“It is as we feared,” Elias said. “There are already agents of the enemy among us.”
“So it would seem,” replied the Wizard.
“Do you think that our findings will be enough to convince the court?” Elias asked. “We can’t very well reveal to them that you are a wizard, and I am not a wizard yet.”
Ogden waved a languid hand. “The Crown occasionally calls on wizards from Arcalum to consult on matters of the arcane when something like this comes up. I will use my contacts in The Sentinels to elicit the help of a trustworthy consultant that will come to the same conclusion as we have. As for the court, many if not most of them will remain unconvinced because the arcane is intangible to them, but it will give the queen the necessary leverage to maneuver a bit and forestall those crying for blood. At the least we have bought ourselves time to locate the genuine perpetrators of this plot against the crown.”
“Well done, Ogden,” said Elias. The older man arched an eyebrow and shared a bemused look with Phinneas at being so summarily praised by his junior. “Now, our primary objective will be to root out this necromancer and his conspirators.”
“No, my young friend,” said Ogden, “our primary objective at present is to continue your lesson. Sit down and let’s get to it.”
Elias hadn’t realized he had risen from his stool, so engaged he had been in the maelstrom of his racing thoughts. He complied with as much grace as he could manage and spent the better part of the evening listening as Ogden lectured him on the various nuances of the arcane.
†
Sarad waited a moment before saying, “Enter,” when he heard the expected knock on the door. He didn’t want to seem over eager.
He looked out the window into a night distorted by stained-glass and stood with his back to the door. He could feel the presence of the two men behind him and sense their trepidation. It was not often one snuck out under cover of night to meet with a clergyman. “Did anyone see you leave your homes?” he asked without turning to face them.
“No, my Lord,” Ogressa said. “We did as you instructed.”
Oberon turned his head to look at Ogressa. What has Ogressa gotten himself into that he bestows such an honorific on a priest, even if he is the Prelate, he thought. “I am not unused to such maneuverings, your Holiness,” Oberon said with a pointed look at Ogressa. “Although, I must confess, I am somewhat surprised and more than a little alarmed that you are. What need does a cleric have of clandestine midnight meetings? Surely there is nothing so strange about a couple of nobles meeting with the Prelate. You have not before attempted to hide your myriad friendships with courtiers.”
Sarad turned from the window and fixed his eyes on Oberon. “The Church has no shortage of enemies, as I’m sure you must guess, and Galacia has always tolerated the Church but resents any explicit political involvement.”
“I require neither a history lesson, nor one in politics,” Oberon said. “Why is it you have called us here?”
“Geoffery!” Ogressa protested.
“No, no,” Sarad said, “our good Lord Oberon asks valid questions. Please have a seat.” Sarad sat and poured tea and waited until the two other men were situated before he continued. “I have tried to make friends among the court because these are Godless times and I am charged with upholding and spreading the One God’s light. I, however, am not skilled in the politics of government, although the Church has its own kind of internal politics—a game that, frankly, I had to play to attain this position.
“Our Holy Father in Aradur is concerned about the faith and what will befall the faithful if Galacia falls once and for all to the savage north. The Shining One does not want Agia to fall back into an age of darkness like the polytheistic Ittamar or, worse yet, the Godless denizens of the Zulbrian continent.”
Oberon frowned. “What is it you mean, Prelate?”
Sarad leaned forward and said quietly. “The Shining One is prepared to lend the full strength of the Church to Galacia. As Prelate of all Galacia, it falls to me to see our holy father’s will done. I have been in correspondence with the Shining One, and he feels, as do I, that the queen is ill suited to rule this country, that her decisions have endangered all of Gods children in Agia.”
“It is true that she is not a God-fearing woman,” said Ogressa. “She refuses to wed and produce an heir, as is her duty, and she does not keep with the word of the book.”
“The Shining one feels as you do,” Sarad said.
