“Fairly said.” A distortion, not unlike a heat-wave, wavered in the air at the base of the wytchwood. A squat, winged, and misshapen figure some four feet tall materialized and sketched a mock bow. “Talinus, at your service.”
Chapter 37
Unlikely Bedfellows
“I know you,” Elias said and drew toward Talinus despite his better judgment.
“Indeed,” said the imp with a coy flash of his needlelike teeth.
“When my mind was linked with Mirengi’s, I saw his memory of when he summoned you. He was but a child.”
Talinus tsked. “I told him that was a mistake, letting you inside his head. Yet since it profits us both, I suppose I can’t complain. Elias Duana, I am here to help you.”
“You’ve been with him all this time,” said Elias, bewildered, “yet you would help undo him?”
“Fickle is the pit.”
Danica took a careful step to stand at Elias’s side when she assured herself that the imp wasn’t a decoy. “Do we kill it, brother?”
“That depends,” said Elias, “whether he answers my questions or continues to evade them.”
“Easy, easy, and put that thing away,” said Talinus, indicating Elias’s sword with a nod of his head. “You can’t blame an imp for having a little fun. I so rarely get to socialize these days.”
“He is rather cute,” Danica said. “Can we keep him?”
“He hasn’t shown his former master much loyalty,” said Elias, “I doubt he would treat us any better.”
“Sarad was never my master, not really. My true masters tasked me with keeping an eye on him and his ilk. I let Sarad think he had me under his power, while I collected intelligence.”
“For whom?” asked Danica.
“You’re smarter than that child. Trust me I know. I’ve had an eye on you as well. Two, in fact, as often as I could spare them.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Danica said sweetly, but she took a step toward him, leading with the tip of her sword.
“My, you are a touchy pair, you Duanas. Although, you have been entertaining, so I’ll throw you this, first of many bones: Sarad’s plans have become a danger, even to me and mine. His ritual could very well disturb the natural order of things. It could spell—heh, no pun intended—disaster for us all, as well as your tiny corner of creation.”
“So, your enemy’s enemy and all that,” said Elias.
“To put it bluntly, well, yes. And, you’re not considering the obvious!”
“Which is…” said Elias.
“Sarad was mean to me! I mean really mean to me!” Talinus’s jocular demeanor evaporated, and his eyes narrowed, his tone shifted. “That whore’s son has what’s coming to him.”
“What is it that you’re afraid is going to happen?” asked Danica, her sword, for the moment, forgotten in her hand.
“Oh, it’s not important we get into that. Dimensional rifts, tears in space and time, that sort of thing. Complicated, boring, and frankly we don’t have the time. Suffice to say it could be nasty. Very nasty—and trust me, I know nasty.”
“Very well, then,” Danica said. “Let’s skip to how you can help us.”
“Hold up,” said Elias, “I have another question.”
Talinus rolled his eyes. “Of course you do.”
“If your kind are so concerned about this whole situation, why don’t they step in themselves and do something about it?” Elias asked.
Talinus’s eyes grew round as marbles. “Because you’re the chosen one,” he whispered. When Elias stared at him flatly, Talinus heaved a great sigh. “Sarad never appreciated my deadpan either.”
Elias sheathed his sword and folded his arms. He decided the imp presented no immediate threat to them. He eyed Talinus and waited for him to continue.
“My brethren cannot interfere—at least not directly. There are rules, by which the dark kin are bound. Criminy, you don’t see demons running around the streets having a merry old time, do you? We can’t visit this plane as we please, otherwise there’d be no order, and there always has to be order. There are laws. It’s been that way ever since the Great Divide.
“The Great Divide?” Danica asked.
Talinus growled deep in his throat and contrails of smoke spiraled out of his nostrils. “We don’t have time for all these tangents. Sarad is going to bring his ritual to bear at midnight and we need a plan!”
Elias ignored the imp’s pyrotechnics. “A human acted to bring you here to our world, by summoning you, so you are now free to exert your will without breaking the laws that bind you, is that it?”
