The Hand kept a break-neck pace that she could not match whilst trying to track them and remain undetected, and so by the third night on their trail sleep had become a stranger to her. She knew she couldn’t keep it up for much longer, yet nor had she been afforded the opportunity she had hoped for. The Hand was ever vigilant and always kept a four man watch, one posted at each of the cardinal directions. To further complicate her situation at every step she could feel the ever lingering presence of Slade, his phantom eyes tracking her every move.
What sleep there was to be had, was fitful to put it lightly. Her slumber was ever agitated, for she felt an electric charge in the air around her, a heavy pressure upon her bosom, a clammy press upon her skin, and at times the sensation of something rustling through her hair.
Chiefly, she ignored his unseen presence for she didn’t want to give the rapacious fiend any satisfaction, but it grew more difficult by the moment. As she got less and less sleep and her fatigue deepened she felt nearer yet to him and could hear the slither of his voice in her mind. He would remark on the fullness of her body and how he yearned for her flesh, to nibble on the parts of her skin that had never been touched by the light of day.
Through all of it came the constant coy remark, the one thing he said that she could hear with perfect clarity: I can help you defeat them. Together we can save your brother. Yet she knew well the price of Slade’s aid.
So she ignored him to the best of her ability and focused on the task at hand, but as she crouched in the sharp autumn air at the edge of the Scarlet Hand’s camp on the third night Danica Duana knew despair. She had but a single short-sword and a pair of daggers and her fledgling magic to defeat two Hands of the enemy.
She could even now sense Slade close at her back, feel the cold of him. There are too many of them, he whispered in her ear, echoing her own thoughts, his voice the rustle of dead leaves at the edge of winter. You cannot hope to stand against so many, but I can grant you the power to destroy them. All of them. Live as one with me, or die without me.
Danica ignored him and looked ahead at Elias, unconscious and bundled by the fire. She knew he didn’t have long and frankly neither did she. Once they broke the Renwood and reached open ground any chance she had to take them was beyond nil. She knew with a cold certainty that she would have to take them tonight or not at all. “Very well,” she said softly into the hollow whistle of the wind, “you’ll have your bloody day, but if Elias doesn’t make it out of this alive I’ll put my own dagger in my heart and take you to hell with me.”
Surrender your protection and let me enter. I will give you such power that you can incinerate all your enemies.
“Very well.”
Say it!
“I’m surprised you are so eager to strike against your former brothers and free the man that killed you.”
You’re stalling. He hasn’t long.
“Then you best answer me quickly or we’ll both be disappointed.”
I owe those men nothing, Slade hissed in her mind. They are as self serving as I was. I want to live again, through you. The door to the other side is closed to me. You are the only door available to me now, my love.
Danica shuddered and felt bile rise up her throat. She swallowed. “And Elias?” She could feel the acrid burn of his rage as she spoke her brother’s name.
If he crosses to the other side he is lost to me forever. I will have my vengeance on him, but not by his death. My revenge is stealing you from him forever. What you reap is his life and thus the deliverance of your world from Sarad Mirengi. An even exchange, no?
Danica felt something tear in her at that moment. She found herself standing again in the circle of stones in the center of that deep and mystic wood. The stones emitted a blue-white light and symbols of binding hovered in the still air. Slade stood outside the circle and she saw him then as he really was—a hulking, hunched creature, eyes red-rimmed and feral with unholy hunger, stooped over by the gravity of his own animosity and despair, which writhed about him as a shadowy mass tinged the bloated red of a septic wound.
Let. Me. In.
Danica sobbed.
Break the circle. Speak the words.
The wood grew dark and all Danica could see were the stones and Slade’s fell, true aspect. Forgive me, she thought. “I permiss you entrance, Slade Kezia.”
The circle of rune stones shattered.
