Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Read Free Page A

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