Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (25 page)

Sarad turned from the window and fixed his eyes on Oberon. “The
Church has no shortage of enemies, as I’m sure you must guess, and Galacia has
always tolerated the Church but resents any explicit political involvement.”

“I require neither a history lesson, nor one in politics,”
Oberon said. “Why is it you have called us here?”

“Geoffery!” Ogressa protested.

“No, no,” Sarad said, “our good Lord Oberon asks valid
questions. Please have a seat.” Sarad sat and poured tea and waited until the
two other men were situated before he continued. “I have tried to make friends
among the court because these are Godless times and I am charged with upholding
and spreading the One God’s light. I, however, am not skilled in the politics
of government, although the Church has its own kind of internal politics—a game
that, frankly, I had to play to attain this position.

“Our Holy Father in Aradur is concerned about the faith and
what will befall the faithful if Galacia falls once and for all to the savage
north. The Shining One does not want Agia to fall back into an age of darkness
like the polytheistic Ittamar or, worse yet, the Godless denizens of the
Zulbrian continent.”

Oberon frowned. “What is it you mean, Prelate?”

Sarad leaned forward and said quietly. “The Shining One is
prepared to lend the full strength of the Church to Galacia. As Prelate of all
Galacia, it falls to me to see our holy father’s will done. I have been in
correspondence with the Shining One, and he feels, as do I, that the queen is
ill suited to rule this country, that her decisions have endangered all of Gods
children in Agia.”

“It is true that she is not a God-fearing woman,” said
Ogressa. “She refuses to wed and produce an heir, as is her duty, and she does
not keep with the word of the book.”

“The Shining one feels as you do,” Sarad said.

Oberon snorted indignantly. “Pardon me, but so that we’re
clear: The Shining One, the holiest of holies, the Prelate of Prelates, wants
you to perform a coup against the crown of Galacia?”

Sarad sat back and took a sip of his tea, peering at Oberon
over the lip of the cup. “Not in so many words. He has, however, instructed me
to aid those who would choose the righteous path.”

“What aid could you possibly give us that is worth the price
of treason—blessing us and healing our wounds when we come to rot in the
dungeon?”

“I can see you don’t place much faith in the One or his
earthly conduits,” Sarad said mildly.

“I say, Oberon—” Ogressa began before Sarad raised a hand
and favored him with a fatherly, indulgent smile.

“No offense was received, Vachel. Lord Oberon is a cunning
man, a man of the world, which is precisely why we need him. The One God has a
plan and he knows that every man has his place, his role to play. Gentlemen,
the church has at its disposal a sacred order of warriors that could grant you
aid.”

“I thought the Knights Justicar were disbanded decades ago,”
Oberon said, keeping his voice neutral, but unable to conceal his interest.

Sarad set his cup down. “No, not disbanded,” said Sarad, “but
in hiding. The Knights Justicar lay in wait for a time when they are most
sorely needed.”

“I would hardly think overthrowing the crown could be
considered holy work,” Oberon said dryly.

“This isn’t about overthrowing the crown,” Sarad said, a
sudden fire in his dark eyes, “but saving His people, the faithful nations,
from butchery by heathens! As the Scrolls say,
by pendant or by pike you
shall see the darkness pushed back
.”

“Think of it, Geoff,” Ogressa said, “this could be what
we’re waiting for! This could be our chance.”

Oberon shot Ogressa an arch look. “Be still, Vachel.” Oberon
found himself looking about the chamber despite himself, at once anxious. Thoughts
whirled through his head: Had anyone noticed him slip out the back of his
townhouse; was he followed; could this be a trap?

Sarad read the man with ease. “Be at peace, Lord Oberon. You
are in safe place. This is not the palace. There are no eavesdroppers or
lurking assassins.” Sarad let his power slip into his voice, and reached his
senses into Oberon’s aura. He did not perform any overt enchantment, but sent
Oberon a suggestion, planted the seed of sedition.

Oberon looked openly at the Prelate and considered the man. He
seemed a genuine sort, but in his twenty-five years at court he had learned
that no one is utterly genuine. Even so, for Mirengi to have attained his
position at such a young age he must be either a legitimate, skilled cleric or
else one very cunning son-of-a-crow. Likely both. He quieted the doubtful voice
in his head. Whatever his intention, the Prelate was right—Eithne was ill
suited for the throne. And the Prelate knew as well as he did that if Eithne
did not leave an heir House Oberon would inherit the crown.

