Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  Teah grasped him by the arm. “Remember their howl. Steel your mind against it.”

  Elias nodded. “That’s why I brought these.” He produced a couple globs of candle wax that he had shaped into bean sized balls and pressed them into his ears.

  The Lichlor bore another sinister characteristic, as Teah had explained the night before as the embers in the hearth faded to orange. They produced a piercing howl that could weaken a person’s will and sap them of strength. Arcanists found it particularly deafening, and had difficulty maintaining the requisite focus to call upon their arcane powers. As the Lichlor fought in packs, their usual tactic involved employing a couple of howlers who would incapacitate their quarry while the remainder moved in for the kill.

  “Are you ready?” Elias asked.

  “I’m right beside you. I’ll protect you, Wayfarer.”

  Teah flickered then disappeared beneath a screen of magic. She appeared to have vanished entirely, as he couldn’t sense her presence at all. Elias concluded that she must have employed an even more advanced magic than the one she was trying to teach him the day before. He only hoped that she would remain as undetectable to the Lichlor as she was to him, for the wolf-like creatures could surely scent an invisible person as easily as they would him.

  Elias rose and entered the void, relying on the state of meditative detachment to heighten his senses. As he stepped from the cover of the forest he felt a resistance, as if he walked through a force field that grudgingly gave way. He had thought that a dawn fog had cast a haze over the open ground, obscuring view, but he now realized that it was an enchantment of some sort. This cast some light on Mordum’s comment that the Lichlor had ventured closer to Enkilder’s domain than ever before. Some magical veil must have kept them at bay. Realizing he had more pressing concerns at present, Elias pushed his way through the barrier and into the open field, hoping he would remain downwind, daring not so much as a single glance behind. Hand tight on his wooden sword, he made his way toward the ruins.

  As he crested the hill that Lucerne was once situated upon, a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that he was about to die. He stopped and summoned his arcane sight. Other than faint traces of energy crisscrossing the ruins, hanging in the air like spider silk, he saw no indication of the Lichlor. A pressure built in his skull, as if six fingers pressed into his forehead and temples at irregular intervals.

  Elias scanned the ruins and noted the irregular, weather-worn slabs of granite. The pattern struck him as somehow significant, which was paired with an insistent feeling that if were to advance much further he would meet with calamity. He descended again into the void, as deep as he dare. In his mind’s-eye he saw throbbing, ember-red clots of energy set out before him in a concave arc.

  It was then that it dawned on Elias that the Lichlor had hidden themselves behind the debris, situated in an arc, so that when he advanced toward the wytchwood they could encircle him and then dispatch him with ease. Teah had warned him that the Lichlor were possessed of an uncanny intelligence, but he hadn’t been prepared for this degree of stratagem on their part. If his flash-vision were to be trusted, Elias counted six Lichlor laying in wait. He needed to create a situation where they couldn’t flank him and he could face them one at a time, or at the least keep them from attacking him on multiple fronts.

  “I have an idea,” Elias said, “but it’s risky. My father would call it a gambit, but it’s our only chance.”

  Elias gathered his focus, and his power. He remembered his battle in the greatroom with Sarad’s Ittamarian thralls. He remembered when he shaped the magic stored in his father’s sword to his will. He didn’t have the enchanted steel at present, but he had his will.

  He envisioned a curtain of flame in his mind, blue-orange and almost liquid, with the power to melt even stone. “Feora!” he cried as he pushed the image from his mind and out into the world. He felt a tremendous tide of energy pass through him, and the air around him cooled. His head swam, his vision obscured by skeins of heat-waves.

  When his vision cleared, Elias saw his magic realized. A curtain of flame cut across the ruins, dividing him from his quarry. Wasting not a beat to congratulate himself, he sprung into action and sprinted over the open ground toward the wytchwood. The wall was long, but so was his run, and if he was certain of anything it was that the Lichlor could outmatch him in a footrace.

