Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3)

by Melissa McPhail

  That’s when he saw the other pattern.

  It was glowing softly on the wall near the doors, where his mother had last been standing. No doubt the streaming sunlight had at first obscured it.

  Tanis made a streak to the pattern. He studied it closely, and as soon as he placed his hand upon it, his mother reappeared.

  “Now, my love,” she said, turning from the window as if she’d never left, “let us talk about the Truths…”

  By the time Tanis finished his second lesson with his mother, he had the hang of the trick. The next pattern to glow was usually near whatever part of the room she’d just been standing in, and each time he need only look closely upon the pattern or touch it with his fingers to bring his next lesson to life. By the time midday rolled past, he’d learned more than he had in a year of study with Master o’Reith.

  His mother didn’t just teach him workings of the fourth strand, but also of the second and third and even some of the first as well. He didn’t know why she was instructing him in the laws and rules governing these other strands, or of the details and patterns of their use—he was no wielder to use the patterns of other strands—but he loved gaining the knowledge and embraced it as much as he embraced the visions of her.

  “Now, my darling,” said his mother at the end of a lesson where she’d been discussing the second strand’s Nine Laws of Travel and the Nodefinders’ associated patterns—he’d lost count of all the lessons so far that day, only noting just then that the sun was tilting towards the west and the forest shadows were extending across the hill. “Let us end for today. Feed your body, rest your mind. In sleep, these lessons will take better shape and find their place within your understanding.”

  She came to where he was sitting at the foot of his bed—where she’d instructed him to sit while they discussed the second strand. She placed ghostly hands upon either side of his head and leaned to kiss his forehead. Tanis saw her face come near and closed his eyes and imagined that he felt her kiss. “Know always that I love you,” she murmured.

  Then she vanished.

  About a heartbeat later, the door to his room opened and Tanis lifted his eyes to find the zanthyr standing in the portal. Phaedor took in his state of undressed dishabille and arched a solitary raven brow.

  Tanis grinned sheepishly. “Blame my mother. She’s been teaching me.”

  Phaedor gave him a curious look as he came inside the room. “Your mother. Just now?”

  Tanis waved helplessly at the walls wearing a smile that fairly exploded off his face. “At least—her patterns have. They’ve come alive this morning, and each one harbors a lesson.”

  “Do they indeed?” Phaedor leaned against the wall and crossed arms before his muscled chest. “Perhaps as you dress you might explain this phenomenon of talking walls to me, truthreader.”

  Still grinning from ear to ear, Tanis pushed off the bed and went to the red-lacquered armoire, which opened to reveal a full complement of clothing, all of the garments fine enough for the Empress’s court—finer even than the jacket Prince Ean had given Tanis and which he’d now quite outgrown, almost as fine as the one Pelas had made for him. “What should I wear, my lord?” the lad asked as he gazed at the array.

  “A simple tunic will suffice for the afternoon’s practice, Tanis. We won’t be heading to Valentina’s court for some time yet.”

  Tanis turned to him swiftly, but the zanthyr merely regarded him with his usual enigmatic gaze. Tanis knew he had to be teasing, yet…he’d sounded earnest. “Oh, I see,” the lad returned, affecting a casual tone. “And how will we be traveling to the Sacred City, my lord? Not through the mountains again, I hope.”

  “Valentina will send a ship.”

  Tanis gave him a sharp look, for again, Phaedor had sounded sincere. “That’s awfully nice of her,” the boy replied with sudden misgiving, no longer certain the zanthyr was kidding. “Will she be coming herself then?”

  “I suspect she will send her Consort.”

  At this, Tanis turned to Phaedor in true, for he could tell the zanthyr really wasn’t teasing, though the hint of a smile glinted in his emerald gaze. The zanthyr only let Tanis read the truth of his words when it suited his motives.

  Tanis turned back to his clothing a little wide-eyed. The idea that an imperial ship might suddenly appear in search of them was both exciting and a little disconcerting.

  “About these lessons, Tanis,” Phaedor prompted before the lad could dive too far into speculation on why Valentina might be sending a ship.

