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

by Melissa McPhail

  Isabel turned both of his wrists so the backs of his hands rested in hers. She caressed his open palms with her thumbs, and a soothing sensation spread along his arms, chasing away the goracrosta’s bite.

  His eyes flew to hers.

  “It may last two turns of the hourglass,” she offered, sounding apologetic, “but when it fades, any Healer can restore it. As you’ll learn, the Palace of Andorr has many Healers.” She touched a hand to his cheek and gave him a sad smile. “Such suffering…” She paused, and her silence conveyed everything words could not. “Such bravery in the face of it. You’re among family now, Sebastian. None would add to your misery.”

  Sebastian dropped his gaze and turned away. “Isabel…”

  How deeply her compassion pierced him! He’d endured the worst of Dore’s demonic urges, but this…ironic to be so undone by a woman’s gentle touch; ironic, too, that one binding imprisoned him while another set him free. His life had become a patchwork of ironies.

  He gripped the back of an armchair while guilt gripped his soul. “Thank you for your encouragement,” he murmured tightly, “but I don’t deserve it.”

  “The only crime pinned to your soul, Sebastian val Lorian, is being born the son of a king and heir to a coveted throne. All else is Fate’s doing.”

  He lifted her a look and growled, “Who will bear the guilt if Trell dies from Radov’s hate? Cephrael won’t carry it to his funeral bier.”

  “Don’t deceive yourself, Sebastian.” Isabel’s tone pierced him with its censure. “Cephrael carries the weight of all.”

  Only with her stinging reprimand did he remember he wasn’t merely speaking with his brother’s beloved but with Epiphany’s Prophet. Sebastian pushed a hand over his heart and bowed his head. “My lady, I beg your pardon.”

  “Granted. Come now, get dressed. Your brother awaits you—anxiously,” and with this last, she darted a smile in his direction, and he knew he’d been forgiven.

  ***

  Ean walked the wide, decorated halls of Andorr Palace with Dareios on one side and the wildcat Babar loping soundlessly on the other. The cat seemed to have taken to his personality, or else to his scent, for she stayed close to him as they walked and had watched him with uncomfortable intensity all the day and the night before, claiming a worktable for her prime observation post while he and Dareios had studied in the latter’s laboratory. Ean wasn’t sure how he felt about being the subject of inspection of a predatory cat large enough to eat a small child.

  With Dareios’s assistance, Ean had flipped through books of fourth-strand patterns, most of them in the compulsion category, memorizing their details. Dareios hoped this familiarity would help Ean in reconstructing the web of patterns Dore had used on Sebastian. Until Ean could view all of the patterns together in their polyhedron matrix and study their interrelationships, he had no chance of unworking the compulsion binding his brother. This dilemma consumed his thoughts.

  And there were other factors to take into consideration, ones he never would’ve landed on without Dareios’s expertise. Ean had let the truthreader work a Telling upon him, whereupon the Kandori prince had recalled Sebastian’s mind as Ean had seen it—what few chances he’d had as he’d battled Sebastian in Tyr’kharta, and then later as he’d carried his brother from Dore’s stronghold. Dareios had seen patterns within patterns. The things he’d told Ean about these patterns had left him restless and disturbed.

  “Darayavahush!” A woman’s voice came sharply from behind them, further down the palace’s wide corridor.

  Babar made a low growl, and Dareios winced. Coming to a halt, he took a deep breath, smoothed his features into patience, and turned with a look of polite inquiry. “Sobh bekheir, mother-of-my-heart.” He pressed palms together and blessed her with a bow.

  The woman who approached looked to be in her middle years, but her age was likely misleading, for the tattoo of the Khoda Panaheh stood out on her forehead. She wore the tunic and loose pants called shalwar kameez, richly patterned in peacock colors, and a chaadar covered her long grey hair. Her earlobes sagged from the weight of ornamental earrings, while a jeweled collar of connected stones covered her neck and shoulders. Her bracelets nearly reached her elbows.

  Dareios gave his mother a chaste kiss on the cheek. “You bless my palace with your sun, Mother.”

  “Of course.” She received his affection with her dark eyes pinned on Ean. “Please introduce us, Darayavahush.”

