Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  “No, not specifically,” breathed Phinneas, lowering his voice in kind, “but I do know what it signifies, but I didn’t want to frighten the poor child or the others for that matter.”

  “That’s fair,” Elias replied slowly, “but I want you to tell me.”

  The doctor sighed. “Fine, but keep it to yourself until I have time to discuss it with Ogden.”

  “Who’s Ogden?”

  Phinneas waved a hand. “An old friend in Peidra. You’ll meet him soon enough. I haven’t the foggiest what that word means, but it has the unmistakable feel of the darkspeech.” Phinneas took a long draught from his mug.

  “Britches, Phinneas, what the hell is that?”

  Phinneas’s mug made an audible clack in the silent room as he set it down. “The darkspeech is the spell tongue of the necromancer—wizards who traffic with the elder evils: demons, Dark Fey, cursed spirits, the old gods.”

  Now it was Elias’s turn to make the invocation of the One God. “But Danica has no knowledge of such things.”

  “No, I daresay not. Few alive know the ancient incantations of the darkspeech. Long ago, when the One Church rose to power, it all but eradicated necromancy in its crusades.” Phinneas looked Elias dead in the eye. “But Slade may have.”

  “What are you saying?” Elias asked as his stomach dropped, but he feared he already knew.

  “Danica used the darkspeech while in a trance I induced so that she could reach her latent abilities. While under my guidance, at that stage of the trance, she should not have been aware of any surface thoughts at all. Using a trick bequeathed upon me by my mentor in the arcane, I employed a trifle of magic to place her into a hypnotic state.”

  “What has this to do with Slade and the darkspeech?”

  “My point is this—sometimes traumatic events we have endured are repressed into our subconscious minds. When in a trance these repressed memories can resurface.”

  “So, she remembers Slade using the darkspeech and repeated it because she touched upon the memory?”

  “Perhaps.” The doctor peered into the amber depths of his mug.

  “Phinneas, what aren’t you telling me?” Elias asked, painfully aware of how his voice quavered in his ears. “I must be prepared to deal with whatever this problem may present.”

  “I know.” Phinneas took a deep breath. “We have discussed the possibility that Slade used his fell powers to invade her very mind. When his power touched hers it may have left some kind of imprint. Some part of his dark will, residue of his thoughts, or knowledge could have been left behind. I suspect it an unintended consequence, but perhaps when he opened his mind to her something of him crossed over.”

  “Bloody hell,” Elias said. The doctor’s words had stricken the blood from his face.

  “Elias, I don’t want my words to frighten you, or put you under anymore undue stress. Danica is resilient, and has recovered unusually fast from her exposure to the dark arts. Her will is strong. I may not have all the answers at present, but I will find a way to cure her of any lasting effect. On that you have my word.”

  Relieved in part by Phinneas’s words Elias nodded. “Very well, Phinneas. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Just promise me you won’t leave me in the dark on this one. My father did that, and things may have turned out different if he hadn’t.”

  “I promise,” Phinneas said, then drained his mug. He motioned to the barkeep for a refill, and the two men sat in silence as they awaited the next round.

  “I miss them,” Elias said.

  “I know, lad.”

  The two men drank their beers, each alone with their thoughts.

  †

  Rafe watched the Marshal and his companion through a window in the alleyway. He slouched against the wall and looked out of the side of his eyes. To a passerby he would just look like another drunk trying to regain his composure before stumbling home.

  Duana’s companion finished his drink and went upstairs. The Marshal remained with his mug for some time and then followed suit. Rafe prepared to depart and then his sharp eyes noticed that Duana left no coin behind and his mug had some few swallows left. He decided to wait a while longer, and was soon rewarded for his efforts.

  The Marshal had returned, unburdened of his sword and coat. He spoke some few words with the barkeep, produced some coin from his pocket, and then disappeared out a back door, mug in hand. Rafe stole along the alley toward the courtyard. A brick wall enclosed the small green, but Rafe expertly scaled it with nary a sound and peered over the edge.

