Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3)

by Melissa McPhail

  At the very bottom, they found Sebastian.

  Ean thought he understood anger. He thought he’d known rage. The fury he’d experienced upon discovering the web of compulsion that bound his brother had been beyond measure.

  Yet none of those moments had prepared him for the wave of fury that broke across his heart as he descended through an opening in the tower’s lowest floor and came upon his brother.

  They’d strapped Sebastian naked across an iron block. His wrists and arms stretched tight above his head. Silver rope stretched his ankles out behind him and anchored into bolts in the floor, so his overtaxed shoulders held the brunt of his weight. His back bore the marks of a vicious lashing, but his hands… Ean’s eyes shied away from their mutilation.

  He hardly realized he stood frozen on the steps until Immanuel’s hand on his shoulder recalled him to the moment. Ean felt so many conflicting emotions he could barely find a coherent thought.

  Immanuel’s gaze took in Sebastian’s broken form and then returned compassionately to Ean. “I’ll wait just above. Call if you desire my help in any way.”

  Ean looked back to Sebastian and swallowed. Then he forced himself down the last few steps.

  The currents flowed smoothly around his brother—this savagery had been the work of human hands—but Ean still studied their tides before approaching, lest he fall into some final trap. Then he rushed to Sebastian’s side and laid a hand on his dark hair, damp with sweat.

  Sebastian’s eyes fluttered open.

  A lump formed in Ean’s throat, and his heart beat a rapid cadence, for he saw not the veil of corruption that had bound the creature Işak, but his brother Sebastian gazing back at him.

  Sebastian managed a humorless smile, fleeting and full of pain, and then the whisper, “…knew you’d come.”

  Ean pushed back a shattering feeling of grief. “I had to.”

  Another smile flickered across Sebastian’s face, ironic…rueful. “I dreamed of you…of us.” He winced. “Almost made it all worthwhile…to have that memory back…after so long.”

  Ean scanned his brother’s broken body, wondering how best to free him. He tried not to stare at Sebastian’s mutilated hands, but his gaze kept straying back to them. “Why?” he found himself murmuring, not really meaning to say it aloud.

  Sebastian closed his eyes and laid his head against one arm. He spoke with a singular weariness of spirit. “Dore knew my hands were the one part of myself I didn’t abhor.” He managed a grim smile and added with a twitch of his brow, “He had to whip that out of me.”

  Ean looked his brother over again, fearing for him on so many levels. “If I release you—”

  “Just do it, Ean.”

  The prince drew his dagger and severed the goracrosta binding Sebastian’s wrists. He exhaled a tormented groan and collapsed onto his knees.

  While Ean attended to the bounds at his ankles, Sebastian laid his forehead against the iron block. “When I was lying there in the snow above Tyr’kharta,” he murmured, his raw voice muffled, “I wondered what would be worse: to know who I was…to remember everything? Or to remember nothing, only having that terrible sense…that something vital had been taken from me. Whatever you ripped out of me…after that, I remembered all.”

  Having freed his ankles, Ean knelt at his brother’s side and leaned to see his face. “And the knowing was worse?”

  Sebastian turned his head and looked at Ean with a gaze lashed by unspeakable memories. “No. It was knowing and being so helpless that I couldn’t abide.” He grimaced again. “Help me…to sit.”

  Ean moved to aid him, for it was clear Sebastian couldn’t lift his arms on his own. With Ean’s help, Sebastian leaned sideways against the iron block and slowly drew in one knee to his chest and then the other, hissing as the effort strained the broken flesh of his back.

  Resting his head against the iron block, he lifted blue eyes to meet his brother’s horrified gaze. “When I saw you in Tyr’kharta…” He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if to deny the memory. “When we met in Tyr’kharta, I believed nothing could save me, but whatever you did there…” Sebastian met Ean’s gaze again. “You did the impossible. If there’s any chance you can do what you claimed, I…” his voice broke, but he finished in the last, “I…would rather die trying than spend another moment…bound to this hell.”

  Ean bent his head to capture again Sebastian’s gaze, which had drifted on tides of pain. “When you recover from this…will you try to kill me?”

