Bryn cast a look across the room. “Are you certain?” she asked, but Elias was already up, springing across the room with a hand on his sword. Bryn hesitated only momentarily. The former distiller had an uncanny way about him, and she’d rather look the fool than suffer the consequences if Elias was right.
Bryn shot to her feet. “Redshields, fox in the rabbit-hole!”
Elias had closed the distance to the queen’s table in a handful of quick steps before anyone had time to react, except for Sarad. The Prelate screamed a silent order to his thralls: Kill the man in the brown coat!
The Whiteshield’s posted at the queen’s table drew steel and made to intercept Elias, unsure from what quarter the threat issued as the Redshield’s formed ranks, but Eithne stayed them with a motion of her hand. The queen arched an eyebrow and looked up at the fledgling Marshal, apprehension and irritation written on her features in equal portions.
Elias felt the eyes of the entire assembly on him as he scanned the hall with frantic eyes. “Get down,” he barked to the queen. “There’s danger.”
As the words left his mouth the servant’s doors crashed open. A whir of motion passed through the archway, indistinct and blurry. A trio of men materialized from out the arcane cloud. Their long, loose hair, braided beards, and dress marked them as men of the north.
Elias felt the flow of time slow, as if he waded through a dream. He watched the wicked, curved hand-axe rotate end over end as it spun through the air, arcing toward them. He loosed his sword from its scabbard even as he turned to shield the queen, his blade but half drawn. He braced himself for the bite of northern steel as he twisted the flat of his blade to face the whirring axe.
The blue tinted steel of his sword vibrated but held as the axe rebounded off it with a mighty twang.
In some partitioned corner of his mind Elias registered the din of hysterical voices as he dropped into a fighting stance and leveled his sword at the charging northmen. “Feora!” he cried in a thunderous voice he did not recognize as his own. He acted on impulse, wondering with detachment if the spell Macallister discharged from his ring had in fact been absorbed by his ensorcelled blade.
Elias found himself ill prepared for the ensuing outcome. His sword transformed into a lightning rod of arcane force and pushed back at him with tremendous recoil. He felt his feet slipping and clasped his other hand around the hilt of his blade. He cried out with the effort, but the sound of his voice became consumed by the roar of fire that discharged from the point of his sword.
The ensorcelled steel amplified the power of the spell it had absorbed and returned it now manifold. The flames took on the aspect of the sword, tinged blue with a white tongue at its core.
The blue-white conflagration consumed the lead assassin and he disappeared for a beat within the cone of fire. The second managed a partial dodge and escaped the brunt of the magical blast. Still, half of his face had been melted in the curtain of fire. The third crashed to the floor, for the northman in the lead had been catapulted off his feet by the blast and sent careening into his compatriot.
Meanwhile, Elias’s startled companions bounded into action, led by Bryn, as the Whiteshields swarmed the queen. Lar sprinted for Elias and the maimed northman, with Danica and Phinneas a half step behind. Bryn engaged the remaining assassin, who had already heaved off his burnt and desiccated countryman. She hurled a dagger at him, which she had produced from the confines of her skirts, as she sprinted in.
Lar but slowed as he bent to retrieve the thrown hand-axe that Elias had deflected. He closed in on the half-maimed northman, who seemed unaware of his grievous injury and, stone-faced, promptly began swinging his two-handed axe in wild, tireless arcs. Lar’s own proffered hand axe seemed paltry in comparison, but he had little time to think on it as he put it to immediate use parrying the flurry of blows the Ittamarian rained upon him.
Danica made to go to Lar’s aid as she felt an electric force gather in her palms but Phinneas restrained her. Danica struggled against him but the doctor spoke into her ear, reaching for his empathetic powers, as he wove a hasty charm spell. The young White Habit grew soft in his arms and he dragged her back to the relative safety of the queen’s table and the swarm of Whiteshields who had drawn together to form a human wall to protect their queen.
