Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (10 page)

“You knew my father?”

“Of him.”

Elias took a step toward Slade. “You took vengeance on a man
you didn’t even know?”

“He had something that belonged to me. Something I want back
very much. Something I couldn’t have reached on my own, but that you, as it
were, have brought to me. As I knew you would, for I summoned you here. I knew
you couldn’t resist the compulsion, for you had to hope your sister was taken
alive.”

Elias’s heart skipped and he blanched. Hot rage transmuted
into cold dread as the details of his dream returned to him—Danica bound in a
dark dungeon crying out for help. Only it was no dream. His hand clenched on
the hilt of his father’s sword, the weapon charged with such foreign and potent
magic.

“Yes, son,” Slade said almost gently, “that small voice
inside your head, the nagging urge to return to this cursed place—it was me.”

“All this,” Elias said choking on the words,” all this, for
a sword.” Incredulous, he shook his head and the fatigue of despair overtook
him. Yet, in that instant when his mind was stupefied, shocked into silence,
from that quiet another presence awoke and it bid him to remain patient and
trust his intuition.

“It’s not personal, kid. Actually, I’m rather fond of you. Because,
after all, we’re not so different, Elias, you and I.”

As Slade spoke his tone changed. His voice became soft and
silky, but the words bore an invisible weight, a singular quality that Elias
had become familiar with. It was the resonance in his father’s words when he
sent the horses away, in Cormik’s when he repelled him in the duel, in the
voices he heard upon drawing his father’s sword, and it meant one thing—Magic.

“I can see the dark in you, boy. You’ve always had a
terrible temper, but you have managed to control it. You’ve had plenty of
practice. When the black beast rears its head, though, you become someone else.”

As Slade continued his hypnotic monologue threads of smoke
colored energy sprouted from the ground by his feet and caressed Elias lazily,
undulating rhythmically as they sought to subvert his will. Slowly, Slade crept
toward Elias.

“As a child, you feared the night, the absence of light, and
you had to keep a candle burning to fall asleep, long after your younger sister
had mastered her need to have a night light. But I know what you did not. You
didn’t fear the night because of goblins or ghouls but because deep in your
unconscious mind you were enamored with the spell the night wove, the void that
waited just beyond your reach. Even then you had an aptitude for the dark arts.
Elias, you and I are—”

Slade’s last words ended in a wet gurgle.

The runes embedded in his forearm burned as Elias waited for
Slade to draw near, all the while pretending subservience to his adversary’s
fell power. As soon as Slade came within reach, Elias drew his sword in a
single, fluid motion, focusing the entirety of his will on its execution, with
his eyes fixed firmly on Slade’s throat.

Slade had the instincts of a jungle predator and leonine
reflexes, and that was all that spared him decapitation. Despite his alacritous
spring-back, the point of Elias’s curved blade cut through Slade’s windpipe as
easily as it cut through air.

Although the cut was not deep it may very well have been a
mortal wound in its own right, however, Slade Kezia had no intention of
conceding that point. His scimitar leapt into his right hand in a rising slash
even as he attempted to staunch his wound with his left.

Blood spilled over Slade’s hand as Elias’s sword met his in a
ringing clash of steel that birthed an explosion of blue and bruise-colored
sparks. Slade launched a second, heavy-handed attack designed to push Elias
back. Meanwhile, he poured his dark magic through his left hand and into his
sputtering wound.

Elias parried handily, but danced back a step to recover his
equilibrium from the resounding blow. Slade lowered his left hand to reveal a
shadowy band of energy coiled tight to his throat, effectively binding his
wound. He smirked at Elias and purposefully lowered his second hand to the hilt
of his scimitar.

“You won’t cheat death so easily this day,” Elias said.

When Slade spoke his voice was somehow raspy and wet at the
same time. He said, “I didn’t know your sister was a virgin. She tasted like
honey, though it is a taste no other shall ever have, now.”

Ignoring strategy altogether, Elias threw himself at his
tormentor, pressing the attack without quarter. Slade proved equal to the
gambit and his scimitar blurred and whined as it turned blow after blow of
Elias’s blue steel. Slade began to sneak in counterattacks as he sought to turn
the tide of the battle.

