Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One

by McPhail, Melissa

  “Who will teach him now?” asked the first.

  “He must teach himself. There is no one left to do it.”

  The first grunted. “There is you. There is Markal—”

  “His Calling has not yet come.”

  A stubborn silence fell, as if in protest. Finally: “Then you are right. There is no one.” The sounds of motion followed, and what might’ve been the sweeping aside of a flap of heavy canvas, as if a man now stood in the portal. “When will—?” began the first.

  “In three days.” The tent flap fell closed.

  This time the silence was enduring. Ean willingly sank back down into oblivion’s embrace.

  “Wakey, wakey.”

  Someone shook Ean roughly by the shoulder, and he blinked open his eyes to meet those of a stranger peering down at him. Ean recognized neither the man nor the unfamiliar tent, and he looked around feeling disoriented.

  “Shade says you’re well and healed, princey. Time to up an’ at it. Help break camp.”

  Ean shook off the fog of his recovering sleep and slowly pushed up on his pallet. Stiffness in his shoulder reminded him of the events that had brought him there. He found the wound bandaged, but an itch beneath the cloth demanded his attention. When he pulled off the wrappings, he caught his breath.

  It can’t be!

  Hardly a scar remained where the blade had struck, only a circle of new pink flesh. He knew Adept Healers had the talent to speed a man’s body in its efforts to repair itself, but either he’d been asleep for a number of days, or a very powerful Healer had worked upon him. But who?

  “Hurry now. Time to move on.” The man tossed Ean a dirty tunic and ducked out of the tent.

  Ean donned the shirt gingerly, his mind awhirl. Knowing the Shade had taken steps to heal him meant the man wanted him alive. It appeared they were letting him move freely about, and if they really didn’t mean to kill him, perhaps he still stood a chance of escape.

  Ean emerged from the tent and looked around. The campsite was as unfamiliar as the men who now watched him. It wasn’t just that he didn’t recognize their faces. They spoke in broken sentences, as if missing knowledge of all the words that made the language flow easily off the tongue.

  Throughout the morning, Ean stayed alert, looking for any opening, gauging his surroundings. As they let him ready his own horse, he noticed his sword strapped among his saddlebags and began forming a plan. Being careful that no one was watching, he slid the weapon free of its concealment and hid it instead behind a fallen tree at the edge of the campsite.

  Fortune favored him that day, for not much later, he saw the opening he’d been hoping for. Most of the men were busy on the far side of the camp. Only two remained nearby, and they were disassembling the tent used by the Shade. The creature himself came out and headed past where Ean sat on the fallen tree.

  Ean let his arm stray behind him, taking hold of his sword. The feeling of the weapon in his hand, of its leather-wrapped hilt and familiar heft, gave Ean a renewed sense of purpose. This man had murdered his best friend. He deserved to die.

  Perhaps it was a dishonorable intention. Perhaps he would’ve lived with regret over such an ignoble deed—indeed, later he would only wonder if the Shade hadn’t done him a service, but in that moment, retribution narrowed his gaze to a single focus. The prince let the Shade pass by, and then with his eyes fastened on the man’s back, Ean rose and followed.

  Closing the distance silently, Ean brought up his sword before him, aiming for the man’s spine—

  Suddenly the Shade stood facing him just inches away.

  Ean drew back in alarm.

  The Shade grabbed Ean’s sword by the blade and yanked the startled prince close. “Foolish,” he hissed, nose to nose.

  Ean felt a chill spreading through his fingers, and he looked to his sword to find a silver-violet flame licking its surface. He released the blade with a violent oath, instinctively recoiling from the ill-conceived power.

  The Shade flipped the weapon and snatched the hilt out of the air. In the same instant, he lunged at the prince.

  Ean shouted and leaped back, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the man’s advance. In a terrifying moment where time seemed to slow, the blade came spearing toward Ean’s chest, right above his heart—

  And exploded in a cloud of ash.

  Choking dust flooded Ean’s nostrils and throat. He coughed and gagged to the sound of the Shade’s dark laughter.

  The prince wiped soot from his eyes and spat ash from his mouth. “Damn you to hell,” he whispered, only then truly understanding the futility of his position—and hating the man all the more for it.

