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

by Melissa McPhail

  “Missing home, brother?”

  Darshan turned to find Shail rounding the last stair leading up from inside the tower. The wind grabbed Shail’s long hair and tore at the crimson silk of his robes. Darshan wore nothing, preferring the feel of the storm’s electricity flowing across his muscled flesh. Elae’s fifth strand was powerful during storms, resembling in its ferocity their own consumptive power. Darshan looked back to the view. “Sometimes I envy Rinokh his vanquishment.”

  Shail reached his side and joined him in gazing at the northern line of mountains, whose jagged peaks were tearing into the band of clouds that formed the storm’s vanguard. “Feel free to join him any time.”

  Darshan cast him a sideways eye. “Yes…you would happily be rid of me, too. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  Shail wore a feral sort of grin. “This world is too small for all of us.”

  “You would make of it your private sandbox,” Darshan murmured critically, “to wage wars and build cities and tear it all down in a swipe of one hand.”

  “And why shouldn’t I? We’re gods to these creatures.”

  Darshan radiated disappointment. “You adopt a naïve view, Shailabanáchtran. The Chaos Father made us for a purpose, and we should be focused upon that purpose—not engaged in infantile games, pushing our toys hither and yon.”

  Shail arched a dubious brow but held his tongue.

  Darshan turned to him. “You mock me even in silence. Why did you come here if not to listen?”

  “Why did you summon me if not to speak?”

  “I suppose for another lesson in futility.” Darshan’s gaze flicked irritably across his youngest brother. “How goes your obsessive hunt for your northern prince?”

  “My hunt?” Shail arched a patronizing brow. “I understood you also wanted him called to heel—something to do with breaking the bond with one of your Marquiin pets?”

  Darshan looked dismissively away. “You and Dore spend too much time together. It’s absurd to think one man could pose a threat to us.”

  “One man can raise the hopes of millions.”

  Darshan grunted. “Deluded millions.”

  “Perhaps, but those delusions provide them surprising buoyancy in weathering the storm. Take care, brother.” He looked Darshan over as the wind whipped his long black hair into violent designs. “If you don’t soon remove your head from the clouds, when you do, you may discover you’ve no ground left to stand on.”

  “Ground you haven’t claimed for yourself, you mean.”

  Shail’s dark eyes gleamed dangerously. “In any case, Dore reports that the val Lorian boy escaped his pet wielder—a pity, although I’d warned him not to underestimate the prince. Ean val Lorian continues to prove himself a threat worthy of our notice.”

  Darshan grunted at this.

  Shail drew his silk vestments tighter around him. “You would be wise to take heed of this man, Darshan. He brought a woman with him to Tyr’kharta. Whoever she was, she has Dore in a frenzy.”

  “Dore is easily excitable.” The man had far too many idle pursuits that did not immediately benefit their aims. It vexed Darshan somewhat that Dore thought to report to his brother before himself. Never mind that he’d made it abundantly clear to Dore that the matter of the val Lorian prince fell beneath his notice.

  Shail wandered along the wall. “Dore thinks the prince may try to rescue his brother. He sent the val Lorian men to Ivarnen while he holds the brother in Tal’Afaq. No matter which fortress the prince chooses, we’ll have him.”

  Darshan appeared unimpressed. “Would that Dore might be diverted from this obsession with Ean val Lorian, but he will not.” He looked his brother up and down. “Much like yourself.”

  Shail arched a sardonic brow. “I’m averting a future your current view is too narrow to foresee, brother. One day you may thank me for it.”

  “More likely I’ll curse you, but I see nothing new in that denouement.” Darshan exhaled an annoyed sigh. “Tal’Afaq, Ivarnen…these are poor choices for ambush. Dore risks the eidola, who are vulnerable while still in conversion.”

  “Ivarnen is the most fortified of your outposts. The prince will be unable to gain entry save through the channel Dore creates for him. And four eidola lord over Tal’Afaq. It is impenetrable.”

  Darshan heard this statement and thought Shail was proving his own naivety, but it would serve no purpose to argue the point. “What of the eidola you’ve been experimenting with using the inverteré patterns? How fares their conversion?”

