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

by McPhail, Melissa

  He turned to find Pelas at the courtyard’s entrance.

  “Ah, so…” the Malorin’athgul said, slowing his approach with his copper eyes pinned unerringly on the zanthyr. “Some things at last become clear.”

  Seeing him, knowing it was time to leave him, Tanis felt his heart tearing in two. He cast a tentative mental probe that he might know the other man’s mind in that moment, but Pelas’s thoughts were suddenly closed to him.

  Pelas stopped about ten paces away, and Tanis wanted so much to go to him, to try to explain…

  Pelas’s gaze was fixed on the zanthyr. “The lad is yours then?” he asked, and Tanis could read nothing in his tone. It was agonizing to be shut out of his thoughts after sharing the space of his mind for so very long.

  “No,” replied the zanthyr in his deeply compelling voice. “I am his.”

  “Ah,” Pelas returned, thoughtful now. “Yes…that makes sense.”

  What? thought Tanis, how does that make any sense at all?

  “Then he is—”

  “Pelasommáyurek,” the zanthyr growled in sudden warning, shaking his head. “Not here. Not like this.”

  Pelas looked taken aback. “I’m…sorry, I didn’t…” His gaze locked with the zanthyr’s, and they exchanged a long moment of silence wherein much was communicated beyond Tanis’s understanding. Finally Pelas tore his eyes from Phaedor’s to give Tanis a troubled frown. “This then is your farewell, eh, little spy?” For all that he’d closed his mind to the lad, Tanis heard the heartbreak in his tone.

  The lad left the comfort of Phaedor’s warm and heavy hand upon his shoulder to join Pelas. He stopped before him and looked up into his copper eyes, so different from the zanthyr’s and yet beautiful too, in their way. “I have to leave you,” he said, hearing his own voice break with the confession.

  Pelas gave him a gentle look. “I know.”

  Tanis understood now why he had to go. Pelas had to make a choice, and Tanis was somehow connected to that choice. The lad knew Pelas couldn’t do it if he stayed. He reached into his coat and withdrew his dagger. “Here,” he said, handing it to him.

  Pelas took the dagger, but he lifted his gaze to observe the zanthyr as he did. Looking back to Tanis then, he asked in confusion, “Why are you giving me this?”

  “You have to make a choice.” Tanis pushed a tear roughly from his eye. “Maybe the dagger will help you find me once you’ve decided—that is, if…if you want to find me. I mean…if that’s the choice you make.”

  Holding his gaze intently, Pelas spun the dagger through his fingers and made it disappear.

  Tanis couldn’t stand his distance anymore. He threw his arms around him in a fierce hug. “Please,” he whispered. “Please…”

  “I know, Tanis,” Pelas returned, his breath a cool breeze across his cheek.

  Then Tanis pulled himself away and rejoined the zanthyr. When he turned back with a last parting glance, however, Pelas was gone.

  Phaedor looked down upon him, his emerald eyes aglow beneath his raven curls. He was so impressive. So imposing. Taller than Pelas and broader still.

  Next to the brilliant force that was the zanthyr, even giants became as men.

  Tanis let out a tremulous sigh and hugged him again, but it was not joy that drove him into the zanthyr’s embrace this time.

  “He’s not like the others,” Tanis whispered with his cheek pressed against the zanthyr’s strong chest, his arms wrapped tightly around him. He felt choked with loss. He didn’t know how Pelas would choose, and the idea of never seeing him again was like losing a part of himself.

  As ever, the zanthyr knew his mind. “Do not be disheartened, Tanis,” Phaedor advised gently. “Your paths do not end here. For good or ill, they will cross again.”

  “What will happen when they do?”

  “That depends upon his choice.”

  “My lord…how can I feel for him so? He’s done…monstrous things…”

  “Love takes many forms,” the zanthyr consoled. “Sometimes is it the truest expression of compassion.”

  Tanis pulled away, sniffing. “I do love him…” Like I love you. “He is the brother I never had.”

