Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (8 page)

“Elias, are you alright?”

Elias put a hand to his head. “Fine. I’m just a little
famished, I think. I better eat this bread before I go.” He returned to the bed
and sat down. He broke off a piece of bread with a shaking hand. “Doctor, would
you be so good as to fetch me a draught of water? Lar, why don’t you see if the
doctor has anything here to pass for a weapon, and then go ready the horses.”

“Of course,” said Lar, who had no intention of doing any
such thing, and with a nod motioned for Phinneas to join him in the hall.

Lar and Phinneas made their way to the kitchen, which smelt
of roasted barley as Phinneas’s Housekeeper, Agnes, had set fresh bread to
bake. Phinneas went to the well bucket, while Lar poured himself a shot of
whiskey.

“That was a close call,” Lar said. “I can’t believe we almost
let him go.”

“Don’t worry, son,” Phinneas said, as he rummaged for the
butter crock and some cheese. “That Slade character is long gone by now.”

Lar whirled on the doctor, incredulous. “What? Are you
bloody kidding me? What about
trusting your instincts
and
you’re like
you father
? Bloody horse manure!”

“Lar, take a breath. I do trust Elias’s instincts. Slade likely
is a highly trained assassin and arcanist who came to Knoll to settle accounts
with Padraic, and if anyone can bring him to justice, it will be Elias—eventually.
He is his father’s son. That having been said, a man clever enough to have
designed this elaborate ruse and catch Padraic Duana unawares, is too smart to
not have gone to ground. Skilled enough to take down an unarmed Padraic Duana
he may be, but a lone swordsman loitering about at the risk of taking on an entire
posse and the Constabulary of Knoll Creek? No, I think not.”

Lar shook his head. “You were actually going to just let him
loose on a wild goose chase? I don’t believe it.”

“Listen, son,” Phinneas said softly as a sharp pain stabbed
in his bosom, “we are all hurt by this tragedy, but no one more than that boy.”

“On that we can agree,” Lar replied, deflating once more.

Phinneas sat down opposite Lar, at his black-oak kitchen table,
and reached for the whiskey bottle. “I’ve seen many men in a hard way in my
long career as a physician, and it’s always the same. First, after the shock
from the loss settles, comes the anger. It seems a terrible thing, but it’s
good, because it protects the aggrieved, insulates him against what he can’t
accept. Elias is no different. Thoughts of revenge are all that he has to
sustain him now. Once that’s used up, only the cold reality of his situation
will remain, and I don’t know if he can survive that.”

Phinneas’s eyes grew wet, and Lar found himself tearing up as
well. “For the survivor’s guilt,” Phinneas said, “can kill him as surely as an
arrow through the heart.”

“So, as your cure, you thought to let him ride off in that
condition.”

Phinneas sighed. “I watched that boy grow. I know how
stubborn he can be. He was determined to ride out, and he needs to blow off
some steam. Truth be told his wound is minor, all things considered. The arrow
tore through the muscle just under his clavicle, but skated his scapula and
major arteries.”

Lar looked at him blankly. “You must have me confused with
someone who’s schoolin’ didn’t end at age fourteen.”

“You are a great deal smarter than you look, Master
Fletcher. My point is that his is the cleanest arrow wound I’ve seen, and I’ve
seen a lot. I used my good Erastean serpent gut to stitch him. Those stitches
won’t come loose unless he pulls them out with his own teeth.” Phinneas pulled
at his aquiline nose thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I’m rather perplexed as
to why he was unconscious for so long.”

Lar shuddered, for he had sat with Elias during his long and
fitful slumber. Like a man in the delirium of yellow fever, Elias talked in his
sleep, at times raving to people not present, calling out strange names, and
rambling gibberish or else speaking in some tongue unknown to Lar.

Lar looked into his whiskey glass. Realizing it was empty,
he reached for the bottle, but Phinneas laid a hand on his forearm. “Not so
fast, son,” the doctor said. “We’ll need our wits about us today, if we’re to
be of any service to Elias.”

Lar conceded Phinneas’s point with a nod. “Speaking of
which, we should get back to him.”

The two men, laden with victuals and supplies, returned to
Elias’s room. Lar, who entered the room first, cursed and dropped the flagon of
water he carried. Phinneas, close on Lar’s heels, bumped into him, his view
obstructed by the larger man. “What is it?” Phinneas cried.

