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

by Melissa McPhail

  He gazed quietly at her. “That girl saved my life.”

  She gazed defiantly back. “This girl did, too.”

  He broke into a smile. “This girl…who learned blades from a zanthyr and is going to teach me the cortata.”

  “That girl, yes.” She flipped a strand of pale hair from her shoulder and cast him a determined look. “That is, if you will have her, Prince of Dannym.”

  He felt desire filling him. Doubtless it filled his gaze as well. “I will, Alyneri d’Giverny.”

  “Well then.” She took his hand and spun on her heel and pulled him off again. “As Vaile would say, the sun grows long and the day short.”

  But the night ahead of us remains longer still.

  He didn’t think she’d heard the thought—she was a Healer, not a truthreader—but from the smile she shot him suddenly over her shoulder, he wondered if she’d heard it after all.

  Sixty-Five

  “Don’t seek to live within a world framed by others’ dreams. Dream new realities and dare to explore their vast reaches of wonder.”

  – Attributed to the angiel Epiphany

  Tanis roused from a kaleidoscopic disorientation feeling a strong arm bracing him against a marble-hard chest.

  Pelas.

  As his vision returned and he recognized a hall in Pelas’s home in Hallovia, Tanis exhaled a tremulous sigh fraught with relief, incredulity and no small measure of did-I-really-just-bloody-do-that?

  Pelas chuckled. “Here all this time I thought my brother feared me, when really he should’ve been fearing you, little spy.”

  Tanis managed to get his feet solidly beneath him and straightened away from Pelas’s support. He pushed a palm to his pounding forehead. “Please, sir…don’t remind me.”

  Pelas chuckled again.

  “Tanis?” Nadia was leaning in the curve of Pelas’s other side. Her voice sounded unexpectedly weak. Then her knees buckled.

  Pelas caught her up in his arms.

  “Nadia!” An alarm went off in Tanis’s head. He took her face between his hands and tried to hold her attention with voice and mind together. “Did Shail or Sinárr put their power into you?”

  Nadia’s head lolled. Her eyes were barely open. “He…put his thumb…”

  Pelas hissed an oath and took off down the hall. Tanis followed close on his heels, his heart keeping a rapid pace with apprehension.

  Pelas laid Nadia down on a bed in the first room they reached, and Tanis nearly threw himself onto the mattress beside her. She looked frighteningly pale, as if death had already claimed her with a final kiss. Tanis spun a desperate look at Pelas.

  The Malorin’athgul placed his hand on Nadia’s forehead and narrowed his gaze in concentration. The furrow between his brows deepened. “Tanis…” his gaze shifted to the lad. “I can pull deyjiin from her veins, but much damage is already done.”

  “Just—” Tanis couldn’t hear him speak such words. “Just do it—please!” He took Nadia’s face between his hands and dove into rapport with her—the connection was the same whether worked by a Healer or a truthreader. In the same moment, he sought Pelas’s mind, casting forth the invitation, knowing Pelas would perceive his entreaty.

  At once the Malorin’athgul opened himself in return. Pelas’s powerful mental presence felt painful to Tanis’s ravaged brain, like sunlight on already burned skin. Help her, sir—oh, please help her!

  He watched with his mind and the currents both as Pelas began drawing deyjiin out of Nadia’s form, not unlike extracting a poison from her blood. Deyjiin’s negatively-charged power churned the currents into tiny rippling waves, like a pelting rain on an otherwise still pond, but in the currents, too, Tanis saw that her life had reached a dangerous ebb.

  Instinct drove Tanis from the shores of desperation into uncharted waters.

  As he’d seen the zanthyr once do, he let the currents guide him to Nadia’s life-pattern. He instinctively recognized it when he found it, but—

  Not merely frayed, her pattern had started coming unbound.

  Tanis couldn’t lose her like this. He wouldn’t lose her at all!

  ‘Take each fraying edge and make it smooth…’

  His mother’s words from a lesson on Healing found him, calmed him, though she hadn’t told him how to make the frayed edges smooth.

