Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  After some minutes Elias said, “Father?”

  “Yes, Elias?”

  “What are we going to do about this?”

  Padraic shifted in his chair and lit another cigarette. “Same as always, I expect. We’ve been neighbors with the Macallisters a long time. We stay out of their way, ignore them as best we can.”

  Elias snorted. Calling the Macallisters neighbors was something of an overstatement. The Duana homestead bordered some of their ranch lands, but their manor house was a solid five miles across the prairie. House Macallister owned half Knoll Creek, so by that standard, half the township were neighbors to the Macallisters. “And if Cormik comes around looking for trouble?”

  “Then we send him on his way. He may call you out to duel, though I suspect Lady Denar’s involvement tonight will probably have put that possibility to bed. In the rare event that happens, you can simply refuse him. A dead Macallister will do us no good at all. No, if they seek satisfaction it will likely come in the form of some kind of subterfuge, or scheme to undermine our business or name.”

  “Nothing new there,” said Elias. “Our homestead is the one jewel that’s always eluded Macallister.” Padraic grunted his assent. “So, what then? We can look forward to them sneaking up on us in the night and setting our house to flame with a fireball?”

  Padraic laughed. “Somehow I think not. If I am sure of anything, it is that the Macallisters do not have that kind of power at their disposal. Cormik’s use of the cantrip was foolhardy at best, but I can’t imagine he would be stupid enough to do so again and certainly not openly. Crown law is very specific on the offensive use of magic by civilians.”

  “You said Macallister was no wizard,” Elias said, the hint of an accusation in his tone.

  “And I stand by it. As distressing as being on the wrong end of the arcane was tonight, the cantrip he used on you was peanuts compared to the power of a true wizard of the higher orders.”

  “If that’s the case I’m not sure I want to meet the real deal. Still, where did he learn such a trick, I wonder?”

  “I imagine his father purchased a lesson from some unscrupulous arcanist in Peidra and taught it to Cormik, or, more likely, acquired an enchanted bauble designed to release a stored bit of magic when the appropriate trigger, usually a command word, is used.”

  Elias leaned forward and fixed hungry eyes on his father. “You seem to know an awful lot about the subject. Can you teach me any incantations?”

  “Elias, it’s not that simple. One cannot pick up a tome of magical lore, read off a list of words and expect magic to happen. Pronouncing words correctly in some long dead language is not going to give you arcane mastery.”

  “I’m serious, dad. I know that you can use magic. I’ve heard people talk about your adventures and the things you did. You told me about the tapestry, but not how one accesses it. If not through incantation, how does magic work?”

  Padraic Duana exhaled a blue stream of smoke. “You should know by now that the tales of my heroics in service to the crown have been greatly exaggerated.” He thought about telling Elias the conversation was over, but he read in his son an eagerness that bordered on obsession—an obsession that largely existed because of his own actions. Elias was gifted, and he hoped for neither the first, nor the last time, that he had made the correct decisions regarding his training. For the second time that day, he realized that if he didn’t cool the fire of Elias’s curiosity, he might seek other methods to slake his thirst for knowledge, and that could prove most dangerous.

  “The words themselves,” Padraic said, “do not explicitly give the magic power, but, rather, focus the mind. The way to think of it is like this—the wizard’s own, for the lack of a better word, creativity shapes his magic.”

  “So, what you are saying is that magic comes from inside the individual, and not from ritual?”

  “Essentially. Nearly limitless energy permeates the universe and a properly trained arcanist can channel this energy and bend it to his will. But our own personality, minds, and expectations shape that energy. While there are differing theories on the origins and mechanics of magic, this is the school of thought I prescribe to.”

  “So words aren’t necessary—just a knowledge of this energy and how to manipulate it?”

  Padraic sighed. “The only absolute in magic, son, is that there are no absolutes. We all shape the magic we use in our own way. If you believe you need to speak in tongues to perform magic, than you will. For example, many arcanists use geometry and geometric spell forms to channel magic, believing it helps harness and focus magical energy. In short, it is the power of our thoughts and will that give magic life.”

