The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light)

by McPhail, Melissa

  He lifted his gaze to meet the Vestal’s. He thought about the Extian Doors and the certainty that he’d seen them before. He thought about his sense of reunion when Björn had embraced him. He thought of the intensity of his determination to seek Björn out in the early days of his vengeance, even knowing how absurd the idea had been.

  “No,” he whispered, turning away to hide the grief that suddenly choked him. He swallowed against a painful constriction in his throat and confessed, “I think I made that choice a long time ago.”

  Björn was watching him quietly, resting chin in hand. “So it would seem.”

  Ean clenched teeth and cast burning eyes out across the vista again, for some reason really wishing that the zanthyr could’ve been there—if only to ridicule and chastise him. It was easier to face Phaedor’s reproach than the depth of Björn’s understanding.

  “But ah…look,” said the Vestal brightly. “What timing you possess, Julian.”

  Ean composed himself with effort and turned to find a youth close to his own age approaching. He wore a silver circlet around his longish blonde hair, and he boasted the early growth of a beard slightly darker in hue.

  “Ean, may I present Julian D’Artenis of Jeune.”

  Julian pressed palms together, fingertips to lips, and bowed. “Be welcome, Ean,” he said as he straightened, his words betraying the slightest hint of a Veneisean accent. “I am so pleased to meet you.”

  “Julian is also a fifth-strand Adept,” Björn offered. “He’s come to T’Khendar to train in his craft, but today he is simply a guide.”

  “Your guide,” Julian clarified brightly.

  Ean gave Julian a smile that he didn’t feel. “Well met, Julian,” the prince said soberly. “I fear I shan’t be the best of company today.”

  “Not to worry,” Julian answered with a grin. “I was you once, too.” Then he flashed a grin, adding, “Well…sort of.”

  Ean looked back at his plate as if to give his food a regretful farewell, but he was startled to find the plate empty. Only then did he realize that he’d eaten it all. His eyes darted to Björn, whose reply was a knowing half-smile beneath a quietly sparkling gaze. Truly, the man was magical in the fullest sense of the word.

  Ean stood and looked down at him. “Thank you, for…well, for everything I guess.” He didn’t know all the things he was thanking Björn for, and part of him still resisted thanking him at all—that deluded part that still believed the stories, he guessed—but he felt that a show of gratitude was the least he could do.

  Björn nodded graciously. “Enjoy your tour.”

  Julian clapped him on the shoulder. “Come, Ean. There’s so much to see.”

  Eleven

  “A rose without thorns is too like a shallow heart. One cannot find love without pricking a few fingers.”

  - Errodan val Lorian, Queen of Dannym and the Shoring Isles

  Alyneri woke to the smell of czai. Because the blindfold still obscured her sight, she imagined morning light filling the little bedroom and tried to envision the farmstead where Yara made her home. She could hear chickens and goats making friendly in the yard outside, and the braying of a mule occasionally disturbed the ordered cacophony. The outside door opened and closed a few times while she lay quietly, and voices floated to her from the other room.

  “…concerned for her,” Ama-Kai’alil was saying as he and Yara came inside together. “It’s been too long. I checked on her earlier and her condition still hasn’t improved.”

  Alyneri’s breath caught in her throat. But I feel so much better!

  “No better, but no worse,” Yara pointed out.

  “Still, she should’ve healed by now. I fear for her. If things don’t change soon…”

  Alyneri went cold. Am I dying? Had they just been humoring her the other night?

  She couldn’t stand the idea of being fooled about her condition, and a sudden determination drove her from the bed. It was something of a challenge sitting up with her injured head and her left arm strapped across her chest, but with persistence she made it upright. As the dizziness faded, she inched her way to standing. Her feet and legs felt stiff, and she noticed new bruises as muscles tensed to support her, but she didn’t immediately fall over again.

  Had she not been so driven to understand the ongoing conversation in the other room, she would’ve been quite happy to lie back down and call it a day. Instead, she shuffled toward the voices, right hand extended blindly before her, feeling for the doorway. She made it to the door before they noticed her, but thereafter a commotion ensued.

