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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Pictures covered the wall thick as plaster, some drawn skillfully, others hastily penned. Many had the perfection of an Illuminator’s hand—those artists who used the fourth strand to pin the exact image of a man upon parchment, canvas or even stone. These latter illuminata seemed uncannily lifelike, staring with eyes that might truly have been looking out from the other side of the paper.

  Men, women and children gathered before the wall and its mounds of wilting flowers, prayer beads, melted candles and spattered wax, not to mention a host of miniature idols representative of various faiths.

  Her Grace stopped to gaze sadly upon the display. “A mourning wall,” she murmured.

  Rhys turned her a disagreeable look.

  Tanis had never seen anything like it. “What’s a mourning wall?”

  “A shrine for the missing and the lost,” she answered. She walked closer, passing between the line of mourners and the stacks of offerings to gaze intently at the many pictures. Tanis saw men and women depicted there and some children as well. A good number of the pictures had a tiny symbol somewhere upon the canvas—a circle crossed with three lines that formed a jagged letter A. He counted easily twenty faces marked with the symbol just within easy sight. Tanis knew that symbol, called the iederal’a. It was the symbol of the Adept race. He forced a dry swallow.

  “Look how many are missing,” Alyneri whispered. She pressed fingers across her mouth and shook her head, her brown eyes wide.

  “Someone is waging war against us,” said an old man who had been staring at the illuminata of an older woman with lustrous white hair, her blue eyes the azure hue of the bay, which even then dominated the distance, viewed between a sculptured archway across the square. He turned to look at Alyneri with tormented dark eyes glowering beneath bushy white eyebrows. “Tis not enough, the insidious wasting that threatens our race, but now they’re systematically exterminating us, one by one. At least Malachai’s damnable war was one we could see, with enemies we could fight. How do you fight against the Balance? What chance have we when Cephrael has determined our race to die?”

  For some reason, the man’s words reminded Tanis of the stranger who’d invaded their camp. He remembered the stranger’s cold malevolence, how his very presence felt antipathetic to their world, and he wondered if the old man was wrong. What if someone was behind all of the terrible things happening?

  Alyneri walked over to the old man and looked at the image of the woman. “She was your wife?”

  He nodded. “A Healer. She had the biggest, kindest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. And now…”

  “Epiphany willing you shall meet again in the Returning,” Alyneri murmured.

  His gaze hardened in bitterness. “That’s enough for you, is it? The idea of meeting again in the next life?”

  “I find encouragement in it, yes.”

  He looked back to the image of his wife. “Then you haven’t known true love.” He leaned and kissed the illuminata and then turned his back on them and walked away.

  Alyneri glanced sadly to Rhys, and they moved on as well.

  When they finally reached the tailor recommended to Her Grace by the villa’s seneschal, Rhys offered to let Tanis accompany him while he ran his own errands rather than staying to wait on Alyneri. Her Grace had turned morose since leaving the mourning wall, so the lad jumped at the chance to escape the miasma of her mood, for it reminded him unceasingly of Prince Ean’s dire state.

  The city streets were jammed with traffic as Tanis followed the captain down the sidewalk dodging merchants and squirming around stands and kiosks as he tried to keep up. Rhys walked with his back rod-straight, towering above most everyone they met on the street, and with his massive shoulders and kingdom greatsword across his back, the crowd parted to let him pass, leaving Tanis to maneuver through the flotsam in his wake.

  Rhys first stop was the city’s premier armorer where the captain placed an order for his men. Tanis spent the time browsing in the shop, and he came across an arm-sheath that he suspected would fit his dagger from Phaedor perfectly. Grabbing up the sheath with excitement, he turned and asked the craftsman, “Sir, how much for this?”

  Rhys cast him an ill-humored look over his shoulder, but Tanis had his own money and didn’t care what the captain thought.

  The armorer, who was white-haired if still robust, gave him a fatherly sort of smile. “Seven shillings, lad.”

