The wall of darkness at the end of the corridor broadened, and the currents roiled in response to the overwhelming numbers of the creatures that waited there. Their distant rattling hiss made the corridor seem an opening to a rattlesnake’s den.
Reaching an intersecting corridor, Ean called a halt to let Rhys catch his breath if he could. Sebastian stopped and faced him, looking guilt-ridden. “Ean, I—”
“There’s nothing to discuss, Sebastian.” Verily, trying to speak of Isabel’s absence would completely undo him.
Sebastian pressed, “I would’ve stopped her if I could—”
“Sebastian, I know.” Ean looked to Rhys and then back to his brother. “We’re getting out of here. I have an idea of how to do it.”
Looking grim, Sebastian turned ahead and surveyed the wall of darkness lying across their path. “Your game, your rules, little brother,” he muttered.
Ean clenched his jaw. Sebastian had it all wrong. This wasn’t his game—he wanted no part in any game that took Isabel from him. And yet…for all he wanted to shout this denial, he knew it would be a lie.
Though he’d thought of it as the First Lord’s game, now Ean realized it had been his game, too—all along. Their game, the three of them. He could no more deny that than he could deny his love for Isabel.
Feeling as if the darkness at the end of the corridor was no match for what seethed in his soul, Ean set his gaze on the future. “Stay close.” He set off at a run.
The hissing and rattling grew louder, the currents blacker, their pounding feet swifter. As they neared the eidola, Ean threw the fifth as a ribbon before them and forged a path over the monsters’ heads.
Black hands reached for their feet as they ran on air thin of possibility and thick with an inhuman hunger. Stone bodies leapt and jumped and flung themselves to try to trip their running feet, to cling to them, stop them, drag them down into the black spume of that hell of Darshan’s invention.
Ean held his sword like a shield before him and poured the fifth off of it, keeping the path clear ahead, while Sebastian flayed his blade left and right and the captain made a bludgeon of Isabel’s staff. The dull clap of stone against stone became a constant assault on Ean’s heart, shouting in an elemental tongue, Isabel…Isabel…Isabel…
The corridor broadened, opened, and they reached the node chamber at last—a vast, columned hall with a rib-vaulted ceiling bathed in the cool light of wielder’s lamps. And beneath, a floor seething with eidola.
Ean’s head throbbed in a painful chorus to the pounding of Isabel’s staff, while his body felt thin…drained of life, drained by fear for Isabel, by the sensation of their separation…yet he dared not stop. Momentum alone carried them forward now.
But the moment they emerged into the chamber, thunder without sound exploded. Ean caught the brunt of the force on his blade and simultaneously wrapped that ribbon of the fifth around himself and his companions, but he couldn’t arrest their fall beneath the concussion. They tumbled, rolled, barreled through eidola to come to a halt near the center of the chamber.
Ean threw up a new shield and made it solid as he climbed over writhing eidola to reach his brother. The prince ripped the binding pattern out of every creature he touched along the way, so that by the time he gained Rhys’ and Sebastian’s sides, only the three of them remained alive inside his shell of air. The world felt eerily silent.
Utterly exhausted of heart and mind, Ean collapsed beside his brother and rested his head on Sebastian’s chest, feeling threadbare. The shield which he held in place blocked all force, all sound, yet Ean felt the army of creatures battering wildly against it.
“Ean, are you…?” Sebastian placed a hand on Ean’s head as he sat up.
Ean slowly pushed himself up as well. “I’m all right,” but he felt far from all right. He felt shattered, abandoned. Desolate.
Sebastian exhaled an oath and looked around. Eidola amassed beyond Ean’s dome, piling upon it like rats, but not even a whisper of their sibilant chorus reached their ears. “How are you doing this?”
Ean pushed palms to his throbbing forehead. “I don’t know.”
But he did know—after a fashion.
‘Arion was my brother’s closest friend. Björn confided in him, taught him things no one else knows...’
Light flared against the shield and spread in a web of violet-silver. Ean felt it searing into his consciousness like Rinokh’s thumb pressing again to his flesh. He staggered to his feet. Time was running out.