  “Huh,” said Elias, perhaps more confused than he was before.

  “Don’t worry, son,” Padraic said around a smile, “some have dedicated their entire lives to understanding the fundamental nature of magic and have come no closer than you and I.”

  With that said, Padraic Duana leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He dwelt briefly on the past, remembering when he, younger than Elias was now, went to Peidra seeking adventure among the sweeping marble arches and wide cobblestone avenues. “Well, Elias, I suppose it best we hit the hay. We have an early start tomorrow.”

  Recognizing a dismissal when he saw one, Elias rose. He turned as he approached the hallway leading to his bedroom. “She knew that he used magic. The Tax Bursar, Lady Denar.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She as much called Cormik out. She said that she was trained in the basic Arcanum, and so saw his treachery at once, which is why she was first on the scene. I’m not sure if the others picked up what she was putting down, but I can tell you the Macallisters did.”

  Padraic’s expression grew thoughtful. “Perhaps there is more to our Deputy Tax Bursar than we had imagined. If so, she has tipped her hand, but to what purpose? In any case, a man could have worse allies than a cousin to the queen.”

  As Elias drifted off to sleep that night he found himself thinking of the woman in the red dress.

  Chapter 4

  Waylaid

  Elias sighed, content, as the midday sun loosened his sore muscles. He hadn’t slept well the night before, and fatigue gave his morning a dreamy, airy feeling. He knew he was in good hands, though, with his father behind the reins, while Asa and Danica sat in the back of the open carriage, taking turns telling him stories and catching him up on the latest gossip.

  His eyelids fluttered open and he looked toward the horizon. They would be at the old Mayfair Manor in minutes. After selling the Knoll barrels to Slade it wouldn’t be far to Doctor Phinneas’s estate, where they could visit with their father’s old friend and see to Elias’s injuries. As he sat forward to stretch and muster some much needed energy the haft of his father’s walking cane dug into his side.

  He hadn’t noticed it before, although it didn’t surprise him. Padraic Duana often brought the thick stave with him on solitary travels, though the hale distiller certainly did not need it to walk. Rather, his father, who eschewed carrying steel, brought the stave as a precaution on the road in case he ran into trouble. Elias smiled to himself. He found it reassuring that even if trouble did find his father he required only a stick and not a real sword.

  They turned a bend, clearing a copse of trees, and the Mayfair Manor came into view. It sat atop a hillock, in parody of a castle atop a mountain. A white limestone façade covered the exterior of the house, and white columns spanned a wrap-around porch, the only reprieve from the severe angles that comprised the helm and pavilion roofs. The manor showed a lack of care, as lichen and moss had claimed the bottom portion of the columns, and mottled spots dotted the facade of the house.

  As they neared the manor a peculiar feeling of anxiety stole over Elias. His heart quickened and his stomach dropped, goose-bumps rose on his arms, and despite the sun he turned cold to his marrow.

  They approached within a hundred yards of the house, but Elias saw no sign of Slade o
r his caravan. He looked to his father. Padraic Duana’s face had turned ashen and he reached for his cane with one hand and reined in the horses with the other. Elias’s panic doubled at the sight of his father. “I’m sorry, son,” Padraic said. His eyes caught the light of the sun and glistened.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Danica said from behind them, sensing their distress. “Daddy?”

  The manor door crashed open.

  When Elias looked back on this day, this moment, which he would do countless times in the years remaining to him, he would first remember how unremarkable the face of evil was. In boyhood fantasies, fostered by many a fanciful novel, he imagined practitioners of the black arts to be gnarled and malformed creatures, pale-skinned from lack of sunlight, wearing heavy black robes that hid their faces in deep, shadowy cowls. This man was anything but. He dressed in normal clothes, if a little ostentatious, like the night before. His linen shirt, breeches, vest, and cape were of fine make, but were of neutral tones, and no more flashy than the dress of a prominent rancher.

  The sense of it, however, was another matter entirely.

