Helpless against the rushing tide, Pelas tumbled within it back into oblivion.
Nineteen
“Illusion becomes reality when collective agreement is achieved on the illusion and when enough agree that the illusion should persist.”
–Sobra I’ternin, Section VII.II The Laws & Esoterics of Patterning, Twenty-Second Esoteric
Tanis roused into darkness, then to kaleidoscopic light. Everything around him seemed to spin, combine, and explode again. Pinpoint stars trailed colorful tails as they swirled. He felt disoriented. With no horizon to determine up or down, he couldn’t tell if he was falling, spinning or simply lying still while everything else spun.
Instinctively he pushed outwards with his mind, hoping to strike something solid he could hold onto, an anchor by which he might orient himself. As his awareness expanded outward in its search, he sensed…not exactly the edges of space; rather a perception of dimension, a framework, and then of things filling the space within that frame.
In the way one seeks to focus through a fog, Tanis tried focusing his mind on the vague forms he was perceiving, to force them to take some shape. Eventually, the spinning light slowed…and became—
Tanis clenched his teeth and tried to hold the impressions still in his mind, but it felt like trying to hold in the light of an exploding star—
Suddenly the forms dispersed into crazy spirals again.
Tanis tried once more to force the world to become still. He tried again to perceive the dimension of space and then to sense the things filling that space.
Again the swirling lights began to slow…
After a lengthy span of time, they congealed into wavering shapes. At one point it seemed as if his concept might actually hold and become solid, but Tanis was pushing against an oddly pliant resistance. It accepted the pressure of his will, but the instant he relented, it sprang back again into the shape it wanted to assume.
Finally exhausted by the effort, Tanis surrendered to the disorientation. He closed his eyes, expecting that sense of vertigo to return…but rather than perceiving the swirling lights beyond his closed lids, he sensed instead a solid band of light that felt bright, almost like…daylight? A comforting pressure resolved beneath his back.
Tanis hastily opened his eyes and sat up.
The daybed he was lying on was positioned against one wall of an arcade. Beyond the arcade’s carved columns and groin-vaulted ceiling spread a sunlit garden teeming with flora. The arcade adjoined another arm and continued on to form a courtyard enclosure. The surroundings were palatial.
Sitting up more fully to better look around, Tanis saw a woman standing several steps away, staring open-mouthed at him.
Tanis pushed palms to his eyes, took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, but the woman was still gaping at him.
Tanis swung his feet to the chequered marble floor and looked over at her. She was tall and willowy and wore a foreign-looking gown of aqua silk wrapped many times about her form. Her long auburn hair trailed in a braid across one shoulder. Tanis braved an uncertain smile. “Um…hello.”
She clapped a hand across her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears.
He had no idea why she was upset, or for that matter, what was happening—what had happened—where he was, who she was…
She blinked dual tears and turned away.
Tanis stood and took a tentative step closer. “Have I done something to upset you?”
She was silent for so long, he began to wonder if she’d heard him or if she didn’t speak his language. But she finally dabbed the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hands and whispered, “I…thought you’d escaped.”
And just like that, Tanis knew her. It was less in her features and coloring than the way her words felt in his mind. “You’re the Avieth.” He did not say Sinárr’s Avieth, though it’s how he thought of her in that moment.
She turned him a barren look. “I knew he would want you.” She dabbed at her face again. “When I saw you in the laboratory…elae had all but left me, yet you still glowed.”
Tanis remembered their conversation and how ravaged he’d felt upon first realizing she was an Avieth, tethered and bound. Gratitude for her help that day softened his expression. “You warned me to flee.”
Her bottom lip trembled and she dropped her gaze.
Tanis took another step closer. “I’m Tanis.”
“Mérethe,” she whispered. There was something fragile about her, like a tiny bird struggling with a broken wing.
“Where are we, Mérethe?”
She lifted a startled gaze to him. “You mean you don’t know? But I thought…”
He angled a curious look at her. “You thought?”
