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

by Melissa McPhail

  “You must be careful of them.” She didn’t think she needed to say it—she thought he’d learned what he needed to from this experience—but she said it anyway, because some truths couldn’t be heard too many times.

  “Isabel, I will be.” He pressed his nose into her hair and breathed deeply. Then he laid his face against her head, and she felt him smile. “You smell like sunlight.”

  Isabel squeezed shut her eyes. Why then do I feel so cold? “Where will you go when you leave here?”

  He let out a slow breath and drew her closer within the circle of his arms. “There’s someone I need to find.”

  Sleep was coming for her. She felt it tugging on her consciousness, lowering its shade across her thoughts. She hardly realized the words left her tongue, for they were more thought than spoken word: “…and one day you will come to find my brother.”

  He chuckled. “To give him my oath, as Franco Rohre and others have done?”

  Isabel let silence embrace her thoughts. “To shake his hand…and be welcomed to the game.”

  He must’ve said something in reply to this, but she’d already drifted off.

  ***

  “My lady, your chariot awaits.”

  Isabel roused from sleep to find Pelas smiling over her. He looked immaculate, striking in a long damask coat the color of wine, with his hair brushed and plaited, his jaw freshly shaved, and fine, starched linen at his cuffs.

  She pushed up on one elbow and almost cried out, but she saw that he’d prepared food for her and couldn’t bear to tell him that she felt too heartsick to stomach anything but grief.

  He was sensitive to her condition, however, and offered her but little things, fruit and the like. Then he made her drink of his wine to warm her, for he said her hands felt like ice. She knew it was merely an emanation of the guilt coating her soul.

  When he’d cared for her as best he could, Pelas stepped back from where she sat on the bed wrapped in his cloak, placed a hand to his heart, and swept an arm open in a bow. “Where would my lady travel?”

  Isabel closed her eyes. She didn’t know how to explain to him it was time for their paths to part.

  Pelas sat down on the bed and brushed a tear from her cheek. “Whatever it is, Isabel, you can tell me.”

  She looked down at her hands, and two more tears fell from her lashes to mingle with others already glinting there. “I can’t go with you.”

  He studied her face for a time. “You don’t expect me to leave you here?”

  She shook her head. “Not in the tower. Outside.”

  “Out—” he gave her a startled look. “Outside.” His gaze strayed to the windows and the bleak mountains beyond. “Out there?”

  Isabel exhaled a slow breath that felt painful as it left her chest. It was all she could do to keep the grief at bay. “Someone will come for me.”

  “Someone…what someone? Isabel…” He took her chin and made her look at him. “What someone?”

  Her eyes must’ve answered him enough, for recognition came into his gaze. Or perhaps it was just the light of realization dawning there. “I see.” He drew back from her. “He will come.” When she said nothing, Pelas leaned on one hand to study her. “Just like that?”

  She nodded.

  “Just…anywhere?”

  She nodded again.

  He arched a raven brow. “That’s a nice trick.”

  “You should ask him about it,” the flicker of a smile touched her lips, “when next you meet.”

  His gaze narrowed while one brow lifted upwards in a suspicious slant. “I’m not sure I want a path if it means becoming so predictable.”

  She gave him sharp little smile. “Too late, I think.”

  His gaze softened, and he leaned to take her into his arms. “Too late,” he whispered in a kiss.

  At the bottom of the tower he set her on her feet, wrapped in his cloak. The day was cold but clear, breezeless. They seemed to be resting on the spine of the world—all around she saw only stark, granite mountains chalked with snow. But the springtime sun felt warm on her aching back, and the sky had never seemed so blue. Almost as blue as her brother’s eyes.

  “You’re certain about this?” He looked her over.

  She leaned and kissed him softly, saying goodbye with her tears.

  He pursed his lips, clearly considering the prudence in leaving her alone on top of the world. But eventually his brow relaxed with resignation and he reached into his coat and withdrew a strip of black silk from his pocket.

