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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Letting out a measured breath, Ean took Isabel’s hands from his face and held them between his own. Gazing at her hidden eyes, he confessed gravely, “Perhaps now that you have commanded it of me, Isabel, I can do so.”

  Her lips curled in a smile. “I don’t remember you being this compliant the last time.”

  Ean released her hands but returned one to his arm and started them walking again. “Me either,” he replied grimly. For I remember nothing at all!

  Isabel chuckled. “So morose! I do remember this dramatic display of emotion being an enduring aspect of your nature. But see now, I believe you’re going about it the wrong way,” she added, returning them to the first topic and the source of Ean’s angst. “The effect isn’t the rope stopping the staff. That’s the outcome. These are not interchangeable terms in Patterning.”

  Ean gave her a curious look. “Then what is the effect?”

  “It is simpler than you have imagined. The effect is what you must do to the rope to make it capable of stopping the staff. That is the effect you are creating. The rope then has its own effect, that of stopping the staff. One concept, one cause, one effect. Balance takes care of the rest.”

  Her words stopped him in his tracks.

  It’s the same as players and pieces, he realized. He had been thinking about it the wrong way!

  He imagined the game of Kings he’d been using so often to compare his experiences against. To move one piece can create a ripple effect. A player makes one effect on his piece—moving it. But the piece can thereafter have numerous effects on other pieces—one play that sets into motion an entirely new sequence of events and even potentially changes the balance of the game.

  He settled her an intense look, his very being vibrating with the magnitude of his realization. “This is about making me into a player, isn’t it?”

  Isabel nodded solemnly.

  Ean felt his world shift back into place, the resounding impact of which shuddered through him. “I know why I am here,” he breathed aloud, heady with the discovery. Leveling Isabel a look that conveyed the force of his gratitude as much as his desire, Ean fastened his mouth upon hers and pulled her close.

  The kiss was at once electrifying, a shock feeding through him to combust a thousand new passions, yet so also was it infinitely divine. The feel of her soft mouth, her tongue sweet against his, the taste of their combined desire…a moment at once passionate and delicious with promise.

  Too soon it ended, yet it felt an eternity shared in the brief joining.

  Ean pulled back just far enough to look upon her face.

  “Well…” she murmured, her lips curling in a seductive smile, her breath a warm caress upon his skin, “better late than never.”

  Twenty-One

  “Beware the locked door isn’t keeping the dog in.”

  - Bemothi proverb

  Trell needed time. Time to process what he’d learned, to fit the pieces into their proper order. Time to let the flood of emotions drain out of him and restore his sense of self within the framework of a new name.

  Trell val Lorian, Prince of Dannym.

  It was unbelievably shocking and…strange, though he knew it as truth, for it resonated in his soul. Yet as much as he needed time, it was the one thing he didn’t have, as he discovered all too soon.

  He was still sitting on the bed beside Alyneri when Yara came in, took one look at them, and assessed from their expressions what had transpired in her absence. “So…” she said in the desert tongue, leveling each of them a shrewd look, “it’s time.”

  Alyneri looked up at her. “Time for what?”

  “A story. Come khortdad, soraya, we must talk.”

  Trell lifted his head to look at her. A feeling beset him in that moment, a sense that what was about to come might be nearly as startling as all that came before. So he gave Alyneri a reassuring look and took her by the hand, and they followed Yara to the table. She poured czai for them and then sat down in her chair at the head, fixing her dark eyes upon Trell.

  “I told you once that I would speak to you someday of how I came to possess a weldmap, did I not, Ama-Kai’alil?”

  “Yes, I remember the moment,” Trell answered.

  “Here then is the story: When I was a young woman not much older than you, soraya,” Yara began, nodding that time to Alyneri, “my father and I met a blind woman traveling on the road to Baiz. These were turbulent years in M’Nador, before the War of the Lakes, and Saldaria was already rising against the Hadorin princes. It wasn’t safe to travel the roads alone, even in Kandori—and especially for a woman. And this woman…” Yara’s wily gaze grew wistful, as if remembering a dream. “Well…she was young and beautiful for all that she was blind,” the old woman said after a moment, “and we feared for her safety. I asked my father to stop, and I offered her my horse.”

