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

by Melissa McPhail

  He smiled down at her. “Stealing away into the night. Would you like to come?”

  She spun a look over her shoulder at the Knights now flooding through her study. A sublime sense of vindication filled her. “They’re taking you for Questioning, Björn. Three centuries overdue.”

  His eyes sparkled. Then he flipped backwards off the railing.

  “No!” She threw her hands to try to catch him—

  Then she was suddenly flying.

  She didn’t have time even to curse his name before her body slammed into his, and his arms were around her, and they were falling in a whirling rush—

  The world jerked upside down. Alshiba spun head over heels and then hit up against something—not soft, no, though it didn’t exactly crush all the breath out of her lungs.

  A force spun her right side up, and then Björn set her down on her feet, but he kept her body encircled in his arms—in that moment of disorientation, she didn’t entirely mind—and waved at the glowering Knights now staring down from the balcony two hundred feet above.

  There among the tall trees, night had already claimed territory from the day. She could hear the waves lapping at the shore and cicadas beginning their evening song. The sky above shone with clouds painted in rose-gold and violet.

  “What…” it took her a moment to regain her breath, moments more to dare meet his gaze for knowing how deeply it would pierce her heart. “Just what did this accomplish?” She joined him in watching the Knights lining her high balcony. “They’ll only follow you down.”

  “Yes, but it will take them a few minutes to find the pattern.” He turned his smile back on her, making her tremble inside.

  Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone less infuriating? The worst part was, Isabel had warned her—oh yes, but she hadn’t listened.

  ‘He is an easy man to admire, my brother, but a hard man to love.’

  Alshiba had brushed aside Isabel’s warning all those years ago—she and Björn were in love!—but in the crushing centuries since, Alshiba had come to realize that Björn’s sister had already understood him in ways she never could.

  Staring quietly down at her, Björn cupped her cheek and brushed his thumb across her lips. Knights began landing around them, but his eyes never strayed, and what those eyes said…

  His thumb traced her bottom lip again, and the love in his gaze stole every ounce of defiance from her heart. He leaned and kissed her lips and let his breath mingle with hers as he whispered, “So full of regret, love.”

  She closed her burning eyes. “What else was left to me?”

  “Alshiba…” His tone commanded her gaze to meet his. He held her chin, like her gaze, without even a flicker of contrition—damn the man his insufferable certainty. “I told you all would be made clear if you just had a little faith in me.”

  She looked defiantly away. “I’m afraid I’m fresh out.” Who imagined so few words could harbor such immense bitterness?

  He replied with a knowing smile. “Oh…I think a little remains.” His thumb lifted her chin and angled her lips up to meet his again.

  Björn’s kisses never tasted of anything but sunlight.

  When he released her that time, he drew her close in the circle of his arms. His kiss, the feeling of being next to him again…it was more than she could bear. Why, oh why, were the Knights not taking him into custody?

  Her heart said, stay with him—go with him!

  Her mind said, make him tell you why he betrayed you!

  Logic said, what in Cephrael’s name is that flashing?

  Alshiba turned. Then she pushed him abruptly away. The Knights encircled them, but so, apparently, did a shield. The soldiers attacked an invisible dome with swords and magic and words of command, but their mouths and their steel moved soundlessly beyond Björn’s barrier.

  He was smiling when she looked back to him.

  She ground her teeth. “Everything is just a game to you.”

  His fingers caught a lock of her hair, and he tugged her close again. She felt a magnet for him, always pulling him near, and he like the sun to her—scalding and immense, the unquestionable center of her universe anytime he was near. “It’s the unspoken rule of life, dear-heart.” Björn gave her another of those smiles that so easily enchained her to his gravity. “There must be a game; else, what are we all doing here?”

  She drew breath to answer—she didn’t know what, just something to deny him—but he fastened his mouth over hers, clutched her body against his and ruthlessly stole what breath she’d mustered.

  She saw stars as he released her and drew away. “You know where to find me.”

  Alshiba made fists of her hands at her sides. “Easier said than done, I hear.”

  “I’m sure you’ll manage with all the resources at your disposal.”

