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

by Melissa McPhail

  Isabel’s lips curled in a smile. “You’re wearing it already, Sebastian. All is in place.”

  Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “And Dore won’t see this illusion on the currents either?”

  “Never fear, Sebastian. Remember, you must act as if you’re holding us in chains, for in their eyes you will be.”

  He gave her a serious look. “Yes, my lady.” Then he set his shoulders, turned, and led them towards the gate, walking with a slight limp.

  One of the guards immediately came out to challenge them. Beyond the gate, Ean saw a bailey full of soldiers.

  Sebastian acted as if he was pushing back what appeared to Ean as a nonexistent hood, but the guard’s eyes widened. “It’s you.” He lowered his sword minutely. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Been away.” Sebastian’s voice came low, nearly a growl, reminding Ean with a chill of Işak—which was exactly the point.

  Sebastian had been sure that the men guarding Ivarnen wouldn’t know what had become of him—Dore shared no secrets, especially in failure—but he would have to appear to them as if still bound to Dore…as if still Işak’getirmek.

  Ean hadn’t anticipated how much it would unnerve him to hear his brother once again speaking and moving with Işak’s voice and manner. And if he felt so unnerved by it, what must it be doing to Sebastian to be acting the part? Abruptly he regretted that the idea had ever occurred to them.

  “Who’s this?” the guard motioned with his blade towards Ean and Isabel. Ean had no idea what guise of illusion Isabel was weaving over them, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that the guard would believe it.

  “Prisoners to be taken to the Advisor.”

  The guard looked them over with eyes like dark pools. “Got nothing on the docket about new prisoners. Nothing about you.”

  “I don’t report to you or your docket, sergeant. I report to the Advisor, and these prisoners are for his attention…from the Prophet.”

  The guard eyed him narrowly and sucked on a tooth. “How can they be from the Prophet when the Prophet’s already here?”

  Ean felt a sudden hollowness in his core. Darshan was in Ivarnen?

  Sebastian countered with an angry growl, “Stupid man. The Prophet sent me to claim them to be interrogated. Now, stand aside. Or shall I make you move?”

  “Yeah, I’ll move.” He sucked on a tooth again and cast Sebastian a stare full of malice and contempt. “But you’ll take an escort with you to the Advisor.”

  Sebastian looked him over critically. “As you please—but see that your men keep their hands off my prisoners.”

  The guard looked him over again, taking special note by way of pause at his crippled leg, and his brow arched mockingly. Then he stepped aside to let Sebastian pass. He made a sound with his tongue and a motion to his men, and two guards fell in with them.

  When they were through the second portcullis and out of view of the gate, Sebastian snatched one of the guards and pulled him close. “Go find out where the Advisor is and see if he’s ready to receive me.” He laced the order with compulsion and pushed the man roughly away. “Hurry.”

  The man ran.

  Then Ean watched his brother silently change the man’s pattern, installing a new compulsion that sent the guard to inspect the latrines instead.

  Ean found a new level of respect for his eldest brother. He’d no doubt Sebastian—Işak—had been this man of brusque action and cold contempt. Yet even when so rigid and disdainful, even walking with a limp and with that scar flaming on his cheek, still he’d exuded a nobility that even Dore’s degradation had been unable to fully erase.

  They crossed the lower bailey amid the tang of forges and the scrape of men sharpening steel, surrounded by a host of soldiers, weapons, munitions…clearly the men of Ivarnen were preparing for some kind of war. Ean wondered if they were preparing for him.

  By the time they reached the far side of the lower bailey, rain had begun falling and the wind had picked up, bringing with it the acrid smell of heat and ash and the sour stench of hundreds of unwashed men. But these displeasing odors were fresh compared to the toxic reek on the currents.

  They soon reached a set of long steps descending into a tunnel. Sebastian looked to the guard at his side. “The dungeons? Have you a key?”

  The man swallowed. “Aye, but—”

  “Perhaps you’d rather these prisoners await the Advisor’s pleasure in his parlor? Shall we serve them wine and a hot meal whilst we’re about it?”

  “No—no, milord.”

