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

by Melissa McPhail

  Darshan hardly knew how to interpret the feelings that raged inside him, tumultuous and intense, causing physical sensations he’d never before experienced—not even at Kjieran’s faithless duplicity. As he watched Pelas being forced to his knees, compounding emotions formed new worlds within his consciousness; gasses of condemnation met the dark stars of betrayal and combusted in an ever expanding nebula of fury. He would bring Pelas under his control. His brother would be made to obey or be destroyed in the process.

  They’d forced Pelas down so he now lay prone before Darshan with the tip of a spear aimed at the base of his skull. His arms and wrists were bound tightly behind him in an elaborate system of slipknots that connected to the goracrosta collar around his neck, so that the slightest motion tightened the noose. Dore could make torture devices of the most common of objects, but his work with goracrosta approached an art.

  Darshan’s gaze swept his Saldarian guards and lingered a heartbeat longer on Dore Madden, who seemed inordinately delighted. He wondered what torments the man had waged upon Pelas while in transit from Tal’Afaq. He’d bidden his brother be returned to him unharmed, but Dore could find shades of grey even within a mandate that was utterly black and white.

  “Leave us,” Darshan commanded darkly.

  Dore whisked the men from the room.

  When he and his brother were alone, Darshan bent and helped Pelas to his knees. His brother sat back on his heels and stared at him in silence. His black hair hung loose about his shoulders, and his copper eyes were condemning, but otherwise he seemed to Darshan a living example of the mold of perfection their Cosmic Father had shaped them all within.

  Darshan stared at Pelas for a long time feeling that nebula’s continuing combustion. It infuriated him that his brother could remain so composed while he suffered such incinerating anger. As Darshan studied Pelas’s calm face, his own constricted and warped, emotions flickering through his gaze with each newly combusting star.

  Then he backhanded Pelas in a violent exhalation.

  Pelas flew sideways across the marble tiles. Darshan stalked after him and kicked him hard. Pelas exhaled a grunt as his body lifted into the air, and another as he hit and rolled upon landing. His face distorted with pain.

  Darshan kicked Pelas repeatedly then—wildly, with rage fueling his savage motion—and every time his foot connected with his brother’s body, he felt another star exploding. Somewhere along the fringes of the vast expanding cosmos, entire planets were being annihilated.

  Finally, Darshan grabbed the noose around his brother’s neck and hauled him to his knees. He held him there while he beat him, exacting the measure of his fury in each brutal blow. He beat Pelas until his flesh split and his lips bled, until he showed some remorse.

  Except Pelas refused to.

  No matter how brutally Darshan struck him, Pelas made no sound, and the accusation in his gaze never relented.

  Suddenly the fury became too overwhelming. Rage exploded out of him in a thunderous shattering of the fifth. Stone cracked—the air itself cracked. Darshan punched his brother down to the tiles. Then he hauled him up and punched him down again. Pelas fell each time bearing his pain in silence, only his eyes revealing his burgeoning hate.

  Finally, Darshan slammed his foot into his brother’s skull. That time Pelas did cry out. He flew sideways like a broken doll, rolled upon landing, and his head bounced against a column. He lay motionless.

  Darshan’s anger abated abruptly. For the space of a heartbeat he feared…but no, these bodies were imbued with their immortal essence. Fists alone—even his own powerful ones—could not affect lasting harm. Pelas had only been stunned. Darshan saw his brother’s eyes focus after a moment, and then he drew in a shuddering gasp.

  The instant’s fear had done what Darshan’s pummeling fists could not, however; it had bled his anger, draining the well of his fury into a bitter sludge.

  Darshan’s bare chest lifted and fell with his rapid breath. He spun away from Pelas and forced composure, lest the hammer of his anger drive a wedge even further between them. As his mind settled, the exploding stars of the nebula dimmed. Combustive gasses still mingled in deadly proximity, but without a spark to ignite their reaction, they became inert.

