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

by Melissa McPhail

  Sebastian turned forward again feeling terrorized—more in view of what Ean was going to do to him when he woke up than because of what lay behind. He hiked his brother’s inert form higher in his arms and blessed Ean for teaching him the pattern that was fueling his steps.

  “That was…Isabel.”

  The Merdanti staff thudded dully on the floor as Rhys struggled to keep up. “Who is Isabel?”

  “Isabel is Ean’s…wife, I suppose. It’s complicated.” He shot him a somewhat desperate look over his shoulder. “Isabel van Gelderan.”

  Rhys missed a step. The staff’s end struck unevenly against the floor, and the captain exhaled a pained grunt.

  Sebastian supposed he understood how a statement like that must’ve sounded to a man like Rhys. No doubt the captain was pondering even now how Prince Ean had wed the sister of the world’s greatest known traitor. How little he understood of what was truly going on.

  How little any of them understood.

  And by Cephrael’s Great Book—what was Isabel thinking?

  ‘Darshan is coming,’ she’d said. So she’d knocked Ean out for gods knew what reason, given them her weapon and…what? Walked out to meet the bloody man? It felt like insanity. It had to be insanity.

  There was no way it was insanity. Isabel knew what she was doing.

  But it certainly looked insane.

  Sebastian forced his aching legs to keep moving. Whatever was happening in Ivarnen…whatever greater battle had begun, his only job now was getting them to the node.

  They reached a tower and Sebastian hurried down its tightly curving stair, nearly leaning into the wall to keep his balance while carrying his brother’s heavy form.

  “My prince…my prince—a moment—” Rhys’ breathless voice called to Sebastian from far back on the stair.

  Sebastian paused and took a moment to reclaim his own breath…but in that sudden stillness, futility pounced on him.

  The node chamber seemed a world away, while his brother’s form felt like a lead weight in his burning arms. Instinct told him an army of eidola waited between them and the node, the same army Isabel had perceived while down in the caverns. And how many more would soon be coming after them from above? With Ean unconscious, they didn’t stand a chance.

  Rhys caught up to him, pushed a hand against the wall and hung his head. He looked haggard. It took a lengthy span of wheezing for him to summon enough breath to speak. “Just a moment…a moment to catch my wind.”

  Sebastian didn’t think they had even a moment to spare, but he’d already abandoned Isabel—never mind that she’d forced him to—and he certainly had no intention of abandoning the captain when he was the whole reason they’d come to Ivarnen to begin with.

  But the captain’s ‘moment’ felt agonizingly long.

  Sebastian set Ean’s body down on the stairs and used the time to release his over-taxed muscles. He loosened his blade in its scabbard, adjusted his baldric and tried to think of any patterns that might possibly defend against eidola.

  Just as Rhys was lifting his gaze and nodding wordlessly that they might continue on, they heard it—the pounding echo of stone on stone. Eidola running.

  Sebastian cursed. He bent and shook his brother where he lay against the wall. “Ean!” He shook him harder. Then he slapped him.

  Ean’s eyes jerked open and he sucked in his breath.

  Sebastian felt a wave of relief.

  Ean pushed groggily up to sit taller. “What happened?” One hand felt along the back of his head as he looked around the stairwell.

  Sebastian cast him a look of black chagrin. “Isabel happened.”

  “Isabel…” Ean blinked. Only then did he seem to notice the captain standing several stairs above him, holding Isabel’s staff. He swung back to Sebastian. “Where is she?” He surged to his feet and grabbed Sebastian. “Where’s Isabel?”

  “She’s gone, Ean.”

  “They took her?” Ean gaped at him in horror. “You let them?”

  “Of course I didn’t let them! It was Isabel, she—” But Gods above, how did one explain such a thing? Sebastian shoved a hand through his hair and then flung it at his brother. “Darshan was coming for you. She—thirteen hells, Ean, I don’t know what she did, but whatever it was, she did it so we could escape.”

  A cold and uncompromising fury settled across his brother’s gaze. “I’m going back for her.” He spun.

