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

by Melissa McPhail

  “Come on.” Ean tugged on Trell’s arm and started climbing down.

  The waves were churning into froth when they reached the waterline, and the wind was really up, whipping the sea into stinging spray. They held their hair out of their faces and watched with breathless anticipation as the rowboat bobbed into and out of view. Finally, Sebastian drew close enough that they could hear him shouting over the roar of wind and crashing sea.

  “Jump!” he was saying, and he waved them forward when he didn’t need his hand to row.

  “Sod it,” Trell growled, “he can’t get any closer. We’ve got to swim.”

  “But…” Ean cast eight-year-old eyes out over the crashing waves.

  The belligerence in Trell’s gaze softened with care. “Take my hand, Ean. Don’t let go.” Ean took it quickly and squeezed hard. “We jump on three.”

  And off they went.

  A harrowing few minutes later, Sebastian hauled Ean and then Trell into the skiff. Then with Sebastian two-handed on one oar and both younger boys together on the other, they made haste to row away as fast and hard as they could before the waves sent them crashing right back into the rock.

  Ean suffered the hard row back to shore enduring the painful silence of Sebastian’s disfavor. He knew he’d be in for it far worse still once his mother learned of their little ‘expedition into foolishness’—as Sebastian had reprimanded amid a slurry of curses the moment they were safely in the boat.

  Even with ‘tempting fate so blithely’ they almost made it to shore without incident, but then Cephrael’s eye must’ve fallen ill upon them, for suddenly a wave caught the stern just so and cast them sideways into a reef. The shallow keel caught, and the next thing Ean knew the skiff had flipped and they were flying into the surf.

  Ean came up sputtering and coughing. Sebastian surfaced just beside him, while Trell broke through closer to shore.

  Sebastian was reaching for Ean when the young prince saw another wave lift the skiff off the reef and carry it towards them. He launched out of the water and onto Sebastian’s head, plunging his eldest brother beneath the sea just as the wave crashed over them. Ean felt a searing pain lance across his back, and he gasped, sucking burning saltwater into his lungs.

  Strong arms grabbed him and surged with him back to the surface, where he coughed and gasped around youthful choking cries. His eyes stung with tears, and his back burned so desperately he could barely stand to move, but that was okay, for Sebastian had an iron arm around him and was swimming for them both.

  As soon as he could stand, Sebastian drew Ean into his arms and rushed him to shore. Ean’s teeth were chattering, his body was shaking, and his back felt on fire, but his only thoughts were of his brother’s heroic efforts.

  “You sa-saved us!” Ean stammered.

  As he was stomping out of the surf, Sebastian shook wet hair from his eyes and looked gently down at Ean in his arms. “I think you just saved me back there.”

  Ean rather imagined that he had. He didn’t want to know what his flesh looked like after being so grievously misused by the skiff’s keel, but better his back than Sebastian’s skull. None of this would’ve happened if he and Trell had just heeded Sebastian’s warning. “I g-guess I should be c-carrying your horse for you.”

  Sebastian pressed a kiss to Ean’s forehead . “Tonight, little brother, I will carry you.” And he had…all the way back to Calgaryn Palace.

  ***

  Sunrise saw Isabel and the prince on a precipice overlooking the fortress of Tal’Afaq. Ean wove the fourth to hide them from view of the distant guards while he studied the patterns of warding surrounding the mountain fortress. Turrets and watchtowers protruded from the rock face, but the bulk of Tal’Afaq extended back into the cliff, making use of a honeycomb of natural caves.

  Ean found the Saldarian fortress impressive, but the dodecahedron of interconnected patterns surrounding the stronghold impressed him more. Each face of the geometric shape was itself a pattern, interwoven with all the others. Each pattern had its own purpose and had been carefully placed next to patterns of similar purposes, so that the entire sphere worked with seamless efficiency.

  No man could pass through that barrier unnoticed. None could pass at all without working elae, and to work the lifeforce upon any of those patterns was to trigger a second layer of patterns concealed behind the first, and the patterns in that layer were uniformly deadly.

