Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  “Generous indeed, but I have my pension from the crown, and the surrounding counties show no sign of tiring of my great-great grandfather’s gold-medal recipe, so I think we shall manage,” Padraic said.

  “Very well, Padraic. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Macallister kept his tone civil, but his face betrayed him: his eyes narrowed, hooded by his brow, and his lips pressed flat in the prelude of a grimace. He adjusted his sable, moleskin riding gloves and nodded to Padraic. “Farewell, old friend,” he said, then mounted his heavily muscled stallion, whose glossy, black coat was the match of his gloves and the trim of his cape.

  “Good luck in the fencing circle tonight, son,” Macallister called over his shoulder as he rode away.

  “I’m not entering the contest!” Elias called after him, but Macallister was already out of ear shot, plumes of dust rising in his wake. Elias swung his foil after the rancher. “Father, why are you so polite to Macallister? You don’t like the greedy son-of-a-crow any more than I do.”

  “Granted, but there is nothing to be gained from responding to rudeness in kind, or from antagonizing a man like Roderick Macallister. Despite all of his failings, and like it or not, he is a powerful man. He’s accustomed to getting what he wants.”

  “But he won’t get our distillery. We won’t sell. Not ever. Why can’t he see that?”

  Padraic managed the effect of a shrug with the roll of an eyebrow. “He doesn’t want to see it, and so he doesn’t. He covets the riches mass producing whiskey here will bring, and the notoriety. We have the best water and so the best whiskey, and that rankles Macallister. He’s the wealthiest man in thirty leagues, but for all that, the spirit that’s named after this region is perfected here on Duana land, and he doesn’t have his hand in it.”

  Elias knew his father had the truth of it. The subterranean limestone basin on the Duana land supplied them with water free from mineral impurities. As a result, the whiskey distilled from it had a crisp, clean and singular flavor. The distillery Macallister owned in town at the grist mill couldn’t compete, and that the rancher could not abide.

  Macallister had worked for some time on developing a new knoll-whiskey recipe, but to no avail. Rumor had it that the rancher had even attempted rituals to purify the water of Knoll Creek. Elias watched as Macallister shrank into a black dot on the prairie and grew thoughtful. “Is it true what folk say? Is he a wizard?”

  Padraic humphed. “Macallister is a rich man with too much time on his hands. Most of his knowledge of the arcane ends at parlor tricks. Yet, out here in the more rural duchies, that is enough to grant one some notoriety. Folk in these parts only exposure to the arcane is what they’ve read in dime-store novels. Most wizards of note don’t saunter about demonstrating their power at dinner parties and drinking holes for the sole purpose of impressing others.”

  “Which is exactly what he was trying to do by dropping that little tidbit about attending the Summit Arcana, as if the entire county didn’t already know.”

  Padraic grunted his assent and followed his son’s gaze, watching as Macallister vanished into the horizon, where a copse of trees met the undulating long grass at the edge of the prairie. “Yet, much harm has been known to come from a great fool with a little knowledge.”

  Padraic looked off into the distance as if he saw something beyond the horizon both captivating and troubling. Elias had long ago grown accustomed to this habit of his father’s—the thousand league gaze as he had begun to think of it—and as such did not interrupt him. Lately, however, it seemed that the thousand league gaze crept upon Padraic Duana often.

  Elias waited silently as the sun began to dip, shadows lengthening into late afternoon and splashing the summer sky with hues of red and purple.

  After the moment passed, Padraic walked to the outer wall of the rickhouse, sat down, and patted a spot of ground beside him. “Sit a moment, Elias. We should stretch so that we don’t cramp up. What were we talking about?”

  “Macallister and his questionable powers.”

  “My old schoolfellow has power in plenty—the kind you carry in your coin purse. That, and his name.”

