The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Finding the bench, Ean helped her sit upon it. “May I join you, my lady?”

  “Please do, your Highness,” she said with a secretive little smile.

  Oh, to know what thoughts she protects behind that veil! “Please…don’t call me that,” the prince said as he lowered himself beside her.

  “Then what shall I call you?”

  Husband. “I am Ean.”

  “I am Isabel.”

  He still had her hand in his. She seemed willing to let him keep it, and since he was quite unwilling to let it go, the arrangement suited them both.

  “Isabel,” he said, gazing upon her, “you are a vision.”

  “As are you,” she said. “A perfect Baldur.”

  “I doubt that very much,” he disagreed with a smile.

  She gave him a skeptical look by way of a delicately arched eyebrow—truly, even partly hidden by the crimson silk, her face was enormously expressive. “Have you met Baldur, Ean?”

  “No, madam. I haven’t.”

  “Then it isn’t fair to contradict me, is it?”

  Ean chuckled. “I suppose not.” As the night’s quiet descended, he gazed upon her and a verse came to him. He spoke it as it came:

  From the ashes of my heart

  Rising sweetly stirs the sleeping dragon

  The beast that roared unending,

  Til fires extinguished

  Now wakened by the Phoenix

  Love reborn.

  Ean flashed a sheepish grin, though he knew his face was invisible to her. “I’m sorry,” he laughed, feeling enormously foolish. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  Isabel smiled with delight, and he adored her for it. “I don’t remember your being this charming the last time.”

  “I…” Taken slightly off guard by her comment, Ean quickly recovered. “I suppose I learned something in death.”

  “That is as it should be. Do we not celebrate the imminent opening of the Extian Doors and the renewal of all souls this night?”

  “A myth, surely,” he posed. “Parable at best.”

  “Yet all myths are symbolic of some truth,” she pointed out, “else they would not endure the ages.”

  “Your wisdom humbles me, my lady.”

  Silence descended again as he gazed at her, but the silence was soft, like a soundless caress. Ean might’ve let it last forever, the night a blanket binding them together, but she said, “You may ask the question on your mind. I will answer if I can.”

  Ean hadn’t realized he was desirous of anything beyond her attention, but the moment she said it, the question materialized. So he did as she bade him. “Tell me then, why do you wear the blindfold?”

  “Because of a promise I made once,” she answered, and though her tone remained light and gentle, he knew this was all she was going to say about it.

  “Another question if I may,” he posed, giving her fingers a squeeze. She nodded for him to proceed. “Perhaps you can help me understand a most vexing problem.”

  “What problem would this be?”

  “One that occupies my consciousness more completely than any I’ve ever before encountered. I know not whence these feelings come, but they consume me. I cannot understand them.”

  “Hmm,” she mused, pressing her goblet demurely to her lips as she sipped her wine, “would this be a question for Epiphany’s Prophet or for the woman Isabel?”

  Ean stared at her eyes, so temptingly hidden, the crimson blindfold so provoking. There was something about her smile, something in the tilt of her head or perhaps in her presence alone, that made her expression clear to him, even when her eyes were a mystery. “It is a question most assuredly for Isabel.”

  “Then I must tell my lord that Isabel, being a mere woman, knows of a man’s feelings only what he has confessed to her.”

  Ean lifted her satin-gloved hand and held it between both of his. “There is a woman,” he began, “a most devastatingly beautiful woman. She is the air I starve to breathe, the light that illuminates me, the force that drives me forward. I cannot remove her from my thoughts. The first moment I saw her, she reached in and claimed my heart for her own, and any time I am parted from her it feels that my heart is being torn in two, the air ripped from my lungs, the light of life extinguished.”

  “That sounds serious, my lord,” she replied with a mischievous smile curling the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps we should seek the services of a Healer.”

  “Alas, I don’t think there is any cure for this ailment, my lady.”

