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

by Melissa McPhail

  “You must admit the possibility based on the facts, young Tanis. Such a talent as yours, and already trained beyond your years…none of us understand why you’ve come here.”

  Tanis exhaled a ragged sigh and leaned his head back against the column. Neither do I.

  Vincenzé braced an elbow on one bent knee and extended his other leg in the grass. “Nonetheless, the High Lord swore to see to your welfare, and he means to keep that promise.” Tanis caught a deeper meaning beneath this statement, but Vincenzé had uncommonly close guard upon his thoughts that morning. “Is your room to your liking? Any trouble with the Sarcova boy?”

  “Felix has barely said two words to me.” Tanis wished that truth didn’t sting so—he’d liked Felix immediately and thought they should’ve been friends by now.

  “Don’t tell me.” Vincenzé’s blue eyes glittered with mirth. “He thinks you’re a spy.”

  “You all do.” Tanis frowned at the man. “You know, you’re only enforcing the rumors by calling on me all the time.”

  Vincenzé chuckled. “No self-respecting spy would meet so obviously and openly with his handler.”

  “Explain that to the rest of them, will you?”

  Vincenzé gave him a humorous look. “You could help yourself by actually attending a class.” He waved nebulously at Tanis’s posture and position. “This kind of loafing doesn’t exactly help your cause.”

  “I’m not—” but he bit back his protest, for the man had a point. Tanis certainly didn’t look like he was paying attention to the maestro’s lecture. He looked like he was doing nothing of value, and he was bright enough to recognize that most of the time perception was nine-tenths of the truth. Still, Tanis couldn’t quite find the benefit in sitting attentively through a three-hour lecture on things he could do in his sleep.

  Vincenzé pulled at a long piece of grass and tossed it absently away. He turned his gaze towards the lecturing maestro. “The High Lord is interested in your roommate, Felix di Sarcova. Like you, he’s an exceptional talent. His Grace would know your perceptions of the boy.”

  Tanis gave him a hard look. “I’m not about to become what everyone is already whispering of me.”

  Vincenzé eyed him carefully. “You have the High Lord’s sponsorship—a great honor. That should elicit your gratitude, young Tanis.”

  “The High Lord has my gratitude,” Tanis returned evenly. “It doesn’t extend to spying for him. Should he prefer to withdraw his sponsorship, I will happily rejoin Phaedor and we can be on our way.”

  Vincenzé grinned broadly at this—not the response Tanis was expecting. “You have an uncommon strength of character for one so young—even among truthreaders, who maintain their innocence longer than most.” He gazed admiringly at Tanis then. “Do you see how much this tells me of you, cucciolo? No, you are no spy, eh—not for us, not for anyone, I think.”

  Vincenzé’s gaze drifted to a group of blue-robed literatos just then passing on the path between them and Maestro d’Eleray across the lawn. He nodded in greeting, and the men bowed respectfully in return, but Tanis felt each of their gazes scraping across him.

  When the literatos were gone, Vincenzé chuckled deeply and leaned back on one elbow. “Aside from dodging the daggered looks of literatos, what have you been doing since your arrival, Tanis? I assume you have spent some time attending lectures—you know,” he waived airily, “in and around your secretive journal reading on art history.”

  In point of fact, Tanis had learned more from his father’s journals than in any of the lectures he’d attended thus far, but Vincenzé’s remark reminded him of a question he’d been meaning to ask.

  He’d spent many weeks at the Villa Serafina, and during all those days his hair had curled around his ears, but in the fortnight since he’d left the Adonnai Valley, the honey-hued fringe had grown long enough to brush at his collar. Too, a shadowed scruff had sprouted along his jaw since he left the villa, but in all of his weeks there, not a tendril had grown. Tanis had immediately thought of his father’s preservation spells, but he didn’t understand how a spell placed on a house could possibly have impacted how quickly the hair was growing on his chin.

  He glanced to Vincenzé’s right hand and the three rings adorning it, marking his knowledge with the second, third and fourth strands. Their eyes connected as Tanis looked up again. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask you about something.”

