Slade’s head bumped against the door and he desperately tried to stall as he groped for the doorknob. “What—what did you remember?”
Duana fixed his oil-fire eyes, which had grown impossibly wide, upon him. “Who I am,” he said. He reached down, grabbing Slade by the wrist as he feebly tried to slap his hand away, and pulled him to his feet…
…and into the center of a circle of stones that he was all too familiar with. Duana had vanished along with the bedroom, leaving Slade alone in the warding circle. Not one to waste time on indecision, he willed himself across the perimeter of the circle, but as he crossed it the runes etched into the stones emitted a brilliant, thrumming white light and with concussive force repelled him as easily as a window a fly. The images of the runes formed in midair above the stones drawn in white fire, handily creating an energetic wall that bound him fast. The very rune-circle on the astral plane that had kept Danica from him for so long now served as his prison. Somehow this safe haven had been energetically linked to the Duana siblings, bound to them, as an enduring means of protection, but such a thing defied the laws of magic.
“The laws that keep you, perhaps,” whispered a woman’s voice from beyond the circle.
“Forgive me for allowing you that moment of hope only to snatch it away,” said Elias who materialized at the outside edge of the circle, “but I couldn’t resist.”
“You’ll get no groveling from me,” Slade spat. “I’ve already ruined your tidy life and spoiled your sister forever. I will rest contentedly in this prison with that knowledge.”
“You are not to remain here,” Elias said, “it is time for you to depart.”
“You aim to free me, fool? I warn you—once I am free from your snare I will give you no quarter. Where in tarnation do you plan to take me?”
“Into the light,” Elias said with a vague smile.
Slade withdrew into himself. “That’s impossible, I serve another master.”
“You are beyond his reach now.” Elias was joined by a multitude of other beings: a woman of surpassing beauty who had Danica’s eyes; Padraic Duana free of the grey hair and age lines he wore when Slade crossed swords with him; a man in white robes with shoulder length golden hair clothed in a like colored aura; Elias’s fair-haired betrothed; a middle-aged man who wore a platinum circlet and purple tunic embossed with the heraldry of house Denar, and countless other shining beings.
Slade hated himself for the quaver in his voice. “Where is it you are sending me?”
“To a place where all sins, even yours, are forgiven,” said the woman with Danica’s eyes.
“But where all debts are paid,” thundered Elias.
“In full,” said Padraic Duana, with something almost like pity in his eyes.
Elias raised his hand and from his palm shot a beam of white light, so pristine that it was not unadulterated by even a single scintilla of any color or impurity. The beam struck Slade in his center and he screamed as warmth radiated through his being and his inherent density began to scatter. Then the host that stood with Elias joined him, and a wash of white light erupted in the center of the circle and when it cleared Slade Kezia was gone.
Elias passed into the circle and approached the silver pool in its center. He turned back and faced the spirits that had stood with him. His parents and Asa approached. “It is time for you to return,” Padraic said.
“I am ready,” Elias said.
“You will forget much of what you have learned when you return to your body,” his mother said, “but you will know what must be done when the time comes. Tarry not, your sister is minding your body. Now, go.”
Elias’s attention lingered on Asa. “Asa...” he began, “there is so much to say.”
Asa’s eyes which had been so guileless in life now burned with an ageless, depthless fire. “I know your heart, Elias Duana,” she said, “but there is no time.”
“This is not goodbye,” Padraic said, “we are with you always.”
After one final look Elias plunged into the silver pool. No white tunnel awaited him, or an empty stretch of space, he simply shifted and then felt the ground beneath him, felt the density of his corporeal form around him once more. His body, however, seemed to forget him and would not obey his commands. He focused on wiggling his fingers and toes, and after an arduous, interminable amount of time, sensation abruptly rushed back to him. Elias’s eyes opened.