  Of all the areas visible within the ruins, only a single spot was defensible—the skeleton of the staircase that had once led from the royal gardens to the palace. The difficulty lay in the fact that the staircase was situated perilously close to where the Lichlor hid. And so entered the wall of flame, but he had invested the greater portion of his power in its construction, and ardently hoped it would buy him the time he needed.

  Elias sensed a presence at his heels, but just as he steeled himself for the sting of the Lichlor’s teeth, a yelp sounded behind him. He reached the foot of the stairs and bounded up, two at a time, until he was situated near the top. He spun to face his pursuer, sword raised into a high guard. It was then that he had his first look at a Lichlor.

  Any wolf he had ever espied before was dwarfed by the enormity of the beast before him. It must have stood three and half feet tall at its shoulder, and weighed fifteen stone. Its fur was short and coarse and the black of mold. Saliva dripped from a muzzle proportionally shorter and wider in comparison to the timber wolf. Its most notable feature were its eyes, which glimmered like scarlet rubies.

  It circled the base of the stairs, sniffing and growling. It faded back and charged. It bounced off an invisible barrier, but this time no yelp was forthcoming. Teah had erected an energetic shield to protect his flank, and it was a damn good thing that she had.

  “Well done, Teah,” Elias said, “but let him through, I don’t want to face them all at once.”

  Just as he finished speaking the lone wolf began to howl. The shrill, piercing shriek was easily several octaves higher than the howl of a normal wolf or coyote, but aside from the brain-splitting tone an insistent power reverberated in the Lichlor’s arcane call. Elias felt as if the very bones of his skull were vibrating.

  When Teah dropped the shield, the Lichlor ceased its screeching howl at once and its muzzle dropped open in an eerily human grin. It hurtled up the stairs. Elias’s every instinct told him to retreat, to flee, but he ignored the voice of fear. Instead, he lunged forward, and as the Lichlor leapt he swung his sword. The point of his wooden blade opened the Lichlor’s throat in an arterial burst.

  His blow had derailed the Lichlor’s course to some degree, but the momentum of its charge proved too powerful to be halted and it crashed into Elias, bowling him over even as it began to convulse in shock. Thrown to his left with the force of the collision, Elias found himself falling through the open air with the beast yet atop him. Time slowed as he plummeted toward the earth. He reflexively dropped his sword so that he could grab the staircase with his free arm. The Lichlor tumbled past him, making a wet thud on the earth.

  Elias struggled to gain a hold and pull his other arm around but his right hand was slick with the Lichlor’s blood and he was losing purchase. Beats before his fate was to become that of the Lichlor, he felt invisible bands of force grasp him tight about the waist and haul him back to the staircase. His heart punched his breastbone and an involuntary laugh escaped his dry mouth.

  “Only five to go. Remind me to buy you a drink if we survive this.” Elias cursed as he realized that his sword was nowhere to be found. Presently, however, it floated up from the ground and hovered before him. “Make that two.”

  His relief proved short-lived, for the pack approached, two in the lead with the remaining three trailing some hundred yards behind. Not wishing to have a repeat of his last encounter, Elias thought to resort to magic, but he feared that another arcane display might drain too much of his strength. His firewall had worked well; indeed, the wall continued to burn though the Lichlor had cleared it.

  Then it occ
urred to Elias, that since he had already spent the energy to summon the flame, if he could manage to redirect or recycle that energy, he might be able to strike a blow from afar with a relatively small investment of his power. He reached out with his mind and willed the fire to gather into a sphere. He envisioned the sphere growing dense, pregnant with explosive force. He mimed the action with his hand, tightening it against his mental focus, and it felt as if he squeezed a full waterskin.

  The lead Lichlor now approached within twenty yards of the staircase. With supreme effort, feeling as if he was moving through glue, Elias thrust his fist toward them with an inarticulate cry. A sphere of blue-white flame streaked across the ruins as his wall of flame collapsed in on itself.