†
Bryn stared up into the star-riddled night. The thick canopy of the Renwood usually impeded all view of the sky, but they had made their camp in a small clearing which allowed for a small slice of the heavens to be viewed. She found the archer, the first constellation her father taught her. She could hear his words echoing in her memory. As the moon rises the archer’s arrow will always fly toward Peidra. Remember that if you ever become lost and you will find your way home. Now as she gazed up at the archer she doubted if she would ever see her home again, for she had a sinking feeling that she would never leave this wood. She heard Ogden and Eithne arguing at the perimeter of the camp but she pretended she didn’t hear them and continued to gaze at the heavens.
They had struck a slow pace through the woods, never wandering far from the river. All the while Ogden urged Eithne to speed up their progress but the queen wanted Danica and Elias to be able to catch them and so set a middling tempo for their march. Bryn heard a shuffle behind her and turned to find Lar approaching. She patted the log beside her and said, “Have a seat then, biggun.”
The log creaked beneath Lar’s weight. “Nice night.”
“Yessir.” Bryn waited for Lar to get on with what he was about. She had learned long ago that when pressed most men clam up quick as a cricket, but if you gave them silence not a one of them could resist telling you what was on his mind.
“I can’t believe I just let her ride off like that. I’ve never been much good when the chips are down.”
“Nonsense, you big oaf. Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to do them or us a lick of good.”
Lar sighed. “I can’t help thinking of them out there all alone, not knowing if they’re alive or dead. It feels like we’ve just been waiting for the axe to fall since we got in that boat.”
“And the waiting is the hardest part.”
“Especially here. There’s something not quite right about this wood, and now that we’re out of earshot of the river it’s so quiet it’s giving me the creeps.”
Bryn felt the hairs on the nape of her neck rise and a shiver crept up her spine. Lar was right, the woods were entirely too quiet. She had been sure she heard the song of crickets and rustle of nocturnal life before Lar had sidled up, but now a pregnant silence lay across the forest and the air pressed thick and clammy against her skin. A tickle ran up her spine. “How long ago did Blackwell’s men go out to scout the area?” Bryn asked slowly.
“I…” Lar looked at her with a furrowed brow and then glanced around the clearing. “I don’t know.”
“Fetch your sword, Lar.” Lar had many qualities that Bryn found redeemable, but ranking highest among them was his ability to act quickly and without hesitation, as he had done the night of the botched assassination attempt—a characteristic wanting in most men. Without a word, or even a glance to the towering wood, Lar ran toward his bedroll hollering a call to arms in his thunderous baritone.
Blackwell reacted with typical efficiency and soon appeared in the center of the camp with Eithne and sword in hand. “In the center of camp, back to back!” he cried.
Bryn scanned the twilit wood before following Blackwell’s command, wondering if her instincts had led her astray. As she ran toward the circle forming at the camp’s center Ogden screamed and reached a splayed-fingered hand toward her. Acting purely on reflex, she threw herself to the ground and into a somersault. An icy trickle cut up her back as a bolt of fell magic missed her by a hair’s-breath.
She rolled into a half crouch, drawing a dagger from her boot, pivoted on the balls of her feet, and let the dirk f
ly even as she spun about. The fell arcanist went down with her dagger lodged between his throat-guard and chin. “That’s just on loan!” she taunted. “I’ll be needing that back!”
Ogden felt the pressure of seasons of repressed anger and fear push up in his chest, and with an inarticulate cry of challenge he channeled his boiling cauldron of raw emotion and hurled a ball of golden fire into the charging Handsmen. The spellfire detonated in a blast that was twenty feet across, instantly incinerating the two Handsmen in the lead, but the others, having longer to react, either leapt clear or raised energy shields to ward off the flame. He gestured with his other hand, reaching out with his psychokinetic powers. With a flick of his wrist he freed Bryn’s dagger from the dying Handsman’s throat with an arterial spray and sent it spinning toward the brazen red-head.
Bryn snatched the dagger from the air with a wolfish grin. “Thanks, old man. Good to know those robes aren’t just for show.”
The remainder of the two Hands reorganized into a crescent formation and advanced on the queen’s party. Each party numbered seven souls, but the queen’s had two unarmed combatants, Eithne and Phinneas, and lacked ranged firepower other than Ogden’s magic. Acting in unison, the Senestrati pummeled them with volleys of energy bolts swollen with puce, fell power, each the size of a cannon ball.
