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

by Melissa McPhail

  “I thought I might find you here.” Immanuel’s eyes danced as he looked upon her in her Palmer’s habit. There wasn’t much to see: an old woman in swaths of white silk. But then she remembered that Immanuel had a knack for seeing what wasn’t there as much as what was—sometimes in spite of what was—a talent all great artists seemed to possess.

  She held a hand out to him, and he came and took it. Her brown eyes smiled into his. “Startling that you remember my habits after all these years,” she said, grateful for the silk that hid her flushing cheeks—so unseemly for a woman her age! “…but even more so to realize I’ve had the same habits for so long.”

  He kissed the back of her hand. “Our habits define us in profound ways.”

  “Spoken like a painter who sees the world only in color and light.”

  “No, Socotra.” He held her wrinkled hand to his cheek endearingly. “An artist must see the entire spectrum to paint its many shades.”

  “Gah!” She tugged her hand good-naturedly from his grasp. “I’m too old for these flirtations.”

  He wouldn’t release her from his gaze. “Do you miss them?”

  “If by that you’re asking if I miss our interludes, well…” she shrugged. “My heart has mended.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Women are marvelous creatures.”

  She eyed him askance at this. He wore his dark hair flowing and free that day, the way she liked it. She wondered if he’d done it especially for her and decided that of course he had. “And men are mules who need a good switching to learn their heads from their arses,” she replied, “but you didn’t come to me after all this time to listen to lectures on the nature of mules.” Her wizened eyes looked him over. “Why have you come, Immanuel?”

  “For your wisdom, my lady.” He took her hand again and ran his fingers gently across her palm, as he’d done when they used to lie abed together, back when her belly was flat and her breasts full. “But what if I said I’d come merely to assure myself of your welfare?”

  “Then you’d be a liar.” She gave him a look of speculation. “And whatever else Immanuel di Nostri is, a liar he is not.”

  His chuckle reminded her of a zanthyr’s rumbling purr. “Will you never give this up? I’m a man like any other.”

  “And I’m the Empress’s heir!” She laughed then, and grasped his hand and tugged upon it. “Come, walk with me. Standing too long in one place now makes my bones weary.”

  Immanuel bowed and extended his arm to her. Socotra smiled as she accepted it, and they headed down a path together through the Sormitáge’s Morning Gardens.

  After a time, he said to her, “I sense deep turmoil within you, Socotra.”

  She grunted and flashed a look his way. “You always were too perceptive to be human.”

  “Tell me.” He placed his smooth, caramel-skinned hand over her aging fingers. “What’s troubling you?”

  “Ah…” A regretful sigh escaped her. “You’ve merely caught this pig wallowing in mud flats of her own making.” She cast him a sideways look. “I don’t want to bore you.”

  He smiled into her eyes and shook his head.

  “Ah well…” A grimace as of pain pinched her expression. Thankfully her wimple hid all but the shadows in her eyes. “You may’ve heard rumors but now it’s fact: Niko van Amstel is going to be the new Second Vestal. I’ve just received an invitation to his fête.”

  To his credit—for he’d famously eschewed Adept politics while keeping remarkably abreast of them—Immanuel at least had the decency to look surprised by this news. “I’ve spent many moons at Niko van Amstel’s estate…” he frowned, cast her a curious look. “I wouldn’t have thought him the best candidate to lead the strand.”

  She harrumphed an emphatic agreement. “Franco Rohre would’ve been a far better choice—not a one of us doesn’t know it. The Alorin Seat knows it. Even Niko knows it.”

  “Then why not select him?”

  She snorted. “He’d never accept! Franco is…” Socotra exhaled a sigh and shook her head. “I suspect Franco would know better why this whole idea reeks of wrongness.”

  His eyes crinkled with a sudden smile. “He was another of your lovers, this Franco?”

  She stiffened at his impropriety. “Former lovers have no claim to make such inquiries.”

  Immanuel chuckled. He took her hand from his arm and brushed his lips across her fingers instead. “And what rights are invested to current lovers?”

