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

by Melissa McPhail

  And so it went, this punishing, passionate, intemperate union. Pelas molded her body to his desires and carved his freedom out of her sacrifice, and though he demanded she receive as much pleasure as he took from her, yet each moment still felt as terrifying as when he’d carved patterns in her flesh.

  Sixty

  “When all else fails—panic.”

  – The royal cousin Fynnlar val Lorian

  Tanis woke to the pale light of wielder’s lamps burning high on the walls of a windowless chamber. The black marble floor radiated coldly beneath his back, but it barely approached the frigid chill caused by the goracrosta burning on his wrists. After being blasted and blown and battered about, pain filled every space in his body not already occupied by guilt.

  With hands bound in front of him, Tanis pushed up on one elbow and looked around the octagonal chamber with its ornate marble walls of ancient design. Then he got awkwardly to his feet. His jaw ached where fists and elbows had met it. He shifted it slowly from side to side and found it functional at least, thanks to the grace of his quick healing.

  He walked to an arched opening and halted just shy of it. Beyond lay a cavernous hall sheathed in obsidian. Shadows fell like curtains beyond the nearest columns, but as far as Tanis could see, bodies covered the black floor. Even in the muted light of wielder’s lamps, silver cuffs and collars glinted—the stolen Adepts. A rising sense of horror twinged in the lad’s spine.

  There must be over a hundred people in there.

  Tanis turned his attention to the silver-violet sheen gleaming along the edges of the archway that separated his octagonal chamber from the greater hall. He could just see the curtain of deyjiin which stood in place of bars to keep him enclosed—he more perceived it than saw it, with its cold breath and tingling static.

  Tanis frowned at the curtain of power. Instinct and experience both whispered that he could pass through it unharmed—after all, he had a special if utterly mystifying relationship with deyjiin. He suspected that at worst, the curtain would shock him senseless, but at best… Somewhere beyond his chamber, Nadia needed his help.

  Tanis drew in a deep breath and walked through the archway.

  It felt like passing beneath a waterfall formed of lightning. The hair rose all over his body and his breath fled in a forceful puff, but then he was emerging on the other side, unscathed save for his suddenly racing heart and electrified hair.

  Tanis pushed his hair back down, drew in a tense breath and looked around the hall; his exhale came heavy with sorrow. So many Adepts stolen to be repurposed for an enemy king’s war…the tragedy of it tore at him—more so because he knew he could do nothing to help them.

  Far worse was worrying for Nadia. How was he ever going to find her among all these bodies? And that was assuming they hadn’t sequestered her the way they’d sequestered him…which he somewhat feared would be the case. He tried reaching out to her along the bond, but either she was out of range of his thoughts or her mind had somehow been closed off to him.

  With no other options in view, Tanis set off among the Adepts in search of Nadia, of escape, or of any sign that he still tread upon his path. The goracrosta binding his hands made his arms ache, and the gloom of the place quickly began to weigh on the lad. Everywhere Tanis looked he saw massive, sculpted columns carved with dark patterns that hurt his eyes. Who knew if the patterns themselves weren’t designed to suck all the hope out of a person?

  Memory accosted him—even as the patterns on the columns accosted his eyes. Too vividly he recalled the vision of Shail streaking along the stadium’s rim, spinning into battle with the eidola. No one would ever believe N’abranaacht had planned the massacre now.

  Tanis cursed himself for a fool. Shail had been ahead of him every step of the way—so far ahead he’d long since vanished over the distant rise while Tanis was still puffing up the first hill.

  A plague of self-condemnation descended on the lad, black thoughts that quickly gained power in the shadowed room populated by uncannily still forms and corrupt patterns. Nadia wouldn’t be in this situation at all if not for him. She could die because of him. And they were helpless now because of him, prey to Shail’s malevolent whims. He had no idea what had become of Felix…

  Oh, the absurdity of thinking he could do anything against a force like Shail!

  An eidola emerged out of the far shadows, and Tanis froze. His breath stilled while his heart raced.

