Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (2 page)

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.