The revelation struck Bryn dumb. This explained why Eithne insisted on waiting three days before striking in earnest through the Renwood. Danica could not accept the death of her brother. Bryn had seen denial in the grief stricken before, mostly citizens on the field of battle or in the aftermath of a raid, but nothing as powerful and disturbing as what she saw in Danica Duana at that moment. “Poor child,” she whispered and took a step toward Danica, reaching out a hand.
Danica’s head lifted and her shimmering green eyes snapped up in their sockets, lending her the look of predator about to pounce. She caught Bryn’s wrist in her hand with an uncanny speed. “Don’t poor child me,” she said. “Elias is alive. I can sense his presence as surely as I sense yours, and the rapid flutter of your heart.”
“Danica,” Bryn said, a feeling of dread rapidly stealing over her, “You’re hurting me.” Danica cocked her head to one side, a lupine gesture that sent shivers down Bryn’s spine, and then abruptly released her. Danica’s eyes glassed over and she grew still and Bryn wondered if she had fallen asleep or else into a trance. Acting out of instinct, Bryn quickly spat out a cantrip that enabled her to detect and perceive arcane energies. Danica was clad in a nimbus of indigo light thick as a storm cloud and as bright as a flash of lighting.
Bryn stumbled away from the inert woman in the face of the sickening realization. The arcane signature meant one thing—black magic. Danica was cursed, or else turned a fell sorceress.
Danica looked at her with flat eyes and said, “Elias. Soon, will I have him again in my grasp.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, the tone low and gravely as if it issued from deep within her, spoken from her diaphragm. Bryn fell back further, dropping into a defensive posture, but Danica’s features abruptly cleared.
The young woman blinked rapidly. “Bryn…what…I don’t know what’s come over me. I have been getting entirely too little sleep.”
“Bad dreams?” Bryn managed.
“The most strange. And vivid.” Danica paused and pressed a couple of fingers between her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Still, I am not insane. Elias and I have always had a special bond, like twins. And with our talents awakening, it has grown stronger. I know that he’s alive. I know. Please, you mustn’t try to stop me.”
“I don’t think you’re insane, and I have come to trust the instincts of you Duanas.” Bryn took a deep breath. “That having been said—don’t do this. It is folly. There is no way that you could rescue Elias yourself, and you haven’t even considered that this may be a trap. Your death profits your brother nothing.”
“If that’s the case, then come with me. Together we can slip past unseen. You know the city, the palace, like no one alive! We could—” Danica abruptly cut off with a sharp exhale, as if she had taken a blow to the stomach. Her eyelids drooped and a glassy look stole over the depths of her murky, sea-green eyes. She paused thusly for several long-felt beats, and as Bryn found herself on the verge of running for help, the entranced young woman began to speak in a slow, thick voice. “No matter, spawn of Denar. Even now he is on the move. He comes to us. But he is not whole. No, not at all. Pity, that. Still, victory without honor, is victory nonetheless and will sate me yet.”
Danica’s head drooped forward until her chin rested almost on her chest, and she grew still as death. After an impossibly long minute, during which Bryn had held her own breath until her lungs burned, Danica inhaled a ragged breath and her head slowly lifted, a leaden ball on an invisible chain. Her skin had a peculiar sheen and blue tint, which brought out the flecks of red in her irises, and lent her the aspect of the undead.
Bryn took a step away from her, stark terror striking her dumb and weak. Danica shambled forward with a wry grin, an unholy light dancing in her eyes. Bryn lowered into a fighters crouch, but her legs betrayed her and bucked and shook with nervous fear. She drew a dagger and held it in an inverse grip in a high guard. “Danica…” she said, unsure what she feared more—Danica, or the dagger in her hand.
The young White Habit offered only an inane giggle and then fell forward onto her knees. She reached out a palsied hand toward Bryn and an inarticulate, animal moan issued from her blue lips. Without further preamble she fell forward, landing face-down. No sooner did she crash to the earthen floor than she began to convulse in a series of wracking seizures. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, like a horse in the grips of mortal terror, and pink foam erupted from her mouth.
