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

by Melissa McPhail

  Tormented eyes looked back to her. He nodded.

  “First, though the goracrosta won’t prevent Dore’s compulsion, it will prevent your using elae to carry out its demands. This places you and Ean on equal footing, for he will not use the lifeforce to harm you. Second, I believe Dore is capable of tracking you through the bond he’s placed in your mind.”

  Sebastian closed his eyes. After a moment he whispered, “I fear you’re right.”

  “The goracrosta will confuse this, prevent his being able to trace you here.”

  His gaze flew back to her. “I would have to wear it constantly—” his voice broke, and he bowed his head, jaw clenching again.

  Isabel wasn’t insensitive to his plight, but she dared make no misguided concessions of mercy. “Can you trust yourself, Sebastian? Say it’s so, and I’ll release you now.”

  He cast her an anguished look. “You know I cannot.”

  “We want only to free you, but until we can trust you not to act against us in this endeavor, what other choice have we?”

  Sebastian exhaled a slow breath. “None, my lady. Very well, I’ll wear the rope, but just answer me one thing.”

  She nodded for him to continue.

  The sudden desperation that came into his gaze tore into her heart. “Can he do it? Can Ean free me?”

  Isabel sat back in her chair. She saw her tiny trail broadening as it led into the future. “If he knew all he has ever known,” she began, “unquestionably. But he fears this knowledge, Sebastian. There’s much you don’t know about your brother, about his Return. He’s afraid to remember the deeds that lie upon the path behind him, yet if he cannot forgive himself for these actions, he’ll never fully regain his identity. You must help him.”

  “Me?” he looked astonished. “How?”

  “Help him to find these truths and face them.”

  “How will I do that with goracrosta around my neck?” He sounded desperate.

  “There will come a time, sooner or later, when the moment will be right.” She paused to let this sink in.

  He stared at her in silence. Then he nodded once and looked down at his hands. “Will you bind me here? Now?”

  She heard the fear in his voice. Isabel stood and gathered her things. “In a few days, after you’ve rested and have the use of your hands again—a hint of freedom to balance the goracrosta’s bite. Also, soon we must speak of Ean’s men and anything else you can tell us of Dore’s activities—tit for tat, I’m afraid, Sebastian. Ean would merely free you, but he thinks only with his heart.” She paused at the door, sighed, and the hint of a tragic smile graced her lips. “He has ever been so.”

  Sebastian gave her a wondrous look. “Who are you, my lady?”

  She turned a look over her shoulder and settled her blindfolded gaze upon him. “I am Isabel van Gelderan.”

  He nearly choked, and his eyes went round. For a space of several breaths, he seemed unable to summon words. Then he managed hoarsely, “Nothing scares Dore Madden—nothing. Except your brother…and you.”

  “Dore escaped my brother’s justice on Tiern’aval.” Isabel’s tone held a steel honed by centuries of sacrifice. “He will not escape mine.”

  Sebastian shook his head, still wide-eyed. “For all our sakes, my lady, I pray you’re right.”

  “So do I, Sebastian. Good night to you,” and she made her leave.

  Twenty-Nine

  “Don’t talk to me about heartache. Don’t tell me about sacrifice.

  None of us hold a candle to what he’s endured.”

  – The Adept truthreader Cristien Tagliaferro,

  on Björn van Gelderan

  A damp dawn found Sebastian val Lorian standing shirtless on his balcony watching the day breaking against the Dhahari range. The thunderstorm that had raged all night was moving off to the north, leaving a trail of broken clouds which the dawn blessed now with its golden kiss. The snowbound peaks also reflected daybreak’s blush, and between the rose-gold sky, the deep violet clouds and the light blooming along the mountains’ crest, the morning seemed full of promise. For the first time in nearly a decade, Sebastian was looking forward to the day.

  Well…perhaps t’was truer to say he held an anticipation that wasn’t entirely bleak. For every grain of hope placed in the sack that was his fate—what few kernels he’d scraped loose from the path of an uncertain future—he carried a score more stones of regret. The bag remained torturously heavy.