  Sebastian grabbed his arm and exhaled a frustrated oath, but it was the captain who truly stopped Ean. He angled Isabel’s staff diagonally in the narrow passage, blocking Ean’s path, and fixed an equally belligerent and uncompromising stare on the prince. He seemed more than squarely matched against Ean’s stubbornness.

  “The lady said not to let you come back for her. She said to get out of Ivarnen, out of Saldaria, and to use the node to do it.” Even wasted with illness, Rhys stood as a wall of conviction, steadfast and resolute. “Now I don’t know what power Prince Sebastian can work, but I got the impression we needed Your Highness to travel the node.”

  Ean stared at Rhys, radiating a rage so formidable that Sebastian had to step back from him. The currents clouded around his brother, layer upon layer of formless power just waiting to be molded to his intent, and as furious as Ean was, he might’ve annihilated half the castle with one misthought.

  “For gods’ sake, Ean.” Sebastian laid a tentative hand on his brother’s arm, willing him to listen, to see. “We had no choice.”

  “You. Left. Her!” The words fulminated out of him, black explosions of condemnation. Sebastian felt each one in his gut.

  He pushed palms to his temples, guilt-ridden and exasperated. “Ean…she said she was upon her path—”

  He heard his brother’s sharp inhale, and his expression…in an instant his face switched from enraged to utterly, completely…shattered. The currents swarmed into a riotous tumult, a hurricane sea of devastation.

  “She’s upon her path…” the words left Ean’s tongue and whispered across his lips as though bled from them. He shifted tormented grey eyes away, red-rimmed and burning with too many emotions to name. “She’s gone…to him.”

  Sebastian reflected that this conversation might’ve been handled better, but they had no time. The eidola were nearly upon them.

  “Ean.” He took his brother by the shoulders. “They’re coming—can’t you hear them? Can’t you see them on the currents?” Sebastian was feeling the first real vestiges of panic. He searched his brother’s gaze, trying to reach him through what seemed a veil of incurable despair. “Ean—don’t make Isabel’s sacrifice worth nothing!”

  Ean stared at him, unseeing.

  “Ean!” Sebastian cast it with a hint of compulsion, demanding Ean’s attention to fix on him instead of on Isabel’s loss.

  His brother’s gaze instantly focused. Instantly hardened. Then eased with understanding…and split into a thousand shades of anguish. He dropped his head, pushed a hand roughly against Sebastian’s shoulder and shoved past him on down the stairs.

  Sebastian exchanged a look with Rhys. Then they set off after Ean.

  ***

  Isabel watched Sebastian leading off into darkness. How strong he was! What honor he displayed as he embraced his new chance at life. Sebastian had reawakened beneath the dawn of her Healing, and all that had been pure in him had grown brighter and more vital.

  The path she’d sown when Sebastian was newly waking had expanded into a wide trail. Sebastian would anchor Ean, while Isabel had unbalanced him. These brothers would find their path together.

  Feeling hope for Ean, if none for herself, Isabel drew in a deep breath, let out a shuddering exhale, and turned and walked into the hall—

  And directly into Dore’s pattern lying in wait.

  Eidola swarmed around her.

  Black hands clutched at her.

  Dark thoughts clung to her.

  The currents ran as ink.

  A cruel and familiar laugh rose above the si
bilant eidola rattling, and Dore Madden pushed his way through the morass.

  “Oh-ho, I set a trap for a mouse and caught an eagle!” He thought he had her contained, which she let him believe. He spun a look back over his shoulder towards his master, the blinding star blocking all else from Isabel’s view. “My lord—it is she, who I spoke to you about…”

  Dore continued his gloating words, but Isabel…she saw only Darshan.

  He towered over the eidola, over Dore—he would’ve towered over Arion had they ever met—and everywhere he walked, his will radiated forth like the sun’s endless rays. Darshan worked compulsion as instinctively as Adepts worked their native strand. She saw this easily, though remaining unaffected by it took all of her skill.

  Yet it fascinated her to see this being and study all that went into his innate construction…to observe the way the currents simultaneously clung to him and flung outwards from him, the way his thoughts set them alternately trembling or glomming to him in great clouds of power. The currents were as helpless and malleable beneath his gaze as any living thing, all of whom he sought to dominate utterly.