“It doesn’t matter what I thought.” The sunlight fell across her features, illuminating the hint of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her heart-shaped face held an elfin quality, but sorrow cast a veil across her beauty. Mérethe clutched at her upper arms, binding herself. “We’re in his world now.”
“Sinárr’s?”
She nodded.
“In Shadow?”
She nodded again.
Tanis gazed around, feeling unnerved. “If we’re in Shadow…why does it look so much like Alorin?”
Mérethe drew in a shuddering breath. “Shadow has no form except what the Warlocks give to it.”
He turned to her curiously. “So he fashions a world that appears exactly like our own—why?”
She shrugged.
Tanis scratched at his head. He sensed an important truth in this information, but the connection eluded him.
He walked to the nearest column and laid his hand on the sculpted marble. It felt smooth, cold and immobile beneath his palm. “Is this place real?” He glanced over his shoulder to where Mérethe stood hugging her chest. “It feels real.”
She met his gaze brokenly. “It’s as solid as Sinárr wills it to be.”
Tanis considered this. Then he wondered…. “Does he will it to be otherwise?”
She bowed her head and swallowed. “Sometimes.”
Pondering this, Tanis studied the marble beneath his hand once more. Even the veins of the stone were true to his expectations. “So Sinárr’s world doesn’t always appear like this?” He cast her a look. “What does it seem like other times?”
Mérethe buried her face in her hands.
It took a moment for Tanis to realize she was shaking with silent tears. Not knowing what else to do, he went and laid his hands lightly on her arms. When she didn’t shy away, he enfolded her gently, half expecting her to stiffen, but she clutched desperately at him instead and buried her face in his shoulder.
Tanis held her while she wept, his brow furrowed and anger fomenting in his thoughts. He could only imagine what life had been like for her, trapped and bound to a Warlock, prisoner to his caprice.
After a time, Mérethe attempted to compose herself. “I’m sorry.” She dabbed at her cheeks with her palms. “It’s been so long since I had anyone to talk to.” She wandered over and sank down on the daybed. Tanis sat down beside her.
Mérethe glanced at him. Wet lashes framed deep-set eyes of pale blue. Her ginger brows were the same hue as her freckles. “Your question…” She nodded towards the garden. “Sinárr’s world has never looked like this. This is…I mean, I thought…” her brow furrowed.
There it was again, that confession half-uttered. He leaned to try to capture her gaze. “What did you think, Mérethe?”
She exhaled a slow breath. “Watching things just before you appeared…” A rueful glance flickered to him and away. “I thought you did this.”
Tanis drew back. “What do you mean, ‘before I appeared’?”
Her bottom lip began trembling. She bowed her head and made knots of her fingers in her lap.
Tanis had a sudden terrible foreboding. “Were you…he didn’t…” The idea seemed so unimaginably horrible that he almost couldn’t speak it. “Mérethe…does he keep you in the formless da
rk?”
She pressed palms to her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. “He rarely thinks of me anymore…rarely cares to make things solid for me. I’ve become uninteresting to him.”
Tanis thought of the disorienting void he’d experienced for just a short time and felt sick at the very contemplation. Never mind the lack of human contact, to have no contact even with anything real? How long could a person exist in that state without going insane?
His heart went out to her so strongly—if it had been in his power to slay Sinárr and free her in that instant, he would’ve done it without a second thought.
“I would like to think I’ve become used to it,” she clasped her hands in her lap forlornly, “but Alorin’s Adepts weren’t made for the dark. I know it has changed me.” She must’ve seen the concern in his eyes, for she gave a little smile. “It wasn’t always this way. While my contact with elae lasted, he was kind and even generous…of a fashion.”
Tanis knew only outrage on her behalf. “How can you say that? He fed off of you—”
She spun him a desperate look. “Tanis, don’t you see? This is your fate now. If I only tell you all the horrible parts—”
Tanis placed a hand over hers. “Mérethe, I’m a truthreader. You can’t fool me, not even here…” Then he frowned, for it occurred to him that elae had to exist in Shadow somehow, for otherwise how were they both alive?
