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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Not much for conversation to begin with, the Fhorgs eyed him uncertainly and kept their distance. Tanis knew enough from their thoughts to know they suspected him of being some kind of witch because he was immune to Pelas’s power. They also thought he’d cast a spell on Pelas due to the close relationship the two of them were forming, and they were certain he was a spy.

  Another day passed without word from Pelas, and Tanis grew ever more uneasy, only now he feared for Pelas as much as he had for the Healer. Had something happened to him? Had one of his brothers caught up with him? Had an assassin’s Merdanti dagger found its mark? These and many more fears accosted the lad repeatedly, interrupted only by his own self-ridicule.

  The man’s managed to keep himself alive for centuries without your help, Tanis! he told himself by way of consolation, but with all of the incredibly dangerous and reckless things Pelas did, Tanis felt it was sheer dumb luck that he survived at all.

  On the third day after Pelas’s disappearance, Tanis woke to find the house completely empty and knew Pelas had returned.

  On the one hand, this alleviated his fears for the man’s welfare. On the other, his intuition told him Pelas had returned with a Healer, and the knowledge made him so sick of heart and stomach that he couldn’t eat a thing all day. A storm was battering the manse when Tanis woke, and the rains only grew worse as the day drew on. Tanis fretted in each moment about Pelas’s activities, and he wandered nervously from room to room trying to make up his mind what to do.

  He had to stop this.

  That much he knew, even without the painful urging of that sense of duty, which grew so tremendous in its intensity during the afternoon that Tanis was near to tears over it. He couldn’t bear feeling so inadequate, but he’d wracked his mind trying to think of some way to help Pelas, or at least the Healer, and…nothing. Even should he envision some elaborate plan, he had no idea where Pelas or the Fhorgs even were—certainly they were nowhere in the house, and naught but empty cliffs spread for miles in both directions.

  Tanis was leaning his forehead despondently against one of the large windows overlooking the cliffs to the north when lightning split the sky and he saw five small dark shapes making their way back to the manse, the last of them emerging from the cliff’s edge even as he watched.

  Instantly the lad bolted off—even before that sense of duty started screaming, even before the desperate panic overtook him.

  Tanis sprinted outside and flung himself across the moors, coming upon the Fhorgs as they rounded a rise. The Fhorg called Jain was in the lead. Tanis knew all of their names now, though they didn’t like it when he used them and only really tolerated Pelas doing it because he could annihilate them with one finger. Fhorgs were weird about names.

  Tanis came to a skidding halt in front of Jain, who lifted his woad-stained face and pinned the lad with a look as storm-ridden as the day. “What happened?” Tanis gasped, discerning from his expression that something was terribly wrong.

  “Pelas went to confront his brother,” the Fhorg admitted, albeit reluctantly. “It did nae go well. Now he’s in a rage as we’ve ne’er seen. Been at it all night w’th’ Healer, but really he’s only just begun—” he was interrupted by one of his brethren shouting at him irately in their own language, and the two of them went at each other while Tanis waited with desperate impatience. Finally, Jain punched the other one into sullen submission, looked back to Tanis and finished, “Pelas sent us away, l’l spy. We did nae e’n inspect the Healer’s blood.”

  The other Fhorgs grumbled fiercely about this in two languages. Tanis didn’t catch all of it, but he heard enough to realize there might still be a chance to help the Healer and Pelas both. “Which brother did Pelas see?” he hastened to ask, thinking it might be important.

  Jain shrugged as the rain poured down atop them all. “He does nae confide in us as ‘e confides in ye, l’l spy,” he answered loudly over the storm. “Perhaps ye can help him find himself again, for I think his brother sent him over th’ edge.”

  “Where is he?” Tanis asked desperately.

  “In the caves,” and Jain jerked his head back the way they’d come.

  Tanis took off in a dead run.

  “Ye take yer life in yer hands goin’ down there!” Jain called after him, and Tanis couldn’t be sure, for he was running so hard, but he thought he heard him shout, “But maybe ye should…for his sake.”

