Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (33 page)

“Marshal?” the guard stammered. “Is it really you?”

“Yes,” Elias said and walked past the two men without pause
and into the relative safety of the stable.

The second guard said. “Sir, we were told you were dead,
along with the queen, Blackwell, Lady Bryn…the whole lot of you!”

“They bury the queen tomorrow!” said the first guard.

“Oberon’s taken the throne as regent. The palace is swarming
with his men and Knights Justicar.” The first guard eyed Agnar. “They said the
Ittamar did it.”

Elias turned on his heels and grabbed the guard by his
surcoat. “Do not believe your eyes, whatever you may see! The queen lives. I
saw her escape myself. Fell magic is at work here. Oberon, Mirengi, Ogressa
they are the masterminds behind this.”

Elias heard a noise behind him. In a fluid motion he shoved
the guard back and spun around, his sword raised in a high guard. Agnar reacted
first and held the perpetrator by the collar, a young ruddy-faced boy with
straw colored hair, with a sword at his throat.

Elias drew up short and an involuntary smile came to his
lips. “Seven? Seven Winters, you little sneak!”

Agnar let up his hold on the boy. “You know this child?”

Elias laughed, his mood lifted by the sight of the
precocious stable hand. “Agnar, meet Seven Winters. A better friend there is
none.”

“Elias,” Seven said, once free of Agnar’s grasp, “I didn’t
believe a word of it. I knew you were alive. I just knew it. I have been
waiting for you these four days.”

Elias took Seven by the shoulders and squeezed. “Thank-you,
my friend,” he said earnestly, “your faith means much to me, but there is no
time. We must be off. Our enemies cannot be far behind. You must hide.”

“But I have something for you. Follow me.”

Seven dashed down the corridor without a further word. Elias
looked toward the entrance, expecting the signs of pursuit at any moment. Elias
hesitated, not wishing to press his luck any further than he already had in his
haphazard escape, but an ineffable urge tugged at him to follow Seven. To Agnar
he said, “Can you prepare the horses?” and to the guards, “Watch the entrance.”
Without waiting for a response he trotted after Seven, aware that every passing
second brought them a step closer to recapture, or to death.

†

Talinus focused his preternatural vision on the stable.
“There are two guards,” the imp said, “who we can assume are loyal to the
Marshal since they haven’t raised the alarm. The Northerner, Agnar Vundi, is in
the corral with Duana and a man-child.”

“The Northerner?” asked one of the hand. “With Duana?”

“Yes, that’s what I said, you imbecile!” Talinus said,
through clenched teeth. The imp forced himself to take a calming breath,
despite the fact that he didn’t actually need to breathe. “This is an
unforeseen complication, but one that we must deal with, and delicately. We
need Vundi alive, but he must not escape. Subdue him quickly, but don’t
mortally wound him, lest we face my master’s wrath.”

Talinus returned his attention to the stables. “Look, now,
Duana has left the others and gone with the manling. They are separated. Now is
our chance. Strike, now. Go!”

†

Seven led Elias into a small common room where the
stable hands took their meals and approached an alcove set in a corner. He
pulled a small folding knife from his pocket and pried open a false floorboard.
From the hidden covey Seven retrieved a long bundle that appeared to be a faded
green horse-blanket, rolled and tied with a leather cord. Seven held the bundle
in both arms and offered it up to Elias reverentially, as if passing over a
holy relic.

Perplexed, and utterly forgetting his haste, Elias took the
blanket. A tingling sensation raised the hairs on the back of his hands and
shivered up his arms, across his shoulders, and to his crown. With shaking
hands Elias untied the bundle and peeled back the horse blanket to reveal a
crimson, leather-braided hilt flecked with black. Elias brandished the blade at
once and felt an electric surge course through him as the naked blue-tinged
steel met the night air. The runes etched into the base of the blade burned red
as if in remembrance of the fires that had forged them. The like runes branded
into the forearm of his sword arm burned in kind.

“How?” Elias asked.

