The party rode abreast down the thoroughfare like a posse. Villagers crept from their homes and businesses to stand along the roadside and watch as the five meandered through Knoll Creek, silent as a funerary march. Bryn had left orders with Constable Oring, and word of their departure had spread like fire in a rick-house.
Most of the folk remained silent and still, but some few would offer a grave nod or remove a hat. As the party neared the end of the town, Mayor Bromstead stood in the center of the road barring their advance.
Elias reined in Comet. The Mayor looked like he hadn’t slept in days, evidenced by his red-rimmed eyes, sallow skin, and unkempt stubble. “That’s it,” he said. “She hasn’t been in the ground yet a week and you’re leaving.”
“Ulric,” Elias replied, using the Mayor’s given name for the first time, “It is because of Asa that I must go. Justice has not yet been fully served.”
“What about her?” Ulric rasped as he pointed an accusatory finger at Bryn. “She have anything to do with this? Country living not good enough for you, Duana, now that some trollop from up north comes calling and pins a shiny shield on your collar?”
“You don’t mean that,” Elias said. “I loved Asa. More than anything. Always have. And you know it.” Elias’s countenance remained expressionless, but his words were spoken softly, and not unkindly. “Step aside, Ulric. It is after noon, and we have far to go.”
The Mayor acquiesced, but after saying, “This is your home, Elias. Don’t you forget that. Don’t you dare.”
“I won’t.” Elias pulled a silver chain from under his shirt upon which hung Asa’s engagement ring. “Not ever.”
Following Elias’s lead, the party rode out of Knoll Creek. Long would it be before any of them passed this way again. Mayor Bromstead and the villagers watched them go, but not a one of the five turned to look back.
†
Agnar Vundi mopped sweat from his brow. He still hadn’t adjusted to the hot sun and mild climate that brought his Southern neighbors so much prosperity. The smell of wheat and fertile earth filled the air and, though completely alien to him, he found it pleasant. Among such an idyllic landscape of rolling green hills and golden fields set as foreground to high, sweeping Peidra Agnar felt his anxiety lessen.
Not as physically imposing as much of his brethren, his king selected him for this mission for the virtues of his tongue, not his brawn. He prayed to Vornac, God of ice and thunder, that he would prove equal to the task. While Queen Eithne of Denar’s correspondence was cordial and hinted at open relations between the ancient enemies, Agnar knew that much of her court would not share her sentiments. Many an enemy awaited him in Peidra, and they would fight him not with blade and shield but with innuendo and posture.
Their escort, Captain Blackwell of the queen’s guard, which Agnar had learned were called Whiteshields, and his company of twelve men awaited him and his companions silently at a respectful distance. Vlad and Krugh, his traveling companions shared the silence with him. As old friends, they knew his habit for pensiveness. The two trusted advisors to his liege would prove invaluable in establishing diplomatic relations. They were stalwart brothers in arms, but better counselors there were none.
“Much rests upon our shoulders,” Agnar said.
Vlad squinted up at Agnar as he knuckled the small of his back. “True enough, but I’m a counselor not a horseman. Right now the only shoulders I’m concerned with is this thing’s and staying off them for a good long while!” He leaned in and in a mock conspiratorial whisper said, “That and my tender arse!”
Krugh harrumphed. “The only shoulders I’m concerned with are those of the Galacian womenfolk. Rumor has it that the warm climate promotes more revealing fashions than we’re accustomed to.” He gave Agnar a lascivious wink.
Agnar shook his head in disbelief. “Wizened by the ancient scrolls you may be, friends, but you jest with the crass ribaldry of a common soldier!”
Vlad shrugged and remounted his white stallion. “These Southlanders love gold almost as much as we love mead. Surely bartering for their grain can’t be that difficult?”
“I hope you’re right,” Agnar said.
While his companion’s words heartened him, the cryptic warning the seer had issued weighed heavily on his mind. The cloudless skies contrasted the shadowed storm front that darkened the deep recesses of his mind.
†
Danica glared at the pin and willed it to move.
