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

by McPhail, Melissa

  The boy took one look at Gendaia and turned immediately obsequious. “Welcome to the Green Frog, milord,” came a young voice mysteriously from somewhere among the layers of cloth. “Will you be stayin’ the night?”

  Trell glanced toward the inn. “Are there rooms to be had?”

  “They’ll make room for you, milord. The Gov’nor don’t like turnin’ people away in storm season, and especially not important folk.”

  A little puzzled by the boy’s remark, Trell handed Gendaia’s reins to him. “What quarters have you for her?”

  “We’ve braziers in the stables, milord. She’ll be warm as a copper on the hearthstone. I wager you’ll be ready to move on b’fore she is, sir.”

  Satisfied that Gendaia would be cared for, Trell gave the lad a coin and saw him off. Then he hefted his bags over his shoulder, turned, and trudged through the snow into the inn.

  A chain of bells rang as he opened the door and stepped inside onto a broad woven mat that was already soaked with snow. The great room boasted a river-stone hearth big enough to roast a boar and a roaring fire whose heat embraced Trell with welcome warmth as he closed the door behind him. He could hear men’s voices off to his left, floating from the depths of a whitewashed hallway, while a wide staircase angled to his right, ending at a balcony that ran the length of the great room.

  A rotund woman soon exited from a door beneath the stairs. Her eyes swept him from head to toe and must’ve found him more than acceptable, for she brightened considerably. “Ah, welcome, milord, welcome,” she said, opening her arms to him. “Will ye be taking rooms tonight? ’Tis a terrible storm that hit us, and so early in the season.”

  “I would like a room, yes,” Trell said, reflecting on how strange it was to be speaking the common tongue, to be in these surroundings, so unlike the desert in every way. “If you have one.”

  “But of course we do, milord!” she proclaimed, taking him warmly by both shoulders. “An’ you’re a dear, aren’t you? My, what lovely eyes. I’ve a daughter would as love gazin’ into eyes such as yours, milord, were she not already bedded up with that loaf of a minstrel, Roark. Never will make nothing of his life when a man can’t lift a finger in an honest day’s work—talking ’bout how he couldn’t make his living if he so much as broke a nail…but come,” and she turned him by the shoulder and walked him to her counter, opening a ledger to a page marked with a blue ribbon. “Sign in, milord, and I’ll get you a key.”

  Trell picked up the quill and wrote his name in her book beneath the scrawled handwriting of a man named Jeremiah Gundstrom. He read some of the other names: Cordell Hait, Rory Tatum, Charis Vogler, Carian vran Lea… They were western names mostly, northern names, names far removed from the ones he was used to hearing save those of men among the ranks of the Converted.

  “Just the one room then, milord?” the woman asked inquisitively, glancing his way as she unlocked a box with a tiny golden key from a chain resting on her ample bosom. “No one traveling with ye tonight?”

  “Just my horse.”

  “An’ what brings ye to Olivine?” She opened the box, which was full of keys, and began searching through it.

  “Just passing through to the Cairs.”

  The woman turned him a look of sudden compassion. “Oh, I fear that’s impossible. The pass has been closed since the new moon. Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings, but we’re as far as you go this winter.” She brightened as she plucked a key from its hook. “But we’ve plenty of rooms, and the gov’nor is always willin’ to give a man an honest day’s wage in exchange for room and board. That is if ye run short of coin…” but her tone and her knowing look said she expected he would not. She turned her ledger to have a look at his name and frowned. “But what’s this? Chicken-scratch! Ye cannot even write? An’ here I thought ye sure an educated soul.”

  Trell glanced at his name and realized he’d written it in the desert alphabet. “My apologies, mistress,” he said, feeling so strange in this place. Desert-bred women weren’t chatty as chickens—at least not with men—and a room in a respectable inn such as that one would be secured by the reputation of your tribe, not by your given name scrawled on a page in a book. He spun the ledger around and struck through his name in the illegible language, penning it again on the line beneath in a smooth, flowing script that felt both incredibly foreign and strangely fitting at the same time.

  Trell of the Tides.

