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

by McPhail, Melissa

  And Trell screamed. His body went rigid.

  “Do not!” hal’Jaitar hissed even as four others appeared in the room: the wielder from the alley along with two of the thugs who’d gutted Kjieran, and a crimson-gowned woman with long, raven hair. “Taliah has the prince’s pattern,” hal’Jaitar warned, and his gaze shifted from where Trell writhed in breathless agony to the woman in crimson silk, who stood with her dark gaze fixed on Trell. “She can kill him with a thought.”

  Agonized, Kjieran quelled the rearing other. He would not risk the prince’s life, and now that he knew the woman’s name, he knew also that hal’Jaitar’s claim was no bluff. This then was the Adept who had overseen Trell’s torture and subsequent healing, for Viernan’s daughter, Taliah hal’Jaitar, was a Healer by birth. Her abusive use of her talent, however, was as loathsome and unforgivable as Bethamin’s scourge upon elae’s fourth-strand children.

  “Quite the conundrum, isn’t it?” Hal’Jaitar posed, watching Kjieran as a viper might regard a threatening hawk. “Call forth your master’s power, and you may destroy us with it…but is your strike faster than mine? Faster than Kedar’s?” and here his dark eyes indicated the wielder Kjieran had last seen in the alley. “Faster than Taliah’s when she has hold of the prince’s pattern already? Care to wager on it, Truthreader?” and the contempt in his tone was thick.

  Slowly, Kjieran stood. He felt himself stranded on a tiny skiff swamped by a hurricane sea. Everything was going incalculably, inconceivably wrong.

  Viernan must’ve interpreted the abject look on Kjieran’s face, for he moved farther into the cell wearing an expression of triumphant condescension. “Did you really think you’d fooled us?” His dark eyes speared Kjieran. “Kedar’s men gutted you like a pig, but you bled not a single drop. And in the Guild Hall…did you imagine I would not recognize deyjiin? I who lived through the Adept Wars, who witnessed with mine own eyes the foul power birthed in the hands of Malachai’s Shades?”

  He settled Kjieran a derisive sneer. “I have known your every move since Dore Madden brought you forth from Tambarré. Your little interlude with that wretched Marquiin, the lengthy sea excursions to scour the flesh from your bones—there is nothing I don’t know of your activities, Kjieran van Stone!”

  Trell moaned beside Kjieran, and the truthreader felt his entire world slipping away—the seas were closing above his head now, the light of hope growing ever more distant.

  “What I don’t yet understand is how,” hal’Jaitar continued. He spared another slicing look for Kjieran, accusatory and fierce. “You haven’t appeared on the currents since you arrived. How then are you striding the fair hallways of Tal’Shira when as far as elae is concerned, you don’t exist?”

  Kjieran gazed at him in broken fury, desperate to help his prince but clearly caught between hal’Jaitar’s pincers with the man’s scorpion tail poised to strike. “What do you want from me, Consul?”

  “I want answers!”

  Kjieran turned an agonized look at Trell. “Then make her release him. Heal him! Now.”

  “You will tell me what I want to know,” hal’Jaitar returned in dark humor, “or Taliah will boil his blood in his veins. Have you ever seen a man when he’s been boiled, Kjieran van Stone?” As if in demonstration, Trell screamed again, and his body went rigid.

  “STOP!” Kjieran raged, and the vicious other launched out of his control. Cold power erupted out of Kjieran, unleashed by the other’s fury. Hal’Jaitar threw up his hands with a dreadful grimace, casting a shield of protection over himself and the others as deyjiin ripped through the room, thunder without sound.

  Trell screamed even more terribly than before, while the other launched Kjieran’s body toward hal’Jaitar with hands as claws—

  A sword caught Kjieran across the side of the head, dropping him hard to the stones. The room shuddered, and stone dust showered down. Shocked silence descended with the dust, and Kjieran pushed up to elbows to find the black-robed Kedar holding a Merdanti blade over him.

  Hal’Jaitar wore an expression of black excoriation. “Fight us now and everyone dies,” he growled, chest heaving. “Is that what you want?”