  “Stones for breakfast, but what are you doing up, child!” Yara exclaimed in the desert tongue.

  Then, suddenly, he was at her side, his arm around her shoulder, supporting her. He smelled like the early morning, like dew and fresh strewn hay, and a little like cinnamon, but that might’ve just been the czai tea brewing. She hadn’t had czai since before Farshideh fell ill, and her eyes filled with tears at the memories the heady fragrance evoked. But the bandage that covered her eyes hid her tears, and she kept her feelings close so as not to worry the others with things that couldn’t be changed.

  “You shouldn’t be out of bed, soraya,” Yara said as Ama-Kai’alil helped her into a chair. It felt good to sit down in her weakened state, but it also felt good to be moving around.

  “I heard voices,” she said as a feeble explanation for disobeying Yara’s strict orders. “And I smelled czai.”

  “We could’ve brought it to you.” Yara still sounded disgruntled by her appearance.

  “And I…” Alyneri caught her lower lip between her teeth and then whispered, “I heard you talking.”

  For a moment the conversation paused in confused silence. Then Ama-Kai’alil said as understanding dawned, “You thought we were talking about you.”

  Alyneri exhaled with relief. “You—you weren’t?”

  “Pshaw!” Yara grumbled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “But then…”

  “It’s my horse,” Ama-Kai’alil explained. “She fell lame more than a fortnight ago and doesn’t seem to be getting better. I…” He hesitated. “Well, I couldn’t bear to lose her.”

  Alyneri perked up at the idea of being able to help in return. “You must take me to see her.”

  “It’s kind of you to want to see her,” he answered, sounding puzzled, “but we’ve done all we can.”

  “You have perhaps,” she agreed, feeling a surge of energy fueled by this newfound purpose, “but I am an Adept Healer. Please…let me see her.”

  “But soraya,” Yara protested, “you’re so weak yourself.”

  “I will be careful,” Alyneri promised.

  A moment of silence followed, and she imagined they were exchanging meaningful looks. “Well…” Ama-Kai’alil said finally, “if you think you could help…”

  She could feel hope radiating off of him. “Will you guide me, Ama-Kai’alil?”

  “Just a minute there,” Yara said. “You’ll not be going anywhere until you’ve put some food into that little body—you’re like to float away on the slightest breeze, so tiny you are.”

  Alyneri admitted the fairness of this assertion. Her body went from slim to emaciated with naught but five pounds lost from her frame, and Ean’s ill condition had stolen her appetite long before her own accident…

  Ean. Oh, Ean…

  Thoughts of the prince necessarily brought thoughts of Tanis and the zanthyr, too, the three of them inextricably connected now in memory for reasons she didn’t fully comprehend. Seeing them in her mind’s eye constricted her throat and brought a tightness to her chest. Her dear friends…they must be so worried! She wished for the hundredth time since her own awakening that she might’ve known anything of Ean’s condition…of her friends and how they fared.

  “Alyneri?” Ama-Kai’alil’s voice was close, golden, full of concern. Images of the warm light of a Gandrel summer pierced through her grim thoughts. “Are you all right?”

&nb
sp; “Oh, I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was reminded suddenly of friends who are dear to me.”

  He placed a hand upon hers. “Is there someone we should help you contact?”

  The same question as before, but she shook her head. “There is no way to reach them,” she confessed, feeling suddenly the weight of all that had come to pass, of Ean’s quest and the kingdom’s dire fate. “For now…no.”

  “As you will,” he remitted.

  “Food then!” Yara said, all business, and she placed a bowl in front of Alyneri. She made to shoo him away from her side, but he said, “No, I’ll do it,” so gently that Alyneri’s heart fluttered. Being next to him wakened marvelous new feelings. Her breath always came a little faster when he was near.

  Alyneri tingled from head to toe as he fed her with slow care, one hand holding hers, the other doling out Alyneri-size bites of Yara’s hearty porridge. She tasted cinnamon and clove, apple, plum and fig, all of it drenched with honey and churned butter, but none of them were as sweet as the feel of his hand on hers. Her heart quickened with anticipation every time she thought of looking upon him for the first time, every time he spoke to her—every moment she shared with him, in fact. How strange to be so appended to a man she barely knew…yet something in his voice spoke to her with the warmth of a childhood memory, one from a time before tragedy shattered her dreams.

