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

by Melissa McPhail

  The second man stood a head shorter than the literato. He had greying hair cut just above his shoulders, a hawkish nose and dark eyes beneath equally dark brows. Tanis recognized him from the recent lecture as the Maestro di Relisi, the one who had asked a question about the First Esoteric.

  Maestro di Relisi saw Tanis first, and his bushy brows pinched together. “What’s this? What are you doing here?” He flicked a bony finger at Tanis. “Students are not allowed in these corridors.”

  “I’m sorry sir, I—”

  “You’re Maritus? Catenaré?” He looked Tanis up and down and his brows narrowed quite spectacularly when he noted Tanis’s hand. He snatched Tanis’s wrist then and examined the silver band on his finger. “A Postulant, eh?” His gaze flicked over him again with cutting severity. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I…think I’m lost, sir.”

  N’abranaacht chuckled. “Really, Paolo, you act as if the boy’s some kind of spy.”

  Tanis turned him a sharp look, but the literato’s brown eyes were gentle, smiling as they gazed down at him. He could see nothing else of the man’s face—not even his eyebrows—only his darkly lambent eyes framed by pearlescent silk. Up close, the effect was slightly startling.

  “Why don’t I escort the lad back to civilization,” N’abranaacht offered. He laid a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. Something about the gesture, the imposed intimacy, made Tanis uncomfortable.

  Maestro di Relisi scowled. “Nonsense. I’ll call a docent.”

  “No need. I welcome the excursion.” He looked down at Tanis. “You’re in Chresten Hall, no doubt. It’s near my apartments.”

  “But—” the maestro protested.

  “It’s no bother, Paolo. We can continue our conversation another day.” His eyes smiled again, yet a flintiness within them left little room for argument.

  The maestro made a bow, but his manner had cooled, and his tone lacked for warmth as he replied, “As you wish, N’abranaacht.”

  As Maestro di Relisi stalked off, Tanis exhaled a tremulous breath and gazed after him with a troubled frown. No doubt he’d made yet another enemy.

  “That’s a ponderous sigh for so young a personage,” N’abranaacht observed. He looked quietly down at Tanis, but something in his gaze that time seemed not quite so friendly.

  The boy wondered if he’d somehow offended him. “Yes, I…well I didn’t mean to interrupt, sir.”

  “A welcome interruption, in my view.”

  “Yes, sir, that was apparent—” Tanis caught his breath, wondering why he ever would’ve made so blunt a remark.

  N’abranaacht seemed not to notice. He released Tanis’s shoulder and motioned him down the hall. “Shall we?” Tanis dutifully fell into step with him. The literato walked so close at his side that their arms often brushed in passing. “So, truthreader, tell me your name.”

  “It’s Tanis, sir.”

  “Tanis,” he repeated in his melodious voice, rolling the lad’s name across his tongue as if each consonant and vowel held a truth to be dissected and understood. There was something dangerous in the way N’abranaacht said his name…in having the man say his name at all.

  Tanis looked up at him uncertainly, but the literato’s eyes were still smiling. It was so incongruous, the dark, smiling eyes and gentle voice and the feeling Tanis got from the man, which was anything but amiable.

  “And tell me, Tanis, why have you come to the Sormitáge?” Their arms brushed again in passing.

  “I really don’t kn—” Tanis clapped a hand over his mouth. He’d meant to say something else entirely, yet his tongue had quite betrayed him.

  N’abranaacht chuckled again, but Tanis couldn’t tell this time if it was in good humor or malicious amusement. Was the man somehow compelling him to speak these raw, unfiltered truths? If so, he was more expert even than Pelas, because Tanis felt no patterns at work—he felt no compulsion.

  “You don’t know why you’ve come?” N’abranaacht murmured. “How odd. Most Postulants come to gain their ring.” Tanis could hear the smile in his voice as well as his dry undertone.

  “Yes, sir.” Tanis shifted uncomfortably and frowned up at the literato, wondering… “Are you an Adept, sir?”