  Sebastian held a hand pointedly for him to lead down the stairs. A long descent later, they reached an iron door, whereupon the guard fumbled for his key.

  During the descent, the stench of eidola on the currents had grown thicker and stronger. By the time the guard got the door open, the sensation had become so overpowering that Ean almost failed to notice the tension held in his brother’s shoulders, in the clenching of his jaw and the cording muscles of his neck. Sebastian was clearly struggling with an entirely different evil, and Ean’s heart went out to him.

  Isabel’s hand caught Ean’s, cautioning him to stillness.

  The guard opened the door and led them into a dim stone passageway, dank with mold and roiling with a volatile energy. Ean had to shut his mind to the currents just to draw breath.

  “My other prisoners,” Sebastian growled as the guard was locking the door behind them. To Ean it seemed his brother was holding himself together by a thread. “Where are they being held?”

  The man turned the key slowly and then looked back to him. “The ones from Dannym?” Something in his gaze. Ean saw it too.

  In a split-second Sebastian had the guard around the neck and was shoving his body against the wall. Then came again that Işak-growl—“Tell me what you know,”—and the compulsion to encourage the guard’s answer quickly along.

  Ean watched Sebastian working these compulsion patterns with alacritous ease and felt a new sense of horror on his brother’s behalf. How often he must’ve been forced into using them for such patterns to become so native—and how evil they all were… Working compulsion of any kind crossed the path of mor’alir, and that was ever a dark and desolate stroll.

  Watching Sebastian in this role broke Ean’s heart all over again.

  “It’s just—they say—” The guard gasped for breath around Sebastian’s clutching fingers. Ean knew too well their strength. “There’s talk…they were moved…”

  “To where?”

  It wasn’t Sebastian’s glare that brought such fear to the guard’s darting eyes. “Milord…they took them to the caverns.”

  Sebastian stilled. Then he closed his eyes, and for a moment Ean feared he was going to lose his hold on this dreadful travesty of himself that he’d been compelled to wear for so many years.

  Sebastian’s hand tightened around the man’s neck. “Which cavern?”

  The guard shook his head wildly, eyes bulging for lack of breath. “It’s not…my post…”

  Sebastian let out a slow exhale. Then he turned them a look fraught with uncertainty and guilt.

  “Do what needs to be done, Sebastian,” Isabel responded resolutely. “The well of mercy in Ivarnen has long gone dry.”

  Sebastian clenched his teeth and looked back to the guard, whose face went suddenly slack with apprehension. He threw a pattern on top of the man, and the guard fell to the stones in a writhing, soundless torment.

  Abruptly Sebastian fell back from him and spun away in horror. He pushed a hand to the opposite wall and hung his head. “It won’t last long,” he nearly gasped, indicating the pattern and its tortured subject. Then he lifted a desperate gaze to Ean. “It’s—”

  “What Işak would’ve done.” Ean put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and willed his gaze to convey all the compassion and understanding he felt in his heart. “I know, and we needed Işak to buy us entrance, but Sebastian…let go of him now.”

  Sebastian’s expression was so burdened wit
h despair…

  “We’ll find another way.”

  Sebastian stared at him with burning eyes. Then he straightened, sniffed once and nodded, and the persona of Işak fell away, discarded like a stinking cloak. “Right.” Sebastian tugged on his coat and exhaled forcefully. “This way.”

  Two corridors later, they rounded a corner into a long passage of iron doors and nearly collided with a group of guards.

  Sebastian turned Isabel a swift look, the question all too clear in his gaze, but she shook her head. Neither she nor Ean would ask him to don the mask of Işak.

  But subterfuge wouldn’t have helped them in any case, for instead of charging, the guards parted to make way for an eidola. It drew its weapon with a slow, ominous scrape and said in its rattling viper’s voice, “Methinks you belong here not.”

  Sebastian exhaled an oath and took a reflexive step backwards.

  Ean couldn’t blame him. No words could convey the visceral horror of seeing such demons in the flesh—and realizing they could talk.

  The creature started towards them.

  Ean stepped in front of Sebastian. “Take the soldiers. Guard Isabel.”