  Elias had to concede his father’s point yet again. Aside from the success of his ranch, Macallister descended from the old gentry that first settled the southlands under the allowance of House Ogressa, who had been awarded this duchy in time beyond reckoning. As if that hadn’t already placed Knoll Creek firmly in his pocket, he had recently become cousin to Duke Vachel Ogressa. Macallister’s elderly aunt married well after the death of her first husband. A union, rumor held, prompted by Ogressa’s dwindling coffers and Roderick Macallister’s ready coin. This merging of the two houses elevated Macallister to the status of Viscount, albeit in title only—a technicality the rancher was all too eager to remedy.

  “As for magic,” Padraic continued, “his power is naught but smoke and mirrors. If Macallister met a true wizard he’d soil his cloth of gold breeches.”

  Elias enjoyed a good laugh at his father’s jibe. Sobering, he said, “Reverend Dunfar says that magic is all but dead and that the One God granted the devout the strength to drive heathen arcanists from Galacia along with the Ittamar incursion.”

  “The Dunfar boy? Little Johnny Dunfar?” Padraic shot his son an arch look and sighed. Padraic had never seen fit to take his children to mass. It wasn’t that he had anything against the One God so much as church bureaucrats. Since his betrothal to Asa Bromstead, however, Elias had begun to attend services. The mayor’s good, god-fearing daughter couldn’t be seen keeping with an irreverent after all, Padraic mused.

  “Yes, little Johhny Dunfar,” said Elias with a wry smile and a shake of his head, “and no, I’m not drinking the sacramental wine. Still, the church gets correspondence from Peidra, and, well, people talk. They say the world is entering a new age—an age without magic. Makes you wonder is all. I heard at the White Horse that a scientist in Phyra is on the verge of inventing a horseless carriage!”

  “I’d like to see that,” said Padraic, not entirely sure that he wanted to see any such thing. “Horseless carriages aside, what you call magic will never leave our world, at least not entirely.”

  “What I call magic? What else would I call it?”

  “The ancient Aradur mystics, for one, called it the tapestry.”

  “The tapestry? I’ve never heard of such a thing. How can a ball of fire come from a tapestry?”

  Padraic favored his son with a chuckle. “I see you still have your nose in those books penned by alehouse bards!”

  “All joking aside,” Elias said, growing intent, “tell me more about this tapestry.”

  Padraic looked at his son. Elias had the Duana build and dark coloring, but he had his mother’s inquisitive mind and his black eyes glittered with an intelligence belied by his sturdy frame and ruddy farm-boy complexion. Padraic felt reticent about stoking the fire of Elias’s curiosity too much, for, like his mother, once one door opened to him he was unable to resist opening the next. Still, if the boy was determined to slake his thirst for knowledge, better it be quenched by his father than some other less than reputable source.

  “The Aradurian mages believed that a field of energy spans the entire universe and connects every single thing, from a man to a mote of dust, together in a vast, living web, or tapestry. Everyone effects and is affected by this field of energy to some degree, but some have the ability to manipulate and bend it to their will. You know these individuals as wizards or sorceresses, or witches, warlocks, mages—or any number of names. Magic is just another word, but it confuses the source of an arcanist’s power.”

  “How so?”

  Padraic offered his son his trademark eyebrow shrug. “Magic conjures images of stage actors and illusionists performing card tricks and pulling prairie dogs from hats.”

  “Like Macallister.”

  “Aye.”

  “So, Dunfar is wrong.”

  “Yes and no. While the force of magic hasn�
�t disappeared, the ranks of practitioners of the arcane have thinned, chiefly because of the northern campaigns.”

  Elias nodded, for his father had alluded to this before. “Many of our wizards were lost in the Quarter Century War.”

  “Inevitably, yes, though conscripted men strove to protect their arcanists, for a good wizard was their lifeline on the Sheer. More than that, the war effort consumed a lot of resources and wizards are expensive.”

  “It makes sense that their salary was higher than a Galacian Regular.”

  “That’s just the tip of the splinter. With the crown’s purse already heavily burdened, stipends for universities, colleges, and other public works ran dry. Arcalum’s recruitment efforts were largely responsible for discovering young individuals with the spark of the arcane. Wizard training is quite a challenging enterprise, and few can progress far without a mentor, and all those wizards and apprentices need to be housed, clothed, and fed—all of which require coin.”

