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

by Melissa McPhail

  Tanis shook his head somewhat glumly. He had no idea what to do now to make up for losing his knight. Much of his strategy had depended on it—a fact Loghain likely knew. “I don’t know Shari,” the lad said while vainly attempting to formulate a new plan.

  “Tis a game of strategy played with round pieces of colored glass—or among the princes of Kandori, polished rubies, emeralds and sapphires.” He sat back with a smile while memories flashed through his thoughts. “T’were never a deadlier opponent than Amithaíya’geshwen or Jayachándranáptra when either is intent upon winning a game of Shari, except…” He pressed one leathery finger to his lips. “Actually, it may be more dangerous still when they let you win, for then they have settled a different sort of predatory eye upon you.”

  Tanis heard the thoughts Loghain’s tongue had refrained from uttering and blushed.

  The Whisper Lord shot him a wide grin. “I recommend you don’t engage in board games with a Sundragon of either gender until you’re certain of your mettle, Tanis lad.”

  Tanis assured him he had no intent of challenging a Sundragon in any capacity.

  Loghain grinned even wider.

  The night had ended with Loghain unsurprisingly taking the game and with Tanis really wishing he would’ve noticed that ruthless pawn before it destroyed his otherwise excellent strategy.

  Now morning had come and Loghain would be leaving.

  Tanis threw off his heavy eiderdown quilt and hurried to dress. Making his quiet way through the darkened villa then, he found Loghain seated at the long kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea. Across the vast room, the robust cook, Nathalia, was busily preparing breakfast while humming tunelessly to herself, and Madaé Giselle could be heard issuing orders from the bakery down a short hallway. Tanis smelled onions and eggs frying in Nathalia’s iron skillet, but he was more interested in the plate of bacon on the table, for each piece was smothered in Madaé Giselle’s prized Bigleaf syrup, dark as molasses and sticky-sweet.

  As Tanis sat down across from him, Loghain looked up and gave the lad his grimace of a smile. Tanis barely saw the Whisper Lord’s gruesome features anymore, seeing instead the kind and considerate man beneath them.

  “Dal mogen, Tanis,” Loghain greeted in his own language.

  Tanis didn’t know the Tyriolicci tongue, but his truthreader’s talent registered the thought behind the words and understood them to mean ‘good morning.’

  Tanis stifled a yawn. “And to you also, sir.”

  Loghain poured Tanis some tea from the pot on the table and smiled when the lad’s next yawn escaped his attempts to hold it back.

  “Lady of the Rivers take my eyes for they’re a-tellin’ lies!”

  Tanis pushed a fist over his third yawn and looked over to find Madaé Giselle standing in the archway. She had a large crockery jar braced precariously between arm and hip and a floury handprint on her cheek. “What’re you a-doin’ up at this hour by the gracious heavens, Tanis lordling?”

  “I…” Tanis broke into another yawn. “…came to see Loghain off.”

  “Well, that’s a-kind of you.” Madaé Giselle came on into the kitchen, peered over Nathalia’s shoulder to assess the eggs, and then set her jar down on a scrubbed wooden table at least nine feet long. She sighed discontentedly as she starting untying the waxed canvas lid. “I vow, that Dional had best find his drogue wolf today or it’ll be nothing but dried beef for the household, and that’s no decent fare for the lady’s son!”

  “T’isn’t bad over toast, Madaé,” Nathalia noted pleasantly.

  “Don’t be a-chiming in agin about it, Nathalia,” Giselle squawked, giving her a sharp look. “We shan’t be a-feeding the lady’s son none of that hillbilly goop your folk call gravy for his supper.”

  “It’s mighty tasty, Madaé.”

  “Don’t you listen to her, Tanis lordling.” Madaé Giselle scoured Tanis with her gaze while busily retrieving bundles of herbs from inside the jar. “Nathalia’s people aren’t known for their culinary talents.” She made a little spitting sound off to the side and then cast Nathalia another hawkish look.

  “I guess Phaedor is still out with the huntsmen?” Tanis asked.

  “As ever we can tell, milord.” Nathalia came to the table with food in hand. “The Lord Phaedor isn’t exactly forthcoming with his whereabouts.”