  Duana stood in the grass with his mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  It had been Rafe’s plan to ambush the Marshal’s party on the road so as not to risk discovery, but he could ill afford to pass up this opportunity. He had Duana alone and unarmed with his companions out of earshot, and likely wouldn’t get a second chance to find him so. On the road the vigilant Marshal posted a watch, and kept his blade close at hand. Here was his best chance of securing the Marshal’s capture.

  Rafe slid over the fence and crept toward Elias Duana’s back.

  †

  Danica woke with a start, her throat thick with the ghost of a scream. The fleeting edges of a troubled dream fled her mind. She struggled to retain some small thread of it, but summoned naught but visions of shadow and gossamer. Despite her inability to recall the particulars of the dream, a sharp feeling of panic needled her in her bosom and would not allow her to close her eyes again.

  She tried to swallow her irrational anxiety but she felt the room closing in on her and the air thicken in her lungs. She needed an open space, and light. She hastily gathered her pack, which held her matches and candles, and snuck from the room she shared with Bryn.

  Calm yourself, you ninny, she scolded herself as she walked down the stairs but an acute sense of panic stole over her. Her head swam and a prickly sensation slid up her neck, across the side of her face, and up to her temples.

  The gorge rose in her throat and she felt the urge to vomit. With one hand clasped over her mouth she raced for the door that led out to the courtyard.

  †

  Elias looked up into the night sky and wondered if Asa and his father could hear his prayers. Did they see him even now? Were they together? As he lost himself to his dark musings, he abruptly felt eyes upon his back. He turned on his heels and startled as he saw a compact man stealing toward him.

  The man drew to a stop and stood to his full height, and Elias realized he was much taller than he had seemed a moment ago. The man had exotic features and held a curved dagger lightly in one hand. The assassin smiled a toothy, mirthless grin.

  Elias reached for his sword and then his stomach dropped as he realized he had been caught unarmed.

  “If you come with me without a struggle I won’t butcher your friends in their sleep,” the man said in a mild tone.

  “What assurance do I have that your word can be honored,” Elias said slowly in an effort to buy time.

  “None, but if I wanted them dead I could have killed them while you tarried at the bar and in the courtyard.” The man took another step closer.

  Elias prepared to throw his lighter as a diversion and then wield the mug as a makeshift weapon when the courtyard door swung open.

  Danica stepped into the green and reeled when she saw the dark figure with the wicked, naked dagger. Elias and the assassin recovered their equilibrium quickly. They both took a step toward her, each wary of the other.

  “Run, Danica and get the others,” Elias said, and the assassin retorted, “If you do, I will gut your brother.”

  Her nausea fled, and in its place rose a cold fury. She took a step into the courtyard and reached into her pack.

  “Don’t,” said the assassin, “or I will cut you from ear to ear.”

  “In the time it takes you to close on me, my brother will incinerate you with wizard’s fire,” Danica said. Her bearing suggested that the assassin did not impress her. In truth she found herself un
afraid, possessed by a feral instinct for blood.

  Rafe hesitated. After Lord Mirengi’s warning, the last thing he wanted to do was turn his back on Duana to engage the girl. He settled for repositioning himself so that he faced both the Marshal and the girl to keep his flank protected. He sighed and backed away on cautious feet, feigning retreat, only to erupt into a deep lunge and throw his dagger with a back-handed flick of his wrist, already reaching for a second with his other hand even as the first spun through the air in a silver arc.

  Elias had been on alert for such a maneuver and when Rafe’s hand moved forward he dove to the side and threw his mug. Elias didn’t register any pain as the dagger raked his shoulder, but felt warmth spread down his arm and chest. The mug went wide. Meanwhile, Danica advanced, brandishing the length of rope with the fist-sized knot on the end that she had taken from Mayfair Manor.

  Elias rolled to his feet with the intention of scrambling for the thrown dagger but saw Danica engaging the assassin with a rope of all things. A scream caught in his throat and he charged the assassin unarmed.

  Danica felt herself plummet into the deep as an electric rush screeched up her spine. Something dark, as wispy as her dream, waited there to be unfettered. In her mind she touched it as she lazily twisted to avoid the thrust of the copper-skinned man’s dagger. She swung her rope. His teeth flashed white in a smile as he caught the rope in a hand and pulled her into his dagger.

