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

by McPhail, Melissa

  “Yeah, they’re not,” Carian said, “or if they are, it’s not any language known to mankind. So imagine trying to take a pattern and translate it into language. There are at least a hundred orders devoted to the work, most of them in the Sormitáge in Agasan, where the original manuscript is kept. Only Björn van Gelderan is rumored to have deciphered the work in full, but Epiphany only knows where he is now. Not that he’s one to help,” Carian added as an afterthought.

  The Fifth Vestal… Trell frowned over a memory which nudged against his consciousness. But try as he might, the thought would not form. “Why do you say he’s not one to help?” he asked absently.

  “Well, with his betrayal during the Adept Wars and holding the Great Master prisoner and all,” Carian muttered, “I’m thinking he’s not exactly working in Alorin’s best interests.”

  “So he’s deciphered the Sobra I’ternin—”

  “That’s the rumor,” Carian inserted.

  “—but he doesn’t share any of the knowledge with the Adept world? Why?”

  “Got me. No one has ever understood why Björn van Gelderan does the things he does. Anyway, some say Cephrael is still among us.”

  “What, you mean…among us, like I might run into him on the road ‘among us’?”

  Carian grinned. “Some scholars think so. They say his hand is guiding the realm even now, that his merest touch can set events in motion to change the fate of entire kingdoms.”

  “How could he be guiding the entire realm if he’s just walking around in Cair Thessalonia like anyone else?”

  “He’s still a god,” Carian said, shrugging. “Isn’t that the whole point of omniscience? If the guy can observe some Fire King schtupping his mistress in Avatar while at the same time listen to the petty whining of thousands, I don’t guess it would matter much if he was also wandering around in Thessalonia looking for a place to piss.”

  Trell frowned at him. “And what do they say of Epiphany, your Sormitáge scholars?”

  His gaze turned uncharacteristically solemn. “They say she sees the future and the past with every waking moment, that in her gaze one might know his last twenty lifetimes or his ultimate end.” He glanced at Trell and considered him for a moment. “There’s an Adept legend which tells that in one sunrise, Epiphany saw the end of days. In her grief, she gouged out her own eyes that the vision might not prove true. Her tears formed the rivers of our world. Some say it’s for her tears they named the Cry.”

  Trell had other ideas about the source of the Cry’s fateful name, but he kept those to himself.

  Sometime during the early morning hours, Trell drifted off. He woke from dreams of Fhionna to a dawn that broke the sky in striated bands of rose, violet and crimson-orange and sat up feeling stiff and cold and oddly missing the desert.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Carian said.

  Trell turned to find the pirate walking up the hillside wearing his usual toothy grin. He held out a warm linen bundle, which Trell took curiously. Inside, he found hot sticky buns drenched in honey and meat pies stuffed with onions and spicy sausage.

  At Trell’s look of amazement, the pirate shrugged. “A Nodefinder need never go hungry. You ready, poppet? My weld map awaits.”

  They headed off soon thereafter, with Trell leading Gendaia on foot following a few paces behind the long-legged Nodefinder, who wandered happily through the meadow looking not unlike a tall, long-haired maiden in desperate need of a shave.

  As they cleared the rim of the long hill they’d been climbing and gained a broad view of the Assifiyah range—seeming so close Trell thought surely he could touch the snow upon the spiny peaks—he said to Carian, “Hadn’t you best tell me something of why you needed me along, my unscrupulous friend?”

  Carian shot him a narrow look over his shoulder. Then he shrugged. “We approach the lair of my arch nemesis, Trell of the Tides, a particularly crafty Nadoriin who has perpetually eluded my attempts to steal the weld map. We finally struck a bargain, but I was…detained in carrying it out. This Nadoriin only speaks the desert tongue. I mean to make good on our bargain and get my map, but I needed another interpreter, as my last one vanished in the intervening months.”

  It seemed entirely too simple an explanation to have any part in the pirate’s convoluted, completely crazed life. So of course, it had to be true.

  “What will you do once you have your map?” Trell asked.

  “I intend to rescue the Great Master from T’khendar.”

  “Oh,” Trell said, only surprised by the things that no longer surprised him. “Well, good luck with that.”