“I told Sarad you were smarter than you looked. Simply put, yes. That’s why your wizards are so persnickety about conjuration. If you lose control of something you summon, they’re free to do as they please once they’re here on your plane.” Talinus offered them a toothy smile.
Elias snorted. “Point and case.”
“Indeed, and now that I am out from under Sarad’s thumb I’m free to carry out the will of my kin, which in this case is to help you stop this ritual from culminating.”
Elias exchanged a long look with Danica, who gave him a spare nod. “Very well, Talinus,” Elias said. “What do you propose?”
Talinus’s smile spilt his bestial face in half. “I thought you’d never ask.”
†
The queen covered her mouth. She refused to give her captors the satisfaction of hearing her weep. She pressed her forehead into the cold flagstone of her cell. Her cell. Her Palace. Her home. Yet she knew it was her home no more. She had lost the throne. She had lost Galacia.
Eithne’s thoughts turned to her cousin. Bryn, defiant to the last, had fought harder for her crown than she had. Pinned to the earth she watched, impotent, as Bryn charged to her death. She didn’t even have the breath to scream as the Senestrati’s fell spell stole her cousin’s life. Ragdoll limp, Bryn crumbled to the dirt.
In some ways she supposed Bryn the lucky one. She didn’t have to endure the indignity of being bound, blindfolded, and strapped to the hind of a horse like a human saddlebag. Of the others, she knew only of Lar who bellowed curses like a drunken porter, even after they were ahorse. Shortly after they started out, he was silenced, whether by the gag or the sword she didn’t know.
Whether any of the other party members survived remained unknown to her, for if captured they were jailed in separate cells, and since her arrival yesterday her iron door had opened but once.
Sarad Mirengi entered with silence, and his cowl, drawn tight about him. The white robes of the Prelate had been exchanged for a long hooded tunic and black close fitted breeches—the habit of an assassin. Eithne stood and held herself to her full height. She was damned if the queen of Galacia—the former queen of Galacia, she corrected herself—was going to receive the man that stole her kingdom on her knees like a frightened waif. “Have you come to gloat?” she asked.
Mirengi pulled back his hood and she cringed from the sight of him, despite herself. His hair line had been blasted back several inches, replaced by swollen scar tissue, and blue spider veins branched across the entirety of his face. He fixed his pupil-less, rheumy eyes upon her. “We are beyond such things, you and I. Now, tell me. Where is Elias Duana?”
†
Elias drew the dead man’s cloak close about him and tried to ignore the cold. In silence they awaited the hour when Talinus would take them to the palace. Danica sat with her back to his, and he welcomed the warmth and comfort of her touch.
As the rust colored sunset lit the branches of the wytchwood afire Talinus had said to them, “Do you think it an accident that we met here?”
“What, at this tree?” Elias asked.
“It is more than a mere tree, Marshal,” Talinus said, “as I suspect you have guessed. Do you know why ancient man so feared the wytchwood?”
“I imagine you are about to tell me,” Elias said.
“To the Fey every tree, every plant, has a spirit, but the wytchwood has an a
ctive consciousness. It can communicate.”
“Shiny,” said Danica, “the tree’s got feelings. What of it?”
“It can communicate with any other wytchwood, no matter the distance, sending information through a vast web at will.”
Elias gazed at the behemoth, ebony tree. He let his cartwheeling thoughts recede and his mind entered the void. He saw particles of green light dance about the trunk and branches of the tree, vibrating with such speed as to be all but indiscernible to his senses. The energy field spun about the wytchwood in a vast ellipse that reached about forty feet on either side. “So that’s why wytchwoods always grow in a clearing—they create the clearing.”
Danica snapped her fingers in front of Elias’s eyes. “What are you on about?” she said.
Elias blinked and the vision vanished. “Information isn’t all they can send, is it?”
Talinus clapped his hands. “You are an apt pupil, Marshal. I could teach you many things.”
“I’d hate to see what you charge for tuition,” Elias said.
“Honestly,” Danica said. “I don’t know which of you two to stab first.”
