A
s was the case whenever Sara teleported, she came to a place she knew well. Most of the time she could teleport anywhere, but it was easier for her to go to a place that had the residue of her power already in it, a place which she was familiar with.
The clearing in which she arrived that night was the same clearing she and Annbell had used several times for traveling to and fro. It was the same place she had first lost her virginity, and there was no other greater power save that of birth and death than that of your first passion.
Sara turned from the place and her thoughts and trod over the ground to the edge of the yard which supported the Mirror of the Moon. She peered through the shrubbery to the meticulously kept lawn. Sara scanned the area for the darkness the dream had predicted would be here. And it was.
The light of the Mirror of the Moon, somewhat diminished due to the waning moon, illuminated the lawn rather well, and the blond boy trying to hide behind the shrubs was relatively easy for her to see in his black robe. He crouched, obviously aware that Sara was there with him.
Sara got the distinct feeling that he had known she would be coming, and had been waiting for her. She was also pretty certain that he knew she could see him. He exuded a type of power that made her shiver, not out of fear, just out of wrongness. There was something corrupt about his power, almost as if it shouldn’t be, like it was an alien force to humans.
She realized then what it was; he possessed a power that humans didn’t, and while it was mere sorcery, it was of a different race, gifted upon him somehow. Beyond that Sara could only speculate.
Sara could feel his confliction — there were emotions warring inside him that no boy his age should have. He lusted, and feared that which he lusted, he hated and yet loved what he hated. This boy desired both to hurt but also to do good. He was an outcast, yet at the same time he was part of a bigger scheme.
Sara felt for him. All the while growing up she was the only dream-weaver alive, the only dream-weaver that had lived in ages, hundreds if not thousands of years. The only thing she knew for certain was that dream-weavers were long dead and thought to be myth, and no one alive had been alive long enough to know what they were or how they worked their strange wyrd. That was saying a lot when you were surrounded by people who were often many hundreds and thousands of years old, due to the gifts which prolonged their lives.
Sara stepped out of the clearing, hoping that she could help this boy, holding her hand out to him. He stood, hesitantly and haltingly, as if he didn’t want to stand, yet at the same time was being forced to.
He held out a hand to her, and she could feel the air stirring as he prepared his attack. Sara merely shook her head, and with nothing more than the barest of thoughts she summoned her wyrd to bear.
His wyrd stirred the air; Sara’s made it crackle and hum with power. She was exuding so much that it made their hair lift slightly in the static-charged air.
“You don’t want to mess with me,” Sara warned the youth. “I’m much stronger than you, with many forces aiding me that you can only guess at. If I wanted,” she said, examining her fingers as if nothing was happening, “I could kill you instantly with just the static in the air. Would you like to see that?”
He hesitated.
“I’m not only a Realm Guardian, but I’m also a sorceress who has been alive for many, many generations. I have seen kingdoms and civilizations fall, I have seen messiahs come and go, and I have even helped a couple restore relative calm to the Realms. More than that, I’m a dream-weaver. Do you know what that is?” She raised an eyebrow as his hand dropped slightly. “It means that I can take your very dreams and turn them against you. I can make every night a living Otherworld for you, or simply manifest your dreams in reality.”
She watched him as he stepped back, worried by what she said.
“What is your name?” Sara asked.
“Astanel,” he said, and then instantly reached for his throat, gasping for air. He crumpled to the ground, grasping his throat, his lips turning blue. Sara wasn’t sure what was happening just then, but she did know that it was because of that foreign wyrd he possessed. There was something to do with that wyrd, and she briefly wondered if the wyrd was not the cause of his contradictory feelings.
She took a step forward, but soon he was pushing himself back to his feet, sucking air furiously as color returned to his skin. He didn’t wait long, for his hand flew up then and black lightning scorched the air, ripping and tangling through the air at her like a consuming beast.
Sara held up her receptive hand and the ball of lightning gathered there. It was still connected to his hand and pulsing ever toward her as he continued working his wyrded will. It took but a small thread of her wyrd coursing down the bolt which connected them. She controlled it with her dominant hand, manipulating the thread down the black bolt he tried to best her with.
When her wyrd reached its quarry, she grabbed tight with her mind and pulled with all her might. Astanel lurched toward her, pulled straight off his feet, and as she contorted her face in rage he continued sliding toward her, his face catching on rocks here and there, causing minor abrasions on his skin. Soon he was at her feet, and she placed her slipper on the back of his head, holding him in place.
Around his neck she could see a small garden snake tighten around his throat, and he began flailing for air and to be free.
“Better calm down or you might break your neck, I’m not letting up.” He found the wisdom in her advice and stopped flailing about. The snake didn’t hiss at her, for it appeared that he was trying not to make himself known.
“What a curious familiar you have,” Sara said, taking her foot off his head as he calmed. “One might say that he is the power behind you.”
Astanel glared up at her as he rubbed his throat.
He was back on his feet before she could blink, and was conjuring white fire in his hand.
“I tire of this,” she said and influenced the shadows to coagulate about him, trapping him in the air. The shadows pressed in on him, stopping him from moving, gathering about his ankles and wrists, pulling him taut. They forced their way down his nose and throat, cutting off all oxygen, and he frantically lashed out with his wyrd. The white fire, frost as she imagined it to be, arched out in all directions, freezing the grass to black and chilling the air all about her.
The shields that were in place about her at all times, wyrded there by not only herself but other sorcerers on her staff, made the attack largely useless. The most he did to her was make her cold.