  Sebastian flashed a bleak smile. “Probably. But not today. Today you’re safe. I’m too weary even for Dore’s compulsion to lift its head.” He drew in a shuddering breath, and as he exhaled, he cast a despairing look at the stairs. “I remember those steps.”

  “A long climb,” Ean agreed. “Would you choose to walk them?”

  Sebastian closed his eyes and his brow constricted. “Today, little brother…I think I’ll let you carry me.”

  Immanuel straightened off the wall as Ean came up from the flight below carrying Sebastian. His copper eyes widened. “Ah…Dore’s wielder.” He shifted his gaze quickly back to Ean. “Things become more clear to me.”

  Ean nodded dispiritedly toward the long flights of steps rising above them. “Will you lead?”

  He seemed to collect himself. “Of course.”

  Sebastian soon passed into unconsciousness. Ean used elae to fuel and buffer their ascent, but the effort cost him. His head pounded with every step gained, and he felt continuously drained, as if elae merely flowed into and out of him again without replenishing his stamina.

  They were nearly to the top before Ean heard men approaching from the final level above. He took the moment to lean his shoulder exhaustedly against the wall.

  Immanuel turned him a look of deep concern. “Perhaps you should leave this battle to me?”

  Ean barely found the energy to nod his agreement.

  As the clamorous Saldarians came bursting through from the floor above, Immanuel’s copper eyes narrowed, and he asked without turning, “Might I use your sword, Ean?” Then he added upon noticing Ean’s questioning gaze, “They’re learning, do you see? This crew carries Merdanti blades.”

  Ean turned his body to give Immanuel access to his sword. “It’s—”

  “Sentient? Yes, I know.” He drew the Kingdom Blade from its scabbard with a sober flourish and lifted the weapon before his nose as he turned to face the oncoming Saldarians. His gaze tightened. “With your permission, Ean…”

  “Please, Immanuel.”

  He ran up the steps to meet the Saldarian horde, and Ean did his best to keep pace. Beneath Immanuel’s sword, men fell as trees to a cutter’s axe, each pitching over the side of the narrow steps, bodies landing as fallen tree trunks on the stone floor forty feet below. Immanuel felled the last man with a blade through his heart and with a kick sent him tumbling to join his companions in death.

  As the door came in view, Ean sought Isabel along the bond—only to perceive her presence surprisingly close. He realized that she’d done as he’d meant to do and had already followed the bond in search of him. There were certain benefits to loving a woman who could see into the future.

  The moment Ean emerged from the tower with Sebastian in his arms, Isabel came around the near corner with Dorn and Lem close behind. Ean’s soul sighed with relief.

  Immanuel had been holding the door for Ean’s exit, and now he closed it and moved around into Isabel’s view.

  She halted abruptly.

  Immanuel stiffened.

  The air in the space between them grew instantly charged and then went still, like the sea stretched flat between two successive squalls.

  Immanuel turned Ean a sharp look as if to ask, your other? At Ean’s nod, the man returned his gaze to Isabel and took three slow steps back. Then he placed a hand across his heart and gave a solemn bow. “Isabel van Gelderan, High Mage of the Citadel, I bid you good afternoon.”

  Isabel stood still as st
one. A conflicting storm of emotion thrummed around her, both confusing and unsettling, but after a taut silence, one corner of her mouth twitched upwards in an almost-smile. “Immanuel di Nostri. To think, all this time…” She shook her head. “How could I not have known?”

  Immanuel shrugged inconsequentially. “You never gave me a second glance, my lady—but why should you have?” He placed his open palm across his heart. “I was merely a painter, one of many littering the Sormitáge’s halls, and you the High Mage.” Then he smiled and added with a nod to another sort of truth, “But then, too, I’m adept at hiding my nature.”

  “So it would appear.”

  Ean shifted his hold on his brother’s inert body, bewildered by this conversation but even more so by Isabel’s reaction. She stood braced as if expecting a storm but spoke almost with familiarity. The currents massed around both she and Immanuel, though neither called them to bear against the other, yet Ean sensed a grave truth was being batted back and forth between them. And threaded throughout all of this was Isabel’s sense of immense conflict.

