“Aye, my lord.”
“Then you know what they say in Alorin. You know the stories of this place…of my oath-brother.”
“Aye,” the gypsy admitted.
Raine settled him an inquiring look.
Balearic shrugged. “You can’t believe everything you hear, your Excellency. Fortune bite me, but you can’t believe half of what you see, either.” He headed over to his fire pit and stirred the coals back to life. Raine followed him. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to care much about ancient history when I expatriated here,” Balearic admitted as he squatted to put kindling on the burgeoning fire. “What vran Lea said was true—I had half the Agasi imperial navy after me. No matter what I did, my pirating days were over. I figured I’d make a new start in a place nobody knew me, somewhere even the Empress’s long arm couldn’t reach.” Getting the fire back to life, Balearic settled an iron kettle on a hook over the flames and sat back, draping elbows over knees.
Raine sat down beside him. “And?”
Balearic cast a thoughtful look out of the corner of his eye. “Things are a bit unusual here, as you might imagine. In a lot of ways, life goes on the same, but in just as many ways it’s completely different.” He gave Raine an uncertain smile. “To tell you the truth, my lord, people here somewhat blame you and the other Vestals.”
Raine drew back in surprise. “They blame us?”
“Through no fault of the First Lord’s,” Balearic was quick to declare. “No doubt he’d be the first to come to your defense, just because he’s that way about things, but you know, in Alorin they’re like to blame those who aren’t there to defend themselves, and I suppose it’s no different here.”
Raine reflected it was an interesting concept to imagine himself the villain for a change.
“No offense, your Excellency,” Balearic continued, his gaze fixed on stoking the fire, “but there’s as some…well, they might’ve left you out in the Wyndlass to find your own way, if you know what I mean. I can’t say for certain if Carian hadn’t been with you if I would’ve made the trek myself.”
“I see,” Raine said, regarding him quietly.
“Lots of us know the rumors circulating about the First Lord back in Alorin,” Balearic continued, “and the people here don’t like them overmuch.”
Raine fixed his gaze upon the gypsy. “You’re sworn to him?”
“I suppose of a fashion,” Balearic admitted, “but not in the way you’re likely thinking—nothing like an oath or any sort of magic—but people are loyal to the First Lord and the Lady.”
“He’s your ruler,” Raine said equitably but with deep concern in his gaze. “It only follows.”
“Oh no, the First Lord doesn’t rule here,” Balearic returned at once. “T’khendar is a realm of Free Cities, like Xanthe. The Governors are in charge of the cities, and they just report to the Guilds.”
Raine leaned back in surprise. “Björn doesn’t rule?”
“Like I said,” Balearic replied, shooting him a telling look. “Folks have a lot of wrong ideas back in Alorin.”
Raine considered him for a moment and then observed, “You are quite forthcoming for a man of your background, Monsieur de Palma.”
“Well…the General said we should be as truthful with you as we dared,” Balearic returned, pushing at the fire with a long stick and not looking at him, “and well…you’re as like to get ill stares from folks as you are to be greeted fairly. It’s only right you should understand.”
“I appreciate your candor—more than you know,” Raine told him. “Who is the General you speak of?”
“General Ramuhárikhamáth. He’s the one who took note of you in the Wyndlass.”
“Ah…” Raine arched brows. So Bjorn maintains his allies in their same roles. But what of his other two generals? Arion Tavestra is certainly dead…and Markal?
Raine had been seeking Markal Morrelaine for centuries. The idea of perhaps finding him in T’khendar brought a sudden sense of hope. Then he laughed at himself, for what point in questioning Markal when Björn himself stood to answer? It seemed a bitter irony, after all this time.
“So you came here and you listened to different stories,” Raine posed to Balearic then, “but you were a cynical man, if I’m not misreading you, Monsieur de Palma. What changed your mind?”
