Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (30 page)

“My boy, don’t waste your life. You have such promise,”
Sarad said, voicing his sincere thoughts. “Nations have survived coups before. It
was never our intention to eradicate everyone from the old regime. We still
need a country to rule.”

Elias responded by raising his sword and shifting his weight
to the balls of his feet, readying himself for battle.

“You are outnumbered thirteen to one, you cannot hope to
stand against so many.”

“Nevertheless,” Elias said, then charged.

†

Captain Blackwell struggled to contain the fury that
was Danica Duana in his arms and advance at the same time. It proved a losing
battle.

Lar, Phinneas, and Ogden looked on, mutely, each numbed with
shock. A drawn Eithne turned on her heels and slapped Danica, hard.

“How dare you!” Danica spat, hysterical tears pouring into
her mouth and rolling off her chin.

“No,” said Eithne, “How dare you. Your brother sacrificed
himself to save our lives. If you die here his sacrifice is in vain, and I
won’t allow that. We must survive and escape so that we can sow our vengeance. We
cannot let the Scarlet Hand win and House Senestrati return.”

Danica ceased struggling and her eyes became cold green
stones. “Give me your word that you will see them dead. All of them.”

“You have it. The people of Galacia will remember this day. They
will remember the name Elias Duana.”

Bryn watched the interchange numbly. Then a sharp twinge of
pain rose in her chest as what she hadn’t allowed herself to think broke
through the deep silence in her mind that shock had erected—the man she loved
was dead.

†

With a casual flick of his wrist, Sarad cast a white
beam of energy speckled with bruise colored flecks at the charging Elias.

Elias did not slow his charge as he swung his sword to
intercept Sarad’s incinerating attack. He focused his will on the blade, and
instead of absorbing the fell magic, he channeled it, instantly returning the
blast at Sarad even as he surged forward.

Sarad, utterly unprepared for the counter attack, barely
raised his hand in time, his flesh blackening and smoking in exquisite agony as
he struggled to shield himself from the mélange of arcane energy. The force of
his initial attack had gained momentum and strength in magnitudes as Elias had
shaped it with his own power.

With supreme effort, Sarad recycled the magic and pushed it
back at Elias, who advanced now as if wading through quicksand, once again
channeling the raw force through his blade. Thus they were caught in a contest
of wills for long seconds, which felt like hours to the arcanists as the
gravity of their magic warped their perception of time.

It was to remain forever undecided as to who the eventual
victor would have been, for Sarad growled a command between clenched teeth and
his masked minions swarmed Elias.

As they closed, Elias screamed, railing at his impotence. Then
an improbable idea sprang into his mind, but he knew it was his only chance. Dropping
into a deep crouch, he released his grip on his sword and threw himself into a
somersault, driving his shoulder into one of his impending attacker’s legs and
sending him sprawling. The river of magic, his sword in tow, washed past him, over
his head, and rendered two of the flanking Senestrati to ash. As Elias gained
his feet he drew the long, thin dagger Bryn had given him.

Sarad had already recovered and presently directed a bolt of
inky energy at Elias with his fleeting strength, yet he was too late. As the
bolt left his hand he looked down to see an ornate dagger hilt jutting from his
chest, just below his left collar-bone. He touched a hand to the wound and
looked stupidly at the blood on his fingers. Sarad observed with some surprise
that he was on his knees. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was
Elias Duana, also on his knees, blood trickling down his brow, a scorch mark on
his duster, and a wry smile playing across his lips.

Talinus, immensely pleased with himself that his gambit had
paid off, materialized as Duana fell onto his face and went inert. “Stay your
hand, imbeciles,” he rasped, “your master wants him alive! Now tend to your
Lord, even now he is dying.”

Sleep well Marshal
, thought the Imp,
I have such plans
for you
.

The Man Without a Face

Elias struggled to open his eyes. As his eyelids
fluttered he detected the blurred features of a stone chamber cast in grey and
shadowy tones. He knew it imperative that he wake, yet he was unable to
remember why.

