Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (36 page)

Danica stepped over the log he was sitting on. “You must
tell me exactly where it was you split with Elias.”

“You’re going after him?” Agnar said weakly.

Danica snorted. “Did you expect less, northman?”

“With all due respect, lass, you’ll never find him,” said
Ogden. “And I might add that you are in no condition to ride out. In any case it’ll
be easier for him to find us, and don’t forget Agnar’s message. We have to keep
the queen and Bryn safe at all costs. We need to send them ahead to the
garrison on the horse.”

“Agnar said that Elias is half-dead. He’ll never make it
alone. He needs me. He’s already destroyed a full Hand while Agnar was riding here.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Phinneas asked, and a
beat later Bryn and Lar both said, “I’m coming with you.” Meanwhile Ogden
pressed back into the conversation.

“
Silence!
” Danica cried as she slashed her hand
through the air. The single spoken word echoed with the resonant heft of an
arcane command and the group fell into a stunned silence, compelled by Danica’s
power. “Ogden, the queen is safer on foot with two wizards, four adept swords,
and one hell of a bitch. Bryn, your duty is to your queen and country not my
brother, and Comet is too weary to support two riders in his present condition,
which means you’re definitely out, Lar.

“Phinneas, I was right when I told the queen that Elias was
still alive, I was right when I said that he was coming for us, and I am right
now when I say that without my aid he will die. The queen must escape, granted,
but Elias is the only one that can defeat Mirengi, and deep in your hearts you
all know it to be true. Forces beyond our ken have drawn my brother and I into
this struggle, and now, I beg of you, let us finish what began on that tragic Midsummer’s
Day. Let fate not have spent my family’s blood in vain.”

Her words fell into a heavy silence as the party exchanged
uncomfortable glances. Agnar crouched with his back to the fire and peered off
into the dark wood in the direction that he imagined Elias would be. “I never should
have left him,” he said.

“I don’t imagine he left you much choice,” Danica said with
a tight smile, “we Duanas tend to be persuasive. Sometimes things happen the
way they are meant to, though we can’t always understand the why of it.”

“Very well, Danica,” said the queen. “Go.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ogden protested.

Eithne fixed her hazel eyes on her most trusted counselor. “This
past week not an hour has gone by that I haven’t cursed myself for not lending
more credence to Elias’s instincts. Now I may have a chance to remedy that. Danica,
Godspeed. We’ll await your return here.”

“Preposterous!” Ogden cried. “Child, we must strike for the
garrison with all due haste. The Hand is likely onto us and they are mounted. We
don’t know how long we have. We’ve tarried long enough.”

“It seems to me we’ll have better odds if we fortify our
position here and lay an ambush than if they fall upon us on the trail.” After the
queen’s words the party fell to arguing again, with each member striving to be
heard.

“I don’t have any more time to waste,” Danica said facing
the only one who remained silent, Agnar. “Whatever you decide to do, we’ll find
you.” Before anyone could protest further she sprinted to Comet, mounted, and
before her foot was in the other stirrup and without a look behind she urged
him into a canter.

†

My Lord, we have followed your instructions
verbatim, but have yet to locate the queen’s camp.

Sarad leaned forward, peering deeper into his scrying
mirror. Using the mirror to present him with an image of the communicant gave
him a focal point and made it easier for him to transmit and receive telepathic
messages. The piece of black stone that hung around the necks of his
lieutenants served the same purpose, for the semi-opaque crystal was a potent
conduit of psychic energy.
Have you had any word from Lieutenant Vash?

None, my Lord.

I’ve warned you that the Marshal is cunning, even in his
present condition, as are his allies.
Sarad let no small measure of his
wrath bleed through the mirror and into the message so that
his
lieutenant would be fully aware of his displeasure.
Duana has misdirected us
somehow.

Unless some other misfortune has befallen you,
discounting Vash’s hand, you have four hands remaining to you. Is that correct,
Kant?