Bryn’s thrown dagger took the northman in the joint where the shoulder met the torso—a wound that experience had taught her to be an exquisite agony—but the man let out nary a cry or grimace and, ignoring her completely, continued his halted charge toward the queen’s table. Bryn altered her course accordingly and engaged his flank.
Lar retreated while desperately struggling to find an opening in his enemy’s defenses. “Fade right!” a voice cried from behind him. Lar complied at once and sidestepped as he caught the northman’s axe on the haft of his blade.
A white sword swept by his shoulder in a vertical cut and sliced through the chainmail gousset that attached the northman’s vambrace to his breastplate.
The Ittamarian stepped in to engage this new threat, seeming unfazed by the spurting wound that had ruined his shoulder, but Lar drew close to him and held his axe fast. As he did so, the Whiteshield that had come to his aid put his long-sword to artful use and reduced the northman’s breastplate to a bloody sieve.
Bryn skirted the backhand pass of the remaining assassin’s axe, spun about on the balls of her feet, and with a sweep of one of her long-bladed Aradurian daggers cut through leather greaves and flesh with equal ease and hamstrung him. Impossibly, even as he lost the use of one leg, the assassin continued to half crawl toward the queen’s table. Bryn quickly overcame her bewilderment and stood behind the man, raising her dagger to deliver a coup de grace.
“No! Wait!” Elias cried, having recovered his equilibrium from his arcane pyrotechnics even as the last northman fell under Lar and the Whiteshield’s concerted effort. Bryn stayed her hand, though she kept a wary eye on the crawling northman. She glanced up at Elias, who still stood at the queen’s table. “We need him alive, or else his secrets die with him.”
Sarad cursed to himself. If they kept the thrall alive they might very well discover the deception, or at the least realize that he was under the sway of an enchantment. He sent a silent command—kill the woman—even as he sent out threads of his power, which wrapped around Bryn and the thrall alike in an invisible lasso of force. With an effort of will he jerked on the magical cord just as the northman turned about, and the pair went careening across the floor, directly toward Sarad’s table. To onlookers, it appeared that the northman turned on Bryn and with a sudden burst of strength leapt from a crouch and grappled her, which resulted in the two stumbling across the floor as they struggled against each other.
As they approached him Sarad abruptly cut off his spell and the two combatants fell to the floor at the foot of his table, with his thrall on top.
Bryn struggled to muster her strength for the wind had been knocked out of her. She looked up to see the northman looming over her, somehow having risen into a half-crouch on his ruined leg, axe raised overhead. She found her breath as the axe descended and screamed. Then she saw a flash of white and heard a sound like the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer on steel.
The Prelate of the Church of the One God had leapt over his table and straddled the fallen Bryn. As the axe fell he raised his bare hand and intercepted the weapon. When his hand met the axe-blade an intense white light issued forth and the axe sundered with a mighty clang.
Let the rabble see that Elias Duana was not the only heroic figure in the capital, Sarad thought smugly, but his elation was short lived, ended by a spray of blood, which showered his robes and face. He blinked away the gore. A foot of steel protruded from his thrall’s chest, who looked down at it stupidly. The steel pulled back through the wound with a grotesque slurping sound and the thrall fell to the side, revealing a stone-faced Elias Duana.
The two men locked eyes.
Bryn surged to her feet. “Captain Blac
kwell! There’s an arcanist loose!”
The Whiteshields scrambled under Blackwell’s command to secure the exits and sweep the wing, while Elias continued to search the Prelate’s eyes. The Marshal inclined his head slightly and then trotted after Bryn to the queen’s table.
Sarad could read nothing in that scant gesture and wondered at the other man’s thoughts.
His plan had gone awry, but Sarad counted it as a success nevertheless. Killing the queen had not been his goal. He needed her alive—for now. Rather, it was his design to implicate the emissaries in a conspiracy against Galacia, thereby weakening the queen’s position. Certain members of the council would be quick to point out that Eithne couldn’t protect herself let alone the kingdom, and that she had been grossly remiss in opening up Galacia to the Ittamar. God alone knew what other trouble they could wreak, now that they had learned the secrets of the Capital and its defenses.
