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

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