Pressing himself close to the wall, he scanned the archway and found another of Dore’s patterns and unworked it. Beyond, deep inside the gallery, hidden from view save from that particular angle…
“It’s Rhys—” Sebastian pushed past Ean into the room.
“Sebastian, wait—”
But it was too late.
Sebastian walked right through the nearly invisible pattern stretched from ceiling to floor, and the Labyrinth collapsed upon him.
Ean hissed an oath and dove into the room after his brother. Patterns like cobwebs covered the entire gallery, most of them making an attempt to conceal the Labyrinth.
He cast a broad sheet of the fourth through the room and seared away the illusion that had tricked Sebastian into his haste, as well as the one that concealed the armed men standing at the back of the room. Then he went to his brother, who’d fallen to one knee with his sword in his fist, head hung.
Wielder’s lamps sputtered and flamed to life. Out of the shadows two dozen men emerged, led by a dark-haired Saldarian that Ean immediately recognized. Behind the well-armed host stood two guards holding a ragged prisoner between them—Rhys val Kincaide.
And behind these…three eidola. Something about them…Ean couldn’t put his finger on why their presence made him suddenly uneasy. He slowly straightened and moved himself between the advancing host and Sebastian’s bent form.
“It seems we meet again, Ean val Lorian.” Raliax’s voice had lost none of its smugness for Ean’s having nearly cut him in twain in Tyr’kharta.
Ean rested a hand on his sword. “The better to best you twice, I suppose.”
“Bold words.” Raliax looked around at his men. “But I clearly have the upper hand. You’d be a fool to resist.”
“I’ve been called worse things than a fool.” Ean fixed a cool grey gaze on the man. “I’ll bet you have too.”
Raliax flashed a knife-sharp smile thick with animosity. “You val Lorians… always thinking yourselves so superior.”
“Only compared to some.”
Raliax’s eyes were twin coals of hatred. “Still…we needn’t be at odds.” He seemed to bite the words as he said them. “You’ve brought what we want…and we’ve got what you want.” He waved for his men to bring Rhys forward.
Ean suspected the Saldarian’s bold posturing had much to do with the patterns still cluttering the air—the ones seeking to entrap anyone working the fifth. But Raliax couldn’t know that Ean had already set them to unraveling. He doubted Dore could make a pattern that he couldn’t now easily unwork—the man was devious but predictable.
As the soldiers parted to make way, two Saldarians dragged the chained Rhys forward and dumped him roughly at Ean’s feet. Ean kept his eyes on Raliax as he bent to Rhys, but then he swept his gaze across his captain. Rhys’ condition brought a lump to Ean’s throat. The weeks of captivity had made a wasted shell of the once-robust soldier; he’d been brutally beaten and looked ill with fever.
Ean pressed a hand to the captain’s shoulder with gentle concern. This was not the reunion he’d hoped for. “Rhys…”
The captain’s voice came as a bare whisper across cracked lips. “Your Highness…kill these bastards. They—”
One of the Saldarians jerked on the chain he held, and the captain flew backwards onto his side. He exhaled a forceful grunt of pain, which devolved into a coughing fit that sounded far worse.
Ean slowly straightened, his gaze arctic now. “And my other men?”
Raliax’s smile could not have been more smug. “Just waiting for a word from me to be released.”
“And what about the eidola hiding in the corner? What’s their purpose? Impartial witnesses?”
Raliax spun a look over his shoulder to the supposedly empty corner where Ean knew the eidola were waiting. He hadn’t bothered unworking that illusion, for the currents revealed the creatures readily enough.
Raliax’s expression had measurably darkened when he looked back to Ean. “So… you see how this will go.” His black gaze flickered around the room as if trying to reassure himself that twenty men and a dozen eidola would be enough to contain Ean. Then he jerked his head towards Sebastian. “The wielder’s useless to you now. That’s the Labyrinth upon him—no getting free of it.” He caught his bottom lip between his teeth in a smile that bespoke base desires. “Leave him. Take your captain and your men. That’s the deal.”
