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

by Melissa McPhail

  “The others—” she whispered.

  “I have summoned them.” He gripped her hand more tightly, and the world skipped beneath them…blurred—once, twice, many times again. They crossed in heartbeats what had been half an hour’s leisurely climb.

  Alyneri felt a frightening duality as she rushed at Balaji’s side. Part of her wanted to run as fiercely as she could into the imminent future, to be there when the moment arrived and do whatever she must to make her world whole again; another part desired to stay behind, to linger even in that past which had felt so agonizing only a moment before. For suddenly the not-knowing seemed a preferable state compared to what the future must surely hold.

  The sun’s rim cleared the mountain ridge just as Náiir’s dark-haired head appeared over the rise of the opposite hill. Balaji must’ve known where his brother would return, for he’d been leading Alyneri in that direction all the while.

  But as the rest of Náiir’s form came into view, carrying Trell in his arms, Alyneri’s feet turned as leaden as if all the blood in her body had fled there to cower. Balaji drew her relentlessly forth through a storm of fear that made all the world seem darker despite the sun rising brilliantly in the east.

  “Balaji—” Náiir’s tone crackled with urgency. “Summon the Mage.”

  “The Mage is in Illume Be—”

  Náiir made a sound that was half-growl, half-roar and which echoed like a clap of thunder throughout the valley. “Reach him!”

  Balaji drew up short, but now Alyneri couldn’t stop. She picked up her skirts and ran to Náiir…to Trell draped unconscious against his body.

  Oh, dear Epiphany, to see him again! She could hardly find her breath for sight of him, even cradled so in Náiir’s arms. For weeks she’d dreamed of seeing him again, but always in her mind she feared she never would. Now here he was, and she’d never loved him more—truly, she knew she could never love anyone more than she loved Trell.

  Náiir gave her a look as she gained his side. He didn’t pause in his descent towards the sa’reyth, but he slowed to let her read of his charge. She spared but a moment to gaze upon Trell’s face—his beautiful face! His closed lids seemed so fragile, his lips pale and barely parted—but then she placed her hands on his head and dove into rapport.

  Tears of joy and tears of foreboding fell unnoticed from her eyes as she swam the current of Trell’s lifeforce, seeking his pattern. When she found it…it made no sense! The light of his pattern was fading, yet the pattern itself appeared whole.

  Her eyes flew open, and she found Náiir watching her as he continued his rapid descent. His gaze reflected what she had just learned. Something was very wrong.

  Jaya emerged from the tent just as they arrived, and she held back the folds of heavy cloth to let them pass. “What is it? What happened?”

  “The witch did something to him.” Náiir rushed through the canvas corridors towards a bedchamber Alyneri had never noticed before. He laid Trell out on the wide four-poster bed.

  Alyneri nearly threw herself to Trell’s side and sank at once back into rapport. Again, she examined his life-pattern, following its twists and curves, seeking explanation for the reason its light had already diminished. Finding nothing, she dove deeper—as Vaile had shown her how to do—deep into the heart of his pattern.

  Now she swam among a maze of arches, looking up, down—all around within a vast complex of light. She threaded her mind among that rose-gold filigree of three dimensions, through the vaulted, spiraling arches and twisting columns that formed Trell’s life-pattern, the very essence that was him. Yet despite this deepest of inspections, she found nothing to explain why his light was waning.

  It frightened her beyond measure.

  Opening her eyes, Alyneri pressed Trell’s hand to her cheek and exhaled a shuddering breath. Her stomach felt sick, her throat clenched by fear. Whatever secret device this woman had worked, she’d hidden it alarmingly well.

  Náiir meanwhile turned to Jaya and said in a low voice, “Trell walked from his cell in Darroyhan, but an hour after our escape, I sensed his consciousness fading. Now he won’t rouse at all.”

  Eyes wide, Jaya moved to Trell’s side, leaned on the bed and placed a hand on his brow. Alyneri watched Jaya close her eyes and concentrate. She remained still for a long time, no doubt following the same course of inspection that Alyneri had just completed. When she opened her eyes again, Jaya had measurably paled. “He fades with every breath!” She turned a gaze of fiery accusation upon her brother. “What could she have done?”

