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

by McPhail, Melissa

  When Ean finally roused from this reunion, he lowered the weapon to his side. The blade felt light as a feather in his hand, no heavier to wield than his own arm. Marveling at the experience, Ean lifted wondrous eyes back to Ramu. “Is it always like this?” he asked, somewhat startled by the unexpected exhilaration he was experiencing just holding the weapon in his hand. His gaze strayed to Ramu’s blade, which hovered behind the drachwyr’s shoulder.

  “When one wields a sentient sword, he touches the elemental power of the very realm. So yes,” Ramu answered with a shadowy smile, “it usually is.”

  Letting Ean have the moment, the drachwyr wandered closer to the wall and looked it over with hands clasped behind his back. “These are the weapons of heroes, those who fell,” he offered, gazing upon the multitude of arms as if remembering each and every man whose life they represented in trade. “We hold them here in trust, to be reclaimed in the Returning.”

  The prince’s gaze flashed to him. “How many have been reclaimed?”

  Ramu’s dark eyes were grave as he gazed at Ean over his shoulder, though an undeniable insouciance hinted in them as well. “One…so far.” Ean gave him a pained look in reply, to which Ramu chuckled good-naturedly and moved to clap Ean on the shoulder. “You have not changed, my friend. That is good to see.”

  “Is it?” Ean held his gaze. “Markal wouldn’t have me think so.”

  “Markal sees only the pupil—”

  “Who failed him,” Ean supplied tightly.

  But Ramu shook his head. “I fear you have the wrong of it, Ean. Markal feels he failed you.”

  “Failed me?”

  Ramu looked him over with his unfathomably dark eyes. They were like depthless pools out of which the sentient realm observed the inartful fumblings of man. “You two are more alike than you know,” he remarked with a smile hinting in his gaze. “I have told Markal this many times, though he ever argues the point with me, but both of you, in your egocentricity—and I intend no slight by so saying, Ean—are all too willing to assume responsibility for the evils of the world. Markal believes any pupil’s failure is his failure as an instructor. And you, my friend,” and here he gazed quietly but forcefully upon Ean, “you have ever believed that any failure in the First Lord’s game is your failure alone.”

  Ean stared at the drachwyr in silence. It was a difficult truth to realize that Ramu—whom he’d met only once—knew him better than he knew himself.

  “But come, Ean,” the Lord of the Heavens said, clearly perceptive to his troubled state of mind, “Markal asked me to work with you today as we restore you to the cortata.”

  Ean tried to shake off the anxious feeling that always accompanied references to the man he used to be. “The cortata,” he murmured. “What is it?”

  “You might think of it as an Adept’s version of the Dance of Swords,” Ramu answered. “It is an age-old training routine taken from the Sobra I’ternin. I’m told you saw part of it being practiced in the courtyard on the day we met in the city.”

  Ean remembered watching Isabel lead the class through a series of complicated interconnected steps and motions that had indeed reminded him of the Dance of Swords. “The cortata,” he repeated.

  “Indeed.” Ramu walked to the center of the vast hall and turned to face Ean as he came to a halt. “The cortata is itself a pattern, but it must only be wielded with a talisman.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Ramu cast him a considering eye. “What do you remember about the use of talismans?”

  Ean grimaced. “Markal and I have been working with them as regards the Seventeenth Law: The use of talismans must focus force without limiting scope. Whatever that means,” he added under his breath, shooting the drachwyr a disgruntled look. The Seventeenth Law had already proven far more complicated and aggravating than it seemed upon first inspection. He was relatively certain now that he had only ever maintained an adversarial and combative relationship with the Laws of Patterning.

  “Talismans, of themselves, may have little or no power,” Ramu echoed Markal’s own words as he reached across his shoulder and drew his sword with a quick circling of his arm. Sighting down the blade aligned towards Ean, he continued, “By the Seventeenth Law, talismans become a focal point for channeling the force of a working.”