Yes, my Lord.

Excellent. Send two hands after Duana and two to hunt
down the queen.

Two full hands for Duana?

You evidently heard me, so I must wonder why you make me
repeat myself.

Forgive me, my Lord. I was merely surprised, for surely
Duana must be dead by now.

I’ll tell you who’s dead—Vash and all his men. Duana, a
single man, alone and under the rigors of the Kin Carnum, killed them all. See
that you are more careful. Bring Duana to me alive, or don’t return at all. The
queen is in those woods somewhere. Find her. Capture her and her party, for
they will be the fodder for the ritual that awakens the ancient lords of House
Senestrati. Understood?

Yes, my Lord. Your will shall be done.

Sarad severed the telepathic link with a thought and rose
from his spell-circle. His stomach knotted in rage as he left his study and
made his way into his audience chamber. Perhaps Talinus had been right, he
thought as he reached for his ivory pipe, and letting Duana go had been a grave
mistake. He sank into his armchair with a sigh and drew on the long-stemmed
pipe, watching as blue skeins of smoke wound lazily through the air.

An abrupt knock thundered at his door. Sarad’s brief moment
of peace shattered, and he thundered back. “You were told I was not to be
disturbed!”

The door to his chambers crashed open and through them
strode Geoffery Oberon.

“We told him that you were indisposed, but he wouldn’t
listen,” said one of Sarad’s attendants.

“Close the doors behind you,” Sarad said quietly. “Dear,
Lord Oberon, what a pleasant surprise.”

“Now, you listen here, Mirengi, I have been trying to reach
you for days. You promised me that you would clear up this business with the
queen. If she resurfaces and goes public we could all be knee-deep in it. And why
are all your goons lurking around my palace? Your Justicars can be found on
every street corner in Peidra and are acting as if they run this city. Now, I
don’t know who you—” Oberon abruptly ceased his rant and eyed Sarad with a
quizzical expression that presently turned incredulous. “Are you smoking
Opium?”

“Not just Opium, but Aradur’s finest black tar. What were
you saying, dear boy? It seems I drifted off there for a moment.”

Oberon trembled and his face went scarlet. He took a long
step toward Sarad. “I don’t know who in the nine hells you think you are
Mirengi—”

Sarad surged to his feet and extended a hand, and Oberon
found himself hurled from his feet and into the air by an invisible force. The
world went sideways. Oberon struggled to collect his thoughts and push himself
off the floor when someone grabbed him by his collar and jerked him up.

He whacked the crown of his head on something hard and
blinked rapidly to clear the swimming stars from his eyes. He felt a terrible
pressure on the top of his skull and tasted bile in the back of his throat. Before
he could master himself vomit poured from his mouth and nose. After he stopped
heaving he coughed weakly and with spastic hands rubbed tears from his eyes. When
he orientated himself he lifted his head from his chest and screamed at what he
saw.

An invisible and unyielding power pinned him to the corner
of the ceiling, bending his neck at a near impossible angle and leaving his
legs to dangle in the empty air. Terror gripped him fast as he saw an inhuman
madness dancing in the Prelate’s bright blue eyes.

“You’ve made a deal with the devil,” the Prelate said,
showing the pink of his gums as he snarled. “Count yourself fortunate that I
still need you alive because I am not having a good day. You best hope that
you’re on my good side when my masters arrive because then your only function
will be my amusement. Now go home and count your golden coins and toy soldiers,
for they will avail you little in the days to come. Enjoy them while you can. Now,
let me show you the door.”

Sarad cast open the doors to his chambers with a thought and
with a motion of his hand hurled Oberon through the open portal and into the
hallway beyond.

Ghosts

“Is he alive?”

“Barely. Only Lord Mirengi can lift the curse but I may be
able to stabilize him, give him a couple more days.” The black-cloaked man
extended a hand about an inch above Elias’s sternum and chanted a couple of
words in the guttural tongue of his masters. A nimbus of brick-red energy
cocooned the fallen Marshal.

