Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (39 page)

Return to Peidra

Bryn led Eithne into the deep wood. Low hanging
branches reached for her with brittle fingers. Brambles and brush sounded their
haphazard escape. All the while Bryn felt the dark press of the Scarlet Hand closing
in on her, the cold fury of their fell power.

A bolt of black fire crashed into a tree at her left and
showered her with tree pulp and scalding sap. She pulled Eithne into the
relative cover of a nearby gully. The cousins stumbled down the treacherous
slope. An explosion of earth disoriented them as a ball of cold flame erupted
on the ground before them. Eithne went down even as Bryn felt the icy fist of a
missile of fell magic punch her in the small of the back. She fell atop Eithne,
to shield her cousin and her queen.

Bryn lay still atop Eithne as the sound of running boots
drew near. The numbing cold of the Handsman’s spell spread through her left
shoulder and down her arm, rendering the limb useless and draining what
strength remained to her. She slid her good hand beneath her body and waited,
measuring each agonizing second with the frantic beat of her heart.

The footsteps stopped.

After an impossible moment of dead silence Bryn felt a
booted foot nudge her, and she exploded into action. She heaved her legs
beneath her, even as she drew a dagger and rolled into the legs of the man that
kicked her. He went down and she went to work with the dagger, burying it in
his groin. The Handsman reacted with alarming speed despite his mortal
predicament and grabbed her by the wrist.

Eithne, recovered, scrambled over Bryn and fell on him,
stabbing through his leather armor with a stiletto she produced from her
skirts. The downed Handsman coughed a spray of blood and went still, but his
companion dove at the queen and pinned her to the ground. Bryn looked up to see
a handful of the enemy close in on them in a crescent formation. “Surrender,”
said one of them. “You are outnumbered and weaponless.”

She spit a clot of blood, for her lip had split against her
teeth when she fell. She looked down at the dead man beneath her and then her
cousin who railed in vain against her captor. She pulled her dagger from the
guts of the dead man. “Never,” she said.

With a final cry of protest Bryn Denar, cousin to the queen,
heir to the throne of Galacia, sprang from the ground and charged the enemies
of her kingdom. She had the satisfaction of seeing the surprise in the eyes of
the last man to taste of her steel before the world went black.

†

“How long?” asked Danica.

Elias stood from his crouch. “Based on the tracks, a battle
was fought here…” he sighed as he scanned the clearing. “I’d say at least three
days ago. Maybe five.”

“Britches,” Danica cursed. “We’ll never make it in time.”

“Not necessarily. Did you find any other bodies in the
woods?”

“Just Blackwell’s two men, and the four of the enemy.”

Elias grunted. “That means they took the rest of our party captive.”

“I can well imagine what sport Mirengi has in mind.”

“Indeed, but this bodes well for us. We both have unburdened
mounts and can travel fast, while they outnumber their horses. The tracks in
the woods suggest the enemy had about ten horses, which makes sense—two full
hands. Even counting the horses from the four men they lost, they took seven
prisoners, which means they have to ride three horses with two passengers.”

Danica grinned. “And bound prisoners don’t ride well. Hot
damn. We just might make it back to Peidra before Mirengi can enact his
ritual.”

Elias found himself returning her wolfish grin. It felt good
to have his Danica back. “Two Duanas against a walled palace populated by an
army of assassins and fell wizards.”

“Sounds like fair odds to me.”

Elias’s grin widened. “My sentiments exactly.”

†

Sarad ground his teeth. “Show to me Remis Kant!” he
hissed yet again. The surface of the scrying mirror warped and wavered as he
poured his magic into it, but he saw only a black pane of glass. He suppressed
the urge to throw the mirror against the wall.

Sarad took a steadying breath and readjusted his seat in the
spell-circle. He focused his will back onto the mirror, deciding on a different
tactic. “Show me where Remis Kant was when we last communicated with each
other, three days ago.”

