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

by Melissa McPhail

  Then he got it. Both names were formed with the same letters.

  Kaye Lommeur. Pelasommáyurek.

  It was an anagram—if an imperfect one.

  Tanis’s heart beat faster as he looked back to Malin’s list of maestros and quickly scanned it, memorizing each name. Then he went back to the four pages Malin had written, each beginning with a name of a Malorin’athgul, and he searched for the maestro’s names within the random letters. He started with Pelas’s page, then moved to the one beginning with Darshanvenkhátraman. In both cases, the names from the maestro list appeared somewhere further down the page, hidden within the seemingly random letters.

  Tanis lowered the pages and looked away. His pulse was racing, and his head felt tingly and tight. All of his senses were screaming in warning, for he understood what had happened here.

  Malin had found the names of the Malorin’athgul. Then, at some point, the mind of a cryptographer had seen a pattern, an anagram, in a maestro’s name. Whatever happened after this discovery, it was enough to scare Malin to silence—at least until the pressure to confess what he’d found became too great and he’d called upon his roommate.

  But what name had scared him?

  Tanis knew Rinokh was gone from the realm for good—the zanthyr had assured him of that—and Pelas…he just couldn’t believe Pelas was responsible for Malin’s disappearance. He prayed he wasn’t. Besides, ‘Kaye Lommeur’ was the only name on Pelas’s list, and Pelas that man was not.

  With a dry swallow then, Tanis looked to the third page in his hand, the one that began with Shailabanáchtran spelled out across the top. His eyes scanned across and down, line by line…and there it was.

  Isahl N’abranaacht. Shailabanáchtran.

  Tanis went cold.

  The pages slipped from his fingers, and he sank back against the chair and pressed a fist against pursed lips, stifling the groan of dread that was trying to escape. His instincts had hinted at it the other night when walking with N’abranaacht, but he’d been too fearful to admit it could be possible.

  No wonder Pelas had avoided the Sormitáge during their travels together, despite his professed admiration of the place. He knew his brother was hiding here.

  “…Tanis?” Felix’s voice held real fear.

  Tanis shifted his eyes to him. Gods, what should he do? Nadia had just told him Phaedor had gone with the Empress. He doubted he’d enough clout with the High Lord to make him believe such as this—not if Marius wasn’t aware already of Malorin’athgul in their realm, which Tanis couldn’t know, and especially not with N’abrachaacht’s popularity.

  The next wave of consternation broke over him as he realized that while he hadn’t recognized Shailabanáchtran beneath his Palmer’s robes, Shailabanáchtran had certainly recognized him. Now it all made sense.

  Tanis covered his face with both hands and let out a tremulous breath.

  “Is it that bad?” Felix asked in a small voice.

  Taking a deep breath, Tanis tried to calm his racing heart. Think! Think, damn it! What do we do?

  First, the evidence. He dropped his arms and looked over at Felix, who sat with his hands trapped between his knees, shoulders hunched. “Where’s the book Malin stole? Do you still have it?”

  Felix eyed him uncertainly.

  Tanis had no patience for any more of Felix’s secrets. “Felix, do you have the book or not?” his voice sliced through the room, spiked with compulsion.

  Felix inhaled sharply. “Yes, I have it.” He reached both hands into his knapsack, felt around a bit, and then lifted something out from the beneath the pile of paper. Crumpled balls tumbled to the floor, and out came a large book wrapped in suede. Felix held the book like it was about to bite him and handed it over quickly to Tanis.

  Alarms all across the library sounded, a banshee’s screeching.

  “Shade and darkness!” Tanis pushed the book towards Felix. “Put it back in your knapsack—hurry!”

  Felix recoiled like the book was a snake. “Are you crazy? I don’t want that thing anywhere near me anymore! Put it on a shelf or something.”

  Tanis forcibly shoved it into Felix’s hands. “They’ve got this entire place warded for this book, Felix. What if they can just as easily tell who’s had their hands on it?”

  Felix paled. “All right.” But when Tanis stood there waiting impatiently, Felix’s mismatched eyes narrowed. “Do you mind? Kind of a private activity here, putting it back again.”

