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

by McPhail, Melissa

  These were warning signs any Healer was trained to look for. She knew she neared a deadly boundary which, once crossed, would be her sure end.

  Shaken by the experience, Alyneri swallowed back a sick feeling and the taste of bile and slowly looked up again.

  A woman was approaching.

  Tall and lithe, she wore her raven hair in a long braid and walked with dual swords strapped to her back, the hilts extending above each leather-clad shoulder. She was both beautiful and imposing, and Alyneri knew at once who she must be. She searched through the fog of exhaustion and mental sickness, and finally the name came to her.

  “Vaile,” she gasped. Then louder, to be sure the zanthyr heard her, she pled desperately, “You are Vaile, aren’t you? Please, tell me you are!”

  Vaile’s predatory green eyes took in Alyneri, Gendaia, and Fynn all in one sweep and seemed to deduce more in that single glance than Alyneri might ever explain in words. She took Gendaia by the bit, asking, “Where is Trell of the Tides?”

  Whereupon Alyneri burst into tears.

  It all came out in a rush then—hysterically, disjointed, the story following as a flock of frenzied birds, flying everywhere and nowhere in the telling. Yet she managed the most fearful points: the attack, their urgent flight, Trell’s promise to meet her at the sa’reyth, Fynn’s desperate state…

  The air felt charged when she was done, as in the moments before a thunderstorm breaks, when the storm is yet rising and the world has gone dark. Alyneri realized it was the fifth strand she sensed, that Vaile had summoned it with her fury, and now it hummed in static impatience, desirous to be spent. Vaile’s expression was as dark as the endless void of space. “Come with me.”

  She set off at a rapid pace, and Alyneri followed in numb silence—or rather, she clung, as she had done the entire journey, to Gendaia’s saddle as Vaile led Gendaia into the shadow of the Point. The one time Alyneri thought to say something to the zanthyr, Vaile silenced her with a sharp look.

  The moment they crossed the node, the landscape changed abruptly from arid trail and sere skies to open hills of grass bordered by violet-hued mountains bathed in the shadows of passing clouds.

  In the haze of exhaustion, Alyneri found herself wondering if all zanthyrs could travel the nodes so easily. At the same time, she fretted over Fynn’s condition and simultaneously refused to think about why Trell hadn’t come yet couldn’t stop thinking about it. All of these worries seemed to swirl in her brain, a poisonous mix of conflicting fears that refused to blend.

  As they rounded a rise and came in view of a large compound of conjoined coppery tents further lower on the hillside, two men were ascending through the long grass to meet them.

  “Vaile, what have you?” asked the taller and older-looking of the two men, whose golden eyes seemed to reflect the desert wheat.

  “The Healer Alyneri d’Giverny,” Vaile replied, “betrothed of Trell of the Tides, and Trell’s cousin Fynnlar, also a friend of the pirate Carian vran Lea, and in dire need of Healing.” Then she added with some heat, “Náiir, they have taken Trell.”

  Alyneri was amazed Vaile had gleaned all of that information from her hysterical ramblings, for she remembered saying little of it.

  Náiir’s expression darkened like a sudden cloud interrupting the sun—no, not a cloud, a hurricane. “Who has taken Trell?”

  “Saldarians, I gather.”

  This was news to Alyneri—terrible news, from all Trell had told her of the mercenaries and their violent tendencies. Yet she’d no idea how the woman could’ve reached this conclusion when she herself knew nothing of it.

  Náiir returned Vaile a telling stare, fiery and fierce. “I will notify Rhakar to search for them.” He spun and rushed away.

  Vaile spoke to the other male then, whose sapphire tunic stood out brilliantly against his youthful caramel skin. “Balaji, the cousin is in desperate need of Healing and I must see what I can do to help him. Take Alyneri to Jaya, who will be of better comfort to her than you or I. And someone had best contact the Mage.” This last she added in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Balaji gave her a quiet look in return. There was much of wisdom in his gaze for all he seemed barely ten and six. “Are you certain of this course, Vaile? If you take it upon yourself to heal this man—”

  Vaile’s eyes flashed. “He is Trell’s cousin, Balaji. That makes him one of us!”