“What we’re talking about, my dear, is teleportation,” said Talinus.
“You’re yanking my bonnet,” Danica said.
“Love to,” Talinus said with a wink. “Maybe later. But business first. The tree can teleport a person from one wytchwood to another.”
“So you’re saying this tree can teleport us directly into the royal gardens?” Danica asked. It sounded like nonsense to her, but considering what she had seen in the last three months she’d being willing to label most anything possible, if not plausible, until proven otherwise.
“But how?” asked Elias.
“Simple. All you have to do is ask. Of course, the White Fey and I aren’t on the best of terms, so you better do the asking.” Elias shot Talinus a quizzical look. The imp offered him a wide, crooked grin. “Go on then.”
Feeling a strange apprehension, Elias approached the tree, one deliberate step after another, keenly aware of the weight of the others’ eyes upon him. He stood at the base of the wytchwood and looked up into its black branches. It had the look of a sycamore, save for the ebony, craggy bark and the red ochre leaves, which appeared unnaturally bright in the failing light. Elias had the impression that he stood beneath an impossibly aged being. He laid his hand on the trunk.
At once images began to flash through his mind. The wytchwood in the Lurkwood in spring, green moss encircling its trunk as far as its branches reached. White flowers, newly bloomed. His mother, barefoot in a white gown. She skipped beneath its canopy, holding hands with a toddling girl.
He saw Lucerne palace from a bird’s-eye view, soaring high above its most ambitious spires. A black cloud seeped from the seams in the marble façade and fissures in the granite beneath. A six sided star drawn in red lines of wavering energy lay superimposed over the palace, but the proportions were asymmetrical.
The open sea. Gray waves lay in all directions. Water sprayed onto the deck. A flock of black birds approached, but they were too large—impossibly large.
A snow laden plain beneath a slate grey sky. Agnar turned about, thigh-deep in the snow, his mouth agape in a silent scream. A drawn shortbow quivered in his hands, the arrow pointed at Elias.
Come back to me, Starchild.
The wintry scene vanished and in his mind’s-eye Elias saw a young woman of surpassing beauty. Her hair was the color of a dark and dewy moss. Her cheekbones sat high on her face beneath murky hazel eyes. Her skin, flawless and smooth, was tinted the palest shade of green and her lips the spare pink of winter rose.
It pleases me that you find me beautiful. This is how your mother saw me.
Elias felt his senses return to his body. He felt the ground beneath his feet, though he yet swayed on them, and the rough surface of the tree beneath his hand. Still the image of the woman was fixed in his mind. Who are you?
I am called Maya. I am glad you have returned. Telepathic communion is new to you. It can be disorienting to humans.
What are you? Elias thought, forming the words slowly in his mind.
Good. It is best to speak slowly in telepathy. Makes it much easier. I am the spirit of this tree.
You are alive then!
So excitable, just like your mother, Maya said, but Elias could hear the smile in her thoughts and, in the image of her he held in his mind, her nose crinkled. Everything is alive, silly boy, merely at differing levels of consciousness.
What was it I saw?
What was, what is, and what may be. You must keep in mind that my kind does not see time in such a linear fashion as you do. Yet do not worry over such things. Focus on the task at hand. Now. You have a question for me?
Yes, thought Elias. We need to get into the palace unseen so that we can stop a great evil. We have been led to believe that you may be able to take us there. Will you help us?
Of course, Starchild. We will transport you. The evil of which you speak is known to us. Yet we cannot permit the Dark Fey passage.
Talinus? Likely that’s for the better. I don’t trust him.
Nor should you. Come to me when the time is right and I will send you and your sister to the royal gardens, to the inner keep of the manlings.
Thank-you, Maya. Elias began to lift his hand from the wytchwood, but turned back. Why do you call me Starchild?
That is what the White Fey have named you. Now, go, and prepare yourself. Rest. Your greatest trial awaits.