  Carian shot him a toothy grin. “Thanks.”

  They made good time through the hill country, and midday had barely passed when the road they’d been following ended in a meadow. Carian ran ahead of Trell, rushing to the top of a hill. There, he turned with a triumphant look. “Ahoy the chase!” He waved Trell to hurry, yelling, “Smartly now, laddie, before the villain escapes!”

  Trell bounded onto Gendaia and cantered her up the hill. Reaching the top, he reined in expectantly, but his face quickly fell into a puzzled frown.

  Nested within the bosom of three hills lay a tidy farmstead. A little farmhouse and a green-walled barn sat next to a paddock holding some goats and a chicken coop. On the south side of the cabin, a neat vegetable garden hosted sprawling winter squashes and orange and gold pumpkins, along with a row of browned corn and mottled white gourds.

  “Where is the villain?” Trell posed with mock seriousness. “Let him not attempt to bedevil us, or he shall come to know the sharp side of our steel.”

  Carian gave him a telling look. “Be on your guard.” He cast a steely-eyed glare in every direction before drawing his cutlass and stalking long-legged down the hill with his wavy hair blowing in his wake. Trell trotted Gendaia after the pirate, trying not to read too little into the tranquil scene. Obviously the pirate had been duped by his nebulous ‘arch-nemesis’ before, and to this end the villain deserved Trell’s due attention.

  With goat-like stealth, Carian slowly nudged the cabin door open and peered inside. Then he spun and stalked across the yard toward the barn. Trell dismounted and looped Gendaia’s reins over the paddock rail, joining Carian just as he was reaching for the barn door latch.

  Abruptly the doors catapulted open and a shrieking, grey-haired woman erupted through them brandishing a pitchfork. Carian swore an oath and ducked sideways, but she was close on his every turn, stabbing and slashing at him wildly. Trell caught one of her many phrases spoken in fast succession and realized she was swearing at the pirate in a Kandori dialect. He heard something about a camel and her daughter’s honor amid the outpouring of curses.

  Carian dodged and ducked and yelled vexedly back at the woman, but she was as spry as a spring chicken, and he just couldn’t seem to shake her off. Trell finally intervened by pulling his sword and leveling it at the pirate, bringing startled looks from both and blessed silence.

  The pirate glared accusingly at him. Trell shrugged with an at-least-I’m-not-a- crazy-madwoman look. Meanwhile the old woman in question held her pitchfork high and cast both of them a mistrustful eye. When it seemed no one was going to break the impasse, Trell turned to the woman and bowed his head.

  “Goodwoman of the sands,” he said in the desert tongue. “I am called Trell of the Tides. This man has brought me here to assist him in making good faith upon your accord.”

  “No, no bargain!” she declared, shaking her head. Then she said it again in the common tongue, though with a horrible and nearly incomprehensible accent, “No bhaargoon!” And she spat at Carian’s feet.

  Carian whipped his head to look at Trell. “Why did she do that? What does that mean?”

  “Goodwoman of the sands,” Trell said again in a soothing tone, “this man would make good on his promise and count the beans and the donkeys with you. He has gone to great trouble to make good on your accord.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, but she was listening. T
he pitchfork lowered just slightly, leveled now at Carian’s throat. Trell kept his sword steady at the pirate’s heart.

  “Goodwoman of the sands,” Trell said. “This man has braved Thalma’s wrath and gained Naiadithine’s favor to find you.” Trell felt it was true in an indirect way. “I shall lower my sword, and we shall all drink the god-drink together. If it be Jai’Gar’s will, we shall reach accord once more.”

  Her dark eyes flickered from him to Carian and back again. Abruptly she lowered her pitchfork and leaned on the end. “You speak knowledgeably of the gods,” she replied, this time sounding surprisingly cultured, “but you are a Northman. Are you then Converted?”

  “No, goodwoman of the sands,” Trell replied in the desert tongue. “I have spent the past five years in the shadow of the Pillars.”

  She arched brows. “You are not Converted, but you serve the Emir?”

  “I did once.”

  “And now?”

  Trell exhaled. “Now I am without kingdom.”

  “What’s she saying?” Carian demanded. He gave Trell a hard look. “Did she say her daughter was pregnant? Because I had nothing to do with that!”

