Indeed, the cortata fueled Ean’s blade while elae fueled his stamina, but he quickly saw that the eidola suffered not the limitations of mortal men. Ean could defend against it so long as elae fueled his strength, but if he continued too long, he would eventually drain himself of the ability even to hold the lifeforce.
The untenable nature of this truth lent a certain desperation to Ean’s thoughts, and while he worked to maintain the steps of the cortata against the eidola’s pounding blows, so also he mentally strove for some inspiration to overcome it.
Hope drained as he felt his energy siphoning off with every swing of his blade. Thoughts of loss began accosting him—nightshade fears, deadly to his resolve—and in this desperate state of mind, he resorted to what he knew best.
He spun out of the cortata, drew every inch of the lifeforce that he dared, and channeled it into a lashing current. Lightning flared through the chamber and into the eidola’s Merdanti blade. Enchanted steel melted in a molten, mercuric rush. Then the bolt shocked through the eidola and blasted it backwards into the cavern wall.
The concussion sent Ean staggering—for he’d forgotten to stabilize himself against it. He spent a dazed moment recovering from the working, ears ringing. He pushed a palm to his forehead and felt elae draining out of him in a chill exodus. It was a good thing he didn’t need the lifeforce to do what he intended.
The prince pushed after the eidola, who was half-sunk into the cavern wall and laboring to rise from beneath the rubble. Ean fell to his knees and slammed his hands against the creature’s chest while his mind sought the patterns that bound the eidola to its golem halflife.
His consciousness speared into the creature’s mind and went streaking through the storm of its thoughts, seeking the pattern he knew he would find deep within that malevolent hurricane. He sought it as a ship’s pilot seeks an island’s darker form through the night—instinctively, letting his mind guide itself towards that powerful marker.
The eidola’s black eyes flew open, and its hands shot out and grabbed Ean by the throat, but though the pressure on his neck blinded him, his inner eye remained focused.
There!
He found the pattern twining among countless others—menacing forms with devastating purpose—but only one of them held that glow of extant power.
He barely noticed as the eidola lurched to its feet, barely realized he was no longer drawing breath. They entered into a desperate race, with Ean seeking the pattern of the eidola’s beginning and the eidola seeking an end to his. The creature had just lifted the prince off his feet and was walking towards the abyss when Ean found the pattern’s beginning and yanked with all the force of his will.
It didn’t budge.
Bound with the fifth! He looked frantically for a secondary pattern interwoven among the one that bound the eidola to life.
Ean felt blackness stinging the edges of his consciousness. The woozy sensation of floating kept distracting him—likewise the pain in his neck and skull. He wanted only to surrender to the feeling of sleep and kept having to recall his consciousness to the task. He finally managed to take hold of the ends of both patterns, and with his last desperate ounce of effort, he set them to unraveling.
The eidola halted, stricken immobile with arms extended and Ean’s inert form hovering over the abyss. As the patterns continued their rapid unraveling, it let out a shrill and inhuman keen.
Ean jolted back to awareness and grabbed onto the eidola’s wrists. He swung his feet for the edge while he gasped for breath, but even as the malevolent life drained out of the thing, the eidola maintained its monstrous lock around his throat.
The creature’s death cry blended now with another’s rage, distant and powerful. The sound scraped along Ean’s physical and mental ears like his breath scraped along his throat. A final spark flared and died in the eidola’s eyes.
Then they were both falling.
Desperation clashed violently with a hopeless fear. Ean watched the edge escaping out of reach and knew he’d failed, that the creature was going to pull him down into death—
An iron hand clamped around his wrist.
Gravity wrenched the eidola’s inanimate fingers from Ean’s neck—sharply and not without claiming some skin in their passing. Then Ean was hanging painfully by one arm watching the creature fall. Seconds later, the shattering of rock reverberated in the cavern.
The iron hands holding Ean hauled him back up over the edge. The prince found his footing and looked up into the face of his rescuer.