  He lowered the weapon with a sweep to the side. “The moment you summon elae, you gather a grave quantity of potential force within your own sphere. The use of a talisman gives you a means of channeling this potential force to more effectively guide it along the framework of your intention.” Ramu spun his sword around in his hand and caught his blade up casually beneath his arm. “Think of it as channeling a river through a canyon as opposed to allowing it to flow across a wide delta.”

  Ean had heard this explanation before from Markal, but he still followed with the same question, “Why couldn’t I just be the talisman?”

  Ramu nodded, granting credence to the legitimacy of his reasoning. “Yes, it would seem the obvious answer. Yet if you became the talisman, the collected force of your working must channel through your body. With the workings you’ve done so far, that might not seem problematic, but by the end of today, I think you will have a better understanding of the inherent flaws of such a course.”

  He gestured to the weapon in Ean’s hand. “Since you’ve chosen your talisman for today, we can begin the cortata.” He turned his back on Ean and looked at him over his shoulder as he ordered, “Follow and mimic my motion as exactly as you can.”

  Thus did Ramu begin.

  Ean’s eyes were glued to the tall drachwyr as he began the Adept Dance of Swords. The sequence seemed very different when performed while holding a weapon than it had while watching the Adepts in the court with Isabel. Ean had barely begun before he began to sense the power inherent in the cortata, and he realized it was a pattern he was working with each sweep of hands and feet, with every twist and turn. He was not even consciously drawing upon elae, yet it began collecting around him.

  “The cortata can be summoned through any strand of elae,” Ramu advised as he lifted his sword overhead with two hands and then slowly sliced down through the air. He stepped to his right and turned slightly in the same direction, and one hand swept the blade in an arc while the other lifted outward and upward. He made every motion slow and deliberate that Ean might mimic it exactly. “Yet it is at its most powerful if wielded through the fifth,” he continued. “Much like the Merdanti weapon in your hands, the cortata—itself a weapon in pattern form—draws upon the power of the realm.”

  Ramu brought both hands to the hilt of his greatsword and lifted the blade above his head and over behind him, ducking low as he slowly turned a circle. Ean followed, laboring to keep his balance in the awkward position. “The fifth being the most powerful of the strands of elae,” Ramu continued as he rose again and circled his sword around in a deadly sideways slash, “the cortata is at its most potent when wielded with the fifth. Its power diminishes as you move up the strands from five through two, until it becomes completely powerless in the first.”

  “Why is that?” Ean asked as he followed Ramu in bringing his sword up above his head again. He stepped backwards as he mimicked the drachwyr’s motions, turning another slow circle.

  “Because it is a destructive pattern,” Ramu answered while sweeping his weapon in a diagonal arc, “the antithesis of the first strand.”

  They retreated to silence after this, for the cortata became more complicated, and Ean had to focus carefully on following Ramu’s motions. Eventually the practice became meditative, and soon Ean knew only the motion, the ever-present hum of his sword deep within his consciousness, and the feeling of elae surrounding and infusing him.

  It took the better part of an hour to move through the motions with the deliberateness of the pouring of thick honey. Finally Ramu brought his feet together, extended his sword in front of him and took hold of the hilt with both hands again. He raised the flat of the blade before his eyes,
pressed the cross guard to forehead and then lips, and bowed.

  Ean mimicked the motion, and as he straightened, he sensed power draining away. It was a strange feeling that fell upon him then: a sense of accomplishment in having completed the entire pattern, and an unexpected sense of loss for the same reason.

  Ramu turned to him. “You sensed, perhaps, the meditative state that accompanies the cortata?”

  Ean lowered his blade beside him. He felt unaccountably drained. “Very much so.”

  “No doubt, also, you felt elae accumulating.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Very good. Now we do it again, but with intent leveled as a guide for the power the cortata summons. In other words, we must now intend for the cortata to assist us in accomplishing a specific end.”

  Ean frowned. “How do we do that?”

  Ramu settled him a regretful look, and Ean saw something flash in his dark eyes before he said, “I must apologize to you now for what I am required to do.”

  Then he attacked.

