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

by McPhail, Melissa

  He opened his eyes to find the Prophet’s face close, his mass of braids a curtain enclosing them both, his large eyes dark and desiring.

  Abandoning the whispered warnings of his shattered soul, Kjieran reached for him.

  He regained consciousness with a gasp.

  Sunset flamed the sky above him, the bloody clouds an unwanted reminder of the copulation he’d just so willingly embraced.

  I made love to a monster.

  The knowledge sickened him.

  As he regained awareness of where he was, of what had been done in that abandoned alley…he suddenly clutched his chest.

  But the tiny medallion was still there, safe around his neck. It seemed the brutes had merely meant to punish and kill him, not to rob him of what little he owned. I shall remember this one grace when I exact the Prophet’s vengeance upon you, hal’Jaitar, Kjieran thought. Yet upon hearing himself even think such a thing, he shuddered, for he saw that this had not been his thought at all, but the expression of some…other. The other that he was becoming.

  Suddenly awareness descended upon him—the terrible knowledge of what had been taken from him, the horrors that had already been exacted against him…and what was yet to be.

  He’d sought the Prophet in his last moments and consummated their bond!

  Though it was only in thought and not in physical deed, yet it seemed no less real for lack of the Prophet’s seed upon his loins or their mark upon the tides of elae.

  He’d sought comfort in the Prophet, had accepted his love, and had returned to life less human because of it. Something else had come back with him, and like Dore’s Pattern of Changing, it would slowly overtake all that Kjieran was, a parasite gradually absorbing its host until it was all and him the host, nothing. Kjieran loathed the thing he was becoming, loathed himself that he had been so weak as to seek solace in the arms of such a man as Bethamin of Myacene. Kjieran lay in shock while the world spun crazily, and then his shoulders began to shake.

  He wept there in the alley then for all he had lost.

  Eventually his tearless sobs abated. Eventually he realized he had to get up and continue on, for even the grace of death had turned its back on him. Desolate, Kjieran rolled onto his back and stared at the fletching on the bolts protruding from his chest. It seemed another man’s hand that reached up, and with a strong tug, ripped them free. He cast the shafts clattering against the wall.

  Pressing both hands to support his ruptured abdomen, Kjieran sat up and assessed the damage. His gut was a shambles, ripped from hip to hip. More horrifying still was that it seemed the wound of a rotten fish, bloodless, with all of his vital organs hanging dark and unhealthy within the cavity, long dead. His body had become as inanimate clay just waiting to be molded, waiting for the fell magic to spread into its dull substance, to fashion it into Dore’s Merdanti blade.

  Pushing one arm across his ravaged belly, Kjieran struggled to his feet. Night had fallen, and the streets were dark. Seeming a beggar in ripped and soiled clothes, he made his slow way back to the palace.

  It took a great effort to hold elae and drape himself in shadows. The lifeforce kept slipping out of his grasp, seeping out of the holes in his chest and gut. No longer a vessel for elae, his body was a sieve. Yet he took some comfort that he might call the lifeforce at all, and strangely did not despair in how little of it he could control.

  Still, it was slow going. He dared not let a soul see him return—never mind the questions he would get from the guards, he did not want hal’Jaitar knowing yet that he lived—and he could not keep the obscuring pattern solid for long. He moved then in spurts, one street, one alley, one tunnel at a time.

  When he finally reached his rooms, Kjieran found that they’d been ransacked. He locked the door nonetheless, and after some searching, uncovered his little box of needle and thread from a pile of clothing dumped beside his chest of drawers. He ripped off his tunic and let his britches fall around his feet. Taking the black thread in hand, Kjieran began stitching himself back together.

  While upon this task, he planned.

  Some thing had come back with him from that foray into the Prophet’s mind, a new awareness birthed in their sex. It was a cold and heartless entity, and the innocent truthreader in Kjieran had shied from it at first. But as he slowly pierced his dead flesh and tied off each knot, pierced and tied with painstaking care, he could not keep from glancing every so often to where the thing crouched in the corner of his mind, a wild and volatile creature.

