Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (21 page)

The ensorcelled steel amplified the power of the spell it
had absorbed and returned it now manifold. The flames took on the aspect of the
sword, tinged blue with a white tongue at its core.

The blue-white conflagration consumed the lead assassin and
he disappeared for a beat within the cone of fire. The second managed a partial
dodge and escaped the brunt of the magical blast. Still, half of his face had
been melted in the curtain of fire. The third crashed to the floor, for the northman
in the lead had been catapulted off his feet by the blast and sent careening into
his compatriot.

Meanwhile, Elias’s startled companions bounded into action,
led by Bryn, as the Whiteshields swarmed the queen. Lar sprinted for Elias and the
maimed northman, with Danica and Phinneas a half step behind. Bryn engaged the
remaining assassin, who had already heaved off his burnt and desiccated
countryman. She hurled a dagger at him, which she had produced from the
confines of her skirts, as she sprinted in.

Lar but slowed as he bent to retrieve the thrown hand-axe
that Elias had deflected. He closed in on the half-maimed northman, who seemed
unaware of his grievous injury and, stone-faced, promptly began swinging his
two-handed axe in wild, tireless arcs. Lar’s own proffered hand axe seemed
paltry in comparison, but he had little time to think on it as he put it to
immediate use parrying the flurry of blows the Ittamarian rained upon him.

Danica made to go to Lar’s aid as she felt an electric force
gather in her palms but Phinneas restrained her. Danica struggled against him
but the doctor spoke into her ear, reaching for his empathetic powers, as he
wove a hasty charm spell. The young White Habit grew soft in his arms and he
dragged her back to the relative safety of the queen’s table and the swarm of
Whiteshields who had drawn together to form a human wall to protect their
queen.

Bryn’s thrown dagger took the northman in the joint where
the shoulder met the torso—a wound that experience had taught her to be an
exquisite agony—but the man let out nary a cry or grimace and, ignoring her
completely, continued his halted charge toward the queen’s table. Bryn altered
her course accordingly and engaged his flank.

Lar retreated while desperately struggling to find an
opening in his enemy’s defenses. “Fade right!” a voice cried from behind him. Lar
complied at once and sidestepped as he caught the northman’s axe on the haft of
his blade.

A white sword swept by his shoulder in a vertical cut and
sliced through the chainmail gousset that attached the northman’s vambrace to
his breastplate.

The Ittamarian stepped in to engage this new threat, seeming
unfazed by the spurting wound that had ruined his shoulder, but Lar drew close
to him and held his axe fast. As he did so, the Whiteshield that had come to
his aid put his long-sword to artful use and reduced the northman’s breastplate
to a bloody sieve.

Bryn skirted the backhand pass of the remaining assassin’s
axe, spun about on the balls of her feet, and with a sweep of one of her long-bladed
Aradurian daggers cut through leather greaves and flesh with equal ease and
hamstrung him. Impossibly, even as he lost the use of one leg, the assassin
continued to half crawl toward the queen’s table. Bryn quickly overcame her bewilderment
and stood behind the man, raising her dagger to deliver a coup de grace.

“No! Wait!” Elias cried, having recovered his equilibrium
from his arcane pyrotechnics even as the last northman fell under Lar and the
Whiteshield’s concerted effort. Bryn stayed her hand, though she kept a wary
eye on the crawling northman. She glanced up at Elias, who still stood at the
queen’s table. “We need him alive, or else his secrets die with him.”

Sarad cursed to himself. If they kept the thrall alive they
might very well discover the deception, or at the least realize that he was
under the sway of an enchantment. He sent a silent command—
kill the woman
—even
as he sent out threads of his power, which wrapped around Bryn and the thrall
alike in an invisible lasso of force. With an effort of will he jerked on the magical
cord just as the northman turned about, and the pair went careening across the
floor, directly toward Sarad’s table. To onlookers, it appeared that the northman
turned on Bryn and with a sudden burst of strength leapt from a crouch and
grappled her, which resulted in the two stumbling across the floor as they
struggled against each other.

As they approached him Sarad abruptly cut off his spell and
the two combatants fell to the floor at the foot of his table, with his thrall
on top.

Bryn struggled to muster her strength for the wind had been
knocked out of her. She looked up to see the northman looming over her, somehow
having risen into a half-crouch on his ruined leg, axe raised overhead. She
found her breath as the axe descended and screamed. Then she saw a flash of
white and heard a sound like the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer on steel.

The Prelate of the Church of the One God had leapt over his
table and straddled the fallen Bryn. As the axe fell he raised his bare hand
and intercepted the weapon. When his hand met the axe-blade an intense white
light issued forth and the axe sundered with a mighty clang.

