The mage waved his hand, and the rectangular viewing portal, which was nothing so much as a hole in space and time, closed in a flash of golden light. He rose from his perch on the spare stool that stood before the arcane apparatus where he had spent countless hours hatching his plan.
He knuckled his back and then took in hand the luminous glass inkwell that contained the enchanted ink he had crafted from purified gold. It was time to finish the spellbook, for there was still much to be done before the man who had brought doom upon all time gained the isle. Fortunately for the mage, time was on his side.
Chapter 32
Out of Illedium
Elias stood at the edge of Illedium as dawn broke. The sun was an angry blood orange and turned the open ground before the ruins of Peidra crimson. The shadows cast from the granite monoliths of the once proud Lucerne Palace stretched across the plains like a crooked, clawed hand reaching for him. No wind fell, and the grass of the fields were still as stone.
“It is time,” Teah said.
A modest entourage had accompanied them, none of whom Elias recognized, save for Cormn and a couple of Enkilder from his household. Solemn as a funerary march they had wound their way out of the heart of Illedium and to the borders of the Enkilder domain.
Elias summoned his arcane sight and studied the shimmering, diaphanous membrane that secreted Illedium away in a place between realms. “Let’s be on with it then.”
A hand alighted on his shoulder.
“Wayfarer,” said Cormn, “I don’t know quite what to say.”
“Then let us not say anything, where words can only hope to fail us.”
“Very well.”
“I will see to it that Malak returns to you.”
Without waiting for a response Elias stepped out of Illedium and into the open field. The energetic membrane rippled around him like a curtain of charged fog. He pulled his hood up against the glare of the sun and adjusted his sword to ensure he could draw it at a moment’s notice.
“This is the furthest from home I’ve been,” said Malak.
Elias grunted and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Me too, friend. Me too.”
Teah set off to the right, opposite of the ruins. Malak unfurled a map and turned it about in his hands to find his bearings. “Teah, I believe you are taking us away from our destination.”
“It is the best way,” she returned. “We’re going to make our way to the edge of the plateau and climb down it, then enter a hidden tunnel and work our way underground, as we had discussed.”
Malak swallowed. “Down the plateau?”
“The way is treacherous,” Teah said, “but entirely passable. All you have to do is follow in my footsteps.”
“Oh,” said the beleaguered Enkilder, “is that all?”
“Trust me,” said Teah. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Very well, said Elias, “but first, there’s something I must do. Nyla said that without my sword to sustain her, the wytchwood is dying. She said that Atya had a message for me and I owe it to her to see her before the end. If it wasn’t for her carrying that burden for all those years we never would have escaped Mordum’s snare.”
Teah frowned. “If you insist. We’re not likely to encounter trouble in the ruins of the palace as it is taboo to both the Wilder and the fey because that is where the ether is the most unstable. You don’t need to be an arcanist to see that something’s off there. Even the birds avoid the place. Still, let us be quick, so as not to invite trouble. We have much ground to cover to reach the other side of Peidra, as our route is roundabout.”
Elias agreed and led them on a straight course toward the patch of enchanted earth he had appeared on when he had been cast into the future. It was a relatively short walk through the open fields and up through the outer ruins of the postern gates of Lucerne to reach Atya. As they crested the stony hill upon which Lucerne had sat, Elias’s breath caught in his throat.
The wytchwood was failing. Elias knew it at once without needing to resort to his arcane sight. Though autumn was not yet in full bloom she had shed all her leaves. Her branches were dry and brittle, cracked and bleeding thick, ochre sap.
Elias approached solemnly, afraid that he was already too late. “Atya,” he said, “I have come.”
You remembered my name.
Elias could hear the happiness in her voice. In the past when he had communicated with a wytchwood it had necessitated him placing a hand upon her trunk. The same was not true now, but still he slipped up close, underneath her low-reaching boughs. “You have done me a great service.”
