Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (5 page)

Elias, who watched her with open interest, saw the woman in
the red dress’s face darken at the Mayor’s words. She glared at Cormik, who
ignored her with practiced nonchalance and, with smug expression, offered
Bromstead only a shrug.

Bromstead made a disgusted sound in his throat and shook his
head to himself, then turned to the woman in red. “And who in tarnation are
you?”

“Indeed!” said Roderick Macallister. “This
woman
has
accosted my son! Her involvement could have caused serious injury!”

“Oh, do shut-up, Roderick,” Bromstead said. “She might well
have saved Elias’s hide.” He took the rapier from the woman and held it up. “It
seems your son failed to notice his blade slipping out of his sheath.”

“An accident, I assure you, Mayor,” said Cormik, answering
for his speechless father. “Furthermore, Elias really shouldn’t have grabbed
the blade. Not only is touching the opposing blade with a hand a concession of
a point, but doing so is what caused the sheaf’s malfunction.”

“That’s horse manure, and you know it!” Danica all but shouted.
“You were intent on putting a hole in him!”

Danica’s words started an avalanche, as Asa, Lar, and the
Macallisters all started talking at the same time, each vying to be heard. The situation
soon devolved into a shouting match, with Bromstead trying in vain to intercede
and cool hot tempers.

The enigmatic woman looked on stoically. She exchanged
glances with Elias, for they were the only two not involved in the argument. With
a shake of her head she turned to leave the dais.

“Wait a hot minute!” Macallister bellowed as her movement
caught his eye. “Where do you think you’re going?”

This silenced the group, who had, to a man, forgotten the
stranger in the heat of the moment. As one, they turned their attention back to
her.

The imperious woman turned on her heels to face the
villagers. She fixed her cobalt eyes on Macallister. “Roderick Macallister, I
presume?”

Macallister straightened his vest. “Viscount Macallister. And
who, pray tell, are you, who saw fit to accost my son?”

The woman arched an eyebrow. “Very well, Viscount. My name
is Bryn. Lady Bryn Denar.” At her pronouncement of the surname Denar, Bromstead
and Macallister blanched. “I am first cousin to your queen. Among my other
duties at court I have been appointed to the office of Deputy Tax Bursar.” She
flashed Macallister a honey sweet smile. “Men seem so much more willing to give
up coin to a woman.

“I am here to collect Ogressa Duchy’s harvest tax. Fortunately
for me I arrived in your hospitable town on a festival day.”

“Welcome to Knoll Creek, my Lady,” Bromstead said, suddenly
unsure what to do with his hands, while Macallister, who for once had no pithy
retort forthcoming, said, “Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” Lady Denar said. “In answer to your query,
Viscount, I saw fit to
accost
your son, because he doesn’t play fair.” She
shot Cormik a significant look. “His careless disregard for the rules of
engagement is ungentlemanly at best and unlawful at worst. Trained, as all high
lords are, in the basic Arcanum, I was the first to see his treachery, and so
reacted first. I trust you forgive my incursion, Mayor.”

“Naturally, my Lady,” said Bromstead.

A pregnant moment of silence fell over the dais as the
implication of Lady Denar’s words sunk in. Then, Bromstead and Macallister
stumbled over each other in an effort to welcome her Ladyship and express their
gratitude for her intervention in a situation that was surely an accident, and
wouldn’t it be best for everyone if we could just put this whole business
behind us? The corners of her lips curled in a near smile and her startlingly
blue eyes sparkled.

“Well,” she said, “I think I will take my leave, then. Mayor,
expect a visit from me tomorrow, for there are matters of state to discuss. This
concerns you as well, Macallister, for as viscount you are steward of Lord
Ogressa’s lands in his absence, and viscounts have a fiscal responsibility to
their county. I will gladly accept your invitation to the—what is it you call
it in these parts?—oh, yes, shin dig that I hear you will be having in a few
days. We can get better acquainted then.”

“Yes, my Lady,” said Macallister with a stiff bow, and an
equally stiff smile.

Lady Denar turned her attention to Elias and gave him an
appraising look. “And a good night to you, master. You fought well. I daresay
you fence almost as well as I do.”

“You honor me, my Lady,” Elias said while bowing his head,
“and may I say that you are a credit to your house.”