Brand reared up onto his hind legs and snorted, kicking his
forelegs wildly. “Contain that beast!” One of the Hand’s comrades fired a
paralyzing bolt of indigo energy at Brand and grabbed his reins.

Elias watched the entire procession numbly, looking down as
Sarad’s minion worked on his body.
I suppose this is what it’s like to be a
ghost
, Elias thought. He held up his spectral hand and wiggled his fingers.
His spirit body seemed real enough to him, if lighter and with an opalescent
aspect.

You’re not dead, but your consciousness has fled your
body
, said a voice, seeming to issue from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Elias grew stone-still and his heart would have leapt, had
he one. Slowly he turned about.
Dad?

Hello, son
, said Padraic Duana.

He was young again and looked like he did before Elias’s
mother died, with jet-black hair and eyes bright with a mirthful light. He
rested a spectral hand on his son’s shoulder and Elias felt a warm, electric
tingle as their energy fields touched.

You look hardly older than me.

What can I say, the other side has been kind to me
,
Padraic said with a wry grin.

I feared I would never see you again.

Yet deep down you knew that I was still with you, did you
not?

I’ve missed you. There are times when I could have used
your advice.

Padraic smiled lightly.
I’ve often been at your side, and
always when you needed me most. When your shield warms that’s me warning you.

Elias’s mind reeled.
I thought that was a function of the
shield, some marshal enchantment.

That old thing is just a hunk of sliver plated pewter,
but it was precious to me as a symbol of my vocation. Because I had a strong
attachment to it on earth it acts as a bridge between our two worlds, so I am
able to communicate with you, in a fashion. Though the item is mundane in your
terms, in a way it represents the most powerful magic of all—the love of a
father for his son. And it contains the secret knowledge you require to defeat
the Hand.

The world around Elias began to waver like a reflection in a
placid pool that suddenly had a stone thrown into it.
This is it
,
thought Elias.
I have died and am passing over to whatever lies on the other
side of life.
Instead, the Renwood, his body, the Scarlet Hand, all
disappeared and he found himself in his room back at the Duana homestead in
Knoll Creek.

†

Danica cursed. She crouched behind a copse of abelia
bushes on the crest of a hillock. She had found Elias after two days hard ride,
following naught but Agnar’s sparse directions and her intuition, but she had
also found two Hands of the enemy.

She watched in impotent rage as they tied Elias to his own
horse. He flopped and hung like a dead man, but in her gut she knew a shred of
life yet remained to him, albeit not much. Her teeth ground and her body
trembled. She took a deep, steadying breath and forced herself to remain still.
The only sensible choice available to her was to tail the two Hands and await
an opportunity when she could catch them unawares so that she could steal Elias
away whilst he was tied to Brand.

I can help you defeat them.

Danica started and spun around on the balls of her feet as
the whisper of a voice tickled the nape of her neck. In her haste she lost her
balance and fell from her crouch and onto her belly. The bushes rustled and her
stomach dropped. She lifted her head a hair and looked down the hillock at the
Hand. The black cloaked figures looked toward her, some drew steel. Her breath
caught in her throat.

Fortune favored her, however, for her spill had disturbed a
handful of cardinals who inhabited the abelias. One of the Handsmen pointed at
the birds taking flight and gave a hearty guffaw. Still, a couple of them
continued to search the hillock with their eyes. Danica pressed herself into
the earth and imagined that a dark cloak draped her, hiding her from view or
from the Hand’s preternatural senses. After a long moment, the men turned back
to their mounts and then set off.

Danica exhaled a long sigh of relief and slowly rolled out
of the bushes. She gave her immediate area a scan, searching for a person
belonging to the voice that had so startled her, though in her heart she knew
to whom it belonged—the shade of Slade, who continued to haunt her.