  He turned, but she grabbed his coat. Her eyes were hard. “If I come for you, Björn, I’ll bring all the force of Illume Belliel with me.”

  Björn grinned. He took her hand from his coat and kissed her palm. “Love of my heart…I’m counting on it.” He gave her a sweeping bow and backed away.

  Alshiba grabbed for him again, but her hand hit an invisible wall. In the same moment, the shouting of men suddenly accosted her ears. Now she and the Knights were somehow together inside the dome, while Björn stood without.

  He placed a hand on the shield and mouthed three words. Then he turned and walked away.

  Alshiba dropped her chin to her chest and forced back a sob.

  “My lady?” One of the Knights placed a hand on her shoulder.

  She shook her head, not trusting to words.

  Three minutes later, the dome, like the man who’d conjured it, had vanished.

  ***

  Björn stood in the shadows just beyond the pillars of the antechamber leading to the apartments of the Speaker of the Thousand Realms. Light from a massive crystal chandelier above the adjutant’s desk chased the shadows from the room, so Björn had created some in which to stand unnoticed. He’d called off the guards with an illusion and was attempting to use a similar trick on the aide, but this man was proving both more logical and more cautious than his counterparts.

  Björn sent another noise cascading down the passage. The aide looked up again with a frown. Anyone could read the questions in his eyes: where were the guards? What was the noise and why hadn’t they taken care of it? Finally, he stood with a dramatic exhalation of annoyance and walked from the room to investigate.

  Björn slipped around and into the Speaker’s apartments.

  The chambers of the supreme leader of the Council of Realms were appropriately gilded, pretentiously immense, and decorated with the spoils of eons of tributes from the thousand realms. It was rather like walking through a museum—the display was as exhausting as the distances between each set of doors.

  After a long walk, Björn stopped before the towering double doors of the Speaker’s office and watched the currents. They confirmed that the Speaker was out. He cast elae into the lock to depress the pins. The trace-seal upon the door he simply unworked.

  Inside, he found the office as he remembered. Much like the rest of the Speaker’s apartments, his office was elegantly appointed and lined in tall windows. An expansive balcony overlooked the sea. When Björn had held the Alorin Seat, the then Speaker had been an incompetent man incapable of seeing beyond a century or two. The new Speaker was better suited to his position.

  Björn was sitting in a chair waiting for him when he entered.

  Aldaeon H’rathigian, Seat of Markhengar and Speaker of the Council of Realms, moved with the characteristic poise of the Elven races, even while he balanced many ledgers in his arms. He wore the Speaker’s robes, which glimmered with opalescent silk and Markhengar’s own silver sapphires, but the elaborate adornment seemed almost crude against his graceful stature—the proverbial gilding of the lily.

  He set down the ledgers on the corner of his desk and then happened to look up. Water-clear
truthreader’s eyes stared. Then they blinked and stared harder. Then he looked over his shoulder at the door, which he had just unlocked and worked a trace-seal to open—for Björn had of course relocked and rewoven the seal once inside—and turned back again wearing an expression of complete bewilderment. “I will never understand how you do that.”

  Björn’s lips arced in a half-smile. “It was practically open.”

  “The door was bound with the fifth!”

  “Perhaps a newer lock?”

  Aldaeon grunted. “As if iron would stop you when a tri-form pattern cannot.”

  Björn’s eyes danced. “One can’t be too careful, Speaker. Word is there are dangerous men about.”

  Aldaeon arched a brow. “Yes…my aide informed me of a commotion at the Alorin Seat’s apartments. I confess, it never crossed my mind it could be you.”

  “I told you I would visit.”

  The Speaker grunted dubiously. “You know the Council would crucify me if they knew I was standing here like this with you. I can’t think of anyone more sought after on our docket.”

  “And do you intend to tell them?”

  Aldaeon observed him with a frown. “I haven’t decided yet.” Smoothing his silver-pale hair as the only indication of his discomfiture, he sat down in his chair, leaned back, and exhaled a slow breath. “Has it really been three centuries?”

  “Give or take a few decades.” Björn looked appreciatively around the room. “You’ve done well in my absence.”

