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

by McPhail, Melissa

  All the while he fed and groomed her, he thought of Alyneri. Now that Gendaia was well, there was no reason for him to linger in Veneisea. Yara had long told him she was fine without him—in words not nearly so gentle—and he felt the weight of his agreement with the Mage coming to bear. He still had a message to deliver in the Cairs, never mind his own personal quest, yet…he wasn’t eager to leave.

  Alyneri was the issue. He still had not told her of Lord Brantley, and he didn’t trust that the man would’ve abandoned his search. And while he felt reasonably sure Alyneri would be grateful that he’d kept her presence hidden, he wasn’t certain of it. The longer he delayed in telling her about the meeting, the more weight the encounter seemed to gather, such that he feared it would become a huge secret, a blight on their burgeoning path toward mutual trust.

  It’s cowardly and selfish to keep this from her, he scolded himself as he brushed Gendaia down, but Alyneri had become…important to him, and he feared losing her.

  More and more, he thought about the girl on the beach and Alyneri as being one and the same. Every day he cursed himself for giving in to the temptation to romanticize their chance meeting into reunion, yet he felt connected to her in a way he couldn’t otherwise explain.

  Now he faced the issue of what to do with her. He dared not leave her where Lord Brantley could find her—the thought of that man laying hands upon Alyneri’s person so enflamed him, he feared for anyone who crossed his path during such moments—but he hesitated to ask her to come with him to the Cairs. Not that he didn’t desire her company; to the contrary, it was concern for her wellbeing that fueled his indecision. What could he offer her but a seemingly aimless quest whose ultimate end was unknown? He couldn’t even offer her his own name, much less a place to call home—at least not right away. It wouldn’t be fair to ask such sacrifices of her, to impose upon her affections by making her into naught but a traveling companion, little better than a camp whore. Surely she had her own future to think of—did she not say she had a Duchess’s rank? Though she mentioned no other man, a woman of her status would not stay unmarried.

  Trell resolved to tell her immediately of Lord Brantley and his intention to leave…but still he hesitated from rushing to the task, finding instead other chores to involve himself in rather than face whatever was to come with Alyneri. The idea of leaving her…well, it just didn’t sit well with him.

  When his regular morning chores were done, Trell attended to the last thing on his list: a shave. Scraping away at the growth of beard over the washbasin in the barn where he’d been sleeping since Alyneri came, Trell peered at himself in a bit of mirrored silver and decided he wasn’t sad to see the beard go. He’d never really seen himself beneath it, and he didn’t like the feeling that he wore yet another mask when he was already so tormented by the nameless countenance he faced every day.

  Thus, clean shaven, Trell stood just inside the barn doors knowing he could delay no longer. He steeled himself to confront Alyneri, and he made his way across the yard and inside the farmhouse bearing a heavy heart. Yara was saying, “…that boy ever comes inside, we’ll have something ready for him.”

  “That boy is here,” he answered, mustering a cheerful demeanor he didn’t feel.

  “Well then.” Yara was just leaving the bedroom as he moved to go in, and something in the look she gave him caught his attention so that he was slightly off balance already when he turned to look upon Alyneri—and seemed to see her for the first time.

  Without her bandages, without the bruises and contusions and swelling distorting her features…he couldn’t believe it. It was her. She was unmistakably the girl from the beach.

  And then he saw how her face had paled, and he saw her stagger, and confusion and concern overcame him. He wanted to reach out to help her but felt inexplicably powerless, pinned to inaction by the shocked expression she wore.

  She staggered back, reaching a hand toward the wardrobe for support. Then, like the surging sea, she rushed into his arms, nearly knocking him over. “You’re alive!” she exclaimed as he held her, feeling wondrous, confused, and anxious to understand. She clutched him close, murmuring prayers of thanks. Then she pulled her face free of his shoulder and looked at him, her lashes long and wet and framing lambent brown eyes. “Trell,” she exclaimed, “it’s really you!” She took his face between her hands as his own suddenly caught and then raced. “Trell!” she cried again, laughing and weeping and completely beside herself with joy. “You’re alive!”

