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

by Melissa McPhail

  Tanis rolled as he hit the ground. Then he scrambled for Nadia, who stood leaning against the wall. He exhaled a desperate breath, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against him, feeling such a raging conflict of emotions—she’d still be safe if not for him! “I’m sorry—I’m so-so-so sorry!” he murmured wretchedly.

  Nadia’s eyes beneath her bloodied spectacles remained unfocused, so Tanis slung her arm around his shoulders, spared a glance for the eidola, which remained buried under a small mountain of rubble, and then drew Nadia down the tunnel, moving as quickly as she could manage.

  The thick stone walls soon drowned the explosions still raging in the stadium, but the sound of other dangers echoed among the maze of dim corridors: distant battle, snatches of men shouting, the chink of mail or boots on stone, the pounding of many feet or an errant scream.

  “Tanis?” Nadia’s voice sounded strained, a bare whisper. “I feel sick.”

  He hitched his arm more tightly around her waist and held hers more firmly around his shoulders. The corridor split just ahead, with a passage angling up and another angling down. He felt dubious about following either of them. “You hit your head pretty hard.”

  “There’s something…important I needed to tell you.” Nadia pushed a hand to wipe the blood from her eyes, but her fingers were shaking so badly that she only smeared it down her cheek instead. She flung her other arm around his neck and looked like she might pass out. “…I can’t remember…”

  Tanis clenched his teeth. All of this was his fault. He pressed his lips to her hair as she clung to him. “We’ve got to get you somewhere safe.” He chose the passage angling up and started off again.

  Tanis wasn’t familiar with the tunnels on that side of the stadium. He didn’t know which corridors led to safety versus leading to the node chamber beneath the Quai Court, or which wound down to the hypogeum, a warren of rooms left over from the stadium’s earlier, darker days.

  If he’d thought to use his father’s pattern to reveal the currents again, they might’ve shown him the way out, but the day’s events were beginning to take their toll. He felt exhausted. He’d been blasted and blown about and flung into walls; his brain had been seared, and he’d done things with time that no wielder had accomplished in centuries. All of this had significantly drained the well of his energy. He wasn’t as sharp-witted as he would’ve liked—as he needed to be.

  As he struggled on, Nadia started weighing more heavily; his overtaxed muscles ached, and his body grew leaden while his head felt too light. It took him too long to realize the corridor had curved and was now leading in the wrong direction, or to notice the darker shadow ahead that was an intersecting tunnel. He didn’t even hear the man until he stepped out in front of Tanis and raised his sword in warning.

  The soldier called back down the adjoining tunnel in accented Agasi, “I think this is the pair you were looking for, Captain.”

  “Bring them!” came a distant reply.

  The soldier motioned at Tanis with his sword.

  Tanis wanted to fight—he wanted to grab time and strangle the man with it, but the lifeforce hovered just out of his reach, made recalcitrant by his exhausted mind. So with no other options open to him, Tanis gritted his teeth and turned down the tunnel, which turned out to be a staircase.

  The steps were steep, and Tanis nearly fell twice. Nadia barely clung to him, for she was drifting in and out of consciousness. He was alone in keeping her on her feet.

  Torchlight glowed at the end of the tunnel, and Tanis exited the stairwell into a wide cavern framed in ornate columns. The carved ceiling and tiled floor embellished with spiraling patterns of the second strand.

  Four mercenaries stood at a far entrance—the main entrance—to the node chamber, blocking any escape. Well…those, and the eidola standing beside a man who was obviously the mercenaries’ captain.

  Tanis’s entire body clenched with frustration.

  The eidola yanked a nearly unconscious Nadia out of Tanis’s grasp and backhanded him. Tanis felt his jaw snap and then knew only a dazed blackness until hands grabbed him off the floor. His stomach heaved as they lifted him, but it had nothing to release back into the world, so it belligerently settled again.

  Tanis blinked to focus. The eidola stood just inches in front of him. Its eyes were like orbs of obsidian with the slightest silver-violet gleam deep within—deyjiin’s signature. Tanis felt the creature radiating hate.