  Tanis took a deep breath and imagined his mind as a beam of light, which was an easier way of conceiving of what he was really doing—that is, creating a focal point for elae and casting his intention through it. He swept the beam across one of the frayed edges of Nadia’s pattern and watched the tendrils seal back into themselves. It surprised him to realize it had actually worked.

  That was…interesting.

  When her pattern didn’t immediately come apart again, Tanis felt hope thrill through him. Okay, he could do this.

  He set to work.

  Tanis was new to a Healer’s technique—though he understood much of their craft from his mother’s teachings and from his observation of Alyneri’s work—so he continued his Healing with methodic and careful attention.

  When he’d resealed every escaping tendril of Nadia’s life-pattern, he inspected it again from every angle to assure himself there were no more frayed edges anywhere. Even as he watched, her pattern began to glow vibrantly again. Then Nadia drew in a deep breath, and her eyes fluttered open. “Tanis…?”

  Tanis nearly cried with the relief that flooded him. He pulled out of rapport and gave Pelas a look of desperate gratitude.

  Pelas shook his head in wonder. “My little spy.” His eyes were warm, his smile impossibly bright.

  Tanis returned his smile with a nearly overwhelming sense of joy.

  Nadia blinked up at him. “I thought I was…” Her eyes strayed off with confusion. Then they moved to meet his gaze again. “Did you heal me?”

  The barest smile hinted upon his lips. “Yes, Nadia.”

  Her eyes regarded him with uncertain wonder. “How do you know Healing patterns, Tanis?”

  Tanis felt a smile of pride twitching in the corner of his mouth, because for the first time, he owned the truth. “I didn’t use patterns, Nadia.”

  Her eyes went round. “A variant trait?”

  He nodded.

  Possibly because he didn’t hide his next thought, Nadia came more fully awake, though her voice grew fainter with surprise. “Do you…are there other things you can do innately?”

  “A few.”

  She searched his gaze in wonder. “Like?”

  The smile twitched more impatiently on his lips. “I’ve had some success traveling nodes and with other workings of the second.” Albeit he admitted his last working—where he’d nearly incinerated the temple and himself and Nadia along with it—might’ve been a tad over-ambitious. “And timeweaving.”

  “A truthreader with three variant traits?” Her colorless gaze strayed to Pelas, who was watching this exchange quietly, and then shifted back to Tanis again. “No one has three variant traits, Tanis.”

  “How else would you explain it?”

  Nadia frowned as she tried to think of another answer. Then something, whatever she’d thought of, made her come fully alert. “Not three variant traits,” she whispered with understanding coloring her tone. Her gaze flew back to meet his and she squeezed his hand. “One trait. One variant trait that makes you a native of four strands.”

  Pelas grunted as if this proved a theory he’d long suspected.

  Tanis gave him an odd look. “I’ve…” He turned back to Nadia. “Is there such a variant trait?”

  Nadia sort of stared at him. “Only one person has ever been known to possess it.”

  Tanis felt a sudden welling apprehension. His mouth went suddenly dry. “Who?”

  Nadia’s eyes darted between Tanis and Pelas again. “Epiphany’s Prophet, Isabel van Gelderan.”

  Isabel van Gelderan.

  Though he’d heard her name a hundred times—a thousand times—this time Tanis knew its truth. Th
e obsidian wall that protected the memories of his parents—the same wall that had banked the deluge of Shail’s invading mind—suddenly began dissolving away as if washed by the surf, and upon that rising tide came a flood of memories.

  Tanis heard his mother’s voice, saw her face—saw his father’s face for the first time. At last, his father! In whose features Tanis found so many echoes of his own.

  And his father said, ‘You are the son of Arion Tavestra, my son.’

  And his mother bent and kissed him and said as she withdrew, ‘You are the child of Isabel van Gelderan, my child.’

  Then together, they said into his mind, using a bond Tanis only then realized still existed, ‘And you are dearly loved.’

  Tanis gripped Nadia’s hand tightly, for such emotion threatened to burst out of him that he wasn’t sure he could contain it.

  The son of Arion Tavestra. The child of Isabel van Gelderan.