  Trell gratefully held her close. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stand without her. “You know me,” he whispered into her hair, overwhelmed. It was so unexpected, but so obviously true. She’d known him the moment their eyes met. She’d called him by name, though he’d never given it in all their time together. But even had she discovered it from Yara, it didn’t matter, for he knew her, too.

  Stunned beyond words, Trell pressed his lips against Alyneri’s hair and murmured again, “You…truly know me.”

  “I know you.” She pulled away and wiped joyful tears from her cheeks.

  He took her hands in his and looked into her lovely brown eyes. “I remember you, Alyneri,” he confessed then in a choked voice, for the first time letting the memory take hold, trusting their reunion as truth. And though there was joy, he also felt bare, a canvas stretched too tightly, his emotions scrabbling for a handhold in a cup already overflowing. “I have but one memory of you, but I do remember.”

  She smiled and wiped away more tears, for they flowed freely. “I thought you were dead—we all did—but your family…your mother, they…” she bit her lip to hold back tears as she finished, “they never named you.”

  ‘Is it a mercy to come back into their lives? If they’ve moved on, if they’ve grieved and named me and forgotten?’

  He remembered his words to Lily, what seemed a lifetime ago, and now he knew what they meant. His mother, his family…they’d thought him dead, yet they’d never named him.

  Tears filled his eyes. His family hadn’t forgotten him. They hadn’t let him go.

  Alyneri drew him to the bed and pulled him down to sit beside her. She steepled his hands between her own and brought them all together to her lips.

  “You left aboard the Dawn Chaser for Tal’Shira by the Sea with a contingent of the king’s men and three crown Healers…my mother was among them.” Her voice broke at this, and her own grief drew him to focus. Hazy memories of a four-masted vessel floated at the edges of his vision.

  “What happened?” he managed.

  “No one knows. The ship never made it to port. None of her passengers were ever heard from again.” She squeezed his hands and added, “Until now.”

  “Alyneri…” he whispered desperately.

  She cupped his cheek. “You were lost,” she said, staring into his eyes, “but now you’re found.”

  “You found me.”

  She shook her head, smiled through her tears. “No…you found me.”

  Trell’s chest burned, his throat tight with overwhelming emotions. The monumental ache of so many years of torment was over, but the collected emotion seemed to want to all flood out of him at once. He fought to control the old fear and uncertainty as they made their violent escape, for having been dislodged from their sturdy home, they had no purchase any longer within his heart.

  She was studying him intently, her brown eyes holding him firm to the external world while his thoughts and emotions ravaged his internal one. She wiped tears from her face as she smiled again, and then she wiped them from his. “Are you ready?” she whispered.

  “For what?” though he knew what she was asking.

  “To know the truth?”

  He swallowed. He dared not conjecture, dared not hope. He’d faced countless odds in battle, been surrounded by death, had himself looked death in the eye many times, but never had he been so afraid of anything as of the words she was about to say.

  “Your name,” she began, but her voice broke
and she had to compose herself. A thousand fears raced through his mind in that brief interlude, doubts and self-abnegation, words like bastard, traitor, coward echoing painfully in the recesses of his heart, in that place which waited to be filled by a name long desired. She took a deep breath and fixed her dark eyes upon his such that he could not look away. They were bound to it now, launching deep into the thick of the truth.

  “Your name,” she began again in a sturdier voice, “is Trell val Lorian.”

  He knew she must still be talking, for her mouth continued to move, but Trell heard nothing but the name, over and over again.

  Trell val Lorian…val Lorian…val Lorian.

  It just couldn’t be. But it was. He knew it was. The name—his name—resonated in a way nothing else ever had.

  “Trell?” Alyneri tried to recapture his attention. “You do know, don’t you? You know that name?”

  “Prince,” he whispered.

  “Prince Trell val Lorian,” she confirmed with all of the gravity the title deserved. “You are a royal prince of Dannym, the second son of Queen Errodan, often called her ‘treasured middle son.’ Your older brother was Sebastian, dead now these eight years.”

