Weakened to his very core, Ean slowly got to his feet, his thoughts and heart a riot of confused feelings for which there could be no expression. Pressing hands upon the mattress, he pinned the other man with a heated gaze. “Are you yet my brother, bound of oath and blood?”
“Yes, but—”
“Were you not raised at my side, my confidant, my closest friend? Did you not make yourself a target that I might live?” He clenched his teeth and declared tightly, “Did you not give your life for mine?”
Creighton bowed his head. “Yes, Ean, but—”
Ean straightened. “Then you are exactly as I remember.”
Creighton lifted his bowed head, and the prince caught a flash of his friend’s eyes beneath the shifting shadows that obscured his face. “Do you mean that?” he whispered.
Ean’s chest was tight, his throat ached and his eyes burned. “With all that I am.”
Crayon took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Then he approached, letting the shadows that obscured his features fade with each step until once again Ean looked upon the undiminished face of his blood-brother.
Ean’s heart was racing, his breath coming too fast. In the last few moments he guessed, somehow, what Creighton had become, but it was still a shock to see him thusly. He held Creighton’s obsidian gaze as long as he could, and then he slumped onto the mattress. His head spun, and he dropped his chin to chest and tried to get a hold of himself. What could not be…was.
“How?” he managed, a bare whisper.
“The First Lord,” Creighton said quietly. He stopped with his hands at his sides, his silver features caught in an expression of grave indecision. Creighton still looked himself beneath the silver mask, which was an exact impression of his features as ever they had once been. “He saved my life, even—”
“As he saved mine,” Ean finished in a tormented voice. He spun the Shade, his brother, a heated look. What wretched irony was this? He’d made so many brash mistakes, so much anger and vengefulness, and all of it misfounded!
“Everything that’s happened,” Ean gasped out, despairing of guilt, “all that has come since that night—all the trials we’ve endured, the danger I’ve put the others in…we’re all here at this moment in this place because of your death.”
“You’re here, Ean,” Creighton corrected regretfully, “because there was no other way to save your life.”
Ean stared at him. “What are you saying?”
“There is too much you need to understand for me to explain it all here, now, but you are deserving of answers, and I can promise them to you.”
Ean could do no more than accept that the Shade standing before him was indeed his friend, for to ruminate on the circumstances was too dire, too ironic…too dreadful. But he was wary of immortals that promised much and delivered little, who took and gave nothing in return. So he held Creighton’s gaze and challenged, “If not here, where? When?”
“Ean…” Creighton frowned down at the black leather gloves that covered his silver hands. Glancing back up beneath his brows, he posed, “Have you never asked yourself why Raine D’Lacourte is so interested in you? Why he chose to become involved in your affairs?”
Ean stiffened. “How can you know such things?”
“Have you never wondered why Raine so vehemently implored you not to seek out the Fifth Vestal?”
Now Ean gaped. “How do you know about that?”
Creighton bent and retrieved Ean’s sword from the floor. He laid it upon the bed as he came closer. “That night in the pit,” he began, standing now within arm’s length of the prince, “when you stopped the Geshaiwyn’s blade from killing you…that night, you worked the fifth strand.”
Ean went cold. He held Creighton’s gaze, but his blood was ice in his veins.
“Raine D’Lacourte knows that Adepts born with the gift of unworking are closely appended to the fifth strand,” Creighton said. “While they are not always fifth-strand Adepts, they have within them the dormant trait that could—and usually does—blossom into the full gift of the fifth.”
Abruptly Ean couldn’t hear any more. He pushed the Shade roughly out of his path and made for the doors, staggering outside onto his patio. The night was calm and balmy, redolent with honeysuckle and the scent of the sea, but the air felt thick in his lungs and clung damply to his skin.
Chest heaving, Ean gripped the patio railing and fought to clear the buzzing in his head—quite a different sort from the night of Rinokh’s attack.
After a long moment of silence, as he stared somewhat desperately toward the distant glimmering bay, Ean whispered, “The fifth…” and the statement held within it fear and hope that were both of them terrible to think upon.
