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

by Melissa McPhail

  There were as many possible patterns to reveal the currents as there were Adepts in Alorin, but Ean knew exactly what patterns he would need to use to reveal the fifth. Arion had spent ages developing such patterns.

  Ean set off again with excitement now hastening his pace. For the first time, he felt a measure of confidence—no, certainty—that he could follow through on his promise. He would free his brother!

  Sebastian’s room lay in darkness when Ean let himself in, but he needed no light, for the currents as he’d summoned them glowed so brightly as to cast shadows on the day. Yet their swift flow grew sluggish as they crossed his brother’s sleeping form; there, the currents pooled in a lazy swirl before slipping off again, pulled back by the force of their own tides. Amid that eddy, the collecting currents became as ink, gradually darkened by the malice of Dore’s matrix.

  Staring for a moment at his brother lying as the dead within that inky pool, Ean inhaled his determination, climbed on the bed, and straddled Sebastian. He placed a hand to his forehead and formed the pattern to draw the currents through him. Yet when he released it into action…

  Something isn’t right.

  The pattern should’ve compelled the currents through Sebastian’s form. They should’ve magnetized to him, but they were being repelled instead.

  Then he had it: the goracrosta.

  Ean drew his dagger and severed the silver rope binding Sebastian’s wrists. He tossed the pieces away and summoned the currents again. This time they complied with his intent.

  Sinking his thoughts deep into Sebastian’s mind, the prince found and studied Dore’s matrix. He didn’t need it to be active now, for he knew its construction intimately. As Ean watched the currents flowing through the matrix, the fourth funneled in with a crystalline shimmer but left in a flow of darkness, like sunlight refracted through a crystal; yet instead of splitting the light into harmonic colors, Dore’s matrix stained it with shadows.

  The fifth still resisted flowing into the matrix, perhaps due to the latter’s inherent polarity. Ean increased his intention, setting the entire force of his will to compel compliance, and…

  There!

  The first of the fifth-strand deadfalls lit with the faintest glow. Just as Ean had suspected, it showed a dim tracing within one of the fourth-strand compulsion patterns. Ean immediately sought its beginning and ending and set it to unraveling.

  One by one, the deadfalls lit with a faint glimmer, and Ean unworked each. The more patterns he unmade, the brighter the others became, such that by the time he’d found and unraveled them all, the central fifth-strand pattern that bound the entire matrix was glowing as luminously as the full moon in its brightest arc.

  A surge of elation thrilled through the prince. Now, finally, he could fulfill his promise. He dove for the pattern of binding and cast his mind as a spear. But the moment that spear-point touched the fifth-strand pattern, Sebastian’s entire body convulsed—

  And he woke with a gasp.

  His hand flew up and grabbed Ean’s neck before he even came fully alert, while webs of the fourth struck out for Ean’s consciousness. Ean seared them from the ether in sudden alarm and threw up a shield of the fifth around his mind, but he couldn’t so easily dispense with the hand choking his throat. Too late, he realized his error in removing the goracrosta, for now Sebastian had both his full faculties with elae and the compulsion to kill him in forceful effect.

  Already seeing flecks before his eyes, Ean cast another spear towards the pattern of binding, but the pain of Sebastian’s choking fingers disrupted his concentration and skewed his aim.

  Now Sebastian came fully alert. He surged up to grab Ean’s throat with both hands, forcing the prince desperately backwards. Waves of compulsion bombarded Ean’s mental shield.

  Pinned to the mattress beneath Sebastian’s throttling hands, the prince felt a vessel being sucked beneath the waves of a storm-washed sea. He would only survive so long as his mental shield survived, and that would fail the moment he lost consciousness. His own fists hit impotently against Sebastian’s strength.

  Do not counter force with force; channel it.

  The Fifth Law of Patterning pierced like a ray of sunlight through the storm befuddling Ean’s thoughts—Arion’s experience coming to his aid—and a pattern imposed itself upon his consciousness. It took three attempts to craft it correctly and hold it in his mind, but when he felt another wave of compulsion hit him, he released it.

  Sebastian ripped backwards and away from him as if caught on the end of a fisherman’s line.