Her skills as a tracker left much to be desired but she had
learned the basics from her father. In this case the difficulty was not in
following her quarry but in avoiding detection. She had no doubt that Sarad’s
minions were highly skilled without the aid of their not inconsiderable fell
magic. Her basic tactic was to follow their trail cautiously on Comet, as fast
as she dare, and then at night tie the gelding off and approach the last few
miles on foot to scout the camp. Her method left her exhausted, for by the time
she found their camp it was the middle of the night.

The Hand kept a break-neck pace that she could not match
whilst trying to track them and remain undetected, and so by the third night on
their trail sleep had become a stranger to her. She knew she couldn’t keep it
up for much longer, yet nor had she been afforded the opportunity she had hoped
for. The Hand was ever vigilant and always kept a four man watch, one posted at
each of the cardinal directions. To further complicate her situation at every
step she could feel the ever lingering presence of Slade, his phantom eyes
tracking her every move.

What sleep there was to be had, was fitful to put it lightly.
Her slumber was ever agitated, for she felt an electric charge in the air
around her, a heavy pressure upon her bosom, a clammy press upon her skin, and
at times the sensation of something rustling through her hair.

Chiefly, she ignored his unseen presence for she didn’t want
to give the rapacious fiend any satisfaction, but it grew more difficult by the
moment. As she got less and less sleep and her fatigue deepened she felt nearer
yet to him and could hear the slither of his voice in her mind. He would remark
on the fullness of her body and how he yearned for her flesh, to nibble on the
parts of her skin that had never been touched by the light of day.

Through all of it came the constant coy remark, the one
thing he said that she could hear with perfect clarity:
I can help you
defeat them. Together we can save your brother.
Yet she knew well the price
of Slade’s aid.

So she ignored him to the best of her ability and focused on
the task at hand, but as she crouched in the sharp autumn air at the edge of the
Scarlet Hand’s camp on the third night Danica Duana knew despair. She had but a
single short-sword and a pair of daggers and her fledgling magic to defeat two
Hands of the enemy.

She could even now sense Slade close at her back, feel the
cold of him.
There are too many of them,
he whispered in her ear, echoing
her own thoughts, his voice the rustle of dead leaves at the edge of winter.
You
cannot hope to stand against so many, but I can grant you the power to destroy
them. All of them. Live as one with me, or die without me.

Danica ignored him and looked ahead at Elias, unconscious
and bundled by the fire. She knew he didn’t have long and frankly neither did
she. Once they broke the Renwood and reached open ground any chance she had to
take them was beyond nil. She knew with a cold certainty that she would have to
take them tonight or not at all. “Very well,” she said softly into the hollow
whistle of the wind, “you’ll have your bloody day, but if Elias doesn’t make it
out of this alive I’ll put my own dagger in my heart and take you to hell with
me.”

Surrender your protection and let me enter. I will give
you such power that you can incinerate all your enemies.

“Very well.”

Say it!

“I’m surprised you are so eager to strike against your
former brothers and free the man that killed you.”

You’re stalling. He hasn’t long.

“Then you best answer me quickly or we’ll both be
disappointed.”

I owe those men nothing
, Slade hissed in her mind.
They
are as self serving as I was. I want to live again, through you. The door to
the other side is closed to me. You are the only door available to me now, my
love.

Danica shuddered and felt bile rise up her throat. She
swallowed. “And Elias?” She could feel the acrid burn of his rage as she spoke
her brother’s name.

If he crosses to the other side he is lost to me forever.
I will have my vengeance on him, but not by his death. My revenge is stealing
you from him forever. What you reap is his life and thus the deliverance of
your world from Sarad Mirengi. An even exchange, no?

Danica felt something tear in her at that moment. She found
herself standing again in the circle of stones in the center of that deep and
mystic wood. The stones emitted a blue-white light and symbols of binding
hovered in the still air. Slade stood outside the circle and she saw him then
as he really was—a hulking, hunched creature, eyes red-rimmed and feral with
unholy hunger, stooped over by the gravity of his own animosity and despair, which
writhed about him as a shadowy mass tinged the bloated red of a septic wound.

