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

by Melissa McPhail

  “Over a dozen. I stopped keeping track after a while.”

  Ean grunted. “Sore loser.” Then his lips curled with the hint of a smile.

  Sebastian eyed him dangerously. “A wise mouse doesn’t antagonize the bull.”

  Ean cast him a flat stare in return. “Which one of us is the mouse in this scenario?”

  To which a feminine voice remarked, “Ah…ever it warms my heart to see such love between brothers.”

  Sebastian turned at Isabel’s voice and pushed from his chair nearly in the same instant as Ean and Dareios.

  She emerged from beneath a colonnade wearing a slim desert gown of emerald green. It clung to her curves and floated before her feet, much as her long chestnut hair floated around her shoulders, bound only by an ebony blindfold.

  Ean took Isabel’s hand and kissed her palm. Then he pressed it to his face and closed his eyes. “My lady,” he breathed.

  “My lord.” She smiled radiantly upon him. Even Sebastian felt the glow of her attention. He got the idea her eyes would’ve been dancing beneath her blindfold and wondered suddenly at their shape and color. Then he wondered if she unveiled in the night, or if she hid her gaze even from Ean—a tantalizing, taunting mystery.

  Isabel turned her head slightly to look at him in the way she looked at everyone without actually looking at anyone. Still, he put a tight lid on his thoughts.

  “Sobh bekheir, Dareios, Sebastian.” Her smile felt an immeasurable grace.

  Ean still had hold of her hand and seemed unwilling to let go. “Would you break your fast with us, my lady?”

  “If you desire it, my lord.”

  Ean helped her into a chair between himself and Sebastian.

  Dareios retook his seat. “As always, Isabel, your timing is impeccable.”

  She smoothed the silk of her gown beneath her. “One must have some defining quality.”

  Dareios smiled and bowed his head. “My lady, the number of your qualities rivals all the jewels to be found in Kandori.”

  ***

  The group fell into easy conversation while they ate, for Isabel had a way of making every man feel the most important person at the table. Ean basked in the warmth of her near presence, of her hand in his, of her smile and her laughter and the sound of her voice. He tried not to dwell on the deep unease he sensed in her that morning. He tried to encourage himself with positive thoughts—by Cephrael’s Great Book, he’d freed his brother from the worst imaginable abuse of magical bondage! And soon…soon they would find and save his men as well. Ean had to believe in this, for thinking of any other outcome made him feel too desolate.

  Yet for all of his attempts to hold onto the sun, somehow by the time the meal had ended, a grave shadow had overcome his thoughts and he was arguing with her again.

  “…If you think force will be the deciding factor in this game, Ean, you have too narrow a view.” Isabel placed her hand on his, but it hardly softened the sting of her words.

  “I’m meant to fight them, Isabel. I sense that.” Ean pressed his lips in a tight line and held her blindfolded gaze. “Tell me it isn’t so, that you’ve looked down my path and see no such conflict at its end.”

  She drew in her breath and let it out slowly. “To look down your path isn’t enough. I would need to look down theirs as well.”

  “And haven’t you?”

  Her brow pinched faintly. “It isn’t that simple. The Malorin’athgul have no path within our realm. They only have purpose. I cannot easily see into their future because there’s no path down which to follow their future steps.”

  “That can’t be good,” Sebastian muttered.

  She turned to him. “You have the right of it, Sebastian, but it’s worse yet. These beings are what we call vortices. The force of their will commands towards them the people and things they need to achieve their aims.”

  Ean felt a deep weariness beset him upon being reminded of this fact, a feeling of being doomed before he began—despite the fact that he’d begun this game centuries ago. He couldn’t help wondering if he’d felt doomed then, too.

  Sebastian settled Isabel a troubled look as he set his goblet on the table. “How do you possibly fight something like that?”

  She arched a resigned brow. “You only hope to convince them to change their minds about what it is that they desire.”

  Dareios exhaled a heavy sigh and shook his head. “No easy feat.”