  Aldaeon very nearly rolled his eyes. “You were the next sure candidate for the Speaker’s Seat. When you left, the votes fell to me…but I suspect you knew that would happen.”

  Björn smiled. “It never hurts to have a friend in high places—especially when one expects to soon become a fugitive.”

  Aldaeon pressed at a miniscule speck on his desk. “I must’ve been your most vehement defamer.” He glanced up at Björn beneath his brows. “I rallied the Seats against you.”

  “That you felt betrayal so deeply only proved the depth of our friendship.”

  Aldaeon gave him a considering look laced with skepticism…a long look during which he was clearly deliberating. Finally he shook his head. “You didn’t want the Speaker’s seat. Politics bore you—even those as convoluted as Illume Belliel’s.” Casting Björn a frown, he rose from his chair and walked to a gilded credenza the size of a small village. As he was pouring wine into two crystal goblets, he looked over his shoulder. “You would’ve had us all wrapped around your fingers within a week, and then what?”

  Björn grinned. “Indeed. Crisis averted.”

  Aldaeon came over and handed him a goblet. Then he sat in the chair across from Björn and considered him with a frown. After some time of this, he said, “I read your letter.”

  Björn arched brows and sipped his wine. “I wrote that letter many years ago.”

  “It took me many years to decide to read it.”

  “Fortuitous you kept it.”

  “You made it impossible to burn.”

  “One must take some precautions, even with friends.”

  Aldaeon grunted and shook his head. For a moment, he stared off absently into the night. “Until I read your letter, I thought you’d gone as mad as Malachai…sure that something in that realm of yours spawned lunacy.”

  Björn traced the rim of his goblet with his thumb and gazed at his wine; in the dark liquid he saw a darker realm of brimstone and fire, and clouds laced with silver-violet lightning. “We spent half a century planning, Aldaeon, and a solid decade building it, and then, when the task was done and the realm created…” he shook his head and looked back to the Speaker. “We had no idea what hit us.”

  “You spoke of deyjiin in your letter.”

  Björn gazed at the darkened windows and saw a reflection of that silver-violet power as it had first appeared, racing along the rim of the world. “We didn’t understand it.” He sighed resignedly. “We certainly didn’t expect it. And before we knew what had happened, it had driven Malachai mad.” He turned and met Aldaeon’s colorless gaze. “He’d been our focal point, the group’s talisman. We worked the entire thing through him.”

  “A grave tragedy.”

  Björn nodded in acceptance of Aldaeon’s condolences. Even now, he felt Malachai’s loss as his personal failure. There were all the reasons in the world to excuse himself from responsibility, but none which truly mattered. He should’ve foreseen it. The burden of Malachai’s death would rest forever on his conscience.

  “Suddenly we were in a scramble to save the realm we’d created—but it wasn’t about T’khendar, Aldaeon, truly. It’s what T’khendar was meant to do.”

  “In your letter, you described the realm as a fortress.”

  “The last bastion between the fringes of Chaos and the Realms of Light.” He took a contemplative sip of wine and gazed out the windows, but instead of the blossoming stars, he saw the cosmic spiral of the thousand realms, with Alorin at its far tip and Illume Belliel at its center. “So long as T’khendar stands, the Malorin’athgul cannot unmake the realms from the plane of Chaos, where their power is greatest.”

  “But they’re unmaking your realm even now.”

  He looked back to his friend. “Their existence in Alorin alone is enough to disrupt the Balance.” He gave him a fleeting smile. “I was struggling to keep the entire game from collapsing. It was lose Malachai or lose T’khendar and everything we’d worked so hard to accomplish.”

  “You sacrificed him.”

  Björn held Aldaeon’s gaze…nodded. “Malachai’s madness exacted a terrible toll.” He grunted and looked away again. “But I had to keep the ultimate goal in mind—this wasn’t about one man or one world but all the peoples in all the thousand realms.” He ran his thumb along his goblet again. “I sacrificed him in a sense, yes…and I sacrificed my own realm to a great degree. There are those who will never forgive me for it.” He looked up to meet Aldaeon’s gaze. “Perhaps they shouldn’t.”

