Thirty-Three
“Truth may walk through the world unarmed.”
- A desert proverb
After his ordeal in the cave, Tanis slept all the next day. When he woke, a brilliant morning bathed the coast in golden light—it was the first time he’d seen the sun since coming to Pelas’s home. Tanis felt hale, and hungry.
And the zanthyr’s dagger was lying in the palm of his hand.
Pelas seemed to have an uncanny sense for knowing when Tanis was awake, for he came into his room just as the lad was getting up to greet the day. His arrival was preceded by a tap upon the bedroom door, and then the man’s head slipped through the parting. “Ah, good,” he said pleasantly, his copper eyes bright. “You’re up.”
He came inside carrying several packages, but Tanis barely noticed them, for his attention was riveted to the man instead.
Pelas looked resplendent in a violet coat cut in his usual flared style, the silk worked all over with spiraling patterns in black and gold thread. His long, thick hair was pulled back and held at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon edged in gold, and several longer strands fell free, framing his face. He looked…softer somehow, less severe. Or maybe it was just that he was himself again, with no hint of the terrible monster that slept within the heart of his desires.
Pelas unwrapped one of the bundles he carried and held up a coat for Tanis. The lad’s eyes went wide.
“Do you like it then?” Pelas murmured, copper eyes sparkling.
Tanis came and took the garment from him. “It’s marvelous!” He ran a hand over the thick silk, but it was the coat’s color that truly amazed him. Neither grey, nor lavender, nor pale blue, nor even the iridescent fire of opal, yet it somehow encompassed all of these. “However did you find such a magical cloth?”
“I had it made.” Pelas was leaning against a chest of drawers. He crossed his arms, looking pleased. “The color was inspired by your eyes, little spy.”
Tanis lifted said eyes to the man. “Really?”
“They look just like that, you know. Sometimes any one of those colors might reflect within your eyes, and sometimes they’re just…open—not empty,” he assured the boy, his tone taking on a whimsical and yet introspective quality, “not truly colorless, just waiting…as if to show a man the color of his own thoughts.”
Tanis gazed wondrously at him. “My eyes do all of that?”
Pelas came over and smiled down at him, and Tanis felt an intimacy with this man that he’d never before experienced with anyone. “All that and more,” Pelas confirmed. Then he ruffled the lad’s hair. “But come—get dressed and let us break our fast, and then we have such a day ahead, little spy!”
“We do?”
Pelas walked to the windows to look out over the cerulean sea. “Do you know what today is?”
Tanis shook his head.
Pelas turned him a look over his shoulder. “The Longest Night. The Solstice. Adendigaeth. Carnivále! Everywhere across the realm people are celebrating. Some have already been at it for weeks. Have you ever been to the Rimaldi Coast for Carnivále, Tanis?”
“No, sir. But I’ve heard stories about the fetes there.”
“After tonight, you will have your own stories to share,” Pelas assured him with a wink. He nodded for Tanis to dress and then left him to ready himself.
After the man left, Tanis sank down on the edge of his bed still holding the impossibly colored coat. He wasn’t sure why he found it so beautiful. Perhaps he too saw his own eyes somehow reflected in its iridescent sheen. As he sat staring at the garment, his throat constricted and his chest grew tight. He hugged the coat close and closed his eyes. There was much more in this gift than the presentation of a mere garment. Tanis knew that wholly. What he didn’t know was how to tell Pelas it was time for him to go.
Just as he’d known in the café that he must follow, so did he know now that it was time to leave. He still didn’t fully understand that sense of duty, or even what he’d been meant to do when the hand of Fate guided him to follow Pelas, but whatever its intent, Tanis no longer regretted heeding its call. His time with Pelas had been frightening and terrible and…wonderful and even enriching, and in the end, Pelas had needed his help. Whatever else he’d managed, Tanis believed he had at least encouraged the man a little bit toward the light.
