“I would be greatly surprised if your master didn’t have the thought at least once, Madaé Lisbeth.” Pelas kissed her hand again and then released her. His gaze strayed amusedly to the table and the meal, which the maid had been doing her best to set out while staring at him in blushing wonder.
Madaé Lisbeth looked back to Phaedor, seeming a little piqued herself. She pressed the back of one hand to her cheek. “You might’ve warned us he was so charming, my lord, and so handsome.”
Phaedor gave a little bow. “My humblest apologies, Madaé Lisbeth.”
She shook her head. “I’ll need to warn off the maids…” her blue eyes strayed to the younger woman, who was now flushing vividly. “Raine’s truth, he’ll have them all standing nude before him just for the pleasure of his gaze.” She turned determinedly back to Phaedor. “Birger should attend upon him.”
“A wise decision, Madaé,” the zanthyr murmured.
“And what do you know about it?” She flung a chiding look at him. “You’d welcome the diversion of every female in the palazzo dancing to a Malorin’athgul’s tune.”
He bowed to her again, that time with a smile. “You know me well, Madaé.”
“Too well, I’d say.” She cast a sharp look at the maid and waved her out of the room. Then she bobbed a discreet curtsy to Pelas. “Be welcome, my lord. We’re at your service. Doubtless the Lord Phaedor will acquaint you with the house…” she looked as if she meant to say something more, but then she just nodded politely and took her leave.
As she was shutting the doors, Pelas murmured, “An intriguing woman.” He shifted his copper-eyed gaze back to Phaedor. “She’s no Adept. Is it the house then that’s prolonged her life?”
“Time passes differently here.” Phaedor extended a hand towards the table of food.
Pelas kept his eyes on the zanthyr as he walked to break his fast. “How differently?”
“Time is inexact, for it depends heavily upon individual perception.” Phaedor strolled after Pelas. “A week here could see but a day passing beyond these lands, or a leisurely day spent beneath this sun might know the changing of a season in Alorin. It much depends upon one’s need. The only surety is that time’s spool is still winding. You’ll know when the world is calling you back, for the thread goes taut.”
Pondering this fascinating concept, Pelas held out a hand in invitation, and they sat down together at the table. As he was pouring himself some tea, Pelas looked Phaedor over inquiringly. “I would offer to share this meal, but I see the way the currents spiral about you. Food isn’t a requirement for your shell—because it’s not a shell, is it? You don’t inhabit it for a brief span of eternity and then claim another. You didn’t craft it, like my brothers and I did, from thought and energy and intent.”
“That is correct.”
Pelas began serving himself. “Your two forms are your essence? They’re pure energy forms, even as ours are in the Void?”
“Yes.”
Pelas looked up under his brows. “And I’ll posit a guess that elae and deyjiin are balanced in the pattern of your forms, as they’re balanced in ours. That’s why you can work both powers.”
The zanthyr nodded quietly to this truth.
“Your forms are native to the Realms of Light—tied to them also, I imagine?”
Phaedor laid his arm on the table. One strong finger nudged a serving dish out of the path of his hand. “Zanthyrs could navigate Chaos, but the ending of things is not in our nature.”
“Ah…” Pelas sat back in his chair and studied the zanthyr. “So we’re alike in form, but opposing in divine purpose?” He frowned slightly. “No, not opposing… differing.”
The zanthyr nodded again.
Pelas sipped his tea contemplatively. The ideas percolating in his head were fundamental truths around which many others revolved. Only since Tanis came into his life had he begun to see these truths as truths, for Shail had intentionally misled him and Darshan to keep them far afield of his own activities.
“Three immortal races, each with a role to play in the cosmic balance.” A new thought occurred to him, and he lifted his gaze back to meet Phaedor’s again. “Is it our coming to Alorin that disrupted the Balance, or our intent?”
“A valid question.” Phaedor flipped his hair from his eyes and held Pelas’s gaze. “The First Law is the First Law for a reason.”
