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

by Melissa McPhail

  Tanis stared at the avieth sitting on the Warlock’s forearm and felt utterly ill.

  ‘He has bound me to this form, bound me to him. I’m beyond hope, for…elae has left me.’

  He’d gotten it all wrong—horribly, inconceivably wrong!

  ‘…if he finds you here, he will make you eidola like the others, a stone shadow of yourself…’

  The avieth hadn’t been talking about Shail. She’d been talking about the Warlock. Tanis slumped in his chair while the world spun in a violent vortex of misgiving, and pins of dismay stabbed his entire body.

  He’d made a dreadful mistake!

  The portal in Shail’s apartments, open to Shadow…it had been open so the Warlock could come and go freely. Had the laboratory with its floating inverteré patterns belonged to Shail at all?

  And the avieth’s scream of ‘He comes!’ She’d been warning him of Sinárr, not Shail. Tanis must’ve escaped just before the Warlock arrived.

  The lad forced a dry swallow.

  Shail’s white-robed attendant approached Sinárr, and the Warlock handed off his avieth to him. Then he turned his attention to Tanis.

  A black-fleshed hand reached for the lad’s face. His nails held a curious golden transparency and were long and slightly pointed. Tanis stifled a shudder as those black fingers touched his chin.

  “Who then is this?” Sinárr’s voice sounded a whisper that echoed of deep darkness. The face came closer. All Tanis saw when he looked into Sinárr’s inhuman eyes was elae trapped behind his sparkling gaze.

  “This is Tanis.” Shail’s voice hinted of merciless humor. “He’s one of my brother’s spies, though he denies it.”

  Tanis couldn’t look away from the Warlock. Sinárr’s flesh touching his cheek felt as smooth and cold as ice. His hand moved to take a lock of Tanis’s hair, and he rubbed it between dark fingers as if tasting of it. Tanis felt pinned immobile beneath this inspection. Only his heart remained free to race, which it did with frightening force, pounding painfully in his chest.

  Sinárr cupped Tanis’s jaw and brought his face even closer…closer still, close enough that their noses nearly touched. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply…and smiled. His teeth were perfect and white.

  Tanis shivered violently.

  “He’s not yours yet, Sinárr.”

  Abruptly the Warlock straightened—the flash of motion happened so quickly that the man seemed to magically shift from bending to standing without passing through the forms in between. Only a swirl of smoke denoted the change.

  “This boy is strong. I would gain much power from an eidola with such a connection.”

  Shail’s eyes licked over the Warlock, calculating. “You have much power already.”

  Sinárr turned away. Smoke and shadow swirled. Tanis suspected that the Warlock had no real form in their realm—only the appearance of form when he stood still, when he focused his power in order to assume a shape.

  As he watched Sinárr moving away, the lad exhaled a measured breath and willed his heart to settle. He’d never imagined that running into Shail in his apartments had been a gift of providence, but he knew now that he wouldn’t have survived that day if the Warlock had found him instead.

  Sinárr walked towards a column. Velvet smoke swirled and solidified with his every step, trailing each motion like steam. A curtain of raven hair flowed down his back, shifting in and out of substance. “You called me. I have come.” He turned a look over his shoulder.

  Tanis couldn’t take his eyes off Sinárr. There was something horribly compelling about this creature. It terrified the lad to realize it. He worried the man had somehow bound him already, claimed him with his mesmerizing gaze and his gilded nails, stolen his will with that deeply unsettling inhalation.

  Shail shifted in his chair while his eyes followed the Warlock across the loggia. Tanis sensed a wariness in him—wary, but not uneasy. The two seemed comparable predators, lions momentarily united in a tenuous truce.

  “You wanted to be here when the Adepts made their choices.” Shail flicked an unreadable gaze at Tanis and then looked back to Sinárr. “We’ll rouse them soon.”

  Sinárr looked to the lake and its tranquil view. “The prospect excites me.”

  “I have only to finish with Tanis and we can be about the task.”

  Abruptly Sinárr blurred and reformed at Tanis’s side, a rearing shadow. The lad started and pressed himself sideways in his chair, angling away from the Warlock.

  Sinárr reached out a hand and stroked Tanis’s head. Black fingers threaded through his hair, brushing it away from his face. His unearthly gaze felt lustful.

