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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Therein did they break their fast together.

  Dining with the First Lord was always a pleasant experience, for the man was interested in everything under the sun and seemed to know equally as much. He and Ramu spoke idly but at length about the history of the long-dead kingdom of Gahanda, which had been absorbed by the Empire of Agasan in a vicious and bloody war while Björn still held the Alorin Seat. Ean found it both thrilling and strange to listen to events that had occurred upwards of five centuries ago being spoken of through personal experience. To know these men had lived so many lifetimes…being himself a moon short of ten and nine, Ean couldn’t even imagine it.

  It wasn’t until the meal was finished and he was following Ramu back toward the center of the hall to continue their training that he began to wonder why the First Lord had come to eat with them. He’d mentioned nothing of dire importance to their training…

  That’s when Ean realized the truth, and the chilling realization brought him to a standstill. The only logical reason for Björn van Gelderan to have attended his training that morning was if Ramu had injured him so grievously that Björn’s skills alone might be needed to restore him to life.

  The enormity of this realization—that these men would do anything, including nearly killing him, to restore to him whatever power and skill he once possessed…Ean could barely process such a staggering truth.

  Ean hardly noticed that he’d stopped walking. He pushed one trembling hand through his hair and kept it hovering there. This conflict might be cached in the guise of a game, but clearly its players were not cavalier about their roles.

  In the First Lord’s game, people truly played to the death.

  Ean might’ve reached this conclusion already, having himself passed that demarcation three times—but those had been other men’s lives. He could not easily embrace the same gritty reality as was maintained by those who’d been playing the game unendingly for eons.

  The world still seemed new and fresh to Ean, his road ahead full of prospects and adventures, and this concept of being eternally bound to a single quest had been rather glibly accepted until it slapped him painfully in the face—which it seemed to be doing repeatedly ever since arriving in T’khendar.

  Rousing from these thoughts, Ean saw that Ramu had already reached the center of the hall, and he jogged to join him.

  The drachwyr said as Ean neared, “You noticed, no doubt, how the use of a talisman in the cortata was of benefit.”

  Ean nodded as he came to a halt before Ramu.

  “Now we will explore the use of the cortata and our talismans in a practice that is much closer to the requirements of actual battle.”

  Ean welcomed the challenge. He felt that anything he could learn from Ramu would be of value, and the practice would be a worthy distraction from the underlying and inexplicable sense of guilt that was relentlessly tormenting him—he didn’t seem able to retrieve any part of the man he’d once been without also compounding that feeling of guilt.

  Ramu drew his weapon with one fluid sweep of his arm and leveled it before Ean. “In battle with other Adepts, one is most likely required to wield numerous patterns at once. Now we will perform the cortata while also working the fifth. You must apply the Laws as required to counter my working. Begin.”

  At once Ramu launched into the cortata with no less ferocity than he had exhibited earlier, only this time Ean easily found the cortata as well. They flowed into the Dance of Swords, and elae began pooling around them. This time it Ean easily fell into the focused and meditative state of the cortata even while fending off Ramu’s earth-trembling blows. While working the cortata, his energy, like elae, seemed boundless.

  And then it began to rain.

  At first, Ean just admired Ramu’s ingenuity and skill—between his obvious knowledge and strength and his incredibly gallant manner, it was hard not to stand in awe of the Lord of the Heavens.

  Ean maintained the cortata, spinning and thrusting, side-stepping and turning, his blade flashing in exact timing to parry Ramu’s blows, but this came easily to him now, calling as he was upon the lifetimes of practice that he had now regained.

  Without missing a step, he began considering how to counter the drachwyr’s working. In a moment when their eyes met over clashing blades, Ean formed his first pattern, molding it around his intention. A heavy wind came screaming through the hall after he cast the pattern, but all this accomplished was to send stinging rain into his face. He released the pattern and let the wind blow itself out while he decided upon another tactic.

  Ramu’s rain soon had him drenched. The stone hilt of his blade became slick in his hands, and it finally occurred to him to shift the structure of the air to protect himself from it. He held this shield happily for a long time, relieved to be free of the constant barrage of water against his head, but as they completed one section of the cortata and immediately launched into the next, Ean realized this was not the type of response Ramu was seeking from him.

  He released his protective pattern and suffered the rain again while he searched for another means of countering Ramu’s working.

  The meditative state of the cortata allowed for thought much clearer and deeper than any form of mortal combat training, for working the pattern through its accompanying motions now came as second nature, leaving Ean’s attention free for patterning of a different sort. Yet still he had difficulty envisioning a way to balance Ramu’s rain while maintaining such a furious pace through the sequence.

  Ean’s next attempt to balance the pattern turned the vapor in the air to fog but was ineffective in stopping Ramu’s rain. Frustrated, he let his mind empty to focus on the prime balance of the cortata itself.

  “You violate the Ninth Law,” Ramu advised during a moment when their blades met and their faces came close enough to feel the drachwyr’s breath upon his skin.

  They separated again, following the sequence, but Ean realized he was right. That pesky Ninth Law.

  Do not counter force with force; channel it.

