her only salvation lay in the Necromancers’ Mosque far to the south. She had to get there. The dreams had returned, and Cianna knew that the temple was not pleased with her lack of haste. It seemed that there was no excuse good enough for the Necromancers’ Mosque save death, whereupon it would have her anyway.
She had not traveled through any villages yet, but instead had skirted around them, fearing that the living might add to her insanity. She was near breaking now, and couldn’t bear any more pain.
Cianna was feeling the corruption nearly as keenly as the Evyndelle, which consumed the poisoned wyrd. Being of angelic lineage meant that she should not be feeling this, for she was not human. Even if she were only part angel, which she wasn’t, she shouldn’t have been feeling this for she would be split breed, and the angelic side would have won out for it was more powerful blood than human blood.
Weeks she traveled, and each day she was lucky to make it a few miles, when normally she would have been able to travel much farther. At night she didn’t sleep — she
couldn’t
sleep, for in dreams the dead were stronger, and the threat of losing her being to them was greater.
Cianna remembered vividly the first night she had slept, and didn’t want to revisit that again. She had been attacked, hands clawing, dead, rotting faces screaming their torment as dirty, corroding nails scraped at her face and arms. Even now she bore the festering wounds from that night, for while they had attacked her in her dreams, they had attacked her nonetheless.
Over the weeks it had taken Cianna to travel from her own private Otherworld with the chaos dwarves, she had noticed curious differences in the people she happened to meet on the road in contrast to those she had lived with before. She was nearing the border of the Realm of Water, one of the realms that was more foreign than all the others, in that it had its own language and might as well have been a different world all together. The oddity of the cross-language, a mixture of the Realm of Earth language she was used to and the Realm of Water’s, she found harsh.
Cianna didn’t have time to really compare and study the people, for normally when they saw her pale face, sunken, blackened eyes and stringy hair, they steered clear of her, often making the symbol of the Goddess before them to ward off Chaos. If she had been in more control of her faculties Cianna would have found their fear of her funny — to think, the daughter of Pharoh LaFaye a being to fear! It was no surprise that they thought she was one of the harmful wyrders who haunted and hunted them now, victims at the mercy of their born abilities.
Was she? Cianna wasn’t sure. She couldn’t really use her power effectively, and normally never at her own bidding. She knew that she was beginning to go crazy, but was she really one of them? A dangerous wyrder who would lash out and kill because of the corruption coursing through her? She didn’t think so, but more and more she was seeing the faces of the screaming dead overlying those of living, traveling folk. More and more she wanted to lash out at the dead made physical with anything in her. One time she had actually craved the blood of a passing traveler, and stopped herself in mid-motion as she neared the unwary man.
Was she a rephaim? One of angelic beings who lived off the death of others? Weren’t they only half-breeds? She was full angel. She couldn’t be one of them!
The good news was that as she traveled closer to the Realm of Water these urges and feelings passed, as the dead began to lose power over her. Cianna had read before that the dead lost power as they neared water, and could not reach a person if water separated them. It could be, she reasoned, that the dead were losing power over her because she traveled toward the marshy border of the Realm of Water. It was enough to make her want to stay in the Realm of Water permanently, Necromancers’ Mosque be damned. She could live with the nightmares. Cianna didn’t think she would be able to live with the tormented dead. Inwardly she shuddered at the thought of crossing the large desert expanse of the Realm of Fire.
Eventually she braved sleeping, when the protection of the water coursed over her and the dead became only tormented whispers in her mind and tingling afflictions to her skin. She had nightmares, sure enough — nightmares of the dead, nightmares encouraging her ever onward toward the Necromancers’ Mosque — but that was something she could live with, something that didn’t harm her any more than startling her awake and burning images upon her psyche.
Nightmares of the Necromancers’ Mosque didn’t leave abrasions on her skin like the wythes did. They also didn’t sap her of energy or stop her from moving on when the dawn came. They also signified something else; the dawn
would
come, and she would live to see another day, something that had not been assured when she was haunted by the souls.
She began to see pilgrims along the roads and paths through the Realm of Earth when she actually joined a road. She knew from the whispering of the dead that these pilgrims were those without home or family any longer, those forsaken by the towns and villages they used to serve.
The closer she traveled toward Brashenar in the weeks to come the more it seemed like an exodus of wyrders, as troves upon troves of them emerged from the city, now pilgrims in an unfriendly land. The inhabitants of the Great Realms were beginning to understand that wyrd, having once been their saving grace, was now their bane, and were systematically eradicating the problem from their midst.
Wyrders wandered here and there, looking for purchase and a new life in a hostile land. As she passed, Cianna watched those traveling as wyrd rebounded and backfired on its users. One woman, merely trying to ignite wet wood for her campfire, went up in flames herself, swiftly and loudly. The flames were angry, not the subtle flames Cianna was sure the woman had intended. Her death was fast; the fire was like a living being, eating away at her flesh like a ravenous beast. As soon as the flesh had been removed from her body the flames vanished in a gust, and one more whisper was added to the population of wythes now taking up quiet residency in Cianna’s mind.
She shivered and passed on, unable to do anything for the smoldering corpse. The fire had happened so swiftly and exacted its polluted vengeance so completely that the woman had been beyond help before Cianna’s mind could even react to the horror.
She traveled for a week or more, seeing many of the same occurrences, and the whole time the tortured dead came less and less to her, and finally parted from her vision and mind all together.
She came upon a campfire late one night, not a day after she passed the towering stone walls of the brilliant city of Brashenar. She tried to avoid the people gathered around it, not knowing how they would respond to her being so close. She had seen several things while traveling, many times hostile things, but one of the most comforting was the way wyrders banded together in their new exiled lives, trying to find land and homes together. The tragedy of the Well of Wyrding was bringing together wyrders from all walks of life, united in survival, and making friends of them.
