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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Well, at least it didn’t flatten him.

  “You are still thinking of this the wrong way, Ean,” Markal observed after the water had settled back into the pool.

  Ean pushed wet hair out of his eyes and took off his dripping shirt, slinging it to the side. The sun felt good on his chilled skin, warming, renewing. “How?”

  “You persist in attempting only to think with patterns.”

  “Because you’re sending patterns at me!” Ean immediately argued, his frustration evident.

  Markal smiled ferociously. “Exactly. You are continuously violating the Ninth Law.”

  “What?” Ean protested, indignant now. “How?” But then he saw it. “No—never mind,” he grumbled. Shadow take the insufferable man, but he’s right. Markal was sending patterns at Ean, and he was only responding with similar patterns in kind—not channeling the force toward his own use. They were just batting a ball back and forth.

  As Ean looked upon their practice thus far, he saw that Markal’s ‘force’ actually could be thought of as the intention—the idea being channeled to produce an effect. In Patterning, first one conceived of the effect he wanted to create—KNOW the effect, as stated by the First Law. Then, if he was an Adept like Ean, he simply created a pattern with his intent.

  Ean had been countering Markal’s effect with his own effect—another pattern. What he should have been doing was stepping back from the effect and rechanneling the energy altogether.

  He exhaled a heavy sigh and nodded, acknowledging Markal’s point. He still didn’t understand how to rechannel the force exactly, but he understood that merely countering with a similar pattern was just applying force against force. There had to be another way.

  “Again,” said Markal, relentless and unyielding.

  And the wave came on.

  By midday Ean felt utterly spent.

  Markal called a halt, and they broke their fast beneath a stone gazebo covered in flowering jasmine, its fragrance heady and sweet. Ean’s constant failure had given him a morose outlook, and now he saw nothing but reasons why this course of action would never work. He feared he’d never be able summon an appropriate response and bombarded himself with excuses and untruths disguised as reasons why he couldn’t.

  Barely aware of what he was eating, only knowing that he would need his strength to keep from drowning, Ean roused from his self-abnegation long enough to notice two figures walking among the trees on the far side of the clearing, beyond the pool. Isabel’s form called to his heart, and he felt her tugging upon the string she ever held.

  That day she wore a gown of the purest jade, and she walked arm in arm with another woman who wore a fiery gown in the desert style. As the ladies passed from shade into the sunlight, Ean saw citrine stones sparkling in the other woman’s flame-gold hair.

  “She walks with the Sundragon Jayachándranáptra,” Markal supplied, mistaking the interest of Ean’s focused gaze.

  Ean tore his eyes from Isabel, having barely even noticed the other woman. “What? Oh…yes. I met Ramu a few days ago.” He looked back to his plate and was relieved to discover that he’d managed to eat most of his food. “I suppose we should try again…” but his gaze strayed wistfully back toward Isabel. The ladies were just heading down a promenade of ancient oak trees and out of view.

  Markal eyed him speculatively.

  They took up their places as the sun was arcing westward. Ean felt somewhat restored—more by sight of Isabel than the food he’d managed to consume. His thoughts kept straying to her now, remembering their few conversations together, imagining moments to come. More than anything, he wanted to chase after her, to find her and be with her, even if it meant simply walking at her side as she spoke with her friend. It wasn’t long before thoughts of Isabel consumed him, such that he didn’t even see the wall of water until it was too late.

  The force catapulted him off his feet and through the air to land in a sprawl while the crushing wave battered him relentlessly into the grass. He lay there choking for a good three minutes afterward, just trying to manage a painful gasp of air.

  The second time he wasn’t so lucky, and he truly thought he might drown before the water relented. That time he was sure Markal had somehow sent extra water in the wave, and as he got back to his feet, he shot the man a baleful look.

  Unrepentant, Markal leaned on his staff. “If you don’t get that woman out of your head,” he remarked, “you’re going to die before you have a chance to live your life with her. What’s more, you’ll likely take the rest of us down with you in the bargain.”