  Kjieran slowly got back to his feet. The blade had only stunned him, but Trell still writhed on the earthen floor, and he could not bear it. “Make her stop,” he managed in a voice like gravel, and his desolate gaze bespoke his willingness to destroy all of them to save Trell even a heartbeat more of suffering.

  Hal’Jaitar considered him with a frown, and then a glare. “Taliah,” he finally said.

  Taliah shifted her eyes to him in agitation. A moment later Trell stilled and exhaled a shuddering breath.

  “Heal him,” Kjieran snarled. He was the wild, cornered wolf, and no one doubted he would chew off his own paw to see his will be done.

  “Healing takes time,” hal’Jaitar snapped, but he flashed a brusque look at Taliah to see it done. Then he settled Kjieran a piercing glare. “Now…explain.”

  Though his plan had gone horribly awry, Kjieran was committed to salvaging something of his sworn liege and his son…something of himself. So he forced back the fear and the other, which were both fighting for his attention, and he confessed, “Dore Madden has long sought the pattern Björn van Gelderan used to create his Shades. In pursuit of this truth, he designed a Pattern of Changing, merging the fifth and the first to create…” and here he paused, swallowed sickly, “…what I am becoming.”

  Hal’Jaitar eyed him narrowly. “Which is what?”

  Kjieran lifted colorless eyes to meet his gaze, feeling naught but empty desolation where his soul had once resonated. “A weapon.”

  Hal’Jaitar broke into a low chuckle, one that grew in volume and spirit until his cold laughter resounded in the stone chamber. “Dore Madden!” he cried with arms thrown high. “Your insanities have borne incredible fruit!”

  Abruptly he swung and paced away, eying a grieving Kjieran over his shoulder as he observed, “There were rumors, of course. Whispers of how that lunatic was creating some sort of weapon for the Prophet. We never imagined the weapon would be alive.” He looked Kjieran up and down and added, “Then again, one must use the term loosely.”

  Kjieran bowed his head, gritted his teeth and tried desperately to hold back a crushing wave of despair. Hal’Jaitar had outwitted him at every turn. Had he ever stood a chance?

  “But this does not explain you, Kjieran van Stone,” the wielder meanwhile remarked. “How is it you live and walk and breathe?”

  “T’were better you asked Dore Madden to confess such sins, for I understand them but little. I know only that…only that…” Dear Epiphany, it was so hard to say, “…that my spirit is somehow now…bound…to the Prophet.”

  “Miraculous.” Hal’Jaitar exchanged a telling look with his wielder, Kedar.

  Trell groaned, then stirred, and Kjieran looked to him as the prince pushed up on his hands. The gruesome and bloody holes in his arms were now covered by regrown flesh. Taliah was skilled indeed to heal him without touch.

  Hal’Jaitar pinned his gaze on the prince, who returned his stare in kind. “I’m still waiting for Fate to come and rescue you, prince of Dannym.”

  “That’s…odd,” Trell answered in a voice betraying of his exhaustion. “I’m not.”

  Hal’Jaitar gave him a surprised look. “No?”

  Trell leaned back against the wall with a grimace. “No,” he answered then, pinning the wielder with a defiant look. “See, it’s not me He’s coming to claim.”

  Hal’Jaitar’s face fell, and Kjieran saw the malice in his eyes deepen and take root in punishments as yet unimagined. Kjieran feared for his prince, and he railed against his own unforgivable failures. All the world seemed to totter at the edge of that sliding cliff.

  “Kjieran van Stone,” hal’Jaitar remarked, and Kjieran turned to find his black gaze pinned upon him. “Your time has come.”

  Kjieran wanted desperately to unleash the other’s wrath, but he dared not do so
again—not with Taliah so close and Trell in harm’s way. Not with hal’Jaitar and Kedar still holding elae. “Release Trell,” he demanded. “Then I will do what you ask.”

  Hal’Jaitar laughed at him. “I will do what I will with my own prisoner, Kjieran van Stone,” he declared with a piercing glare, “and you will comply with my desires without question or defiance, or this prisoner of mine, with whom you so tragically and impotently concern yourself, will meet his end via the most gruesome and ignoble means imaginable.”

  Kjieran gritted his teeth. “And what is your will, Consul?”

