Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (32 page)

Sarad’s voice gathered volume and echoed with power as his
chant reached crescendo, and Elias knew his death was on those lips, mere heartbeats
away. The links of the ensorcelled chain stretched and with a final grunt of
effort they gave way and Elias exploded into a lunge even as a black mist began
to curl out from Sarad’s mouth.

Utilizing the coiled energy released when he broke free,
Elias threw all of his momentum into swinging the chain. The lambent links whipped
through the air like a serpent of fire. The near molten links of the impromptu
chain-whip tore into Sarad’s face.

Sarad’s spell died on his lips. The chain, heavy with the
gravity of enchanted iron and Elias’s magic, snapped his head to the side, gouging
him from temple to chin even as it cauterized the wound, and sent him hurtling
to the floor.

Elias wound the chains around his hands, keeping a wary eye
on the felled Sarad, and crept forward. The scent of burning flesh—his—tickled
his nostrils, yet he felt no pain. He was beyond pain. He swung the smoldering
chains in a flurry. Sarad’s robes and skin peeled away beneath the blows.

Elias stood over his enemy. Sarad looked up at him with
glittering, granite-black eyes, the muscles in his face slack, his expression
flat, apathetic. Elias knew in that instant that Sarad had been beaten. The necromancer’s
resources—his magic and his will—had been drained. If he struck now, Sarad
Mirengi would die.

Yet, Elias stayed his hand. When he questioned himself—as he
would many times in the years to come—afterward as to what precisely had stayed
his hand, he would remain forever unable to articulate
why
. His best
guess upon further reflection was that having been inside Sarad’s head and
privy to his thoughts had changed him in some subtle way. As Elias looked down
on the ruined face of his enemy and his smoking wounds, a profound ice-numb
weariness stole over him, not a bodily fatigue but of something more essential,
although, again, he couldn’t put a name to it. The molten core of his rage winked
out.

This man, this false Prelate, deserved to die. Countless
innocents had perished at his hands and he and his brethren would see this land
dismantled and rebuilt in their own dark image. Killing him was the right thing
to do. It needed to be done. And yet Elias could not raise his hand to deliver
the final blow.

“The flaw of your kind is the inability to make hard
decisions,” Sarad said as his black will and power returned to him in the
presence of Elias’s impotence, and a plan sprung into his mind. “You want to
rule but don’t wish to stain your hands with blood.”

Elias, consumed by a sudden fatigue that turned his guts to
sand, drew into himself as Sarad uttered a sibilant string of fricatives, and
erected an energy shield before him, but he misread the necromancer’s
intention, for no attack came. Instead, Sarad cocooned himself in a cloud of
black smoke that poured from his mouth. The necromancer dissolved into the
ashen mist, which then swirled about Elias, slipping around his shield, and
slithered underneath the door and was gone.

Elias coughed as he inhaled the fine sooty dust that Sarad
left in his wake.

Alarmed by the mist that crept down the hall, two sentries
burst into the chamber with drawn steel and spells on their lips. Elias, who
had slipped into a trancelike state, watched the advancing figures with
detachment. They moved honey-in-winter slow and words born of frost trickled
from their lips.

Elias, motivated purely by reflex, countered frost with
flame. “Feora,” he said, as a vague memory flitted across his consciousness. Fire,
liquid and golden, exploded through his mind, stole his sight momentarily, and
gave a semblance of clarity back to his thoughts.

A detonation like dynamite hurled Elias against a wall. When
the haze cleared, or when his eyes regained their function—Elias didn’t know
which came first—he discovered the other two men were gone and with them the
door and a portion of the archway.

He stumbled out of his cell and into the corridor where he
found the charred and shrunken remains of Sarad’s acolytes. Their desiccated
hands still grasped their scimitars. Blackened and hot to the touch, the swords
still held their form and edge, attributable, Elias assumed, to some
enchantment.

He paused as a series of dry coughs overcame him. He pulled
a hand sprinkled with ash from a mouth thick with the acrid taste of sulfur. His
contemplation of this oddity proved brief, though he knew it significant, for a
string of exclamations in a language he did not know issued from somewhere
close by.

