Perplexed, and utterly forgetting his haste, Elias took the blanket. A tingling sensation raised the hairs on the back of his hands and shivered up his arms, across his shoulders, and to his crown. With shaking hands Elias untied the bundle and peeled back the horse blanket to reveal a crimson, leather-braided hilt flecked with black. Elias brandished the blade at once and felt an electric surge course through him as the naked blue-tinged steel met the night air. The runes etched into the base of the blade burned red as if in remembrance of the fires that had forged them. The like runes branded into the forearm of his sword arm burned in kind.
“How?” Elias asked.
Seven paled considerably in the face of such an arcane display, but he wore his smile easily. “Like Pa always said, servants are invisible to the upper crusters and can go near anywhere unnoticed. I waited until no one was fooling with it and gave her a pull, and she slid right out of that wall, easy as butter.”
“Stuck in the wall eh?” Elias marveled at his good fortune. “Was there no guard posted?”
“There were the first two days, but by the third I guess they figured it wasn’t goin’ anywhere. I climbed the balcony outside the council chamber, went through the window, and then used the North entrance to the throne room. Simple really. I only just got it tonight. I was figurin’ you might need it.”
A toothy grin erupted on Elias’s face. “To think Sarad and all of his wizards couldn’t move the Daishin an inch, but along comes Seven Winters and steals away with it like a rogue out of legend!”
“Well, you do know what they say about seventh sons.”
Elias’s response died on his lips for a cry issued from the corral, momentarily followed by Agnar screaming his name.
“Seven,” Elias said, “hide.”
Elias ran into the corral brandishing his sword, which burned with arcane fire. One of the guards shambled drunkenly toward him and then fell to his knees, impaled by a black shafted arrow that had found purchase in the crease between his shoulder plate and chainmail. Pulses of magic rippled down Elias’s sword and into his arm, and with it an inferno of rage that banished his fatigue and any thought of flight.
Elias’s heart drummed the beat of the Danse Mortum and the tumult of events around him slowed and he saw them with a detached, pristine clarity. Black blood sputtered from the fallen guard’s mouth as he struggled to regain control of his legs. The second guard pulled closed one of the double doors, using it as a shield, before retreating along its line. Black arrows fletched with crimson feathers spun in tight spirals through the open archway while others thudded into the closed door, rocking it against its frame. Agnar cursed in his native tongue and dove into an open stall and somersaulted into a crouch. Comet, not yet saddled, reared fully onto his hind legs, eyes rolling in terror.
Elias continued his forward rush. His sword weighed heavy in his hand, pregnant with the deluge of magic it had absorbed from his battle with Sarad in the throne room. His awareness of this slid fluidly through his mind, for the sword had become an extension of his will and as much a part of him as his lungs and heart.
“Comet,” Elias called out, his voice resonant and binding. Comet neighed and shook his head but calmed under the sway of the arcane command.
Elias used a barrel pressed up against the wall of the corral as a stepping stone and leapt an impossible distance onto Comet’s bare back. All the while the magic of his sword trickled into him, fueling the molten core of his rage. Elias remained amount by clenching his legs hard against Comet’s ribs and digging in his heels.
Comet exploded through the open archway, ropes of froth whipping from his muzzle. Three scimitar wielding Handsman approached the stables in a wedge formation, but when they saw Elias bearing down on them they fanned out. With archers yet undiscovered, Elias could ill afford reining in to chase the melee combatants and make himself an easy target. He had little recourse but to resort to the arcane, even though his magic had failed him in the courtyard. However, he now channeled his will through his sword, summoning the pent up energy stored within the enchanted steel.
Acting on instinct, Elias swung his sword, tracking across all three Handsman, and cried, “Feora!” Black fire edged in indigo scythed from his sword in an incandescent arc, an inky stain in the starlit night. The three swordsmen fell, rimed in frost, as the cold flame consumed them, the fell magic of their own lord recycled and used against them.
Elias pressed Comet’s mad gallop without so much as a pause and discovered the archers, two of them, standing side by side some fifty feet away. To Elias’s surprise, despite having arrows notched, they dropped their bows and made to scatter.
