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

by McPhail, Melissa

  “I’m not here to question you,” Raine reassured the proprietor, not that it helped a great deal. He took the man by the shoulder and pressed him down into the closest chair, which was fortuitous because the innkeeper was shaking like a luffing sail. Franco thought it a fair miracle that the man’s bones weren’t rattling in his skin. “I’m looking for a man who may have stayed here,” Raine said.

  “Ain’t r-rented a room in t-two score, milord,” the man stammered with the gaze of a caged rabbit. He continued with a solid stream of denials that ended back at the beginning. “Ain’t rented no rooms to no criminals, I swear.”

  “You may have merely seen him then,” Raine offered—truly, he had the patience of a saint. “If you would but take a moment to recall—”

  “Nobody important’s been in here, milord. I swear it.” The man had broken into a cold sweat, and his eyes were getting rounder with every breath. Franco wondered what crime he was so afraid Raine would uncover. When faced with the conversation of a Truthreader, many a good man nearly shattered his sanity over the silliest of things. Actually, that’s the more common case. The true criminals know no remorse. They stare his lordship in the eye and lie through their gnashing teeth.

  Franco clenched his jaw tightly with the thought, as if to hold back his own confession.

  Ha—that’s what you attempt with every breath!

  More and more of late he’d been having conversations with some part of himself—the part that used to be sufficiently drowned in wine but which had begun sobering up when he’d embarked upon this quest with Raine. The voice had since become an insufferable nuisance.

  It’s time you faced the truth, it chastised, cowardly inebriate that you are.

  Shut up!

  “If you will just—” Raine was trying meanwhile to get the proprietor to calm down, but clearly nothing could be done to settle him. The Vestal exhaled with sudden impatience and in one motion pressed his hand across the man’s face in a particular manner useful only to Truthreaders. The tavern master jerked once, his body stiffened, and he exhaled a low groan that mimicked the wild moan of wind through the rafters.

  Franco looked at the rigid man with his eyes rolled back in his head and suddenly couldn’t stomach the sight. He rushed outside, heart pounding, and leaned against the wall as the door slammed, resting his head against the rough wood.

  What in Epiphany’s name are you doing? he asked himself to no avail. What would happen when they found Björn van Gelderan? What would he say when he saw Franco serving Raine?

  Not that Franco could’ve refused the Truthreader’s bidding—the Fourth Vestal, by Cephrael’s Great Book!—not without facing a host of disconcerting questions he wouldn’t have been able to answer. Not without risking everything! As it was, he barely had the man’s trust, and who could blame him? A canyon of betrayal spread between them.

  Franco pushed palm to forehead. Gods above, I am doomed. Had he really spent the last three-hundred years in his cups?

  Three-hundred and eighteen you cowardly sot!

  All that time spent avoiding the Vestals, only to run squarely into the most fearsome of them—

  Fearsome? You mean Raine? balked that irksome voice. He’s got the manners of a courtier and the build of a scholar. He’d be lucky to best a squire in battle.

  Franco gritted his teeth. Raine D’Lacourte fought the Sundragon Srívas’rhakarakéck at the Sunset Battle of Gimlalai!

  He lost didn’t he?

  Yes, but not his life. He is fearsome, Franco insisted as the voice of his conscience subsided to inane name-calling, more so than any Shade and his pack of darkhounds could ever be. Indeed, the Fourth Vestal was ferocious when running down a truth, and unlike darkhounds, the sunlight didn’t banish him back to shadows.

  Franco feared that sooner or later Raine was going to ask him some very uncomfortable questions, and he just didn’t know what he was going to say when he did.

  You should end it now—put us both out of our misery.

  Franco dropped his hand and closed his eyes. Gods, he really was going mad, talking to himself like this. How obliviously happy he’d been in his world of wine.

  Sobriety, in comparison, was hell.

  Letting out a heavy breath, Franco pushed a hand through his hair and looked sorrowfully around. Had not some shadow of honor bound him to this service, he saw any number of places he could go, a host of escapes. ’Twould take naught but a walk down the street to vanish once again into obscurity—and dissipation.

