Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “What do you mean ‘in a sense’?” Ean lengthened his stride to catch up with him. “In the sense of getting us the hell out of here?”

  Darshan arched a rueful brow. “Not in that sense.”

  “What then?”

  “I can perceive the starpoints of this world and in so doing perceive deyjiin, but this…there is a confusing confluence of dimensions in these worlds. They veil and overlap each other. Until I can coincide the outermost starpoints, I won’t be able to tear the fabric.”

  Ean rubbed his forehead. “I’ll pretend I understood what you just said.”

  “Until I can perceive the outermost ring of starpoints framing this space, I will continue to be the effect of the interior environment, Ean. I’m subject to whatever laws the Warlocks have established for the world—much as my brothers and I are subject to the laws of the Realms of Light when in your world.”

  Ean grunted. “I’m not sure you’re subject to much of anything in Alorin.”

  Darshan turned him a meaningful gaze. “Were we not, Prince of Dannym, we would have already unmade it.”

  It must’ve been drawing on afternoon—that is, had time been sequential in the various worlds—when they passed from the humid land of lakes onto a frost-covered plain devoid of any landmark save a large sun and an even larger planet falling beneath the horizon. The chill air attacked their skin and made fog of their every exhale.

  Ean stared into the distance, scrubbing at the back of his head. “Are you sure we’re headed the right way?”

  Darshan arched a rueful brow. “I am sure of little here, save that wherever I’m heading is where we’re meant to go.”

  “That’s deep.” Ean turned a glower off to the horizon. “You should’ve written that in Bethamin’s book.”

  “I perceive in your tone a peculiar dissatisfaction at my response.”

  “Even so?” Ean looked him over with intelligent grey eyes. “Such a doctrine of belief would imply we’ve been brought together for a reason.”

  “A specious conclusion.”

  “No. A logical one.” The frozen earth crunched beneath Ean’s steps. “To say with any certainty that wherever you’re heading is where we’re meant to go is a statement of faith in your path.”

  “Malorin’athgul have no path.”

  “In the mortal tapestry.” Ean stared pointedly at him. “But having and acting upon a purpose connotes action intended to deliver you to a specified future. That’s a path.”

  “By this definition I accept your point.” Darshan looked him over speculatively. “Why does the idea disturb you?”

  Ean abruptly stopped and turned to face him. “It bothers me because neither of us foresaw or planned this consequence. I don’t even think your brother expected it until the opportunity presented itself. Yet you claim to be walking some path in pursuit of your intention, and I…I thought I was walking mine before I wound up here. I even thought Balance might’ve been…” but he bit back whatever else he’d wanted to say.

  “Keeping to your metaphor of paths, why would you imagine you’re not still walking yours simply because it brought you to Shadow?”

  “So you see my point then.”

  Darshan studied him in the growing dark. Ean stood gripping his sword firmly, yet without evident hostility; more a clutching at some reality that made sense to him. “I’m not sure that I do.”

  Ean shifted beneath agitation’s weight. “My point is…who brought us together?”

  “Who…” Darshan eyed him quietly, “as in what force, or what divinity?”

  “Take your pick.”

  Darshan cast his gaze across the prince, and beyond him, the featureless expanse. The sun was nearly gone, the world growing colder with every inch of its descent. He perceived quite some distance in any direction before reaching another canvas. “Let’s settle over there,” and he nodded towards a section of plain where grass grew long enough to soften their repose.

  They made camp encased in a dome of deyjiin, which provided light as well as protection from the wind…and other things that roamed in Shadow. Darshan used his power and fashioned chairs from the frost, so that if Ean couldn’t eat, drink or be warm, he could at least sit comfortably.

  He didn’t look comfortable, however. Deyjiin’s flickering light made hollowed shadows around the prince’s eyes, and he sat with his elbows plugging into his knees, supporting his head in his hands.

