“Point taken,” Ogden said, “and we certainly plan to take a good look at your sword, but your gift doesn’t spring from the enchanted steel, though it may in some way amplify your natural abilities. In the time I knew your father, I never saw him do anything remotely like you did with that sword, and he was far from a stranger to the arcane.
“You are an Innate, son—a person that has a natural ability to manipulate magical forces. Any arcanist can see that in your aura, plain as day. Yours is a rare, and dangerous, gift.”
Elias sat forward, his eyes alight with curiosity despite himself. “I don’t follow you. All wizards manipulate magical forces.”
“True,” Ogden said, “but the majority of wizards learn to manipulate magic through years of study. They painstakingly learn exercises to focus their minds, and then utilize incantations, rituals, or formula to channel magic. Others, like necromancers, traffic with demons and spirits to gain mastery over the arcane. An Innate such as yourself does not require these methods to bend the forces of magic to your will, rather, magic lives within you. Both you and your sister were born with the ability to channel magic through a focused force of will alone, sparing you the need for ritual and incantation. In the distant past those like you were considered the true arcanists, while all others were pretenders.”
Elias’s mind reeled. “Huh. You know, my father told me shortly before his death that magic is shaped by an arcanist’s creativity, will, and expectations, and that incantation and ritual was chiefly a way to focus the mind, hone intention, or even a crutch.”
Phinneas exchanged glances with Ogden and smiled. “Your father always had interesting views on magic,” Phinneas said. “Perhaps he was right, or, at the least, his theories were right for him. Each wizard, and his gift, is different.”
Elias thought this over. “It seems that the Innate has it easier than other wizards.”
“Yes and no,” Ogden said, his expression at once grave. “The Innate still requires a tremendous amount of training to focus his mind and learn how to tap into his natural abilities and to manipulate the energetic forces that are all around us. And unlike other arcanists who choose when to utilize their powers, for example to detect magic or sense the presence of an intruder, an Innate can never fully turn off their powers—they are always active, to an extent.”
Elias threw up his hands. “See, there you have it. I don’t have the gift. If I was an Innate, surely these powers would have manifested by now.”
Ogden exchanged glances with Phinneas who said, “For better or worse, and whether you like it or not, you have been activated so to speak, and now your gift will manifest regardless of your feelings on the matter.”
Elias grew alarmed by the gravity in Phinneas’s bearing. “Activated? But how? Why now?”
“Your recent exposure to the arcane, either from that sword or your encounter with Slade has awakened your latent abilities,” Phinneas said. “But if you take time to think about it, your gift has always been there, just below the surface, making its self known now and again.”
“I’m sure that I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ve known you since the day you were born, and you were always an uncanny child. Even now you are able to sense the thoughts and emotions of others, if on an unconscious level. You instinctually know who to befriend and who to steer clear of. It is your intuition guiding you. You sense when danger is imminent, like when you pushed your father out of the way because you thought that barrel of knoll was going to fall on him from the fifth level of the rick-house. There was no way you could see the crack in the rick-beam. So how did you know it was going to fall?”
Elias had no answer for the doctor. His mouth had grown dry.
“Your powers will begin to show themselves whether you want them to or not,” Ogden said. “If you can’t find an outlet for the spark of the arcane that has begun to burn in you it will manifest itself in a variety of unpleasant ways.”
“You must learn to control your powers,” Phinneas said. “Otherwise, you could find yourself suffering from headaches, troubled sleep, violent mood swings, loss of appetite—a host of unpleasant side effects.”
“You seem to know a lot about this for someone who professes to be a classically trained physician with a couple of tricks up his sleeve,” Elias remarked.
“One of my patients suffered from these side-effects,” Phinneas said slowly. “Your Mother, Elias.”
Elias leaned forward. “What?” he hissed.
“Your mother was the most talented sorceress I have ever seen,” the doctor said. “She learned to control her powers to the best of her ability, but ultimately I feel they were the cause of her death.”