And if elae existed…
He tried listening for Mérethe’s thoughts, but heard only the wind in the garden; he tried looking for leis or nodes but saw only the illusion Sinárr had made solid. He tried working a pattern of his father’s to reveal the currents, but he could gain no sense of elae with which to fill the pattern and form his intent.
But it has to be—the lifeforce must exist here somehow.
If it did, Tanis couldn’t sense it. Nor could he sense Pelas, though he had the barest perception that their bond still existed—likewise that connection with his mother—yet trying to cast his thoughts outward to reach Isabel only made his attention wander aimlessly off.
Tanis was frowning over all of these facts when he heard someone approaching from further down the arcade. He and Mérethe both stood at the same time. A page was coming towards them carrying a stack of folded clothes and a pair of shoes.
“Sinárr is trying to impress you.” Mérethe dropped her gaze to her fingers, which she alternately entwined and squeezed. “It’s been a long time since he bothered with servants.”
Tanis gave her a curious look.
She arched a brow, challenging his understanding. “To craft personages whole-cloth, ingrained with the understanding of what food to choose and how to prepare it and serve it? Or to send them here bearing…gifts.” She regarded the young page with a sort of vague horror. “It’s much simpler for Sinárr to just make the food appear on the table—or the clothes appear on you.”
The servant stopped in front of Tanis and bowed with a murmured, “My lord.” He bent to one knee and held the items over his head.
Tanis frowned at them.
“Sinárr wants you to believe all of this is real.” Mérethe was watching the kneeling servant, looking haunted now. “He’s…courting you, I think. The way he once courted me.”
The idea made Tanis distinctly uncomfortable. Likewise the page kneeling before him, awkwardly holding up the clothes and shoes. Tanis took them just so the boy would get up again.
Which he did. Then he bowed with another “My lord,” and departed back the way he’d come.
Tanis watched him go, trying to find any chink in the illusion, but the boy didn’t blur at the edges or fade in strange places, his clothes had wrinkles where they ought to, his hair wanted a trim, which seemed somehow appropriate, and he even walked like a boy would, hitching up his slightly-too-loose-in-the-hips britches as he went.
Tanis looked to Mérethe. “Sinárr’s illusions are very convincing.”
She sighed.
Tanis assessed the clothes in his hands then. They were made of a sumptuous silk and beautifully constructed, but he felt apprehensive about wearing them. He hadn’t minded when Pelas had commissioned coats for him, but the idea of being dressed by Sinárr roused all the hair on the back of his neck.
Mérethe nodded towards the other end of the arcade. “I should let you change. He’ll be waiting.”
Tanis followed her gaze and saw a set of double doors where only empty wall had been before. He reluctantly started off in that direction, but after taking just a few steps he looked back to her. “If he’s weaving this illusion just for me…when we separate, what happens to you?”
“That depends on how solid he wants all of it to remain.” She sat down on the daybed again and lifted a hollow gaze to the groin-vaulted ceiling and its frescoed arabesques. “Are you sure this isn’t your doing? I’ve never seen him make anything so elaborate.”
Tanis looked at the ceiling. She’d called it elaborate, but he’d seen hundreds like it at the Sormitáge. “If I made it, Mérethe, I have no idea how.” He frowned, concerned for her. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll just sit here for a time, Tanis.”
Until such time as Sinárr remembers your existence?
The very thought made him clench his teeth, but he nodded to her and made his way to prepare to greet Sinárr.
Tanis stood for a while in his rooms debating whether or not to put on the clothes just to see what Sinárr would do about it, but considering that he was living just then at the whim of an immortal who could very likely snuff his life as easily as pinching out the flame on a candle, prudence suggested a more diplomatic approach.