He sat up and, like a dream fleeting upon waking, the details of his experiences outside his body had already begun to fade. Flashes of brilliant color filled his mind’s-eye and images of his parents, Asa, and his battle with Slade flickered then winked out with each blink of his eyes. His equilibrium returned to him momentarily, as if he had never been gone in the first place. His first thought was of Danica.
He found her unmoving by his side, sprawled face-down. His heart stuttered. Had he failed when he drove Slade from her body? Had he been too late? He reached a tremulous hand toward her and took her by the shoulder. She felt warm to the touch, radiating a near preternatural heat. He gave her a gentle shake and called her name.
Danica’s eyes snapped open. “I thought I lost you.”
“Then we’re both happily surprised,” Elias said.
“I had the strangest fever.”
Elias chuckled. “Me too.”
Danica sat up. “I saw Mom, but it all seems so hazy now. Was it a dream?”
“If it was then it was one we shared, because I saw her too.”
Danica nodded. After the strange circumstances of the last few months she could believe almost anything. She stood and brushed herself off. “We have work to do don’t we?”
Elias fixed his eyes upon hers and in them he saw that old, familiar glint once again. “Yes,” he said, “yes we do.”
Chapter 36
Return to Peidra
Bryn led Eithne into the deep wood. Low hanging branches reached for her with brittle fingers. Brambles and brush sounded their haphazard escape. All the while Bryn felt the dark press of the Scarlet Hand closing in on her, the cold fury of their fell power.
A bolt of black fire crashed into a tree at her left and showered her with tree pulp and scalding sap. She pulled Eithne into the relative cover of a nearby gully. The cousins stumbled down the treacherous slope. An explosion of earth disoriented them as a ball of cold flame erupted on the ground before them. Eithne went down even as Bryn felt the icy fist of a missile of fell magic punch her in the small of the back. She fell atop Eithne, to shield her cousin and her queen.
Bryn lay still atop Eithne as the sound of running boots drew near. The numbing cold of the Handsman’s spell spread through her left shoulder and down her arm, rendering the limb useless and draining what strength remained to her. She slid her good hand beneath her body and waited, measuring each agonizing second with the frantic beat of her heart.
The footsteps stopped.
After an impossible moment of dead silence Bryn felt a booted foot nudge her, and she exploded into action. She heaved her legs beneath her, even as she drew a dagger and rolled into the legs of the man that kicked her. He went down and she went to work with the dagger, burying it in his groin. The Handsman reacted with alarming speed despite his mortal predicament and grabbed her by the wrist.
Eithne, recovered, scrambled over Bryn and fell on him, stabbing through his leather armor with a stiletto she produced from her skirts. The downed Handsman coughed a spray of blood and went still, but his companion dove at the queen and pinned her to the ground. Bryn looked up to see a handful of the enemy close in on them in a crescent formation. “Surrender,” said one of them. “You are outnumbered and weaponless.”
She spit a clot of blood, for her lip had split against her teeth when she fell. She looked down at the dead man beneath her and then her cousin who railed in vain against her captor. She pulled her dagger from the guts of the dead man. “Never,” she said.
With a final cry of protest Bryn Denar, cousin to the queen, he
ir to the throne of Galacia, sprang from the ground and charged the enemies of her kingdom. She had the satisfaction of seeing the surprise in the eyes of the last man to taste of her steel before the world went black.
†
“How long?” asked Danica.
Elias stood from his crouch. “Based on the tracks, a battle was fought here…” he sighed as he scanned the clearing. “I’d say at least three days ago. Maybe five.”
“Britches,” Danica cursed. “We’ll never make it in time.”
“Not necessarily. Did you find any other bodies in the woods?”
“Just Blackwell’s two men, and the four of the enemy.”
Elias grunted. “That means they took the rest of our party captive.”
“I can well imagine what sport Mirengi has in mind.”
“Indeed, but this bodes well for us. We both have unburdened mounts and can travel fast, while they outnumber their horses. The tracks in the woods suggest the enemy had about ten horses, which makes sense—two full hands. Even counting the horses from the four men they lost, they took seven prisoners, which means they have to ride three horses with two passengers.”