  Leveling him a castigating glare, the eidola stalked over, grabbed him with its stone hands and dragged him off.

  Well, at least it hadn’t punched him like the last one he’d met.

  Tanis wondered where Shail had brought them. The entire place was sheathed in obsidian—from the shadowed ceilings of the great hall that the eidola had dragged Tanis out of, to the groin-vaulted hallways he then dragged him down. The place felt like a crypt—it was certainly as cold as one—and it had the same kind of ancient-looking ornamentation as the van Gelderan mausoleum at Calgaryn Palace.

  At last the eidola dragged Tanis through a massive portal out into daylight. The lad turned over his shoulder to watch the façade of a temple growing into view behind him. The eidola led him down a wide set of black marble steps, pitted and broken, whereupon Tanis gained a wider perspective and realized the entire temple had been hewn right out of the mountainside.

  Then the noise of men and metal drew his attention and he turned back—

  To face an army camp of thousands.

  Icy peaks surrounded the camp on all sides, and tents and men clustered in the valley between, stretching from edge to edge like an uneven carpet of drab moss.

  ‘…they want Adepts to fuel the Danes’ war…’

  There seemed little question whose army he was looking upon.

  The eidola dragged Tanis along a steep trail skirting the forested hills that lined the protected valley. At the top of the rise they came upon a pavilion whose ancient construction looked as if it might’ve predated the forest that had grown up around it.

  The eidola took Tanis through a series of salons to the back side of the building and a loggia with a commanding view of a mountain lake.

  And Shail, sitting at a table draped in velvet.

  Tanis felt everything inside him clench—fear, fury, apprehension all lodged in his chest.

  The eidola jerked him roughly to a halt in front of the table. Tanis was just surprised the thing didn’t force him to his knees.

  Shail sat with his elbows resting on the arms of a wingback chair and his fingers steepled before his lips. His chilling gaze held Tanis captive far more adroitly than the eidola’s clawing fingers.

  “Well, Tanis…here we are again.”

  “My thoughts exactly, sir.”

  Shail’s razor gaze falling across the lad felt like blades slicing his skin. Tanis half expected to look down and see red lines bleeding through his shirt. After an uncomfortable moment of this, Shail motioned for him to sit, and the eidola forced him into a chair without giving him time to move of his own accord. Tanis glared up at it.

  Shail dismissed the creature with a flick of his eyes. It retreated to stand in the shadows of a column, but Tanis could still feel its hateful gaze boring holes into the back of his head.

  “So, Tanis…it seems we shall have our tea after all.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tanis couldn’t miss the irony in the moment, nor the black humor in Shail’s tone.

  The man’s lip curled in a smile that failed to touch his eyes. “Did I not explain to you that Fate bows to my will?”

  Rather than acknowledge any possible truth in his statement, for it frightened him to think so, Tanis asked instead, “What have you done with Phoebe, sir?”

  Shail’s dark eyes licked over him, assessing, contemplating… Tanis felt like a hunk of meat being inspected by a butcher’s blade—meticulously inspected.

  The lad tried a different question. “The other Adepts in the temple…you drugged them?”

  Shail stroked
beneath his lip with the back of one finger while his eyes scrutinized every inch of the lad’s corporeal form. “Yes.”

  Tanis had to work some moisture back into his mouth. “Why…why didn’t you drug me?”

  Shail’s dark eyes gleamed dangerously. “We did.”

  Tanis felt himself go a little pale.

  A man in a white, hooded cassock came to the table carrying the tea service. He set down the tray and poured steaming tea into two cups. Tanis hadn’t exactly seen where he’d come from or where he vanished to afterwards, for the lad couldn’t remove his eyes from Shail’s.

  It seemed such a surreal moment, sitting there having tea with an immortal being whose purposes were utterly antipathetic to their world, with a tranquil lake on one side of the pavilion and thousands of men preparing for war on the other.

  Tanis looked at the tea cup in front of him. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to manage the cup with his wrists bound together with magic rope. But then, Tanis hadn’t really been brought there to drink tea.