Elias parried in turn but he made every intercept become but
another attack that redirected Slade’s blade as he continued to push for
advantage, thus following his father’s central sword fighting tenets: make
every movement of the sword an offensive maneuver, never break stride, and
never, ever stop cutting. So it went, with each man straining to create an
opening in the other’s defense in a blinding crash of steel that showered the
clearing with the sizzle of arcane sparks, like a lightning storm in miniature.

It soon became apparent that the two men were equally
matched in raw power and in skill. Slade had the advantage of a lifetime of
survived encounters behind him, but the grievous wound Elias inflicted on him
at the onset of their duel had taken much out of him, and so evened the field. Whoever
could outlast the other, or find a way turn the tables would prove the victor.

Slade reached for his dark gift, bestowed on him by his
masters. It was a risky move, for it would further sap his strength, but he
already felt himself weaken, while the tireless and enraged distiller continued
to hammer him with resounding blows. If he didn’t bring the battle to an ending
soon, he would just be postponing the inevitable.

Elias’s arms burned and he felt the hot trickle of blood as
his stitches opened. His stamina ebbed rapidly, but he feared pulling back, for
the cunning Slade might seize the opportunity and find an opening. Even as he
thought on changing his style, Slade’s scimitar ignited with dark fire.

As their blades met tongues of puce fire edged in black
reached toward Elias, radiating cold, and an electric charge crept up the steel
of his sword, down through the tang and into his hands. Elias gritted his teeth
against the withering sensation, even as the runes on his forearm grew warm and
a blue light crept out from under the sleeve of his duster. Likewise, a corona
of blue energy enveloped his blade and the air hummed, pregnant with arcane
energies.

Slade rushed Elias with a curse and slid in low, swinging
his scimitar in a descending arc. Elias, whose attention had momentarily
wavered while in a high guard, did not have the time to maneuver into an
appropriate parry, so he leapt to avoid having his legs cut out from underneath
him and then sprung forward to put some distance between Slade and himself
before turning on his heels.

Slade’s slide-attack had left him on a knee, and while he
presently remained in that position, he turned and fixed his smoldering gaze on
Elias. He shivered with rage as he looked on the
Dashin
, held aloft in
the would-be Marshal’s gloved hands. Slowly, deliberately he stood, as the
Marshal looked on him with an impassive expression.

“It cannot be,” Slade said in his ruined voice. “It has
taken me nigh a decade of study to learn the secrets of the seven blades and
you—you…infidel…” The assassin spat the final word in a froth of blood, as he
sucked air in through flared nostrils.

Elias braced himself for what he did not doubt was an
impending charge from Slade and said, “This is my father’s sword and it will
remain with me until the day I die, which will be long after it has drank the
blood of you and every last one of your brothers.”

Blood spilled over Slade’s lips and ran down his chin as he
forced words from his ruined throat. He eyes went wide and his skin paled, and
still he tried to speak, coughing crimson froth onto his face and shirt. “
Kaznuth
Harren!
” he chanted in a guttural tongue.

Inky tentacles of fell energy sprang from the earth and
encircled Elias as Slade summoned every last splinter of power his dark gift availed
him.

Elias retorted with a cry drawn from the pit of his stomach
and swung his luminous sword at the snaking ropes of dark magic that sought to
bind him. To the astonishment of all present, the animated mass of negative
energy dissolved in a paroxysm of blue-white sparks. A few quick strokes later,
and the tattered threads of Slade’s spell were no more.

Slade responded with a flick of a wrist and a curse in the
dark tongue of his masters. A bolt of fell magic lanced from his hand. Elias
didn’t have the time to dodge, so, reflexively, he raised his sword. The bolt
deflected off the flat of his blade and returned to Slade who reacted in kind,
but was unable to bring his magic to bear quickly enough. The bolt of energy
exploded on Slade’s scimitar, tearing it from his grip and showering him with
dense, sticky flames.

