†
“It’s brisk outside, you’ll need this.” Teah handed Elias a dark cloak. The orange firelight played strangely across the fabric’s surface, and Elias was unsure if the cloak was grey or a deep forest green.
Elias donned the cloak and the weight of it on his shoulders comforted him. Teah reached up and threaded the clasp, a styled silver wytchwood leaf, through a leather loop. Elias studied her. He found her expression unreadable, but a palpable gravity was written in the fine lines of her face and her ageless eyes. If Elias based his judgment on physiology alone, he would’ve guessed her to be a woman in her prime, perhaps thirty or thirty-five. Yet Elias knew she was far older than that.
“Where are we going?” Elias asked.
Nyla padded into the chamber, dressed in an ivory, gossamer-thin dress and a cloak similar to the one Elias wore. “I’m ready.”
Teah smiled at her daughter, and Elias could feel the sunshine in it. He shuddered as pins-and-needles washed up his back and over his arms. Teah turned back to him. “Leosis wishes to meet you before the Abeotium.”
Elias swallowed. “Leosis is your husband?”
Teah nodded. “Come.”
Teah led him out of the bedchamber and into a greatroom which comprised a sitting area and a kitchen. Like the bedroom the low-ceilinged chamber was composed of a featureless grey stone. Elias followed his new companions out the front door of their modest domicile and into a deciduous forest. The night air bit with playful teeth, but the trees yet bore green leaves so Elias guessed the season to be late summer or early autumn.
Teah murmured, a sibilant sound that scattered into the night like a whispering wind through leaves, and a sphere of soft yellow light appeared above her palm. Without a word she set out down a well-worn but narrow forest path, and Elias followed.
The trio wound a circuitous path through the wood for about a quarter of an hour before happening upon a creek, which opened the sky up enough for some few glimmers of starlight to filter through the thick canopy. As they continued downstream the creek widened and Elias smelt incense on the breeze. Just as Elias began to wonder if he had erred in following these women off into the deep wood, Teah’s light illuminated a white stone bridge, worked with intricate, abstract carvings that utilized arcs and soft-edged triangles. The symbols tickled a far corner of Elias’s mind, but he couldn’t quite place them.
Teah threw her sphere of light across the bridge. It came to a stop in midair and revealed a small island wreathed in trees but with a circular clearing in the center about half an acre in breadth. Elias saw then that the island was populated by a score or so of men and women, all fair of hair and long of limb. At the far edge of the clearing sat a man in a white throne-like chair that appeared to rise right out of the island, as if the bones of the earth had reached directly out from the soil. With a well-practiced mental effort Elias focused his arcane sight and saw that the chair bore a magical signature, but the clearing was so awash with swirling energy that he had to withdraw his probing senses for fear of being overwhelmed. He settled for concluding that the chair must be made of either limestone or else an aged, desiccated white birch.
The man fixed his eyes on Teah’s party, but they lingered on Elias. As Elias followed Teah across the bridge he couldn’t take his attention from the man, who exuded a strong and tranquil energy, as deep and calm as a primordial lake. The man’s hair, which he wore with two narrow braids to hold his shoulder-length locks back from his face, was bone white, yet he looked no older than forty.
As they came to a stop some few paces before him the man said, “You cast a great shadow here, stranger.”
Elias went cold. He could feel the eyes of the entire gathering weighing upon him. “It was not my intent to do so.”
“It rarely is, when such evils are born into the world,” the man returned, though not unkindly. “You have arrived on a day of celebration, Wayfarer, as my wife has dubbed you. This is the day of my Abeotium—the day where I will make the transition from this world to the next, but then, Elias Duana, you know something about traveling across the boundaries of realms, do you not? You have the look of one who has crossed many boundaries, dark one.”
Chapter 3
Abeotium
“Dark one?” asked Elias, taken aback.