  “As well as your own.”

  Darshan eyed Shail circumspectly. Something in Shail’s coldly smiling gaze hinted that he thought his creatures better formed and far superior. Darshan suspected his youngest brother would think thusly of any working held in competition against his own.

  Shail swept a strand of blowing hair from his face. “Soon we will raise armies unlike anything this realm has ever known.”

  Giving Shail a long look, Darshan walked to the tower’s edge where part of the crenellated wall had crumbled and fallen away. There, he braced his feet, lifted his arms, and with his mind pulled the storm closer, calling its power for his own.

  White-hot kinetic energy scraped along his skin. It roused the dark hair on his arms and chased and sparked from band to band among the hundreds of braids hanging down his back. It sang through his flesh and stirred his loins, savagely arousing him with a rapturous pain. For a moment, he seemed unearthly, a being encased in light. Then the raw power exploded upwards, splitting the sky, throwing the world into blinding negative.

  Somewhere far above, thunder sounded.

  Darshan slowly lowered his arms. Steam rose from his flesh, and his chest lifted and fell with his rapid breath. The lightning had left jagged ebony streaks across his skin, vicious brands that even then began to fade. He turned his head to look upon his brother, and his eyes were wholly black.

  I would see this realm returned to Chaos, he said mind to mind, his thoughts as dark and violent as exploding stars.

  Shail eyed him inquisitively. One could almost see the picture spinning into shape in his calculating gaze. “I had only to follow the path of the dead to find you tonight—truthreaders like a trail of breadcrumbs from temple to tower.” The wind funneled into the wide sleeves of his robe, and the silk billowed about him. “It seems excessive, even for you. Your appetite for the flesh of young men must’ve grown tremendously.”

  Darshan gave him a withering look.

  “Or…” Shail pressed a finger across his lips. “Is it that your favorite flavor is gone and none of the others taste as sweet?”

  Darshan looked back to the storm. Kjieran’s loss was a wound that wouldn’t heal, his death a mystery with no answers, only agonizing questions shaped of jagged blades. Yes, none of his other truthreaders even remotely filled the void Kjieran’s death had opened, no matter how many he consumed in one meal. But it was no business of Shail’s.

  Darshan arched a brow. “You should know better than to believe the things Dore whispers across your pillow.”

  He called the wind this time, drowning out Shail’s affronted retort. The wind funneled down from the charcoal skies, dragging a cyclone of clouds. It buffeted and enveloped him where he stood. Stinging ice whipped his body, sharp as the knife of betrayal Kjieran had plunged into his heart, and the rough wind scoured his naked flesh. He willed that it would take these strange and inexplicable feelings with its passing, leaving him cleansed of their constant ache.

  The wind tore away from him and fled past Shail, ripping through his silken robes as it left. He stood glowering with his fists clenched.

  Darshan sighed. The gust of wind was gone, but the ache irritatingly remained. He looked to Shail. “Have you done something to Pelas?”

  His brother’s gaze tightened. “Why?”

  “This will be the third summons gone unanswered in as many moons.”

  Shail gave an indifferent shrug. “The last I saw our brother, he’d t
aken a truthreader for his sodomite.”

  “And?”

  “You know how he is. Perhaps the boy is more intriguing than you or I.”

  “What do your spies say of his activities?”

  “They’ve proven annoyingly silent.”

  Darshan grunted. “I believe Pelas has killed all of my spies. He seems quite adept at ferreting them out.”

  “Or else they’re inept at keeping their mouths shut.” Shail strolled to the edge of the tower and looked down. The stones at its base joined with the sheer mountainside, which fell away into a boulder field hundreds of paces below. He bared his teeth in a sharp smile and murmured, close and low at Darshan’s ear, “Then again, maybe he learned what you did to him and chose another side.”

  Darshan’s eyes flashed. He spun nose to nose with his brother and murmured darkly, “Pray you are incorrect.”

  Lightning split the sky in a blistering line and thunder shattered the world. The storm’s tumultuous blanket now claimed the entire eastern horizon, while rain washed across the plains. In moments, it would be upon them.