  Unruffled, Balaji’s gaze hinted of warning and amusement in one. “You know what it is you declare?”

  She snarled her reply in a language that sounded as old as the bedrock of the realm, her tone uncannily like the affronted growl of a cat. Then she spun and headed off, leading Fynn’s horse.

  Gazing after her, Balaji smiled a faint smile. “Apparently you do.” He looked to Alyneri then, and his expression fell into concern. “Come, soraya.”

  Thus, Alyneri followed the youth named Balaji, and the next hour became a blur. She remembered being handed over to a lovely woman with citrine-colored eyes and given something hot and spicy to drink. She remembered weeping desperately on a sofa while the lovely woman comforted her with kind words, and then…nothing.

  Forty-Six

  “I do not believe in failure. I simply will not stop until I succeed.”

  - The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

  Long after night had claimed Tal’Shira and sleep had claimed the Marquiin Yveric, Kjieran stood in the shadows of an arcade that opened onto one of the many stone-paved courtyards in the palace complex. This one, called the Court of Fifty-Two Arches, was built in honor of the original fifty-two Nadori princes who’d paid tribute to the Hadorin rule, centuries past. Accordingly, the coat of arms of each prince had been carved into one of the arcade’s pillars. Kjieran couldn’t imagine life in a kingdom of fifty-two princes who each believed himself of equal right to rule. No wonder M’Nador was always at war.

  Draped in shadows, Kjieran watched all who came and went in the night and listened to the thoughts of careless passersby who did not know how to think in whispers. To any who glanced his way, he would’ve seemed but one more shadow among many, for this much of the fourth-strand patterns of illusion he had mastered before leaving the Sormitáge, and as yet, elae remained his to command.

  The vast courtyard bustled even at this late hour, for it stood nearest the south gate of the palace and was a gathering place for anyone with legal business inside its high walls. But Kjieran watched the square for another purpose: it held the only node in Tal’Shira not guarded by blood-thirsty Saldarians. Dore had used this same node to bring Kjieran from the Prophet’s temple in Tambarré to Tal’Shira. Yet his own travel notwithstanding, the node otherwise boasted exclusive use by men upon business for Radov or hal’Jaitar. If ever he hoped to cross paths with one of the Shamshir’im, it would be in the Court of Fifty-Two Arches.

  According to Yveric, the Shamshir’im were hal’Jaitar’s men. Wielders, some of them, assassins, spies…capable of any manner of treachery in the name of princedom or by mere warrant of their leader’s will—for hal’Jaitar surely needed no further justification for ordering men upon perfidious deeds than because it suited his aims. Yveric had pressed Kjieran to investigate among the Shamshir’im, for they would certainly know the truth if it was to be found in Tal’Shira.

  Kjieran knew the chance of a Shamshir’im openly confessing culpability in Sebastian or Trell’s death was about as likely as Radov doing it. Yet there were ways of encouraging men upon a subject. A truthreader might use any manner of subtle mental prodding to bring a topic to light. How many times had his own Sormitáge master elicited whispering among a group of malcontents that he might learn of their allegiances? Or introduced a revolutionary idea into a meeting of young idealists by the merest thought placed within the aether and made to linger, floating among them like a bright candle, until one of them picked it up thinking it his own? A trained truthreader knew a host of subtle, delicate ways to elicit information without anyone becoming aware of it. T
ellings and Readings were the blunt mallets of children compared to this fine craft.

  Such mastery was gained only by way of a truthreader’s second ring. Before the Adept Wars, there had been hundreds of Adepts with multiple rings—one on each finger, even as hal’Jaitar wore, and more besides.

  Swapping tales of the ringed wielders of the Fourth Age was a favorite pastime of Sormitáge students—especially tales of Markal Morrelaine and his most famous pupil, Arion Tavestra, both of whom were rumored to have worn two rows of rings on all ten fingers. Such investiture demonstrated both an advanced understanding of the Laws of Patterning as well as expert application of the Esoterics. Of course, the Fifth Vestal was said to have worn five such “rows”—ten fingers, five rings upon each—but Kjieran had always believed those tales laughably exaggerated.