  Sebastian placed his bound hands on the railing, feeling the heavy plaster supporting them, and thought back to the recent revelation: Isabel van Gelderan is bound to my brother, and Ean to her.

  Whoever could have imagined it?

  He knew only a little about the woman who’d been the Citadel’s High Mage—Raine’s truth, he’d thought her dead from Dore’s lunatic spoutings—yet Dore clearly feared her with a fervor bordering on insanity. This gave him some clue to the power she commanded, but her Healing told him more. His leg no longer ached, though the rains had lashed all through the night, and the scar on his cheek had faded to a thin line. Even had he been inclined to believe anything Dore said—which was quite the opposite—he would’ve noted Isabel’s uncommon compassion in these acts.

  But even more revelatory was Isabel’s fourth-strand working, which somehow intervened between Dore’s compulsion and his own mind. Her miraculous intervention was allowing him a clarity of thought he hadn’t experienced since N’ghorra—indeed, he’d forgotten what it felt like to think without the vitriolic specter of Dore Madden tainting his reason.

  This freedom was worth any cost to him—well worth the numbing pain of goracrosta. He maintained his outward reserve, but he was reveling in the freedom to think his own thoughts, even for just a few days.

  However…through this clarity, Sebastian’s intelligent mind made discomfiting connections, fitting the pieces that were Isabel and her brother Björn into a puzzle with his own brothers and the Sundragon Şrivas’rhakárakek. Thinking all of this through had kept him awake the last two nights—so, too, his guilt over his involvement in what was becoming a tragic farce, Dore’s idea of comedy. Epiphany help anyone so ill-fated as to become the puppet in one of Dore’s tragedies.

  A knock on the door drew Sebastian’s attention, and he turned to see a woman entering. Draped in a crimson sari banded in jeweled emerald and gold circles, and with a matching chaadar covering her dark hair, she seemed a djinn gliding through the room towards him, a vision born of magic.

  She joined him on the balcony, pressed palms together and bowed with a smile. “Sobh bekheir, Sebastian, Prince of Dannym.”

  Sebastian caught his breath at this address.

  Lowering her hands, she cast him an inquiring look. “Is something wrong?”

  The shadow of a frown pinched Sebastian’s brow. “I’m afraid your greeting took me off guard, my lady.”

  One corner of her mouth curled upwards as if to draw his gaze to the humor dancing in her blue eyes. “I merely said good morning. A curious offense.”

  Thinking of his two brothers and the shackles he now believed bound the three of them to oddly connected paths, Sebastian replied, “We are a curious brood, the princes of Dannym.”

  Her gaze swept him, and he thought he saw a glimmer of appreciation in the smile she smothered. “I am Ehsan, princess of Kandori. I’ve come to assess the state of your healing for the Lady Isabel.”

  “Then I submit to your inspection, princess.” He turned to face her fully and held out both hands, bound in their linen gauze.

  The smile danced in her eyes again. “This inspection will require a deeper delving than that, Prince Sebastian.”

  The barest tightening of his gaze conveyed his disconcertion at this repeated address. “Do you prey upon my sensitivities, princess?”

  “Nay,” she laughed, “merely your insecurities. Come.” She waved him follow her back into the bedchamber and bade him sit upon a chair.

  He did so, and she moved close to l
ay ringed fingers on his head. Looking up between her arms, his gaze followed the lines of jeweled bangles like vambraces stacked around her wrists, up across the sweep of her ornate sari, to a wide collar of precious stones that concealed the graceful line of her neck and hid the curve of collarbone that he would’ve found so alluring. He wondered if she slept in all that jewelry, and then he wondered…

  She cast him a chastising look beneath one arched eyebrow—perfectly formed with just the slightest impertinence in the aspect of its angle. “And how did you sleep?”

  He held her gaze. “I don’t sleep, princess.”

  She closed her eyes to sink into the Healer’s rapport. “Then what do you do with the night?”

  He sighed. “Most of the time, I just wait for it to be over.”

  She made her inspection of his life pattern in silence. Then she removed her hands and stepped back to look down gently upon him. “But now you’ve come to Kandori, and my brother and yours will see what can be done to bring peace to your dreams.”