  That’s when Tanis understood. Turning away, he said, “The book wasn’t just in your knapsack. The knapsack is your coach, isn’t it?”

  “You know,” Felix growled, “real Nodefinders prefer the proper term: stanza segreta.” He hastily crammed all of the fallen balls of paper back into his satchel. Then he slung the strap over his shoulder and nodded to Tanis. “Hurry—this way.”

  They rushed down an aisle between two stacks, ears ringing from the screaming alarm. “Can’t we go back the way we came?”

  “No, trust me,” Felix muttered. “You never know who might be wandering by. I have a faster route anyway.” Felix turned at the end of the aisle and led Tanis on another chase through the maze of towering bookshelves, in and out of shadows.

  Just as they were about to reach the front of the massive room, double doors burst open and a dozen red-cloaked Imperial Guards rushed in with lanterns held high. Four men followed, carrying staffs with some kind of protrusion at the end and wearing black cloaks marked with silver quatrefoils crossed with swords.

  Felix sucked in his breath and yanked Tanis back behind the bookshelf. “It’s the Order,” he hissed. “They’ve got bright-eye bulbs on their staffs. If those things get a whiff of us, they’ll flame to life.” He slowly leaned to brave another look. “Okay, they’ve gone down the other row. Hurry.”

  A tense silence cloaked the boys as they slipped across the corridor, and then Felix grabbed Tanis by the arm and hauled him towards a reading alcove. He ran them right into the wall, and—

  Something cold and rough hit Tanis in the face, and he blinked in the dim darkness of a forest. Felix still had hold of his wrist and was dragging him through the trees while fir limbs scraped his arms and face.

  As soon as they reached a clearing among the heavy trees, Felix released Tanis and started pacing a circle, hands on his hips, breath moving fast with disbelief. “What by my blessed Aunt Bruna was all that about?”

  Tanis took it as a rhetorical question. He pressed his palm over the bridge of his nose and tried to calm his racing heart, which was thrumming with dire apprehension. “We need evidence,” he murmured, “but…I have no idea how to get it.”

  Felix spun to him. “Enough of this, Tanis—talk. What did you see on those pages? You went as pale as the moon.”

  After a moment, Tanis dropped his hand and settled Felix a look of pained resignation. “Is there somewhere we can sit down? It’s…kind of a long story.”

  They passed the night on a marble bench inside the Quai stadium, which happened to be only a short distance away from where they’d arrived.

  First Tanis told Felix about the Malorin’athgul—at least as much as he understood of them—but this digressed into his travels with Pelas, and then an explanation of the zanthyr and a few of their experiences together, which culminated in his arrival at the Sormitáge. Finally he recounted his run-in with Literato N’abranaacht. All of this took much of the night in the telling.

  The grey light of dawn was hinting around them, shifting the world from pitch black to mist and shadow, when Tanis finally walked Felix through the understanding he’d gained of Malin’s discovery, ending with the anagram of Isahl N’abranaacht and Shailabanáchtran.

  “I knew it!” Felix hissed. He slammed his fist onto his knee. “I knew N’abranaacht wasn’t the saint he makes himself out to be.” He cast Tanis a peevish glare. “You know I investigated him—or tried to. He caught me in his office and nearly took my head off with a sword. Who keeps sabers on their walls,
by the all the holy Sanctis?”

  Tanis gave him a telling look. “Immortal creatures with identities to hide.”

  Felix grunted. “And you really think he’s the one who took Malin?”

  Tanis blew out his breath between his lips. “Well I can hardly say it’s certain—not without some digging—and digging anywhere near Shailabanáchtran is likely to get us both killed. But it makes sense.”

  Felix rubbed at the edge of the marble bench wearing a ponderous frown. He looked up under his brows. “The Order is reading all the maestros, you know. The frites are all over it. Literatos will be next.”

  Tanis shook his head. “They won’t find anything reading N’abranaacht, Felix. He can hide his connection to elae—don’t ask me how, but I’m certain of it. He’s fifth-strand, but they think he’s na’turna. They won’t even be looking for elae’s mark within his life pattern—shade and darkness, who’s to say he doesn’t have a way of faking even that?”