  Darshan watched him carefully while he fingered his scepter, returned now to its original shape and positioned between his feet. “If I could do more, Ean…”

  Ean waved him off. “I know. Starpoints. Coinciding. I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  Ean slouched back in the low-slung chair. “It’s basically a fourth-strand construct—not all that different from the Labyrinth.” He waved nebulously. “You’re caught within its reality so long as your mind is trapped within the pattern. You have to permeate the pattern to escape that reality, and while you’re in it…well, you’re basically a slave to its design.”

  “An adequate comparison.”

  Ean eyed him askance. “So how are we going to get out of here?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  In fact, Darshan was seeking the exterior starpoints with his every breath, but so far he hadn’t found the outermost rim of framed space. What he had found, however, brought a tightening around his eyes.

  Ean clasped hands behind his head and let it hang back, braced by disquiet. He looked at Darshan between the steeple of his elbows. “Are you ever going to tell me why you saved me in Tambarré?”

  Darshan thumbed his scepter pensively. After a time, he said, “I’d hoped you could provide some answers.”

  “Answers.” The prince sounded dubious. He sat slumped in his chair with malcontent making a severe line of his brows. “I could use some of those myself. For instance, what did you do to Kjieran van Stone?” When this question met with Darshan’s silence, a purposeful determination hardened Ean’s gaze. “Did you kill him?”

  Darshan rubbed the back of his neck, and once again registered surprise at his missing hair. He thought of Ean’s metaphor of paths, and Socotra Isio’s discussion of vortices, and he thought on how his own decisions had shaped his future action. He’d intended that Ean would come to him, and Ean had.

  In this intention, had he reshaped Ean’s path to conform to his own? Had he connected them cosmically through cause and intent? He’d certainly done something, for now he and the prince were navigating Shadow together. Darshan couldn’t see how this confluence aligned with his still-shifting purpose, but he was certain somehow that it did.

  He looked down at the scepter in his hands and ran his thumb along the patterns carved around its end. “I bound Kjieran to me.”

  Ean roused. “Bound, how?”

  “A pattern of Dore Madden’s…a form of the Unbreakable Bond, but one-sided. I bound him against his will.”

  Ean’s eyes widened. He lanced a thunderous look at him.

  “Kjieran was the first eidola I made and the only one I fashioned using that pattern, the only one I bound to my own soul. I…” Darshan exhaled a slow breath, “I wanted to make him immortal.”

  Ean’s waxing anger waned into incredulity. “You were in love with him.”

  Darshan arched resigned brows. “Kjieran chose death over eternity with me. He betrayed me multiple times along the path to his eventual immolation, but the worst of those betrayals for me lay in his choice to end his life.”

  “Thirteen hells.” Ean fell back in his seat again. He stared at Darshan while a deep furrow notched his brows. After a time, he remarked, “That’s one hell of a binding to work on a man without his consent.”

  “So I have come to understand.”

  Ean blew out his breath. “Your understandings come too bloody late!”

  Darshan ran his thumb along his scepter, contemplatively, one part of his mind still exploring the threads of consequence that had united his
path with Ean’s. “You may be surprised to learn that Kjieran’s death did not sever our connection.”

  Ean blinked. “You mean—” he sat roughly forward again, “he’s still in communication with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? He didn’t go into the Returning?”

  Darshan’s gaze tightened. “These were the very questions that drew me to the Sormitáge. Those, and how to restore Kjieran to life again.”

  At this, the prince fell back and stared open-mouthed at him. Then he pushed palms to his temples. “No-no-no-no-no—the eidola, the Marquiin, those appalling Ascendants—you’ve wrought nothing but torment and death. Why would you restore Kjieran? It goes against—”

  “Everything I’ve apparently stood for?” Darshan cast resignation on his gaze. “As you said, Ean, many understandings have come to me too late.”

  “By Cephrael’s Great Book, Darshan!” Ean launched out of his seat and paced several quick steps beneath deyjiin’s dome. As the lightning in his gaze faded, he shook his head and pinned him with a gaze of clouded wonder. “If not for what happened in Tambarré, I would never believe this conversation is real.”