  But one that might be at his command, if he was brave enough to compel it.

  Oh, he knew it would attempt to control him as well, that they might wrestle over every choice and action, but he also somehow knew that so long as elae was with him, he might still be the victor…might use it to his own ends.

  The beast had consumed the last of his innocence. He would make that sacrifice worth something.

  So while Kjieran sewed his flesh back together, he talked to the beast, timidly at first, but then with growing surety. When at last he tied off the final knot of his sutures and snapped the hanging thread, he had formed something of a plan. It was dangerous, and he never would have attempted it before he’d lain down with the Prophet, but he saw now how little he had left to lose.

  Rather than clutch what tiny remaining treasure he held and huddle in cowardice and despair, Kjieran now understood he would only be worthy of this lingering piece of himself if he succeeded in saving his king.

  Standing then, straightening with his resolve, Kjieran walked to the carved wooden screens that acted as doors between his room and the night. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d been operating in darkness, but the moon was high now and it cast a glimmering reflection on the wavering sea.

  Thinking upon his act with the Prophet, Kjieran wondered if he would ever reach the furthest level of Hell, or if in truth, Hell had no end. Every time it seemed he could cast his nets no lower, still they snared some new atrocity to subjugate and torment him. Hours ago he’d been ready for death, sure he would at any moment stare upon its misshapen face. Now death seemed impossibly out of reach, an impotent phantom with naught but moonlight for substance.

  All the better, for he had things to do.

  It was hours before he found his bed that night, hours spent outlining his plan, examining scenarios, exploring contingencies. Finally there was but one remaining act before lying down to sleep.

  Kjieran took off his amulet.

  Fifty

  “Partaking of Alorin’s tender flesh has roused in them an insatiable hunger for worlds they were never meant to know.”

  - Jayachándranáptra, Rival of the Sun

  Trell pitched to his knees on the marble floor. The hood was ripped from his head, and he inhaled free air for the first time since departing camp in the Kutsamak. There was something to be said for the Saldarians’ treatment of prisoners; it was hard to plan any sort of escape with your hands and legs bound in iron and stinking burlap over your head, the rough cloth slit just enough to prevent smothering.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, Trell looked around the long, rectangular room whose walls were decorated in elaborately carved soapstone panels. High windows let in the afternoon light, long shafts of which fell in perfect symmetry to cast illumination on four carved marble lions. Each animal held a paw upraised, jaws open in soundless roars.

  “Unshackle him.”

  Trell looked over his shoulder to see a man entering through a set of double doors at the near end of the room. He wore robes of ebon silk, and his head was bound in the Nadori keffiyeh and black-corded agal. As he approached, Trell noted that he wore eight Sormitáge rings, one on each of his fingers. Trell had no question of his identity.

  The Saldarian guard released the iron cuffs, and Trell gingerly massaged his wrists as he got to his feet.

  “Leave us,” commanded the wielder.

  “But my lord—”

  “I said leave us!”

 
The Saldarian ducked his head and stalked off. Trell watched him go with a shadow of a smile. How fearful did they think him if they imagined he’d take on Viernan hal’Jaitar with naught but his bare hands?

  Hal’Jaitar must’ve reached the same conclusion, for he looked to Trell with one eyebrow raised. “It seems you made quite the impression, Prince of Dannym.” The wielder stopped beside one of two sofas, velvet-covered and low-backed, with a table in between. Four glasses and a silver teapot sat on the table, and a faint tendril of steam emitted from the pot’s curving spout. Hal’Jaitar indicated the sofa across from him with an open hand. “Won’t you join me?”

  Still rubbing his wrists, Trell walked slowly to the sofa with his body aching from bruises old and new. The trip east had been rough, and his treatment just shy of brutal. He was fairly sure one of his ribs had been fractured. Every breath was painful, every motion an effort of will, but he’d be damned if he’d let Viernan hal’Jaitar see him hurting.