  The Speaker shrugged in acceptance of this truth. “Someone must atone for the genocide, or so demand your critics—Alshiba being foremost among them, I might add.”

  “Malachai more than atoned, Aldaeon.” Björn turned a grim look out the windows again, lest Aldaeon see in his gaze how deeply the truth still speared him. “His soul…deyjiin unmade it.” Fierce eyes swung back to meet his friend’s. “That was Malachai’s reward for bravery beyond mortal comprehension—to be removed from the circle of Returning. Eternal death.”

  Aldaeon paled. He set down his goblet as though it held this unwanted truth within its depths. “Deyjiin can do that?”

  Björn leaned towards him. “They can do that. And with naught but a kiss of their power.”

  The Speaker looked appropriately horrified.

  Björn leaned back in his chair and eyed him shrewdly. “It’s only a matter of time before they find their way to Illume Belliel, my friend. And from here—the center of the thousand realms? What harm could be wrought?”

  Aldaeon shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “What makes you think they’re seeking the cityworld?”

  Björn held his gaze. “It’s what I would do.”

  At this response, the Speaker looked exponentially more disturbed.

  Björn ran a finger along his lower lip. “One of them at least has made contact with the Shadow Realms.”

  Aldaeon stiffened. “You’re certain of this?”

  Björn gave him a telling look. “He twice used inverteré patterns to kill…” the thought brought a sudden lump to his throat that gave him pause. Even with Ean Returned, Arion’s loss remained a wound that would never fully heal. “…a dear friend.”

  The Speaker stared at Björn. “Couldn’t he have gained these patterns elsewhere? Despite long efforts to confine them, inverteré patterns are still extant in the realms.”

  “These patterns were new, different. He pushed deyjiin through them, tried to unmake—” but he bit his tongue. Even now he co
uldn’t say it—didn’t dare think it. The idea of losing Arion from the tapestry forever, as he’d lost Malachai…

  Frowning with concern, Aldaeon picked up his wine and sipped it, holding Björn’s gaze over the rim. Much passed between them during that enduring silence. Then the Speaker arched a brow as if with a new understanding. “By the Blessed Lady’s Light…you think they’re making a pact—this Malorin’athgul and the Warlocks of Shadow.”

  “Made. It’s nearly assured.”

  Aldaeon fell back in his chair, looking stunned. “But the treaty—”

  “Malorin’athgul don’t care about the treaties that bind the thousand realms, Aldaeon. When Alorin signed its pact with the Council, we shunned the Shadow Realms as was required of us, and the welds opening upon Shadow have been stricken from our weldmaps and charts. But Malorin’athgul aren’t bound by the same cosmic laws.” He leaned forward, draped his forearm across his knee, and pinned the shocked Speaker against the back of his chair solely with the force of his gaze. “Balance shifts beneath their feet like sand, my friend, and they have no compunction whatsoever about working their power, our power, or inverteré patterns corrupted by deyjiin to achieve their aims.”

  Mouth slightly ajar, Aldaeon lifted his goblet, held it to his lips without drinking, and then lowered it again. He wetted his lips. “And you think you have this grave threat in hand, do you?”

  Björn shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “More or less.”

  As he sipped his wine then, he lifted his gaze to the cage of energy surrounding him. It stood invisible to the naked eye, but the currents revealed its shape to him, as well as the many patterns that comprised it. “This is really lovely work, by the way.”

  The Speaker gave him an agonized look and set down his goblet dejectedly. “How long have you known the celantia was in place?”

  “Since you summoned it.” Björn stood and examined the invisible shield that would prevent him from moving beyond a space of about four square feet. As his fingers touched this prison of light, sapphire-blue patterns spiraled outwards in a kaleidoscopic burst of color.

  Aldaeon also stood, looking supremely apologetic. “One must take precautions sometimes…even with friends.” He bowed his head as he walked to the side of his desk, but there he paused with his hand on a gilded box. He spun Björn a regretful grimace. “They’re not above reading even me, you know—the Questioners of our illustrious Council.”