Rod clapped his brother in the back of the head, knocking a black forelock into Rickon’s brown eyes. “Those are aquamarines, you dimwitted fop.”
Rickon rounded on him, shouting, “You’re a fop!” They tumbled off into the crowd, who closed in around them again indifferently. The other three went back to the matter of the necklace.
“It’s for your mother, Julian,” Liam reminded him—as if he needed reminding!
“Yeah, Julian,” the slender Dickon agreed. “You can’t scrimp on her birthday present.”
Liam added, “And it’s not like you can’t afford—”
“Will you two shut up!” Julian hissed, shooting a look at the merchant. The Khurd was leering at him now, grinning like a bridge troll. Utterly embarrassing.
Liam looked injured. “You said aquamarines,” he pointed out in a hurt tone. “You said your mother wanted cabochon aquamarines.”
“Fifty crown!” the merchant barked, pointing at the jewels. Julian began to wonder if those were the only words the man knew how to say. He frowned at the necklace again. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it. Fifty Free Crown was barely half that in Veneisean gold, but it was still outrageously expensive.
“You said aquamarines,” Liam repeated a third time, “since they’re the Goddess Alshiba’s favorite, and your mother being—”
Julian leveled his friend a pointed stare. “Liam,” he interrupted with forced patience, “I do not need reminding of my mother’s station. She does enough reminding for all of us. All right?”
Liam looked injured. He set to pouting.
“That is a certainly necklace deserving of a High Priestess,” someone observed mildly from behind Julian. All three boys turned their eyes to the man. He stood half a head taller than the tallest of them and was dressed in an elegant jacket the color of sky. His black curls were cut short, his features were elegant and his manner refined, and he had sparkling blue eyes that complimented an amiable smile. Dickon and Liam grinned back at him like the village idiots, but Julian settled his pale green eyes on the man. Strangers didn’t just jump into conversation on the streets of Cair Rethynnea—not when their intentions were honorable.
Seeing that he had the boys’ attention, the dark-haired man continued, “But aquamarines are not Alshiba’s favorite gem. The First Vestal prefers the firestone—opals.”
Rickon and Rod just then shoved their way back into the group, having ostensibly decided the victor of the fight—though a man would be hard-pressed to tell which one of them it was; Rod was sporting a cut brow and Rickon had a bloody lip. Julian ignored the both of them.
“How would you know that?” Liam challenged the blue-eyed stranger. “You’re no priestess.”
Julian was eyeing the man with cautious reserve. He couldn’t help but notice that he wore a silver ring set with a large aquamarine far more exquisite than any stone in the necklace Julian held; it sparkled almost as intensely as the man’s blue eyes. “One would think the goddess’s Healers would know such things,” Julian said.
The man smiled noncommittally. “One would think,” he agreed. “May I?” Julian held the necklace out, and the stranger took it from his offering hands and looked it over. “These are fair quality. Probably the best you’ll find in this market.” He settled his stunning sapphire eyes on Julian again and gave him a knowing smile. “Have your heart set on this one, do you?”
Curious now, Julian shrugged.
“Fifty crown!” the merchant barked.
The man handed the necklace back to Julian. Then, arching a dark brow, he turned to the Khurd and told him, “Ben pazarlik yatmam. Üç yüzden fazla vermem.”
The merchant gaped at him.
“You speak the desert tongue?” the triplets chimed in wonder.
The dark-haired man settled the merchant a penetrating look. The merchant blinked, then turned to Julian and barked, “Thirty crown!”
Julian was taken aback. He spun a swift look at the stranger.
“That will be his final price,” the blue-eyed man advised. “You should take it.” Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Wide-eyed, Julian grabbed for his purse.
Minutes later, the five boys were wandering down the Avenue of the Gods toward the towering jade Pillars of Jai’Gar.
“Who was he?” Rickon wanted to know.
“How’d he learn the desert tongue?” Rod demanded of no one in particular. “I thought only the Khurds could speak it.”
“Maybe he was from M’Nador,” Dickon suggested.