  The zanthyr must’ve known his tormented thoughts, for he took the lad tenderly by the back of the head and pulled him into the circle of his arms once more, holding him until Tanis felt a measure of hope restored.

  That time when he pulled away, his outlook was a little brighter. Phaedor kept his arm around his shoulder as he called forth a portal—just as Pelas had. Tanis had never seen the zanthyr travel this way, but he knew Phaedor could work deyjiin and was somehow not surprised. The silver line split down, and then they were walking through Shadow and out onto a midnight field where two horses waited in the luminous fall of moonlight, one black, one silver-pale.

  “Caldar?” Tanis asked, shooting the zanthyr a look.

  “A distant cousin,” the zanthyr answered. “This is Draanil, sire of his own line of noble Hallovian steeds. He will carry you, I think, if you will have him.”

  “Of—of course!” Tanis exclaimed. He looked into the horse’s lambent brown eyes as he stroked his neck. “I am honored, Draanil.”

  Phaedor took the leads of his midnight stallion, and they walked the horses side by side along the crest of a grassy hill. Tanis could see the golden lights of a city in the distance, but he didn’t know what city it was. Nor did he care. He was with the zanthyr, and that was all that mattered now.

  “My lord,” he said, glancing at Phaedor. “Why did you say you were ‘mine’ back there?”

  Phaedor gave him one of his decidedly disturbing looks, the kind that always drew chills out of the boy. “Because I am bound to you, Tanis.”

  Tanis stopped dead in his tracks. “You are?” he croaked. “How? When?”

  “When I made a promise to your mother to keep you safe,” he answered as if this wasn’t the most earth-shattering statement in Tanis’s entire existence.

  “You what?” the lad veritably shrieked.

  Phaedor cast him a sideways look full of shadowy amusement.

  “And you didn’t think to tell me this until now?” Tanis protested shrilly.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Over the course of the next few minutes, Tanis muttered a steady stream of inhospitable things under his breath while wondering if perhaps Fynnlar wasn’t entirely wrong about the zanthyr. Sometimes he really could be insufferable.

  Then something else occurred to him which cheered him somewhat. “So if you’re bound to me, my lord,” Tanis said, casting the zanthyr an imperious look, “does that mean you have to do what I tell you?”

  The zanthyr eyed him dangerously. “Try it and find out, Truthreader.”

  Tanis went a little pale.

  Phaedor grinned and flipped his dagger.

  Thirty-Four

  “Your gods are fickle, fustian creatures thriving on the inane worship of deluded men.”

  - Shailabhanáchtran, Maker of Storms

  Ean woke to wondrous smells of breakfast. He rolled onto his side and found Isabel already at work in the kitchen. “My lady,” he sighed happily, “you look positively domestic.”

  She shot him a grin over her shoulder. “Why thank you, my lord. Would you like to join me? We could use more wood for the fire and some fresh water also.”

  Ean rolled from the bed, which was still made if a bit rumpled, and happily set to the chores she assigned him. Housekeeping with Isabel felt intimate and familiar, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been together like this before. He dared not ask her, however, for fear she would answer him.

  When breakfast was done and cleared and cleaned, Isabel pulled a cloak from her pack and took up her staff. Ean followed, bringing his navy cloak edged in silver, so like the one he’d worn that fateful night on a lonesome beach when his whole life had changed.

  Together, they found the path once more.

  The trail eventually led to a cave, where Isabel to
ok up a torch. Ean offered to recall the working for summoning fire—he was quite sure he could remember the pattern if she commanded it of him—but Isabel just struck the provided flint against her staff and a spark caught upon the torch at once. As it flamed to life, Ean saw a narrow, arched corridor, smooth as black glass, vanishing into darkness.

  “This is no natural cave.”

  “No, Malachai made it.”

  Ean frowned into the gloom. For some reason, the one man he wanted least to recall was Malachai. Though he understood better the tragedy of the wielder’s madness, an uncomfortable association still stirred at the man’s name. Ean now recognized such unsettling feelings as hidden truths—in this case, a painful one, long buried, that he did not wish to be unearthed.

