“Cóir taisteal, Dagmar,” Isabel greeted. “Events progress. I trust you are pleased so far.”
“I begin the preparations for their arrival as we speak,” Dagmar said by way of acknowledgement. “My lady, your advice is ever apt.”
“One does try to be of some value,” Isabel murmured modestly.
Dagmar shifted his gaze to Ean, and there was something in it that reminded him of someone…the briefest ghost of a countenance that he couldn’t place. “Ean,” the Vestal said warmly, “I rest easy knowing you travel in the best of company. Do not let her be too reckless.”
“I am never reckless,” Isabel returned with a prim lift of her chin.
“I won’t, my lord,” Ean assured him, believing whole-heartedly that Isabel was likely more reckless than he was.
Just then a shimmering behind Dagmar drew Ean’s eye, and a second later a Shade materialized, coalescing out of the shadows into form. Dagmar turned when he felt the creature behind him, but Ean’s heart sank to realize it was Creighton. Here was another soul he’d wounded deeply, another for which any apology seemed inadequate.
“The First Lord requires you, my lord,” Creighton told Dagmar. “He awaits in the map room.”
“I’ll come at once, certainly.”
Creighton shifted his obsidian gaze to Isabel and Ean. “My lady,” he said, nodding, and to Ean, he pressed hands together, fingertips to lips and bowed. “My lord…”
“Creighton—” Ean reached to him, but he was already fading.
Dagmar also departed with a nod of farewell, leaving Ean watching the vapor of Creighton’s passing with a heavy heart.
“What happened between you?” Isabel asked into the silence that remained, sensitive to the sudden dark cloud that had erupted out of Ean’s thoughts.
“I wronged him,” Ean admitted, suddenly miserable and bombarded by guilt. The most depressing part was that his conflict was as yet unresolved, and to think otherwise would merely be duplicitous. “I owe him my life,” he murmured, “but when he thought to embrace me as the brothers we were…are…I rejected him.”
“Do not let appearances fool you,” Isabel advised gently. “None of us are truly the shells we wear.” Ean gave her a stricken look, and she returned a reassuring smile. “Come,” she said after a moment’s pause, time enough to let him brood over mistakes and misdeeds. “The sun lengthens, Ean.”
Feeling heavy hearted, the prince walked with Isabel through the palace, eventually reaching a set of towering arched doors similar in height to the Extian Doors but crafted of a smooth wood enameled in crimson, their facing edge deeply adzed to mirror the design of the arch above them. Isabel traced a pattern in the air, Ean heard a click, and the doors swung inward.
Before them spread the torturously long hallway Ean remembered from his first moment of arrival in T’khendar, the endless corridor lined on both sides with regularly spaced black-lacquered doors. It truly seemed to go on forever.
“What is this place?” Ean asked as Isabel nudged him through and the doors swung shut behind them.
“We call it the Nodes,” she replied. “It is a creation of the Second Vestal, one of many improvements he’s put in place since elae was restored to T’khendar.”
There was another mystery Ean realized he’d never gotten answered. “About that,” the prince said as they walked down the endless hallway. “Raine D’Lacourte told me elae didn’t exist here.”
“In the beginning it did not,” she confirmed.
“Then how did elae come to be?”
“What is elae but the force of life? The entirety of Cair Tiern’aval—all of its peoples—were stranded here when the island’s weld was twisted, tearing the city from Alorin’s fabric into ours. Those people are the original inhabitants of T’khendar—that is, the ones who chose to stay,” she amended as an afterthought. “Through them, through the others of us who remained, elae flowed. In time, more came to T’khendar, and elae became powerful here, settling into natural currents.”
Ean shook his head as the obvious truth fitted effortlessly into the as-yet incomplete whole. It made perfect sense if one actually stopped to examine the natural laws.
Isabel looked to him as they stopped before a door. “Now we must travel. Come, take my hand.”
Ean happily obliged, and she opened the door and led them into darkness. A heartbeat later they emerged through another door as if merely exiting from a lightless wardrobe into the bright of day.