“Yes, the all-important Laws.” Pelas frowned into his tea. “Isabel admonished me that if I’d better understood the Laws of Patterning, I might’ve solved my brother’s compulsion myself.” But thoughts of Isabel quickly led him elsewhere. He lifted his gaze back to the zanthyr. “You came for her in Myacene, after…”
“Yes.”
Pelas set down his teacup. Tanis had forgiven him for harming his mother, but Pelas had much to accomplish yet to make himself worthy of Isabel’s sacrifice. “How…is she?”
“If you would know, ask her.”
Pelas drew back slightly, but then he understood. “Ah, of course.” He’d forgotten that Tanis possessed another bond, an older bond to both of his parents. Phaedor was suggesting that bond was available to Pelas now as a channel of communication.
Pelas shook his head slowly, still awed by the lad’s powerful impact. “It’s staggering what Tanis has done.” He studied the zanthyr quietly. “Did Isabel know her son would…” but he couldn’t even begin to define the enormity of what Tanis had already accomplished.
“Isabel would not have risked a pregnancy without purpose, knowing what she knew.”
“About us, you mean?”
“You were only part of the equation. Isabel had already foreseen her husband’s death. She would never have allowed Arion’s son to grow up without knowing his father.” He lifted a finger towards the food to remind Pelas to eat it instead of ponder it. “The idea was unconscionable to her.”
Pelas dutifully started eating—unlike the zanthyr, his shell required sustenance—but his mind was a whir. “Yet Arion Tavestra died at the Citade—ah…I see.” The truth occurred to him so simply. He gazed at the zanthyr with a wondering admiration, hardly noticing the flavors upon his tongue for the heady understandings unfolding in the galaxy of his mind. “That was a magnificent risk you and she took.”
“Isabel is known for taking risks.”
The layers of subtext in that comment gave Pelas a discomfiting twinge. He considered Phaedor with deep regard. “So you took Tanis, what…three hundred years into the future? How did you find your way back?”
Phaedor arched a brow. “You have seen how brightly shines her star.”
Pelas blew out his breath, for that answer had been too obvious. Isabel could ground a man through all of eternity. He returned to his food and let his thoughts drift beyond Isabel’s gravity.
“Divine purpose…” he nodded slowly as he considered the idea newly, “this is the greatest contention between Darshan and myself.” Pelas drew a spiral with his fork in the air. “If I can conceive of another game beyond the game of unmaking, then surely I can choose to play that game or not, as I determine. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have the ability even to conceive of following another purpose.”
“This is axiomatic.”
“But not to Darshan.”
“Your brother wouldn’t harbor such confusions if he’d studied the mortal tapestry.”
Pelas blinked at him. Then he set down his fork and shook his head. “I want to view this tapestry with your understanding.”
“It begins with understanding there is something there to view.”
Pelas sank back against his chair. Copper eyes held emerald green. “I thought the immortal races had no paths in the mortal tapestry.”
Phaedor nodded to this truth. “You’ve bound yourself to Tanis’s thread in the pattern, but his path through it will never belong to you, for you can leave it at any time.” He tossed the hair from his eyes and leaned forward to level Pelas a potent look. “Why do you think they fear us so desperately? Because we can
jump from one path to another, influence it, and move on.”
Pelas ran a finger beneath his lower lip. “So what you’re telling me is that you’ve found a way to track a Malorin’athgul’s influence through the mortal tapestry.”
Phaedor’s emerald eyes gleamed. “Just so, Pelasommáyurek.”
“My, my, my…” Pelas shook his head. “For your view, Shail would destroy multiple worlds.”
“It is not by destruction that he would gain this view.”
This comment gave Pelas pause for a lengthy span of thought.
Suddenly too full with ideas to eat anything more, he rose from the table and headed out onto the terrace. Beyond a marble railing, a glittering lake bound the sunlight into a watery net. The air felt crisp in his lungs and the sun strong upon his face; his breath frosted with every exhale.