  Chills striped the lad.

  “I don’t understand why I can’t have this one now.” Sinárr’s hand found the back of Tanis’s head and encouraged him forth with gentle pressure. The lad felt himself flowing towards the Warlock, his body moving without thought or will, simply inclining in his direction.

  “Sinárr, release him.”

  The Warlock spun with a look of frustration. Tanis fell back in his seat with a forceful grunt.

  “Until I know what my brother knows of our plans, the boy stays with me.”

  Sinárr erupted into a swirl of smoke that quickly reformed again. “You are most aggravating, Shailabanáchtran.” He looked back to Tanis. “Can you not see how the boy and I are drawn to each other?” Sinárr’s eyes captured Tanis’s gaze—his attention, his very essence. He traced a single gilded fingernail slowly down Tanis’s cheek and whispered, echoic of the deep dark, soft as night’s gentle kiss, “…our opposing natures call to one another.”

  Shail cracked a smile. “If you desire Tanis, Sinárr, you can help me with my brother. Then the boy will be free for you to claim in whatever way suits you.”

  Sinárr spun back to Shail. Smoke exploded, swirled, resettled. “I accept this proposal.”

  Tanis went utterly, completely cold. For a moment he wasn’t certain his heart was still beating, so close the shock felt to death’s grip around it. Then he felt the tiniest flutter and sucked in his breath with a shuddering gasp.

  Shail grinned wickedly at him. “I see Tanis is equally excited by the prospect, Sinárr. Shall we be about it?” He stood and motioned to the eidola who’d been lurking in the shadows, and it came and hauled Tanis out of his chair.

  Shail called a portal, and before Tanis knew what was happening, the eidola was dragging him through the temple again.

  Reeling, Tanis tried desperately to think of some way out of this untenable situation, but his brain wouldn’t focus. Instead of presenting him with solutions, all his mind kept throwing in front of his eyes was himself, saying to Felix, ‘Shailabanáchtran is about the deadliest adversary you could imagine, Felix. He’s probably worse than you can imagine…’

  Apparently he was worse than even Tanis could imagine.

  The lad felt like all he’d done was offer himself and Nadia up to Shail like one of Madaé Giselle’s turkeys, trimmed and tied and ready for roasting. He was supposed to be upon his path…yet he feared now that he’d made a terribly wrong turn somewhere.

  Shail swept through the soaring obsidian halls with Sinárr at his side. Their continuing conversation suddenly yanked Tanis back to the present as Sinárr asked, “Why this fixation on Pelasommáyurek?”

  Shail cast him a doleful eye. “Darshan has made an enemy of Pelas, and their enmity has bled onto my affairs.”

  The Warlock perpetually molted velvet-dark shadows, leaving icy wisps trailing behind him as he walked. “But you don’t fear him?” It sounded more question than a statement of fact.

  Shail’s gaze tightened. “That Darshan fears him is enough. Pelas can cause us interminable trouble if not subdued.”

  “If he’s as trusting as you claim, it should be no effort to bind him, but…” Darkness swirled, shifted, settled back into form with Sinárr’s steps. “You would let me make a harvester of your brother?”

  Shail swept through a vaulted antechamber. His
crimson robes of silk flowed like blood in water as he cast a withering look at Sinárr. “A few millennia bound to you might moderate Pelas’s infuriating intractability.”

  They entered a vast hall lit by iron chandeliers burning with the cold light of wielder’s lamps. Shail motioned to the eidola escorting Tanis, and it marched the lad to the center of the chamber. Shail bound him there beneath a dome, with air and magic. The lad felt invisible threads wrapping around him, pinning him to immobility. Panic set in, and he shot a desperate look at Shail, rife with premonition. “He’s not going to come for me, sir! He can’t!” Verily, these words resonated in a way that broke Tanis’s heart with their truth.

  Shail’s lip curled with a dubious smile. “We’ll see.”

  “But I’m not—”

  Shail pressed a finger across his own lips, and Tanis lost the rest of the words beneath a gag of air. Shail leaned close, bringing them eye to eye. “Your fate is set either way, young fool. If Pelas doesn’t claim you, Sinárr will.”