They stood at the edge of a farmstead. To the south spread fields of corn, still productive though the Winter Solstice approached, while to the west, fields of wheat were shooting up green sprouts. Ean looked behind him to see a simple door built into a stone casing. Glancing around the frame, he found nothing behind it but grass.
“Isa! Isa!”
Ean turned at the sound of children calling excitedly, ee-sah! ee-sah! shouted in joyous voices. Moments later, a bevy of children came hurtling out of the cornfield, emerging like a flock of ravens disturbed from their midday meal. A rotund woman followed in their wake brandishing a straw broom that seemed an appropriate tool for managing such a gaggle of young thrushes. They swarmed around Isabel with joyous exclamations, a dozen or so in all, each wearing simple linen tunics and wool leggings. None of them were especially clean, but they seemed well cared for and were adorned only in the normal amount of dirt for children of such an active young age.
“Ah, Lady, ‘tis a pleasure to see you, as always,” said the wide woman as she neared. “Settle ducklings, settle!” she shushed, motioning to the children who were clinging to Isabel, grabbing skirts or hands or hair, just to have that tactile connection with her. “They’ve been watching for ye all morning, of course, ever since General Ramu stopped to tell us to expect ye.”
“Céad míle beannachta,Treva,” Isabel greeted, and somehow Ean knew these words, foreign though they were to him. A hundred thousand blessings. “All right, all right,” Isabel said sweetly to the children. “I may have something in my bag for each of you. Who’s been good since I was here last?”
“Me!” came the staggered chorus of replies, accompanied by a multitude of jumping beans with upraised hands. Isabel glanced at Ean, and he got the sense her eyes were smiling at him through the blindfold. Then she let the children pull her to the side where she might better retrieve their presents from her own pack.
“Blessings upon your house, General,” the woman Treva said to Ean, bowing with hands pressed to her lips.
Ean turned to her with a frown. “No, I’m…I’m Ean. Ean val Lorian.”
“Of course ye are,” she replied, eyeing him in that way women have, as if he’d be expected to say naught but foolish things. “I’m Treva. The Lady told us a fortnight ago that ye’d be arriving in T’khendar soon. We’re so glad ye’ve made it at last.” Treva shook her head and lamented on Isabel’s behalf, “Epiphany knows, the Lady’s been missing ye something fierce these long years, though she’d never say it aloud.”
Ean considered her fretfully. Her candid words fell upon a truth he wasn’t ready to face.
“Might as well come up to the house,” Treva said then with a contented sigh. “They’ll be about this for a while yet, and she has’nae even seen the older brood. They’ll be wantin’ to talk to her. Well, come on then,” and she gave Ean’s sleeve a friendly tug.
Not wanting to leave Isabel but recognizing that she had her own relationship with these children, Ean allowed Treva to pull him away. “Where are we?” he asked as they headed into the cornfield. The tall stalks quickly muffled the children’s excited voices and brought only echoes on the breeze.
“The nearest town is Roth’s Crossing,” Treva answered. Then she frowned. “But ye probably aren’t familiar with T’khendar, are ye, milord?”
“Not really, no.”
“We’re a few hours southwest of Niyadbakir by horse, but closer to Legacine, one of the Five Cities.”
“The Five Cities?”
; “That’s right,” she said. “Renato, Legacine, Torian, Dumarre and Premeira. These are the Five Cities of T’khendar, and of course Niyadbakir, but the Prime City isn’t on the river route.”
“You’re losing me, Treva.”
She cast him a wry look. “No matter, General. This is Sionym House, where you’ve come, and that’s the important part.” Just then they emerged into an open yard fronting a massive stone manor and outbuildings, the workings of a healthy farmstead. Children of all ages buzzed about like bees, taking no note of them. The farmstead was cooled by towering acacia and eucalyptus trees, forming a barrier between the fields and the jutting mountains just beyond. “We’re an orphanage under the Lady’s care,” Treva explained, settling hands onto hips with a look of proud satisfaction.
“An orphanage,” Ean said, glancing to her in surprise. But of course, what other explanation could there be for so many children? Ean observed the many youngsters buzzing about, some light-skinned, some so dark as to be carved of ebony, some with hair like fire and others as pale as moonlight. “Where do the children come from?”