  Padraic looked ahead toward the creek and watched the water, as his fathers had before him, bubble from its underground cavern and run down the gentle slope toward the Duana’s modest mill and rickhouse beyond, rolling downstream through the limestone basin like the years had rolled by, at first slowly, and then quicker as he aged, until he found himself in the autumn of his life, hair more salt than pepper and skin as coppery as the whiskey he distilled.

  Elias watched his father intently as he spoke. While Padraic Duana felt old that day, sitting by the creek with his son, to Elias his grey hair was dignified, and the tanned skin, squinting hawk-like eyes, the lean silhouette, were all testimonies to a life lived largely out of doors and evidence of his strength and athleticism even well into his fifties.

  “It’s a shame,” Padraic said, “that human ingenuity and compulsion to war have slowly bled us of our most precious gift.”

  Elias gazed at his father, who had closed his eyes and grown as still as someone in a deep sleep. “What do you mean?”

  “I think we’ve had enough talk of war and wizards for one day.” Padraic opened his eyes. “Besides, I think that a certain young man is due to meet a comely young lass at the county fair.”

  “We still have to turn the top level of the rickhouse,” said Elias, keeping his tone neutral, for though he was loathe to rotate the barrels in the sweltering attic of the rickhouse it needed to be done and the hour before dusk was the best time to do it.

  “True enough,” Padraic said, and Elias’s heart sank, “but I think it can wait until tomorrow, and you really should get a move on. You don’t want to keep Asa waiting.”

  Elias clapped his father on the shoulder in thanks and sprung to action. Not five minutes later, as Elias closed up the rickhouse and gathered the practice equipment he heard the clip clop of hooves. He turned toward the drive trail. A smear of orange light bobbed in the distance—a carriage lantern. As the carriage crested the hill leading to the Duana homestead, Elias cried out, “Dad! Danica’s carriage!”

  One corner of Padraic’s mouth tilted upward as he watched his two children come together and his thoughts turned to his late wife. The greatest gift they had given their children was each other. In the years to come, he ardently hoped that would be enough. Padraic sighed deeply. He walked around the far side of the barn and approached his modest but well-built cedar shake house from the back. He wanted his children to be able to greet each other without their old man present.

  Elias sprinted toward the carriage as it meandered into the driveway before the house. Danica threw down the reigns and jumped from the driver’s seat even as the carriage shrugged to a stop. “Were you planning on doing battle with me, brother?” Danica asked, raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at his practice sword.

  Elias, who only then realized that he still held the practice blades, cast the foils aside and the two siblings embraced, laughing. “I didn’t think that your summer apprenticeship finished for another month,” Elias said.

  “It doesn’t, but how could I miss Midsummer’s? And I knew my little brother would be helpless without me.”

  Elias harrumphed with a wry grin and a shake of his head, for though he was two years her elder, the precocious Danica had taken to calling him little brother some years ago after he had shed the excess bodyweight that had plagued him through his youth.

  Elias held her out at arm’s-length and looked her over. She wore a simple but elegant white frock, the official garb of a Healer, but Danica was not one to be satisfied by attaining the rank of a mere adept, and aspired to the white coat of a vested doctor. Elias thought she looked a bit thin, but her face retained its cherubic aspect, though it had seen some sun, evidenced by a smattering of faint freckles.

  “Look,” Danica said, indicating the carriage with a tilt of her head, “I’ve brought company.”

  The doors of the carriage opened to reveal the broad, befreckled face of Lar. “Good evening, Master Duana, my name is Lar Fletcher. You may remember me from the schoolhouse. I believe I sat behind you.”

  “Very funny, Lar,” Elias said, the corners of his mouth twisting into a half smile.

  “What? It’s been so long since my best friend visited, I thought he forgot me.”

  “Dry your tears you big sissy, and get your arse out of my face,” cried a woman’s voice from inside the carriage. “I’m dying in here. With all your whining you’d think he was engaged to you!”