  The morning’s conversation concerned preparations for Yara’s impending trip, and not long after Yara began discussing the packing, Alyneri asked, “Where are you going, Yara?”

  “To visit my grand-children in Agasan.”

  “Rimaldi and then the Solvayre,” Ama-Kai’alil added with a smile in his voice.

  “How wonderful!” Alyneri aimed a smile in her direction. “I have always wanted to see Agasan, especially the Rimaldi Coast. Will you be sad to leave Veneisea? It’s a beautiful kingdom, from what I saw of it.”

  “Pshaw,” grunted the old woman. “There are plenty of lovely places in the world, and I’ve had enough of Veneisean ‘virtue’ to last me twelve lifetimes. Do you know where the word virtue comes from?” she posed as Alyneri opened her mouth to accept another bite of porridge—half listening to the old woman and half reflecting on how mortified she would’ve been if it had been Ean feeding her instead of Ama-Kai’alil, and how strange to find herself comparing them at all.

  “No, Yara,” Alyneri mumbled through her mouthful.

  Ama-Kai’alil supplied in a sardonic tone, “Virtue from the Veneisean root vertu from Old Cyrenaic, vir, meaning man.”

  “Man!” Yara grumbled. “Who generally exemplifies no virtues and countless vices! I guarantee you, a man devised the Veneisean Virtues and required woman to follow them or be labeled a whore and a tramp.”

  “When I am king of Veneisea,” Ama-Kai’alil teased, “I will recommend that men follow the Virtues as well as women.”

  Yara paused in her shuffling, and Alyneri got the sense she had pinned him with a wily eye. “When you are king, Ama-Kai’alil, you will do much greater things than that.”

  “I was only making a jest, Yara,” he said, and Alyneri could tell the old woman’s praise had embarrassed him.

  “Yes, but there is something about you, Ama-Kai’alil,” Yara insisted. “You are a man above men—a leader of men—not merely in deed and stature but in ideals…born to stand above others that they might aspire to greater themselves merely by walking in your shadow.”

  He sat quietly beside Alyneri after this startling pronouncement, and she wondered what he was thinking and wished for the tenth time that morning alone that she could look upon him. After a moment, he remarked softly, “A selfless deed doesn’t make me royalty, Yara,” and he sounded both uncomfortable and tormented.

  “Perhaps not,” she conceded, “but it does make you noble in the most vital of ways.”

  Who is he? Alyneri wondered, herself caught now in the mystery of his heritage. She believed Yara’s assessment of him. Even the gentle tone of his voice compelled one to listen, to follow. She quite believed she would do anything he asked of her and she barely knew him—by the Grace of Epiphany, she’d never even seen his face!

  Too, something about conversing in the desert tongue added another level of…well, sensuality, to their talks. The Kandori dialect was complicated, but the complexity added a richness to their communication that deepened the connection she felt to him. Knowing that he spoke more languages than she did only heightened her admiration.

  When Alyneri had eaten all she could, he helped her from the table and back to her room, where Yara took over to help her dress. “One of my daughter Habivi’s old dresses,” she advised as she did up the buttons of the frock. “A bit loose through the hips, but it’ll do.”

  “Do you think we can remove the bandage over my eyes?” Alyneri asked as she sat upon the edge of the bed.

  Yara checked with a peek beneath the bandages. “Not yet, soraya. There is still some swelling.” At Alyneri’s crestfallen sigh, Yara offered, “But we might do a little with your hair.”

  Alyneri brightened.

  Thus did she emerge from the bedroom with a new dress and her hair done up in a braid and a ribbon and feeling much restored, even if mainly in dignity.

  He walked her out to the barn with one arm around her waist, their bodies pulled in close to keep her stable, and her free hand in his. His touch both soothed and electrified her, at times reminding her unnervingly of the zanthyr’s kiss. Being close to him roused intense feelings, and walking with his body warm and hard against hers, his strong arm holding her so firmly…all of it served to bring a heady sense to the day.