He tried to move but could not, somehow trapped between the
waking world and the realm of dream. A din of voices resounded in his head,
quiet yet insistent. A feminine voice separated from the throng, gentle yet
firm: ...
Elias...fight the shadow...do not slip into darkness...

Elias focused on flexing his fingers and toes and his
consciousness shifted abruptly, struggling against an oppressive weight. His
eyes snapped opened as a sharp gasp escaped his lips.

Red pain lanced through him like liquid fire. Muscles he
didn’t know he had burned and groaned in protest. His head pulsed and throbbed,
his vision narrowing and expanding with each ebb and flow of the blood
thundering through his skull.

Instinctively, he rolled onto his side. His sight became
overwhelmed by pinpricks of light and he vomited. Once his stomach had emptied
of bile he dry heaved. Each rasping cough wracked his torso with pain,
aggravating his bruised and broken ribs.

When the dry heaves ceased and his vision cleared he saw a
squat, shadowed figure crouched outside the single, spare and barred window
high on the far wall. Red eyes, ablaze with preternatural energy regarded him
candidly, unblinking. Ordinarily, fear would have quickened his heart in the
presence of such an ominous threat, but exhaustion and the agony of his
injuries had bred an apathy in him and only curiosity remained. He met the gaze
of the entity on the other side of the window.

Darkness blurred the line of the figure and Elias could
discern little detail, but he judged the creature to be compact, for though it
crouched on the outside sill, the window was meager, some three feet high, and
less than that in width, yet the creature was of a size to peer in at him. The
diminutive creature cocked his head and a sound issued from it that was
reminiscent of a cat’s purr, and for some reason that he couldn’t identify that
unsettled Elias more than the scarlet eyes that held him transfixed.

Elias struggled to rise and pain lanced through his torso
and stars danced before his field of vision as his grasp on consciousness fled.
Stubborn yet to his core, he rose to his knees and then met resistance. Dumfounded,
he looked to his hands and by the scant ambient light discovered that manacles
bound his wrists to the floor via thick chains.

Elias looked up to the window. The scarlet of the eyes narrowed,
hooded by heavy lids, and Elias thought he almost detected a skosh of sympathy
in that fiery gaze.

Thus bemused, Elias teetered on his knees and crashed onto
his back, unconscious before he hit the floor.

†

When Elias next awoke he had regained some control over
his faculties. His bodily injuries, however, were another matter. His legs
ached, having been awkwardly folded beneath him in his fitful sleep; his neck
and shoulders were stiff and knotted; his head throbbed as if his heart had
been relocated to his skull; his torso screamed in agony along his ribcage and
his sternum burned in fiery pain with each ragged breath.

Elias assessed his situation. He had been divested of all
his effects. Along with his duster and sword his shirt, shoes, and socks had
been taken, leaving him bare-chested and barefoot. The manacles, which gripped
his wrists fast, left him little room to maneuver as their chains were attached
to hooks on the floor diametrically opposed to each other on either side of the
small chamber. They allowed only slack enough for him to sit or rise to his
knees. Either one of these actions pulled the chains taut, causing the manacles
to cut into his wrists and his shoulders to groan and pop in protest.

Elias sat back on his haunches and wondered why he was still
alive. He had been sure he had met his death in the throne room. The fact that
he yet lived, Elias mused, was not cause for celebration as he had scant hope
of escape and undoubtedly long hours of torture to look forward to. He prayed
his allies were not foolish enough to attempt his rescue.

As Elias’s thoughts turned to Danica, Lar, Phinneas, and his
new friends and mentors Ogden, Bryn, and the queen, tears pooled in his eyes. Desperation
and anxiety sparked an intense, slow burning anger when Elias thought of all he
had lost at the hands of the Scarlet Hand. What nettled him most was the
knowledge that the architect of his doom had been hiding in plain sight the
whole time, masked as the Prelate of the Church of the One God.