Elias approached an oak door reinforced with iron bands. He
considered the door briefly, then raised a hand and focused his will. He
envisioned the door exploding under a concussive force. He believed it would explode,
then his perspective slid, and with a detached certainty he
knew
the
door would explode. A dam of energy, which he perceived as a pressure that collected
and built within his skull, burst from him with an inarticulate cry. Convex
rings of force, visible like a heat-wave distortion, crushed into the door and
reduced it to splinters.

When the motes of wood dust settled Elias entered a cell
similar to his own and set his eyes upon Agnar Vundi.

“Come then sons of summer,” Agnar cried, “men of the north
do not fear death!”

Elias responded with a toothy grin.

“Duana?” Agnar gasped. “Can it be you?”

“None other. But under the circumstances, I think you may
call me Elias.”

Agnar eyed the disheveled, glassy-eyed Marshal and ran a
dry, sandy tongue across his chapped and split lips. “Elias you don’t…” he
trailed off and his voice dropped to a whisper. “What have they done to you?”

Elias shrugged. “Torture. Starvation. Holidays inside a
necromancer’s head.”

“Yet, you’ve escaped,” Agnar said and looked past Elias,
expecting a cadre of soldiers at any moment.

“For now. We are in Treacher’s Tower, the highest spire at
Lucerne Palace. It’s some six-hundred feet high. Sheer Walls. One stair case
leading up. Built, I think, by Jonas the Just for the most traitorous of
criminals after—”

“Elias, perhaps we can continue this conversation on foot? I
don’t suppose you have a key.” Agnar eyed the chains that hung from Elias’s
wrists and then lifted his own manacled hands.

“Key, no. But I’m a wizard.” Elias waved a hand indicating
the door shrapnel.

“Oh,” said Agnar, unsure, “of course you are.”

Elias grinned again. “I haven’t really had much luck before
tonight.”

Elias’s words did little to put Agnar at ease, who already
felt ambivalent about entrusting himself to a half-mad fledgling wizard, but he
figured dying on his feet, or in a botched blast of magic, preferable to
rotting away in a cell. Agnar Vundi drew a deep breath and raised his hands.

†

“Offer him some resistance, but let him escape,” Sarad
said to his hastily gathered council. “Sacrifice some of the fledgling
acolytes.”

Talinus’ eyes narrowed. The imp, not unpleased—he had been
trying to come up with a plan to arrange for the Marshal’s escape, although he
despaired that Sarad would kill him before he had the chance—was nevertheless
taken off-guard, and therefore suspicious. “But why, master?”

Sarad cast a quick glance at the others assembled. His
underlings knew better than to question his command and stood at attention,
expressionless. Good. He could ill afford dissention at this critical time. “The
Marshal is useless to us dead. Torture is likewise futile, for a Marshal trick
enables him to separate his consciousness from his body. He can’t be broken. We
employ a similar technique under capture, as many of you have learned. Meanwhile
we have discovered the queen’s secret escape route, but neither our scouts nor
our diviners have been able to track them. If we allow him to escape, he will
lead us to his comrades, to the queen.”

“Clever,” Talinus said. “Simple, but clever. It just may
work. But is it too risky to let such a dangerous man free?”

“Alone, unarmed, he is of little danger to us,” Sarad said,
“and, he shall be watched closely.”

“Who shall we send to track him?” one of the lieutenants
asked. “Nervas is perhaps our best scout.”

“No,” said Sarad, “send three hands but give him a day’s
head start and instruct them to stay at least that far behind him at all times.
The Marshal is cunning and will double back on his trail. If he discovers he is
being tracked he will lead us away from the queen. No, I have arranged for
another way to keep an eye on Duana.” Sarad paused for effect. “I have
performed the
Kin Carnum
.”

Talinus offered up a silent curse to the Eldritch Circle as
a charged silence fell over the chamber.

