Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (28 page)

“You told me to do what I did that night, so I did—I even
used the same word.”

“Yes, but did you consciously try to cast forth flame?”

“No. I just repeated the process.”

“Yet, you expected that would be the result?”

Elias rolled the question around in his head. “I
suppose...I’m not really sure.” He hung his head and sighed.

Elias could feel Ogden’s eyes on him so he looked up. “What
is it?”

“Only that you remind me so much of him.”

“My father?”

“He was as hard on himself as are you. You must remember,
son, that people tend to find true what they expect to find true. We create our
lives with our expectations, fears, and hopes—even our very thoughts. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“You will, in time. It was Padraic who taught me that. He
said it was a bit of philosophy he picked up from the Eurinthian. He was
something of a student of Eurinthium, more so than my colleague I think.”

“Maybe it was this sword that sparked his interest in Eurinthium.”

“Perhaps. Here, come have a seat and a glass of wine. You’ve
earned it.”

As they settled into a couple of the over-sized chairs by
the bookshelves and Ogden poured the wine, Elias had ample time to think about
the wizard’s question. Elias took a pull of the dry red that Ogden usually kept
at hand. “Maybe I do know what you mean. Shortly before my father died he told
me that magic was limited only by the limits of the mind.”

“That is what he and your mother believed. Go on.”

“In our present experiment, my mind was limited to my small
experience with magic and as such I expected that the result would be the same
as before, so it was.”

“Precisely!” Ogden said as he made an emphatic gesture with
his hand, spilling wine onto his sleeve. “If a person goes into a situation
expecting a particular outcome, he is apt to get it, even if that is only his
perception and not the actual truth of the matter. This is why one must keep an
open mind and not draw premature conclusions.”

“Especially a wizard,” Elias replied.

“Especially a wizard,” Ogden agreed and went to take a sip
from his goblet, frowning when he realized it was empty.

†

Agnar Vundi felt like he had spent the majority of his
days of late looking out windows. The black fear that he would wake one night
to find southern steel at his throat or face public execution had faded into a
persistent, torpid dread that he would never feel the bite of the Northern wind
again but would spend the remainder of his days locked up in his gilded prison.

“I don’t know why you insist on these visits,” Agnar said,
turning from the window. “Not that they’re unwelcome, mind you. I have no one
to talk to and most days yours is the only face I see. Yet, why do you bother?”

“You’re the only person in the capital who is as bad at
cards as I am,” Elias said as he shuffled a deck. “That and I like your
stories.”

“How about I tell you a story about a dream I had last
night. I dreamt of the Iscarp Mountains—a monument to all creation and bigger
than anything you’ve ever seen in these Southlands of yours. I dreamt of the
halls of my fathers set around the hot springs that make the seat of my king a
grassy oasis in a land burning with frost the better part of the year. I dreamt
that a man, once an enemy, now a friend, let me return there.”

In the streams of midday sun Elias thought that Agnar’s eyes
appeared almost white, reflecting the light like a timber wolf’s in torch fire.
“There’s little I’d like more than to see you free, but it is not in my power—yet.”

Agnar left the window sill and sat across from Elias,
resting an arm on the card table. “Your queen is satisfied of my innocence?”

“She is, but the court is not. The council is not, at least
not all of them.”

“Why do you have a queen if she does not have any power?” Agnar
sighed, for he knew this was an old conversation between them, but it was all
he had.

“Our government is situated differently than yours. The
crown needs the support of the influential houses, and their coin. The
government is in debt and has taken loans from some of the notable houses,
their privately owned banks, and even foreign powers, chiefly through bank
alliances or marriages to the leading houses of Galacia. The crown debt is
first what attracted Eithne to your king’s trade proposal.”

“I’ll never understand your world. All this talk of wealth
and your precious silver and gold coins. In my world we make art with these
metals because they are too soft for building or for sturdier crafts. In
Ittamar a man’s currency is his skill.”

Elias started dealing the cards. “In some ways I’ll never
understand this world either. Where I grew up we were largely self-sufficient
on our farm and distillery, trading whiskey as often as coin for the goods we
needed. Truth be told, your Ittamar seems better suited to me than life in
Peidra. I have half a mind to return there with you. There’s only one problem
though.”

“And what’s that?” asked Agnar as he eyed Elias over the
tops of his cards.

“How can you make whiskey with no corn or grain?” Elias
grinned as he drew a sliver flask from his coat.

