Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (35 page)

Talinus looked up from the floor. “You let him escape so
that in the end when you capture the queen and her allies he will blame himself
for leading you to them and then you’ll make him watch as you destroy them all
and summon your dark Lords from their slumber. You want him to have the
illusion of hope only to snatch it away from him in the last act.”

“You forget yourself,” said Sarad, standing, his voice
growing quiet.

“Mark my words—your pride has undone you. You never should
have let the Marshal go for he will yet foil you. Again.”

Overcome by hatred and anger, Sarad unleashed a deluge of
fell magic on Talinus, fueling his power with every mote of black emotion in
his soul. A tsunami of black energy washed over the imp. After the climax of
fell magic Sarad felt better, but realized he would need to acquire a new
familiar. He spared the broken and lifeless imp a long look before he felt a
tug at his mind.

He stepped into his spell-circle and picked up his scrying
mirror. Using the psychic connection he had formed with Duana he focused on the
mirror and willed that an image of him would form out of the chaos of the
churning energies caught in its glass. In a way the scrying mirror was a portal
through which the adept could peer through space and, providing the arcanist
had achieved mastery, even time. The rainbow maelstrom of energy slowed and
darkened to a deep indigo and became placid. Sarad had at last homed in on
Duana’s signature. He poured a yet increased amount of will and magic into the
mirror and, as veins protruded in his temples and capillaries burst in his flushed
face, the indigo image began to lighten until he saw the natural light of
midday illuminating the face of his quarry.

“See? I told you I could find him.” Sarad looked up from the
mirror, only to remember that Talinus was gone. He felt a pang in his breast,
but presently returned his attention to the mirror. He grinned as he listened
to the conversation between the Marshal and the northman. After they finished
he pulled the image up and away from the two men, above them and to the tree
line. He continued elevating the viewing portal until he had a bird’s eye view
of the Renwood. Sarad felt enormously pleased. The ancient and mystic Renwood
was the perfect setting for this little drama to be brought to a close. He only
hoped that Duana would last long enough to be recaptured.

Sarad set his mirror in the center of the spell-circle and
closed the portal. With a flick of his will he cast the doors to his study
open. The two Handsman who attended him looked inside. “Prepare a sending to
our brothers in the field. I have located the queen.”

†

Agnar felt the uncomfortably close presence of Elias
and the intense gravity of his eyes. The Marshal said, “When we reach Gaudvaug
Lake you will set out along the tributary that cuts south and east, toward the
queen, while I will head toward the western edge of the wood. Understood?”

“I don’t even know which way is east. This damned forest is
so thick I can’t even see the sun.”

“I’ll ride with you that far and point it out.” Elias shot
Agnar a significant look, but it was lost on the Northerner who didn’t know what
the Marshal was about. Elias fell silent again and swayed in his saddle. After
a couple minutes he straightened and his eyes sharpened. Surreptitiously he
cast his eyes to either side and then up at the tree-line as if he was looking
for something. Tightening his hold on Brand’s reins he said, “Come then and
let’s see how well a northern man can handle a southern horse.” With that Elias
prodded Brand into a dead run.

Agnar observed that Elias had begun acting odd since they
had gained the great wood, which wasn’t saying much, he conceded to himself. The
Marshal acted like a man who thought he was being followed even though there
wasn’t the slightest sign of pursuit. He constantly checked their retreat and
glanced about or sat still in his saddle as if listening for something he alone
could hear, which could very well be the case—Agnar had seen men hallucinate in
their sickbeds with fever more than he would care to admit. At other times
Elias pretended he didn’t know what Agnar was talking about. Still, whatever
the southerner’s game was, Agnar owed him his life and would stick by him,
addled wits or not. In any case, it seemed his consent was superfluous,
considering his horse had set out after Elias without any prodding on his part.