  Ean shook his head. It must’ve taken decades to construct that shield of wards.

  He clenched his jaw and tried to think of any possible way through it. That his brother likely suffered at Dore’s hand, and he, Ean, was being prevented from rescuing him by a tangle of convoluted knots, its own sort of labyrinth…this made him all the more determined to reach him.

  “What in Tiern’aval could require such protection?” he muttered to himself.

  Isabel stood with her staff braced between her hands and a frown creasing her brow. “Craft most foul.”

  Ean grunted. “This would’ve taken years to create. I got the idea these creatures you spoke of were new.”

  “The eidola are not new,” she said darkly, “just new to this realm, and Dore Madden has long wallowed in the muck of depravity. Before eidola, he made other monsters.”

  Ean heard multiple intimations in these words, but he had no images to give context to their meaning. “Is Dore in there?”

  “I believe so, but I fear he won’t risk open confrontation if he can help it. Dore prefers to let others fight his wars.” She shifted her hands on her staff, turning it within her grip, the only indication of her impatience. “Can you see a way through the patterns, Ean?”

  “No.”

  “Can you unwork them?”

  The prince clenched his jaw. “No.” Indeed, the complexity of interwoven wards was beyond his skill—at least without days of study beforehand.

  “Did you search the nodes?”

  Ean gave her a look, for he hadn’t thought of that idea.

  A Nodefinder saw nodes as Ean saw patterns—simply everywhere he looked—but the surest way of finding nodes when one wasn’t a second-strand Adept was to follow the currents. Elae’s tides formed whirlpools over nodes and eddies over leis. One need only travel the river of the second strand to find them.

  Ean called upon the currents using a pattern that would show him not only the placement of the nodes and leis but also the infrastructure of the fortress itself.

  The currents followed natural channels, but like irrigation canals, if man dug new channels—rooms, passages—the currents would flow into those as well. Many patterns facilitated seeing these current paths, but few were as intricate as what Ean worked. He’d summoned this pattern as natively as he’d called upon elae. It might’ve told him something about his returning skill if he’d had time to consider it.

  “I see only the one node inside the fortress,” Ean said with a sinking feeling.

  “I observed the same.” Isabel shifted her hold on her staff. “Dore has the node as heavily warded as the fortress. What else do you see?”

  Ean tried to stave off the hopelessness suddenly rising in him and focus on the task at hand. “I see…” He swallowed back a rising frustration. “I see many leis, but I don’t see how they’ll help us. We can’t get to them.”

  “You violate the Fifth Law, Ean.”

  Ean grimaced. That pesky Fifth Law. A wielder is limited by what he can envision. Ean turned back to the currents and eddies that indicated leis. They lay deep inside the mountain’s caves, perhaps not even in the fortress at all.

  Isabel nodded towards them as if she saw them also. “What would a Nodefinder do to gain access?”

  Ean turned her a frown as he considered her question. The morning wind stirred in her long hair and rippled her cloak, giving an otherworldly cast to her form, like a being shaped of air and shadows…

  “Ean, the fortress lies in the other direction.”

  His eyes crinkled with a smile. “Sorry
.” He took her hand and looked back to the fortress and the outline of bronze the currents were drawing of its depths. “A Nodefinder would put the leis to use for him,” he said after a moment. He pointed towards a distant hill. “Those leis there. A skilled Nodefinder could reroute them to connect with the ones inside.”

  “Arion had his second row. That skill should be native to you, my lord.”

  Ean grunted and arched a rueful brow. Fate had truly turned him a blind eye to pit him forever against his own past genius. “I can’t even imagine how to—”

  “You can imagine it.” She squeezed his hand. “The working should feel native, Ean. You’ve done it so many times before, and with far more difficult intersections than leis. Imagine. See what happens.”