Exhaling a tremulous sigh, the lad finally pushed off the grief that gripped him at the thought of leaving Pelas and got washed and dressed. Not that he had any idea how he was going to leave anyway. It was hard enough just thinking about it, much less figuring out a means of accomplishing it.
He found Pelas on the patio where he’d first seen the man, only now the day was bright and clear, and the chill in the air was a pleasant embellishment to the morning. The Fhorg Jain was just leaving Pelas as Tanis arrived, and for the first time the Wildling actually grinned at him as he passed. The moment was surreal.
Pelas turned and gave Tanis a winsome smile that hit the boy with an anguished pang of regret. When Pelas was himself, he was…dazzling. Tanis still saw the unearthly creature he’d first glimpsed when Pelas stood much in the same position upon the patio, but now he understood all that he was seeing in him—the enthusiasm, the irrepressible interest, the excitement for things large and small; and the darkness that hungered beneath, seeking as much to dominate its host as the doomed Healers it forced Pelas to consume on its behalf.
Tanis smiled in return, and they broke their fast together at a table at the patio’s end, where the cliffs fell away. Tanis was pensive as they ate, his mind consumed by that same sense of duty, which was now urging him to leave. It was much in conflict with his personal feelings…as ever it had been.
Pelas mistook his thoughtful silence. “Do you harbor ill thoughts of me, little spy?” he asked with such anguished concern that Tanis’s eyes flew to his.
“No, sir!” he hastened to assure him, only willing that Pelas might see the truth in his gaze, for Tanis loved him now even as he loved the zanthyr, and he could find no ill will in his heart for the man. “I was just…thinking.”
“About?”
Tanis frowned. “Choices?”
“Ah, that inexhaustible conflict. It has become the bane of my thoughts of late as well.”
Tanis was relieved to know that he was at least thinking about the topic. But now that he’d brought the matter up, Tanis couldn’t help himself saying, “Sir, at some point, you have to accept that if you can make a choice about one thing, you can make a choice about something else.”
Pelas gave him an endearing look, a half-smile teasing the corner of his mouth. “I do, do I?”
“Yes,” Tanis declared. “If you can choose not to destroy this world right now,” he said, “if you can choose to find joy in something, if you can choose to see the world differently from your brothers, then those are choices and you are making them and you can’t deny the existence of choice while yet obviously making choices that are real!”
Pelas regarded him solemnly. “These are all fair points, little spy.”
Emboldened by his agreement, Tanis pressed on, “And…and it only follows that if you can make one choice, you can make other choices, too. A choice is simply a decision. Some are harder than others, but they are all within your power. Unless you give something the power to control you, it cannot truly do so. And that, too, is a choice.”
Pelas held his gaze, saying nothing.
Tanis dropped his eyes to stare at his plate feeling frustrated and even a little desperate. It just seemed so simple to him. Why couldn’t Pelas understand that he was the one complicating it? Tanis looked up to meet his dark copper eyes and declared, “Sir, if you can choose to see joy, you can choose to be not as you are.”
“Yes,” Pelas murmured, giving Tanis a smile that did nothing to lighten the anguish in his gaze, “so you have told me.”
They retreated to the silence of their thoughts then, and Tanis imagined the day almost imperceptibly darkened, but then Pelas f
inished his wine and spun out of his chair and swept a hand before him as he bowed low to Tanis. “Our carriage awaits, little spy.”
Tanis pushed out of his chair uncertainly. “Our carriage?”
Pelas straightened, and his eyes twinkled.
Tanis frowned at him. “It would seem our carriage is sorely lacking for seats.”
“Seats!” Pelas waved indignantly at the offensive idea. “Seats would only be a nuisance when navigating Shadow.” He held out his elbow to the boy. “Come, lad.”
Tanis approached and took hold of his arm, asking, “Shadow?”
“The carriage of our particular travels,” Pelas murmured while concentrating upon calling his portal. The silvery line split down through the air, and arm in arm, they walked into the darkness.
