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

by Melissa McPhail

Marius downed the last of his wine in a gulp. It flamed in his empty stomach as he growled into the cup, “I would happily interrogate Markal if only I could lay my hands on the man.”

  “You need only brave the nodes to T’khendar to find him, Marius di L'Arlesé.” The zanthyr flipped his dagger again and caught its point on the tip of his finger. “He’s been there six moons or more.”

  Marius gripped his goblet in his fist. “How, by the Lady—?”

  “Prior to this, Markal slept under your nose for three centuries, a hermit in the hills of Talieri.”

  Valentina’s chuckling formed a soothing balm for Marius’s rigid displeasure. He looked over to find her laughing. “The energies flooding elae’s tides coming down out of the Geborah mountains would’ve washed any hint of Markal’s presence out of the currents. Oh, you are a brilliant man!”

  “Why tell us now?” Marius couldn’t cleanse the irritation from his tone. “The knowledge is of no use with the man lavishing a realm away.”

  Phaedor arched a raven brow. “What you do with the information, Your Grace, is hardly my concern.”

  “Certainly not anymore!”

  “Peace, Marius.” Valentina looked to him. “I would see the doors with my own eyes—”

  “Oh, Valentina, you can’t seriously think—”

  She raised a hand to quiet him. “My heart tells me Markal had some hand in this, that they’re not the legendary gates to Annwn and this is merely an elaborate hoax, but Marius…what if it isn’t? The Sobra speaks of the Extian Doors as being raised by Cephrael himself. You know the mythology.”

  “Yes, mythology—”

  She cast him a telling look. “They would not be the first things to emerge out of legend into our world.”

  Marius gritted his teeth and held his tongue. Much as he’d like to argue with her, he had no firmer ground to stand his logic upon.

  “My Sight is dying, Marius.” She searched his gaze for understanding, for agreement. “The currents carry a taint unlike anything seen in history, our race totters on the fringe of extinction.” Her voice, husky and deep, resonated with her deepest fears. “What if these are the real doors? What if they herald the end of days?”

  “More likely the Danes had some part to play in it. Köhentaal is but a stone’s throw from their border.” Marius gave her a look rife with frustration and then turned to the zanthyr. “Phaedor, surely you don’t subscribe to these doomsday theories.”

  “Nothing is assured,” the zanthyr murmured, which of course was no answer at all.

  Valentina stood and walked to Marius. She placed her hands on his chest and looked up at him. “Mia caro, would you trust the eyes of another man to tell you if the doors are true?”

  As the High Lord gazed into his Empress’s eyes, he knew he would lose this battle. “No.” He dropped his gaze in submission. “No, I would not.” Abruptly he looked back to her. “But Köhentaal lies at the furthest rim of the empire, Valentina. The territory is dangerous—”

  “I will accompany the Empress to Köhentaal.”

  Marius spun a heated glare at the zanthyr.

  Valentina nodded to the efficacy of this idea, effectively sealing the matter. “It would be a boon to have you there to speak of what you see in their construction.”

  “Your will, my Empress,” Phaedor said with a quiet nod.

  Marius ground his teeth. He loathed this turn of fate immensely—how could he place his empress at the mercy of a creature of such ambiguous allegiance? “It’s a journey of many days, Valentina,” he protested, feeling strained by events spiraling out of his control—and infuriatingly into the zanthyr’s, it would appear. “Permit me to accompany you as well.”

  “No, Marius. We cannot both depart the capital. If I haven’t returned by Twelfth-day, you must hold proceedings in my stead.”

  The zanthyr settled his gaze upon the High Lord, and his emerald eyes gleamed meaningfully. “We shall both take care for the treasures in our hands, Marius di L'Arlesé.”

  Thirty-Three

  “There is a finite law: what a man can’t do, and what a man can do. And then there’s what a wielder can do, and that is infinite.”

  –The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

  Thirteen hells! Ean threw up his hands and stalked across the sand court where he pushed palms to tired eyes and tried to quell his frustration.

