The Bonds of Blood (48 page)

He was not alone.

Before him stood the darkest woman he
had ever seen seeming to be made of flawless onyx, shimmering as if
graced by a frail light. She seemed to glow.

She was both exotically beautiful and
horribly terrifying. Her black skin was marred only by the glowing
white orbs that sat in her eye sockets and the blood red lips to
which she held a silver key, as if permanently hushing
people.

She looked both young and old, and her
head was completely bare. Her clothes appeared to be the finest
silks, draped over her head and flowing statuesquely to the floor.
Around her upper arm was twined a vivid orange snake, which was the
only thing that seemed to move at all, and he felt her mere
presence resonating deep within him.

Large wings of blue and purple feathers
sprouted from her back, stretching wide. Each tip was decorated
with an emerald circle like the eye on an ostrich tale, which
looked down at him from a height some ten feet above her
head.

And out of the darkness behind her came
the terrifying pale horse from his dream …

“LOCKELAYTER!” Grace screamed into the
din, and Maeven came back to himself. He watched Jovian’s now limp
form float in the air through a sheet of tears that clung to his
eyes but refused to fall.

Angelica looked to the old
lady but her attention was soon drawn to another figure that
stepped out of the darkness behind her teacher. The deeply tanned
creature was one of the most hypnotically beautiful things she had
ever seen, resembling both human, yet at the same time being so
completely alien that he seemed to be anything
but
human. As the lightning flashed
his skin shimmered gold in contrast to the thick silver bands
clinging to his upper arms and wrists. Upon seeing the man Grace
addressed as Lockelayter, Angelica felt the ring on her finger
begin to warm and vibrate in response to an energy that he emitted.
He looked at Angelica with almond-shaped lavender eyes and nodded
once, the mere glimpse of a smile touching his lips.

Reaching behind him, he retrieved an
arrow from his quiver and placed it to the mahogany bow clasped in
his other hand. Lockelayter knocked the arrow, aimed, and drew. “I
do not wish to harm you, sorceress,” he said in a voice as
captivating as his appearance. “But I will kill you without a
second thought if you do not let the boy go.” Though he spoke in
normal tones, he was well heard over the chaos.

Porillon snarled and dropped her arms,
causing Jovian to slam into the earth with such a harsh impact that
he nearly bounced. Maeven could not fight the tears any longer, and
they burned his face in stark contrast to the cold
rains.

“This is not over,” Porillon snarled,
lightning dancing across her hands still. The man who had
previously clung to the shadows came rushing forward to grab
Amber’s arm and pull her away. Maeven recognized the blond head
immediately.

“Astanel?” he called out, and the boy
turned to look and reached to his throat as he gasped for breath.
Maeven noticed at once the snake there, constricting around the
boy’s neck. Harshly he grabbed Amber’s arm and pulled her away from
them even as he fought for breath.

“NO!” Joya screamed, bounding off her
horse to land in the mud with a splash. She took no notice to this
and started running after them as soon as she landed. She raised
her hands toward Porillon and they began to glow an angry red
before fading once more. She shook her hands as if begging them to
work and continued to run after them.

Porillon raised her hands and swatted
the air, knocking Joya back as if she were nothing more than a
bug.

“I warned you,” Lockelayter said and he
let the arrow fly.

It struck true, thudding deep into
Porillon’s chest before the three of them disappeared.

“GRACE!” Joya shrieked drawing all
their attention to where Joya collapsed, her fingers pressed to
Jovian’s neck. “He is not responding!”

With a despairing moan that matched the
one coming from Maeven’s own lips, Angelica went limp and slid off
Jesses back to collapse lifelessly in the mud.

“Jovian, wake up,” Joya said in a
panic. “You can’t be dead, so that must mean you are sleeping. Wake
up!” As she spoke she seemed to be growing angrier and angrier, but
at whom Maeven was not sure. “JOVIAN NEFERIS, YOU WAKE UP THIS
INSTANT! I AM NOT JOKING AROUND! GRACE, WHY WON’T HE WAKE UP?” Her
voice cracked then, and in another flash of lightning Maeven could
see the tears coursing freely down her cheeks as the harsh truth
sunk in. “Father told you to keep us safe; he said to keep us safe
and bring Amber back, so far you haven’t done either. He can’t be
dead,” she reasoned to Maeven, and in her panicked, crazed eyes she
seemed to want a response. He opened his mouth to reply, but
nothing could be forced around the lump constricting his throat.
“Father said to keep us safe,” she reasoned with her brother’s
lifeless form as Grace checked Angelica’s pulse, and then went to
collect the mess that Joya was becoming. “He told him, Grace, he
said, ‘Jovian Neferis, you keep your sisters safe and bring Amber
home’; that is what he said, I heard it.”

“I know, dear, I know,” the old woman
soothed as she rubbed Joya’s shoulders.

“And we aren’t safe, and Amber isn’t
home,” Joya continued to sob. “His job isn’t done. Dammit, Jovian,
you can die later. WAKE UP!” Finally she gave up her ranting,
resigned to the fact that no matter how much she raved she would
not be able to change the simple truth.

Jovian Neferis would never wake again
in the living world.