An image formed instantly as if a doorway had swung open
through a black wormhole in the mirror. Sarad cursed at what he saw. Bodies lay
strewn over the campsite, some twisted in horrific poses, others laying as if
in repose, weapons undrawn—the work of a master assassin. The earth was colored
brown in wide patches from the days old spill of congealed blood.

A cold knowing crept over Sarad Mirengi—the Duana siblings
had reunited and they came for him.

I told you letting Duana go would prove your undoing
.

“Silence, Talinus,” Sarad screamed as he surged to his feet.
He spun about, searching for the imp.

“My Lord?”

Sarad turned to the man that stood in the corner of his
study, a slight Aradurian who wore the robes of the Hand. “Who in the nine
hells are you?”

The man arched an eyebrow. “Achrin—your new attendant, my
Lord.” When Sarad but glared at him, he licked his lips and cleared his throat.
“My Lord, Talinus is dead.”

“Leave me, unless you are fixing to join him.”

Achrin wasted no time in complying and left Sarad alone with
his black mood and his black thoughts.

†

Elias and Danica pressed Brand and Comet to their
utmost and thundered down the river bank, for it was the most direct and least
challenging route. Although they only burdened their mounts with the scant
supplies they took from Elias’s captors, the horses had been sorely taxed in
the last week and their strength and stamina began to fail on the duo’s second
day out from the scene of their companions’ last stand.

“We can’t push them much more,” Elias said. He eased Brand
to a stop and dismounted. “He’s been favoring his left foreleg. His shoe looks
clean. It might be a cramp.”

“A fracture, I think,” Danica said and joined Elias by the
edge of the water.

“What makes you say that?”

Danica shrugged. “I dunno. Just feels right.” She placed a
hand on Brand’s leg. In her mind’s-eye she saw an image of a cracked radius
from one of her textbooks. Her hand grew hot and Brand swung his head about to
fix an eye on her.

Elias watched as Danica’s eyes went glassy and distant. When
she lifted her hand from Brand he, not known for affection, nuzzled her throat.
Danica giggled and patted him playfully on the muzzle. When she withdrew, Brand
tested his injured foreleg and then danced about, eager to be off as if he had
a two days’ rest. “How on earth did you do that,” Elias said. “It’s like he’s a
new horse.”

“Just came naturally.” Danica affected a neutral tone, but
Elias could read in her expression that she was a puzzled as he.

“Well, why don’t you
naturally
do it to Comet too,
and then we can be off.”

Later as they took a brief rest Elias said, “I’ve been
thinking.”

“Have you now,” Danica said with a wry grin. “Dangerous
business that, but I knew you’d get around to it one of these days.”

Elias chuckled despite himself. “When Mirengi held me
captive, a fever took me and I had strange visions.” Danica’s grin evaporated
and she leaned forward, her expression serious. “In one of them I saw myself as
a boy and I was with Dad.” Elias hesitated.

“Go on then,” Danica urged.

“I was in some kind of trance, like when Phinneas hypnotized
you. Dad was telling me things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Self defense and tactical strategies, and how to use the
arcane.”

“How old were you?” asked Danica, incredulous.

“I don’t know. Small. Maybe ten.”

“You think this actually happened?”

“I do.” Elias looked pointedly at Danica’s hands. “I think
that, in a way, Dad programmed us. He hypnotized us and then trained us in the
arcane so that we would have the knowledge of magic if we ever needed it, but
he buried it deep in our subconscious minds so that we wouldn’t endanger
ourselves or draw attention by being consciously aware of it.”

“Britches,” Danica breathed. “Brilliant. Devilish, but
brilliant.”

“And that’s not all.”

“There’s more?” Danica whispered, unsure if she could handle
any more of her brother’s revelations at present.

“That day at the manor, before Dad sent the carriage off so
that he could stay behind and hold off Slade, he spoke a single word in the
tongue of the ancients. I’ve thought up until now that he cast a simple cantrip
to spook the horses.”

“As if they needed any help.”