Lar stepped into the room and indicated the open window with
his now empty hand. “He’s pulled the wool over our heads. He’s escaped.”

Return to Mayfair Manor

Elias rode hard for home. Anxiety quickened his heart,
and his pulse thundered with the beat of the horse’s hooves, for he knew time was
against him. His every fiber screamed at him to get to Mayfair Manor as fast as
possible.

Even though Phinneas’s argument made perfect sense and logic
suggested that the Manor would be the last place Slade would hide out, he felt
a certainty that he would find the fiend there, as if someone had whispered it
into his mind and bid him to act against all peril and return there with all
the haste he could muster. If Danica’s body hadn’t been recovered, there was a
chance, however slim, that she yet lived, but every passing moment decreased
the likelihood of that scant hope.

An electric jolt of pins-and-needles rushed up his spine and
crashed over the crown of his head like a wave.

Some dozen years ago, when his father came to him in the
pre-dawn light, as he woke he knew that his mother had died. He knew it as
certainly as he knew the sun rose in the east. The knowledge was simply there
in his mind, and so it was now. He had to return to the Manor, and quickly.

With that cold certainty came the knowledge that he could
not fail, that he would not fail. Slade would fall by his father’s sword. The
tingling sensation that crept over him increased manifold and Elias shivered
despite the midday sun. He felt a peculiar dislocation from his body, as if it
were being piloted by someone other than himself.

Elias swallowed his heart and tried to turn his thoughts to more
mundane matters so that he might ease his anxiety, but his mind rapidly
returned to Slade. He channeled the rage and impotence he felt at having been
so handily duped by the cunning assassin into focusing on how he would defeat
him. He played through the duel in his mind’s-eye, envisioning the differing
styles and strategies his father had taught him.

Slade used a scimitar, so Elias could count on him slashing
primarily and thrusting rarely, if ever. Elias decided to adopt a high guard as
Slade would most likely strike at his head and throat to end the battle
quickly, and a wide front-facing stance to keep his legs from becoming easy
targets. With a rapier a strike to the forward leg proved a deadly gambit, for
while it wounded the recipient, the defender could still muster the strength to
run the attacker through. A scimitar, however, could cut your legs out from
underneath you, and the fight would be over in short order.

The scimitar was a heavier weapon, favored by the desert
tribes and principalities of Aradur. To properly wield the weapon required more
strength than the duelists of Peidra needed to make effective use of the
rapier. As such, Elias assumed Slade would come in fast and hard and try to
overwhelm him with brawn and a heavy-handed, offensive style. This left the
distiller with a couple of counter strategies to consider. Slade would tire
quickly wielding the heavy scimitar, so Elias could assume an evasive style and
wear down Slade’s stamina, or he could do the unexpected and launch an aggressive
attack himself.

While the rapier was the fashionable weapon of the day in
Galacia, it was not always so, and Padraic taught his son styles for the long
and broad swords as well. Padraic’s own, exotic blade was somewhere between a
rapier and a scimitar in design, though Elias had only espied the elegant
weapon a handful of times. His father kept his past tidily locked up in a trunk
in his room.

Elias snapped out of his musings as he thundered across the
open prairie that preceded his family estate. The sight of his lifelong home, a
glaring symbol of all he had lost, brought his blood back up, but beneath his
fury lay a scarcely restrained hysteria.

Elias dismounted before his horse came to a full stop and
bounded into his house. He didn’t pause in the sitting chamber where he and his
father had enjoyed passing the time with an idle game of cards or a glass of Knoll
and a smoke. His father only had life in his memories now, and to dwell on that
fact would be too painful. The slim chance that Danica might yet live kept the
breath in his lungs and one foot stepping in front of the other. Where he went
next, though, it would prove hard not to face the ghost of Padraic Duana.

Elias opened the door to his father’s room. Keeping his eyes
focused on his feet, he walked to the foot of the bed and dropped to a knee. With
a grunt of effort he pulled out the chest that had hidden under the bed for the
better part of two decades. The lid and the brass bands of the oak chest swam
with flowing, archaic runes.