Seven paled considerably in the face of such an arcane
display, but he wore his smile easily. “Like Pa always said, servants are
invisible to the upper crusters and can go near anywhere unnoticed. I waited
until no one was fooling with it and gave her a pull, and she slid right out of
that wall, easy as butter.”

“Stuck in the wall eh?” Elias marveled at his good fortune. “Was
there no guard posted?”

“There were the first two days, but by the third I guess
they figured it wasn’t goin’ anywhere. I climbed the balcony outside the
council chamber, went through the window, and then used the North entrance to
the throne room. Simple really. I only just got it tonight. I was figurin’ you
might need it.”

A toothy grin erupted on Elias’s face. “To think Sarad and
all of his wizards couldn’t move the Daishin an inch, but along comes Seven
Winters and steals away with it like a rogue out of legend!”

“Well, you do know what they say about seventh sons.”

Elias’s response died on his lips for a cry issued from the
corral, momentarily followed by Agnar screaming his name.

“Seven,” Elias said, “hide.”

Elias ran into the corral brandishing his sword, which burned
with arcane fire. One of the guards shambled drunkenly toward him and then fell
to his knees, impaled by a black shafted arrow that had found purchase in the
crease between his shoulder plate and chainmail. Pulses of magic rippled down
Elias’s sword and into his arm, and with it an inferno of rage that banished
his fatigue and any thought of flight.

Elias’s heart drummed the beat of the
Danse Mortum
and the tumult of events around him slowed and he saw them with a detached,
pristine clarity. Black blood sputtered from the fallen guard’s mouth as he
struggled to regain control of his legs. The second guard pulled closed one of
the double doors, using it as a shield, before retreating along its line. Black
arrows fletched with crimson feathers spun in tight spirals through the open
archway while others thudded into the closed door, rocking it against its
frame. Agnar cursed in his native tongue and dove into an open stall and
somersaulted into a crouch. Comet, not yet saddled, reared fully onto his hind
legs, eyes rolling in terror.

Elias continued his forward rush. His sword weighed heavy in
his hand, pregnant with the deluge of magic it had absorbed from his battle
with Sarad in the throne room. His awareness of this slid fluidly through his
mind, for the sword had become an extension of his will and as much a part of
him as his lungs and heart.

“Comet,” Elias called out, his voice resonant and binding. Comet
neighed and shook his head but calmed under the sway of the arcane command.

Elias used a barrel pressed up against the wall of the
corral as a stepping stone and leapt an impossible distance onto Comet’s bare
back. All the while the magic of his sword trickled into him, fueling the
molten core of his rage. Elias remained amount by clenching his legs hard
against Comet’s ribs and digging in his heels.

Comet exploded through the open archway, ropes of froth
whipping from his muzzle. Three scimitar wielding Handsman approached the
stables in a wedge formation, but when they saw Elias bearing down on them they
fanned out. With archers yet undiscovered, Elias could ill afford reining in to
chase the melee combatants and make himself an easy target. He had little
recourse but to resort to the arcane, even though his magic had failed him in
the courtyard. However, he now channeled his will through his sword, summoning
the pent up energy stored within the enchanted steel.

Acting on instinct, Elias swung his sword, tracking across all
three Handsman, and cried, “
Feora!
” Black fire edged in indigo scythed
from his sword in an incandescent arc, an inky stain in the starlit night. The
three swordsmen fell, rimed in frost, as the cold flame consumed them, the fell
magic of their own lord recycled and used against them.

Elias pressed Comet’s mad gallop without so much as a pause
and discovered the archers, two of them, standing side by side some fifty feet
away. To Elias’s surprise, despite having arrows notched, they dropped their
bows and made to scatter.

Elias ran down the first one with ease. The archer rolled to
the left, dodging Comet’s thundering hooves, endeavoring to keep out of reach
of Elias’s sword arm. Elias read his foe’s intentions at once and tossed his
sword into his left hand, grabbed a handful of mane with his right, leaned down,
and with a sweeping stroke cut the Handsman down. The maneuver, however, cost
him his balance, riding bareback as he was, and Elias had to drop his sword for
he needed his hand to stay ahorse.