“Granted. However, now I think that he released the dam,
opened up a door in us, so that our abilities would begin to manifest. After
that is when things began to change for me. Before I just thought it was the
circumstances, the sword, but it’s more than that. I think the same thing
happened to you…”

“You can say it—but I fell under Slade’s power and it
tainted me.”

“We are beyond Slade now. That shadow has been lifted.”

“Yes,” Danica said with a slight narrowing of her eyes, “yes
it has.”

A silence fell between them and they each ruminated upon the
strange circumstances that had led them this far, and the final and most trying
leg of their journey, which yet lay ahead. At last, Danica said, “It grows
dark.”

Elias reached for his saddle bag. “The matches are wet,” he
sighed. He considered the torch in his hand a moment and held his hand over the
oilcloth. He felt energy collecting in his splayed hand. He waited until it
coalesced into a sphere that shimmered and warped the air and then willed it
life. A jet of flame erupted from the torch, washing the riverbank in an orange
glow.

“Well then,” Danica observed, “you may be on to something
after all. At the very least, if we make it back home, imagine the bundle we’ll
save on matches and flint and steel with you around.”

Thanks to Danica the horses enjoyed renewed vigor and they
soon recouped the time they lost, and then some. They cleared the Renwood on
their fourth day in the saddle and struck across the plains toward Peidra.

When the pace allowed they made idle conversation, as they
made an unspoken agreement to table the topic of their perilous mission to
thwart the Scarlet Hand and rescue their companions. Danica filled Elias in on
the goings-on of Academy life, which she had not had the opportunity to discuss
with him since her return home at Midsummer’s. For his part, Elias filled the
miles with the latest scuttlebutt from Knoll Creek—at least what had rated as
the current talk of the day when they left their childhood home some two months
ago.

By week’s end they approached Peidra through the Hartwood. While
Elias did not doubt that his fieldcraft fell short in comparison to the enemy,
he felt reasonably sure he could conceal them whilst under the cover of the
wood he had grown familiar with in his time at the palace. Beyond the Hartwood
was another matter, for there lay an open tract of land some two miles long
between the tree line and the postern gates of Lucerne Palace.

As chance would have it, Elias found himself confronted with
a familiar sight, and the scene of one of the last happy memories he counted
before the night of his capture by Mirengi. A wistful smile stole across his
features as he thought of Bryn and the way the late summer sunlight had caught
in her hair.

“Look at that wytchwood,” Danica said after a whistle. “There’s
one back home in Lurkwood, thought not this impressive. I’m sure Mom took me
there once when I was a girl.”

“There’s a tree in the royal private gardens that has the
look of a wytchwood as well.”

“Really? I’m sure I would have noticed it. Bryn took me
there once.”

“He’s quite correct,” said a gravelly, disembodied voice,
“though it would pass the notice of all but the most observant, concealed as it
is by a spell of obfuscation.”

Elias drew his sword at once and dropped into a fighting
crouch. Danica took up a position at his back and scanned the depth of the woods,
short-sword naked in her hand.

“Be at peace, Marshal, for I mean you no harm,” said the
voice.

“If you would be a friend, then show yourself,” Elias retorted.

“Fairly said.” A distortion, not unlike a heat-wave, wavered
in the air at the base of the wytchwood. A squat, winged, and misshapen figure
some four feet tall materialized and sketched a mock bow. “Talinus, at your
service.”

Unlikely Bedfellows

“I know you,” Elias said and drew toward Talinus
despite his better judgment.

“Indeed,” said the imp with a coy flash of his needlelike
teeth.

“When my mind was linked with Mirengi’s, I saw his memory of
when he summoned you. He was but a child.”

Talinus tsked. “I told him that was a mistake, letting you
inside his head. Yet since it profits us both, I suppose I can’t complain. Elias
Duana, I am here to help you.”

“You’ve been with him all this time,” said Elias,
bewildered, “yet you would help undo him?”

“Fickle is the pit.”