  Náiir clenched his jaw. “She was a mor’alir Adept. What wouldn’t she do?”

  Balaji entered through a parting of drapes with Mithaiya close behind him. “I’ve called the Mage, Náiir, but I cannot say how quickly he will come.”

  Jaya spun to him. “By the Lady’s blessed light, why didn’t Vai—” Abruptly she bit off her words and turned Náiir a dramatic look of unease. “Where’s Vaile?”

  Náiir’s gaze narrowed to a smoldering, brimstone stare. He didn’t seem to see Jaya anymore, only the memory of what he’d witnessed. “We met with some resistance at Darroyhan.” His lips pressed to a tight line. “Vaile took the full force of a blast of deyjiin as we were departing with Trell.”

  Jaya pressed a hand over her mouth.

  “And?” Mithaiya demanded.

  Náiir turned her an unreadable look. “She said she would follow.”

  “So you just left her there?” Mithaiya grabbed Náiir’s arm. “With deyjiin in her veins? What if she couldn’t take the form?”

  “Ah…” Balaji’s eyes were fixed on his brother. “You saw it too, then.”

  Náiir shifted his gaze to Balaji. Alyneri saw an odd acceptance in it.

  Jaya dropped her hand to her side. “What are you saying?”

  Náiir turned her a grim look. “Vaile made her choice, Jaya.”

  Balaji looked over at Alyneri and gave her a soft smile. “She’s been teaching Alyneri the dance of swords.”

  “That hardly proves—” Mithaiya began.

  “Amithaiya’geshwen,” Balaji’s tone, though mild, yet silenced her. “Vaile gave Alyneri her own blades to use in her studies.”

  At this, both Jaya and Mithaiya stared hollowly at him.

  Alyneri didn’t understand the tumultuous energy that charged like lightning through the currents at this, and she really didn’t care. Even the misgiving that something terrible had happened to Vaile sounded a faint whisper, drowned by the fear screaming in her head.

  She shoved to her feet. “Trell is dying while you stand here bickering! Cannot any of you help him?” She cast her gaze urgently about the room, seeking any eyes to meet with hers. “Won’t you help him?” Her voice broke, and she sank again at his bedside. His hand in hers felt cold.

  Náiir touched her shoulder. “If it was within my power to help him, Alyneri, I would—Balance be damned.”

  “Náiir—”

  “Peace, Mithaiya!” Náiir speared a condemning look at his sister. Then he turned back to Alyneri with deep concern furrowing his brow. “I searched his pattern all the while we flew, and still I could find no hint of Taliah’s working.”

  “Nor I,” Jaya said, sounding desolate.

  Alyneri swallowed back a sob. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pressed Trell’s hand to her face. Still in rapport, she watched his life-pattern fading before her eyes. All the while she’d been holding his hand, she pushed her own lifeforce into him, but it seemed hardly to make a dent in his degeneration. The life just kept trickling out of him. He grew paler by the breath.

  Balaji came over and placed a hand on Trell’s shoulder, and Alyneri saw a surge of elae flood into his pattern. He looked to her compassionately, nodded once, and withdrew. So followed Mithaiya, then Náiir, each one sending a pulse of elae into Trell’s pattern, making it momentarily glow before it faded again, though it remained brighter after each surge.

  After her siblings left, Jaya sat down on the bed be
side Alyneri, placed one hand on Trell’s leg and her arm around Alyneri. She cast a steady flow of the lifeforce into his pattern, even as Alyneri did.

  Weak with desperation, Alyneri leaned into Jaya’s embrace, and they rested their heads together.

  “The Mage made Trell’s body strong,” Jaya murmured into Alyneri’s ear, “and his will is even stronger. Trell’s is the strength of a thousand men. Have faith he can endure even this.”

  Alyneri’s face was wet with tears. Their salt collected on her lips and stained her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop crying. The thought of losing him after all he must’ve endured, when freedom lay within his reach…it seemed so unbearably unfair.

  “Jaya.”

  Alyneri looked over to find Balaji standing in the doorway.

  “Any more and you risk shifting the Balance in Trell’s life, never mind your own.”