  “The master wants him alive, remember.” One of the soldiers had spoken, but Tanis didn’t know which one. He could barely focus beyond his own nose, beyond the fire throbbing in his jaw or his pounding skull.

  The eidola’s black eyes bored into Tanis. Then it turned away. “Bind him with the goracrosta,” it said in a voice like tumbling stones, “and bring him with the girl.” The soldiers holding him pushed him roughly into motion. Tanis stumbled in the darkness and nearly fell. One of their elbows found his jaw on the way down.

  Blinding pain stole his breath. Then blackness claimed him.

  Fifty-Eight

  “No rush is so consuming as the elemental fifth.”

  – Dhábu’balaji’şridanaí,

  He Who Walks the Edge of the World

  Fazil, Captain of the Guard, stood on Darroyhan’s northernmost tower bathed in the gilt of a setting sun. The red-gold orb hung pinned between the darkening sea and the forward edge of a bank of charcoal clouds. Farther east, stripes of rain washed across the ocean, blanketing half of the horizon, while sunset painted the western clouds with angry light.

  It was a potent finish to the day, but Fazil barely noticed, for his dark eyes were riveted on the two creatures standing atop a distant tower. They’d arrived along with reinforcements from Tal’Shira, the rumored ‘bright stars’ of Radov’s new army, but Fazil thought they naught but drew darkness with them everywhere they went.

  Supposedly ‘secret weapons from the Prophet,’ they’d been sent to help protect Darroyhan—from what, none would say—but the creatures in no way lessened the collective apprehension building among the troops. If anything, the presence of such things made it worse, for what kind of threat required demons to thwart it? Fazil just saw them as one more reason to stay on his guard.

  If nothing else, the constellation proved his apprehension well-founded.

  Every night that week Fazil had watched the seven stars of Cephrael’s Hand rise in the west, cross directly over the tower where Trell val Lorian slept, and dive into the eastern ocean just before daybreak.

  And Fazil wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. It was whispered among his men that the constellation was watching over the prince. Others warned the stars were a beacon for Fate to come claim them all. Fazil had just decided to quell this talk—never mind that he quite agreed—when the reinforcements from Tal’Shira had arrived with those black-skinned demons, proving to his already superstitious men that deep trouble was afoot and heading their way.

  Now Fazil watched the eidola standing together, seeming little more than dark shadows limned in dying sunlight, and he wondered why they’d really come to Darroyhan.

  He didn’t trust those things, no matter what lies Viernan hal’Jaitar spun into plausible truths. The so-called eidola were unnatural and nothing made by their gods. Just hearing them talk—with voices like dry seeds rattling in a hollow gourd—had unsettled him more than watching Taliah hal’Jaitar work her witchcraft.

  That was two counts against Radov’s Prime Consul, in Fazil’s book. First the lie about Trell val Lorian being a turncoat and a spy. Second the letter telling Fazil to trust these eidola and to give them access to the fortress.

  Well, Fazil had let them roam about—albeit unwillingly—but all the treasure in Kandori wouldn’t entice him to trust them.

  One of his men came up beside him and joined him in watching the creatures on the distant tower. After a moment, he made a deprecating grunt. “They’re like death walking.”

  Fazil eyed him in silence, but
he couldn’t disagree.

  From the northernmost tower where he stood, the captain had a view of all seven of Darroyhan’s remaining towers. Even in the day’s dying light, he clearly saw Taliah hal’Jaitar and her two mutes emerge from the south tower where she kept her prisoners and walk along the parapet to the tower beside it, where she kept her residence.

  No sooner did she disappear into the latter than one of the eidola broke away from its twin. Fazil followed it with his gaze, watching it slide along the parapets like a shadow and enter the south tower Taliah had just departed.

  Fazil’s eyes narrowed. He looked back to the squall rapidly overtaking the entire horizon. Yes, a storm was definitely coming.