  Trell arched brows. “You offered to give her your horse—just like that?”

  Yara flashed a grin, and for a moment Trell saw her in her youth—a wild and beautiful girl with a wide smile and eyes dark as loam. “There was something about this woman, Trell of the Tides,” she said, shaking her head with a rueful look. “You would’ve done anything for her too, I’ll wager. My father was just as surprised to hear my offer, but he was not unaffected by her spell, and he congratulated me for my generosity. She accepted the gift of my horse but begged me to ride with her into Baiz.”

  Yara sipped at her tea and eyed the two of them over the rim. Trell had Alyneri’s hand tightly in his own.

  After a moment, Yara set down her tea and continued her story. “While we rode together on the long road, the blind woman told us stories. She was a fine storyteller—one of the best I have ever heard. And oh, but her tales were compelling! One of them I passed along to you,” she added, nodding at Trell.

  “Which one?”

  “The legend of the Kandori fortune.”

  “Ah…” he said, well remembering the tale of the dragon and his true love and how it had somehow made him think of Naiir.

  “When we reached Baiz,” Yara said then, “we parted ways. My father, a Scholar, was there for a meeting with Prince Sabahi—one of your great-uncles, soraya, though Inithiya has long claimed his spirit now—and we were to stay for at least three nights. So the blind woman asked if I would come to her inn on the following night, and I readily agreed.” Yara smiled quietly again, wistfully. “You see, I was captivated by her.”

  “So you went to see her?” Alyneri asked.

  “Of course.” Yara took up her tea again and drank it, and there was so much unspoken in her dark-eyed gaze. Silence settled upon the table, for Yara seemed lost in her memories. Suddenly she roused from them with a start and eyed Trell and Alyneri sharply. “So…I went to see the lady. She greeted me in her hotel, and we shared a cup of tea in her rooms. She had money this woman—for all she had been walking on a lonely road that day—but her room was as opulent as any in the prince’s palace.” Yara took a deep breath and let it out. Her wrinkled dark eyes captured first Trell’s gaze and then Alyneri’s. “After the tea, she read my future.”

  Trell blinked at her. “A fortuneteller?”

  “This was no charlatan soothsayer,” Yara remarked tartly. “She was an Adept Seer. She took my hands and she looked into my eyes—though how she saw me at all through the blindfold she wore, I vow I shall never understand—and she told me what my life would bring.”

  Trell felt Alyneri tense beside him. “Was it…true?” she asked haltingly.

  Yara leveled her a piercing look. “All of it.”

  Trell shook his head. He was increasingly amazed by the things that no longer amazed him. “What did she tell you, Yara?”

  “My life,” she said, waving him to silence. “She told me of the man I would marry and the daughters I would bear, and how my grandchildren would bring me boundless joy. But she told me other things,” Yara said then, eyeing them both in a way that indicated she approached the important part. “Once she’d assure
d me I would live a long and healthy life, she asked a boon of me. I’ve already told you I would have given her anything, so I accepted without question.”

  Yara sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, dwarfed as ever by her bulky woolen sweater. She looked up at them beneath wispy grey brows, her dark gaze surely as compelling as the Seer’s had been so long ago. “That’s when she walked to a chest—I’ve never seen such a chest as this, so ornate it was—and withdrew the map.”

  Trell sat back in surprise. “Carian’s map?”

  “The very same. She told me many things then, things I must do and how to know it was time to take the next step on my path. In the end, she told me I would travel to Veneisea and make my home near L’Aubernay. And then…” Yara settled them both an unsettling look. “Then she told me of the two of you.”

  Trell felt chills sprout down his arms and legs, and he exchanged a look with Alyneri, who seemed equally startled.