  As ever, when Isabel commanded, memory surfaced. Images flickered like a shuffling deck of cards—years of lectures using words that no longer held meaning: the Greater Reticulation, the Lesser Tessellations, extratellurian cartography…

  Suddenly an image formed whole and complete, and he saw a Sormitáge maestro standing next to an illusion of an icosahedron, pointing as he said, ‘…each is a node point in the Pattern of the World, each node hosting up to fifty-six ley-lines within its matrix, each such magnetic channel capable of supporting twenty-four to the third power of leis…’

  The odd thing was, some part of him understood all of this.

  Exhaling a slow breath, Ean squinted at the fortress. The rising sun had found it now, and the strong light shining so directly upon the stone stole all contrasting shadows, making the towers seem to lay flat against the cliff face.

  Any shifting of second strand channels must begin with a study of the Pattern of the World—he didn’t have to know second-strand Laws to understand this fundamental.

  Ean let instinct guide him and willed himself to see the magnetic lines extending from the nodepoint deep inside that mountain. Patterns indeed native to him shifted and formed in his mind, became invested with elae, and grew into a geometric shape of intersecting lines. The leis shaped an intricate star pattern around the node, but many more lines connected this node to other similar star patterns—other distant nodepoints.

  Ean foundered his way among the intersecting lines of kinetic power, mentally following each from one end to the other and back again. Trying to make sense of them was like tracing the individual branches of every tree in the forest canopy back to its roots—then memorizing each route. Once he finally found his footing upon these branching paths, he began to see how new connections might be formed.

  The sun moved across the sky, bringing heat to the day. Isabel stood beside him all the while, holding his hand, never moving—not even seeming to breathe—only her hair or the edges of her cloak stirring with the occasional wind. She worked the fourth now to conceal them from view.

  “There.” Ean squeezed her hand while he continued scanning the multiple icosahedrons visible to his eyes. “I see how a connection can be made without destabilizing the pattern.”

  “Then let it be done, my lord, lest the day escape us.”

  As he assessed the glowing leis, deciding which he would move and how, the solution presented itself with startling simplicity. Using the fifth, he seared a path through the ether between two leis and then lay the second strand along it, the pouring of bronze into an earthen mold. A casing of the fifth sealed the new connection, binding it to permanence. Instantly the currents began to flow along the channel.

  Ean stared, hardly believing he’d done it.

  As he watched the currents surging along their new path, he couldn’t help but wonder: how often must he have worked the second strand to have it feel so fluid in his thoughts, to have accomplished it with such ease? He hadn’t seen the patterns as he’d worked. He’d merely envisioned the lines of connection between the two leis he meant to bind together. The First Law of Patterning gained a whole new meaning to him: KNOW the effect you intend to create.

  Still, Ean perceived that countless years of practice and learning had gone into achieving this simplicity. A blossoming sense of pride filled him.

  “It’s done,” he said, looking to Isabel.

  “And done well,” she agreed. She took up her skirts in one hand and her staff in the other. “Lead on, my lord. The path beckons.”

  Twenty

  “You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.”

  – Madaé Giselle

  Tanis was dreaming of Pelas when the clinking of china disturbed his sleep. He opened sandy eyes to find Madaé Lisbeth setting out his tea service on a table by the fire. Darkness clung to the windows outside his room, and the hearth had just been lit, for the flames were yet catching in a grand snapping of crackling timber.

  “Madaé?” Tanis pressed palms to his eyes. In the fog of lingering sleep, he wondered why she was setting the service instead of Birger.

  She turned him a smile over her shoulder, and the glow of a suddenly flaming log illuminated her kindly face with light. “Ah, you’re awake, dearling.” She straightened and pressed out her skirts. “Sorry to be so early with the tea, but the Lord Phaedor needs you ready to go by sunrise.”

  Tanis shifted to sit up against his pillows. “Go?” He rubbed his eyes again. “Go where?”

  “I’m afraid it’s time, dear.”

  Her tone more than her words brought Tanis fully awake. “We’re leaving?”