“Hey there, stranger,” a pleasant voice called from the direction of the fire Cianna was trying desperately not to see. She ignored the voice and kept walking. “Why don’t you come share our fire for the night?”
“Sorry,” Cianna said, not wanting to be rude. Her voice came out raspy and hollow from her long weeks without talking. She wondered if she looked like a wythe herself, hair streaming and arms bound tight around her chest, warding off the cold of the dead which still clung feebly to her. “I really must press on.”
“Oh, yeah, that would be the good thing to do when conditions are so right for it,” the voice said merrily and the others gathered with the woman giggled a little. Cianna could not help but smile as well. The woman’s voice held no hostility, but instead something refreshing that Cianna thought didn’t exist in the world anymore — humor. “Come on,” she urged. “The fire’s warm, and it’s such a cold night. The food is edible, though I don’t claim that it’s good. I still haven’t found anything that Deven is good for; thought maybe cooking would be his strong suit.” The woman sighed hopelessly and Cianna stepped closer, inexplicably drawn to the warm companionship this group shared.
“Don’t worry,” a man called out. “We haven’t used our wyrd in several weeks. You have nothing to fear from us.”
“Devenstar’s right, there’s no need to approach us like a pack of rabid dogs. We might bite, but it’s only out of fun,” the original woman joked scandalously and Cianna laughed, finally joining them at the roaring fire.
She sat as a bowl of stew and mug of coffee were pressed into her hands, and she fell into them with a hunger she didn’t think she could harbor. The girl beside her smiled.
“My name is Pi,” she announced, holding out her hand. Cianna looked down at her full hands and looked back at the woman, her mouth full of food. “Right,” Pi said, laughing. Cianna studied her silken black hair, slanted eyes, and fey features in the flickering light. She was a short woman, small-breasted and even smaller of waist and hips. Her face not only held a warm smile, but skin the most clear olive color she had ever seen. Her features were complemented by the sage green dress she wore. Cianna wondered if she’d been evicted from the city in the middle of her routine life. Her leaving didn’t appear to be planned, just like the others surrounding the fire, who were all dressed for court life or life in an academy, instead of life on the road.
“You are from the Realm of Water,” Cianna said to Pi.
“What gave it away?” Pi joked.
“I think it was your eyes,” the one called Devenstar said.
“Maybe your hair,” a blonde girl said.
“Or maybe that my name sounds more like a bodily function than it does something you would call your child?” Pi said laughing, which started them all laughing. “This is Devenstar,” Pi said, indicating the blond who’d told Cianna they were safe. He was tall and willowy; his eyes were a clear blue color and appeared somehow cat-like in their nature. Cianna felt something deep within her stir as she studied the man’s strong face with its weeks’ worth of golden stubble. His eyes were sunken naturally instead of through sleep deprivation, and his nose was long and sharp. Cianna brought herself up short as she caught herself studying the defined body under his golden tunic and trousers. “We just call him Deven, though. This is Clara,” she referred to a blonde who looked as though she could have been Deven’s sister, with similar build and blue eyes. “Chy, and Flora,” Pi said, pointing out the last two people with them. Chy was a young boy of no more than thirteen, Cianna guessed, who looked to be from the Realm of Water as well. Chy was impossibly thin (as most from the Realm of Water were) with thick raven hair and dark blue eyes. Flora was a plump elderly woman with auburn hair streaked with gray.
“So what’s your name?” Pi asked.
“Cianna.”
“Let the poor girl eat,” Flora admonished Pi as she gathered Chy to herself, wrapping him protectively in a heavy wool cloak. Flora eagerly rubbed her hands up and down his arms in an effort to warm his slight frame. “Can’t you tell she hasn’t eaten in some time?”
Cianna felt a little self-conscious, for she had been eating rather hastily and thought maybe she had been making a spectacle of herself. Either way, she slowed down her consumption and told them a little about herself.
“My name is Cianna,” she began, not giving them her last name. “I’m from the north and I travel to the Realm of Fire, to the Necromancers’ Mosque.”
“Ooo,” Pi said. “A necromancer!”
“Yes, we heard,” Flora said, smiling at Pi’s exuberance. “You travel into my aunt’s realm. Azra Akeed is the Realm Guardian of the Realm of Fire.” Now that she mentioned it, Cianna could see the dark tanned quality to Flora’s skin. She hadn’t thought anything of it, for Flora was such a common name, not one you would expect to come out of the Realm of Fire. She was not as dark as most of the people that lived in that realm, either. Though they could not be called black, the people that lived in the Realm of Fire were still dark. Cianna figured that no matter how much time you spent out of the desert, you never fully lost that inborn tan.
Cianna didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything and continued eating.
“We are actually traveling there. We left the wyrder’s academy not long ago and struck out with Flora, who is our teacher. She’s taking us to the Realm of Fire to be with her aunt, in hopes that we can at least find a home there,” Pi informed Cianna.
After a time they all began to chatter around the fire and the night passed. Cianna was surprised to have found such a group of happy people now, when the lives of wyrders seemed so bleak. It was refreshing.
“Alright, it’s time Chy and I hit the hay,” Flora said. “Chy, go say goodnight to your sister.” Chy, who had been nearly asleep on Flora’s lap, stumped over to Pi and gave her a big hug and kiss goodnight before retiring with Flora.
“My parents settled here in the Realm of Earth a few years back,” Pi told Cianna. “I had to transfer out of the wyrder’s academy in the Realm of Water and enroll here. My skill with the language was not that good when I first moved here, and for that reason alone I almost didn’t get admitted. Flora took Chy and me under her care though, and she has been good for us.” Cianna thought Pi had assimilated well; she could barely detect an accent on her at all.