“Here and there,” Treva said. “Few enough are from T’khendar. Mostly Djurik collects them from his travels.”
“Collects them from where?” Ean gave her a confused look. “Who is Djurik?”
“Djurik Nagraed,” said a dark-skinned man, who was just then emerging from a near stone barn brushing hay from his overalls. From the look of him—his ebony skin, shaved head and pale blue eyes—Ean placed him as Bemothi, but of that kingdom’s jungle tribes. Djurik stopped in front of Ean and bowed as Treva had done—as so many had bowed to him since arriving in T’khendar. The greeting made Ean immensely uncomfortable.
“Be welcome, General,” Djurik said. “It is our greatest honor to host you and the Lady.”
“I’m Ean,” he insisted lamely, suspecting it would make no difference.
“May I show you the farm, General?” Djurik offered, proving Ean’s suspicions correct.
For lack of any reason not to, only wishing they’d stop calling him General, Ean agreed. Djurik showed him the outbuildings and paddocks, pastures and fields. Ean saw easily four score children of varying ages, from the youngest tending the goats and chickens to the oldest working the wheat.
“Are they all orphans?” Ean asked as they walked between a fenced-in vegetable garden, ripe with gourds and cabbages, and a smokehouse, outside of which two older boys were stacking wood.
“Aye,” Djurik said. “The Lady found me herself when I was naught but trouble with a stick, and she set me to task helping to build this place and then fill it.”
“So you’re an Adept,” Ean reasoned, realizing he had to be a Nodefinder—or at least one of the Wildling tribes of the third-strand, who often shared this second-strand trait—though how Djurik was traveling outside of T’khendar was incomprehensible based on everything Ean knew. “Are the children Adepts as well?” He didn’t like the sudden idea that came to him, that Djurik might be taking Alorin’s adepts away when all were so desperately needed.
“A few,” Djurik admitted to Ean’s first question, “but these younglings are mainly just innocents without hope—homeless, parentless. Adepts like us…we make a way for ourselves even in the worst of circumstances, don’t we?” His pale blue eyes searched Ean’s for understanding. “We’re born with a gift, whether we use it for good or ill. These children had nothing, no one.”
Ean was relieved that his concern had been for naught. Then he chastised himself for ever doubting Isabel.
“But how are you traveling between the realms?” Ean asked, totally bemused by this mystery. “I thought the nodes to and from T’khendar were hopelessly twisted.” He recalled the zanthyr chastising Carian for that very thing.
“Aye,” Djurik said, eyeing Ean surreptitiously, “and how deep does the alabaster go?”
Ean did a double-take.
The man just grinned at him, straight white teeth bright against his ebony skin.
Uncomfortable with where this was heading, Ean returned them to safer waters. “Where do the children go from here?”
“Once they finish their schooling, they’re free to return to their own lands—or stay in T’khendar and join the First Lord’s crusade.” He rested hands inside the flap of his overalls and exhaled a thoughtful sigh. “I’m proud to say most choose to stay.”
A hubbub of excited shouting preceded Isabel’s arrival at the farmstead. Still surrounded by a froth of children, all of them clearly beneath the age of seven, she was soon bombarded with two dozen more coming at her with exclamations of surprise and welcome. Ean watched, entranced, as Isabel allowed the youngest children to take her hands, guiding her toward the manor, while the oldest boy claimed her satchel and two of the adolescent boys—all long legs and lean-muscled arms, so like Tanis these days—carried her staff between them.
“You know,” Djurik mused, gazing at Isabel just as entranced as Ean, “there’s a lot of folks as say they stayed in T’khendar ‘cause of the First Lord, to serve him, to do their part. I reckon that’s true enough. But I warrant there’s just as many of us are here to serve the Lady. Not that there’s competition between the two, mind,” he added, glancing at Ean, “but this world is their world. We all know that.”
Ean considered Djurik. He seemed a simple man with his tattered work clothes and sweat-stained neckerchief, but he wondered… None of us are truly the shells we wear. Isabel’s admonishment. He was beginning to see the truth of it.