  ***

  Trell woke in darkness. He lay with disorientation like a blanket over him, trying to remember where he was and what had happened. An attempt to move chained wrists and ankles answered the former, and the enduring ache in his joints and shoulders told the latter.

  Taliah must’ve healed him again, though he recalled lying in pain for a long stretch after her last tantrum—days perhaps, but it was hard to keep track.

  He lay wondering what had woken him until he heard the door latch click. Moments later, the heavy door burst open and flew into the wall. Torchlight blinded him, and he squeezed shut his eyes until the spots behind them cleared. When he opened them again, the iron lamps were glowing and a demon stood at the end of the marble slab where Taliah had left him chained.

  Trell blinked, but the macabre vision remained.

  “You are the prince.”

  Its voice sounded like the clatter of pebbles down a stone stairwell. Trell couldn’t quite believe the thing was talking.

  It took a standing jump and landed in a squat at the foot of the table, jarring the room with a painfully loud clap of stone on stone.

  Trell stared unbelievingly at the thing. Was this some new trick of Taliah’s? Something conjured from her dark magic? Shade and darkness—could the thing have once been a man?

  “What are you?” His voice sounded hoarse to his ears, dry from days without drink.

  The creature grinned a bleak rictus, revealing a black, spiny ridge where its teeth should’ve been. “I am Death.”

  Trell laid his head back against the marble block and closed his eyes, resigned to whatever was to come—because, truly, what could he do about it? “It took you long enough to get here.”

  The creature made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. Did demons possess a sense of humor?

  “It won’t be long now, my prince, and it will please me to kill you, for my master wishes it too, but first—” Abruptly the thing sprang and caught itself low, with its hands to either side of Trell’s head, its body poised lengthwise over his own. Now that was disturbing.

  Its demonic face hovered inches from Trell’s, close enough that he could see a spark of violet in the depths of its gaze. “My master wishes to know: why did Kjieran van Stone betray him? Why did he choose you?”

  Trell blinked. Then, for a lengthy moment he just stared—the question was so non-sequitur. “Kjieran…?” He vaguely recalled the truthreader coming to him in his cell in Tal’Shira when he’d still been nailed to the wall—how long ago had it been? Trell had no idea. Weeks or months…the days all blurred together. Kjieran had been trying to save him from Viernan hal’Jaitar, that much he recalled.

  “I don’t…” he tried to focus his thoughts through the dull throbbing of his tortured head. “…Who is your master?”

  The creature moved to its feet. Now it towered over him. “You will answer, and then you will die.” It shoved a foot onto Trell’s ribcage and pressed down. It felt like a bear was sitting on his chest.

  Trell tried to draw breath. “I don’t—”

  “Kjieran van Stone betrayed our master!” Its voice came now in a rattling snarl, echoing in the stone chamber. “He tried to save you. Then he tried to save your father, both acts in defiance of our lord—treason! And after everything our master did for him. After such grace as our master’s love, which none have known since—Kjieran betrayed him!”

  Trell was seeing stars. The foot on his chest compressed so tightly he feared his ribs would shatter and pierce his lungs, and death really would come for him.

  And then something dark blurred before his vision and slammed into the creature with a shattering of glass. The thing flew off of the table and smashed into the far wall in an explosion of stone.

  Trell gasped in a breath that felt like needles stabbing his lungs. He saw one of Taliah’s mutes standing over him, and then Taliah herself.

  “Get that thing out of here,” she hissed.

  Chaos exploded around him. Trell closed his eyes and just focused on breathing. Glass from the shattered lamp had cut into his chest and arms. He felt the warmth of blood and the sharp fire of those cuts. Soon exploding stone peppered him everywhere else. It went on that way for some time, until—

  A dull thud right beside his head bade him open his eyes. One of Taliah’s mutes had just decorated the marble table with pieces of his skull. The other lay crumpled by the door. Taliah stood now between Trell and the demon with her hands spread against the table.

  Her dark eyes speared it in accusation. “I know what you are.” Her lips curled back so that her long teeth, like her father’s, seemed to spit the word, “Inverteré.”