In the span of a few minutes her world
came to an abrupt end. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing seemed
real. It would have been more acceptable to believe the world had
suddenly turned upside down than to comprehend that her family was
quickly unraveling at the seams.

The longing for home, missing her
father, the loss of Jovian, and the insane look on her eldest
sister’s face chased Angelica down into a near catatonic state. She
was so introverted with grief that she didn’t see hardly any of the
stone slab path that wound up the side of the Mountains of
Nependier or the glowing mushrooms that lighted their way as the
makeshift stairs were climbed. The two days of traveling were done
in a haze of tears, anger, grief, and depression. Angelica began to
wonder if she would ever be the same again.

“Star Sister,” the elf named
Lockelayter addressed Grace who looked up at him with red rimmed
eyes. “We near Whitewood Haven.” She nodded slightly and looked
behind her once to make sure the others followed. All of them were
in tow in similar states of apathy.

Suddenly Angelica stopped, and Joya
nearly bumped into her. “Grace,” Angelica said, her voice breaking
with fresh tears as she looked down at the torn, burned body of her
brother and closest friend in the entire world. “We—” sobs stopped
her from saying more, and Angelica crumbled to her knees on a
rather large, cold slab beside Jovian’s dead body. “We never gave
him his final rights!” she moaned.

She felt hands on her shoulders and
realized they were Joya’s. Her older sister tried to sooth her with
sympathetic crooning, but her consolation was also marred by tears.
Angelica reached back and rubbed her sister’s hands where they
rested, as the old lady came closer to kneel before
them.

“What about his Darkest Hour?” she
continued, barely being understood through her grief. “Wh-what if
he c-couldn’t pass the Th-three Wisdoms because the ritual was not
h-held?” Her words were punctuated with hiccupping. “What if-if he
didn’t make it in-into the Ever After?”

Grace forcefully crushed Angelica to
her chest and rubbed her back as the younger sister cried herself
hoarse. She reached out to Joya then and pulled her into her
ancient embrace as well.

“Hush with all that now,” Grace said
rocking them both as they cried. The old lady was no fool; she knew
what Maeven was doing as he walked back down the path, but she
didn’t say anything lest she upset the group further.

Damn you,
Joya thought wickedly to the man who had been
visiting her each night.
You said you
would help me save my family, and here one lies dead.

“Ladies, please,” Lockelayter said. The
ankle length wrapping of white cotton bound about his waist
whispered as he paced back to them. Besides that and the silver
bands he wore blessedly nothing; the rest of him stood out in soft
lines that spoke of a strength that was not apparent in the soft
curves of muscle. His waist-length brown hair rustled in a slight
breeze that brought the smell of pine to Grace’s nose. “We haven’t
much time. Come!”

He urged them to stand, but other than
that Angelica knew little else until they reached Whitewood
Haven.

EPILOGUE

_J
ovian wasn’t aware of
the separation
at the present. He looked
around him at the storm ravaging Foothills of Nependier and blinked
in awe. Everything was of such color, such vibrancy. He felt as he
had the night he traveled to Baba Yaga, which didn’t bode well, but
at least he was in no pain. He thought death would be more painful.
He smiled to himself and looked back to where Angelica always stood
behind him, or beside him.

“Hey Angie look—” But his words were
cut short by a sob from the same sister to whom he called. His
attention was then drawn down, and he saw his body, still clutching
his mother’s sword that was surprisingly untarnished. As his sight
followed the blade downward, his eyes lingered momentarily on the
ruptured fingers that had spewed forth blood and gore on the hilt
of the sword.

Though he resisted, Jovian found his
attention riveted to the burned and broken form on the ground that
used to house his spirit. The shattered orbs of his eyes, splayed
out across his cheeks and into his charred and frayed facial hair.
He was a mess, a mess of burned flesh and exposed bone.

In grief he turned away and saw
darkness gather at the edge of his vision. Three forms gathered
there in the blackness, and he knew that he was entering his
Darkest Hour, Death’s three Wisdoms were coming for him, and with
no one to pray strength into him, it would be a task to reach the
Ever After.

His spin straightened and he took a
tentative step toward the leering shadows that were the Wisdoms,
and the dark window they were opening into the Otherworld where the
Darkest Hour was held.

“Stop,” a strong, commanding voice
sounded behind him, and he was only distantly aware of his sister
Joya screaming at him and Grace. He turned back to see the
luminescent figure of Aramaiti as she finished manifesting in the
rain-trodden hills. Jovian realized then that while it was raining
in the foothills, the droplets were not cascading down on where he
stood. It was almost as if the rain was falling on the other side
of a curtain, in a place that was and was not where he found
himself at the same time.

He wanted to smile at Aramaiti, but
Jovian found that he could not. The ball of nerves tightened in his
stomach, and he wanted more than anything to vomit.

Then, just out of sight in a shimmering
transparency, he saw another woman. She stood behind what Jovian
guessed was yet another veil, maybe in the Ever After, of the
Otherworld? Though he was certain such beauty as he saw mirrored in
the woman’s loving face could never be in the Otherworld. She was a
short woman, with long brown hair that cascaded down her back in
waves. Wrapped around her was a cloak so blue as to be nearly
indistinguishable in the storm atmosphere.