  He threw himself back down in his chair and stared at Darshan in brooding silence, rubbing his jaw. “So…what does this mean? You’re on our side now?”

  “I admit a certain lack of clarity in how to go about accomplishing my purpose.”

  Ean gave a muttered curse. “What about Dore Madden?”

  “Dore has always been Shail’s creature.”

  Ean’s eyes explored the veil of deyjiin gleaming above him. Then his gaze found a particular focus and his fingers slowed on his jaw. “It was Pelas, wasn’t it? This—this…” he waved at him, “whatever this is.”

  Darshan shook his head. “I admit Pelas has long been trying to sway my intentions—”

  “No, no…you don’t see it.” He rolled his head from side to side along the back of the chair, his expression full of grave comprehension. “Isabel knew, or at least she suspected. She saw a possibility that I was incapable of envisioning.” He pushed his palms to his forehead again. “No wonder she chose to save your brother!”

  Darshan perceived the prince’s radiating emotions, his confusion and misgiving, feelings of loneliness, estrangement, and beneath all else, a tormenting sense of guilt. He was coming to understand human emotions far better than he ever desired to, and finding more empathy through his own experience than he cared to admit.

  “When I laid the compulsion on Pelas, I wove it into the pattern of his existence.” He held his gaze on Ean as evidence that he understood this was a crime against his brother. “For Pelas to somehow have managed to deny it—much less overcome it—when it had become so much a part of his being, is testimony to your Isabel’s ability as much as to my brother’s tenacity.”

  Ean turned to him seriously. “If the pattern is that interwoven, I wouldn’t even be able to unwork it. It will be with him until the end of his days.” His tone conveyed the enormity of this truth.

  “Yes…” Darshan arched brows, “I have forever altered my brother’s immortal composition.”

  ***

  Night claimed the Shadow world as the dream claimed Ean’s sleeping mind…

  *—*

  Arion stood at the balcony railing looking out over the nascent world he and the others had made. A storm had just emptied itself upon Niyadbakir, cleansing its palaces, bridges, and towers. The dark city sparkled. Further across the barren valley with its mist-filled hollows and volcanic earth, a line of jagged mountains was tearing the ashen clouds into strips.

  Though the naked eye saw naught but bedrock and harsh, stabbing light, Arion knew that T’khendar was alive. The fifth thrummed its heartbeat through every inch of stone and earth; the air tingled with it. Yet the fifth was the only strand of elae to be found there.

  Ah, but Arion saw such promise in this world! What he could’ve done with the basalt city, the granite peaks! When elae filled this land, Niyadbakir would become a city of impossible beauty. Björn would see to that.

  The thought gave him pause.

  Gah! If only his own future still held the same promise of possibility! But the pattern of consequence had become a tangled bramble. Soon, so many bright paths would intersect that all he saw was light, and beyond that burning core…

  Arion’s throat felt tight when he thought upon it.

  But this potential was the least of their loss. Tragedy’s bloody flag flew high over the battlefields of their endeavor now. They’d planned for so many contingencies, thought through as many scenarios as their inventive minds could muster, yet still they hadn’t foreseen this madness.

  A door opened behind him.

  Arion turned from the railing to see Isabel emerging. Her pale blue dress appeared grey in the storm-light. Its color now more truly reflected their hopes. She closed the door quietly, then lifted her blindfolded gaze to him. “I thought you’d gone.”

  Arion collected her into his arms. She felt too thin against him, a fragile bird draped in heavy silk. He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You didn’t seriously imagine I would leave you here?”

  Isabel slipped her arms around him, too weary-worn with grief and exhaustion to reply.

  Arion stroked her hair, feeling vestiges of his own sorrow threatening. “How is he?”

  She exhaled a tremulous breath. “Destroyed.” Grief choked her voice. “Consumed. We can do nothing for him.”