  “Pelas is far less concerning than Ean val Lorian,” Shail remarked then, turning away. “Pelas believes all the drivel you’ve planted in his head. You waste all your efforts worrying about our brother’s inane dalliances a continent away while a real danger cavorts upon your doorstep.”

  “I’m relieved to know where I stand in the order of priority.” Pelas noted from behind.

  Darshan whirled to find him sitting on a merlon on the tower’s south side, one elbow resting on bent knee. There was no telling how long he’d been there listening—damn him. Pelas had tricks that eluded even Darshan’s understanding. This is what Shail failed to recognize about their intrepid middle brother.

  Darshan frowned. “Make yourself at home, Pelas.”

  “Thank you, I am quite comfortable.” His copper eyes swept Darshan’s naked form. “Laundry day?”

  “How droll,” Shail sneered.

  Darshan eyed Pelas darkly. It troubled him not knowing how much Pelas understood of their activities, how much he’d overheard in this or any other conversation where he’d deigned to listen in similarly unannounced. “I suppose it would be too much to expect you’ve accomplished something since last we met.”

  Pelas flicked at a speck on his boot. He’d bound his long hair at the nape of his neck, but the wind still whipped stray strands across his face and around his shoulders. “The last time we met ended in a rather spectacular fight.”

  “So I recall,” Darshan said, eyes cold and very, very bleak.

  “I believe at the time you swore to end me if I defied you again, and I…think I answered that by throwing you through a wall.”

  “That is my recollection as well.”

  Pelas leaned back on one elbow. “Well, if you mean since that last meeting? Then, no.”

  “It’s always such a pleasure catching up with you, brother,” Shail remarked as his gaze took in the approaching storm. “One day you must tell me all about your dabbling with colored mud and oh, the latest carvings you’ve made of the realm’s Healers. No doubt they’re all true works of art.” He cast a look at Darshan by way of departure and then descended the steps into the tower amid a billow of crimson silk.

  Thunder cracked overhead, splitting the sky, and rain poured out of the fissure.

  Darshan lifted his face to the heavens and closed his eyes to the wind and the icy, stinging rain. He could sense the rain’s deconstructing of the clouds, molecule by molecule. The chill downpour washing over him was not unlike the rush of unmaking. Would that he could return now to those chaotic fringes of the cosmos. No doubt there he would not feel so empty.

  As the rain roared down around him, pelting earth and stone with equal fervor, Darshan exhaled a slow breath and opened his eyes. Droplets clung to his lashes, tiny globules, worlds unto themselves. He blinked them away like tears and turned to look at his brother.

  Unlike Shail, who’d shamefully fled the storm, Pelas stood now atop the merlon balancing on its edge, even leaning somewhat into the wind, foolishly trusting to its support. His coattails flapped behind and beneath his outstretched arms, while his dark hair lay in drenched waves down his back.

  It troubled Darshan how alike they were, he and Pelas. Diametrically opposed philosophically, yet entirely too akin on an instinctive level. It was one reason he considered Pelas so dangerous. One of many.

  “Why have you come, Pelas?”

  “You summoned me, Darshan.”

  “Were I to collect a drop of rain for every time I’ve summoned you without a response, the resulting sea would fill all of Saldaria.”

  Pelas turned him a look over his shoulder. “Is that all I need do to claim your trust? Attend you even as Shail does, like a dutiful lap dog attentive to your call?”

  “It would be a beginning.”

  Pelas’s eyes tightened. “A beginning with no end. You would make me your lackey, just another fawning sycophant vying for the favor of Bethamin’s divine grace.”

  Darshan exhaled a frustrated breath. “I tire of this argument, Pelas. It serves neither of us.”

  Pelas turned and stepped down off the merlon, landing with a splash of boots in the puddles rapidly filling the roof. When he looked up, his eyes shone like glowing amber. “Why have I come?” He gave Darshan a humorless smile. “Why have I come? I’ve come so you can remove the compulsion you placed on me!”

