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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Ean was too weak to form a retort, but he managed a rueful smile in return. With Matthieu’s help, Rhys mounted and drew Ean close, holding him in his arms. The prince caught the captain’s dour look and knew Rhys didn’t trust himself to speak. Closing his eyes, Ean leaned back against his captain and let darkness take him while the horse carried them away.

  Forty-five

  ‘There are three great uncertainties in life: weather, wind and women.’

  – The pirate Carian vran Lea

  Alyneri lay her pounding head against the cushion of the sofa in Claire’s room, willing sleep, but her eyes refused to close, as if in surrendering to slumber she would blot out what had been achieved.

  She’d done it.

  She’d reached an unborn child without tactile contact, established rapport, and made him move his head into position. To her knowledge, no Healer had ever accomplished such a thing before. The trouble was she still didn’t know how she’d done it. Desperation had driven her actions, but now it had left her and moved on, vanished along the winding road that was her past, taking knowledge of what had been done along with it.

  “Sleep now, chatonne, my kitten,” said Annaliese tenderly, petting her hair.

  Alyneri exhaled a slow breath. Across the room, Sandrine had her head bent in rapport with Claire, who held one babe to her breast while the other, already sated, slept within the arms of its nursemaid. It was a momentous evening for all of them.

  “You did well tonight, my lady,” Annaliese said, following her gaze across the room. “You and she, you made a strong team.”

  Alyneri’s tired eyes burned and her head ached as she watched Sandrine. She was so exhausted that she felt like she was floating above the sofa while a huge weight pressed her down, but still her heart beat too quickly and she couldn’t relax.

  It had been good working with the other Healer. Sandrine exhibited an untempered power when in rapport, and Alyneri suspected she could learn much from the other woman—if only she weren’t so frightening to be around.

  It’s quite like keeping a viper for a pet, she thought, again comparing the Veneisean Healer to a snake, though she didn’t exactly think of Sandrine in this fashion. There’s something truly dangerous about her though, like the viper. You cannot trust that it won’t bite you for no apparent reason.

  Alyneri had expected Sandrine’s gratitude upon finishing her work with the babes and seeing them born healthy and Claire saved as well, but the other Healer had seemed nothing if not annoyed. She’d been sharp with her thereafter, giving her deprecating looks for little to no reason. If not for the urgency with which Sandrine had pushed her to save the babes and thereby Claire, Alyneri might have thought Sandrine wanted the comtesse to die. It made no sense to her—what could she have done to so upset Sandrine?

  Alyneri exhaled another long sigh and wondered why she couldn’t relax. Her body would not release the tension that held her hostage and kept sleep at bay. But when an urgent knock came upon the door, she knew immediately why she’d remained so alert.

  She was off the sofa and running for the door before Annaliese or any of the others in attendance had barely registered the sound. Alyneri threw open the door with a sinking feeling of dread, knowing already who awaited without. “Where is he? What happened?”

  Bastian stood momentarily stunned, his mouth half open.

  Alyneri grabbed him by the shoulders, abandoning completely any thoughts of secrecy, and demanded, “Where is Ean?”

  “The gravest threat is not to your love,” said a striking auburn-haired woman who stood behind Bastian. Alyneri hadn’t noticed her standing there until that moment.

  “It’s Fynn, Your Grace.” Bastian finally found his voice. “He’s bad.”

  Alyneri couldn’t help the relief that flooded her, though she felt guilty in the doing. She drew in a determined breath. “Take me to him.”

  Bastian nodded and rushed off down the hall. Alyneri found herself walking beside the taller woman wondering who in Tiern’aval she was. She studied her profile as they rushed along, noting a nose that was long and straight beneath fiery auburn hair in a thick braid down her back. She wore a manly tunic, leather vest, and britches beneath a heavy russet cloak, and matching boots whose tops were turned down above the knee. She had a sword at her belt, too, and blood on her cuffs.

  Alyneri pushed aside the mystery of the woman as they reached a staircase and headed down, asking Bastian instead, “What happened? How were they hurt?”

