Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

Niko threw up both hands. “To kill the Mages—what else, Franco?”

  Ah, the lunatic rises from Reason’s ashes. I knew it couldn’t last.

  Niko went on, half grumbling, half extemporizing, pacing in time with the cadence of his thoughts, “Björn obviously took care of the Mages for us in the end—imagine him slaying his sister after all Arion Tavestra went through to save her from Dore?—but…well, at least he’s done our work for us now. It’s late, I’ll admit. Three hundred years late. But regardless, the slate is clean. We can start fresh.”

  Franco pressed fingers to his temples, reeling as much from Niko’s words as his inconstancy to a troth with reason.

  “And it starts here, Franco. With us—united.”

  Here it comes.

  “New vestals to replace the broken ones. The Second, sadly, the Fifth for a surety. We’ll have to look for someone to replace Raine if he doesn’t come around. And of course, Alshiba. She’s the most fractured of all of them.”

  Franco had listened to about as much as he could take. He heard Carian vran Lea’s plea to Dagmar shouting in his head, ‘Let me kill him! Why can’t I kill him? I’ll make it quick!’

  I wouldn’t make it quick, Franco thought with his jaw clenched tightly.

  Anger kept trying to make fists of his hands. He forced his fingers to relax at his sides, but to stand there and let the man accuse him of duplicity, while with his every breath, Niko was so openly plotting to depose all of the realm’s vestals?

  —To be fair, he didn’t say anything about Seth—

  Franco really wanted to hit something. He wished it could’ve been Niko.

  Niko helped himself to some wine, giving Franco time with his thoughts. He looked rather desperately around, seeking some anchor of rationality, something to ground him to his purpose for being there, to remind him of his oaths to the First Lord and Alshiba.

  What he saw instead were changes in the office that he’d missed upon first entry. Niko must’ve been using the space for quite some time, clearly without Alshiba’s knowledge or leave.

  Niko took up his wine and sat leaned against the sideboard. “We could do great things together, you and me. I would keep you on, of course, as my deputy. You needn’t worry.” He drank his wine and had a thought in the middle of his swallow. “Oh—here’s something that will cheer you. I’m working on a way to release us from our oaths.”

  Franco felt lost. “What oaths?”

  “To the Fifth Vestal.” Niko looked at him like he was surprised Franco had to ask. “The man is a traitor and, frankly, a terrorist. Twice he’s invaded Alshiba’s apartments as well as the Speaker’s own. It’s unconscionable that we Companions should still be bound to any shadow of his will. I know a man who can release us from those oaths. Won’t that be a relief?”

  Franco felt like the rug had been pulled out from under him. No, the floor. No, the ground for miles around. He choked out, “Who could possibly break an oath-binding laid in by the Fifth Vestal?”

  Niko sipped his wine with a smug sort of smile. “You wouldn’t know him.”

  Franco’s gaze was hot. “Wouldn’t I?” He’d been putting a lot of thought into who Niko could’ve found to replace the Fifth Vestal. Only one man seemed to fit the bill, and he was not a man in any sense of the word. “What about Alshiba?” he asked with his jaw tight and his hands tighter at his sides. “I suppose you already have her replaced, too?”

  Niko seemed to backpedal a bit. “Now, now…let’s not be hasty, Franco.” He lifted a finger off his goblet and pointed meaningfully at him. “No, we have to kill her first. That’s where the atrophae come—”

  Franco didn’t remember crossing the room or drawing his dagger. He only really became aware of himself when he found Niko beneath him on the floor and his blade at the man’s treacherous throat. “Go on,” Franco growled. “Tell me the rest of your plan.”

  Niko tried to swallow past the pressure of Franco’s blade and choked instead. “I will if you will,” he gasped.

  Franco arched a brow, dangerous and dark.

  “Admit it,” Niko’s voice barely scraped past Franco’s blade. “You serve him. You’re sworn to Björn—” he winced as Franco pressed the blade harder into his neck. “Just…one truth.”

  Franco could barely see through the bloodhaze clouding his vision. “I serve him,” he hissed, low and fierce, “proudly, as you—”

  A numbing force shocked through him all at once, a lightning strike of immobility. Breath froze in his lungs—everything froze.