“Even with outside swords it wouldn’t be easy,” said Oberon
at last. “The captain of the guard and the Galacian regulars are loyal to the
queen, as is Mycrum who aside from being acting General practically has a
personal army himself.”

“Yet it’s worth looking into,” Ogressa said. “It can be
done.”

“The queen is smarter than you give her credit for,” Oberon
said.

“Still,” Ogressa said, “It can be done. All we have to do is
make it look like the work of the Ittamar.”

“How exactly will we do that?” Oberon said with a raised
eyebrow.

“Leave that to me, and the Justicars,” Sarad said.

Oberon produced a flask from his coat and quaffed a dram of
whiskey. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in an uncharacteristic
gesture of machismo. “I’d have to take a look at these Knights Justicar.”

“Of course, Lord Oberon,” Sarad said around a crooked smile.
“As it happens the Knights Justicar are en route as we speak.”

The Hartwood

“I’ve arranged an audience with the Prelate for you,”
Bryn said as she mounted Comet.

Elias paused with his foot in a stirrup. “Are you serious?”

Bryn snorted. “When aren’t I?” When Elias only shot her a
flat look she rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m serious. This afternoon, in fact.”

“You mean today, in the afternoon?”

Bryn rolled her eyes again. “Yes, today, in the afternoon. Hurry
up and get into your saddle, Comet is eager to run.”

“He likes you.” Elias mounted Brand and prodded him into a
gentle trot. “Have your contacts uncovered any intelligence on him?”

“He’s squeaky clean. An orphan in Aradur, he was taken in by
the church and raised at the Citadel. He was pious from day one, because of his
childhood on the streets I suppose. That must be why he moved through the ranks
so quickly. Acolytes can’t swear the faith until sixteen but they say he
memorized the scrolls before ten. He is favored by the Shining One. He and the
holy father share a personal correspondence to this day.”

“Britches,” Elias swore softly.

“That’s not all. According to Church record, he participated
in several potential miracles as a child.

“Oh,” said Elias, feeling more foolish by the moment.

“Once, after giving alms to the poor he was saddened and
went to the chapel in the Citadel and prayed when the other clerics were taking
lunch. The statue of Saint Rosemary wept tears of blood. Another time, he
prayed over a room of plague victims, and the next day the whole lot of them
were fit as fiddles. Some survivors say that they saw a halo around him as he
prayed.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Elias groaned.

“Really, Marshal, provincial types are supposed to more
religious.”

Elias responded by nudging Brand into a gallop and, with a
cry, Bryn followed suit. After they had finished giving the horses their head
they had left the palace grounds behind and approached the Hartwood. Elias reined
Brand in and a moment later Bryn joined him, flushed and nearly out of breath. Elias
decided she looked much better, for despite her affectations to the contrary, the
queen’s cousin was under as much pressure as anyone in the kingdom and it had
begun to show in the carefully painted over bags under her eyes, and a handful
of other individually insignificant signs that would escape the notice of all
but the most observant. Brand, perhaps sensing Elias’s whimsy, nudged Comet and
Bryn turned to face his rider and offered him a small smile.

Elias felt a peculiar tugging in his chest and he snapped
his gaze to the Hartwood. “What’s that?” The familiar tingle crept up his spine
and the markings on his forearm grew warm.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Let’s go for a walk in the woods,” Elias said, moved by
some inarticulate urge. Without awaiting a response he nudged Brand to the edge
of the treeline, dismounted, and tied the reigns to a drooping maple. Bemused,
Bryn followed suit and found herself trotting after him on a narrow deer path.

“What do you know of this wood?” Elias asked when she caught
up to him.

“As much as anyone, I suppose,” Bryn said. “It’s an ancient wood,
been here for as long as anyone can remember. It’s the only forest for leagues
and leagues. It’s practically all grassland from here to the coast. The next
closest forest is the Renwood.”

Elias held aside a willow switch, so that Bryn could pass. “Odd,
don’t you think?”

“What? That we’re walking amidst a thick summer wood at
midday with no real trail to speak of, for no particular reason? Naw, seems
perfectly normal to me.”

“Look here, the path widens.” Elias offered Bryn a rueful
smile and sketched a half-bow. Bryn swatted him lightly on his outstretched arm
and then the two companions began to walk down the path side-by-side. “No, I
mean isn’t it odd that amidst a steppe that stretches for hundreds of leagues
in every direction, up springs a towering and ancient wood?”

