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

by Melissa McPhail

  Vaile’s emerald eyes narrowed in feline amusement.

  But just as quickly they hardened again, for in that brief moment below the cloud line, what the currents had shown her of the activities at Darroyhan sickened her heart and roused her fury.

  Vaile pulled the storm like a flowing cloak, so that as they came upon the fortress, rain pelted, lightning flashed, and thunder shook the world. She sent a pulse of the fifth to help the storm along, and a streak of lightning struck the spire on the northernmost tower. The men lining the parapets below scattered for cover.

  Just within the gauzy lowest clouds, Vaile made a wide perch of the fifth and settled lithely upon it. Moments later, Náiir banked a close circle and then landed beside her. She dodged to avoid his taloned wings as he folded them behind his body. His spiked tail wrapped around the perch, and its razor tip came to rest near her paw.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder resounded. The core of the storm shook the air.

  This is a fitting overture for our entrance, don’t you think, Náiir?

  He angled a fiery orb in her direction.

  Smoky clouds filtered across them, masking their forms from view of the men below, but even had mortal eyes noticed the immortal creatures hovering in the darkly shrouded heavens, they would’ve thought them figments of the storm.

  Náiir turned his golden-eyed gaze down upon Darroyhan’s towers. How should we proceed? We don’t know which tower they’re holding him in.

  She turned him a look that might’ve been a smile if told from the number of sharp teeth it revealed. I’ll go provide a diversion while you find out.

  He sighed. How did I know you were going to say something like that?

  Because I’m fonder of Trell of the Tides than you are.

  Somehow that isn’t the explanation I was thinking of. He aimed a look her way. Perhaps it would be better if I created the diversion, Vaile.

  Nay. Viernan hal’Jaitar might be expecting one of you to come for Trell. Whereas me…? The grin widened. They cannot even imagine.

  They’ll need imagine nothing in a moment, he groused. Try not to kill them all—I need at least one to tell us where to find Trell.

  Vaile turned her head to him, and her gaze held that insolent cast all felines seemed to possess. I should’ve brought Rhakar. He would’ve been more fun.

  Náiir cast her an annoyed look, which manifested in a sharp turn of his head and a hiss of steam from flared nostrils. Rhakar would’ve bound you to the storm and rescued Trell himself.

  Ha! Vaile launched off her perch, which dissolved as she departed, forcing Náiir to pump his wings to recover. She laughed as she dove through mist. He would’ve tried.

  She set her sights on the northernmost tower and its five guards. With the fifth singing in her blood, she tucked her head, drew in her paws as she flattened her body, and dove down from the heavens in a streak of velvet darkness.

  Just inches from the tower parapet, she threw out her wings and thrust her hind legs forward, claws extended. The men saw her then—my, did they. Nadoriin scattered with shouts of alarm, but Vaile easily caught one man and then a second in her hind paws. She flung herself away from the rooftop with powerful thrusts of her wings.

  Up over the pinnacle she rose, and then she dove into a spiral. The men spun, screamed…spun…screamed. Hundreds of feet above the sea, she released one and then the other. They tumbled through the air, still screaming, until they hit the charcoal water with tiny splashes that quickly vanished beneath the downpour.

  Náiir had taken human form upon the tower when Vaile circled back around. Two soldiers lay unmoving in his wake, while a third stood pressed against a merlon with Náiir’s Merdanti blade beneath his chin.

  With the wind singing in her wings, Vaile hovered over the tower and released the form.

  Darkness and light engulfed her as the fifth exploded through her form—dissolving, sculpting, reforming every inch of her. It felt like a plunge through the waters of sheer energy. A momentary disorientation cleared as she swam up through the swirl of transfiguration to assume her new shape. Surfacing, she took her next breath in her human form. Then she strode to Náiir’s side.

  The Nadoriin he held at sword-point stared with mouth agape.

  “I asked you a question.” Náiir prodded the man’s memory with the tip of his blade.

  Vaile looked the soldier up and down. “Their lives are not so valuable as you make them, Náiir. Kill this one. We’ll find another to tell us what we want.”