  Beneath a blustery overcast, an illusion glowed in the air behind him. Taller than a man, the hovering icosahedron of interconnected patterns cast wavering shadows throughout the pink marble courtyard. He’d brought Dore’s pattern matrix to vivid life through a deft working of the fourth, meticulously reconstructing each pattern for inspection.

  For all the good it had done him.

  Clenching hands into fists, Ean ducked his head and growled, “I know it has to be there, but I’ll be damned if I can find it.”

  Dareios sat at a linen-draped table cluttered with the remains of their recent meal. He propped one gold-slippered foot across the opposite knee, rested an elbow on the table and traced the line of his jaw with his forefinger while his colorless gaze assessed the matrix. A slight tightening around his eyes was the only indication of his perplexity. “If these patterns weren’t so offensively vile, I might congratulate their maker on his deviousness.”

  Ean turned him a look across the court. Three days ago his brother had laid nearly where Ean was now standing—he thought he might still imagine the impression left by Sebastian’s coiled form as they’d lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him away—and he had yet to resurface from that moment. Ean had no idea what he’d done or how much harm he’d brought upon his brother. Isabel could only tell him that Sebastian appeared to suffer from some mental trauma. She could do no more than keep his body comfortable while his mind recovered. If it could recover.

  Three days, and still Ean had come no closer to finding the pattern of the fifth that bound all of Dore’s patterns into permanence.

  “It has to be there.” He glared at the floating sphere. It was less a geometric shape with twenty flat sides than a three-dimensional puzzle formed of dozens of interconnected patterns, like snowflakes crossing through each other, or an ornament of intersecting lace panels. Every pattern had countless joining points, places in one pattern that mirrored other patterns, points where they intersected in purpose and design. These mirror points allowed otherwise disparate patterns to cross in symbiosis.

  Ean cast Dareios a tormented look. “Why can’t I see it?”

  “That none of us can find the fifth in this construction is not a testament to our inadequacy but to its maker’s ingeniousness.” Dareios extended a jeweled hand towards the hovering matrix. “It’s there, Ean. We have merely to continue our search and study with patience. Haste will only further obscure the truth we seek.”

  “Spoken like a scholar,” Ean grumbled.

  “Argued like a soldier,” Dareios returned with a wink.

  Something poked at the table’s linen from below and the wildcat Babar tumbled out with an edge of the linen caught in her mouth. Between teeth and claws she nearly dragged the tablecloth off the table and half the china with it.

  Dareios nudged and hissed at her in his own language. The cat flattened an ear. “Go, Babar!” He made a shooing motion with his hand and leaned to stare at the animal. “Go beleaguer your mistress, who likes you more than I do.”

  Babar stared at him for a moment more. Then she twisted with another harrowing tug of linen and scampered off.

  Dareios sighed and sat back in his chair. “I vow, that animal is far more vexing than the problem facing us. Yet they are similar creatures—patterns are creations formed of thought and intention, and they live, even if only for a brief instant, every time a wielder casts them forth with purpose.” His gaze shifted back to Ean, who stood now with hands shoved in his pockets and a scowl on his face. “Perhaps a break from this task would do you some good, Ean. Your brother’s condition clouds your thoughts. I’ll stay and
keep at our study. As you know, I but live to solve such problems, whereas for you, they tend to be—”

  “Daunting?” Ean posed disagreeably. “Tormenting? Agonizing? Exasperating?”

  Dareios grinned. “I was going to say tedious, but as you will.”

  Ean regarded him for a moment in silence. Then he grunted. “You have it?” and he motioned to the illusion. Dareios would need to take over its rendering to keep the illusion in place.

  The hint of a smile danced in the truthreader’s eyes. “I think I can manage it, Ean.”

  Ean nodded and left him.

  ***

  Isabel stood with hands pressed to the railing of her balcony. A blustery overcast clung to the Dhahari mountains, those razor peaks ripping shreds out of the clouds as they passed. The grey sky appeared featureless and flat, yet the lack of color in the sky brought out the color in the earth: the green of the valley, the darker blue-green of the mountain firs, the pale gold of fields and the hills bathed in russet gauze. Some people hid from this kind of day, making false light indoors to remind them of the sun as if lessened by its absence, but Isabel saw promise when the sky slept.

