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

by Melissa McPhail

  She felt herself go a little weak.

  “But this is not your only name. No, not your true birth name,” he continued, eyeing her with an elusive light in his gaze. “You have Kandori blood, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “My father…” Alyneri whispered. Náiir had a way about him that quite stole her breath. “Jair Haxamanis.”

  Náiir’s lips spread in a slow, seductive smile. “I knew we were related.”

  “That doesn’t require much of a deductive leap.” Jaya brushed past him and on into the room.

  “Alyneri, Princess Heir of Kandori,” Náiir continued, pinning Alyneri fast with that smile, which made her belly feel warm and her head light, “daughter to Jair and Melisande of Dannym, niece of Dareios, granddaughter of Jorin Haxamanis, son and heir of Vasudev, heir of Amlan, son of Giridhar, heir of Shrivasta, heir of Inesh, son of Samarth, heir of Muralidhar—”

  “I don’t see how you keep up with all these relationships.” Jaya handed Alyneri a goblet, breaking the trance of Náiir’s gaze. Alyneri gratefully accepted the wine. She needed it now for multiple reasons.

  “You have your interests, Jaya, I have mine.” Náiir looked Alyneri over with another sly and utterly intoxicating smile. “I’m fascinated by how one’s seed can be so far reaching.”

  “I think you’ve assigned responsibility to the wrong causation,” Mithaiya grumbled.

  “Peace, Mithaiya.” Náiir cast her a look as she seated herself on a couch. “I don’t complain about your partaking of that pirate’s loins upon every visit to T’khendar. I cannot help that my seed is prolific.”

  “Your ego is prolific,” Jaya muttered.

  Alyneri sipped her wine, grateful for its heat and the way it melted the sharp fear that lined her insides with frost. Then, too, Náiir’s attention had a similar effect. She welcomed all of these sensations, for their distraction eased her mind. “You know much of the Kandori lineage,” she said to Náiir. “Did you know my father?”

  “In a sense.” He smiled warmly at her. “We are related, you and I, if…distantly.”

  “Half of Kandori is related to you if distantly,” Jaya muttered under her breath.

  Náiir shot her a look over his shoulder. “And this seems troublesome to you why, Jaya?”

  “I would you didn’t fill young Alyneri’s mind with your ideas and your talk.”

  “She could do worse than to gain from the immense wisdom of her paterfamilias,” Naiir asserted with an arch of his handsome brow. “But I would know what stories she has heard of me,” he added, shooting Alyneri a sudden grin. “Surely you find no harm in the sharing of tales, Jaya.”

  “Beyond fueling your unbridled narcissism?” She took a seat on the sofa across from Mithaiya and pulled her feet up beneath her like a cat.

  “The Mage says we cannot love and respect each other if we do not love ourselves,” an entering Balaji observed judiciously.

  “Thank you, Balaji.” Naiir flung a hand to his brother and a pointed look at Jaya.

  “I would hear of Trell of the Tides,” Jaya said with a lofty lift of her chin. Looking kindly upon Alyneri then, she patted the seat beside her. “For clearly he has found himself at last.”

  “Ah, well,” Naiir remitted with a smile, “I can’t argue with that.” He made a debonair bow to Alyneri and walked her to Jaya’s side.

  Balaji approached carrying an empty goblet. “Do tell us Trell’s tale, Alyneri, daughter of Jair.” He handed the goblet to her.

  Alyneri blinked as dark liquid swirled into the vessel. She lifted startled eyes to meet Balaji’s gaze and found him smiling at her, though something about his smile more unsettled than encouraged her.

  For a moment, Alyneri swooned. The idea that she was somehow distantly related to a Sundragon had her spinning, Náiir’s attentions had her buzzing…simply being the focus of such ancient creatures had her blood humming and her heart fluttering…

  Yet the glory of their attention helped push her fears from mind, and she tried to craft them a story worthy of their interest.

  Balaji’s wine tasted sweet and heady and brought color to her cheeks. Náiir brought her a plate of food. Then they all took seats and leveled their ancient eyes upon her.