To that end he had achieved his aim. Stepping in with a display of daring heroics was merely cream on the honey-cake. As it was, word of his blessings, healings, and skills as a counselor had spread through Peidra and his renown had grown by magnitudes in the eyes of the commoners and gentry alike. In a few short months he had become one of the most popular Prelates of the last century, and the latest rumor professed that he was favored by the One God himself. After his gallantry tonight—sundering a savage’s axe with his bare hand, armed with naught but his faith—he should rightly have been the toast of the town.
Then enter the vexing Elias Duana and his cohorts. Doubtless he had still stuck another feather in his cap, for the confounded courtiers could not decide who to rest their eyes on—him or the Marshal. Yet, instead of the singular hero of the day, his intervention had come as an afterthought. There was a new celebrity in town and aside from giving the ever hungry gossips a juicy new piece of meat to sink their teeth into, the incipient upstart threatened to undermine decades of planning on his and his masters’ part. And his masters did not take kindly to failure.
Sarad burned holes in the back of Duana’s head, occupied with his dark musings, largely unaware of the commotion in the great hall.
Now that the danger had been averted, the chamber erupted into bedlam. A woman screamed. Several courtiers ran toward the doors, which the royal guards warded with naked steel and vehement orders. Oberon screamed, “The Northerners have betrayed us! Seize them!” Someone else: “Take them now!”
Eithne recovered her equilibrium, swallowing her heart, which had been in her throat, and stood. “Wait!” she cried, “Peace!” but her voice was drowned out by the discordant din of voices.
Elias, who feared a lynching, brandished his blade and scurried over the table, for the mob and guardsmen alike pressed in on the queen’s table and blocked his path. The emissaries raised empty hands above blanched faces, frantically watching the curtain of steel drawing close around them.
The guard posted at the queen’s table stayed their hands but cast their eyes about, nearly as panicked as the Northerners, awaiting affirmation or new orders, all the while resisting the pressing mob, which was a battle they were beginning to lose.
“What are you waiting for?” Ogressa growled as he drew a bejeweled rapier that looked more ceremonial than functional. With his beady eyes drawn into a squint and his plump lips curled in a snarl between his fleshy jowls he looked like a ravening bulldog come to feast.
“Take them!” Oberon screamed and pressed close to his ally, dueling saber in hand.
“Belay that order!” Elias roared and raised his sword which hummed and emitted a blue halo of light. His voice rang out across the room with preternatural clarity and echoed off the marble walls with resounding command. “Attend your queen.”
The throng, cowed by Elias’s arcane display, quieted enough for Eithne to make herself heard. “Stand down, Whiteshields, Redshields,” she said. “These men are unarmed and outnumbered and pose little threat. What we need now are answers, not butchery.”
“Please, my Queen,” said Agnar Vundi in his most supplicant tone, “may I address you?”
Eithne glanced at Ogden, who shrugged his eyebrows. “You may,” she said, “but choose your words carefully.”
“I am aware of how...incriminating this looks, but you must believe me—I beg you!—we had nothing to do with this. It is a scheme, a conspiracy, to undermine these negotiations. Surely we wouldn’t be so foolish as to strike in the open like this! It is folly!”
“He lies!” Oberon cried, with the majority of the court quick to shout their agreement.
Eithne knew that her people were frightened, and, as her father had taught her, frightened people could not be reasoned with. Fear was not an emotion that her courtiers were familiar with, and they hungered for requital.
“Silence,” said the queen. “You will all have an opportunity to speak, but now is not the time.” She turned to the tall, fair Whiteshield that had come to Lar’s aid. “Captain, take these men to their chambers, where they will remain under lock and key until we can sort this mess out. See that their person and rooms are thoroughly searched. Make use of Marshal Duana as you see fit.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Daryn Blackwell said. He spoke the names of several of the guard. “You’re with me,” he said. “The rest of you stay with the queen, and when she retires guard her chambers. I don’t even want anyone to walk the corridors leading to her rooms unless they have the express permission of the queen or myself. Is that clear?”
“Aye, sir!” They said as one.