Balearic pitched his stick onto the flames and clasped hands before him. He gave Raine an uncertain look. “People talk, like I said, but here they tell different stories. I suppose we’re all wont to think the worst of others, my lord, but…well, there was something of these stories that just rang with truth to me.” He gazed off over the fire and added quietly and with a sudden faraway look, “And then there was the Lady. One can’t see her but know she represents goodness in all its forms.”
Raine looked at him in confusion. “What lady?”
“The Lady Isabel.”
Isabel!
Raine gaped at Balearic while the earth disintegrated beneath him, the heavens slowed in their turning, and reality came to an abrupt and staggering collision with the impossible. He knew he couldn’t have heard the man correctly, that he must’ve been mistaken, yet Balearic’s description of her—now that Raine had put a name to the Lady—could refer to no other woman.
“Isabel,” he whispered, his face ashen. Isabel. He pushed two fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose and tried to breathe around the tightness in his chest.
Isabel!
“I see you know her then.”
Raine staggered beneath the weight of his shock. He felt as though his entire understanding of the world and everyone in it had suddenly been turned inside out and the flesh of assumption stripped away to reveal the bleeding truth beneath.
Forcibly drawing himself back from the fringes of sure despair, Raine managed a painful swallow. “Has she been here the whole time?” he asked, a rough whisper. “Since the beginning?” He could hear the desperation in his own voice.
Balearic regarded him solemnly. “Far as I know, my lord, she’s been here since Tiern’aval fell.”
Raine sank his head into his hands and a growl of despair escaped him. Dear Epiphany. “All this time…all this time…we thought—”
Balearic suddenly understood why Raine was so shocked. “Well, you didn’t think he’d killed her!” he exclaimed, horrified. “Not the Lady, his own sister! Even I know the First Lord would sacrifice the realm he created with his own blood and tears before he would see harm come to the Lady Isabel!”
Raine gave him a tormented look. “She was the High Mage of the Citadel, Balearic!” he growled heatedly, so overcome that his emotions got the better of him. “You know that story, certainly.”
“Oh aye, I know it,” the man said with a hard, uncompromising glint in his blue eyes. “But there’s lots said of the Hundred Mages and their fate that isn’t fact—why, the Lady’s not the only one as survived when all were said to have perished. There’s the governors of the cities too—Governors Paledyne, Tempest, val Kess, d’Norio and Ranner—all Mages once, and I hear Markal Morrelaine returned several moons ago, and others besides, I’m told.”
These names sent Raine reeling. He grabbed Balearic’s arm as much to keep himself grounded as with his shock. “Alive?” he gasped. “They’re all alive? They’re all here?”
“You shouldn’t believe the stories, my lord,” Balearic said reprovingly.
“We saw the Mages’ heads, man!” Raine exclaimed in exasperation and dismay. “Malachai paraded them right before us!”
Balearic picked up another stick to poke at the fire and posed quietly, “Did you count them?”
Raine stared at him. “Count them?” The effrontery of the remark roused furious indignation, but then Raine saw the point of his question. Something within the obvious truth of it restored some semblance of order to his thoughts, and he suddenly deflated. “No,” he admitted then, exhaling a heavy sigh, “I suppose we did not count them.”
“Wasn’t a hundred, that�
�s sure as silver,” Balearic grumbled.
Raine pushed a hand through his hair. Thunderstruck and thoroughly confused, he wanted more than ever before to strangle the living life out of Björn van Gelderan. “Then why?” he asked more of himself than Balearic, a fervent plea whispered into the rising dawn, as if beseeching the sun for answers that no one else would provide. “By Cephrael’s Great Book,” Raine hissed exasperatedly, “if everything we know is a bloody lie, what did happen there?”
“The events that took place at the Battle of the Citadel are a closely guarded secret,” Balearic offered, even though Raine wasn’t expecting him to answer the question. “People don’t even whisper about that night—not even the ones who lived through it. Someone comes along thinking to be smart, trying to make connections, conjecturing…the next thing he knows he’s got a Shade asking questions at his door.” He shoved his stick into the fire, sending sparks heavenward. “Ain’t nobody wants that kind of attention.”