Let the rabble see that Elias Duana was not the only heroic
figure in the capital, Sarad thought smugly, but his elation was short lived,
ended by a spray of blood, which showered his robes and face. He blinked away
the gore. A foot of steel protruded from his thrall’s chest, who looked down at
it stupidly. The steel pulled back through the wound with a grotesque slurping
sound and the thrall fell to the side, revealing a stone-faced Elias Duana.

The two men locked eyes.

Bryn surged to her feet. “Captain Blackwell! There’s an
arcanist loose!”

The Whiteshields scrambled under Blackwell’s command to
secure the exits and sweep the wing, while Elias continued to search the
Prelate’s eyes. The Marshal inclined his head slightly and then trotted after
Bryn to the queen’s table.

Sarad could read nothing in that scant gesture and wondered
at the other man’s thoughts.

His plan had gone awry, but Sarad counted it as a success
nevertheless. Killing the queen had not been his goal. He needed her alive—for
now. Rather, it was his design to implicate the emissaries in a conspiracy against
Galacia, thereby weakening the queen’s position. Certain members of the council
would be quick to point out that Eithne couldn’t protect herself let alone the
kingdom, and that she had been grossly remiss in opening up Galacia to the
Ittamar. God alone knew what other trouble they could wreak, now that they had
learned the secrets of the Capital and its defenses.

To that end he had achieved his aim. Stepping in with a
display of daring heroics was merely cream on the honey-cake. As it was, word
of his blessings, healings, and skills as a counselor had spread through Peidra
and his renown had grown by magnitudes in the eyes of the commoners and gentry
alike. In a few short months he had become one of the most popular Prelates of
the last century, and the latest rumor professed that he was favored by the One
God himself. After his gallantry tonight—sundering a savage’s axe with his bare
hand, armed with naught but his faith—he should rightly have been the toast of
the town.

Then enter the vexing Elias Duana and his cohorts. Doubtless
he had still stuck another feather in his cap, for the confounded courtiers
could not decide who to rest their eyes on—him or the Marshal. Yet, instead of
the singular hero of the day, his intervention had come as an afterthought. There
was a new celebrity in town and aside from giving the ever hungry gossips a juicy
new piece of meat to sink their teeth into, the incipient upstart threatened to
undermine decades of planning on his and his masters’ part. And his masters did
not take kindly to failure.

Sarad burned holes in the back of Duana’s head, occupied
with his dark musings, largely unaware of the commotion in the great hall.

Now that the danger had been averted, the chamber erupted
into bedlam. A woman screamed. Several courtiers ran toward the doors, which
the royal guards warded with naked steel and vehement orders. Oberon screamed,
“The Northerners have betrayed us! Seize them!” Someone else: “Take them now!”

Eithne recovered her equilibrium, swallowing her heart,
which had been in her throat, and stood. “Wait!” she cried, “Peace!” but her
voice was drowned out by the discordant din of voices.

Elias, who feared a lynching, brandished his blade and
scurried over the table, for the mob and guardsmen alike pressed in on the
queen’s table and blocked his path. The emissaries raised empty hands above
blanched faces, frantically watching the curtain of steel drawing close around
them.

The guard posted at the queen’s table stayed their hands but
cast their eyes about, nearly as panicked as the Northerners, awaiting
affirmation or new orders, all the while resisting the pressing mob, which was
a battle they were beginning to lose.

“What are you waiting for?” Ogressa growled as he drew a
bejeweled rapier that looked more ceremonial than functional. With his beady
eyes drawn into a squint and his plump lips curled in a snarl between his
fleshy jowls he looked like a ravening bulldog come to feast.

“Take them!” Oberon screamed and pressed close to his ally, dueling
saber in hand.

“Belay that order!” Elias roared and raised his sword which
hummed and emitted a blue halo of light. His voice rang out across the room
with preternatural clarity and echoed off the marble walls with resounding
command. “Attend your queen.”

The throng, cowed by Elias’s arcane display, quieted enough
for Eithne to make herself heard. “Stand down, Whiteshields, Redshields,” she
said. “These men are unarmed and outnumbered and pose little threat. What we
need now are answers, not butchery.”

“Please, my Queen,” said Agnar Vundi in his most supplicant
tone, “may I address you?”

Eithne glanced at Ogden, who shrugged his eyebrows. “You
may,” she said, “but choose your words carefully.”

“I am aware of how...incriminating this looks, but you must
believe me—I beg you!—we had nothing to do with this. It is a scheme, a
conspiracy, to undermine these negotiations. Surely we wouldn’t be so foolish
as to strike in the open like this! It is folly!”

