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

by Melissa McPhail

  Only when the first onlooker fell back in a spray of blood did anyone realize these were real soldiers and the university was being invaded.

  Chaos broke out.

  A second wave of soldiers materialized on the Quai court and jumped into the audience after their brethren. They slashed through the hapless fans to form a spearing line. Then came a third wave.

  Tanis leapt onto one of the stone benches and ran towards the center of the stadium where he’d have a clearer view, but he soon lost any hope of spotting Nadia among that chaos. The stadium appeared as a storm-washed sea, with people nearly climbing over each other to escape.

  The university’s Regiment Guard—bright spots of blue and silver—came rushing out of the tunnels and started fighting their way toward the mercenary force against an ocean of screaming people. A few brave souls attempted workings—Tanis felt energy flare and expand just before one explosion hit near the advancing line of mercenaries—but a black-robed wielder appeared on the court to deal with such resistance. A dozen bolts of the fourth cast randomly into the crowd nullified future attempts and stirred the masses into further frenzy.

  Almost worst of all, Tanis saw maestros among the terrified students, but none of them lifted even a finger in aid.

  Tanis pushed palms to his forehead. Nadia, where are you? He exhaled a frustrated breath and strained his eyes scanning the crowd. The cacophony rising from the frightened and injured made concentration difficult, but Tanis thought he saw a spot of white in the lowest circle of rows, near the field. If it was N’abranaacht, he was still over two-hundred rows distant—wide rows clogged with frightened people.

  Tanis made for the spot he’d seen anyway, leaping from bench to bench, weaving among the crowd, dodging others also using the benches but heading away from the field.

  Motion on the Quai court drew his eye as he ran, and he watched a company of Guardsmen rush onto the black and white tiles, led by two men in black robes. A sorcerous battle began then between the man Tanis assumed was Shail’s wielder and the wielders for the Guard, with the latter trying to reach the former through concussive waves of power that flattened anyone unlucky enough to get caught in their cross-fire.

  Tanis was beginning to hope they might succeed in stopping the enemy wielder when a man climbed the steps to the field…or…Tanis blinked to focus on the distant figure, for his eyes seemed to think the man’s skin was entirely black.

  He stalked onto the Quai court carrying an ebon-hued blade, and he walked with the manner of a fighter who knew he had the clear advantage. Two of the guardsmen broke formation to confront him, but he swept them aside with easy back-handed blows. They tumbled like twigs to lie still at the edge of the court. Six more soldiers moved to block the man’s progress then, and a battle resulted. The black-skinned man easily held his own.

  Tanis knew him then, for what else could he be than eidola? Had he been hiding in the audience all along, concealed perhaps, like Shail himself, in the passive robes of a Palmer?

  Tanis observed all of this with one eye on the Quai court and the other guiding his way as he jumped from bench to bench, pushing through the masses still trying to escape. For all that his breath came fast from this effort, he felt cold inside.

  A hand caught his arm roughly. Tanis grabbed his aggressor’s wrist, jumped off the bench and spun, flipping the man over onto his stomach. He shoved the other’s arm up behind him with the latter’s hand turned in a torturous hold and exhaled a warning growl.

  “Yeow!” Felix’s cry sounded muffled, made as it was into the stone bench.

  Tanis released him with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry.” He extended a hand to help Felix up. The Nodefinder had a cut over one eye, a bleeding lip, and a nasty bruise blooming on his chin. “What in Tiern’aval happened to you?”

  Felix glowered at him while dabbing at his lip with the back of his hand. “Nothing you didn’t just make worse!” He exhaled forcefully. “Wouldn’t you know? N’abranaacht’s got a whole company guarding the entrance to the node chamber below the Quai court. If I hadn’t been able to travel twisted leis, the bloody barbarians would’ve beheaded me.”

  Shade and darkness.

  Tanis climbed back atop the bench and turned a desperate look around. The amphitheater remained in chaos, while the melee on the Quai court had devolved into a heated battle. Smoke and ash floated in a bluish haze, sparkling with lightning of the fourth. Tanis felt a constant tingling, like pins stabbing his skin.