  I would settle for any kind of dreams so long as they didn’t reek of Dore Madden.

  She held out her hands, palms open. “Now you may present your hands for ministration.”

  He noted the gold band of a Sormitáge ring on her thumb as he placed one heavy hand in both of hers. As she unwrapped the bandage, he asked, “Princess Ehsan?”

  She looked up under her brows with the hint of a smile. “Prince Sebastian?” Then she laughed. “Why do you grimace so? It is your name.”

  He held her gaze. “How do you know the Lady Isabel?”

  She lifted a slender shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Long has my family served them.”

  “Them. You mean Isabel and Björn van Gelderan?”

  She arched a brow as if to ask, who else would I mean?

  He gave her a look as if to reply, you tell me.

  She removed the last layer of gauze binding his hand to the plaster. “Lift your fingers.”

  He was almost afraid to do so, for the memory of their shattering remained so vivid as to impose the image upon his mended flesh and send pain shuddering through him again. But he wouldn’t have her observe such cowardice, so he did as she required.

  Each finger lifted cleanly, responding to his will, wholly restored. He clenched his jaw and looked back to her, but his eyes burned with gratitude as much as anger for the deed, never mind it was now undone. “Good as new.” The words sounded nearly a curse.

  She motioned him to place his other hand in her care, but she made no remark upon the bitter fury in his gaze.

  When both hands were unwrapped and inspected, Ehsan pressed her palms together and bowed. “I will let the Lady Isabel know you’re ready.”

  He stood and bowed to her in kind. “Mamnoon, Princess.” Thank you.

  Her eyes swept him again, and though he couldn’t be sure, he thought they lingered for a heartbeat’s pause at his linen pants hanging loosely from his hips. Then her blue eyes lifted and fastened on his, she gave him the slightest of nods, murmured, “Kahesh mikonam, Prince of Dannym,” and departed.

  Day had fully claimed the world by the time Isabel came to Sebastian’s room carrying a bundle of folded clothes. Her arrival drew tension through him like knotted cord through wood, each node splintering as it passed. The moment was nigh when he would lose his hold on the peaceful reality of his own thoughts, and he already craved what would soon be lost again. More than he feared the goracrosta’s numbing pain, he feared this…this loss of himself.

  “My lady,” He came to his feet as she was shutting the door, “is there…?” But he bit back the words with an inward curse. Of course there was no other way, else they’d be following it. Why could he feel so courageous in the midst of a battle and so craven as he faced its beginning?

  “Sobh bekheir, Prince of Dannym.” Isabel nodded a hello. She wore a long tunic and pants cut in the Kandori style, and gold slippers carried her soundlessly as she moved across the room to set the clothes on his bed.

  He watched her as she passed, for he had a boon to ask of her. “My lady, before you remove this binding of sanity…if it’s not too much to request, might I…I would like to see Ean.” I just want to look upon him with my own eyes, just once with my own unadulterated eyes…before he becomes my target again.

  “Ean wants this also,” she replied gently, though he got the distinct impression she was responding to his unspoken thoughts. She turned to face him. “Sebastian, we’re still looking for Ean’s men. Have you any idea where Dore would’ve taken them?”

  He pushed a hand through his black hair and sank down on the edge of his chair. “One of his castles I’d assume.”

  The barest tilting of her head revealed her surprise. “How many castles does Dore Madden have?”

  A shadow crossed Sebastian’s gaze. He tried only to answer her question without picturing the places themselves. “Many, my lady, and all of them pestilential warrens, breeding grounds for the…vilest experimentation.”

  Isabel drew in her breath and let it out slowly. “Have you names? Locations?”

  “I will give you a list—what few I know of.” He moved to a near desk and quickly scratched out the names. Seeing his own hand drawing the quill across the page, however, brought a lump to his throat. Just days ago, he thought he’d be incapable of holding anything ever again.

  As the ink was drying, he returned the quill to its stand. “Şrivas’rhakárakek.” Sebastian looked up at her under his brow. “I released the Labyrinth upon him and he followed me across two nodes…but he never…he didn’t bring harm to me.” He searched her hidden gaze for some understanding of this mystery.