Bryn’s knowledge of medicine extended only as far as that of a field medic, but she knew enough to stabilize a patient before transport. She took a knee and wedged her sword-belt in Danica’s mouth to keep her from swallowing her own tongue. She vaguely recalled hearing that restrained epileptics often dislocated joints or broke bones, so she settled for clearing debris around the convulsing woman and holding the belt fast.
After some interminable time that was likely only a couple of minutes, the convulsions gradually lost vigor, receding into weak muscle spasms and finally stillness. The exhausted Danica looked at the sky with sightless eyes, pupils dilated to such a degree that Bryn could barely see the green of her irises, and then with a spastic fluttering of her eyelids she slid into unconsciousness.
Chapter 31
Fevers
“Marshal, you do not look well.”
“I told you, call me Elias.”
Agnar eyed his fellow fugitive. The southerner’s usually ruddy complexion had taken on a waxy quality, shiny and ashen. Angry, black bruises lay beneath his dark eyes, which glittered with a feverish light. “Elias, you do not look well.”
Elias grinned broadly. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that looks aren’t everything?”
“In the time I’ve known you, I have never seen you smile.”
“What can I say? I finally feel optimistic.”
Agnar nudged his horse closer to Elias’s and frowned. He had seen fever addle the wits of many of his brethren, but the Marshal was a hard man to read. Though he presently grinned like an idiot, and looked on the verge of falling out of his saddle all morning, the fact was that he hadn’t. What’s more, he had led them on a straight course—as near as he could tell—and covered their trail admirably. Still, it was clear that Elias was not well.
“We need to rest,” Agnar said.
“What you mean is that I need to rest.” When Agnar did not respond, Elias sighed and looked east, back toward Peidra. “We don’t have much time, Agnar. The queen’s party didn’t start out with horses but they’ve had several days head start on us. We need to catch them in time to warn them.”
“We’ll need our strength, as will the horses, if we hope to be of any use to your queen.”
Elias sighed. “I’ll be better off when we reach our destination. I suspect rest will do little to restore my strength.”
Agnar frowned and followed Elias’s gaze to the east. For the first time since he had been South of Ittamar, a chill stole through him and he shivered. “Rest is always good. However, I understand you are eager to see your medicine man.”
Elias continued to focus his gaze on the distant horizon, silent for a pregnant moment. “What I mean is that I do not think this sickness is entirely natural. I feel that unseen eyes are fastened on me at every moment, that an alien presence has attached itself to me.”
“You believe you have been cursed?”
“That’s not all. I have been playing the events of the past couple of days over again in my head, and I am not convinced that our escape was genuine. Why did we not meet resistance until the first courtyard, and when we did all of their arrows seemed to target you. They wanted you dead, but for me to escape—alone.”
Agnar felt the pit of his stomach drop about a foot into his guts. “You think they let you escape only to track us to your queen?”
Elias nodded. “And they’ve weakened me with this fever-curse to make it easier to track us and to addle my wits so that I wouldn’t pause to question our good fortune. They want us t
o slow down so they can stay fast on our tail.”
“If you are correct then we are only bringing death to your queen.”
“On the other hand, we need to warn her of what we have learned, and the knowledge I only discovered on the night of the coup—that and what else I gleaned when I was inside Sarad’s head.”
Agnar let the last comment go unaddressed. There were some things that he didn’t exactly want to know. “So, what do we do then?”
Elias brought his horse around and transfixed Agnar with dilated, fever-bright eyes. “We do the unexpected, my friend.”
†
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Lar.
“I don’t know,” said Phinneas, who crouched by Danica’s side inside the cramped tent which also contained Ogden, Bryn, and Eithne. “This is like no delirium I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t have a fever—in fact she’s ice cold.”
Lar picked loose a sticky strand of black hair that had become stuck to Danica’s lips. “Is it a curse?”
Phinneas looked Lar in his slate-grey eyes. “I believe so, son.”