  Ean watched his brother’s body sail across the room and slam into the wall, shattering a lamp in the process. He’d known his second-strand pattern would convert Sebastian’s compulsion into kinetic repulsion, but he hadn’t imagined it happening with such force.

  Ean rolled quickly off the bed and came up with a hand splayed in a shield of the fifth, instinctive to Arion’s style. Now both mind and body were protected. So, too, he cast a web of the fifth across the door that no one might interrupt them and come to inadvertent harm.

  “Sebastian…” Ean pushed a hand to his tortured neck as his mind madly sought some solution. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  Sebastian was pushing up from the floor, and he lifted his eyes and pinned them darkly on Ean. The prince saw no hint of his brother in that gaze, but surely Sebastian lingered somewhere in those shadows, brutally imprisoned. He didn’t want to harm him, but he couldn’t see a way back into his head without subduing him, nor a way to subdue him that spared him from harm. The worst of it was he’d been so close!

  Sebastian regained his feet. Ean searched his brother’s face, but when only the black gaze of Dore’s puppet gazed back, Ean got the sinking feeling that his princely brother hadn’t returned from sleep at all. He’d only succeeded in rousing the demon.

  Sebastian pushed the back of one hand across his bleeding lip, his eyes murderous. “You shouldn’t have removed the goracrosta, Ean.”

  “Yes, I see that now.”

  The currents were collecting around Sebastian, indicating he called them into a pattern. In their encounter in Tyr’kharta, Ean had shown Sebastian that he could unwork patterns before they were released, so Sebastian now hid his working from Ean’s view. Whatever else Dore had done, he’d given Sebastian the skill to hold an iron screen across his thoughts.

  Ean saw the pattern flash as Sebastian released it, and he instinctively strengthened his shield while the room exploded around him. Wood, plaster and glass ripped through the chamber. The poster bed flew into the wall. The balcony doors tore outwards off their hinges, and needle shards of flying glass shredded the drapes. The concussion knocked Ean off his feet, but he rolled with its force and came up in a crouch. His shield of the fifth held firm.

  The second explosion, coming on the heels of the first, concussed directly against Ean’s shield and sent him flying backwards again. He threw a cushion of the fifth behind him and flipped over it, regaining his feet uncertainly.

  Thirteen hells!

  What a mess he’d made of things!

  Sebastian approached. With every step he threw another concussive bolt of the fourth. Ean gritted his teeth and held his shield firm, but in truth, he clenched his teeth against his own stupidity.

  How easily he might’ve made the stones open up to swallow Sebastian, yet Ramu had made it clear that wielding the fifth in combat meant pitting himself directly against Balance in an unwinnable contest. Ean had discounted Ramu’s advice once before; he wouldn’t do so again. But this left both of them wielding the fourth, and in this they were uncomfortably well-matched.

  Blast after blast rebounded against Ean’s shield, driving him backwards across the balcony. The prince had a vast repertoire of his own patterns to use, courtesy of Arion, yet these would only destroy Sebastian, and what Ean most needed was another glimpse into his mind. He needed him closer, not blasted into oblivion, as Sebastian was continually attempting to do to him.


  For every step forward Sebastian claimed, Ean took one in retreat. He was nearing the railing and the very edge of the palisades, where the cliffs fell away two-thousand feet to the plains below. One blast hitting him wrong and he would fly over the rim of the world.

  Oh…

  Do not counter force with force, channel it.

  The same law could work to his aid again.

  Suddenly seeing the shape of a desperate plan, Ean prepared himself, prepared his intention and his patterns, summoning and holding as many as he could while also keeping his shield in place.

  Right before he released the first of them, he managed a painful swallow and the weak-hearted thought, Are you really doing this? But Arion had been reckless in a carefully considered way, and it had served him well. If Ean couldn’t regain his abilities—all of them—he might as well give up now.

  A wielder is limited by what he can envision.

  Ean would envision greatness in himself.

  With Sebastian's next blast, Ean released the first of his patterns to rechannel Sebastian's fourth-strand energy into his own intent. The concussive force of the collision of patterns propelled him backwards, up over the railing. At the same time, Ean threw a lasso of the fifth. It caught around his brother and yanked him off his feet after him, so that they both catapulted over the edge of the world.

