Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  She missed her father now, particularly his counsel. That her father yet lived she still thanked the One God. In the autumn the Scarlet Hand had struck at him in Phyra while he was on the road, but the wily Vance Denar and some few of his retainers had escaped into the Apine Noira forest and eluded his pursuers. Even with a leg crippled from the withering illness that claimed King Peregrine and Bryn’s mother both, which she later learned was the work of the Hand, he led a superior force on a merry chase and eliminated them one by one.

  Bryn could use his strength now, but when her father began using a cane he retired his sword and took up the office of a diplomat, a calling to which he was well-suited. It would seem, as her father had told her on more than one occasion, that the same maxims that applied to military stratagem were of great benefit in the diplomatic arena. So when the spring came her father went, for Galacia’s treaty with Ittamar had put the lower countries of Agia into an uproar and they required more than a little cajoling to appease their fears.

  Bryn examined the edge of her rapier. The folded steel could shear paper, and the ancient enchantments the Aradurian mystics had woven into the blade ensured that it would hold its edge for a good long while. Satisfied, Bryn oiled the sword and then picked up her repeating crossbow to clean that as well.

  As she set about her task, her thoughts went elsewhere, her fingers working with practiced, automatic efficiency. She didn’t know what alien magic could have stolen Elias, but shadowed stirrings in the deep of her mind told her that it involved her somehow. Whatever it may be, she was done yielding to that pervasive, nameless fear that had corrupted her since the day she awoke to find Danica returned to Lucerne and Elias vanished into the ether.

  The tiny, fine hairs on Bryn’s arms shot up. A peculiar odor, like the smell in the air after a thunderstorm or one of Ogden’s alchemical experiments, filled her chamber. Bryn loaded her crossbow as an acrid taste filled her mouth.

  She rose from her seat at her breakfast table and positioned herself in the nearest corner with her back to the wall. She dropped into a crouch and leveled her crossbow. She held her rapier in her left hand in a reverse grip and rested the crossbow on her forearm to steady it.

  A buzzing sound issued from her bedchamber, like an enchanted violin string that once plucked never ceased reverberating. The haunting strain was followed by a loud, crushing sound.

  “Come then!” Bryn cried, a black rage blooming in her like the sudden inferno of naphtha set to flame. She didn’t have to wait long.

  An ashen monstrosity that Bryn could only describe as an impossibly massive caterpillar slithered out of her bedroom. Eyeless, bloated, and the color of a corpse freshly drowned, it wormed toward her, garish maw opened in a silent scream, revealing rotten, yellowed teeth, each the size of a butcher’s knife.

  Bryn fired a volley of bolts into its open maw, but the reeking hulk seemed unfazed. Deciding she didn’t want to get pinned by the creature she threw down her crossbow, turned over her breakfast table, and rushed the worm using the table as a makeshift battering ram. It complied with her plan and chomped down on her table, splinters of wood bloodying its mouth. It made short work of her offering, but it bought her much needed time.

  She sprinted up her divan and leapt onto the worm’s back, leading with her rapier. Its hide proved tougher than she had imagined, but her Aradurian steel sunk into it, halfway to the hilt. The worm bucked with all the ferocity of a spooked stallion. Unfortunately for Bryn, all she had to hold onto was the hilt of her rapier.

  She managed to hold on for a few precious moments before being hurled back across the room, toward the corner she had begun the battle in, but not before her left thigh was slashed open by her own blade. She rolled to minimize the damage from the fall, but she took the landing hard, bearing the brunt of it on the shoulder of her sword-arm.

  Bryn made to rise but her left leg failed her and she slid to the floor, wet with her own blood. She hazarded a quick look to her leg as the worm continued to thrash. Her wound spurted jets of purple blood. It would be the death of her if she didn’t act rapidly.

  “Feora!” she cried, summoning what scant Arcanum she possessed, and formed a fist-sized sphere of flame above her palm. She made to cast it at the berserk creature, but a desperate idea bloomed in her frenzied mind.