  How odd to see his name written in the common alphabet, though it didn’t fill him with as much loneliness as he’d expected. Trell was surprised, actually, to realize there was beauty in the name for him now; it conveyed an intimate connection with the Goddess of the Waters which he never knew existed before his travels with Fhionna. Naiadithine had claimed him as her own, and Trell of the Tides was her name for him, her token of promise, her chaste kiss of blessing.

  “Trell of the Tides,” the woman read aloud, sounding disappointed that it hadn’t been Lord-somebody-or-other. She looked slightly peevish as she looked up at him. “Don’t say much about ye does it?”

  Trell met her gaze. “Actually, mistress, it says everything I know.”

  The woman gave him a puzzled look. “Well then, Trell of the Tides. Let’s get ye to yer room, an’ then I suspect ye’ll be wantin some dinner.”

  In acknowledgement, Trell’s stomach growled on his behalf.

  As she led him to the stairs, she pointed down the adjoining hall, from which now floated the music of a lute and a male voice raised in song. “The Common’s that way. Just opened a new cask of cider—it’s still a bit green, so I recommend the mead lessen ye don’t mind it sour. We’ve a bathhouse out back. The gov’nor keeps the coals burnin bright as the summer sun, but ’tis an icy walk there and back in this weather.”

  “Is the governor about?” Trell asked as he followed the round woman upstairs.

  “I’ll ask him to find ye in the Common, milord.”

  On the second floor, she showed him into a smallish room dominated by a wide poster bed. The single window was frosted over. “I’ll send Millie up to get a fire started for you, milord,” the woman said as Trell walked past her into the room. She handed him his key and strode purposefully down the hall.

  Trell closed the door and set his bags on a black lacquered chest at the foot of the bed. The woman intimated her expectation that he’d be here all winter waiting for the spring thaw and the opening of the pass. While he didn’t relish the trek back down the mountain, Trell had no intention of staying put in Olivine, not when he carried a fortune in Agasi silver—ripe for the picking should anyone unsavory discover its presence—and a missive for the Mage’s contact in the Cairs. Somehow he had to find a way across the peaks into Xanthe.

  With his silver stashed safely in his satchel and it in turn strapped diagonally across his chest, Trell locked his room and found his way to the Common. For all that he hadn’t encountered another patron thus far, the tavern was bustling with activity. Tables were packed with men dicing or carding, and the bar was lined two-deep with locals of various sizes and shapes, most of them dressed in rough-spun woolens. A barmaid passed among the crowd, her long wavy red hair a delight to behold among the ocean of ochre and brown. As Trell looked around, he noted that the minstrel who’d been singing earlier now lounged beside the wide hearth entertaining two rosy-cheeked girls of Lily’s age who gazed adoringly at him, though Trell thought the man of average measure.

  It was a scene found anywhere among the kingdoms of men, yet Trell felt misplaced; the play was the same, but all the actors had changed.

  Across the room, two men stood and headed for the door, leaving a small table open near the fire. Trell reached it at the same time that the red-haired barmaid arrived to clear the remains of the others’ meal. “Will you be taking dinner, sir?” she asked without looking up from her task.

  “Please.” He lowered himself into a chair.

  As she lifted her gaze and met his, she did a double-take, her eyes widening in
obvious surprise. She blushed then, and a pink color came up beneath the smattering of pale freckles across her nose. Looking quickly back to the table, she asked, “Anything to drink, milord?”

  “Cider,” Trell murmured, wondering at her reaction.

  She smiled bashfully, curtsied, and darted off toward the kitchens.

  Bewildered, Trell scratched his head and gazed after her.

  She wasn’t the only one to react strangely to his presence. As he ate his meal and drank his cider, he noticed others staring at him. Besides the barmaid, who never again could meet his eye, the two girls that had been fawning over the minstrel kept darting glances his way and then whispering to each other, and a woman in a green dress sitting at a table with three men stared at him the entire duration of his meal. He began to wonder if there was something offensive about his person. He hadn’t set foot in the northern kingdoms since he woke in Duan’Bai; who knew what manner he might have adopted in the Akkad that was deemed improper by these females?