  So did Alyneri tell the drachwyr of Trell’s travels to the west and of how she and he came to meet on Yara’s farm. When she spoke of Trell rescuing her from the flooded river, Náiir shook his head and remarked, “Naiadithine has outdone herself.”

  “She challenges your own matchmaking, I do believe, Naiir,” Balaji noted with a sharp grin.

  “Pshaw!” Naiir scoffed. “A pretender! Why I have—“”

  “And Trell has learned of his birthright?” a new voice interrupted before Naiir could hijack them all onto a self-congratulatory tangent.

  Alyneri turned. She hadn’t seen the zanthyr Vaile come into the room, but the woman stood in the shadows, much as Phaedor always did.

  “He has,” Alyneri confirmed as the memory melted more of her fear. The moment when she’d told Trell his name remained immense and joyous.

  “How did it come to be so?” Jaya asked with brimming excitement. “Tell us!”

  So Alyneri continued the tale, speaking of the days of her recovery and of their ensuing time together. She ended with Yara’s startling story about the blind Seer who’d read her future.

  Whereupon Balaji chuckled as deep as distant thunder, earning a confusingly irritable glare from Jaya, and Náiir remarked in amazement under his breath, “Isabel. She is so much more daring than even the First Lord!”

  “As reckless with her life as Arion ever was,” Vaile agreed, but it acted as a sobering comment to the group.

  Alyneri thought she must’ve misunderstood and worried that she hadn’t. “Do…” she had to work some moisture back in her mouth. “Pardon me, but…do you know this Seer?”

  They all exchanged looks, hesitating, and then into the silence, Vaile said, “She is Isabel van Gelderan, Epiphany’s Prophet, High Mage of the Citadel.”

  Alyneri stared at her. She couldn’t have been more startled if they’d told her Epiphany Herself walked the land. Isabel van Gelderan! But…?

  She pushed her hair back from her eyes feeling awkward, like she’d become the brunt of a joke everyone else understood. “Then…then Isabel didn’t…she wasn’t…” She pressed the back of one hand to her forehead. Every account of the Adept Wars taught that Björn van Gelderan had murdered his sister Isabel and the other Mages in the Citadel on Tiern’aval. If that wasn’t true…

  “Isabel lives in T’khendar with the First Lord,” Balaji offered. Then he added with a decadent sort of smile, “though you may have heard rumors to the contrary.”

  Rumors? Alyneri turned him a wide-eyed look and asked weakly, “Are all the histories wrong?”

  “Only the ones written in this realm,” Vaile remarked.

  Jaya glared at her. Then she patted Alyneri’s hand. “In time, soraya, all things will become clear.”

  “If time cooperates,” Mithaiya said quietly.

  This brought another shadow to their ancient eyes. Alyneri didn’t understand the sentiment that hovered in silence among them, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Anything that darkened the gazes of these creatures was likely to frighten her immensely.

  “But this bodes well for you, sweet one,” noted Mithaiya, breaking the silence and the haunting spell her comment had imposed, “and indeed, for all who cherish Trell of the Tides. For we knew already that the First Lord cared for him, and if he also figures into Isabel’s path, we have likely not seen his end.”

  Alyneri didn’t find this sentiment exactly heartening.

  “So you left the farm of the old Kandori woman,” Jaya prodded with a withering glance at Naiir, who grinned broadly, “and then?”

  Alyneri took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts. “Then we went to Rethynnea, where Trell delivered the Mage’s missive to his contact, as promised.”

  “And what did it say, this
missive?” Vaile inquired.

  Alyneri closed her eyes briefly and let out a little sigh. “It requested that Ghislain see Trell reunited with his family.”

  “Oh!” Jaya pushed hands to her cheeks. “How marvelous! I do love it when the Mage thinks of everything!”

  “Whenever does he not, Jaya?” Naiir remarked.

  The room fell silent again, with the others exchanging looks between them that were far too quick and knowing for Alyneri to understand.

  But she did understand that thanks to the Agasi silver the Mage had given Trell, he’d been able to bribe Hadrian of Jamaii to save her from the odious Lord Brantley.

  She continued the story then, speaking of how Trell had reunited with Fynn at Ghislain’s home, how they’d returned to the villa and learned of the destruction of the Temple of the Vestals and Ean’s disappearance.