  Dareios did, introducing his mother, Nîga. Ean bowed and made the proper respects.

  Nîga looked back to her son. “You’ve been hiding here in the Moon Palace keeping your guests from us and denying them the splendor of the Sun Palace.”

  Ean didn’t think more could be done to increase a palace’s splendor short of building walls out of precious stones and mortaring them with diamond dust.

  “Only in respect for their needs, mother,” Dareios replied. “Their time is short.”

  She arched a brow. “And our wisdom is too long. Is this your meaning?”

  “Why would that be my meaning?”

  Her dark eyes flicked over him with a mother’s venerable scrutiny. “Very well, your sisters and I will visit you here. The Moon Palace is not so large, nor so comfortable, but we will make do,” and she added with a sweep of dark eyes over Ean, “in respect for your guests’ needs.”

  Dareios placed a jeweled hand over his heart. “It would be my honor to host you and my sisters, mother-of-my-heart.”

  Ean admired his equanimity.

  Nîga seemed skeptical of it, but she gave her son the benefit of the doubt. “Look shortly for our arrival. It will be good for us to spend some time with Magdalena.”

  A shadow came to Dareios’s eyes upon this pronouncement. “You will know her gratitude.”

  Nîga nodded brusquely, turned and departed.

  Babar growled. Dareios frowned after her.

  “Magdalena?”

  Dareios darted a glance Ean’s way. “My wife. She is…unwell, else I would’ve introduced you.” He turned and resumed their walk to meet Sebastian.

  “I hope you won’t think ill of me for keeping you isolated from my relatives,” Dareios said then, eyeing Ean askance. “Kandori is an odd place, and we Haxamanis are an odd people. I have more women in my life than I care to deal with, all of whom, in their extreme, unparalleled wisdom, consider themselves in parity with me.” He sighed. “I’ve been remarkably unsuccessful at dissuading them from this view. Would that some scripture might declare my innate superiority, but I’ve found nothing yet to prove it—at least,” and he cast Ean a wry smile as he finished, “not anything they will accept.”

  Ean thought of his difficulty just dealing with Alyneri and felt a deep empathy for the Kandori prince. “And what of your daughters?”

  “Ah, I married them off as expeditiously as possible. In that, at least, I had some say.” He cast Ean a smile that faded with his wandering thoughts. “When Magdalena was well, she patrolled the harbors of my life, requiring the proper fees for entry and exit and shuffling my mother and sisters into appropriate berths with competence and grace. Alas…”

  Babar came up beside Dareios and placed her head within reach of his fingers. He stroked her with a pensive frown as they walked. “My wife is from Ma’hrkit. We met at the Sormitáge. My father would’ve preferred me to marry a woman of the sands, but the moment he met Magdalena, he understood my love for her.” A contemplative smile came to his lips with these thoughts. “Still…he warned me.”

  Ean turned him a look. “Of what?”

  Dareios’s expression reflected years of love as well as the regret that now limned those memories. “It’s rare among my family to meet someone who hasn’t worked the Pattern of Life. We’re descended from immortal drachwyr. Following the example of our First Father and Mother and working the Pattern of Life…this is considered both a duty and an honor for any heir in the royal lines.” A tragic smile flickered across his face. “But my wife�
��she doesn’t trace her lineage back to dragons. Our stories and tales were meaningless to her—oh, she enjoyed them, but of their lessons, she took little heed. To the Kandori Adept, choosing immortality is a sacred calling, yet my wife would live but one lifetime. She says a dozen daughters and a scant seven decades with me is enough. Now she seeks the Returning…and I will soon be without her.”

  “Dareios…I’m so sorry.”

  He cast Ean a resigned look. “Thank you, but such kindness is unnecessary. Our Sire and First Father Náeb’nabdurin’náiir has been centuries without his beloved Amardad. Life goes on, in Kandori.”

  He gave Ean a considering look then. “But perhaps you’ll understand why a man like me chooses to live elsewhere from the bulk of his relations, though I miss my father’s regular counsel, I admit. But I’ve a wife who’s determined to die and a mother who refuses to and eight sisters who would each have me as their lackey.” He grimaced and shook his head. “No, the Moon Palace is a much safer place. If my brother Jair were alive, he’d be living here with me, make no mistake. Jair had no head for the politics of women.”