The cold places of this world reminded him of Chaos in visceral ways—Darshan hadn’t been wrong about that. The sensation of ice crystallizing around his body in the blackness of the Void, or shedding itself in veils of refracted light as he sped through a galaxy’s core…the feeling of hovering on the solar wind while he embraced a dying star…these were experiences as part and parcel to his existence as thought itself.
Yet while the game of unmaking remained one he could enjoy—relish even, in its purity of purpose—he saw other games he would rather be playing now; newer games…creative games.
Pelas leaned on the railing and breathed deeply of the mountain air.
With so many eons on the track behind him, he took most experiences in stride, but this experience—treating with another immortal in equal allegiance? Even with his brothers he’d never known such harmonious partnership.
And beneath that new sense of unanimity, a driving urgency replaced gravity’s usual pull. The energy of Pelas’s consciousness now hummed with purpose. More incredible still, it hummed a song of his choosing.
How fascinating, these many new awarenesses, among them a sense of the rightness of things. Could it be he was perceiving Balance itself? Even more intriguing to ponder, had he always possessed such an awareness? Had the ethereal song he was now hearing simply been drowned out by the dynamic cacophony of Creation, the former’s melody having become clear at last, thanks to this oddly silent place?
He admitted a clarity of thought previously unavailable to him, bombarded as he had always been by elemental perceptions that formed the woof and warp of his cosmic essence. But he was caught out of time now, like the palazzo, his consciousness removed from the supersonic motion of the cosmos and placed in a sort of stasis where thought might percolate without undue molecular influence.
No wonder Björn had seen so far into the future during his years of planning at this palazzo. From such a vantage, the right sort of man might see around time’s curve into many distant tomorrows.
Pelas became aware of Phaedor’s presence in the doorway and turned him a glance…and a smile. “These are interesting roles we’ve chosen: protector, brother. What role will Sinárr choose, do you think?”
Phaedor emerged from the shadowed doorway into the brilliant day, flipping a Merdanti dagger. “That very much depends on how jealous you make him.”
Pelas barked a laugh. “Jealousy is in Sinárr’s nature, isn’t it? But they’re all absurdly possessive, the Warlocks of Shadow.” He leaned back against the railing and crossed his arms. A rising breeze blew his long hair across his face, and he swept both hands back through it to hold it out of his eyes. “They’ve never created anything they didn’t control utterly. It’s why they have no society to speak of.” He gave another thoughtful laugh. “The gods help us if they ever learned to share.”
Something flashed in Phaedor’s consciousness upon this comment. His mind went suddenly still.
Pelas pulled his blowing hair around to the side to better regard him. “What is it?”
“A perception.” The zanthyr came and stood beside him at the railing, facing outwards over the glittering lake while the wind tossed his wavy raven hair into his face. “Do you see it?”
Pelas could sense Phaedor’s direction of attention, but he couldn’t hone in on it or recognize its meaning. “I haven’t yet the facility you’ve developed.”
“Your statement…” the zanthyr’s eyes tightened slightly, “if Warlocks learned to share…it makes me wonder, who would teach them?”
“Understanding the threat they would become if they ever worked in concert?” Pelas arched brows. Then his expression fell. “Yes, I see your point.” He exhaled a slow breath and rubbed the scruff shadowing his jaw. It would be just like Shail to unite a notoriously independent and solitary race through some enticing treachery—and giving Warlocks access to the Realms of Light would be enough to bring together a disturbing number of them.
Shailabanáchtran meant Maker of Storms, and his younger brother embraced the meaning of his name to its fullest. Pelas had committed himself to defeating Shail’s end game, even though he still didn’t know what that end game entailed.
“You will discover it.”
Pelas shifted his gaze back to the zanthyr. It was a unique experience having his mind read so completely.
Phaedor flipped his dagger. “There are few capable of threatening your brother’s plans, but you are uniquely qualified to do so.”
Pelas gave a slight wince. “So far I’ve only shown myself qualified to be outwitted.” He studied the zanthyr. “Why do you think so?”
Phaedor’s emerald gaze spoke volumes. “Because your brother has elected you as his enemy.”