  Niko scrambled out from underneath his rigid form, toppling Franco onto his side in the process. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could barely even think.

  “See?” Niko indignantly tugged at his coat. Franco heard a scraping sound—curtains being drawn back. “I told you I could get him to confess.”

  “Indeed you did. Fine work, my friend.” A man’s voice, deep and full-bodied—if such could be used to describe the timbre of a sound. But he did speak as though he was a fine wine, with a sort of fluid and intoxicating depth to his tone, each word offering multiple meanings, inviting of a desirous complexity. Franco only knew one man with a voice like that.

  The working holding him immobile lessened to allow him to breathe. He gasped just as a pair of shoes planted themselves in front of his eyes—expensive shoes, shining beneath immaculately tailored pants.

  “I am surprised at how well your formula worked, though,” Niko muttered from above him.

  “Bully them, confuse them, anger them,” the man with the red-wine voice chuckled softly. “Three corners of a kite. Nudge up one, then another, then the next, then the first, round and about until the kite is toppling and your victim practically tumbles into confession. Three points to gain an admission of fault from any reasonable man.”

  “Franco serves a heinous traitor,” Niko grumbled, “how reasonable can he be? Still, it worked like you said it would.”

  “Like a charm.”

  I’d like to shove a very large charm down his smug Eltanin throat.

  Franco stared into the rug, cursing his stupidity. He should’ve walked out when he had the chance!

  Yes, Franco Rohre, said the mental voice of the truthreader standing above him, whose expert working was pinning him to frozen life, you certainly should have.

  Doors slammed open, followed by running feet.

  “He’s here, the traitorous dog! Isn’t that right, Admiral?” Niko punctuated his call to arms with a kick of Franco’s immobilized leg. “Bind him! Take him!”

  Hands grabbed Franco’s arms and hauled him to his feet. The immobilizing working fell away in time to be replaced by the icy bite of goracrosta around his arms.

  Hmm…the mad voice in Franco’s head tapped its finger to its lips thoughtfully, I’m starting to think it wasn’t Alshiba who sent that book after all.

  While the guards were binding his wrists behind him, Franco tossed the hair from his eyes and met Mir Arkhadi’s crystalline gaze.

  “Franco.” Mir nodded with quiet amusement.

  “Mir.” Franco knew where this was headed now. “Be careful rooting around in my head. You may snare more thorns than even you can enjoy.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard all about your dangerous mind.” Mir very much looked like he was relishing the challenge. He nodded to the guards to take Franco away.

  “I want to know everything.” Niko grabbed Mir’s arm. “Everything he knows—especially about Dagmar’s weldmap.”

  “We shall leave no stone unturned, you have my word.”

  And then they were carting Franco away for a private date in Mir Arkadhi’s dungeon.

  Sixty-nine

  “To stand before the light of truth and admit what it reveals…these are the greatest pursuits of man.”

  –Aristotle of Cyrene

  Ean bobbed within a river of disorientation. Freezing waves stole his breath, pummeling light his vision. Power soaked his core until he knew he was drowning in it. He flailed for w
akefulness as for the surface of that power, for breath and for life. Was it memory, or was it happening in that very moment—this dying, drowning sense of being swept into the vast beyond?

  He couldn’t separate time’s segments. Infinity was all that had been and would be in a loop of now that never let now become then. He found no handhold of yesterdays to anchor him, for the river was rushing him too quickly on, and his hands…his frozen, burning hands—

  Ean woke with a harsh inhale. He pushed palms to his eyes, but he still couldn’t shield himself from the blinding light. His head was swarming, yet his mind felt fractured. Multiple awarenesses stacked themselves in layered shards, but none of those awarenesses understood each other. An emptiness so vast as to dwarf comprehension hovered just beyond his mind. Ean’s bemused and battered consciousness spun within these layered perceptions, observing them…wondering at them.

  He finally dragged his mind back beneath his own control to focus on one clear thought: Why am I alive?

  Pain throbbed in his palm.

