As Slade well knew, the four who were fast in their bedrolls had been expertly trained to react instantly to any alarm even from out of a deep sleep. They leapt to their feet, weapons in hand, and fell into a diamond formation. By then Slade had reached the fire and the dying man who had raised the alarm. He pulled the dagger from the fountaining wound, and drew Danica’s short-sword. “Hallo, dear brothers,” Slade purred, “time for a little fun.” Then he did what they would least suspect, and charged.
As he closed in on them Slade swung his short-sword in an underhand swing and a wave of negative energy swept along the earth. The Hand was utterly unprepared to have their own magic used against them, and the two in the front facing corner of the diamond were unable to muster an arcane defense before being consumed by the rushing tongues of fell flame. The spell detonated in a puce blast with a diameter of some ten feet, but the men in the back rank were able to dive to safety.
By the time the remaining men of the Hand rolled to their feet, Danica watched, at once aghast and mesmerized, as her body leapt over the cold conflagration with an inhuman bound and engaged the enemy. Slade was an expert swordsman and controlled her athletic body with both panache and ferocity, but his adversaries were blade masters as well. Danica did not doubt that he could have dispatched the hand from afar with his not inconsiderable knowledge of the fell arts, but his rapacious hunger for blood could only find satisfaction in the close, intimate kill. She prayed that this flaw would not be their undoing.
Slade and his adversaries exchanged a flurry of blows, steel ringing on steel with arcanely charged sparks as each combatant funneled his magic into his blade. Slade used her body and sword well, knowing that neither was the equal of his opponents in sheer strength, so he slithered around their heavy scimitar blows, short-sword snaking through the scant holes afforded in their tight fighting style. Slade continued to dance on her legs, his footwork the rival of any Phyrian ballerina, and after a minute of pitched battle his adversaries bled from a dozen thin, shallow cuts, which far from mortal, and indeed stitchable by any respectable goodwife, each sapped a little of their ebbing strength, and taxed their resolve.
Presently Slade found the opening he awaited when one of his adversaries rolled an ankle and took a lurching step to regain his balance. As his scimitar dipped Slade lunged high and ran him through a finger’s-breadth below his sternum. Behind you! Danica cried, but Slade required no warning, having anticipated the remaining swordsman. He left the short-sword in the impaled man and threw Danica’s body to the earth, handily ducking the scimitar-blow from behind, and reverse somersaulted through his legs and into a flanking position. Danica watched, horrified, as her hand lashed out, encased in an aureole of bruise-colored fell magic, and punched through the back of the remaining swordsman’s neck in an explosion of gore. If she had a body she would have shivered.
“That was bracing, wouldn’t you say?” Slade said around a vulpine grin. “Although I am afraid that I’ve soaked through your breeches, and not just because of the exertion.”
You disgust me, Danica said as a wave of revulsion rolled over her.
“Just glad to be back among the living is all.” Slade smoothed her hands over her hips and sighed. “I could get used to this.”
Danica ignored him, though she fumed to see him handle her body so, with his smug expression plastered on her face. Get moving, Slade, even now Elias is slipping away. Remember our bargain.
“Gladly. I can’t wait until he wakes to find me—” he winked “—well, to find me inside of you.” Slade jogged to Elias’s resting spot by the fire. He lay bundled to the chin in blankets, ashen-faced and clammy. Slade took a knee by his side, pulled back his blankets, and laid a hand on his sternum. “I’ll need your help. You’ll have to come back into your body to have power over the physical world.”
But how? You’re in there now.
“We’ll have to cohabitate. Look. Focus on the back of your neck. You don’t have eyes in your present form, you’re just accustomed to seeing the world in a certain way. You are able to perceive reality with different senses. At the back of your neck where your spine meets your skull there is a spinning disk of energy. See it. Feel it. Enter your body through there.”
Danica drew close to her body and peered at the back of her neck, narrowing the focus of her sight. The forest grew indistinct as if someone had dropped a gossamer drape over the entire world. She saw a brick-red wheel of energy spinning at the base of her skull. She felt herself drawn toward the miniature vortex and the silver cord grew taut, pulling her in as she neared it. Her consciousness spun in kind as she fell into the vortex and back into her body.
†
Elias looked down onto his body, at first elated to see that Danica was alive and had found him. His joy proved short lived, however, for he soon perceived a crackling black cloud of energy swirling about her. What’s happened to her?
Slade has possessed her, Padraic said, the sound of his voice grim in Elias’s mind. It is his taint on her aura that you see, for their energy fields have merged.
How is this possible?
He has been reaching her in her dreams for some time, but now she’s lowered her natural defenses and let him possess her body.
Why on earth would she do such a thing?
To save you. She knew she didn’t have the strength to defeat so many single-handedly, so she struck a bargain with him to defeat your enemies, with control over her physical body the price.
How do you know this?
I saw that it was to happen.
Yet you did nothing to prevent it?
No, because I also saw what happens next.
