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

by Melissa McPhail

  “I could snuff you like a candle.” Arion’s voice was coolly controlled, but the fifth thrummed with warning.

  Dore licked his lips again. It was the furtive advance of what loosely passed for courage in the man. “But you won’t,” he murmured, his eyes burning with a dark light, “because you’re the magnificent Arion Tavestra, so incorruptible and bright, like a newly minted coin with the Fifth Vestal’s head gleaming upon it.”

  Arion bared his teeth. “I could make it look like an accident.”

  Dore cast him a hollow smile. “How would it appear for the High Mage’s lover to become aggressive towards a witness who may be called to testify against her?”

  Arion straightened. He’d never wished to harm another being so desperately as he wanted to harm Dore Madden. Choking the ill-born life slowly and torturously out of the man would’ve been the fiercest of joys. It took all of his considerable will to simply stand there.

  “You may have the rest of them fooled,” he said quietly, “but you won’t escape my vengeance, Dore. I will pursue you across lifetimes if I must—until I’ve made you pay dearly for what you’ve done.”

  It sounded a bold threat, but Dore’s face went slack. “You have no proof,” he whispered.

  Arion tapped one finger to his temple. “In here is all the proof I require…”

  Time whirled. Suns rose and set and rose again, and images spun in a dizzying kaleidoscope of memory until the next one bubbled to the surface…

  Arion ran.

  In one hand he held a Merdanti sword while the other hand supported a shield of the fifth against an onslaught of fire and flame. Cannon blasts of power rocked the firmament and shattered the stone beneath his feet, or reflected off his shield to shatter the walls instead. He leapt fallen statues and dodged crumbling columns and missed not a step in pursuit.

  Smoke and flame filled the wide corridor, but occasional breaks revealed the huddle of traitors fleeing ahead of him. They threw patterns in an unending stream, their conjuring growing ever more desperate.

  Arion ripped these patterns out of the air and cast just as many of his own. Where his landed, men fell to the stones to be trampled first by their friends and then by Arion’s fury. He left a continuous trail of bodies in his wake.

  He couldn’t see Dore among the mass of traitors, but he knew the wielder ran at the head of that bunch. Many of the patterns he ripped out of the air reeked of Dore’s particular poisonous tang.

  A thunderous roar shook the air, and the walls and floor trembled beneath him, but this eruption was the product of another battle happening elsewhere in the massive Citadel: Illume Belliel’s Paladin Knights battled Malachai’s Shades and Björn’s Council of Nine, with the fate of T’khendar and all the Realms of Light teetering in the balance.

  No mercy would be found in any corner of Tiern’aval that night.

  Reaching the dome still some distance ahead of him, the traitors sought to bar Arion from entering. They threw a net of patterns layered scores deep across the archway. Meanwhile they attacked the doors inside the dome that led to the node chamber—doors he’d bound with the fifth. Eruptions of power buffeted Arion as he chased.

  The patterns barring the corridor were too many and too complex to unwork quickly. Instead he called the fifth. The elemental force of the world coursed through him, electrifying his blood, sparking in his eyes; for an instant he became a being charged of energies violent and reactive. Then, still running, he released his intent.

  The floor beneath the archway mushroomed. Stone turned aqueous and rippling, and as it rose up, it pushed the net of patterns above it. With a thought, Arion reordered the molecules of the morphing stone, and crystal formed before his eyes. He cast the fourth into the glassy wall, while his running feet pounded in time with his raging heart, and he flung the fourth along his blade.

  The wall shattered like a great chiming bell. Running through the eruption of crystal shards, Arion entered the dome.

  They were waiting for him—Mages all. And Dore. The other cowards who’d waged this coup had already fled somewhere—elsewhere. The traitor Mages formed a line before the towering doors, a score and ten left from the sixty who’d first stood against him, and they raised their hands as one.