  For all he wanted to rage and howl and protest, for all he wanted to take the knife from Shail’s side of the table and cut the goracrosta from his wrists and escape to find Nadia, Tanis understood—actually, he sensed more than he understood, but the sensation spoke quite loudly—that for whatever reason, Balance lay on Shail’s side at the moment. The most Tanis could do was wait for it to lean in his direction again, and until that time…well, he’d best cooperate.

  He lifted his gaze back to Shail. “You must think me terribly fearsome to keep me bound in goracrosta, sir.”

  Shail stroked his finger beneath his lower lip again. “I don’t know what I think of you yet.”

  Tanis dropped his eyes back to his tea. That makes two of us.

  “For all his faults, my brother Pelas is no fool. He kept you close. I would know why.”

  “You would have to ask him that, sir.”

  “Yes, I intend to.” Shail’s gaze swept Tanis again, more accusatory than inquisitive. “How did you escape the chamber in the temple?”

  Tanis attempted to pick up his cup, maneuvering awkwardly to do so. “You mean the curtain of deyjiin?” He managed to get the china rim to his lip and leaned slightly sideways to take a sip. He wasn’t sure afterwards that the tea had been worth the effort. He looked back to Shail as he set it down.

  The Malorin’athgul’s gaze had gone very dark. “Yes, truthreader, I mean that exactly.”

  Tanis shrugged. “I just walked through it, sir.”

  Shail’s eyes tightened. Oddly, the man no longer radiated such malevolent intentions as what Tanis had experienced from him in the Sormitáge, though the lad harbored no illusions that Shail’s inherent disposition had changed. He was nothing if not calculating.

  The Malorin’athgul regarded him quietly for a moment, much like a tiger’s impassive observation of the prey struggling beneath its paw. Then he extended his palm. “Give me your hand.”

  Tanis exhaled a sigh and pushed his bound hands across the table. He knew what was coming next.

  Shail took one of Tanis’s hands and narrowed his gaze, and the lad felt deyjiin’s chill come washing through him.

  As he’d witnessed when Pelas had tested him in much the same way, Shail’s determined expression soon changed to one of infuriated disbelief. He flung Tanis’s hand away, sat back in his chair and stabbed Tanis with a Merdanti gaze. “Did Pelas work this craft upon you? Make you immune to our power?”

  “No, sir. He was as shocked as you are.”

  “Shocked is not the word I would choose.” Shail studied Tanis in silence. He looked thunderously displeased. “Truthreader, timeweaver, traveler of twisted nodes…immune to drugged wine and deyjiin. What manner of wielder are you?”

  Tanis exhaled a deep sigh. “I wish I knew, sir.”

  Shail considered this answer with an arched brow. Suddenly Tanis felt the fourth swirling around him like wind—just as obvious and just as insubstantial, for he could no more take it into himself than he could capture the wind in his palm.

  “What other things can you do, Tanis?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.” The words came right out without a second’s conscious thought.

  This…pattern—if it was a pattern Shail worked in order to compel such answers—must’ve been what Shail had used against him the night they walked back to Chresten together. Tanis wasn’t sure why he could feel the working now but hadn’t been able to feel it then. Could the goracrosta’s intervention be making it easier to sense such things? Could it be acting as a filter of some kind? Or did it have something to do with the way Shail himself was wielding the pattern?

  Shail moved his hand to the arm of his chair. “So you don’t know your nature…do you expect you can do other things with the lifeforce?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered his traitor tongue.

  “Innately?”

  Again the words flew out of his mouth. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose, yes.”

  “Did my brother Pelas send you to spy on me?”

  The sudden change of questioning made the lad give a little start, but still he’d no choice but to answer truthfully, “No, sir.”

  Shail grunted. “The real truth this time.”

  Tanis felt compulsion land like a blow to his breastbone. He braced bound wrists against the table’s edge to catch himself as he doubled over. The answer burst out of him with his breath. “He didn’t send me!”

  Shail skewered him with his gaze. He shifted in his chair, edgy with skepticism. “If you truly aren’t my brother’s spy, then he won’t come for you.”