“He lies!” Oberon cried, with the majority of the court quick
to shout their agreement.

Eithne knew that her people were frightened, and, as her
father had taught her, frightened people could not be reasoned with. Fear was
not an emotion that her courtiers were familiar with, and they hungered for
requital.

“Silence,” said the queen. “You will all have an opportunity
to speak, but now is not the time.” She turned to the tall, fair Whiteshield
that had come to Lar’s aid. “Captain, take these men to their chambers, where
they will remain under lock and key until we can sort this mess out. See that
their person and rooms are thoroughly searched. Make use of Marshal Duana as
you see fit.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Daryn Blackwell said. He spoke the
names of several of the guard. “You’re with me,” he said. “The rest of you stay
with the queen, and when she retires guard her chambers. I don’t even want
anyone to walk the corridors leading to her rooms unless they have the express
permission of the queen or myself. Is that clear?”

“Aye, sir!” They said as one.

“This is preposterous,” said a red faced Oberon. “The
council should be participating in this investigation, not some greenhorn, backwater
lawman sworn in a day ago.”

“You forget yourself, Lord Oberon. I do not owe you an
explanation, nor do you require one. Marshal Duana saved the life of his queen
tonight, and that more than qualifies him to take part in this investigation. I
did not see you eager to cross swords with the assassins.”

Eithne turned from Oberon with a contemptuous snort. “Captain,
Marshal, you have your orders. Ogden, Bryn, you’re with me.”

Without a further word the queen swept from the great hall sparing
not so much as a look behind.

The House That Shall Not Be Named

The rest of the night passed without incident, and the
knock at the door that Elias, largely sleepless in his sheets, had been waiting
for, did not come until morning.

He followed a grim Redshield to the queen’s private audience
chamber. Eithne, Ogden, Phinneas and Bryn awaited him at an ovular table. The
queen sat on one side with her steward while Bryn and the doctor took the
other.

Elias sat next to Bryn and said, “Where are Lar and Danica?”

“They will be along shortly, son,” Ogden replied. “Phinneas
here was knocking at my door at first light. He’s filled me in on the events of
last few weeks. The two of us wished a word with you alone.”

“Alone?” asked Elias as he glanced at Bryn and the queen.

Ogden shrugged his eyebrows. “This conversation concerns
House Denar, and I’m not often in the habit of keeping matters of this
magnitude from my queen.”

“Indeed,” Eithne said a little hotly and shot a pointed
glance at Ogden, but Elias let her comment pass—he had enough on his mind at
present. “Firstly, Elias, we wished to thank you for your heroics last night. It
would seem that my cousin was right about you. Even so, you can well imagine my
surprise that you alone sensed a plot against my person, but, as Phinneas and
Ogden have been good enough to explain, there is a cogent if unusual reason for
that.”

Elias knew he was among friends, but he felt like he was on
the hot seat nonetheless. “I have a feeling that this isn’t about a
commendation, so kindly enlighten me.”

The queen smiled. “It would seem you are as brash as you are
fearless, but that is just as well. We haven’t time for posturing and innuendo.
I may not know what you’re about, Elias Duana, but you’re a new addition, which
means you are all but certainly not a conspirator in the plot against the
crown, which makes you a better candidate for a confidant than the other
members of my court.”

The queen’s smile turned wry. “Ogden, say your piece so that
we can get on with our private council. The business of running a kingdom
awaits, secret cabals and assassination conspiracies notwithstanding.”

Ogden and Phinneas exchanged glances. The queen’s advisor
nodded at Phinneas who said, “We wish to discuss your training, Elias. As a
wizard.”

Elias barked an involuntary, gruff laugh. A private meeting
with the queen and her advisors had promised a more heady subject matter than
his conscription into the wizard’s academy or whatever it was they had planned
for him and his magical sword. As it was, the events of last night had left him
overwhelmed to the point of feeling numb. He had felt like he had been outside
his body since the bizarre skirmish in the great hall.

“We’ve been over this, Doctor,” Elias said. “After the
things I’ve seen I’ve come to realize that my father was right to curtail my
interest in the arcane. I have difficulties in spades, and neither the time nor
the inclination to take up magic. We’ve a den of fox to catch.”

“Circumstances have changed, Elias,” Ogden said. “After
speaking with the doctor it is my belief that it’s irresponsible for you not to
be trained.”

“Speak plainly,” Elias sighed. “I beg you.”

“Very well. After your display last night and having spoken
with Phinneas at length, it is clear that you, my boy, are an Innate,” Ogden
said.