Elias ran down the first one with ease. The archer rolled to the left, dodging Comet’s thundering hooves, endeavoring to keep out of reach of Elias’s sword arm. Elias read his foe’s intentions at once and tossed his sword into his left hand, grabbed a handful of mane with his right, leaned down, and with a sweeping stroke cut the Handsman down. The maneuver, however, cost him his balance, riding bareback as he was, and Elias had to drop his sword for he needed his hand to stay ahorse.
Elias did not turn about to retrieve his sword, for he could not allow the remaining archer to escape into the labyrinthine gardens and lose him. As he closed in on the fleeing man, shadow leapt up around him and coalesced, obfuscating him from view. Elias cursed and with a command brought Comet skidding to a stop. He searched frantically for the Handsman but could not see him.
Desperate rage gathered in Elias as blood thundered through his head like a blacksmith’s hammer on anvil. Fueled by the raw force of his anger, desperation, and need, he reached for the void, reflexively, foolishly. “Luminae!” he screamed and a white light burst from him.
With the light went the remainder of his strength and Elias felt a curious dislocation of his mind from his body and he tumbled from Comet, unconscious.
Talinus, invisible to mortal eyes, alighted on a low wall at the edge of the gardens. He marveled at the supine Marshal, hoping he wasn’t irrevocably damaged. Duana had taken out an entire Hand, a five man cadre of the Scarlet Hand, single-handedly, in less than a minute. If Duana survived his plan, Talinus decided he would either have to turn him or kill him. The man was simply too dangerous—unpredictable, reckless, and wild, which he found to be redeeming qualities in any man, but dangerous. Consumed as he was by wrath, Duana would be putty in the hands of the Eldritch Circle. Duana merely required a little more blood on his hands and the suffering of another tragic loss.
With a couple of beats from his wings Talinus flew to the Marshal’s side. He didn’t have enough time to remove Sarad’s curse, but he could tip the odds in the Marshal’s favor. The power of death was also power over life, and so Talinus leaned over the slumbering Marshal and breathed the Obsidian Queen’s kiss into him. By then Duana’s allies had arrived on the scene, but their eyes passed over him unseen. As a final touch Talinus planted a suggestion deep in Elias’s subconscious and then pushed a command directly into his conscious mind: Awake, Marshal!
Elias started awake as if snapped from a long sleep by a ringing church-bell. He felt hands on him and heard voices, but he ignored them. Something urgent tugged at him, but it lay just beyond his reach, like a dream upon waking breaking into shards of images and primal emotions. He felt an alien presence close at hand, which he perceived as a heaviness in the air, a slumbering power like the charge in the air before a storm.
Talinus became still as the Marshal fixed his eyes upon him. Impossible, he thought. The Marshal’s senses were keen, but to see a Fey without the aid of a powerful enchantment lay beyond the reach of any mortal. Yet, the imp grew anxious all the same, but after a long look the Marshal shook his head and blinked, as if banishing the fog of sleep, and rose with his comrade’s aid. As he stumbled away the Marshal cast a glance over his shoulder. Oh, yes, Talinus thought for the second time in as many minutes, dangerous. This man is very dangerous.
Talinus waited until the Marshal gained th
e stables and then took to the air to tell Sarad the good news.
Elias wasted no time in preparing the horses and tried to ignore the sideways glances Agnar cast at him. Seven had produced a worn pair of riding boots and a tattered cloak to cover his nakedness, but Elias was thankful for that much and treasured the little comfort the necessities brought him. “Quickly, now,” he said, “let’s turn loose the other horses. It will help cover our trail and buy us some time. The smell of blood and magic will have spooked them and they should run straight away from here for miles.”
When he and Agnar were mounted, Elias nodded to Seven and said, “I cannot thank you enough for what you have done, Seven Winters.”
“My duty ‘s all,” said the boy. “When you return maybe you can take me as a squire.”
“Count on it. But now you—and you soldier—must go to ground. If Oberon’s men suspect you gave us aid, you will be in grave danger. Farewell.” With that final word Elias and Agnar thundered into the night, each wondering how close behind pursuit lay.