It was all I could do to deter my wayward kin.
“You mean the dark fey?”
There was a time when there was no dark or white, when we were all brothers, but that was long ago. When this age burns out, and the world is remade, perhaps it will be so again. Yet I can longer see what may be.
“You mean the future? What can you see?”
A grey veil hangs over all.
Elias’s heart fell. “What can be done?”
Starchild, I fear you alone can lift it and restore the future, and the past, for if you fail there are none who can take up the task in your place.
“What must I do?”
Find a doorway to the Wandering Isle. You no longer have the time to travel overland and oversea. Yet, I sense a passageway awaits you, and close. Your companion’s intuition to lead you toward the vault is correct. There you will find what you need.
Elias felt a shift in Atya’s energy. He instinctually raised his arcane sight and saw that her aura, once nearly fifty feet in circumference, was collapsing in on itself. “Atya...”
I am dying, Starchild, but this is good. Long have I been separated from my sisters, long have I gone without hearing their voices. I am ready.
“You have held on all this time, for me?”
It is true that your sword sustained me. I have carried it these long years, sleeping with its magic for centuries, dreaming. Through its connection I felt you spinning through the ether, tearing through the veils.
“So that is how I came to be here? You pulled me here?”
Yes, I had strength enough for that, and it fortunate that I did, for your enemies thought to cast you to the end of time, where you would have been powerless, but that is not your fate.
Elias pressed his palm against her trunk. “How can I begin to thank you for what you’ve done? How can I hope to repay you?”
Her voice sounded softly in his head, distant and shy, though unafraid. Only, hold me a little while.
Elias pressed his face against her bark and wrapped his arms around her trunk, though he couldn’t reach across it if he had the arm-span of ten men. A face pushed from out of the tree, rising from the bark like a swimmer emerging from under water, and rested against his shoulder. Her skin was the deep caramel of whiskey, her hair the green of dewy moss, and her eyes amber and feline. Arms pushed from the bark and pulled him close. He knew that he was looking upon the spirit of the great wytchwood, for he had seen a similar aspect in his mind’s-eye when he had communicated telepathically with her sister, Maya. Though Elias had never seen her in this form, she seemed familiar to him.
“You, and your sister, have been my closest friends since my sisters have died,” Atya whispered into his ear, “as was your mother before you. Yet this is in your future, even as it is in my past. Forget me not.”
Her skin warmed against him and burned fever-hot. She trembled and withdrew back into her trunk. He held on to her as long as he could but she began shrinking in on herself. Her bark split from her trunk to her boughs, branching like lightning. Green light poured from the fissures. Elias stood back.
He watched awestruck as the once behemoth and proud tree crumpled, consumed by a green fire that emitted neither heat nor cold and did not burn. They mystical fey fire devoured Atya utterly and left behind not a mote of ash. Elias made to turn away and rejoin his companions, but a glimmer caught his eye on the barren
patch of earth upon which Atya once stood.
It appeared to be a round and craggy stone, but as Elias took it in his hand he realized that it was a seed.
“A bit of hope for the future, it would seem,” said Teah.
Elias rolled the seed around in his hand. He thought of how Atya had become unable to sense the future. He had a good of idea of what that might mean. “First we must see to it that there’s a future to await us. Come on. Let’s go.”
After an hour on foot they reached the edge of the plateau and Elias looked out over what was once Galacia. What he saw chilled him to the marrow, and he reflexively gripped his sword in a white-knuckled hand.
Teah’s hands grasped him, one on each arm. “Peace, Wayfarer, peace.” She held him tightly, and he felt the heat of her breath on his cheek. “I should have warned you. Forgive me.”
Elias blinked away involuntary tears. The plains, the fields of rye and wheat that were the breadbasket of Agia, were gone, blasted. As far as the horizon the earth was black as charcoal, pitted, ragged, and glistening, like oiled glass. “What in the name of the One God happened?”