  For Franco’s brown eyes saw things that most men’s could not.

  Franco Rohre was an Espial—called a Nodefinder by most—and he saw the ætheric places where the very pattern of the world conjoined, bringing together lands as distant as Agasan and Avatar in the space of a single step.

  Of course there were no welds such as the latter near the shabby inn. These major links in the pattern of the realm were scarce and difficult to find without a weld map. But the minor ones, called nodes, were common, and the smallest leis even more so. These last were like tributaries leading to rivers, the rivers leading to the sea, seas opening to oceans. So was the pattern of the world evidenced in creation.

  “All things are formed of patterns, from a single blade of grass to the most majestic of mountains: air and water, fire and earth; Life itself.”

  It was the first axiom of the Sobra I’ternin, one of the Adept race’s most treasured texts. Everything they knew of Patterning, of the physical laws that bound the Adept race—a literal mountain of knowledge—came from the merest fraction of the Sobra I’ternin, of which only the first third had been translated. There were countless fraternal orders devoted to study of the work. Raine D’Lacourte counted himself a member of several of them, in fact.

  Franco knew he could travel upon any one of the nearby leis, which seemed softly glowing stars to his eyes alone. As Franco mentally explored the leis in a manner which his innate talent allowed, letting his awareness pass through their ethereal portals to what lands lay beyond, he saw one that opened onto a moonlit field, another leading to an empty room, yet a third seeming a forest path…yea, by the time Raine emerged from the Gilded Boar, Franco could be half a world away.

  But honor kept him rooted.

  Honor, pshaw! You’re too much of a coward to abandon even that loathsome oath.

  My oath. Franco quailed at the memory of its making, the vision of himself kneeling before—no! Gods no! He dared not bring that image to bear. It was the last thing he wanted fresh on his mind for Raine D’Lacourte’s ripe plucking.

  Not that the Fourth Vestal would be eavesdropping on his thoughts. Franco knew that for all of Raine’s formidable reputation, he was the most polite of Truthreaders and would never covertly pry into a man’s head, but Franco also knew that thoughts had force. Think them too loudly, and a Truthreader like Raine couldn’t help but overhear, even from across the room. Franco accordingly banished the very hint of oaths from his mind. Some thoughts could travel far enough to be heard on the other side of the world.

  A cloud moved off the moon at last, and Franco gratefully lifted his eyes to the heavens—and froze.

  It was there, right there, as if hanging above his very head…as if tolling for him. Seven stars as unmistakable as Raine’s countenance, and even more historically significant.

  “Cephrael’s Hand!” Franco whispered. He’d seen the constellation before, but never like this—burning bright as a beacon fire and seeming large enough to touch.

  The door opened and closed, and Raine came to stand at his side. He lifted his gaze to follow Franco’s upturned stare. “Ahh…” Raine murmured, and there was much said in his simple exhalation. He pointed to the lowest corner of the grouping of seven stars. “It’s rising, see? You can tell from the position of Nibis in relation to Canis,” and he indicated the single stars in question. Then he dropped his hand and narrowed his gaze as he watched the sky. “The superstitions are not entirely unfounded, you know. Someone inevit
ably dies beneath the inauspicious light of those stars.” Then he turned his head and cast Franco a droll smile. “But so do others die beneath the full moon, and the Evenstar, and the daylight.” He pulled up his hood then. “Come, Franco. Let us leave this cheerless corner of the kingdom and find a coach for hire.”

  Franco looked to him in surprise. “A coach? Does this mean…did you find him?” A flurry of explanations for their change of plans crossed Franco’s mind, and a fleeting hope that they might find rest instead of relentless pursuit.

  “Sorry, no. Björn was here, as we thought, but has since moved on. The proprietor had but the slightest memory of him, nearly faded into obscurity.”

  “Then why are we—”

  “There was something else.” Raine turned him a serious and somewhat disquieting look. “Something…unexpected. I must study the currents from a node.”