“Ogden, with respect, it is the power of the sword, which is
more than enough for me to handle at the moment.” Elias pulled up his sleeve. “This
thing branded me. Somehow it and I are connected. The brands are what warned me
of trouble and the blade had magic stored it—all I did was release it.” Elias
picked up the red scabbarded sword, which he had rested against the table. “Slade
came halfway across the country hunting for this. Why he would go to such
trouble for a sword is the question we should be asking. Any power you think I
have comes from it, not me. I don’t even know what an Innate is.”

“Point taken,” Ogden said, “and we certainly plan to take a
good look at your sword, but your gift doesn’t spring from the enchanted steel,
though it may in some way amplify your natural abilities. In the time I knew
your father, I never saw him do anything remotely like you did with that sword,
and he was far from a stranger to the arcane.

“You are an Innate, son—a person that has a natural ability
to manipulate magical forces. Any arcanist can see that in your aura, plain as
day. Yours is a rare, and dangerous, gift.”

Elias sat forward, his eyes alight with curiosity despite
himself. “I don’t follow you. All wizards manipulate magical forces.”

“True,” Ogden said, “but the majority of wizards learn to
manipulate magic through years of study. They painstakingly learn exercises to
focus their minds, and then utilize incantations, rituals, or formula to
channel magic. Others, like necromancers, traffic with demons and spirits to
gain mastery over the arcane. An Innate such as yourself does not require these
methods to bend the forces of magic to your will, rather, magic lives within
you. Both you and your sister were born with the ability to channel magic
through a focused force of will alone, sparing you the need for ritual and
incantation. In the distant past those like you were considered the true
arcanists, while all others were pretenders.”

Elias’s mind reeled. “Huh. You know, my father told me
shortly before his death that magic is shaped by an arcanist’s creativity,
will, and expectations, and that incantation and ritual was chiefly a way to
focus the mind, hone intention, or even a crutch.”

Phinneas exchanged glances with Ogden and smiled. “Your
father always had interesting views on magic,” Phinneas said. “Perhaps he was
right, or, at the least, his theories were right for him. Each wizard, and his
gift, is different.”

Elias thought this over. “It seems that the Innate has it
easier than other wizards.”

“Yes and no,” Ogden said, his expression at once grave. “The
Innate still requires a tremendous amount of training to focus his mind and
learn how to tap into his natural abilities and to manipulate the energetic
forces that are all around us. And unlike other arcanists who choose when to
utilize their powers, for example to detect magic or sense the presence of an
intruder, an Innate can never fully turn off their powers—they are always
active, to an extent.”

Elias threw up his hands. “See, there you have it. I don’t
have the gift. If I was an Innate, surely these powers would have manifested by
now.”

Ogden exchanged glances with Phinneas who said, “For better
or worse, and whether you like it or not, you have been activated so to speak,
and now your gift will manifest regardless of your feelings on the matter.”

Elias grew alarmed by the gravity in Phinneas’s bearing. “Activated?
But how? Why now?”

“Your recent exposure to the arcane, either from that sword
or your encounter with Slade has awakened your latent abilities,” Phinneas
said. “But if you take time to think about it, your gift has always been there,
just below the surface, making its self known now and again.”

“I’m sure that I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve known you since the day you were born, and you were
always an uncanny child. Even now you are able to sense the thoughts and
emotions of others, if on an unconscious level. You instinctually know who to
befriend and who to steer clear of. It is your intuition guiding you. You sense
when danger is imminent, like when you pushed your father out of the way
because you thought that barrel of knoll was going to fall on him from the
fifth level of the rick-house. There was no way you could see the crack in the
rick-beam. So how did you know it was going to fall?”

Elias had no answer for the doctor. His mouth had grown dry.

“Your powers will begin to show themselves whether you want
them to or not,” Ogden said. “If you can’t find an outlet for the spark of the
arcane that has begun to burn in you it will manifest itself in a variety of
unpleasant ways.”

“You must learn to control your powers,” Phinneas said. “Otherwise,
you could find yourself suffering from headaches, troubled sleep, violent mood
swings, loss of appetite—a host of unpleasant side effects.”

“You seem to know a lot about this for someone who professes
to be a classically trained physician with a couple of tricks up his sleeve,”
Elias remarked.

“One of my patients suffered from these side-effects,”
Phinneas said slowly. “Your Mother, Elias.”

Elias leaned forward. “What?” he hissed.

“Your mother was the most talented sorceress I have ever
seen,” the doctor said. “She learned to control her powers to the best of her
ability, but ultimately I feel they were the cause of her death.”