  Thus did Trell enter into the role of interpreter and the true story emerged. The woman began, rattling off her grievances while shooting incendiary glares at the pirate. Trell labored to keep up.

  “She says you were supposed to return to her village in Kandori. She said you promised her a camel and five goats and that you promised to…marry her daughter?” He glared accusingly at the pirate.

  “Now, that was never part of the bargain!” Carian growled, giving the woman an explosive look. “I’ve never even met her daughter,” he insisted irritably, looking back to Trell. “And I tried to get her a damned camel, but the bloody Khurds wanted Belloth’s bloody ransom for the creature and it didn’t even look healthy. And not a one of them spoke a decent word of Common.”

  Trell relayed the pirate’s response, to which the woman launched into another long tirade. When she was finished, Trell nodded and then told Carian, “She says when you didn’t show up to fulfill your end of the bargain she got worried you would try to steal the map again and so moved her family away. She wants to know how you found her?”

  Carian scowled at the old woman. “With difficulty,” he grumbled.

  Trell looked back to the woman, who laid out her demands. Trell took it all in and turned back to Carian. “She says she doesn’t want a camel anymore, because what would she do with a camel in Xanthe? Now she wants safe passage to Agasan and a chaperoned tour through Solvayre,” and he looked back to the woman and added in the desert tongue, “You’ll love it there, it’s very nice.”

  “Agasan!” Carian veritably shrieked meanwhile. “A tour of Solvayre?”

  “Yes. She wants to tour the Solvayre vineyards and sample their wines—she says she overheard a woman talking about just such a trip. She blames you for her daughter’s capriciousness, since you never came back to marry her, and she moved them here and then the girl ran off with a—” Trell had to ask her to repeat some of her story. Then he continued translating, “a haberdasher’s son. So now since she’s already left her homeland and you’ve found her again to complete the bargain, she wants to do some traveling and see more of the world.”

  “This is preposterous!” Carian snapped exasperatedly.

  “Oh, and she wants her wood pile restocked for the winter. About—” he looked back to her for clarification and then nodded. “Yes, about so high,” and he held his hand to the level of Carian’s head.

  Carian glared in reproachful silence.

  The woman tugged on Trell’s sleeve. “Tell him I want the coin in Agasi silver—and I won’t accept stolen gold from some poor captain’s doomed ship. It has to be his own.”

  When Trell told him this, the pirate threw up his hands. “And how is she going to know if it’s my money or not,” he protested, shoving hands onto hips.

  Trell gave him a shadowy grin. “I wouldn’t bet against her, Carian.”

  Carian stalked off to swear by himself for a while.

  The woman turned her dark eyes to Trell. “Come inside for tea, Trell of the Tides. Let that pirate blow off his steam at the goats.”

  Trell followed the old woman inside and watched as she stoked the fire in her stove and put on a kettle to boil. She bade him sit down at a scrubbed wooden table and then sat down across from him, pulling her knitted woolen sweater closer about her shoulders. “The old are always cold,” she said in the desert tongue, giving him a sad smile. “I hear it is warmer in Solvayre. I am Yara, by the way.”

  “May the eye of Jai’Gar bless your fire always, Yara,” Trell replied, using the highest form of respect in his greeting.

  She smiled approvingly. “The Emir taught you very good manners, Trell of the Tides. I would not have thought that of him, though I know little of the man, in truth. Only the angry tales of Nadoriin.”

  “Doubtless both sides slander each other,” Trell admitted. He held her dark gaze for a moment, and then he asked, “How did you come to possess a weld map, Yara? It seems a strange token for a woman of the sands.”

  She eyed him shrewdly. “Perhaps one day I will tell you, but today is not that day.” She stood to tend to the kettle, which had begun whistling for attention, and poured boiling water into two ceramic cups, both painted in a mosaic pattern of blue, white and tan. It reminded Trell wistfully of Duan’Bai’s elaborate minarets. “Do you miss the desert?” he asked.

  “Always,” she said, giving him a smile. “Do you?”

  “I think I do. More than I ever thought I would.”

  “We leave roots in any place we call home,” she advised. “They tug at us to return.” When Trell merely gazed thoughtfully at his mug, she asked, “How did you come to the land of sand and sky, Trell of the Tides? You don’t seem the type to run from duty or disaster. What drove you south?”