She gave up with a grunt of exasperation. She unfolded her legs, which had fallen asleep, and stood. “I can’t do it,” she said and tossed Phinneas the pin.
Phinneas caught the pin and offered her a sympathetic smile. “It is expected for one to fail at their first attempt to touch their gift, so try not to get discouraged. It takes years—no, a lifetime—to master the craft of magic.”
“How can I hope to ever master magic if I can’t move a measly pin! Perhaps you’re wrong, Doctor. I’m no sorceress.”
“Patience, Danica. It takes a lot of energy and will to move objects. Sit back down. Let’s try again.”
Bryn watched the pair with a bemused smile. They had been in the saddle for two days, and had just stopped for their midday meal. Danica looked well to Bryn, but she still worried for the younger woman. God alone knew what horrors the poor thing endured at the hands of the demonic Slade.
Bryn’s attention snapped away from the doctor’s lesson as she heard Lar curse.
Her smile widened. Elias had brought his fencing foils for the purpose of instructing Lar in the art of the sword. Lar had been eager enough at first, but Bryn suspected his enthusiasm had dwindled. Since tragedy had befallen him Elias’s skills had sharpened, as had his ferocity. He acted without hesitation, and struck with alarming velocity and power. He allowed Lar no quarter, and thus proved a demanding instructor.
Elias noticed Bryn watching them and waved happily. Lar did not look nearly as amused. To all appearances the distiller seemed to have gotten a grasp on his grief, but Bryn knew it to be a façade, for she could feel the anger pressing out of him.
“How goes it?” Bryn asked.
Elias mopped sweat from his brow and threw down his foil. “He’s strong as an ox, but I think him more suited to a northern axe than a southern sword.”
“Ha. Ha.” Lar said.
“Shut-up you giant oaf!” said Danica who had reassumed her cross-legged position before Phinneas. “Can’t you see I’m trying to concentrate?”
“What, me?” replied a confounded Lar.
Elias suppressed a laugh and drew near so that he could observe the Doctor’s lesson. Lar followed at his heels with his head hung low, like a dog unaware of what he’s done to earn his master’s ire.
“Close your eyes,” Phinneas said. His voice took on a peculiar quality—a lilting cadence, silky and hypnotic, and laced with the whisper of magic. “Now imagine you are walking down a staircase into the deep, protective bosom of the earth. With each exhale you descend a stair. With each step you take, you fall further into yourself.
The world falls away. Every distraction, every surface thought, falls away, until all you can hear is the whistle of your breath and the drumbeat of your heart. All you see is the staircase stretching before you. But there is something bright down in the deep beyond the last of the stairs. In the core of you it waits. You only must reach out and touch it.”
Danica gazed into the deep and into the pale, flickering flame that waited there. As she closed in on it, she discovered at its heart throbbed a taint: an inky, cancerous tumor from which tendrils so black they were no mere darkness but the very absence of light spider-webbed like veins swollen with pitch.
“Balizor...” she whispered, and indeed it sounded as if her voice issued from deep within her. Danica shuddered and a sob escaped her mouth, open in a silent scream.
Elias dashed forward and took her by the shoulders. Danica’s eyes fluttered open and she looked lazily at her brother. “What is it?” she asked.
>
Elias tried his best to affect a calm demeanor. “What do you remember?”
“Down in the deep.” She yawned. “But,” she added sheepishly, “I think I fell asleep.” She looked toward the Doctor’s hand where the pin remained. “Tarnation! It’s not moved.”
Phinneas regarded the pin with narrowed eyes. “No, but it’s grown quite cold—so cold that it burns.”
Elias turned to him and noted with no small amount of alarm the red mark on the doctor’s hand. “Balizor,” Elias said carefully, “what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Phinneas said without looking him in the eye.
Elias didn’t need his father’s shield to know that the doctor lied.
†
Rafe Kaifess tied off his horse and approached the White Horse Tavern. A wolfish grin spread across his face as he took in the building and the pipe smoking elders whiling away the afternoon in rocking chairs on the porch. Given this quaint town with its backwater accoutrements, Rafe found it hard to imagine that this country’s denizens had driven his noble masters into exile.