  “Oh, right.” Tanis selected a green tunic and shoved his arms into it. “Well…I dreamed of my mother, and when I woke at dawn, a pattern was glowing on the wall.”

  “Which pattern?”

  Tanis pushed his head through the tunic and reached for a pair of dark lambskin leggings. “That one in the middle.” He pointed ambiguously toward a patch of wall before attempting to don the pants. “Four up from the wainscoting.”

  Phaedor walked over to said pattern and laid three fingers upon it, stroking downward. “This pattern, lad?” He turned him a sideways glance, and there was something in his gaze…

  Tanis was trying to hold the hem of his tunic with his chin in order to tie his britches. He looked up beneath his brows. “That’s it,” he muttered.

  Did the hint of a smile shadow the zanthyr’s lips? Who could say? ‘Phaedor’ and ‘enigmatic’ were interchangeable terms. The zanthyr dropped his hand from the wall. “And what happened then?”

  “I went over to it and touched it, and my mother appeared.”

  “How very curious of her.”

  Tanis was occupied with trying to figure out the way the laces worked on his britches, so he missed the sardonic undertone in the zanthyr’s reply.

  “Well, not in the flesh, of course,” the lad added absently, “I mean, she said she was only an illusion formed of the fourth, but…” He finally managed to tie off the laces and looked up with an expression of supreme excitement, letting his tunic fall around his hips. “But she looked real.”

  Phaedor’s gaze fell softly upon the boy. “No doubt she did, lad.”

  Tanis grabbed his belt and slung it around slender hips. “When one lesson ended, another pattern would start to glow. As soon as I touched it, she’d be there again, giving me my next lesson.”

  “Even so?” Phaedor aimed an amused look his way. “And what have you learned this morning, truthreader?”

  “About the First Law and the Twentieth Esoteric and the Nodefinder’s Nine Laws of Travel.” He slid the leather belt through the buckle and knotted it off. “And a bunch of other stuff.”

  “Do tell me more.” The zanthyr motioned Tanis toward the door. “You have my undivided attention.”

  Tanis finally noticed the multiple undertones in Phaedor’s reply. “Wait—is this a test?” He turned him a hard look over his shoulder while the zanthyr was prodding him through the door. “You knew about this already, didn’t you? You did come in just as the last lesson finished…”

  The zanthyr’s emerald gaze glittered.

  The manor hummed with activity as Tanis followed Phaedor down the halls, much in contrast to their arrival. While they walked, the boy did his best to recount highlights of his lessons—remaining suspicious of the zanthyr all the while—and Phaedor in turn made laconic introductions of the staff they met along the way.

  All introductions were made in a dialect of Agasi, and Tanis at first found himself struggling to keep up with a language he hadn’t studied in over a year; but as the day passed, the dialect became intrinsically familiar, as if he’d learned it while still a babe, when language was only heard and not spoken.

  Tanis gratefully accepted three meat pies and an apple tart from the tall, wiry cook, whose lined brown eyes had crinkled warmly as she’d hugged him in a strong embrace. He devoured all the pies in less time than it would’ve taken him to name their ingredients, and snared a winter apple from a large basket by the pantry doors as he followed the
zanthyr outside.

  The afternoon beyond the manor’s solid stone walls greeted Tanis with a bracing chill. A bank of grey clouds was moving in from seaward, obscuring the sun that had shone so brightly upon the lad’s first waking. It gave an ominous cast to the day and elevated Tanis’s already heightened sense of adventure.

  The zanthyr took Tanis to a limestone-paved courtyard surrounded on three sides by the manor’s tall walls. Two grey-white marble centaurs standing fifteen feet high marked the open edge of the court. They faced the imposing mountains of the north as if intent on protecting the manor, stone arrows nocked to bow. Such wondrous care had sculpted their marble flesh that the lad wondered if they might not someday, somehow, come to life and let their arrows fly.

  Inside the court, Phaedor unwrapped a bundle lying in wait and produced two short swords, both with hilt and blade carved all of a single stone. Tanis knew a Merdanti weapon when he saw one, and he eyed it uncertainly as the zanthyr handed it to him.