Before Slade could recover from the viscous fire eating away
at him, Elias was on the move, charging across the ground between them. He
pounced on the dying assassin, an inarticulate cry on his lips, and tackled him
to the ground. With sword still in hand, Elias reared up and punched Slade in
the face. A nimbus of blue-white energy enveloped his gloved fist as he
continued to rain blow after blow on Slade’s face and head, screaming all the
while.

The ribbons of magic that bound Lar and Bryn dispelled with
Slade’s death, and they, who had no choice but to helplessly watch the exchange
between the two men, their fate held in the balance, sprang to action. Elias who
had surrendered to his rage still beat on Slade, though the assassin had given
up the ghost. Lar and Bryn each took a hold of Elias and pulled him off the dead
man.

The incensed distiller struggled against them but Lar’s arms
wrapped him like iron bands. “He’s dead Elias,” Lar said softly. “It’s over.”

Elias sobbed in Lar’s arms, but soon collected himself. Lar
released his bear-hug and helped Elias to his feet. Elias, who had never
relinquished his grasp on his father’s sword, sheathed the enchanted blade and
repositioned the baldric so that the scabbard rested on his back. “You
shouldn’t have come, Lar. You could have been killed, and that is something that
my conscience couldn’t have handled.”

“Did you really expect me not to follow you?”

“No.” Elias turned his back on them and looked down at
Slade. He took a deep breath. “Thank-you.”

“Actually, it was my idea, don’t you know,” said Bryn. “I
had to drag him along, and you should have seen the sword he tried to bring!”

“I told you, it was the best I could find,” Lar said.

“Ha! Some decorative relic from the first age!”

“You remind me of my sister,” Elias said, “always ready with
some joke, no matter the circumstance. You would have liked her.” Elias’s tone
had gone flat. Bryn fell silent and looked at Lar who offered her a tight, thin
smile.

Elias blinked away fresh tears and refocused his attention,
on Slade. “He’s still wearing those gloves.”

“So,” said Lar, “you’re wearing gloves right now.”

“When we met him at the fair he wore those same long riding
gloves. Asa mentioned it. She thought it odd, someone wearing gloves on a warm
summer evening. I wore these gloves for riding and fighting. They are bulky and
tough, to protect the hands. Look at his. They are thin and skin-tight—designed
to allow him to go about his daily business without encumbering.”

Lar wondered at Elias’s observations, while his friend
crouched down and began removing Slade’s gloves, first the right and then the
left. The right glove came off revealing a normal hand beneath. Elias turned it
over and inspected it carefully before moving on. He pulled off the left glove
and then looked over his shoulder and favored Lar with a half-smile. Lar inhaled
sharply. A serpentine S set inside a circle was tattooed on Slade’s left wrist
as it met his palm in a scarlet ink.

“What do you suppose is the significance of this,” said
Elias. “Bryn, does this mean anything to you?”

“No,” she replied, “I haven’t seen it before. My guess would
be it is likely the symbol of the assassin brotherhood to which he belongs. He
has the look of an Aradurian, and they’ve no shortage of assassin and thieves
guilds.”

“The question, then, is which one,” said Elias while
rummaging through the dead man’s pockets. “He doesn’t have anything else of
value on his person.”

Satisfied, Elias stood and faced his two companions. “We
should search the area for clues or evidence. Even though you two are witnesses
that Slade told me Macallister hired him, the bastard is chummy with the
Magistrate. I’ll need more evidence than word of mouth to bring Macallister to
heel. And,” he added looking each of them hard in the eye, “I need to find my
sister and father. They deserve a decent burial.”

“We should search the perimeter first,” Bryn said. “He
likely hid his possessions in the woods or somewhere off site.”

“Very well,” said Elias, “but let’s stick within sight of
each other, in case Slade left behind any surprises, or friends.”

“Agreed,” she said and then looked to Lar.

“Yeah,” said Lar as he swallowed a lump in his throat. Being
confronted with the corpse of Slade bothered him enough, let alone finding
Padraic or Danica, or the One God knows what else. Lar skirted the wood looking
for anything out of the ordinary, careful to keep an eye on the others. Bryn
searched the clearing before the manor, starting where the road exited the
wood, while Elias crept along the edge of the house, peering inside windows and
scanning the roof.