A man of striking countenance gazed back. Seeing Ean stable on his feet, he tilted his copper-eyed gaze to assess the abyss where the eidola had fallen. “Well…that’s one way to be rid of them.”
Ean sort of staggered away—from the edge as much as from the stranger. He shakily retrieved his sword from the cave floor and looked back to the man as he slowly straightened, pressing a sleeve to staunch his bleeding neck. “Thank you.” His voice sounded hoarse, strained. A host of questions and uncertainties spiraled in his thoughts—who…how…why? Reason delivered no rationale for the stranger’s presence, and even intuition held its tongue as to his possible aims.
The man seemed to understand receiving wariness where gratitude would’ve suited better, for he delivered the barest twitch of a smile. “I’d been following that eidola when you appeared to challenge it. I admit I was…surprised at your valor.”
Ean braced himself against the cavern wall. His neck and head were a throbbing agony, while the rest of him suffered latent trembling as the flush of adrenaline bled away. He leaned his head against the rough stone and closed his eyes, too weary in that moment to face his own stupidity. “That’s a diplomatic way of saying what a fool I was.”
“But perhaps…a noble one,” the man agreed with more gentleness than Ean deserved. He looked him over then. “Who is this noble fool, I asked myself when I saw you going after the eidola. You’re not one of Dore Madden’s sycophants—that’s apparent—so who, how, why…?”
At this echo of his own thoughts, Ean looked swiftly back to the stranger. He certainly didn’t look the part of a villain—Raine’s truth, he looked like some foreign duke, what with his elegant, thigh-length coat and long raven braid and aristocratic manner. The prince admitted that odder things had happened to him.
Ean felt a measure of his composure returning with his breath, and with this a resurgence of purpose, the resonance of his own true path—the real reason he’d come to Tal’Afaq. He pushed unsteadily off the wall.
“Dore Madden holds my brother captive. I came here to claim him, but…” he paused as the truth of his stupidity once again threw itself in his face.
The man eyed him curiously. “But you saw the eidola and thought it would be a fair diversion in the meantime?”
Ean’s gaze hardened. “I saw it for what it was: an egregious aberration of elae, binding a living body unto death and a man’s mind to a monster’s.”
“Ah…” The stranger’s copper eyes scanned Ean speculatively. “Then you see far more deeply than I gave you credit for, noble fool.”
Ean waved his sword at the man by way of sheathing it. “And you?”
Mystery hinted in his gaze, much like the zanthyr’s own. “My brother spoke about these things to me.” He walked slowly towards Ean. “I hardly believed him, so I came to see if he spoke the truth. When I laid eyes upon these eidola, however…when I saw deeply of their nature, of the thread of compulsion that binds them, as you said, to a monster…” His expression flickered through what might’ve been irony. “I’ve killed two thus far. You claimed a third. I’m told a fourth remains. Perhaps we will make quick work of it together.”
Ean shook his head. “I must find my brother.” Dropping his gaze, he added resolutely, “I was wrong to seek this vengeance now.”
“I see.”
Ean looked back to him. He searched the stranger’s eyes with his own, finding no guile, only sincerity, and something more… “You saved my life, a
nd I owe you for it, but my brother—”
The man lifted a hand. “Perhaps…” A smile twitched in his features, undecided of the final shape they meant to express. “Perhaps I could aid you in securing your brother’s safety. Then we might talk of repayment of debts.”
Ean felt an immense sense of relief mingled with a sudden welling gratitude. He extended his hand. “I’m Ean val Lorian.”
The man paused with his own hand half-extended, and something crossed his expression, but then he completed their greeting and took the prince’s wrist in his iron grasp. “Well met, Your Highness. I’m Immanuel di Nostri.”
Ean’s first-strand pattern pulsed a strong beacon to his brother’s location, but he was forced to travel a circuitous route to reach him. In this, Immanuel’s companionship proved a boon. The man had recent knowledge of the caves and twice guided him around hazards that would’ve cost him time in retracing his steps and risked further unnecessary exposure.