  “And what do you ken about it?” Madaé Giselle pinned Nathalia with a cronish eye. “I’ll have you know, Tanis lordling, the Lord Phaedor was called away again ere the witching hour. Barely made it to his rooms, I vow, before Kendir was a-banging on his door. One of Dional’s huntsmen was attacked by the dreaded beast. It lured Cyrt into some kind of a trap. Imagine a creature so smart and crazed at the same time! Cyrt may’ve lost a leg, or worse—can’t say whether or not his lordship a-reached him in time, and we won’t know ‘til they all return.”

  “That won’t be too soon, eh Madaé?” plump Nathalia noted.

  Madaé Giselle grumbled something inhospitable and headed back out of the room, calling Nathalia after her.

  Tanis dove in to his eggs hungrily and made a quick dent in the piles on his plate, yet all the while he remained acutely aware of Loghain’s somber mood. A darkness accompanied the Whisper Lord that morning; obscuring mists shadowed his thoughts, and Tanis sensed grave truths hiding among shifting veils of regret.

  “Where do you head now, sir?” the lad asked. He hoped he might draw forth the Wildling’s usual jovial spirit.

  Loghain glanced up from his tea. “To fulfill my duty, Tanis youth. Alas, time steals away, and ever must I chase it.”

  “You seem melancholy, sir.”

  Loghain gave him a regretful smile. “Duty casts a long shadow upon my path today. Would that I might linger here longer—in truth, if discipline did not itself require it, I might be tempted, for time within your father’s spells passes differently than in the world beyond—”

  “By the accursed light of Nuskat’s grave!” Madaé Giselle came barging back into the room carrying an open basket of herbs. “It’s all gone to blackspot!” She dumped the moldy vegetation on the prep table and glared reproachfully at it.

  “What has, Madaé?” Tanis asked, half-turning in his chair.

  “Heartleaf.” She flicked at the offending leaves. “The last of my supply.”

  “That’s a pity,” agreed a returning Nathalia. She was laden down with bowls of vegetables. “Don’t you need heartleaf for the pies I’m about to make?”

  Madaé Giselle cast her a doleful eye. “You know I do, you impish tart. And now that drogue wolf’s a-drawn off all my lady’s foresters and not a sole around to gather more.”

  “I know heartleaf,” Tanis said. “My lady used it often in poultices. I should be pleased to get more for you if you can tell me where it grows.”

  “Why y’are a love!” She beamed at him at first. Then she tilted her head and spied him shrewdly. “But ware, ‘tis a hike east and north into the hills, for the stuff is rare enough in these parts. Two turns of the hourglass, mind, and that’s with a span of good weather behind us to dry the path, which we don’t have.”

  Tanis shrugged. “I’ve nothing to do until Phaedor returns.” At least he didn’t expect so. The patterns on his walls had remained quiet and dim, and he’d done more than his share of sword practice in recent days with Loghain.

  “I’m heading that way for a stretch,” the Whisper Lord offered. “We can hike it together.”

  “Suit yourself then.” Madaé Giselle waved absently at them both. “But don’t claim I put you to the task, should the Lord Phaedor take exception to the lady’s son a-cavortin’ in the hills.”

  “Mind you stay out of the forest, Tanis,” said an entering Madaé Lisbeth.

  Tanis rarely saw his mother’s seneschal, but the diminutive woman never failed to make him nervous when she did appear. Even knowing she’d been his nurse when he was a babe didn’t quell the sensation. It was like she knew all of his worst mistakes and reminded him of th
em with every inch of her gaze. He’d never known anyone who wasn’t a truthreader to engender such a reaction.

  Madaé Lisbeth set down her ever-present ledger on a counter and opened a high, glass-fronted cabinet full of folded linens just above it. “That drogue beast is giving our good huntsmen a turn for their efforts,” she muttered with a shake of her greying head. She began taking out neat piles of tablecloths and placing them on the counter, ostensibly to be inventoried. “Last we heard, they thought it was making its way west, but I vow none of them know exactly where the creature is hiding.”

  “I’ll be sure to stay in the clear, Madaé Lisbeth,” Tanis promised.

  “I suppose that’s our cue then, lad,” Loghain said with a quiet smile.

  The Whisper Lord took leave of the household staff and especially thanked Madaé Lisbeth, but as they were heading out, Tanis remembered something and spun back to ask, “Madaé Giselle?”