Let. Me. In.

Danica sobbed.

Break the circle. Speak the words.

The wood grew dark and all Danica could see were the stones
and Slade’s fell, true aspect. Forgive me, she thought. “I permiss you
entrance, Slade Kezia.”

The circle of rune stones shattered.

†

Bryn stared up into the star-riddled night. The thick
canopy of the Renwood usually impeded all view of the sky, but they had made
their camp in a small clearing which allowed for a small slice of the heavens
to be viewed. She found the archer, the first constellation her father taught
her. She could hear his words echoing in her memory.
As the moon rises the
archer’s arrow will always fly toward Peidra. Remember that if you ever become
lost and you will find your way home
. Now as she gazed up at the archer she
doubted if she would ever see her home again, for she had a sinking feeling that
she would never leave this wood. She heard Ogden and Eithne arguing at the
perimeter of the camp but she pretended she didn’t hear them and continued to
gaze at the heavens.

They had struck a slow pace through the woods, never
wandering far from the river. All the while Ogden urged Eithne to speed up
their progress but the queen wanted Danica and Elias to be able to catch them
and so set a middling tempo for their march. Bryn heard a shuffle behind her and
turned to find Lar approaching. She patted the log beside her and said, “Have a
seat then, biggun.”

The log creaked beneath Lar’s weight. “Nice night.”

“Yessir.” Bryn waited for Lar to get on with what he was
about. She had learned long ago that when pressed most men clam up quick as a
cricket, but if you gave them silence not a one of them could resist telling
you what was on his mind.

“I can’t believe I just let her ride off like that. I’ve
never been much good when the chips are down.”

“Nonsense, you big oaf. Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t
going to do them or us a lick of good.”

Lar sighed. “I can’t help thinking of them out there all
alone, not knowing if they’re alive or dead. It feels like we’ve just been
waiting for the axe to fall since we got in that boat.”

“And the waiting is the hardest part.”

“Especially here. There’s something not quite right about
this wood, and now that we’re out of earshot of the river it’s so quiet it’s giving
me the creeps.”

Bryn felt the hairs on the nape of her neck rise and a
shiver crept up her spine. Lar was right, the woods were entirely too quiet. She
had been sure she heard the song of crickets and rustle of nocturnal life
before Lar had sidled up, but now a pregnant silence lay across the forest and
the air pressed thick and clammy against her skin. A tickle ran up her spine. “How
long ago did Blackwell’s men go out to scout the area?” Bryn asked slowly.

“I…” Lar looked at her with a furrowed brow and then glanced
around the clearing. “I don’t know.”

“Fetch your sword, Lar.” Lar had many qualities that Bryn
found redeemable, but ranking highest among them was his ability to act quickly
and without hesitation, as he had done the night of the botched assassination
attempt—a characteristic wanting in most men. Without a word, or even a glance
to the towering wood, Lar ran toward his bedroll hollering a call to arms in
his thunderous baritone.

Blackwell reacted with typical efficiency and soon appeared
in the center of the camp with Eithne and sword in hand. “In the center of
camp, back to back!” he cried.

Bryn scanned the twilit wood before following Blackwell’s
command, wondering if her instincts had led her astray. As she ran toward the
circle forming at the camp’s center Ogden screamed and reached a splayed-fingered
hand toward her. Acting purely on reflex, she threw herself to the ground and
into a somersault. An icy trickle cut up her back as a bolt of fell magic
missed her by a hair’s-breath.

She rolled into a half crouch, drawing a dagger from her
boot, pivoted on the balls of her feet, and let the dirk fly even as she spun
about. The fell arcanist went down with her dagger lodged between his
throat-guard and chin. “That’s just on loan!” she taunted. “I’ll be needing
that back!”