“I don’t know how they stopped it,” Pelas went on musingly, heedless of Tanis’s spiraling thoughts. “I can’t imagine Rinokh used any kind of control in releasing his working to begin with, which means there is someone else in this world who can manage our power.” He turned Tanis a dark eye and noted, “My brother Shail is looking into that mystery.”
Tanis gulped a swallow, for he knew of a few too many people who might work the same power, starting with the zanthyr. He was almost certain that whatever had happened at the Temple of the Vestals, the zanthyr and Raine had been involved, and possibly the pirate and Prince Ean also. Tanis so wished he could have any news of his friends, and once again came that crushing sense of guilt for abandoning them.
Followed by the sense of duty, which was a shallow comfort.
They emerged from the jungle at last and gained a stone-paved path that meandered across a wide lawn, splitting and rejoining to form some sort of pattern too vast to be observed while walking upon it. The flames of the sky were dying into the dense, dark blue of early evening, and the weather was fair if more humid than in the Cairs. After they headed up a flight of wide stone stairs marking the end of the lawn, Tanis turned to look behind him and saw the pattern of the path in its fullness. He didn’t recognize it, but it looked pretty.
Turning back, he faced a massive mansion. It crowned the hill before them, reached by way of four sets of long stairs. Tanis wondered why Pelas couldn’t have found somewhere closer to land them and decided he must’ve wanted the walk again.
He just couldn’t understand the man.
When they finally reached a long patio that ran along one side of the manse, people were just beginning to filter outside to enjoy the night air. They all wore expensive clothes. Surpassing them all in splendor, Pelas approached as if he’d just been out for a walk and headed on inside. “Quickly now, little spy,” he whispered in Tanis’s ear as they were joining the party-goers, “give me a name—any name but your own.”
“Tad,” Tanis said, thinking immediately of his friend, which only then made him wonder how Tad was faring and what was happening back in Dannym. It seemed like they’d been gone so long now.
“Ah, Signore di Nostri!” A diminutive woman who was just then approaching addressed Pelas with a smile. “We are so fortunate that you grace us tonight. Did you just arrive?”
“Lady Gartelt,” Pelas replied, taking her hand and kissing it with a slight bow. “We were just enjoying the gardens. May I present my associate, Tad. A truthreader I am sponsoring.”
“You are always so benevolent.” She barely spared a glance for Tanis but gave Pelas a generously appreciative look instead.
“Your words as ever fill my heart with gladness, my lady. And how fares your Queen?”
“Troubled, my lord. I’m sure you know of the many Healers who have gone missing. Her Majesty counts nine vanished in recent moons. The queen has closed the holy city of Jeune to all but those upon Crown business.”
“Dreadful,” Pelas clucked.
Tanis’s astonishment at the man’s duplicity was surpassed only by his admiration for the perfection of its delivery.
“And where is our host this evening, lovely Mian?” Pelas inquired.
“Oh,” Mian said, looking off with a frown. “Niko is somewhere about. Shall I find him for you?”
“No, no—trouble yourself not. We are happy wanderers this evening.”
“Well,” she said, looking him up and down rather unsubtly, “if you think of any way I can help…”
“Of course, you will be the first one I call upon.”
Mian smiled, curtsied, and departed without another glance at Tanis.
For once, Tanis appreciated Master O’reith’s making him memorize long lists of tedious names. “Sir,” Tanis murmured as Mian was departing, “was that really Mian Gartelt of the Fifty Companions?”
Pelas frowned after the Healer. “Just so.”
“But…?” He didn’t understand why nothing had happened to Pelas, why his thoughts remained quiet. “But isn’t she a Healer?”
Still gazing after Mian, Pelas arched a solitary ebon brow. “Indeed.”
“Then…?”
He turned Tanis an unreadable look, just the slight tightening around his eyes to indicate his displeasure. “She has Dore Madden’s taint upon her,” he observed, and moved off again.
Tanis walked attentively at Pelas’s side as the man idled among the partygoers. He knew many people, most of whom addressed him in return as Signore di Nostri. But whether they were old acquaintances or new ones, Pelas always greeted them with perfect grace.
