“Anything,” the lad agreed with a smile.
“What do you know of Arion Tavestra?”
Julian gave him an odd look, but he answered, “He was one of the First Lord’s closest friends, a General during the Adept Wars, and a member of the Council of Nine.”
The familiar name rang a chord in Ean’s memory. “Isabel mentioned them once. What’s the Council of Nine?”
Julian frowned at him now, his gaze genuinely concerned. “They really don’t tell you anything, do they?”
Ean gave him a rueful look. “It is important that I remember what I can on my own—which isn’t to say you can’t offer some aid to that end.”
The lad leaned back against the wall and crossed his ankles. “Well…” he began, regarding Ean uncertainly, “the Council of Nine is the First Lord’s war council, but it’s more than that. It comprises his closest advisors, those who have been with him since the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“I think since they first learned of the threat to Alorin and began planning what to do about it.”
Ean frowned. “How long ago was that?”
Julian gave him a wide-eyed look. “A long time ago.”
“Who sits on the Council now?”
Julian scratched at his head and dislodged a tuft of blonde hair to stand on end. “The Council hasn’t changed, Ean. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Well…some of the chairs are empty.”
“I see.” Ean felt that weight descend upon his heart again. “Like Arion Tavestra’s?”
“And Malachai’s.”
Ean held his gaze. “What else? About Arion, I mean.”
Julian shifted and crossed arms, narrowing his gaze as he thought it over. “Arion led several of the important battles. Köhentaal, Gimlalai. He was responsible for apprehending the other Vestals and bringing them to T’khendar. And he was at the Citadel when it fell.”
Ean’s throat felt tight. “How did…he die?”
Julian shook his head. “No one knows—at least, the ones who do know aren’t telling. The whole battle of the Citadel is shrouded in mystery. As far as the people of Alorin are concerned, the only survivors were the Fifty Companions, and they’ve been truthbound not to speak of that night. Those of us in T’khendar know that others survived the fall, but they’re equally as mum about the whole thing.” He frowned suddenly. “But Ean, wouldn’t—wouldn’t the First Lord just tell you if you asked him?”
“I’m sure he would,” Ean answered, but hearing the truth from the First Lord would be more than he could bear. He gave the lad a weak smile. “Thanks…for answering my questions.”
Julian looked concerned. “Ean…” He reached a tentative hand to brush his arm. “You know, it can’t be as bad as you think.”
Ean grimaced. “How not?”
Julian frowned. “It’s just…whatever is tormenting you…it’s not like they don’t already know about it. I mean…whatever it was you think you did…obviously they’ve forgiven you.”
Ean admitted he had a point. He turned to look out the window and clenched his teeth, working the muscles of his jaw. “I think, Julian,” he confessed after a long and depressing silence, “I think the problem is that I can’t forgive myself.”
Ean took his leave of Julian soon thereafter, but he had no destination, no agenda. He walked aimlessly through the palace, head down and shoulders hunched, hands shoved in his pockets. Seeking answers from Julian hadn’t been such a good idea. It seemed the truth was painful no matter how he learned it.
Eventually his feet brought him to the yard where he most often practiced with Markal. Ean picked up a stick he’d been using as a wand during an earlier lesson and twirled it absently through his fingers. In their recent training, Markal had been working with him on the use of talismans, as covered in the Seventeenth Law: The use of talismans must focus force without limiting scope.
Ean preferred to use his hands when any focal point was required at all, but Markal constantly tried to disabuse him of this inclination, saying it was terribly dangerous.
‘Talismans of themselves may have no power,’ the wielder had explained. ‘They merely become a focal point for the channeling of the force. Rather than summoning all of this force and holding it within a nebulous concept of one’s own sphere, a wielder channels the force through his talisman.’
‘But why can’t I just be the talisman?’ Ean had argued.
To which Markal had replied critically, ‘Because then all of the force of your working has to channel through you.’
Ean still didn’t understand why it was such a problem. Looking at the stick in his hand, he pointed it at the empty air and channeled the second strand through it. The air started spinning in front of him. He altered his intention, layering a pattern of the fifth, and the air became sand. He channeled more energy into the layered pattern, and the vortex tripled in speed, skyrocketing upwards until it was easily a hundred feet high and towering above the courtyard walls.
He changed the concept of his intent, and the sand became a surging geyser of water and cascading spray. Higher, he thought with gritted teeth. Faster.
Elae flowed into him, focused through his intention into the stick, his talisman, and shot forth to alter the patterns at work. The geyser grew, it spun faster, spraying water across the entire courtyard so that Ean was soon drenched and dripping, and still he forced it to continue.