  She looked up from her work at the prep table. “What? Changed your mind already?”

  “No, it’s just…” he looked around, searching the kitchen with his gaze.

  “What’re you a-pining for, child?”

  “I was just thinking I should take a knife with me, Madaé. Heartleaf is really hard to cut.”

  “A knife!” She shoved hands onto her hips. “Where’s the dagger as obviously belongs in that sheath you’re always a-wearing?”

  Tanis gave her a pained look. “It’s a long story.”

  She eyed him shrewdly, but she gave him a small butcher’s knife to carry all the same.

  Tanis parted ways with the Whisper Lord amid a bracing wind. The high plateau where their paths diverged offered a view up and down the coastline. South-westward, the distant cliffs vanished into fog, but to the north and east the grey-green hills of a great bay curved, its long, sandy beach a sickle moon beneath smoke-hued, sullen clouds.

  Tanis watched Loghain trudging off into the misty hills until he passed from sight, then he continued along the path to find Madaé Giselle’s heartleaf. Feeling somewhat disheartened by their parting, Tanis shoved hands in his pockets and slumped his shoulders while he walked beneath the oppressive clouds.

  As the trail wound into the mist-drenched hills, the overcast devolved into fog and drizzle and the clouds settled down upon the land as if resentful of being roused in the first place. Tanis cast an annoyed look at the sky and pulled up the hood of his cloak.

  Off to his left, dark swaths of forest clung like black moss to the steep sides of a ravine that dove many hundreds of feet into the land. He’d left the sound and smells of the sea far behind; now the air carried that particular musk of damp earth, wet rock, and moss.

  As Tanis rounded a curve in the trail where a sheer incline emptied down into the forest on his left, a loud rumbling from everywhere and nowhere brought him to a precipitous halt. Instinctively, he moved closer to the rock face on his right and watched in awe and wonder as the trail just before him morphed into a mudslide that tore half of the hill down with it.

  Tanis backed hastily away—but not quickly enough—for the path beneath him suddenly shifted and became fluid. In an instant, a mass of mud and rock had captured him up to his thighs and was carrying him on its tide, plunging relentlessly downward into the trees.

  Wild wind stung Tanis’s eyes. He threw an arm across his face as he plummeted beneath the forest canopy, terrified that the torrent would ram him into trees or boulders. Some low-hanging branches teased possible escape, but the clinging mud tore him forward before he could grab hold. Rough limbs scratched him while tree trunks blurred past.

  And then, for all its intensity, the deluge just…ended. The incline leveled out, and the landslide came to a sluggish halt.

  Relief mingled with lingering fright as Tanis reached trembling hands for a near branch and dragged himself free of the heavy mud. A few harrowing minutes later, the boy sat adjacent to the mudslide, winded and shaken and drenched in filth, but otherwise unharmed.

  Tanis spent a few minutes retrieving his composure, which had abandoned him higher up on the hill, and took deep breaths to calm his ragged nerves. Then he got unsteadily to his feet and looked around.

  To all sides, the forest grew wild and dark. Fir trees black with moss blocked what little light the overcast allowed. He could barely see a hundred paces into the gloom. Directly above him, the hillside had sheered off to become slick and steep. He tried climbing it, but his feet simply sank as if into snow, and higher up the hill became nearly vertical—he’d never make it back up.

  Tanis tried for the better part of an hour to regain the trail through the forest, but in every attempt, he reached a ridge where the land angled so sharply upwards that he’d have needed climber’s picks to surmount it.

  The adrenaline surge that had buoyed him upon the tide of mud soon abated, and now a sense of impending doom settled upon the lad. The mudslide had taken him into a valley on the north side of the trail—away from the path back to the villa. He couldn’t just angle back the same direction in which he’d come, because all attempts ran him into that inaccessible ridge. Frustrated, Tanis reluctantly headed off into the forest instead, knowing all the while that he was heading in the wrong direction.

  After about an hour of slow progress—wherein he slipped and slid through deep piles of leaves while being accosted by underbrush with a variety of spiny appendages—Tanis reached a creek. Though icy, the tumbling waters gave him a chance to clean up. He stripped off his clothes, waded into the water and rinsed everything thoroughly. His hands and legs were numb before he finished, and donning again his wet clothing seemed like adding insult to injury, but he took some small relief being free of the cloying mud.