  “I was shipwrecked.” Trell felt certain of this truth for the first time in his life. “Naiadithine took pity on me and delivered me to a seaside village called The Tides. I don’t remember much else until waking in the Emir’s palace. That was more than five years ago.”

  “And you remember nothing of your former life?”

  “I know none of my upbringing or my heritage,” he admitted, “though I remember now that I had two brothers and was educated in a tower by the sea.” He sipped his tea and was pleasantly surprised at its flavor, which reminded him of the czai tea they served everywhere in Duan’Bai. He added after another sip, “What memories I do have started coming back to me after I headed west.”

  The door opened, and Trell turned to find Carian standing in the portal. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll do everything she asks. But tell her there’s no more negotiating after this.”

  Trell translated, and Yara nodded, her dark eyes pinned inexorably on the pirate.

  Carian turned and left.

  Trell wandered over to the door and gazed after the pirate as he climbed the hill. If he knew Carian, it would be some time before they saw him again. The pirate wouldn’t forsake an opportunity to play Trumps in order to win the money he meant to give to Yara.

  The old woman came and stood beside Trell in the doorway. Her greying head barely reached his shoulder. They watched the pirate disappear over the hill together. “And that,” she said then in the common tongue, “is the way to do business with a pirate.”

  At Trell’s astonished look, Yara brushed her hands together definitively and returned to her chair. “Pirates can be trusted to keep to the Code, Trell of the Tides,” she continued in the common tongue, speaking with the barest hint of a Kandori accent as she lowered herself into her seat, “but old women have a code of their own: Never let an impudent young scoundrel think he can get the better of you.”

  Utterly amazed, Trell leaned against the open doorway and gave her a look of admiration. “Count the wrinkles on a woman’s face,” he mused, “and that is the measure of her wisdom.�
��

  Yara arched a brow. “That is an old Kandori saying. Where did you hear it? Surely not in the Akkad.”

  Trell smiled softly and shook his head. “I don’t know where I first heard it,” he admitted as he closed the door and returned to his chair. “There is much of my past that is lost to me.”

  “It seems that some of the best parts remain,” she told him gently. She placed a hand on his as he sat down. “So,” she said then, “which do you prefer? The desert language or the Common tongue?”

  “The desert tongue,” Trell said without hesitation.

  “Then we shall speak thusly,” she happily agreed, switching back to it. “So tell me, are you recently departed from the Emir’s service? Know you anything of the war?”

  Trell wrapped both hands around his tea cup, feeling its warmth taking off the day’s chill. “The Emir employs a mage now, a powerful magician. He recalled the Sundragons from isolation and set them to patrolling the skies over Akkadian-held lands. The war has stalled as a result.”

  “Sundragons,” Yara mused, arching a charcoal eyebrow. “My people know something of Sundragons.” Her dark eyes glittered as if with the knowledge. “The Kandori fortune is said to have been amassed by a Sundragon. Some stories say a Sundragon sired the line of Kandori princes, and they inherited the dragon’s fortune when the creatures were banished; others say the princes fought the Sundragons and bested them, claiming their fortune as plunder.”

  Trell couldn’t imagine the drachwyr caring enough for worldly goods to bother amassing any amount of wealth. Perhaps Rhakár, but even he seemed above such things. Even less realistic was the idea that a mortal prince bested a drachwyr in battle. Trell was willing to wage that even Mithaiya could defeat the strongest of Radov’s Talien Knights.

  Yara was considering him intently when he looked back to her. “Know you something of Sundragons, Trell of the Tides?”

  “Perhaps a little,” he admitted with a sheepish grin.

  “There is an even older legend about the Kandori fortune,” she offered then, eyeing him shrewdly. “It is said that a Sundragon once fell in love with a mortal girl, an Adept of the first strand. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but it was her compassion and intelligence that truly appended him to her. She in turn saw him for what he was, and she worked the Pattern of Life that they might live out an eternity together. The dragon showered her with gifts and riches, amassing a fortune greater than any the world had ever known, greater even than the Empress of Agasan or all of the Fire Kings of Avatar.”