Elias found a grim solace in the fact that he had struck a
final blow against Mirengi. He dared to hope that blow had been fatal. If he
had slain the dark Lord of the Scarlet Hand then he could at least find some
peace in death. More than that, he had given his comrades a chance to escape,
and thereby there remained the seed of hope that they could one day take back
the capital and drive Galacia’s ancestral enemy from their homeland once and
for all. If the Denar line yet lived, then a chance remained that the shadow of
the Senestrati could yet be turned back.

The answer as to whether or not Sarad Mirengi lived would
remain unanswered for several days. Elias anxiously awaited his captors to show
themselves, but several days had passed without any encounter. His only gauge
of time was the window which permitted some few slants of light during the
daylight hours to cut the oppressive gloom of his cell.

The windowless door had not been opened once, and he guessed
he had gone three days without food or drink. He reasoned his captors were
trying to wear down his resolve and weaken him prior to his eventual torture
and execution. Well Elias Duana was damned if he was going to let the
Senestrati break him.

Elias’s thoughts wandered to what little he knew of torture.
He had asked his father about it once and the distiller had said that all men
break under torture, eventually. Many a man had confessed to crimes he never committed
under the duress of a skilled torturer, simply to end the agony.

Elias tried to hold onto his anger and let that sustain him,
but the countless hours began to weigh on him, gathering gravity with each
passing moment. At times he felt the walls of the stuffy chamber closing in on
him and he couldn’t breathe. His heart fluttered weakly in his chest and then
beat so rapidly he feared it would burst. He had to focus on his training with
Ogden and drop into the calm meditative state he learned from the wizard to
stave off the panic and despair that threatened his sanity. He needed to
maintain his wits as long as possible to resist breaking under torture and die
with some shred of dignity intact.

Death. When Elias faced down Sarad in the throne room he held
no illusions that he would survive the encounter, but nor did he have time to
dwell on his mortality or what lay beyond—an afterlife or oblivion. Now he had
nothing but time to ruminate upon his demise. After Asa and his father died and
his tidy little world had been crushed to pieces, Elias had often wished that
he had perished with them that day. All that had sustained him was his sister
and his quest for vengeance, and when he set out on his mission he cared not
that it might claim his life, indeed he assumed it would. However, here, lying
in the dark, alone, famished, doomed, Elias discovered that he wanted to live
despite all he had lost.

A wild tumult of emotions raged through him, from despair to
hysteria. Elias pulled at his chains, his muscles flexing and bulging with
effort, and howled a deep, visceral scream that rebounded off the walls with
arcane force. The dust of powdered mortar flitted around the cell, illuminated by
the slants of light that sliced through the twilit gloom like spectral blades.

“Come, then!” Elias roared. “Face me you cowards and let us
be done with it!”

Much to Elias’s surprise, before long he heard the jingle of
keys and the door opened, letting in the orange glow of torchlight. To Elias’s
light deprived eyes the torch might well have been the midday sun. He heard the
scrape of boots on the stone floor and then silence. When his eyes adjusted to
the light he looked up, blinking away tears, and saw a man clad in a dark tunic
and loose fitting pants standing before him. The exotic-featured man peered at
him with almond shaped eyes and a countenance devoid of expression.

Elias opened his mouth to speak but a disembodied voice
preempted him. “Are you so eager to die, Elias Duana, that you would waste your
fledging strength summoning me?” A figure emerged from the darkness at the
torch’s fringe. Elias startled that he hadn’t seen the hooded person, for his
eyes were well adjusted to the dark. The shadows gathered around the man like a
cloak, fluid, flowing like water, and blurred his line, lending him the
insubstantial aspect of a wraith.

“Mirengi,” Elias said, doubtless as to the identity of the
threatening presence.

“You will find you are quite powerless now, my friend,” the
false prelate said. As if on cue, the torch bearer directed the light at the
stone beneath the kneeling Elias. The flickering flame revealed a spell-circle
laden with arcane sigils drawn on the floor in a crimson paint. Elias knelt at
the circle’s center at the crux of intersecting lines. “Your magic is sealed.”

Elias made no reply. He held his head up and met Sarad’s
gaze, unflinching.