Elias bent all of his will onto Danica and saw the astral imprint of Slade’s form overlapping her body. The psychotic fiend had stolen almost everything from them in life, and he was damned if he was going to let him harry them from the other side as well. I won’t let him have her. Not this time.
Padraic’s eyes glimmered like black coals. Just so.
A nimbus of green light, white at its center, encased Danica’s hand as she pressed it to his chest. The glow rapidly spread to cover the entirety of his body. He became at once aware of two things: first, that he was being drawn back toward his body, and, second, that he felt the weight of many eyes upon him, and perceived many vague shades occupying the clearing.
He resisted the pull to return to his body as a tumult of emotion tore through him. The thought of Slade, his ultimate nemesis, returned from the land of the dead to steal the last remnant of his family was more than he could bear, and under the weight of that single thought something broke in him. The inarticulate rage that had burned in him for months spent itself in that moment, and from the ash of that inferno something much stronger arose, a stone-quiet, immutable resolve. For the first time he found himself free from the ever spinning maelstrom of his thoughts and found a quiet, still place in his mind.
He appealed then to the God that had eluded him all his life, to his mother, to Asa, to his ancestors and those that had gone before him and worn the shield of the Marshal, and finally he called upon his own magic, to any shred of grace and power that might dwell within him. A profound strength and energy surged through him and poured from his sternum, which he perceived as deep purple flame that blossomed to cocoon his entire being.
His father’s voice echoed in his head. What you see now is the mantle of your own power. It is the heritage of the wizard untainted by the pall of fear, hatred, or anger like that of the Senestrati, for it is not those black emotions but another force entirely that moves you now.
Again Elias felt the pull toward his body and again he resisted, until the pressure became too much to bear and he surrendered, using the pent up force to slingshot past his body and into Danica’s.
He passed partway into Danica’s body before an iron force pulled him back. He became aware of a shimmering silver cord connecting his spirit body back to his physical, which lay between him and Danica. He cursed him
self, as he intuitively grasped the function of the cord, a knowing that came to him like a long-forgotten memory.
“Fool,” Danica sneered, and as Elias looked upon her face he could see the shadowy aspect of Slade superimposed over her features. “You thought to force me out of her, but you are not dead. You are yet bound to your own body, and thus cannot occupy another. You have lost this time, boy. You will live, as will I—in your dearest sister’s body. Through her I will wield a power more terrible than Mirengi has ever dreamed.”
Elias was jerked back toward his body as Slade, through Danica, poured healing magic into him. He felt Danica’s spirit screaming out, struggling against Slade as the fell wizard siphoned off her magic, her energy. Elias held up his spirit-hand and willed energy into it. I think not. His hand burned with purple flame and he chopped down sharply, severing the silver cord that bound him to his body.
A din of voices screamed as one as Elias shot into Danica and tore Slade’s spirit from her body in a resounding concussion.
†
Danica inhaled sharply as she found herself back in her body. The world seemed less bright, but she could feel her fingers and toes, the pull of gravity and the earth about her once more. She felt at peace to be whole again, save for the alien presence in her mind. Her free hand shot up and slapped her in the face.
Concentrate! Slade’s voice whispered in her mind. He hasn’t long.
“What do I do?”
“Remember your lessons with that old fool, Phinneas,” Slade growled, this time through her own mouth. It was a most peculiar sensation to have someone else talking to you through your own mouth. “Surrender your magic to his body. Let the energy move through your hand. The healing power in you is drawn to disease like a magnet—just get your mind out of the way so that it can pass into him.”
As soon as she complied she found that her autonomy had failed, as her awareness was drawn back and settled somewhere behind her eyes, where she was free to look out on the world and feel a vague connection to her body though she was unable to exert any control over it. Danica would forever look back upon this experience of being a prisoner in her own body as the most arcane of tortures, unbearable even for a few minutes. She had no doubt that sharing a body with Slade would have crushed her psyche within a matter of days, if not hours.
That, however, was not her fate. For she presently saw a purple cloud of energy descend upon her—a ferocious, unearthly light like nothing she had ever seen. She felt Slade’s despair at once as his words fell from her lips, rising into a rapid crescendo as the purple cloud rebounded, gathered power, and then passed into her.
She reeled at the force of the impact, though the energy was ethereal and passed right through her body. Motes of light danced about her and then winked out one by one. She looked down at Elias to see that color had returned to his face and he appeared to be breathing easily. She made to lift her hand from his chest and investigate what had happened, when a voice sounded her mind.
No! it cried.
She kept her hand fast on Elias’s sternum and looked up to see her mother’s spirit kneeling on Elias’s other side, her spectral hand laid on his crown.
Elias has severed his silver cord so that he could enter your body and drive Slade’s spirit from you.
Danica, panic stricken, shifted on her haunches so that she could stand. “Where are they now?”
Don’t take your hand from him!
Danica froze, for she could sense the necessity in her mother’s tone. “I won’t, but I beg you, tell me what’s happened.”
The spirit empowers the body, child, and without some shred of it present, the body will die. You must wait until Elias’s returns to his body, for if you withdraw your energy from him now he will not have a body to return to.
