Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  “Maybe with magic, but whatever happened to scalpel and pliers? That’s worked for millennia. No, Sarad, I think your hunger for vengeance is the reason you let Duana go.” Talinus could feel Sarad’s anger rolling off him in waves as his aura blackened.

  “Don’t be absurd, imp, and mind yourself lest you overstep your bounds.”

  Talinus continued his relentless press. “You want revenge for what Duana has done to you. He almost destroyed you though he was outnumbered thirteen to one. You actually died for a brief moment in time and the magic that brought you back has left you hideously scarred and twisted like a gargoyle from the pit.”

  Sarad screamed an inarticulate curse and thrust a hand forward. A ragged spear of black energy burst from him. Talinus had been prepared for the outburst and erected a subtle shield before him to redirect the energy away from him, but the force of the blow repelled him, launching him across the room and into the wall.

  Talinus looked up from the floor. “You let him escape so that in the end when you capture the queen and her allies he will blame himself for leading you to them and then you’ll make him watch as you destroy them all and summon your dark Lords from their slumber. You want him to have the illusion of hope only to snatch it away from him in the last act.”

  “You forget yourself,” said Sarad, standing, his voice growing quiet.

  “Mark my words—your pride has undone you. You never should have let the Marshal go for he will yet foil you. Again.”

  Overcome by hatred and anger, Sarad unleashed a deluge of fell magic on Talinus, fueling his power with every mote of black emotion in his soul. A tsunami of black energy washed over the imp. After the climax of fell magic Sarad felt better, but realized he would need to acquire a new familiar. He spared the broken and lifeless imp a long look before he felt a tug at his mind.

  He stepped into his spell-circle and picked up his scrying mirror. Using the psychic connection he had formed with Duana he focused on the mirror and willed that an image of him would form out of the chaos of the churning energies caught in its glass. In a way the scrying mirror was a portal through which the adept could peer through space and, providing the arcanist had achieved mastery, even time. The rainbow maelstrom of energy slowed and darkened to a deep indigo and became placid. Sarad had at last homed in on Duana’s signature. He poured a yet increased amount of will and magic into the mirror and, as veins protruded in his temples and capillaries burst in his flushed face, the indigo image began to lighten until he saw the natural light of midday illuminating the face of his quarry.

  “See? I told you I could find him.” Sarad looked up from the mirror, only to remember that Talinus was gone. He felt a pang in his breast, but presently returned his attention to the mirror. He grinned as he listened to the conversation between the Marshal and the northman. After they finished he pulled the image up and away from the two men, above them and to the tree line. He continued elevating the viewing portal until he had a bird’s eye view of the Renwood. Sarad felt enormously pleased. The ancient and mystic Renwood was the perfect setting for this little drama to be brought to a close. He only hoped that Duana would last long enough to be recaptured.

  Sarad set his mirror in the center of the spell-circle and closed the portal. With a flick of his will he cast the doors to his study open. The two Handsman who attended him looked inside. “Prepare a sending to our brothers in the field. I have located the queen.”

  †

  Agnar felt the uncomfortably close presence of Elias and the intense gravity of his eyes. The Marshal said, “When we reach Gaudvaug Lake you will set out along the tributary that cuts south and east, toward the queen, while I will head toward the western edge of the wood. Understood?”

  “I don’t even know which way is east. This damned forest is so thick I can’t even see the sun.”

  “I’ll ride with you that far and point it out.” Elias shot Agnar a significant look, but it was lost on the Northerner who didn’t know what the Marshal was about. Elias fell silent again and swayed in his saddle. After a couple minutes he straightened and his eyes sharpened. Surreptitiously he cast his eyes to either side and then up at the tree-line as if he was looking for something. Tightening his hold on Brand’s reins he said, “Come then and let’s see how well a northern man can handle a southern horse.” With that Elias prodded Brand into a dead run.