  He looked to where his brother lay helpless, bound and collared, his dark hair a liquid splay of ebony across the marble floor. By Chaos born, he loved Pelas! As much as he might be said to know anything of love, he knew it for Pelas. Why couldn’t his brother understand that his every act proceeded from this endearment, from his unbridled care for him?

  Darshan drew in his breath and let it out again, tasting the metallic remnants of his anger as a tang upon his tongue. He would try once more to reason with Pelas, though he held out little hope for success.

  “Why must you force my hand like this? You test my forbearance to the utmost with your flagrant misbehavior.”

  Pelas slowly elbowed himself up to his knees. He shook the hair from his eyes, spat blood from his mouth, and settled an unyielding gaze on his older brother. “You started this, Darshan.”

  “I—” Darshan spun to him, instantly fuming. Pelas had begun it by spending centuries playing with colored mud and engaging in mortal dalliances, their divine purpose abandoned!

  But Darshan would not suffer another argument over his brother’s petty grievances. “What’s done is done—and in your best interests. You would do well to accept what cannot be changed.”

  Pelas spat blood from his mouth again. “Then we have nothing to discuss.”

  “We have much to discuss.” Darshan leveled his brother a piercing glare.

  “Those eidola were bound to me.”

  Pelas snorted. “Enslaved is more apt.”

  Darshan’s expression darkened. “I felt their loss each time one expired—with each fragile soul ripped from the bosom of my awareness.”

  The faintest disbelief lifted his brother’s brow. “A few eidola—”

  “FIFTY!” Darshan roared, and the air raged with his fury, blasting past Pelas, sending his long hair shooting back from his battered face. “Fifty eidola! Purloined! Destroyed! Claimed by you—blood of my blood—into permanent death!”

  For a moment Pelas looked taken aback. Then some kind of understanding came to his gaze, and his lips slowly curled in a smile. He broke into quiet laughter.

  Darshan bore his mirth in simmering silence, determined not to lose his temper again. Exacting his anger only seemed to bastion Pelas’s obdurate will. But his brother’s laughter grated. When he could bear it no longer, he ground out, “Care to share the source of your humor?”

  Pelas sobered. He gingerly shifted his jaw from side to side, as if testing its integrity, then tilted his head up to meet Darshan’s gaze. His eyes were cold. “I doubt you would find the same amusement in it.”

  Darshan clasped hands behind his back lest they lash out at his brother of their own accord. “I would you might see reason,” he remarked with frustration pulsing in his tone. He started pacing before Pelas’s kneeling form. “Think, Pelas—think what we might accomplish together!” He turned him a look of appeal. “If we were united in purpose.”

  Pelas arched a contemptuous brow. He looked down at his body, bound in goracrosta, and winced as the noose tightened—triggered by his movement. Already his neck bled beneath the abrasive silver rope; a growing stain darkened the collar of his shirt. He lifted a disbelieving gaze back to his brother. “This is how you entreat my cooperation?”

  “I would have preferred a more civilized approach, but you forced my hand when you murdered my children.”

  “Your chil—” Pelas choked on his disbelief.

  Darshan turned to pace back in the other direction. “If you won’t see reason, Pelas, I must resort to more disagreeable methods. I confess, I find them less palatable, though Dore assures me of their success.”

  “That wretched creature feeds you poison with his every breath.”

  Darshan cracked a bare smile. “Thi
s…this is the difference between us.” He approached Pelas until he towered over his kneeling brother. “I exploit the adoration of these creatures to forward our purpose. I use their squabbles, the petty bickering of inconsequential kings, to make great gains along our objectives, and I let these doomed creatures make what they can of their inconsequential lives beneath the auspices of my will.” Abruptly he bent and grabbed Pelas by the throat, pushing his nose a mere inch before his brother’s. “But in all of this, I am never deceived.”

  Pelas glared blackly at him. His deep hatred seemed an inverse reflection of the bond they’d once shared, long ago, when all they’d known was the void of unending space and the violent yet infinitely sublime rush of unmaking.