  Then Shail and Sinárr departed to walk in a wide circle around Tanis. Thus, the lad only heard part of their conversation.

  “…many to overcome him?” Sinárr surveyed the space with his golden gaze, but Tanis perpetually felt the Warlock’s eyes straying back to him.

  “I cannot say.” Shail’s voice resonated in the vast, empty hall. “It would be wiser to seal the entire area within a containment field.” They stopped back in front of Tanis, seeming a tall flame of crimson and its night-dark shadow.

  “If he’s your brother, deyjiin won’t contain him.”

  Shail crossed arms and then stroked his chin with one finger. His gaze narrowed as he assessed the dome above and its surrounding hall. “No…” he murmured, “not merely deyjiin—a web of it, woven to mimic goracrosta.”

  Sinárr sucked in his breath with an admiring hiss. “A dome of inverteré patterns to steal his power. You’re beginning to think like a Warlock, Shailabanáchtran.” He walked in smoke a few paces past Tanis, surveying the scene. “I alone may draw power from my eidola. They and I will cross into the dome and take Pelas as easily as an ewe.”

  Shail grunted. “Don’t underestimate my brother, Sinárr. This had better be enough to contain him.”

  “For Tanis, I shall bring the full force of my power to bear against him, Shailabanáchtran.”

  “Good.” Shail’s gaze shifted over Tanis’s shoulder. “Ah…and here is our coup de grâce—my gift to you, Sinárr.”

  “Another gift? This is proving a bountiful day.”

  Shail’s dark eyes glinted with cold humor as he looked back to Tanis and remarked, “It’s always preferable to have a friend along when facing an eternity of bondage, don’t you think, truthreader?”

  Tanis jolted—for he knew immediately who Shail was bringing as a gift for the Warlock. Yet he could do nothing! To be pinned so helplessly in that moment was the worst feeling he’d ever experienced.

  And of course it was Nadia who Shail paraded in front of him. Her dark hair had come unbound and trailed in waves down her back, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. She cast a desperate look at him as the eidola stopped her before Shail and Sinárr. Tanis saw that she, too, was bound with goracrosta.

  Sinárr took up a strand of her hair and spun his finger around it. He pulled her head closer and leaned in. Then he smelled as deeply of Nadia as he’d partaken of Tanis. The lad wanted to scream. Everything in him swelled to do so, yet nothing emerged but a choking gasp.

  “Ah…this child is strong as well.” Sinárr turned in a swirl of velvet smoke, so that his face vanished and reappeared around his glowing golden eyes. His teeth shone very white as he smiled. “What marvelous gifts you present me, Shailabanáchtran.”

  With a flick of his gaze, Shail instructed the eidola to move on, and the creature dragged Nadia across the hall. Tanis felt a volcano ready to erupt, but he managed only the barest puff of a furious exhale.

  Shail chuckled, and his eyes glinted with dark amusement. “A prince and his princess. So quaint.”

  Tanis choked on his breath upon hearing these words. All fury fled from him, replaced by sure panic. His eyes flew to Shail’s.

  The Malorin’athgul arched a wry brow. “Did you really think a few braids and an illusion pinned to a bit of glass would keep me from recognizing the Empress’s heir? Had you not just spent hours together the day before, no doubt plotting your doomed little coup?”

  Tanis shook his head violently to indicate he wanted to speak.

  Shail humored him.

  Tanis blurted desperately, “But surely she’d be useful to you, sir—to your war!”

  “My war.” He grunted deprecatingly. “As if the politics of mortal kings could interest me.” He spun in a billow of crimson silk and headed off with the Warlock.

  They soon passed out of Tanis’s hearing, but the lad hardly noticed anyway, for grief fought a battle with confusion while his soul bled with guilt. He watched the eidola tie Nadia to one of the twisting columns of a bronze baldaquin far across the hall. It was torment seeing her, knowing he’d brought her into this peril. She was too far away for the lad to see her clearly, denying them even the comfort of each other’s gaze, and the goracrosta prevented any mental communication.

  While Shail and Sinárr constructed their trap for Pelas, Tanis stood bound to misery, wondering with each inhale if this was really the path he was meant to walk and with every exhale fearing for Nadia and what he’d done. With nothing else to do but suffer his desperation, the lad made a clock of his fears and cycled through them with each passing hour.