  As he stood shivering, staring at the stream and wondering what to do, Tanis remembered a story Fynnlar had told him once about a group of treasure hunters who got lost in the jungle but found their way back to civilization by riding a river. He decided to follow the stream and hope for a similar outcome. He really wished he knew Phaedor’s trick of conjuring fire while he walked, though, for his teeth were chattering despite the arduous trekking.

  All in all, Tanis was not finding much to appreciate about his adventure.

  The stream eventually became a waterfall that emptied into a crescent-shaped ravine, whose fern-lined walls fell away seventy paces to the rocky pool below. Tanis was forced to look for another path downhill, which took him deeper still into the forest.

  The day lengthened, and the lad grew so cold that his feet and fingers ached. He decided to stop and attempt a fire, for he knew the night would grow colder still.

  Tanis had learned much from his travels—first with Prince Ean and Rhys and later with the zanthyr, the latter of whom had advised him to always carry flint and steel. The lad had accordingly sequestered a bit of the stone in an inside pocket of his cloak, and he hunted around for a particular type of moss that he’d seen the zanthyr use often enough. Then he gathered wood. Once he got a fire going, he used Madaé Giselle’s dagger to strip fir boughs to both shield his body from the cold earth and cover himself as the night deepened.

  In this way did Tanis begin the evening: sitting fireside upon a bed of fir limbs, letting the heat steam away the damp from his clothes and boots. He had a supply of firewood that would keep through the night. He figured if he couldn’t have food, at least he’d stay mostly warm.

  He consoled himself with the knowledge that they’d be looking for him by now—at least…well, if the hunters had returned and learned of his absence, the zanthyr would be well on his way to finding him.

  But what if Dional and the others had spent another night in the forest? Surely someone would be sent in search of him…wouldn’t they?

  Tanis imagined Madaé Giselle and Madaé Lisbeth at least would call for a search party, though the idea of these two ancient women trudging through the forest in the night was both sadly comical and a little frightening.

  He tried for a long while to see if he could sense the bo
nd that connected him and Phaedor—weren’t you supposed to be able to perceive such things?—but he could claim no more awareness of the zanthyr’s whereabouts than he’d ever been able to before.

  When Phaedor had come for him in Rimaldi, the zanthyr said he’d just been waiting for Tanis’s call. The lad suspected that ‘call’ was connected to the working of his talent, but he had no one nearby to work a Telling upon, and he didn’t know how else to wield his gift that he might alert the zanthyr to his whereabouts.

  Eventually these avenues became a little too frightening to ponder.

  A morose mood and sharp hunger compounded his exhaustion, and Tanis was soon struggling to keep his eyes open. He tried recounting some of his mother’s lessons, and this kept him alert for a while, but too soon his eyelids were fluttering again.

  The lad had just begun to doze off when a sudden sense of alarm jolted him back to wakefulness. He scrambled to his feet, but then he just stood there listening to the darkness while his heart raced.

  The forest lay quiet. Perhaps too quiet. He didn’t expect to hear crickets at that time of year, but usually some nocturnal animals prowled the night—owls and bats and other such creatures.

  Like drogue wolves?

  The thought came with a sharp pang in the same moment that Tanis realized he wasn’t alone. He snatched up his butcher knife and held it before him, but his hands felt clammy on the handle and his head too light.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic! What if it’s just a raccoon?

  Tanis took a deep breath to try to calm his racing pulse, but an imminent and pervasive sense of danger kept him far from calm.

  What if it is the wolf?

  Tanis pushed the hair from his eyes with the back of his hand and strained to see beyond his circle of firelight.

  Surely a drogue wolf is no less of a threat than a raving Malorin’athgul, he reasoned, not entirely comforted in the correlation. He held his knife before him and assumed a fighting stance, balancing his weight evenly between both feet, knees bent. But he didn’t feel the least bit brave.

  Darkness enveloped the world beyond his fire-lit circle. Tanis listened for sounds from the deep, but all he could really hear was the crackle of his fire and the horrendously loud beating of his heart, which seemed to reverberate through his body as if it were a tower bell. He was scanning the darkness in a state of rising panic when the beast at last presented itself.