It surprised Tanis to notice how immediately everyone who met Pelas took to him. People shared the most intimate and privileged things with him—even people he’d only just met—and Tanis watched men and women both cross the room just to say hello. Throughout, Pelas’s manner remained impeccable, courteous and refined, and Tanis grew ever more wary of him.
Pelas had power. It was subtle, hidden, but terribly potent. People uniformly were attracted to him, and something in his presence drew forth their deepest confessions. Tanis saw this part of him as a harmonic of his darker nature, and he understood how these traits were two sides of the same coin. But it frightened him to wonder if Pelas had worked some power upon him in the café that fateful afternoon…if indeed that’s why Tanis had been compelled to follow him. What if it wasn’t duty that drove him at all, but merely a subtle form of compulsion?
But it couldn’t be, he told himself, for Pelas would’ve expected you to come if he’d worked compulsion upon you—and why would he? Yet the idea had lodged spiny tendrils into Tanis’s head, and he couldn’t quite weed it out.
They’d finally made their way across the largest of the rooms when Tanis began hearing music and laughter. Pelas heard it too, and he gave Tanis a bright smile, whispered, “Dancers!” with a wink and pulled Tanis eagerly toward the music.
They exited into a stone-paved court to the rhythmic beat of bells and tambourines, to the plucking of sitars and the plaintive melody of reed pipes. And to a contingent of veiled dancers spinning and undulating upon a circular dais. Tanis gaped at the women, who seemed practically naked to the northern boy, what with their cropped, bejeweled vests and low-slung skirts hung with tassels and fringe, navels sporting jewels or pierced with silver chains. And the way they moved…Tanis stood entranced, his eyes very wide.
Pelas cast him an amused look. “I don’t imagine you’d see many dancers of this fashion in Dannym.”
“No sir,” Tanis whispered without removing his eyes from one girl in sheer red silk whose belly was just then undulating like a snake.
They watched the dancers until two men flipped onto the dais and began a complicated saber dance. Tanis appreciated their skill, but he didn’t find them nearly as interesting as the women. Pelas laughed at his disappointed look and motioned them on, giving the lad a frosty but consoling pat on the shoulder.
They followed along a patio lined with tall statues, each pair demarking a staircase leading down to the gardens. Pelas admired the sculptures as they passed, his gaze rapt, a slight smile curling the sharp corners of his mouth.
“Sir,” Tanis remarked as Pelas was inspecting a statue of a maiden being seduced by a fawn, “it looks like you’re kind of enjoying yourself.”
Pelas cast him an amused eye. “Does it?” He ran his fingers lightly across the woman’s marble leg. “I suppose it could be said that I enjoy the experiences of this place. Darshan says joy is an illusion, but I am often willing to be deceived by beauty.”
Tanis gave him a curious look. “Is that not a choice, sir?”
Pelas turned to him looking surprised. “I’m…not sure. It is certainly an interesting idea.” He was about to say more when his eyes narrowed and he hissed an expletive. He grabbed Tanis close into the loop of one arm and swept his other hand through the air. Tanis saw the world subtly darken even as a chilling veil descended. Tanis knew this sensatio
n. The last time he’d felt it he’d been in the zanthyr’s protection.
They remained perfectly still. Three men soon emerged from the mansion to halt just feet from where Pelas concealed them. The first man boasted a tall frame, blonde and handsome. The man beside him stood even taller and broader still. Silk cording bound his long ebony hair, and he wore three red-gold bangles in each ear. The third, white-haired man looked emaciated, and his thoughts were riotous.
“I must be certain of success before I will act,” said the man with the long black hair. His voice was close enough to Pelas’s in timbre and inflection that Tanis could only assume he was one of Pelas’s brothers.
“To be sure,” the white-haired man agreed. He licked his lips and looked furtively around. Then he murmured, “The Prophet is fully in support of our plan.”
“Be that as it may, I must be assured of it.”
“We understand your requirements, Lord Abanachtran,” the blonde man said. “We will keep you apprised of our progress.”