  Ean thought of Dareios’s wife, who was apparently determined to die. The Kandori had his own experience from which to speak.

  “Cephrael warned us in the Sobra I’ternin—he warned us this could happen.” Isabel twined a lock of hair through her fingers and cast her hidden gaze out over the valley. A deep line furrowed her brow. “Cephrael had a better understanding of Balance perhaps even than our Maker did.”

  Dareios choked on his wine.

  Isabel turned her face to him, and a wry smile hinted on her lips. “Blasphemy from Epiphany’s Prophet—yes, I know how it sounds, Dareios, but hear me out. In his visionary state, our Maker created sometimes without imagining how each creation would ultimately evolve through countless millennia. But Cephrael knew that Balance was the greatest force in this universe, and that it couldn’t always be predicted how Balance would shift in order to keep the universe ultimately aligned.”

  “Isabel…” Dareios stared at her. “Could I have heard you correctly? Are you implying you think the Balance shifted first?”

  “That the Malorin’athgul found Alorin perhaps because it had shifted?” She sighed and shrugged slender shoulders. “The more I understand of them, the more I think it’s possible.”

  She let each of the three princes digest this, and then Ean felt her mind shifting. What had been formless now aligned along a definite course, and he knew she meant at last to broach whatever had been so troubling her.

  Isabel leaned forward in her chair. “Sebastian, I would that you might tell me if Dore has a stronghold near a lake, or perhaps close to the sea. A castle crowning a mountaintop.”

  Sebastian held her hidden gaze. “Ivarnen is such a fortress, my lady. It sits on a lonely mountain in the midst of the Enduil Estuary in Saldaria.”

  “A lonely mountain.” She touched fingertips to her lips. “Yes…that is how it seemed to me.” Her fingers stiffened suddenly and pressed against her mouth.

  So acute were her feelings in that moment that Ean wanted to pull her close, to embrace her and swear to destroy any cause for her fear. Instead he clutched her hand. “What is it, Isabel?”

  “Ivarnen.” She looked to him. “That’s where your men are being held.”

  Sebastian hissed an oath, and Ean turned an inquiring gaze to his brother.

  “Ivarnen is a mountain fortress crawling with soldiers and surrounded by a wide moat of the sea.” Abruptly he pushed from his chair and walked a short distance as if to hold off some grave disagreement. “There’s no way in or out of Ivarnen save through one gate, or through a node Dore keeps closer than his favorite—” But whatever comparison he’d meant to make died on his tongue. He shook his head and turned them all a look. “It’s the most heavily fortified of any of Dore’s fortresses, and crawling with Saldarians.”

  “And eidola.” Isabel sounded grim. “He’s making them there, and I suspect many already walk its corridors.”

  Ean got the sense there was much more she wasn’t saying.

  Sebastian cursed and shot Ean a heated look. “Not with a hundred men could we do this, Ean. Not with five hundred.”

  ‘It should be a small task for a ringed wielder to take on a few hundred men…’

  For some reason Rhakar’s comment came back to Ean and made him smile. Leave it to the drachwyr to reduce things to their simplicity.

  Ean held his brother’s gaze. “Then three will have to accomplish what five-hundred cannot.”

  Thirty-Nine

  “Solitude is a wielder’s surest companion.”

  – The Agasi wielder Markal
Morrelaine

  Tanis sat leaning against one column of a semi-circular arcade in the Sormitáge’s Giardino del Vento Ehst. Across the mottled lawn, where splotches of brown betrayed winter’s lingering kiss, Maestro d’Eleray stood lecturing to a group of Maritus students on the nature and use of latent Tellings. Tanis was only partly listening.

  The wide silver band he wore on his fourth finger gave him the right to sit in on any lecture or class in pursuit of a maestro to sponsor him for his ring. But Tanis couldn’t shake the feeling that his path had led him to the Sormitáge for reasons other than learning. The zanthyr had said as much—in his cryptic, elliptical way—pointing out that Tanis’s mother had already taught him all he needed to know. But if that was true, why would she have wanted him to go to the Sormitáge?