  Tanis almost missed the stairs leading down the cliff face, for the trail opening onto them could barely be discerned among the black rocks. He had to slow as he took the stairs, for they were treacherous indeed, cut right into the side of the cliff with no handholds and nothing to prevent a fall of several hundred feet onto razor-sharp rocks should his foot slide on the perilously wet stone.

  The cave was halfway down the cliff face, but Tanis was cringing ever before he reached it, for Pelas’s thoughts came tumbling up to him in force. Wave upon wave of malevolent fury assaulted the boy, and he had to concentrate as much on trying to close his mind against Pelas’s anger as upon setting one foot safely before the other.

  He paused just above the cave entrance to catch his breath, but nothing could prepare him for the force of Pelas’s anger. It blasted out of the cave like heat from a forge, repelling Tanis mentally as well as physically. The Fhorg had been speaking the truth—Pelas was over the edge.

  In the flash of a moment, Tanis realized that while their ideologies might lead them to draw very different conclusions about what is morally acceptable, this did not necessarily make the Fhorgs inherently evil men. That Jain understood Pelas was in need of help…clearly he cared for him, even as Tanis did.

  Shivering now from the pelting rain as much as from his own fear, Tanis drew in a shaky breath and braved a look into the cave.

  He recognized the Healer, Medira, who was strung naked and spread-eagled between two wooden posts. Her flesh was marked in many places. Tanis knew it would be too dangerous to open his mind to her thoughts to assess her condition, for he would then become equally subject to Pelas’s onslaught again, and he didn’t think he could experience that and keep his sanity. But he didn’t have to know the Healer’s mind to know she wished for death. The look on her face communicated that clearly enough.

  Further back in the cave, closer to the torches, Pelas stood with his back to Tanis assessing a table of knives. Tanis knew it might be his only chance to act.

  Moving as quickly as he dared, Tanis stole into the cave. At one point Pelas selected a blade and almost turned, and Tanis dropped to his knees, catching his breath, but a different knife caught the Malorin’athgul’s eye instead, and he set to sharpening it.

  Tanis crawled the last few paces on hands and knees. He was shaking so hard when he reached the Healer that he could barely grasp hold of his dagger to get it out of his boot, but he managed somehow and only blessed Phaedor a thousand times for the dagger’s ever-returning nature…for its being Merdanti. The goracrosta ropes that bound the Healer parted with ease beneath its razor edge. Tanis had just released Medira’s final limb when Pelas turned.

  The look on his face would haunt the boy’s dreams for weeks to come.

  The man he knew had gone. In his place scowled a vicious creature whose features were so twisted with pain and fury that they seemed a mummer’s mask. The darkness consumed Pelas wholly.

  The monster that had Pelas in thrall threw his hand out, fingers splayed, and Tanis and the healer both went tumbling through the air. The lad’s head hit hard against the cave wall in a blinding flash of pain, and then he fell helplessly forward, losing his breath in the bargain. Pushing up to knees and elbows, Tanis focused through the pain in his skull and saw Medira dragging herself toward the cave mouth.

  Then Pelas was upon him.

  He grabbed the boy up by his neck in a choking hold such that Tanis’s vision soon turned black at the edges. “Where did you get this dagger?” Pelas snarled, shaking the lad as he ripped the dagger from his hand.


  Tanis knew something was dreadfully wrong. He couldn’t move one arm and his head felt fuzzy yet throbbed violently at the same time.

  “Tell me who gave you this weapon!”

  Tanis felt Pelas’s dark power wrapping around his mind—the man’s natural talent that made the real Pelas so compelling and brought his darker side to wicked life. Tanis looked him in the eye as best he could, but he couldn’t make his eyes focus. It took everything he had in him to manage in the barest whisper, “…no.”

  Pelas threw the dagger so furiously that it sailed out of the cave to be swallowed by the storm. He slapped the boy hard then, the Healer all but forgotten. “Tell me!”

  The force of his intent was so powerful that Tanis felt the words rattle through him. His face flamed, his head screamed, and he worried he was going to throw up. He managed weakly, dizzily, in a tiny voice yet fueled with the power of his love for Phaedor, “You can’t…have it, sir.”