  As Trell was slowly lowering himself down, the wielder leaned back in his seat and crossed one knee, settling hands in his lap. “Let us assume we know each other,” he said with his piercing dark eyes pinned on Trell. There was naught of amity in his gaze, belying his mild tone. “Imagine we have met again after many years abroad. What then might you tell me of your travels?”

  “You mean, since you sent men to assassinate me and set fire to my ship? Since then?”

  Viernan’s expression darkened. “So you do remember. They told me you claimed no knowledge of your past.”

  “I know only what the wielder Işak intimated,” Trell answered, giving hal’Jaitar a smile full of promised retribution, “but now you’ve confirmed it. Thank you.”

  In the angry silence that followed, Viernan returned the twitch of a smile. “Well played, Prince of Dannym. You take the point.” He stared at Trell in silence then, holding the prince’s gaze, two players regarding each other across the King’s board. Eventually Viernan’s smile returned, wider this time, revealing long teeth yellowed with age. He indicated the tea service on the table between them. “Let us take tea together as allies are wont to do.”

  “Allies who try to kill each other.” Trell eyed the tea skeptically. “I think I’ll pass.”

  Viernan speared him with a narrow look full of venom. “You are too like your older brother. He, too, was insolent. He, too, thought himself beyond my reach.”

  Trell stared back in silence, only the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching. He knew Viernan hal’Jaitar’s reputation—the Emir’s forces had been battling Viernan’s wielders for months. But in that moment, Trell didn’t care that the man was insanely dangerous, or that his gold rings spoke of untold powers. All he knew was that this man had stolen years of his life and apparently murdered his brother Sebastian. For that, he had to pay.

  Trell bent to rest elbows on knees, the better to meet Viernan’s glare. “To think,” he remarked in a low voice, wolf-grey eyes pinned unerringly upon the wielder, his calm demeanor belying the shock he felt, “…all this time…everyone suspected the Khurds were to blame for our deaths, when it was you.” He shook his head as if with admiration, but he was dangerously angry. “Score a point for Viernan hal’Jaitar.”

  The wielder said nothing, but he didn’t need to, for Trell had barely begun to consider the matter when more pieces clicked into place. “Of course. Now I see,” he murmured, casting Viernan another appreciative nod full of rancor. “Let us return eight years into our mutual past. The lingering war with the Akkad has interrupted Radov’s mining operations in the Kutsamak, and the royal coffers are growing spare. The Congress of Princes is fractious and ever with an eye towards overthrow—Radov would never go to them for aid. He knows he can’t rouse a mercenary force large enough to defeat the Akkad, so he must call upon the Triad pact.” Trell pressed a finger to his lips, adding then, “But how to convince his neighborly monarchs to help? Radov needs more than a token force to defeat the Seventeen Tribes. He needs the bulk of Dannym’s army.” He raised his finger as if with sudden inspiration. “Of course! What better way to secure his allies’ support than by assassinating their children and blaming his enemy?” He cast Veirnan a look of merciless accusation. “The essence of war is deception, eh, Consul?”

  Though the wielder’s gaze in reply to this speech was chill, he would not be baited into another confession. Abruptly he stood and walked around the room, his hands locked behind his back. “Işak’getirmek,” he said then, glancing briefly at Trell. “What happened between the two of you? He defeats you in battle and suddenly you are compatriots, sharing secrets in the dark?”

  “Işak?” Trell said, sitting back with a baffled frown. “What do you care about him?”

  Viernan spun with a sharp glare. “You will answer my questions, Trell val Lorian, or be asked them again by his Highness’s Questioner, who is not so patient!”

  Trell affected a careless shrug, but the effort cost him, as pain speared through his side. He growled through clenched teeth, “We barely spoke at all.”

  “Yet you manage to uncover truths we’ve effectively hidden for half a decade!” Viernan swung heatedly to face him. “You will tell me now,” he hissed, pointing a finger and stalking toward him, “where have you been these past years? How did you survive?”