  Ean pulled on his lasso, and Sebastian’s body slammed into his, setting both of them to spinning. They tumbled in a tangle through a rush of wind, his brother's face twisted with unreasoning rage as they clung to one another. Then Sebastian wrapped his legs around Ean’s hips and went for his throat, while Ean dove for his brother's mind.

  Sebastian still held his shield in place, but Ean knew the corridors of his mind almost as well as his own. He threw another intention towards the ground while simultaneously rushing along those mental corridors seeking freedom.

  Sebastian's fingers felt as claws around his throat, his legs a vice around Ean's hips, and every spinning revolution pulled painfully first one way and then the opposite as gravity dragged them greedily towards the earth.

  While Sebastian's snarling features grew blurry, Ean sought the foundation pattern of his mental shield. Desperately spearing through the maze of his brother's mind, he finally found it and ripped it to unraveling. The pattern disintegrated into mental ash.

  Sebastian roared, but the wind stole his fury. His fingers tightened around Ean’s throat, and blackness encroached upon the prince’s tearing eyes. Their spinning fall flung Sebastian down and Ean up, round and round. Somewhere in one of these revolutions Ean saw the ground rushing up to meet them, but he was committed: they would both die in this attempt, or both survive it as brothers.

  Mentally Ean clung now to Dore's matrix even as Sebastian clung to Ean’s body in their plummeting gamble with fate. Ean tried again to form that spear to penetrate the fifth strand pattern and unwork it, but too soon the ground took shape beneath them. Sebastian, now on top, raised his head and—

  They hit.

  And bounced on a pillow of air created by the intention Ean had cast at the outset. But he’d misestimated the force of their fall. The cushion flung them high again, but it also flung them apart, even as the ground exploded beneath it. A geyser of rocks and dirt bombarded Ean as his body spun out of control. He threw a field around his brother to protect him, but then he was slamming into the side of the crater his working had just formed. His arm crunched in a sharp flare of pain, and he tumbled roughly down inside the crater’s shell.

  For a few frozen moments, he knew only pain. Then awareness surged back. He sat up abruptly, choking and coughing and spitting bitter dirt from his mouth. His throat felt so raw he could barely draw breath, and one arm hung useless at his side. From the sharp pain in his chest that intensified every time he attempted to inhale, he suspected he’d broken a rib.

  Gathering his wits, Ean called the currents to light the now dust-filled night and saw his brother lying face down about ten paces away. He half-crawled, half-stumbled over to him. Ean couldn’t find the energy to care if Balance claimed him anymore—so long as he made good on his promise first.

  With a desperate will formed of raw determination, Ean wrapped a binding of the fifth around Sebastian and climbed atop his inert form. He shoved his good hand across his brother’s eyes and mentally dove into his mind. The demon that possessed Sebastian’s body roused at once, but Ean knew it now for what it was—naught but a greedy dragon guarding a sacred treasure. Well…Ean would be the prince who slew it once and for all.

  No spears this time. Ean focused the force of his entire being at the pattern of binding, found its beginning and end, and cast a roiling flame into that minute place of separation. Not merely content to release it to its work, Ean mentally guided it through the entire pattern from both sides at once until those dual channels of raging fire met in the center and—

  The pattern exploded.

  But not just the one pattern. A chain reaction spread like wildfire through the entire matrix. Beneath him, Sebastian howled murderously, with pain and fury intermingled in his hoarse scream. At first startled by the mental flames surging up around him, Ean finally realized the patterns had been designed to combust and take Sebastian’s mind along with them.

  Desperately then, he dove into that blazing inferno, feeling its heat as acutely as if he’d truly rushed through a forest fire. Even feeling himself burning, he pushed through the choking detritus of disintegrating compulsions seeking his brother’s life pattern. But reaching it was truly like trying to find his brother’s body in a flaming forest. He could barely see, barely breathe. His own mind felt on fire, connected as it was to Sebastian’s own, and all of the pain his brother endured, he experienced as well.