  Náiir pressed the tip of his blade into the man’s throat, barely piercing the skin. “Aid us and live; defy us and die. Choose wisely.”

  The man’s dark eyes flew back to Náiir. “The prince…” he gasped around the ebon steel threatening his flesh. “South tower.”

  Vaile directed her gaze through the storm. Two towers crowned Darroyhan’s southern end.

  Náiir motioned with his blade. “Show us.”

  The man pushed a hand to his throat and moved quickly into the tower. They descended the spiraling steps at a run. Several stories down, they emerged onto the ramparts as thunder rumbled another angry growl.

  The soldier, their guide, drew up short. Likewise Vaile and Náiir behind him.

  Soldiers were pouring out of Darroyhan’s towers onto the walls.

  Vaile arched a raven brow. “It appears they’ve noticed our arrival.”

  Náiir sighed. “Perhaps it was your making windmills of the guards that alerted them.”

  She tucked a strand of raven hair behind one ear. “Do you think they took offense?”

  Náiir’s dark brow furrowed faintly as he watched the crenellated walls filling with men like batter poured into a mold. “More than somewhat, Vaile.”

  She turned him a feral grin. “Good.”

  Náiir spun his blade horizontally in his hand, making the steel tip spiral like a drill. “This is quite a lot of soldiers for so remote a fortress.”

  “The Consul sent them.” The Nadoriin’s gaze flicked uncertainly between the two of them. “Reinforcements.”

  Vaile grinned. “How thoughtful of Viernan. He knows all of you so well, Náiir.”

  A mass of soldiers from the nearest two towers was streaming towards them in a raging wall of mail and steel and darkly bearded faces.

  Náiir’s frown deepened. “We’ll need a better route.”

  “Very well. Let’s make one.” Vaile jumped up onto the nearest crenel. The wind whipped through her clothes and tugged at the dual swords strapped to her back. She turned Náiir a grin. “Coming?” Before he could answer, she flung herself off the wall.

  She cast the fifth before her, and her feet struck down on a level even with the ramparts. She ran then, high above the lower bailey, high over the heads of the staring soldiers in the yard, spearing the fifth before her with every step. A glance over her shoulder showed Náiir and the Nadoriin not far behind on her bridge.

  She and Náiir might’ve taken the form again and merely flown to the south tower, but seeing two immortals and a soldier running through midair would give the men below a better story to tell, and she wanted the tale of Trell val Lorian’s escape from Darroyhan to be worthy of telling for a very long time.

  The men lining the ramparts watched for a moment’s astonishment, but soon they had regrouped and were chasing along the walls after them in a race towards the south towers.

  Vaile reached those ramparts first, but the wall of armed humanity lagged only one tower behind. She stepped up onto the merlon while Náiir helped the soldier over the crenel, and watched the lines of men approaching from either side. They would try to pin her and Náiir between them, making a vise of the two forces.

  Vaile’s gaze narrowed. She turned and focused on a space of wall to her right and flung out her hand—but it was her intention that she truly flung across the distance.

  Abruptly the stone beneath her gaze began crumbling, merlons tumbling, the ramparts dissolving as the entire section of wall melted into s
and like a child’s castle swept away by the sea. The approaching men drew up short and shoved backwards against their brethren to try and halt the momentum of the mass before they all tumbled over the edge.

  Náiir grabbed her arm and with it her attention. “Vaile.” His eyes were hot upon hers, his tone sharp. “You take too many chances.”

  She jerked free of his hold and cast a daggered look in reply. “Ten chances would not be too many until Trell is safe.”

  Thunder sounded again, but further away. The storm was moving on, and so must they.

  Vaile lifted her chin to indicate the horde still approaching on their left. “I’ll stay to manage these. You find Trell.” She jumped from the merlon and landed with a splash. She cast him another look over her shoulder, but his gaze, still fixed upon her, was dark with concern.

  So he’d figured it out then, like Balaji before him. Well…what of it?

  She gave him a hard stare. “Find Trell, Náiir.”