Elias did not turn about to retrieve his sword, for he could
not allow the remaining archer to escape into the labyrinthine gardens and lose
him. As he closed in on the fleeing man, shadow leapt up around him and
coalesced, obfuscating him from view. Elias cursed and with a command brought
Comet skidding to a stop. He searched frantically for the Handsman but could
not see him.

Desperate rage gathered in Elias as blood thundered through
his head like a blacksmith’s hammer on anvil. Fueled by the raw force of his
anger, desperation, and need, he reached for the void, reflexively, foolishly. “
Luminae!
”
he screamed and a white light burst from him.

With the light went the remainder of his strength and Elias
felt a curious dislocation of his mind from his body and he tumbled from Comet,
unconscious.

Talinus, invisible to mortal eyes, alighted on a low wall at
the edge of the gardens. He marveled at the supine Marshal, hoping he wasn’t
irrevocably damaged. Duana had taken out an entire Hand, a five man cadre of
the Scarlet Hand, single-handedly, in less than a minute. If Duana survived his
plan, Talinus decided he would either have to turn him or kill him. The man was
simply too dangerous—unpredictable, reckless, and wild, which he found to be redeeming
qualities in any man, but dangerous. Consumed as he was by wrath, Duana would
be putty in the hands of the Eldritch Circle. Duana merely required a little
more blood on his hands and the suffering of another tragic loss.

With a couple of beats from his wings Talinus flew to the
Marshal’s side. He didn’t have enough time to remove Sarad’s curse, but he
could tip the odds in the Marshal’s favor. The power of death was also power
over life, and so Talinus leaned over the slumbering Marshal and breathed the
Obsidian Queen’s kiss into him. By then Duana’s allies had arrived on the
scene, but their eyes passed over him unseen. As a final touch Talinus planted
a suggestion deep in Elias’s subconscious and then pushed a command directly
into his conscious mind:
Awake, Marshal!

Elias started awake as if snapped from a long sleep by a
ringing church-bell. He felt hands on him and heard voices, but he ignored
them. Something urgent tugged at him, but it lay just beyond his reach, like a
dream upon waking breaking into shards of images and primal emotions. He felt
an alien presence close at hand, which he perceived as a heaviness in the air,
a slumbering power like the charge in the air before a storm.

Talinus became still as the Marshal fixed his eyes upon him.
Impossible, he thought. The Marshal’s senses were keen, but to see a Fey
without the aid of a powerful enchantment lay beyond the reach of any mortal. Yet,
the imp grew anxious all the same, but after a long look the Marshal shook his
head and blinked, as if banishing the fog of sleep, and rose with his comrade’s
aid. As he stumbled away the Marshal cast a glance over his shoulder. Oh, yes,
Talinus thought for the second time in as many minutes, dangerous. This man is
very dangerous.

Talinus waited until the Marshal gained the stables and then
took to the air to tell Sarad the good news.

Elias wasted no time in preparing the horses and tried to
ignore the sideways glances Agnar cast at him. Seven had produced a worn pair
of riding boots and a tattered cloak to cover his nakedness, but Elias was
thankful for that much and treasured the little comfort the necessities brought
him. “Quickly, now,” he said, “let’s turn loose the other horses. It will help
cover our trail and buy us some time. The smell of blood and magic will have
spooked them and they should run straight away from here for miles.”

When he and Agnar were mounted, Elias nodded to Seven and
said, “I cannot thank you enough for what you have done, Seven Winters.”

“My duty ‘s all,” said the boy. “When you return maybe you
can take me as a squire.”

“Count on it. But now you—and you soldier—must go to ground.
If Oberon’s men suspect you gave us aid, you will be in grave danger. Farewell.”
With that final word Elias and Agnar thundered into the night, each wondering
how close behind pursuit lay.

Cursed

“Danica believes that there can be no success without
Elias,” Eithne said and looked at Ogden and Phinneas in turn. A silence fell
over the cramped quarters of her tent as the two men exchanged glances.

“We all mourn Elias,” Ogden said slowly. “He was a great
friend and ally. His loss was a tragic one, and he will ever be missed, but as
promising as his potential was, his training had but begun, and he was only one
man.”