“He didn’t look like a desert man to me,” Rod argued. “More like an Agasi.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Dickon admitted.
Silent among his bickering friends, Julian was walking with his necklace in hand experiencing a sick feeling of trepidation. Why? he wondered. Why did he want me to know that he knows who I am?
***
“I thought we were to meet in the Temple of the Vestals,” the cloaked man said suddenly into Björn’s ear as he walked along the Avenue of the Gods, following a good fifteen paces behind the five teenagers.
Björn did not need to turn to know who now walked at his side. “I was otherwise engaged,” he answered in a low voice. He nodded toward Julian’s fair head among the crowd in front of them. “He has the gift, though he doubts it still.”
“An Adept?” the man beside him asked. His voice was muffled by the deep cowl of his sky blue cloak, which kept his face in shadow. “What strand colors his blood?”
“The rarest one.” Björn’s eyes never strayed from the five boys ahead of him. They had passed beneath the Pillars and were walking along Temple Row heading for a soaring structure of green glass and white marble that was a scaled-down replica of the Hall of a Thousand Thrones in the cityworld of Illume Belliel—though not a man on that street knew it save himself. “It becomes increasingly clear to me, Dämen,” he noted, “that none of the Vestals understand what’s been happening these past centuries during my absence, lest they’d have long sent others in search of these lost souls.”
The Shade’s silver features were fully concealed beneath his cowl, but his dark eyes looked sadly upon the five boys. “They’re Returning, but not Awakening,” he remarked. “Is it Balance that prevents the knowledge of their gifts from surfacing?”
Björn shook his head, and his sapphire gaze was granite hard. “I suspect it is merely the force of the others’ presence in our world. They need do nothing, Dämen,” he stressed with sudden fervor, turning to regard his Lord of Shades with concern marring his handsome brow, “nothing but wait, and the pestilence that suffuses their being will gradually dissolve our living realm. But they do not do nothing.” He cast his Lord of Shades a telling look before turning forward again. “They act. And thus do we.”
“Indeed, First Lord,” said the Shade solemnly.
Rather than expounding on the troubling subject further, Björn asked, “How go the preparations?”
“Everything is ready,” Dämen confirmed. Then he frowned. “But First Lord, do you really think this course is wise? What if there is trouble with the node?”
Bjorn cast him a sideways glance. “There will be no trouble with the node, Dämen, and you know my reasoning better than most.”
Dämen pursed his lips, frowning beneath his shadowed hood. Clearly something was troubling him deeply. “We find ourselves at the same crossroads, ma dieul,” he murmured at last. “They will find him again soon—it is assured. Do you not think it prudent to do more to protect—”
“No,” Björn said in a tone that brooked no argument, his eyes flashing with warning. “Twice before we’ve reached this crossroads, and twice we’ve failed. Every time we have tried to help this man, he has died as a result, and do you know why?”
“Please educate me, ma dieul.”
Bjorn cast him a telling look. “Because we overstepped ourselves. Balance plays a mighty role in this man’s life. The best we can hope to do is keep the Balance on
his side, give him time to come to the understanding on his own. It may seem cruel, Dämen—and dangerous—but it’s the only way to avert tragedy.”
Dämen still seemed reticent. “The Second Vestal has spoken to me on the matter, ma dieul,” he admitted. “He sees events unfolding on many strands and wishes we might exert more influence over them.”
“Dagmar is driven by an insatiable need for action and wants more than anything to return to Alorin,” Björn replied, waving off the Shade’s concerns. “He would rush headlong as our sole vanguard against the ravening hordes—and would no doubt cut a formidable swath through the enemy ranks—but ultimately, in his haste, he would fail.” He eyed his Lord of Shades intently. “All things fall in their time and place, Dämen. While we might wish them differently, our wishes cannot change the pace of the game. No, we must ride this river, no matter how interminably slow its current may seem, and trust that the river is taking us where we need to go.”
“Yet the river is long and winding,” Dämen said disagreeably, “and full of sharp rocks and treacherous falls that we cannot see while riding its current.”