Leosis’s pale blue eyes crinkled, belying the sting of his words. Despite the air of gravity that pervaded his aura Elias sensed that at his core the man was possessed of a mirthful spirit. “Does not your surname mean dark one in High Aradurian? Although, to your credit and that of your forbearers, I believe it was a reference to your bloodline’s coloring and not your deeds. Still, as your namesake suggests, there is a clever bit of dark in you that scurries and hides, eluding your every attempt to illuminate it. I wonder what you will do, Elias Duana, when you find it. Will you have the courage to destroy a part of yourself, even if it is undesirable?”
“You speak in riddles, friend.”
“Perhaps, but we are friends, I think.” Leosis fell silent and his icicle blue eyes lost focus and gazed through Elias. He grew inert and Elias wondered if he had died, or else fallen asleep.
“You must forgive Leosis,” Teah whispered into his ear. “His attention is already focused in many other realms, his mind split in many directions. Sometimes he cannot remain grounded in a single dimension, in a single time.”
Elias’s mind pinwheeled and a score of half-formed questions rose in his mind. “What?”
“He is our Speaker,” Teah said by way of an explanation. “The greatest of our people’s shapers.” When Elias answered her with a blank stare, she added, “Think of him as Seer.”
“Why is he to die tonight?”
Teah hesitated. “It’s complicated. We do not live our lives in the way we once did, or the way that you do. Each one of our people in their time on this earth will reach a moment when they are ready to move on, and so they do.”
“What people is that? Who are you?”
Teah’s fine eyebrows drew down over her eyes in a strange expression that Elias could only read as sympathetic, or apologetic. “We were once as you are now, before the great war.”
“Shiny.”
Leosis stirred. He favored Elias with a coy smile. “Dark One,” he said, his voice warm with good humor, “walk with me. Take my hand.”
A cascade of murmurs rushed through the clearing.
Elias stepped forward into Leosis’s space. An electric rush spread through him, and he felt as if every inch of his body was covered in goosebumps. Time slowed as he reached for Leosis’s hand. The air thickened around him and Elias felt as if he waded through molasses.
As he took Leosis’s hand in his own, Elias’s equilibrium fled. His vision swam and an intense pressure blossomed at the base of his skull. The sensation lasted momentarily, and when his vision cleared Elias found himself standing at the base of a verdant hill splashed with light from a dusking sun.
He sensed Leosis at his side but ignored him and surveyed his surroundings. They stood amidst a sprawling, mossy moor peppered with heather that rose into a hill topped with standing stones. Elias’s mind rebelled against the land laid before him: the colors were far too intense, too vibrant, to be found in nature.
Elias felt Leosis at his side, waiting on him patiently. The man radiated calm—a state of mind that Elias did not share. “Why are you going to die tonight?”
Leosis exhaled in a gesture that wasn’t quite a sigh. “It is time. I have walked this earth for centuries, and now it is time to walk in other realms.”
“And what of your people?”
“In some ways I can be of greater benefit to them on the other side. Our passing is different than yours. As to why, well, that is something of a complicated question, and answering it is not why I have brought you here.”
“What of Teah and Nyla?”
“It is always difficult to be separated from the ones you love. Yet they understand this is a transition we all must go throu
gh, and they wouldn’t think to ask me to stay when it is against the calling of my spirit. I am old and it is my time, though, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, we do not age as you do.”
“So that’s it then?”
“Is it not a crime to resist the natural order of things? Our bodies and the way we focus energy to sustain them are different than yours, but we are not meant to live forever on this earth. Natural law must be observed.”
Elias stiffened at Leosis’s words and found the courage to turn and look him dead in the eye. There was no judgment written on the lines of his face, only naked empathy.
Leosis gripped him by the shoulder and said, not unkindly, “You know something about bending the laws of nature, Elias Duana, do you not?”
“It was written in the Grimoire that time is not linear, but that is only how humans had come to perceive it due to our limited senses. Time can fold back on itself.”
“What you say may be true, but who are you to rewrite history, to reweave the tapestry?”