Autumn’s Prayer

Eithne tasted the promise of autumn on the air as she
inhaled the rich, earthy scent that rode the crisp wind. She had always felt
the fall to be a magical season infused with vibrant energy. A restlessness
always crept over her when the leaves began to change and with it a wish to
escape the confines of palace life. Now all Eithne wanted was to be home.

Her thoughts turned to her father. How would he have reacted
to losing the crown in a midnight coup to a storybook enemy out of legend? Could
he have spotted the snake in the grass? Elias had, at least on some instinctual
level. He didn’t suspect the Prelate was a lord of the Senestrati, granted, but
he had distrusted him. Eithne cursed herself for having not looked into the
matter more deeply. It fell to her to make decisions based on the information
with which she was presented. She should have put more credence in Elias’s
instincts. But she hadn’t and now her Marshal was dead.

Yet Elias Duana had served her, and Galacia, well. His
sacrifice had allowed for her escape with a small complement of her most loyal
friends and advisors: Captain Blackwell and two of the Whiteshields, Bryn,
Ogden, Danica, Lar, and Phinneas.

They escaped through an ancient route, old as Lucerne palace,
if not more so. In the royal sitting rooms a secret door in the fireplace
opened to a passage that tunneled to the basement of the palace and then
through the granite plateau. The passage opened some half mile from the city
proper into a copse of trees, and that was the merit of the secret route, for
that exit was a decoy.

Under the bedrock rested a subterranean aquifer, accessible
through a small rectangular rift set on the edge of the tunnel where the wall
met the floor, nearly invisible to the eye in torchlight and scarcely large
enough to accommodate a grown man.

On the granite bank of the aquifer rested a narrow, shallow
boat that sat twelve. The underground lake opened into a fast moving river
scrunched tight by jagged walls and reaching stalagmites. They rode the
turbulent waters for the better part of the night, which finally deposited them
in the pre-dawn light into a primordial lake situated amongst a towering wood. The
Renwood, Odgen explained, was an ancient forest sacred to the Druids of old. “The
Druids called this lake
Gaudvohg
,” he had said, “which means
lake of
mirrors
.”

The wizard felt secure that while the trap door in the royal
suite would be discovered, likely sooner than later, the aquifer would probably
remain undetected, seeing as he had used magic to obfuscate any arcane tracking
methods. Nevertheless, he thought they should not tarry in the vicinity of the
Renwood, as boundless and mazelike as it may seem. The Prelate—Eithne urged
herself to stop thinking of him in terms of his office—would go to any and all
ends to secure her capture. Whatever the apostate’s plans, he could ill afford
leaving the legitimate heir to the throne alive.

Yet the queen had ordered that they remain camped in the
heart of the wood, by a small river tributary of the Gaudvohg some twenty miles
from the lake, for three days now. To Odgen and Blackwell’s urgings that they
break camp and seek a safer haven, she said only, “Am I not still queen?” Truthfully,
trepidation gnawed at her with rusty teeth every moment they remained here,
despite the tranquil, mystic thick of the wood. She stayed for Danica Duana,
and for Elias.

As they made camp their first night out from the lake a
raw-eyed Danica approached her tent. The young White Habit wasted no time with
pleasantries. “I know how this will sound,” she had said, “but I think Elias is
alive.”

Eithne, in her gentlest words, tried to explain the
impossibility of her brother’s survival, but the girl was insistent. “If he
died, you think I would feel…something,” Danica said, “but instead I feel this—”
she clutched a hand to her breast, “—this itch, this sense, that he’s still
alive, and he needs us.”

Elias along with the rest of the party had been appraised of
the escape plan by Ogden. It was he that had insisted on personally seeing that
the boat had been stocked with fresh supplies. If anyone could hope to escape
the Scarlet Hand, the bull-headed Elias stood the best chance, Danica reasoned.
If he broke free he would seek them here.

After all the Duanas had suffered, much in the service of
Galacia, Eithne figured at the least she owed them a few days; this is what the
queen told herself, but as she warmed herself before the fire and watched the
golden flames consume the pungent pine and poplar, she prayed to that autumn
magic that had tantalized her fantasies since childhood, for she too dared to
hope that her Marshal against all odds had managed to survive.