Bryn Denar raised a delicate eyebrow, her eyes lingering on
Elias, before turning on her heels and striding away. She approached two men,
wearing the crimson and gold of House Denar, who stood underneath a poplar
tree, where they had watched the proceedings on the dais. She swept past them
with nary a pause and they fell into rank behind her, without so much as a
glance behind.

The woman was an arcanist, that much was sure, thought
Elias, for she of all the onlookers had detected Cormik’s surreptitious spell. Elias
watched the flamboyant tax bursar and her retainers melt into the night and
wondered.

†

Padraic sat up, smoking in his arm chair, when his
children came home.

He appeared unsurprised as they told their tale, although,
in Elias’s experience, nothing ever seemed to catch his father off guard. Danica
told most of the story, which suited Elias just fine, who paid only cursory
attention to their conversation, for he was deep in thought. For all her
protestations to the contrary, Danica thrived on drama.

After Padraic rendered the obligatory fatherly wisdom,
Danica, sufficiently calmed, went to bed. Elias sat up with his father and
after ruminating behind three-fingers of knoll said, “Cormik used a spell on me.”

Padraic leaned forward in his chair. “You’re sure?”

“Without a doubt. I had him cornered at the edge of the
ring. He was finished. Then he made a gesture with his left hand, but he kept
it close to the cuff so I don’t think anyone else saw, and whispered a word or
two in a strange tongue. The next thing I knew, I was laying on my back, feeling
like a mule kicked me in the belly.”

“How bad is it? Do you think your ribs are broken?”

“Bruised at the worst. No, I’ll live, but I’m not looking
forward to tomorrow morning, I can tell you that.”

“All the same, I think we better stop by and see Phinneas
tomorrow, just to be sure. It’s high time we pay that old goat a visit anyway. Besides,
I am sure Danica wouldn’t mind seeing the man that set her on her way to
becoming a doctor.”

Elias agreed, knowing better than to argue with his father, and
it would be good to see the doctor. A smile came to Elias despite his black
mood, as he remembered his bit of good fortune. “It shouldn’t be too
inconvenient,” he said slyly. “We can drop off the Knoll Barrels first, and
then cut through Lurkwood to go visit the Doctor.”

“What’s this, then?”

Elias told his father about his chance encounter with a
Merchant bound for Peidra. After they shared in the excitement of the windfall,
the two men fell silent, each pondering the strange happenings of the night,
and the ramifications. They had enough trouble with the Macallisters when they
feigned civility, but now that they had been humiliated in public, and in front
of a member of the royal family, each man could only guess at what the future
would hold.

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.

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 or 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 could, 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.

“The
Dashin
. Where is it?”

“All this for a sword.”

“No mere sword, as you well know,” Slade spat, trembling
with excitement. “Where is it?” He held out his hand between them. Oily
tendrils of magic snaked out from his shirtsleeve and coiled around his wrist
and hand. “I will bind myself to my words. Your children for the
Dashin.
”

“Where’s the rest of your Hand?”

“This is a personal mission.”

Padraic looked pointedly at the smoking archer. “You want
the sword for yourself.”

“It belongs to the Scarlet Hand. It belongs to me!”

“The
Dashin
is an heirloom of House Senestrati,
crafted before they fell into shadow.”

“You’re stalling.” Slade held out his hand, tendrils of dark
magic writhing toward Padraic. “Your children for the
Dashin
. What say
you!?”

Padraic closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt his
resolve cracking. He thought of his wife as the life leaked out of him. Edora
would tell him to have faith, and he did—in his son. The time had come for
someone else to take up the sword and shield, and as much as he had tried he
could not pull his children from the tide of their destiny.

“The
Dashin
is warded from you and yours, which is
why you can’t sense it,” said Padraic. “Even if it were a foot away you
wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on it, or even detect its aura. But, then, you
knew that. Thus the charade.”

Slade stepped back and Padraic felt the rage and madness
pour off him. “Die a fool then. It matters not. Your son will want vengeance
for you and his woman. That, and the thought that his sister may yet live will
ensure he comes for me. I’ll keep her alive for bait but, oh, how I will make her
sing. Yes, your son will come, and he will bring the
Dashin
to me.”