  Ean growled the most uncomplimentary thing he could think of, to which Markal replied, “And when you fail this time and retreat to the Extian Doors for a fourth time to await your Returning, I think I will claim Isabel for myself.”

  Even knowing he meant it as a taunt, Ean stiffened. The idea of Isabel with any man enraged him beyond reason.

  “Yes,” Markal remarked thoughtfully, “I shall take Isabel to my bed.” He swept his staff before him, calling up the waters even as he declared in an elae-enhanced voice, “Isabel shall lie bare before me, wanton and lustful for my loins, and she shall beg—”

  The water rushed toward Ean—

  “—for a release that I shall deny her—”

  Ean lashed out. The force of the water coming toward him spun into a towering vortex of whipping sand, lashing back toward Markal. The wielder raised his staff, and the sand turned to wind, a gale that forced him stumbling backwards toward the trees. Until at last the pattern exhausted itself.

  Dislodged leaves floated idly down upon the settling tides of elae, but Ean stood in a battle stance, his shoulders taut, fists clenched and ready to launch toward the man in a fury.

  Markal tugged his tunic straight and smoothed his silver-white hair, which Ean’s wind had displaced. “A mite touchy, aren’t we?” he inquired, his dark eyes sparkling with triumph.

  It took the greatest force of will for Ean to allow himself to release the intent harbored so dangerously within him, an intent that had already gathered unto itself a deadly quantity of elae. The power hummed within his consciousness just waiting to assume some shape, some form…waiting for his will to mold it.

  Exhaling through clenched teeth, Ean let elae slowly ooze out of him to reassume its natural channels. He wondered if Markal had any idea how close he’d come to being annihilated. He suspected that he did. That’s probably why he was smiling.

  “Let us explore the reasoning behind the Ninth Law,” the wielder said then. “This time, counter my pattern with the same pattern.”

  He sent a smaller wave toward Ean, and Ean easily copied the pattern he inherently saw to send an identical wave back toward Markal. Both forces met in a geyser of whitewater.

  Once the pool had stilled, Markal said, “This time, let us re-direct the force, repel it.”

  He lifted his staff, and the water lifted at his command, shooting toward Ean. Ean threw up a pattern that channeled the same force back toward Markal, rerouting the water in a stream the opposite way. Markal added his own layer to the same pattern, casting the water back toward Ean, who countered, until a looping tunnel of water churned between them.

  Abruptly Markal dropped his arms, and the water dove back into the pool with a violent splash. While the water stilled, Ean stared at the pool feeling dazed. He realized just how much of his own lifeforce he’d exhausted with the last few workings. It occurred to him that while he could call elae to him in abundance, the actual use of it—the channeling of the lifeforce to align with his intention—was exhausting all out of proportion to how much of it he could summon.

  Markal pinned Ean with an incendiary look. “Explain what you have just experienced.”

  Ean was finally sedate enough to find his voice. In truth, it disturbed him how violently he’d reacted to the wielder’s taunts about Isabel, yet the ache in his heart remained a palpable thing. He couldn’t bear the thought of her with another man.

 
Markal approached at a steady pace, his gaze fixed on Ean and awaiting a reply, and Ean decided he’d rather not get drenched again, so he focused on the wielder’s demand. An explanation of the day’s lesson. “The most effective way of countering an effort coming against you is to use the power already being channeled. There is no need to call elae on your own. You merely re-align the power another has summoned to suit your own will.”

  “Just so,” Markal confirmed.

  “You can take an effort and put your effort against it,” Ean continued slowly, thinking through what he’d just observed with the geysering water, “but then you have two counter-efforts pushing against each other. It doesn’t accomplish very much. Likewise, sending the same effort back toward its origins just causes the cycle to repeat. Both of these approaches waste your energy.”

  “Ah, good,” Markal commented, “so you noticed.”