Teah, who still gripped him fast, said, “The nations of men assembled to assay the Darkin stronghold at what was once your Peidra. They stormed the plateau, every last capable man and woman in all Agia, or so they say. They were too many, even for the height of the plateau, even for the might of the fey to overcome in pitched battle.
“Thus, was it that the Obsidian Queen summoned her six most powerful mages, known as the Eldritch Circle, and with them rose into the black skies over the central towers of Lucerne and created the most ambitious and heinous arcane working the history of any race has ever seen. She ripped the life force from her prized mages, drained every mote of their power, and from the heavens called forth a liquid fire that rained for seven hours across all the plains. After the cursed storm passed, not even a single bone or shred of sinew from any man, woman, or child remained, and the earth was blasted as far as the eye could see.”
A bone-dry laugh escaped Elias’s lips, who now knew how the palace had been destroyed so completely. “And you call humans barbarians.”
“I am sorry, Elias,” Teah said.
“No. It was I that did this. I let the cursed dark fey into our world.”
Teah drew closer yet to him, and her hair raised goosebumps on his neck. “No. You can’t let yourself believe that, or we are already lost. The blame belongs to those who set the trap, those who divined a divergent timeline, those who deceived you. Don’t give in to your rage, or your despair. You were a pawn in their schemes once, don’t let yourself be again. That, Wayfarer, is how you sow your vengeance. It is how you win.”
She held him until he stopped shaking, then withdrew to stand by the stupefied Malak.
Elias turned on her, his eyes black as pitch and hard as granite. “You meant for me to see this unprepared, to harden my resolve to repair the timeline, no matter what. To see that this evil never happens.”
Teah studied him coolly. “You are cross with me?”
Elias smirked. “No, but remind me to never think of crossing you. You are too clever by half, lady. Now, lead on.”
Teah led them along the edge of the plateau for a couple of miles. She brought them to a stop before a horseshoe shaped boulder. She spoke an incantation under her breath and the boulder shimmered then disappeared, revealing a narrow, rounded stair carved out of the granite of the plateau’s face. “An illusion spell,” she explained.
Elias focused his eyes and saw that the spare stairway descended along the face of the plateau, though it was almost impossible to track it more than a few paces at a time, as it was evidently designed to blend into the rock so as to avoid detection. “Clever,” he remarked.
Malak, for his part, swooned on his feet.
“None of that, now,” said Teah. “There are plenty of handholds along the way. The trick is not to look down, and focus only on the step before you. I’ll lead the way. Watch first where I step and then follow me exactly. I will pause after every step to give you time.” She turned to eye the younger Enkilder. “Or, if you prefer, Elias can carry you.”
Malak gave her a weak smile. “That shan’t prove necessary. Elias, you’ll take the rear?”
Elias took off his cloak and adjusted his sword to rest along his back. “Of course. Now, take off your cloak and put it in your bag, if you can. You don’t want it to catch the wind or a crag.”
Malak swallowed. “Indeed.”
Once they had all adjusted their packs, Teah gave them a nod and set out down the staircase. Malak kept one hand along the face of the cliff the entire time, using the rough pits and crags as an impromptu banister. Elias instead opted to keep both hands free for balance and ease of maneuvering. After they wandered down the sheer plateau face for a few hundred feet, Teah came to a stop.
“What?” asked Malak in a brittle voice. “What is it?
“A small section of stair has eroded,” Teah replied.
Malak pressed himself flat against the rock face. “What do we do? Turn back?”
“Not an option,” said Teah. “We’ve squandered half the day coming this way, and I needn’t remind you that time is against us.”
“Agreed,” said Elias, “but what to do?”
“Hold up,” replied Teah, “I’m thinking.”
“It’s too far to jump,” said Malak.
“I could phase across, and then toss you two a rope,” said Teah.
“So we could, what?” asked Malak. “Walk across it?”