“You have said to me that history and the fate of nations
often hinge on the actions of individuals,” Eithne said hotly.

Ogden put up his hands and said, “I meant the choices of a queen,
Eithne.”

Eithne stood, her hands balled into fists, and then realized
the confines of her tent did not allow for pacing. She felt her ears grow warm
and then sat down again on her bedroll. “And what choice do I have now, Ogden?”

“We all miss the boy,” Phinnneas said, his voice a whisper,
“but we musn’t give up. I think this is what Ogden means. We have to put aside
our grief and focus on taking back the capital. Otherwise, Elias’s sacrifice
would have been in vain.”

Eithne took a calming breath. “You are right of course. I
just feel so lost. Danica is half-crazed, Bryn is nothing like herself, so
withdrawn; we have three men at arms, and are marooned in the wilderness. What
can we do?”

Ogden leaned forward and clasped Eithne’s hands in his own. “Despair,
fear, these are the Scarlet Hand’s greatest weapons. We still have allies. Your
uncle and House Mycrum will rally to you if you make yourself known.”

“Providing they yet live,” Eithne said.

“Likely they remain in position, but are carefully watched,”
Phinneas said. “Mirengi would risk losing control of the public if both the
queen and two Houses were eradicated in rapid succession. Vacuums of power need
be filled, else governments fail. Mirengi may be a merciless son of a bitch,
but he isn’t stupid. Even an idiot would sense foul play if the monarch and all
her allies disappeared in a week’s time, destroyed by a handful of northmen. If
we can defeat Mirengi and his men, whoever has assumed control of the throne
cannot openly challenge you. Galacia still has a standing army.”

“Yet we cannot simply stride through the city gates and
declare to the people of Peidra that their queen still lives. We do not know
how many spies Mirengi has or where. We would never make it in alive and how many
commoners would know their queen by sight, dressed as a beggar?”

“And there is your answer,” Ogden said. “First we gain the
garrison on the other side of the Renwood, and then we dispatch Mirengi as he
did us: with subterfuge, stealth, and cunning.”

†

Danica stifled a sigh, rose from her crouch, and crept
away from the queen’s tent. She returned to the pack she had stashed a safe
distance from the camp. She checked its contents yet again, although she knew
well what it contained. She withdrew her cloak and wrapped it about her, donned
her short sword, and checked the small store of food she appropriated from the
camp larder. Lastly, she reached a trembling hand for the coiled length of rope
that Slade had used to bind her to the table in the Mayfair Manor. It seemed a
lifetime ago, yet it felt so close, and she knew that part of her still lay on
that table bound and afraid in the dark.

Danica withdrew the rope from the pack, at once disgusted
and fascinated. It was yet black with her blood. The rope felt unnaturally cold
in her hands, and a numbing sensation rapidly radiated from her fingers to her
hands and wrists. Despite the cold that cut through her, Danica broke out in a
sweat. She peered at the rope and blinked in the face of the impossible as the
rope writhed in her hands. The dark stains on the rope undulated and rolled
like the ebb and flow of dark waters on some alien shore. Faint, Danica toppled
from her crouch and onto her knees. She tottered and fell...

Footsteps sounded behind her, then to one side. Danica’s
eyes rolled around trying to spy the figure, but she saw only shadows dancing
at the edge of her periphery. In vain, she tried to move her head, but the rope
held her fast, and she only succeeded in tearing the rope deeper into her
flesh.

Icy fingers caressed her hair and then drew down her face—gnarled,
thin fingers, with wicked black fingernails, thick and sharp as talons. The nails
trailed over her cheek, cutting with the efficiency of a razor and leaving hot
trails of blood in their wake. Danica strained her eyes to look down her naked
body. Clouds of shadow obfuscated her periphery, but she could see the
corpse-hand, reaching, disembodied, from out the darkness and slicing through
the tender flesh of her torso.

The hand lingered in the downy hair of her pubic mound. Danica
screamed, but supine, with her neck pulled taut, and the constricting binding
of her torso, she only managed a hoarse whimper. A single finger burrowed
through her hair and toward her sex...