  She preferred to contact her brother beneath a roofless sky, come wind or rain or snow, for she loved the wind in all its many forms, even as she loved storms and the sea and the twirling heavens on a clear night. She could lose herself in them for hours just listening, her ears attuned to their starsong, her mind seeking to know their language.

  In these elemental entities, whose dispositions and whims appeared so incomprehensible and capricious to most, Isabel saw magnitude and purpose. Elemental forces ever reminded her of her brother.

  It was a small ritual, finding a place to stand beneath the open sky and a moment of solitude in which to cast her mind across the endless void to find her brother’s thoughts, but she respected what small ritual she could manage. Ritual gave a deeper context to her connection with her brother and added a sense of devotion to the act, which she appreciated. For she was devoted to him—to him and to their mutual game, knowing that upon this rested the future not just of Alorin but of all the Realms of Light…and possibly those of darkness, too, though she’d put little attention towards their future if Alorin fell. No doubt her brother had considered them. His gaze was as like the heavens; little passed beneath it unobserved.

  Lifting her chin to feel the wind caress her skin and stir her hair, Isabel relaxed and expanded her mind and sought the space of her brother’s thoughts. Quickly she sensed him—for the realm of thought lay above the physical and followed not its laws. Time, space and distance…these aspects cast no shadows over thought. A single thought could exist eternally in an instant, or be known by all no matter how disparate their locations. Finding her brother’s mind, Isabel inserted her presence with a gentle chime of greeting.

  Ah, hello, sister…

  Björn’s mental voice held a certain resonance that always warmed her. She sensed he spoke with others in T’khendar in that moment, but her brother had ever been capable of carrying on multiple conversations simultaneously. Just one of many reasons she admired and adored him.

  What news, Isabel?

  It had been many days since she’d updated him, yet it took but the space of a few quiet breaths to communicate all, such was the alacrity of thought.

  She’d always sighed at the inefficiency of translating and congealing thought into ideas, ideas into symbols, symbols into sounds, and then the reverse on the other end—sounds decoded back to symbols to ideas to the purity of conceptual thought—this process repeated endlessly…

  Language had become so ingrained that even truthreaders fell prey to it, when in fact they heard not the ‘language’ of another’s thoughts but simply the complete thought itself, its full concept gleaned and duplicated, often in picture form. Truthreaders could communicate with thought alone, easily and simply. It astonished her how few of them realized this on their own.

  In return for her news, Björn updated her on affairs since she’d left T’khendar. Much had happened in a short span of time, though this didn’t surprise her. The game was accelerating, the most powerful pieces being put into play. It only followed that the interchange upon the board would intensify.

  I sense your restlessness, Björn said into her mind. What troubles you, Isabel?

  She cast a mental sigh. I’m troubled by Ean’s path. It often surprised her how readily she confessed her fears to her brother…even when she denied them in her own thoughts…or in her heart.

  Why?

  It has become fluid.

  The breath of a pause filled the space of his mind—an eternity in that communication form. Then: I was afraid of that.

  You were right to warn me.

  I don’t enjoy being right at the cost of your happiness.

  I could never be happy if my happiness endangered the game.

  In acknowledgement of the deeper implications of these truths, she felt an ethereal caress, like a stroking of her hair. Ma dieulle, tan cyr im’avec, his mental voice whispered.

  Y dama avec’im, she replied lovingly, and withdrew from his mind.

  “What did he say?”

  Isabel turned to find Ean standing between the open patio doors radiating frustration. She dropped her hands from the railing and moved to join him inside just as rain broke lightly upon the world. “Much has happened since we left. The game moves quickly.” She closed the double doors behind her. “I told Björn the names of the fortresses Sebastian gave to us. He’ll have his network investigate, looking for your men. Cephrael willing, we’ll know something soon of their location.”