  Now, tragically, most truthreaders never tested for their rings—to wear even one was a rarity. As these fears for his dying race were accosting him like bats flapping blindly in a brightly lit room, Kjieran saw two men suddenly appear in the middle of the court. One looked injured and clung to the other as they stepped off the node into the Tal’Shira night. Even as Kjieran watched, the taller, haler man turned to his damaged companion. Kjieran saw steel flash in the moonlight, and the slouching man fell backwards to the stones, his throat severed from ear to ear.

  Kjieran reached quickly for their thoughts, gleaning but little from the dying man, who had been mostly dead before he crossed the node. The other set off purposefully, but not before Kjieran plucked a whispered name from his thoughts.

  Hal’Jaitar…

  The man seemed urgent to reach the Consul—just the sort Kjieran had been hoping to find. He latched onto the other’s mind and slipped through the shadows in silent pursuit.

  But oh, he must be careful!

  Hal’Jaitar was a known raedan, and any man who could read the currents posed a perilous threat. The pattern Kjieran worked to hide himself from view would leave its mark upon the tides of elae. If hal’Jaitar traced the working back to him, it would mean his certain end—yet Kjieran could ill afford to be seen following the man.

  While Kjieran had been training for his mission back in Dannym, Raine had advised him of some few ways to hide a working from the currents, ways that did not require enormous skill with the lifeforce. Kjieran used these tactics now, skipping in and out of sight using real shadows when he could, creating the illusion of them when he could not, and allowing himself to be openly seen when the danger was not too great.

  He hoped the pattern he was using would appear in such brief flashes upon the currents that it would be difficult to trace back to him. But he also knew hope was as likely to betray him as Fate already had, and in truth, only duty drove him on.

  Kjieran’s hands twitched erratically beneath his cloak.

  The lower half of his legs felt strange as he walked, heavy and…yet empty, solid but with the sensation of nothingness. If he didn’t know better, he would think he had no legs at all—

  It was in that moment that he felt the Prophet’s attention open upon him. His presence suddenly flooded into Kjieran’s mind in a deluge of chill power and webbed heat, the bond a fiery seal between them. Kjieran gasped and released his pattern just an instant before the Prophet flayed his mind with the dagger of his attention, baring its tender places to his least inspection.

  Kjieran forced himself to keep moving, to act as if nothing had changed in his own actions or thoughts. The Prophet had warned him that he might compel Kjieran at any moment, even as he had done upon his first arrival in Tal’Shira, and he was loath to give the man cause to do so again.

  Bethamin gazed through his eyes for a time—a frightful few minutes, for Kjieran was forced to work no patterns in the Prophet’s presence lest he seal his certain doom. Eventually Bethamin concluded Kjieran was merely out for a walk and left him to it, his presence withdrawing, leviathan tentacles sliding back into their lightless lair.

  Kjieran exhaled a tumultuous gasp and immediately called back his pattern, only feeling safe when he again felt elae infusing him, once he knew no one could see his twitching hands.

  He clutched Raine’s amulet hidden beneath his shirt and squeezed shut his eyes. Desperation seized him, for the briefest of moments, he could barely breathe.

  Then the feeling passed, and Kjieran opened his eyes to the night. His quarry had gained a wide lead while he’d been despairing, so he ran to close the distance.

  Heading into a narrow, arched tunnel, Kjieran nearly collided with a man coming from the opposite direction. He wore a black chequered keffiyeh wrapped by a red agal, a fringe of small tassels declaring his minor sheikdom amid the vast wealth of the Nadori princehoods—the larger the tassel, the greater the fortune. The nobility spoke of Radov’s grandiose tassels as boasting wealth in outrageous proportion, though it was whispered among less esteemed company that the unending war had drained the prince’s coffers, and now he merely boasted.

  The sheik stopped between Kjieran and his quarry, barring access through the narrow tunnel, and Kjieran plastered himself against the wall with growing animosity while the sheik relit his stub of a siyar with a spark of flint and steel. Exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke, he pushed past Kjieran, never noticing him. Kjieran was tempted to plant within him the idea that he no longer liked the taste of siyar leaves but dared not risk such a working merely to assuage his annoyance.