  He pushed a hand through his hair, feeling utterly inept and fighting off a crushing sense of futility. Any minute the mercenaries would have their Adepts surrounded and begin evacuating them across the node that Shail’s wielder was protecting.

  “Bloody Sanctos on a stake, Tanis.” Felix had joined him on the bench and was casting his gaze around in horror. “What can we do?”

  Tanis spared him an agonized look. “I—” But a sudden perception drew his attention to the lowest circle of rows, where he saw two figures moving against the exodus.

  Nadia.

  Tanis sprinted for her.

  ***

  Nadia’s shoulder ached beneath N’abranaacht’s clawing fingers, which seemed to emanate icy cold so that her entire arm was numb beneath their hold. Yet the experience paled compared to the numbness she felt inside.

  When N’abranaacht had taken over her mind and usurped her communication with Tanis, he’d somehow equally shut her out of the exchange. She had no idea what he’d said or done to Tanis through the bond, and the thought that Tanis might’ve come to harm because of her carelessness made her heartsick with fear. The worst of it was she couldn’t even sense elae while the literato was touching her. She had no recourse to any of her gifts and no means of contacting Tanis again.

  She’d tried pulling away many times, but escaping N’abranaacht’s hold felt as much an impossibility as suddenly seeing dragons descending on Faroqhar in fire and flame. Yet…that envisioning now seemed no more improbable than armed mercenaries invading the Sormitáge, or the black-faced…creature that was fighting countless Regiment Guardsmen on the Quai court and winning.

  In fact, the entire day’s events had Nadia feeling faint with disbelief. Could the literato have somehow switched doors while they were taking tea, so that she’d emerged from his office into a world that looked the same yet existed on an entirely different plane?

  She tried to keep her wits about her, but such dreadful thoughts kept presenting themselves for her regular inspection that it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

  For the longest time, N’abranaacht had made her sit on a bench while chaos erupted around them, but now they were up and moving towards the Quai court. She didn’t even remember being instructed to stand and walk.

  That he could invade her mind, compel her cooperation, even usurp a bond—all through the touch of one hand…this was a truth altogether unimaginable. Fear gripped Nadia as tightly as the literato’s fingers.

  She tried pulling away again, but her effort was half-hearted, and this time the literato squeezed so painfully that she gasped and her knees buckled. Even falling didn’t free her from his grasp. He merely caught her other arm in a vice-like grip and kept her moving.

  “Still thinking your young suitor will come to your rescue, Phoebe?” The malicious humor in his tone made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Nadia didn’t trust speech. She clenched her teeth tightly lest he somehow compel another truth from her wanton tongue. Fear made her feet unsteady, while guilt weighed heavily on her heart—such guilt! It would consume her should she dare think of the truths beneath it. But she didn’t dare, for what if he could read her mind as easily as he compelled her tongue? What havoc could this man wreak if he knew he held captive the heir to the Agasi Empire?

  They had to walk a fair distance, and Nadia was forced to step over those who’d fallen to an early blade. As they rounded one edge of the court, a man in a hooded cassock rose from a bench.

/>   The literato thrust Nadia into the man’s grasp. “Take her.”

  She looked beneath the shadowed hood, and fear lodged as a lump in her throat. The man’s eyes were wholly black—likewise the flesh of his face and the hand that reached out to shackle her wrist in an iron hold.

  “Get her across the node, but keep her isolated from the others until I return.”

  “Your will, my lord.” The creature’s voice sounded like pebbles rattling in a tin cup.

  It pulled Nadia into the embrace of one iron arm. She turned a look over her shoulder, but N’abranaacht was quickly heading up a near flight of steps.

  The man’s arm around her shoulders felt as unyielding stone, yet relief flooded Nadia—for now that N’abranaacht had released her, she sensed the lifeforce again. She drew in elae like a man nearly drowned, a shuddering, grief-stricken inhale, and was just forming her intent to compel the creature to let her go when a resounding explosion rocked the air and sent her staggering into her captor’s arms.