Bjorn eyed him crookedly and then chuckled. “Touché.”
Dämen bowed respectfully, his point made and taken; it was as much as he could hope for. “What is your will, ma dieul?”
“The node is all that remains, but for the plan to work I must have the services of a Nodefinder. I need your Shades to track down Franco Rohre. He is one of the fifty, you will recall, who swore fealty and were given tasks at the fall of the Citadel.” He narrowed his gaze. “The time has come for Franco to prove his troth.”
“Your will be done, ma dieul,” Dämen murmured with another reverent bow.
“But first I have a task for you,” Björn interjected before the man could fade. “A trifling matter for my Lord of Shades.”
And as Dämen leaned in to listen, Björn gave him his orders.
***
Shaded by the cool marble confines of the Temple of the Five Vestals, Julian gazed with reverent awe upon the pristine statue of Alshiba. The statue stood fifteen paces high, a vision of the Alorin Seat holding out her hands, palms down, as if to heal. Many a man and woman had pressed their heads within the cup of those stone fingers while saying a prayer, and later swore their ills had left them. The statue glowed with a wondrous white light, which Julian knew was the result of a wielder’s working so long ago. The populace needed no such knowledge, however; often enough, their faith in the statue’s power was what drove their own prayers to fruition. Every one of us works a little magic, his mother had often told him.
Now Julian knelt upon the velvet cushion at the Goddess’s feet and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the fear that gnawed his stomach raw. He’d taken to chewing ginger root to settle it, but he knew the pain would abate only when he found a solution to his problem. Would that I could tell my mother…but he dared not, for fear of what she would be driven to do.
Heartsick, Julian opened his pale green eyes and looked down the east wall of the temple. Statues of the other Vestals were spaced in equal distances of fifty paces: Dagmar holding his famous sword, Seth with a hawk on one outstretched fist and five fiery arrows clenched in the other; Raine, whose eyes were set with two diamonds of stunning brilliance, and then…but the last marble pedestal stood empty: Björn van Gelderan’s, the Fifth Vestal.
In Julian’s home of Jeune, it was forbidden to create any rendering of Björn for fear that he could take its form and return to Alorin in this way. Julian didn’t know if such magic was possible or if it was just superstition, but he did know that his mother and all of her followers believed that fifth-strand adepts were born evil and must be eradicated. Queen Indora supported this view so completely that any Veneisean child showing even the slightest Adept talent was sent to Jeune for testing. To Julian’s knowledge, none of them had ever shown a gift for the fifth, but even the testing was torture enough.
Theirs was a fear Julian didn’t understand. True, Malachai had been a fifth-strand Adept, as was the Fallen One, and history had seen what they had done—his mother had borne first witness, in fact, being one of the few survivors of the Adept Wars and a member of the famous group known as the Fifty Companions. So he supposed he could understand her fear to some degree. But nothing puzzled him more than to see the raw terror that came into her eyes at the merest mention of Björn van Gelderan.
Nor could he understand why so many people found no illogic in this idea—that two men did evil things surely couldn’t mean that mean all fifth-strand Adepts were born evil? If a prince went mad for power and slaughtered his brother, did that make all princes evil, or all brothers evil? If a mother drowned her baby soon after birth did it mean all mothers were murderers in their hearts? Did not everyone ultimately have a choice in their actions? Couldn’t a man choose to do good or ill with his gifts?
Julian had always advocated for free will, but broaching such arguments with his mother had never gone anywhere pleasant, and the latest time had almost brought them to blows.
Now the subject had taken on a whole new and terrifying importance, and Julian dared not broach it with anyone.
Drawing in a heavy breath, Julian lifted his gaze to the statue of Alshiba, who the priestesses of Jeune worshipped as a goddess, and said a small prayer. Then he stood and wandered absently over to the empty pedestal at the far end of the temple where the Fifth Vestal’s statue belonged. He gazed at the pedestal for a long time.