  The quirk broadened to a grin that was unmistakably suggestive as she replied, “Oh, surely we can find something that will do the trick,” and her tone inspired such a host of lustful visions that Ean felt himself heat beneath them. He might’ve lost himself in that moment if not for the arrival of her brother upon the patio.

  “Ah, Ean, there you are.”

  Ean forced a swallow. He searched frantically for any thought to release him from the sudden desire that had him all but storming the castle to claim Isabel then and there.

  Having doffed his two-faced mask for the moment, Björn took one look at Ean, arched an ebony brow and shifted his gaze to his sister instead. “Isabel, what have you done to the boy? He looks a bit…peaked.”

  She held out her hand blithely to Björn, and he obediently went to help her stand. “We were only talking,” she said.

  Björn settled her a dubious look. “Do not let the guise of innocence fool you, Ean,” he advised then, shifting his gaze to him. “My sister is as artful as they come.”

  “Yet never so artful as thee, dearest brother,” she returned, but there was only adoration in her smile.

  “Shall I—” Björn began, but she waved him off.

  “I will find my own way. Until tomorrow, Ean,” she said, and then she moved gracefully through the doors to be enveloped by the crowd.

  Björn gazed after her wearing a thoughtful frown. Ean felt strangely allied with him as they watched her depart.

  “My sister,” the Vestal mused. “She is predictably…unpredictable. Well, Ean” he said when even Isabel’s headdress was out of sight, “there is someone else I’d like you to meet—if you think you’re up for it.”

  Ean didn’t remark on the double-entendre so clearly noted in Björn’s dry tone. He tugged his jacket down and squared his shoulders. “Of course. As you wish, First Lord.”

  Björn cast him a sideways glance full of amusement. “What do you know of Markal Morrelaine?”

  “Julian has told me a little of him.”

  “Markal is one of my generals,” Björn explained as they moved back inside. “There is no finer wielder among us. He is na’turna, a non-Adept. When he began training at the Citadel, he could not even sense the lifeforce. Over the years, through his diligence and determination, he worked his way up the ranks and Orders. Now, as in his own day, his technique is unmatched.” He glanced to Ean and added, “I know of no one better suited to instruct you in the complex art of Patterning.”

  Ean thought of Julian’s lament over Master Morrelaine’s weighty proverbs and laws of patterning learned in Old Alæic and somewhat dreaded meeting the man. That Ean had so often seen him escorting Isabel didn’t help matters either.

  They found Markal among a collection of women dressed as nymphs lecturing to them on the differences in the Wildling races of Alorin. “Markal,” Björn said by way of greeting, then added to the others, “Do forgive my interruption, ladies, but I must speak with the General a moment.”

  “Of course, First Lord,” several of them murmured, and they all bobbed curtsies and moved off together. Ean couldn’t help but notice their relief.

  Markal had his mask captured under one arm like a riding crop and looked less than enthusiastic about participating in the fete in any capacity. For all his silver-grey hair and weathered features, he remained undeniably robust, broad of chest and muscled beneath his gilded tunic. He immediately fixed his attention on Ean.

  “A
h, if it isn’t Baldur. So you were the one observing lessons from the Court Wall.”

  “Markal Morrelaine, may I present Ean val Lorian,” Björn said pleasantly. He looked to Ean. “I will leave you two to make your plans together.” He nodded to the both of them and left.

  Ean felt unhappily abandoned. He looked back to Markal, who was frowning ponderously at him.

  “Um…” Ean said.

  “Dawn,” Markal grunted. “In the practice yard where you wasted so much time ogling the Prophetess.” He spun on his heel and vanished into the crowd.

  Not wanting to get off on the wrong foot with a man renowned throughout the realm for legendary works of the fifth strand, Ean was waiting in the practice yard when the first rays of morning brightened the grey sky. Markal arrived only moments thereafter as if riding the dawn tide.