“My men.” Ean felt sick as he shifted his gaze to the three eidola standing in the back. His heart went out to them; their blood would forever stain his hands. Likewise the guilt of their end. But he had no illusions that they were his men any longer.
Ean exhaled a slow breath. “Let’s get this over with, then.” He settled his gaze on Raliax, cold and hard as winter iron. “Where’s your master?”
Raliax’s eyes gleamed darkly. “You treat with me or not at all, little prince.”
“Very well, if you insist.” And he drew his sword.
Two dozen men drew theirs in reply.
Ean kept his gaze fixed on them but asked his brother, “Are you ready, Sebastian?”
Sebastian rose slowly from his crouch and stepped forward to Ean’s side. He lifted his head and settled a penetrating gaze on Raliax. “Like there’s no tomorrow, Ean.”
The Saldarian took two reflexive steps backwards. His eyes darted between Sebastian and Ean. Then he rushed Sebastian.
The others rushed Ean.
Ean cast the fifth into the chains binding Rhys. Then he swept his sword overhead and spun into the cortata, noting mid-turn that Sebastian had done the same.
The room fell into chaos.
For many minutes, Ean knew only the clash of steel, the sounds of battle and the rush of elae in his ears. Men fell beneath his blade, others to bolts of the fourth which he cast like arrows. The latter sent men flying, often taking others down as their bodies plunged like boulders catapulted through the larger host.
But then the mortals grew wise and cleared away from Ean, and the prince found himself in the center of the long gallery with eidola coming at him from all sides.
Ean saw them as black forms against the currents, phantoms that absorbed elae’s light—or perhaps repelled it completely—like the Merdanti blades they all carried. One of them started a rattling hiss that the others joined, so that a sibilating threat soon simmered in the gallery. It played counterpoint to the sounds made by the men still fighting Sebastian and to the rain washing the windowpanes.
Ean watched the creatures coming, their speed increasing with every step. Individually, he could take them, but all of them together…?
He darted a glance down the gallery and its long row of rain-spattered windows. The eidola might be immune to the fifth, but the room wasn’t.
Running, Ean flung the fourth at the windows. They exploded in a deadly spray of glass. The concussion sucked the rain inside, and the raging wind overturned and doused the lamps. Ean embraced the storm with his mind and cast it through the room, drenching all in stinging spray. Then with a thought, he turned everything to ice.
The marble floor became instantly slick—only Ean’s feet found solid footing beneath his intent. The running eidola hit the ice and slid, fell, skidded—slammed into one another. Ean sent a bolt of the fourth towards three of them to augment their own momentum, and they flew out the shattered windows into the night. Three more he anchored in the ice with a thought. It would hold them for only moments, but he’d take whatever moments he could.
Spinning around, he ran to find the eidola who’d been his men. He owed them their freedom from the hell of Darshan’s binding, and he would give them that if nothing else.
The closest one—who Ean recognized with a heartbreaking jolt as Fynn’s man Brody—jumped for Ean, but he dropped into a slide beneath it. The creature soared over his head, hit the ice behind him, and went veering towards the far wall.
With a little help of the fifth, Ean slid back onto his feet and ran for the next one—Dor
in! Ah, Cephrael no.
He’d been so loyal and such a fine scout!
The eidola who wore Dorin’s stolen face hissed at him. Feeling a pain in his chest that was his heart rending, Ean dove for the creature and took him off his feet. They both sprawled onto the ice in a spinning skid. Wrestling the thing around beneath him, Ean reached into its mind and ripped apart the pattern that bound it to life. The body stilled while they were still sliding.
A third eidola fell upon him from behind, and Ean rolled to meet it head-on. Black eyes stared into his from the golem face of Cayal.
Cayal! Oh, Cayal! Not merely his man, but a friend in true—honorable, faithful, one whose counsel Ean had always respected. Ean swallowed the stone of guilt in his throat and grabbed Cayal’s head between both hands. The eidola pinned powerful knees into Ean’s shoulders and pulled a dagger from a sheath at its thigh. The blade was heading for Ean’s heart before he saw it.