  A storm of patterns pummeled Arion, forcing him to one knee. He might’ve used the fifth to push the patterns back, but he saw the Labyrinth concealed in every one. He pressed his fist into the floor to support himself while his other arm braced the shield that held the patterns off, his thoughts holding tight to that tiny globule of safety protecting him from a rain of destruction.

  On and on the onslaught came. No man should’ve been able to withstand that bombardment. Certainly the Mages thought as much. Their faces contorted with effort and rage, eyes fomenting with violent power. They meant to annihilate him.

  Well…he intended the same.

  The currents told him enemy reinforcements were coming—Illume Belliel’s Paladin Knights in force, coming to help the traitors they thought were true.

  This would’ve been a very different battle without their interference.

  Arion couldn’t splice his thoughts into any more pieces—already his mind felt fractured, flayed. When he paid attention to his body, his breath came raggedly and every muscle ached. But he rarely paid attention to his body.

  He would’ve liked to have stretched time to give himself the edge, but he couldn’t summon the attention or the energy. Instead, he reached out to the currents. He let part of his mind flow with them across the room, and—

  Ripped the fourth from the Mages’ minds, purloining it for his own use. While they shrieked in fury, he spun his stolen power into a combustible ball and ducked as the explosion erupted in every direction at once with volcanic force.

  The Mages flew through the air like tumbling dolls. The dome’s glass ceiling exploded into a rain of deadly shards. Arion put kinetic propulsion behind the deadly glass. More Mages fell.

  Now a net of compulsion bombarded his shield. It felt like barbed wire against his mind, a last-ditch attempt to hold him off. He jumped to his feet in alarm—yes, as he’d feared, they’d gotten the doors open and were slipping through the parting like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

  A storm of running feet now pulled his gaze back to the corridor. The Knights were nearly upon him. And the Mages…he spun back to find them vanished through the doors.

  All but Dore. He stood in the parting with a hand on the edge.

  Their eyes met. Victory, challenge, fury, threat…all were conveyed in this single locking of gazes. Then the Paladin Knights came pouring into the chamber intent upon him—they thought him the traitor.

  Arion breathed in determination and exhaled duty. The two were eternally interwoven in him, threaded into his very life-pattern.

  Dore and the Mages would have to wait.

  He lifted his blade and turned to face the Knights…

  ***

  On and on came the visions as Ean walked through the Labyrinth. Every step worked the pedals of the wheel, spinning memory into threads of another man’s life. Many of the scenes seemed to have no relation to the Labyrinth but only to Arion, perhaps connected to those years in which he was exploring the Labyrinth himself and structuring his methods of escape.

  After a time, Ean grew tired of the steady influx of memories, many of them confusing and lacking in context. He had no idea how long he’d been walking either, for the Labyrinth contains no time—a memory can be just as vivid in recollection whether it happened seven decades or seven minutes in the past—but Ean had the sense that his physical body was growing weary, and this translated into a similar weariness of thought.

  Reaching another crossroads, Ean sat down and exhaled a long sigh. Then he stretched out on his back, clasped hands behind his head and gazed up at the heavens. Once again, the stars seemed to mirror the crossroads where he lay. Wait—

  The stars mirrored the crossroads.

  Ean sat up swiftly, and
a tremor of excitement thrilled through him, for he remembered an important truth: the stars weren’t part of the pattern, they were its mirror! They could show him the way out!

  But no…that didn’t seem right.

  After a moment of frowning over this, he exhaled explosively and fell onto his back again. He’d obviously played the Labyrinth game countless times. Surely he would’ve left himself keys, hints to help himself remember the way out…

  Walking the maze had been the first clue. The order of the stars was another, but what was their message?

  As Ean pondered this, his attention began to wander again. Some of his attention meandered back along the route he’d followed through the maze and the stories of Arion’s life he’d encountered along the way. Other pieces spanned tentatively ahead. Most of his attention stayed on the stars, watching, exploring the relationships of their placement, seeking a pattern in their arrangement. After a while he imagined himself among them, staring down at the maze.