  “Ah, but you know that already. The time has come to carry out your master’s order and eliminate Dannym’s king. Oh, yes,” hal’Jaitar returned Trell’s burning gaze with a supremely triumphant look, “your dear father has become a stump in the marching path of progress. But you needn’t dwell too long upon his fate, Prince of Dannym, for if I know my daughter, it will soon require all of your attention just to stay alive.”

  A brusque wave from hal’Jaitar, and Kedar’s two thugs moved to take Trell in hand. Hal’Jaitar turned back to Kjieran. “Kedar waits to escort you, Kjieran van Stone,” and he motioned to his wielder. “You will be told what to do when the moment is nigh. You will do this, Kjieran,” he emphasized then, holding him in the thrall of his terrible gaze, holding him by the threat in his tone and the fourth wielded in binding, “or I give you my solemn oath that your dear Trell will live a very long life in my daughter’s care and suffer grievously during every moment of it.”

  Kjieran knew then that he would have to choose. He could not save both his prince and his king—Raine’s truth, he might not be able to save either of them. He turned a stricken look to Trell, whom the men had in hand, and though Kjieran’s talent had nearly vanished, still he heard Trell’s powerful thought as their gazes locked, the sentiment offered this time in consolation. I am upon my path, Kjieran…

  For a desperate moment as Kjieran held Trell’s gaze, understanding passed as wine between them. Share with me this drink to fate, Trell’s grey eyes seemed to say while the men roughly bound his hands behind him, that we might face it bravely and with honor, and never fear our road.

  Grief settled as a heavy stone deep in his heart, and Kjieran knew he would never see his prince again.

  Then they were carting Trell away with Taliah in the lead.

  When they were gone, Kjieran looked back to hal’Jaitar. “And once I’ve done as you ask?”

  The wielder’s lip curled in a sneer. “You think to bargain again?”

  “No, Consul. Only to caution you.”

  “And what would be this warning, Truthreader? Another dire prophecy like the ones your prince so glibly spouts?”

  Kjieran glanced to the broken doorway where the wielder Kedar awaited him. “No,” he answered, bowing his head, “only…lest we forget, Consul,” and here he lifted hal’Jaitar a look of dreadful sincerity, “there is Balance in all things.”

  Fifty-Four

  “He is not the captain nor the helmsman nor even the rudder that steers our ship. He is the compass.”

  – The Second Vestal Dagmar Ranneskjöld,

  on Björn van Gelderan

  Grydryn val Lorian pressed fists to the marble desk in his chambers and stared down at the pale stone. In his mind, the conversation he’d just had with Viernan hal’Jaitar replayed endlessly, while in his heart, grief and hope warred for purchase…

  “Your Majesty, we have news of your son.”

  Grydryn had barely entered the salon of Viernan hal’Jaitar before the consul was coming toward him with this declaration. The king frowned. “News of Ean?”

  “Of Trell.”

  Gydryn blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your Majesty, he lives.”

  The king’s expression darkened. “First these claims of Radov’s ill health, and now you insult me by naming my dead son? Each of your lies is less plausible than the first, Consul.”

  “I assure you, it is true, your Majesty.” The Consul affected a level of compassion which Gydryn suspected he was quite incapable of actually feeling. Hal’Jaitar motioned the king toward a grouping of low-backed chairs as he explained, “We have long followed whispers that your son lived as a hostage in Duan’Bai. How, we yet wondered. If he survived the shipwreck, why have we seen naught of him?” Viernan sat as the king did and leaned in to confide, “And then the Emir’s Mage made his presence known, and the stormy skies of mystery cleared. Powerful and cunning, the Emir’s Mage has only recently revealed himself, but we suspect he’s been advising the Emir for many years.”

  “What does this have to do with my son, Viernan hal’Jaitar?” Gydryn growled. “My patience grows thin.”

  “The Emir’s Mage is the reason your son remains lost to you, your majesty,” Viernan explained. “He worked a terrible pattern upon Trell to make him forget his identity. Majesty…your son Trell remembers nothing of his life before the shipwreck. He has been hiding in plain view these many years among the Emir’s Converted. Only recently was he positively identified, a simple soldier in the ranks.”