Agnar shook his head and laughed despite himself as he
reached for the polished flask.

Secret of the Dark Covenant

“No.” Sarad glared balefully at the man before him. The
acolyte had the gaunt features and dark coloring that distinguished the men of
Aradur. “It’s
Hal-i-ruk
not
Hali-ruk
. The Lord of the Fallow
Field is particular about invocations in his name, and he won’t grant power to
those who cannot speak his tongue. Again.”

He watched as the man’s features warbled beneath a screen of
magic. Whereas before he looked on a man with skin dark as burnished copper,
now he saw a well wrought facsimile of a barbarian of the northern wastes. Sarad
made the man repeat the glamour and the accompanying gestures until he felt
certain he could perform it adroitly.

The glamour was paramount to the success of his plan. All
his agents needed to have it mastered by midnight for he couldn’t very well
cast it on all of them himself. He would need every last shred of power
available to him. By the pact they had all made to join the Scarlet Hand the
door to the fell powers had been opened to them, but sadly not all had the wit
or tenacity to excel in the necromantic arts.

“Would you like that I too should adopt the likeness of the
ice-men, Master?” Talinus said as he alighted on the windowsill. “Imagine the
fear a flying dwarf from Ittamar would strike into their hearts!”

Sarad ignored the imp’s quip. “Leave me. I have preparations
to make.” The imp sketched a mock bow and set off to go about whatever business
imps had whilst free of their duties.

He planned to take the palace by cover of night. Ogressa had
been kind enough to furnish him with a score of standard Redshield uniforms and
breastplates appropriated from the Lucerne armory to disguise his finest
adepts. For his part, Oberon had arranged for a squad of the palace guard loyal
to him—or, rather, to House Oberon coin—to be stationed at the postern gates with
orders to admit a contingent of new recruits with no questions asked. Once they
gained the palace his men would quickly dispatch the unprepared guard thus
leaving the back gate and portcullis unmanned and open to the remainder of
Sarad’s forces.

Once his combined forces had gained the palace the more skilled
of his arcanists would invoke their Ittamarian glamours whilst those dressed as
the palace guard would maintain their disguise. Both groups would head directly
for the royal wing and the heart of the palace. When the fighting began the
genuine palace guard and the elite Whiteshields would find the Ittamar
and
their own men coming at them. Once the battle began in earnest and the entirety
of the Galacian forces roused, the Galacian regulars would join the scene only
to find a melee where palace guard were pitted against each other and savages
alike. They wouldn’t know who to engage, and in the ensuing bedlam Sarad would
gather his lieutenants and strike for the heart of Lucerne and take the queen.

As plans went it had few flaws, save for the vexing Elias
Duana and his allies.

While the Sentinels were a mere shade of what they once
were, the Scarlet Hand had never been stronger, for as the old magic of Galacia
waned, the arcane chains that bound House Senestrati loosened, and their
influence grew. He knew that Queen Eithne’s Steward, Ogden, was a Sentinel and
a wizard of no mean power, for he read the old man’s aura with ease. Despite
this, he feared not the Sentinel mastermind, for in his heart he knew the
cogent threat was Elias Duana.

Sarad, however, had formulated a plan to neutralize the
marshal, or at the least delay him until it was too late. Once the palace fell
he could deal with Duana at his leisure.

With the Denar heirs out of the way Oberon would assume the
throne as regent, though his reign would prove short lived. With the blood of
the Denar women Sarad would enact the centuries awaited ritual that would break
the curse that bound his masters’ power and barred them from Agian soil. With
the ancient geas broken, House Senestrati would be free to once again exercise
the power that they had brokered their souls for before their betrayal by House
Denar. Even the wizard-king Mathias did not have the strength to utterly break
their power and drive it from the world, so he bound it the only way his limited
mind could conceive—by finding a counter to what he saw as an unnatural power,
the magic of un-life, in his very own life force and that of his brethren. Mathias
realized that House Denar’s power was no stronger than the Senestrati’s, though
it was their equal and polar opposite, so he reasoned by binding them together
they would negate each other. Thus was the Senestrati’s power ever neutralized
by the Denar bloodline and the living magic bound to each of its descendants.

Yet the Senestrati endured, slumbering away the long
centuries in a state of arcane stasis, sending their spirits out to roam the
earth, seeking out vessels to perform their will in exchange for their
knowledge of the necromantic arts—vessels like Sarad, to whom they taught the
darkest secret of all.