He had seen his father gazing into the chest shortly after
his mother had died. When he asked what was in it, his father answered, “The
past, son, and that is where it is best left.” Despite his father’s evasive
answer, Elias had always known what the chest contained. Pausing momentarily to
wonder if his father warded his effects, Elias threw open the lid.

He heard a sharp snap, like the crack of a whip, and an
electric tingle rushed up his fingers and to his shoulder before dissipating
across his back. He eyed his hand and shook it, but it seemed no worse for the
wear, so he dismissed the occurrence and looked into the trunk.

First, he withdrew Padraic’s hat. Crafted from well-worn
brown leather, the wide brimmed rancher hat was reminiscent of an earlier era. Viewed
as a rustic accoutrement, the rancher hat fell out of fashion in Peidra and the
more urbane areas of Galacia. Similarly, the Marshal had largely gone the way
of the rancher hat, viewed by many as a vestigial office necessitated by a more
lawless time. The crown still retained Marshals in its service, but enforcing
the law of the land presently fell largely into the purview of the more
bureaucratic and less militant constabulary.

Elias donned the hat.

Next, he removed his father’s duster, made from supple brown
leather, with a thick fur lining the inside of the coat. In one of the pockets
was a similarly worked pair of gloves. A further examination revealed that the
fur lining could be removed by undoing a series of buttons, and vents under the
arms could also be unbuttoned. As a result, the duster served to keep one warm
in the winter and cool in the summer months. After making the appropriate
adjustments, Elias pulled his father’s coat on.

There were but two items left in the chest: his father’s
badge of office and his sword. Elias’s heart quickened as he reached for the
blade and found the metal of the scabbard warm to the touch. The scabbard had
been crafted from a light but durable metal and was finished with a gleaming
crimson flecked with black. Pins and needles climbed up Elias’s arms and spread
throughout his core as he ran his fingers along the glossy surface.

He wrapped a hand around the braided leather hilt and, placing
a thumb on the ovular guard, he eased the sword from the scabbard. Characters in
a runic language foreign to him were etched into the base of the blade, and as
the sword cleared the scabbard the room echoed with sibilant whispers, seeming
to issue from all around him. Alarmed, Elias slammed the blade back into the
scabbard and lurched to his feet. He spun on his heels, examining the room,
half expecting to encounter a shade.

Much to his relief, Elias found himself alone. Nevertheless,
he remained vigilant for several heartbeats and continued to scan the room and
listen for any sign of a maleficent force. Once satisfied, his gaze returned to
the sword, which he had dropped in his alarm.

It was an alluring weapon, of that there was no doubt. Even
sheathed, it had an elegant line that curved slightly in the fashion of a
saber, but with an elongated hilt to accommodate two hands, and a unique ovular
guard, the likes of which he had never seen. The blade had evidently been
enchanted to boot. Elias decided, however, that the sword, whatever its nature,
had belonged to his father and therefore was not inherently evil.

Elias reminded himself that he was in a hurry. Gathering his
resolve, he snatched up his father’s sword, and with one fluid motion drew the
blade. If before the room echoed, it now resounded with spirant voices uttering
slippery words that stacked on one another with invisible weight, like wind
blowing through a hollow, winter wood. Elias held fast, fear pushed aside by
his need, and added his voice to the chorus, crying out against his rage and
misery.

The runes etched in the blade glowed scarlet, as if in
remembrance of the fires that had forged them. The room spun and tendrils of
force lashed at him, visible only as a distortion in the air like heat waves,
and wrapped around his limbs and torso, as insubstantial as wind but as unyielding
as steel cord.

Still, Elias refused to relinquish his hold on the sword. His
eyes could not focus for the vertigo, but he felt his right arm burning as if
on fire. Overcome, Elias grew faint.

Unconscious on his feet, he crumpled to the floor.

†

Lar urged his borrowed steed into a gallop as soon as
he cleared the gate of the doctor’s homestead. It had taken him precious time
to find a suitable horse among the doctor’s scant offerings and saddle it, as
Elias had taken his, but Lar planned on heading Elias off by plotting a course
directly for the Manor. Elias, Lar reasoned, would go home first to equip
himself for battle. Lar had agreed with Phinneas that the marauders that felled
the Duanas were likely long gone, but as he rode his stomach dropped and he realized
that he was afraid.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lar saw a blur of motion and
turned in his saddle, one hand reflexively reaching for his sword. A rider
approached on an intercept course. He was too far away to distinguish any
facial features, but he saw a shock of red hair undulating in the wind.