  Ears ringing, Nadia clung to the creature’s immovable form and looked for the source of the explosion. Midway up the stadium, a figure in silver mail and a red surcoat emblazoned with the imperial crest stood atop one of the tunnel arches.

  The Imperial Adeptus—thank the Lady!

  The wielder held a silver staff whose smoking tip remained aimed across the stadium at the mercenaries. Nadia swung her head to find their lines broken and the Adepts fleeing.

  Another wielder of the Adeptus appeared on an adjacent tunnel roof. He raised his staff and aimed a murderous blast towards the battle on the Quai field. The wielder there deflected the pattern, which exploded against a section of the court and disintegrated the tiles into a massive geyser of ashen dust.

  Red-cloaked soldiers came pouring in through several archways then, but they still had to battle their way through a terrified exodus to reach the mercenary forces, who were now reforming their lines. The two Adeptus wielders atop the tunnels began concentrating their fire against the black-skinned creature fighting the Regiment Guardsmen on the Quai court.

  Then something—Nadia could only describe the force as thunder without sound—ripped through the stadium and flattened her painfully against the creature holding her; he himself stood as immobile as stone beneath the onslaught. She watched over his shoulder in growing horror as an invisible wave swept up the theater, taking down everyone in its path.

  The Adeptus wielder standing atop the tunnel spun like a ragdoll in the surf. She didn’t see where he landed and could only pray he’d maintained the wherewithal to protect himself.

  Breathless, Nadia sought the source of the strange power and spotted another of the black-skinned creatures high on the other side of the stadium, standing upon its crowning colonnade.

  Instantly the remaining Adeptus wielder retaliated against the creature, and the sky above the amphitheater lit up with the fourth. Soon all the wielders from both sides were attacking and defending. Deadly patterns flew like arrow volleys. No one paid any attention to how many innocents were harmed in the process.

  Nadia stared. Was the world falling to pieces?

  Everywhere she looked, Nadia saw chaos. Worst of all was the newest creature at the theater’s rim, for he fired off constant lobs of thunder without sound that flattened or shattered everything they hit, while the wielders’ aiming against him might’ve thrown feathers for all their patterns made any difference.

  And then—impossibly—No…it can’t be…?

  Nadia blinked at a white figure streaking along the colonnade at the stadium’s rim, brandishing a black sword. A moment later the figure swung at the creature, and they met in a clash of blades.

  “That’s our cue.” The monster holding Nadia dragged her off towards the nearest tunnel.

  Wait—he’s not taking me to the Quai court? But—

  Suddenly every instinct screamed in alarm. She thrust her feet before her. She struggled. She tried compulsion. She even shouted. But the creature was an unstoppable force sweeping her inexorably on. Elae had no effect on it.

  In a final act of desperation, she flung open her mind.

  Taaaniiis!

  ***

  Tanis got separated from Felix in the blast of deyjiin that ripped through their side of the stadium and cast the boys tumbling into a crowd of onlookers who’d stayed to gawk at the battles. The shaken lad was attempting to extract himself from the bodies that had graciously broken his fall when a streak of white at the stadium rim caught his attention. He blinked and pressed palms to his eyes. Then he stared.

  N’abranaacht’s silk robes clearly outlined his muscular form as he rushed to engage the eidola—his own creature—in combat. Thus began the pirouetting dance of a black marble statue against an angel in flowing white silk, with the stadium’s majestic colonnade as a background.

  It made no sense!

  Tanis pulled his leg out from beneath an unconscious man and got shakily to his feet. Felix was still buried somewhere in the pile of people, but Tanis couldn’t spare thought for him just then, for every sense screamed in warning.

  The stadium had become a breeding ground for bedlam, yet what had truly shaken Tanis was the suspicion that he had it all wrong.

  He scanned the scene: the mercenaries still trying to herd their captured Adepts towards the Quai court while staving off the soldiers trying to stop them; the wielders battling each other as well as creatures obviously impervious to elae; the same creatures easily battling a dozen men at a time; and N’abranaacht himself, by all accounts looking as though he was coming to the rescue…

  Oh, gods!