  Jaya let out a slow breath. She stood and looked down on Trell quietly, her eyes dark with concern. “Once again, his life lies in the Mage’s hands.” She gave Alyneri an apologetic look and left with her brother.

  Alyneri closed her eyes and laid her forehead on Trell’s upper arm, her hands clutching his. She cast the lifeforce into him in a ceaseless flow. She knew the constant drain on her own ability would eventually make a sieve of herself, so that her pattern couldn’t hold the lifeforce any more than his could. Yet what choice had she? Trell lay before her! He was dying! These were incontrovertible facts with an unequivocal response.

  She would save him, or die trying.

  Some time after daybreak, Fynn came in. He sat for a while in a chair at the foot of the bed and stared at his cousin, not speaking—not even drinking. Then, after an hour or so, he got up and left with red-rimmed eyes.

  Carian came soon thereafter. He put a hand on Trell’s leg and gazed at him for a time. Then he smiled and left.

  It panicked Alyneri to think they were coming to pay their last respects.

  Throughout the day people came and went. Alyneri rarely had the energy to spare a glance for them, but she often felt them there…felt their grief or their worry…their compassion. No one disturbed her. None tried to stop her, though everyone knew she was killing herself trying to save him. They also knew that nothing they could say would change that.

  At one point in the early evening she heard a commotion that partly roused her from the symphony of rapport–Vaile’s return. Alyneri listened long enough to ascertain that the zanthyr lived, and then she directed her attention back to Trell. His future was not so assured.

  She drew upon the lifeforce, pushed it into Trell’s pattern and considered the drain on her own energies as penance for her mistakes. They’d parted in the Kutsamak still riven by her duplicity. He had every right to be upset, but to think he might die believing she was ashamed of him—this nearly undid her. When she thought of her time together with Trell…when she recalled his humor and his nobility and his incredible courage—oh, how desperately she loved him!

  At some point, Balaji brought her a chair. Alyneri had lost track of the hours by then. Now she sat at Trell’s bedside and rested her chin on her hands and gazed at him through eyes wet with tears.

  For hours she stayed so, funneling elae into his pattern. For hours she watched as his face grew more pale, the delicate skin beneath his eyes grew shadowed, and the angular hollows beneath his cheekbones became ever more pronounced.

  ‘If Cephrael stood against him, he would’ve died in the fire sea…’

  Vaile’s words. Alyneri had to believe them now—they were all she clung to, in fact. She had to believe that Trell could survive even this; that somehow Balance would shift again in his favor. She thought of all the things she’d told Vaile that she and Trell would do together, and she promised herself it would come to be.

  “I won’t give up on you.” Alyneri pressed a wet kiss to his palm and channeled elae into his life-pattern despite the dangerous throbbing in her skull. “Don’t you give up either.”

  ***

  She was resting with her head on his arm when again she felt a forceful presence enter the room. It took her half a minute to convince herself to lift her head to see who had come—the chains of her exhaustion bound her into that bent posture. When she did manage to lift her gaze, she looked upon another Sundragon.

  Two of the drachwyr she hadn’t yet met, but this man could only be Şrivas’rhakárakek, the Shadow of the Light. Jaya said he came and went always in the night.

  Rhakar came across the room and stood opposite her across the bed. He placed a hand on Trell’s shoulder, and because she maintained rapport, Alyneri saw a pulse of brilliant energy flowing into Trell’s pattern, making it flare brightly before settling back again to the ashen hue it had become. Yet some of Rhakar’s working must’ve lingered, for Trell’s pattern seemed a little more solid than it had a moment ago.

  Alyneri lifted her gaze to meet Rhakar’s.

  Yellow-gold eyes looked down at her. “I didn’t pull him from a well so a witch could curse him unto death.”

  Alyneri pressed her lips together and blinked more tears from her eyes.

  Rhakar held her with his gaze. His presence felt different from the other drachwyr…uniquely powerful…as though a thousand threads attached to him. She remembered Mithaiya saying that Rhakar was already invested in the game and got the impression that he walked the tapestry indifferent to the cobwebs of Balaji’s analogy, that he never wove between them but merely passed on, letting them collect…or searing from the ether any that sought to prevent his passing.

