Ean arched resigned brows. “Yes—no…I mean, her acts don’t require my forgiveness.” He gave a pained grimace. “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Ean tossed a soft grin in his direction. Then his expression sobered into thoughtfulness. “At first…in the beginning I struggled to forgive her, I’ll admit, but now it’s more about forgiving myself, I think.”
“How is that, Your Highness?”
Ean sat up to better meet his gaze. “You perceive it. I know you must. You’ve always been keen to my mind, Tanis, more than most…better than most.” He sank forward and braced elbows on his knees, staring out at the distant cliffs. “Darshan drew me to Tambarré, drew me to himself; he’d bound my path to his intent long before he bound me with his power. I know this has changed everything, Tanis—I perceive the paths of consequence shifting even without elae to show me their design. But I think the reason I can’t move forward into that future is because I still don’t know everything that lies behind. There’s a betrayal at the end of Arion’s path—I can sense it. I know it’s the key to understanding so much more than I currently do, but for the life of me, I can’t recall that truth!”
Ean hung his head. “I probably don’t need to tell you any of this. What with your being a truthreader and the fact that I’m in your world here—Raine’s truth, you’ve probably read every thought that’s come to me.”
Tanis was watching him with compassion making a vise around his chest. “I sense your turbulence.”
Ean cast him a rueful smile. “How could you not?” He straightened and laid a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. “We can talk more of this as you will, only right now…I just want to enjoy this day with you. Can you do that for me, Tanis? It’s been so long, I hardly remember what simple happiness feels like.”
Tanis exhaled a slow breath and silenced his own impatience. “Of course, Your Highness.” He let his gaze wander towards the horizon, thinking of another time, centuries ago, when he’d sat happily in his mother’s arms admiring the sea. “My mother once told me that it’s important to enjoy moments of respite when they present themselves.” He glanced to Ean and away again. “She said those are the times when Fate isn’t requiring greatness of us.”
Ean’s hand tightened on Tanis’s shoulder. “Your mother? You finally met your mother?”
“She taught me most everything I know about truthreading, and much about Patterning.”
“How? When?” Ean took him by both shoulders. “Don’t keep such momentous things from me!”
Tanis held his gaze, feeling oddly choked. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Highness.” He stood and focused on the beach, anchored both the sea stack and the shoreline firmly in his thoughts and then…folded the illusion, as if bringing together two edges of a painted canvas.
Suddenly they stood on the beach, only now the cliffs had been hollowed out to house a domed gazebo with towering columns tiled in abalone. Beneath the dome waited a linen-draped table set with a meal.
Tanis stood there sort of smiling at it.
Ean let out a low whistle. “That’s beautiful. Is this another of your creations?”
“It’s Sinárr’s.” Tanis turned him a grin. “He always knows when I’m hungry.” He led the way up the stairs.
Ean followed, but at the top, he paused and stared at the table with its elegant display of delicacies. At compass points around the central table, iron filigree braziers glowed, filling the cave with warmth. “Is this…but it’s not real, is it?” The prince lifted a puzzled look to Tanis. “It can’t be real.”
Tanis sat down in a chair. “The first law of Shadow: it’s as real as we decide it will be.”
Ean came and sat down across from him. “Is that really the first law?”
Tanis started helping himself to a pheasant pie fragrant with apricot and sage. “To be honest, Shadow has a lot of first laws. It depends on which Warlock you ask.”
“I see.” Ean served himself from a tagine of lamb and olives. “So, you were about to tell me of meeting your mother. When did this miracle come to pass?”
“After the zanthyr came for me in Rimaldi.”
Ean paused the serving spoon halfway to his plate. “You were in Rimaldi?”
Tanis smiled. “That’s another long story, Your Highness.”
“All right, fair enough.” Ean motioned for him to continue. “So the zanthyr retrieved you from Rimaldi…”
“And took me to my mother’s house…”
Tanis told his prince then how he’d discovered the patterns on the walls of his bedroom, how each one had revealed another of his mother’s lessons, and some of what she’d taught him.