Sebastian jumped up after him and took his arm. “How long can you hold it?”
Ean clenched his jaw. Already he was having difficulty focusing his eyes. “Not much longer.”
His brother squeezed his arm in reassurance. “We’re close, Ean. We can make it.”
Ean turned him a desperate look. “How?” He clutched his brother’s shoulder in return, feeling like he could barely stand. “I don’t…when this shield falls, I can’t…”
Sebastian’s gaze conveyed his understanding. “You still have to get us across the node.”
Grimly, Ean bowed his head and pressed his forehead against his brother’s shoulder. He feared if he worked any more of the lifeforce, he wouldn’t be able to withstand the force of the Pattern of the World raging through him.
“If His Highness can’t work his magic, then we do it the hard way.”
Ean lifted his head with effort to look at Rhys. The captain was getting to his feet, leaning heavily on Isabel’s staff. His face looked pale and drawn, and he was drenched in sweat. That he found his feet at all seemed a fair miracle to Ean. Isabel must’ve had something to do with his recovery.
Sebastian wrapped an arm around Ean’s shoulder, sensing his equal waning of strength. “What’s your idea, Captain?”
Rhys ran his eyes along the dark staff in his hands. “The lady said to use it against anything that stood in our path.”
Ean cracked a threadbare smile. Ever Isabel was looking out for him. He forced back a welling sense of frustration…forced his body straight, though he felt like the entire mountain was squatting on his shoulders. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
Deyjiin flared again, webbing across Ean’s dome. He sucked in his breath with a hiss. Every time that power touched his mind he felt it dissolving his hold on elae.
They made haste to arrange themselves in a row with Ean in the center and Isabel’s staff held horizontally before them, and they aligned their direction towards the center of the room and the node.
Ean gripped the staff with both hands and clenched his teeth. “I’ll hold the shield as long as I dare.”
Sebastian cast him an encouraging look. “I’ll be right beside you, little brother. Ready, Captain?”
Rhys grunted.
And so they went.
Ean managed barely five steps into their dash before his shield gave way beneath another blast of deyjiin, but Sebastian threw up a shield of the fifth as Ean had taught him and they kept moving.
Ean had never known such gratitude for his brother as what he felt in that moment. Right beside me, indeed.
With Isabel’s staff as battering ram clearing the way ahead, and their desperation pushing from behind, their mad rush to the node became less a flight to safety than the trampling force of a cavalry charge. Eidola fell, scattered by Sebastian’s working and Isabel’s staff, and then the node was before them—likewise the eidola who had been wielding deyjiin.
Three things happened at once:
Rhys cried out and staggered to his knees.
The eidola in front of them threw another bolt of deyjiin.
And Ean grabbed both of their arms and dove onto the node.
The Pattern of the World sucked him into its rushing embrace. Holding tightly to his precious cargo, Ean swam the current back the way they’d come, trusting—praying—that they both had hold of him in turn. For he sensed nothing but light, felt nothing but the raging, ripping force, saw nothing but the channels upon which he sw
am to bring them back to—
Kandori.
They landed in a heap in the tiled courtyard, which lay silent beneath the moon’s luminous kiss.
Ean moaned.
Sebastian groaned.
Rhys made a choking sound that thrust Ean’s heart into his throat.
He surged free of the tangle and reached for Rhys. The captain lay on his side with the hilt of a knife extending from his back.
Ean let out an anguished cry.
Dareios! He cast forth the thought with desperation, with every ounce of the fourth he could put behind it. Help us!
Then he moved to cradle Rhys’ head in his lap. To have gone to such lengths to rescue him only to lose him now felt like being unmade all over again. He stroked Rhys’ hair back from his face. “Hold on, Rhys…help is coming.”
Sebastian set down Isabel’s staff and looked over the captain’s wound. His eyes, lifting to meet Ean’s, revealed the truth.
Rhys gazed up beneath a labored brow to focus on Ean. “Your Highness…” The gruffly managed epithet held no rancor, no judgment, only sorrow. And perhaps a hint of Rhys’ usual reverence that now weighed upon Ean’s conscience like a ship dragging anchor.