He nodded at the old-timers and threw open the double doors. The barkeep and a handful of locals glanced in his direction with ill concealed interest. Rafe sidled up to the bar and chose a remote stool. “G’day, fella,” he said in greeting to the barkeep who looked slightly perturbed by his arrival.
“What’ll it be then?” the spindly man replied.
“Knoll, of course. I’ve been dry for nigh a week in the saddle and have a mighty thirst.” Actually, as a rule Rafe did not drink, for it addled the wits, but it wouldn’t look good to ply the man for information without paying him for services rendered. Rafe produced a gold coin and pressed it into the keep’s hand. “Keep the difference, my friend.”
The man brightened visibly and poured him a generous glass of amber sprits from a bottle that had red wax trailing from the neck. “Enjoy, stranger,” said the man and began to walk away.
A man of few words, Rafe mused. “I wonder my good man,” Rafe called after the barkeep, “if you could help me with something?”
“What do you have in mind?” asked the man, his suspicious expression returning.
“I’m looking for a man, a Marshal as it were.”
“What would you want with Elias?”
Rafe congratulated himself. The bumpkin had already given him his quarry’s name. “I have need of the law. You see I live some distance away, and have had a quarrel with a dishonest merchant, but the town government there is corrupt. I need some outside help and I heard that there was a Marshal around these parts and thought I might persuade him to settle the dispute.”
“Where’s it you’re from, then?”
“Abbington.”
The barkeep grunted. “That sounds like Abbington alright. Cost me nigh a month’s wages to purchase some of them fancy glass cups you’re drinking from. Elias Duana’s your man, but he ain’t here. Matter o’ fact, you’re drinking his special reserve as we speak.”
“Oh, is that right? A Marshal from out of legend, and a distiller of one mighty fine whiskey! Where, I wonder, has this miracle man gone?”
“Up north as far as anyone can tell. Hunting an assassin is what they say. A Hoity-toity rancher that goes by the name of Macallister hired some men to off him and his family. Only he didn’t quite die, did he? That’s how this Marshal business began. Carved one of ‘em up real good and then proclaimed himself the law. Shame too. He was fixing to marry the Mayor’s daughter, a real thoroughbred, but she got arrowed through the heart. He’s left not two days ago.”
To his credit the barkeep looked genuinely distressed, but Rafe largely attributed it to the projected loss of Duana’s whiskey. “Well, I thank you all the same, friend. I hope the day sees you well.” With that Rafe quaffed the surprisingly smooth contents of the glass and walked out of the quaint tavern and back into the sun.
Duana may have a few days head start, but Rafe could ride hard and few steeds could outmatch Wraith for speed and endurance. He would pick up this rogue Marshal’s trail and put an end to his meddling for good.
†
They had been on the road for nigh a week and had covered nearly half the distance to Peidra. The four from Knoll Creek had adjusted to the saddle well enough, but were glad to partake in the amenities offered by the town of Galeway, which provided only a slight diversion from their course.
“Why won’t you let Phinneas train you to use your magic?” Danica asked as she browsed the local mercantile’s stock of thread.
“I’ve enough problems to deal with, including the riddle of Dad’s sword, to worry myself further with the arcane arts,” Elias said. “I don’t need any more complications at present. At least not right now.”
“You were always the one obsessed with tales of wizards and those dime-store novels. I figured you’d be thrilled to discover you have the touch.”
Elias’s thoughts turned to his pitched battle with Slade. “It isn’t quite like we thought it would be though is it?”
“No. It’s not. But we are what we are.” Danica held up a spool of neutral toned thread and chewed on her bottom lip. “I’ll take this one,” she said to the clerk, who rang her out with nary a word, only too happy to have them out of his store.
“Besides,” Elias added as they made their way out into the street, “I’ve listened to your lessons with the Doctor. I could have that pin dancing a jig, but I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“I don’t know if I like the haughty new Elias,” Danica said dryly. “I much prefer the old reserved and humble Elias, even if you were rather dull.”