  Tanis’s entire body was throbbing from that punch of compulsion, but the lad pushed himself straighter in alarm nonetheless. “What do you mean?”

  “Last night I summoned Pelas.”

  Tanis heard this and went weak with trepidation. He knew that this conflict wasn’t about him—it was beyond Shail to conceive of Tanis being a threat to him. No, this had always been about Pelas. And now, because of him, Pelas would be walking right into Shail’s hands.

  How many others would Tanis place in danger? Who else would come to harm due to his stupidity? Guilt pulled him rapidly down where shame and castigation boiled in a toxic pitch.

  Shail leaned back in his chair and crossed one knee. “If you don’t profess to be spying for my brother, then who? The High Lord?”

  Tanis dropped his gaze to his lap. He had no idea what he was going to do…where his path was taking him. He had to work to keep tears from burning his eyes—he’d be damned if he’d let Shail see him cry. “No, sir.”

  Shail grunted dubiously. “Just your own ill-fated interest?”

  Tanis clenched his teeth. “I suppose.”

  Shail’s razor gaze swept him, looking unconvinced.

  The lad grabbed his courage and lifted his gaze. “What have you done with Phoebe, sir?” If he found out nothing else, he had to know this.

  “Oh, yes…Phoebe.” Shail cast him a merciless sort of smile. “Miss della Buonara will be given the same choice as the others—to serve freely, or become eidola and serve eternally.”

  Tanis’s chest became so bound with fury and protest that he could barely breathe. He wanted to scream. He wanted to fight. He wanted to summon every bit of elae he could muster and blow the entire pavilion from the firmament. Jaw tight, he ground out angrily, “Bound to you—”

  Shail’s laughter cut him off. “These hapless creatures aren’t bound to me.” His laughter grew darker, bolder, loudly declaring Tanis’s ignorance. “What need would I have for eidola?”

  Something in the way he said this made the hair rise on the back of Tanis’s neck. The lad deflated, struck by a painful volley of confusions.

  Still chuckling, Shail took up his tea. He looked truly amused. “Admittedly, my brother builds an army of the creatures.” He motioned airily with his cup. “But making weapons of eidola is not their true purpose. Any time you magically force a thing from its intended
use, you run a risk of turning Balance from your favor—oh, yes, Tanis.” Shail’s dark eyes lanced into the lad. “Do you think me unaware of Balance and how it referees this world?”

  Tanis’s mouth had gone far too dry to mold any response out of the crumbs of his mortification.

  “Eidola are creatures of Shadow, young fool.” Shail’s tone resonated a mirthful condescension. “Bound to a Warlock who cannot work your lifeforce, they harvest elae to fuel his power.” His gaze shifted slightly, off over Tanis’s shoulder. “Is that not right, Sinárr?”

  Tanis felt him as he arrived, for he emitted a chill greater even than Shail’s. The lad leaned around the wing of his chair to see a pillar of smoke and shadow coming across the room. With every step, smoke swirled into a shape that resembled a leg and then dissolved again. Sinárr trailed smoke like a man on fire, but only a deep darkness burned at his core. He stopped beside them, and only then did the shadows cling to form.

  As the whirling smoke congealed, Tanis looked first upon a black-skinned face with golden eyes, reminiscent of a Whisper Lord, only more…human wasn’t the right word. Human-like perhaps, for his features were fey, if fierce. But those golden eyes—as purely golden as the eidola’s were black—seemed less metallic than composed of light itself…as if all of his stolen power glittered in his gaze.

  The smoke continued its swirling descent into form, taking the shape of an elegant coat, velvet black, molded around a tall frame, and draping down into boots of shining leather. His shoulders seemed too broad for a natural man, his arms and legs just slightly too long. Human-like, but clearly not.

  At last only the shadows swirling about his right arm remained. This darkness lifted to reveal a great bird’s feet clinging to the Warlock’s forearm. Then followed the rest of the avieth into view as the whirlpool of shadows unraveled upwards, revealing glinting feathers as captured light, and finally vanishing above her head in a violet spark.