  “You’re shameless to flirt so with an old woman.” Her tone hinted of peppery affront, but her laughing eyes quite ruined its burn. The doors of a woman’s heart never grew so hardened as to deny quarter to a handsome man. “Franco is…friend is perhaps too generous a word, but we’ve always understood one another. Of any of us, he had the firmest hold upon his honor.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of any of us?’”

  “We survivors…they call us the Fifty Companions, but companions we’ve never been.”

  Socotra sighed. If ever there was a time to speak the truth of Tiern’aval, these times called for it, yet the oath she’d sworn still bound her tongue to silence. More than frustrating, for her conscience knew no relief from its burden.

  “Ah…of course.”

  Socotra eyed him quietly. She’d long wondered how much Immanuel di Nostri understood of the Adept arts, how knowledgeable he was of their history and trials. He’d lived through the Adept Wars yet remained indifferent to the tragedy—no matter the words he’d tried to use to paint some other picture in her mind. He claimed himself na’turna, only learning and working the Pattern of Life as gifted artists were sometimes wont to do, but she didn’t believe a word of this nonsense. In her private speculation, she thought him a zanthyr’s Wildling offspring, for she’d wager her last tooth he had something of the fifth in him.

  “So Niko van Amstel will become the Second Vestal,” Immanuel remarked, sounding thoughtful. They were approaching Tilden Hall and her chambers. “What in this most disturbs you?”

  Socotra turned her gaze away. A truth I may never share.

  Once, her secret troth with Björn van Gelderan had buoyed her, firmed her resolve, but now the same oath of secrecy served Niko’s ambitions and drowned the rest of them in guilt. “Niko…has not a clean soul.”

  Immanuel smiled crookedly. “Has anyone?”

  She shook her head. “I fear the colors of Alorin’s tapestry if Niko van Amstel takes power.”

  Immanuel considered her quietly. Then he nodded. “This is a fear I understand.”

  She served him tea in her drawing room while he stoked her fire.

  Stoked indeed…never more apt a metaphor had she found to describe Immanuel di Nostri’s effect on anyone. Man or woman, he caught and held them captive with the simplest of glances. His every motion held a calculated grace, using never more nor less effort than efficiency required, and his gaze conveyed intelligence and a wry sense of humor. But Immanuel’s vivid passion for experience is what truly enflamed Socotra—none could long remain around the artist without feeling that vibrant pulse of life filling them as well.

  Immanuel replaced the poker on its hook and straightened to face her as she was setting the tea service down on a table between two armchairs. He stood waiting then, watching, expecting her to reveal her features or else the miracle of consuming tea without touching porcelain to her mouth.

  Sitting down, Socotra unfastened the lower flap of her wimple. But this was not all she did.

  The cloth came away to reveal a woman of perhaps thirty and five, exotically beautiful, with slanted eyes and the nut-brown skin of the Geshaiwyn people. She next removed her head-covering and drew forth a curtain of shining black hair.

  His eyes softened. He came and bent one knee beside her and placed fingertips to her cheek. “Socotra,” he whispered, “show me what is real.”

  She pressed her lips together and regarded him in silence. Would that I adored you less. A deep breath and slow exhale, and her face res
umed its natural shape—eyelids drooped, flesh sagged, reforming before his eyes.

  She knew what he saw then: hair still lush and long though it had shed all of its darkness, and the lines that deepened the folds of her slanted eyes and creased her cheeks like dry riverbeds.

  Yet his smile showed none of his surprise at how deeply she’d aged—if he was surprised at all—and his fingers tracing her cheek still brought a flutter to her heart. As he rose, he leaned and kissed her, instantly reminding her of their heated nights and a shared intimacy that had defied words. He’d been an incomparable lover.

  “You still flush at my kiss,” he remarked with a hint of pride as he took his chair.

  Socotra grunted. “I’d like to meet a woman who doesn’t.” She poured him tea and handed him the cup and saucer. Sitting back again, she observed, “I would ask where you’ve been these long years, but I’d rather know what knowledge you think I possess to bring you back.”