  Ean nodded wordlessly and looked away; she saw his jaw clench.

  Isabel sighed. Seeing only the power that resided within him, she forgot sometimes that Ean was still so young in his new life. She might expect him to mold the waters of the sea into a ship to carry them, but she couldn’t expect him to maintain an immortal’s practiced stoicism when he felt stymied at every turn. He needed her so desperately, yet she now believed she was the wrong person to help him on his path.

  “Ean…”

  He spun her a fierce gaze, beautiful for all its intensity. If he only really knew what he was capable of… She walked to him and placed her hands on his chest. He wrapped his hands around hers tightly. “I know your mind,” she said gently.

  His jaw tightened. “My brother lies beyond my reach. My men equally so. Every day that passes takes them further from my grasp.”

  “Your path has never been so fluid.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Isabel slipped her arms around him, and his arms enfolded her at once. No matter the distance between their hearts—an unwanted distance caused by diverging paths—he never pushed her away. “That your path has never been fluid before, this is what troubles me.”

  “More fluidity would appear to mean more opportunity.”

  “Yes, but opportunity for what?”

  Oh, that he might see what she foresaw, that she might share with him the fears that plagued her, but it wouldn’t serve Ean to know any more than he’d already gleaned from her troubled thoughts—indeed, he’d gleaned too much already.

  She pulled away and placed a hand on his cheek, letting her fingers scrape the scruff shadowing his chin. The lines that connected his cheekbones to his jaw were wonderfully alluring to her. She would’ve loved him if he’d been buck-toothed and deformed, but she didn’t deny an appreciation that her true love had Returned as a handsome prince instead.

  She watched him searching her gaze—or attempting to, beneath her blindfold.

  “You say you know my path. But I don’t know yours. It’s enough to drag me under just worrying for Sebastian and the others. This specter of future that hangs over me since Tal’Afaq feels like a cloak choking me at every turn.” He clenched his jaw and turned his eyes from her. “I cannot think of losing you, too, Isabel.”

  Isabel sighed. “This is the problem with glimpsi
ng the future. It changes in the now what has yet to be. You become the effect of something that hasn’t even happened, provoking its eventuality.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but she placed a finger across his lips. “Instead of living and making choices in that moment, about that moment—enjoying or hating or elating in that moment, but knowing you are in that moment—you make choices based on some perceived future that might not have come to pass, except for the fact that you’re already—consciously or unconsciously—making choices to bring it into being. This circular cause is how Seers lose themselves.”

  Ean frowned at her. “Isabel…I know what I saw.”

  She could barely endure the truth in his words. She traced her fingers along his unshaved jaw. “I have to walk my path, Ean.” She added quietly, even knowing what the words would do to him, “You once said the same to me.”

  She saw the shock in his expression, followed by contrition beyond measure. A host of emotions flickered across his face, and then his gaze hardened. He bent and swept her up into his arms.

  “You want me to be in this moment?” he growled into her ear, his voice rough. “Your will be done, my lady.”

  And he took her to the bed.

  ***

  Rain lashed the windows as Ean lay with Isabel’s long hair spiraling across his chest and her legs entwined with his. One arm held her close, keeping her near, while the other draped overhead, elbow bent, an oblique expression of the duality he felt in that moment—possession and dispossession, contentment interlaced with frustration. Increasingly it seemed he was ending up in bed with her in some haphazard attempt to announce his claim, to possess her in whatever way she allowed.

  He wondered if she knew he recalled those moments when last they’d parted, the conversation she’d hinted at. He’d dreamed that confrontation once, but in the months since, those incorporeal dreams had grown the flesh of true memory.

  Ean had once thought Isabel had been the one pushing him away; but looking at those memories now, he knew that in truth he’d been steadfast on his path, only he wanted to be uncertain. He’d wanted not to leave her—he’d sought vainly for any reason to stay, one that overshadowed oath and honor. He’d wanted to believe that life with her was more important than anything else, more important than the game…but he couldn’t.