“Through the palace gardens,” said Danica, who drew close to the pair. “Bryn and I found her beneath the wytchwood.”
“The wytchwood, but how?” asked Elias.
Nyla smiled up at him. “Space and time are not as linear to the wytchwood as they are to you and I. Maya said that she told you that once.”
“Yes, I do recall, you little scamp. What I meant was, I thought the last of them were destroyed?”
“They were, Wayfarer,” said Nyla, “but I did not squander the heart-seed that you gave to my mother. With the unraveling in the ether repaired and with my mother as Speaker we turned back the power of the Darkin. We reclaimed the spirit of the land, at least in part. Atya’s daughter took to root. I’ve waited all these long years for her to mature so that I could return to you.”
“Nyla, that’s...” Elias trailed off, unable to find the words.
Nyla rolled her eyes. “Terribly romantic, I know.”
A silence fell between them, which the queen filled by saying, “Here you are, before our very eyes—the famous Nyla we’ve heard so much about. You must stay the night, I insist. We will have a feast in your honor.”
Nyla’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You are most kind, your Majesty, yet I cannot.”
“Surely you can spend a single night,” said Danica quickly. “You saved my brother’s life, and there is so much to say.”
Nyla’s eyes never left Elias as she said, “And he saved my very soul. Yet, still, I cannot. Though I didn’t travel here with the same temporal Arcanum that Elias has used, I have still bent the ancient laws. I don’t belong here, and dare not tarry.”
Bryn padded up to them and reached out shyly and grasped Nyla by the hand. “It’s the strangest thing, but I feel that I know you.”
Nyla gave the princess a sly smile. “In another life, perhaps. Come now. No more tears. Walk with me to the gardens?”
Elias walked with Nyla, hand in hand, out of the throne room, through the great hall, and down the stairs leading to the royal gardens, and the Lucerne Sentinels followed.
As they approached the great wytchwood Nyla squeezed Elias’s hand and then pulled away from him. “There is the matter of a debt that needs settling.” A capricious smile lit her face. “Forgive me my penchant for the dramatic.”
She reached beneath the shadow of the wytchwood and the obfuscating screen of magic that hid the tree’s true identity. She turned back to them, clutching a bundle of green cloth in both hands. “Wayfarer, take off your coat and roll up your sleeve.”
“Which one?”
“You know which one.”
Elias complied and Nyla laid the bundle on the ground. She unrolled the cloak and lifted Elias’s sword in both hands, as if a supplicant offering up a holy relic.
Elias’s breath caught in his throat. He had given up hope of ever seeing his father’s sword again. He reached out and wrapped a hand around the scabbard. At once a surge of energy rushed through him. The four runes embedded in the forearm of his sword arm emitted a blue-white light.
“Draw the blade,” Nyla said.
Elias pulled the blade free in a single, fluid motion. The sound of enchanted steel ringing on steel filled the clearing. Moved by an inexorable, magnetic force the sword pulled up to point skyward. A blue-white corona of light enveloped the blade and a high pitched hum drowned out all sound, even the thundering of his heart. An arc of lightning lanced from the point of the blade and into the cloudless summer sky.
The blade turned white under the wild discharge of arcane energy, but the only heat Elias felt was the burning in his arm.
Elias blinked. The blade had cooled and resumed its normal appearance as if nothing had happened, but it was not unchanged. Three interlocking circles had formed along the base of the blade, etched into the steel as if they had always been there. The four original runes remained, rising through the intertwined circles, but a fifth had formed in the vesica picsis of the second and third circle.
“Elias,” said Danica, “look at your arm.”
Elias sheathed his sword and was unsurprised to find that the fifth rune had likewise been branded into his forearm. He turned his attention to Nyla. “What does it mean?”
Nyla ran a finger along the runic characters. “The three spheres—vital, mental, spiritual.”
“Body, mind, spirit,” said Elias.
“Yes. You thought the symbols were Eurinthian. You were right in part. The Eurinthian were the first men, and they derived their language from the Elder Fey. I had to search long and far to unravel their mysteries. I think I have it right, but these symbols also engender entire concepts, and their order augments their meaning. The knowledge I give you today is but the outline of their true connotation.”
Nyla pointed at the first symbol. “This is the symbol for aether, the conduit of an arcanist’s power, but also the source from which all living beings absorb life-force energy.
“The second symbol means Imperial Aegis. See how it crosses the first and second circles? The power of this rune protects you, mind and body, and is likely the reason why your mind has been so resistant to the rigors of time magic.”
She pointed to the third rune, tapping each half once. “The third is the symbol for the Void, but it is also intertwined with the rune for will. The one naturally flows into the other.”
Nyla looked up at him. “The fourth is the elder symbol of Binding. I believe you are well acquainted with its power.”
Elias studied the markings and thought of his father. His father had taught him of the tapestry, which the ancient fey called aether, and the modern arcanist and scientist called the ether. He had taught him of the mental state called the void, and how to hone his will. He had taught him the spell of binding during a state of induced hypnosis—a feat that had stymied Ogden to this day—which had allowed him to defeat both the Scarlet Hand and Mordum. The runic concepts emblazoned on his sword contained his father’s most essential and valuable lessons. Padraic Duana had unraveled their mysteries, at least in part, and because of that his children, and Galacia, had survived the last year.
Elias looked up from his arm. “And the fifth symbol?”
Nyla fastened her otherworldly green eyes upon him. “The fifth symbol flashed in my mother’s mind the moment she freed my spirit. It has been burned into her memory ever since, and long did she search to learn its meaning. The fifth rune is the symbol of Unfettering.”
“But why?” asked Danica. “What does it mean?”
“The Wayfarer alone can uncover that truth.” Nyla shrugged. “Perhaps he has unfettered his own power, or his true potential. Or he has unfettered the blade, activated its deeper mysteries. In any case the fifth symbol has eluded all of the Dashin’s previous wielders, and that is of no mean consequence because this sword is older than this city, older than this civilization.”
Elias felt the eyes of the others upon him. “Yet I haven’t awakened it fully. There are three circles and according to the pattern of one symbol at each pole—one in the center, and one in the vesica piscis where the circles join—there is room for two more symbols, totaling seven.”
Nyla nodded. “Seven. It’s a good number. You’ll figure it out in the proper time. I’m certain of it.
“Before I go, I have a message from my Mother.”
“Is she well?” asked Elias.
Nyla’s nose crinkled when she smiled. “She is. You should know that she speaks of you, and often. She said that before you parted you told her that you had come to rely too much on your sword. She wants me to tell you that you have relied on it too much as a weapon. It is much more than a weapon. It is a key; it is a map.”
Elias barked a sardonic laugh. “What in the timelines does that mean?”
“Damned if I know. Since she has been named Speaker she has become as cryptic as my father ever was.”
Nyla studied her feet, then looked up at him. “It is time.”
Elias rolled down his sleeve and strapped his sw
ord across his back. “Will I see you again?”
Nyla’s eyes glittered with tears. “Not in this life.”
She grasped him tightly and buried her face in his neck. She whispered into his ear, words that he alone could hear.
Nyla stood on her toes and gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the lips and then turned away, dissolving beneath the boughs of the wytchwood in a burst of green light.
The End
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Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 48