  He pitched Ean a coil of rope, which the prince caught out of the air, and spun to face him. In his hand, Markal also held a coil of rope. He took one end of it and slung the other toward Ean, but as the rope uncurled to its furthest point, it went taut. When Markal lowered it, he held a rowan staff. He set the staff at his sandaled feet, settled Ean a doleful look, and asked, “What are we doing here?”

  Immediately puzzled by the question, Ean replied, “Learning to…pattern?”

  “No!” Markal spiked the stone tiles with his staff.

  Ean started at the resounding clap, which echoed in the empty court. “We’re not learning to pattern?”

  “One doesn’t merely ‘learn to pattern,’” Markal said imperiously. “So with the danger of repeating myself, I ask you again, why are we here?”

  Ean frowned at him. “Am I supposed to know this already, because no one gave me any—”

  “You are supposed to use that gelatinous mass of flesh you call a brain to think about the question, Ean val Lorian.”

  Holding Markal’s gaze, Ean began shifting the rope through his hands, uncoiling and re-coiling. He recalled Julian’s comments about Markal’s many ‘alabaster lessons,’ as he’d come to think of them, and tried to distill his answer down to its most basic. “We’re here…” he said after thinking for a moment, “because the realm is out of balance and someone has to do something about it.”

  “Not someone,” Markal said, his brown-eyed gaze intense and not entirely friendly. “You.”

  “Right,” Ean said. “Me. And you’re going to teach me how.”

  “No!” Markal pounded the stones again, and again the echo accosted Ean’s ears. “You already know how,” the wielder said disdainfully. “You have only to remember.”

  Ean was really trying hard to maintain his patience with the man. “Then you’re going to…help me remember?”

  “No!”

  Ean rolled his eyes and sighed. “Might you just tell me what we’re doing—”

  Abruptly Markal lashed out with the staff, and the next thing Ean knew he was lying on his back on the stones.

  After he found his breath, he got up and leveled Markal a heated look with his backside smarting. “I get the idea we’ve been down this road before,” Ean observed with admirable composure considering how desperately he wanted to wrap his hands around the man’s throat.

  Markal regarded Ean with all the joy of an opossum displaced from its den by a marauding bear.

  Ean took his silence as affirmation. “So…” He leaned down and swept up the rope, coiling it in his hands again, allowing himself to imagine he would soon be using it to strangle his instructor. “Let’s see if I’m catching on. Once upon a time, the great Markal Morrelaine was given the task of teaching one upstart young Adept who never studied, didn’t know why he was there and ultimately failed—”

  “Wrong again,” Markal growled. “He was a brilliant student. He learned faster than any student I ever trained. He knew exactly what was needed of him, he studied within an inch of his life, and he still proceeded to go out and get himself killed.”

  “So you’re being this asinine to protect me?”

  Upon which utterance Ean found himself staring at the sky again. That time with a smashing headache.

  When Ean had once more regained his feet, as well as a little more humility, Markal leaned on his staff, leveled the prince an incendiary stare and said, “You don’t have to play the role you have played in the past.”

  “You don’t have to treat me as though it’s a foregone conclusion that I will!” Ean retorted. He rubbed the knot forming on the back of his head and glared at the man under his eyebrows, adding, “People can change.”

  “Not in this, not you,” Markal lectured. “That aspect of your inherent nature which most goes against my inherent nature will never change. You are reckless, impetuous and foolhardy. You always have been and always will be. It’s why she fell in love with you, though why that makes you so attractive to her I will never understand.”

  Ean got the idea Markal was no longer talking about him but about some long-ago dead version of him, which may or may not have any relevance to who he was now. Or at least so he hoped.

  Ean held his gaze. “Then where do we go from here?”

  “You can keep landing on your back until something important breaks,” Markal said, motioning at the stones with his staff, “or you can answer my question.”

  “Fine,” Ean growled. He shoved both hands to his sides and tried to figure out what in Tiern’aval the man expected him to say.

  “No!” Markal barked with another ear-splitting slam of his staff. “Don’t try to tell me what you think I want to hear!”