  Almost at once he knew what to do. Ean didn’t need to know the pattern to change water to ice, for as an Adept of the fifth strand, he instinctively thought with the necessary patterns. All he required was a clear concept of the effect he wanted to create—application of the First Law—to change Ramu’s rain to ice and then, with careful consideration—the slightest shifting of his conceptual imagery—to snow. He kept this up long enough for the snow to build into drifts at their feet, forming a sort of pattern in itself upon the marble tiles as they continued their exact dance through the cortata, but the effort of constantly keeping this working in play soon became draining of his energy.

  That’s when he realized that he could do more than simply channel Ramu’s force into a new form. Ean shifted his concept altogether. Ramu was already changing the structure of the air in the room with his working. Ean had merely to augment the drachwyr’s alteration with his own new layer.

  Almost as soon as he began the working, he knew he was on the right track. The air grew ever colder until the snow ceased altogether, until the chill became so intense that it even disrupted his mental calm. Ean began to feel elae pulsing through him in time with his heart, and still he drew upon the lifeforce, channeling it through the blade in his hand, through the cortata sequence. The sun continued its slow motion through the sky, long rays shifting in the tall windows as the orb made its way across the heavens, but within the Hall of Heroes, the passing of the day was measured only in the number of times Ean completed the cortata.

  The snow had long stopped, replaced by ice that blossomed before Ramu’s rain could form. Ean’s breath came as frost and his body felt as lead, but he ignored the freezing temperatures as much as the pounding in his skull and pushed through the sequence again…and again…discounting utterly the growing unease that tugged at his consciousness, until—

  Ramu twisted away suddenly in a motion that Ean recognized afterwards as a means of safely discontinuing the sequence without
completing the pattern. The prince lowered his sword to look inquiringly upon the drachwyr—and staggered.

  Ramu moved to catch him before he fell and lowered him to sit on a floor that seemed a solid lake of ice. Ean’s head was suddenly swimming, he had an abominable ringing in his ears, and he felt both burningly hot and frighteningly cold at the same time.

  “A fine application of the Ninth Law,” Ramu murmured over the chattering of Ean’s teeth. The prince hugged his elbows and willed the room to stop spinning around him. “It was not, however,” Ramu added with a quirk of a smile, “the best example of the Fifth Esoteric.”

  Ean pushed his head between his knees and tried to keep from throwing up. “What’s the Fifth Esoteric?” he managed, exhaling frosted breath upon his boots.

  “To understand the Fifth Esoteric, we must begin with the Second, which introduces us to the concept of Absolute Being—that which encompasses all that you are and more, for it includes the concept of the space which a wielder might control by expanding his zone of influence.”

  “Is this supposed to make sense to me?” Ean muttered miserably. He knew his head was going to explode any minute, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted his last moments alive to be spent trying to figure out impossibly cryptic rules.

  Ramu chuckled. He turned his gaze to the table where they’d broken their fast and called forth an empty goblet from its quiet respite. A loud crack echoed through the hall as the goblet ripped free of its icebound table and flew towards them. Ramu caught it out of the air, shattering the nimbus of ice which had encased it. A moment’s concentration upon the cup soon resulted in swirling dark liquid that filled to the brim. “Here, Ean.” He extended it to him.

  Ean managed to take the chilled goblet and drink, grateful just for the show of compassion. Though the strong wine warmed his stomach but little, yet he soon felt slightly less askew. He managed to look around the hall and—

  The scene was astonishing…terrifying.

  At first Ean didn’t know what to make of what he saw. He stared uncomprehending at the milky white ceiling, the slick and shimmering columns, and the myriad crystalline designs crackling the high windows.

  The entire vast hall was encased in ice.

  Turning the other way, he saw icicles hanging from the weapons on the wall and even larger ones from the ceiling. The floor had become a solid sheet of bluish ice from door to door. Looking back to Ramu feeling immensely discomfited now, Ean asked, “I did this?”

  “Perhaps not exactly the effect you had envisioned?”

  Ean looked back to his wine and drank more of it this time. He was starting to feel a measure of himself restored, but the knowledge of what he’d done had shaken him. “I…” he tried pushing a hand through hair but found it stiff, frozen locks bound in a thin sheath of ice. He looked at the particles of ice on his hand and shuddered. “No,” he whispered then. “I meant merely to rechannel the force of your working. I thought of turning your rain to snow and of the super-chilled winters in Edenmar when the air was often too cold even for snow to fall.”

  “The wielding of patterns is governed by the boundaries of Absolute Being,” Ramu said. “This is the Second Esoteric. It means, in simple terms, that we as wielders are limited by the amount of force we can control. The Fifth Esoteric further refines this concept by stating that Absolute Being must equal the scope of a wielder’s concept of effect. This means,” he continued with an amused look at Ean’s pained expression, “that if you intend to encase an entire hall in ice, you must first expand your self-being—a term used to express the amount of space a wielder might occupy with his mind—to incorporate the entire hall. Otherwise, you fall prey to the effect of your creation, for you have set your working outside the limits of yourself.”

  Ean downed the last of his wine with a shaking hand. His head had finally stopped spinning, but he was now so cold that he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering, and his body was trembling in spurts. “I think…I understand,” he stammered.