Creighton came to stand in the doorway, his silver features gleaming in the moonlight. “Beyond the great Markal Morrelaine, there are only a handful of wielders alive today who can compel the fifth. What minor workings they manage may seem impressive, and certainly they require enormous skill, yet they do little to disturb the currents. But to work the fifth as an Adept, Ean…it would make you immensely dangerous.”
Unable to look at Creighton, Ean worked the muscles of his jaw, his throat clenched by betrayal and fury. “What does Raine want with me then?”
“He would seek to keep you from your gift. The First Lord believes the Fourth Vestal will take you to Illume Belliel as soon as possible.”
Ean shot him a tormented look. “And what would be so wrong in that? I know nothing of these gifts.”
Creighton crossed the balcony to stand at his side, so close they might’ve been as the boon companions of old; only now there was a vast divide between them. “If you mean to ever defeat the Malorin’athgul,” Creighton advised by way of answering, “you must become everything you can be—trained, tested, beaten and bested in trials aplenty until you have certainty with your talent.”
Ean turned to face him fully, anger and anguish both vying for purchase upon his features. “And who would teach me these things?” he asked hoarsely, immensely weary of contesting the same point with a revolving wheel of personages. “The zanthyr? Yourself? More midnight lessons in my dreams?”
Creighton gazed quietly upon him. “I think you know.”
Agonized, Ean spun away, hunching his shoulders against the truth as much as the supernatural creature his blood-brother had become. “Then it’s as I feared,” he whispered wretchedly. “He would make me his weapon.”
“He would give you knowledge, Ean,” Creighton returned. “How you use it is up to you.”
Fifty-six
‘Oh, his warped sense of justice can be quite convincing.’
– The Fourth Vestal Raine D’Lacourte
Fynn was ruminating on Cephrael and wishing the angiel’s ill hand wasn’t shackled so firmly around his own ankle when Carian vran Lea finally showed up. The pirate came swaggering out onto Raine’s balcony with his usual nonchalance and his black hair hanging wild about his shoulders.
“Well, it’s about time,” Fynn complained, shooting the pirate an annoyed look. He wasn’t sure if he was more irritated by the pirate’s lateness or the fact that he’d been forced to keep company with the Vestal in Carian’s stead.
Raine turned from the railing and settled the islander a hard gaze. “Ah, Carian,” he murmured with undertones of discontent. “You have much to answer for. But first, what did you discover of the node?”
The pirate leaned back against the outside wall and pulled out his pouch of tabac. “Nothing I didn’t already know.” He looked unconcerned by the Vestal’s veiled threat as he rolled the leaf and lit the fag in a lamp hanging from the wall. Leaning back again, he exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Like I said before, without traveling the node, I can’t learn much else about it. But something’s going on. There’s a shady fellow hanging around the temple.”
“What sort of fellow?” Fynn inquired.
Carian frowned at him. “The shady sort. Calls himself Franco.”
; To which Raine and Fynn replied with uniform surprise, “Franco Rohre?”
Carian eyed Raine up and down. “Tall fellow, looked not unlike yourself.”
“Carian,” Raine declared heatedly, “Franco Rohre is the reason you were sent to investigate that node, for I saw traces of his second strand workings upon the currents. You must learn what he’s done! I assure you something has been altered.”
“Undoubtedly,” the pirate agreed, “but expertly so. I wager the Great Master himself couldn’t have done a nicer job of hiding his work. I’ll tell you this much: Franco traveled the node while I looked on, and I saw nothing untoward in the passage beyond it, but I repeat myself in saying that without traveling the node myself, I can’t tell what’s been done to it.”
“Traveling it is out of the question.” Raine shook his head, crossed arms and pressed his lips together tightly, looking aggravated. After a moment, his gaze flashed to Carian. “I have no evidence beyond instinct, but I am reasonably certain that Franco Rohre is in the service of the Fifth Vestal.”
Fynn let out a slow hiss.
“You don’t say?” Carian arched brows. “That must’ve been the man I saw…winds blow me proper.”
Raine pinned him with a piercing look. “What man?”
