Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (34 page)

Bryn’s knowledge of medicine extended only as far as that of
a field medic, but she knew enough to stabilize a patient before transport. She
took a knee and wedged her sword-belt in Danica’s mouth to keep her from
swallowing her own tongue. She vaguely recalled hearing that restrained
epileptics often dislocated joints or broke bones, so she settled for clearing
debris around the convulsing woman and holding the belt fast.

After some interminable time that was likely only a couple
of minutes, the convulsions gradually lost vigor, receding into weak muscle
spasms and finally stillness. The exhausted Danica looked at the sky with
sightless eyes, pupils dilated to such a degree that Bryn could barely see the
green of her irises, and then with a spastic fluttering of her eyelids she slid
into unconsciousness.

Fevers

“Marshal, you do not look well.”

“I told you, call me Elias.”

Agnar eyed his fellow fugitive. The southerner’s usually
ruddy complexion had taken on a waxy quality, shiny and ashen. Angry, black
bruises lay beneath his dark eyes, which glittered with a feverish light. “Elias,
you do not look well.”

Elias grinned broadly. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you
that looks aren’t everything?”

“In the time I’ve known you, I have never seen you smile.”

“What can I say? I finally feel optimistic.”

Agnar nudged his horse closer to Elias’s and frowned. He had
seen fever addle the wits of many of his brethren, but the Marshal was a hard
man to read. Though he presently grinned like an idiot, and looked on the verge
of falling out of his saddle all morning, the fact was that he hadn’t. What’s
more, he had led them on a straight course—as near as he could tell—and covered
their trail admirably. Still, it was clear that Elias was not well.

“We need to rest,” Agnar said.

“What you mean is that I need to rest.” When Agnar did not
respond, Elias sighed and looked east, back toward Peidra. “We don’t have much
time, Agnar. The queen’s party didn’t start out with horses but they’ve had several
days head start on us. We need to catch them in time to warn them.”

“We’ll need our strength, as will the horses, if we hope to
be of any use to your queen.”

Elias sighed. “I’ll be better off when we reach our
destination. I suspect rest will do little to restore my strength.”

Agnar frowned and followed Elias’s gaze to the east. For the
first time since he had been South of Ittamar, a chill stole through him and he
shivered. “Rest is always good. However, I understand you are eager to see your
medicine man.”

Elias continued to focus his gaze on the distant horizon,
silent for a pregnant moment. “What I mean is that I do not think this sickness
is entirely natural. I feel that unseen eyes are fastened on me at every
moment, that an alien presence has attached itself to me.”

“You believe you have been cursed?”

“That’s not all. I have been playing the events of the past
couple of days over again in my head, and I am not convinced that our escape
was genuine. Why did we not meet resistance until the first courtyard, and when
we did all of their arrows seemed to target you. They wanted you dead, but for
me to escape—alone.”

Agnar felt the pit of his stomach drop about a foot into his
guts. “You think they let you escape only to track us to your queen?”

Elias nodded. “And they’ve weakened me with this fever-curse
to make it easier to track us and to addle my wits so that I wouldn’t pause to
question our good fortune. They want us to slow down so they can stay fast on
our tail.”

“If you are correct then we are only bringing death to your
queen.”

“On the other hand, we need to warn her of what we have
learned, and the knowledge I only discovered on the night of the coup—that and
what else I gleaned when I was inside Sarad’s head.”

Agnar let the last comment go unaddressed. There were some
things that he didn’t exactly want to know. “So, what do we do then?”

Elias brought his horse around and transfixed Agnar with
dilated, fever-bright eyes. “We do the unexpected, my friend.”

†

“What’s wrong with her?” asked Lar.

“I don’t know,” said Phinneas, who crouched by Danica’s side
inside the cramped tent which also contained Ogden, Bryn, and Eithne. “This is
like no delirium I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t have a fever—in fact she’s ice
cold.”

Lar picked loose a sticky strand of black hair that had
become stuck to Danica’s lips. “Is it a curse?”

Phinneas looked Lar in his slate-grey eyes. “I believe so,
son.”

“Bryn, you found her like this?” Lar asked.

“No. When I approached her she looked fine, if a little
drawn. I surprised her and she almost attacked me. We started talking but when
the conversation turned to her brother she began acting strange, hostile. It
was like she became someone else. Her voice changed and she started talking
like…” Bryn trailed off, at a loss for how to describe the surreal encounter.