Ean listened raptly, his smile wide and his gaze marveling. At one point he remarked upon her ingenuity, whereupon Tanis had to admit to him how foolish he’d felt when the zanthyr had asked him if he really thought that his mother had put those very important lessons on his walls.
Ean laughed out loud. “No?” He clapped a hand down on the table, his eyes bright. “Where were they, then?”
Tanis smiled softly. “Just memories stored in patterns in my mind, like gifts for opening in my later years. Returning home had wakened those patterns, and the memories of her lessons came back in the form of illusions. Many lessons returned over time—years of lessons, actually.”
Ean shook his head wonderingly. “But weren’t you just a babe when you became a ward of the Lady Melisande?”
“I was two years old when Phaedor brought me to live with Her Grace’s mother.”
“Two.” Ean sat back in his chair and stared at him. “But…did you say the zanthyr brought you?” He rubbed at his forehead. “How did I not know that?”
Tanis imagined the answer to that lay in his father’s occluded memories. “After a few months at my mother’s home, Phaedor took me to the Sormitáge—that is…” he flashed a sheepish grin, “actually, the High Lord of Agasan came to see Phaedor, and the zanthyr ingeniously commandeered the High Lord’s ship to take us to Faroqhar.”
“That must’ve been something to see.” Ean shook his head and drank his wine. “So you enrolled in the Sormitáge…”
Thus did Tanis tell his prince the tale of his time in Faroqhar. Over the course of the evening, as they moved from the gazebo to a balcony at Sinárr’s villa, Tanis detailed his adventures—from his invocation examination with the Endoge, to his investigation with Felix and finally the battle at the Quai field.
As Tanis spoke of Shail’s capture and Pelas’s rescue, they were sitting beneath the stars on Sinárr’s balcony overlooking the edge of the world. Beyond their high vantage, a luminous sea extended to the edge of creation. Three moons in different phases made an arc in the west, while high above, a pair of twin planets hovered, nearly translucent, against the backdrop of space.
When Tanis finished catching Ean up on his experiences, the prince sat still for a long time, drinking his wine and studying the lad with a furrow between his brows. “So, because of you,” Ean began slowly, “two of our most powerful enemies have not only become allies but have now been eternally bound to the game on our side.” The portent in his tone, likewise the intensity of his admiring gaze, felt a little overwhelming to the lad.
Tanis pushed his hair from his eyes. “I had some help.”
Ean arched brows at him significantly. “Not much, I’d say.”
Tanis held his position with polite insistence. “I had my mother’s teachings…and my father’s.”
When Ean only stared at him at this, Tanis dropped his gaze to his goblet. “This betrayal that sits in your past…why do you think you can’t remember it?”
Ean gave a forceful exhale and pushed to his feet. He walked to the railing and stared out across the Shadowscape. “Tanis, this may seem unreal to you…” he paused, looked around, and then cast him a wry smile, “or not, but I’ve died three times for this game—each time Returning, each time trying again to take my place as a Player, each time falling pre
y to Shailabanáchtran’s malice.”
Ean turned to lean back against the railing and regarded Tanis with a deep furrow between his brows. “Arion made a choice in his last hours, and it’s condemned me ever since. Why can’t I remember?” He tapped his fingers on the balustrade while his frown deepened. “Honestly, I think it scares me—I don’t even know why. It’s not like I can change anything about it, do anything about it, and yet, just aiming my attention towards that memory makes me cold.” Ean gave a troubled exhale and shook his head. “Shail showed me something from his own recollection, but I don’t trust it.”
Tanis studied him with quiet concern. “What things do you know are true?”
Ean crossed his arms. “I had a dream where Isabel asked me—asked Arion—to promise not to pit myself against the Balance. In that memory, I didn’t make that promise, but I believe that later I did.”