  Elias recognized the figure that stepped onto the porch, but it was not the same man he had met last night. Slade’s manner had been carefree and his countenance given to good humor and jest. This man moved like a panther, and an unnatural air bled from him like an invisible, reeking vapor. The irises of his eyes reflected the sun like a wolf’s in firelight.

  Padraic ordered Danica and Asa to get down while Elias and Slade sized each other up. Padraic gave Elias one final look. Though the whites of his father’s eyes showed a little more than usual, to Elias, they looked as gentle and calm as ever. He waved a hand over the horses, his eyes still fixed on his son, and in a rich, sibilant tongue, spoke a single word. “Dormena.”

  Before Elias had time to register what happened, Padraic Duana exploded into action, bounding off the carriage in a fluid leap that defied gravity, cane in hand.

  Elias scrambled into the driver’s box, reaching for the reins, and then a whirlwind of activity happened all at once: A second man, garbed like Slade, stepped onto the porch with a nocked longbow in hand and fired an arrow; the horses began to turn; and Padraic and Slade joined in combat, the latter wielding a wicked, curved sword.

  Elias looked down, stupefied, to see a black fletched arrow protruding from his chest.

  The horses, frothing with effort, had completed their turn and strained to gain the protection offered by the copse of trees. Danica and Asa screamed in abject terror. The archer continued to fire with alarming celerity. Elias tried to tell them to get down, but he could not find his voice and managed only an inarticulate grunt as his vision darkened. Both women reached for the swaying Elias, to keep him from being unseated from his precarious perch in the driver’ box, but the carriage lurched wildly as it entered the cover of the tree-line.

  Danica lost her footing, and Elias’s left arm numbed, lacking the strength to hold onto her, even as she tried to pull him into the passenger cabin. They both went down. Elias sprawled into the driver’s box and Danica tumbled from the carriage.

  Elias reached for the reigns only to find them gone, dragging in the dirt. He managed to find the breath to call the horses to halt, but the ensorcelled steeds did not heed him. He turned to Asa. A blood-stained arrow sprouted from her bosom.

  Asa’s blue eyes went wide and her pupils dilated. A sensation of pins-and-needles washed over Elias’s entire body. His mind reeled as he looked back and forth between Asa and Danica, who lay motionless in the distance, growing smaller with every passing second.

  Elias tried to stand in the pitching carriage, but his legs failed him and white pin-pricks of light danced across his field of vision. In a final effort of strength he pulled Asa into the coach box with him and cradled her in his lap. Tears slid from her eyes in lazy streams as she looked up at her betrothed.

  Elias would have ample time in the following days to brood over precisely what Asa cried for. She cried for fear of death—that was certain. Perhaps she cried also for Elias, and the life they would never get a chance to share. Perhaps she cried for the children she would never mother with the man she loved, or for the thousand little concerns and pleasures that seemed so important in life but were now lost to her forever.

  Asa tried to speak, but her words came out as a gurgle of black blood. Her eyelids fluttered, but she could only keep them half open. Her bottom lip trembled. “Shhh,” Elias said as he smiled around the salt of his own tears. “You can close your eyes and rest if you like. The arrow didn’t hit any major arteries,” he lied. “You’re going to be just fine. Phinneas will fix you up right, you’ll see. We’ll be there soon.”

  Asa smiled, and died.

  Elias sobbed and pulled her to his breast, breathing in the scent of her for the last time. He held his dead betrothed, and felt the corners of his world darken. His vision blackened around the edges and he grew faint. Despair crawled over him, and he surrendered to it. In a few surreal moments everything had been taken from him. Soon, Elias thought, he would follow his family into death.

  He looked at Asa’s face, serene in death but bereft of the cherubin exuberance that had illuminated it in life. As he continued to look upon her, a black rage roiled within him. The darkness at the edge of his vision melted into red, as that smoldering rage took to flame, and he knew that he could not let himself die—not yet.