Ean shoved the fifth against his own body and sent both himself and Cayal skidding just as the dagger would’ve pierced his flesh. The blade sliced along his ribs in a line of heat and lodged in the floor, only to be ripped out of the eidola’s hand as they flew away across the ice.
They spun in a tangle, and in that flicker of an instant Ean questioned himself. Was there a way to save Cayal? Could he sever the eidola’s connection to the Prophet and somehow…?
But even before he thought it through, he knew there was no saving this man who’d been so brave and traded his life in service of his king. When Ean chose to save Sebastian, he’d sacrificed these loyal men as surely as if he’d cast them himself into the flames.
And that was the truth Ean had to face. Cayal and the others were already dead.
Agonized, Ean twisted while they both slid across the ice, and grabbed for Cayal’s arm. He knew exactly where to find the pattern of binding now—he barely had to look for it anymore, as his mind simply found it through any sort of contact—and with a surge of the fifth, he seared the pattern out of existence.
He who had once been Ean’s friend fell back, no more animated than a broken statue.
As their motion across the ice slowed, the prince wanted only to stay there with Cayal’s remains. He wanted to grieve for him and say the Rites for the Departed—for surely Cayal and the others deserved no less than this grace—but instead he gritted his teeth and rolled to his hands and knees—just as Brody raised his blade above him.
***
Sebastian spun into the cortata and raised his sword to block Raliax’s downward stroke. Their enchanted blades clashed with the dull ring of stone on stone, but in Sebastian’s mind, the sentient weapon sang. He felt it like an extension of his arm, a lengthened appendage jointed at the hand. Sebastian spun beneath their locked blades and swept his sword around in a forceful arc, slicing across the black scales of Raliax’s armor. The Saldarian barely jumped back in time.
Sebastian pressed on the offensive. It thrilled him to fight cleanly, without the tricks Dore had made him use; the cortata fueling Sebastian’s free mind gave him more power than he had ever hoped to wield. Downward he swung his blade, back and forth the weapon hissed, splitting the air with its razor edge, driving Raliax relentlessly back. The only thing Sebastian compelled was the Saldarian’s desperation.
Another swing sliced for Raliax’s chest, that time drawing blood. Even Merdanti armor couldn’t protect against a sentient blade.
Raliax swore and scrambled back, scattering men behind him in his haste to escape. Elsewhere in the gallery, two dozen others were attacking Ean, but Sebastian suspected that his brother could hold his own. He only had eyes for Raliax—clear eyes, unimpeded by Dore’s twisted illusions.
Sebastian stalked the Saldarian, who looked far less smug now than he had a minute ago. “I remember things.” Sebastian swung his blade in its own deadly dance, keeping the form of the cortata. “Many things…how you dumped me in N’ghorra, and even before. I remember you.”
Raliax held his sword before himself warily, but he looked more keen to flee than fight. Resentment alone must’ve rooted him. “Oh, aye, I remember you…Prince Sebastian, all pride and posturing, come to M’Nador to impress us with your rhetoric and velveteen smile.” Raliax carved arrowheads out of his words, and he fired each of them at Sebastian laced with poison’s bitter bite. “You were an arrogant prick then, and you’re no better now.”
“True, I am no better.” Sebastian gave him a grim smile. “Now I am merely smarter.” He took another step towards the man as he twirled his blade in the cortata’s slow, twisting dance. “I have you to thank for that.”
Confusion clouded Raliax’s gaze. He lifted his sword as if to defend against an unaccepted truth. “What’s this…wielder’s trickery?”
“Gratitude.” Sebastian took another step. “If I hadn’t first endured N’ghorra’s lessons, I never could’ve survived Dore Madden’s.” Abruptly he darted in with his attack.
Raliax matched his advance with a grunt of effort, and their battle paced a fast blur across the floor, blades flashing, until—
The windows exploded. Sebastian drew up short, letting the spray glance harmlessly off him—nothing so slight could penetrate the barrier of Dareios’s shirt of mail—but Raliax threw an arm across his eyes and ducked for cover. Wind scoured the gallery then, extinguishing the lamps. Sebastian watched eidola go pouring across the floor after his brother.