Pelas frowned. “Game theory. I admit my novice understanding.”
“You must advance it quickly, for understanding the game provides the foundation for intelligent choices.”
Pelas studied the zanthyr intently while a new understanding percolated in his thoughts. “That’s why you brought me here.”
Phaedor motioned with his dagger towards the palazzo. “You will find the Fifth Vestal’s library more than adequate to your needs.”
“A study,” Pelas nodded his understanding, “beginning perhaps with the theory of games?”
“The song will lead you to the important subjects.”
The song…
The zanthyr viewed the mortal tapestry in ways that defied explanation. The threads of the living pattern seemed almost to speak to Phaedor—shouted even. Was this the song the zanthyr was referring to? Or was it some other force, perhaps the one Pelas had heard humming in his consciousness already?
Whatever its source, Pelas wanted the zanthyr’s skill of prediction. He would need it if he hoped to outsmart his brother.
Phaedor straightened away from the railing. A new energy underscored his manner now, an obvious desire to depart. Pelas wondered what the zanthyr was seeing in the tapestry, what thread was calling to him.
“Time passes differently here,” Phaedor reminded him with a pointed look, “but be diligent in your pursuits. Timing is—”
“Everything.” Pelas nodded his understanding. He was seeing many things in a different light. He would need to shine that light on many more old conceptions to bring them into new focus. He looked up under his brows as the zanthyr was pocketing his dagger. “I’ve just one last question before you go.”
The zanthyr glanced up inquiringly.
Pelas crossed his arms and gave him a meaningful smile. “Who’s Náiir?”
Forty-nine
“If you would hold your heart protected, let no one inside, for once that boundary is breached, it will ever be vulnerable.”
–Ysolde Remalkhen, Fire Princess of Avatar
Alshiba roused to firelight’s shadow-spirits dancing on the wide-beamed ceiling. Midwinter’s chill clung to her bedchamber, making ice of the shadows at the edges of the room, but where she lay beneath a heavy eiderdown, she felt almost too warm. She hadn’t been to her family’s chalet in Avatar’s great mountains since the fall of the Citadel. Odd that her dreams would’ve taken her there now.
Alshiba pushed up from beneath the eiderdown and noticed that her finger was conspicuously missing an important ring. A younger self, then, had drawn her to this past.
Across the room, Björn was tending the flames of her fire.
Ah, no…that sounded wrong even in her head. Would that it hadn’t been so aggravatingly true. She angled a narrow gaze at him. “Who’s weaving this dream?”
He looked over his shoulder as he straightened. “You are.” Then he smiled—damn him—and pushed hands in his pockets. “I’m just a willing participant.”
“If this was my dream, you wouldn’t be in it.” But she knew this was a lie, and so did he.
Alshiba looked down at her hands, trying to understand. This felt like Dreamscape, but with an odd resistance between layered consciousnesses, as a dream within a dream. She lifted her gaze back to meet his. “You’re Healing me, aren’t you? Forcing deep sleep?”
“Yes.” He stood backlit by the flames in the oversized hearth; golden light wreathed the outline of his familiar form. It was actually painful, looking at him.
Alshiba closed her eyes and laid her head back against the pillows. “Where am I really?”
“In your bed in Illume Belliel.”
She swallowed. “And where are you?”
“Right beside you.”
Alshiba looked up at the painted beams that crisscrossed the plastered ceiling. The angst and longing she usually experienced around Björn felt distant to her, less friends than family members holding a heated discussion in another room, probably about her; the kind of discussion she would just as soon not interrupt—let them think she was still sleeping…alone.
She recognized a younger version of herself in these thoughts, a freer self whose greatest concern had been her father’s grumbling disapproval. Björn had changed that—changed her—when he’d chosen her for Alorin’s First Vestal. In between those youthful years of insignificant consequence and her life now, she’d spent many winters in that chalet, that bedchamber…winters of stolen solitude, long nights of darkness where she’d laid blissfully with Björn’s fine form stretched alongside her.
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