  “My…lord?” The Nadoriin seemed uncertain how to address Náiir and equally urgent to be off. How quickly he’d allied with their cause, yet she sensed no guile in the soldier. He motioned to the tower. “The prince is this way.”

  Náiir tore his gaze from Vaile’s and followed him.

  It felt suddenly as if Náiir tugged her resolve with him as he departed. Vaile closed her eyes and let the moment’s indecision rake across her…and move on.

  She’d made her choice. It was time for this…long past time.

  Opening her eyes to a new moment, a firm decision, she reached back with crossed arms and drew her blades. In her hands, the sentient Merdanti weapons sang a new counterpoint to the song of the fifth ever humming in her blood. This…this connection to the forces that bound the realm together, to the churning storm and the motion of the tides and the gravity propelling the swiftly spinning heavens…this was what life was meant to feel like for one of her ilk. To live and never work the fifth was to exist without drawing breath.

  Vaile turned to face the rush of soldiers.

  As the first of them reached her, she spun with a swipe of flashing blades. He fell aside to find his death. Others quickly followed. Vaile spun her swords in the ta’fieri and carved a swath through the field of men.

  On they came like the rushing tide and she the rock upon which they broke, wave after wave. None passed her. None escaped her. Bodies piled to left and right, jammed the crenels or toppled over the edge. How many would have to die before the others realized the futility of their intent? It mattered not to her.

  Perhaps if they’d been Adepts, Vaile might’ve found compassion, but these men, mere blank threads in the tapestry and inconsequential to the Mage’s game…what care had she for their lives? She, a predatory being born of storms. If they meant to throw away their mortal lives, she would aid them in their goal.

  Vaile spun. Her blades sliced. Now windmilling, now a figure-eight, from the cortata to the ta’fieri, back and forth. She knew every step, every spiral, every turn of wrist or elbow. She ducked and twirled, lunged, sidestepped. She launched high over the fallen and sliced as she flipped, and her black blades unerringly blocked every sword, dagger or fist aimed her way.

  In Vaile’s blood, the fifth sang, boundless and bright, raging, violent, beautiful… and remorseless.

  Finally, the mass of men before her fell back and the soldiers broke apart, a path opening down their center. The battle stilled beneath the pouring rain. Vaile sensed the stillness birthing a new kind of storm.

  At the far end of the passage of men, darkness took shape.

  The currents shied away from it—verily, the thing repelled elae. She knew then what it was, though she hadn’t seen its like in two-thousand years, not since Warlocks from the Shadow Realms ran amok through the wastelands left by the last cataclysm. But no Warlock had made this thing. So she asked into the storm as the creature was coming towards her, “What manner of demon are you?”

  Dark eyes fixed upon her, and in their depths she saw the violet glint of deyjiin. The demon spoke to her in a voice of crushing stone. “I am Fate come to claim you, bitch.”

  Vaile spun her blades. “Strange.” She arched a raven brow. “I’ve met Fate, and you look nothing like him.”

  The thing made a rattling snarl and bolted at her in a streak of dark energy.

  She caught its midsection in crossed blades and flung the demon up over her head. It hit the stones with a thunderous crack and somersaulted back onto its feet. Vaile turned to face it and simultaneously threw up a shield of the fourth at her back, lest any of the soldiers regain their courage and try to attack her from behind. The fourth strand was neither as invigorating nor as resonant as the fifth, but it had its uses.

  Before her, the creature held its own Merdanti blade in both hands and considered her with dark eyes, oddly angling its head to view her out of first one orb and then the other, as if both were not centered on its face. “I know what I am,” it posed in that ratcheting clatter, “but what are you?”

  Vaile scraped her blades against one another and then flung her arms outward, swords extended, her entire body taut. Crashing thunder carried her reply.

  “I am Alorin.”

  The fifth exploded out of her.

  A razor bubble expanded around her, splitting rain, fragmenting air, sheering rock. The creature ducked its head against the onslaught and stood its ground while her working sliced away a curved section of the walls in its split-second passing. Then the rain returned.

  Interesting.