Ogden’s offensive was short lived for he soon had to turn all of his attention to deflecting the Hand’s arcane assault.
Phinneas provided little help, as offensive, dynamistic manifestations of the arcane was not his specialty. Still, he lent what strength he could to his friend by bolstering Ogden’s magic with his own raw arcane energy, which he passed to the wizard by laying a hand on his shoulder, as if he were performing a healing. Likewise, Bryn’s knowledge of the arcane was primarily limited to utilitarian spells she had picked up from tutors from Arcalum, so she settled for erecting a weak shield around herself and shouting curses at the enemy.
Ogden deflected bolt after bolt. At first his strategy was to reflect them back at his enemies so that they would have to deal with the return fire and thus slow their assault, but many of the returned magic missiles flew wide, and since the Handsman presented a syncopated volley, he soon lost ground.
The sinking realization crept over him that he could not hold off the Senestrati indefinitely. Their only chance lay in scattering. Summoning the remaining dregs of his power, he focused on the primary shield he had constructed and willed it to widen, fueling his effort with the wild gestalt of emotion that tore through him. After the final expulsion of his power a near diaphanous wall of energy, peppered with scintillating sparkles, lay from one side of the clearing to the other. The wall wouldn’t withstand the Scarlet Hand indefinitely but he prayed it would buy them the precious time they needed to escape.
“We have to take to the deep wood!” Ogden cried. “Break them up, minimize their ranged attacks!”
“Bryn, take the queen and flee, we’ll hold them off at the perimeter,” Blackwell roared.
Bryn required no more encouragement and grabbed her sheet-white cousin by the arm and sprinted for the treeline. Yet, nor did the Hand squander a moment either, for as soon as the wall went up they split off into two man teams so as to run around it while the other three held fast and pummeled Ogden’s wall with blasts of fell magic.
Chapter 34
Fever’s Break
How can we be home? Am I a ghost, haunting my own room? Elias looked about his modest bedroom, glad to see his childhood home once more, but it was coupled with the bitter sting of having failed in his quest.
Don’t look at me, Padraic said coyly, though his lips didn’t move. Elias realized communicating in spirit would take a little getting used to. You took us here, Elias, and you did so for a reason. The question is why.
Elias began to form a retort in his mind when the room began to change. Furniture rearranged in an instant and he realized that he looked upon his bedchamber as it was when he was a child. He then saw himself as a boy of about Seven’s age propped up in bed with a tattered book resting on his chest. His mother sat by his side on the edge of the bed.
She looks so young, Elias thought. He could feel his father smile beside him.
She always seemed that way to me. Edora had the aspect of the forever young, the ever new, because of her joyful, vibrant nature—like a wood sylph.
Have we traveled back in time?
In a manner of speaking. We are seeing the echo of what once was. Listen.
“Did you fall asleep reading a scary story and have a bad dream?” his mother asked Elias’s child self.
The boy looked up at his mother with dark, saucer eyes. His bottom lip trembled. “There’s a bad man in the corner watching me when I’m trying to sleep. I’m afraid of him.”
Edora Duana pushed back a shock of black-cherry hair and turned to face the far corner. She turned back to Elias. “That poor lost soul?” Elias nodded and his mother rolled her eyes. “Sheesh. He’s nothing to be afraid of. Do you know why?” Little Elias shook his head. “I’ll tell you why, silly. Deep in here—” she poked his sternum “—is a little white light and it’s part of every other light in the whole universe, and it’s inside everyone.”
“Even the bad man has one?”
“Even him, he’s just forgotten it’s there. Now, whenever you feel afraid or in danger, Elias, you let that white light of yours shine, and nothing can hurt you. Not a thing. So let that little light shine, let it push right out of you.”
Elias’s child self looked down at his chest with his brow furrowed. “I don’t see anything.”
Edora poked his nose. “Don’t worry, you will one day. For now all you need to know is that it’s there. Picture it in your head, pushing out of you and protecting you whenever you have need of it.”