“The timeline is a self-correcting system, at least for the most part. That, and the time mages built fail-safes to balance the system. They fathered the modern world. I read their work.” Elias’s voice sounded thin, hollow in own his ears.
“You knew you were wrong to open that Grimoire. A small piece of you knew, though it was quieted by grief. And you know it now. You see, I know your story.”
Elias’s vision blurred. “I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t watch her die.”
“And that is what your enemies counted on. Come, walk with me.”
Leosis began to climb the hill, and Elias walked at his side. “The Grimoire you came to possess was not from an ancient age as you were led to believe, but from a distant future. The mages who learned to regret its creation couldn’t destroy it, for the thing itself was magic given form and like the scripts it contained the Grimoire Infinitum existed outside linear time in a state of energetic flux, and thus was impervious to destruction by conventional means. It is a magic unlike any the world has ever known. There is only one place it can be unmade.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Just listen for now, it may make sense to you later. The time mages that wanted to destroy the book were unable to do so, and so, in an act of desperation, they sent it far away. They sent it somewhere they reasoned it would be safe.”
A chill shot up Elias’s spine as it dawned on him. “They sent it back in time.”
“Precisely. They figured that no one in the distant past would have the ability to understand the complex mathematics and astrological charting involved, or possess the energy source to empower the knowledge were they to unravel its mysteries. To their credit, they were correct, until you came along.”
They crested the hill and came to stop in the center of the circle of standing stones. Elias felt the force of them, could taste the static charge in the air. “What is this place?”
“This is an echo of what once was. This once served as a gateway of sorts. At one time the elder fey had constructed many such structures all over the world. They were able to use them to travel, covering vast distances in the span of a breath.”
“Not unlike traveling with a wytchwood.”
Leosis blinked. “Even with all I can see, you still manage to surprise me. You know of wytchwoods?”
“I used one once.”
“The wytchwoods are old, elder magic. All were destroyed long before this age began. But one remains, as you know, in the ruins. Some untold enchantment protects it. For our part, we have endeavored to live more in concert with the energy of the land, but no creature in the history of this planet managed it like the Sylvan.”
Elias ran a hand along one of the towering grey-blue stones, which stood as tall as a cottage. “Why have you brought me here?”
Leosis drew close and his expression became passive, almost alien as it had in the clearing. “I know what you would ask of me, Elias Duana, but I’m not precisely sure how to help you get back home. The old gateways are closed to us now, as they are closed to the fey, for the cycles have changed. We are in a different star age now, one where the old currents have slowed. Ours is an age of waiting, of contemplation, not of action, of movement, like your own.”
Leosis open his hands and held them opposite each other and a dark mass, suggestive of the firmament, blossomed between his palms. Pin-pricks of light formed in the mass, like stars in the heavens. Slowly at first and then gathering speed the mock-stars began to move in elliptical cycles. They came into a line and began to vibrate and hum. “This is as your age,” Leosis said.
Elias held his breath, transfixed. The stars slowly spiraled away from each other and their vibration stilled, until they had scattered completely.
“Now, you see the age my people are in,” Leosis said. “At the height of our power, we could use gateways such as this to breach dimensions, but no more. The pathways have changed, and the world is rebuilding itself, preparing to birth another age.”
Elias’s heart sank and his legs weakened, robbed of strength by the weight of Leosis’s words. He had sacrificed everything to save Bryn and in all likelihood he would never set eyes upon her again.
He shook his head, and his thoughts cleared. He knew there must be a solution, there was always a solution. “There must be a way. Can you think of nothing that might lead me to an answer, might put me on the right path?”
“A way has become known to me, through a vision, though it is a perilous path that leads far beyond our borders.” When Elias began to retort, Leosis held up a hand. “Save your words, Wayfarer. I know the kind of man you are, and I know that you prefer death to exile. But first, before I can tell you where to go, you must learn where you are, or, shall we say, when you are.”