  “Would this be something you heard in a lecture, or something from that mysterious book of yours?” He aimed an inquiring look at the satchel that concealed the journal in question.

  Tanis frowned at him. Sometimes talking with Vincenzé reminded him of conversing with the zanthyr: half of everything the wielder said had some hidden meaning, and he always seemed to know when Tanis was keeping some truth from him.

  Tanis flicked discontentedly at a blade of grass clinging to his pants. “Will you hear my question, sir?”

  Vincenzé grinned. “To be certain.”

  “I was wondering…” the lad cast him a considering look from beneath his brow, “how would one stop something from aging?”

  Vincenzé drew up both knees and draped elbows across them, letting his hands hang between. “The obvious answer is the Pattern of Life.”

  “For a person. But what about for a thing?”

  “You ask about preservation patterns, eh? The Sormitáge makes good use of them—from the paintings on the ceiling of the Grand Passáge to the treasured Archives.”

  “Those are third-strand patterns, right?”

  Vincenzé nodded.

  “How do they work? Surely they’re not pinned to every book in the Archives individually.”

  “They very nearly are. Any pattern increases in intricacy the larger the area and the greater the number of things within that area that a wielder intends to control. And when you’re dealing with time itself…”

  “But could you cast a pattern over the Archives to prevent it from aging?”

  Vincenzé plucked a stalk of long grass and munched on the end thoughtfully. “I suppose you could if you went stone by stone, wall by wall—but look, Tanis,” he gestured with the grass stalk, waving it hither and yon, “if it was truly feasible, our ancestors would’ve constructed it thusly. To cast a third-strand pattern across the entire Archives…even should it be possible—which I entirely doubt—” and he aimed a pointed look at the lad, “well, it would mean trapping everything in the building out of time, eh? I’m not certain you’d even be able to reach the Archives under those circumstances.”

  Something about this explanation made Tanis fluttery inside. “What do you mean, you wouldn’t be able to reach it?”

  Vincenzé waved his grass stalk vaguely. “The building would be traveling in time differently from your own stream, eh? In fact, it’d not be traveling in time at all, while you continued on. You’d have to timeweave back to the exact moment in which the Archives last existed in order to find the building at all. And the working…” Vincenzé let out a low whistle. “You’d have to be able to command copious amounts of elae as well as conceive and compel a host of interwoven patterns…you’d be ripping more than a building out of time—do you see?”

  Tanis was sure that he did.

  Vincenzé’s gaze became thoughtful as he further considered the concept. “Too, if you just kept the building trapped in time, eh, but not the land around and beneath it, the building might not age but the land would. So essentially, you’d have to be able to rip the entire terra firma out of time. By the Lady, what power you’d have to command!” He gave Tanis a look that spoke volumes. “That’s more than just the third strand you’d have to be working, eh—and all the while fighting against not only the obdurate motion of time but the vast power of the pattern of the realm itself.”

  Tanis thought of the alabaster arches worked all over with patterns and the feeling of the third strand humming through them and went a little pale.

  Vincenzé regarded him carefully. Then his bl
ue eyes widened. “Sancto Spirito,” he murmured with sudden understanding. “You know of such a working.”

  Tanis cast him an irritable look—the man was entirely too perceptive.

  Vincenzé let out an incredulous whistle. “Where? Where have you known such a thing?”

  “Can’t you just pluck it from my head the way you’ve been getting all your other answers?” Tanis remarked churlishly.

  Vincenzé laughed. “It’s not so pleasant, having your thoughts on display, is it, cucciolo?”

  “I wasn’t reading you on purpose!”

  The wielder’s gaze softened. “I’m not in your head, Tanis. It’s your face that betrays you—the honest face of an honest lad. But you must tell me now—the cat is out of the bag, eh? Where is it that you found this working?”

  Tanis frowned and turned his gaze away. He understood now what his father had done in constructing the arches. What Vincenzé couldn’t know, but what Tanis was now putting together, was that in all the time he’d spent at the Villa Serafina—on this trip as much as in his early life—he hadn’t aged. His mother could’ve implanted ten years—thirteen hells, she could’ve given him a hundred years—worth of lessons while his baby body aged not a day.