  But his words brought the Shade to ire. He snatched an unresisting Ean by his tunic and pulled him close. “What know you of hell, Prince of Dannym?” he hissed, his breath cold and strangely odorless, a dry arctic wind. Obsidian eyes bored into val Lorian grey, and Ean felt fear—the Shade’s fear—seeping into him through their contact. The hair started rising on the back of his neck.

  “I know Hell, for I have died there,” the Shade continued. “Hell is a blessing compared to what awaits us all if he fails. Remember you that, Prince of Dannym.”

  He shoved Ean away, and then, inexplicably, punched him.

  The prince spun with the impact and hit the earth in a hard expulsion of breath, silver stars marking his blackening vision. The warm taste of blood filled his mouth, a fitting complement to the bitter ash that still tainted it.

  As if in answer to the angry query in Ean’s glare, the Shade replied coolly, “For respecting so little those who saved you.” He pitched Ean’s useless sword hilt at his feet, turned his back on the prince and left him there.

  Three

  ‘A change of work is as good as rest.’

  – The Adept Healer Alyneri d’Giverny, Duchess of Aracine

  The boy Tanis swore under his breath as he stumbled down a path through the Queen’s Garden of Calgaryn Palace, tripping every few steps on a root or hopping with pain as a particularly sharp stone pricked through the thin soles of his court shoes. He should’ve changed into more appropriate footwear, but the truth was he’d forgotten to harvest the coneflowers that day, remembering nothing of the promised task until he was leaving the dining hall with a belly full of meat pies and his head humming with news—none of which would be worth his salt when his lady was expecting a cleaned batch of coneflower roots on her worktable in the morning.

  His lady, the Adept Healer Alyneri d’Giverny, Duchess of Aracine, was not a patient young woman—patience being an attribute which, in her view, only gained importance when facing the ineptitude of others and “really shouldn’t be considered one of the Veneisean Virtues.”

  Tanis normally wasn’t so neglectful of his duties, especially when assigned him by his lady—who, though only four years older than him, became a formidable demon when her desires were thwarted—but the Harvest Festival was due to begin tomorrow, commencing with a parade celebrating Prince Ean’s long-awaited return, and Tanis could barely think of anything else. His excitement filled him completely.

  At dinner, all of the boys were talking about Prince Ean—indeed the entire dining hall had been abuzz with discussion of him, nearly obscuring any mention of Festival, which was the usual highlight this time of year. Queen Errodan herself had returned to court two moons past to make the arrangements for her son’s return, spawning heady talk of herself and the king and their infamous disputes—and more recently of a secret paramour rumored to share her bed at night—but Prince Ean alone dominated discussion on the eve of his homecoming.

  At Tanis’s table, Tad val Mallonwey had the most to tell, for his eldest sister, Katerine, was being courted from afar by the prince’s blood-brother, Creighton. Katerine routinely read Creighton’s letters to Tad, all of them ripe with details of Creighton and Ean’s escapades, and in Tad’s retelling to the other boys, the crown prince had become both brave adventurer and heroic warrior. Tanis wondered if His High
ness could possibly live up to the image Tad’s stories boasted of him and was most excited to finally lay eyes on the crown prince.

  Tanis had little to add to the dinner hum himself, for he knew but one story of the royalty, and it was trite now, dusty and irrelevant with age: long ago, his own lady, Her Grace, had been betrothed to one of the val Lorian princes, and the connection had once made Tanis a star among the noble boys. But Prince Ean’s middle brother had found his death at sea—coincidentally upon the same ship as Her Grace’s own mother. All hands were lost when the Dawn Chaser faltered in an early winter storm. ’Twas a tragic tale now and not one for so festive an affair as Prince Ean’s homecoming.

  Was it any surprise, really, that Tanis had forgotten his duties in light of such rich anticipation? Not surprising, no, Tanis thought, though his lady would grant him no leniency for forgetfulness.

  Thus did Tanis find himself wandering in the moonlight searching for a plot of prickly purple flowers.