  The only other person in the room who seemed to garner any attention was a man with long, wavy black hair who sat with his back to the wall. The rest of the men at his table were engrossed in a game of cards, but he sat with muscled arms crossed watching the room as if observing a game of Kings, his gaze both assessing and calculating. Trell watched him remove a pouch of tabac from inside his vest and roll its leathery leaves into a fag. He lit it from the lamp on his table and sat back again, exhaling a haze of smoke.

  “Is there anything else I can get you, milord?” asked the barmaid suddenly from Trell’s right. He hadn’t noticed her there. He looked up, hoping to meet her gaze, but she blushed and looked away again.

  Trell decided he’d had enough of this for one night. “No. Thank you.” He stood, paid her for the meal, and departed. Rather than return to his room, however, he left the inn to check on Gendaia.

  When he reached the stables, he saw that the lad had spoken true: the stable was warm enough to set the long icicles to melting above the wide barn door. Trell eyed them uncertainly as he passed beneath.

  How long had it been since he’d seen an icicle? Yet he distinctly remembered icicle sword-fights in a snowbound courtyard, shards of the spikes flying dangerously as he and his younger brother hacked away, laughing as they tumbled through the snow baiting each other with boastful threats…

  Trell paused just inside the stables with a sudden lump in his throat. For so many years he’d prayed for a memory—any memory—but while in the Emir’s employ, these prayers had gone unanswered. Now memories came unbidden and with such clarity that they left him feeling stung, even shaken.

  In this recent vision, he recalled his brother’s face so clearly he might’ve drawn his likeness! His face was so like Trell’s own and yet…different, with eyes of shared color but deeper set. In the memory, his brother laughed as they trampled through the snow, both of them wearing only loose tunics and britches tucked into heavy fur boots, their breath steaming in the air. The younger boy gave Trell a taunting grin and beckoned with his icicle, and his name was…

  It was…

  But he couldn’t catch it.

  The more Trell chased after it the further the name fled, until even his brother’s face began to lose its detail. His memories were fickle things yet, as wild and unmanageable as the Cry, as deep and mysterious as the goddess who dwelled there.

  “Milord?”

  Trell blinked to find the stable boy staring uncomfortably at him. He gave him a reassuring smile. “I just came to check on my horse.”

  The boy’s tense expression relaxed. “Ah, she’s a rare beauty. I’ve got her snuggled in as happy as a suckling pup, sir, don’t you fret. Here, come and see.” He waved Trell to follow as he continued chatting on contented horses as he walked down the line of stalls.

  Gendaia came forward to greet Trell while he was still several stalls away.

  “She knows your step, sir, that’s Raine’s truth,” the boy noted with a grin. “Never seen a Hallovian before, m’self, but I’ve heard fairy tales about ’em. It’s a real privilege, sir, I must say. What’s her name, might I ask?”

  “Gendaia.”

  “Well, that’s sure pretty. What’s it mean?”

  “Daybreak,” Trell murmured. He took Gendaia’s head and stroked her silver-white nose. She nickered and pushed her head into his shoulder. He spoke into her ear, murmuring a welcome in the desert tongue. She tossed her head and snorted, and Trell smiled. He looked to the stable boy, who was grinning eagerly at him. “Well, she does seem happy and warm,” he admitted.

  The boy beamed.

  Trell looked back to Gendaia. “Good night, beautiful lady-horse,” he said in the desert tongue and continued in this like, “Enjoy your warm meal and dry hay. Tomorrow it’s back to the snow for us, I fear.”

  She tossed her head in acknowledgement and then pulled back into her stall.

  Trell turned to the stable boy and found that he was staring at him in awe.

  “You must be Trell of the Tides,” said a deep voice from the stable’s entrance.

  Trell turned to see a heavyset man standing in the doorway. “I am.”

  “The name’s Harmon,” said the man as he approached. Harmon had the build of a blacksmith long retired, with a powerful gut where a muscled chest might’ve once reigned, but his large brown eyes seemed genuine, and his manner was amiable. “I’m the governor here in Olivine and the owner of this inn.”