  A slight smile hinted on her lips. “If you successfully released the Labyrinth on Rhakar, you took the point, Sebastian.”

  “Very well, my lady, but my question is, why did he follow me if not to seek retribution—to claim a point in return, as it were?” He blotted the paper and offered it to her, but as she made to take it from his fingers, he held it firm a moment longer. “Was he searching for Trell? Is that why he first came upon us in the Kutsamak?”

  “Yes.”

  Sebastian dropped his gaze. Then it was as he’d suspected. The truth seared his heart with branding blame. Releasing the paper into her hand, Sebastian sank down on the chair behind the desk. A desperate guilt clenched him. “Does Rhakar search for Trell still?”

  She nodded.

  He leaned to rest elbows on his knees and pressed his head into his hands. After a painful silence in which he endured the flagellations of his own conscience, he said in a strained voice, “I sent him to his death.”

  Her brow lifted. “You cannot know Trell has reached the end of his path.”

  “I know Radov.”

  A moment later, he felt her hand brushing his hair, calling his eyes to meet her blindfolded gaze. How she saw him through the opaque cloth, Sebastian couldn’t say, but he’d no doubt that she saw him, through and through.

  Isabel stroked his hair gently. “You know Radov,” she murmured, “but do you know Trell?”

  Her words called to mind the image of his noble brother, humbled on his knees yet smiling enigmatically, promising another meeting even as Sebastian turned his back on him. Could Trell have known him on some level even as Sebastian had—instinctively, as if their shared blood sang a song of recognition?

  Sebastian had been shattered by that meeting. Seeing Trell had splintered the walls of Dore’s dam around his thoughts, opening a deluge of memories to make a mud of conflicting truths. But Trell had seemed confident, his composure unshakable.

  Yes…he supposed he did know enough of Trell to believe him capable of surviving even Radov’s worst. After all, Sebastian had survived it, at least…life imbued his body still. This was survival of a sort, though he loathed every moment of his current existence.

  “You can reclaim your life,” Isabel murmured, stroking his hair gently, “so long as the will to do so survives within you.”

&n
bsp; Her hand found his cheek, and he caught it suddenly and held it there, pressing his face into her palm. Her gentleness, her deep understanding…she immobilized him. He felt a vessel stripped bare with nothing to offer but a ravaged hull. After floating for so long in the brackish hell where Dore had moored him, he almost couldn’t bear the calm, clear waters of Isabel’s compassion.

  “Come, Sebastian.” She touched his chin meaningfully, and though he dreaded it, he moved to his feet before her.

  From her pocket, she withdrew two pieces of silver rope, intricately braided. Sebastian held out his hands, but despite his best efforts, they still shook. Goracrosta had been one of Dore’s favorite torments. The things his twisted imagination had done with it…

  “I’m ready,” he somewhat gasped.

  She looped the first length around his wrist and pressed the two ends together, sealing it with a thought. “Elae permeates life—at all times, in all ways. Goracrosta cannot keep elae from flowing through you, it only restricts you from casting it outwards from yourself. We’ve chosen the lightest weave to spare you as much discomfort as possible.” She released the ends, and he saw they’d reformed an unbroken cuff. It was lovely, in a horrible way, like having a viper coiled around his wrist.

  And yet…the pain wasn’t as terrible as he remembered. Achingly cold, yes, but the stabbing pains, the fire in his flesh, the unrelenting agony that usually came with its touch…these sensations were absent.

  “One controls the effects and intensity of goracrosta through the pattern of its weave.” Isabel wrapped the second silver viper around his other wrist and pinched the ends to seal them. “The Sorceresses of Vest intended the rope to be utilized thusly—providing infinite application—but most often it is kept in its basest form, for few outside of the Blackshard Circle know the weaves to control it.”

  He stared at her. “Someone invented this torturous stuff?”

  “The Vestian Sorceresy believes pain holds the same value as pleasure.” She released the second cuff and took up both of his hands. “The Quorum’s magi created goracrosta to honor their gods; the Sorceresy perfected it so as to enslave them.”