  The Queen’s Garden formed a swath of vibrant nature nestled within the sprawling palace complex, the latter nigh on a city unto itself. While Queen Errodan had resided at court, her garden had been a grand and lovely place, with orchards and fountains and expansive lawns, hedge mazes and quiet groves and even a tree swing or two. A complement of thirty groundskeepers had tended to it with loving care.

  In Her Majesty’s absence, however, much of the garden had gone to seed, for the King would spare only a single elderly gardener to its maintenance, and the latter managed little more than to keep the weeds from overtaking the gate.

  Tanis loved the garden, even in its wild state, but it was not so friendly a place at night. Large as it was, an entire army might be hiding amidst the long grasses—cavalry, pikemen and archers at the ready—and no one be the wiser. The ivy-choked walls became a threatening harbor for bats by night, and the old moss-covered oaks along the east corridor creaked and rustled with every passing breeze. As he moved beneath them, Tanis couldn’t help but fear that they were discussing how best to consume him.

  Trying not to think too much on the disposition of the oaks, Tanis crossed a path that led west toward the orchards and an elaborate portal that opened into the royal wing of the palace, said portal ever manned with a host of steely-eyed guards who would just as soon shoot you as hear an explanation as to why you’d so foolishly strayed within bowshot.

  Fortunately, the coneflowers lay to the north. Tanis reached a circular court dominated by a fountain whose marble archer seemed a pale ghost in the moonlight and took a break to empty a stone out of his shoe. As he donned his shoe once more, the lad pushed a lock of ash-blonde hair from his face and followed the archer’s ever-drawn arrow with his gaze, upward to the heavens. His eyes widened.

  Cephrael’s Hand, by all that’s unholy!

  The ill-omened constellation burned so brightly, Tanis thought he might reach up and pluck the jeweled stars from the sky. A saying came unbidden to mind:

  ‘A man may rule his household,

  And a King govern his land,

  But Death walks in the thrall of Cephrael’s Hand.’

  Tanis wasn’t sure what he believed when it came to such things. Actually, he wasn’t sure what he believed about most things, these days.

  Since gaining his fourteenth name day eight moons ago, Tanis had begun his Adept training with the King’s Truthreader, Vitriam o’Reith. It still seemed something out of fantasy to be training in the Art—something from someone else’s life; the kind of someone who did interesting things, who traveled to dangerous places, like the Fire Kingdom of Avatar or the Akkad.

  His friends envied him his Adept birth, but Tanis wasn’t so sure being a Truthreader was such a gift any more. Knowing he lived in one of the last generations of a dying race somewhat dampened his excitement about his growing ability to read minds. Oh, Tanis still loved learning about the five strands of the life force known as elae, loved coming to understand how each strand represented a different aspect of elae’s magical properties, and how each Adept was inextricably tied to his respective strand. He loved learning his Truths and practicing Tellings. And certainly the promise of a royal commission made life a little sweeter in the contemplation.

  About the only thing Tanis had to complain about, if he was ever of a mind to complain, was his teacher, Vitriam o’Reith. Tanis wouldn’t have chosen Master o’Reith for his instructor, not if he’d had his way about it, for the King’s Truthreader was exceedingly old and made for a tiresome tutor. It would’ve been so much more exciting to learn from the king’s other Truthreader, Kjieran van Stone, who hailed from the Empire of Agasan and had studied Patterning at their famous Sormitáge. But Kjieran had been missing from the palace for some time—at least three moons—and Master o’Reith refused to say where he’d gone.

  On a secret mission for His Majesty, no doubt, Tanis had decided.

  For all his excitement at finally studying the Art—and he was excited, even though it meant enduring Master o’Reith’s tedious lectures—being a Truthreader wasn’t as thrilling as the stories made it out to be. There were a god-awful lot of rules to remember, and why did he have to learn so many names of people who’d died hundreds of years ago?

  ‘’Tis not that they died, but that they lived, Tanis youth,’ Master o’Reith always lectured. Tanis felt that entirely too many people were lecturing him these days.

  Standing again, he scowled up at the constellation. Somehow, he suspected, it was lecturing him too.

  The “educated races” were apparently supposed to know better than to let their heads be filled with “peasant superstitions,” at least according to Master o’Reith. But Tanis couldn’t deny that bad things seemed to happen when that constellation showed up…wherever it showed up.