Elias, stunned, looked from Phinneas to Ogden, shaking his head, unable to formulate a response. Ogden said quietly, “Edora was like a bonfire to a candle in comparison to other practitioners of the arcane, myself included.”
“You knew my mother?”
“Very well,” Ogden replied. “She was once my student.”
Elias looked at Ogden as if seeing him for the first time. He was so caught up in the conversation and defending his position that he hadn’t paused to consider how the sagacious old advisor knew so much about the arcane. “Ogden, you’re a wizard?” he asked weakly. He turned to Bryn. “You didn’t tell me that.”
The queen harrumphed and her earlier remark became clear to Elias. “That would be because she didn’t know, nor did her queen,” Eithne said.
Elias looked at the queen and decided that she looked more irked than angry, so he decided to dig a little deeper. “Oh, how’s that?”
Ogden spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “As Eithne’s father was fond of saying, the wise falcon conceals his talons. I am not publically known as a wizard because I belong to an order that prefers its members to come and go with anonymity.”
“I didn’t realize that your queen counted as the public,” Eithne said.
“I had planned to tell you eventually, child. I just couldn’t seem to find the right time, and I knew it would lead to that other business. The order had made the decision to reveal ourselves to you, eventually. We deemed you trustworthy.”
“Trustworthy?” The queen glared at him. Bryn took one look at her expression and burst out laughing. Her good humor proved contagious and Eithne found herself grinning despite herself. “This is no laughing matter!” she managed. “I am your rightful monarch!” This only spurned Bryn who laughed all the harder, while Phinneas watched the interchange with a bemused expression.
Elias continued to shake his head. He waited for the ribbing to cease and then said, “I’ve had enough riddles and half-truths for a lifetime. Ogden, what was your relationship to my father? And what is this order of which you speak?”
“Your parents and I belonged to a clandestine order, a kind of secret brotherhood,” Odgen said. “We call ourselves simply the Sentinels. Your mother saw potential in your father and sponsored him into our sect. That was how your father and I met.”
Elias turned to the doctor. “Phinneas, I was told you introduced my parents. That my mother was the youngest daughter of an inconsequential noble house that didn’t approve of her marrying my father.”
“She was, and I did,” the doctor replied. “The portion of the story that was untold is that I met your mother in the Sentinels and introduced her to your father because I wanted her opinion on him.”
“You too?” Elias groaned.
“Indeed,” said Eithne. “Anyone else I should be aware of?”
“Some few colleagues from the University, and Arcalum. We have operatives in the Red, White, and Blackshields,” Ogden said blandly, “Miss Gafferty—”
“—the cook?!” Eithne cried.
“Don’t look so alarmed, child, she has detected five attempts to poison you in the last year alone. Your uncle Josua.” Ogden made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Some few more.”
“Josua? Good God, man!”
Ogden shot Eithne an exasperated look. “Well, we need a man on the council, don’t we?”
Bryn poured a glass of water and offered it to her flustered cousin. Eithne took a deep draught. “Is it too early for wine?” she asked.
“Kindly fill me in, why don’t you,” Elias said. “What are the Sentinels?”
“We are a utilitarian organization,” Ogden said, “the watchdogs of the realm, if you will, secreted away from the public eye and thus the meddling of bureaucrats, which is precisely why we keet it so exclusive. Well that and the fact that we guard dangerous and terrible secrets.
“The Sentinels have existed in some fashion or another since the reign of King Mathias who banished the Seventh House. The name of the Seventh house has been lost to the annals of history, with some help from us. That forgotten House is named Senestrati.”
“Senestrati,” Elias said, testing the sound of the name in his mouth. He fixed his eyes on Phinneas. “The word the assassin said in Abbington.”
Phinneas looked at his hands. “I am sorry I kept this from you, Elias, but this is bigger than us. The Sentinels adhere to a strict code, and that is precisely why we have remained secret for so long. I had to speak with Ogden first, as he is the head of our order.”