  The roiling sphere struck the earth inches before the Lichlor and detonated with a concussive force that cracked like a whip. The blast hurled the Lichlor airborne in a cataclysm of liquid fire and detritus from the ruins. They skipped like stones when they returned to earth and then went still, their melted fur smoking.

  The remaining three rushed on, adding the thunder-clap of their barks to the crackling of flame as the leaden sky rumbled overhead in the promise of rain. Elias Duana strode down the steps to meet them.

  The leaner, longer of the three Lichlor reached the foot of the stairs first and leapt at him without pause. Elias danced up a step. As the Lichlor’s claws scrambled for purchase on the weather-worn granite, Elias leapt down a step with an overhand stroke, allowing the momentum of his descent to guide his blow. His well-timed attack drove the Lichlor’s skull into the stair and stunned it. Capitalizing on its stupefied state, Elias whipped his sword around and chopped at the Lichlor’s neck. His makeshift blade, however, did little damage to the thickly corded slabs of muscle that protected the Lichlor’s spine, for its edge had already been dulled.

  Sensing the remaining two members of the pack close at hand, Elias improvised and jumped, bringing both of his booted heels on the lead Lichlor’s forelegs, crushing its bones. Before it could recover and nip at him he kicked the unbalanced beast to the side and off the stairs. Elias backpedaled up the staircase, but the largest of the pack had closed in on him.

  Before he could bring his sword around the pack-leader pounced and bore him onto his back. Pinned beneath the impossibly heavy aberration, Elias found himself confronted with an image from out of nightmares. His visage contorted in a snarl that displayed rows of yellow, notched teeth, the Lichlor locked ember-red eyes on Elias in a chillingly human look of unadulterated hatred.

  A yelp sounded from the foot of the stairs, presumably as the remaining Lichlor met with one of Teah’s force barriers. Unfazed by his pack mate’s predicament, the alpha reared up, gathering power to deliver the killing blow to his prey. Yet, as he drew back, he afforded Elias the fraction of freedom he needed to move his sword arm. Pinned at the shoulders, Elias didn’t have the mobility to roll to the side or muster his blade, but, swinging from his elbow, he thrust his stave over the Lichlor’s forelegs and caught the far end in his left hand.

  As the Lichlor bore down on him to rip out his throat, Elias braced his elbows against the stairs and pushed the blade up into the Lichlor’s open maw. The Lichlor chomped down on the blade, which was positioned parallel to Elias’s throat. The edge of the stave cut into the Lichlor’s mouth, but it only clamped down on it all the harder, until his blood began to drip down onto Elias’s throat and face.

  Elias poured all of his strength and what power remained to him into the supreme effort of holding the Lichlor at bay. He felt Teah’s power wrap around the creature, but her effort was split between trying to free him and maintaining the barrier that held the remaining Lichlor at bay, who had presently begun to howl.

  Spent from his efforts, the screeching sound invaded Elias’s mind, ricocheting off the inside of his skull. In the presence of the bone-drilling sound, no thought could form, no will could prevail. Elias dizzied. His body felt far away, disconnected from his mind, which shrank to a pinprick of light in a dark sea. Something hot and wet pressed close to his chin. Someone called his name.

  A chatter filled Elias’s mind as he felt himself wander to the precipice of oblivion. So many voices, clamoring to be heard over the others, all insistent, all bright as cathedral glass. They drowned out the piercing cry that had invaded him.

  Elias blinked. He returned to his body with an electric jolt. The world had gone silent as a coffin, but he feared he had recaptured his senses too late. He had lost all but the last inch to the Lichlor, and was utterly without the requisite leverage or power with which to cast him off.

  He peered past the Lichlor’s grizzled muzzle and into the leaden sky as he readied himself for the inevitable. In the bruise colored clouds he saw flickers of light, swirling like will-o-the-wisps. He felt the pent-up energy in the clouds, the charge in them, and it called to him. A tingling began to circle in his chest, and he realized how easy it would be to simply reach out and grasp that pregnant power trapped in the sky above. All he needed to do was give it a channel to run through.