Escape

Agnar alternated between blowing on his wrists and
wringing his hands. “By the White Hag’s tit,” he cried, “that’s hot!”

Elias looked at his own blistered wrists. “Sorry, that is the
only way I know.”

“If we get out of this, you can always retire to the quiet
life of a blacksmith.” Agnar received a wan smile from Elias. “So, now what?”

“The Hand is likely mustering their defenses even as we
speak. Their leader was with me when I broke free of my chains. To go down
those stairs is suicide, and to wait here is certain death.” Elias looked down
the concentric hallway and fell into thought.

Agnar swallowed. “We have to try something.” He joined the
Marshal and looked into the corridor. “Elias?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Oh.” Agnar paced, waiting on the Marshal, dizzied by a
growing sense of panic.

“I could try to make a hole for us to jump through, but I
don’t know if I could use my magic to slow our fall enough that we would
survive.”

“If it is my fate to die this day,” Agnar said, “then let it
be on my feet.”

Elias looked Agnar in the eye. “So be it.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but it will be an honor to
die beside you, son of summer. Although I feel our deaths would be better were
we armed. It will be difficult to kill very many of these bastards with our
bare hands.”

Elias remembered the scorched but likely serviceable
scimitars clutched in the death-grasps of the Handsman in the corridor and
smiled. “Come then, Agnar,” he said, “we will strike at our enemy with their own
steel.”

Thus armed they crept down the spiraling stair case,
expecting resistance at every step, but none came and they reached the bottom
of the tower without incidence.

“Is it possible your struggle with their leader left him
weakened and unable to rouse the alarm?”

“Perhaps.” The thought had occurred to him, but it felt too
convenient. “More likely a trap of some kind awaits us. On the other side of
this door is a guard barrack. After that is the western courtyard where we will
be easy pickings for archers or wizards on the balconies above. Keep your wits
about you and stay close.”

Elias eased open the granite door, using it as shield, and ducked
his head out, expecting a hail of arrows or a blast of fell magic. He
encountered neither, only an empty chamber. The silence unnerved him more than
discovering a handful of armed men. He stole through the guard room, Agnar
close at his heels, scimitar raised in a high guard. With some effort Elias
quieted his mind and sought the detached state of awareness of the void, which
he had so painstakingly practiced with Ogden. He extended his senses and tried
to detect any hidden foes or traps that may be lying in wait.

Elias approached the second granite door that led to the
courtyard. He focused his sight inward and in the black of his mind’s-eye saw
several red, pulsating pillars of light that beat like fiery hearts. He drew
close to Agnar and whispered into his ear. “At least three, likely five await
us. You concentrate on ground level, while I focus on the balcony. We move
fast. I don’t want to be cornered.”

Agnar nodded and offered his new ally a grim smile. Today
they would honor their ancestors well.

Elias burst through the door in a stooped over run, taking
long, loping steps from side to side. Arrows sailed over his head and brushed past
his bare shoulders. He assessed the situation with quick eyes as he weaved
across the courtyard: three soldiers warded the central hub of the courtyard,
and two archers stood on either side of the balcony. They wore the garb of the
Redshields, but Elias knew at a glance they were Handsmen.

As planned, Agnar charged into the thick of the foot
soldiers, pushing them back with sweeping strokes of his scimitar. Elias, his
conscious thoughts buried in the void, leaving instinct and reflex as his prime
directives, pointed with sword in hand and summoned gouts of flame to bring
down the opposing archers.

“
Feora!
” Elias cried. The word echoed in his head,
bouncing wildly around the void, the syllables red and reckless. Steam
sputtered from his hands, but not a single tongue of flame. The energy of his
failed spell broke over him, a furious storm wave in a seething ocean. Elias
had channeled too much magic through his failing body and exhausted his mental
and physical resources. A headache so acute that he thought he ruptured an
artery stole his vision momentarily and left him stunned. The archers’, who had
led him, arrows flew wide.