His head started pounding, and he knew he should stop, but focusing his will required all of his concentration, which meant he had no room for guilt and regret. He deemed a pounding headache was probably worth a few moments of peace.
And then he heard a voice behind him.
“Ean.”
The prince released the patterns, letting them expend themselves. A momentary shower of rain pelted him as he turned to face Creighton, dripping and cold and immediately anxious. “Creighton,” he replied, and then he bowed his head, remembering their last encounter and the way he’d so unforgivably slighted his closest friend. “I’m so sorry.”
The Shade remained untouched by the water pouring down until it was gone, the pattern expired. “Ean…” Creighton called the prince’s gaze back to him. “There is nothing you could do that I would not forgive. And you are right to feel as you do. I am not the same man I once was…no matter how we might both wish it so.”
Ean heard the choked desire in his blood-brother’s voice, and he realized that they were united in that wish.
“You might not believe me,” the Shade said then, recovering his composure, “but I chose this path.”
Ean grunted. “You’re right—I find that hard to believe.”
“Yet I was given a choice,” Creighton insisted. “It didn’t seem like much of one at the time, but as I look back on it now, I see that it was a fair one. I did choose to become a Shade when I agreed to keep this form rather than fade from the world. I chose to give my oath freely, and I’m proud of that decision.”
Ean gazed at him with profound admiration. “You are where I want very much to be, but I…just can’t seem to get there.” He realized that here was someone who truly understood him, and that they were not so different after all. Both had come through death and emerged again, and both had been irrevocably changed by the encounter.
We are none of us truly the shells we wear.
Suddenly making a decision, Ean reached for his friend and drew him into a fierce hug. “I’m trying very hard to see you beneath the shell you wear,” the prince murmured, agonized by the truth of it. “I beg you be patient with me, my brother.”
Creighton swallowed as he hugged Ean in return. “Would you prefer an illusion? I…could work the same illusion I worked in your dreams.”
“No, I want to come to know you again in this form. I want only truth.”
The Shade in Ean’s arms smiled, and for a moment, the man that was Creighton shone brilliantly through. “Take as long as you need, Ean,” the wor
ds a gentle absolution. “There is only eternity before us.”
After a moment more, Ean pulled away. He nodded and released Creighton. “Thank you.”
The Shade shrugged, murmured dryly, “Don’t mention it.” His obsidian gaze swept Ean then, noting his drenched clothing. He arched a brow. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“Not especially,” Ean grumbled. Then he added with remorse, “But I will, if you want me to.”
Creighton motioned for them to walk, and Ean fell in beside him as they traded the courtyard for an arcade of sculpted columns, each one supporting an elaborate arch. “It seems that you are battling demons of your own devising,” the Shade observed as they walked.
“Very probably,” Ean admitted.
Creighton glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “So much of everything that we deal with is simply happening within ourselves.” Seeing Ean’s surprise at this wisdom, he explained, “When you share a mind with immortals, you are privy to an immortal’s understanding.”
Ean admitted the obvious truth in that.
“The First Lord says we limit ourselves by our viewpoints,” Creighton said then, “by what we are willing to experience, by what we are willing to let others experience, and by what we are willing to let ourselves believe.”
“Belief isn’t my problem,” the prince muttered.
“Then what is?”
He grimaced. “Courage, perhaps?”
Creighton gave him a curious look. “What is there to fear in your memory, Ean? What’s done is done. Nothing you can do will change that. Why not just accept it?”
Ean shook his head. “It’s…complicated.”
“Is it? Or are you just making it seem so? Regret is our futile effort to change the past, but all we’re really doing is trying to exert control now to make up for our failure to control it at a time when we might’ve made a difference.”
Ean gave his friend a rueful grin. “If only I might’ve become a Shade, I could be wise like you.”
“Don’t tease. You have your life. Live it, don’t waste it.”
“I will if you will promise to do the same.”
The Shade turned him a startled look. “And what do you mean by that?”
Ean eyed him speculatively. “I think you know.”
“Ahh…” Creighton did not sound pleased.
“If I can see past the shell, Creighton, so can she.”
“Katerine,” the Shade murmured. He turned Ean a grave look. “Do you really think so?”
“I do.”
The Shade sighed wistfully. “I would like to believe it.”
“I know this much,” the prince offered. “If the situation were reversed, and it was Isabel who waited in Calgaryn for news of me, I would not hesitate. So long as there was breath in me, I would seek to be at her side.”
“Wise words,” Creighton said, smiling. “Then we have a pact? We shall live our lives and not waste any more time on fear or regret.”