Elias resisted the urge to look down. “There must be some other spell one of you have that could help? What about using magic to leap further? I’ve seen people do that in the past.”
Malak cast Elias a sidelong glance. “But can you?”
Elias barked a laugh. “Good point.”
Teah cursed. “We haven’t time for this.” She bowed her head and stepped off the staircase.
The arcanist blinked out as if stepping through an invisible doorway and reappeared on the other side of the fissure, some seven feet away. “Toss your pack over, Malak,” she said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.”
“What? Why?”
“Because lean as you are, I think you’ll be heavy enough.”
“Pardon?”
“Just do it.”
Malak complied with a sigh. As fortune would have it, the pack traveled straight and true, and Teah caught it without incidence. She set it down behind her and took off her own pack. “Hold tight and for the love of the spirits, stay still.” She reached out a hand and her eyes narrowed in concentration.
A squeal escaped Malak’s lips as he levitated into the air, mere inches off the staircase, before being pulled through the air and over the open chasm. Beads of sweat sprouted at once on Teah’s face and throat and she inhaled deep, labored breaths through her nose. Elias could see the quickening of her pulse in the hollow of her throat.
Malak closed his eyes, and his lips worked a silent prayer.
“Open your eyes, you fool,” Teah rasped as Malak came to alight on the far side of the fissure.
Malak sank into a crouch and gripped the staircase in trembling hands. “Well done. Although, you could have warned me.”
Teah snorted. “Had I, would you have agreed?”
“Fair point.”
Teah wiped sweat from her brow. “Wayfarer, sit tight. I need a moment to recover my strength. You are a great deal heavier than Malak.”
Elias took a look at the breathless Enkilder. “Take all the time you need.”
“Right, then,” said Teah after catching her breath.
Elias took a deep breath as Teah extended a hand toward him. She bowed her head and her breathing deepened. A stray gust of wind blew her hair about her face and throat, and errant strands stuck to her slick brow. Elias felt an invisible cocoon envelop him and tug him up into the air. His feet hovered inches above the granite hewn staircase. He gripped the hilt of
his sword.
Teah gritted her teeth and her lips peeled back in effort. Elias wobbled in mid-air as he felt the cocoon of force falter. Teah cursed and her working failed. Elias sank back down to the stairs, but he had prepared himself and alighted with naught but a small stumble toward the cliff face.
“Blast,” she swore, “I need more time to recover my strength. Malak, get me some of that bread or cheese.”
Malak knelt and rummaged through his sack without a word, but he wore his feelings naked on his face.
“Relax, Teah,” said Elias. “You’ve extended yourself much in the last two days.”
Teah grunted around a mouthful of bread. “You’re not wrong. And lifting a person is a great deal more difficult than inanimate objects.”
“Why’s that?” asked Elias, who was in no particular hurry to repeat the experience.
Teah shrugged a shoulder. “People have energy fields, a kind of special gravity all their own. It weighs, for the purpose of this kind of thing.”
Elias studied the Enkilder woman, who yet appeared depleted by her arcane workings. He knew at once that she lacked the strength to levitate him across the fissure, and he was certain that she knew it too. Yet here they were, separated. They needed a solution, and soon.
A thought came to Elias and he rummaged in his sack. He withdrew a hemp rope and began to tie it to his sword.
“What are you on about?” Teah asked.
“I’m going to toss you my sword,” Elias said as if it were the most natural thought in the world. He smiled to himself, thinking how proud Danica would be. “I don’t want to risk it falling—I just got it back.”
“To what purpose?” asked Teah, her usual passive expression replaced with a knitted brow.
Elias finished the knot and checked it. Satisfied it would hold he said, “The blade is enchanted to absorb spells. It stores them as raw magic, which can be channeled and repurposed. See if you can use the power within to drive your working.”
Teah’s lips pursed to one side, and she looked less than convinced, but she said, “Very well. We’ll give it a try.”
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 27