Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle Book 1)
Patrick Siana
Language: English
Pages: 425
ISBN: B00H1HEK38
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
AN EPIC SWORDS AND SORCERY FANTASY SERIES THAT WILL KEEP YOU UP FAR PAST YOUR BEDTIME
A retired Marshal hiding out as a whiskey distiller. A princess. An assassin. A viscount playing at sorcery. A magic sword, and an ancient curse. It has all the makings of one of Elias Duana's dime-store novels. Only this is no bedtime story.
It all begins when Viscount Roderick Macallister makes an unannounced visit to Elias Duana's homestead with an offer to purchase his ancestral land. Elias turns Macallister away, but little does he know that his refusal to sell will thrust himself into the midst of a centuries-long feud between two royal dynasties and reveal his own family's mysterious past.
On a routine outing Elias is ambushed by scimitar-wielding, magic-slinging highwaymen. Elias escapes with his life, though he is wounded. It doesn't take much imagination on Elias's part to conclude that the men who attacked him were no mere bandits. Despite the day-old arrow wound in his shoulder Elias embarks on a mission to protect his land and family and bring his would-be killers to justice.
Elias knows that his father was once a Marshal, an arbiter of the queen's justice, though Padraic Duana was always tight-lipped about his past in service to the queen. What Elias doesn't know is that his father carried not only a magic sword, but also the secrets of his nation. Secrets that an arcane sect named the Scarlet Hand is more than a little interested in. Secrets involving a long-forgotten curse and a banished House shrouded in dark magic, and in mystery.
As Elias stumbles upon one clue after another, however, the homesteader turned rogue lawman discovers that far more than his small corner of the world hangs on the precipice of ruin, for the Scarlet Hand has designs on the throne itself. With the Hand fast on his trail, Elias races toward Peidra, the capital of Galacia, to warn the queen of the imminent threat to the crown, knowing full well that the safety of both his family and all the realm is in his hands.
Still, the rogue Marshal finds help in unexpected places as he joins forces with a razor-tongued princess that is anything but proper, his medical-school-dropout sister, an aged spy turned country doctor, and a horse named Comet. Together, this unlikely band of heroes is all that stands between the fist of the Scarlet Hand and the destruction of the realm, if not all the nations of Agia.
around the stymied horse’s stuck leg when Bragan stiffened sharply. “What the hell?” He looked up the slope at Vash. Vash pressed his horse to the crest of the slope and then heard a long wet sound come from behind him followed by two thuds. Vahn and Utho’s horses sped past him, snorting in terror while his own mount reared, spooked by the coppery scent of blood. Vash pulled hard at the reins in an effort to turn around but a large crash and two screams pulled his attention back down the slope.
intelligence for the seventh house, but this is the first time in generations that one has been discovered, much less taken. This is the first time the Hand has left any witness alive.” Elias felt the others’ eyes upon him, and he shifted uneasily under their weight. “Well, it won’t be the last. If they are as far-reaching and covert as you say, we may not have to find them at all—they may very well come for us to tie up loose ends.” “The queen must be warned,” Bryn said. “Her life could be in
dreamt of walking such gallant environs but had long ago dismissed the notion that he would ever see more of the world than the few counties beyond Knoll Creek. The dream of his youth had come to pass, but not in the least way like he had imagined it in his childhood fantasies. The sting of his loss still burrowed its way inside him, though the pain grew less acute with each passing day. He could now conjure up the faces of Asa and his father in his mind’s-eye without his breath catching in his
rise.” “You remind me of your father, young man,” the white-haired man said, his bright eyes almost disappearing beneath the fold of his wrinkled eyebrows. “He wouldn’t bend knee to any man, or woman for that matter.” “You knew my father?” Elias asked, unable to conceal his interest. “Yes. He was a good man. No, he was the best of us.” Elias tilted his head. “You were a Marshal, sir?” “Not quite,” he returned with an apologetic smile, “but we were both…let’s just say that we shared similar
no run-of-the-mill magical weapon, but we knew that. What I think is that in some way we don’t yet comprehend you and this sword have been linked. This may mean that the warding magic bound to the sword has been bound to you as well and will protect you even if you are not wielding the weapon. Or it could mean that you have the ability to unlock this artifact’s true potential.” “Artifact?” “I say artifact, because this sword may very well have functions beyond that of a weapon—magnificent a