There was no Lord of the Fallow Field, or a Devil by any
other name. Hell was a simpletons concept, a fairy tale in reverse. No pit
existed in the center of the world awaiting the damned, for Hell only existed
in the minds of men, formed out of the ether by their very thoughts and fears. No,
Hell was not a place, but a state of mind.

From its very beginnings, the One Church was a construct of
the dark brotherhood, for on the fear-energy of men did they feast and grow fat
with power.

That alone was the secret of the House Senestrati’s dark
might, and now that House Denar had wilted and the nations of men had lost
faith in the validity of their own souls and the power of their own consciousness
they would be easy prey to their darker appetites.

The world was ripe for the age of the necromancer, and it
began when Galacia, the lynchpin of Agia, fell. Sarad Mirengi, Prelate of the
Church of the One God, closed his eyes and smiled.

Shadow’s Fall

Talinus perched over the Marshal that irked his master
so. He leaned close, silent as the breath of death, and examined his quarry. Duana’s
features were less severe in sleep. With his penetrating eyes closed his
countenance bore an almost childlike innocence and he appeared a good deal
younger. At a distance Talinus had thought him in the prime of his life, but
under closer scrutiny he judged that the Marshal had seen about five and twenty
winters.

He need only extend his arm and with a quick flick of his
wrist open the Marshal’s throat with his razor talons. That, however, had not
been why he’d come. Talinus fixed his crimson eyes on the oblivious mortal and
wondered. Try as he might, he could not discern what was so special about the
whelp. Oh, he liked Duana well enough—after all, he did strive to foil Sarad,
which he found amusing—but he couldn’t reason out why his true masters willed
that the Marshal be not only spared but encouraged to nettle Sarad.

The lords of the Eldritch Circle were known to be a fickle
bunch, but why take such interest in this particular mortal? Duana proved
himself proficient with blade and wits alike, but his arcane powers had only
just begun to bud, and likely wouldn’t mature for years. With the knowledge of
magic being but a shade of what it once was, even at the summit of his skills
he wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to his predecessors of yore. Worse yet,
Duana seemed married to the folly of peculiar human ideals like honor, justice,
and duty—definitely not the malleable clay most men would be in the hands of
the Eldritch Lords. Still, if it was the will of the Circle, Talinus would see
it done.

Once he was free of Sarad he’d commune with the Circle and
then he’d have his answers.

The imp leaned in, so close that he could see Duana’s eyes
fluttering beneath their lids and feel the mortal’s breath on his brow. Talinus
reached out with his senses and entered the Marshal’s mind planting a
suggestion of dire alarm and fear.
Wake, Elias of Duana. Wake!

Elias exploded out of sleep with a cry on his lips and a
sense of dread tearing through his mind. He perceived at the limits of his
vision a shadowy form that skirted the ceiling. Fearing an imminent attack he
threw himself out of bed and into a combat roll. He snatched his sword, which
he kept at his bedside, as he tucked himself into the tumble. With a mighty
two-handed swing he unburdened his blade of its scabbard and backed against the
wall, surveying the ceiling. His eyes darted around the room scanning for
danger.

The attack didn’t come. Elias remembered to breathe and
gasped as he drew in one deep breath after another. He didn’t know what
instinct had roused him from his slumber, but something had been in his
chambers, something that loved him not. In his survey his eyes passed the door
and he cursed to discover it ajar. Something had snuck into his bedroom unseen
and nearly killed him in his sleep. Whatever the identity of the shadowed thing
that traversed ceilings, it was now at large in the palace. The guard must be
warned as well as Ogden, for Elias was certain that the arcane had played a
role in the encounter. This whole thing stank of the Hand.

Elias dressed quickly, but he took the time to button his
duster full to the neck for he did not doubt that he would need whatever
protection the durable leather could provide. As he reached for his boots by
his bedside he saw the flurry of papers that he had fallen asleep reading
spread upon the floor, which he must have cast off when he leapt from bed.

Red wax had spilled over the account of King Mathia’s
binding of the seventh house, a bit of verse he had read countless times and
had taken to calling the poem of binding. Though he was in a need for haste, he
felt inexplicably drawn to the paper and the congealing scarlet wax. Most of
the poem was obscured by the wax but one line remained clear:
bound them in
the heart’s own blood
. As his eyes traced over the line he saw that that
the
e
in
heart’s
was obscured by a dot of wax and it read as
hart’s
.