“Bryn, you found her like this?” Lar asked.
“No. When I approached her she looked fine, if a little drawn. I surprised her and she almost attacked me. We started talking but when the conversation turned to her brother she began acting strange, hostile. It was like she became someone else. Her voice changed and she started talking like…” Bryn trailed off, at a loss for how to describe the surreal encounter.
“Like what?” Phinneas said, abruptly intense.
Bryn threw her hands up. “It’s hard to explain. It’s almost as if she were in some kind of trance. Like I was talking with some other personality and not the Danica I know.”
Ogden and Phinneas exchanged glances. “Could it be?” Phinneas asked as the color drained from his face.
“I don’t know,” Ogden said slowly. “A case of full possession is rare and I don’t know anyone that’s actually witnessed one. The individual usually has ample natural protection against such profanity but given all the abuse Danica has suffered, and grief, lack of sleep—it is feasible.”
“Possession?” Lar asked in a brittle voice. “Bloody hell. You can’t be serious. You are serious. Why didn’t you two see this coming?”
The words fell into a deep silence as neither Phinneas nor Ogden could find the words to answer Lar. The unassuming farmer had been quiet and reserved since their midnight escape, but at that moment a deluge of emotion surged through him. The others found themselves acutely reminded of the raw power of the ordinarily gentle giant as the blood rushed to his face and the flat muscles of his chest and ham-haunch sized shoulders, cultivated from years of manual labor, strained against his shirt and the thunder of his voice filled the tent.
Lar leaned over Danica, so close that were she awake she would feel his breath on her check. “You listen to me, you demon. You get gone, or I swear by God’s blood I’ll walk to Hell and sell my soul to Lord Fallow himself just so he takes you back.” Lar cast Ogden and Phinneas a baleful look and then brushed his queen aside as he stormed from the tent.
Ignoring the obvious, Eithne said into the charged silence, “What was she doing out in the wood alone?”
“She was going back to Peidra,” Bryn said. “She thinks Elias is still alive.”
“That’s preposterous,” Ogden said.
Bryn shot him a look. “She’s been through a lot, and whatever else you may say about the Duanas, they have uncanny instincts.”
“You actually think she’s right.” Ogden said.
“I don’t think he’s escaped, but they may have kept him alive. They may be trying to,” Bryn paused and gave Ogden a significant look, “elicit information from him.” Bryn could tell from the way his shoulders slumped and how he wouldn’t meet her eye that it was a thought that had occurred to him as well. “If you thought your brother was in the hands of those animals would you do less?”
The tent fell quiet again as each of them were left alone with their grim thoughts. “She seems to be resting quietly now—surely that’s a good sign,” Eithne said at last.
“We’ll do everything we can for her,” Phinneas said, his large brown eyes wet. “I owe Padraic and Elias at least that much.”
“If this is possession,” said Ogden in a monotone, “though her body appears at rest her spirit is fighting for her life.”
†
Danica found herself in a clearing in a deep wood, standing inside a circle of stones. She counted seven stones, each the size of a modest sack of grain, engraved with fluid symbols. She couldn’t remember how she had come to be here but she knew it was imperative that she not leave the circle of stones. She was sure someone had told her that once.
At the center of the circle sat a silver pool, about the diameter of a bird’s bath, lambent and placid as glass, but when she reached out a hand to touch it, it rippled and hummed with an electric thrum of power. In the pool an image formed of a dark shadow veined with swollen, red arteries. The vantage of the image changed, pulling back, and she saw herself bundled in a sleeping roll. She inhaled sharply for the shadow was superimposed over her like a cocoon and throbbing like a cancerous boil. Red ropes of energy writhed from the black mass and connected to her body at her belly button, solar plexus, sternum, throat, and in between her eyes.
“There you are, you little naughty.”