Elias, stunned, looked from Phinneas to Ogden, shaking his
head, unable to formulate a response. Ogden said quietly, “Edora was like a
bonfire to a candle in comparison to other practitioners of the arcane, myself
included.”

“You knew my mother?”

“Very well,” Ogden replied. “She was once my student.”

Elias looked at Ogden as if seeing him for the first time. He
was so caught up in the conversation and defending his position that he hadn’t
paused to consider how the sagacious old advisor knew so much about the arcane.
“Ogden, you’re a wizard?” he asked weakly. He turned to Bryn. “You didn’t tell
me that.”

The queen harrumphed and her earlier remark became clear to
Elias. “That would be because she didn’t know, nor did her queen,” Eithne said.

Elias looked at the queen and decided that she looked more
irked than angry, so he decided to dig a little deeper. “Oh, how’s that?”

Ogden spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “As
Eithne’s father was fond of saying, the wise falcon conceals his talons. I am
not publically known as a wizard because I belong to an order that prefers its
members to come and go with anonymity.”

“I didn’t realize that your queen counted as the public,”
Eithne said.

“I had planned to tell you eventually, child. I just
couldn’t seem to find the right time, and I knew it would lead to that other
business. The order had made the decision to reveal ourselves to you,
eventually. We deemed you trustworthy.”

“Trustworthy?” The queen glared at him. Bryn took one look
at her expression and burst out laughing. Her good humor proved contagious and
Eithne found herself grinning despite herself. “This is no laughing matter!”
she managed. “I am your rightful monarch!” This only spurned Bryn who laughed
all the harder, while Phinneas watched the interchange with a bemused
expression.

Elias continued to shake his head. He waited for the ribbing
to cease and then said, “I’ve had enough riddles and half-truths for a
lifetime. Ogden, what was your relationship to my father? And what is this
order of which you speak?”

“Your parents and I belonged to a clandestine order, a kind
of secret brotherhood,” Odgen said. “We call ourselves simply the Sentinels.
Your mother saw potential in your father and sponsored him into our sect. That
was how your father and I met.”

Elias turned to the doctor. “Phinneas, I was told you
introduced my parents. That my mother was the youngest daughter of an
inconsequential noble house that didn’t approve of her marrying my father.”

“She was, and I did,” the doctor replied. “The portion of
the story that was untold is that I met your mother in the Sentinels and
introduced her to your father because I wanted her opinion on him.”

“You too?” Elias groaned.

“Indeed,” said Eithne. “Anyone else I should be aware of?”

“Some few colleagues from the University, and Arcalum. We
have operatives in the Red, White, and Blackshields,” Ogden said blandly, “Miss
Gafferty—”

“—the cook?!” Eithne cried.

“Don’t look so alarmed, child, she has detected five
attempts to poison you in the last year alone. Your uncle Josua.” Ogden made a
dismissive gesture with his hand. “Some few more.”

“Josua? Good God, man!”

Ogden shot Eithne an exasperated look. “Well, we need a man
on the council, don’t we?”

Bryn poured a glass of water and offered it to her flustered
cousin. Eithne took a deep draught. “Is it too early for wine?” she asked.

“Kindly fill me in, why don’t you,” Elias said. “What are
the Sentinels?”

“We are a utilitarian organization,” Ogden said, “the
watchdogs of the realm, if you will, secreted away from the public eye and thus
the meddling of bureaucrats, which is precisely why we keet it so exclusive. Well
that and the fact that we guard dangerous and terrible secrets.

“The Sentinels have existed in some fashion or another since
the reign of King Mathias who banished the Seventh House. The name of the
Seventh house has been lost to the annals of history, with some help from us. That
forgotten House is named Senestrati.”

“Senestrati,” Elias said, testing the sound of the name in
his mouth. He fixed his eyes on Phinneas. “The word the assassin said in
Abbington.”

Phinneas looked at his hands. “I am sorry I kept this from
you, Elias, but this is bigger than us. The Sentinels adhere to a strict code,
and that is precisely why we have remained secret for so long. I had to speak
with Ogden first, as he is the head of our order.”

“Surely, you could have made an exception with me?”

Phinneas looked up at Elias. “If I had my way you still
wouldn’t know.”

“Phinneas,” said Elias, taken aback, “how could you say such
a thing to me?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you—of course I do. I would
keep you in the dark about this for the same reason your father hid your
abilities from you—because I would protect you. Like your father, I would spare
you from this world, for it is more than a little dangerous, and truth be told
it is not a pleasant life. That is why your parents left the Sentinels, because
it is no environment in which to raise a family, and that is why I never had
one. Yet, despite their best efforts, your parents could not escape that life,
try as they might. Eventually, it caught up to them.