“And what of the other matter?” demanded the white-haired man. A sort of gruesome excitement glinted in the dark pools that were his eyes.
The Lord Abanachtran looked him over critically. “It suits our purposes to aid you in apprehending this Ean val Lorian. Send your emissary to the Karakurt in Rethynnea. I believe your man will find her at his complete disposal.” With that, he cast the both of them a piercing eye and departed. The two remaining men exchanged a look and then separated as if reluctant to be seen with one another.
Only when they were all well away did Pelas release his spell.
Tanis rubbed his arms ardently and relaxed his clenched teeth while Pelas stared after his brother looking stormy. “My younger brother, Shail,” he muttered. “He has his sticky fingers in far too many pies. Come, my little spy.” He touched Tanis gently upon the shoulder. “I mislike the taste of the air now.”
Tanis could sense his tension, and he wished he better understood what had just happened, or why Shail made Pelas so uneasy. Not that the Lord Abanachtran didn’t strike an imposing figure, and certainly he wore menace like a cloak.
“I think it is time we took our leave,” Pelas remarked as they headed back into the crowded hall. “Stay close to me, lad.”
Tanis had no intention of doing anything else, not with another Malorin’athgul wandering around, and then there was that other man…the cadaverous one with the storm of malevolent thoughts. Tanis could tell he was treacherous just from encountering the space of his mind.
They were making their way across the hall, weaving amongst the elegant crowd, when Pelas slowed his pace and then abruptly stiffened. His eyes latched onto a woman so intently that Tanis knew Pelas saw no one else.
The woman walked with a man toward the patio they’d just left, and Pelas turned and followed like a snared fish. Tanis watched the darkness descend upon him with growing trepidation, yet he suspected that to disturb Pelas now might mean the end of both of them—especially with the Lord Abanachtran so close. He fretted over what to do, praying that Epiphany might grant him a moment’s inspiration.
Just as they emerged back out onto the balcony, the Lord Abanachtran appeared. Tanis could feel the man’s malice preceding him. The darkness meanwhile had Pelas wholly consumed—his thoughts had descended to that cold, merciless place that Tanis knew too well—and his eyes remained pinned upon the Healer and her escort, who were now heading down into the gardens.
Seeing Shail approaching, Tanis dropped his eyes and stared hard at his boots, desperately wishing he might become invisible again.
The man who called himself Lord Abanachtran stopped beside his brother. “Pelas,” he greeted darkly.
“Shail,” Pelas replied without turning his piercing gaze from the departing Healer.
“I see your bloodlust still consumes you, clouding your judgment as ever it has.”
“As does your quest for dominion, brother,” Pelas replied with cold disinterest. Tanis realized that perhaps it was an unexpected boon that Pelas was in the darkness, for he seemed ever as frightening as Shail. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Pelas remarked.
“You should have. My field, after all, is intelligence.”
“Sedition seems more apt.”
Shail’s lips spread in a feral smile. “Are they not one and the same?”
“I suppose we each pursue our purpose in unique ways,” Pelas replied, but the condescension was heavy in his tone. He had not once bothered to look at his brother, and even Tanis felt himself excluded from Pelas’s rarified air. “So it’s the Lord Abanachtran now, is it? That’s bold of you. Think you’ll succeed in your little rebellion?”
Shail stiffened, and Tanis caught the tumble of his thoughts—a flash of confusion and the slightest startle of fear glimpsed amid boiling anger.
Pelas smiled, cool beneath the fire of his brother’s furious gaze. “Ah, but you didn’t think I knew so much of your affairs, did you? Yet I am not without my own spies.”
Though he was clearly outraged, Shail reeled in his anger as if it had never existed, which Tanis found even more disturbing. “And who’s this?” Shail inquired tightly, shifting the force of his attention onto Tanis, who in turn stared harder at his boots. “Your protégé?”
“The son of one of my subjects,” Pelas replied with such a perfect mix of contempt and derision in his tone that even Tanis would have believed him. “He serves me now.”
“A fitting duty in exchange for the service you deemed his mother.”
