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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Trell sensed a certain truth in this story. For some reason, he thought of Náiir and his sad, dark eyes. “How did the story end?”

  “They lived for hundreds of years together, the fair mortal girl and her dragon lover, but eventually the woman grew tired of life, though never tired of her dragon-prince. Yet he saw the sadness in her eyes, and how she yearned for a new life in the Returning. He saw that immortality was not meant for such frail creatures, for their minds were too fragile to endure the unending years. So he flew with her into the heavens, higher and higher, until she slept and would not reawaken. He used his dragon magic to pin her to the cosmos then, and there she remains, a bright star to light the way for other tired souls who would find their path to a new life in the Returning.”

  Trell considered the story with a thoughtful gaze. He wondered how much truth was in the legend and if he would ever have the chance to ask Náiir about it; but more than this, he was curious about mention of the Returning. “I didn’t realize the Kandori believed in the Returning,” he said.

  She eyed him sagaciously. “Most truths are true whether you believe them or not, Trell of the Tides.”

  Trell conceded her point.

  She sat back in her chair with a disagreeable frown. “But you are not completely wrong about us. The Kandori believe there could be gods above men, and we hold them in regard out of respect for our forebears, but we do not know it to be true, and we trust the empirical long before we trust to faith. The Nadori desert begets practicality in its children, for prayers don’t bring rain when the aqueduct runs dry for lack of tending, and no amount of fervent chanting ever got crops planted or to harvest.” She eyed him quizzically with her wrinkled dark eyes. “But you named the desert gods to me several times this day. Do you believe…or do you know?”

  Trell considered her question. After a moment, he answered carefully, “I believe only what I have experienced.”

  “Ah ha!” she cried happily, clapping her hands. “We are not so different then. But come,” she said, leaning across to pat his arm. “Let us ready a bed for you. No doubt that pirate will be long in returning.”

  “I can sleep in the barn,” Trell offered.

  “Nonsense. You can sleep in my daughter’s bed. She won’t be using it.”

  Trell rose to follow her, asking, “Where is your daughter now, Yara? Did she truly move away with her haberdasher’s son?”

  Yara turned him a look of quiet regret. “My Habivi has been thirteen years in the grave. She gave me six grandchildren before she passed. All of them are in Agasan with their families.” She gave him a wry smile. “Do I look young enough to have a child of marrying age, Trell of the Tides? I thought you smarter than that.”

  Trell gazed curiously at her. “Why the lie, Yara?”

  “That pirate trades in trickery and deceit,” she said critically. “A taste of his own craft is good for him.”

  “He’s not all bad.”

  “No,” she agreed, giving him a soft smile, “else why would I bother trying to teach him anything at all? Come now.” She waved him to follow. “We’ll make up a bed for you and then see what we can throw into the pot for dinner. If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve been better prepared.”

  “I’ll try to give you fair warning next time,” Trell said as he followed her from the room.

  “You do that, khortdad. Surprise guests, like hemorrhoids, are rarely welcome visitors.”

  Fifty

  ‘Do not be burdened with the morality of petty kings. My will shall be your guide.’

  – The Prophet Bethamin

  Ean dreamed.

  In his dream, a voice called out to him from the darkness, calling his name. Ean felt fingers of menace reaching out for him; darkly twisted, gnarled things that once clenched would merely petrify. Ean turned and sprinted through the darkness, but no matter which way he ran, the voice grew closer, sharper. Suddenly a face appeared in front of him, and Ean drew back, cringing away from a man with boiling eyes…

  The dream shifted, and Ean was back in camp. He looked around, seeing his companions sleeping beneath the silent night; even the zanthyr reclined quiet and still against a tree with his hood pulled low over his eyes. Ean got to his feet, pulling his cloak closer around him. He caught the flash of something in the distance, so he headed off into the trees.