  This thought ever hovered in the back of the lad’s mind, like a vagrant glaring from a recessed doorway. It stood as a harbinger of threat, whispering from the dark shadows of Tanis’s thoughts where it kept ill company with apprehension.

  It didn’t help that his new roommate had managed barely a word of welcome and treated him instead with cold suspicion, or that people campus-wide observed him with their thoughts full of barbed and spiny speculations. Word that the High Lord was sponsoring Tanis had spread through the university like the wind, scattering a toxic pollen of rumor such that by the time Tanis had emerged for his first morning’s lesson, every student was already poisoned against him.

  Tanis had gleaned from the minds of those who could not yet control their thoughts that the population of the massive university seemed split into two factions: those who were certain that Tanis was a spy, and those who were sure he was the High Lord’s bastard. Tanis might’ve answered any of them with the truth had they cared to ask, but students of all ages seemed more inclined to speculate about him than speak to him.

  The most popular rumor among the frites claimed he was a spy for the Order sent to investigate the recent Adept disappearances. But frites were the least of his problems. The docents resented his placement as Devoveré for apparently random, petty reasons and stopped him frequently in the halls to inspect his ring. The literatos generally suspected he was reporting on them to the High Lord and gave him a wide berth, while the maestros eyed him circumspectly and guarded their thoughts. The diverse looks Tanis received as he walked through the Sormitáge halls might’ve been cataloged in a work comprising several volumes. Without the support of even his roommate, Tanis was feeling understandably lonely.

  On the bright side, he’d managed to find the university’s training hall, where instructors from around the globe taught martial arts and students paired up to practice with swords, mace, bow, or a plethora of varied weaponry. Even so, Tanis could only run through his sword forms so many times in one day. The instructors looked at him strangely when he tried to practice the ta’fieri, and his nearly flawless execution of the cortata sequence drew too much unwanted attention. So Tanis had taken to practicing his forms early in the morning or late at night and spent most of his daylight hours reading his father’s journals.

  As the sun climbed the sky that morning, casting the arcade’s half-moon shadow over the lecturing maestro and his class, Tanis looked back to the passage in the journal he held propped against his bent knees. He’d read it several times already, but his father’s words kept drawing him back the way one seeks the company of an old friend.

  Today I reached a milestone in my training. I will write more of it in a moment, for indeed, the achievement marks the first of the rings claimed of my second bracket. Four more to gain my first row, and I intend to see it done before my twenty-fifth name day. From what I can tell, none will have accomplished so much at so early an age save the Alorin Seat himself. One day I hope to stand before him and swear fealty as a banner lord might swear to his liege, laying not pride of blood but ten gold rings at his feet in tribute.

  The contemplation of such a moment, as remarkable and long-dreamed as it is, yet pales in mind and thought when placed against the moment currently possessing me. For today I met the woman that I intend to spend my eternity with.

  As reward for today’s achievement, my master arranged our meeting and attended himself, though I suspect he imagined his role more warden than chaperone. He said it was folly, this desire to meet her, to speak to her beyond our heretofore stilted interactions.

  He said beyond that forum, I was but one more stone on a beach of shining pebbles, no more remarkable than a host of others. He said she would not deign to acknowledge me even should I be standing between her and the sun, casting my impertinent shadow upon her. He called me a fool, but then he’s always calling me a fool, and I’m always proving him wrong. It’s my greatest challenge to show this master of cynicism how nothing is impossible.

  He arranged our meeting in the Giardino del Vento Ehst. She stood waiting beside the statue of the Custode della Verità Sacra,

  Tanis looked up from his father’s eloquent script and focused his gaze across the lawn, away from the lecturing maestro, towards a distant statue. He could just see it peeking beneath the marble archway that demarked a path through a grove of linden trees. Perched on its high pedestal, the statue seemed nearly as tall as the trees, though Tanis suspected this was merely a trick of perspective. He turned back to his father’s words.