  Still clutching Pelas’s neck, Darshan moved to his knees and pressed their foreheads together. “Oh, Pelas…Pelas…” he whispered. He felt his breath brushing against his brother’s mouth, even as he sensed Pelas’s throbbing pulse and tasted the tang of his anger on the electrified currents. “You’ve abandoned our purpose. I don’t know how you became so wayward, so utterly lost. But all the protection we have in this effort lies in staying true to our divine cause.” He pulled away and cupped his brother’s face with both hands, searched his gaze with his own. “Should we stray from our path, the vengeance of our enemies might be waged against us. If we betray our Cosmic Father, Pelas, he’ll exact his justice in retribution.”

  “There is no justice in this, Darshan.” Pelas’s eyes were cold. “Only your own petulance.”

  Darshan brushed his thumb across his brother’s swollen lip, bringing a new welling of blood. He leaned in to cleanse it with a kiss. Their lips met, and Darshan ran his tongue across his brother’s mouth, tasting salt. They had acted as one in the void. They must be as one again.

  He let his lips linger against the corner of his brother’s mouth, their exhaled breath mingling. Darshan stroked Pelas’s dark hair. “Can you not see I must save you from yourself?”

  Pelas jerked his head free of Darshan’s hold. “I know your twisted sense of compassion.”

  Darshan felt a welling sorrow and let it linger. Grief only enhanced the righteous sense of duty that now gripped him. “No, dearest of my brothers,” he replied, moving back to his feet, “it’s you who have twisted from the faithful path onto the road of iniquity.” He looked to the doors at the end of the hall. “Come.”

  They opened to admit Dore Madden, followed by two pairs of Ascendants carrying heavy gold poles set into marble bases.

  Pelas’s gaze narrowed. “More compulsion, brother?” The word slapped Darshan with its contempt.

  Darshan regarded him sadly. “We are past the point of simple cures.” He grabbed the noose around Pelas’s neck and hauled his brother off, deaf to his strangling cries. He dragged him all the way onto the balcony, out into the open night.

  There, he slung Pelas to the stones, bare beneath the starry heavens, where he lay gasping ragged breaths. A storm would’ve been more fitting for the working Darshan intended, but he could call the lightning out of a clear sky as easily as from a tumultuous one.

  Dore directed the Ascendants to set the poles to either side of where Pelas lay. He struggled to rise, but Dore took hold of the strap connecting his wrists and collar, and twisted. Pelas choked with a shudder and abruptly stilled, his head caught at a strange and awkward angle.

  “There now.” Still holding the strap of rope twisted taut, Dore bent and stroked Pelas’s head. “You remember what I can do with this, don’t you?”

  Darshan misliked the hungering in Dore’s gaze. “Release my brother and move away, Dore Madden, unless you would feel the sky’s fire in your own blood.”

  Dore gave Pelas a lustful look. Then he sucked in his breath across a thrusting tongue and released him to stand back.

  Lying on his side, Pelas looked to the gold poles. “What’s all this?”

  Darshan felt Pelas’s apprehension flowing crisp on the currents. It pleased him to know his intractable brother would soon learn obedience…thrilled him to imagine their working together anew.

  Pelas must’ve caught some inkling of his thoughts—even through the goracrosta—for his expression darkened measurably. “What is it you attempt here, Darshan?” His tone assumed more accusation than inquiry.

  Darshan glanced at Dore, who nodded and licked his lips. Every cell of the man radiated wicked delight. But of course, Dore thrived on making helpless victims of the strong.

  “Our power was given us to carry out our purpose, Pelas.” Darshan shook out his hands and opened his arms, bare save for the bands of gold circling each bicep.

  He could taste the power in the air from fingertips to tongue—ever elae’s fifth strand collected around him as readily as their own deyjiin. Pelas’s presence only added to its potency, though his brother would have no recourse to either power, not bound in goracrosta. Thus were gods made as helpless as mortals.

  “You have abused this gift,” Darshan continued while his awareness roamed the heavens searching for lightning’s magnetic surge, “trifled with it, adulterated it, wasted it on frivolous pursuits; and thereby you have endangered your own eternity. Even compulsion couldn’t curb the base desires of frivolity that have apparently overwhelmed your judgment. Therefore, I must protect you from yourself.”