They were following a tunnel when they heard sounds of many running feet. They pressed themselves against the wall and watched a dozen men fly past the end of the tunnel with swords in hand. Ean worried they were headed in Isabel’s direction and wore a pained expression as he watched the guards pass by.
Immanuel eyed him quizzically. “Something I should know?”
Ean shifted his gaze to the man. Then he sighed. “I came with another. She’s ending the lives of the eidola still in transition.”
“Ending the ei—” The man looked truly startled. “That’s a bold calling.”
Ean rubbed his palm against one eye. “She is dauntless on her path.”
Immanuel considered him upon this utterance, his gaze intense. Then he silently motioned them on.
That time Fortune’s eye had been upon them, but only moments later she must’ve blinked, for the next storm of men barreled into the tunnel they were following instead of past it. They took one look at Ean and Immanuel and let out a uniform cry.
Ean had his blade out in time to cut down the first of them. Then he dove into the cortata and devastated three more. But Immanuel…
Ean had wondered, when he saw that Immanuel carried no blade, how he’d managed to overcome two eidola, but watching him spin from assailant to assailant, ripping the swords from their hands and flipping them to stab back into their own chests…well, he had his answer.
While Ean watched, fascinated, Immanuel plowed through the squad of guards and left no man standing in his wake. Ean found a grave beauty in the way Immanuel moved—no, the way he flowed—through the mass of attacking men. Ean had only ever seen such glorious equilibrium of motion in creatures of the fifth…
It struck him even as he had the thought.
Gods above and below…could he be any more obtuse? Ean pushed a palm to his throbbing forehead and wondered how close a truth had to be before he saw it—must it bite him in the nose?
He didn’t need to study the currents to secure this truth—though he should’ve done it before he gave the man his hand in friendship—but he did, finally, just for the sake of belated prudence.
As Immanuel slew the last of their assailants and turned to him, Ean saw only an earnestness and intelligence in his gaze—and his presence upon the currents like a glowing star.
Immanuel discarded the last of his pilfered weapons as if an inconvenient burden. His eyes tightened slightly as he noted Ean’s expression. “What is it?”
Ean pulled on his nose. “I was just…admiring your skill with a blade.”
Immanuel arched a brow. “I’ve no doubt you could do it too, the making of one’s flesh as stone so as to counter any blade save Merdanti. It comes naturally to children of the fifth, like you and I.” At the prince’s startled look—startled, for twice the man had now spoken the most recent thought on Ean’s own mind—Immanuel smiled. “Yes, I see it in you, all over you.” He waved absently at him. “The fifth is as alcohol, telling tales in your every exhalation.”
He motioned them on through the tunnel then. But Ean couldn’t get the images of Immanuel battling out of his mind. The way he’d spun and stabbed and flung blades without even looking…
“You fight as if with eyes in the back of your head.”
Immanuel cast him an amused look. “Surely you fight with the same sense? The fifth binds you and I to everything around us, like water, alerting us to the smallest ripple in the pool.” He cast Ean a sideways look and a somewhat perplexing smile. “For lifetimes I lived indifferent to the workings of elae. But I’ve recently been remedying studies long overdue, and now I watch the currents as often as I watch my back for the daggers of my brother’s spies.”
Ean frowned. “Your brother…who told you of eidola. You’re at odds?”
Immanuel considered him a moment before answering, “One might say our purposes are currently misaligned.”
They moved on, but as they came towards the end of an upward-sloping cave, the sounds of men floated to their ears. Immanuel ducked down next to the cave’s mouth, and Ean joined him at the edge, which overlooked another cavern thirty paces below.
A score and ten men were preparing for battle. They were arming themselves with a greasy sort of efficiency, boasting base insults, and naming off the deeds they would accomplish to exact their revenge on ‘the invaders.’ The thought of such men getting anywhere near Isabel roused Ean’s violent protest.
“Perhaps we should do something about them, eh?”