Leosis took his hand. “Come.”
Before he had a chance to respond, Leosis turned and Elias found himself standing in the ruins where he had awoken and encountered Nyla. He looked up and saw the tangled branches of the wytchwood reaching at the sky with bare, black fingers.
“I didn’t notice that the wytchwood had started shedding its leaves,” Elias said. “All of the other trees still have their leaves. Come to think of it, wytchwoods never shed their leaves.”
“To my knowledge,” said Leosis, “this is the last living wytchwood in all the world. It has been dormant since I was born—that is until you came along.” Leosis laid a hand on her trunk. He closed his eyes and a half-smile warmed his face. “Now, however, she has plenty to say.”
A peculiar feeling stole over Elias, and he felt that he had been here before. “What does she say?”
Leosis took his hand from the wytchwood. “Do you not recognize this place?”
Elias retreated a step and his stomach tightened. He peered around the clearing. Stone Garden Nyla had called it, and the place lived up to its name. As far as he could see chunks of granite rose from the ground, all weatherworn, but Elias could tell by the alternating shapes and sheer enormity that they had once been worked stone that supported a massive structure. All that remained of that structure, however, was the lingering vestiges of a single staircase and an archway.
Granite was much harder than other stones, which is why it was so hard to work, but also why it endured so long. Elias could think of few place in Agia that could afford to transport and work with so much granite. Perhaps wherever he was had a natural source close by, like in...
Elias’s mind reeled as the unfinished thought fizzled in his mind. He stumbled on numb legs to the staircase and archway. He climbed a step and images flashed in his mind. “It cannot be.”
Leosis’s voice sounded at his ear. “You’ve walked these steps before, have you not?”
Elias looked from the stairs to the wytchwood and back again. “It cannot be.”
“And yet your every sense tells you that it is. Where are we, Elias Duana?”
Elias met the pale fire of Leosis’s gaze. “Lucerne Palace. We’re at the ruins of Lucer
ne Palace.”
Chapter 4
An Uninvited Guest
Danica flipped through the dusty tome. She threw it down with a sigh. She must of have read the last page a half-dozen times.
For days she had been holed up with Ogden in his private library scouring his collection for any bit of lore that might explain an arcane working responsible for recent events. The fact that Elias had evidently been in the palace recently despite the fact that not a single soul could attest to having seen him complicated matters further. It hinted at a sinister magic that no one thought even possible.
Danica wished, not for the first time, that Lar and Phinneas were here. She had expected a letter from them by now, but so far not a word. It felt strange that they had all gone their separate ways after the failed coup on the throne, but Elias wanted to return to Knoll Creek to put things in order, take a much needed rest. With him gone from the capital it didn’t quite seem right for the other denizens of Knoll Creek to remain, so they left as well. For Danica’s part, it seemed like wisdom that she complete her education as a doctor as she was so close—not that she couldn’t have done so in Peidra, but she couldn’t bear to be so far away from Elias.
Danica had her own thoughts on why Elias wished to return home, if, as he said, only temporarily.
She pushed back from the writing desk at which she sat, a giant slab of oak besot with ink stains, scrolls of parchment and vellum, and arcane tomes the majority of which she barely understood. She didn’t make it far before falling back into her chair. She gasped as an electric tide of pins-and-needles crashed over her crown and a phantom pressure gripped her skull in a vice grip. “Ogden!” she cried.
The aged wizard stumbled around the corner from his laboratory. “Yes, I felt it too.”
†
Bryn ran the whetstone along the length of her rapier. The storied Aradurian steel held an edge like no other, despite the fact that the current generation preferred the fashionable work of the Kveshian smiths. Her father, however, knew the measure of true steel, and taught his daughter to use only Aradurian, for the clay crucible ovens they used increased the temperature of the molten iron manifold. The hottest fire breeds the strongest steel, and in that way people and swords are the same, he had said to her.
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 3