  “There are two types of Merdanti blades. A dormant blade, like the one you hold, may be wielded by anyone.” Phaedor sighted down his own blade, peering discerningly at its edge. “A sentient blade, in contrast, is a far more powerful weapon and requires a flow of elae to waken it.”

  Phaedor spun his sword before him in several fast circles. Then he took hold of his forearm with opposite hand and jabbed and lunged with the blade. “There are few sentient blades left in the realm,” he noted as he moved through these motions, “but men continue to make dormant Merdanti weapons with what craft is left to them.”

  Finally, he flung his sword through an impressive figure-eight display and abruptly caught it up beneath his arm, pinned between bicep and chest like a riding crop. “Even dormant Merdanti swords are superior to steel, but no weapon is as powerful as a sentient blade.”

  Tanis ran his hand along the flat of his sword where the stone shone dully. It felt different from his dagger somehow. He looked up suddenly. “The dagger you gave me—it was a sentient blade?”

  Phaedor eyed him approvingly.

  Tanis frowned at him. “But I didn’t—I mean, I never put any sort of flow of elae into it.”

  “A sentient blade is attuned to its owner’s intrinsic pattern and wakens automatically at their touch.”

  Tanis was never more keenly aware of how invaluable was the blade he’d so blithely given to a Malorin’athgul. “I see,” he murmured, feeling a sudden heavy weight bearing on his heart.

  Phaedor offered no consolation. “Come now.” He motioned with his blade for Tanis to assume a fighting position.

  “We’re going to spar with Merdanti blades?” the boy squawked.

  “They’re dormant,” the zanthyr pointed out, as if this somehow made them completely harmless.

  Tanis gave him a pained look of severe protest.

  Phaedor walked three paces off and turned. Sweeping up his blade before him, he murmured ominously, “Let us see what you recall of our earlier lessons.”

  Glaring at him, Tanis brought up his blade and summoned his determination.

  The zanthyr lunged, and Tanis parried. Their blades met with the flinty spark of stone on stone. Thus did their practice begin.

  Sparring with the zanthyr was a singular experience. Phaedor had no compunction about letting Tanis feel the sting of his blade. The zanthyr’s skill was such that he might swing with all the speed and fury of battle, yet allow the merest whisper of his sword’s razor edge to kiss Tanis’s flesh, leaving the boy trembling with all of the fear if a fraction of the consequence.

  An hour into their sparring, the zanthyr stepped back and bowed a polite ending to their first engagement. Tanis was brightening with the hope that the day’s lesson was done when Phaedor eyed him in that terrifying way of his—the one that implied he knew everything Tanis was thinking and had other ideas—and announced, “Ready yourself for the cortata.”

  Tanis’s heart sank, but he took a deep breath and summoned his resolve. One did not enter into any enterprise with the zanthyr without a firm grasp on his concentration. Tanis had learned this the hard way.

  The zanthyr had starting teaching him the cortata during their trek through the mountains. Phaedor had worked the fourth to illumine the air, showing how each motion of hand, foot and sword created a corresponding swirl in the mighty, three-dimensional pattern that was the cortata.

  Now Tanis could visualize the pattern as he wove it with body and mind. He still had to move carefully through the positions, but the cortata’s methodic dance felt a welcome relief from Phaedor’s frenzied sparring.

  As the sun fell towards the horizon, the zanthyr pushed Tanis faster through the cortata’s twists and twirls. Despite the day’s chill, the lad was soon sweating through his tunic, his fair hair darkened with moisture. Finally Phaedor stepped back, saluted with blade held before his nose, and then swung the weapon to the side, readying for the next phase. “Now: the ta’fieri.”

  An already exhausted Tanis felt the words like a knife in his gut and groaned. The ta’fieri form of swordplay, known only to the zanthyrs or their beleaguered pupils, was the most difficult of any sword-form to master. The spiraling figure-eight style of fighting seemed to come easily to the creatures who’d invented it, but every muscle in Tanis’s body recoiled in horror at the memory of its practice.

  Looking the zanthyr in the eye, the boy drew in a breath tight with apprehension and raised his weapon, though he felt despondent about the outcome.

  The zanthyr chuckled at his expression. “Now, Tanis, you will never find success if this is your mindset.”