  “I will never forget her words,” Yara said, adopting that far-away tone once more. “She told me, ‘In Veneisea, you will meet a man who doesn’t know himself, and he will stay with you for a time. He will soon be joined by another, and once they have found each other,’ she said,” and Yara eyed the both of them critically again, “she told me, ‘once they have found each other, no matter the time of day this happy reunion, Yara,’ she said, ‘before nightfall, all of you must be gone from that place.’”

  Trell held her gaze, feeling the weight of prophecy suddenly hanging upon him. It felt uncomfortably akin to his interactions with Naiadithine.

  “Or…?” Alyneri meanwhile asked.

  Yara shook her head. “There was no or, no ultimatum. Simply the information.”

  “But…?” Alyneri shook her head as she held Yara’s gaze. “But why?”

  “I think I know,” Trell said, realizing it only then. He looked to Alyneri. “While you slept in a fever, I took a trip to L’Aubernay, where I crossed paths with a man who was looking for you. He announced himself as Lord Brantley.”

  “No!” Alyneri clapped a hand to her mouth in dismay.

  Relieved that his instincts had been correct, Trell squeezed Alyneri’s hand and reassured, “He struck me as an unsavory fellow, so I told him nothing of you.”

  Her face flooded with relief, and she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, bless you for being so clever!”

  “But,” Trell said, gently extracting himself from her embrace though he minded it not at all. He captured her eyes with his own. “But I think he recognized me—or at least my sword.”

  “Your sword?”

  In that moment, Trell realized that Alyneri had never seen it, yet she could surely explain the sword’s significance. “More than one person seems to have recognized me by this sword,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me why, Alyneri.” He stood and went to where his cloak hung on a hook by the door. He retrieved his sword from underneath and pulled it free of the scabbard with a ringing of steel.

  Her eyes widened when she saw it, and tears came into them as she looked up at him. “You kept your sword? All this time?”

  “It was my only possession,” he told her simply, “the only connection to my past.”

  Alyneri looked back to it as she wiped a tear from her eye. “It’s a kingdom blade,” she told him, using the familiar—if still meaningless—name. “These swords are only worn by members of the royal family of Dannym or their liegemen, and yours… with the sapphire pommel stone…” She looked up at him again, her brown eyes large. “Anyone who knows anything about the royal family knows that stone, Trell. It pronounces your birthright as much as your family name.”

  Trell sat down heavily in his chair.

  All this time…he’d had a card of calling with him all along. No wonder the Lord Commander of Tregarion had treated him thusly, and Indora’s truthreader to advise the man to tread carefully. No wonder the Veneiseans had called in the Magisteré, who in turn begged him to stay.

  Alyneri put a hand upon his. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, but words failed him for the moment.

  “Soraya,” Yara asked Alyneri then, “could this Lord Brantley be the threat the Seer intimated so many years ago?”

  Alyneri nodded. “Assuredly—Trell is right. Lord Brantley is an unscrupulous man, and the lord he serves is worse.” Her fair brow furrowed with a sudden memory, and her gaze grew even more troubled. “I…” She dropped her eyes to her lap and confessed then, “The coach I was traveling in belonged to the Duke of Morwyk. He had…kidnapped me. When the storm came and our coach faltered, I thought it was Epiphany’s blessing.”

  Trell squeezed her hand.

  Yara’s dark eyes grew distant, and she remarked to herself, “So…it would seem this story shall close as the Lady predicted.”

  “And what did she predict?” Alyneri asked, clearly apprehensive.

  Yara turned her a swift look, sharp and shrewd. “Ah, but that is my future, soraya, not yours,” the old woman advised, gentling her words with a faint smile. She looked to Trell but included both of them with her question as she asked, “Where will you go?”

  Alyneri and Trell both answered at once, “The Cairs.” Then they gave each other startled looks. Trell motioned for Alyneri to explain, to which she offered, “Ean is there, and your cousin Fynnlar.”

  Ean… As he held Alyneri’s gaze, Trell couldn’t help but wonder. Had the Mage known his brother was in the Cairs, even then? Is that why he’d sent him there, to ensure that he somehow regained his family? But…why would the man care?