  To which everyone in the room fell confusingly silent again.

  That time, Alyneri didn’t let it go. “What is it?” She looked around at all of them with a sudden fluttering unease. “Do you know something of the temple? Of Ean?”

  After a tense moment of silence, Balaji answered, “He is in T’khendar with the First Lord—or was when last we saw him.”

  Alyneri’s heart filled with hope. “Then he’s well? You’ve seen him?”

  “Only briefly,” Naiir said, “but Ramu has spent time with him.”

  “I sense something of his heart in yours,” Vaile remarked then, pinning Alyneri with an arch look.

  Alyneri dropped her gaze and flushed. “I…loved Ean, once.” She looked sheepishly around at the group. “But in my heart I’d already let him go before…well, before Trell came back into my life.”

  “Of course.” Jaya patted her knee and cast Vaile a look of barely concealed annoyance.

  “And what is the rest of the tale, young Alyneri, daughter of Jair?” Balaji inquired. “There must be more yet.”

  “Oh yes.” Alyneri felt relieved to return to her story and escape Vaile’s discomfiting gaze. She continued telling them of Carnivále, Lord Brantley and her rescue by Trell and the pirates. This led directly to their recent travels…and travails…whereupon her voice floundered beneath a rising grief.

  “Radov has Trell,” Náiir remarked. Alyneri sensed a simmering fury in his tone and fire behind his gaze. “Until we know where he’s being held…”

  “Even did we, Náiir,” Mithaiya said curtly, “it’s not for us to decide what’s to be done.”

  Alyneri suddenly felt desperation grip her again. “But…but why?”

  “Because this is the Mage’s game, soraya,” Jaya consoled. She gave her a look of the deepest sympathy.

  “We cannot take action because the game is in play,” Balaji added by way of solemn explanation, “and we are not players within it.”

  Sixteen

  “If you would command anything—control or compel anything—be willing to cause anything.”

  – The Fifth Vestal Björn van Gelderan

  Tanis woke feeling sore in a hundred places. He didn’t know whether to thank Loghain for testing him in new and varied ways or to resent him for the same; nor could he understand why he could heal overnight from a beating by Fhorgs but still be sore from sword practice the next day.

  He wondered if his unusual ability to heal had something to with the bond he shared with the zanthyr, though something in this answer didn’t quite seem true. Still, he wouldn’t have put it past Phaedor to offer him a reprieve from wrongful pain yet allow suffering when he felt Tanis had earned it with his own stupidity.

  Outside, the barest hint of dawn tinged the fog, but much of the world remained dark. That particular creeping chill which often accompanied early morning had permeated the room. Tanis couldn’t yet tell if the day would be born clear or overcast, but odds favored the latter, for while the Caladrian Coast boasted a more temperate climate than northern parts of the Empire, in the winter months it slumbered beneath cloud-blanketed heavens and lingering storms.

  The lad lay in bed for a while letting his eyes recover from the sandstorm that seemed to have overtaken them in the night, and then for a while longer while he considered the effort it would take to cross the chilly room to reach his clothes. Normally Tanis would still be asleep during these nascent hours, but Loghain was due to depart with the dawn, and the lad wished to see him off.

  Tanis really liked the Wildling. Over their days together, he’d come to appreciate Loghain’s particular duality of genteel disposition and ghastly countenance. By the very nature of his being, the Whisper Lord challenged Tanis to look deeper and deny the validity of a judgment based on appearances.

  The day before, after yet another bout of grueling sword-practice—which activity, Tanis had learned to his dismay, the Whisper Lord apparently found more restful than rest itself—Loghain had shared dinner with Tanis and then joined him in his mother’s game room. There, the Whisper Lord attempted to teach the lad strategy at Kings while chewing on a bit of ginger root to settle his ‘perpetually tempestuous stomach.’

  The game room’s long gallery overlooked those razor-edged mountains of frost—the Navárrel. The snowy peaks had been reflecting the sunset back into the gallery as Tanis and the Whisper Lord sat to either side of an ornate marble Kings board.