Carian blew three smoke rings. “In the temple. He looked harmless enough—one of those aristoractic types. Franco claimed he was his patron.”
Raine grabbed his arm. “You saw the Fifth Vestal?”
Carian eyed Raine’s fingers on his person until the Truthreader released him. He took a long draw on his fag again. “Whether the man I met was the infamous Franco Rohre and his patron the Fifth Vestal….well,” and here he looked the two of them up and down quizzically, “that’s your concern.”
“That the Fifth Vestal walks Alorin at all is everyone’s concern, Carian vran Lea,” Raine returned critically. “He—”
But he got no further, for just then the zanthyr appeared amongst them.
Fynn started so fiercely he nearly fell over the railing, and Carian snarled an oath under his breath, but Raine merely gazed upon the zanthyr with reluctance, an expression of concern blended with annoyance that revealed more of his feelings than was his usual wont. “What news then, Phaedor?” he inquired.
“The prince wakes.”
The Vestal roused immediately. “Is he himself? Does he recall—”
“He remembers all.” Phaedor’s tone was black as the deep ocean on a starless winter night. He swept the Vestal with his emerald gaze. “The prince spoke the name of his attacker.”
“Who does he claim it was?”
“Rinokh.”
The name sounded as the crack of lightening; Fynn felt the word rumble in his chest and even fancied he saw ripples in his wine.
Raine leveled the zanthyr a heated stare. After a strained silence during which time Fynn grew highly uncomfortable, worrying a confrontation was imminent, the Vestal finally grunted and looked away. “It must be a trick,” he said under his breath. “Björn works deyjiin, as do his Shades. There is no other explanation.”
The zanthyr’s gaze was unyielding. Fynn was very glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of it. “There is one,” Phaedor replied. “The truth.”
“Fantasy,” Raine hissed with sudden heat, uncharacteristically flustered. He leveled the zanthyr a look of censure. “Malorin’athgul are the stuff of legends, Phaedor.”
“The Adept Wars are the stuff of legends in this age,” the zanthyr returned evenly. “Dare you claim them a fiction?”
Raine looked frustrated. “I have peered into their dark corner,” he admitted, his expression grim. “’Tis nothing attributed to them that cannot also be attributed to Björn. I know your loyalty to him, Phaedor, but the pieces fit.”
“The pieces fit both puzzles,” Phaedor warned in a low growl, “and one fits better than the other. Put your pieces together dispassionately, Vestal, and then look upon the picture you’ve made—if you dare. One will provide clarity while the other becomes more muddled still, motive buried in obscurity because no motive exists.”
“You are hardly an impartial voice!” Abruptly Raine shook his head and looked away. He braced both hands against the railing. “Logic dictates but one villain in this matter.”
Phaedor pinned the Vestal with a compelling stare. “This answer is not a question of logic but one of courage. You did not display it three centuries ago, but perhaps you will find it now.”
Carian let out a low whistle.
Raine’s expression darkened. “Yes,” he admitted begrudgingly, turning to level a diamond-hard gaze upon the zanthyr, anger and regret warring for purchase on his features, “we were cowards in those times. We couldn’t bring ourselves to believe what Björn had become. We trusted to his sense of duty, we chose to think the best of a man so admired. But three centuries have proven how falsely placed our hopes!” His gaze locked with the zanthyr’s. “I am willing to call Björn a traitor now and put no more faith in his goodness. T’khendar has poisoned him even as it poisoned Malachai—dare you deny it!”
Phaedor’s look of disgust was unbearable even to Fynn. “I never made you out to be a fool until tonight, Raine D’Lacourte.”
Then he vanished.
Fynn started with a hissed intake of breath and then deflated. “I hate it when he does that.”
Carian flicked the butt end of his fag over the railing and muttered something about insufferable immortals before disappearing back inside the villa.
Raine stared at the place the zanthyr last stood, his expression fiercely tormented.
Seeing the opportunity to make his escape, Fynn downed his wine and left the Vestal to square off against his own demons. He didn’t know what malorin’athgul were, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. All he cared about just then was that his cousin was awake.