He came back over and sat down on the couch next to Tanis, resting elbows on his knees. “Arion Tavestra slew the Hundred Mages at the Citadel—I did that, not Björn.” He lifted a burning gaze out across the sea. “But because he was my friend…Arion’s closest friend…Björn took responsibility for Arion’s choices as though they were his own, even though he hadn’t been there, even though he had no idea why Arion had done it—or if it was even the right thing to have done. He simply trusted that it was a choice Arion had to make.”
Ean slumped back against the cushion. “But I don’t know, Tanis. Shail had the Mages under compulsion, but if Arion had looked for another way, might he have found one? He slew them ruthlessly, driven by fury at what they’d done to Isabel…hardly considering the personal consequences, and I believe in so doing, he drew Cephrael’s blighting eye.” The prince looked gravely to the lad. “Beyond this surety, the rest of that night is jumbled. I can’t even remember the name of my own—” He pressed his lips together tightly and turned his gaze away.
Tanis felt Ean’s radiating torment on multiple wavelengths. “Your Highness—”
“Ean,” he protested faintly.
“—if you’re willing, I could work a Telling to help you recover your memory.”
Ean turned swiftly back to him. “You can do that?”
Tanis knew unequivocally that he could, but he said only, “It’s worth a try.”
“Of course, then—yes.” An almost desperate willingness radiated from Ean. “I’m in your hands, Tanis. Do what you will with me.”
Fighting a sudden nervousness of his own, for Tanis knew at least some of what he’d find in Ean’s memory, the lad placed his hand over the prince’s brow in the truthreader’s hold. “Open your mind—”
—to me. Ean had done it before Tanis even finished the request.
The lad summoned elae through the link he shared with Sinárr and bound his thoughts with Ean’s in the powerful patterns of elae’s fourth strand, working the Telling as his mother had taught him.
Recall Arion’s battle with Shail. Find its beginning…and when he sensed-saw that Ean had done this, Move through it and show me what occurred.
Thus did Ean recall Arion’s final battle for the first time through the fourth strand’s unadulterated lens of truth.
*—*
Arion swam in a river of light. He could barely see, barely think. Fragmented patterns clogged the currents; daggers of compulsion fractured his thoughts. He and the Enemy rode the raging current of the Pattern of the World, locked in a deadly embrace.
He’d had to sever two of his anchors. The last one, the node in the far north, still held. Balance had a sense of humor after all, it would seem.
An hour ago he might’ve released that anchor and ridden the Pattern’s tide to a safe harbor, but an hour ago he’d been unable to conceive of letting the Enemy walk free, or of abandoning the effect he’d intended to create, of turning his back on the First Law…
How could he call himself a wielder if he made such a choice? It would be denying everything that he was, everything he knew. He would be denying himself.
Arion understood then that this was the choice Isabel had foreseen, the choice she’d known so unquestionably that he would make…the one he’d already made…the only one he could ever make.
An hour ago, two paths had extended before him.
Now both lay in shards. He leapt from one decision to the next, each time hoping the landing might reveal a new consequence, an opening to some future beyond the one reflected in the Enemy’s eyes.
The Pattern of the World tore at his mind. The Enemy tore at it more violently.
Every time the man’s compulsion had overcome one of Arion’s shields, he’d been forced to retreat behind the next one. He’d compartmentalized his consciousness so many times, he hardly knew what part of him remained.
They now clutched a dagger between them. Two men, each with a foot upon a single stake, teetering violently, forging a tug of war with Balance.
Arion had hold of the Enemy’s life pattern. He was unworking it.
The Enemy had hold of Arion’s last shield. He was unmaking it.
Balance would decide which one would prevail, but Arion already suspected which of them Cephrael had chosen as the victor.
There came a point when a man knew the battle couldn’t be won, yet he kept fighting anyway, because that’s all he could do. For a soldier, this was a courageous act, but for a wielder…for him, it would always prove catastrophic, because the moment a wielder knows that he can’t achieve the effect he intends, he can’t.