  Abruptly he frowned and looked to Ean. “But you…you have some experience with daughters of the sand. My niece, Alyneri?”

  Ean gave him a telling look. “If Alyneri is any example of Kandori women, then yes.”

  “And how is my niece?”

  Ean shook his head. “I wish I knew. We separated in Rethynnea.”

  “I confess my own failure to keep appropriate tabs on my brother’s daughter.” Dareios stroked a triangular brow absently. “I was hoping the val Lorians could do better than we, but I cast no blame upon you for it. We Haxamanis are descended from drachwyr. We can’t be expected to fit solidly into some mortal human mold.”

  Abruptly he pushed a hand through his short hair. “Ah, but my sisters use this excuse to try my patience endlessly, while my mother assumes it as the basis for the criticism of my many faults.” Darting a rueful grin at Ean, he added, “and inversely her explanation for any irreconcilable fault of her own.” He pressed palms together and raised them to shake at the heavens, adding a prayer in his own language.

  They left the wide palace halls to proceed down a long colonnade passing between courtyards. The morning cast gilded light onto the pink marble paving stones and outlined the fluted columns’ easternmost edge.

  In his mind, Ean ran through the conversation they’d just had, and something occurred to him. “Dareios, why didn’t your father marry off your sisters?”

  Dareios was casting a solicitous look up at the clouds gathering above the palace. “The scriptures grant emancipation to Kandori Adepts who gain their ring. My sisters were all Sormitáge-trained Healers before my mother began considering proper husbands for them, and by then it was too late.” He added with an irascible frown, “Doubtless this had been her plan all along. Now my sisters each have the right to choose their own husbands in their own time.” He shot Ean a tormented look. “A few have. Most seem content to meddle in my affairs. Ah well…” he exhaled a resigned sigh and shook his head. “At least my life isn’t dull.”

  Ean was just pondering this idea when something flew out of the shadows with a whir. He drew back stiffly and simultaneously summoned elae, but the weapon rebounded off the force-field around Dareios’s golden vest and went clattering across the marble tiles. Babar chased after it.

  Ean held the fifth in a cloud of power, his senses on full alert, but Dareios just grinned and held out his hand to a form that materialized out of the shadows of a column. It was his cousin Bahman, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Well done, Bahman!” Dareios shook his hand enthusiastically.

  “It was the flux differential,” Bahman said. “Just as you thought.”

  “Excellent, excellent.” Dareios placed a hand on his cousin’s shoulder and started them walking again. “Just a few more tests, and we’ll be ready to make delivery. Let the Kagan’s agent know His Highness will have it soon.”

  Bahman nodded and jogged off.

  “Then…” Ean scratched his temple and pointed to the gleaming gold framework extending beyond the rolled sleeves of Dareios’s kurta. “The vest isn’t for yourself?”

  Dareios laughed. “Heavens! Why would anyone bother to assassinate me?”

  Ean frowned, feeling suddenly foolish. “Not because you’re heir to the realm’s largest fortune?”

  “Along with eight others from my generation?” He arched an amused brow. “And six from the generation before them, and we might continue counting all the way back to the fortune’s eldest heir, Mirza Parviz, who some say still lives in a cave in the Dhahari. As the story goes, in his extreme old age he’s actually become a dragon. But I can tell you, from what I last saw of him, this story likely stems from the state of his breath and the inhuman flatulence he can produce after a meal of falafel.”

  “I see,” Ean murmured, though he really didn’t.

  Dareios clapped a hand on his shoulder. “My inheritance isn’t riches, Ean, it’s the life it allows me to lead.”

  “Then the fortune doesn’t exist?

  “Oh, it exists.” Dareios gave an emphatic grunt. “Takes all of us to manage it, to be frank, but wealth has a way of making slaves of its heirs.” He cast Ean a serious eye, as if probing Ean’s understanding with his colorless gaze. “Some men spend their entire lives protecting their inheritance, coddling and hoarding it like rodents, never leaving their extensive grounds for fear of what will happen if they remove their eyes from the stonework. But a man who covets his own wealth pays a heady price, in the end. If there’s one story all Kandori children know, it’s that one.”