Fynn hurried through the villa toward Ean’s rooms with thoughts of how to tell him that Trell lived running through his head, but all the while a sense of urgency was building until he was veritably running up the stairs by twos and threes. He finally burst into Ean’s suite and sprinted across Ean’s sitting room, throwing open the bedroom door, and—
“Shade and darkness!” Fynn staggered back. But in the next breath he’d recovered and drew his blade. He rushed forward brandishing the weapon with a growl of rage.
“Fynn, wait!” Ean shouted, but the Shade who stood beside him merely raised his hand, and Fynn was ripped off his feet. He flew ten paces through the air and crashed into the corner, collapsing upon the floor with an undignified thud and clatter of steel.
Ean turned Creighton a glare of reproach, but the Shade looked unrepentant. “We’ve little time now, Ean. Hurry.”
Dazed and bewildered, Fynn struggled back to his feet. His head was throbbing painfully, and when he pressed fingers to his skull they came away wet with blood. He lifted val Lorian grey eyes to view his cousin, who was hurriedly shoving clothing into a bag, and then looked to the Shade who stood behind him.
Then he looked harder.
His eyes widened in horror. “Creighton?”
“I’m sorry, Fynnlar,” Creighton murmured, sounding contrite even if his silver features revealed none of the emotion. “There’s no time to explain.”
Fynn’s skin crawled just looking at the freakish doppelganger of Ean’s blood-brother. That’s when he realized he couldn’t move. “You—bastard!”
Ean spun a look from a frozen Fynn to the Shade, who shrugged helplessly. Looking displeased, Ean closed his pack and slung it over his shoulder. He was frightfully unsteady on his feet.
He came to face Fynn with the Shade close at his side, as if for support. His silver face was unmistakably that of Creighton’s. The entire scene was so incomprehensible that Fynn worried he’d finally crossed the line from inebriation into hallucination.
“I’m so sorry, Fynn,” Ean murmured as he paused before the royal cousin. His agonized expression seemed to convey the canyon of b
etrayal that now must lie between them. “I know you can’t possibly understand.” He grunted ruefully and added under his breath, “I barely understand, myself.”
Fynn glared at him in brittle accusation.
“Ean…” Creighton urged.
With one last look of regret, Ean turned away from Fynn and followed the Shade outside.
Fynnlar remained in his guise of an ill-conceived statue—immobile save for the unending stream of invective he muttered to occupy the time—until a chambermaid finally came to tend Ean’s hearth and found him standing there. She ran off in a rush of screaming, which drew Brody and the soldiers, who fetched Raine and Seth, who finally tracked down the zanthyr, who to his utter disgust released him as easily as the Shade had bound him.
Then Fynn told them what he’d been trying to tell them all along—though no one had been listening amid the surprise and commotion of trying to free him. The instant he could move, however, Fynn grabbed Raine roughly by the shoulders. “Listen to me, you deaf-eared lout! He took Ean!”
Raine stiffened, and the room went silent. “Who took Ean?”
Fynn rubbed the fingers of one hand with the other, trying to work some blood back into them. He aimed an ill-humored glare at Phaedor. Somehow he was sure this was the zanthyr’s fault. “A Shade.”
“A…Shade?” Raine seemed to need a moment to process the information. “You mean an actual Shade—”
“Yes a gods-damned Shade! He took Ean, I’m telling you!”
Raine finally looked appropriately shocked. “Where did they go?”
“They didn’t exactly delineate their plans to me!”
Raine gaped for one heartbeat, then he spun into action. “Fortune curse us all, it’s happening tonight!” He spun to Seth. “Ready the men—and find Carian vran Lea!”
Abruptly the room cleared. Only the zanthyr remained, watching Fynnlar with arms crossed.
“What?” Fynn remarked churlishly. He walked over to pour himself a glass of wine from a decanter on Ean’s mantel.
“A Shade took Ean,” the zanthyr repeated dubiously, clearly questioning Fynn’s recounting of events. “It begs the question, what Shade?”
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 98