Moments later they stepped out into a cloister that connected two massive buildings. Tanis heard the quiet music of a fountain nearby, but the ivy-bound columns of the walkway prevented much of his view into the garden.
“I would be misleading you if I said Shadow was truly a place,” Pelas noted as he led off down the covered walkway at a leisurely pace. “It is a dimension, not a realm. It’s only location is in time.”
Tanis was already lost.
Pelas chuckled at his baffled expression. “Our power tears the fabric of the realm,” he explained to the lad then. “It is what this power was created to do—to dissolve and destroy, to unwork what has been woven, to rend that which was whole.”
Tanis gave him a troubled look.
Pelas shrugged. “Argue what you like about my nature, little spy, but this truth is incontrovertible.”
Tanis decided not to take up the point. “And Shadow?”
“Shadow lies between. It is the buffer between the realms and is therefore everywhere and nowhere. There is no such place as Shadow, for it only exists in the time between, in the measurement of change, of what was and is and will be. It is time that connects the realms together, time that binds the universe.”
Tanis shook his head and gave Pelas a rueful grin. “I don’t think you need worry about me passing along this secret, sir,” he admitted. “I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”
Pelas chucked. “It’s just as well. Navigating Shadow is far more complicated than a Nodefinder simply following upon an existing path. There are no paths into and out of Shadow. We must create them ourselves using time.”
“But you can go anywhere by traveling through it?”
“There are limitations, of course, but the places you and I have traveled are ones I know well.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“An important one,” Pelas said, winking.
They made their way through the next building, miraculously seeing no one, and exited through towering doors that opened onto a crescent of descending steps. The moment Tanis emerged into the world, he was assaulted by scents and noises and the heady perception of thousands of minds shouting exited thoughts loudly into the aether. The streets seemed one undulating mass of people, many already in costume for the night’s revelry—although to look at some of them, Tanis rather wondered if perhaps they simply hadn’t taken them off in days.
The lad had never been to the Rimaldi Coast, but the city where they’d arrived was not unlike Cair Rethynnea, if perhaps older and with larger and more ornately imposing buildings. Yet the many races represented there were much like in the Cairs, and the architecture itself was similar.
Pelas blended right in with the affluent crowd that jammed the streets in that part of the city, yet he was in no way invisible among their number. Everywhere they walked he drew attention, for he was ever enticing and just so very interesting to look upon. Tanis noted that when Pelas was truly himself—as he was that day—one could not help but stare. It wasn’t that his coat was so fine—though it was—or that he was handsome beyond all measure, though his features were exotic. Rather, his own interest in everything around him seemed to attract the interest of others. Much in the way a crowd of people staring at something will draw others to investigate, such was Pelas’s lure.
Tanis had never had so much fun just walking with someone, though he imagined walking with the zanthyr would have been a similarly thrilling experience.
Pelas took them through the city pointing out his favorite places so that Tanis might admire them also, and as the sun was nearing its zenith, they turned down an avenue toward a majestic marble building of soaring heights. A huge glass dome glittered splendidly at its crown, almost too sparkling to look upon in the midday sun.
Rather than walking up the long flight of wide steps leading to its entrance, Pelas shot Tanis a conspiratorial grin and led him into the park that bordered the building’s southern face. A slender path led away from the park’s main walkway, winding down through lush undergrowth and eventually ending back at the building and a shadowed side door. Glancing first to left and right, Pelas pulled Tanis over to this door and tried the handle. It was unsurprisingly locked.
“Give me that dagger of yours, little spy,” he whispered with his copper eyes darkly twinkling.
Tanis gave him a suspicious look.
“I’ll give it back!” he laughed. “Come now,” and he held out his hand. “I know you must have it.”
Reluctantly, Tanis withdrew Phaedor’s dagger from his boot and handed it over.