  Tanis clutched his hair as the truth unfolded in front of him.

  Diversion. It was all diversion.

  No wonder everything remained in constant chaos. That was the point of the entire endeavor—creating chaos was all they were trying to do.

  ‘N’abranaacht’s got a whole company guarding the entrance to the node chamber below the Quai court…’ Felix’s words took on frightening new meaning. ‘If I hadn’t been able to travel twisted leis, the bloody barbarians would’ve beheaded me.’

  No. They hadn’t been trying to behead him, they’d been trying to capture him.

  Tanis pressed palms to his eyes and tried to breathe around the dread suddenly clenching his chest. He felt sick.

  All those thousands of people—they’d all had to pass by the node chamber as they fled through the tunnels leading out of the stadium. The enemy could’ve picked Adepts off at their leisure with no one the wiser. They might have hundreds across the node by now.

  Taaaniiis!

  Tanis caught his breath at Nadia’s sudden mental cry, which pounded in his head with the force of her alarm. He spun around in search of her and spotted two forms near the Quai court: Nadia struggling in the arms of a white-robed man—doubtless another of Shail’s creatures—who was dragging her towards a tunnel.

  In a moment of desperate clarity, Tanis knew if the creature reached that tunnel with Nadia, he would never see her again.

  Concussions rocked the amphitheater as Tanis jumped from bench to bench in a desperate streak. A blast passing too near sent him sprawling, and as he pushed shakily to his feet again, scraped and bloodied, he realized he’d never make it in time.

  In that moment, Tanis stopped thinking and just acted.

  He needed time to reach Nadia, so he reshaped time around his intent.

  Instantly the world shifted and slowed—smoke billowed lazily from the battle on the field; soldiers moved with sluggish limbs, taking seconds to match their swinging blades, even the sparkle of the fourth dulled—but Tanis flew.

  He launched from bench to bench to stone staircase and took the steps three at a time. He blurred around and past fallen men and shattered stones, ducked flying bolts of the fourth and dodged through storms of patterns that swept across the stadium like rain. And all the while he kept his gaze pinned on the man dragging Nadia inexorably towards the tunnel, trusting instin
ct to deal with the rest.

  The creature reached the tunnel just an instant before Tanis reached him. In the last, the lad leapt onto a bench and launched himself through the air. Hitting the man felt like diving into a marble column, but he did go down beneath Tanis’s form.

  The force of their collision knocked time out of Tanis’s control, and they tumbled in a fierce and painful tangle.

  Recovering quickly, the creature sprang to its feet, grabbed Tanis by the back of his shirt and flung him against the tunnel wall. Tanis slammed into the stone and fell painfully to his hands and knees. The eidola ripped off its robe and launched towards him.

  Nadia screamed.

  Tanis grabbed time again and wrapped it about himself like a cloak. The eidola’s fist shot towards him, but Tanis easily ducked it. He spun into the cortata and pulled out Phaedor’s dagger in the time it took the eidola to draw back its arm and swing at him again.

  Tanis struck the creature across the chest with his dagger, and to his immense relief it staggered back. Such monsters couldn’t bleed, yet Tanis knew he’d injured it from the way it pressed both hands to the contusion on its chest.

  Tanis drew upon the cortata’s power, and when the creature next grabbed for him, he ducked its thrusting arm and used the momentum to flip it over. He released time as the eidola slammed to the floor in a thundering clap of stone on stone, but then time yanked him back into its regular stream with a sudden jar.

  “Nadia!” Tanis spared a glance for her over his shoulder. “Run!”

  She had one hand on the wall and was struggling to rise, but he realized with a sinking heart that she was in no shape to flee. Blood streamed down the side of her face, pooling against her spectacles, and she looked dazed.

  The eidola found its feet again and launched for Tanis. It caught him around the waist, and they flew violently backwards through the air. Tanis made time into a rope and climbed up it, slipping out of the creature’s hold. He stood on its back while they soared past Nadia, and dove off the cliff of its shoulders just before it crashed violently into the tunnel wall. The floor shook in a rumble of falling stone as part of the wall collapsed atop the eidola.