A half day’s hard ride later they approached the banks of a
modest river that wound around towering oaks and southern maples. Some few
miles later the river forked and Elias brought them to a halt and dismounted. He
crouched by the water while Brand sated his thirst. He eyes closed as he rested
his head on his knees. Agnar followed suit and lead Comet to the water. He had
begun to think that Elias had fallen asleep when the Marshal said, “This fork
on the right is the path you want to take. The water is shallow enough by the
bank that you should be able to run Comet with little trouble.”

Agnar opened his mouth to protest Elias’s plan to split up
when another thought occurred to him. He gazed through the opening in the
forest canopy that the river provided and found slants of light from the
setting sun. “I thought you wanted me to take the southeast tributary?”

“The right fork is the one you want.”

“Earlier you said the southeast fork, and then after that
when the river forks again to stay on southeast tributary.”

“Take the right fork and follow it all the way to the queen,
or find her at the outpost on the other side of the forest. Trust me.”

Agnar sighed. “This plan, splitting up like this, it is
folly.”

Elias rose and took Agnar by the shoulders. “If you have
ever trusted me, Agnar, I beg you trust me now. The queen must know what I have
learned at all costs. Oberon has taken the throne. He was in bed with the
Prelate prior to the coup, which I’m sure won’t be a great leap of faith for her.
Between Mirengi’s men and Oberon’s mercenaries they practically have an army of
their own, aside from the fact that they have assumed control of all of
Peidra’s swords, guards and regulars alike. But what is of the utmost
importance is that Mirengi needs the queen, and he needs her alive.”

“By the Gods,” Agnar breathed, transfixed by the intensity
of Duana’s gaze.

“Now listen well, for it is what follows that they must
know. The king that banished Mirengi’s necromantic Lords centuries ago did so
with a very strong magic, but it was so powerful that it needed a constant
source of energy to be maintained. King Mathias knew if his spell faded the
Senestrati would return, so he bound it to his bloodline, to his very life
force and that of his descendants, thus securing his spell to an everlasting
source of energy. The spell that keeps the seventh house bound is alive in
every member of the Denar bloodline. Mirengi needs to sacrifice the queen and
Bryn in a fell ritual to break the bond and free his masters, who even now
slumber but stir. I’m not sure I quite grasp how, but I gleaned from Mirengi’s
thoughts, that the original surviving members of the Senestrati who attempted
the coup all those years ago are in some kind of stasis. They must know this. It
is of the utmost importance. Whatever happens, Sarad cannot get his hands on the
queen and Bryn. Promise me.”

“I don’t understand a word of what you’ve said.”

“You don’t have to. Just deliver the message.”

Agnar felt his stomach drop. “You should tell her this, not
me.”

“Tell Ogden that it was right before us in the poem of
binding the entire time:
He bound them in the Heart’s own blood
. Only
the translation was wrong, for the poet meant
The Hart
, as in the Stag. The
blood of the Stag—the blood of House Denar.”

Elias mounted Brand and offered Agnar a grim smile. The Marshal
looked worse than ever, his skin having taken on the ashen, waxy aspect of the
dead, but a preternatural fire smoldered in his eyes, like the dying coals of a
hearth-fire that appeared cool to the eye but had the heat to boil blood in the
vein. “Fear not, friend. You will see me again, in this life or the next. You
don’t have far to go, and I have every faith in you. Now, give me your word you
will see this done.”

“You have it, son of summer,” Agnar swore.

With that Elias was off, thundering through the darkening
wood, and Agnar, dumfounded, stood and watched him go.

Visitations

Aaron Vash signaled his men to stop. The Marshal’s
giant copper stallion lay on its side breathing weakly in a gully at the bottom
of a steep slope some fifty yards down. Vash and his Hand had been following
the half-dead Marshal’s erratic trail for two days now, since receiving the
telepathic sending from Mirengi. It seemed their quarry had ridden his horse
half to death, yet Vash had survived this long as a lieutenant of the Scarlet
Hand by never taking anything at face value. Even though Mirengi had reported
that Duana had succumbed to a fever curse through the
Kin Carnum
, all
accounts spoke to the Marshal’s cunning and resilience. Vash reached out with
his senses to see if he could detect Duana’s presence or catch a trace of his
aura.