  Tanis felt more than a little dismayed by this new understanding. The idea of sharing any of it with Vincenzé…well, guilt flooded through him at the mere suggestion of it. But then he realized that he probably only really knew a fraction of what had been done to create the working, and that telling Vincenzé about a preservation pattern wouldn’t suddenly give the man a map through the impassible Navárrel peaks to find the protected villa.

  The lad exhaled and looked up under his brow. “A pattern like you just described is in place in the Adonnai Valley.”

  “Ho, ho! Now that is something to know!”

  Tanis turned and gazed off into the distance rather than endure the triumphant gleam in Vincenzé’s eyes. He regretted bringing up the subject now. “Sir,” he murmured then, hoping to direct Vincenzé’s interest elsewhere, “could a variant trait give a person the ability to timeweave, even if he or she isn’t third-strand?”

  Vincenzé looked the lad over speculatively, and Tanis felt certain he was trying to guess why Tanis was suddenly asking about this unusual topic. Finally, he plugged the stalk of grass back into the corner of his mouth and leaned on one elbow.

  “Theoretically, I suppose it’s possible. A variant trait accounts for Geshaiwyn being able to both change their features and travel the leis, and avieths are known to carry the variant trait that allows for timeweaving, but those are Wildling races already associated with the third strand.” He narrowed his gaze thoughtfully. “Your question would be better addressed to one of the Arcane Scholars who specialize in this field of research.”

  “Do you know someone I could ask?”

  Vincenzé shook his head. “The Imperial Historian is the one you want to speak with. He’ll be able to refer you to the right Scholar.”

  Applause echoed from across the way, and Tanis looked over to find that Maestro d’Eleray had ended his lecture.

  Following the lad’s gaze, Vincenzé clapped Tanis on the shoulder. “Come, cucciolo. Let’s break our fast together—‘tis the least I can do in return for the information you’ve given me this day.”

  Tanis slowly joined the taller man in standing and then slung the strap of his satchel diagonally across his chest. Inhaling a slow breath, he prepared himself—and his truthreader’s sensitivities—to face the crowds. Already he was noticing looks from the dispersing students, and worse, Maestro d’Eleray’s chilling stare.

  Vincenzé tsked and muttered something under his breath in his native tongue. He glanced at Tanis out of the corner of his eye. “Ne’er there was a more exclusive community than what you’ll find populating this campus, eh cucciolo?” He shook his head as he motioned Tanis off. “At every level, Sormitáge residents do naught but seek reasons to ostracize each other.”

  Beyond the gardens, they joined the masses of students passing along a wide foot-path connecting two of the larger lecture halls. Vincenzé nodded toward a group of students years older than Tanis, all of whom wore the grey and red coats of the Imperial Adeptus. “See those Adepts? The noble classes shun them because they come from poor families, sponsored instead by the Empress’s benevolence. Each might be twice the talent of one of the blood, but without a coat of arms, they could well be begging on the street for all the fair notice they’ll receive from the Empire’s blue-blooded caste.”

  Next he shrugged his head towards a group of students sitting on the lawn. They were of varying ages and nationalities, but they all wore a wide gold cuff on their wrists. “And that lot—Catenarés. They’ll segregate themselves and look down their noses at Docians with the same disdain that the Maritus students pay them in turn.”

  He indicated a group of younger students wearing torque-like gold collars. They were cutting across the lawn amid a hum of avid discussion that Tanis disagreeably suspected included gossip about him.

  “And those frites? They’re outcast because they’re…well, frites.” Vincenzé exhaled a resigned sigh and rested a hand on his sword as he walked. “Maestros rarely associate with literatos—or Sanctos-forbid, a docent—even though the rest of us are hard-pressed to tell the difference between a literato and a maestro save that literatos rarely teach.

  He adjusted his baldric as he commented, “The politics of families cuts another haphazard swath; likewise religions shared or shunned. And you’d need a year of solid study to understand the hierarchy among the Scholars.” He cast Tanis an apologetic smile. “The Sormitáge shoves everyone into some caste or another.”