  “Witch, my master cares not if you live or die.” It stalked towards her.

  Taliah threw her arms before her, and—Trell could only explain it as a dread darkness—rippled outwards from her core.

  It caught the creature in the chest and spun it backwards into the wall. The stone shattered in another explosion. With all the craters marking the walls already, Trell worried the entire tower would soon come crashing down around them.

  “Inverteré.” Taliah’s lips curled back again as she snarled the word. She pushed up her sleeves and aimed her palms at the creature, who was just then pushing blocks of stone off itself. “I know such patterns as what crafted you.”

  Reaching its hands and knees, the thing looked up at her under its bony brow. Its eyes were like black orbs of malice, and Trell saw something flash deep within them.

  Thunder without sound ripped through the room.

  The power shoved him painfully against the table, straining his chains, threatening to tear him and the chains from the stone; it sucked the air from his lungs, compressed his already stressed ribs, and finally sent him spiraling into darkness.

  ***

  Vaile flew through the storm.

  Tumultuous currents buffeted her velveteen wings, lifted and dropped her body, rocked her into uneven flight. All around, lightning burst into being, limning the charcoal clouds with great sheets of static brilliance. It couldn’t harm her, only lacing her dark wings with rippling light.

  She remembered when all of Alorin had slept beneath primordial tempests, waiting for the exploding land to be made ready for life. The drachwyr had been created in those fiery terrene forges, birthed of flame and smoke and sere sunlight; but Vaile and her brethren were the children of wind and clouds and starlight, born of the rippling energy of Alorin’s first storms.

  The fifth sang to her as she flew. It hummed into crescendos, charged forth in frenzied peaks, and fell into arpeggios of crackling static. Its song both bound Vaile and buoyed her, as if the lightning alone bore her through the damp and darkly crystalline clouds. She reveled in this elemental fugue, in the tension built in the humming downpour, the strings of the storm, and in the explosion of timpani in its thunder.

  It had been a long time since she had felt so alive…a long time feeling only a shell of herself.

  Perhaps she’d adopted many identities in her long life. Not as mortals did, by changing shells, but in her own way…selves reinvented or newly adopted for each millennia. But in the last many centuries, she’d spent too much time in her human form while the part of her that was uniquely Vaile drained away into transparency, bled of life like he
r dying realm.

  Once great men had challenged her, enticed her…even enchanted her…but she held no love for humanity in this age, though she loved some humans individually.

  She and her immortal counterparts, the drachwyr, varied in this view. The drachwyr were bound to humanity in ways Vaile had never understood. They possessed an infinite compassion and patience for mortal frailties, and seemed ever fascinated with those transient beings.

  But zanthyrs had no such threads of sympathy binding them, no cause to love or care for the races populating the mortal tapestry. Increasingly Vaile longed to exist solely as her wilder self, her elemental self, the side of herself that was purely and essentially the fifth.

  Was this storm your doing, Vaile?

  Náiir swirled down out of the grey froth above her, his scales a glint of fire, wings trailing steam.

  She angled a feline glance at him and then dove deeper, spiraling down into the denser storm. Powerful wings propelled her through darkness and flashing light. Let him follow if he dared. The drachwyr were not so fond of storms as she was.

  I merely borrowed its usefulness, Náiir.

  You’re pulling it with us. He appeared nearby again, following close with outstretched wings, coppery-gold fire searing through smoke. He banked and sliced into the darkly swirling clouds, vanishing in a spear of serpentine tail.

  Yes, but not off its course, she cast the thought back to him. You give my intelligence too little credit.

  Nay, only your prudence.

  Prudence has never troubled me. She flung her wings downward to lift herself over a mounding cloud and then dove through a hole just beyond it. Out of the clouds into the pelting rain she emerged, but only for the span of two thrusts of her raven-black wings, for she’d seen what she desired.

  As she rose again into the clouds, she heard Náiir’s mental sigh. Exactly my point, Vaile.