  Eventually Sinárr appeared again before Tanis—it was like the air split into a fissure and disgorged ebony smoke that poured itself into the Warlock’s shape. Parts of Sinárr always remained amorphous; even his eyes shifted and sparkled, like golden glass beads tumbling in a goblet.

  Those eyes fixed on Tanis again as the Warlock materialized in front of him… studied him…smiled.

  Tanis’s heart streaked into a panic.

  Sinárr stroked his gilded nails upwards along Tanis’s neck and drew them to a point at his chin. His unearthly eyes regarded him with a definite hunger. “No…I think not eidola for you.” He leaned close, bringing his lips to Tanis’s ear, his breath icy as he whispered, “For you…concubine.” One nail caught beneath the lad’s chin and pressed sharply.

  Tanis got the frightening image of this unnatural being vampirishly feeding off of him for eternity, and suddenly nothing a Malorin’athgul could ever do seemed anywhere near as horrible.

  “Sinárr…”

  The Warlock growled and exploded into smoke.

  Tanis let out a shuddering exhale.

  Then the two immortals departed, leaving Tanis to face his very uncertain future alone.

  Sixty-One

  “The angiel are united in purpose but not always in action.”

  – Sobra I’ternin, Eleventh Translation, 1499aF,

  On the Relationship of the Angiel to the Mortal Tapestry

  Alyneri hugged her knees and gazed out across the valley of the sa’reyth, watching as the stars began to fade beneath dawn’s early light. The night had been chill, but Balaji’s arm around her shoulders had kept her warm. Though he usually unsettled her, that night she’d felt joined with him in their vigil, bonded through their shared purpose. She didn’t exactly feel safe in his company, but she certainly felt protected.

  She’d had plenty of time through the night to reflect on why Balaji made her so nervous. Outwardly it made no sense—Balaji was ever amiable, the sa’reyth’s peace-keeper, equalizer and inimitable cook—but when she thought about it, she realized that she perceived in him an immense distance, as if only part of his mind wandered this earth while the greater part adventured eternally in the cosmic elsewhere.

  His manner reminded her often of Phaedor, but whereas Phaedor presented himself with a zanthyr’s aloof indifference, Balaji always offered an amiable and welcoming smile. She had the sense, howe
ver, that beneath Balaji’s friendly façade lurked a wild being of untamed power. One could look at Balaji and see a youth of ten and eight, or gaze deeper and see a fiery dragon sharing kinship with the sun.

  Despite her misgivings about his nature, all through the night Balaji had held her close, doubtless sensing the trepidation she must surely have been radiating. He in turn had watched the skies quietly, calm and unflustered, unfettered it would seem by bonds of love and thus by the emotions that accompanied those bindings. Yet Balaji clearly cared for Trell—she knew it was unfair of her to cast aspersions over his compassion.

  As dawn’s fire burned orange behind the eastern mountains and turned the near sky a deep, luminous blue, Alyneri hugged her knees closer and asked, “Does the passing of the endless years harden one’s soul, Balaji? Does it make it easier to endure not knowing what’s become of those we care about?”

  Balaji turned his gaze from the sky and considered her as he held her within the circle of his arm. “A fair question, Alyneri, daughter of Jair. The Mage would say it is only our choices that harden us.”

  Alyneri pondered that, though her thoughts were sluggish after keeping their all-night vigil. She pushed a stray strand of hair from her eyes. “But what of tragedy and death, and things stolen and lost? What choice does one have in these?”

  Balaji gave her a gentle smile. “One chooses how he will respond to them after all is said and done.”

  “That seems a callous way of looking at life,” she protested wearily. “How can you not feel the loss of a loved one? Would the Mage have no one mourn their passing?”

  “Ah, but it is after the mourning is done that one makes the choice to harden their heart against loving again, or not,” Balaji pointed out with a smile.

  Then his smile faded and his arm around her shoulders stiffened. “They near.” He stood and abruptly froze again, like a predator smelling the air. “Something isn’t right. Come, Alyneri.” He offered her his hand, and she took it feeling suddenly ill with foreboding—a feeling that only intensified as Balaji drew her urgently down the hill towards the sa’reyth.