  Of course, thought Franco. They were within a night’s ride of Calgaryn, after all, one of the oldest of cities, and its crowning palace was older still, though newer walls had long been constructed over the original structure. Most of the ancient strongholds were built upon nodes or welds, though the primitive cultures that built them knew only that such places harbored an inexplicable pulse of power.

  “I am sorry to press on when rest is such a needed commodity, Franco,” Raine offered unexpectedly. “I know you are tired, even as I am, but we can find some respite at least in the coach tonight while on our way. That, I hope, is some relief to you.”

  While motion across a node was almost instantaneous, every passage required Franco’s energy and intense concentration, and they’d traveled over such a long, disjointed path that Franco had often spent each free moment in study of the nodes that he might get them to their next destination without traveling to the far side of the globe and back to do it. Six nights without sleep, traveling every day—seven days running on this, their latest trip, but they’d been at it together for more than a full cycle of the moon. Yes, he was exhausted.

  Franco nodded soberly. “I appreciate that, my lord.”

  Raine considered him as they walked. “You have served me well in this endeavor, Franco. I think perhaps we have wronged you by not calling upon you sooner. In the Second Vestal’s absence—”

  Franco cut him off lest he say more. “My lord, you and the other Vestals have done me no wrong. By…mercy alone I survived the wars. I would that I hadn’t.”

  Yes and when you should’ve died, the First Lord spared you, but oh, at what cost!

  Shut up!

  Raine regarded him quietly. “The Adept Wars have faded into lore, and the dead have moved on or Returned—may Epiphany guide them. You and the others were… well, many of you were but children when the Citadel fell and the mages were slain. Whatever role you played or didn’t, whatever it is you blame yourself for so endlessly...you’ve paid your penance in the intervening years, Franco. I don’t believe you should continue to abase yourself, and neither does the Alorin Seat.”

  Franco clenched his teeth and swallowed. Gods, he really was doomed. To cover his disconcertion, he said, “You found something, you said, my lord?”

  Raine cast him a narrow look, noting his clumsy change of topic, but he was too polite to press the matter. “I shall study the currents,” the Fourth Vestal confirmed, “and then we will better understand the nature of this development.”

  As they rounded a corner beneath a bright lamp, leaving the sad street and its lonely inn, Franco gave the place one last look and then turned forward again, frowning. “I just don’t understand,” he murmured as he shoved hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the evening’s chill as much as his own fears. “What business could a Vestal have in such a place as that?”

  Raine shook his head, and an old frustration resurfaced in his expression. “A Vestal could have no business there whatsoever,” he answered. “Our task is to oversee our strand of elae and monitor its use, and to protect and defend its Adepts. I can find no reason for my oath-brother to go to any of the places he’s gone.” As he spoke, he fingered a heavy silver ring on the third finger of his right hand, the aquamarine stone cut deep and square. Each of Alorin’s five Vestals wore such an oath-ring, including the man they followed.

  And you’ve seen that ring up close, have you not? Become intimate with it even?

  Franco gritted his teeth. Maybe he was being haunted. Perhaps this voice was a doppelganger come to torment him for his crimes.

  The ghost of your murdered conscience, you twit!

  Raine meanwhile exhaled with vexation and continued in a quiet voice no less fierce for its restraint, “Why take the trouble to occlude each innkeeper’s memory when he knows I can Truthread them? Why stay at seven inns named after the same animal? Why vanish for centuries, return in utter secrecy, and then traipse across the continent leaving a trail on the currents that even a novice raedan could follow?”

  Franco had wondered that much himself. Though he was no raedan to decipher the workings of the world by a careful study of elae’s currents, he knew enough to understand how the power that surged through the pattern of the realm formed currents of energy as it flowed along its channels, energy that carried upon its tides a record of every manipulation of a lesser pattern—events the uninformed called magic. The Vestal Raine d’Lacourte was the foremost raedan in the realm, and his fame in reading the currents was legendary.

  Raine remarked with a tinge of bitterness, “Why does my oath-brother do anything he does?”

  Franco was immeasurably glad that this question was obviously rhetorical.