  Pelas’s eyes were fire upon him, scalding and merciless. “I will have it out of you in your blood then, stupid boy!” Pelas started dragging him across the cave.

  Tanis realized he was crying, though he couldn’t remember when the tears had started. “You’ll not have it…even if…if you kill me.”

  Pelas’s fiery eyes flashed. “Tis not death you should be fearing right now.” He threw the lad roughly to the floor.

  Tanis closed his eyes and lay shivering in pain. He was determined not to betray the zanthyr. It occurred to him that Phaedor wouldn’t care in the least if Pelas knew of him, but Pelas had bled so many other confessions from him, Tanis vowed he would not get this one. The zanthyr is sacred…and you cannot have his memory.

  Pelas snatched him up again and started binding his wrist to the post—

  In that moment, Medira reached the cave mouth. Weeping, she struggled to her feet and turned to look back at them. Even with the raging storm, Tanis heard her say through lips bloodied and broken, “Death…is only…the beginning.”

  Then she threw herself off the cliff.

  Pelas roared in outrage. He slung Tanis to the floor and surged after her, but there was no retrieving Medira for his dark pleasure. She was free.

  The explosion of fury that followed was even stronger than what had come before. Tanis lay upon his side trying not to throw up as wave after wave of thunderous rage battered him, crushing through his chest. During each passing surge the lad couldn’t breathe. He managed only little gasps between the crests while his head exploded with pain and his stomach turned inside out.

  Until…at last, it faded.

  Tanis might have blacked out. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he probably had, because there was a point where he felt no pain and then it seemed to detonate everywhere at once. When he opened his eyes, Pelas was standing over him.

  This time, the mask he wore was of horror.

  Suddenly he was on his knees and cradling Tanis’s head in his lap. The lad heard him swearing darkly, furiously, and though his curses were in another language, Tanis knew Pelas cursed himself.

  The Healer’s blood was cold, the Healer herself was gone and the darkness had retreated, though now a different pain consumed the man. “No, no, little spy,” he whispered then, one hand caressing Tanis’s cheek. For once, the lad didn’t mind the chill of his flesh. “You should not have come down here! You should not have interrupted me!”

  Tanis couldn’t be sure, because he really couldn’t focus his eyes, but he thought Pelas was actually crying.

  It took a long time for Tanis to make the thoughts in his head form into words, and longer still, it seemed, for his tongue to utter them. “No choice,” he whispered at last.

  “No choice? You could’ve stayed where you were safe!” Pelas very nearly shouted at him.

  “But you weren’t safe, Sir,” Tanis murmured.

  With a groan of guilt, Pelas drew Tanis into his arms and cradled the lad’s body against his own. He said nothing, for it seemed words failed him.

  Tanis blacked out again.

  When he came to, Pelas was still holding him, but now they were beside a fire and he felt warmer and slightly less nauseated, though his body still trembled.

  “Sir…” Tanis whispered. He found he could focus his eyes a bit better.

  Pelas looked down at him, and his gaze was tragically tender. “You will live,” he murmured, “and I will have your hide for this tomorrow.”

  Tanis managed a meek smile. But it was short-lived, for his concern for Pelas still sang inside him, that sense of duty stronger than ever. “You left,” he said. “What happened?”

  Pelas drew Tanis closer to him, cradled like his own child, but Tanis wondered if Pelas didn’t hug him for his own comfort as well. He said in a low voice, his tone intense and shadowed, “I went to confront Darshan on some of my recent theories, formulated as a result of our conversations.” He added through clenched teeth, “It did not go well.”

  “You…” Tanis was amazed—a mite dull-headed still and perhaps a little slow in forming his thoughts, but amazed all the same. “All those times,” he said weakly, feeling a semblance of lucidity at last returning, “…you really were thinking on all of the things you said you must think on?”

  “Of course.”

  Tanis felt such a rush of unexpected tenderness for him. He’d always thought Pelas’s remarks were glibly spoken, a means of moving the conversation along. Yet all this time he had been honestly considering everything Tanis said.