  Grinning with excitement, Tanis approached the counter. He laid down the sheath while he retrieved his money, counted out the correct coinage, and handed it over. As the merchant was depositing the coin into his lockbox, Tanis withdrew the dagger Phaedor had given him. He laid that on the counter too, alongside the sheath. “Will this fit, do you think, sir?”

  The armorer’s eyes widened upon sight of the weapon. “What in Tiern’aval…?” He picked up the dagger and looked it over. “Merdanti?” He lifted a bewildered gaze to Tanis. “How did such a fair youth come by a zanthyr’s dagger?”

  “It was a gift, sir—Raine’s truth,” Tanis told him while Rhys glared and the armorer gazed in wonder. Then he propped elbows on the high counter and confided, “But my lady, you see, she doesn’t like my wearing the dagger on my belt. She says I might as well attach a target to my back for all that carrying a Merdanti dagger is inviting for trouble, but I’m fourteen now, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t wear it, and—”

  “A gift?” the merchant repeated as if he’d heard nothing else. He looked utterly mystified. “From whom?”

  Tanis gave him a curious look. “From the zanthyr that made it, sir. How else could one come by a zanthyr’s dagger?”

  At that, Rhys snatched Tanis’s dagger out of the merchant’s hand, swiped his new sheath off the counter, and marched him outside. Back on the street, he shoved both items into Tanis’s hands and growled, “Mind you don’t tell our business to anyone else!”

  Then he took off in his brisk walk, forcing Tanis to run after him while trying to secure the dagger into its new sheath and the new sheath to his forearm while also keeping his sleeve lodged above his elbow and one eye on where Rhys was headed.

  Their next destination was to see about a new horse for Cayal, whose mount had fallen lame. After arguing with the merchant for at least ten minutes, Rhys finally agreed to a price that was half of what the man had first asked for the horse. For a few extra shillings, the man agreed to have his boy deliver the new steed to the villa where they were staying, and then they were off again.

  As he trailed along after the captain, Tanis began to wonder about the business transaction he’d just witnessed. So he asked Rhys, “My Lord Captain?”

  Rhys gave him a sideways glance full of immediate annoyance. “What?”

  “Was that horse really worth ten crown?”

  “He was worth what I paid for him and not one shilling more,” Rhys said.

  “Did the owner know that?”

  “Of course.”

  That confused Tanis. “But if the horse is only worth the five crown that you paid for him, and the owner knew that, then why did he ask for ten crown?”

  “Because it’s customary,” Rhys said. “You never ask for what something is worth because you’ll end up getting less than it’s worth.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” the boy protested. “Why ask for more than what something is worth if you know what it’s really worth? If it’s really worth what you’re asking for it, people should pay it. Right?”

  Rhys gritted his teeth. “No. If he only asked for five crown, people would think that the horse was only worth two and a half, and then he wouldn’t get the price that the horse was fairly worth.”

  “But you knew the horse was worth five crown, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Was that just because the man asked for ten?”

  Rhys gave him an aggravated look. “I knew the horse was worth five crown because I knew the horse was worth five crown.”

  Just then they crossed a street where
they narrowly avoided being hit by a covered wagon full of gypsies, veered around a mother scolding her mud-smeared child, and wove their way through a display of vegetable-laden carts blocking the sidewalk while their owner chatted with a friend. Those immediate dangers then past, Tanis returned to the conversation.

  “So you knew the horse was worth five crown,” he repeated to the captain. “So that means that if the man asked for five crown, you’d have paid him five crown without an argument?”

  Rhys scowled at him. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” Tanis replied. “If no one ever teaches me anything, then you can’t expect me to get any smarter. What if I have to buy something one day for you, my Lord Captain? Wouldn’t you like to know I’d do it right?”

  Rhys gave him a sooty look.

  “So would you have paid him the five crown?” the boy persisted.

  “No, I’d have paid him three.”

  “Three!” Tanis exclaimed. “But you said the horse was worth five! Three hardly seems an honorable fee, my lord. Why wouldn’t you have paid him five?”