Agnar abruptly turned on the trio of soldiers chasing him and
cut one of them down and then changed direction, ignoring the burning in his
lungs and legs as malnourished muscles screamed in protest. He heard a strange
popping sound and risked a side glance and saw Elias reeling on his feet. He
cursed to himself and changed direction, the remaining foot soldiers closing on
him. “Duana!” he screamed.

Elias resisted his body’s insistence that he sleep, for the
shred of awareness that remained to him knew that he was about to die. With
energy born of desperation, hate, and the refusal to succumb to Sarad and his
minions, he forced himself back into the void. The headache and weakness that
overcame him became distant as his consciousness separated from his body. He
knew he could not draw on his magic, so he sunk himself further into the void,
opening his senses and focusing entirely on the present moment. Time shrank
away from him, for his consciousness retained but the most tenuous of
connections to his body.

Two arrows spiraled lazily toward him and he coiled his
wrist to deflect them but gauged that they would fly wide, so he lunged and
batted aside an arrow on a course to impale Agnar. He grabbed the northman by
an arm and swung him about and away from a flurry of sword attacks and then
spun his scimitar in a rising arc, cutting through the mail under one of the
soldiers’ armpit. Agnar, ever fleet of mind and arm, went along with the
unorthodox tactic and continued the spin, dropped to a knee, and slid his blade
into a chink in the armor at the groin of the remaining soldier.

Elias knew better than to reach out to his magic again, but
fully consumed by the void his distant pain offered no distraction, and to his heightened
senses time thickened. He flicked out his sword to deflect more arrows,
noticing with disinterest that the arrows targeted Agnar and not him.

Agnar shook Elias, trying to bring the glassy eyed Marshal
back to his senses. He had seen that far-away and dark eyed look before in the
witch-women and seers of Ittamar. He could ill afford the marshal to enter a
trance in the middle of their half-brained escape attempt. He pulled Elias
along, bending to scoop a long-sword from the stiffening fingers of one of the
felled soldiers.

Elias responded to Agnar’s cue and the two raced out of the
courtyard, black-feathered arrows scattering about them as they fled.

Next they passed into a long, wide hall that approached the
wing that housed the Whiteshields. Elias skidded to an awkward stop, stumbling
on numb feet. He glanced about the granite lined hall searching the tapestries
hanging amidst the pedestals and plaques housing artifacts of the guard’s
history.

“Elias,” Agnar whispered, “this is hardly the time to take a
rest!”

Elias continued to scan the walls. “There it is.” He led
Agnar to a cleverly concealed door, nearly flush with the wall. “A servant’s
door. Almost impossible to notice unless you know where it is.” He opened the
door and ushered Agnar inside.

The narrow passage barely afforded room for the two men to
walk abreast and ran parallel to the guard’s hall. After some fifty feet the
passage split off: one way continued along the same direction and a second,
perpendicular path led down a narrow stair.

Halfway down the staircase the smells of roasting meat and
baking bread assailed their nostrils, reminding each of the long days since
they had last eaten. As they approached the entrance to the kitchens, Elias
paused, not knowing what to expect on the other side of the archway. Stealth
was certainly not an option, so he readjusted his grip on the scimitar and strode
into the kitchen, trying to affect a look of nonchalance.

A silence fell over the bustling chamber at once as a
baker’s boy took note of them and squealed. On impulse Elias took the loaf of
steaming bread from the boy and with sure, slow steps approached the larder. He
quickly found a sack with a few apples and filled it with whatever victuals
were handy—a wheel of cheese, a couple sausage, and a wineskin. He tore off a
hunk of the bread and offered it to Agnar, who choked it down, scimitar in hand.

Elias exited the larder and felt the eyes of the entire
kitchens focus on him. The baker’s boy approached him and with trembling hands
offered him another couple of brown loaves of bread. “‘Tis barley bread, for us
’n won’t be missed.”

Elias took the bread from the ruddy, straw-haired boy and
nodded his thanks. He stepped briskly past the boy, afraid that the Hand had
already guessed his ruse and were fast on their trail, but he realized they
would not get far without sustenance.