  Bryn gritted her teeth and threw the arcane flame into her wound. Once released from her will the magical flame bore all the properties of its natural equivalent. She screamed as the fire cauterized her gushing wound. Huh, she thought with an inane giggle, smells like bacon.

  The worm regained its composure momentarily and began to buck toward her. Bryn drew the boot dagger she always wore strapped to her calf as a matter of course and waited. She didn’t have the strength to maneuver on her leg, so she had to wait for the perfect moment to strike. She had but one more chance to live to see another day.

  Halfway to her the worm paused its advance and grew stone-still. It lifted its maw and began to wave it around, as if sniffing, despite its lack of the required sensory organ. Shifting direction, it began to lumber toward the door, leading not to her bedchamber but to her formal sitting chamber and the royal hallway beyond.

  The door rattled and the knob cycled back and forth a fraction of an inch. By the One God’s Beard, someone had heard the commotion and came to her aid. Her elation proved short-lived, for she remembered she had locked the door, not wishing to be disturbed.

  Bryn cursed herself and crabbed back toward her bedroom, but she didn’t make it far.

  The cherry-wood door exploded through its frame with a concussive force that rattled her teeth. The hardwood sundered in two and hurtled into the worm before skittering off the floor like a skipping stone. Bryn ducked and covered her head as the door splintered off the granite of the far wall. Only one arcanist in Peidra could boast that reservoir of power—Ogden Vandrael.

  Through the haze of arcane energy and powdered wood rushed a stone-faced Danica Duana, her black hair caught in an otherworldly wind, a short-sword glinting naked in her hand. Without breaking stride for a single beat, she tumbled past the worm and debris alike and hissed a handful of words in a serpentine tongue. At once her sword became lambent with a cold, blue corona.

  From her tumble she glided into a lunge that carried her half the breadth of the room. She held her sword fully extended but anchored in a single position, parallel to the floor and perpendicular to her side, allowing the momentum of her arcane dash to drive her blade. The steel slid through the worm like an oar through water, emptying the putrid contents of its stomach and intestines onto the floor. The worm convulsed, a scream of gases escaping its grievous wound as it deflated.

  Bryn cackled as the monstrosity shuddered a final time and grew still. “Back to the pit with you, you whore’s-son.” She pushed her torso up from the floor but her head swam and her vision blackened around the edges.

  When her head cleared she found that Danica knelt at her side, probing her. Her touches felt feather light on her numbed body. The room was now filled with voices, but they sounded far away, as if coming from the other side of a closed door. Bryn tried to twist her neck to see if anyone else stood close by, but her muscles refused to obey.

  Danica’s voice alone stood out. “We can’t move her, she’ll bleed to death. She managed to cauterize the wound somehow, which no doubt saved her, but her femoral artery is severed. She’ll bleed out if I can’t stitch it, and quickly.”

  A warmth stole over Bryn. She had always figured death would be a cold thing, but she felt afloat in warm, gently undulating waters. This isn’t all that bad, she thought as she drifted off.

  Red pain lanced through her. She wasn’t sure where it came from—it seemed to be everywhere at once.

  “There, I’ve made a tourniquet, but I need my clamps, the sickle-shaped needle, and cat-gut—God’s blood, just bring me my whole damned bag you damned imbecile. The princess’s life depends on it. Run!”

  Another voice spoke, close
at hand, but Bryn’s eyes wouldn’t focus and she couldn’t see the speaker. “She’s fading. You’ll have to use your gift.”

  “I can’t very well suture her artery with my mind,” Danica snapped.

  Bryn laughed, but the effort sent her into a coughing fit, and then she felt like her whole body was coughing.

  “I was wondering when she was going to go into shock. She’s tough as mutton that it didn’t happen already.”

  “Danica, you have to try! She won’t last!”

  Bryn felt at once as if she were sliding sideways. An intense but not unpleasant heat, like an October sun, enveloped her and a tingling sensation rushed through ever scintilla of her body.