  “I noticed.” Ean exhaled a sigh and moved to sit on the edge of the stone pool, resting elbows on knees. “I don’t exactly understand it. I mean…” he pushed a hand through his wet hair and glanced up at the older man. “I was holding so much elae just then—” He shook his head and dropped his gaze, adding ruefully, “You have no idea.”

  “I have an idea,” the man remarked with shadowy amusement. He walked to stand in front of Ean. “Take a deep breath,” he said, “as deep as you can possibly draw.”

  Ean did so, gazing curiously at him.

  “Now keep it in.”

  Ean held his breath, staring at Markal while his chest grew tight and hot, blood vessels constricting.

  “Blow it out hard.”

  Ean forced a powerful exhale.

  “Now do it again.”

  Ean followed his directions, and five more times did he draw breath as deeply as his lungs would allow and forcefully exhale. By the end, he felt lightheaded and drained.

  “It is the same with elae,” Markal explained then, taking note of Ean’s physical response. “Like air, there is more elae in the world than you will ever be able to hold within you. The lifeforce is boundless and inexhaustible. You are not. Your lifeforce is but one tiny spark of this immense whole.” He leaned on his staff and fixed Ean with his piercing gaze. “Your body’s innate energy can be expended until it cannot itself contain elae within it any longer. No amount of drawing upon the lifeforce will restore a body which has become a sieve.”

  Ean thought this over carefully. “So the lesson of the Ninth Law is also a lesson on survival.”

  Markal eyed him gravely. “They are all lessons in survival.”

  Thirty

  “Destiny is a pleasant fiction. Choice determines our fate,

  not the gods.”

  - Isabel van Gelderan, Epiphany’s Prophet

  Alyneri d’Giverny stood before the standing mirror with a tiny crease furrowing her fair brow. She didn’t know what she thought about the dress she wore that morning. It was not her usual style. In fact, she never would’ve had the courage to wear the style in Dannym, though it was certainly her birthright. The gown was a welcome surprise upon rising that morning, having been delivered—ironically—on the day she’d been kidnapped. Even when she’d ordered it and two others to be made for her, soon after Ean’s accident…even then she wasn’t sure if she’d ever find the gumption to wear them.

  But things had changed.

  It started with the zanthyr. Ever since her first confrontation with Phaedor, Alyneri had started seeing things changing within herself, shifting away from the northern ropes that sought to bind her, reaching toward her own truth. Shrugging off the need to be someone she wasn’t felt uniquely liberating, and her disposition had generally improved as a result.

  Even feelings for Ean had been affected by this change—that she cared for him still went without question, but even before his accident, she’d begun to accept their diverging paths. She no longer suffered from a perpetual longing for his affections, and though she hadn’t spotted it at the time, somewhere on their travels south, she’d finally forgiven him for not loving her. Hope of their mutual love had already begun to fade long before he’d been hurt.

  And then, somewhere between being kidnapped and nearly killed by a mudslide, and learning to heal herself, Alyneri had embraced her desert heritage in a way that felt…well, it felt right. Respectful of her father and all that he’d given her, of her family name and relatives who cared for her still. She felt more honest and authentically herself.

  She’d tried living among her mother’s northern friends, but without the Lady Melisande to dignify Alyneri’s presence, they’d looked upon her like a rather exotic and unusual daisy: idly interesting, a topic of speculation to be certain, but still, ultimately, a weed.

  The teal desert gown Alyneri now wore was made of heavy silk and felt incredibly soft against her skin. The wide collar arched gracefully from shoulder to shoulder to reveal the lovely line of her collarbone, and it clung to her chest in ways that made her blush. Fitted through her torso and hips, it flowed seamlessly into a full skirt that pooled at her feet. She especially loved the tiny hook-and-eye closures along the hidden placket on one side, which allowed her to dress herself. The gown was elegant, refined, simple yet terribly beautiful, and it startled her to see herself wearing it.

  It startled her more to realize she looked…alluring.