  Finally, he saw a light glimmering through the smoke and flames, and he speared towards it. Terrifyingly, his brother’s life pattern was already fraying, so Ean wrapped a lifeline of the fifth around it, wrapped himself around it, but then he could do no more than huddle there while the matrix burned. He felt it as trees combusting on all sides, concussions buffeting and blasting him with searing heat, some so violent as to nearly knock him into unconsciousness along with Sebastian.

  It didn’t occur to him that shielding his brother’s mind with his own could’ve resulted in the matrix claiming both of their lives, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if it had, for Ean could walk no other path than the one that gained his brother’s freedom.

  He imagined himself and Sebastian huddling there in that forest of exploding trees, where wildfire raged all around and burning smoke choked the air, and he held tight to his unconscious brother, sheltering him with his mental body, using every ounce of elae he could summon to keep them coolly protected against the raging onslaught, himself barely clinging to consciousness, until…

  The fires waned. No more trees exploded—none were left. The mental air began to clear. Finally Ean dared lift his mental gaze and saw only the starry heavens of Sebastian’s mind—free.

  Gingerly, so carefully, Ean slowly released his shield around his brother’s mind, released the patterns of the fifth with which he’d bound his body. He opened his real eyes and looked down on his brother’s form, on his face smeared with dirt and blood. Aside from knowing he still breathed, Ean had no further sense of him.

  Fear gripped him in its own chokehold—for oh, he’d taken such chances! The prince drew in a tremulous breath and lifted his eyes to the sky—and to the seven stars of Cephrael’s Hand. Ean managed a painful swallow as he stared up at them. Ever the constellation seemed to shine upon some portentous moment of his life.

  Ean pushed the hair from his eyes with a trembling hand. His body felt stretched as thin as old linen, while his head felt too full, like a bin of chaff, dense yet still empty. His shoulder and arm throbbed, his side burned, but he really only felt the ache of his heart.

  Had he succeeded…or had he failed?

  Ean was just wondering if he should try to reach
Isabel when Sebastian’s eyelids fluttered. Ean’s breath halted in his throat and he stared, waiting…

  Sebastian opened his eyes. Red-rimmed. Bloodshot. For a heartbreaking instant, Ean couldn’t tell who stared back at him.

  Then Sebastian blinked and looked slowly around. “Shade and darkness, Ean…” His hoarse groan seemed to encapsulate Ean’s entire existence in that moment. “What did you do to me?” A muffled choke that might’ve been a laugh escaped him.

  Emotions at once both wonderful and overwhelming flooded Ean, too precious to put into words. He grabbed his brother up into a fierce embrace.

  “Gods above…you did it…” Sebastian choked out a bare whisper and clutched Ean tightly in return. “By Cephrael’s Great Book, Ean—you did it!”

  Ean clung to his oldest brother in life as he’d clung to him amid that raging inferno, yet now he knew only the searing heat of happiness. He felt Sebastian shaking in his arms and experienced anew that heartbreaking compassion for all his brother had endured.

  But Sebastian wasn’t crying—he was shaking with joy, his shoulders wracked by silent laughter that finally burst out of him, bold and wonderful.

  Soon it had overtaken Ean as well, and their foreheads fell together, hands gripping the back of each other’s necks, until such joyous tears had washed the dirt from their faces.

  Years later, the Kandori would tell a story of two godly brothers who’d fallen from the sky in battle and then laughed at their folly amid the crater made by their anger.

  Hugging his brother, laughing and grinning so wide that his face hurt, Ean cast forth the thought: Isabel, it’s done!

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard her smiling reply, And done well.

  Thirty-Five

  “From Chaos we were spawned, and to Chaos we shall return.”

  –Excerpted from “The Prophet’s Creed,” The Book of Bethamin

  Darshan watched as they brought his brother Pelas before him bound in woven chains of goracrosta, his face hidden beneath the curtain of his long, dark hair. Darshan’s expression revealed none of the fury that seethed inside, none of the betrayal he’d felt upon learning what Pelas had done—an entire crop of eidola destroyed! He’d known Pelas would find some way of excoriating him for the compulsion he’d worked upon him, but he never imagined his brother would fall to such treacherous lows.