“Rhys…” Ean took the captain’s hand in his. “Help is—”
“Don’t waste it…on me.” The captain’s gaze shifted to Sebastian…and a smile split across his wasted face. For a moment he gazed at the two princes, and then a look came into his eyes. Ean almost thought…it seemed amazingly like…pride.
“Knew you’d do it.” Rhys shifted his gaze back to Ean, full of candid admiration. “…knew you’d find him…save him.”
Ean turned Sebastian a swift look.
“…had to,” Rhys gasped. Conviction alone must’ve fueled his breath. “He was…your brother.”
“Captain…” Sebastian’s face was tormented with apology.
Rhys shifted his eyes to him. “In Tyr’kharta…lost my honor when I denied you. I couldn’t believe it…didn’t want to. I failed you…all three of you.”
Though he didn’t know what had transpired between Rhys and Sebastian in Tyr’kharta, Ean felt Sebastian’s guilt resonating with his own.
“Later…I knew…” Rhys looked back to Ean. “When you didn’t come for us…the wielder’s trap…” His smile showed teeth stained with blood. “…knew you’d found your brother…that you would save him.”
Ean bit his lip, eyes welling. How could he have chosen any other way? Yet facing the very real and devastating consequences of that choice was agony.
Beside him, Sebastian opened his mouth to speak, but Rhys silenced him with a lift of trembling fingers. “It’s right…it’s what…His Majesty would’ve wanted.” He gave his princes another pained smile that conveyed so readily his relief in seeing them together. “His sons…restored—” He choked suddenly, and fell into a fit of coughing.
Ean gritted his teeth and dropped his chin to his chest. He’d abandoned Rhys and his men to a horrifying end; yet through it all, Rhys had lost not an ounce of respect for him. Ean didn’t deserve the captain’s esteem.
Then a sudden host of others were descending upon them in the night, a flurry of hands and low, urgent voices and whispering silks. Ehsan drew Sebastian off while Dareios and Bahman had to physically pull Ean from Rhys’ side to let the Healers see to him.
With unshed tears burning his eyes, Ean looked to the sky in accusation, searching the night’s stars for Cephrael’s Hand—expecting, as it so often was, for the constellation to be shining down on his agony.
Yet the sky stood empty. As he hung his head and sucked in a shuddering breath, Ean knew then that these tragedies weren’t Fate’s doing—only his own.
Fifty
“If the beard were all, the goat might preach.”
–A popular Kandori saying
The wielder Viernan hal’Jaitar stood on a balcony overlooking the Shamshir’im torture chamber where the sailor Hafiz was being readied for questioning. In that they were readying him with batons and knuckles, and that this process had been going on for the better part of an hour, Hafiz’s answers were coming faster but far less coherently.
Viernan admitted the efficiency of truthreaders in these situations…except that truthreaders in these situations couldn’t be trusted. Something happened when you made fourth-strand Adepts into inquisitors. They lost their moral compass. The very quality you’d chosen them for—that inability to tell a lie—somehow underwent a corruptive metamorphosis, which quite defeated the purpose of using them at all. Then you were simply stuck with an Adept who could read minds and had few compunctions about selling what they ‘overheard’ to the highest bidder.
Thrace Weyland was such a one.
Thrace Weyland.
The Consul raised his lip in a sneer. He might’ve called Thrace by any one of his many names—Mayanar Galandan, Joreth Wren, or the name by which Viernan knew him best, Esfandiar Lahijani. Oh, if Viernan ever got his hands on Esfandiar…but the man was too smart to show his true face and far too adept at hiding it.
A viperous rattle behind him alerted Viernan that the Prophet’s creatures had come to pry into his business. Bethamin had given them as ‘gifts’ to Radov, but the Prophet’s gifts were always poisoned sugar. Like the gift of absinthe from Queen Indora of Veneisea, which had completely usurped his prince’s will. Like the ‘gift’ of the Prophet’s blessing kiss that seemed to have claimed Radov’s sanity in the giving so long ago.