Chapter 30
Cursed
“Danica believes that there can be no success without Elias,” Eithne said and looked at Ogden and Phinneas in turn. A silence fell over the cramped quarters of her tent as the two men exchanged glances.
“We all mourn Elias,” Ogden said slowly. “He was a great friend and ally. His loss was a tragic one, and he will ever be missed, but as promising as his potential was, his training had but begun, and he was only one man.”
“You have said to me that history and the fate of nations often hinge on the actions of individuals,” Eithne said hotly.
Ogden put up his hands and said, “I meant the choices of a queen, Eithne.”
Eithne stood, her hands balled into fists, and then realized the confines of her tent did not allow for pacing. She felt her ears grow warm and then sat down again on her bedroll. “And what choice do I have now, Ogden?”
“We all miss the boy,” Phinnneas said, his voice a whisper, “but we musn’t give up. I think this is what Ogden means. We have to put aside our grief and focus on taking back the capital. Otherwise, Elias’s sacrifice would have been in vain.”
Eithne took a calming breath. “You are right of course. I just feel so lost. Danica is half-crazed, Bryn is nothing like herself, so withdrawn; we have three men at arms, and are marooned in the wilderness. What can we do?”
Ogden leaned forward and clasped Eithne’s hands in his own. “Despair, fear, these are the Scarlet Hand’s greatest weapons. We still have allies. Your uncle and House Mycrum will rally to you if you make yourself known.”
“Providing they yet live,” Eithne said.
“Likely they remain in position, but are carefully watched,” Phinneas said. “Mirengi would risk losing control of the public if both the queen and two Houses were eradicated in rapid succession. Vacuums of power need be filled, else governments fail. Mirengi may be a merciless son of a bitch, but he isn’t stupid. Even an idiot would sense foul play if the monarch and all her allies disappeared in a week’s time, destroyed by a handful of northmen. If we can defeat Mirengi and his men, whoever has assumed control of the throne cannot openly challenge you. Galacia still has a standing army.”
“Yet we cannot simply stride through the city gates and declare to the people of Peidra that their queen still lives. We do not know how many spies Mirengi has or where. We would never make it in alive and how many commoners would know their queen by sight, dressed as a beggar?”
“And there is your answer,” Ogden said. “First we gain the garrison on the other side of the Renwood, and then we dispatch Mirengi as he did us: with subterfuge, stealth, and cunning.”
†
Danica stifled a sigh, rose from her crouch, and crept away from the queen’s tent. She returned to the pack she had stashed a safe distance from the camp. She checked its contents yet again, although she knew well what it contained. She withdrew her cloak and wrapped it about her, donned her short sword, and checked the small store of food she appropriated from the camp larder. Lastly, she reached a trembling hand for the coiled length of rope that Slade had used to bind her to the table in the Mayfair Manor. It seemed a lifetime ago, yet it felt so close, and she knew that part of her still lay on that table bound and afraid in the dark.
Danica withdrew the rope from the pack, at once disgusted and fascinated. It was yet black with her blood. The rope felt unnaturally cold in her hands, and a numbing sensation rapidly radiated from her fingers to her hands and wrists. Despite the cold that cut through her, Danica broke out in a sweat. She peered at the rope and blinked in the face of the impossible as the rope writhed in her hands. The dark stains on the rope undulated and rolled like the ebb and flow of dark waters on some alien shore. Faint, Danica toppled from her crouch and onto her knees. She tottered and fell...
Footsteps sounded behind her, then to one side. Danica’s eyes rolled around trying to spy the figure, but she saw only shadows dancing at the edge of her periphery. In vain, she tried to move her head, but the rope held her fast, and she only succeeded in tearing the rope deeper into her flesh.
Icy fingers caressed her hair and then drew down her face—gnarled, thin fingers, with wicked black fingernails, thick and sharp as talons. The nails trailed over her cheek, cutting with the efficiency of a razor and leaving hot trails of blood in their wake. Danica strained her eyes to look down her naked body. Clouds of shadow obfuscated her periphery, but she could see the corpse-hand, reaching, disembodied, from out the darkness and slicing through the tender flesh of her torso.