  “Sebastian,” Trell murmured. The name fit. It was right.

  “And your younger brother is—”

  “Ean,” he gasped as he drew in a shuddering breath. The elusive name—so long yearned for—had finally come. Trell covered his face with his hands.

  “Trell…” Alyneri wrapped her arm around his shoulders, comforting him as best she could as she finished, “you’re next in line for the throne.”

  Seventeen

  “Self-illusion is the worst of all vices.”

  - The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

  Raine dreamed.

  He stood in a great library, as great as the Citadel’s had been before Tiern’aval fell. Hundreds of thousands of works crammed the towering shelves, which vanished into dimness in the cavernous room. As he walked slowly among the stacks, he saw the titles of great and important works long lost to the realm. It crushed him to be reminded of the vast amount of knowledge that had been destroyed when Tiern’aval was ripped from the world.

  Even had the wealth of knowledge somehow survived, however, the damage had truly been done when Björn sacrificed the Hundred Mages. These peaceful, scholarly sages had spent their long lives in search of wisdom and understanding of the wielding of elae. They alone performed the difficult testing for the many levels of Adept mastery that resulted in the gaining of the Sormitáge rings, and they’d necessarily maintained neutrality throughout the wars, neither helping nor hindering either side. Their slaying, beyond any other single act, had convinced Raine and Alshiba that Björn had finally succumbed to the same poisonous taint that had destroyed Malachai.

  “Hello, brother.”

  Raine spun at the voice. He could not mistake it even after three centuries.

  Dagmar wore his characteristic black, though his blonde had grown to his shoulders and his green eyes displayed new lines—of wisdom if not age. He still wore the braided gold circlet of his family line, a tradition the Danes had never let fade. Likewise he wore his oath-ring on the third finger of his right hand, and the azure stone glittered in the muted light.

  This more than anything startled Raine to see. It seemed an impossibility that the color of the stone could remain true. How could Dagmar have survived in T’Khendar for three hundred years and not violated his oath? But the stone was undeniably blue—as true to color as Raine’s own.

  “It cannot be,” Raine voiced aloud the thought that was ringing repeatedly in his head. The statement embraced a number of facts he couldn’t accept.

  “Welcome to T’khendar, brother,” Dagmar said soberly. He wore his reserve like a cloak, the better to mirror Raine’s wild and varied reactions in comparison.

  Raine searched his face, wishing he might’ve been scouring his mind instead, the vault of Dagmar’s thoughts opened to minute inspection. But such skills were denied him in dreamscape; this was but a shadow of the waking world, a projection. Yet some things he knew were true. Dagmar’s ring, for example. There was no doubting the fact of it.

  “It’s been a long time, Dagmar,” Raine said, finally gathering his composure, calling forth the decorum and manners that ever served him when logic and seemingly all else failed. “We thought perhaps the nature of our oaths kept you from contacting us in dreamscape, but now I see it was simply a choice.”

  Dagmar grimaced. “A choice, yes,” he agreed, but his expression betrayed the guilt he felt at this accusation. Still, Raine saw a resolute determination in his gaze. “Everything in life is about the choices we make, is it not, brother?”

  Raine shook his head as he regarded Dagmar. Too much had come between them. Too much blame and denial, death and treachery long unpunished. There must be accountability, atonement. “Why did Björn bring me here, Dagmar?” The demand came with sudden heat, Raine’s anger forming a ridge of emotion between them. “Why are you here?”

  “With a welcome, a gift, and a warning.”

  Raine stiffened, and his gaze hardened. “A warning?”

  But Dagmar did not rise to meet his ire. “Indeed,” he replied, and Raine could not deny the depth of regret in his tone. “But first the welcome. The First Lord, our oath-brother, is glad you have come. He knows you have questions, but before he will consider answering them, he requires something of you.”

  “He has no right to make demands of any of us!” Raine hissed. He felt anger flooding into him and fought to hold it back. He knew that a battle here would accomplish nothing—though by Cephrael’s Great Book, it might make me feel better to hit somebody.