  “And what exactly constitutes success, my lord?” Tanis countered peevishly, lowering his weapon again. “If success means beating you, I shall never achieve such anyway.”

  “Yes, but you can get better at losing in the attempt.” The zanthyr motioned with his blade. “Come—we’ll begin slowly.” He pinned his green eyes unerringly upon the boy.

  Tanis gave him a harassed look, but he readied his blade again. Two handed, he swung the Merdanti sword back and forth in an exacting figure-eight fashion. The ta’fieri was practically useless against any adversary unless you could do it faster than the eye could follow, and Tanis was far from achieving that level of proficiency, so Phaedor sparred with him in apparent slow-motion.

  Tanis had barely managed five minutes of the form before his arms were aching and his breath was coming in labored gasps. Sweat soon made his hands slick, and the heat rose from his body to steam in the chill air. Still the zanthyr pressed him, until every muscle in his body had passed through fire and into that overtaxed, wobbly place of barely-controlled motion.

  Just when the lad was sure he would drop his sword and was putting all his concentration into just staying on his feet, a man dressed in hunting leathers came jogging across the lawn and halted halfway up the steps to the court. “My Lord Phaedor!” The urgency in his tone interrupted their sparring.

  Phaedor stepped back and opened his sword arm to indicate a pause. Tanis doubled over, braced hands on his knees and tried to force some breath back into his lungs. He looked up under his brows at the huntsman, who wore dark leathers and high boots muddied nearly to the knee. Tanis thought him a blessed gift from Epiphany herself.

  The huntsman shifted the longbow and quiver strapped diagonally across his back. “My lord, Dional, the huntmaster, asked if you might come right away.” The look upon the man’s face made it plain that whatever the huntmaster needed of Phaedor, it was important enough to require his immediate attention.

  “Lead on, Kendir.” Phaedor swept up the cloth that had protected both weapons and received Tanis’s blade from him. They followed the huntsman down the steps. When Tanis thought on it later, he couldn’t recall what the zanthyr did with the weapons thereafter, only noting that he never saw them again that day.

  They followed Kendir through the forest for the better part of an hour, moving swiftly. Tanis observed the huntsman leave nary a mark of passing and noted wi
th appreciation that he walked almost as silently as the zanthyr. Had anyone been listening from afar, they would’ve heard but one person approaching—his own fumbling attempt.

  Indeed, as he trudged along behind the two men, Tanis reflected that he never had seemed to get on well with forests. Back in the Gandrel, he was always getting tripped up or stubbing his toe on something unseen, and he’d been certain the spiteful roots were always trying to snag his boot or ankle.

  This forest treated him little better. The boy tripped twice on their hour-long jog. The first amounted to a spectacular fall to hands and knees, occasioned by a rock that had clearly erupted from the ground just to threaten his steps. The second time, his foot caught within a tangle of fallen branches, and he tripped-skipped-nearly-fell several noisy and harrowing paces across the carpet of leaves and twigs before he’d freed it from its woody captivity.

  Phaedor, bless him, never even twitched at these mishaps, but upon Tanis’s last dance with the brush, the huntsman had turned an amused eye back in his direction.

  The collective mood had become quite sober by the time they reached the waiting Dional, who stood leaning against a black oak as they approached. The estate’s huntmaster looked robust, though he’d clearly seen fifty name days and counting. His shoulder-length hair sported more iron-grey than brown, and his face was as weathered as the elder trees, with deep lines tracing the story of his years.

  He straightened as Phaedor arrived. “My lords, thank you for coming. She’s this way.” He turned and jumped down into the basin of a shallow ravine and headed off.

  The zanthyr leapt the distance to the crevice floor with ease, cloak floating behind him, while Kendir slid down the leafy embankment to join the other two. But Tanis stood stricken atop the hill and couldn’t bring himself to move.

  In the deeps of the pit lay a Hallovian mare.

  She seemed to have been dragged quite some distance, for blood, dirt and leaves stained her once-glorious hide, and she lay in an unnatural position, as if pulled unconscious into the ditch. Something had ravaged the poor animal then and left her blanketed in her own entrails. Worse was realizing that she yet lived.