Elias’s breath caught in his chest. His mind raced back to
the letter Bryn had intercepted months ago hinting at a
hart-hunt
, which
they had taken to be a clue indicating a plot against the House Denar, whose
moniker was the stag, or hart. Hart’s blood; blood of the hart.

“Good God,” Elias whispered in the darkening room. He had
finally unraveled the riddle that was right before them the entire time. At
last he knew how the Scarlet Hand planned to break the geas, but he feared it
was too late.

Having already squandered enough time, Elias resolutely
strapped his baldric across his back, in the southern fashion, but he carried
his steel naked in hand.

Cautiously, he opened the door with his sword and braced
himself for attack. When none came he sidled to the door and quickly ducked his
head in and out, wary that an archer or wizard may be lying in wait. Satisfied
that both ways were clear, he dashed from his chambers and set off at a run.

He screeched to a halt as he rounded a corner and
encountered a scintillating wall of energy. The diaphanous force-field cast the
hallway in a red and purple glow. The wall looked paper thin, but Elias did not
doubt its power to bar, or to kill. A faint hum filled the air and caused the
hairs on his arms to stand on end.

He paced before the wall and cursed. This hall provided the
quickest access to the royal wing and both Eithne and Ogden. If he turned back
and took the long way, looping around by the rooms of the lesser court and the
guest chambers, he would arrive too late to bring warning.

There was only one course of action available to him. He
considered only a moment. If his sword could absorb magic directed at him he
reasoned it could do the same to protective or warding magic. If the barrier
proved too powerful for his sword to absorb or had been designed to resist such
measures or, worse yet, explode on contact, it marked his end. If the Scarlet
Hand took Eithne, however, all of Galacia would fall under shadow.

With clenched teeth Elias drove the blade of his sword into
the wall of humming energy. As Elias’s sword met the diaphanous veil of energy
a concussion issued forth that swam around him like a maelstrom, leaving a
hollow place between his ears, as if all the sound had vanished from the world.
He had experienced a similar sensation once in his youth when Shamus O’Toole
boxed his ears during a game of storm-the-castle.

Even as the whirlpool of energy funneled into his sword,
Elias knew he could only afford to squander a handful of breaths to recover his
equilibrium. He sucked in precious air before dashing through the eliminated
barrier, up the corridor leading to the royal suites, around a corner…

…and directly into a Redshield.

The blustering soldier crashed onto his haunches, flinching
as Elias nearly lopped his head off with a barely checked cut of his blade.

“Get up, you fool,” Elias growled. “The queen’s life is in
danger. The palace is under attack! Rouse the Captain and then make for the
queen’s chambers. Now!” The guardsmen’s eyes widened and his bottom lip trembled,
but to his credit he rose with an “Aye, sir!” and fled down the corridor in the
opposite direction with haste.

Elias first met resistance in the antechamber that preceded
the wing of the upper court. He sprinted through the door, turning a
shadow-clad figure’s scimitar with a flick of his wrist, danced out of reach of
another wickedly curved blade, and skidded to a stop with his back to a wall. The
tactic was a gambit for while it discouraged flanking it limited his range of
movement, and offered scant opportunity for retreat.

Despite the fact that the swordsmen couldn’t flank him, they
struck as one. Elias instantly knew that he couldn’t block both strikes, which
slanted toward his skull. Instinctively, he dropped to a knee and the scimitars
crashed together in a shower of sparks. Elias had to take one of the swords out
of the battle immediately, but he didn’t have a clear line to deliver a
deathblow to a vital area, backed as he was against the wall with them right on
top of him. With a hunch of his shoulders he adopted a perpendicular guard. The
tingle of magic skittered up his spine as he swung.

The only indication to the Senestrati that the one-sided
fight was about to take a drastic turn was a whir of blue that gave birth to a
red mist followed by a wet THWACK. The maimed man looked stupidly at his
squirting stump, never having felt the sting of the blade that severed his
hand. Elias didn’t give the Handsman time to deliberate on his quandary, for
presently he had gained his feet and with a vicious kick thrust the maimed man
into his companion. A heartbeat later, his
Dashin
followed and showered
the remaining Handsman with gore from his ally’s braincase.