Raine gave him a stricken look and silence fell upon them, a long stretch where only the fire crackled and the kettle boiled its low hum. Finally, Raine said quietly, “So far there has not been a single thing about this place that fits with anything I remembered or knew to be true.”
“Aye,” Balearic commiserated with a long sigh. “T’khendar will do that to you.” Then he shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Thinking he’d let the Lady fall into harm…” he clicked his tongue, conveying his disappointment, and added, “ye just don’t know him at all.”
No, Raine agreed, teeth clenched in frustration. I clearly do not.
‘If you want answers in Niyadbakir, you must face first the veils of your own failure.’ Björn’s words—warning or prophecy? Raine was starting to believe that either way, the endeavor might prove more difficult than he imagined.
***
Franco Rohre stepped off the node into the glaring morning of the Wyndlass Desert and was immediately assaulted by searing heat and the unforgiving brightness of the endless sands. In the near distance, within the shadow of jutting basalt cliffs, Franco saw a splash of color and knew he’d found the Great Master.
He set off toward the green canvas tent wondering why anyone in his right mind would purposefully create a desert. If you had the skill to birth a world from the womb of another realm, why not give it a temperate climate and cloak the hills in foliage? What was there to admire about a bloody furnace of stone and sand?
Dagmar was reclining in a hammock chair beneath the shelter of his canvas tent, whose sides were open to the breeze—not that the boiling wind did anything but cause a man to simultaneously bake and perspire. The Second Vestal smiled as Franco trudged up, his shirt already soaked with sweat. “Ah, Franco,” he greeted, twining hands behind his head, “welcome to the Wyndlass.”
“Thank you, my Lord. I’ve always wanted to visit.”
The Vestal chuckled. “It has been so long since I suffered from the heat that I forgot how unpleasant it can be. Here, sit, have some siri,” and he waved nebulously toward the other hammock and a table where a pitcher of siri beaded with sweat. Franco willingly accepted the drink but forewent the hammock; the idea of anything else touching his body was somehow abhorrent.
“I can teach you the patterns my oath-brother taught me so long ago, Franco,” Dagmar suggested with a twinkle in his eye. “That is, if you dare to work the fifth.”
“No thank you, my lord,” Franco returned. “I’ll take my chances with the heat.”
Dagmar grinned. “I don’t blame you. The fifth is not a strand to be taken lightly, and working its patterns—especially when they are new—can feel much akin to baking in this desert.” He swung his feet over the side of his hammock and went to pour himself more siri.
The Second Vestal was always tall and broad of shoulder, and Franco had never seen him wearing anything but black, desert or no desert. Dagmar turned and leaned against the table as he continued his thought, “But Franco, I must admit, when you’re spending weeks at a time in this heat, when the sun has stolen every ounce of energy and even your bones feel baked and burned…in such a time do you look upon the fifth as a blessing.”
“Why were you spending so much time here, my lord?” Franco returned, adding under his breath, “Why did Malachai create a desert at all? It seems so pointless when you’ve unlimited possibilities.”
Dagmar gave him a strange look and answered, “There was much Björn’s Council of Nine didn’t understand about what was happening in T’khendar in its nascent days. Even my oath-brother was confused in the beginning—which is something I hope never to witness again. He wanted my help, so he told me all.”
Franco gaped at him. “Before the Citadel fell?”
He nodded.
Franco exhaled a low whistle. He recalled how tormented Raine and Alshiba were over Björn’s motivations, and equally so over Dagmar’s subsequent return to T’khendar. It would be a considerable blow once they learned the Great Master had been Björn’s ally all along.
But these were truths Franco would rather not have known, so he did not delve any deeper into them. “You said you were spending a lot of time here in the desert, my lord?”
Dagmar eyed him sagely, noting Franco’s reluctance, but he did not press the matter. “The Wyndlass is the outermost barrier to the end of the known realms, Franco. Beyond this desert lies the naked aether of unraveling space. The welds here must be unimaginably strong to resist the forces that pull against them. Björn and I spent months shoring up these aetheric places to keep deyjiin from seeping in…and to keep the Malorin’athgul out.”