  There were hours yet until dawn, and the forest slept drenched in fog. No stars were visible through the blanketing mist, and only a dim paling told of the moon. All was quiet, the air still, but Ean sensed that the night was alive.

  He felt it in a hundred different places on his skin, in the way the fog rose and the near river rushed and the world continued living, moving and changing even while mankind slept. He sensed the patterns at large about the world, the many imprints working seamlessly in concert, hidden but active in propelling the realm forward through time. And he sensed an awareness, as if the night were its own entity that harbored the knowledge of everything happening within its ken.

  Then, into this sense of calm, intruded chaos. Like rainfall pelting an otherwise still pond, a presence emitting waves of discord disturbed the quiet night. Ean felt him coming nearer, preceded by a dissonant symphony of frenzied energy, elae shrinking back from the touch of something foul, retreating as the tide from a treacherous shore.

  Ean knew that he should do something to protect himself from the malevolent onslaught, as he’d done in other dreams, but the knowledge was frustratingly missing, trapped beneath a veil of black unconsciousness—though he knew on some level that once it had been second-nature to him.

  And then the man appeared, the mist unfolding around him. Ean went cold; it was the same man who’d searched for him the night the zanthyr came, the face from the first part of his dream.

  What is happening? Am I awake or dreaming still?

  “Who are you?” Ean demanded. “What do you want?”

  The stranger smiled, but his eyes were cold. “Your death,” answered the man, “or your oath. Either will do.”

  Waves of malevolence charged the air between them. Ean couldn’t imagine binding himself to any such man. “I would take my own life before I allowed it to be of use to you,” he promised, though it startled him how much effort it took to speak the words. It was as if the man already bound him with invisible waves of his chill power.

  The stranger chuckled, a merciless sound. “Don’t you know you are already my pawn?” he asked with unwholesome mirth. His eyes gleamed dangerously across the distance, while the ground between them lay cloaked in fog. “You doomed creatures live out your existence only to benefit our aims. Were you to throw yourself from a cliff in this moment, it would be to our advantage as readily as if you put forth your talent of unworking to achieve those tasks I assigned to you. You are but walking to your deaths—every moment you live is only taking you swiftly there. There is but one end for mankind. You cannot but seek it in your every breath!”

  Ean railed against his words. “You’re wrong,” he argued, but his declaration lacked conviction. Tendrils of the man’s power had him in their grasp, and he found it difficult to concentrate; strange, warped images kept impinging upon his thoughts, twisted images of dreadful torments. Fighting to stay focused, Ean clenched his teeth and gasped, “You don’t know us at all.”

  The stranger’s grin seemed the face of Death. “You don’t know yourselves. You live all your lives in denial of the inevitable. There is no future but death for mankind. What use to prolong it?” When Ean didn’t immediately answer, the stranger gazed knowingly upon him. “So you begin to see, do you not? Is it not a kindness to unmake those who are but doomed already? Where is the mercy in perpetuating the torment, extending their suffering until they do, finally, expire?”

  Ean shook his head. The man’s words felt wrong—all wrong—yet he couldn’t see any other truth through the power that clouded his mind. Twisted images of death and dying flashed painfully, and he felt his own will dying, a sputtering
ember unable to catch the flame. Does not everyone march toward death in the end? he caught himself wondering. What was the purpose of this life if not to merely walk a long path toward a destination already known?

  No. No!

  “No!” Ean clenched his teeth and fixed his gaze defiantly upon the man. He tried to think of meaningful things, certain now that the stranger was intruding upon his mind, warping truths even as his dark power eroded elae. “No! There is purpose. There is greatness. There is love.”

  “Delusions all,” whispered the stranger.

  “There is virtue, there is goodness,” Ean insisted desperately.

  “Illusions devised to rationalize a pointless existence.”

  Ean felt the stranger’s cold power reaching out for him again, and he shrank from it in horror. He began to feel that sense of unraveling from his dream. Looking down, he couldn’t see his feet, lost as they were in the fog, but a sense of panic claimed him. He knew there was something he should do to defend himself; he knew he could battle this evil, but desperation shut him down, and fear gripped him in a dreadful embrace.