His friends were outside granting him a moment alone, but Julian could not be at peace. Just that morning at their inn, he’d dropped a teacup to shatter on the stones of the hearth. As he was cursing his clumsiness, he offhandedly envisioned the cup snapping back together again—in the way one wishes something like that could happen but knows it can’t—yet when he’d bent to gather the pieces, he’d found the cup whole and shining as if straight off the shelf. He’d almost dropped it again, he was so startled. And it wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened.
He’d left Jeune three moons ago pleading youthful wanderlust, but in truth, he’d left because he feared everyone could see what he was—worst of all that his mother could—and if they ever discovered his secret…well, at least for now he was safe in the Free Cities, but he feared he would have to flee to the ends of the realm if anyone from Jeune ever found out.
***
“Well, I don’t see why I can’t change my name to Dagmar,” Rickon protested as he and the others shared sips from Liam’s flask of plum brandy while sitting on the steps of the temple. The afternoon sun had passed beyond the city hills, and the Avenue of the Gods was cast into cooler shadow, for which the boys were grateful. “At least it could be my nickname,” Rickon added. He puffed out his chest and observed, “I think I would make a fine Dagmar.”
“You’d make a fine bar wench,” Rod chastised with a clap on the back of Rickon’s head. Rod was the oldest by five minutes, and he took great pains to remind his brothers of the fact.
“Shut up, the both of you!” Liam hissed. He was staring at the hooded figure of a man just then climbing the steps toward them. In the afternoon shadow, the stranger’s pale blue cloak seemed to glow with an even paler nimbus. Something about the man made the boys shiver, and though each suddenly had the inexplicable urge to stand and run with sudden fervor, something kept them rooted—perhaps it was pride.
They would never have the opportunity to curse it.
Seeing that he had all of their attention, Dämen lifted his black-gloved hand at the boys. Look at me but once, and I have the power to bind you, children. A pity they didn’t know that.
Rod was the first to discover he couldn’t move, and when he opened his mouth to shout, the sound that emitted was little more than a guttural choke. By the time the Shade reached the step below the boys, they were all wild-eyed and whimpering. Dämen glanced around. The Avenue at his back had a constant flow of traffic, but it was not so crowded as the bazaar beyond the Pillars, and no
w there was an abundance of shadows to fuel deyjiin. “Come lads,” the Shade murmured.
They stood obediently and followed him up the stairs toward the deeper shadows.
Dämen took them around to a lush but deserted courtyard between the Temple of the Vestals and the black marble temple of the Wind God Azerjaiman. There, he gathered his cold power and focused it into the space of a needle-thin beam, searching the air before him for the finite division between shadow and light. There. The spear of power split in two directions, searing a hole in the delicate veil of worldly light. A silver-black line speared down, and as Dämen guided it, the line broadened to reveal a dark, cold nothingness. The fabled dimension of Shadow.
Dämen pushed back his hood, revealing his silver features, and settled his obsidian eyes upon the four boys. “After you, lads.”
***
“He isn’t the monster people accuse him of, you know,” the man said to Julian suddenly.
Julian sucked in his breath with a hiss and spun. He relaxed somewhat when he recognized the blue-eyed stranger, though he wondered why he wasn’t more surprised to see him again. He turned back to the empty pedestal feeling equally empty inside.
“No?” he returned. His voice sounded dull and without conviction even to his own ears. “Björn van Gelderan butchered the Citadel Mages in cold blood and was responsible, even if indirectly, for the deaths of all the innocent inhabitants of Tiern’aval.” Julian could near recount each name of the deceased, his mother had been so adamant that he knew and remembered the massacre. “And what of the thousands of Adepts that Malachai and his creatures slew?” Julian looked to the stranger, who was regarding him intently in turn. He was startled yet again by the intensity of his blue eyes.
“There were other losses too, you know,” the boy went on, trying to cover his unease, “the loss of magical knowledge and wisdom that went with the Mages to their graves, the destruction of the Citadel Library, and the near extermination of our—of the Adept race. Anyone would say those are monstrous crimes.”
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 29