  Pelas turned a sharp look from Darshan to Dore, to the poles on either side of his body. Dore had begun unwinding an iron shackle from around each marble base, and now he and the Ascendants opposite him began attaching them to Pelas’s bound ankles and wrists. His brother’s eyes went wide. “You can’t—you can’t possibly—”

  “Oh, it’s quite within my means, I assure you.” Darshan knew his brother’s mind; he tasted the tang of Pelas’s fear rising on the currents. “I will sear the ability to work our power from your mind. No more will you know the sweet kiss of deyjiin. Never again will you betray our power with the harlot elae. Both will be denied you evermore, Pelas.”

  Darshan found the lightning and with an inhaled breath, he called it down upon his brother. It struck one pole and immediately leapt to the other, catching Pelas in between. His brother convulsed. Blood frothed where clashing teeth bit through his tongue, and with every undulation, the goracrosta constricted and released.

  As the first wave drained away and Pelas lay gasping and shaking, Darshan gazed tragically, regretfully upon him. “Remember, dear brother, you brought this on yourself. What I do now…I do for your salvation.”

  He called forth the lightning in an unrelenting stream, and the storm lasted for a long, long time.

  Part Two

  “All paths may wind again towards the light if hope survives the long night between.”

  - Isabel van Gelderan, Epiphany’s Prophet

  Thirty-Six

  “Men might be driven to despicable acts under the banner of noble intention.”

  – Zafir bin Safwan al Abdul-Basir,

  Emir of the Akkad

  Trell stood at the window of his room gazing out at the endless blue sea and the sloop making its way into the island’s harbor. The harbor boasted a single jetty where they received food and supplies each week, for the only thing Taliah hal’Jaitar sowed on that barren rock was hopelessness.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when the mutes had shoved him, hooded and bound, into a skiff and aimed the prow north. Taliah hadn’t been forthcoming with her plans for his future, and he hadn’t asked her because it hadn’t mattered.

  All night the brutes had rowed. Then came the morning sun rising over a gilded sea, and the dot of an island in the distance. It had grown into a swath of volcanic char. The high end of the island towered a hundred feet over the water, while the low end sloped into a rugged escarpment that vanished at high tide.

  And the towering fortress of Darroyhan clung to every inch of it. Forged of sharp coral and bleached rock, its highest towers scraped the clouds, while the lower towers, like the one where Trell had been housed, were stacked fat and rugged to
do battle with the sea.

  Darroyhan might’ve been constructed to provide a refuge for M’Nador’s Ruling Prince should he ever have need to flee the princedom. It lay just north of the trade route between Tal’Shira and Vest—Trell had ascertained that much from watching the ships passing in the distance—and would’ve provided a strategic location for naval warfare.

  Perhaps that remained its intended purpose. Trell only had access to a small portion of the fortress—barely more than the one tower that overlooked the jetty—so he couldn’t know what other uses Taliah, her father Viernan hal’Jaitar, or Radov had for the place. He did know the walls were patrolled by Nadoriin, that a Talien Knight oversaw its upkeep, and that the servants who interacted with the ships coming and going all had their tongues cut out—whether this indignity had met them before they came to serve at Darroyhan or because of it, Trell didn’t know.

  As he’d sat in the boat on that first morning watching the formidable fortress growing larger, he hadn’t been sure why Taliah was taking him there. Now he understood that she’d brought him there to break him.

  The first day she’d given him a room, new clothes, even ordered him bathed and shaved for her pleasure. That night, she’d called him forth and bidden him sit down at the table where her servants had set a fine meal. She let him eat the entire meal without saying a word, and when he’d finally set down his fork, she’d smiled.

  Then she’d caused him such gut-wrenching pain that he’d vomited up everything he’d just consumed. As he’d crouched on hands and knees gasping for breath, she’d come and stood over him, just short of his own filth staining the marble floor. “Do you understand, Prince of Dannym?” Her voice chimed like sharp crystal. “You will do nothing ever again without my permission.”