  The lad realized something else. He wasn’t sure if he came to the conclusion on his own, or if Pelas unwittingly spoke to him through the force of his own thoughts, but it occurred to Tanis with a pang of compassion that Pelas wasn’t reveling in the darkness.

  He was trapped by it.

  “I should not have gone to him,” Pelas lamented then, his fury at himself all too clear in his tone. “I should have trusted my own reasoning, but I couldn’t…I wanted confirmation.”

  “Of what, sir?”

  Pelas shook his head, his gaze tormented. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it does.”

  Pelas gave him an agonized look.

  “Sir, you don’t have to be this way…no matter what you think,” Tanis managed weakly. “You don’t have to forever battle these forces that tear you in two.”

  Clearly not trusting himself with a reply, Pelas laid Tanis down by the fire to better warm his trembling body and looked away with his jaw clenched so tightly…as if to draw back all of the fury he’d unleashed that night. He hugged his knees to chest and growled at last, “Yes, I do.”

  Tanis watched him from an awkward position as he lay on the floor, loath to move his head for his brain throbbing so violently. “You can decide to walk a different path,” the lad offered, “just as I might have.”

  “It is not the same! You had a choice. For me there is none.”

  “Why not?”

  Pelas shot him a desperate look. “It has already been made.”

  “Who made it, if not you?”

  He looked away again, and after a moment he answered bitterly, “There never was any choice. I am what I am.”

  “If that is truly so, then change what you are.”

  Pelas spun him a despairing look. “How?”

  Tanis had no real wisdom to offer, only what seemed obvious to him. “Decide to.”

  Pelas exhaled a growl and fell backwards onto the floor. He shifted his body to align his head so it rested near Tanis’s own, so that they both gazed toward the far distant ceiling lost in shadows, their shoulders almost touching.

  A long silence followed wherein the only sound was the fire’s crackling song and the crashing of the distant surf, and then Pelas said quietly, “When I realized that I’d hurt you, Tanis…when I finally surfaced through the blood haze of rage that had clouded my vision…” He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and confessed in a raw voice, “In that moment I questioned everything that I thought to be true—all of my br
other’s doctrines, everything he’s ever taught us.”

  Swallowing, Tanis gingerly turned to look into Pelas’s eyes, their bodies so close that their foreheads nearly touched. “Why, sir?”

  Pelas gave him a tragic smile. “Because I did not want you to die.”

  Tanis could only image what such an earthshaking confession must’ve cost him.

  Pelas grunted despondently and looked away to stare upwards into darkness. “It is so strange…I sense something of our Maker in you, little spy. You make me feel as if there could be something else for me, even though I know such is impossible.” He managed a soft smile, though there was infinite sadness in it. “I don’t know if that is a good thing to feel…but it is interesting. It is an experience. I like experiencing new things. This whole world was a new thing, once.” Tanis heard the anguished longing in his tone even as he heard hope shattering when Pelas finished, “And then my brothers came here, and I realized there was nothing for us but to continue that which we are.”

  That sense of duty rang like tower bells inside Tanis’s head, and the lad finally knew what he was meant to say to help this man. “Then,” he whispered, “but not before?”

  “No,” Pelas sighed. “Before Darshan took me in hand, everything was different.”

  “Then perhaps that explains why he truly fears you, sir,” Tanis murmured, suddenly impossibly tired. He yawned prodigiously.

  And before he could receive Pelas’s response, the lad was fast asleep.

  Twenty-Nine

  “Experience is the name men give to their mistakes.”

  - The Espial Franco Rohre

  Dawn found Ean on the practice yard with high hopes for the day. His talk with Isabel had been enlightening, and he stood to face Markal’s formidable lessons with a renewed sense of purpose.

  But of his night with Isabel, the kiss remained most predominately on his thoughts, a pleasurable torment, for he only wanted more of her. All night, visions of Isabel had dominated his dreams, and he woke feeling agonized for lack of her body entwined with his own.