  Custode della Verità Sacra, Keeper of the Sacred Truth, whose twirling form is captured for eternity in the Giardino del Vento Ehst. One arm reaches to the heavens, the other lengthens gracefully behind her, the folds of her stone gown flow like twisting marble flames. Serenity imbues her features, cast in the everlasting light of the sphere balanced so precariously and yet timelessly upon the tips of her gently reaching fingers. She is the flame of truth, that resonance that permeates all existence, as ephemeral and yet immutable as Epiphany must be.

  As my master and I arrived, the lady of my dreams stood before the statue in quiet observation, her face uplifted to the sphere of truth and bathed in dappled sunlight, seeming in that moment to me equally as pure as the statue, blessed of grace, and utterly incorruptible.

  My master made the introductions. Banal, unimportant. She spoke quiet words of acceptance, but her eyes said so much more. I could not contain myself. I fell to my knee and pledged my troth. I can barely remember what I said—the words came pouring out, overflowing my lips with hasty and incautious truths. She laughed when I’d finished and bade me rise—said we were making no knights today, but perhaps I could escort her in a walk about the gardens.

  My master watched as she extended her hand to me, and his eyes were dark orbs of disbelief as I took it and looped her arm through mine. He stood speechless while we walked away, or else he held his tongue in respect of her. No doubt I shall feel the brunt of his displeasure in tomorrow’s lessons and many more to come. Yet how can I regret a moment of the day? I walked with perfection beside me and left her side reluctantly, forever changed.

  A shadow befell Tanis, and he looked up to find Vincenzé standing between him and the sun. The man had an uncanny ability to find Tanis no matter where he was on the vast university grounds.

  “Ciao, Tanis,” Vincenzé greeted as Tanis squinted up at him. He cast a blue-eyed glance over his shoulder toward the class and then back to the lad. “I cannot tell if I’m interrupting your lesson or a moment’s idle reflection that would’ve been better spent in study.”

  “Not that it would matter in either case, I suspect,” Tanis grumbled, for whenever Vincenzé came calling, he expected Tanis to drop everything and attend him in the High Lord’s name. Still, while the lad felt slightly disconcerted in Vincenzé’s company, the man had proven his only ally amid the inhospitable morass of gossip and rumor that he was forever trying to pole his way through.

  Vincenzé slung himself down beside Tanis and leaned in to view the open pages of the journal. Tanis closed the book pointedly, to which Vincenzé grinned. “What’s that you’re reading?”

  My father’s most intimate recollections
, Tanis thought, but he said only, “At the moment, a description of the Custode della Verità Sacra.”

  Vincenzé lifted his gaze toward the distant statue. “Why not view it for yourself, eh?”

  “Perhaps I will do that, sir. How can I help you today?”

  Vincenzé chuckled. The two of them ever skirted around each other, much as the High Lord and Phaedor had done while still aboard ship. Tanis knew Vincenzé’s mission involved bleeding him for personal facts to assuage the High Lord’s endless curiosity, and he felt obliged to thwart the wielder if at all possible.

  “The High Lord is asking how you’re settling in so far. He would be reassured of your welfare and see that you’ve everything you require.”

  Tanis tied the ribbon around his father’s journal and placed it inside the leather satchel at his hip. He didn’t trust that Vincenzé might not know some pattern to read its words through the cover. “I haven’t yet found a maestro to sponsor me for my ring, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But that’s not really at issue, is it, eh cucciolo? We both know you could test for your ring at any time. Sancto Spirito—the Endoge himself would vouch for you.”

  “So what is at issue?”

  Vincenzé’s eyes danced. “You tell me. You’re the one who said the ring doesn’t make the wielder.”

  Damn the man—he remembered their conversations too well. Tanis hadn’t meant anything by that remark, yet Vincenzé found a way to use it against him.

  The lad grunted and shook his head. “You think I’m a spy, too, don’t you?” Why must everyone think I’m a spy? Even Pelas had been certain of it—though Tanis had come to love Pelas’s epithet of ‘little spy’ and wished Pelas might’ve been there now to counsel him.