Danica thrashed and kicked as she screamed back into the
blinding light of midday. Hands grasped her by the shoulders and held her fast.
Danica turned her head and bit at the hands, which promptly retreated from her
snapping teeth. She fell back onto the earthen ground and scrambled on her
back, away from her attacker, trying in vain to gain her feet.

“Bloody, hell!” Bryn cried. “Danica, you nearly took off my
finger!” Bryn looked down at the southern woman. Danica’s head twisted about
wildly as she blinked blood-shot, wet eyes furiously. Her lips pulled back from
her teeth in a garish snarl, revealing blood red gums. Bryn went cold to her
core, and despite herself took a step back. When she spoke her voice quavered. “It’s
me, Bryn. What’s happened to you? Have you taken ill?”

Danica’s eyes began to adjust to the light and focus and she
became aware of her location. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t in the manor. It
was only a dream, like before. By the time she re-opened her eyes, she had
grounded herself, but the black fear remained, like an icicle lodged in her
bosom. “Forgive me, lady,” she said. She rose and dusted herself off. “Sometimes
I have night terrors.”

“It’s not night,” Bryn pointed out.

“Day terrors, then. By whatever name, I am sure you are
familiar with the condition.”

“I have heard of it before, yes, but…” Bryn trailed off and
eyed the young woman. Danica seemed to have returned to herself and stared back
at her coolly. Bryn briefly considered pushing further, but she knew little
good could come of pressing issues both sensitive and perilous. A gentler hand
would be required here. It occurred to Bryn that Danica had been acting
increasingly peculiar, but she had hitherto attributed it to the growing amount
of stress she had been under. So much had happened to the poor creature since
Bryn had met her. The White Habit had lost almost everyone dear to her.

Bryn affected what she hoped to be a casual shrug and broke
the long silence. “Looks like you are ready for a long journey there.”

“It’s good to be prepared when going for a hike in the woods
alone. You don’t know who you may find.” Danica arched an eyebrow.

Bryn sighed audibly. She knew Danica well enough to know
that once she got her back up, she would not back down for anything. This
situation required a different tact. She had to strike for the heart if she was
to get anywhere here. “Danica, I hope you know that I consider you a friend, as
I did your brother. I cared for Elias.” She paused to let her words sink in. “You
needn’t lie to me. Why are you leaving?”

Danica shifted on her feet. “You followed me?”

“I saw you skulking around Eithne’s tent.”

“You were spying on me,” Danica said a little hotly.

Bryn permitted herself a low chuckle. “Nothing so sinister. I
noticed a tension in you since we started moving through the wood. I was
worried for you.”

“I’m touched by your concern, Lady, but it is unfounded. I
am holding up rather well for someone who has lost her father, brother, friends,
and home all within a season.”

Bryn could tell by Danica’s posture that she was losing her.
The other woman crossed her arms before her, her jaw clenched, chin lifted, and
eyes narrowed in clear defiance. Evidently the young woman had taken her words
as pity and felt insulted. Bryn silently cursed herself, but she knew one form
of bait Danica couldn’t resist, though she was loath to use it. At this point,
however, she was left with little recourse.

Bryn lifted her own chin and arched an eyebrow. “I never
thought you the type to run, Danica Duana. I suppose I was wrong about you.”

Danica took a step toward Bryn, fury transforming her delicate
features into a crimson visage of bestial rage. “Run? Run, you miserable little
cunny,” she growled. “I’m going
back
to Peidra. By the time you fools
decide on a course of action it will be too late.”

“Back to Peidra? To what end? You cannot possibly think to
take on the Scarlet Hand yourself.”

Danica’s entire body shook, muscles seemingly contracting of
their own volition, as if on the verge of an epileptic fit. Her head drooped
between her hunched shoulders, but her eyes rolled up in their sockets to peer
at Bryn. “I’m going for my brother.”