  “It was the Tyriolicci,” answered the woman.

  “The what?”

  “A Whisper Lord,” Bastian supplied.

  Alyneri gaped at him. “They fought a Whisper Lord? Are they both insane?”

  “It happened in the city,” the woman said. “There was no choice save to fight.”

  Alyneri glanced uncertainly at her. Who was this woman and why did she keep talking as if she’d been there?

  Bastian stopped before a door and paused with his hand on the latch. “Lord Fynnlar has lost a lot of blood…”

  Alyneri gave him a telling look and entered to find a host of men standing around looking confused and out of sorts.

  “At last—’tis la duchesse!” announced Matthieu in relief. He pulled Rhys to the side out of her way, and Alyneri saw Fynn lying pale on a cot, with Ean laid out on another beside him.

  “His Highness sleeps only,” Rhys told her when he saw the color draining from her face.

  Alyneri reached for Bastian’s arm. “They’re covered in blood. Are you certain of—?”

  Ean stirred at the sound of her voice. “Alyneri…” He sounded tired but strong of heart. “Help Fynn. Hurry.”

  Needing no more prodding, Alyneri moved to Fynn’s side. The comte’s chirurgeon had cleaned and dressed his wound, but already blood was soaking through the linen. She placed her hands on Fynn’s bare chest and calmed her mind, pushing away lingering fears for Ean’s condition as well as the image of Sandrine’s face, which hovered in her near consciousness. Letting her awareness settle into and sway with the rhythm of Fynn’s energy, she found his life pattern quickly and set to the task of repairing the torn threads.

  She didn’t need to look at his wound to know what had been done to him; his pattern was frayed and weakened, the strands barely contiguous, its integrity far compromised. With immense patience, she gathered each fraying end and smoothed it with elae. Then she began the puzzle of piecing the ends of the pattern back together. As she repaired each strand, restoring integrity, she saw the whole pattern begin to shine again.

  ‘Take away the breeze that threatens the candle,’ the Lady Melisande had often instructed, ‘and the sputtering flame grows bright and strong.’

  Time passed and the men around her settled. The room grew quiet and calm, but Alyneri noticed none of these changes, for her work consumed her attention wholly. She was halfway though Fynn’s pattern when a woman’s spoken words shocked her almost completely out of rapport.

  “Why did no one send for me?” Sandrine demanded from the doorway. “Another of your men lies wounded and yet you wait upon la duchesse when I could help?”

  “Don’t touch him!” Alyneri shot to her feet, swaying slightly from the effort of withdrawing so rapidly from rapport. Everyone in the room gaped at her, most of all Sandrine. “It would be best if you took over here,” she managed, not caring in that moment that she’d horribly offended the other woman. “I will tend to the other.”

  Sandrine looked skeptical. “You can barely stand, ma chère.”

  “Then it is fortunate I can sit while I heal him,” she returned testily, and before anyone could protest—not that anyone dared—she moved around the bed to Ean’s side.

  He opened his eyes when he felt her touch, and she had to stifle the whimper that tried to escape her upon meeting his grey-eyed gaze, for he was so precious to her. The idea of Sandrine laying hands upon him filled her with a horror so complete that she’d never have been able to find her way
back into rapport with Fynn anyway, not while the woman remained in the room.

  “My personal angel,” Ean murmured, smiling though he was clearly in pain.

  “I might say just the opposite of you,” Alyneri muttered, but her tone was gentle.

  Sandrine watched the exchange with one arched brow, and then she made her way across the room to Fynn’s side. She sat and placed her hands on his head, but her eyes did not leave Alyneri. “I suspected when you refused me that your heart had been given to another,” she remarked coldly, drawing Alyneri’s eye.

  Matthieu cleared his throat. “Let us leave the Adepts to their charges,” he said in Veneisean, whereupon the men made a hasty exodus. Only the red-haired woman remained, arms crossed as she leaned against one corner.

  “I had thought you in love with your betrothed,” Sandrine continued, holding Alyneri’s gaze, both of them half in rapport with their charges and half-caught by the other, “but now I see you only pretend to the role.”