  “You’re no truthreader,” Ean retorted with a black look. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “Because I know you,” Markal said, emphasizing each word by jabbing the end of his staff toward Ean. “You think we’ve just met. You think this is all new,” and he opened one hand to the scene at large, “but who you were and who you are remain the same. One life to the next, all that changes are the choices you make. Your talents, your inherent flaws, even the skills you’ve mastered in one life—these you carry with you, Ean val Lorian. Sometimes you remember them and they become useful skills again. Sometimes they elude you and must be relearned, but your basic nature endures the centuries. That is what is truly immortal.”

  Ean clenched his teeth and glared at the man. “Fine,” he said again. He really did wish he remembered, because if what Markal said was true, then he was certain he must’ve known a really good way to knock Markal off his feet. “So I’m here to remember,” he began thinking aloud, “but you’re not here to help me do that. So we then must be here for a different purpose altogether.” He glanced at Markal to see how he was doing, but the man just glared at him like a black-eyed badger.

  ‘…it means that no matter how complex things appear, there is a simple truth that once found will dissolve the complexity.’ Julian’s explanation of the alabaster lesson seemed applicable here.

  Well, the simple truth was Ean didn’t really know why he was there. He’d made a choice and that choice brought him to T’khendar. He believed he had a role to play in a larger conflict, but he wasn’t sure what that role was, or even if he really understood the larger conflict.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  Markal cast him a suspicious look. “You don’t know what?”

  Ean shrugged. “I guess I don’t really know why I’m here. I could guess at the answer, but I don’t really know.” He expected another lambasting, but Markal merely grunted.

  “At last, we reach the simplicity. And the subject of today’s lesson. The First Law of Patterning: KNOW the effect you intend to create. Now…” and he pointed at Ean’s hands. “You hold a rope.”

  Ean looked down at the braided coils. “So it would seem.”

  “Therein lies your defense.”

  It was all the warning Ean had. In the next moment, Markal’s staff came sweeping for his feet. Ean jumped back. Markal swung again, on the advance. Ean skipped away.

  Abruptly Markal stood up
and settled his staff at his toes. “I did not say dodge and dart like a jackrabbit. You have a means of defending yourself. Use it.” He swung his staff with sudden ferocity.

  Ean veered back just in time to prevent its connecting with his chin. “Shade and darkness!” he swore, glaring hotly at the man. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  Markal replied by swinging his staff low to catch the back of Ean’s calves, knocking him forward. He finished with a lightning-swift jab between the prince’s shoulder-blades, and Ean was licking the stones.

  Smarting all over, and especially in the area of his pride, Ean pushed himself up to hands and knees, calves throbbing, his spine burning. He cast Markal a black glare. “What in Tiern’aval am I supposed to do with the rope?”

  “That is for you to decide,” Markal informed him critically.

  Ean climbed back to his feet and slung the rope out in front of him. He thought about Julian’s admonition not to wear his sword and wondered blackly if it was to protect Markal from a horde of students bent on killing him.

  Holding the rope in both hands, he tried to get a sense of what to do with it. His talent had only ever appeared in the unworking of patterns, never in the conceiving of them. A great many people had told him, however, that the ability to work them lay dormant within him, that it he simply had to wake it.

  “KNOW the effect you wish to create,” Markal said again, darting at him.

  Ean slung the rope in defense but only managed to get it stuck around the staff. Markal had him down three seconds later.

  The morning continued in this vein.

  By midday, Ean was stripped to his britches and sweating. His torso bore the marks of Markal’s teaching—long red welts, bruises that were circular and puffy, bluish shadows along his ribs on both sides.

  As Ean pushed up from the ground yet again, wondering for the umpteenth time why he bothered getting back to his feet but certain that he would even if it was just to spite the older man, Markal said, “You must KNOW the rope will stop the staff, Ean.”

  “Yes, so you’ve been saying,” Ean grumbled. He’d tried a thousand different ways of envisioning the rope stopping the staff, but none of them had any effect. “I’ve been trying to—”