  “Because,” said Rhys with an affronted glare, “if the owner was stupid enough to only ask five crown for that horse, then he deserved to get three for it. The horse would be better off with a smarter owner anyway.”

  As Tanis was pondering that logic, they ducked under a wooden scaffolding, barged through the middle of a brawl of rumpled-looking children, and turned up a side street toward a sword maker’s workshop, the craftsman coming highly recommended by a man named Ewan Favre, who was somehow connected to Fynn and whose name Tanis had heard mentioned with enough frequency to cause him to remember it. Just outside the sword maker’s, Rhys turned and gave Tanis a penetrating look. “Now keep quiet while we’re inside. That means keep your wagging mouth shut.”

  “I know what it means,” Tanis grumbled.

  In and out and they were back on the street.

  “You know, my lord,” Tanis remarked as they headed through a square of upscale taverns whose patrons sat at café tables shaded by orange trees, “I’ll never learn a thing if I don’t ask when I don’t understand something.”

  “Children should be seen and not heard,” Rhys muttered.

  “I’m hardly a child,” Tanis protested. “I’m—”

  “I know, I know,” he cut in testily, “you’re fourteen now.”

  “And besides,” Tanis pointed out, “Prince Ean asks just as many questions as I do when he’s trying to understand something.”

  “So?”

  “So…” Tanis paused, frowned at him. “So, I mean, I don’t talk any more than he does.”

  “And your point?”

  Tanis thought about that for a moment. Then he gave the captain a suspicious look. “Are you saying Prince Ean talks too much?”

  Rhys halted, turned, and glared at the boy. “I’m saying you talk too much,” he grumbled. Then he spun on his heel and strode on.

  When Tanis caught up with him, the lad said, “Don’t you think it’s important to ask questions, my lord?”

  Rhys assumed a pained expression. “What do I look like to you, Tanis? The Book of Cosmic Answers?”

  Tanis frowned.

  “Who am I to say yes or no?” Rhys went on. “I’m a soldier. I do what I’m told. I’m supposed to follow orders, not question them.”

  “But I’m not a soldier.”

  “You don’t say.”

  At this juncture, Tanis concluded that it wasn’t easy to carry on a conversation with someone who didn’t want to converse with you.

  They stopped to look around a saddler’s shop whose window display had caught Rhys’ eye, and that reminded Tanis of the horse and the fact that he was still confused about it. As Rhys was admiring a cantled saddle tooled with inlaid silver, Tanis ventured to ask, “My lord? About that horse. If you didn’t know that the horse was worth five crown, might you have paid the man what he asked?”

  Rhys gave him a tormented look.

  Tanis persisted, saying, “I just don’t understand why someone would ask a higher price for something than he knew it was worth.”

  At that, the saddler looked up from the stirrup he was piercing and grinned at Rhys. The captain flushed, grabbed Tanis by the ear and dragged him from the shop.

  “Look, Tanis,” he growled as the boy stumbled along after him batting at the captain’s fingers, which felt like steel pincers on his fragile ear, “you don’t need to know the logic behind every single thing that happens in the entire realm.”

  “I was only asking!” Tanis yowled as he tried to pry his ear free of the captain’s hold.

  Rhys released him, and Tanis darted out of reach with a glare like an affronted barn cat. “If someone picks a fight with you,” Rhys went on, “you don’t stop to ask him why. You just hit him back, right?”

  “Unless he’s bigger than you are,” Tanis pointed out, “in which case you run.”

  Rhys shook his head and grumbled something about boys raised without a father’s hand.

  “But about the horse, my lord,” the lad said after ensuring he was well out of fingers’ reach. “It seems to me that if the man knew that he could only get half of what he asked for, and he wanted ten crown for the horse, then he should have asked for twenty crown.”

  “Twenty crown!” Rhys exclaimed. “Why that’s absurd! No one would pay that price.”