  He walked to meet the eidola.

  In the days since Tal’Afaq, Ean had put long hours of thought into how to face these creatures more effectively than he’d managed the first time. Time to put his theories into practice then.

  First noting that this eidola held a mortal blade, not Merdanti, the prince used Immanuel’s advice from when they’d fought together in Tal’Afaq and made his flesh as stone. He caught the eidola’s descending blade in his bare hand and ripped it out of its grasp. Then he grabbed the creature and flung himself around it and up onto its back. He bound its body with his legs while he pushed hands to either side of its head and sought the pattern that bound it to life.

  The eidola raged. It howled. It rammed Ean backwards into the wall, pinning him between the slab of stone and its stone body. Its hands grappled for Ean’s head, but he had his arms extended to their fullest, his weight in his legs and the fifth all around him. He found the pattern he wanted amid the muck of the creature’s mind, but he didn’t just unwork it. He ripped it apart.

  In that split-second moment as the pattern was tearing, while the creature still clung to life, something far larger and more powerful retaliated against Ean. A wave of vehemence launched towards him—

  The eidola collapsed.

  Ean recoiled mentally and physically and steadied himself against the wall, breathing hard. How horribly close he’d been to receiving the backlash of what had to have been a Malorin’athgul’s unbridled fury. It had felt entirely too akin to Rinokh’s rage on the night in Rethynnea when he’d nearly died.

  The guards, too, stood stunned. Their eyes were fixed on the eidola lying immobile on the floor. They obviously expected it to rise again. When it didn’t, they shouted and charged.

  Sebastian passed Ean in a blur.

  Ean spared a glance after his brother, but there were only six guards, and Sebastian had a Merdanti blade, Dareios’s enchanted mail, and a pattern of the fifth to protect himself. Ean would’ve insulted him deeply if he’d tried to help.

  Isabel came up and pressed a hand to Ean’s forehead. “What happened there, in the end?”

  Ean turned her a look. “Darshan happened.”

  “You’ll be more careful next time.” She ran her fingers lightly across his temple, along the line of his jaw. Ean felt oddly like she was memorizing the shape of his face.

  The last of the guards fell to Sebastian’s blade and he turned. “Ean…”

  The prince nodded. Then he took Isabel’s hand and they moved on together.

  They met four more eidola along the way. Ean destroyed each of them and departed their minds before that malevolent force could latch onto him, but each almost-meeting with that forceful presence disturbed him immensely.

  He learned that whoever—whatever—had made these creatures, the same pattern had been used to bind all of them to life. By the time he faced the fourth creature, Ean found the pattern of binding within a heartbeat, and two more saw it ripped apart.

  At an intersection of tunnels, Isabel stiffened and squeezed Ean’s hand. He motioned to Sebastian to stop and turned to her. “Tell me.”

  She pressed her lips together, radiating alarm. “My path…” She turned a look away, down the darkened tunnel. “My path leads to the left.” He saw her swallow, felt the tension binding her. “I can sense them…hundreds of them.”

  “Eidola?” His voice sounded pathetically faint.

  She nodded.

  Ean held her hidden gaze. “But we’re not here upon your path.”

  She shook her head in acknowledgment of this truth.

  “Right.” He looked to his brother, who was watching them warily. “Then we go forward.” So they headed off again, away from the branching tunnel and the army of eidola.

  They’d barely gone twenty steps, however, when a voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. “Ean val Lorian…”

  Both princes drew up short.

  “That’s Dore’s voice.” Sebastian spun a look around the tunnel.

  Ean reached to still his brother’s hand upon his weapon. “He cast it upon the currents. Wait…”

  “Ean val Lorian…I know you’ve come to me at last to answer for your crimes. Bring my wielder back to me…and see your men returned.”

  Sebastian hissed an oath. “What kind of fools does he take us for?”

  Something in this question reminded Ean of Pelas’s remark in Tal’Afaq. A tragic smile flickered on his lips. “Noble ones, I think.”

  “Seek me…and ye shall find…”

  Ean exhaled a slow and determined breath.