  Then he flashed a grin to banish the sobriety in this sentiment. “But of course, Kandori children know all of the stories, as any of them will happily prove if you dare to ask them and have days to spare…”

  That’s when Ean saw Sebastian.

  ***

  Sebastian gazed at his brother from across a sand court. Ean emerged from the shadows of a pink-marble cloister while talking to a tall man of such dress and stature that he could only be a prince of Kandori.

  Yet Ean…amazingly, his littlest brother seemed well paired with the Kandori prince. The set of Ean’s shoulders, the way he focused the whole of his being through the sharp point of his gaze. It made Sebastian smile to see that his brother had come into his own so potently. And to see Ean without the poison of Dore’s compulsion… Sebastian drank it the vision greedily, thirstily.

  Ean turned as if feeling Sebastian’s eyes upon him. He spoke a word to the Kandori prince beside him, and then he came around the sand court towards Sebastian. Isabel touched Sebastian’s arm, a gentle encouragement. Thus did he walk to meet his brother, for the first time in years looking upon him without eyes colored by a false enmity cruelly imposed.

  As they both rounded the edge of the court and faced each other along its length, Ean extended his stride until he was nearly running. A flurry of uncertainty beset Sebastian as the distance shortened between them, but then Ean was pulling him into a fierce embrace. The strength in his little brother’s arms was fueled by a desperation that echoed in Sebastian’s own heart.

  “They told us you were dead!” Ean voice sounded strained and tight. “Else father never would’ve ceased looking for you. But we never named you, Sebastian.” The words sounded as choked as Sebastian felt in hearing them. “We never let you go.”

  Sebastian clutched his brother in silence, trusting his actions to convey what his voice could not. They clung to one another while clouds moved across the sky. Then Ean pulled away. His eyes were glassy, like Sebastian’s own.

  Unfortunately, tears wouldn’t restore what had been taken from them, nor vanquish the terrors of the intervening years. Yet just looking upon his littlest brother, so grown, so…accomplished, it brought warmth to places in Sebastian’s soul long frozen by apathy. Ean had their father’s eyes—eyes all three brothers shared—but Ean’s held a peculiar cast that only Pa
tterning imparted. You saw it in a man when he knew he could change the shape of things made by his gods.

  Sebastian was seeking words to greet Ean when his brother shifted a tense gaze to Isabel.

  “There is something else you should know, Sebastian,” she said then.

  Sebastian reluctantly abandoned his study of his brother’s face to give Isabel his attention. “The good news never ends.” The words came out more bitterly than he’d intended, but one couldn’t make sweetwater when all one had was salt.

  “We have reason to believe now that Dore has planted specific patterns within your consciousness with destructive intent, snares and pitfalls intended to react to aggression aimed against the patterns of his compulsion.”

  “They’re especially attuned to the fifth strand,” a male voice added, and Sebastian turned to see the Kandori prince had joined them.

  Ean opened his palm to the arriving prince and greeted him with his gaze. “This is Dareios, Sebastian. He’s been helping us resolve how to free you.”

  Sebastian felt a growing unease. “But if you can’t work the fifth…” He’d been counting on Ean being able to easily subdue him by binding him with the fifth.

  A stream of curses ran through his head. He shifted his gaze back to Isabel; it would be but moments before she removed her pattern of intervention and thrust him back into mindless fury.

  Sebastian turned a look around at the others. “Very well. How do we make this work?”

  Isabel nodded to the Kandori. “Dareios has a plan.”

  Looking indecently pleased, Dareios clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. “We solve this in the way of our forebears, my fellow princes, as in times before man learned to tread the paths of magic.”

  Sebastian gazed at him blankly. “What way is that?”

  Dareios’s handsome face split in a grin. “Why, hand-to-hand combat!” He motioned to the sand court behind him.

  Sebastian swept a dubious gaze over Ean’s form. “We’re going to wrestle?”

  Ean shrugged.