  Emerging from the tunnel, he cast his mind in a fan of perception and cast his gaze across yet another broad court, this one the Court of the Winds. He picked up hal’Jaitar’s man again on the far side of the square, just before he disappeared into another arched passage. He would not have recognized him by sight alone, for he wore a red chequered keffiyeh now and seemed one of a hundred others. Only the specific feel of his mind radiating his urgency to find hal’Jaitar made him visible to Kjieran.

  Kjieran pinned his attention on the man more directly and sprinted across the courtyard to catch up, dangerously making his pattern solid that none might notice his passing.

  He dove into the tunnel after the man but came to an abrupt, staggering halt. The arched passage was lit by a single lamp, and the man had stopped beneath it to search through the purse at his belt. Kjieran kept his pattern solid, drawing shadows as a cloak around him, and slipped into the darkness along a narrow overhang to watch and observe.

  The Saldarian was an ordinary sort, nondescript, slightly arrogant—which trait seemed born into the Nadori as if bred for it—only… Kjieran realized the man wasn’t Saldarian at all. The thoughts that had led him to such a conclusion had been but one aspect of the other’s disguise, one which he’d discarded apparently when he donned the keffiyeh. Now his thoughts shrieked spy.

  The man counted his coin until he was sure he was alone—Kjieran’s illusion being beyond even an assassin’s acute senses—and then he spun to the wall facing the iron sconce and worked a trace-seal in the air with both forefingers, a complex pattern that spiraled in opposite directions. If Kjieran had any doubts about the spy’s alliances, they were dispelled upon seeing this working, for only a wielder such as hal’Jaitar might’ve crafted a trace-seal of such complexity, and surely none but his Shamshir’im would’ve known it.

  The stone wall swung inward with a nearly inaudible click, and the man slipped through the parting into the darkness. Kjieran darted after him before the seal reactivated itself.

  The doorway opened into a narrow stone corridor. Wielder’s lamps called brighteyes were set into sconces every twenty paces. The oil-rubbed iron lamps depended upon the touch of elae to spring to light, but they were usually calibrated to recognize the lifeforce inherent in all living men, wielder or no. The brighteyes lit up like chimes struck by a passing hand the moment their pattern touched a living man’s, and they winked out again when a man moved beyond reach of the patterns that bound each lamp.

  Kjieran’s spy had already reached the second brighteye, which blinked on just as the first extinguished, cast
ing Kjieran into darkness. He rushed to close the distance lest the lights blink on and off behind the spy and alert him to his presence. Had he been less focused upon the man, Kjieran might’ve wondered why the brighteye blinked to darkness at all, considering he stood so near. But Kjieran’s mind was too occupied with other worries, and the thought never occurred to him.

  They descended a set of narrow, twisting stairs that the spy seemed to know by heart but which had Kjieran lightheaded by the time they reached the landing. They walked for a long time in the close corridor after that, and Kjieran was forced to maintain his illusion the entire way lest the man hear his footsteps echoing behind him upon the uneven stones. Finally, after walking for perhaps half the span of the hourglass, they reached another staircase, equally narrow, but this one a straight and steep ascent.

  At the top a wooden door awaited, bound in iron. Another trace-seal opened this door—not nearly as complex as the first—and the spy and Kjieran were through.

  They emerged into a vaulted antechamber, obviously subterranean. Three more doors opened into the room, while one long wall sported hundreds of pegs upon which hung loose black hoods cut with a narrow slot for the eyes. The spy grabbed a random hood and shoved it over his keffiyeh before heading for a pair of massive double doors at the chamber’s far end. Kjieran stole a hood and followed.

  The final portal stood at least thirty paces high and was carved with the raging face of the Wind God, Azerjaiman. The doors opened with a single touch of the spy’s finger upon a stylized golden plate. Kjieran made sure to slip through before the doors shut, for he’d seen such plates in use in Agasan. They were attuned to each spy’s life pattern, and no amount of Adept craft could impersonate it.

  Just inside, Kjieran drew up short.