Free Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) by Patrick Siana

circular motion. His pale blue eyes narrowed as he
focused his will and cast a spell. Sarad summoned a ward, as a failsafe, to
prevent anyone from barging in on him. The ward would make it virtually
impossible to break down the door by any mundane means.
    That done, he waved his hand cursorily over the floor in the
center of the chamber and spoke a single word: Ikoro . The floor wavered
and shimmered, like the heat wave distortion in the air above a torch, and then
cleared to reveal a spell-circle rife with arcane runes and sigils, which were etched
into the floor in silver and intersected by long, sweeping lines.
    Sarad used an illusion to hide his Wizard’s Circle from view,
lest anyone entering his study discover the true nature of their nascent
Prelate.
    With the illusion that obfuscated the circle dispelled,
Sarad readied himself to commune with his masters. He sat in the center of the
circle between a series of intertwining lines, closed his eyes, and began to
chant. The words he spoke would be indecipherable to any listener, save one of
his order, as a coherent language. Rather, they sounded like a discordant,
sibilant song pronounced in phonemes instead of words.
    The circle began to emit a scarlet light.
    He could feel the heat leeching from his body, as if an icy
fist held him fast it its grasp. Sarad opened his eyes. A shadowy form
coalesced in the scarlet blaze. The figure sat cross-legged, suspended in mid
air. His body was wreathed in waves of scarlet energy that clung to him like
liquid fire. His eyes, however, were an inky void, as depthless and as devouring
as a starless, moonless night.
    “Sarad,” the figure said simply.
    “Greetings, my Liege. I humbly await your direction.”
    “You have done well by securing the office of Prelate. We
are pleased. How go your efforts at subverting the court in Peidra?”
    “I have made progress, faster than anticipated. As we
discussed, it is too early to begin posturing for political influence. However,
my blessings have ingratiated me to many members of the court and gentry, and
the number of those who seek the sacrament is growing exponentially.”
    “Excellent. Before long they shall seek your counsel, and be
as clay in your hands to be shaped to our will. When House Denar is at its
weakest, the Hand will strike and you will open the door for our return.”
    “So shall it be, my Lord.”
    “Long have our agents been abroad in Agia, and long have
they waited for this moment. Hitherto, they have remained hidden, masquerading,
but soon shall they reveal themselves as the servants of a power long-forgotten
but not gone.”
    With that said the ephemeral figure nodded once, and the
scarlet bindings that wound about him frayed, then dissipated. The lambent
threads lashed and snaked in the air like a taut sailor’s line abruptly cut. A
preternatural wind swept through the chamber. The arcane light spun into a
vortex, churned into a ball, then a pinprick before disappearing completely,
leaving an exhausted Prelate of The Church of the One God in its wake.
    †
    Elsewhere in the capital, a careworn Eithne Denar,
Queen of Galacia, resisted the impulse to rub her aching head.
    She remembered the most valuable lesson her father had
taught her—never let the gentry see you rattled. She heard his voice even now. They
are jackals, Ith. If you prick your finger and let slip a single drop of blood,
they’ll take your whole hand, so eager will they be for a taste of it.
    The queen wished for nothing more than to throttle the reedy
man who lectured her in a tone thick with condescension. Her tenuous grasp on
the favor of the court, however, stayed her hand. At thirty she was a
relatively young sovereign in the eyes of the gentry—a fact that Lord Geoffrey
Oberon was all too happy to remind her of. She could ill afford to alienate
House of Oberon as she had need of their ample resources and familial ties with
the royal house of neighboring Phyra. As the breadbasket of the