“Surely, you could have made an exception with me?”
Phinneas looked up at Elias. “If I had my way you still wouldn’t know.”
“Phinneas,” said Elias, taken aback, “how could you say such a thing to me?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you—of course I do. I would keep you in the dark about this for the same reason your father hid your abilities from you—because I would protect you. Like your father, I would spare you from this world, for it is more than a little dangerous, and truth be told it is not a pleasant life. That is why your parents left the Sentinels, because it is no environment in which to raise a family, and that is why I never had one. Yet, despite their best efforts, your parents could not escape that life, try as they might. Eventually, it caught up to them.
“But after speaking with Ogden I came to realize that fate has moved our hand, and with your powers activating we had no choice but to take you into the fold.”
Elias laid a hand over Phinneas’s. “I never knew the burden you carried, or my father. I think I understand him better now.”
A silence fell over the room. Elias’s words had struck a cord with Eithne and, following his lead, she took Ogden’s gnarled hand in her own. The Steward looked suddenly weary as he offered his queen a wan smile. “You did what you felt you must, old friend,” Eithne said gently. “I am not cross with you.”
“So,” said Bryn, breaking the silence, “the Sentinels were formed as a response to House Senestrati?”
“I would recommend not speaking that name aloud,” Ogden warned. “I’ve warded this room, so we are safe, but the Scarlet Hand is ever vigilant for their masters and command powers most profane. Fortunately, the Sentinels are vigilant as well. The forgotten house vowed that they would one day find a way to break the enchantment that has kept them from our lands. Thus the Sentinels were formed, in part, because the founders of the sect saw the damage that could be done if one of the ruling families fell prey to their thirst for power, thereby necessitating a hidden body that could circumvent the trappings of the bureaucracy and act in the benefit of the greater good, and in part as counter to the Senestrati, to await the day of their return and prepare for its coming.
It seems that day may soon be upon us.”
“How could they manage to break the spell that has kept them banished for so long?” Elias asked.
“That,” replied Ogden, “I do not know. What I do know is that the signs that their agents have been sweeping through our lands have increased in recent years and months. Although those of the Senestrati bloodline cannot pass our borders their acolytes can. Nevertheless, their minions are not to be trifled with as they have been gifted the secret of their masters’ fell powers.”
“The Scarlet Hand.”
“Just so,” Ogden said, “but before we get into that let’s bring your sister in, for this concerns her as well. The two of you are the only ones that have encountered the Scarlet Hand and lived to tell the tale. But first, we need to return to the subject of teaching you to control your gift.”
“Marshal, I can ill afford a powder keg walking around Lucerne right now,” Eithne said, not unkindly. “When I appointed you, I had assumed you would tarry at court for a bit and then accept a commission somewhere closer to your home. I appointed you mostly as a courtesy, truth be told, but after last night I am aware more now than ever that I need all the allies I can muster, and while you have certainly proven yourself, you must abide us on this. Ogden and Bryn are willing to vouch for you and your friends, and that is enough for me, but I require you to work with them, under their auspices. I am afraid this is nonnegotiable. Do you accept these terms—all of them?”
Elias studied the queen, and then his eyes went to Ogden. He took in the old wizard’s frank expression, his raised eyebrows, and the wizened age lines spiderwebbing at the corners of his sharp, penetrating blue eyes. Perhaps it was nothing more than sentimentality, the fact that he had known his father, but Elias found that he trusted the old Steward.
“Yes,” Elias said at last, “I will accept these terms, Your Grace.”
“I am pleased, Marshal,” said the queen.
Ogden and Bryn exchanged looks, the former exhaling a sigh of relief, while the latter relaxed visibly. Elias smiled thinly. He appreciated the time and faith they had placed in him. Yet surely they put too much stock in him. He’d felt he was in over his head since first taking up his father’s sword, but the specters of Padraic and Asa had continued to propel him forward, filling him with a need to find peace and make sense of their deaths.