  In retrospect, Ean decided there was no experience in the living world that brought one so close to the dark grace of death like watching the Sundragon Ramuhárihkamáth rushing toward you with his liquid black eyes pinning your soul and his deadly blade raised for the claiming.

  But in that moment, all Ean had time to do was bring up his sword to deflect the drachwyr’s downward stroke. Their blades clashed with a resounding clang, the hum of the Merdanti stone rippling the air, and Ean felt the force of Ramu’s strike reverberating through his very bones and even into the stone beneath his feet. The blow sent him staggering backwards, but the drachwyr gave no reprieve. He pressed Ean with focused intent, and Ean struggled to deflect each powerful stroke—Ramu came on like an avalanche, and the prince tumbled at its stormy edge. Every move of the drachwyr’s blade slammed and battered him with thunderous force. Even calling upon elae to give him strength, Ean could not match the man.

  Still, the prince was sure they were merely sparring, despite the force of Ramu’s advance—that is, until he faltered. He expected Ramu to compensate accordingly, but to Ean’s rising dismay, the Sundragon took advantage instead and marked a gash in the meat of his shoulder that could’ve been worse but for Ean barely jerking away.

  The prince staggered both from the blow and with the conclusion that the man might actually kill him, and he lost precious moments trying to find some equilibrium in the realization. Ramu almost caught him again, and his blade sliced through Ean’s pants high at his thigh, marking his flesh in a thin stripe of blood.

  Ean knew on some level that this was no different than what Isabel had done, requiring dire necessity to rouse the instincts and long years of training yet buried beneath the veil of death, but the knowledge served only to rouse an underlying sense of desperation, for he was dreadfully overmatched in facing this ancient, elemental creature.

  Ramu pressed him back through the hall with a sequence of strong over-handed blows that shuddered through Ean’s arms and shoulders. He felt like he was trying to stop an oncoming galleon ship with his body alone, such was the unyielding force of Ramu’s attack.

  Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam!

  Each blow clanged violently in Ean’s head, and the Merdanti hum had started reminding him now of the Whisper Lord’s virulent screech. He soon labored to draw breath in his lungs, his arms ached deep in the bone, and blood soaked his shirt and side—and still Ramu pressed him relentlessly. He had no time to form his own advance, no time to think, only react, for the drachwyr’s pace in battle was so furious as to truly lead the charging avalanche down the mountainside.

  A powerful blow suddenly made Ean stumble. His ankle turned, his hold upon his weapon slipped, and Ramu’s blade took him. Fire erupted in his chest, and Ean cried out, diving and rolling desperately away before the next round of that circling blade claimed more than a bit of flesh.

  It was then, as he stumbled back to his feet looking for his sword, that he knew that Ramu would kill him, that whatever the General’s intentions for this battle, they led unequivocally to this truth.

  Seeing Ean’s defenses waning, the drachwyr lunged, his blade a bolt aimed for the prince at its bull’s-eye. Time seemed to slow in that moment. Ean saw the blade coming for him. He knew the heat of its kiss, and feeling only the dread of encroaching disaster, he thought of Isabel. It was naught but a split-second flash, but within it was all of the guilt and anguish of having failed her already too many times. Just as the blade met with the cloth of his shirt, just as he knew this would be his end and he would fail her again, Ean finally pierced the veil.

  Multiple patterns flooded into his mind, and with them elae—but it was no longer a passive presence. He knew instinctively how to wield it in this battle, how to channel elae into the force of his intent, how to mold this formless power to his will.

  Diving into an elae-fueled roll that would’ve been impossible to manage only seconds before, Ean swept up his sword and narrowly deflected Ramu’s weapon. The drachwyr’s Merdanti blade still ripped into his tunic and his flesh besides, but its touch might’ve been far more deadly.

  Elae channeled into Ean like the returning tide…

  He launched into the cortata, sensing already which part of the pattern they were upon—for all of this time Ramu had been performing the cortata sequence, yet only in that moment did Ean finally recognize it. He met Ramu’s blade with his own, and they fell into the dance.