Oberon snorted indignantly. “Pardon me, but so that we’re clear: The Shining One, the holiest of holies, the Prelate of Prelates, wants you to perform a coup against the crown of Galacia?”
Sarad sat back and took a sip of his tea, peering at Oberon over the lip of the cup. “Not in so many words. He has, however, instructed me to aid those who would choose the righteous path.”
“What aid could you possibly give us that is worth the price of treason—blessing us and healing our wounds when we come to rot in the dungeon?”
“I can see you don’t place much faith in the One or his earthly conduits,” Sarad said mildly.
“I say, Oberon—” Ogressa began before Sarad raised a hand and favored him with a fatherly, indulgent smile.
“No offense was received, Vachel. Lord Oberon is a cunning man, a man of the world, which is precisely why we need him. The One God has a plan and he knows that every man has his place, his role to play. Gentlemen, the church has at its disposal a sacred order of warriors that could grant you aid.”
“I thought the Knights Justicar were disbanded decades ago,” Oberon said, keeping his voice neutral, but unable to conceal his interest.
Sarad set his cup down. “No, not disbanded,” said Sarad, “but in hiding. The Knights Justicar lay in wait for a time when they are most sorely needed.”
“I would hardly think overthrowing the crown could be considered holy work,” Oberon said dryly.
“This isn’t about overthrowing the crown,” Sarad said, a sudden fire in his dark eyes, “but saving His people, the faithful nations, from butchery by heathens! As the Scrolls say, by pendant or by pike you shall see the darkness pushed back.”
“Think of it, Geoff,” Ogressa said, “this could be what we’re waiting for! This could be our chance.”
Oberon shot Ogressa an arch look. “Be still, Vachel.” Oberon found himself looking about the chamber despite himself, at once anxious. Thoughts whirled through his head: Had anyone noticed him slip out the back of his townhouse; was he followed; could this be a trap?
Sarad read the man with ease. “Be at peace, Lord Oberon. You are in safe place. This is not the palace. There are no eavesdroppers or lurking assassins.” Sarad let his power slip into his voice, and reached his senses into Oberon’s aura. He did not perform any overt enchantment, but sent Oberon a suggestion, planted the seed of sedition.
Oberon looked openly at the Prelate and considered the man. He seemed a genuine sort, but in his twenty-five years at court he had learned that no one is utterly genuine. Even so, for Mirengi to have attained his position at such a young age he must be either a legitimate, skilled cleric or else one very cunning son-of-a-crow. Likely both. He quieted the doubtful voice in his head. Whatever his intention, the Prelate was right—Eithne was ill suited for the throne. And the Prelate knew as well as he did that if Eithne did not leave an heir House Oberon would inherit the crown.
“Even with outside swords it wouldn’t be easy,” said Oberon at last. “The captain of the guard and the Galacian regulars are loyal to the queen, as is Mycrum who aside from being acting General practically has a personal army himself.”
“Yet it’s worth looking into,” Ogressa said. “It can be done.”
“The queen is smarter than you give her credit for,” Oberon said.
“Still,” Ogressa said, “It can be done. All we have to do is make it look like the work of the Ittamar.”
“How exactly will we do that?” Oberon said with a raised eyebrow.
“Leave that to me, and the Justicars,” Sarad said.
Oberon produced a flask from his coat and quaffed a dram of whiskey. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in an uncharacteristic gesture of machismo. “I’d have to take a look at these Knights Justicar.”
“Of course, Lord Oberon,” Sarad said around a crooked smile. “As it happens the Knights Justicar are en route as we speak.”
Chapter 21
The Hartwood
“I’ve arranged an audience with the Prelate for you,” Bryn said as she mounted Comet.
Elias paused with his foot in a stirrup. “Are you serious?”
Bryn snorted. “When aren’t I?” When Elias only shot her a flat look she rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m serious. This afternoon, in fact.”
“You mean today, in the afternoon?”