  Her dress wasn’t all that she’d altered, though the second change proved slightly less dramatic. Northern ladies wore their hair in braids or sculpted curls like crowns upon their head, but daughters of the sand left their hair long and free, at the most held with a net of precious stones.

  So Alyneri had had ordered a net of tiny garnets, which stones always brought out the color in her dark eyes. She wore the cap now, liking the way it held her flaxen hair out of her eyes while letting her long locks fall free, liking the way it framed her heart-shaped face, making her dark eyes look larger…

  A knock came upon her bedroom door, and she automatically called for entry. Trell came in looking upbeat and prepared for the day, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw her.

  “Alyneri,” he moaned good-naturedly, pushing palms to his temples, “what are you doing to me?”

  She turned to face him. But upon seeing his gaze, she followed his eyes to the dress curving around her hips and blushed. “I—I had it made before…everything happened.”

  He approached her at a steady pace, his grey eyes fixed upon her, pinning her in place while her heart tried to race away with her breath in tow. “I have known many women who wore such gowns,” he murmured in the desert tongue that the words should be all the more intimate for their having been spoken thusly. He stopped close and gazed into her eyes as he brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder. “None of them were as beautiful as you.”

  Alyneri’s stomach did a little flip. She felt trapped by his eyes, by the heat radiating out of him and her own longing for his touch. “Trell, I—”

  He leaned and captured her mouth with his own. She melted at his kiss, and when his tongue found hers…a thrill coursed through her, waking every sense with a current of desire. One hand slipped into her hair and held her firmly. The other hand found the small of her back, and gentle pressure brought her body against his. She felt him powerfully then, felt his own strength and his own desire rising against her.

  When he released her, she stood breathless and exhilarated and blushing fiercely.

  One finger lingered on her cheek, his thumb capturing her bottom lip while he rested his forehead upon hers. “You mustn’t wear such alluring things, Duchess, if you don’t want this reaction out of me.”

  I shall never wear anything else!

  Alyneri finally found her voice, though it sounded very young to her. “I…I shall take your advice under consideration, your Highness.”

  His lips spread in a slow and devastating smile. “So,” he said then, easily moving on while she gazed at him in wonder, still enraptured by his kiss. “Fynnlar has gone to see about acquiring a Nodefinder
to take us to Tal’Shira. What would you do in the meantime, your Grace?”

  Only be with you, she thought, but she said, “It’s Carnivále. Do you…do you think we could go?”

  Trell considered the idea. “It could be dangerous. Brantley might still be looking for you.”

  “I thought perhaps if we wore masks…”

  Trell took up her hand, but he did not pin her breathlessly that time, only moved his thumb slowly across her skin, seeming to savor the contact as much as she did. “I have never lived in fear of losing my life,” he remarked, holding her gaze with thoughtful regard, “but I would not endanger yours needlessly.”

  Perhaps it was the dress that emboldened her, but she straightened her shoulders and said, “I don’t want to live my life carefully, Trell. I want to live it bravely. Ean was impulsive and reckless with his life, and…well, I don’t mean that we should be quite so cavalier, but I…” She paused and gave him a little frown as she confessed, “I have a feeling that adventure will find us no matter how careful we might be.”

  It was true. She wasn’t sure if this feeling was the shadow of a Seeing, but it certainly resonated within her in a way that defied explanation.

  “Whatever path we’re upon, we have to walk it, eh?” Trell regarded her intently.

  “Something like that.”

  He released her hand and ran the back of his fingers down her arm, his touch stirring up heady urges. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and tried not to imagine what it would be like to lie with him.

  “Very well, Duchess,” he said after a moment, flashing a smile. “We’ll walk the path together and boldly face whatever it brings.”

  Wherein Alyneri wondered if she could ever love someone more.

  The sun hung low above the Bay of Jewels as Alyneri and Trell took a coach from the villa toward the Rue Royale, that broad boulevard running through the center of the city, where the largest of the parades and fetes were being held.