  His copper eyes danced as he looked her over. “One of the Sormitáge’s leading Sobra scholars need not be so humble.”

  “But the youngest child of Gilden Isio had best be.” She stirred honey into her tea. “What’s your question, Immanuel?”

  He settled back in his chair and crossed his knees with aristocratic elegance. “I’ve recently become interested in the philosophy of paths.”

  Socotra arched brows. “Just when I thought you couldn’t become more intriguing.” She considered him while he chuckled. “This interest is general? Personal?” When he didn’t answer, merely smiled at her, as was his way, she said, “We Palmers believe all natural men have a path. Some walk the Greater Path, weaving a broad thread in the tapestry of all; some walk the Lesser Paths, so their choices have no impact on the larger pattern of the tapestry. Finding and knowing one’s path is at the core of our faith. But this, I believe, you already knew.”

  He nodded.

  “So…?”

  “Do you choose your path, or does it choose you?”

  “As in, are we destined to one path only?” She sipped her tea and eyed him over the rim. “Some think Cephrael moves us, that whatever path we walk, whatever choices we make, His hand is guiding us. Whether this amounts to one path or many, they believe each step is framed by His intent.

  “Others believe every man’s path is of his own choosing, that no matter where his choices take him, he is still upon his path. Epiphany’s Prophet wrote lengthily on both ideas.”

  She set her tea in her lap. “Then there are those, such as in the Sorceresy of Vest, who believe only Adepts have paths, but that each Adept must choose between the two Paths of Alir—the heart-light. Every Adept is called to one path or the other, based on the song in his or her heart.”

  “These paths are?”

  “Hal’alir, the light path, and mor’alir, the dark path. They’re echoes of each other—harmonics—and in treading one path an Adept is ever above or beneath the other, its lighter or darker reflection. Every step, every act, reflects that harmonic connection. Since it is through each act of power that the paths are walked, an Adept is only ever one step away from either path.”

  “Is there a ‘right’ path?”

  “The Sorceresy claims both paths are valid journeys, though I cringe to imagine the corruption the dark path works into an Adept’s soul.” She picked her tea back up. “But I could advise you better if I knew what you were hoping to understand. The subject is as broad as that of Balance.”

  “My interest is merely scholarly, Socotra.” He smiled innocently. “You know how I am.”

  She grunted dubiously.

  He chuckled at her. “So which of these multiple divergent ideas is correct?”

  “That inevitably depends on who you ask.”

  “And what do you believe, Socotra Isio?” His gaze captured and held her. “Can a man choose his own path, or even change his path once he finds himself upon one he regrets?”

  The question launched her back through time, through her hundreds of choices, for good or ill, through a Citadel dissolving in flames and a tortured oath of contrition beneath the Fifth Vestal’s cobalt gaze…

  “Epiphany’s Prophet says we choose. We choose what to do with our lives, what to make of them, or not, who to harm and who to love, who to protect and who we allow to harm us. She says the choices we make every moment of every day cast the path anew before us. Our paths can be straight or winding, depending on how closely we listen to our hearts.”

  “What does this mean, to listen to your heart?”

  “Epiphany speaks through our hearts. She speaks the Maker’s will for us.”

  “If your Maker has a will for each of you, is this not the same as destiny?”

  “Destiny implies you have no choice,” she corrected, “but every man chooses first to listen and next to act, or not, upon what he has heard—or what he thinks he’s heard.”

  His gaze narrowed slightly at this concept, so she clarified, “If two warring dukes both listen to their hearts, and both of their hearts tell them to go to war…can they both really be acting on the Maker’s will?”

  He shook his head. “Can they?”

  “Epiphany’s Prophet tells us the answer lies not in the deed but in the conviction behind it.”

  Immanuel barked a laugh. “I see now why it takes so many of you to understand this subject. It lacks logic in every sense.”

  She smiled sadly upon him. “Faith often does.”