  His words thundered, and an expanding bubble of sheering sound ripped through the storm, blasting the water from Darshan’s flesh. The puddle beneath his feet vanished, seared away by sound, and then reformed seconds later as the rain returned.

  Pelas faced him now, arms poised aggressively at his sides, his eyes fiery and his body thrumming with power.

  Darshan pressed his lips in a tight line. “What have you done since coming to this world? What have you accomplished toward our aims?”

  Pelas stared at him. “Shail means to destroy you, even as he destroyed Rinokh. Yet you stick your bloody claws into my mind—”

  “Shail is at least pursuing our purpose!” Darshan gave his brother a piqued glare—by Chaos born, Pelas was the most obstinate being ever created! “Whether or not Shail thinks he can somehow eliminate us, his brothers—to whatever end that might prove—our purpose is still being accomplished. But you, Pelas…you don’t just fraternize with these human toys. You’re in love with them!”

  “As are you.”

  Darshan sucked in his breath with a hiss. The words were accusation and victorious coup in one.

  “What happened with Kjieran? Why did he betray you?” Pelas made a slow approach behind the lance of his words. “What did you do to the poor man to make him hate you so desperately that he would rather burn to death than endure one more breath bound to you?”

  Darshan gaped at his brother. How could he have learned these hateful truths? If there was anything in the cosmos Darshan feared, it was the mistake of underestimating Pelas.

  Darshan lashed out with a mental bite of jagged power that tore through Pelas’s mind. His brother stumbled, shook his head, but then he straightened, and when he looked up again, his face was set with a grim smile.

  Darshan grew wary and his gaze narrowed. Pelas shouldn’t have been able to throw off his assault so easily. His brother had changed since their last confrontation, grown stronger somehow.

  “The laughable irony in all of this is you imagine I have some choice,” Pelas observed bitterly. “If I indeed love these beings, or even if I love killing them, is it not what I’m made to do, brother?” His gaze darkened. “I know it’s what you’ve compelled me to do.”

  “I’ve compelled you to follow our purpose!” Darshan cast his brother a heated look. Why must Pelas ever rouse such feelings of revolt and reprimand within him? He might watch a hundred Adepts dying in the thrall of deyjiin’s dark grace without a single twinge of feeling, yet a wrong word from Pelas could set his blood to boiling. “Choice,
choice—of course you have a choice.” He flung his hand at this absurdity. “Do you imagine that the rules that define their existence somehow equally define ours? We’re gods to these creatures!”

  Pelas shook his head, his face a mask of disgust. “Can you not see your hypocrisy?” As if in equal accusation, the skies flashed and thunder sounded. Pelas swept his dark hair back from his face and flung a hand at Darshan. “By Chaos born—is there even a thimbleful of truth amid your mountain of lies?”

  Lightning split the sky again, and a resounding crack followed on its heels, reverberating through the valley. The tower gave a little shudder.

  Darshan lifted one hand in entreaty. “I don’t want to battle with you, Pelas. I never have. We are too alike—”

  “We are nothing alike!” Pelas’s lip curled in contempt. “Remove the compulsion you put upon me, Darshan.”

  Darshan’s gaze smoldered. “That compulsion is the only reason I suffer you to remain here.”

  They locked gazes upon each other and started pacing a slow circle with their bodies as magnets, both repelling and compelling. “You have no right to attempt to control me.”

  “I have the skill,” Darshan returned blackly, resolutely. “I have the power. That gives me every right.”

  “Might defines right?” Pelas’s tone was crystalline in its iciness.

  “Only the feeble complain of injustice, Pelas. The concept is a fabrication invented by the weak to justify their failures.” He regarded Pelas with grave censure, his dark gaze raking across him. “I fear you have become feeble…weak, like these creatures whose insignificant lives you covet.”

  “Or perhaps I am become bold,” Pelas returned with a sudden defiant smile that unnerved Darshan no end. “Perhaps I will choose my own purpose instead of the one you’ve chosen for me.”

  The very suggestion roused Darshan’s rage beyond measure. “I will destroy you if you defy me, Pelas.” He filled himself with power, feeling it electrifying his skin. “I won’t allow you to impede us in accomplishing our purpose.”