  Agnar observed that Elias had begun acting odd since they had gained the great wood, which wasn’t saying much, he conceded to himself. The Marshal acted like a man who thought he was being followed even though there wasn’t the slightest sign of pursuit. He constantly checked their retreat and glanced about or sat still in his saddle as if listening for something he alone could hear, which could very well be the case—Agnar had seen men hallucinate in their sickbeds with fever more than he would care to admit. At other times Elias pretended he didn’t know what Agnar was talking about. Still, whatever the southerner’s game was, Agnar owed him his life and would stick by him, addled wits or not. In any case, it seemed his consent was superfluous, considering his horse had set out after Elias without any prodding on his part.

  A half day’s hard ride later they approached the banks of a modest river that wound around towering oaks and southern maples. Some few miles later the river forked and Elias brought them to a halt and dismounted. He crouched by the water while Brand sated his thirst. He eyes closed as he rested his head on his knees. Agnar followed suit and lead Comet to the water. He had begun to think that Elias had fallen asleep when the Marshal said, “This fork on the right is the path you want to take. The water is shallow enough by the bank that you should be able to run Comet with little trouble.”

  Agnar opened his mouth to protest Elias’s plan to split up when another thought occurred to him. He gazed through the opening in the forest canopy that the river provided and found slants of light from the setting sun. “I thought you wanted me to take the southeast tributary?”

  “The right fork is the one you want.”

  “Earlier you said the southeast fork, and then after that when the river forks again to stay on southeast tributary.”

  “Take the right fork and follow it all the way to the queen, or find her at the outpost on the other side of the forest. Trust me.”

  Agnar sighed. “This plan, splitting up like this, it is folly.”

  Elias rose and took Agnar by the shoulders. “If you have ever trusted me, Agnar, I beg you trust me now. The queen must know what I have learned at all costs. Oberon has taken the throne. He was in bed with the Prelate prior to the coup, which I’m sure won’t be a great leap of faith for her. Between Mirengi’s men and Oberon’s mercenaries they practically have an army of their own, aside from the fact that they have assumed control of all of Peidra’s swords, guards and regulars alike. But what is of the utmost importance is that Mirengi needs the queen, and he needs her alive.”

  “By the Gods,” Agnar breathed, transfixed by the intensity of Duana’s gaze.

  “Now listen well, for it is what follows that they must know. The king that banished Mirengi’s necromantic Lords centuries ago did so with a very strong magic, but it was so powerful that it needed a constant source of energy to be maintained. King Mathias knew if his spell faded the Senestrati would return, so he bound it to his bloodline, to his very life force and that of his descendants, thus securing his spell to an everlasting source of energy. The spell that keeps the seventh house bound is alive in every member of the Denar bloodline. Mirengi needs to sacrifice the queen and Bryn in a fell ritual to break the bond and free his masters, who even now slumber but stir. I’m not sure I quite grasp how, but I gleaned from Mirengi’s thoughts, that the original surviving members of the Senestrati who attempted the coup all those years ago are in some kind of stasis. They must know this. It is of the utmost importance. Whatever happens, Sarad cannot get his hands on the queen and Bryn. Promise me.”

  “I don’t understand a word of what you’ve said.”

&nbs
p; “You don’t have to. Just deliver the message.”

  Agnar felt his stomach drop. “You should tell her this, not me.”

  “Tell Ogden that it was right before us in the poem of binding the entire time: He bound them in the Heart’s own blood. Only the translation was wrong, for the poet meant The Hart, as in the Stag. The blood of the Stag—the blood of House Denar.”

  Elias mounted Brand and offered Agnar a grim smile. The Marshal looked worse than ever, his skin having taken on the ashen, waxy aspect of the dead, but a preternatural fire smoldered in his eyes, like the dying coals of a hearth-fire that appeared cool to the eye but had the heat to boil blood in the vein. “Fear not, friend. You will see me again, in this life or the next. You don’t have far to go, and I have every faith in you. Now, give me your word you will see this done.”

  “You have it, son of summer,” Agnar swore.

  With that Elias was off, thundering through the darkening wood, and Agnar, dumfounded, stood and watched him go.