“Well then, Vash, shall we be on with it?” asked Bragan.

Vash grunted. He didn’t sense any sign of the Marshal. “Smells
like a trap.”

“You can read the tracks as well as I and you’ve seen a man
addled by a fever curse. The marshal is in the grips of delirium. We have to
find him while he’s still on this side of the veil and stabilize him. Do you
want to explain to Lord Mirengi that we’ve denied him the pleasure of taking
Duana’s life because we hesitated?”

“No,” Vash said. Mirengi had given them express orders that
they were to capture Duana alive. “Bragan, go down there with Keif and check
things out. I’ll stay up here with Vahn and Utho on the high ground and cover
you.”

“Very well.”

Bragan and his two companions guided their horses down the
steep slope. Halfway down the slope Keif began to curse. Vash stiffened and
drew his scimitar. “It’s nothing,” Bragan called to them, his voice thick with
disgust, “Keif’s horse has gotten its hoof stuck. The soil is loose.”

Vash relaxed. That explained Duana’s horse. The beast likely
lost its footing and broke a leg and Duana crawled off to hide, or to die. He
only hoped they found him before the latter happened. He did not want to
explain to Mirengi how they had failed to reach the Marshal in time. Vash
relaxed his sword arm and nudged his horse forward to get a better look at
Bragan’s progress.

Bragan and Keif dug around the stymied horse’s stuck leg
when Bragan stiffened sharply. “What the hell?” He looked up the slope at Vash.
Vash pressed his horse to the crest of the slope and then heard a long wet
sound come from behind him followed by two thuds. Vahn and Utho’s horses sped
past him, snorting in terror while his own mount reared, spooked by the coppery
scent of blood. Vash pulled hard at the reins in an effort to turn around but a
large crash and two screams pulled his attention back down the slope.

Duana’s horse was up and breaking into a dead run. Where on
earth did Duana get a rope that long? Vash thought numbly, before realizing
that it wasn’t a rope but a corded braid of vine tied to the behemoth
stallion’s bridle. The other end was affixed to a rotten log which had been
buried under the loose earth and leaves—the very culprit that had caused Keif’s
horse to become stuck. When the log jerked from its precarious resting place,
the horse’s leg snapped and initiated an avalanche of tumbling horse flesh and
loose earth and stone that was presently joined by Vahn and Utho’s bolting
mounts—an avalanche his men were buried alive in.

Vash had scanned the area for Duana, using his arcane senses
to detect the Marshal, but he hadn’t thought to direct his scan up. Duana had
left them a tidy booby trap that didn’t involve a single shred of magic and thus
escaped Vash’s scan while he hid up in a tree waiting for them to trigger it. Vash
brought his horse around and faced Duana. The Marshal stood behind him, between
the bodiless heads of Vahn and Utho, with his sword extended at the end of an
arcing slice. The Marshal had the grey pallor and red-rimmed eyes of one in the
final stages of the fever curse, but his aura crackled around him, vibrant blue
and flickering with veins of silver lightning.

“I’m a little insulted he only sent five,” Duana said,
“although, admittedly, I am feeling a little under the weather.”

“Not at all,” Vash said cordially, “Occupying the attention
of an entire Hand is high praise indeed.” Vash dismounted while keeping a close
eye on the marshal, who didn’t so much as blink. “You’re almost finished,
Marshal. I’d say surrender to me and I’d lift the curse. Most men would say
yes, because if they had the opportunity for even one more breath then there’s
always the hope, however slim, a situation would arise where they could turn
the tables. But you’re not most men.”

“I would say put up your sword and forget all this business.
Take your life and forget Galacia, forget the Hand, forget House Senestrati’s
dark covenant. But you live by the sword and could never lay it down.”

Vash smiled and raised his scimitar into a high guard. “I
fear the will of my dark masters more than death.”