Ean turned to meet Immanuel’s gaze inquiringly.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want such men chasing down the ‘she’ who accompanied me, were I in your shoes.”
Ean gazed at him in wonder. Was the man reading his thoughts, or just somehow a kindred spirit that thought the same thing at the same time? Either way, the prince felt an unexpected and immediate kinship with the man.
Immanuel turned a narrow gaze back to the Saldarians. Ean could see the wheels and cogs of his intelligent mind whirring with perfect synchronicity. “It suits me to disrupt activities here, and we must cross this cavern in any case.” He spared Ean a sideways glance. “Would you care to join me in showing these men some humility? You have my oath it won’t compromise your brother’s rescue.”
Ean looked back to the Saldarians. “There’s near thirty of them down there—all well armed.”
Immanuel seemed not to understand his point. “What purpose would it serve to attack unarmed men?” Upon which inquiry he launched himself over the wall. Ean watched him drop twenty feet to the ledge below and land soundlessly in a crouch.
It inspired him to do the same. Twenty feet whirred by in a flash, and he landed on a buffer of the fifth beside Immanuel, his heart racing with the exhilaration of what he’d just done—a very zanthyr-esque feat. He couldn’t help the grin that escaped him, nor the small glow of pride.
A wielder is limited by what he can envision.
Immanuel straightened to his full height. Then he whistled.
The Saldarians turned, and the room fell silent while disbelief bloomed into anger. Then the men were rushing them. Immanuel went flying into the melee.
Ean stood for a moment, caught by wonder, watching as Immanuel tore two blades from his attackers, flipped the swords to switch his hold from blade to hilt, and stabbed them right back into their owners’ chests—all in the breath of an instant. Then he was ducking, spinning, snaring more weapons and flinging them off again with deadly accuracy… As nature wasted nothing, so did Immanuel display an economy of motion, so simple and yet so elegant, like those great predatory cats formed of muscle and stealth.
Immanuel clearly needed none of Ean’s help to clear the room of thirty men. He’d merely included Ean because…well, Ean suspected the man thought it would be fun to battle side by side.
He launched off the ledge after him.
Ean gained no joy in killing, but knowing what these men would do to Isabel if they caught her…well, he didn’t exactly mind it either. And he had to admit, as they moved back to back
cutting a formidable swath through the mass of Saldarians, exchanging a knowing glance here and there, or a fierce grin, it was exciting fighting with Immanuel at his side.
Twenty-Three
“What you call impossible, I call a challenge.”
– The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra
After finishing off the Saldarians, Ean and Immanuel hastened out of the caves into the fortress proper. They were climbing a long, narrow staircase cut into the rock when the first-strand pattern attached to Sebastian resonated so violently in Ean’s mind that he caught his breath. Then he launched up the remaining stairs two at a time.
The stairwell opened into a long passageway. Smooth sandstone led away left and right beneath an arched ceiling of mosaic tiles. Partway down the corridor, a black-enameled door marred the otherwise empty wall, and Ean knew that he would find his brother through it.
He emerged into the hall with his blade held ready and Immanuel close behind him. Ean scanned the passage for patterns, and finding none, he moved to the black door. Yet even as his hand reached for the latch, he paused. Then he stepped back.
“Do you see something?” Immanuel peered intently at the lacquered wood.
Instinct guided Ean towards the wall. He leaned flat against it and gazed sidelong, scanning the face of the door, and there it was: a gossamer pattern too thin to be seen except from an oblique angle.
“How predictable you are, Dore Madden,” he murmured. He shifted his gaze slightly to see all of the pattern, found its beginning and ending and unraveled it with a thought. Then he looked to Immanuel. “Now we go in.”
A flicker of intent dissolved the iron lock. Black sand came pouring out of the keyhole as Ean pulled open the door to reveal a dim landing. Stone steps skirted the outside edge of a curving wall lit by slotted windows—clearly one of Tal’Afaq’s exterior-facing towers. Ean glanced at Immanuel and then started down.
Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3) Page 35