Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) by Patrick Siana Read Free Book Online Page B

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