  Inside the barn, they stopped in front of a stall where a horse was already attentive to his arrival. “Alyneri,” he said, still using the desert tongue, “this is Gendaia.”

  “Oh, what a lovely name,” Alyneri said. She extended her hand toward the horse.

  “It means daybreak in Old Alæic,” he offered.

  “You speak the Old Tongue?”

  “No, but those who named her do.”

  Gendaia placed her nose into Alyneri’s outstretched palm, and she asked, “Have you owned her long?”

  “A Hallovian is owned by no man,” he corrected with a smile in his voice, that particular tone golden Alyneri had come to love, “but she has been my companion for several moons now.”

  “A Hallovian,” Alyneri repeated with a sigh, thinking at once of Caldar’s noble form.

  He chuckled. “You’ve known one yourself, I take it.”

  “They’re incredible animals. Can you let me inside with her?”

  “Sure.” He opened the stall and guided Alyneri within.

  She reached out, and he guided her hand to the horse’s flank. Then he stood close to her holding one hand protectively against the small of her back—the quiet assurance of his near presence—and his other hand across Gendaia’s nose. Thus connected within this tactile circle, Alyneri sank into rapport.

  The sudden light of elae dazzled her. She’d never before realized how much light elae encompassed—she’d never endured multiple days without sight—but it both astonished and enlivened her. Within Gendaia’s energy she gained a clear sense of her surroundings and of the three of them connected in their circle of touch.

  She healed animals before, but even if she hadn’t the theory was the same: All things are formed of patterns. She need only gain Gendaia’s pattern to heal her. Except…the horse’s pattern hid from her—perhaps some aspect of her Hallovian nature caused this. She went deeper into elae, deeper into the horse’s own lifeforce, and found something truly astonishing.

  Within the rushing, rosy stream of animal life, she saw a faint and distant pattern—a human pattern—and beyond it, the shadow of another. She spent a moment trying to understand these visions, and yet once she did, the shock sent her reeling. One level of her awareness felt Ama-Kai’alil stiffen in worry beside her, and he pressed his hand tighter against her back.
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  Suddenly the most distant pattern flared.

  “Ama-Kai’alil,” she managed, breathless and barely keeping herself in rapport for the force of her excitement, “place your left hand upon mine.”

  He did so, and his pattern came into clear focus.

  So, too, did the one beyond it.

  Her own.

  Stunned beyond measure, she remained immobile, unable at first even to process the enormity of her discovery. Finally, she gathered her wits about her and returned to the task at hand. A brief foray into uninspected corners of Gendaia’s lifeforce resulted in the animal’s pattern at last surfacing. Alyneri saw at once where Gendaia’s pattern had been frayed, an injury so minimal that it took just the slightest gift of her own energy to mend it.

  Gendaia nickered softly, and Alyneri smiled, unknowingly reassuring the man beside her, who had grown quite tense in the intervening minutes.

  But she didn’t release elae. Two tasks she had yet to do, so long as her energy held up. First to study his pattern, then to memorize her own.

  His pattern she saw easily, for she had direct contact with him and could’ve looked upon it even without Gendaia’s presence, but she dared not change anything about their configuration. Thus, Ama-Kai’alil’s pattern remained distant but still within view. It shone with integrity, uncompromised, though it had clearly been mended not too long ago. Yet whoever had Healed him had not simply rewoven the frayed strands. He or she had shored up Ama-Kai’alil’s entire pattern. Beside her stood a man who had not merely been mended but whose entire constitution had been improved—made stronger, sturdier, more completely whole than nature herself had managed.

  Alyneri didn’t know how it had been done—how it could have been done.

  Feeling her own energy draining, she pushed on, now turning her attentions to herself. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to look upon her own pattern, to see its weaknesses and frayed strands, to see it—even so distantly—as its vitality ebbed even from her use of her own energy in viewing it.

  She felt herself failing, felt the faintness coming on, and she knew she had to hurry. Using the last of her strength, she committed the pattern to memory.