Danica took a careful step to stand at Elias’s side when she
assured herself that the imp wasn’t a decoy. “Do we kill it, brother?”

“That depends,” said Elias, “whether he answers my questions
or continues to evade them.”

“Easy, easy, and put that thing away,” said Talinus, indicating
Elias’s sword with a nod of his head. “You can’t blame an imp for having a
little fun. I so rarely get to socialize these days.”

“He is rather cute,” Danica said. “Can we keep him?”

“He hasn’t shown his former master much loyalty,” said
Elias, “I doubt he would treat us any better.”

“Sarad was never my master, not really. My true masters tasked
me with keeping an eye on him and his ilk. I let Sarad think he had me under
his power, while I collected intelligence.”

“For whom?” asked Danica.

“You’re smarter than that child. Trust me I know. I’ve had
an eye on you as well. Two, in fact, as often as I could spare them.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Danica said sweetly, but she took a
step toward him, leading with the tip of her sword.

“My, you are a touchy pair, you Duanas. Although, you have
been entertaining, so I’ll throw you this, first of many bones: Sarad’s plans
have become a danger, even to me and mine. His ritual could very well disturb
the natural order of things. It could spell—heh, no pun intended—disaster for
us all, as well as your tiny corner of creation.”

“So, your enemy’s enemy and all that,” said Elias.

“To put it bluntly, well, yes. And, you’re not considering
the obvious!”

“Which is…” said Elias.

“Sarad was mean to me! I mean really mean to me!” Talinus’s jocular
demeanor evaporated, and his eyes narrowed, his tone shifted. “That whore’s son
has what’s coming to him.”

“What is it that you’re afraid is going to happen?” asked
Danica, her sword, for the moment, forgotten in her hand.

“Oh, it’s not important we get into that. Dimensional rifts,
tears in space and time, that sort of thing. Complicated, boring, and frankly
we don’t have the time. Suffice to say it could be nasty. Very nasty—and trust
me, I know nasty.”

“Very well, then,” Danica said. “Let’s skip to how you can
help us.”

“Hold up,” said Elias, “I have another question.”

Talinus rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.”

“If your kind are so concerned about this whole situation,
why don’t they step in themselves and do something about it?” Elias asked.

Talinus’s eyes grew round as marbles. “Because you’re the
chosen one,” he whispered. When Elias stared at him flatly, Talinus heaved a
great sigh. “Sarad never appreciated my deadpan either.”

Elias sheathed his sword and folded his arms. He decided the
imp presented no immediate threat to them. He eyed Talinus and waited for him
to continue.

“My brethren cannot interfere—at least not directly. There
are rules, by which the dark kin are bound. Criminy, you don’t see demons
running around the streets having a merry old time, do you? We can’t visit this
plane as we please, otherwise there’d be no order, and there always has to be
order. There are laws. It’s been that way ever since the Great Divide.

“The Great Divide?” Danica asked.

Talinus growled deep in his throat and contrails of smoke
spiraled out of his nostrils. “We don’t have time for all these tangents. Sarad
is going to bring his ritual to bear at midnight and we need a plan!”

Elias ignored the imp’s pyrotechnics. “A human acted to bring
you here to our world, by summoning you, so you are now free to exert your will
without breaking the laws that bind you, is that it?”

“I told Sarad you were smarter than you looked. Simply put,
yes. That’s why your wizards are so persnickety about conjuration. If you lose
control of something you summon, they’re free to do as they please once they’re
here on your plane.” Talinus offered them a toothy smile.

Elias snorted. “Point and case.”

“Indeed, and now that I am out from under Sarad’s thumb I’m
free to carry out the will of my kin, which in this case is to help you stop
this ritual from culminating.”

Elias exchanged a long look with Danica, who gave him a
spare nod. “Very well, Talinus,” Elias said. “What do you propose?”

Talinus’s smile spilt his bestial face in half. “I thought
you’d never ask.”