With the subject at hand settled, Danica and Lar were summoned and brought up to date on House Senestrati, the Sentinels, and Elias’s imminent training. Danica took this all in stride saying, “I suppose one secret society demands another.” Elias knew her reaction shouldn’t surprise him—nothing ever seemed to rattle Danica.
After Ogden and Phinneas finished briefing her, Danica asked, “Is my wizard’s training to continue too?”
“Yes,” said Phinneas, “but given the tilt of your powers, and background as a healer, I will train you. In any case, one pupil each is enough for old men like us.”
This made perfect sense to Danica, who nodded absently to herself, her intrepid mind already formulating new inquires. “What I don’t understand is why now? What has changed in the last couple of years that the House-that-shall-not-be-named is on the precipice of returning?”
“That is the question upon which all of our lives and the fate of Galacia rests,” said Ogden. “Sentinel legend holds that a millennia ago King Mathias of House Denar, one of the original wizard-kings of this land, bound the seventh house by means of a geas, which is a powerful enchantment that compels the recipient, upon pain of death or worse, to fulfill the terms and stipulations set forth by the wizard. A geas is typically a magical pact or contract between two individuals, or a wizard and a familiar, spirit, or demon, and thus is usually the province of the necromancer. However, uncommonly powerful arcanists of the previous ages were reputed to have the ability to compel victims to a geas without their consent. How Mathias managed to do so to an entire bloodline is beyond us, and he left no record as to how he managed the feat.”
A silence fell over the audience chamber as the gravity of Ogden’s words settled upon each of them.
“How exactly does the Scarlet Hand fit in to the equation?” Danica asked. “They are the seventh house’s servants?”
“It is a good deal more complicated than that,” Ogden replied. He sat back, folded his hands over his chest.
“The Scarlet Hand is House Senestrati’s arm, and a long reaching one at that, as there are cabals of this secret enemy in every kingdom across the continent of Agia. The Hand is a clandes
tine sorcerer-assassin fraternity, loyal to the cursed house through the dark covenant. Performing the will of the seventh house is the price the Hand pays for the dark gift, the unimaginable and terrible power of necromancy.
“None know how many scions of the seventh house have endured, for it is written that their unnatural obsession with the dark arts has rendered them sterile, but the recipients of their covenant have long nettled the free peoples of Agia, seeking a method to break the geas that binds their masters and opening doors to secure their eventual return. Some have conjectured that all the descendants of the Senestrati have long ago turned to dust, but that their shades roam the lands still, bound to the earth by their hate and appetite for revenge, appearing to those who would seek the benighted path and bestowing upon them the dark gift. In any case, through the Scarlet Hand has House Senestrati passed on its legacy of necromancy and the arts of the assassin.
“These Handsmen, as they call themselves within their fraternity, travel Agia in five man cohorts, or Hands.”
“Five fingers in a hand,” said Lar. “Clever.”
“Yes, thank-you Master Fletcher,” Ogden said, raising his prodigious eyebrows with a bemused smirk.
“How else does the Hand occupy itself when it’s not seeking a way to free its masters?” Elias asked.
Ogden pressed his lips together in a grim parody of a smile. “Oh, plenty, son. They undermine the free governments of Agia as they see fit, seek ancient lore and artifacts.” He shot Elias a pointed, but not unkind look. “And they accept assassination contracts as it suits them.”
“By the One God’s britches,” Lar swore, “what are we up against?”
“It’s not as hopeless as you fear,” Phinneas said. “The Hand does not go merrily through the lands unopposed. The Sentinels have eyes everywhere.”
“And, for better or worse, and whether you wish it or not,” Ogden said, “you’re all Sentinels now. Fate crossed your paths with that of the Scarlet Hand, and you were thus exposed to knowledge and secrets that few are privy to. According to Sentinel canon, once someone stumbles upon our sect there are only two responses, and one of them is initiation, providing the person is trustworthy.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 22