  He could see it spreading out beneath him almost at once, a vast circular pattern of intersections, canals and dead-ends. It seemed to have no beginning and no end, no clear way in or out. Ean inspected the wall along its outer rim, finding not a single opening.

  Then it occurred to him with a shock of awareness.

  He was actually in the stars looking down at the maze.

  In that moment, he understood.

  He didn’t need to solve the maze at all. The end was as unimportant as the beginning. All he needed to do was continue to free his attention until he was free.

  It came back to him in a sudden flood—all the tricks he’d discovered in beating this pattern. This was his mind, after all. He could be anywhere within it. Be the sky, be over the pattern. See its structure. See its end. Be at its end with a simple thought.

  He remembered now making the heavens, constructing them to mirror the pattern as a message to himself. He understood the meaning of that message now.

  With a thought, Ean returned to the Labyrinth. He wanted to leave himself a better message—one that would help him escape faster the next time. The conundrum lay in where to leave this note for his future self, because every wall looked the same, and he couldn’t know which crossroads he might next arrive in, if ever trapped again.

  Arion had left a message in the heavens.

  Ean decided to leave it on the walls—but upon every wall. He extended a finger and wrote in light, Walk the path, but be in the stars. He pushed this message into the stone and made it glow. Then he multiplied it, so that as he turned around in that circle of intersecting routes, the message glowed on every wall, endlessly repeated.

  Satisfied, Ean returned his awareness towards the distant stars and took a mental leap. Pinpoints of light became gilded streams, a tunnel of brilliance. Soon he felt himself falling, but he sensed it was only towards the unconsciousness of sleep and restful recuperation.

  He’d already left the Labyrinth far behind.

  Ten

  “You see things that are and ask, why?

  I imagine things that never were and say, why not?”

  – The artist Immanuel di Nostri

  Pelasommáyurek perched atop a rock formation overlooking an arid valley and the Saldarian fortress of Tal’Afaq. The natural sandstone tower fell away steeply to either side of where he sat hugging his knees. He didn’t fear the edge, yet he remained acutely aware of its danger. He’d gone to Tal’Afaq in part because Darshan had spoken of making eidola there, and Pelas wanted to see if his brother had truly done what he’d claimed. But he’d also gone there to brood, for the lonely sandstone towers of Tal’Afaq were unmatched in their isolation.

  Pelas felt a crushing sense of betrayal at what his brothers had done. Learning that they were equally complicit in forcing him along a path of their choosing had him in turmoil. He’d often fought with his brothers—especially with Darshan, though he liked Darshan and rather despised Shail—yet he’d always believed they held each other in mutual esteem. Now he knew better.

  Learning that Darshan had compelled him upon their purpose had infuriated him, even if it hadn’t surprised him; yet he would’ve forgiven Darshan if his brother had agreed to free him. Odd that an act so egregious could be so easily put aside, but something so small as learning how little his brothers actually thought of his…this betrayal could never be forgotten.

  Pelas exhaled a long sigh, wishing his breath might release the tension binding body and thought, might dispel the raging currents that clung to his anger. He didn’t want retribution—though watching Darshan endure a few centuries of agonizing punishment held a certain appeal. Yes, Darshan had threatened him, incensed him, even broken his heart, but Darshan’s argument had merit: they had been created for a single purpose.

  Yet…Darshan had emphatically declared that they had choice where the races of Alorin did not. To Pelas, this meant that they should’ve been able to choose their own purpose. The problem, he suspected, lay in Darshan’s limited view—he couldn’t see any other path for them than what they’d been created to do.

  When Pelas thought upon it, it all traced back to his little spy.

  Odd that a mortal boy could have such a profound effect on him, but until he met Tanis, he hadn’t realized how dark his days had become. Darshan had compelled him to walk a path of burning stones, and the longer he’d stayed upon it, the more raw his soul had become. Tanis had braved walking the smoking stones of his mind with him, and in so doing, he’d shown Pelas there could be another path, even though he hadn’t believed it at the time.