  Trell felt the compulsion impinge upon his mind, a fiery poker to his thoughts. It assaulted his stomach with a sickly heat, but as he’d been fed little for days, there was nothing to react to it. And he’d fought worse in Işak’s patterns. Much worse. “As I told your men,” he hissed, reflexively hunching his shoulders against the mental attack, “I remember nothing of my past.”

  “Lies!” Viernan waved an airy hand while his pattern deepened, becoming a fiery iron fist in Trell’s intestines, a forge consuming his brain. “You would have me believe you just appeared with the black-sheep cousin—what’s his name…Fynnlar—with no memory of your life? Why not claim you were in T’khendar and flew back here in the arms of a Shade!”

  Trell doubled over from the force of Viernan’s compulsion, but he wouldn’t submit. “Can they do that?” he inquired tightly, fiercely, fighting the pattern that sought to own his thoughts with everything that he was. He cast the wielder a sharp smile through gritted teeth.

  Viernan gazed broodingly at him in silence—possibly not a good sign. Abruptly the compulsion ceased, and the pain vanished as instantly as it had come. “So you will not easily divulge the truth,” the wielder surmised. He started pacing again. “Therefore you must be protecting someone. But is it yourself…or another?”

  Trell found he’d been nearly flat on the sofa and pushed himself up again somewhat shakily. He fixed his gaze on the wielder and reflected on the irony in this situation.

  Had he been defeated on the lines, abducted in battle, this confrontation would’ve had its place in his life…but he was not there as a leader of the Converted, hostage of war—they knew nothing of that. No, he was there but for the happenstance of a royal birth.

  And yet, Trell recognized that Viernan hal’Jaitar was his enemy in every way—it wasn’t the Nadoriin at large, nor the Saldarians…perhaps not even Radov. Viernan stood behind this conflict.

  Trell shook his head, amazed at the path of Fate. All of his years…years of amnesia, years of battle, his recent quest…everything that had come before—all of his conflicts and choices—they had still brought him to this seemingly inevitable confrontation. The real kicker was that the Mage had foreseen it—of this, Trell was certain. He’d glimpsed but a shadow of what the Mage knew in that moment before parting with Alyneri, but the section of the pattern he had seen…

  “The truth is coming, Viernan,” Trell said quietly. Somehow he knew that events continued to unfold in the world around him, the Mage’s leviathan plan moving inexorably forward. “How long do you think you can keep up this charade? My father must be in Tal’Shira by now. Care to wager on whether he’ll keep his army in Taj al’Jahanna once he learns of
your betrayal?”

  The wielder arched a brow. “What makes you think he will?”

  Trell barked a laugh. “How can you imagine he won’t?” He leaned back slowly on the couch, the better to support his aching side. “That will be a problem, won’t it?” He pressed a thoughtful finger to his lips. “How will you ever retake Raku without the Dannish army? Radov’s forces are spread too thin. The Emir has too many, and his Converted fight like banshees—unlike those Saldarians.” He clicked his tongue in mock sympathy. “Not turning out so well is it, that pact with the Prophet? Maniacs can be unpredictable—”

  “As amusing as this conversation is, prince of Dannym,” the wielder interrupted with a withering smile, “we grow short on time.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do,” Trell agreed, and all pretence vanished from his manner, revealing only the solid core of determination beneath.

  Viernan’s dark eyes were coldly calculating. “You are too intelligent for your own good, Trell val Lorian.”

  “So it would seem,” Trell agreed soberly. For all his cavalier demeanor, he knew what would be awaiting him in the shadowed, soundproof cells of Radov’s dungeon.

  Viernan waved his hand, and the doors at the back of the room opened. Trell guessed their meeting was over. As the Saldarian approached with clinking irons in hand, Viernan cast Trell one final look of searing curiosity. “How did you survive?” he asked again, shaking his head.

  The Saldarian grabbed Trell’s arms and wrenched them behind his back.

  Bent nearly double as the big man clasped the irons once more around his wrists, the prince looked up under his brows. “Fate chose a different role for me.”

  “Strange,” the wielder remarked, his eyes black orbs of malice. “For a favored child of Fate, Cephrael’s hand seems to have dropped you right back where you started.”