“This is preposterous,” said a red faced Oberon. “The council should be participating in this investigation, not some greenhorn, backwater lawman sworn in a day ago.”
“You forget yourself, Lord Oberon. I do not owe you an explanation, nor do you require one. Marshal Duana saved the life of his queen tonight, and that more than qualifies him to take part in this investigation. I did not see you eager to cross swords with the assassins.”
Eithne turned from Oberon with a contemptuous snort. “Captain, Marshal, you have your orders. Ogden, Bryn, you’re with me.”
Without a further word the queen swept from the great hall sparing not so much as a look behind.
Chapter 18
The House That Shall Not Be Named
The rest of the night passed without incident, and the knock at the door that Elias, largely sleepless in his sheets, had been waiting for, did not come until morning.
He followed a grim Redshield to the queen’s private audience chamber. Eithne, Ogden, Phinneas and Bryn awaited him at an ovular table. The queen sat on one side with her steward while Bryn and the doctor took the other.
Elias sat next to Bryn and said, “Where are Lar and Danica?”
“They will be along shortly, son,” Ogden replied. “Phinneas here was knocking at my door at first light. He’s filled me in on the events of last few weeks. The two of us wished a word with you alone.”
“Alone?” asked Elias as he glanced at Bryn and the queen.
Ogden shrugged his eyebrows. “This conversation concerns House Denar, and I’m not often in the habit of keeping matters of this magnitude from my queen.”
“Indeed,” Eithne said a little hotly and shot a pointed glance at Ogden, but Elias let her comment pass—he had enough on his mind at present. “Firstly, Elias, we wished to thank you for your heroics last night. It would seem that my cousin was right about you. Even so, you can well imagine my surprise that you alone sensed a plot against my person, but, as Phinneas and Ogden have been good enough to explain, there is a cogent if unusual reason for that.”
Elias knew he was among friends, but he felt like he was on the hot seat nonetheless. “I have a feeling that this isn’t about a commendation, so kindly enlighten me.”
The queen smiled. “It would seem you are as brash as you are fearless, but that is just as well. We haven’t time for posturing and innuendo. I may not know what you’re about, Elias Duana, but you’re a new addition, which means you are all but
certainly not a conspirator in the plot against the crown, which makes you a better candidate for a confidant than the other members of my court.”
The queen’s smile turned wry. “Ogden, say your piece so that we can get on with our private council. The business of running a kingdom awaits, secret cabals and assassination conspiracies notwithstanding.”
Ogden and Phinneas exchanged glances. The queen’s advisor nodded at Phinneas who said, “We wish to discuss your training, Elias. As a wizard.”
Elias barked an involuntary, gruff laugh. A private meeting with the queen and her advisors had promised a more heady subject matter than his conscription into the wizard’s academy or whatever it was they had planned for him and his magical sword. As it was, the events of last night had left him overwhelmed to the point of feeling numb. He had felt like he had been outside his body since the bizarre skirmish in the great hall.
“We’ve been over this, Doctor,” Elias said. “After the things I’ve seen I’ve come to realize that my father was right to curtail my interest in the arcane. I have difficulties in spades, and neither the time nor the inclination to take up magic. We’ve a den of fox to catch.”
“Circumstances have changed, Elias,” Ogden said. “After speaking with the doctor it is my belief that it’s irresponsible for you not to be trained.”
“Speak plainly,” Elias sighed. “I beg you.”
“Very well. After your display last night and having spoken with Phinneas at length, it is clear that you, my boy, are an Innate,” Ogden said.
“Ogden, with respect, it is the power of the sword, which is more than enough for me to handle at the moment.” Elias pulled up his sleeve. “This thing branded me. Somehow it and I are connected. The brands are what warned me of trouble and the blade had magic stored it—all I did was release it.” Elias picked up the red scabbarded sword, which he had rested against the table. “Slade came halfway across the country hunting for this. Why he would go to such trouble for a sword is the question we should be asking. Any power you think I have comes from it, not me. I don’t even know what an Innate is.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 21