  Darshan would make all of creation submissive to him—bound beneath his steadfast, obdurate and inflexible will.

  The sea of eidola parted to let him through.

  Isabel urgently wrapped a shield around her thoughts—indeed, around her very being—closing off and concealing all but a thimble of the light that was uniquely her, like a lantern shielded but for a single slat that allowed some small glow to escape. Still, in the case of Isabel, this glow was not inconsiderable. She didn’t yet know if this shielding would prove to her advantage or her ruin, but there was nothing more she could do to influence either eventuality.

  “But where is your Arion?” Dore shoved his mouth against her ear. “Where? Where?”

  She reminded herself that he thought he had her under his control and whispered, “Gone…escaped.”

  Dore stiffened beside her. “No.” The word emerged with his breath in a defiant gasp. Then he snarled. “NO!” He slung around and shouted at the eidola. “Find him! Bring him back!”

  A slew of them streaked away down the hall.

  Isabel cast forth the desperate thought, Hurry, Sebastian. They’re coming. Then she dared think no more, for Darshan stood before her.

  She felt his cold presence chilling her flesh, felt him exploring the pieces of her mind that she’d left glowing—a purposeful lure, that he might not delve more deeply. Even so, the touch of his mind scalded her, and his gaze…he caressed her skin with darkness, with power, the lick of his eyes but a whisper. Any more than a whisper might’ve seared her from the ether.

  He stood before her with skin as bronzed as the belt of metal that hung about his hips. Dark eyes watched beneath a wide forehead. His nose was long, straight, and like his brother’s, slightly rounded at the end, but his chin was square, his cheekbones sharply contoured. A cascade of braids fell down his back. Darshan stood bare-chested, yet it was Isabel who felt naked beneath his gaze.

  He lifted his hand and with long fingers traced the line of her jaw. Dore’s pattern of binding she’d all but ignored. Darshan bound her with his gaze alone.

  “You described her as formidable, Dore.” He sounded amused.

  At his resonant voice, the eidola quieted.

  Darshan ran his finger beneath the curve of Isabel’s chin. His touch sent chills racing down her spine, raised bumps upon her flesh, and made her heart quicken—in fear or aught else, she couldn’t be certain. This man possessed a power that even she barely understood.

  “But look at her…” He arched a brow as his fingers continued their gentle inspection of her face. “As fragile as a bird…and blind, it would seem.”

  “She wasn’t blind in Tyr’kharta,” Dore complained. His voice sounded like a whining child’s next to Darshan’s.

  With his burning gaze holding her fast, Darshan cupped Isabel’s head with both hands and ran his thumbs across the silk covering her eyes, lightly across her delicate lids. His power wrapped around her like a cloak, binding her to him, imparting to her his desire as if it were her own. Had he demanded anything of her in that moment, she wasn’t certain she could’ve resisted him.

  “No…” He released her face—allowing her at last to draw in a shuddering breath—but he left one hand resting on her shoulder, as if the continuing contact pleased him. “This woman poses no threat to me.”

  “But, my lord—”

  “Do not trouble me with your petulance, Dore Madden.” Darshan raised his voice but a fraction, yet his irritation thundered through the corridor.

  “My lord, my lord…” Dore came nearly crawling back to him, head bowed and wringing his hands in a revolting display of obsequiousness. He licked his lips and turned a glare of hatred upon Isabel. “My lord, she deceives you—”

  Darshan’s eyes flashed, and his hand tightened on Isabel’s shoulder. “You forget your place.” That time his voice boomed, Isabel’s ears rang, and the currents seethed beneath his indignation.

  Dore clasped hands and held them high above his bowed head, a placating gesture. “I mean only that she is…deceptive, my lord. She has power but…but she hides it. My lord—” he licked his lips and cast an urgent look towards the gallery. Then he dropped his voice and hissed, “She murdered your children.”