†

The queen covered her mouth. She refused to give her
captors the satisfaction of hearing her weep. She pressed her forehead into the
cold flagstone of her cell. Her cell. Her Palace. Her home. Yet she knew it was
her home no more. She had lost the throne. She had lost Galacia.

Eithne’s thoughts turned to her cousin. Bryn, defiant to the
last, had fought harder for her crown than she had. Pinned to the earth she
watched, impotent, as Bryn charged to her death. She didn’t even have the
breath to scream as the Senestrati’s fell spell stole her cousin’s life. Ragdoll
limp, Bryn crumbled to the dirt.

In some ways she supposed Bryn the lucky one. She didn’t
have to endure the indignity of being bound, blindfolded, and strapped to the
hind of a horse like a human saddlebag. Of the others, she knew only of Lar who
bellowed curses like a drunken porter, even after they were ahorse. Shortly
after they started out, he was silenced, whether by the gag or the sword she
didn’t know.

Whether any of the other party members survived remained
unknown to her, for if captured they were jailed in separate cells, and since
her arrival yesterday her iron door had opened but once.

Sarad Mirengi entered with silence, and his cowl, drawn
tight about him. The white robes of the Prelate had been exchanged for a long
hooded tunic and black close fitted breeches—the habit of an assassin. Eithne
stood and held herself to her full height. She was damned if the queen of
Galacia—the former queen of Galacia, she corrected herself—was going to receive
the man that stole her kingdom on her knees like a frightened waif. “Have you
come to gloat?” she asked.

Mirengi pulled back his hood and she cringed from the sight
of him, despite herself. His hair line had been blasted back several inches,
replaced by swollen scar tissue, and blue spider veins branched across the
entirety of his face. He fixed his pupil-less, rheumy eyes upon her. “We are
beyond such things, you and I. Now, tell me. Where is Elias Duana?”

†

Elias drew the dead man’s cloak close about him and
tried to ignore the cold. In silence they awaited the hour when Talinus would
take them to the palace. Danica sat with her back to his, and he welcomed the
warmth and comfort of her touch.

As the rust colored sunset lit the branches of the wytchwood
afire Talinus had said to them, “Do you think it an accident that we met here?”

“What, at this tree?” Elias asked.

“It is more than a mere tree, Marshal,” Talinus said, “as I
suspect you have guessed. Do you know why ancient man so feared the wytchwood?”

“I imagine you are about to tell me,” Elias said.

“To the Fey every tree, every plant, has a spirit, but the
wytchwood has an active consciousness. It can communicate.”

“Shiny,” said Danica, “the tree’s got feelings. What of it?”

“It can communicate with any other wytchwood, no matter the
distance, sending information through a vast web at will.”

Elias gazed at the behemoth, ebony tree. He let his cartwheeling
thoughts recede and his mind entered the void. He saw particles of green light
dance about the trunk and branches of the tree, vibrating with such speed as to
be all but indiscernible to his senses. The energy field spun about the
wytchwood in a vast ellipse that reached about forty feet on either side. “So
that’s why wytchwoods always grow in a clearing—they create the clearing.”

Danica snapped her fingers in front of Elias’s eyes. “What
are you on about?” she said.

Elias blinked and the vision vanished. “Information isn’t
all they can send, is it?”

Talinus clapped his hands. “You are an apt pupil, Marshal. I
could teach you many things.”

“I’d hate to see what you charge for tuition,” Elias said.

“Honestly,” Danica said. “I don’t know which of you two to
stab first.”

“What we’re talking about, my dear, is teleportation,” said
Talinus.

“You’re yanking my bonnet,” Danica said.

“Love to,” Talinus said with a wink. “Maybe later. But
business first. The tree can teleport a person from one wytchwood to another.”

“So you’re saying this tree can teleport us directly into
the royal gardens?” Danica asked. It sounded like nonsense to her, but
considering what she had seen in the last three months she’d being willing to
label most anything possible, if not plausible, until proven otherwise.