He’d just finished dressing when another set of double doors appeared on the other side of the room, an obvious request for his attendance. Tanis pushed a hand through his hair and stared at the doors. He rubbed his nose and stared at the doors. He wiped something from his eye and stared at the doors. Then he blew out his breath, stalked across the room and opened them.
Across a loggia, the grand edifice of a white bridge gleamed alluringly, framing a view of…
Well, it might’ve been one of the most beautiful vistas he’d ever seen.
A marble bridge wound through a forested ravine, passing among steep mountainsides and sheer cliffs. A cold-looking waterfall tumbled down a granite-faced chute and sent mist drifting across the balustrade.
Tanis tried to recall if he’d ever seen such a marvelous place before, even in a painting—he couldn’t quite dismiss Mérethe’s idea that he’d somehow influenced Sinárr’s creation while trying to escape the disorienting void—but the design of the bridge seemed as foreign to him as the mountainous landscape. Never mind that the bridge appeared to simply be floating among the trees.
With apprehension gripping him like a too-tight vest, Tanis started off down the bridge. The mountains soon reared so steeply above him that their tops were lost to his view.
It was so odd, this experience: on the one hand being fascinated by his surroundings and the other wondering how any of it existed at all. He tried not to think too deeply on the truth—that he was lost in Shadow, the captive of an immortal Warlock who wanted to bind him for eternity.
Tanis wondered why he wasn’t more afraid. He wondered why he wasn’t trying everything in his power to escape…
Even as he had the thought, a familiar mental barrier resisted the idea; even thinking it felt like trying to swim a raging river upstream. Tanis knew that feeling well—verily, he despised it at times. But its meaning was clear.
So…finding a way out of Shadow wasn’t the direction his path was leading him. Then where in Tiern’aval was it leading him?
He trailed his fingers across the marble railing as he walked, feeling the smooth stone, noting its temperature, the way it became cool or warm as a result of the sunlight. How could Sinárr capture so many sensations and details? How could an individual mind form an illusion so incredibly complex?
And why didn’t it frighten him more
, knowing he was hostage to that mind?
In truth, Tanis was more worried about Mérethe’s fate than his own. He wondered if perhaps his unusual equanimity had something to do with the perception of immortality he’d gained from binding himself with Pelas. To Pelas, eternity was almost palpable. The awarenesses Tanis had gained through sharing Pelas’s mind had changed him in ways he never could’ve anticipated. He wasn’t the same person he’d been even a week ago.
Tanis saw the end of the ravine looming ahead, a great V-shaped opening where verdant cliffs juxtaposed against the azure sky. The bridge, like the mountains, appeared to end there.
He emerged from the mouth of the mountain’s shadow onto a wide, arching balcony. Beyond its marble railing, an emerald carpet of trees abutted a sea. On the far horizon, a curtain of rainbow mist—shifting veils of color—dominated the vista. High above, variegated clouds blended into a nebula of violet-rose gasses that merged into the void of starry space. It truly appeared as if Tanis was standing on the edge of the world.
“It is amazing, what you’ve done.”
Sinárr’s voice came close in his ear, even as his black-skinned hands found Tanis’s shoulders from behind. He felt the man’s cold touch radiating through the silk of his coat.
Tanis realized he wasn’t merely standing on the threshold of the world, but on the precipice of life as he’d known it. The balcony seemed to tip precariously, leaving him balanced on its lengthwise edge. One wrong step and he would tumble into the abyss.
Sinárr possessed a powerful presence behind him, radiating not merely deyjiin’s telltale chill but a steady flow of some other kind of power. And yet…was he really standing there at all?
Tanis tried to work some moisture back into his mouth. “What do you mean…what I’ve done?”
Sinárr murmured into his ear, “I felt your effort to merge minds with me as I wove this world into form.”
In his own realm, the Warlock’s voice held a darkly liquid quality. Each word seemed to flow into Tanis’s mind and stimulate his perception in a new way, waking awarenesses that felt strange and startling. Tanis wanted to move away, but Sinárr had him pinned.
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 30