  When Rhakar looked at her, as he was doing just then, Alyneri felt as if those electric threads, myriad filaments of fate, reached out to bind her as well. “Trell is a Player, Alyneri d’Giverny. Isabel says his path extends long into the tapestry. You hold him here until the Mage comes. Don’t let go.”

  A sob lodged in her throat at this—yet it was hope that caught it there. Desperately, she held his gaze and managed a nod.

  He nodded once in return, pointedly sealing their pact, and left.

  ***

  Alyneri lost track of time as she sat at Trell’s side, pushing elae into his pattern. From the ache everywhere in her body and the interminable throbbing in her skull, she thought it must’ve been nearing midnight. She’d been awake for more than two days. Now it was less the fear of Trell’s imminent expiration than of an overwhelming weariness that terrorized her, for she was the only force keeping him alive—her lifeforce anchoring his to this world—and if she failed…if exhaustion claimed her into sleep or if the lifeforce suddenly denied her its touch, Trell would depart within the hour.

  Indeed, the longer she held him to life, the more she felt that some force equally pulled him into the beyond, dragging him down to death’s depths. She’d caught Trell while the anchor of death was still sinking, but now it wasn’t enough for Alyneri to hold only Trell above those dark waves. She had to buoy him and the anchor. If she let it drop low enough to catch the bottom, it would yank Trell from her grasp.

  Alyneri let out a shuddering exhale and rested her head on Trell’s chest while she gripped his hand in hers. The world spun dizzily. She felt unimaginably drained…a mere husk of herself. Her fingers around his were cramped from clenching so tightly for hours unending, as if her hand alone held him to life; with every heartbeat, the light of the lifeforce seemed to move farther and farther away, like a candle being carried down a darkened hallway.

  Each time she inhaled, she drew upon the lifeforce, but where once it had gushed as from a well too full, now elae came as barely a trickle.

  She felt herself fading while the world spun around her, felt her own heartbeat slowing in time with Trell’s. Darkness hovered on the edges of her vision…teasing, inviting.

  Her muddled mind saw justice in their passing together into the beyond, as if in proving herself so willing to give up her life for him, she might make amends for having ever thought to live without him.

  She tried to resist the pull of exh
austion’s sleep, tried to resist the force tugging Trell into the depths, but suddenly she felt the anchor dropping. It slid from her grasp like elae had slipped, whisking away into the deep. The world spun with ghostly shadows, like sinking into a well of inky darkness. Alyneri felt herself being sucked down beneath the waves—for though she couldn’t put life into Trell’s pattern any longer, yet she wouldn’t let go of it. Thus they both tumbled toward death’s depths, struggling to draw breath through the swirling dark—

  Light blazed in painful shards of color.

  Alyneri’s enervated mind thought at first it must’ve been Phaedor that sent his light into Trell’s pattern, for whoever else could’ve shone so brightly?

  A hand came to rest upon her head, and elae flooded into her even as it flooded Trell’s pattern with a brilliance theretofore unmatched. It was as if the light was breaking away the char to forge the pattern anew. She roused and sat up with a start.

  Looked up.

  Blue eyes gazed into hers. “Sweet Alyneri…” His hand stroked her hair as he smiled upon her with wonder and awe. “How brave and selfless you are.”

  Alyneri caught her breath.

  Björn sat down beside her. She didn’t know where the chair had come from—didn’t know where he had come from, this man who glowed on the currents like a star. No, a core of stars.

  He laid one hand upon Trell’s brow and extended his other palm open to her. “Give me your hand. See what parasite of vengeance tries to claim our Trell of the Tides.”

  Alyneri complied without thinking, such was the power of Björn’s gaze. He interwove her fingers with his and then turned his attention to Trell.

  Through Bjorn’s eyes, Alyneri immediately saw a world bathed in the currents of elae, brilliant with color and gilded light. She saw what Björn saw as he dove with alacrity into Trell’s mind and instantly arrived at his life-pattern. He didn’t seek it. It simply appeared to his view.

  And she saw at once the dark pattern clinging there like a spider.

  It stood out so prominently against Trell’s life-pattern! How could she not have seen it?