  Chapter 32

  Visitations

  Aaron Vash signaled his men to stop. The Marshal’s giant copper stallion lay on its side breathing weakly in a gully at the bottom of a steep slope some fifty yards down. Vash and his Hand had been following the half-dead Marshal’s erratic trail for two days now, since receiving the telepathic sending from Mirengi. It seemed their quarry had ridden his horse half to death, yet Vash had survived this long as a lieutenant of the Scarlet Hand by never taking anything at face value. Even though Mirengi had reported that Duana had succumbed to a fever curse through the Kin Carnum, all accounts spoke to the Marshal’s cunning and resilience. Vash reached out with his senses to see if he could detect Duana’s presence or catch a trace of his aura.

  “Well then, Vash, shall we be on with it?” asked Bragan.

  Vash grunted. He didn’t sense any sign of the Marshal. “Smells like a trap.”

  “You can read the tracks as well as I and you’ve seen a man addled by a fever curse. The marshal is in the grips of delirium. We have to find him while he’s still on this side of the veil and stabilize him. Do you want to explain to Lord Mirengi that we’ve denied him the pleasure of taking Duana’s life because we hesitated?”

  “No,” Vash said. Mirengi had given them express orders that they were to capture Duana alive. “Bragan, go down there with Keif and check things out. I’ll stay up here with Vahn and Utho on the high ground and cover you.”

  “Very well.”

  Bragan and his two companions guided their horses down the steep slope. Halfway down the slope Keif began to curse. Vash stiffened and drew his scimitar. “It’s nothing,” Bragan called to them, his voice thick with disgust, “Keif’s horse has gotten its hoof stuck. The soil is loose.”

  Vash relaxed. That explained Duana’s horse. The beast likely lost its footing and broke a leg and Duana crawled off to hide, or to die. He only hoped they found him before the latter happened. He did not want to explain to Mirengi how they had failed to reach the Marshal in time. Vash relaxed his sword arm and nudged his horse forward to get a better look at Bragan’s progress.

  Bragan and Keif dug around the stymied horse’s stuck leg when Bragan stiffened sharply. “What the hell?” He looked up the slope at Vash. Vash pressed his horse to the crest of the slope and then heard a long wet sound come from behind him followed by two thuds. Vahn and Utho’s horses sped past him, snorting in terror while his own mount reared, spooked by the coppery scent of blood. Vash pulled hard at the reins in an effort to turn around but a large crash and two screams pulled his attention back down the slope.

  Duana’s horse was up and breaking into a dead run. Where on earth did Duana get a rope that long? Vash thought numbly, before realizing that it wasn’t a rope but a corded braid of vine tied to the behemoth stallion’s bridle. The other end was affixed to a rotten log which had been buried under the loose earth and leaves—the very culprit that had caused Keif’s horse to become stuck. When the log jerked from its precarious resting place, the horse’s leg snapped and initiated an avalanche of tumbling horse flesh and loose earth and stone that was presently joined by Vahn and Utho’s bolting mounts—an avalanche his men were buried alive in.

  Vash had scanned the area for Duana, using his arcane senses to detect the Marshal, but he hadn’t thought to direct his scan up. Duana had left them a tidy booby trap that didn’t involve a single shred of magic and thus escaped Vash’s scan while he hid up in a tree waiting for them to trigger it. Vash brought his horse around and faced Duana. The Marshal stood behind him, between the bodiless heads of Vahn and Utho, with his sword extended at the end of an arcing slice. The Marshal had the grey pallor and red-rimmed eyes of one in the final stages of the fever curse, but his aura crackled around him, vibrant blue and flickering with veins of silver lightning.

  “I’m a little insulted he only sent five,” Duana said, “although, admittedly, I am feeling a little under the weather.”

  “Not at all,” Vash said cordially, “Occupying the attention of an entire Hand is high praise indeed.” Vash dismounted while keeping a close eye on the marshal, who didn’t so much as blink. “You’re almost finished, Marshal. I’d say surrender to me and I’d lift the curse. Most men would say yes, because if they had the opportunity for even one more breath then there’s always the hope, however slim, a situation would arise where they could turn the tables. But you’re not most men.”