With his spectral senses, Elias peered close at his mother and his child self. Atop the boy’s sternum sat a pinprick of white light, feeble, like the flicker of a tea-candle. He looked to his mother and saw a rose-pink nimbus surround her, bright as the corona of the sun, but at its center, at her bosom, it burned a brilliant white, unadulterated by the barest scintilla of any other color. Elias turned his gaze to his center and found that his own flickering light had blossomed from a tiny candle flame to a fist sized star-burst.
Your light has grown, son, Padraic said to him telepathically. Now it’s time to put it to use, for even the smallest flame can turn back the night.
The perimeter of the room dimmed until all Elias could perceive was his mother and her star-bright aura. Edora Duana turned to face the spectral Elias and Padraic. She fixed her cat-like, jade eyes on Elias. “The seed of everything you have ever needed to know is buried in the primal firmament of your soul. You need never look anywhere else, for the doorway to the infinite is inside each of us.”
At those words the vision abruptly vanished as if it never was and Elias found himself in his bedroom as he had left it before he had begun his long journey with his father’s sword in hand. Elias felt himself trembling in his center and it felt as if something inexpressibly fast spun about him, as if he were at the center of a gyroscope. He looked at his body and saw that he was clothed in his full marshal regalia, down to boots and gloves.
Are you ready to return? Padraic Duana asked.
Elias looked up at his father’s beaming face with a thousand questions whirling through his mind, but his mother’s words yet echoed in his head and so he said, simply, Yes.
Good, because time is different here, and your sister sorely needs you.
†
Danica passed into a dark, colorless world inhabited only by shades of grey. Disenfranchised shapes and forms swam around her like demon fish in a sea of ash.
She still felt like she had a body of sorts, but it was airy, almost without substance, and was presently being dragged away in an ethereal tide. She felt a resistance in her bosom and saw that a flickering silver cord pulled taut against her sternum. She knew instinctively that the sil
ver cord tied her spirit to her body. As she focused on the cord it grew more substantial and as she wrapped her fingers about it, it felt solid and thrummed with primordial power.
She pulled on the cord and found herself slowly making ground against the current of other spirits and the bizarre, amorphous shapes that swirled about her in a spectral tide. She rapidly gained momentum and as she sped along the length of the silver cord the dark world grew brighter and she felt denser in her core. Then she passed through a kind of membrane composed of a white film that felt somehow sticky and airy at the same time.
Danica found herself back in the land of the living—so to speak. She hovered behind her corporeal body, which crouched some few feet away, held fast by the silver cord, which she couldn’t see as clearly but could still acutely sense. She felt a chill run through her soul as her body half turned and transfixed her with alien eyes. To look upon one’s body in three dimensions was bizarre enough, but to see it animated, possessed, by her nemesis was almost more than she could bear.
“So, you’ve returned,” Slade said with her own tongue. “I was hoping you would. Perhaps in time we can learn to share your body together, love, but first there is work to do.”
Danica trailed behind her body as Slade snuck up upon his first victim, balanced on the balls of her feet. The hapless sentry never sensed his impending death as Slade slid a dagger into a kidney and another between two vertebrae at the top of his spine and into his skull. He died on his feet, not so much as whimpering. “Opening with a slow thrust to the kidney is always a prudent choice,” Slade said in a whisper that only she, with her earless senses, could hear. “The pain is so exquisite that your target will instantly go into shock with nary a cry.”
Spare me your rhetoric and get on with it, Danica said.
Slade took her words to heart and sped around the clearing in small, quick steps. He soon dispatched the remaining three sentries in the same fashion as the first, leaving six, two who sat idly by the fire and four who slept. The two by the fire sat opposite each other, which would make taking them by surprise difficult and flanking them both an impossibility. Slade settled for creeping to the edge of the firelight in a deep crouch, dropping to a knee, and after a deep inhale threw both daggers at once. Each sunk to the hilt in its intended target’s throat. One died at once, his spinal cord severed, but the other, though mortally wounded, lurched to his feet with a wet gurgle and kicked over the open saddle bags at his feet, creating a clamor.
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 38