Danica looked about the clearing and found it empty. “Where have they gone?”
Your brother and Slade have gone to a place between worlds and are even now struggling against each other.
Danica swallowed the lump of fear caught in her throat. Elias had sacrificed himself to spare her a fate worse than death and she was damned if she was going to shirk reciprocation. A quiet resolve stole over her. “How long?”
Edora’s brow knitted. Not very. The body has a kind of consciousness of its own, but it cannot sustain itself for long once the etheric cord has been cut.
“I’ll handle things here. Go help Elias.”
I’m proud of you, Danica.
With that her mother vanished and Danica bent all of her will into keeping her brother alive.
Chapter 35
Spirit Duel
Once the paroxysm of energy and color cleared Elias found himself lying on a patch of summer grass, the yellow glow of the sun warm upon his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt warm. He breathed the scent of southern earth. It all felt real. Almost.
Elias sat up and noticed without surprise that he was at Mayfair Manor. Slade stood on a patch of scorched earth some twenty feet away, the very place his father had died. He looked as he did that day—dressed in black breeches, a black vest, wearing a wolf’s grin, a naked scimitar in hand. “A clever gambit you made in cutting the cord so that you could drive me from her body,” he said, “but we’re in my world now, Elias—a world in which I’ve had much practice, thanks to you. This time it will go as it should have that day. You die here, where your father did.”
Elias stood and found he wore his father’s duster with his sword in hand. He tightened his grip on the braided leather hilt. Slade had gotten every detail correct, down to the red dye of the leather, the exact shade of the scabbard. For all Slade’s accuracy, though, Elias knew it to be an illusion, just as the Senestrati’s power was an illusion, based on smoke and shadow and childhood fears. And like in the schoolyard, the only way to defeat a bully was to stand up to him, tip the momentum in your favor, for when the crowd of onlookers began to cheer for you, you moved faster, punched harder, burned brighter, and then even the mighty could fall, and at the moment Elias had a feeling that there were a great many souls pulling for him, though he could not see them. Yet he also had a hunch that an illusion this well wrought might just be able to cut—even kill.
“Have you nothing to say?”
Elias looked up from his sword and into Slade’s haughty glare. “There is much I would say to you, scourge of mine, had I the time, but I have other battles to fight. So.”
“Straight to combat then, no banter? The duel is a lost art.”
He’s stalling. The thought came to Elias from the quiet of his mind, the deep place beyond instinct and intuition. He knew at once that he had to return to Danica, to his body, and soon. Elias started toward Slade and suddenly the necromancer was on him as if he had stepped through a hole in space.
Elias turned his scimitar without a thought, again reacting from the void. Slade pressed him with a flurry of blows that seemed to issue from different directions simultaneously, his black steel blurring into a crackling semicircle. Elias retreated under Slade’s brutal offensive, managing to parry and evade each slice but unable to riposte or counterattack. Elias felt a crunch under his feet and realized that Slade had maneuvered him onto the blasted patch of earth on which his father had died.
Elias hesitated as he absorbed this fact and Slade, capitalizing fully on his psychological advantage, drew close to the Marshal and came at him with a thunderous, finishing blow. Elias caught the slanting overhand slash on the broad of his blade at the last moment, but Slade had slid inside his defenses and utilizing his superior leverage pressed his scimitar down on Elias in a painstaking contest of strength in which the Marshal steadily lost ground, the forte of Slade’s blade creeping perilously close to his throat.
“How then,” Slade rasped between clenched teeth, “does it feel to die on the same ground as did your father?”
Elias could think only of the impossible burn in his arms as Slade bore down on him until it occurred to him that he didn’t have a body at pr
esent—he had only his thoughts, the contents of his mind. He locked eyes with Slade, who at once appeared insubstantial, composed of shadow. His fatigue melted.
“We’re not where my father died,” Elias said, “we’re in his house.”
Slade recoiled, for his scimitar vanished and he found himself closed in a wood paneled room flickering with orange candlelight. Duana sat in a modest homemade chair by an equally modest bed, and wore a nonchalant expression that stole all the fire from him, for in the Marshal’s bland features an alien intelligence lurked. Slade reached for his power, all the energy he had accumulated since his death, to discover but a few tattered threads remained to him, rather than the deep reservoir that had sustained him since he last crossed swords with Duana. He withdrew further from Duana and pinwheeled through the air as he tripped over something.
“My father’s trunk. It contained his duster and other effects, including the sword for which you lusted with such ardor. The same sword that reaped your destruction.” The Dashin materialized, suspended in midair between them, slowly rotating in a nimbus of brilliant cerulean light. “Your power is quite beyond you now.”
Slade scrambled away on his back, crabbing toward the closed door and his only means of egress. Elias stood. The Marshal took a slow step toward him, then another, only he wasn’t the same man. Duana had changed somehow, expanded, his aura star-shine bright. Slade tried to stand but like in a nightmare he couldn’t muster the strength for an invisible weight pressed upon him. “How?”
“I remembered something. Something I was taught as a child as I lay in bed.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 39