  He recalled suddenly another conversation, another dream that wasn’t a dream.

  “Will you cross this bridge with me, my friend?” Björn had invited him.

  “Why should I?”

  “To regain your future and your past.”

  “Where does the bridge lead?” Ean had asked.

  “To pain,” Björn answered with honest regret.

  “What will I find on the other side?”

  Björn had smiled. “Yourself.”

  Even then, standing on the fringes of death, Ean had suspected that the pain Björn spoke of was still awaiting him, that he’d only had the barest taste of it. But now he was certain that the First Lord had been speaking of more than one moment, one life, one untimely mistake. When Ean accepted Björn’s invitation to return across the bridge, it wasn’t merely to regain the painful knowledge of the errors of one life and near death, but of three of them.

  The tunnel was long, and Isabel kept silent during the hours they traversed it, giving Ean time with his thoughts. He knew how deeply aware of him she was. Just like he knew she was leading him toward more than just Rinokh, that this tunnel, like Björn’s bridge, would eventually end in pain.

  The smallest light at the far end gradually brightened, widened, until they emerged into daylight.

  But it was a strange daylight, the light harsh beneath a grey-green overcast. The sky crackled with lightning that flared in huge sheets, blasting the turbulent clouds into sere white brilliance and then retreating defiantly, leaving a sickly greenish hue. The canyon before them lay barren, the basalt towers of the surrounding mountains standing black against the sky. A rough stairway led down to the canyon floor, and Isabel kept her torch as she led Ean down. As always the soft thud of her staff tapped a reassuring comfort, something normal among this place that twitched with unmaking.

  Their descent took the better part of two hours, until at last Ean stepped off the final stair and set both feet somewhat reluctantly upon the canyon floor. A million rough stones rattled there every time the lightning cracked overhead. There was no bare earth upon which to safely tread, only the molting rocks. Isabel turned them to their right, and Ean saw that the towering basalt walls narrowed as they angled further into the canyon. Into this chasm they headed, unevenly, taking care on the volatile stones.

  The further they went, the more the air became charged. Isabel’s hair floated away from her head in spidery strands, and as Ean felt the hairs rising on his arms, he realized his own hair was doing the same. The air crackled with static, which simply gathered there, building and amassing until the lightning released it into the upper atmosphere. Ean felt they were dangerously close to being electrocuted, that the lightning that flashed incessantly in the heavens could just as easily strike them down at any moment.

  Finally they reached the narrowest point where the sheer sides of the canyon met at a soaring wall of black volcanic glass, which disappeared into the overcast far above.

  “Obsidian,” Ean murmured, noting the glass’s telltale dark gleam.

  Isabel set down her staff and took his hand in hers, sparking his fingers with her first touch. “This place is the furthest edge of the known realms of light,” she said gravely. “Here, the veil between worlds is very thin. Beyond this wall,” and she indicated the darkly translucent obsidian before them, “we look into the Unknown, the outer chaotic fringe of the cosmos itself. It is the place of unraveling where the Malorin’athgul reside, working their consumptive power to dissolve the edges of the ever-expanding universe,” and she added solemnly, “for there is Balance in all things.”

  “What are the Malorin’athgul?” Ean asked, suddenly desperate to better understand their enemy.

  “They were made in the Genesis along with the angiel,” she explained as they stared at the volcanic glass wall while the world crackled and shuddered around them. “They are as much the Maker’s children as Cephrael and Epiphany.”

  Ean gaped at her, unable to believe such a startling truth. “But—” It was incomprehensible that their Maker would knowingly bring such evil creatures as Rinokh into being.

  “They are the balance to creation, Ean,” she tried to tell him as lightning flared and thunder rumbled the stones beneath their feet, rippling the air even within their chests. “They are…complicated creatures.”

  A static wind charged down from the overcast, whipping Isabel’s hair into a frenzy of wild strands, each with a life of its own. She pulled up the hood of her cloak to contain it and continued, shouting to be heard above the din, “The Malorin’athgul were never meant to know of our world at all! Their only purpose for being is to unmake the unraveling fringes of our universe while at its core it is continuously self-creating.”