  “Ean,” Sebastian’s eyes widened. “You’re not seriously—”

  “It’s what we came here to do. He’s just making it easier for us.”

  Sebastian arched brows with high dubiety. “You and I must have very different ideas of what that word means.”

  “Hurry,” Isabel whispered.

  Ean gave her a look, wondering and worrying at the hurricane he perceived in her thoughts. He tightened his hand around hers and moved into the lead, following Dore’s trace upon the currents.

  The way took them from the dungeons to the upper levels of the castle. They were upon a winding spiral stair when Isabel stopped them again.

  Ean turned to her, feeling dismayed. “What now?”

  “Something…” She shook her head, caught the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth, and exhaled a slow breath. “The paths have shifted again.”

  “Like in Tal’Afaq?”

  She looked to him. “Like Tyr’kharta.”

  Somehow that seemed worse, though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Something isn’t right here.”

  “Much isn’t right here, my lady,” Sebastian said.

  “I concede your point, Sebastian, but this is different.” She twisted her staff in place before her feet.

  Ean felt her emotion through their bond. If he hadn’t known her better, he would’ve described it as panic, but this was Isabel…to imagine her feeling such a thing was inconceivable.

  “What is your will, my lady?” Sebastian asked.

  Her hands tightened on her staff. “Lead forth with care, my lords.”

  Sebastian grunted. “So sayeth the angiel as her knights head into hell.” He drew his blade, held it before him and moved into the lead. “I knew Dore was making monsters, but…” He clenched his jaw and aimed a look at his brother. “When you spoke of these creatures to me, Ean, you called them eidola. You didn’t say they were demons.”

  “They’re not demons.” Ean pushed a hand through his hair. “They’re just…men bound to one.”

  “They’ll be demons in my dreams,” Sebastian groused.

  They finally gained the landing where a single, dim lantern hung above an iron door. Instinct made Ean grab for Sebastian’s arm before he could touch the latc
h. “Wait.” He gave his brother a look of caution.

  “There’s nothing on the…what are you doing?” Sebastian looked at Ean oddly as the prince pressed his head to the wall to examine the door from an oblique angle.

  “No,” Ean murmured. “The currents never show Dore’s traps. They lie dormant until you walk through them to your death. Here…look for yourself.” He motioned Sebastian to take his place beside the wall and moved out of the way. “You’ll need my pattern to see it.”

  Sebastian gave him a look. “That goes without saying.” Then he inspected the door with a narrowed gaze. “Is that…” He scanned up and down and let out a low whistle. “Dore never taught me patterns like this. It’s like a spider’s web, only—”

  “It would be the last thing you ever saw.” Ean made a circle of his finger along a specific part of the pattern. “See…it’s designed to react to the fifth, to patterns like the variant one we’re using.”

  Sebastian pushed away from the wall. “So if you can see it…”

  “It can kill you.” Ean quickly found the pattern’s point of separation where beginning and end connected and started its unraveling.

  Sebastian watched him as he was doing this. “You’re really kind of a miracle, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Isabel said from behind them.

  Ean cast her a sidelong look while asking his brother, “What do you mean?”

  Sebastian was regarding him seriously. “I can see what you’re doing because of the pattern you’ve given me, but seeing and unworking aren’t the same thing. I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue how to unwork that. This talent of yours—it’s more than just seeing patterns.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall and stared at Ean, making him rather uncomfortable with the force of his gaze. “In all the realm, how many people do you suppose can see and unwork patterns?”

  “Two,” Isabel said.

  Ean turned her an expression of pained entreaty.

  Sebastian looked to Isabel and met her hidden gaze. “My brother and yours.”

  She nodded. Then she nodded to the door. “Let’s keep moving.”

  So they did.

  Dore’s card of calling on the currents led them to a long hallway that appeared to run the entire length of the castle main. Ean led the way, scanning the wide corridor for patterns and passing room after room standing vacant and cold, host only to shadows and the rain beading against darkened windows. The passage seemed to go endlessly on—he’d covered barely a third of it when he came to an archway that opened upon a darkened gallery of tall windows. Something…