  Lar squeezed himself out of the carriage and Asa appeared, following gingerly in his clumsy wake. Elias’s bemused expression bloomed into a full grin. The four of them were together again, just like old times.

  Elias took Asa’s hand and helped her step down from the rustic carriage, which didn’t boast a fold-down stair like her father’s coach. Asa, ever demure, wore her golden hair up, with a few tresses artfully let loose, and a pale, silk summer dress. Elias hazarded a quick peck on her cheek, which elicited a hearty guffaw from Danica.

  Danica shook her head in resigned disbelief. “I decided to pick them up on the way through town, so that we could all go together. Little did I know it would take Miss Bromstead three hours to get ready! I wonder who she is trying to impress. I heard that she got herself engaged to some farmer from around here, but I credited it as nothing more than gossip. After all, what are the odds that the Mayor’s daughter would settle for some backwater bumpkin?”

  “I’m glad to see that your fancy education hasn’t impinged your sense of humor, Danica. Besides,” Asa drawled, as she turned up her nose, “It only took me two hours to get ready.”

  Danica put her hand to her head, “I can hardly believe my ears! The prim and proper Asa Bromstead cracked a joke!”

  They laughed as one, overjoyed to be together again. After they wiped their eyes and caught their breaths, the quartet went up to the house so that Danica could visit with Padraic and Elias could clean up and change. Despite the four friend’s protestations, Padraic opted out of the fair to instead enjoy a quiet night in his study.

  In short order the foursome piled into Danica’s carriage and were on their way to Knoll County’s Midsummer’s Fair, each brimming with excitement for the annual festival that was the highlight of the summer in this quiet corner of Galacia.

  Yet, from his perch in the driver’s box, Elias found himself ruminating upon Macallister and his unannounced visit. An inarticulate sense of dread gnawed at his gut with dull, rusty teeth, and he wondered what the viscount was really about. The more he thought on Macallister’s manner, the deeper his feeling of apprehension grew, for it seemed something sour lurked beneath the rancher’s usual flippant façade.

  Elias tried to put Macallister from his mind and focus on the fine victuals, spirits, music, and games that awaited him at the fair, but his relief proved fleeting, for he realized that at the town green he may very well encounter Macallister yet again, and worse, Cormik. The viscount’s son—and Elias’s nemesis—was certain to make an appearance, if not at the duel, than strutting amidst the citizens of
Knoll Creek, who grudgingly bent knee to the Macallisters since their ascension to the higher echelons of the gentry.

  Chapter 2

  Duel

  Elias heard the fair before he saw it. The din of boisterous townsfolk, farmers, and vendors carried in the verdant valley that nestled the town of Knoll Creek. Elias urged the horses on from his seat in the driver’s box, which he shared with Asa, not wanting to miss out on any of the festivities.

  Elias paused at the gate after he paid the porter and absorbed the sights, sounds, and smells of the fair.

  The soft, warm glow from post mounted lanterns cast the grounds in a cozy, ethereal light, which left him with the sensation of a pleasant dream. The air hummed as the voices of villagers absorbed in gossip, bartering, and merry making merged into a lulling chorus. A lazy breeze wafted the savor of roasting pork, grilling beef steaks, and simmering chili.

  A band in the center of the grounds pounded out the twangy, toe-tapping melodies that had become synonymous with the south of Galacia. A flash of red caught Elias’s eye as a dancer whirled before the gazebo that housed the band.

  His eyes lingered on the dancer for a beat. She moved with a fluid grace, the equal of which he had only seen in his father when he fenced. Auburn hair fanned out in a fiery corona as she glided and spun, laughing all the while. Elias wondered who she was, for he had not seen her before.

  It took Elias a moment before he realized someone had been speaking to him. He turned in his seat to find Danica’s head poking from out the carriage window, eyes rolling, one corner of her mouth tucked up into a half smile. “When you’re done gawking like a kid in a candy shop,” she said, “maybe we can actually go in.”

  “Yeah,” said Lar, whose head suddenly popped out of the window beside Danica, “and don’t think you’re backing out of our annual chili eating contest just because you had the runs for a week last year!”