“Just worry about your spells Archmagus.”
“See? That’s what I mean!”
Elias’s mouth opened in preparation for a retort when a man walked into him, dropping a shoulder into his chest. Elias stumbled but quickly regained his balance.
“Watch where you’re going fella!” the man barked.
Elias quickly sized the man up. He had the rough hewn features of a laborer: callused hands, a moderately muscled form, but, evidenced by his lax stomach, also a man who enjoyed his cups. “Pardon, friend,” Elias said carefully, “but you bumped into me—an honest mistake, I’m sure.”
“I ain’t your friend, and I do believe you just called me a liar, didn’t he Billy?”
“I reckon so, Clark,” said Billy, who looked like he could have been Clark’s brother. Billy cracked his knuckles and squinted at Elias.
Elias laughed. He knew it could only make matters worse, but he couldn’t help himself. The inane machismo struck him as some absurdity from a poorly written play. “Listen, listen,” he said, looking to Danica for help, “I didn’t call anyone a liar. Let’s just chalk it up to a misunderstanding and be on our way.”
Clark did not look pleased by that prospect. “So that’s how it is. You think that fancy get-up and sword makes you better than me? Your kind makes me sick, keeping men like us down!”
“Why don’t you go scratch, you dim-witted son of a whore,” Danica said. “We don’t want trouble with the likes of you. We’ve better things to do.”
“I don’t see how that much matters now, you bloody little cunny!”
Elias had seen this before in the schoolyard and the tavern. This man was working himself up for a fight, going through the motions of getting his blood up. He had set his mind on a fight, for whatever reason, and there was no stopping it now. His only option was to neutralize the threat as quickly and painlessly as possible.
“Let’s go,” Elias said and made to walk away, but he kept an eye on Clark, waiting.
As expected the heavy man reached for his turning shoulder, likely to turn Elias about for a punch, but the callused hand never touched him. Elias reached out with his other arm and grasped his attacker’s hand in a vice-like grip. He spun on his heels and rotated the man’s wrist. The maneuver forced Clark to lean to his right to avoid the needling pain and directly into Elias’s left hook, which landed on
the point of his chin. Clark’s eyes went wide, then glassy as he crumbled to the street.
Billy charged, but Elias, who had kept the other thug in his periphery, had already prepared a counter. Elias dropped into a crouch and dove at Billy, careful to avoid his booted feet. His shoulders took the charging brute in the shins, and Billy fell head over heels, getting a face full of dirt.
Elias grabbed Danica’s arm and they melted into the crowd leaving the men in a groaning heap behind him.
Rafe watched silently from the shadow of an alley across the street. He had paid the men to pick a fight with Duana. He found himself neither surprised nor disappointed. If the self proclaimed Marshal bested Slade in pitched combat, he must have considerable skills at his disposal. Be that as it may, Rafe still wanted to get a first-hand look at Duana in action.
Still, he could likely take Duana by himself if he could separate the Marshal from his friends. In any case it would be a rare treat to pitch himself against a Galacian dog that could actually pose a challenge. He would, however, have to wait until the travelers left town to strike. Despite his aptitude for going unseen, he couldn’t take the chance that the men he hired might talk and jeopardize his cover. More importantly, he wouldn’t be able to extract information from Duana in his preferred fashion while in town. He would need privacy so that no one could hear the Marshal scream.
Chapter 15
Night Caller
The others had turned in early, eager to seek the comfort of a soft bed, but Elias tarried in the Inn’s tavern, nursing an ale. His piercing look persuaded Phinneas to remain as well. Elias drank in silence for some minutes as he thought about how to word what he had to say.
“Phinneas,” he said, “I think you know what Balizor means, and I want you to tell me.”
“Damnation, boy!” Phinneas hissed and looked to either side. He made the invocation of the One God, a knuckled fist pressed to forehead, heart, and lips. “Don’t say that word aloud!”
“So, you do know what it means,” Elias whispered.
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 17