Danica grinned. “And bound prisoners don’t ride well. Hot damn. We just might make it back to Peidra before Mirengi can enact his ritual.”
Elias found himself returning her wolfish grin. It felt good to have his Danica back. “Two Duanas against a walled palace populated by an army of assassins and fell wizards.”
“Sounds like fair odds to me.”
Elias’s grin widened. “My sentiments exactly.”
†
Sarad ground his teeth. “Show to me Remis Kant!” he hissed yet again. The surface of the scrying mirror warped and wavered as he poured his magic into it, but he saw only a black pane of glass. He suppressed the urge to throw the mirror against the wall.
Sarad took a steadying breath and readjusted his seat in the spell-circle. He focused his will back onto the mirror, deciding on a different tactic. “Show me where Remis Kant was when we last communicated with each other, three days ago.”
An image formed instantly as if a doorway had swung open through a black wormhole in the mirror. Sarad cursed at what he saw. Bodies lay strewn over the campsite, some twisted in horrific poses, others laying as if in repose, weapons undrawn—the work of a master assassin. The earth was colored brown in wide patches from the days old spill of congealed blood.
A cold knowing crept over Sarad Mirengi—the Duana siblings had reunited and they came for him.
I told you letting Duana go would prove your undoing.
“Silence, Talinus,” Sarad screamed as he surged to his feet. He spun about, searching for the imp.
“My Lord?”
Sarad turned to the man that stood in the corner of his study, a slight Aradurian who wore the robes of the Hand. “Who in the nine hells are you?”
The man arched an eyebrow. “Achrin—your new attendant, my Lord.” When Sarad but glared at him, he licked his lips and cleared his throat. “My Lord, Talinus is dead.”
“Leave me, unless you are fixing to join him.”
Achrin wasted no time in complying and left Sarad alone with his black mood and his black thoughts.
†
Elias and Danica pressed Brand and Comet to their utmost and thundered down the river bank, for it was the most direct and least challenging route. Although they only burdened their mounts with the scant supplies they took from Elias’s captors, the horses had been sorely taxed in the last week and their strength and stamina began to fail on the duo’s second day out from the scene of their companions’ last stand.
“We can’t push them much more,” Elias said. He eased Brand to a stop and dismounted. “He’s been favoring his left foreleg. His shoe looks clean. It might be a cramp.”
“A fracture, I think,” Danica said and joined Elias by the edge of the water.
“What makes you say that?”
Danica shrugged. “I dunno. Just feels right.” She placed a hand on Brand’s leg. In her mind’s-eye she saw an image of a cracked radius from one of her textbooks. Her hand grew hot and Brand swung his head about to fix an eye on her.
Elias watched as Danica’s eyes went glassy and distant. When she lifted her hand from Brand he, not known for affection, nuzzled her throat. Danica giggled and patted him playfully on the muzzle. When she withdrew, Brand tested his injured foreleg and then danced about, eager to be off as if he had a two days’ rest. “How on earth did you do that,” Elias said. “It’s like he’s a new horse.”
“Just came naturally.” Danica affected a neutral tone, but Elias could read in her expression that she was a puzzled as he.
“Well, why don’t you naturally do it to Comet too, and then we can be off.”
Later as they took a brief rest Elias said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Have you now,” Danica said with a wry grin. “Dangerous business that, but I knew you’d get around to it one of these days.”
Elias chuckled despite himself. “When Mirengi held me captive, a fever took me and I had strange visions.” Danica’s grin evaporated and she leaned forward, her expression serious. “In one of them I saw myself as a boy and I was with Dad.” Elias hesitated.
“Go on then,” Danica urged.
“I was in some kind of trance, like when Phinneas hypnotized you. Dad was telling me things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Self defense and tactical strategies, and how to use the arcane.”