On the other side of the kitchens an exit led to an outdoor
well, and perhaps their freedom, if they were fast and fortunate. Nevertheless,
as they passed through the open archway, Elias paused and turned. Some two
dozen bakers, scullery maids, and cooks watched him, each holding their breath,
eyes wide. Elias, again driven by impulse, addressed the crowd. “Take heart,”
he said. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, or seen, but the queen lives and will
reclaim the throne from her enemies.”

“That was foolish,” Agnar said as Elias poked his head out
the doorway that led outside.

Elias crouched and scanned the night for signs of sentries
or pursuit. “What’s that? Going through the kitchens, taking food, or my
speech?”

“Yes,” said Agnar.

“It was the quickest path to the outside, one that our captors
may not be familiar with, and we won’t get far without food.”

“And the speech?” Agnar whispered.

“My father taught me that to occupy a conquered land you
must win the hearts of the people, or else subdue them. Fear is our enemy’s
greatest weapon. They are but shadow and gossamer.” Elias dashed off toward a
line of elms in a half-crouch, effectively ending the conversation.

Agnar grunted and followed suit. Of all the things his new
ally had proved to be, it seemed he was a philosopher as well.

Elias led them through the line of elms and into the eastern
outer gardens where they surprised a couple of courtly lovers romancing in the
moonlight. The pale faced youth sprang to his feet and drew a bejeweled rapier.
His hand shook, but to his credit he held the blade before him in a fair
facsimile of the royal guard style and pushed his lady love behind him.

“Put up your toy sword, boy,” Elias half whispered, half
growled, “lest you be an enemy of the queen.”

The young aristocrat blanched further. “The queen is dead.”

“Lies!” Elias spat. “The queen has escaped and is very much
alive. Do not believe the council or the lackey they’ve put on the throne as
regent.”

The youth sheathed his weapon and his eyes grew wide. “The
Marshal,” he said, “can it be you?”

Elias drew close to him. “There is no time, son. You never
saw me.”

As Elias drew away, the youth placed a hand on his shoulder
and leaned close. “Oberon has taken the throne and blamed the queen’s death on an
Ittamar raid. Not all are happy to see House Oberon in control. There are too
many unanswered questions. The Prelate held services for the queen today. Oberon’s
already ordered the army raised. It looks like we’re to be at war again.”

Elias squeezed his arm in response and then vanished back
into the gardens with Agnar close on his heels.

They reached the edge of the gardens without further
incidence. Elias crouched behind a red fern and peered out across the wide
green lawn that lay before them. “We have a long open space to cross here,” Elias
said, “but the stables are this way and we need horses.”

“The stables will be guarded, no?”

“Yes.” Elias rubbed his bare arms and shivered. “Typically
two of the lesser guard, a technicality, really since the grounds are closed—but
there is an alarm bell. I don’t know if Mirengi has heightened security. They
may very well guess our intentions and send men to the stables.”

“Mirengi?” asked Agnar, a chill moving through him even
though the autumn air of Galacia felt quite temperate to him. His mind spun as
he searched for the Galacian word for their high holy man. “Your…high priest is
the one behind all this?”

“Yes, and he’s the one that framed you and your men. But
this is a conversation for another time. Are you ready?”

“Does it matter?” Agnar snorted.

Elias offered Agnar a wry grin. “Quick and quiet, then.”

Elias set off at light jog. Agnar kept pace with ease, for
he was used to running in the thin air of the North. The northerner could run
all day in the thick air of the southlands.

As they neared the stables Elias spotted the expected two
sentries dressed in the garb of the Redshields. Elias slowed to a casual walk. “It
may be a trap. We gain the inside as soon as possible. The corridor will
nullify greater numbers. We fight back to back. The Horses we need are in the
seventh and the ninth stalls.”

The guards began to shift nervously as they neared. One of
them called out in a quavering voice, “Ho! Who goes there?”

“Marshal Duana, and in the absence of Captain Blackwell,
your commanding officer,” Elias said in a low tone, but one that carried well
in the still night. As he spoke his eyes did not rest on the guards but scanned
the elms to either side of the stable and the roof for any sign of ambush. He
kept his muscles loose and ready for action.