  The demon lifted its head with a triumphant grin. It launched at her then, but what did it really think—that being born of inverteré patterns and deyjiin made it invincible? That it had a hope of overwhelming a zanthyr in combat?

  Vaile met its downward rushing blade with crossed swords, clamped hard. She twisted and turned her body and ripped the weapon from the demon’s grasp. Then she spun, sheathed one blade, grabbed the demon’s neck as she came out of the spin and rammed her other blade through its stomach.

  It hissed that ratcheting snarl, black eyes burning in defiance.

  Vaile snarled back. Then she ripped her blade upwards and sundered the creature.

  It crumpled.

  She spun and pointed her sword at the soldiers watching from beyond her barrier of the fourth. They all took a reflexive step backwards.

  That’s better.

  Vaile gave them a feral grin and ran to join Náiir.

  ***

  Trell started aware as something heavy landed across him and tumbled off again. From the brush of clothing against his bare chest, he assumed it must’ve been Taliah.

  A storm raged beyond the tower. Trell knew this because wind and rain now whipped through the room, because his body was drenched and shaking, and because the howling wind seemed to have more of a hold on him than the chains—tearing at his hair and stinging his eyes. Trell strained his neck to look over his shoulder and found a gaping hole in the wall. Beyond lay only wind and rain, and a hundred feet below, a churning charcoal sea.

  Only one of the tall iron lamps remained standing and alight, and Taliah used this to draw herself up. Her face was a bloodied mess. Likewise her torn and charred gown. Half her hair had been somehow singed away. Clearly she and the demon had continued battling while Trell lay unconscious.

  A rattling drew his gaze across the room to the demon creature. It looked the same as it climbed out of another indentation in the stone wall, only…perhaps a darker stripe marred its chest. Yes…as it moved out of the shadows, Trell saw a gaping fissure there, as if skin and bone had been hewn away.

  The moment she regained her feet, Taliah cast another dark enchantment at the demon. It ducked the blast as it launched towards her. She threw herself aside, but it caught her dress, spun her back into its arms and drove her into the wall.

  Taliah screamed with defiance. She mashed her palms against its eyes, and a dark language frothed across her lips, a litany of hissing words that sounded like Agas
i twisted inside out. The demon writhed beneath her hands and grappled for her throat while she swung her head and shoulders unnaturally to avoid its clawing fingers.

  Trell swallowed and looked away.

  Would this truly be how his life ended?

  That he had endured so much, only to find himself pinned between evil and its darker twin…it seemed so…

  Unbelievable? Unbearable?

  Arrows of incomprehensibility lodged in a shield of disbelief. That Naiadithine had borne him, saved him, reunited him with friends and family, only to have him see this mangled end? Could his path really have been leading him here?

  Or perhaps he’d been wrong—so very wrong—and his existence held no more purpose and was graced of no more divinity than any other man’s. Perhaps he was not destined for anything and his life was simply purposeless…one long race towards an inevitable death, as the Prophet Bethamin would have them all believe.

  To meet such an end…lying chained and helpless beneath this storm of evil, with neither outcome preferable to the other…Trell could almost believe the Prophet had the right of it. It tore him apart to think so.

  While his body shook from the blasting wind and rain—not to mention the host of other unimaginable wrongs it had recently endured—Trell pondered the unreality of the moment and nearly laughed. Surely all men experienced that same instant of rejection when they looked Death in the eye. A man might many times escape Death’s near embrace, but he only met His consuming gaze once.

  Then—

  He almost missed the curse, for it was faint with incredulity, but he heard clearly the words, “Stand back,” and the voice that had uttered it—oh gods, that voice! He had to be imagining it.

  In the darkness of the shattered doorway, light blazed—no a sun blazed.

  The world went silent and still. The storm, the wind, Taliah’s macabre chanting… everything simply…ceased.

  A moment later, a face appeared over his own. Dark hair fell across eyes of gold flamed with power. Náiir.

  Trell shut his eyes lest emotion overwhelm all reason.

  Náiir placed a hand on Trell’s brow. “Oh, my friend…” His voice was raw, fierce with fury, “this nightmare is almost behind you.”