  With sudden vitality, Ean turned his head and looked Sandrine the eye. “I am her betrothed.” Upon observing Sandrine’s shocked look, he added sternly, “and I would appreciate your oath to make no more advances towards my fiancée.”

  Sandrine’s eyes widened. “Prince of Dannym,” she whispered, staring at him. “Mon dieu!” When she realized Ean was waiting for her oath then and there, she hurriedly replied, “Yes, yes. You have it.”

  Alyneri gazed incredulously at Ean. It took real effort on her part not to kiss him right there.

  “I am watching,” said the woman in the corner. She passed her gaze pass from Ean to Alyneri. “You need not fear on my watch.”

  Alyneri was so confused by the strange woman, but Ean seemed reassured. He looked back to Alyneri and winked, and she thought perhaps she had never loved him more.

  So it was that she finally let herself sink into rapport and began her work again, terribly tired but wonderfully content just to be near Ean. At some point during her Healing, she knew that Ean had fallen asleep, but Alyneri continued on, weaving the strands of his pattern back together until it shone as brilliantly as the rising sun.

  ***

  Ean dreamed.

  In his dream, he faced the shadows, only now a face appeared within them. It remained indistinct, blurred by the fog of time, made hazy by the death that separated then from now. While Ean didn’t exactly recognize the man, something seemed familiar about his rounded nose and dark hair.

  “You cannot hope to succeed,” the man said, coming closer so that Ean could see more of him. He wore crimson pants and a matching tunic, both cut in the desert fashion, and his feet were bare. “Forswear your oath,” he continued as he walked, “and I will give you a quick death. Remain upon this course, and I will cast you out of time. There you will remain, floating beyond the now, dying while eternity passes.”

  Ean shuddered at the image those words conveyed. He had no doubt that the man could do exactly as he threatened, yet he also knew that this would not be how their battle ended. Ean dreamed with that strange sort of half-awareness that one is in a dream while also observing the dream, likewise knowing that this was a dream one had dreamed before—though the wakeful Ean had no recollection of having ever dreamed it. Still, Ean had the sense that the battle the man suggested had already occurred, thus he knew his end; yet in the dream it had not happened, so the end remained unclear to him.

  Ean raised a weapon before him, but it was not his own sword. Rather, it reminded him of the zanthyr’s stony blade but with a hilt carved in the shape of a dragon, its wings outstretched. He gave the man an unwavering stare as his only answer.

  The man snarled an oath and attacked, and their blades met with a deadly clang. As their breath mingled across locked swords, he saw flames behind the man’s eyes.

  Suddenly the fire in his gaze was actually the flames of a brazier, and Ean found himself chained to a low-hanging bar. The fiery burn of a cat-of-nine-tails across his naked back mingled with the smell of charcoal and the hot taste of blood. Ean knew this moment, too—knew that he had lived it, or dreamed it, yet the memory seemed somehow too real. The stranger stood across the room staring heatedly at him, and Ean knew that despite the dire scene, despite his quivering legs and the roiling sickness in his bowels, he somehow still held the upper hand.

  The whip sliced into the flesh of his back with sudden vicious abandon, and Ean cried out. His arms ached like they’d been ripped from their sockets, and blood ran down from his manacled wrists to mingle with ever-widening pool at his feet.

  The pain reached his head, and his gaze dimmed. When he focused again, the stranger stood before him. “Your purpose is to die,” he said with uncommon patience, viewing Ean as if a curiosity worthy of closer inspection. “Why do you rail against your end? Is not the very foundation of your existence simply to carry forward toward death? Why do you resist what you know is inevitable?”

  He lifted Ean’s chin with one black-nailed finger to gaze at him, but Ean could barely focus—the man’s face swam before him, a thousand-fold flaming eyes. Ean saw him look to someone who stood behind, and he cringed in the split-second before the whip scourged his flesh again, the metal tips finding purchase on bone. He screamed without realizing it was his own raw voice he heard.