  They were easily twenty paces distant, but Immanuel took another step away from Isabel. His copper eyes looked her over appreciatively then, making Ean flinch. “There are a great many people who would pay dearly to know you survived the Citadel, my lady.”

  She arched a brow above her blindfold. “There are a great many who will pay dearly because I did.”

  She and he held each other in silence then, somehow reading of one another. The moment drew out long enough for Ean to grow uncomfortable with the energy passing between them.

  Finally, Isabel murmured, “You’ve chosen a path?”

  “I…” Immanuel frowned. Then he cast her a look of appeal—most surprising and unexpected.

  Isabel’s fingers tightened around her staff. “You are no longer yourself, Pelas,” she remarked then, using a name unfamiliar to Ean, “not wholly.”

  Ean spun a look at Immanuel.

  His face constricted. “No, my lady. I’m not.”

  The passage seemed to darken, but Ean couldn’t tell which of them was muting the light.

  Isabel turned her staff in her hands, kneading the enchanted stone. “What will you do?”

  His gaze flicked away and back again. “I will once more seek my brother and demand that he free me from the chains of his will.” Then he frowned, and his simmering anger set the currents churning away in waves. “That failing,” he murmured tightly, “perhaps I will seek out your brother and ask him to do what mine would not.”

  She stepped towards him with sudden urgency. “You should come with us now.”

  Immanuel took a quick step backwards. He seemed startled by her invitation. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again and rubbed his jaw instead. “I…cannot. Don’t you see…?” He tilted his head as he held her invisible gaze. “I cannot know what other compulsions Darshan might’ve placed upon me. I can’t trust my own mind, nor my decisions…my every thought is suspect.”

  Ean started violently at this admission. Darshan? His brother? He turned a furious look of betrayal upon Immanuel.

  “Do not be quick to judge, Ean,” Isabel advised quietly, though she herself stood amidst a hurricane storm of uncertainty, just as he did. “The currents reveal the truth.”

  “And what truth is that?” Pelas inquired. His gaze had never left her.

  She pressed her lips together tightly. “Darshan will never release you. Pelasommáyurek, come with us.” Such ominous portent laced her tone that Ean felt this entreaty hit him like a punch to his gut. Isabel wouldn’t be this insistent unless she’d looked down the path ahead and seen something that disturbed her greatly.

  But quite aside from Isabel’s foresight, the prince had his own perceptions, and he sensed something between Isabel and Pelas—some future—that made him cold inside.

  The matter was decided for them when the ratcheting rattle of an eidola interrupted the silence. Ean spun a look over his shoulder to find one of the creatures stalking towards them leading a host of men.

  Shade and darkness! And he with Sebastian to carry…?

  Immanuel hastily replaced Ean’s sword at his hip, saying low into his ear as he came close, “I hope one day we’ll meet again, Ean.” Then he turned to face the eidola and placed his body between it and the others. “Go,” he murmured, settling a predatory gaze upon the creature. “This one is mine.”

  “Hurry, Ean.” Isabel clearly sensed his hesitation. “The path narrows.”

  Ean gave Immanuel one last searching look. Then he followed Isabel, his head swimming amid a sea of future storms. His bond with Isabel had somehow dumped him onto a path of the Sight, and it had him in its grip now and was shaking him as an angry child torments a doll.

  Ean heard battle break out behind them—Immanuel undoubtedly engaging the eidola—and then men were shouting and feet were pounding in pursuit. He spared a glance to see the host splitting itself around the grappling pair, swarming past them into the chase.

  Isabel motioned them around a corner and called a sudden halt. “Dorn, take Sebastian.” While Ean handed his brother to the larger man, Isabel moved her staff in an arc and raised an invisible field of the fourth wall to wall. Those chasing would perforce careen through it, for only the currents revealed its presence. That done, she motioned them all forward in haste and told Ean as they rushed on, “You’ve got to get us out of here, my lord.”

  This went without saying.