  It was longer than her other had been and delicately embroidered with patterns—his patterns, like those that still burned everywhere in her skin. She reached to receive the cloth from him and studied the patterns’ construction, blacker than black thread against the midnight silk like the twisting spirals of endless space.

  Pelas had been birthed of Chaos; these patterns were pure starlight.

  “Allow me?” he offered.

  She placed the silk into his hands and turned, and he replaced the blindfold across her eyes, tying it gently. Then he leaned and kissed her cheek from behind her.

  “You won’t change your mind about this?” But he knew that she wouldn’t.

  “Be wary of your brothers.” She turned to face him again. “They’ll use patterns to trick you again, if you let them.”

  Considering this, he drew in a deep breath and exhaled with a nod.

  With elae now brightly showing her the world once more, she watched Pelas call a portal, watched its silver-violet streak splitting the gilded fabric of the realm, opening upon the dimension of Shadow, which was time itself—the stuff that bound all the realms together.

  With one last glance over his shoulder—concerned, warm…impossibly grateful—he stepped into Shadow, and his portal closed.

  Isabel let out a sob that caught in her throat. Wrapping his cloak about her form, she walked barefoot across the icy earth and slowly—ever so slowly—lowered her tortured body onto a rock.

  Then she called to him, reaching out along their bond.

  She’d been an anchor for him once, when he’d navigated the formless stretches of Shadow across the centuries to regain her. Finding her on the other side of the world would hardly be a test of his skill.

  Knowing him, he was probably already on his way.

  I need you…

  And oh, she needed him desperately.

  The cold air embraced her with its chill. She hugged Pelas’s velvet cloak tighter about her and tried not to breathe too deeply, tried not to move, just letting her body tremble as it willed. She might’ve made herself comfortable in the cold—it would’ve been easy to do—but culpability weighed too heavily upon her. She felt wrong seeking comfort when the pain was only her due. Some discomforts were meant to be borne.

  The sun had barely traveled in its arc when he appeared over a distant rise, a dark shadow crossing the frozen earth. Moments later he stood over her.

  She saw his green eyes tighten—he would see what her cloak concealed. He would’ve seen all the moment he arrived.

  “Isabel…”

  Amazing how much horror and disapproval he could lace across her name.

  She winced beneath the reprimand in his gaze. “Pray don’t chastise me with ‘I told you so’s,” she whispered. She’d never felt so broken. His censure would only pound the pieces into chalk.

  The sky swirled as Phaedor swept her into his arms.

  She laid her cheek against his marble chest while her eyes burned with unshed tears. She knew those would fall later, in her brother’s embrace. Phaedor held her tightly, and though he radiated fury over what she’d done to herself, still he pressed a kiss of absolution to her forehead.

  She’d known adoration when Pelas held her, but in Phaedor’s embrace was a safety that would survive the shattering of the world.

  With her ear pressed to his chest, Isabel heard his heart beating in resonance with hers. Their life patterns were bound in three—her brother and Phaedor and
herself—as inseparable as the binding she and Arion had worked centuries ago. Then, Arion had sacrificed himself for her brother, for their mutual game…and sacrificed their love in the process.

  And now she had done the same.

  Phaedor had warned her it would be so…that her path and Arion’s would ever be diverging and converging. She had wanted to prove him wrong just once.

  The zanthyr’s warmth permeated Isabel’s frozen flesh and eased her trembling. Or perhaps it was the healing he worked upon her as he held her in his arms, frowning with unspoken rebuke.

  “Please…” She pushed her face into his chest. “Just take me away from here.”

  “As you will, Isabel.”

  And he summoned a portal to take her home.

  Sixty-Three

  “A variant trait is like a twist in the game. Balance doesn’t know what to do with it.”

  – The Agasi wielder Markal Morrelaine

  Tanis stared around the obsidian hall with foreboding and guilt mingling in his soul. They were like oil and acid, fomenting an unmixable concoction that churned endlessly. He felt as if Shail had stabbed his heart and left the bitter steel there as a reminder of his foolish mistakes, so that with every doomed contraction he might know again the pain of failure. His every exhalation seemed to stain the air with fear.