  “I think what troubles me most,” Raine continued, more to himself than to Franco, “is wondering how long Björn was here before he deigned to alert me. Was he truly in T’khendar these long centuries, or has he been here among us all the time, working in secret, in silence, incognito…watching us—laughing at us—as our magic dies. Malachai’s legacy.” He let the words hang in the air so Franco might better absorb their meaning, so that the fears they revealed grew longer, stronger, in the way the afternoon shadows lengthened until they merged into night.

  Franco tried not to look at him. Too much. I understand too much. No man should bear such burdens of truth.

  The First Lord does, his conscience reminded mercilessly. He faces truth in every waking moment. With every step, he presses forward staring boldly into the sun, even knowing the blindness that inevitably follows.

  Misinterpreting Franco’s silence, Raine placed a hand upon his shoulder. “I don’t mean to unnerve you with all my talk, Franco, and in truth I shouldn’t burden you so with my thoughts. I hoped to find clarity in the orderly discussion, but I fear I have only become more ensnared.”

  Franco drew in a deep breath as if to summon his resolve. “We will find him, my lord, and then he will tell us what we need to know. He will understand what’s happening, and why so many haven’t Returned.”

  Yes indeed, the First Lord knows why the Adept race is dying. So do you.

  Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup!

  Raine was gazing curiously at him. “I hope you are right. My oath-brother Björn was the first of us to take the Vestal oath, the first to decipher the Sobra I’ternin and work the Pattern of Life…the first to do a great many things.” He shifted his gaze in front of them again, but he did not seem heartened. “There are some who believe he has deciphered Cephrael’s great work in full,” and he added under his breath, “and as many again who blame him for what has happened as if because of it.”

  Franco gave him an uneasy look. He never liked repeating what people said of the Fifth Vestal—it felt like defaming his sworn liege to even repeat the words, yet the subject bore mentioning now. “My lord, they say…they say the Fifth Vestal, he’s—”

  “Our enemy now,” Raine finished soberly. “Yes, I know what they say.”

  Franco pressed, “But if he’s truly deciphered the Sobra I’ternin, then he would know High Law in all its fullness.”

  Ra
ine turned him a telling look. “Which is why, Franco, we do well to pray that Björn van Gelderan is not our enemy.”

  The mad voice of Franco’s conscience laughed bitterly.

  Seven

  ‘Our faults are etched in stone for the ages, our qualities writ in water.’

  – The Immortal Bard, Drake Di Matteo

  Alyneri placed the teacup of brewing herbs into the older woman’s hands with a concerned look. “Are you certain this is all I can do to help you, Lady Astor?”

  “What ails me, my dear, isn’t anything you can fix with herbs and tea,” the dowager Countess of Astor returned, calmly shaking her grey-streaked coiffure. She settled the teacup in her lap alongside a napping Shinti-Hansa, whose black nose barely peeped from its mane of golden fur. The dog sneezed in its sleep, and Lady Astor spared a hand to scratch its head, adding, “Nor would I wish it. Sixty turns of the seasons is many enough for any woman. I have given my lord husband four sons and seen them all reared. What more can I hope to do?”

  To travel! To see the world! Alyneri thought as she straightened, but she dared not speak such, not in current company. Ten sets of feminine eyes looked on as she tended to the Countess that morning, and though their gazes seemed placid enough, she knew ill thoughts lurked beneath quiet waters.

  “I must disagree, Wilamina,” said Ianthe val Rothschen d’Jesune, better known as the Marchioness of Wynne. She was Veneisean by birth, and has the high horse to prove it, Alyneri thought resentfully.

  “If a Healer such as our Alyneri offered to cure me of the ravages of age,” Ianthe proclaimed, “I should take her ministrations as good medicine.”

  “That is because you are young and know no better.”

  “Not so young as our fair Alyneri,” Ianthe replied, settling cool blue eyes on the Healer. The Marchioness was golden-haired and lovely, and married to one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom; what power she lacked in title, she made up for in riches. “I have heard all the girls abuzz with Prince Ean’s expected return this afternoon. Will you be attending the parade also, Duchess, to put your favor in with the rest of the hopefuls?”