He allowed himself a moment of wonder. Then he turned and ran after Raliax.
As he crossed the room in darkness, he thought he saw a figure wrestling with shadows. It might’ve been the captain.
Abruptly something struck beside his head and glanced off again, rebounded by Dareios’s mail. Sebastian spun as a form rushed out at him, and he swung up his sword to counter the blade flying towards his eyes. Their hilts clashed with brutal force.
Raliax uttered a growl—fury mingled with malice. He tried to overpower Sebastian, but the latter slung his sword to free it and danced to the right. Their blades scraped along each others’ edges as Sebastian slid safely out of reach.
They paced each other then, two predators casing the same hunting ground. “I remember you were different, too.” Sebastian held his sword before him, grey eyes fixed on his enemy. “Raliax of Tambarré, Envoy and Adjutant. You had a promising career…that is, I suppose, until you failed to kill me properly. What happened after Viernan hal’Jaitar stole me away? What did your masters exact from your soul in punishment?”
The Saldarian’s eyes were pools of black hate. “You know nothing of me.” But the vitriol in his tone said otherwise. “Stop gabbing and fight, you gimp-legged jade!” he rushed at him.
Sebastian skipped aside, but at the same time he slid the fourth along his blade and flung it outwards like a rope. Raliax tripped across the thread of power and tumbled, skidded across a floor that had somehow become ice. He shouted curses under his breath as he scrambled to regain his feet, and then he called to his nearby men to attack in his stead.
Five Saldarians rushed Sebastian, albeit unsteadily on the icy floor.
Sebastian might’ve used any manner of patterns to subdue them, but honor kept such thoughts corralled. That he’d found honor again at all after so long still brought a choked feeling to his chest. He cast the fourth before his feet to crack Ean’s ice and rushed forward to exact the cost of his vengeance on Raliax’s men.
One, two, three fell to his blade. He thrust, he spun, he bounded over the fallen and ran his sword through a fourth.
Suddenly power flared in a halo around him, and he spun with an intake of breath to see Raliax flying backwards through the air. The blackguard had tried to attack him from behind.
Sebastian ducked beneath the swiping blade of a fifth man rushing in and spun. He surged upwards, sweeping his blade in a deadly, diagonal arc that cut deep. The soldier fell.
Instinct shouted and Sebastian threw himself sideways. Raliax’s sword thrust missed him by a breath. The Saldarian snarled in outra
ge and barreled into Sebastian, and they crashed into the ice. Both of them lost their blades.
Raliax scrabbled for the advantage and managed to get his hands around Sebastian’s throat. He smashed Sebastian’s head backwards hard enough to shatter the ice skimming the floor. Sebastian felt his head hit the marble beneath, and pain exploded in his skull.
***
Ean rolled to avoid Brody’s descending blade. The razor edge slammed into the ice mere inches from his head. He threw the fifth to push himself free and flew out from underneath Brody just as the latter was bringing down his blade a second time.
The group of eidola that Ean had pinned in the ice were helping free each other as Ean skidded past them on his back across the floor. Even as he watched, the last of them broke out of the ice block that had been encasing its feet.
Ean felt the beginning of a dull ache behind his eyes, the signal of impending exhaustion—he’d been working the lifeforce nearly non-stop since they arrived in Ivarnen—but resting meant dying, and dying wasn’t an option. Ean saw the pack of eidola coming for him and felt a desperate sense of frustration. He needed time to figure out a way to handle all of them at once.
Breathing in determination, the prince caught up his sword as he pushed back to his feet. Then he summoned a third strand pattern and split time, fracturing each moment into multiples of itself, making seconds into minutes.
He stood then, chest heaving, head throbbing, while the world around him slowed. Rain seemed to hover in the air as it inched slowly towards the floor, the shifting mist took on a granular cast, and the eidola moved as if through stone. Sound ceased.
Ean listened to his rapid breath and the thudding pulse of his heart and tried to solve the problem of these eidola.
Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3) Page 75