  Rafe’s smile faltered and his dagger tumbled from numb fingers.

  Elias, who had closed in on the melee, punched the assassin behind the ear. He snapped his hand back as a jolt of cold lanced up his arm. He discovered with horror that ripples of puce energy pulsated along the length of Danica’s rope. He hadn’t been cognizant of falling, but found himself sprawled on the earth.

  Caught unawares, Rafe suffered the full brunt of the onslaught of the fell power. He could not comprehend how this could come to pass. How had Duana’s sister acquired knowledge of the necromantic arts? He didn’t, however, have long to ponder the mystery, for soon the capacity for thought was burned from his mind and all he could do was scream.

  Elias watched with mounting revulsion, unable to act, stunned from his brush with the obscene magic, as torrents of bruise-colored energy coursed through the assassin’s rigid body. Thick blue veins protruded on his face, neck, and hands, growing more distended by the second as they became pregnant with fell power. His skin took on the gray, mottled tone of a corpse some days dead. The coarse, black hairs on his head, eyebrows, and the back of his hands turned white as a bridal bolt.

  Elias shook off the torpor that had taken a hold of him and struggled to his feet. A cold certainty dawned on him: Danica was draining the very life from their assailant. He carefully took her shoulders in his hands. “Danica, you’re killing him.”

  She turned alien, black, pupilless eyes on him. “Would he have done any less to us, brother?”

  Her voice echoed in his ears and he felt his strength waning under the spell of her frigid tone. Elias knew that the assassin would have shown them no mercy, but for his part, pity stirred in him still. To kill a man in combat was one thing, but to execute him in such a brutal fashion was profane.

  “Not like this,” Elias said. “Besides, he may have information. We could question him.”

  She snapped back her rope and shot him any icy look. “Fine.” The assassin fell to the ground like a board. His mouth worked silently as he looked up at them with eyes clouded with cataracts. His face contorted as if he wept, but his sand-dry eyes and mouth could issue not a single tear or sob. Elias knelt by his side and placed a hand on his quavering shoulder. “Easy, there,” he said. “We won’t hurt you anymore, but you must tell me who sent you. If you are honest you will be spared.”

  The living cadaver almost smiled and with supreme effort made a sound in his throat. Elias leaned close as the man whispered. “Ssss-en-es-t-t-tra-ti,” he managed before convulsing into a fit of seizures. Fetid spittle sprung from his dry, cracked mouth, followed by black blood as his yellowed teeth rent his black, bloated tongue. The convulsing slowed, then ceased.

  Elias stumbled to his feet, overcome with disgust. He met Danica’s eyes. She shrugged, a bland expression on her delicate face. Her eyes still looked peculiar in the moonlight. Elias found himself unconvinced it was mere illusion.

  She reached out a hand and lay it on Elias’s left shoulder. A gasp of breath escaped his lips as warmth spread throughout the injured limb. With the glowing sensation came a rush of energy. She took her hand away, leaving him strangely invigorated. Elias examined his arm and found, much to his surprise, that the wound he received from the curved dagger, which surely would have required stitches, had vanished and healed seamlessly with only the barest inkling of a scar. Moreover, the injury he had sustained from the arrow some weeks ago, which had left his shoulder and chest muscles stiff, felt loose and pain free.

  While Elias flexed his shoulder in wonder Danica regained her senses. She cast a look at the twisted, revolting corpse of the assassin and promptly emptied the contents of her stomach. Elias gathered her hair to keep the vomit from getting tangled in her black tresses. When her heaving ceased he took her in his arm and began to walk her toward the door.

  The assassin’s screams had stirred the occupants of the Inn, and presently their party came crashing through the door with Bryn in the lead. Under different circumstances, the sight of the shapely red-head crashing through the door barefoot, in her sleeping clothes, and wielding a rapier in one hand a long dagger in the other may have been a subject for jest. Lar, close on her heels, barged through next, and lastly the flustered doctor.