  Tanis had studied Kings with Fersthaven’s Marshal, Master Lamory, a witty and charming man who played well; but despite the marshal’s enormous patience, Tanis had never advanced beyond an elementary understanding of the game.

  Oh, he’d grasped some of the basic tactics with ease, like the Pin and the Skewer and Back Rank Mating, but the further ahead a strategy required him to think and plan—as many as ten or twelve moves, some of them—the farther from his grasp the strategies slipped.

  Loghain taught with as much patience as Master Lamory, and more often than not, his tolerant and didactic nature allowed Tanis success at applying his newfound strategies.

  “But never expect such concessions from a Sundragon,” the Whisper Lord had advised with a chuckle after letting Tanis take a play that a more competitive player never would’ve allowed.

  It wasn’t the only such warning Loghain gave Tanis regarding the enigmatic drachwyr, leaving the lad to wonder how a creature the size of a modest castle might engage in a game of Kings.

  After teaching the lad a particularly vicious means of annihilating an opponent’s guards, the Whisper Lord advised, “But if you ever play a Sundragon, Tanis lad, never use this strategy, for if you do, he will have your king inside of two moves.”

  That’s when Tanis finally asked, “Sir, are you saying that Sundragons can really play Kings?”

  Loghain barked a laugh. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they invented the game!” But at the lad’s obvious confusion, the Whisper Lord tilted his head sideways. “Don’t you realize their nature, lad? They’re of the fifth.” When Tanis still looked blank, Loghain posed, “Like the zanthyrs?”

  Now Tanis finally understood. “They can shift forms?” The idea opened an entirely new realm of speculation and wonder—as if dragons weren’t intriguing enough already.

  “Just so, lad. You’re far more likely to see a drachwyr in the form than ever to see a zanthyr.”

  Tanis regarded Loghain wondrously. “I get the idea you know a number of them personally, sir.”

  “It has been one of my greatest privileges, Tanis.”

  A flurry of images bombarded him upon this confession, Loghain’s thoughts coming loud and forceful as they carried the myriad faces of men and women who the Whisper Lord powerfully admired. One face stood out to Tanis, for he glimpsed it more than once: a handsome man with gloss-black hair and the bluest eyes the lad had ever seen.

  Within these thoughts so unwittingly cast forth by Loghain, Tanis understood that these were individuals who had rallied to an immense shared purpose; and he sensed another cohesive element that he recognized as binding all of these faces together: a fierce and unwavering loyalty directed towards the
blue-eyed man.

  The lad was too bright not to make certain connections then, but this didn’t mean he accepted them easily. “Sir…” Tanis fingered the marble knight in his hand, for he sensed he approached a subject rife with dangerous truths. “The blue-eyed man in your thoughts just now…is he the Fifth Vestal?”

  Loghain lifted his golden gaze from studying the board. “Aye, lad.” His expression turned grave as he considered Tanis. “But he’s no one you need fear. Despite what you may’ve heard, the First Lord seeks naught but to save Alorin from those who would destroy it.”

  Tanis sensed no undercurrent of duality nor any attempt to dissemble in this statement, and Loghain’s tone held such admiration and that Tanis felt only truth in his words. The lad had never experienced a situation where a man spoke a truth that violently disagreed with what most of the world believed…yet the lad knew the real truth was Loghain’s.

  Suspecting that further talk of Björn van Gelderan would likely take him far afield of any truth he was comfortable exploring, Tanis asked by way of returning them to more certain territory, “Are they only men, the…uh, Sundragons?”

  Loghain tilted his head. “Why do you ask?”

  “You said ‘he will have you.’”

  Tanis finally managed to make the move he’d meant to do ages ago, placing his knight to queen-four.

  “Ah, so I did.” The Whisper Lord eyed Tanis’s placement of his knight with a hungry half-smile. “How very observant of you.”

  Loghain took Tanis’s knight with a pawn—an outcome the lad had failed to predict in all his flurry over Sundragons and banished wielders. While Tanis was smarting from the loss of his piece, the Wildling offered, “I’ve met six Sundragons. Two are female, but the ladies will never play Kings. They much prefer the game of glass stones—Shari, as the Kandori call it.”