  And behind their names…hundreds of memories, scenes from his earliest years. He could perceive them hovering in the space behind the obsidian wall…a wall he realized he could now raise and lower at will.

  Why had hearing his mother’s name this time released those memories? But of course, he knew.

  Because this time I was ready.

  Tanis pushed a hand through his hair and left it lodged there, all but forgotten in a moment of new understanding. His parents had built the wall to protect him until he was old enough to protect himself, until he’d gained enough understanding of his gifts to raise and lower it with a simple thought. Which he did just then, raising it up again to protect those cherished truths.

  Tanis let out a forceful exhale and dropped his hand. He closed his eyes feeling a sense of reverence, of awe, and of immense gratitude to his parents. When he opened his eyes again, he felt as if he gazed upon a brand new world.

  Nadia was staring speechlessly at him.

  Pelas was smiling.

  Only then did Tanis realize that he’d shared the entire experience with both of them—for he still shared Pelas’s mind from the moment of their Healing, and with Nadia through their bond.

  “Tanis…” Nadia breathed wondrously.

  Tanis pushed a palm to his eyes and found both a little damp. He felt—well, he could hardly express how he felt. Elated? Joyful? Overwhelmed? Even a little bit frightened.

  Nadia watched him dabbing at his eyes and laughed suddenly. “Tanis—you’re Arion Tavestra’s son!”

  I’m Isabel and Arion’s son.

  Never mind how impossible it seemed, how improbable that he’d been born three centuries ago yet had seen only fifteen name days—no matter all the reasons why it shouldn’t be true, Tanis knew unequivocally that it was.

  Equally incredible was the fact that the two people in the room with him, who were undeniably the most special people in his life, had been there also to witness what was quite possibly the most significant moment of his existence.

  Tanis reflected on the many dangers and desperate moments that had defined the last twenty-four hours, and on how despite uncountable odds, they’d somehow escaped death’s swiping claws only to land here in this moment of impossible wonder.

  He looked to Pelas with eyes round with wonder. “Your brother claimed Fate bent to his will…but…perhaps Cephrael turns a benevolent eye my way sometimes, too.”

  “Perhaps he does, little spy.” Pelas’s gaze sparkled with equal parts admiration and affection, and both of them in that moment felt limitless to Tanis. “Perhaps he does, indeed.”

  ***

  Tanis followed Pelas from the room where Nadia was now sleeping, but he could barely sense his feet beneath him. How impossible it all seemed, and yet so profoundly magnificent at the same time. He felt as if that rapid and dangerous descent into Shail’s enmity had been worth every second, since it had ultimately resulted in this moment.

  He watched Pelas on the currents as he followed him down the dark hallway of his home, and a sense of marvel beset him anew—this time at the change he observed in the man. This wasn’t the same Pelas he’d said goodbye to in Rimaldi. A darkness had hovered about that man, clouding his spirit. This man blazed on the currents like a star.

  Yet for all the excitement of the night thus far, a chord of tension still threaded through the lad, for he didn’t know if they would be able to stay together now that they’d reunited. If Shail’s summons had called Pelas from his path before he could make his choice…?

  Tanis didn’t know what he would do if he and Pelas had to separate again. Every time the lad thought of walking his path without him, he felt that same odd resistance he’d experienced back in the temple.

  And what had he experienced in the temple? In retrospect it seemed like he’d been perceiving the very shifting of Balance itself. He’d said only moments ago that perhaps Cephrael turned a benevolent eye his way. In some ways, it seemed the only explanation. How else could he account for their miraculous escape, save for having followed that tilting sensation when he sensed it leaning in a fortuitous direction?

  But could one really sense the tides of Balance? Surely if such awareness existed, his father would’ve written about it.

  His father. Arion Tavestra. Tanis felt a bit unbalanced just thinking about it—but in the best possible way.

  Pelas paused at the landing to wait for him, and they headed down the wide staircase side by side. Tanis felt like the question of Pelas’s choice both bound and separated them as they descended the stairs together, like opposite sides of a coin. He couldn’t find it in his heart to ask him for the truth…not if the answer meant having to leave him so soon.