She used the moment to reach for the snake, which did hiss at her now that he knew she had seen him. Before she could reach it, however, the shadows worked their way out of her wyrded grasp and swallowed the boy and snake whole. When the shadows abated there was no sign of either of them.
“Hmm,” she said and turned toward the Mirror of the Moon.
The one problem that she figured she would have trying to get into the Mirror of the Moon was the wyrded locking mechanism which held the doors shut. Even if there was someone inside, others couldn’t get in unless they either knew the way through the locking metallic vines or the person inside let them in.
This was one challenge that no matter how much wyrd she possessed, or what her station in government was, it wouldn’t get her through. To be honest she was not one hundred percent sure how they opened now; they did open for the postulant when they recited a certain conjunction of words swearing fealty to the Goddess.
“The Goddess prevails in my soul,” Sara said, bowing her head and holding her hands out, palms up in the Hands of Trust sign to show she was not harboring any weapons or ill will.
As she suspected, it didn’t work.
Sara stood back and looked at the door, considering it for a few minutes. “I don’t suppose you could help me out here?” she asked the Realm of Earth, a constant entity in her mind since she was chosen by it to be its Guardian.
It didn’t respond.
“Didn’t think so,” she harrumphed and thought of what it could have been changed to. She thought quickly of all the people that had held the Mirror of the Moon since she had last been here for any duration of time. Of the people she could remember, there were two that stuck out in her mind, Porillon and Arael. Both had to do with Chaos. She wondered if she had to have the correct password, or just merely say something that was close to the meaning.
“May Chaos consume,” she said with malice to the door. Even uttering the words made her feel sick, and she felt the link with the Realm of Earth in her mind contort with anxiety.
With a metallic slithering and grinding the leaves and vines that had been seemingly welded in place over the seams of the door began to move, as if they were growing backward, unwinding and unbinding until the deep mahogany doors slid open with a near-silent whoosh.
Sara was greeted by the inside of the Lunimara, illuminated as was the outside. It had been through a lot of changes since she had been here last. Someone just recently appeared to have scrubbed it from top to bottom.
The floors were freshly polished and reflected not only her image but the silver light in rainbow hues around the corridor. The walls, floor, and ceiling all shined with the light of the moon, illuminating with ease the inside of the temple and the corridors. Straight ahead of the door by which she entered there were floor-to-ceiling windows creating the inside wall which looked out onto a square garden, roofless so that all that gathered within that lavish botanical haven could see the heavens high above them.
The Mirror of the Moon was a series of four corridors with doors which led off into other rooms of worship and veneration, and gathering halls for idle chit-chat. From the dream that she had Sara knew the Realm of Earth wanted her to go to the kitchens, so she headed right down the corridor, hanging a left at the end of the hall and toward one silver door that led down into the underground kitchens.
As she put her hand on the door a force of wyrd so strong that it took Sara to her knees ripped through the temple. She panted and gasped as she rocked back and forth on her knees, wondering what in the realms was happening.
She had the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to find out. She haltingly made it to her feet and pushed the silver door open. The pain of the onslaught was so harsh that sweat had instantly beaded up on her face and Sara had flushed with heat.
As she stumbled down the stone steps to the kitchens, she felt the pain lifting. Sara realized then that whatever it was emanated from the actual temple itself, and as soon as she could be out of there the better.
Sara was smart, and didn’t feel the need to play heroine; if it was something drastic she was certain to hear about it soon enough from her link with the Realm of Earth. Quickly she made it to the kitchens and began looking around frantically, for she had the feeling that whatever was causing the discomfort in the temple was soon going to realize she was there.
She looked high and low for anything that could have been so dire that the Realm of Earth would send her out looking for it at this time of night and into this kind of trouble. Sara had no doubt that what she felt blasting through the temple was going to cause a lot of trouble for the realms, and she hoped that maybe what the Realm of Earth had sent her here to fetch would help against it.
Or was that power the knowledge she had come here for? Was that pain what she was meant to find when she entered the temple? Was all that she was going to find just that pain and knowledge that something was here to harm?
She started back for the stairs when she thought of that. Once she began climbing them, however, she had the feeling that what she’d felt was something else, something that it was good for her to know about, but not what she had come here to know.
With a resigned sigh, Sara stepped back into the kitchen and looked around. She was not a weak person of mind or body, but the pain she felt blast through the temple had also brought with it crippling fear, and it was that very fear that Sara was fighting now as she continued looking in pots and pans for what the realm had wanted her to find.
Her hands shook and a few times she only just caught a terracotta pot before it shattered on the floor. She had caused such a ruckus that she instinctively looked up to see if anyone had heard. Only at the last moment did she remember that if anyone else was in here it would be Grace and the others. Most likely, however, they had already gone to the Well of Wyrding.
She sighed and leaned against the counter. She had looked everywhere.
Finally she spotted a lump of what appeared to be trash on the table, and began rummaging through it because something told her that it was not at all trash. She scoffed thinking this would be her luck, the pile of crap on the table she’d put out of mind several times thinking it was nothing would be exactly what she needed.
At the bottom of the clutter Sara found a wadded up piece of paper with names and numbers written on it. For some reason the realm told her this was precisely what she’d come looking for.
“A scrap of paper?” she asked, and felt a slight confirmation in her mind.
“That’s what you came here and risked your life to get?” Sara heard a familiar voice from behind her, turned to look and saw her sister, a little worse for the wear, her hair matted and stringy, her eyes slightly glazed, and with a considerable swelling to one ankle.