“But…” Franco frowned. “Aren’t they already in Alorin?”
Dagmar flashed a grin. “Three, yes, but we don’t want to invite any more in, do we?”
“Indeed not!” Franco hastily agreed, unnerved by the very idea.
“So have I asked you here to aid me this time, Franco,” Dagmar explained. “Long have I tended these welds, seeing to their welfare as a gardener nurses a delicate fruit to ripen on the vine, protecting it from dangers seen and unseen. The drachwyr are my silent watchmen, observing from the air what only their immortal, fifth-strand eyes might witness, noting the tiniest snags in the fabric of the realm. Then do I tend to them. Now, I would have you here to help me, if you accept this role.”
“Of course, my lord,” Franco replied, though he silently loathed the idea of spending even one more hour in the furnace that was the Wyndlass, much less an unknown number of weeks.
“But what of your other task?” Dagmar asked then. He settled onto his hammock like a chair and sipped his siri as he swung gently. “What is your old friend Niko up to?”
Franco schooled himself calm on the matter, for he was altogether too keen to destroy Niko van Amstel in agonizing and bloody ways. He reported with an appropriate underscore of acid in his tone, “He plans to depose you, my lord.”
Dagmar gave him a look of resigned acceptance. “I suspected something of the sort.”
“You don’t seem overly dismayed. I was ready to tear out his throat.”
The Great Master gave him a grateful look. “I know I have your support, Franco. You have always been true to your oaths. No,” he said, sighing, “there are worse things than no longer being Alorin’s Second Vestal.”
“My lord!” Franco protested at once.
“Be at ease, Franco, and hear me out.” Dagmar raised an imploring hand. “My brother’s game far surpasses the mere politics of realms. I will not be changed if suddenly this ring is denied me. The Vestal oath is not a ring to wear.”
Franco clenched his teeth. It is to Niko. “He intends to take your place, you know.”
Dagmar flashed a rueful grin. “That went without saying.”
Franco felt protest and angst welling. He couldn’t accept Dagmar’s passive demeanor. “My lord, do you really intend to do nothing?”
Dagmar finished his siri and reclined back in his hammock again. “The First Lord’s advice is ever w
ise, Franco,” he observed then, “and I have learned much of his philosophies in the last few centuries. We learn from the Esoterics of Patterning that the universe aligns toward our intentions. If we are focused on a single goal—that mountain in the distance, say,” and he nodded toward a far basalt cliff jutting to scrape the sky, “then the more we continue toward that goal with singular focus, the more the universe aligns to bring it into being. If, however,” and here he eyed Franco sagaciously, “we are attacked along the way and we diverge from that path to handle each attack, we have stopped all progress toward the mountain. Our goal has been abandoned.”
“So you’re saying we have to ignore all attacks?” Franco challenged dubiously. “I cannot accept that.”
“No, of course not. To ignore an attack merely brings it closer to your path. What Björn advises us, however, is to accept that there will be attacks, and to solve them without diverging from the path toward our goal.”
“And how do we do that?” Franco grumbled.
Dagmar leveled him a sardonic grin. “Therein lies the challenge of the game.”
The game. That damnable grace-forsaken game!
Franco had long ago decided—albeit in hindsight—that he should have slit his own throat rather than take part in any aspect of the Fifth Vestal’s blasted game, even as he knew he had no choice in the matter now, that in fact he’d made his choice long ago. But this did not in any way soften the brutal reality that the game they were about was deadly beyond measure.
Even deadlier than working the fifth.
Grimacing, Franco poured himself more siri, feeling ill-humored. “I suppose I should learn some fifth-strand patterns then, my lord,” he decided, turning to Dagmar with grim resignation. “At least that way, when the end comes, I’ll meet it comfortably.”
Eighteen
“Take care when biting at the bait of mystery.
Always a hook lurks beneath its flesh.”
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 23