  “Well met,” Trell said, clasping wrists with him. “My horse and I thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Indeed, indeed,” Harmon said, emitting a chuckle from somewhere deep within. He glanced at the gawking stable boy somewhat disapprovingly. The lad cleared his throat and rushed off, and then Harmon said to Trell, “Seline, my innkeeper, mentioned you were hoping to head on tomorrow.”

  Trell nodded. “I was planning to take the pass into the Cairs.”

  “That’s inadvisable,” Harmon told him, shaking his head. “The pass is buried under ten feet of snow at last account and more by the time this storm lets up. You’d never get through. Last year a Nadori merchant and his entire company were lost in the pass in snow half as deep and we didn’t find them til summer set in. No, no,” he shook his head definitively. “The best advice is to winter here and wait for the spring thaw.” He settled his gaze on Trell suggestively and offered, “I’m always in need of help this time of year. We’re a small community, and it takes every hand to keep the routes clear and the mines running.” His little eyes gave Trell a once-over and he added, “I expect you’re a man unafraid of honest work.”

  It was the third time Trell had heard the term. He wondered what these people considered to be dishonest work and how they so easily decided which side of the line he walked. “If the pass is closed,” he said, “we’ll have to head south to the Ruby Road.”

  “We?” asked the Governor.

  “My horse and I,” Trell clarified, only then realizing that he’d spoken of Gendaia as a traveling companion—but one simply didn’t think of a Hallovian steed as a mere beast of burden. “We may still be able to get through on the Bemoth end,” Trell added as an afterthought.

  “And brave the jungles, milord?” the man looked startled. “You must have pressing business in the Cairs!”

  Trell couldn’t bring himself to confess the truth: that spending three months in the tiny town while the solution to his past lay so tantalizingly before him might prove more torturous than all the years before. Instead all he could offer the man was the simple declaration, “Regretfully, I cannot stay.”

  The governor regarded him hesitantly, his brown eyes almost hidden among the heavy folds of his eyes. “Milord…” he said again, and Trell fought the urge to cringe at the title, “I’m not a one to pry, but…is it possible you were speaking the desert tongue just then?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s just…” The governor frowned. He glanced around the empty stable and placed a hand on T
rell’s arm confidentially, explaining, “I’ve a guest arrived two days past. He’s not the type I’d usually recommend to my patrons—that is, we prefer to conduct our business here in Olivine with honest men, so I cannot vouch for him—but he’s been asking around for someone who speaks the desert tongue. ’Tis possible you may be able to…help each other.”

  Intrigued, Trell shifted his weight and settled his hand absently on the hilt of his sword. “How so?”

  The governor eyed Trell’s blade and its gleaming sapphire pommelstone quizzically, but he said only, “Perhaps he should be the one to tell you, milord. If you’ll agree to speak with him, I’ll introduce you.”

  Trell saw no reason not to, and soon he was being ushered into a private room adjoining the Common. The room was small, with just four tables arranged around a modest hearth, but the fire was warm and the stout was heady, and Trell figured he had his sword if things came to that.

  It wasn’t long before the door opened and a man walked in. Trell smiled softly when he recognized him. It seemed only fitting that this would be the man who Harmon had decided walked the other side of the ‘honest’ line. Neither of them seemed to fit in well in Olivine.

  “You’re Trell of the Tides?” asked the other man as he closed the door behind him.

  “I am.”

  “Carian vran Lea,” he offered. “Of Jamaii.”

  Of course. Up close, Trell saw that the islander was perhaps thirty and five, but the fine lines edging his brown eyes had been deepened by a life at sea. He certainly looked the rogue, unshaved as he was and with his wavy black hair hanging wild and long about his waist. He wore four silver hoops pierced through each ear and a tiny gold loop in his right nostril.

  “So…” said the islander as he swaggered over, swaying slightly as men accustomed to life on the sea often will. He wore a cutlass at his belt as well as dual daggers, but there was nothing threatening in his manner as he sat down across from Trell. Not that the man needed any posturing to prove himself a dangerous opponent. The islanders were said to train in the mujindar fighting style, and everyone knew what happened to people who crossed one of the pirates of Jamaii or their countrymen.