“I’ve never really thought about it before. Maybe there were
more trees in this area in antiquity, but our ancestors cut them down. There
are, of course, the local legends, but they were really just invented by the
crown to keep commoners from poaching deer and boar.”

“Tell me some.”

“They’re just children’s stories, but as you wish.”

“Many myths contain shreds of truth, or are superstitious
accounts of real events because peoples of the past didn’t understand what they
saw.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Ogden. You’re
beginning to sound like him.”

“My mother actually told me that once when I was still a
child.”

“You’re still a child if you ask me.”

“Alright, bard of the wood, on with the story.”

Bryn took one look at Elias’s nonplussed expression and
sighed. “Some say the Hartwood is haunted by the spirits of the Fey that used
to live here before mankind came to these lands and drove them out. Others say
that the Fey still live here in secret, and if you are in the wood after dark
they’ll come for you. Still others say that the Fey and the kings of old made
some kind of pact and the Fey were allowed this tract of land as their own. Another
version of this last myth is that the wood itself was a gift to the crown for a
pact honored and it magically sprung up amidst the fields of grain. I could go
on all day. There are dozens of stories about the Hartwood.”

“Yet they all have a common thread.”

“That they’re ridiculous?”

“No, the Fey. History may get diluted and perverted over
time, but the seed of truth may yet remain. In all of your myths, the central
figure is the Fey. None of those stories may have any credence, perhaps, but
the one element that endured was the Fey.”

Bryn managed to raise an eyebrow and fix her cobalt eyes on
him without missing a step. “Are you honestly suggesting that faeries are
real?”

“Not in so many words, but who are we to discount the
possibility—especially after the extraordinary things we’ve both seen? The
world is a big place. It’s rather egotistical to think that man is the only
intelligent life in it. Besides,” Elias said as his gaze swept over the trees,
“there’s something strange about this forest. I can’t quite put my finger on
it, but it feels as if someone is watching us.”

“Probably a spooked doe,” Bryn said but she shivered despite
herself. “It is an unusually quiet forest though, isn’t it?”

As if on cue Elias tilted his head. “Did you hear that?”

“What? No.”

“Come on. This way.” Elias trotted off down the path and
veered off into a thicket. Helpless, Bryn stared off at him for a beat and then
set out after him, wondering if the distiller’s wits had abandoned him at last.

Bryn found Elias crouched at the edge of a clearing occupied
by a group of four young men dressed in the costume of the aristocracy. One of
the men was Ronald, Geoffery Oberon’s cousin and attendant, who occupied himself
with idly fencing another youth, while the others practiced their craft on a
gnarled tree with roots as thick as a full grown man. A viscous, burgundy sap
leaked out of rents in the obsidian bark.

Bryn groaned inwardly as Elias stepped into the clearing and
said mildly, “One must never cut down a wytchwood, my mother told me.”

Startled, the foursome turned as one, Ronald nearly tripping
as he turned to face Elias. The two who had busied themselves with desecrating
the tree began to edge toward their companions, swords held in a low guard and
trembling slightly. Ronald recovered his equilibrium first and said, “Ah, what
have we here? the Marshal and the queen’s cozening cousin.” Ronald followed
Elias’s gaze to the tree. “What’s this then? You are the queen’s personal
ranger now as well? I suspect that the devil tree did more damage to their
swords then they to it.”

Elias approached the tree and pretended not to notice as the
other men stiffened and edged away from him. He laid his hand on the tree and
discovered with some surprise that it was warm as a tingle rushed up his arm
and melted over his back. He had seen one other wytchwood in his life, deep in
the Lurkwood with his mother as a child. It remained one of his fondest
memories of her, but try as he might he never could find that tree again, save
but once—the day he crossed swords with Slade.

Elias kicked over a wineskin as he turned to face Ronald. He
retrieved the skin and gave it a whiff. “Minter’s whiskey.”

“You have a good nose, Marshal. I expect you’ll be on your
way, then, to find a clearing of your own so you can enjoy your doxy,” Ronald
said, eliciting hearty guffaws from his friends.

“Not all women are of the same ilk as the insipid sycophants
your cousin keeps,” Bryn said.

“Indeed, some women know their place.”

“I have a mind to teach you what some women know, whelp,”
Bryn said hotly.

“They say you are skilled with a blade, but frankly I don’t
believe the hype,” Ronald retorted with a leer. “Perhaps we should have a fence
then? First blood?” Ronald lofted his rapier and drew circles in the air with
it, to the amusement of his fellows, but Elias read fear in the almost
imperceptible tremble in his knees and the tense set of his shoulders. Elias
knew that his bravado was largely for the benefit of his cronies for he did not
want to lose face in their eyes.