“Britches!” Lar cursed under his breath. It was the woman
from the fair who pulled Elias’s bacon out of the pan—Lady Bryn Denar.

Lar rode to meet to her. He reined in his horse and asked
without preamble, “What are you doing here? My Lady,” he added as an
afterthought.

Bryn, who stood in her stirrups, sat in her saddle and
caught her breath. “Word travels fast in Knoll Creek. I figured something was
amiss when the Mayor cancelled our audience.” She fixed cobalt eyes on Lar. “But
this... The constable told me that Elias lives, but is mortally wounded. Is
this true?”

“No. He is anything but. The Doctor has restored him—mostly.
He was arrowed through the shoulder, but it has done little to slow him down or
his damn mule-headed stubbornness. He escaped through a window at old
Phinneas’s when we went to fetch him some food. He insisted a merchant by the
name of Slade is responsible for the ambush and has taken my horse to pursue
him. For some reason, he thinks this merchant waits for him at the Manor. At
first I thought him crazy with grief, but I’ve begun to get a bad feeling about
all this. I’m going to head him off.”

“And if there is battle, you intend to fight with that?” Bryn
motioned at the ancient sword Lar had stuck into his saddle bags. “It looks
like an heirloom you pulled off a wall.” Lar blushed, for that is exactly where
he had procured the dusty blade, from over the doctor’s mantle.

“It was the best I could manage.”

“Here,” Bryn said as she produced a sword from under her riding
cape, “take this.”

Lar took the proffered weapon and examined it quickly. It
was a rapier, Kveshian by the look of it. Longer and thicker than its Phyrian
and Galacian counterparts, the Kveshian rapier proved adroit in a duel as well
as open combat. Lar knew little of academics, but he had paid attention during
military history. “Thank-you, Lady Denar. Can I ask, where are you going? My
Lady.”

“I’m coming with you. If Duana’s instincts are correct, we just
may be riding into a fight, so, under the circumstances, I think we can do away
with titles. Call me Bryn.”

“Right, but why?”

“Because that’s my name.” Bryn eyed the imposing farmer, who
looked back at her with poker-perfect deadpan. She sighed. “I am an agent of
Crown Law, so this kind of thing concerns me. That having been said, I can’t
help but shoulder some of the responsibility for this. I should have put the
clues together sooner.”

Lar pressed his mount closer to Bryn. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t come to Knoll Creek to collect taxes, but this is
neither the time nor the place to discuss this. Are you with me or not?”

Lar gave Bryn an appraising look, but truth be told he was
glad for the company. “Aye,” he said, “I’m with you. But, you have given me
your sword, how will you fight if it comes to that?”

“I shall manage just fine. Now, get off that horse.” When
Lar’s sole response was to frown down at her, she sighed again, but she wore an
easy smirk. “That horse you’re riding looks like its back is about to break. I
think you outweigh it by a stone, whereas my gelding is from the queen’s
stables and has the fortitude begotten of a millennia old, storied bloodline. Let’s
switch mounts so that we can recoup the time we’ve lost here talking about the
weather.”

Lar harrumphed, but dismounted at once and the two switched
horses. “Let’s not waste any more time then,” Lar said, sounding a great deal
braver than he felt.

Bryn nodded at him once and then they were off, galloping
into the yellow sun.

†

Elias opened his eyes. He lay on the floor, his
father’s sword grasped firmly in hand. His sword-arm throbbed and his head swam.
He glanced at his arm and with a sharp gasp noticed the source of his
discomfort: the very same runes etched into the base of the blade were branded
into the flesh on the underside of his forearm.

He examined the four characters that ran from his wrist to
halfway up his forearm. Each of the angry, red, and swollen characters was
approximately a square inch and composed of both angular intersections and sweeping
curves. Elias vaguely remembered that his father had told him of a people in a
continent far to the southeast that used a runic language composed of
ideograms, where one character could represent an entire word or concept. Whatever
their origin, it seemed he was stuck with them.