  Bryn blanched as she beheld the grotesque cadaver. “What in the nine hells has happened?”

  “Inside,” Elias said. The prudent doctor had already begun to help him with the wan Danica.

  Once inside a dram of whiskey did much to restore Dancia’s color and she calmed visibly. “Now we’re even,” she said. “You’ve saved my life once, and I’ve returned the favor. I suspect you’ll change your tune about wanting to leave me behind.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Elias replied. “I did have that mug, and it was mighty stout,” he said seriously. “I could have fended him off.”

  “I can’t believe you two are making light about this,” Lar said in a tremulous voice. “This is no laughing matter.” He stormed over to the bar to procure more whiskey.

  “It is our way,” Elias said soberly to his back.

  By now the innkeeper had worked up his courage and poked his head around the stairwell. His drawn features displayed concern and fear in equal measures.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Bryn said and approached the innkeeper with spread hands and a beaming, if crooked, grin. Seeing the buxom, half naked Bryn approach, did much to pacify the Innkeeper.

  Elias waited until Phinneas escorted an uncharacteristically compliant Danica to bed and returned before filling the party in with a hushed voice. He briefly explained the circumstances of the ambush and Danica’s fortuitous entrance. Quickly, so as not relive the memory too keenly, he described the ill begotten fate the assassin suffered at the hands of Danica.

  “How is such a thing possible?” Bryn asked. “Danica’s training has only just begun. There is no way she could command the power to do such a thing.”

  Elias and Phinneas shared a look. “Not to mention that kind of power,” Elias said.

  “What are you two about?” Bryn asked as Lar looked on, speechless, already well on his way to inebriation.

  “It confirms a theory we had only hours ago discussed,” said Phinneas. “It is my belief that under the hands of Slade, Danica endured a kind of psychic torture.”

  “In fact,” Elias said, “the good doctor believes that Slade actually entered her mind with his dark powers.”

  “Whether by accident or design,” Phinneas continued, “the touch of his magic in some capacity warped and changed her own spark of the arcane, twi
sting it.”

  “I’ve never hear of such a thing,” said Bryn.

  Phinneas struggled to keep his expression neutral. “We’re largely in the realm of conjecture here. I’m no magus, trained in the knowledge of the dark arts.”

  “Then what in God’s name are we going to do?” whispered Lar.

  “Don’t look so defeated, friends,” Phinneas said. “Danica is the strongest willed young woman I know. Whatever is behind this affliction, we will find a way to set it right.”

  The doctor’s words did little to bolster the morale of the others, but his efforts did not go unappreciated. The four sat in silence for a time, each struggling to cope with this newest hurdle.

  Elias broke the silence. “The body still has to be dealt with,” he said.

  “I suppose a late-night visit to the town undertaker is in order,” Phinneas said. “I will deal with this. I am no stranger to the dead.”

  Elias shook his head. “No one goes it alone this night. I will accompany you. Lar and Bryn, you stay here and safeguard Danica. Assuming all goes well we should try to get a few hours sleep. I want to be gone from this place at first light. The last thing we need is a lot of questions or people poking their noses around in the morning.”

  Elias paused at the courtyard door. “Phinneas, do you know what Senestrati means?”

  “No,” said Phinneas.

  Troubled, Elias opened the door, for Phinneas Crowe had lied to him for the second time that week.

  †

  Sarad stirred from his slumber with a start as a maelstrom of darkling energies swept through his bedchamber.

  A confused specter keened before him. Threads of puce and scarlet ectoplasm lashed from it in wild arcs.

  “What is your name, spirit, and what business have you with me?” With some surprise, Sarad felt his heart hammer against his ribcage.

  White-cloak and brown-coat...twin stars of destruction...you’ll burn too...

  The specter cowered, panting like a feral beast, and then scattered in an otherworldly wind.

  Sarad cursed vehemently. Rafe, despite being warned, had suffered Slade’s fate. Judging by the state of turmoil exhibited by his shade, he had met a terrible end. This Marshal from the south, seemingly risen from the ether, presented a more dire threat than anticipated.