  “He presents you with this,” Dagmar said, and he handed Raine a bronze coin. It was stamped on both sides with the same simple pattern in the shape of an endless knot.

  Raine accepted it with a force of will, swallowing back his fury to fester and roil inside him. “What’s this?” he asked tightly.

  “A reminder.” Dagmar leveled pale green eyes upon him, his gaze unwavering. “That this battle has two sides, yet they are two sides of the same battle.”

  “No,” Raine returned. “I do not accept that.”

  “Hence his warning,” Dagmar said then, giving him a rueful smile. “If you want answers in Niyadbakir, you must face first the veils of your own failures.”

  Raine held his gaze hotly. “That sounds more like prophecy,” he growled.

  “Take it as you will, brother,” Dagmar said by way of farewell, and the dream began to fade.

  “You are sworn to him now?” Raine shouted after him, but the library was already gone.

  He woke with a start, the last word of his shout echoing in the enclosed wooden wagon where he’d slept for the last many nights. His host slept soundly, snoring from the bunk above, one hairy foot dangling. Raine unclenched his fist and saw Björn’s coin resting upon his palm.

  Suddenly overwhelmed with emotions too volatile to contain, he launched off the cot and outside into the early dawn. The barest lightening of the eastern horizon heralded the coming day. The moon rode low in the west, but above, midline to the zenith, Cephrael’s Hand glowed. Raine stared at the constellation and tried to will his anger to drain away.

  He remembered seeing the constellation while in the company of Franco Rohre a month into their hunt for Björn…the night Ean val Lorian had been kidnapped by a Shade. He wasn’t sure why he associated the constellation with Björn now—he certainly didn’t ascribe such power to his oath-brother as to imagine him capable of influencing the stars—yet there seemed a connection.

  Raine drew in a calming breath and let it out slowly, his gaze fixed upon the heavens. ‘If you want answers in Niyadbakir, you must face first the veils of your own failures.’ Dagmar’s words, on behalf of another.

  Raine grunted. An appropriately cryptic remark, coming from Björn.

  He needed to walk, to let his heart find a purpose for
racing, to let the intensity of his anger find balance in action. Shoving hands into his pockets, one fist still holding Björn’s coin, Raine headed across the camp.

  He could not deny that he’d had his own failures, but somehow he didn’t think Björn was referencing a failing Raine had already identified. No, his oath-brother—ever audacious and unrepentantly exacting—would expect him to search deeper for those answers.

  Shadow take the infernal man!

  One of Raine’s gifts was a singular lack of ego—which he felt Björn more than made up for on his behalf. But the idea that Björn might be justified in anything—surely the intention behind Dagmar’s visit—was incredibly hard to swallow. Even had he nothing to do with the recent events in Alorin—and it seemed much must be pinned on the presence of Malorin’athgul—Björn still had the Citadel, T’Khendar, and the greater part of the Adept Wars to answer for.

  As Raine was passing another wagon, its door opened and a man stepped out, already in the middle of a stretch. “You’re up…early…” Balearic noted through a yawn.

  Raine lifted his gaze to the pirate-turned-gypsy, studying him as the latter scratched his beard and then tugged down his waistcoat over an untucked shirt.

  “Yes, good morning to you.” He turned and gazed eastward once more. The horizon had become a glowing line against shadow-black sand, the heavens just above pale gold but quickly moving through to the deepest blue, the stars fading beneath the powerful coming of dawn.

  Raine had been many days in T’khendar so far, helping in the gypsy camp as they moved west, but much remained unclear about Björn’s realm and those who dwelled there. They were due to reach the city of Renato the following afternoon, and while Raine wouldn’t be sorry to say farewell to the Wyndlass Desert, he’d had little chance to speak with Balearic since their rescue, and he still had a host of questions for the gypsy.

  “Nine years, you said,” Raine noted as Balearic descended the steps of his wagon and joined him in observing the sunrise. “That’s how long you’ve lived here.”