  Because you are a celebrated commander in the Emir’s army.

  Because you are the son of a king…his enemy?

  But neither of these answers seemed to fit.

  “Trell?” Alyneri asked.

  He focused back upon her and shook his head. “Sorry...” Smiling at her then, he reached a hand to brush her cheek, marveling that she could be so dear to him already. “Much on my mind today.”

  Alyneri looked troubled again. “Trell, I realized something. Carian vran Lea—”

  “He knew me,” Trell supplied. He captured a lock of her hair between his fingers and watched the streaming sunlight turn it a pale, silken gold. “I know. I was meant to leave with him just days before you came, but Gendaia fell lame, and I wouldn’t risk her.” He glanced to Yara, adding, “I thought then that Naiadithine had her hand in that occurrence. Now I know she did.”

  “So it would seem,” Yara agreed.

  “Naiadithine?” Alyneri asked.

  “The River Goddess and I have a history,” Trell murmured.

  Yara laid both palms on the table. “So…” she said definitively, “let us make our preparations,” and she shooed the both of them into action.

  Twenty-Two

  “The best revenge in life is living.”

  - Yara, an old Kandori woman

  As Trell and Alyneri hurried to prepare for their departure, Trell was still reeling. Having a name also meant having all of the responsibilities that came with it. And this was no simple title. This was royal lineage and succession to the Eagle Throne—a throne the Duke of Morwyk was apparently seeking with bold declaration.

  Trell exhilarated in knowing his name after so long, yet in many ways the knowledge came as a blow. He knew very little about his father, but he did know that Gydryn val Lorian had allied with Radov, and Trell could never support such an alliance.

  Trell pushed a hand through his hair, pausing upon this thought. He couldn’t help but marvel at the tangled mire he’d landed in. He’d always expected a name would tie together pieces of his past, but he’d never imagined it would further ensnare him amid the politics of kings.

  Time enough to worry about such things in the Cairs, he thought—he hoped—for he really didn’t know what his future held now.

  Trell saddled Gendaia and then hitched up Yara’s wagon, which was already stocked and ready. Then he swung into the saddle and rode Gendaia through the fields to the nei
ghboring farmstead. He found the boy Deon in the fields with his sheep and gave him the news that they were leaving. They had long ago settled Yara’s accounts with Deon’s father—Yara’s landlord—and Deon and his brother would come later to retrieve the animals left behind, but Trell had one last request.

  “A horse?” Deon said. “But of course my Da can spare a horse for you, Trell of the Tides.”

  “I will pay him, of course.”

  “With everything you’ve done for us, I’m sure he won’t ask much.”

  So it was that Trell procured a horse for Alyneri and was soon making his way back to Yara’s. He was deep in thought when Gendaia reached the river, and Trell focused on his surroundings to realize it was the same crossing where she’d gone lame so many weeks ago.

  The moment seemed significant in a way that touched him deeply. He dismounted and walked to the water, kneeling to place a hand within its cold embrace.

  I’m sorry I doubted you, my Goddess.

  Naiadithine had brought him Alyneri. She’d brought him his name. She’d carried him full circle, from the moment when he’d lost everything in the deep waters of the Fire Sea to this day, when it had all been restored to him. Or at least the parts that mattered most.

  I am forever in your debt, my lady.

  He sat in silence, letting the cold waters chill his flesh, until at last he heard her blessing.

  Follow the water, Trell of the Tides...

  Trell stood and looked upriver to where the water tumbled over dark rocks. The scene reminded him of something. He reached inside his shirt and withdrew Lily’s tiny silver flask. It was time to open it now, and though he already suspected what it would say, it was still startling to see the words written in her tidy hand.

  You are Trell val Lorian, a prince of Dannym

  Trell swallowed. Thank you, Lily. She’d known him by his blade, by his story, but she’d told him she knew him in truth by the nobility he’d displayed; by his courage and generosity and honor. Trell hoped these were traits he would find in his family, is his father and brother. He now prayed for this as he’d once prayed to know his name.