Dancia’s heart dropped. She turned slowly from the pool and toward the voice of her tormentor. Slade looked like he did the day they had met him at the Knoll County fair a lifetime ago: dashing and dressed in warm colors, yet his conjured illusion could not hide the black hunger in his eyes. The stones emitted a green light and a wind rustled through the canopy and Danica drew strength from that. “You again,” she said, affecting disinterest.
“And again and again. Death holds no mystery and creates no barrier for the Necromancer, child. Though I am hungry for a body again.” Slade gave her a lascivious wink. “Be a good girl and come without a fight and I won’t have to punish you.”
“This circle will bar you indefinitely.”
Slade reached a hand toward the perimeter of the stones and met an invisible barrier with a pop that gave birth to a collision of black and green sparks. “You can stay in there as long as you like but as long as you do you will remain in limbo, kept from your body and from the other side. You’ll have to come out and face me eventually.”
Danica’s attention was drawn away from Slade by a flickering in the pool. She looked into it and smiled at what she saw. “Perhaps not as long as you think. Elias is coming for you.”
†
“Split up?” said Agnar, incredulous. “You can’t be serious. You’re in no condition to travel alone and I’m in a strange land without any supplies.”
Elias licked his cracked lips. “My plan is simple. Once we gain the Renwood we find the lake on the eastern edge of the forest, which is where the escape route ends. From there their plan will be to travel along one of the tributaries of the lake and to an outpost of the Galacian Regulars on the other side of the forest. The Renwood is over a hundred miles long and it will take them a week to reach the outpost. You’ll easily be able to overtake them on horse. You’ll travel along the tributaries so that you won’t leave a trail.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll aim for the opposite side of the forest, leaving an easily followed trail. By the time they catch me, you would have already overtaken the queen and will be well on your way to the outpost.”
“Your plan is to sacrifice yourself so that I—your ancestral enemy—can deliver a clandestine message to your queen? You have lost your wits, son of summer.”
“Look at me, Agnar.” Elias nudged his mount, Brand, closer to Comet, forcing Agnar to do just that. Agnar looked into Elias’s black and shining eyes, the iris indistinguishable from the pupil. His skin was bereft of color and glistened with an unnatural pallor. A spider web of blue veins protruded against the skin
of his neck, creeping ever closer to his face.
“I am done for, Agnar. Mirengi saw to that. He let me escape with the hope that I would lead him to the queen, but knew he couldn’t let me live so he set this plague on me, so that even if I did manage to elude his tail I would die before long and avail my queen nothing. By using so much of my own magic I depleted my strength and hastened the process.” Elias drew closer yet to Agnar, leaning out of his saddle. “But his spell cut both ways. He tried to invade my mind, but in doing so opened up his own to me. I’ve learned his plan.”
†
“What are you up to, Master?” Talinus asked as he alighted in Sarad’s study. The wizard sat inside his spell-circle in his study, legs crossed and in seeming meditation. A scrying mirror rested on the floor before him.
“I was trying to locate Duana before you interrupted me.” Sarad opened his scarred eyelids, unleashing a withering blue-eyed gaze onto Talinus.
Talinus’s thoughts roiled. The impertinent—and clever—false Prelate threatened to undo all his plans. The Kin Carnum curse that Sarad cast on Elias was no trifle of necromancy. The spell involved a necromancer investing a portion of his magic, his spirit, in the victim. This created an energetic loop between the pair, whereby the Necromancer could track the victim, cast other spells on him from great distances, and even, providing he had the skill, sense his thoughts and emotions. In this case Sarad had also, through the Kin Carnum link, cast a fever-curse spell on Duana to ensure his death in the event they couldn’t recapture him.
The Kin Carnum, however, was a risky gambit, for it left the Necromancer bereft of the piece of himself that he attached to his victim, and maintaining the psychic link was draining.
“The Kin Carnum,” Talinus tsked. “Rather risky don’t you think? Duana is resourceful. What if he catches a glimpse into your skull, like he did when you tried to invade his memories?”
“It was a risk I had to take,” Sarad snapped, brittle with his exertion. “Some magic protects him and insulates his mind. It would be impossible to break him.”
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 35