  Their path opened onto a broad piazza dominated by a massive fountain sparkling in the noonday sun. Dozens of students were already crowding around it, and the hawkers were descending like flies—loudest among them was the one announcing hot buns and sausages.

  As they passed a group of noble girls heading in the other direction, Vincenzé started chuckling. Tanis turned to him. “What?”

  His eyes gleamed humorously. “Well they’re not all staring at you with scathing glares, are they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Vincenzé glanced over his shoulder towards the girls they’d just passed. When Tanis turned, he saw all three girls staring at him, though they quickly looked away when he caught their gaze.

  “I think those three would’ve happily accepted your attentions, cucciolo.”

  Tanis turned him a look of confusion.

  Vincenzé laughed. “Why do you look so startled? You’re a handsome youth—and you have the High Lord’s sponsorship on top of those good looks.”

  Tanis didn’t need to be reminded of that.

  “Life might’ve been easier for you here if you were short and rat-faced, Tanis.” Vincenzé eyed him consideringly. “The most universally despised man is the one who has no faults.”

  Tanis was pondering this logic as they headed down some steps. He noticed a crowd collecting around the entrance to a limestone building on the east side of the quad. A host of gold torques, bracelets and cuffs gleamed in the midday sun as students of all levels milled in animated conversation.

  Vincenzé gazed curiously at the crowd, and shortly the cause for their aggregation presented itself, for the doors opened and a white-robed and hooded man appeared. He came to the edge of the steps to meet the press of bodies and a slew of shouted greetings and questions.

  “Who is that, sir?”

  Vincenzé’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at the melee. “That would be the Literato N’abranaacht, if I’m not mistaken. An Arcane Scholar.” Vincenzé sucked at one tooth. “He’s become quite the celebrity of late.”

  Wondering at the tension suddenly threading through Vincenzé’s thoughts, Tanis observed the literato with interest. A sleek white hood covered his head with only a wide, slotted opening for his eyes. The folds of the hood blended into his silken robes, the iridescent cloth
of which shimmered in the sun. Quite in contrast to his elegant garments, the black hilt of a greatsword rose over his shoulder.

  “Why does he wear those robes?”

  “He’s a Palmer, lad.”

  “Is that a kind of Adept?”

  Vincenzé gave him an amused look. “The Holy Palmers are one of the more benign religious factions tolerated by the Empress.”

  Tanis frowned. “Is that why the students are so interested in him? Because of his beliefs?”

  Vincenzé barked a dubious laugh. “Not a chance.” He placed a hand on Tanis’s shoulder and prodded the lad into the shade of a narrow lane edging the piazza. “The Arcane Scholars are the Sormitáge’s heroes, eh, always off in foreign lands exploring treacherous caves and crumbling temples in search of a particular treasure.”

  “What treasure would that be, sir?”

  Vincenzé cast him a telling look. “Dark patterns. Lost works. Ancient knowledge—arcane knowledge. Things lost in the storms of history or claimed by time’s greedy appetite. N’abranaacht is recently back from Myacene. His journey was apparently profitable.”

  Something in Vincenzé’s tone made the lad turn to him again. The wielder’s lips were set in a tight line, belying the mildness of his words.

  Presently they came upon a tavern whose tables spilled out into the narrow, cobbled street. There they shared a luncheon of cinghiale stew and plum pudding, washed down by the last of the winter’s heavy-frothed black beer. Though simple, it was better fare than what he’d been eating in Chresten Hall’s dining room.

  While they ate, Vincenzé told Tanis stories of himself and his cousin Giancarlo during their childhood in Caladria. Most of the tales involved times Vincenzé had won some bet, but Tanis suspected there were just as many stories that Giancarlo could recount to the opposite outcome.

  Finally Vincenzé pushed away his bowl, leaned back in his chair, and rested clasped hands across his abdomen. “That’s your problem, lad.”

  Tanis was eying the remaining bit of Vincenzé’s stew and wondering if he should ask him if he could finish it. “What is, sir?”