  Ean spun away and ran headlong through the trees, through the fog, trying to escape the terrible power reaching out for him, trying to outrun the stranger’s maniacal laughter. He tripped over a rock and barreled into the earth, scraping his chin, his palms, his knees. He cried out and jumped back to his feet, desperate to find his bearings, but he saw only dense fog in every direction. He was lost, and the power was close to claiming him. He could sense the tumultuous ripples that preceded its arrival, waves of deadly malice flying before the storm.

  Ean made to run again.

  “Ean…”

  The familiar voice stopped him in his tracks, and he spun, reaching out toward the voice. “Creighton!”

  In all his dreams since the night of their parting, he had not heard his blood-brother’s voice. Hearing it now with such clarity brought a grief so sharp that he felt cleaved. He fell to his knees and reached out again in the direction of the sound, tears streaming down his cheeks before he knew they had even formed. “Creighton…”

  A figure approached through the fog, and Ean recognized the shape of his blood-brother’s shoulders and the line of his body, even though his face remained hidden in the drifting mist. “Ean,” he said again with sorrow and longing. “Don’t do this. Don’t let him defeat you before the battle is even begun.”

  Ean buried his face in his hands feeling a desperate sense of grief. “He twists everything. I can’t see the truth. I can’t see the beginning or the end of it—” Suddenly he looked up, and it was as though the world came back into focus.

  “It is what they do,” Creighton said simply. “It’s why they’re so toxic to us.” He circled behind Ean and kneeled there, placing hands on the prince’s shoulders.

  With Creighton’s reassuring presence, Ean felt the remaining vestiges of the stranger’s power fading. He basked in the warmth of his friend’s touch, feeling terribly weary, his eyelids fighting to stay open. He knew it was only a dream, but had he been given the chance, he would’ve lingered there to the end of his days. “How do I defeat him when he obscures the pattern from my sight, Cray?” he murmured. “How do I find where it begins and ends?”

  Creighton gently guided Ean onto his side and brushed a cool hand across his eyes to close them. “You will learn. But not tonight.”

  “Don’t go…” Ean whispered, but he was already tumbling back into dreamless slumber.

  ***

  The Shade pulled free of Dagmar’s hands and leaned his head back against the chair with a weary sigh. His mind ached, but not nearly as painfully as his heart. He lifted obsidian eyes to the Second Vestal, who gazed compassionately upon him.

  “That was one of them, wasn’t it,” asked the Shade, “that man who was seeking Ean, trying to invade his mind?”

  “It was,” the Vestal confirmed.

  The Shade shuddered. “My lord, how can a power feel so malicious in the hands of one man and so…neutral in my own?”

  “His power radiates his intent,” Dagmar advised, “and malorin’athgul are naught but volatile creatures seeking the end of days.”

  The Shade exhaled heavily and closed his eyes. “I thought it would be wonderful seeing Ean again,” he confessed. “Instead my heart feels…broken.” He opened his dark eyes to meet the Vestal’s pale green gaze. “I believed…when I took my oath, even then I believed…but now I see in a way that was unclear to me before. My lord,” he paused and furrowed his silver brow, “am I ready for this assignment? So much depends on what few moments are left.”

  “You have the First Lord’s knowledge now within your ken,” Dagmar advised. “Do not fear that it will elude you; when you have need of the understanding, it will present itself to you.”

  “But there is so little time and so much he must learn. The things you would have me teach Ean are dangerous workings even when learned in their proper order, but I must instruct him with leaps and bounds, leaving much uncovered.”

  “This is the task before you,” Dagmar agreed.

  “A single misstep could kill him,” the Shade whispered wretchedly. “I cannot bear the thought of his death upon my conscience.”

  “Yet he bears the thought of yours even now.”