“Like what?” Phinneas said, abruptly intense.

Bryn threw her hands up. “It’s hard to explain. It’s almost
as if she were in some kind of trance. Like I was talking with some other
personality and not the Danica I know.”

Ogden and Phinneas exchanged glances. “Could it be?”
Phinneas asked as the color drained from his face.

“I don’t know,” Ogden said slowly. “A case of full
possession is rare and I don’t know anyone that’s actually witnessed one. The
individual usually has ample natural protection against such profanity but
given all the abuse Danica has suffered, and grief, lack of sleep—it is feasible.”

“Possession?” Lar asked in a brittle voice. “Bloody hell. You
can’t be serious. You are serious. Why didn’t you two see this coming?”

The words fell into a deep silence as neither Phinneas nor
Ogden could find the words to answer Lar. The unassuming farmer had been quiet
and reserved since their midnight escape, but at that moment a deluge of
emotion surged through him. The others found themselves acutely reminded of the
raw power of the ordinarily gentle giant as the blood rushed to his face and
the flat muscles of his chest and ham-haunch sized shoulders, cultivated from
years of manual labor, strained against his shirt and the thunder of his voice
filled the tent.

Lar leaned over Danica, so close that were she awake she
would feel his breath on her check. “You listen to me, you demon. You get gone,
or I swear by God’s blood I’ll walk to Hell and sell my soul to Lord Fallow
himself just so he takes you back.” Lar cast Ogden and Phinneas a baleful look
and then brushed his queen aside as he stormed from the tent.

Ignoring the obvious, Eithne said into the charged silence,
“What was she doing out in the wood alone?”

“She was going back to Peidra,” Bryn said. “She thinks Elias
is still alive.”

“That’s preposterous,” Ogden said.

Bryn shot him a look. “She’s been through a lot, and
whatever else you may say about the Duanas, they have uncanny instincts.”

“You actually think she’s right.” Ogden said.

“I don’t think he’s escaped, but they may have kept him
alive. They may be trying to,” Bryn paused and gave Ogden a significant look,
“elicit information from him.” Bryn could tell from the way his shoulders
slumped and how he wouldn’t meet her eye that it was a thought that had
occurred to him as well. “If you thought your brother was in the hands of those
animals would you do less?”

The tent fell quiet again as each of them were left alone
with their grim thoughts. “She seems to be resting quietly now—surely that’s a
good sign,” Eithne said at last.

“We’ll do everything we can for her,” Phinneas said, his large
brown eyes wet. “I owe Padraic and Elias at least that much.”

“If this is possession,” said Ogden in a monotone, “though
her body appears at rest her spirit is fighting for her life.”

†

Danica found herself in a clearing in a deep wood,
standing inside a circle of stones. She counted seven stones, each the size of
a modest sack of grain, engraved with fluid symbols. She couldn’t remember how
she had come to be here but she knew it was imperative that she not leave the
circle of stones. She was sure someone had told her that once.

At the center of the circle sat a silver pool, about the
diameter of a bird’s bath, lambent and placid as glass, but when she reached
out a hand to touch it, it rippled and hummed with an electric thrum of power. In
the pool an image formed of a dark shadow veined with swollen, red arteries. The
vantage of the image changed, pulling back, and she saw herself bundled in a
sleeping roll. She inhaled sharply for the shadow was superimposed over her
like a cocoon and throbbing like a cancerous boil. Red ropes of energy writhed
from the black mass and connected to her body at her belly button, solar
plexus, sternum, throat, and in between her eyes.

“There you are, you little naughty.”

Dancia’s heart dropped. She turned slowly from the pool and
toward the voice of her tormentor. Slade looked like he did the day they had met
him at the Knoll County fair a lifetime ago: dashing and dressed in warm
colors, yet his conjured illusion could not hide the black hunger in his eyes. The
stones emitted a green light and a wind rustled through the canopy and Danica
drew strength from that. “You again,” she said, affecting disinterest.

“And again and again. Death holds no mystery and creates no
barrier for the Necromancer, child. Though I am hungry for a body again.” Slade
gave her a lascivious wink. “Be a good girl and come without a fight and I
won’t have to punish you.”

“This circle will bar you indefinitely.”

Slade reached a hand toward the perimeter of the stones and
met an invisible barrier with a
pop
that gave birth to a collision of
black and green sparks. “You can stay in there as long as you like but as long
as you do you will remain in limbo, kept from your body and from the other
side. You’ll have to come out and face me eventually.”