“But how?” asked Elias.

“Simple. All you have to do is ask. Of course, the White Fey
and I aren’t on the best of terms, so you better do the asking.” Elias shot
Talinus a quizzical look. The imp offered him a wide, crooked grin. “Go on
then.”

Feeling a strange apprehension, Elias approached the tree,
one deliberate step after another, keenly aware of the weight of the others’
eyes upon him. He stood at the base of the wytchwood and looked up into its
black branches. It had the look of a sycamore, save for the ebony, craggy bark
and the red ochre leaves, which appeared unnaturally bright in the failing
light. Elias had the impression that he stood beneath an impossibly aged being.
He laid his hand on the trunk.

At once images began to flash through his mind. The
wytchwood in the Lurkwood in spring, green moss encircling its trunk as far as
its branches reached. White flowers, newly bloomed. His mother, barefoot in a
white gown. She skipped beneath its canopy, holding hands with a toddling girl.

He saw Lucerne palace from a bird’s-eye view, soaring high
above its most ambitious spires. A black cloud seeped from the seams in the
marble façade and fissures in the granite beneath. A six sided star drawn in
red lines of wavering energy lay superimposed over the palace, but the
proportions were asymmetrical.

The open sea. Gray waves lay in all directions. Water
sprayed onto the deck. A flock of black birds approached, but they were too
large—impossibly large.

A snow laden plain beneath a slate grey sky. Agnar turned
about, thigh-deep in the snow, his mouth agape in a silent scream. A drawn
shortbow quivered in his hands, the arrow pointed at Elias.

Come back to me, Starchild
.

The wintry scene vanished and in his mind’s-eye Elias saw a
young woman of surpassing beauty. Her hair was the color of a dark and dewy
moss. Her cheekbones sat high on her face beneath murky hazel eyes. Her skin,
flawless and smooth, was tinted the palest shade of green and her lips the
spare pink of winter rose.

It pleases me that you find me beautiful. This is how
your mother saw me
.

Elias felt his senses return to his body. He felt the ground
beneath his feet, though he yet swayed on them, and the rough surface of the
tree beneath his hand. Still the image of the woman was fixed in his mind.
Who
are you?

I am called Maya. I am glad you have returned. Telepathic
communion is new to you. It can be disorienting to humans
.

What are you?
Elias thought, forming the words slowly
in his mind.

Good. It is best to speak slowly in telepathy. Makes it
much easier. I am the spirit of this tree
.

You are alive then!

So excitable, just like your mother
, Maya said, but
Elias could hear the smile in her thoughts and, in the image of her he held in
his mind, her nose crinkled.
Everything is alive, silly boy, merely at
differing levels of consciousness
.

What was it I saw?

What was, what is, and what may be. You must keep in mind
that my kind does not see time in such a linear fashion as you do
.
Yet
do not worry over such things. Focus on the task at hand. Now. You have a
question for me
?

Yes
, thought Elias.
We need to get into the palace
unseen so that we can stop a great evil. We have been led to believe that you
may be able to take us there. Will you help us
?

Of course, Starchild. We will transport you. The evil of
which you speak is known to us. Yet we cannot permit the Dark Fey passage
.

Talinus? Likely that’s for the better. I don’t trust him
.

Nor should you. Come to me when the time is right and I
will send you and your sister to the royal gardens, to the inner keep of the
manlings
.

Thank-you, Maya.
Elias began to lift his hand from
the wytchwood, but turned back.
Why do you call me Starchild
?

That is what the White Fey have named you. Now, go, and
prepare yourself. Rest. Your greatest trial awaits
.

Recognizing the dismissal, Elias nodded and took his hand
from the tree. He walked back to the others on numb legs. Danica still had her
sword in hand, absent-mindedly shaking her leg, while Talinus made a show out
of inspecting his talons.

Danica looked up at him expectantly. “What happened?”

“She agreed to take us when we’re ready,” Elias said, “but
she won’t transport Talinus.”