Ignoring the sneer in this remark, Pelas returned, “I noted your experiment with Rinokh did not fare so well.”
“Did it not?” Shail’s smile was so chilling that Tanis felt it like slime creeping down the back of his neck. He suppressed a shudder. “Good to see you, brother,” Shail murmured. Then he left.
Pelas struck off after the Healer. Tanis could naught but follow.
He fretted the entire way through the garden, imagining all manner of terrible consequences for himself, for Pelas, for the Healer. They came upon her abruptly in a rose court. She sat upon the edge of a fountain laughing with her escort. Pelas approached the Healer and dropped to one knee.
“Pardon my intrusion,” he murmured with his head bowed, “my deepest apologies, but I have followed you here.” Looking up at the woman, who wore an expression of surprised interest, he continued, “When I saw you inside, I was taken aback. I felt certain that some part of me recognized you. Is it…could it be possible…do you recall if perhaps you might have healed me once?”
Tanis watched this courtship in terror, for the darkness had firm hold of Pelas, yet he remained immensely compelling…perhaps even slightly dangerous, but in a way that drew curiosity as a needle draws blood. This was the Pelas that Tanis had first glimpsed back in the café in Rethynnea, and with a gulp, the boy realized what must’ve drawn the darkness upon Pelas that day—or rather who—for he and her Grace had walked by only moments before Tanis took up a chair near the man. Had Pelas been responding to the Lady Alyneri in the same way he now responded to this poor doomed Healer?
Tanis shuddered to think so. The idea of Pelas’s darker nature having even glanced upon his lady filled Tanis with a sense of dread so complete that his stomach turned sickly over it.
The Healer meanwhile exchanged a look with her companion, and then gave Pelas her full attention. She had a round face that was not unkind and dark hair, and she seemed in the fullness of her years. “I’m not sure, my lord,” she replied. “Let me look upon you.”
The smile Pelas gave broke Tanis’s heart. Their conversation continued, with Pelas gaining her name and what city she hailed from, but the boy hardly heard it, for the sound of his soul crying out in protest was too loud in his ears.
Fate had worked a cruel twist indeed to force a man who was capable of engendering such admiration to use his talent to the detriment of all. Tanis wanted Pelas to be good, but he patently wasn’t.
The Healer and her escort la
ughed at something Pelas said, drawing Tanis back into their conversation. Pelas gave her a charming smile, kissed her hand, and stood. “It was most wonderful to meet you, Medira,” he said, proclaiming her doom as he bowed in farewell. Then he turned and left them.
Tanis followed feeling agonized. Would that he had some magical potion that would cure Pelas of his dark desires! It was so hard to be with him knowing what he intended, yet Tanis wanted to be with him. In their short time together, Tanis had come to know this man, and though they considered each other equally delusional, Tanis genuinely liked Pelas.
Why—oh why—in Epiphany’s name did you follow him, you stupid boy?
Pelas did not head back for the mansion but led them deeper into the moonlit gardens. When they were far out of earshot even of the birds and Pelas had surfaced from the darkness, Tanis braved timidly, “You’re going to go after her aren’t you, sir?”
Pelas glanced at him, but his gaze remained distant. “Very likely.”
“But sir,” Tanis urged with sudden desperation, “you know you could still choose not to do it.”
“Such a choice is quite impossible, little spy.”
“No,” Tanis insisted, “it’s not—you simply decide that you won’t do it!”
Pelas gave him a soft look, and Tanis felt real tenderness from it. “I could decide, as you say,” he admitted, clearly giving due thought to the idea, “but in the end it would make no difference. I would still find myself there someday, hungering, waiting to claim her.” He shook his head and sighed resignedly. “I cannot change my nature. The end is inevitable.”
“What if you could?” Tanis asked, stubbornly clinging to hope.
Pelas arched a curious brow. “What do you mean?”
“What if you could change your nature. Would you?”
“The question holds no merit. It is hypothetical.”
“What if it wasn’t?” Tanis persisted. Then he added suddenly, “There is much in our world that you have not yet experienced.”
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 18