  “Alas, I am na’turna—a requirement, I fear, for Arcane Scholars. The university leadership believes the temptation would be too great to use the inverteré patterns we research, had we the necessary talent.”

  They exited the corridor through a side door and emerged onto a path that wound through a lengthy colonnade of elm trees. Night had fallen, but plenty of Sormitáge residents were still making their various ways hither and yon. Relief washed over Tanis to see other people. He’d begun feeling like no one in the world existed except him and N’abranaacht—an unsettling contemplation.

  Suddenly the man’s arm enwrapped Tanis’s shoulder. The gesture appeared friendly and warm, yet Tanis would’ve felt more at peace with a viper around his neck.

  “You are quite the enigma, young Tanis,” N’abranaacht murmured in that gentle voice which was so at odds with Tanis’s perceptions. The literato nodded politely to a pair of scholars passing the other way and kept Tanis tightly in the circle of his arm. “Tell me then, who sent you to the Sormitáge?”

  “My mother wanted me to study here, sir.” For once Tanis felt relief in being able to provide an answer that was congruous with his own intentions.

  “Your mother?” N’abranaacht seemed displeased by this answer, as if he’d expected Tanis to say something else. “Who is your mother?”

  “My father called her Renaii.”

  “Another peculiar response. Does she have no name beyond what your father called her?”

  “I imagine so, but I—never really knew my parents. I was only two when we… parted.”

  Here again, Tanis would’ve liked to have answered differently—he would’ve liked not to have answered at all! How was the man forcing these replies out of him if he wasn’t an Adept? Tanis sensed nothing of elae within or around the literato, yet if N’abranaacht couldn’t be blamed for Tanis’s uncharacteristically blunt responses, who or what was causing them?

  N’abranaacht squeezed his shoulder gently. “I find you most intriguing, Tanis. It isn’t often one meets an orphaned truthreader. Where, then, were you raised?”

  This time Tanis tried very much to control his answer, to put form to his thoughts before the truth was surgically excised out of him, but again his tongue flapped with betrayal. “I grew up as the ward of the Duchess and Healer Melisande d’Giverny of Dannym.”

  “How curious. Who sponsored your studies here then?”

  Tanis clenched his teeth and tried to hold back his answer, just to see if he could. He might as well have been trying to hold back a river in flood for all the words went flowing across his tongue anyway. “The High Lord Marius di L'Arlesé is my sponsor, sir.”

  “Indeed. That is no small boon.”

  Tanis was becoming well and truly frightened. Something was definitely being done to him—worked upon him—to force these answers. The fact that he couldn’t even perceive the magic was one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. Worse even than his first encounter with Pelas…

  Abruptly Tanis looked up at the literato. His brown eyes were smiling down at him, warm, compelling…

  Tanis caught his toe on an uneven tile and skipped-stumbled several paces forward. He laughed nervously as he recovered, but he took care to stay slightly in front of N’abranaacht as they continued along. He could see the lights of Chresten through the trees. A watchtower beckoning to an exhausted, storm-stranded sailor could not have been more welcome.

  He glanced back at the literato to give him an uneasy smile. “And you sir?” He hoped in part to turn the conversation away from himself and in part to assuage a sudden frightening suspicion. If N’abranaacht was truly not an Adept, the literato should feel nothing in Tanis’s next remark and would only answer as compelled—but if he was something more… Ta
nis swallowed, put the entire force of his skill into forming the question, and braved, “Where do you come from?”

  The barest tightening around N’abranaacht’s eyes told Tanis what he needed to know. The man was impressive. If Tanis hadn’t been watching so closely, he never would have noticed that N’abranaacht had felt his compulsion at all, for surely the literato’s reply gave no hint of it as he answered patiently, “A place far from here, Tanis youth.” He reached to place a hand on Tanis’s shoulder, but the boy deftly avoided it. No way was he letting the man touch him again.

  They reached the path to Chresten’s doors, and Tanis lengthened his stride to put more distance between them before he stopped and turned. “Thank you for the walk, sir.”

  “Of course.” N’abranaacht bowed politely. “I hope you will join me again some time, Tanis—perhaps…for tea tomorrow? I will send for you. You might tell me then how you came to acquire the High Lord for a sponsor.”