The hand lingered in the downy hair of her pubic mound. Danica screamed, but supine, with her neck pulled taut, and the constricting binding of her torso, she only managed a hoarse whimper. A single finger burrowed through her hair and toward her sex...
Danica thrashed and kicked as she screamed back into the blinding light of midday. Hands grasped her by the shoulders and held her fast. Danica turned her head and bit at the hands, which promptly retreated from her snapping teeth. She fell back onto the earthen ground and scrambled on her back, away from her attacker, trying in vain to gain her feet.
“Bloody, hell!” Bryn cried. “Danica, you nearly took off my finger!” Bryn looked down at the southern woman. Danica’s head twisted about wildly as she blinked blood-shot, wet eyes furiously. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a garish snarl, revealing blood red gums. Bryn went cold to her core, and despite herself took a step back. When she spoke her voice quavered. “It’s me, Bryn. What’s happened to you? Have you taken ill?”
Danica’s eyes began to adjust to the light and focus and she became aware of her location. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t in the manor. It was only a dream, like before. By the time she re-opened her eyes, she had grounded herself, but the black fear remained, like an icicle lodged in her bosom. “Forgive me, lady,” she said. She rose and dusted herself off. “Sometimes I have night terrors.”
“It’s not night,” Bryn pointed out.
“Day terrors, then. By whatever name, I am sure you are familiar with the condition.”
“I have heard of it before, yes, but…” Bryn trailed off and eyed the young woman. Danica seemed to have returned to herself and stared back at her coolly. Bryn briefly considered pushing further, but she knew little good could come of pressing issues both sensitive and perilous. A gentler hand would be required here. It occurred to Bryn that Danica had been acting increasingly peculiar, but she had hitherto attributed it to the growing amount of stress she had been under. So much had happened to the poor creature since Bryn had met her. The White Habit had lost almost everyone dear to her.
Bryn affected what she hoped to be a casual shrug and broke the long silence. “Looks like you are ready for a long journey there.”
“It’s good to be prepared when going for a hike in the woods alone. You don’t know who you may find.” Danica arched an eyebrow.
Bryn sighed audibly. She knew Danica well enough to know that once
she got her back up, she would not back down for anything. This situation required a different tact. She had to strike for the heart if she was to get anywhere here. “Danica, I hope you know that I consider you a friend, as I did your brother. I cared for Elias.” She paused to let her words sink in. “You needn’t lie to me. Why are you leaving?”
Danica shifted on her feet. “You followed me?”
“I saw you skulking around Eithne’s tent.”
“You were spying on me,” Danica said a little hotly.
Bryn permitted herself a low chuckle. “Nothing so sinister. I noticed a tension in you since we started moving through the wood. I was worried for you.”
“I’m touched by your concern, Lady, but it is unfounded. I am holding up rather well for someone who has lost her father, brother, friends, and home all within a season.”
Bryn could tell by Danica’s posture that she was losing her. The other woman crossed her arms before her, her jaw clenched, chin lifted, and eyes narrowed in clear defiance. Evidently the young woman had taken her words as pity and felt insulted. Bryn silently cursed herself, but she knew one form of bait Danica couldn’t resist, though she was loath to use it. At this point, however, she was left with little recourse.
Bryn lifted her own chin and arched an eyebrow. “I never thought you the type to run, Danica Duana. I suppose I was wrong about you.”
Danica took a step toward Bryn, fury transforming her delicate features into a crimson visage of bestial rage. “Run? Run, you miserable little cunny,” she growled. “I’m going back to Peidra. By the time you fools decide on a course of action it will be too late.”
“Back to Peidra? To what end? You cannot possibly think to take on the Scarlet Hand yourself.”
Danica’s entire body shook, muscles seemingly contracting of their own volition, as if on the verge of an epileptic fit. Her head drooped between her hunched shoulders, but her eyes rolled up in their sockets to peer at Bryn. “I’m going for my brother.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 34