“Then we are both in luck.”

“How’s that?”

“Today we will both be free from the shadow of the Seventh
House,” Elias said and then lunged.

†

Danica watched as her brother engaged the last Handsman,
who lost the battle in the first blow. To his credit, the agile assassin turned
Elias’s first lunge, albeit barely, having not anticipated Elias’s explosive
opening. The Handsman was thrown off balance from that initial maneuver and was
unable to regain control before Elias capitalized on his advantage.

After the Senestrati fell Elias stumbled on dead legs to the
foot of a large oak and collapsed with his back against the trunk. Danica could
see the labored rise and fall of his chest and knew he didn’t have long. She
needed to help him but hadn’t the foggiest idea how to escape the dream-like
world she found herself in. She was safe in the circle of stones but she knew
that as soon as she left them Slade would be waiting for her. Frustrated, angry
tears streamed down her face.

“Don’t fear for your brother, he will live. He has too much
to accomplish to leave the world behind right now, and he knows it. But he does
need your help.”

Danica looked up from the pool, expecting more of Slade’s
trickery, but her breath caught in her throat as she beheld a woman of delicate
but surpassing beauty clad in an alabaster gown and radiating a white aura
edged in the pink of winter rose. Her skin was so pale that it appeared almost
translucent, and her eyes burned an exotic green, so much like Danica’s own. Danica’s
throat felt thick and she grew faint as a rush of pins and needles washed over
the backs of her arms, up her spine, over her shoulders and neck and
culminating over her crown. “Mom?”

When she smiled Danica began to weep.

“Yes, child, it’s me.”

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“Then you should know that I am with you often. We talk most
nights while you are asleep, but only when you are in the deepest of dreams, so
you have no conscious recollection of it when you awake.”

“But, Mom, you’re dead,” Danica sobbed, fearing that this
was another of Slade’s tricks.

The shade of her mother took a step into the circle of rune
stones. “This is not a trick, Danica. Slade is gone at present.”

“You can read my thoughts?”

“Danica, there is much that I would tell you but there isn’t
time. I have not been able to reach you in your dreams since Slade has exerted
his power over you. You must rejoin your body so that you can help Elias. A man
is coming to your camp. He has helped your brother. The others are frightened,
especially the two young soldiers. They won’t want to believe this man from the
north, but you must make them.”

“What about Elias?”

“I will help your brother. Your father and I will see that
he lives until you reunite.”

“Dad’s with you?”

“Yes. Presently he is with Elias, protecting him. Now listen,
please. Time is different here. Days have already passed in your world. We will
guide Elias toward your camp with what strength remains to him, for he is close
to the other side and we will be able to exert a greater influence over him. However,
we are unable to heal his affliction, though we will lend him what succor we
can. You alone can save Elias, and he alone can save you. You are like binary
stars, a pair, and are destined to rise, or fall, together.”

Danica didn’t know how she would honor her mother’s wishes,
but she promised if there was a way she would find it. “I’ll do as you say. Only
I don’t know how.”

“You do know how, you need only remember what you’ve
forgotten. But first you must help Agnar Vundi and to do that you must wake
up.”

“I’m stuck here.”

“I’ve shown this place to you, child, long ago, yet this is
but a facsimile and exists only in your mind. Your body and world are but a
thought away.” Edora Duana waved a hand over the silver pool. It rippled and in
it an image appeared of Danica lying in her tent. “See, there you are. Feel
your body around you. Feel your toes and fingers wiggling and the dust of sleep
in your eyes. Feel the ground beneath your back and the soft weight of the
sleeping roll pressing into you.”

Danica felt herself grow light and then she was falling, through
the pool, before passing into a shadowy realm where vague, amorphous shapes
flashed in her peripheral vision. She heard her mother’s voice echoing in her
mind.
Danica, you and your brother have a hard road yet ahead but you will
succeed together. Do not give up hope. Now, child, quickly, wake up!