  Bryn sighed and welcomed death.

  †

  Lar Fletcher fiddled with the Marshal’s shield, then put it back in his pocket. He had worn it but once, the night the queen pinned it to his chest. He had thought at that moment that a new life had begun for him. A life that saw him as a Marshal, upholding Crown Law with his best friend—a life that saw him a provincial corn farmer no more.

  Yet the morning after the queen’s banquet, all that changed. Elias informed their party, all whom had fought to retake Lucerne, that he was returning to Knoll Creek, for a time. He supposed Elias needed some time to rest, chew on things for a while. Lar could understand that, but when pressed as to when he would return Elias grew evasive.

  His friend remained elusive when they returned to Knoll Creek. He never turned Lar away when he dropped in on him, but Elias was changed. He had grown pensive and reserved. He seemed far away, as if his attention was elsewhere. As he thought on it, Lar realized that Elias had become like his father. Cordial but distant.

  Phinneas walked out of the tavern carrying a brown parcel and a wineskin, presumably their lunch. An irregularity in his gait drew Lar from his thoughts. As he packed his saddlebag the usually buoyant doctor looked his age. “What is it, Doc?”

  Phinneas looked up at him, his almond-brown eyes tight. “I feel as if someone just walked over my grave, Lar.” He shook his head and tied his long grey hair back with a leather thong. “Something’s not right with the world. I can feel it in my teeth.”

  You didn’t have to be an arcanist to see that, thought Lar. He looked to the horizon. The courser beneath him shifted, perhaps sensing his unease. “All the more reason to get a move on. If we press hard we can make Lucerne by supper time tomorrow.”

  Phinneas smiled up him, some of his native cheer returning to his face. “Lead on, Lar.”

  Chapter 5

  The Wandering Isle

  Elias found himself back in the clearing beside Teah and Nyla, as if he had never left. He couldn’t remember if he had fallen to a knee in the ruins of Lucerne or in the clearing.

  Under the enormity of his present situation he had grown faint and panic tightened his windpipe. He hadn’t been cast to some distant shore, but hurtled centuries, if not millennia into the future. Everyone he had ever known, ever loved, had long since turned to dust.

  He had been deceived the day Talinus appeared to him, skulking amidst the leafless branches of Lucerne Palace’s royal gardens.

  “There is a way,” he had whispered. “There is a magic that can save her. Ancient, dangerous, powerful—but it is the only way.”

  “What magic?” Elias had asked, at once ill at ease.

  “You must bend the tapestry, turn it back the way it was before she was struck down.”

  “What you speak of is impossible.”

  Talinus drew close, his red eyes glimmering like smoldering coals in the dead of night. “The antediluvian shapers knew the laws that governed the cosmos, they knew the shape of reality. More essentially, for you, they knew how to shape reality to their will. On the vernal equinox will such a day come that the heavenly powers will be in the proper alignment. The door can be opened.”

  Elias circled the imp, extending his senses outward to detect any hidden threat, but he found none. He crouched, toe-to-toe with Talinus, so close he could taste the dark fey’s smug sense of self satisfaction. “How do I know you aren’t trying to trick me?”

  Talinus’s smile split his face, revealing twin rows of needlelike teeth. “You don’t, but what choice do you have?”

  Elias glared at him, his anger warming his cold skin from within. “You know that I can sense deceit.”

  Talinus purred, an unholy sound like gravel grating on glass. “Your lady fair will be spared. That I can guarantee, but I’m not sure you’ll like the price for her deliverance.”

  Elias looked up at Leosis as his thoughts returned to the present. Though the past was lost to him at this moment, he had crossed the barriers of time, so reason held there must be a way however remote to travel in reverse. As he thought on Talinus a white anger ignited within him that spent itself equally between himself and his malefactor, and from that ardent source his resolve cemented, hardened by the heat of his anger.

  “There must be a way that I can set things to right.”