The dark warrior danced back and lifted his scimitar into a
high guard, sparing his slain compatriot not the slightest glance. “You’ve
already lost, Marshal. The queen is ours.”

“For the life of me, I cannot figure out why you bloody
people talk so damned much.” Elias considered the impasse for a moment, and
then his father’s voice echoed in his mind from a long ago lesson:
Always
press the attack, even as you defend. Let every parry be a strike that merely
intercepts the other’s sword on its path. Don’t cross swords with your opponent.
Swing only to cut
.

Elias leapt at his adversary with an over-hand strike,
mimicking his form. The Senestrati stuck first, but Elias altered his arc so
that he made glancing contact with the other’s blade, so as to tilt it away
from his snaking torso, and continued his downward slice. The scimitar missed
his shoulder by a scant inch, but his blade cut the Senestrati from neck to
sternum.

The Handsman expirated a gurgle of blood as he sank to the
floor, yet Elias did not see it for he had already bounded through the door
leading into the next chamber.

†

Sarad exhaled a sigh of sublime bliss. He felt dark
clouds of fear billowing throughout the palace as the alarm rose. Not that it
would do the imbeciles any good now. His men had already been firmly in place
throughout the grounds before making themselves known. All that remained for
them was to systematically eliminate every soul that stood in their way. In the
aftermath of the massacre Sarad would offer to supplement the ravaged guard
with Knights Justicar, and easily as that Peidra would be his.

Sarad would wait until all but the queen’s honor guard were
dispatched before presenting himself to her, and thus at the moment of her
greatest despair reveal the architect of her doom. Until then let her cower in
the most exquisite of terror, wondering at the spider in her chamber that had
eluded her and her precious Marshal for so long.

Sarad had nothing if not a flair for the dramatic, and he
couldn’t resist indulging his favorite vice.

Sarad sent his will out amongst his soldiers:
Bloody the
Marshal if you can, but see that he lives. Him, I want him for myself.

†

Danica cowered in the dark. She was unsure how far
she had come, but her feet were sore, bare, and sticky.

She had thought the cave would be a safe haven, but as
the ambient light faded she soon became lost. The dark felt dense, heavy and
alive, slithering against her skin.

Huddling against a damp wall she gasped, struggling to
breathe the viscous air. Panic rose thick in her throat and her heart thundered.
Despite the fact that there was no one to see her, she angrily wiped the tears
from her eyes, ashamed.

Danica fumbled through her skirt pockets desperately. She
sighed in relief as her hands closed around a match. Trembling, she struck it
against the cavern floor.

In such absolute darkness the tiny flame was a mighty
beacon. Yet, her happiness proved short lived, for the glow revealed a face she
knew—a demon’s countenance she could never forget.

“There you are, my love,” Slade said with a lupine grin. His
skin looked pale and waxy, his eyes sunken and black with madness, yet he
towered above her, very much alive. “What’s wrong,” he grated, stepping so
close she could taste his cloying breath and feel its fetid warmth, “Cat got
your tongue?”

Suddenly, she found herself naked with Slade sprawled on
top of her, licking her face, slowly, with a grey, swollen tongue. Danica
screamed.

“Come, love. My brethren await and I am anxious to be
reunited with them.” Slade snapped his teeth by her ear, and…

…Danica’s eyes opened, a banshee’s wail on her lips. She
quickly absorbed that she sat propped against a wall in her chambers at the
Palace and a wild-eyed Lar held her by the shoulders. “I say, stop shaking me
at once,” she said with all the nonchalance she could muster. Truth be told,
she had never been so glad to see Lar in her life.

“By the seven hells, woman!” said the normally stoic Lar. “You’re
fixin’ to wake the dead!”

Danica bit her tongue, for despite his stern tone, his eyes were
wide with worry. They looked at each other then, unabashedly, both aware that
she suffered from a dire affliction, and it was getting worse.

Danica looked away first, blinking away tears. Then a sense
of uneasiness stole over her, as if someone watched them from the shadows. She
shuddered and her breath caught in her throat as a tingling sensation rushed up
her spine and across her shoulders, spilling in waves up her neck, face, and
crown. Danica heard frantic voices and in her mind’s-eye flashed images of
guardsmen engaged with dark-clad scimitar wielding warriors. She blinked
rapidly as a burst of white light blinded her momentarily. Then she saw her
brother, chest heaving with exertion as he parried one continuous blow after
another as a horde of swordsmen closed in on him.