Danica opened her eyes, casting aside her sleeping blankets
in the same instant, and sprang from her sickbed.

†

Agnar poked idly at the fire. The still of the night
lay on the camp and all he could hear was the crackle of the flames and the
hiss of sap boiling out of green wood, but he felt the eyes of the Galacian’s
on his back.

When he had approached the camp he made no effort to hide
his coming or blunt the sound of his passage. He did not want to catch the
Galacians unaware or be mistaken for an assassin or rogue. He had found the
foot tracks of the queen’s party a day after he left Elias and about half a day
after that the tracks grew sporadic. Evidently the Galacians had returned to
cover their trail. Agnar continued to follow Elias’s directions and soon
spotted the first sign that he closed on them.

A pair of Galacian guardsman were running sentry duty
through the forest, presumably checking to see if the enemy had found them. Agnar
pretended not to notice them because he felt that as long as the Galacians had
the upper hand they would bide their time until they found what he was about. He
pulled Comet off Elias’s course and meandered away from the river so as to
allow the guardsmen to return to their camp and report their findings. It was
his hope that if the queen’s camp knew of his presence they would be less
likely to react violently.

As he spotted the smoke from their low-burning fire winding
through the twilight he felt the presence of a couple of men flanking him, but
he resisted the temptation to turn about in his saddle and check. He slowed
Comet to cautious walk and as he approached the perimeter of the camp cried,
“Ho! Galacians! I, Agnar of clan Vundi, come in peace to deliver a message from
Marshal Duana.”

A disembodied voice said, “Elias Duana is dead, so I ask you
what treachery is this, Agnar Vundi?” A second voice, also speaking out of the
empty air, said, “You are flanked by two of Galacia’s finest archers. Make a
false move and you’ll be easy target practice for them. Keep your hands where
we can see them.”

“Gladly,” Agnar said as he scanned the dark and seemingly
empty camp, “except I don’t know what you can or can’t see as you are presently
invisible. As for the archers, Elias did not mention having put bows and arrows
in your escape boat. Again I say, I am here as your ally with a message of
grave importance.”

His words met a pregnant silence and Agnar felt sweat wind
down his neck. Then there was the rustle of a tent flap and Danica Duana strode
toward him. “For shame,” she said, “this man has helped Elias foil the Hand, I
think we can spare him the parlor tricks. Now, where is my brother?”

“We were forced to split up,” Agnar said in a hollow voice. “He
thought that we were being tracked, perhaps by some black magic. He ran toward
the center of the wood in a hope to lead our pursuers away from the queen. He
sent me to deliver his message.”

The air before Agnar shimmered and Lady Bryn Denar
materialized. “Is it true? Elias lives?”

“Presently, but he is in peril, having succumbed to a black
curse. Mirengi took him captive but kept him alive so that he could learn his
secrets.” Agnar swallowed. “I could hear his screams from my cell, but he never
broke. I thought he had died but one day he literally blew out his cell wall
and rescued me and together we escaped. He could have left me to die, but he
saved me.”

Brush rustled behind Agnar and he stiffened, but held his
ground, and his breath. Eithne Denar circled in front of him. “Master Vundi, I
think you better start from the beginning. Join us by the fire and warm your
bones.”

Agnar filled them in on everything that had happened since
their escape as he warmed his hands by the fire. As soon as he finished the
Galacians began firing one question at him after another, but only one stood
out and kept rolling around inside his head as they discussed their next move
and his fate:
Why did you leave my brother alone
? He had looked up at
Danica Duana, into her feline eyes, and found his mouth had gone dry.

Elias is persuasive, he had said. He made me promise to do
as he said. I didn’t want to leave him behind. His words echoed hollowly in his
ears. Danica made no response but continued to look at him openly with those
unsettling green eyes.

So there he remained, poking at the fire, waiting to see
what fate had in store for him and his tenuous allies, all the while wondering
about his new and unlikely friend, the singular Elias Duana. Just when he
thought he could sit still no longer a din of arguing voices drew toward him.