  “But they’re not expected to,” Tanis pointed out. “By custom rule, he’d have gotten half of what he asked—that is, ten crown—which is still twice as much as the horse is worth but half what he asked for, and since he was already making a profit on the horse when selling at five crown, then he could have come away twice the richer.”

  “It wouldn’t work that way, Tanis,” Rhys said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because his competitor would undersell him at ten crown and no one would buy from him at all.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” the boy muttered.

  Rhys looked over at his bewildered face and fought to suppress a smile.

  “So, my lord?” Tanis asked a little later as they were walking across another square whose stones were damp from the spray of a cascading fountain in its center.

  Rhys clenched his teeth. “What?”

  “Would Prince Ean have paid the man five crown?”

  Rhys scowled. “His Highness would have paid him twelve.”

  “But the man was only asking for ten!”

  The captain harrumphed irritably. “My point exactly.”

  Leaving the square, they turned a corner and headed back through the garment district toward the tailor’s, walking beside window after window packed with bolts of colorful cloth, elaborate gowns, velvet cloaks and courtly attire, or frilly hats with lots of feathers that Tanis marveled anyone would wear. Who’d want to go to court looking like a rooster?

  The captain had gotten ahead of him while Tanis was gawking at the strange hats. When the lad caught up with him again, he inquired in earnest, “My lord, do you really think it wrong of me to ask so many questions?”

  In front of them, a glassmaker stood on his front stoop shaking the remains of a broken vase and scolding a pair of young boys who looked ready to bolt at any second. “Who am I to judge, Tanis?” Rhys replied, eyeing the demonstrative merchant with mild annoyance as they passed. “I’m just a soldier; it’s all I’ve ever been trained to do. Your life is destined to be far different from mine, you being a Truthreader and all. I mean, by the time I was your age, I was already a squire for the king. By seventeen, I’d entered my formal training, and I was knighted at twenty.”

  Tanis gazed at him rather wistfully as he thought about such a life. “I’ve always wanted to be a knight,” the lad confided. “Do you think I might ever have the chance, my Lord Captain?”

  Rhys’ look softened. “You know the right people, Tanis,” he replied, “Prince Ean trusting you the way he does, and you’re sure to be given y
our own place at court when we return to Calgaryn.” Then he frowned. “You’d need a title though.”

  Tanis certainly didn’t have one of those. He gave the captain a meager smile instead. “That’s all right, my lord,” he responded. “I don’t really need to be a knight.”

  At the next corner, they got stuck on the wrong side of a wagon loaded with sacks of flour. The driver was trying to maneuver his team backwards up across the sidewalk in order to line up the rear of his wagon with the baker’s unloading platform and making a real mess of things. Rhys regarded Tanis the entire time they waited, with the shrill voice of the irate glassmaker still resounding in the distance. “You’re a good lad, Tanis,” the captain said as they began walking once more. “Your heart is pure.”

  A thought occurred to Tanis then, and after thanking Rhys for the complement, he said, “You must really care about Prince Ean, don’t you, my lord?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Assumption?” Tanis replied.

  Rhys shrugged. “The prince is destined for greater things than I,” he admitted, neither one of them willing to speculate if their prince would in fact recover, finding the hope of full recovery as the only acceptable truth. “Never in my life would I have imagined such a quest as his, but His Highness is so intelligent—half the time he’s predicting the day after tomorrow while I’m still pondering over yesterday’s failings.”

  “He is smart,” Tanis agreed.

  “And he’s so quick on his feet,” Rhys continued, his voice colored with a certain measure of pride, “he thinks fast and reacts faster—which traits make a good soldier. Plus, he’s always following right along with things. You can’t put one past Prince Ean.”

  “I think he’s very lucky to have you protecting him,” Tanis told him.

  The captain shrugged. “He’s got that zanthyr now. I just don’t trust the damnable creature. His Highness doesn’t realize his own importance to his father and his kingdom, else he wouldn’t either.”

  “Phaedor cares very deeply for Prince Ean.”

  “Does he now?” Rhys eyed him skeptically. “I suppose he told you that?”