Recognizing the dismissal, Elias nodded and took his hand from the tree. He walked back to the others on numb legs. Danica still had her sword in hand, absent-mindedly shaking her leg, while Talinus made a show out of inspecting his talons.
Danica looked up at him expectantly. “What happened?”
“She agreed to take us when we’re ready,” Elias said, “but she won’t transport Talinus.”
Talinus snorted. “No surprise there. There’s not much love lost between my kind and the Fey.”
“Pity,” said Danica. “Although that was rather easy, don’t you think?”
Elias fixed his black eyes upon Talinus, who grew still beneath his glare. “Maya called you a Dark Fey. What do you suppose she meant by that?”
“What, like a fairy?” Danica asked.
Talinus grinned and showed Duana his teeth. “I’ve gone by many names. To the dark skinned people of the southern continents you may well appear a demon, or a God. There’s no accounting for taste, Duana.”
Elias frowned down at Talinus and then exchanged a long look with Danica. He hadn’t expected Talinus to give him a straight answer, but the imp’s reaction told him that he had stumbled upon something. It seemed to Elias that every time he answered one question a half-dozen more sprang up in its place. The more he learned, the more he realized how little he actually knew.
Elias sat down, hugged his legs, drew the cloak he had taken from one of the dead Senestrati about him, and prepared for the long wait until midnight.
†
“He’s alive.” Though fear grasped her tight in its icy fist, Eithne took a step toward Mirengi. “You’ve haven’t found my Marshal yet.”
“It matters not,” said the maimed former Prelate, “he delivered you to me, as I knew he would. That I don’t have him as an audience for the ritual only takes the sugar from my tea.”
“Impatient whelp. You had him in your grasp, but let him go, because you couldn’t wait until your assassins located me on their own. Tell me, do you think the gambit was worth it? Knowing that the man that did this to you is still out there? That he might yet return to foil you?”
Sarad folded his hands and peered at her with his milky, pupilless eyes. “I see what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. You think to goad me into striking you down, so that I can’t perform my ritual. I’m not that vapid. I didn’t masquerade as a cleric for over a decade only to fall prey to the machinations of a child-queen in the final movement. Come
midnight, I will break the spell that your ancestor bound to your bloodline. The magic that endures in you will be undone. House Senestrati will return.”
“You still have enemies. Your masters will not hold this land uncontested.”
“Once the ritual is complete, no force born of this earth can stop us. If you think me unsufferable, be glad that you will not live to bend knee to the power I serve. This kingdom alone will not satisfy them, they will rule the continent. Your Marshal best hurry, backed by more than his sword and his sister. He has six hours before you, and this age are no more.”
†
“It is time,” Talinus said. “I can feel Sarad amassing his power.”
Elias, who still sat with his back to Danica’s, tilted his head back and rested it against hers. The long wait was over. At last he would have either satisfaction, or rest. He had delved into his memories and tried to remember everything his father had taught him, but there was simply too much. He knew that he would have to trust in his instincts and hope that he had learned his lessons well. Like the morning before an important exam at the schoolhouse, pouring over last minute notes did little good. One had to surrender to the fact by that late hour that they either knew the material or did not. Instead Elias sought the void and surrendered to the quiet core of him that he found there.
“Those tattered rags don’t much suit you, Duana,” Talinus said and threw a brown bundle at his feet.
“What’s this?” Elias asked and took a knee before the pile. What he saw took his breath. “Father’s duster.” As he unfolded it he found hidden inside the scabbard for his sword, his father’s shield, and hat. He cast aside the second hand cloak and ill-fitting scimitar scabbard he had procured from a fallen enemy. He looked up at the imp, who wore an almost kindly expression. “How?”
“I’m bred of the old blood. I can pass unseen when I wish to.”
“Thank-you, Talinus.”
“What,” said Danica, “nothing for me?”
“As a matter of fact,” Talinus said and pulled another bundle from nowhere.
Danica took the rope from him. Stiff, thick and some sixteen feet long, the rope had a waxy, fist-sized knot at one end. “One of the ropes that Slade bound me with. I had left this behind.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 41