By the time Ean and Isabel left the farmstead, midday had come and gone again. They headed off on foot, their satchels packed with food enough for several more days on the road, their stomachs full from a hearty meal of smoked ham and hard cheese, black bread smeared with salty butter, of a tart with apples and dried plums, and all of it washed down with spicy cider. The children gave them an enthusiastic send-off, waving and cheering as if they embarked upon a grand adventure fraught with danger and daring. They were deep on a path through the woods before the sound of youthful voices finally faded.
“My lady,” Ean asked once the silence of the wood had fully enveloped them, “why did you bring me to Sionym House?”
Isabel walked with smooth strides, her staff finding its way unerringly along the path before her, never mind that she walked blindfolded. “It was on the way, my lord.”
“Is that the only reason?”
She glanced at him with a brow aching gracefully above her blindfold, and she considered him this way for a time. Then she looked back to the path ahead. “There is much to know about my brother’s game, Ean. Much to recall—too much to explain. You must see something of this world, of what we’ve created here, of the people who chose a life in T’khendar. You must make your own connections, form your own conclusions. My brother will not have your oath unless it is in full knowledge of what you swear.”
My oath. The words made Ean immensely uneasy. He looked away from her and exhaled a troubled breath, pushing a hand through his hair. Of course he’d known it would be expected, he just…well…
But that was her point, wasn’t it? She knew he wasn’t ready to give his oath, that he didn’t understand nearly enough about what they were doing. He wandered the formless midlands between sides, unable to fully choose either, for both were obscured beneath a haze of falsehoods and unknowns.
Only Isabel was clear.
“I haven’t asked you,” Ean said, hastening to change the subject, “because it hasn’t mattered,” because I would follow you anywhere, “but…where are we going?”
She cast him a brief look over pursed lips. “To see him.”
“Who?”
“Rinokhálpeşumar.”
Ean stopped abruptly. “Rinokh,” he repeated, staring after her. He felt a dry-throated panic welling at the idea of confronting the creature again. “But I thought…” He adjusted the straps of his pack and tried to calm himself. “I thought he was… undone.”
Isabel halted several pace
s ahead. “Malorin’athgul cannot be unmade. Only the shells they’ve chosen to wear in this realm might be stripped away. Come, Ean,” she reached back for his hand. “You must understand what it is we fight.”
Ean thought he had a fair idea of that already, but he took her hand and allowed her to lead him on, for he could refuse her nothing. Yet as they started walking again, Ean kept seeing his dreadful confrontation with Rinokh superimposed over the path before him, and the persistent memory started making him ill. He thought he almost felt again the man’s chilling power crushing him into the earth, and either this or the increasingly steep climb soon had him sweating beneath his tunic.
Rather than dwell disturbingly upon the moment of his near-death, he tried again to push the vision from mind and asked Isabel instead, “Why do we not travel the nodes?”
“There are no nodes leading to this place. It would be too dangerous.”
The path continued steepening until they were using hands as well as feet to climb from boulder to boulder. Isabel tied up her skirts around her knees and used her staff for support, climbing sure-footed in suede boots. Ean shouldered her pack as well as his own, and in this fashion did they make steady progress up the mountainside.
It was late afternoon when the path leveled out and they emerged into a clearing where a waterfall had carved a grotto out of the stone. Above them, the bare rock face angled up and out of sight, while to their right, a lush valley spread, velvet-soft for all it was hundreds of feet beneath them. Seeming close enough to touch, the deeply ribbed walls of the adjacent ridge soared to impossible heights, the true temples of the earth. Their emerald sides were softened by a lush canopy of trees that somehow clung to the near-vertical walls. More waterfalls fell from on high, long lines of silver-white gleaming against a granite face. It was a magnificent and unearthly vista.
Standing amidst such majesty, Ean felt an inexplicable sense of expansion, as if some part of him was being stretched, his awareness extending to the peaks of the mountains and beyond, the rest of him filling the valley, becoming the water of its bountiful cup.
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 42