  Tanis was so absorbed by these thoughts that he failed to notice a shadow approaching from the adjoining path until it quite unexpectedly bumped into him. The lad started like a hare spooked by a fox, jumping half out of his skin, while the approaching shadow very nearly shrieked. Both lost their balance and reached for the other.

  Tanis inhaled the scent of jasmine and felt soft hair beneath his hands before the woman composed herself. In the moonlight, he knew her face as well as his own. “Your Grace!” Tanis exclaimed. He quickly stepped a proper distance away.

  “Tanis, what in Tiern’aval are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  Tanis gave her a tense look and rubbed at one eye.

  She arched a pale eyebrow at him. It was a sure sign of warning. “Well?”

  As the lad tried vainly to come up with some acceptable truth that would spare him a scolding, he saw a swath of shadows approaching from behind his lady, and soon a host of soldiers had joined them.

  Leading the pack was a bear of a man whose face Tanis knew well but whose company he usually went out of his way to avoid. The soldier had stormy grey eyes sighted down a thin, flaring nose, and his reddish beard stood out in contrast to the mane of brown, shoulder-length hair that fought to escape an earl’s bronze circlet. He ever sported his chain of office, a heavy necklace of linked gold disks that was worn only by the captain of the King’s Own Guard.

  “Oh, good,” the captain said, eyeing Tanis with the suspicious indifference of a grizzly toward a nosy chipmunk. “You found him.”

  “I did no such thing,” Alyneri remarked without turning to view the captain. She was pinning Tanis with a steady stare instead. “I’m still waiting for that answer, Tanis.”

  Tanis glanced from Her Grace to the burly captain, who was backed by a score of stone-faced soldiers, and decided Her Grace was definitely the more amiable ear. “I forgot to harvest the coneflowers, my lady,” he confessed, “and I knew you were expecting them in the morning, so I—”

  “Oh, is that all?” Alyneri waved off the rest of his explanation and started down the path again, her moon-pale braid swishing along her back like a wildcat’s tail.

  Tanis gazed after her looking baffled.

 
; “Well? What are you waiting for, lad?” the captain complained. He gave him a shove to start his feet moving. “We’ll lose sight of her at this pace, and I’ll be damned if I intend to spend the night hacking my way out of this thorn-infested mire of overgrown cabbages.”

  Thus prodded, Tanis stumbled into motion and did his best to catch up with Her Grace. As he nursed his wounded pride, he thought of informing the captain that they certainly didn’t grow cabbages in the Queen’s Garden, but he suspected the man wouldn’t find the information at all useful, and he knew enough of the Lord Captain Rhys val Kincaide to know that he did not appreciate information which he didn’t find useful. Tanis had, in fact, heard the captain say to his men more than a few times that what he dubbed “useless” information did nothing but tangle a soldier’s clear thinking. Oftentimes, these admonitions were emphasized by way of a gauntleted hand smacking the back of their head—just one of many reasons Tanis usually avoided the Lord Captain like the plague.

  He did, however, ask him, “Sir, where are we going?”

  “Shadow take me if I know,” the captain grumbled. “The duchess says she knows a shorter route to the tunnels, and I’m thinking she means to go by way of the infirmary, but the next thing I know she’s leading us through this forest of weeds.”

  “But why are we going to the tunnels?”

  Rhys gave him an annoyed look. “You sure talk a lot for a Truthreader. That o’Rieth character hardly ever says a word.”

  “Master o’Reith has long passed his eightieth name day and often falls asleep with his eyes open,” Tanis returned matter-of-factly. “He only speaks when directly addressed.”

  “Seems to me you could learn from him.”

  Tanis scowled at the captain and decided to ask the same question of his lady instead. A brief sprint and he’d caught up with her. He stood nearly a head taller than her since his last growth spurt, but for all of that she rivaled the wind for speed when she was on a mission. “Your Grace,” Tanis said as he tried to fall into step beside her, though he quickly discovered it was impossible for his longer legs to match her pace and managed instead only a clumsy sort of skipping gait. “Why are we going into the tunnels at this hour?”