Bryn took a menacing step toward the courtiers, but Elias
continued as if the interruption in their conversation never happened. “It is
said the wytchwood were sacred to the old people, and the berries they grow in
spring have mystic powers.”

“I’ve read of them in mythology books as well, sir,” Ronald
said. “Their wood is too hard to work, their sap poisonous, and nothing grows
around them. They are a cancer in the wood. The old people didn’t understand
their parasitic nature and so they made up stories. Any that remain should be
rooted out.”

Elias took a casual step toward Ronald, stopping at the edge
of the striking distance of his rapier. “Then if I find this tree further
damaged I know who to come looking for.”

“I’m here now, sir,” Ronald said weakly, his choice of words
stronger than his voice, which trembled. His friends fanned out giving him
space.

Elias stepped closer, bringing himself fully within range of
Ronald’s rapier. He felt Bryn sidle up to his side. “Your grip is too loose and
your elbow too stiff,” Elias observed.

Ronald’s eyes flashed down to his sword arm and then back up
to Elias. Sweat beaded on his brow. “I have been instructed by the best Galacia
has to offer, sir.”

“I’m afraid, sir, that you have been misinformed.” The
courtiers laughed and Ronald’s color rose. “A sword is like a bird—hold it too
tight and you choke it, too loose and it flies away.”

“Learn that from your mother too?” Ronald said to the
pleasure of his chorus.

“No. My father. Padraic Duana. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He
forgot more about the sword than most of Galacia’s best will ever know.”

Ronald swallowed. “I’ve heard tell of him. They say he was a
good man.”

“The best,” Elias said around a smile. “I could show you
some of what he taught me.”

“What?” Ronald and Danica said as one, both incredulous.

Elias laughed. “Just because your cousin is a bully it
doesn’t mean that you have to be one as well. The queen’s court already has
enough pricks.” Elias cast a pointed glance at the three youths standing behind
Ronald and began to walk away. He looked over his shoulder when he reached the
edge of the clearing. “I’ll be at the Redshield’s practice field tomorrow at
nine for some exercise if you’d like to join me. And tell your friends to leave
the wytchwood alone. The Fey that live in these woods won’t take kindly to
children of men cutting up their friends.”

No one perceived the hidden presence that watched from the
boughs of the wytchwood.

Once they were out of earshot Bryn said, “Sometimes you say
the damndest things, Duana. Wytchwood? Children of men? And I can’t believe you
offered to teach that snot how to fight. He’s the queen’s enemy, for God’s
sake.”

“It feels like I’ve seen that tree before somewhere. I mean there’s
one in the Lurkwood. I saw it as a child, and again on the day I fought Slade,
but that particular tree seems familiar. There’s a tree remarkably like a
wytchwood in the palace gardens, but the bark is too light. It’s a sycamore, I
think.”

Elias felt Bryn lag behind and he turned to face her and saw
that she had come to a stop and was glaring at him. “That kid is hardly the
enemy. He’s just a misdirected youth wanting for a little attention. His
relation to Oberon is hardly his fault. If we judged each man on his merit and
not his ancestry the world would be a far less bloody place. Now let’s be on. You
have to brief me about my meeting with the Prelate. I don’t want to make a fool
of myself.”

Bryn heaved an exaggerated sigh but walked toward him. “Elias
Duana,” she said, “that’s one thing you’ve never needed any help with.”

“Coming from you, I’m tempted to take that as a complement,”
Elias jibed before turning to lead them back toward the horses when Bryn’s hand
on his arm stopped him.

“Wait a moment,” she said. “I have something for you, and
now’s as good a time as any. It’s just a trifle, really—one that I was sorely
pressed not to use on Ronald.” Bryn met Elias’s eyes briefly and then passed
him a small bundle wrapped in a linen cloth that she produced from a riding
boot.

Elias took the proffered parcel, and not knowing how to
respond said, “I’m always amazed by what you manage to stuff in those boots.”

Bryn arched an eyebrow. “Go on then.”

Elias unwound the linen cloth to reveal a long dagger in the
style Bryn preferred, almost the length of his forearm. The emblem of house
Denar was embossed on the cross-guard and the hilt was finished in moleskin and
platinum wire which wound to a pommel capped with a teardrop diamond. Elias
drew it from a scabbard bejeweled with sapphires and rubies.