  “Then how did—”

  “A truth for another day!” she answered, shouting though they stood side by side.

  Ean gazed into the madness surrounding him and wondered not for the first time why they were here. “Where is Rinokh?”

  “Here! Hold the light to the wall!”

  Confused, Ean took the torch from her and released her hand to stagger closer to the towering obsidian wall. The static wind was monumental there, threatening to tear his cloak from his shoulders. It cast the heavy cloth snapping tautly behind him as he struggled forward, yet the light of Isabel’s torch remained steady. So there is a little magic in it after all.

  Not understanding why, only trusting Isabel, Ean held the fire to the depthless glass. The obsidian seemed to absorb the flame, to draw it deeply in and magnify it. He saw a blossoming gold reflection spreading far inside the deep, dense wall, widening as if a light-tower beacon, when suddenly—

  Ean leapt back, stumbling on the uneven stones. A great eye pressed against the other side of the volcanic glass, magnified in turn from an immense, unknowable distance by the wall that was more than a wall. As Ean stared, the eye vanished to be replaced by the reptilian face of a monster.

  Ean stared at the wall, chest heaving, knowing he faced his enemy but uncomprehending of what he saw.

  “He is trapped now,” Isabel came up behind Ean. “Trapped beyond the veil of this world. His original means of entrance to the realms of light is now denied him, and he knows it, but still he searches, hovering at T’khendar’s edge, hoping…”

  “It’s…he’s…” Ean turned to her, pointing hard at the glass. “He’s a dragon!”

  “He is Malorin’athgul.”

  Swallowing, Ean looked back to the creature. He could see it swimming beyond the veil that separated the worlds. Here a spiked tail raked the volcanic glass wall, there a great eye peered intently, maliciously, inward. A head appeared in full, turning from side to side, displaying a double row of teeth, and then the mouth opened violently, and Ean wondered if Rinokh played some fell power upon the wall, trying to unravel it as he had so nearly undone him. The thought brought a latent shudder.

  “They cannot be unmade, Ean!” Isabel called over the roaring thunder and the shuddering rocks and the crackling, electric wind, “but they must not be allowed to unwork the living realms. This is our enemy! This is what we are sworn to fight!”

  Much later, Ean sat in silence at the table back at the cottage, his mind still dwelling in that hea
vily charged canyon that so throbbed with unmaking. He’d barely said a word since returning from the mountain, only trusting that Isabel knew his mind.

  The image of Rinokh wasn’t what upset him the most. Rather, it was the knowledge she’d given him as they walked back—that three more of these creatures dwelled now within Alorin, unmaking it by the malevolent force of their presence as much as by the dark mischief they were most certainly about.

  “Am I meant to face them? Is this what he needs of me?” he’d asked her somewhat desperately.

  But Isabel would not answer him in this.

  She made dinner for them, and they ate in silence, for Ean struggled with his new understanding. Three times he’d battled these creatures and died, failing not merely himself but all who’d been counting on him. The Malorin’athgul need do nothing but exist within the realm and Alorin would eventually wither and die. They were the reason Alorin was out of Balance, why the Adept race was dying.

  No wonder Markal treated Ean’s incompetency with such vehement disdain. Every moment such creatures were allowed to remain in Alorin, the realm itself moved one step closer to death. And each time Ean confronted them and failed, he only prolonged their tenancy.

  He felt a black and explosive self-loathing, his guilt a lead weight plunging his soul into an abyss... Might as well invite them to stay at their leisure for all the good I’ve done!

  “Ean…” Isabel called his attention.

  He looked up to find her sitting across from him with hands clasped on the table. The dishes were gone, cleaned. He didn’t even remember eating the meal.

  “My brother thought it would be better if we kept this knowledge from you a little longer,” she said. “He feared that if you knew the threat we faced—if you knew how critical our position and how volatile their presence in our world…if you knew what failure meant to our future—that you would be stricken. He feared you would take these failures upon your own shoulders as a weight that only you might bear, as if you and you alone had failed the entire world.”