  “I would say put up your sword and forget all this business. Take your life and forget Galacia, forget the Hand, forget House Senestrati’s dark covenant. But you live by the sword and could never lay it down.”

  Vash smiled and raised his scimitar into a high guard. “I fear the will of my dark masters more than death.”

  “Then we are both in luck.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Today we will both be free from the shadow of the Seventh House,” Elias said and then lunged.

  †

  Danica watched as her brother engaged the last Handsman, who lost the battle in the first blow. To his credit, the agile assassin turned Elias’s first lunge, albeit barely, having not anticipated Elias’s explosive opening. The Handsman was thrown off balance from that initial maneuver and was unable to regain control before Elias capitalized on his advantage.

  After the Senestrati fell Elias stumbled on dead legs to the foot of a large oak and collapsed with his back against the trunk. Danica could see the labored rise and fall of his chest and knew he didn’t have long. She needed to help him but hadn’t the foggiest idea how to escape the dream-like world she found herself in. She was safe in the circle of stones but she knew that as soon as she left them Slade would be waiting for her. Frustrated, angry tears streamed down her face.

  “Don’t fear for your brother, he will live. He has too much to accomplish to leave the world behind right now, and he knows it. But he does need your help.”

  Danica looked up from the pool, expecting more of Slade’s trickery, but her breath caught in her throat as she beheld a woman of delicate but surpassing beauty clad in an alabaster gown and radiating a white aura edged in the pink of winter rose. Her skin was so pale that it appeared almost translucent, and her eyes burned an exotic green, so much like Danica’s own. Danica’s throat felt thick and she grew faint as a rush of pins and needles washed over the backs of her arms, up her spine, over her shoulders and neck and culminating over her crown. “Mom?”

  When she smiled Danica began to weep.

  “Yes, child, it’s me.”

  “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Then you should know that I am with you often. We talk most nights while you are asleep, but only when you are in the deepest of dreams, so you have no conscious recollection of it when you awake.”

  “But, Mom, you’re dead,” Danica sobbed, fearing that this was another of Slade’s tricks.

  The shade of her mother took a step into the circle of rune stones. “This is not a trick, Danica. Slade is gone at present.�
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  “You can read my thoughts?”

  “Danica, there is much that I would tell you but there isn’t time. I have not been able to reach you in your dreams since Slade has exerted his power over you. You must rejoin your body so that you can help Elias. A man is coming to your camp. He has helped your brother. The others are frightened, especially the two young soldiers. They won’t want to believe this man from the north, but you must make them.”

  “What about Elias?”

  “I will help your brother. Your father and I will see that he lives until you reunite.”

  “Dad’s with you?”

  “Yes. Presently he is with Elias, protecting him. Now listen, please. Time is different here. Days have already passed in your world. We will guide Elias toward your camp with what strength remains to him, for he is close to the other side and we will be able to exert a greater influence over him. However, we are unable to heal his affliction, though we will lend him what succor we can. You alone can save Elias, and he alone can save you. You are like binary stars, a pair, and are destined to rise, or fall, together.”

  Danica didn’t know how she would honor her mother’s wishes, but she promised if there was a way she would find it. “I’ll do as you say. Only I don’t know how.”

  “You do know how, you need only remember what you’ve forgotten. But first you must help Agnar Vundi and to do that you must wake up.”

  “I’m stuck here.”

  “I’ve shown this place to you, child, long ago, yet this is but a facsimile and exists only in your mind. Your body and world are but a thought away.” Edora Duana waved a hand over the silver pool. It rippled and in it an image appeared of Danica lying in her tent. “See, there you are. Feel your body around you. Feel your toes and fingers wiggling and the dust of sleep in your eyes. Feel the ground beneath your back and the soft weight of the sleeping roll pressing into you.”

  Danica felt herself grow light and then she was falling, through the pool, before passing into a shadowy realm where vague, amorphous shapes flashed in her peripheral vision. She heard her mother’s voice echoing in her mind. Danica, you and your brother have a hard road yet ahead but you will succeed together. Do not give up hope. Now, child, quickly, wake up!