  “Nobody could…” Felix began, but at the look on Tanis’s face, he left the thought unspoken.

  Tanis pushed a hand through his hair and gazed off into the grey dawn, a muscle working in his jaw. After a moment, he muttered, “Shailabanáchtran is about the deadliest adversary you could imagine, Felix. He’s probably worse than you can imagine, actually.” He frowned as something occurred to him, and his thoughts wandered. “I don’t know…I think fifth-strand creatures have an innate facility with the other strands, like they can sometimes just tap into them without needing to know the patterns involved. There’s a certain propensity to be able to work the other strands innately.”

  In fact…if Tanis had been fifth-strand, this explanation would make sense of all the mysterious things he could do. But he’d never heard of a truthreader being associated with the fifth, and he’d done nothing with that strand himself.

  Still musing, Tanis thought of all the things he’d seen Phaedor and Pelas do. “Reweaving a man’s life pattern from next to nothing…being impervious to Tellings… healing practically overnight…working deyjiin as easily as elae…placing compulsion on people without even trying…”

  Felix gave him an odd look. “You realize I have no idea what you’re talking about now.”

  Tanis cracked a smile. “Sorry…” He shook his head and returned his thoughts to their current problem. “It’s just…I know how Malin felt, harboring this secret. Being Malorin’athgul isn’t something you can simply accuse someone of.”

  “I can get us into N’abranaacht’s apartments if that would help.”

  Tanis thought about that for a moment. “How? On a node?”

  “On a leis.” Felix yawned. “…Since the nodes and leis are all twisted, the Sormitáge engineers weren’t particularly careful about where they constructed their buildings. With a little research, I can usually find a leis leading most anywhere.”

  “Felix…” Tanis moved his head to capture the other boy’s gaze with his own. “How have you managed all of this for so long without being caught? I would’ve thought surely they’d have questioned you about Malin’s disappearance.”

  Felix snorted. “Yeah, of course. But my dad’s a truthreader, Tanis. I grew up with eight Adept brothers. You think I don’t know there’s a hundred ways to avoid lying while still not telling the truth?” Seeming suddenly exhausted, Felix collapsed back on the marble bench. “Besides, the captain of the Regiment Guard who was investigating Malin’s kidnapping is na’turna. He doesn’t know how to ask the right questions.” He lifted his head to look at Tanis. “And you and I both know that the right question is everything.”

  “Wait…” The statement gave Tanis an idea, and he blossomed, but then he saw the futility in it and wilted again.

  “What?” Felix cast him a look.

  Tanis rubbed his face with both hands. His eyes felt like a sandstorm had hit them, and his head felt thick and webbed with cotton. They’d resolved little towards how to reveal N’abranaacht for what he was, but at least they’d bonded over this mutual goal. Tanis supposed gaining Felix’s trust showed some small progress for their night’s work.

  “I had a…thought,” Tanis said through a wide yawn, “…but I don’t see how to make it work.”

  “So let’s hear it.”

  Blowing out a heavy breath, Tanis fell back on the bench and let his arms drape to either side, mirroring Felix’s exhausted pose. He gazed at the slowly brightening sky. “We’d need another truthreader—a talented one. Ideally Devoveré.”

  “I…may know someone,” Felix said after a moment. “I’ve had a truthreader sort of helping me with my investigation.”

  Tanis’s attention was instantly caught, for just as Felix had the thought, he’d clamped down on his mind. The effect was as if he’d seen Tanis suddenly in the hallway and slammed the door in his face. Someone actually trained in guarding their thoughts would’ve been more subtle, but Felix had roused Tanis’s curiosity instead of avoiding it.

  Tanis decided not to press Felix on the name of his friend and said instead, “I missed an appointment with N’abranaacht yesterday, but I’ve no doubt he’ll call me to have tea with him today.”

  “You can’t go, Tanis,” Felix muttered. “You said he recognized you.”

  “That’s why we need another truthreader to show up instead. If the meeting is innocuous enough, N’abranaacht will be forced to maintain his show of benevolence.” And if whoever went in his place was sitting across from the literato at a tea table, N’abranaacht would have fewer opportunities to establish that dangerous physical contact. It at least slightly lessened the odds against them.