  He blinked until his bleary eyes found his palms—his left palm…and a cut, still raw. Whereupon the layered awarenesses aligned beneath a sudden, rather horrifying memory—

  Breath halted in his lungs. Ean threw an arm over his eyes and stifled a groan of realization—in the same moment feeling immensely grateful that he was alive and absolutely terrified at what that meant.

  You chose this path, cousin, Fynn’s voice smirked. You asked him to bind you.

  Yes, but I didn’t think he’d actually do it!

  The Fynn voice snorted derisively. That’s why they say never to make a deal with Death when you’re standing on His doorstep.

  Thank you for that very helpful observation—

  “Do you always carry on conversations with yourself this way?”

  Ean dropped his arm to look at Darshan. The Malorin’athgul was sitting in a low-slung chair, stroking a finger along his bottom lip and observing him—damn him—with quiet amusement.

  Ean pushed an arm over his eyes again. His entire body felt numb and at the same time, electrified. He had no idea how that was possible. “Lady’s light…” he breathed more than spoke, “you’re probably wondering what you got yourself into with this binding.”

  The Malorin’athgul stroked at one eyebrow. “Actually, I was wondering if this sort of display might’ve been Kjieran van Stone’s true reaction upon realizing he was bound to me.”

  Ean was trying to get a grip on the enormity of what he’d done—of what Darshan had done for him, at his request. “You saved my life. And I’m grateful—thirteen hells, I’m so astonished I’m speechless.” This truth, compounded with the cosmic perceptions he’d been awakened to, had him reeling. “The reality is just a little hard to wrap my head around.”

  Indeed, possibility was a rearing monolith splitting the sky into forked potentialities, light and dark in positive and negative, reflections of intent. Ean had gambled everything on the tenuous hope that Darshan possessed more humanity than his actions as the Prophet would suggest. But it was done now, whatever the outcome, whatever Darshan’s intention beneath the act—whether charitable or aught else. Ean was bound to him now and subject to everything that binding implied.

  By Cephrael’s Great Book! He prayed he’d made the right choice!

  The Malorin’athgul rose from his chair and idled towards the windows. “There are worse things than being bound to one of us, Ean.”

  Processing this, Ean exhaled a slow breath and looked back to him curiously. “Like what?”

  Darshan turned a telling look over his shoulder. “You could be bound to a Warlock.” He halted before the window, which soared nearly three times his own considerable height. Beyond him, the onion-dome towers of the alien city sparkled with painful brightness.

  Looking out at the city, it took Ean a moment to discern what seemed different about the view. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed to study it, and soon realized that he was seeing more than light reflecting off of solid objects; he was seeing the city’s towers as solidified energy, a dazzling spectrum of variegated masses, as though viewed through the lens of elae’s fifth strand—only it couldn’t be the fifth he was looking through now. For some startling reason, Darshan was sharing his awareness with Ean, and his was a very different perspective.

  Indeed, when he chose to become aware of it, Ean got the distinctly uncomfortable perception that he was actually somewhere else entirely, or else… rather, that what appeared to be there wasn’t actually there, but the only there was his body, suspended out of space and time in a dimension that had neither, while his mind wove illusion into form around him.

  The prince looked to Darshan and swallowed. “Tell me how you bound me.”

  Darshan’s tall form made a dark silhouette before the sparkling city. He clasped hands behind his back. “I crafted its intent to mirror the binding I share with my brothers. This was the only way I knew to forge such a link with deyjiin.”

  Ean was just rising from the bed. Now he sank back down again on its edge.

  Darshan had spoken so matter-of-factly, yet this was a staggering truth—a staggering gift. He had a thousand questions in that moment, yet the only one that scraped past his incredulity was, “Why?” Ean stared perplexedly at the man. “Why would you do such a thing for me? Why bother sparing my life at all?”

  Darshan turned over his shoulder. “You expressed uncertainty about your path leading you here, about us being here together. I harbor no such uncertainties.”

  Ean sank elbows onto his knees and tried to reconcile this statement with the truths he was perceiving through their binding, recognizing in the same moment that the immortal was giving him free access to his thoughts so that Ean might gain this understanding.