  Darshan frowned and looked back to Isabel. He took her chin and tilted her head back to better view her face, and his eyes examined her features while his mind explored her thoughts. She’d never felt so bare to anyone’s inspection, nor so helpless to resist—

  Nay…perhaps the will remained with her to resist—she was much stronger than she appeared—but she didn’t dare try resisting just to prove to herself that she might. This was her path now. She had to walk it to know where it would lead.

  “Hers is not the mind I felt,” Darshan said after a moment of this intensely unsettling inspection. “But…defiance cannot go unpunished.”

  “Yes…” Dore sounded highly pleased. He rubbed his hands together, and his black eyes grew luminous.

  Darshan’s gaze narrowed. “Not by you, Dore Madden.” The currents boiled with his displeasure. But when Darshan looked back to Isabel…oh, what menacing thought had brightened the depths of his gaze? It terrified her all the more for how deeply pleased he seemed by its ingenuity. “Yes.” He smiled as he held her chin in his hand and her will in thrall. “I have a more fitting punishment in store…”

  She felt his mind reach for hers, and she felt him…felt him closing that tiny opening, the glow she’d allowed him to see, like shuttering the lamp…

  Ean…forgive me!

  The lantern closed.

  ***

  Ean…forgive me!

  Ean stared, unseeing, as the thought impinged upon his consciousness—distant, faint, yet cast with such intention that he knew she’d meant for it to reach him across the world…even across time itself.

  In the next moment, he couldn’t feel her at all.

  Breath left him—nay, his heart simply stopped contracting, his lungs ceased expanding, thought ceased being.

  A sharp pain daggered into his brain, demanding Ean’s attention. He focused instantly on Sebastian, instantly furious, but then he understood why his brother had sought to impinge upon his thoughts. Still…the crushing weight of loss was more than he could bear.

  He pushed his brother out of his path and fled down the steps.

  She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be—

  No…he could feel her still…

  Relief exploded with an intake of breath, shuddering and strained. But knowing she lived in no way lessened the abject fury that gripped him. Desperately he searched the bond to better sense her presence…desperately he clung to its ephemeral glow, so fragile and wavering as to be nearly nonexistent. The flame that usually burned so brightly—even sometimes painfully—in his consciousness had been banked to its lowest ebb, mere coals darkened with ash.

  Bu
t she lived. Until he understood more, it would have to be enough.

  I am upon my path…

  Ean could almost hear Isabel saying those dreaded words. She’d been hinting at this moment for weeks. He’d known it was imminent. He’d just never imagined—he hadn’t let himself imagine—it would actually happen.

  Behind him, his brother cursed in pursuit of him—or else in flight from what pursued above, for they were all fleeing the torrential currents and the storm of eidola that drove them forth.

  As they reached the tower’s base, Ean flung open the door and bolted through, with Sebastian close and Rhys several paces behind.

  “Ean—” Sebastian sounded desperate as he emerged into the corridor.

  Ean silenced his brother with a look. He reached for Rhys and dragged the captain out of the tower. Then he narrowed his gaze and sent the fifth into the stones. Or…perhaps it would’ve been truer to say he drew it out of the stones. Even as they watched, the walls began bleeding sand.

  Ean grabbed Rhys’ arm and hauled him away while spearing his brother with his gaze. “Run!”

  They fled the crumbling tower and the avalanche that followed. Soon the corridor was filled with limestone dust and chalk, the fumes of dying walls. Ean summoned a pattern and let the currents guide him through dim light towards the node, but he hardly needed the currents to tell him what waited between themselves and freedom: A long corridor guarded by eidola, and a node chamber wall to wall with them.

  “Ean—”

  “I see them, Sebastian.” Verily, the currents flowed like pitch with the blood of men made into monsters.

  Ean kept a hand around Rhys’ arm to help him along. The captain was huffing and wheezing, straining to keep apace. Isabel’s staff clapped dully along the corridor stones with his uneven steps, an agonizing reminder of her absence.

  Ean felt the eidola like a vein of cold water threading through a shallow pool, icy where warmth should’ve reigned; so did their presence flow along the currents of elae—not merely darkening them but depleting them of life, sucking warmth from the world as a Merdanti blade absorbed magic.