  Tanis had no intention of going anywhere near the man. “I…couldn’t, sir. Not tomorrow.” Not any day.

  N’abranaacht closed the distance between them in a single step. “Oh, but you simply must.” One finger caught Tanis beneath his chin and gently lifted the lad’s gaze to meet his own. Every one of Tanis’s senses screamed in warning. “Let’s just say it’s the price I require for my service to you tonight.”

  Tanis felt frozen—literally frozen to the stones. He believed he could not have moved if he’d tried. “That—that seems like two services given, sir,” he stammered.

  N’abranaacht’s eyes smiled again, and this time they were decidedly predatory. “Oh…I think you will make it worth my while.”

  Then he released Tanis from his thrall and glided away into the night.

  Forty-One

  “He’s discarded the rigid cloak of law. Judgment suits him better.”

  – Ramuhárikhamáth, Lord of the Heavens, on Björn van Gelderan

  Björn van Gelderan, Fifth Vestal of Alorin, stood on his balcony gazing out over the realm he and his friends had made. The wind tossed his dark curls and tugged at his coat as it howled hungrily around the towers of Niyadbakir. Across the green valley, a line of low-lying clouds hugged the distant mountains, assuming their shape, while a storm pushed impatiently from behind.

  No matter how often or how long he gazed upon it, Björn never became inured to T’khendar’s wild beauty, nor forgot that this immaculate creation had been birthed through the minds of men. But the realm’s beauty hardly consumed his thoughts that afternoon. The game progressed, and like T’khendar, it had changed through the centuries.

  In the beginning, it had been like a match of Kings, full of strategy and planning, thinking twenty steps ahead, envisioning every possible outcome of playing this or that piece at a certain time, estimating consequences to the ninth hand of chance.

  The game had grown since then. His Players now manned the field, weaving their own strands of the great tapestry. He saw the pattern taking shape at last, and while it was as he’d always envisioned, yet it had become so much more; for his Players made choices that added their own dimension and color to the tapestry, and many bound new threads to themselves in ingenious and even startling ways. Some Players were finding and using their own pieces—or forging them sometimes, whole-cloth, out of the muddle of common man. He’d chosen his Players well and prepared them as best he could, but he could do no more now than let them play, as they’d been intended to do all along.

  He admitted that the game now held a certain unpredictability.

  This very capriciousness made it more exciting. The game had been in play long enough to have taken on its own life, its own personality. He knew now how the game itself would react, and he understood how to send it spiraling in new directions—well…most of the time.

  Björn’s task in these times fell to prediction. To see beyond the next sunrise—the next many sunrises—and know what would be waiting upon that far horizon. No, not merely to know it, but to frame it himself, to bring into being the next swirls of the pattern he needed to shape.

  To have that foresight, he had to understand his Players; he needed to know how they thought, what they feared, what they cherished, and what drove them to overcome; he had to know what choices would entice them and which they could resist—for if he could predict their choices, even somewhat, he could predict the next phase of the pattern, the next twist of each binding thread.

  This wondrous tapestry that his game had become kept weaving itself into innumerable spiraling designs…patterns within patterns; the contributions of others had formed a vast canvas upon which they painted the stories of their lives—each one individual, each one inspired, all of them interwoven, bound by purpose.

  As Master of the Game, it fell to him to keep these many threads aligned. If he could succeed…what a glorious masterwork they would all have created in the end.

  A shadow came to stand beside him on the balcony—Dagmar, dressed in his characteristic black. The Second Vestal nodded to the far horizon and leaned elbows on the railing. Two Vestal oath-rings gleamed dully in the overcast. “Storm’s coming.”

  “Evidence of our living realm.” Björn felt the rising tide of the fifth tingling along his skin. “I remember the first time we made rain that wasn’t yellow with sulfur. Malachi stripped down and danced in it.”

  Dagmar arched a humorous brow. “He always was a bit off his gourd, wasn’t he?”