  The room went black, but the voice remained, a vicious, cajoling whisper in his mind. “Do it,” came the voice, “release yourself from this existence blighted by life. It is a futile, transient state to fight for when your every breath merely takes you closer to that end. Today, tomorrow, a week of torment from now, I will still win, for the end will claim you. It is your destiny. Embrace it…”

  Ean felt himself slipping…slipping…he knew death was so close… It would be nothing to open himself to its cold, unforgiving kiss…

  In the last moment, a face surfaced out of the deep dark. Its brilliance shocked him so greatly that he flew back toward consciousness, regaining himself with a gasp.

  Only it was a different scene he found upon surfacing. Though his enemy looked the same, there was something very different about the mist-filled plain upon which they both stood.

  The stranger glared at him. “My brother is coming for you.”

  “Coward,” Ean said.

  The stranger just laughed, and the red sky imploded.

  Ean woke with a start.

  Never had he been so relieved to realize he’d been dreaming. As he lay in bed letting his heart calm and his breathing return to normal, he looked around in the gray morning light. He lay in an opulent bedroom with walls paneled in pale blue silk. The frescoed ceiling above him was painted with a scene of nymphs tormenting a shepherd. Ean yawned and stretched and became immediately aware of a hundred new places on his body. Memory returned in a flash, and he exhaled a regretful, “Oh…”

  “They say the second day of recovery is always worse than the first,” came a feminine voice from across the room.

  Ean slowly pushed up on one elbow, careful of his head and other injuries still healing, the skin of which felt tight and raw. He saw her then, sitting in an armchair by the hearth where coals burned low. Her fiery hair blazed like burnished copper even in the muted light, though its color was the only thing feminine about her. Her almond-shaped eyes were set well apart, her nose was straight and her cheekbones pronounced—all of the makings of beauty, yet in her the elements seemed too stark. Hers was the harsh beauty of a hawk, wild and fierce.

  He remembered her sweeping past him to his rescue—even now the feeling of overwhelming relief remained palpable—but everything after that was a haze. Why she’d come, and why she remained, was a mystery.

  “I thank you for my life,” Ean said, glad to notice the numbness of sleep fading. He pressed palms to both eyes and then blinked them again. “Wow… how long was I asleep?”

  “Two days.” She stood and approached his bedside. She wore a blood-red tunic beneath a chestnut-hued vest, and leather britches tucked into thigh-high boots, but Ean noted appr
eciatively that there was nothing at all mannish about her figure. She stopped and looked down at him with eyes that were tawny-amber, like an owl’s golden orbs. “How do you feel?”

  Ean gave her a rueful grin. “Alive. It feels wonderful. How is Fynn?”

  “Alive…like you.”

  Ean lay back on his pillow and exhaled in relief. “That’s a blessing.” He stared up at the young man in the fresco and shook his head. “I was a fool.”

  “Yes, no doubt, but the Tyriolicci would have found you sooner or later. At least it was only the two of you who bled on his blades. The carnage might’ve been worse had all of your men been with you. I don’t know if the little Healer could’ve saved so many.”

  Ean turned his head to look back to her. “So you’re saying it was actually providential that I rushed into a burning building against all better judgment, was accosted and taken hostage, and somehow managed to escape only to be nearly gutted by a Whisper Lord?”

  She regarded him coolly. “I’m saying there is no wisdom in regret.”

  Ean gazed at her with growing wonder. “Who are you?” It was a question long overdue.

  “I am Gwynnleth nach Davvies of Elvior.”

  “Elvior,” Ean said, tasting of the strange name. “Where is that?”

  “On Mount Pisah.”

  Now understanding dawned upon him, and he arched brows in surprise. “You’re an Avieth.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously. And that was one.”

  “One what?”

  “One mark against you.”

  Ean barked a laugh. “How is that?”

  She drew herself tall and announced, “I have determined to give you three chances.”

  “Chances for what?”

  Her tawny eyes narrowed as she replied in a steely tone, “To prove you are just like all the other Northmen I’ve met.”

  Ean chuckled. “Then I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a long time, my lady.”

  She regarded him doubtfully. “We’ll see.”