  The prince scrubbed at his jaw. Amazement and wonder were running neck and neck with gratitude, all of them chasing after possibility. He couldn’t see any paths of consequence—of course not, for they were patterns of elae—but he could sense myriad spirals unfolding.

  “I perceive your lingering discomposure, Ean, but we haven’t much time left to prepare.” The Malorin’athgul looked to him. “Binding your life pattern to my own required much use of my power. The working has made a beacon across the linked realms.” His gaze tightened. “We must ready ourselves. They’re coming.”

  Ean shook his head. “Who’s coming?”

  “Revenants. Golem creatures.”

  Ean came alert. “Eidola?”

  “Eidola would be preferable; they’re bound to the Warlock that created them and may still be controlled and directed. Revenants are the discarded entities the Warlocks have brought to life and then abandoned. They no longer know any consciousness, only hunger.”

  “That’s…horrifying.” Ean got unsteadily to his feet. “What do they hunger for?”

  “Deyjiin. They could feed for millennia off of one such as me.” Darshan placed his hand on the window, Ean felt his thought as a mental snap, and the glass vanished. A scorching wind blasted into the room, whipping hair and clothing. “Shail left our brother to a clutch of these creatures.” Darshan turned him a look that spoke volumes. “Pelas had just escaped them when you tried to unmake him in my temple.”

  Ean winced and shoved a hand to hold back his hair and his chagrin. “That wasn’t my best moment.”

  It occurred to him as he joined the Malorin’athgul at the window’s edge that through his binding with Darshan he was now also connected to Pelas and Shail…and Rinokh. The potential ramifications kept branching the more he thought about them, and not all of those outgrowths were easily digested.

  “I assume you can’t use deyjiin against these revenants?”

  “Correct. It would only make them stronger.”

  “So how do we fight them?”

  Darshan lifted a calculating gaze out across the city. “For now, with the strength of sword and staff.” He turned to face Ean. “You must duplicate the starpoints of this realm
so you can draw your own power here.”

  The prince blinked at him. Then the truth sank in. He shook his head slowly while a welling astonishment gradually consumed him. “By Cephrael’s Great Book…” he gave an incredulous exhale, “you’re telling me I can work deyjiin?” He’d never imagined Darshan would bind him in a way that allowed him access to his own power.

  Darshan looked back to the city. “It is fortunate you’re of the fifth—‘as fabled as you and I,’ I believe you said—for in elae’s fifth strand, the two powers achieve balance.”

  Ean considered deeply of his words. “That field you placed around Nadia back in Tambarré. It was formed of both powers, wasn’t it? Balanced somehow. That’s what you’re talking about?”

  “Yes. Even bound to me, you would not be able to work my power were you not also a fifth-strand Adept…or eidola, mutated by the fifth.” Darshan leveled him a deeply penetrating stare. “Perhaps we too will find balance in this unanticipated union.”

  Ean managed a swallow around a continuously-increasing disbelief. “So…matching starpoints. How do I do that?”

  Darshan extended his hand. “Join minds with me and I will show you the manner of it.”

  Ean looked at his hand, feeling like the foundations of every his expectation of the man were being shaken. Then he clasped wrists with Darshan.

  The Malorin’athgul opened his mind—that mind which had felt like a sun upon Ean’s first contact. It still blazed as brightly, but now Darshan’s binding protected Ean from the searing star of his awareness. Darshan drew him within the corona of his thoughts and then exploded his awareness outwards to encompass the starpoints of that world.

  Ean saw balls of light framing space in a cube, almost exactly like what he envisioned when he framed space in Absolute Being. He understood immediately what he needed to do. He communicated this understanding to Darshan with the instant timelessness of thought, and Darshan stepped mentally aside.

  Duplicating the starpoints of that realm felt natural in a way that Ean found incredibly stimulating, for he realized he was using deyjiin to do it. The power felt light and cool in his mind, so different from elae—the lifeforce had a warm viscosity, while deyjiin seemed as a weightless, cohesive mist—yet it responded similarly to his intent. The moment he duplicated the final starpoint, deyjiin flooded through him.