  Now Ean knew the motions exactly. Now he knew before Ramu’s blade came toward him where he must go to meet it—or avoid it altogether. Now he understood the intricate footing, the slight shifts of balance, the twisting spins that took one beneath the guard of his opponent or out of harm’s way. Now he saw the pattern working, channeling into him, through his weapon, and directed into the force waged in each blow of his sword, and he remembered how to wield the cortata in pieces, even non-sequentially, without losing the entire pattern.

  As fast as they moved now in the sequence, Ean did not tire. He was merely a conduit, the lifeforce passing harmlessly through him and into his blade, the weapon then becoming the channel to direct the force of the inexhaustible power that was elae. Ean lost all track of time—indeed, there was no time, there was only the cortata.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, they came to the pattern’s end.

  Ramu stepped out of Ean’s reach, swept up his blade before him in an elegant gesture, and bowed.

  Gravely, Ean returned his regard, feeling odd and out of sync with time, with the world around him…and yet wholly more himself.

  Through the restoration of the cortata, elements of the man he’d once been had found their place now in this, his new life. More pieces had found their way back onto the King’s board, even ones he hadn’t known were lost.

  Ean stood holding the dark-eyed gaze of the Lord of the Heavens. He understood now that the cortata had been his to command once—indeed, he’d known its dance for decades—and having it restored to him was indescribably meaningful. His wounds were afire, his tunic was shredded and soaked in blood, but Ean knew only gratitude. Staring at the drachwyr at a loss as to how to communicate such thoughts, he managed, “Thank you.”

  Ramu nodded in reply, his gaze alone bespeaking all that need be said. He swept his sword before him, focusing upon the blade, and Ean heard a hiss and saw smoke release from it as Ramu sheathed it in the scabbard on his back, cleansed now of blood. Whereupon, the drachwyr offered, “Shall we break our fast together? I believe there is one who would tend to your wounds,” and he nodded toward the far end of the room.

  Ean turned to look over his shoulder, his heart suddenly quickening in anticipation, yet it was not Isabel who waited at a round table set with a meal, but another. Ean’s eyes widened.

  “Ma dieul,” Ramu greeted, calling pleasantly to Björn. He motioned Ean onward, and the prince limped to join the First Lord at a table draped in white linen.

  Ean wondered where the table had come from, for he was
certain none of this had been there when he first entered the hall. Not that there hadn’t been time while he battled the Sundragon to cart in a table and set it with a meal, but that he’d noticed nothing of this happening was a little disturbing.

  Björn looked Ean over as the prince hobbled near, and his raven brows lifted. “You went easy on him, Ramu.”

  “I dared not incur the Prophetess’s wrath, my lord,” Ramu returned, flashing a twitch of a smile.

  “I applaud your excellent judgment,” Björn complimented, but Ean looked to the drachwyr feeling unnerved. That had been going easy on him? “Ean, come,” Björn beckoned then. “I would that you not remain in this state—unless it pleases you to do so?”

  “No…thank you, I would rather not,” he answered, still looking uneasily at Ramu.

  Björn stood to place his hands to either side of Ean’s head, and the prince closed his eyes. This shared pose seemed too familiar suddenly, as if he had assumed it many times before. He soon felt warmth suffusing him, and only moments later his wounds started tingling.

  This Healing felt very different from Alyneri’s ministrations. Her touch was the kiss of moonlight, while Björn’s was the scalding desert sun. Yet it was not unpleasant so much as unsettling, for Ean knew that what he was truly sensing was the difference in the amount of power Alyneri might draw at her most desperate compared to what Björn held readily available.

  When Björn withdrew, only moments later, he pointed Ean toward a marble urn and washbasin. Ean tore off his ruined shirt and used the unsoiled parts to clean away the results of the morning’s sparring.

  “I thought you might have need of this,” Björn said when Ean was finished, and he held out a tunic of heavy grey silk worked all over in thread-of-silver. Ean gratefully accepted it, surprised and touched by the First Lord’s consideration.