  “With the morning tide.” She finished setting out his breakfast and came over to his bedside. “I’ve laid out your things for today.” She indicated the darker shapes at the foot of his bed with a pat of one hand, “and Birger packed the rest of your trunk last night after you took to bed. He’s down readying the carriage now. Giselle is preparing some special provisions for you—it’s many a day to Faroqhar by ship with steady winds; less if there’s a wielder aboard as can work the fifth—but the Lady knows a ship’s fare is lean at best, and Giselle knows your appetite.” She added with a wink, “She’ll be taking good care for you.”

  Barely a week had passed since his encounter with the drogue wolf—not nearly enough time to do all of the exploring Tanis had hoped to do. He still hadn’t found the pebble beach or gone to inspect the arches of the forest more closely. But worst of all, Tanis hadn’t finished his lessons with his mother—surely he couldn’t leave with so many unexplored patterns still on the wall!

  Madaé Lisbeth stopped at the door and turned to look back at him. “What a handsome youth you’ve grown into, Tanis. I’m so very…proud.”

  Tanis got the idea she’d meant to say something else, but her thoughts were suspiciously silent, as if she knew how to guard them from a truthreader.

  “I’ve left a travel sack upon the chest in case there’s anything else you’d like to take with you.”

  “Thank you, Madaé.”

  As she closed the door, Tanis fell back onto his pillows and stared at the flickering shadows on the brocade canopy above. This is really happening.

  He’d forgotten all about going to Faroqhar. Why were they going to Faroqhar anyway?

  Not that he didn’t want to see the Sacred City, seat of the Empress of Agasan, but he couldn’t bear the idea of leaving before he finished his mother’s lessons. Never mind that he’d been many days now without another pattern glowing its welcome; he was sure more would come when…well, when the time was right.

  No, he decided, and the thought gripped him forcefully to bind his determination. I just won’t do it. I won’t leave!

  Tanis threw off his covers, grabbed his heavy woolen robe, and somewhat stomped out of his rooms in search of the zanthyr.

  He found Phaedor—for once—in his own chambers. Tanis stalked inside with all the aplomb of a slumbering bear cub tumbled from a tree, whereupon he announced, “My lord, I must speak with you this instant.”

  Phaedor was sorting weapons on a table. A dozen or more bundles wrapped in dark cloth were arranged before him. The only light came from the fire roaring in the gre
at hearth. Its warming glow illuminated a circular span towards the chamber’s center, leaving the distant edges in velvet darkness and highlighting the zanthyr’s dark form as a great rent in the fabric of the room.

  Phaedor’s dark hair hid his gaze from Tanis’s view, but the line of his jaw glowed in the firelight. He didn’t look up from his task. “I’m listening, Tanis.”

  The lad came to a halt at the far end of the rectangular table and rested hands on the back of a chair. He took a deep breath of resolve. “My lord, I can’t leave today.”

  “Indeed? Pray explain why, truthreader.”

  Tanis drew up tall. “To be frank, my lord, I’m just not ready.”

  The zanthyr lifted his head and spied him with an amused look. “Are you not?”

  The undertone of Phaedor’s reply caught the lad by surprise, for he perceived his implication. Abruptly the granite pedestal of his conviction morphed into a rickety attic stool covered in cobwebs and missing half a leg.

  “Well…” Tanis scrambled for something to hold his argument steady, “but my lessons!” His concerns came pouring out in a rush then. “My lord, if we leave, I’ll never get to finish my studies with my mother. There are so many patterns on the walls that I haven’t learned yet. If we depart now, I’ll never have the chance to…to study with her again.” He’d been about to say to see her again, but the words wouldn’t leave his tongue.

  The first grey light of dawn now tinged the windows. Phaedor leaned both hands on the table and settled his gaze on Tanis, and the lad felt his emerald eyes penetrating all the way down to his heels. “Think you truly that these invaluable lessons are stored on the walls?”

  Tanis opened his mouth to form a retort, but the words wouldn’t form. Cast in such a light, the absurdity of this assumption struck him—never mind the implication in Phaedor’s pointed stare, which conveyed the zanthyr’s expectation that Tanis should be exhibiting greater intelligence than he’d managed thus far.