“First,” Sarad said, “you will tell me with what command
word, or by what means, I can use to move your sword. It is an eye-sore.”

Elias barked a laugh. “Water,” he croaked. “I can hardly
speak.” True, he had a powerful thirst, but his chief purpose was to buy some
time. Elias found himself perplexed by Sarad’s query. He did not utilize a
command word or any spell to wield his sword, yet Sarad indicated that for some
reason he and his minions could not remove Elias’s sword from where it had
fallen. Elias filed the information away, though he doubted it would do him any
good in his present situation.

Sarad crouched and leaned into the circle. He took Elias’s
chin in one hand and with the other brought a drencher of water to the
Marshal’s lips. The gesture was oddly gentle, which somehow unnerved Elias all
the more.

Even as Sarad crouched close to him, Elias couldn’t see the Necromancer’s
face. Shadows coalesced around the fell wizard, thick and opaque as tar. A
peculiar, cloying odor reminiscent of putrid cream lingered in his wake, faint
yet persistent.

“Now,” said Sarad, “of the sword. Do not think to trick me. I
can sense deceit with ease.”

Elias licked his cracked lips and wondered if detecting lies
truly was part of Sarad’s repertoire. Considering what he had seen from the
false Prelate thus far, it seemed likely. “I will not tell you how to master
the blade,” Elias said.

Sarad nodded, unsurprised by his captive’s response. He
extended an index finger and a ray of icy energy shot from his hand and stole
the breath from Elias. The fell magic struck him in the clot of bruises amassed
around his sternum. Elias crumpled to the floor in exquisite agony as his days
old wound, received from Sarad’s bolt of dark magic in the throne room,
throbbed with renewed gusto.

“You will tell me!” Sarad all but screamed, his calm façade dissolving.

Elias struggled to breathe, convulsing as pain wracked his
torso with each ragged gasp for breath. He could feel black rage rolling off
Sarad in palpable waves. The wizard had lost control. Elias made a grim
decision. “You haven’t what it takes to break me, you miserable cur.”

Sarad grew still, but his voice quavered when he spoke. “We’ll
see,” he said. He thrust splayed hands at the downed Marshal. Purple energy
gathered in his hands and then discharged in a blast of black lightning.

Elias held his breath and surrendered as the fell
electricity rush through him. The initial pain faded momentarily and in its
wake came a sensation of numbness as all of the muscles in his body convulsed
and twitched of their own accord. His vision narrowed to a tunnel, then a
pinprick.

“My Lord, you’re killing him!” someone cried. “We need him
alive! Don’t you see, he wants to die so as not to give up his secrets!”

“You dare to question me, imp!” Sarad growled, but he ceased
his attack.

“No. Not ever, my liege. However, I do not wish to see this
scum get off so easily,” added Sarad’s clever familiar.

Sarad drew in a deep breath and willed his blind wrath to
recede. He realized his hands shook and he clenched them into fists. “Indeed. My
intention was merely to bring him within an
inch
of his death.”

“You are most wise, my lord.”

Elias struggled to pry his eyelids open but they felt laden
with sand and he saw only lazily fluttering dots of light. Panic rose thick in
his throat. He had prepared himself for death, not blindness. He blinked and
strained to focus. Slowly shadows began to form between the false stars. Elias
saw a squat form crouching some feet away that seemed vaguely familiar but then
a boot stamped down in front of his face and he lost the thought. With titanic
effort Elias turned his head and the stars crashed back into his field of
vision tenfold; before they cleared a sledgehammer of force crushed into his
skull and he knew no more.

†

Elias was drowning. He sputtered and flailed his arms
in a pathetic attempt to swim only to discover that his arms were bound. He
tried to cough but instead inhaled more water. Elias kicked and writhed.

Then someone booted him in the ribs.

Elias’s eyes groaned open. Sarad crouched over him with a
bucket in his hands and said, “Good. You’re awake.”

Elias licked his lips. “Really?”

Sarad chuckled. “Surprised to find yourself alive, Marshal? You
didn’t think you’d get away from me that easily did you?”