  Leosis tightened his grip on Elias’s hand, which he yet held fast in his own. “And find it you must, Wayfarer, for you have disturbed the natural order, opened gates that were best left closed. The destruction of Lucerne and all you hold dear began the night you rewrote history, and the ramifications of your actions have rippled through the timeline. The spirits alone know how far the stone has skipped.”

  “Can you point me in the right direction?”

  Leosis closed his eyes, and Elias felt him slip away again, perhaps journeying through far realms, the past or the future. “There are specific dimensional nodes that connect all realms. Think of them like a central hub from which many doors open. But without the Grimoire’s native magic you won’t be able to access them. Yet there is a place, the stronghold of a once great arcane brotherhood, dislocated from time, and from space. You may be able to find passage home from there, but the exact qualities that make this place of use to you also makes it nigh impossible to find, for it never seems to be in the same place twice. This is why it is known as the Wandering Isle. Many have sailed to find it, and many have failed.”

  Leosis opened his eyes and snake-quick grasped Elias by his skull. “It is within these parameters, I think. Do you see it?”

  An image bloomed in Elias’s mind’s-eye. He saw a three-dimensional map focused on what appeared to be the coastline of distant Aradur, across the continent, past the arid deserts and enormous inland sea that separated the east from the west. Far to the south of the coast in the open ocean lay a triangle, by perspective easily the size of a country, superimposed over the map, drawn in glowing red lines.

  “Yes,” Elias said, “I understand.”

  “Somewhere within the boundaries of this triangle you should find the Wandering Isle.”

  Elias swallowed. “Should?”

  “As I said, the Wandering Isle does not occupy a fixed point in space, or time. It is even possible you may be able to find passage there through an avenue that appears a great distance from the location I have just showed you, geographically speaking at least. It fluctuates on the cusp of myriad dimensions. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Elias, “but it’s a start. All I need to know is that this traveling island may appear within the boundaries you showed me. I’ll search the sea until I find it.”

  Leosis smiled. “They were right about you.”

  “Who?”

  Leosis squeezed Elias’s hand a final time, then released him. “It was nice to have met you, Elias Duana, Wayfarer.”

  Elias’s mind yet brimmed with questions, but he recognized the dismissal. “Fare well on your travels, friend.” He rose, and after a final glance at Leosis’s serene features, walked to the edge of the clearing and joined the gathering.

  Elias sat with his back against a tree, the tranquility of the scene and the vibrant, gentle energy in the clearing melting away his anxiety. One by one, and requiring no cues, each man, woman, and child present in the clearing went up to
Leosis, stood before him, and took his hand. No words were exchanged and the time shared between each member of the gathering and their Speaker scant, numbering in seconds not minutes, but Elias suspected that they each shared an experience not unlike his own, and in the spacious corridors of the mind, the places between worlds, or wherever Leosis took them, time passed by different rules.

  After all participants of the Abeotium had gone before Leosis there remained but two, Teah and Nyla, who had stood by his side for the entirety of the procession. Leosis fixed his eyes on Nyla. “My child,” he said, and she fell into his arms. They held each other for many minutes, and Elias wondered where they went and what they shared. Perhaps a lifetime of wisdom passed from father to daughter, or something more important yet.

  Elias felt an ache in his own heart as he thought on the ones he loved and the very real possibility that he might never see a one of them again. He found himself unsure of which was worse—spending a life exiled from the Galacia he knew, or a Galacia without Bryn. He felt like it was another man that embarked on the quest to bring his father’s murderers to justice, and yet the memory of that loss was fresh in his mind, as were the events that followed when he took on the Scarlet Hand.

  During the last half a year Elias felt as if he had never left that struggle, and against those memories he couldn’t reconcile the person he had been with the life he was to live in the days to come. But by leaving Peidra, which in turn was responsible for the ensuing disbandment of the party that had saved Lucerne, he had left the seat of the kingdom weak while Galacia was yet recovering from the battle with the Scarlet Hand. None, he least of all, thought that their enemies could strike at them again so quickly, and so it was the perfect time for them to do just that.