Bryn rolled her eyes again. “Yes, today, in the afternoon. Hurry up and get into your saddle, Comet is eager to run.”
“He likes you.” Elias mounted Brand and prodded him into a gentle trot. “Have your contacts uncovered any intelligence on him?”
“He’s squeaky clean. An orphan in Aradur, he was taken in by the church and raised at the Citadel. He was pious from day one, because of his childhood on the streets I suppose. That must be why he moved through the ranks so quickly. Acolytes can’t swear the faith until sixteen but they say he memorized the scrolls before ten. He is favored by the Shining One. He and the holy father share a personal correspondence to this day.”
“Britches,” Elias swore softly.
“That’s not all. According to Church record, he participated in several potential miracles as a child.
“Oh,” said Elias, feeling more foolish by the moment.
“Once, after giving alms to the poor he was saddened and went to the chapel in the Citadel and prayed when the other clerics were taking lunch. The statue of Saint Rosemary wept tears of blood. Another time, he prayed over a room of plague victims, and the next day the whole lot of them were fit as fiddles. Some survivors say that they saw a halo around him as he prayed.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Elias groaned.
“Really, Marshal, provincial types are supposed to more religious.”
Elias responded by nudging Brand into a gallop and, with a cry, Bryn followed suit. After they had finished giving the horses their head they had left the palace grounds behind and approached the Hartwood. Elias reined Brand in and a moment later Bryn joined him, flushed and nearly out of breath. Elias decided she looked much better, for despite her affectations to the contrary, the queen’s cousin was under as much pressure as anyone in the kingdom and it had begun to show in the carefully painted over bags under her eyes, and a handful of other individually insignificant signs that would escape the notice of all but the most observant. Brand, perhaps sensing Elias’s whimsy, nudged Comet and Bryn turned to face his rider and offered him a small smile.
Elias felt a peculiar tugging in his chest and he snapped his gaze to the Hartwood. “What’s that?” The familiar tingle crept up his spine and the markings on his forearm grew warm.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Let’s go for a walk in the woods,” Elias said, moved by some inarticulate urge. Without awaiting a response he nudged Brand to the edge of the treeline, dismounted, and tied the reigns to a drooping maple. Bemused, Bryn followed suit and found herself trotting after him on a narrow deer path.
“What do you know of this wood?” Elias asked when she caught up to him.
“As much as anyone, I suppose,” Bryn said. “It’s an ancient wood, been here for as long as anyone can remember. It’s the only forest for leagues and leagues. It’s practically all grassland from here to the coast. The next closest forest is the Renwood.”
Elias held aside a willow switch, so that Bryn could pass. “Odd, don’t you think?”
“What? That we’re walking amidst a thick summer wood at midday with no real trail to speak of, for no particular reason? Naw, seems perfectly normal to me.”
“Look here, the path widens.” Elias offered Bryn a rueful smile and sketched a half-bow. Bryn swatted him lightly on his outstretched arm and then the two companions began to walk down the path side-by-side. “No, I mean isn’t it odd that amidst a steppe that stretches for hundreds of leagues in every direction, up springs a towering and ancient wood?”
“I’ve never really thought about it before. Maybe there were more trees in this area in antiquity, but our ancestors cut them down. There are, of course, the local legends, but they were really just invented by the crown to keep commoners from poaching deer and boar.”
“Tell me some.”
“They’re just children’s stories, but as you wish.”
“Many myths contain shreds of truth, or are superstitious accounts of real events because peoples of the past didn’t understand what they saw.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Ogden. You’re beginning to sound like him.”
“My mother actually told me that once when I was still a child.”
“You’re still a child if you ask me.”
“Alright, bard of the wood, on with the story.”