  “I never thought you’d come.” Tanis turned him a look of tense confession. His hands felt twitchy at his sides, so he made them into fists and shoved them in his pockets. Colorless eyes stared forward, seeing both the solid marble of the stairs and the gilded, ephemeral currents superimposed across them. “I wanted you to come—but I didn’t at the same time, because I knew it was a trap, and I knew you needed to walk your own path…”

  “I came as soon as I received his summons, Tanis.” Pelas cast him a sidelong look, his gaze considering. “How could I not when he had you, and I…” He arched a brow and exhaled a slow breath, turning ahead once more. “I’d been trying to find you again nearly since the moment you left.”

  Tanis dropped his gaze back to the stairs. A warm flush came to his face, for he felt the same way.

  “It wasn’t my intention to make you wait so long for rescue,” Pelas continued with a slight grimace, “but I had to devise a way to tap into Sinárr’s eidola to fuel my own power while beneath their goracrosta dome.”

  Tanis turned back to him with sudden understanding. “The ‘demons of our salvation,’” he quoted Pelas’s words.

  “Just so.” The Malorin’athgul arched a sardonic brow. “Unfortunately it took longer than I would’ve liked to learn of their plans and then derive the necessary patterns to turn them to my advantage. I had to experiment on quite a few eidola, and all the while maintaining my cloak of deyjiin, lest my brother take notice of me.” They reached the main floor, and Pelas placed a hand on Tanis’s shoulder, stopping him. “It pained me to see you suffering. I would’ve ended it sooner if I could’ve.”

  “It’s not important now, sir.” Tanis only cared that their paths had reconnected. He prayed they could remain so.

  Again the question rushed to the edge of his tongue and hovered there, unspoken.

  Pelas held his gaze quietly, as if waiting to receive the question they both knew hung between them like a shielded lantern, requiring one of them to open its flaps. When the moment hung even as the lantern of question hung, Pelas motioned them off again, that time towards the kitchens.

  “I have much to tell you, little spy, things we should discuss, but I would know first of you.” He cast him an endearing smile. “You’ve learned much, it would seem, since we parted.”

  Tanis exhaled a measured breath. “Yes, sir.” He’d actually lo
st count of all the things he’d learned. He feared it would take a decade now to recount them all. “Where should I start?”

  “You gave me your magical dagger and left with your zanthyr…and then?”

  Tanis rubbed at one eye. The idea of referring to Phaedor as his zanthyr threw him somewhat. “We traveled through the Navárrel…”

  Over the course of the next hour, while Pelas found food and drink for them, Tanis told him everything that had happened since they parted in Rimaldi—at least, everything that seemed relevant.

  They were sitting at a table on Pelas’s patio, beneath the night’s stars overlooking the sea, when the lad began speaking of his time at the Sormitáge. When he reached the part of his story where he met Shail, he slumped back in his chair and exhaled dramatically. “Gods above, I was so stupid.”

  Pelas sat with one hand draped over his chair arm, a wine glass suspended between his dangling fingers. “I suspect neither of us is well matched against my younger brother.” He lifted his goblet and drank from it. “I confess a certain naivety myself in predicting Shail. Don’t let these missteps dishearten you though, Tanis. We’ve gained much in understanding.”

  Tanis frowned towards the horizon. A thunderstorm was moving off to the west, trailing the tattered wisps of its expended fury, and its departure revealed a moon nearly full. “I’m not so sure all’s well that ends well, sir.” Verily, Tanis expected to have nightmares for many moons to come. Just thinking of Sinárr made him shudder.

  “How not?” Pelas cast him a look. “We live to fight another day, and we’ve learned from the experience.” He lifted his goblet in salute. “All experience is worth having.”

  “Yes, I seem to recall your mentioning that before.”

  Pelas chuckled.

  Tanis turned his gaze back to the star-filled heavens and thought on everything that had happened to him. Pelas was right. He had learned much—of Shail, of his own abilities, of his parents…this last joy had barely settled into place in his understanding. Yet he knew nothing of the road Pelas had traveled, and the tension of this uncertainty had become a constant ache in his chest.