Danica’s attention was drawn away from Slade by a flickering
in the pool. She looked into it and smiled at what she saw. “Perhaps not as
long as you think. Elias is coming for you.”

†

“Split up?” said Agnar, incredulous. “You can’t be
serious. You’re in no condition to travel alone and I’m in a strange land
without any supplies.”

Elias licked his cracked lips. “My plan is simple. Once we
gain the Renwood we find the lake on the eastern edge of the forest, which is
where the escape route ends. From there their plan will be to travel along one
of the tributaries of the lake and to an outpost of the Galacian Regulars on
the other side of the forest. The Renwood is over a hundred miles long and it
will take them a week to reach the outpost. You’ll easily be able to overtake
them on horse. You’ll travel along the tributaries so that you won’t leave a
trail.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll aim for the opposite side of the forest, leaving an
easily followed trail. By the time they catch me, you would have already
overtaken the queen and will be well on your way to the outpost.”

“Your plan is to sacrifice yourself so that I—your ancestral
enemy—can deliver a clandestine message to your queen? You have lost your wits,
son of summer.”

“Look at me, Agnar.” Elias nudged his mount, Brand, closer
to Comet, forcing Agnar to do just that. Agnar looked into Elias’s black and
shining eyes, the iris indistinguishable from the pupil. His skin was bereft of
color and glistened with an unnatural pallor. A spider web of blue veins
protruded against the skin of his neck, creeping ever closer to his face.

“I am done for, Agnar. Mirengi saw to that. He let me escape
with the hope that I would lead him to the queen, but knew he couldn’t let me
live so he set this plague on me, so that even if I did manage to elude his
tail I would die before long and avail my queen nothing. By using so much of my
own magic I depleted my strength and hastened the process.” Elias drew closer
yet to Agnar, leaning out of his saddle. “But his spell cut both ways. He tried
to invade my mind, but in doing so opened up his own to me. I’ve learned his
plan.”

†

“What are you up to, Master?” Talinus asked as he
alighted in Sarad’s study. The wizard sat inside his spell-circle in his study,
legs crossed and in seeming meditation. A scrying mirror rested on the floor
before him.

“I was trying to locate Duana before you interrupted me.” Sarad
opened his scarred eyelids, unleashing a withering blue-eyed gaze onto Talinus.

Talinus’s thoughts roiled. The impertinent—and clever—false
Prelate threatened to undo all his plans. The
Kin Carnum
curse that
Sarad cast on Elias was no trifle of necromancy. The spell involved a
necromancer investing a portion of his magic, his spirit, in the victim. This
created an energetic loop between the pair, whereby the Necromancer could track
the victim, cast other spells on him from great distances, and even, providing
he had the skill, sense his thoughts and emotions. In this case Sarad had also,
through the
Kin Carnum
link, cast a fever-curse spell on Duana to ensure
his death in the event they couldn’t recapture him.

The
Kin Carnum
, however, was a risky gambit, for it
left the Necromancer bereft of the piece of himself that he attached to his
victim, and maintaining the psychic link was draining.

“The
Kin Carnum
,” Talinus tsked. “Rather risky don’t
you think? Duana is resourceful. What if he catches a glimpse into your skull,
like he did when you tried to invade his memories?”

“It was a risk I had to take,” Sarad snapped, brittle with
his exertion. “Some magic protects him and insulates his mind. It would be
impossible to break him.”

“Maybe with magic, but whatever happened to scalpel and
pliers? That’s worked for millennia. No, Sarad, I think your hunger for
vengeance is the reason you let Duana go.” Talinus could feel Sarad’s anger
rolling off him in waves as his aura blackened.

“Don’t be absurd, imp, and mind yourself lest you overstep
your bounds.”

Talinus continued his relentless press. “You want revenge
for what Duana has done to you. He almost destroyed you though he was
outnumbered thirteen to one. You actually died for a brief moment in time and
the magic that brought you back has left you hideously scarred and twisted like
a gargoyle from the pit.”

Sarad screamed an inarticulate curse and thrust a hand
forward. A ragged spear of black energy burst from him. Talinus had been
prepared for the outburst and erected a subtle shield before him to redirect
the energy away from him, but the force of the blow repelled him, launching him
across the room and into the wall.