Bryn took one look at Elias’s nonplussed expression and sighed. “Some say the Hartwood is haunted by the spirits of the Fey that used to live here before mankind came to these lands and drove them out. Others say that the Fey still live here in secret, and if you are in the wood after dark they’ll come for you. Still others say that the Fey and the kings of old made some kind of pact and the Fey were allowed this tract of land as their own. Another version of this last myth is that the wood itself was a gift to the crown for a pact honored and it magically sprung up amidst the fields of grain. I could go on all day. There are dozens of stories about the Hartwood.”
“Yet they all have a common thread.”
“That they’re ridiculous?”
“No, the Fey. History may get diluted and perverted over time, but the seed of truth may yet remain. In all of your myths, the central figure is the Fey. None of those stories may have any credence, perhaps, but the one element that endured was the Fey.”
Bryn managed to raise an eyebrow and fix her cobalt eyes on him without missing a step. “Are you honestly suggesting that faeries are real?”
“Not in so many words, but who are we to discount the possibility—especially after the extraordinary things we’ve both seen? The world is a big place. It’s rather egotistical to think that man is the only intelligent life in it. Besides,” Elias said as his gaze swept over the trees, “there’s something strange about this forest. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it feels as if someone is watching us.”
“Probably a spooked doe,” Bryn said but she shivered despite herself. “It is an unusually quiet forest though, isn’t it?”
As if on cue Elias tilted his head. “Did you hear that?”
“What? No.”
“Come on. This way.” Elias trotted off down the path and veered off into a thicket. Helpless, Bryn stared off at him for a beat and then set out after him, wondering if the distiller’s wits had abandoned him at last.
Bryn found Elias crouched at the edge of a clearing occupied by a group of four young men dressed in the costume of the aristocracy. One of the men was Ronald, Geoffery Oberon’s cousin and attendant, who occupied himself with idly fencing another youth, while the others practiced their craft on a gnarled tree with roots as thick as a full grown man. A viscous, burgundy sap leaked out of rents in the obsidian bark.
Bryn groaned inwardly as Elias stepped into the clearing and said mildly, “One must never cut down a wytchwood, my mother told me.”
Startled, the foursome turned as one, Ronald nearly tripping as he turned to face Elias. The two who had busied themselves with desecrating the tree began to edge toward their companions, swords held in a low guard and trembling slightly. Ronald recovered his equilibrium first and said, “Ah, what have we here? the Marshal and the queen’s cozening cous
in.” Ronald followed Elias’s gaze to the tree. “What’s this then? You are the queen’s personal ranger now as well? I suspect that the devil tree did more damage to their swords then they to it.”
Elias approached the tree and pretended not to notice as the other men stiffened and edged away from him. He laid his hand on the tree and discovered with some surprise that it was warm as a tingle rushed up his arm and melted over his back. He had seen one other wytchwood in his life, deep in the Lurkwood with his mother as a child. It remained one of his fondest memories of her, but try as he might he never could find that tree again, save but once—the day he crossed swords with Slade.
Elias kicked over a wineskin as he turned to face Ronald. He retrieved the skin and gave it a whiff. “Minter’s whiskey.”
“You have a good nose, Marshal. I expect you’ll be on your way, then, to find a clearing of your own so you can enjoy your doxy,” Ronald said, eliciting hearty guffaws from his friends.
“Not all women are of the same ilk as the insipid sycophants your cousin keeps,” Bryn said.
“Indeed, some women know their place.”
“I have a mind to teach you what some women know, whelp,” Bryn said hotly.
“They say you are skilled with a blade, but frankly I don’t believe the hype,” Ronald retorted with a leer. “Perhaps we should have a fence then? First blood?” Ronald lofted his rapier and drew circles in the air with it, to the amusement of his fellows, but Elias read fear in the almost imperceptible tremble in his knees and the tense set of his shoulders. Elias knew that his bravado was largely for the benefit of his cronies for he did not want to lose face in their eyes.
Bryn took a menacing step toward the courtiers, but Elias continued as if the interruption in their conversation never happened. “It is said the wytchwood were sacred to the old people, and the berries they grow in spring have mystic powers.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 25