  Elias took a deep breath and looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest. The arrow had struck him not an inch below his left collarbone. Blood soaked his shirt to the waist—a not insignificant amount of it from Asa—but the wound bled now only in a trickle. He went to pull the arrow out, but then thought better of it. He remembered someone telling him once that removing an arrow without a healer at hand was a grave mistake. Instead he braced the arrow between his index and middle fingers and pressed down his hand to staunch the bleeding.

  Elias screamed.

  From the pain he drew resolve and focused on it to remain conscious and with vehement curses urged the galloping horses onward, toward Phinneas Crowe’s homestead.

  †

  Padraic Duana fought hard, and well. Despite this, his situation proved impossible.

  His foe, clearly an expert swordsman, fought with a strength and agility that could only be possessed by a disciple of the arcane arts. Moreover, his cane could not hold up against the steel of his enemy’s scimitar, which had been enchanted, for it was the black steel of the Scarlet Hand.

  Padraic sought to evade Slade’s attacks primarily, and if blocking proved necessary he parried against the flat of Slade’s blade. He brought as much of his magic to bear as he could, sending his will along his cane to strengthen it. A pale blue energy enveloped his stave and turned back a measure of Slade’s fell power, and his scimitar. He lacked sufficient power to attempt a more intricate arcane working, for he had invested most of his magic in Elias and Danica.

  Padraic’s tactic worked for but a minute, yet it was long enough to buy the spelled horses the time to pull the carriage to the relative safety of the Lurkwood, which had been his intent, but when he needed to block a blow aimed at his abdomen, his cane cut in two. Padraic Duana was all but eviscerated, but he refused to fall to his knees as his body demanded of him. He knew he was finished but he held himself proudly and met the gaze of his enemy.

  “Defiant to the end, Duana,” Slade said, not unkindly. “Feel no shame, you fought well under the circumstances.”

  “I arrowed the blond through the heart,” said the archer, who walked up to Slade, having watched the duel play out from a safe distance. “She is finished. The Duana girl fell from the carriage. She’s alive but unconscious. I only winged the boy, as you ordered.”

  “His sword arm?” asked Slade. “The boy can fight.”

  The archer hesitated. “No. He was turned from me, so I had to take the other shoulder, or miss the shot all together.”

  “Well, I s’pose you did the best you c
ould, friend,” Slade said adopting the accent used in the rural regions of Galacia, mania dancing in his eyes. He raised a hand, fingers crooked into a claw, and black bolts of lighting lanced from his fingertips. The force of the blast lifted the archer from his feet and threw him a half-dozen feet. He lay convulsing on the earth as ripples of puce electricity oscillated over his smoking body.

  Slade turned his black eyes back to Padraic. “Where were we?”

  “You’re going to live to regret leaving Elias alive, but not for long,” said Padraic.

  Perhaps Slade saw something then in Padraic’s expression, or sensed a portent himself, for his smile faltered a hair. “You boast, even at the end, Marshal. I respect that. It’s almost a pity I’ve slain you.”

  “Answer me one thing, assassin. Why this elaborate ruse? Has the Scarlet Hand fallen so far that it now must subsist on contracts to assassinate farmers?”

  “All work and no play, Duana. But no. Your enemy pays well, but not that well. My Lieutenant’s reason for accepting the contract was that you number among the few that can stand in our way, and my masters would see you all extinguished. Thanks to your rancher friend, we discovered who you are, or, shall I say, who you were before you went into hiding, Sentinel.”

  Slade flashed him his teeth in a vulpine grin. “For my part, I couldn’t pass up a chance to kill a Marshal of your reputation. They say you were the best.”

  “That a fact?”

  “It is, but that’s just sugar in my coffee.”

  Here it comes, thought Padraic. “What is it you really came to Knoll Creek for?”

  Slade leaned in, close enough that Padraic could feel the heat of his breath and see the fell power dancing behind his eyes. “We are both men of honor, Sentinel, though we serve different masters. Your son yet lives and your daughter can be spared. Though you are dead, I will give you the lives of your children.”

  “Your price?” said Padraic softly, although he knew.