  He bowed his head to her in acknowledgement of this truth. Then his eyes strayed, and for a time he sat with his wrist draped across the chair arm, tea cup captured beneath his hand, one finger idly tracing along its rim. She could always tell when Immanuel’s thoughts had taken him elsewhere, even if she couldn’t tell where those thoughts traveled.

  “What did you mean when you said natural men have a path?” he asked after a time, looking back to her. “You imply some don’t?”

  She searched his eyes, again seeking any clue to why he fixed on this topic now, when he’d shown so little interest in it before. Finally, finding nothing in his gaze, she said, “My Order believes that fifth-strand creatures have no path.”

  He arched brows at this and shifted in his chair, settling chin in hand. “Whyever not?”

  “Because they lead immortal lives.” She held his gaze with a tilt of her head to see that he understood. “Unlike Adepts of the fifth, who must work the Pattern of Life to live immortal through the ages, the lifelines of fifth-strand creatures are tied to the life of the realm. But the paths of the tapestry are woven of individual lifetimes. Thus fifth-strand creatures have no place in the tapestry, nor a path through time.”

  “So no fifth-strand creatures have a path?”

  Was that a hint of disappointment in his tone? It was so hard to tell with him—he kept his emotions so close. She shrugged with a look of apology. “It is but one theory to explain their natures.” She shifted uneasily in her chair then. “But when we speak of fifth-strand creatures—zanthyrs, drachwyr—we necessarily speak also of Balance, Immanuel, for the two are inseparable. We Palmers believe such creatures have no path within the tapestry, but any study of Balance will show you that it all but clings to them like their own shadows, that their every action influences it.”

  Immanuel finished his tea and set his cup down on the table. “Intriguing, Socotra…as ever.” His eyes that time looked her over appreciatively, making her flush, but she didn’t chastise him again, for the places his gaze warmed her hadn’t known the heat of desire in many years. Holding her still with his gaze, he rose slowly, took her hands and drew her to her feet.

  “I’m old, Immanuel,” she whispered breathlessly.

  One corner of his mouth curled upwards. “So am I, Socotra.”

  But when he fastened his mouth on hers and lifted her effortlessly into his arms, she suddenly felt very young indeed.

  ***

  Pelas rose from Socotra’s bed and dressed in silence. It had been a long time since he’d sough
t carnal pleasure from a mortal woman, a long time since a mortal had aroused him. But Socotra had always stirred his passions. She understood him in ways no other woman ever had.

  As he was donning his pants, he felt admiring eyes on him and turned her a smile. His lean physique was not so imposing as his brother Shail’s, rather the jaguar to Shail’s tiger, nor had his bones climbed so tall as Darshan’s, but human women had always found him attractive, which suited him fine.

  “There is another group who affects the tapestry that I failed to mention.” Socotra bent an elbow and rested her head in her hand as she watched him dress. He still found her beautiful; it had surprised him that she didn’t agree.

  “Who?”

  “My Order describes them as vortices.”

  He cast her a look at this, for he knew vortices of an elemental nature; at the fringes of space, they became pools of chaotic power.

  “These Adepts attract the paths of others and align them along their own, forming a broad swath in the tapestry, rivers into which numerous tributaries flow. No matter their intent, vortices bend the paths of others to suit their aims, even calling into their path those they’ll need to accomplish their objectives—whether or not they even know they’ll need them. Björn van Gelderan was such a one. He drew many men—great men—to his path.”

  “Björn van Gelderan…” Pelas frowned slightly as he fastened the tiny hooks lining the placket of his silk shirt. He cast her a look. “He was fifth-strand.”

  She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Vortices usually are.”

  Pelas fastened his belt and sank down on the bed at her side. He smoothed a strand of hair from her shoulder. “Thank you for today.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you want to thank me, paint me as I was when we were lovers, not as I am now.”

  He planted a kiss on her forehead and murmured, “When I paint you, Socotra, it will be as I see you.”

  “Immanuel—” She took his hand as he made to withdraw. “What are you?”

  Pelas gazed at her for a long time. Then he sighed. “If I told you my nature, Socotra…you wouldn’t like it.”