  Yet as Ean tried to focus on some possible escape, nameless fears attacked him. His head felt a bucket of ash, full of charred bits of things that might become—

  Isabel grabbed his arm and forced him to a halt. Then she took his face in both hands. “Come back to me.” Abruptly she kissed him hard, and as her mouth lit fires of desire to burn away that cold, prescient sun, so too her mind embraced his, twining through the bond, pulling him back from that omniscient path that wasn’t his to walk.

  Just as abruptly, she pulled away. “Focus on this moment, my lord, or none of us will have a tomorrow to shape to our desires.”

  Ean stared at her for a breath longer. Then he gave her another rough kiss and grabbed her hand to keep her close. “I have an idea.” He drew her with him as he set off down the hall. “But I’m not sure how to make it work. You’ll have to help me remember.”

  They speared ahead, while behind, the men chasing them ran through Isabel’s pattern and came to a halt. Argument broke out among their ranks, for each man swore he’d seen the enemy running in a different direction. Soon Ean could no longer hear their harsh voices, only the unsound of elae’s rushing tides.

  Ean led them onto one of Tal’Afaq’s crenellated towers. While Lem watched their backs, Ean tugged Isabel towards the tower’s edge. Relief flooded him as he looked upon Dore’s patterns of warding, for his suspicions proved correct.

  “Look there.” He pointed to the invisible web, knowing Isabel saw it in her own unique way. “The inner pattern-web is the dangerous one, but it’s a lacework of holes.” He could almost draw a straight line from the tower where they were standing to the ridge where he and Isabel had observed the fortress that morning. “The outer shell is the one designed to set off alarms of warning, but they’re alert to us now anyway. If I can take us through the hole in the inner web, we’ll make a clean escape.” He searched her hidden gaze with his own. “Can I do it, Isabel?”

  She traced a thumb across his lips, while a brooding smile hinted on hers. “You helped my brother fashion a new realm from the womb of Alorin’s ether. I imagine you could make stairs of the air with ease.”

  Ean blinked at her. “I—?” Then he shook his head, not so much denying the truth as saving it for later inspection. He turned a discerning gaze upon the space between their tower and the distant ridge, his heart racing, acutely aware of the short span of time he had to affect their escape.

  Isabel said low into his ear, “In your mind, when breaking free from the Labyrinth, you realized y
ou could be at any place within it or exterior to it.”

  He turned her a startled look, for he hadn’t told her how he’d escaped the pattern, yet she spoke only the truth.

  “You could be anywhere within your mind that you chose to be,” she continued, hastening past his surprise. “So is it the same in this world. You must cast your awareness across the distance. Place an anchor of your attention here and another anchor atop the far ridge, and claim all of the space between. Own it—even as you have owned me.” And she emphasized this idea with images of their bodies intertwined, conveying the full concept of her meaning. “It is the same feeling of possession, of dominion,” she murmured low into his ear. Thus she coaxed his memory through the veils of death. “All of that vast expanse must be yours in which to build your bridge.”

  She spoke to him of the Fifth Esoteric: Absolute Being must equal the scope of a wielder’s concept of effect. He recalled his lesson with Ramu and a hall encased in ice. Definitely a mistake he didn’t want to repeat.

  Ean drew in a deep breath and summoned his resolve. Then he summoned the fifth. Its touch burned, for his mind had already been singed by overuse that day, but he focused his concentration and made his attention into a spear. He cast this spear of awareness forth with such speed that the ridge solidified within his perception almost instantly—Ean had to overcome his own startled response to keep from losing hold of it as soon as he’d claimed it.

  He anchored his awareness there, as Isabel had bade him, and cast another anchor beneath his feet. Then he sought to form the bridge. In his mind, he saw it clearly, yet making it of air…it felt too insubstantial.

  Though theoretically the pattern of air should hold them, he didn’t trust his skill, and he knew that without complete certainty, the working would fail. Where he struggled lay in the aspects of air. It willingly filled every available space, yet it resisted assuming any form. Ean frowned out across the arid vista, which offered little except rock and sand.

  Sand…

  He smiled. Lifting his sword to use as his talisman, as the focal point for this powerful working, he called the wind towards him and made it spin—faster, harder. Soon these spirals were pulling sand upwards through their funnels, fueling his bridge. He held the intended shape in his consciousness, and the sand filled it with form.