The revelation struck Bryn dumb. This explained why Eithne
insisted on waiting three days before striking in earnest through the Renwood. Danica
could not accept the death of her brother. Bryn had seen denial in the grief
stricken before, mostly citizens on the field of battle or in the aftermath of
a raid, but nothing as powerful and disturbing as what she saw in Danica Duana
at that moment. “Poor child,” she whispered and took a step toward Danica,
reaching out a hand.

Danica’s head lifted and her shimmering green eyes snapped
up in their sockets, lending her the look of predator about to pounce. She caught
Bryn’s wrist in her hand with an uncanny speed. “Don’t
poor child
me,”
she said. “Elias is alive. I can sense his presence as surely as I sense yours,
and the rapid flutter of your heart.”

“Danica,” Bryn said, a feeling of dread rapidly stealing
over her, “You’re hurting me.” Danica cocked her head to one side, a lupine
gesture that sent shivers down Bryn’s spine, and then abruptly released her. Danica’s
eyes glassed over and she grew still and Bryn wondered if she had fallen asleep
or else into a trance. Acting out of instinct, Bryn quickly spat out a cantrip
that enabled her to detect and perceive arcane energies. Danica was clad in a
nimbus of indigo light thick as a storm cloud and as bright as a flash of
lighting.

Bryn stumbled away from the inert woman in the face of the
sickening realization. The arcane signature meant one thing—black magic. Danica
was cursed, or else turned a fell sorceress.

Danica looked at her with flat eyes and said, “Elias. Soon,
will I have him again in my grasp.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper,
the tone low and gravely as if it issued from deep within her, spoken from her
diaphragm. Bryn fell back further, dropping into a defensive posture, but
Danica’s features abruptly cleared.

The young woman blinked rapidly. “Bryn…what…I don’t know
what’s come over me. I have been getting entirely too little sleep.”

“Bad dreams?” Bryn managed.

“The most strange. And vivid.” Danica paused and pressed a
couple of fingers between her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Still,
I am not insane. Elias and I have always had a special bond, like twins. And
with our talents awakening, it has grown stronger. I know that he’s alive. I
know. Please, you mustn’t try to stop me.”

“I don’t think you’re insane, and I have come to trust the
instincts of you Duanas.” Bryn took a deep breath. “That having been said—don’t
do this. It is folly. There is no way that you could rescue Elias yourself, and
you haven’t even considered that this may be a trap. Your death profits your
brother nothing.”

“If that’s the case, then come with me. Together we can slip
past unseen. You know the city, the palace, like no one alive! We could—” Danica
abruptly cut off with a sharp exhale, as if she had taken a blow to the
stomach. Her eyelids drooped and a glassy look stole over the depths of her
murky, sea-green eyes. She paused thusly for several long-felt beats, and as
Bryn found herself on the verge of running for help, the entranced young woman began
to speak in a slow, thick voice. “No matter, spawn of Denar. Even now he is on
the move. He comes to us. But he is not whole. No, not at all. Pity, that. Still,
victory without honor, is victory nonetheless and will sate me yet.”

Danica’s head drooped forward until her chin rested almost on
her chest, and she grew still as death. After an impossibly long minute, during
which Bryn had held her own breath until her lungs burned, Danica inhaled a
ragged breath and her head slowly lifted, a leaden ball on an invisible chain. Her
skin had a peculiar sheen and blue tint, which brought out the flecks of red in
her irises, and lent her the aspect of the undead.

Bryn took a step away from her, stark terror striking her
dumb and weak. Danica shambled forward with a wry grin, an unholy light dancing
in her eyes. Bryn lowered into a fighters crouch, but her legs betrayed her and
bucked and shook with nervous fear. She drew a dagger and held it in an inverse
grip in a high guard. “Danica…” she said, unsure what she feared more—Danica,
or the dagger in her hand.

The young White Habit offered only an inane giggle and then
fell forward onto her knees. She reached out a palsied hand toward Bryn and an
inarticulate, animal moan issued from her blue lips. Without further preamble
she fell forward, landing face-down. No sooner did she crash to the earthen
floor than she began to convulse in a series of wracking seizures. Her eyes
rolled around in their sockets, like a horse in the grips of mortal terror, and
pink foam erupted from her mouth.