  Elias called upon his second sight and peered into the sky until he sensed something solid but elusive, like a greased serpent. Something splintered in his hand, which was just as well, because he couldn’t catch the snake of light if his hands were full. He thrust out his arm as a great shadow fell over him, blocking his view.

  The last thing Elias saw was a searing arc of liquid light before he was hurtled into the grey of the sky.

  Chapter 11

  Bound

  “I’m not going to leave him, he’s still alive!”

  Elias’s eyes had sand in them. He tried to rub at them, but his hands hung impossibly heavy at the end of rubbery arms. Grey shapes flashed before his eyes, and he endured a period of agony of indeterminable length where he thought he might be blind, before realizing that he lay on his back gazing at angry storm clouds. He tried to roll onto his side but his muscles had turned to water and wouldn’t obey him.

  “Is he awake?” someone asked, a man.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said another unfamiliar voice, also male.

  “Unhand me at once!” said a familiar voice, Teah. “I have to try to heal him. He’s dying you fools!”

  “Perhaps it is nothing less than he deserves,” said the first voice.

  “Letting a man die whom you can help is tantamount to murder.”

  “I hardly think that you are in a position to lecture us on the interpretation of our laws, Teah,” said the second voice.

  “I said unhand me.”

  “Or what, will you stab me to death as well?”

  “The Lichlor are beasts, aberrations. They’ve begun to see through our shields. I did as I must to protect our people, as did the Wayfarer.”

  “The Arbiter will decide on the merit of your actions, and their consequence.”

  “What are you doing?” cried the other voice. “Stop!”

  Elias heard a crack like a whip and then a thud as something fell beside him. He tried to turn his head, but his neck muscles only twitched in limp protest. Something gossamer soft lay against his arm, and the scent of lavender filled his nostrils. A gentle rush of warmth, something like a hot breath, spread through him.

  “Fool, what have you done?” growled the second speaker, his tone charged with authority, crackling with wrath.

  “She was casting a spell. I thought she meant to kill us.”

  “She was trying to heal him.”

  “From so far away, and with her hands restrained? Impossible.”

  “You forget yourself, Malak. She was wed to my predecessor, and may possess abilities far beyond those typical to our kind. Now you have perpetrated against her the very crimes we seek to exile her for. Fool.”

  “It speaks only to the gravity of her crimes, which have spread their taint so quickly to have corrupted my actions. I didn’t mean to hit her. It just happened.”

  “Yes, yes. She has already rekindled the cycle of violence that the High L
aws sought to break. You’ve made my case for me, though unwittingly. Still, you may yet have a place on my council, if you play your cards right.”

  “Yes, Speaker. Thank-you, Speaker.”

  “Now bind them, we have far to travel.”

  Elias was unceremoniously turned onto his stomach. The action derailed his equilibrium and his head swam as his face pressed into the wet earth, depriving him of air. The world spun, and Elias spun with it into unconsciousness.

  †

  Elias awoke in a prison, albeit a gilded one. The chamber was carved of granite and trimmed in limestone. It lacked any natural woods, save for thin strips of birch which composed two spartan chairs, but for all that the chamber still felt warm. Tapestries woven in earth tones mitigated the cold edges of the chamber and paintings framed in silver and copper alloy brightened its demeanor.

  For all that, the door remained locked, as did the windows, which looked out upon an unusual village built over a narrow stretch of river. The stone and brick structures of the village stretched up instead of out, many of them miniature palaces in their own right. Some cobblestone paths snaked into the wood and smaller if not less modest structures peppered them, but the majority of the town lay situated around the river and indeed over it on wide, arching bridges.

  A knock sounded at the door, eliciting a chuckle from Elias. He had been left to his own devices the many hours since he awoke, locked away, and yet his captors knocked. How quaint. “Enter,” said Elias, affecting an imperious tone, which only amused him further, though he found himself all too aware that beneath his bemusement something dark lurked.