  “I think we all were.” Björn cast him a wry smile. “We rather had to be, didn’t we, to imagine we could do something like this?”

  Dagmar’s smile faded. “Aye, brother.”

  Björn gave him a curious look. “What’s on your mind? Something to do with this storm?”

  “Nay, this one is natural enough.” Dagmar turned and leaned back against the railing to better meet Björn’s gaze—only he didn’t look at him, but rather at a silver coin that he passed slowly between his fingers. “Rinokh succeeded again in sending an electrical storm through the Eye. This last storm left a tear in the ether an eighth of a mile long.”

  The Eye. That place where the barriers between the realms grew thin; where a wall of volcanic glass separated the fringes of Chaos from a ravine that eternally twitched with unmaking; and where the Malorin’athgul Rinokh malevolently hovered.

  Björn exhaled a pensive breath. “We knew he would try—proof that this game won’t be solved by force. Even were we to succeed in defeating Rinokh’s brothers, they would merely join him on the fringes of the Realms of Light, seeking a way back inside…and they’d have all of eternity to find one.”

  Dagmar grunted. “The battle would be unending. A shame we can’t unmake the immortal the way we unmade the shell he claimed in Alorin.”

  Björn arched brows by way of agreement. Then he glanced sideways at Dagmar. “You and Ramu repaired the tear without too much effort, I hope.”

  “The tear bothered me less than the fact it happened at all.”

  The First Lord looked him over. “Do you need more help?”

  Dagmar flicked his coin into the air and caught it again. “Nay.” He turned and leaned sideways against the railing. “Just thought you should know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “In other news, your contact in Illume Belliel says Alshiba still hasn’t sought the Speaker’s aid.”

  Björn turned him a look. “Light above, what is she waiting for?”

  “Gods help me if I know. Franco apparently as much as told her he can travel to T’khendar and that you’re holding her Vestals hostage here.”

  Björn cast him a sidelong grin. “Hostage?”

  Dagmar shrugged. “Just passing along the conversation as it was relayed to me.”

  “Franco is in Illume Belliel with Alshiba?”

  “Nearly every day since she thrust the deputy ring upon his finger.”

  “Keeping him close beneath her watchful eye.”

  Dagmar arched a telling brow. “I sometimes wonder she has
n’t uncovered a way to listen in on Franco’s dreamscape meetings with me.”

  Björn flashed a grin. “Doubtless she’s tried.”

  Dagmar flipped his coin and caught it again. “Your contact says that Alshiba won’t be able to gather more than fifty Paladin Knights to her cause.”

  The First Lord frowned. “Fifty isn’t nearly enough.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  Björn rubbed his chin and considered his oath-brother. He couldn’t be wrong about why Alshiba had elevated Nico van Amstel to become the new Second Vestal. Her motivations seemed obvious. But if his presumptions were correct, why was Alshiba waiting so long to take her next step? Unless…

  Björn arched a brow as he saw a more subtle motivation come into focus. He considered where the path of this idea might lead and saw numerous threads spiraling off of it to form a beautiful new design.

  The First Lord smiled and turned to Dagmar. “Perhaps I ought to go stir up some trouble.”

  “You?”

  Björn leaned his hip against the railing. “Who better?”

  Dagmar regarded him flatly. “Anyone would be better. I would be better. It’s me she’s trying to replace.”

  “Only because she had more second-strand resources available—albeit insultingly inferior.” He grinned at his next thought. “Doubtless, if Alshiba had some means of replacing me, she would’ve tried long ago. Besides,” he clapped Dagmar on the shoulder, “what have we to fear with you to take over in my absence? None could wish for a stronger leader, my friend.”

  Dagmar gave him a look of blatant suspicion.

  Björn laughed. “You’ve got to learn to accept a compliment without suspecting me of going off to martyr myself.”

  Dagmar watched him coolly. “Aye, brother, as soon as you can take one without turning it back around on the giver.”

  The shadow of a smile hinted on Björn’s lips at this, and his eyes sparkled with humor. “Well enough…there may be room for improvement in both of us.” He nodded towards his study, and they headed inside together.