  Ramu sheathed his sword and helped Ean to stand, carrying the prince’s Merdanti weapon on his behalf as they began walking slowly toward the doors. “Think of it like this: if you bake a cake using a bowl too small for the batter, it will spill out over your hands and onto the table. You become the effect of the thing you created. If you try to herd a flock of sheep that is larger than you can easily control without the help of a sheepdog, the sheep readily slip away and you must spend hours chasing them down—again, you have become the effect of the original thing you set out to control.

  “The same is true with elae. You can draw it endlessly to you, especially while wielding the cortata, but if you draw more than you can easily control, then it slips out of control. Moreover, drawing that much of the lifeforce without controlling the implementation of its force—without sending it through an exact channel—is exhausting and the surest way to meet a quick end. The Esoterics explain that a wielder need not be limited if he is capable of expanding the force of his own being. It is really quite simple.”

  Ean felt it was anything but, though he nodded politely to Ramu anyway. The man was so incredibly gallant, it seemed the height of rudeness to treat him with anything but the utmost respect.

  Now that elae had all but abandoned him, Ean was feeling the effects of his causation all right. Every muscle in his body ached. His arms twitched at inappropriate times, and he felt like his bones were frozen solid. Still, he needed to understand what had happened—mainly so he never made the same mistake again.

  “How would…” he began haltingly, stammering through chattering teeth, “how do you occupy space with the f-force of your b-being?”

  Ramu glanced to him, his dark eyes hinting of mirth but revealing only patience. “You might begin by expanding your awareness to fill the room. It is an activity you would find merit in practicing,” and compassion or no, he couldn’t help adding with the quirk of a smile, “…that is, after you warm up a bit.”

  “I feel like my blood is f-frozen.”

  “The aftereffects of drawing more elae than one can direct,” Ramu noted. “Unfocused power rages through like a swollen river, stripping away one’s own supply of the lifeforce, leaving you as you feel now. A mild case, considering.”

  “Mild?” Ean croaked in protest.

  Ramu gave him a telling look.

  As they neared the doors, which glistened beneath their layer of ice, the Lord of the Heavens sent the fifth to open them. They broke apart with a shattering icefall and opened to reveal a Shade just then congealing on the other side.

  “General,” he said, bowing to Ramu in the usual fashion. Then he looked to Ean. “I have been sent to escort you back to your apartments, my lord, if you would like my assistance.”

  Ean didn’t have the energy to answer, so he just let his head hang slightly by way of acceptance.

  Ramu chucked beside him. “A good day’s work,” he observed. He lifted Ean’s Merdanti blade, spinning it to extend the hilt to him. “Your sword, Ean?”

  Ean couldn’t conceive of calling even the small amount of elae it would take to hold the weapon, and he despaired of carrying it. Ramu must’ve read this from the terrified look on his face, for he swirled it around again and caught the blade beneath his arm like a riding crop. “I’ll place it back on the wall. You will know where to find it if you desire.”

  “Thank you,” the prince whispered, unbearably grateful. Then he lifted his head to meet the drachwyr’s gaze and said again, more exactingly, “Thank you.”

  Ramu nodded, his ageless gaze seeming to understand that Ean might never find words of gratitude enough to encompass all they had accomplished that day. Smiling, Ramu bowed a farewell, and then Ean was following the Shade down the long alabaster passage just focusing on putting one numb, frozen foot before the other.

  Forty-Eight

  “A man’s intelligence may be measured by his ability to deceive.”

  - Shailabhanáchtran, Maker of Storms
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  Şrivas’rhakárakek, the Shadow of the Light, flew high above the Kutsamak. In the harsh light of the desert afternoon, his shadow floated across mottled ridges and dove into deep, shaded canyons. It slid down the sides of sheer cliffs and glided up vertical rock faces, and everything it fell upon—whether bug or tree, dumb beast or dumber man—was known by Rhakar.

  As he flew, the strong desert sun glinted off Rhakar’s coppery scales, making his hide sparkle and shimmer as brightly as his namesake. From the ground, he often seemed a soaring comet perusing the daylight skies of man, burning so vividly as to challenge the sun in blinding brilliance. There were many who claimed his sparkling hide was the reason the Sundragons were so named. Rhakar knew better.

  He did not often fly this quadrant of the Kutsamak, for it was far from the lines of war, farther from Raku, and no armies marched among its dry wastes. But that day he did not search for archers in their hidden lairs nor for soldiers concealed in ambush. That day, he sought villains of a different mold, and he would not cease his flight until he found them.

  Rhakar was good at finding things. The meaning of his name hinted at this truth. For while light could illuminate dark corners, so also could too much brilliance sometimes conceal, being so bright as to chase all the shadows from the world, obscuring the secret things they sheltered. Rhakar could see into the shadows with or without the light to guide his search, and he suspected it was the shadows where he would find that day’s quarry.

  It went without saying that he would find them. Had he not already once discovered Trell of the Tides in such a place of shadows where none other might’ve thought to look? Indeed, he’d found him before and would do so again, though it chafed at him that he must twice look to save the life of the same inconsequential man.