Would that Viernan could give any of these gifts back—along with a few ‘gifts’ of his own.
Viernan cast the eidola a mordant eye. Ever the demonspawn followed him about, spying for their master and reporting to Bethamin on everything they saw and heard in the shadows of Tal’Shira. They lived inside Viernan’s privacy like parasites under his skin. He couldn’t step from his chambers without finding one of them watching his door—watching him. They never slept, never ate…but my…what he’d seen them do.
After observing a demonstration of one of the creatures against twenty of Radov’s Talien Knights, hal’Jaitar no longer harbored questions as to what had become of his wielder, Kedar, and the company sent out with the King of Dannym. Kjieran van Stone might have eliminated them all by brute strength—but certainly his master’s power would have accomplished the deed.
Luckily, few of the eidola worked this power. The creature called Tagn told him that the Prophet misliked too many of his offspring touching his power and that its investiture required a different pattern of binding. But Tagn worked it; likewise his silent partner.
The part of Viernan that desired retribution against the Akkad took this knowledge and basked with glee in its icy heat, but the better part of reason warned that a host of creatures with massive power and a miniscule sense of morality would only wreak havoc on their way to catastrophe.
The Prophet claimed to be Radov’s ally—though Viernan had little doubt that as soon as their mutual usefulness had been expended, their alliance would evaporate like a drop of water on the desert sand. And after the Akkad and Dannym had fallen to his will, what if Bethamin decided to turn his aims against M’Nador? Who would stand up to an army of such eidola when mortal men could not?
“…Thrace…Weyland…”
The gasped words from the sailor Hafiz snared the Consul’s ears and riveted his attention back to the chamber floor. He grabbed the railing and leaned forward. “What did he say?”
The black-robed interrogator lifted dark eyes to his master. His gaze spoke volumes. “He said he sold information about the prince to Thrace Weyland.”
If a snake existed that could spit venom from its eyes, Viernan hal’Jaitar would’ve been it.
The eidola Tagn came up next to hal’Jaitar, forcing the Consul to swallow his natural revulsion, lest the urge to destroy such an abomination should overwhelm his reason.
“What does he mean?” Tagn’s voice rattled like a pit viper’s tail. “Who is this Thrace Weyland?”
Fu
ry smoldered in Viernan’s dark eyes. A perpetual thorn in my side. “Weyland is a purveyor of information—the worst sort.”
“What is the worst sort?”
Viernan turned to him. “The kind who knows everyone.”
“Why does this concern you?”
Hal’Jaitar looked the creature over vexedly. “The prince has powerful friends. We have reason to believe they may attempt a rescue.”
The two eidola exchanged a look, and then Tagn fixed his inhuman black eyes on hal’Jaitar again. The Consul felt as if he stared into the dead eyes of a man-sized scorpion poised to sting.
“Our Master was displeased to learn Trell val Lorian survived the attempt on his life five years ago. He would be even less pleased to find the prince walking free now.”
How little you understand of it. Viernan looked back to the prisoner below. Taliah had sent word that she would like the sailor to be given to her once they’d finished their interrogation. Hal’Jaitar was of a mind to do it—better that all threads connecting to Trell val Lorian traced to Taliah.
“Where are you holding him?” Tagn clattered.
Viernan turned his head sharply. Why was this creature suddenly so interested in the val Lorian prince? He straightened and looked the eidola over, scouring it with his gaze. He’d seen these eidola kill and main, but were such creatures capable of guile? For the first time it occurred to Viernan to wonder if they had some agenda beyond spying on him for the Prophet.
“What kind of a name is Tagn?”
“Our master renames each of us upon our rebirth. Tagn means claw.”
The Consul grunted. Fitting. He looked back to the prisoner Hafiz below. “What’s your interest in Trell val Lorian?”
“You’ve chosen not to kill the prince, despite my master’s wishes. He would know then that Trell val Lorian is at least safely contained, Consul.”
Viernan considered the creature suspiciously. “He’s being held at Darroyhan.”
Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3) Page 78