In that place of knowing stood Arion. He knew the Enemy was more powerful, and he couldn’t shake that knowingness. It had poisoned all of his efforts, corrupted his certainty, broken his resolve.
The only recourse he had to keep the Enemy from compelling him into becoming his weapon was his native skill of unworking; yet using it in combat was tantamount to using the fifth in combat.
And so he had…
And so he knew where Balance would cast its favor.
Oh, Isabel…I am so gravely sorry.
She’d known, because she knew him. He should’ve listened to her.
Arion fought against the compulsion bombarding him, fought to continue unraveling the Enemy’s pattern, fought to keep desperation’s claws out of his thoughts. Amid the many compulsive patterns overtaking his mind, among the disheartening illusions and lies trying to corrode his efforts, he clung to one truth: Isabel had promised him that he would know his son.
The Enemy’s gaze burned into Arion as they struggled, nose to nose, for control of the dagger. The man needed but a grace of Arion’s blood to bind him unbreakably. No longer merely a pawn to be used and discarded then, but a puppet to be manipulated, leveraged, broken and punished until eternity’s clock wound down.
The Pattern of the World raged, spearing Arion’s eyes with painful shards of light. Balance rang a reverberating warning. Elae screamed for him to act.
Isabel had told him to what time and place she would send their son if Arion fell, as she’d foreseen. He finally felt vindicated in dredging that truth so ruthlessly out of her.
Arion reached out along the bond with his son and anchored himself to his child’s awareness. He threw a second anchor into Time to hook upon a far-flung future that Isabel had foreseen. He cast a third desperate anchor to the north, and Calgaryn.
Then he clenched his jaw, and his determination, and forced the three streams to coincide.
Time sucked him violently forward.
The Enemy almost lost hold of him. Arion had hoped that he might, but the man clung to him as Time skipped them along its undulating stream, both Arion’s life pattern and the Enemy’s bared to the elements, intertwined…tangled.
The Enemy’s anchors hauled them back in time. Arion’s hauled them forward. He felt himself being torn apart across the centuries—his very life pattern ripped to shreds.
Arion had but a brief window left to act, seconds…fractions of seconds.
The Enemy was dragging his consciousness back to his own time
. Arion couldn’t prevent that. But without his body, the Enemy couldn’t bind him either.
With a final surge of determination, Arion plunged the dagger into his own chest while simultaneously anchoring his body in his son’s future time. Then he released his hold on the Pattern of the World, and the node in Calgaryn reeled him in.
But the forces rushing through it were too violent. The node expanded—exploded. The floodgates opened back into the Pattern of the World, and the river became a sea.
Where the node had been now pulsed a powerful weld.
It sucked Arion into its vortex and spit his body forcefully out into the future, even though he felt his consciousness being pulled backwards into the past. For a moment in the shattered continuum, Arion existed in two places. The Enemy existed in two places.
Time stretched.
Existing simultaneously in both moments, the Enemy rose above Arion. His eyes gleamed darkly in the shadowed tunnel where they’d landed after the weld spit them out.
Arion watched the Enemy pull the dagger out of his chest. Blood choked his throat. “This isn’t…the end of me.”
The Enemy gave him a sharp smile. “Come and find me. I’ll be waiting.” He licked his thumb and pressed it to Arion’s bloodied lips.
Deyjiin flooded into Arion. Every molecule in his body screamed.
The Enemy vanished back down Time’s stream, dragging Arion’s soul with him.
Arion fought that current as long as he could, but deyjiin was devouring his body, turning it into crust, an ashen shell, and without it, he had no more anchors. With a last force of will, his last effect to create, Arion willed that his body would become a beacon for his soul, to find his way back to his son when time’s clock struck the year.
He cast a final apology along two binding threads, but he was so weak, his pattern so torn, and Time’s clutching current roaring so loudly in his mind, he didn’t know if either would hear him.
Isabel…Tanis, my son…I love you.
Then, with his last dying breath, Arion bound his memories for his future self to unravel and surrendered to the darkness.
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