  Arion turned burning eyes out over the blackened city. His heart felt charred. “If we took Malachai to Alorin—”

  “Elae cannot combat this devastation, Arion.” She withdrew from his arms and walked slowly to the railing. The blindfold could no longer conceal the ever-widening shadows around her eyes. “We don’t yet understand enough about deyjiin, but nothing good has ever come from violating the Ninth Law.”

  A damp wind clutched at their clothing and made chestnut flames of Isabel’s hair. She gave a shuddering exhale and dropped her chin to her chest. “I wish you’d gone.”

  Arion collected her into his arms again. “Why?”

  “Our son needs you as much as I…more, perhaps.”

  “He’s been cooing in my head all night across the bond. He’s had much to say about Madaé Giselle’s barley milk.”

  She turned within the circle of his arms to look up at him. “Björn thinks our bond with Phaedor is protecting us from deyjiin, but Arion…you shouldn’t linger in this place.”

  “The fifth is everywhere here, Isabel.”

  “You need more than the fifth to sustain you.”

  “No,” he drew her close and pressed a kiss to her hair, “only you.”

  She pulled back stubbornly. “We need you at your strongest.”

  Arion managed a grin. “But I only need—”

  “Don’t be cavalier. If we’ve learned anything from the tragedies of this endeavor, it’s that we cannot accurately predict every possible outcome.”

  Arion adjusted her blindfold gently across her eyes, his gaze upon her thoughtful. “What does Björn want to do?”

  “What else can we do?” She gave another tremulous exhale and let her lingering grief disperse. “We must do our best to protect Alorin from what we’ve done. Go through with this charade with the Vestals, make sure no one tries to find their way here. My brother thinks he can solve the riddle of deyjiin, given time.”

  Arion heard the leading edge in her words. He searched her hidden gaze. “But?”

  Her brow furrowed. “But…Björn wants to twist all the welds. If something happens to you in the events to come…you may not find your way back.”

  Arion touched his thumb to her lips, where soon he intended his own lips to be. He let his gaze convey the fullness of his desire. “You think a few twisted welds will keep me from your side?”

  “Arion…” Her disconcertion sent jagged waves through their bond.

  It wasn’t just his insouciance that disturbed her, it was everything e
lse—T’khendar overcome with deyjiin, Malachai overcome as well; his resulting insanity and the wave of mad rage that had so violently and explosively decimated their race; and the looming fate that stole sleep from her every night—some confrontation that Isabel believed Arion would not survive.

  Oh, she tried to hide her surety from him. She lectured him on their paths. She said every choice offered new possibility, opportunity to change one’s course. But she couldn’t hide from him the truth that had consumed her hope—that somewhere along the way, he’d already made the choice that would take him to his end.

  Well…maybe he had set himself upon an inexorable course. This didn’t mean he had to believe himself lost to it.

  He and Björn had pursued many avenues in search of understanding of Isabel’s prediction, seeking ways for Arion to prevail; but even more personal than any choice he might make for the game, Arion couldn’t believe he would ever make a decision that would take him away from Isabel’s side, or from his son’s.

  Isabel was just watching him—listening, perhaps? He wasn’t trying to hide his thoughts from her.

  She lifted herself and kissed him, and for an instant their bond resonated with a different energy. As she withdrew, she pulled off her blindfold.

  Arion caught his breath. “Isabel—”

  “I will make this promise to you, Arion, if you will look me in the eye and make a promise to me.” Isabel’s resolute tone bound his tongue to stillness, while her colorless eyes, staring so intently and shockingly into his, bound his soul to her will. “I swear to you that you will know your son, and he will know you; you will see him grow and become a man. But you must promise me that you will not pit yourself against the Balance as Malachi and we have here done.” She searched his gaze for willingness as much as pressured him to agree. “Promise me that you’ll do nothing to compromise the integrity of your honor, that you’ll do nothing to draw Cephrael’s eye against you.”

  Arion stared wonderingly at her. “Do you truly think me so imprudent, Isabel? I know better than to attract Cephrael’s gaze in censure—”