  Gydryn stared at the man, searching for words that wouldn’t come. If even a fraction of it were true…

  “I dared not speak of this before,” hal’Jaitar continued, leaning slowly back and crossing his knee, his dark eyes regarding Gydryn with well-crafted concern, “not without confirming the reports, but at last we have eye-witnesses who have identified Trell—witnesses who will hold up even to a truthreader’s incontrovertible inspection.”

  Gydryn stood speechless.

  “Your Majesty, this is the reason we have been holding off on the parley. Now, having confirmed the reports, his Grace hopes to use the meeting as a means of demanding your son’s return to you. Abdul-Basir requested the truce never anticipating we knew of this treason, and while Prince Radov would hear his terms, yet we will grant the Emir nothing unless it includes your son’s immediate return…”

  That had been less than an hour ago, and now Gydryn found himself much at odds.

  Was it possible?

  The king straightened and walked slowly toward the doors, which stood open to admit the afternoon breeze. As usual, his knights kept watch upon the balcony and in the hall, letting not servant, page nor counselor enter without inspection. In the palace of a foreign prince, it was safest to assume that everyone was a spy.

  With a heavy heart, the king walked to the stone railing, leaned elbows on the balustrade and gazed out over the azure bay. Could it be true? Could Trell be alive?

  For all he could be trusted no more than a viper in a rabbit warren, Viernan hal’Jaitar was far too savvy to make such a claim without an truth beneath it. How much truth was the question Gydryn now battled with, and whether it was enough to warrant delving deep into the well of his sorrow and attempting to salvage something of hope from the depths.

  His heart wanted desperately to investigate this claim, to contact Morin d’Hain’s local contacts, as well as Raine D’Lacourte’s people in Tal’Shira, and demand their assistance in tracking down the truth of things. But this would cause further delay and introduce potential new complications. It would give Viernan hal’Jaitar more time to gather intelligence on Gydryn’s true activities.

  They faced off across a King’s board, he and hal’Jaitar, and while their strategies varied, the end they sought was the same: survival for their respective kingdoms, for their long-standing ways of life. The king had made his initial feint in approaching hal’Jaitar with threats of evacuation. Hal’Jaitar had taken the bait. This was merely the wielder’s next play.

  So while his heart bled at the possibility, his head knew that a game of Kings was rarely won by reacting to an opponent’s single move. No, any strategy of Kings encompassed the entire game and took into account a multitude of moves and counter-strokes. And once set into motion, it must be played out to its end.

  The king exhaled a sigh and stared at the shimmering waters, wondering if, as his wife oft
en claimed, there truly was some divine plan that justified so many sacrifices. Errodan believed strongly in the idea that a greater purpose guided the tragedies of life, as if each chain of cause and consequence was somehow woven into the fabric of a larger pattern. She believed an individual was beholden to discover his purpose, his part to play in the great pattern, and to have faith until such time as this purpose became clear.

  Gydryn saw the value in this ideal…how it could give a man hope when all the world seemed winter-bleak and the future held naught but empty despair—but he couldn’t live that way.

  So long as men were free to do ill or good to their peril or success, terrible things would happen in the world. There was no larger pattern in Gydryn’s view—the Maker did not sit in the clouds playing with their lives as if upon a King’s board, all of the trials and betrayals somehow part of his master strategy. No, if there was a purpose to be found in living beyond the tragedies and grave consequences of life, it was only what purpose a man made for himself.

  Gydryn bowed his head and closed his eyes for a grieving moment, knowing what he must do. Whether or not his son lived, whether Trell knew anything of his past or had walked away from it knowingly—whatever had happened in the intervening years—he would be a man now. He would’ve made his own choices to live by or regret. He walked his own road. Gydryn couldn’t allow the possibility of Trell’s survival to alter the course already set.

  If his son lived, he was on his own.

  So decided, the king straightened and turned to his knights. “Prepare for departure to the parley. We leave with Radov at dusk.”

  The party gathered inside the palace yard and left in stages, with Radov in the lead surrounded by his Talien Knights, then later the King of Dannym and his remaining knights, followed in the last by a score of cavalry. They traveled during the night hours, for the scalding desert sun struck an armored soldier as deadly as any archer’s arrow.