  Pelas ran his thumb across his fingernails and eyed the fortress of Tal’Afaq in the distance. The concept of eidola intrigued him, but the idea of potential new paths intrigued him more.

  Before Darshan took it upon himself to compel him onto a path of his choosing, Pelas had spent decades at Agasan’s Sormitáge. Though he’d been upon a work of artistic exploration instead of adventuring with elae, he’d listened, he’d learned, and he’d made many friends. Centuries had passed since he’d lived and worked there…dark years, with darker tragedy in between. Many faces had been lost to the turning of that Age, but he knew one would remain, one he could trust—a near miracle, that, for trust came to him as rare as diamonds in the sea.

  He would take a risk going to the Sormitáge now, of course, what with his brother’s compulsion in his head and the campus so rife with Healers. Living as Pelas did in the isolation of Hallovia’s storm-washed coast, those dark passions implanted in him often slumbered, but they would come to vivid wakefulness again if disturbed by the resonance of the first strand.

  If there was any grace in what his brother had done to him, though, it was that only the strongest Healers compelled that darkness from its slumber. Even then, with enough distance between them, he could often resist its demanding call.

  But Healers weren’t the only danger. His brothers had spies like spiders among the university’s halls, and he had been well known there once, albeit as his other identity: the artist Immanuel di Nostri.

  Still…all experience was worth having.

  Pelas stood and stepped to the crumbling edge, barely a foot before him. The ravine lay in shadow, but Pelas was of the fifth—he could sense the density of the earth or the exact molecular composition of the air with the same refined clarity as a master chef’s expert tasting of a sauce, differentiating elements as the chef discerns flavors. Pelas knew intrinsically the distance of the stone tower to the earth below, the gravitational forces acting upon it, the humidity of the air, and the elemental construction of the rock. These perceptions were as natural as drawing breath.

  A breeze rose as Pelas lifted his arms. Then he dove. Wind rushed in his ears and buffeted his eyes, making them squint and tear as he fell. Few sensations in Alorin approximated the feeling of unmaking, but falling at terminal velocity came close.

  Too quickly, the ground rose up to greet him. Pelas summoned a portal and somersaulted into Shadow just inches before they
met.

  ***

  Socotra Isio leaned against the marble balustrade, feeling the press of conscience like the tide-pull of the years behind her. Her aging brown eyes gazed out across a valley of forested hills in a patchwork of bare hardwoods and evergreen pines—hunting grounds of the imperial family of Agasan—and beyond these, peeking among the highest firs, the spire tips of minarets belonging to the Empress’s palace.

  The Palmer’s white habit and wimple that covered Socotra’s head and face kept her from smelling the forest’s scent, but she imagined that she could. Indeed, she imagined herself back in her native Malchiarr, where the hills were steep, the trees immense, and mist clung jealously to the valleys even when the sun won its battle with the clouds. Increasingly she imagined herself there.

  Odd how entering one’s twilight years cast the mind back to one’s earliest days to dwell. A century or more might’ve passed without thinking of herself in those forests—a barefooted child with a Nodefinder’s adventurous spirit and a Geshaiwyn’s nose for trouble—yet now such moments were the only parts of her life she wished to recall. She’d taken the Palmer’s religious vows at a time when hiding her face appealed to her vanity. Now this same anonymity appealed to her conscience.

  “Socotra Isio.”

  She turned at the address. Had she recognized the voice brought to her by her sluggish ears? Certainly her eyes made no mistake of the man standing before her.

  A flood of warmth carried a smile to her features, though her wimple hid it from his view. “Immanuel di Nostri.” She nearly laughed to say his name, it had been so long. So long, yet the man looked not a day older—still as strikingly handsome as the day he’d kissed her hand and lifted those devastating copper eyes to capture her heart. And then proceeded to break it. But she’d understood from the first that no woman could command Immanuel di Nostri; he was the kind to live free or not at all.