Pelas considered the Merdanti weapon with renewed appreciation. “A truly marvelous treasure,” he commented with a wistful sigh. Then he grinned at Tanis and proceeded to use his prized dagger for the lowly task of jiggering the lock. Tanis heard a click, Pelas flashed him a triumphant grin, and the door swung inward. He handed him back his dagger with a wink.
“Couldn’t you just have used your power to dissolve the lock, sir?” Tanis asked as he slipped the dagger back into its sheath—no point trying to hide it now—which he now wore on his belt beneath his coat.
Pelas gave him a lightly chastising look. “Now where would be the fun in that?” And with a smile, he led Tanis inside. The corridor beyond the heavy door was dim, but Pelas clearly knew the place well.
“Where are we, sir?” Tanis asked in a low voice as they moved down the hall hugging the darkness.
“The Nodefinder’s Guild Hall,” he returned with a mischievous grin. “They’re fussy about intruders, so walk quietly and if anyone notices us, try to look important.”
Tanis thought that would be no trouble at all for Pelas to manage and quite a challenge for him. Fortunately, all the Guild’s members and administrators seemed to be out enjoying Carnivále, for they encountered no one as they swept through the wide halls and up a grand curving staircase to the second floor. Down another long hallway past what appeared to be libraries or archives of some kind, they reached the open gallery beneath the crystal dome. The ceiling soared upwards through five floors, and great works of art adorned the walls of the circular walkways at each level. Pelas took him up a flight of stairs to the third level and stopped before an oil painting at least twenty paces across. Tanis had to step back all the way to railing to appreciate its scope, but there, he gazed upon the work with amazement.
The base of the painting was full of color and light and even sound—if such could be said of the impression of its vibrant, ebullient motion. The story of this part of the painting depicted a party, but it was also so much more than this. Within each vignette, each collaboration of faces and people, there was a new revelation. Something discovered, something new, something expressed or admired. Some people danced, some ate and drank, some talked or argued, conspired or laughed. Every detail of their lives in that moment was captured in paint, each jewel in a woman’s necklace or a man’s ring fashioned with its own particular and unique sparkle.
The brilliance of the painting’s main focus was remarkable, but especially in contrast to the darkness that hovered above. The artist had expertly blended the colors of his fete into the blanket of a starry night, color sweeping upward to be captured by the heav
ens and reflected ever so subtly in the stars. But it was above the stars, in the darkness of the clouds, that Tanis saw them hovering. Watching. They were but shadows with eyes—yet not even that much of them was shown, not truly. It was more the impression of them, the way their eyes were stars that were yet sentient, celestial bodies of a different, darker nature.
When he saw them, he knew.
Tanis turned Pelas a swift look. “You painted this!”
Pelas grinned at him. “I hoped you would see. I thought you might.” He looked back to the painting, assessing it critically, as only its own creator could. “There are many who do not notice us at all.”
The painting frightened Tanis more than he cared to admit. “Is it…is that what it’s like—what it’s like for all of you?”
Pelas cast him a sideways look that hinted at a smile. “Never fear. We’re not gods hovering in the clouds, little spy. This is just a metaphor for how I feel…felt… about your world.”
“Why is it here? I mean…” Tanis looked around and then whispered, “Do they know you painted it?”
“It was painted by an imminently respectable artist named Immanuel di Nostri. My name, once.” He gave the boy a conspiratorial smile. “I’ve had many identities, but Immanuel was always one of my favorites.”
Tanis looked back to the painting. “It’s…incredible.”
“Thank you,” Pelas returned, “but you need not praise it. I only wanted to show you because I thought you would appreciate its message. And I see that you do. That is enough, truly.”
Tanis gazed at Pelas in wonder. Cliff diver, sailor, courtier, artist, interrogator and intrepid explorer. He wondered how many other skills the man had mastered.
“But come,” Pelas said brightly then. “There is much still to see.”
He led Tanis through the gallery, explaining that it was actually an archive of masterworks from around the realm. He also told him that Immanuel di Nostri had many paintings in a gallery in the Sormitáge.
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 45