“How old were you?” asked Danica, incredulous.
“I don’t know. Small. Maybe ten.”
“You think this actually happened?”
“I do.” Elias looked pointedly at Danica’s hands. “I think that, in a way, Dad programmed us. He hypnotized us and then trained us in the arcane so that we would have the knowledge of magic if we ever needed it, but he buried it deep in our subconscious minds so that we wouldn’t endanger ourselves or draw attention by being consciously aware of it.”
“Britches,” Danica breathed. “Brilliant. Devilish, but brilliant.”
“And that’s not all.”
“There’s more?” Danica whispered, unsure if she could handle any more of her brother’s revelations at present.
“That day at the manor, before Dad sent the carriage off so that he could stay behind and hold off Slade, he spoke a single word in the tongue of the ancients. I’ve thought up until now that he cast a simple cantrip to spook the horses.”
“As if they needed any help.”
“Granted. However, now I think that he released the dam, opened up a door in us, so that our abilities would begin to manifest. After that is when things began to change for me. Before I just thought it was the circumstances, the sword, but it’s more than that. I think the same thing happened to you…”
“You can say it—but I fell under Slade’s power and it tainted me.”
“We are beyond Slade now. That shadow has been lifted.”
“Yes,” Danica said with a slight narrowing of her eyes, “yes it has.”
A silence fell between them and they each ruminated upon the strange circumstances that had led them this far, and the final and most trying leg of their journey, which yet lay ahead. At last, Danica said, “It grows dark.”
Elias reached for his saddle bag. “The matches are wet,” he sighed. He considered the torch in his hand a moment and held his hand over the oilcloth. He felt energy collecting in his splayed hand. He waited until it coalesced into a sphere that shimmered and warped the air and then willed it life. A jet of flame erupted from the torch, washing the riverbank in an orange glow.
“Well then,” Danica observed, “you may be on to something after all. At the very least, if we make it back home, imagine the bundle we’ll save on matches and flint and steel with you around.”
Thanks to Danica the horses enjoyed renewed vigor and they soon recouped the time they lost, and then some. They cleared the Renwood
on their fourth day in the saddle and struck across the plains toward Peidra.
When the pace allowed they made idle conversation, as they made an unspoken agreement to table the topic of their perilous mission to thwart the Scarlet Hand and rescue their companions. Danica filled Elias in on the goings-on of Academy life, which she had not had the opportunity to discuss with him since her return home at Midsummer’s. For his part, Elias filled the miles with the latest scuttlebutt from Knoll Creek—at least what had rated as the current talk of the day when they left their childhood home some two months ago.
By week’s end they approached Peidra through the Hartwood. While Elias did not doubt that his fieldcraft fell short in comparison to the enemy, he felt reasonably sure he could conceal them whilst under the cover of the wood he had grown familiar with in his time at the palace. Beyond the Hartwood was another matter, for there lay an open tract of land some two miles long between the tree line and the postern gates of Lucerne Palace.
As chance would have it, Elias found himself confronted with a familiar sight, and the scene of one of the last happy memories he counted before the night of his capture by Mirengi. A wistful smile stole across his features as he thought of Bryn and the way the late summer sunlight had caught in her hair.
“Look at that wytchwood,” Danica said after a whistle. “There’s one back home in Lurkwood, thought not this impressive. I’m sure Mom took me there once when I was a girl.”
“There’s a tree in the royal private gardens that has the look of a wytchwood as well.”
“Really? I’m sure I would have noticed it. Bryn took me there once.”
“He’s quite correct,” said a gravelly, disembodied voice, “though it would pass the notice of all but the most observant, concealed as it is by a spell of obfuscation.”
Elias drew his sword at once and dropped into a fighting crouch. Danica took up a position at his back and scanned the depth of the woods, short-sword naked in her hand.
“Be at peace, Marshal, for I mean you no harm,” said the voice.
“If you would be a friend, then show yourself,” Elias retorted.
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 40