  Pelas wasn’t going to come for him.

  Tanis had never thought that he would…although he admitted a pale hope had occasionally roused its head to be noticed. Pelas had his own choice to make, and Tanis knew the importance of that choice. He couldn’t bring himself to truly hope the man would come rescue him. Pelas had to walk his path—as much as Pelas had a path—and Tanis had to walk his, also.

  It was hard to believe he walked it at all, but some faint part of him recognized that he did. During the long hours, he’d many times tried to imagine escaping with Nadia, but always those scenarios had met some opposing force in his mind…as if the very fabric of existence was pushing back against the idea.

  Mostly his own incredulity stood in the way of any focused thought. He just couldn’t believe that his mother had gone to such trouble to train him—and for what? So he could become a Warlock’s concubine?

  Tanis shuddered at the very thought—or would have, if Shail hadn’t bound him so tightly that even breath had to scrape its way in and out of his lungs.

  But his disbelief over his circumstances made it difficult to think of solutions. What meager ideas he mustered just kept walking in circles in his head, leading nowhere.

  The worst of it wasn’t his own fate. That was too wholly unreal. No, the worst of it was worrying for Nadia.

  Gods above, he’d been so stupid! Why hadn’t he just told Vincenzé what they knew? Why hadn’t he trusted the High Lord’s calm rationality? How could he have imagined that three teenagers were any sort of match for Shailabanáchtran?

  Verily, when he looked at it, Tanis could barely stomach his exorbitant stupidity.

  And what of Felix? Tanis had just left him there, abandoned beneath a pile of bodies…

  Surely this must be what the zanthyr had meant when he spoke of Balance—or rather, of violating it. Somehow Tanis must’ve roused Cephrael’s anger, for the angiel’s scales of Balance certainly seemed to be weighing much more heavily on Shail’s side than on his own. Either that, or the Malorin’athgul’s claim that Fate cow-towed to his will was more than bold posturing. But if it was true, what hope did any of them have? If even Balance stood on Shail’s side?

  Tanis couldn’t decide what was worse: contemplating an inevitable end, or the endless not-knowing. To just be pinned there hopelessly, impotently, with nothing to do but think on past mistakes, or else the grim envisioning of an unimaginable eternity…and all the while just waiting… waiting…it felt an acute form of torture.

  As the hours passed in this guise, what hope the lad had mustered faded away again. He tried to keep hold of his courage, but it felt a frail rope, many times frayed, and the tugging tide of fear so strong—

  “Hello, little spy.”

  Tanis caught his breath. The familiar voice, coming low in his ear, seemed an impossible dream. Instantly he felt Shail’s invisible bonds falling away. Tanis spun—

  And there stood Pelas.

  Tears of relief—and joy, and dire apprehension—brimmed in the lad’s eyes. But then Pelas reached for Tanis’s bound hands. “Sir, wait—”

  Pelas sliced his dagger—Phaedor’s dagger—through the goracrosta.

  And a silver-violet dome sprang up all around them.

  Tanis inwardly moaned. Gods above, now they were both trapped! And all of this was his fault!

  Pelas lifted his handsome face to assess the dome. Then he turned back to Tanis, frowning as he noticed the lad’s devastated expression. He drew him into a dear embrace. “Ah, Tanis…how I’ve missed you.”

  Tanis hugged him tightly in return, jaw clenched, barely holding back tears. He felt pummeled by emotions too powerful to reconcile—fear and fury, apprehension, sorrow, shame, and a host of others, all of them swirling and pulling and tearing at him. This was no reunion. Tanis had just ensured Pelas’s end along with his and Nadia’s.

  The lad drew back and pressed palms to his eyes. “Sir,” he groaned wretchedly, “you shouldn’t have come.”

  Pelas’s copper eyes looked him over. Then he exhaled a regretful sigh. “I see Shail has been at you like Darshan has been at me.” He shook his head and gave him a smile soft with compassion. “I never imagined our threads could’ve become so closely woven together, Tanis, yet I see so clearly of this truth now.”