  The Shade swallowed with the truth of this and bowed his head. This guilt was a torment he kept close to his heart, for it reminded him of the life he once knew and treasured. Composing himself, he met the Vestal’s gaze. “I will guard his dreams, my lord, and I will reach out to him when the time is right.”

  Dagmar smiled. “Good.” He held out his hands again, palms open. “Are you ready now to find her dreams?”

  The Shade trembled at the thought, his own fears so palpable as to rest his weary head upon a pillow of them. But he was excited as well, for where there was life, there was hope. And that was something the malorin’athgul could never understand.

  “Yes, milord,” he said as anxiety welled along with anticipation. He placed his hands within Dagmar’s once more, providing the contact the Vestal needed for rapport.

  Would she love him still?

  The Shade rode a crest of hope back into the world of dreams.

  ***

  “I’ve found him!” someone called. “He’s here!”

  Ean swam up from the depths of a dreamless sleep, becoming aware of voices near him. Finally he opened his eyes to find Alyneri hovering over him, her face pale and drawn. Immediately he sat up and took her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong? What happened? Is someone hurt?”

  She stared at him, horrified.

  “Where?” Fynn called from far off, somewhere among the trees, and then the zanthyr emerged from the forest, a tall shadow moving with swift and powerful grace. “Here,” he called to Fynn, and his deep voice filled the forest like a lion’s roar.

  Ean looked around and only then noticed that he wasn’t in camp. “Where are we?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “You tell us,” Alyneri whispered. She tugged on his hand. “Come away from the edge—please, Ean. I cannot bear it.”

  Only then did Ean turn behind him and see the cliff. Had he but rolled onto his back during the night, he would’ve tumbled hundreds of feet to his death. Ean did move away from the edge then—and right quickly.

  Fynn came running up, followed by Brody and Rhys. “Shade and darkness, you’ll be the death of me!” he exclaimed with a heated glare. “What in Tiern’aval were you thinking wandering off in the middle of the bloody night? And how did you get past the watch?”

  Ean suppressed a shudder as the chilling understanding hit him. “It was foggy,” he murmured.

  “It was clear as daylight all night long,” Rhys said, sounding almost frightened.

  Ean shifted his gaze to the captain. “In my dream, I mean.” He tried to work some moisture back into his mouth, which had gone very dry at the prospect of how his night might’ve ended so differently.

  “Let’s get ba
ck to camp,” the zanthyr said. He took Ean around the shoulder and encouraged him away.

  Ean walked in a daze, as incredulous as he was disturbed. Had it been a dream, or had the man actually been there? And if he was real…what specter had appeared in Creighton’s guise?

  By Cephrael, I heard his voice!

  The zanthyr turned him a look of bedevilment tinged with concern. “You must be able to protect yourself at least in your dreams, Ean val Lorian. I cannot be everywhere at all times.”

  “I thought it was a dream.” Shaking his head, Ean added, “It had to be a dream…”

  The zanthyr considered him. “There are workings that blur the line between wakefulness and slumber,” he advised after a moment. “They are dark workings and not attempted by the faint of heart.”

  “The man in my dream… it was the same stranger who came the other night.” Ean turned the zanthyr a stricken look.

  “That went without saying.”

  Ean pushed a hand through his cinnamon hair, staring off. “It was…and it wasn’t like the other dreams.”

  The zanthyr cast him a sharp look. “What other dreams?”

  Ean cast him a sideways glance. “I’ve been having dreams since I woke at Fersthaven. They almost always involve the same two men and my unworking something…big…in the darkness beyond my sight. Sometimes I get to the end of the thread, and other times…” he shrugged.

  “And last night?”

  “Last night was similar in that I felt the same menace beyond my sight, this force that hated me and wanted me destroyed. The man spoke to me, but his words were…twisted. Treacherous. I couldn’t see the pattern and couldn’t find where to pull to begin to unravel it.”