  “And while this…doomed soul takes your place?” Felix murmured through a yawn.

  “We investigate his rooms.”

  Felix abruptly pushed up on one elbow. “Tanis…that’s an excellent idea.”

  Tanis pressed his palms to his eyes and tried to squeeze the prickling sand of fatigue out of them. “So who’s this truthreader you’re so avid to keep secret from me?”

  At this remark, Felix eyed him irritably, like a calico cat with its ears flattened. “See, this is precisely why people don’t like truthreaders.”

  “What people?” Tanis lifted his head to look at him. “Guilty people?”

  Felix gave him an affronted look. “Private people.”

  “Private people with guilty secrets,” Tanis corrected. “If you don’t want me hearing your thoughts, Felix, don’t think them so loudly. Now, you were going to tell me about this truthreader…”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  Tanis pushed up on one elbow to look at the other boy. “I could easily compel it out of you.”

  “But you won’t, because you’re not a bully, and because you know I’d report you.”

  Tanis balked. “You’d report me?”

  “Just to get you out of my hair.” Felix flashed a grin. “Without a second thought.”

  Tanis gave him long look. “You’re kind of reprehensible.”

  “You try growing up with eight Adept brothers and tell me you don’t have to sell your soul just to get the chance to eat your own dinner without fighting for it tooth and claw.”

  “Thirteen hells, were you raised in a cage?”

  “Of rabid badgers.” Felix sat up and stretched, yawned again. “Well…I’d better get going.”

  Tanis did a double-take as the other boy got to his feet. “Going where?”

  “We need another truthreader, right? So I’ll have to go…fetch one.”

  Tanis reluctantly pushed to his feet. “We’ll go together.”

  “Forget it, Tanis.” Felix grabbed his knapsack and started off towards the stairs. “This is one time you can’t follow me.”

  “I can and I will, Felix.” Tanis stalked after him.

  A long flight of stone steps ascended to the top level of the oval-shaped stadium, but with the clouds now glowing rose-gold behind the colonnade crowning its rim, Tanis felt like they were climbing into the heavens. “Whoever this truthre
ader is will be putting themselves at grave risk,” he said while watching the sky turn from grey to blue before his eyes. “I must be certain they’re up to the challenge.”

  “I can assure you, they are.”

  “Felix, you’re not hearing me.” Tanis took his arm to draw his gaze. Mismatched green and blue eyes peered back. “I won’t send someone up against N’abranaacht unless I think they can come out of the encounter unscathed. You’re not a truthreader. You won’t be able to look for the abilities I can observe.”

  “This…person is Devoveré, Tanis. You’re not even Devoveré.”

  “The ring does not the wielder make, Felix.”

  Felix frowned irritably at him. “Fine, but you’ll have to follow the rules.”

  Tanis smiled and arched a brow. “This gets more interesting by the minute.”

  Forty-Seven

  “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the dark.”

  – The royal cousin Fynnlar val Lorian

  Tanis and Felix stopped by their room to change clothes—Tanis didn’t think it was a good idea to look like they’d been up all night, what with the alarms having gone off in the Archives as they had—and headed off again towards the node Felix meant to travel.

  As ill luck would have it, their way took them past the Imperial Archives. A clump of frites stood on the lawn humming with gossip like a hive of bees, their topic no doubt concerning the host of Red Guards who stood watch in front of the building’s entrance. A crowd of students, scholars and docents had gathered at the base of the steps, waiting for permission to enter.

  Seeing a familiar face among the diverse groups gathered there, Tanis nudged Felix and asked in a low and somewhat urgent voice, “Can’t we get to the node some other way?”

  Felix scowled at him. “It’ll take three times as long—”

  Just then the man Tanis had noticed looked over, and his gaze fixed unerringly on the boys. Tanis blew out his breath. “Never mind,” he grumbled. “He’s seen us now.” Tanis put on a friendly face and smiled at the man. He even managed a tentative wave, though nothing too eager or the other would wonder at it.