  Tanis’s eyes burned. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Pelas and stared off instead, viewing the world through a black veil of fault. “Any minute all hell is going to open upon us, sir.”

  “Yes, my brother’s trap.” Pelas lifted a calculating gaze to the dome of deyjiin. “Like you in this moment, Tanis, I lost hope once.” When he glanced back to the lad, his eyes were sparkling and bright. “Never again.” He reached a hand and took Tanis’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, making the lad look at him. “Promise me the same?”

  Something indefinable cavorted in Pelas’s gaze, mingling with deep affection and the irrepressible thirst for excitement that always danced there. Tanis couldn’t decipher the meaning of this look, but the energy of it funneled into him.

  That’s when the truth finally claimed him: Pelas was standing right in front of him!

  Finally—after so long, after so many months of desperately wishing to see him again! He stood right there looking as he always did—magnificent, dazzling, ready to take on anything the world dished out. Tanis had been so overcome by despondency that he’d failed to recognize the obvious truth.

  This was Pelas.

  Pelas had come for him!

  Suddenly hope welled—no, it surged with tidal force, raging across the despairing landscape Tanis had been mired in to cleanse away the muck of disheartenment.

  Tanis threw his arms fiercely around him. “You came!”

  Pelas chuckled and held him close. The embrace of a brother couldn’t have felt more true. “Of course I came,” he murmured. “But leaving, I think, is our objective.” He drew back and took the lad by the shoulders, and his smiling copper eyes looked him over once more. “Ah, yes, that’s much better.” His gaze shifted past Tanis then, and he straightened. “And here they come at last, the demons of our salvation.”

  Tanis’s face fell slack and he spun. A host of eidola were coming their way, led by Sinárr. He braced himself against the onset of that incapacitating fear again, yet…he couldn’t find even a breath of it anymore.

  Pelas had come for him!

  It occurred to Tanis just how despairing he’d been—so deep into that well of hopelessness that he’d barely registered the lifeline being thrown to him. And he saw, too, that if he let Shail demoralize him so easily, then the man had won before the fight even began.

  It was an important real
ization, but Tanis barely had time to process it before Sinárr burst into existence inside the glowing dome. Seconds later, his eidola walked through the shimmering walls—over a dozen in all.

  Tanis instinctively moved closer to Pelas. He in turn placed a possessive hand on the lad’s shoulder.

  Swaths of darkness clung to Sinárr as he approached. “You would be Pelasommáyurek.” Sinárr’s quiet whisper scraped Tanis’s ears, making the lad shudder reflexively.

  Pelas’s hand on his shoulder tightened with reassurance. “And you would be Sinárr.”

  “Shailabanáchtran would have me destroy you and claim the boy as my own.”

  The ghost of a smile flickered on Pelas’s lips. “My brother never did learn to play well with others.”

  The Warlock vanished and reappeared in a flood of smoke in nearly the same instant, only now he stood but paces in front of them. His golden eyes fixed on Tanis, ardent with desire. “Come to me, child.”

  Tanis felt himself alarmingly moving forward.

  Pelas held him firmly back. “Release him from your will, Sinárr.”

  “Nay, Pelas.” His gilded eyes shifted to the Malorin’athgul. “You have no power here.”

  Pelas moved Tanis behind him with one hand while his other flashed out and closed around Sinárr’s throat. Smoke exploded, swirled, congealed. Pelas’s voice came as soft as Sinárr’s. “Are you so certain of that, Witchlord?”

  Darkness erupted, swirled, sucked violently back into form. Pelas had Sinárr pinned.

  The Warlock struck in a flash of shadow—a Merdanti blade in a deadly swipe. Pelas caught his wrist and thrust him backwards, and they both vanished into a geyser of darkness. This angry vortex swept across the floor like a tornado as Sinárr and Pelas grappled within its mists. The eidola scattered before it, and then the swirling shadows crashed into the dome.