Ean turned and extended his hand to the Shade, and they shook on it. But as he took leave of his friend to seek out Isabel, whose presence ever called to him, Ean only hoped the oath would help him find the courage to follow through with his promise.
***
Raine left Dagmar and Carian to their working, exiting back into the hallway to find the Shade still waiting there—or else newly reappeared. It was hard to know for certain.
“My lord,” the Shade said, bowing.
Raine gave him an odd look as he closed the door to Gwynnleth’s room. There was something in his face perhaps, or at least in his presence, that called for recognition. “Do I…know you?”
“My name is Creighton,” the Shade replied. “Creighton Khelspath, once.”
“Creighton—” Raine did a double-take. Too well he remembered Prince Ean’s letter describing his blood-brother’s death, as well as Morin d’Hain’s report of his missing body. “You’re…Ean val Lorian’s blood-brother?” The words sounded pathetically shrill.
“I was, once.”
Raine still had hold of the door handle and was suddenly grateful for it. He leaned back against the wood as the ramifications of this realization settled into a new pattern, collecting unto them disparate facts that altered it from its prior form. “Björn’s Shade didn’t slay you as Ean thought,” he surmised, reaching the logical conclusion.
“No. The Geishaiwyn assassin did. I was nearly dead when Reyd’s power called me forth. My body obeyed his command.”
“And there on the plain he made you into a Shade?”
“He claimed my soul for the First Lord,” Creighton corrected, “but the later choice to keep this form was my own.”
“You are bound to my oath-brother now,” Raine concluded. It was not a question, yet he hoped the Shade would answer him all the same.
“The bond with the First Lord anchors me to this body—my body, though its form has been altered with the fifth to resist the corrosive effects of deyjiin.”
Raine was fascinated. “Why deyjiin? Why not heal you?”
“It was too late for me for healing,” Creighton answered. “There was no one there to heal me in any case, only Reyd, and we Shades cannot work the first strand. There was no other choice available to my mentor if he meant to save my life. I am glad he did what he did. I wasn’t ready to move on, to pass through the Extian Doors and take my chances in the Returning.”
Raine pushed off the door and started walking down the hallway, and Creighton moved silently at his side. “But why deyjiin?” he asked again, deep in thought now. Raine was intensely curious to know why Björn had used deyjiin to create his Shades—those he’d created since the fall of Tiern’aval, Shades like Anglar. But for that matter, why had Malachai made them in the first place? Once, Raine had believed there was naught but evil motive behind the deed, but now he suspected else.
No, he suspected better. Was he finally finding faith in his oath-brother after all this time, after all that had come before?
It was strange to think so.
Suddenly rousing from this stream of thought, which had occupied him for quite some time, Raine looked to the Shade who walked patiently at his side. “Were you waiting for me back there?”
“Indeed, my lord. I was asked to accompany you, but you seem to already know where to go.”
Raine looked up and found himself facing a pair of carved doors. Odd that his feet had found their own way to this new place. He felt a pang of anxiety, a premonition of what lay beyond. He thought of Ramu’s speech on courage and steeled himself for whatever Fate harbored for him.
The Shade opened the doors on his behalf and stood aside to let Raine pass. He noted that the creature did not follow him. He could feel the doors closing behind as he made his way through a gallery opening to various intersecting passages. He suspected that one of them would lead to the Hall of Games, but he sensed this wasn’t where he was meant to go that day. Passing a few other people, who nodded a silent hello, he made his way down the right-hand corridor, which eventually opened upon a cloistered garden.
He saw her then, sitting upon a bench with her back to him. Waiting.
Raine’s heart was suddenly beating too quickly, his breath coming shallow and fast.
Isabel.
He did not love her—no, it was nothing like that. But Isabel did this to a man. She claimed a piece of his soul as her own and never relinquished it, so that he saw a bit of himself like a mirage within her, compelling him to rescue it, to claim it back unto himself. Until such a man managed this impossible feat, that part of him that was caught within Isabel ever called him back to her, binding his soul in some indefinable yet entirely marvelous way.
Raine forced a deep breath and walked into the courtyard. The grass was soft under his boots, and the roses were still in bloom though midwinter had now passed. Raine imagined roses would bloom for Isabel no matter what time of year it was.
“Come and sit beside me, Raine,” Isabel said when he was still f
ar behind her.
He noticed she wore a blindfold, black as night against her fair skin and chestnut hair, and he wondered at it. But he also did as she bade him and sank down onto the bench beside her.
She took his hand, and Raine’s heart beat faster as he looked upon her face for the first time in three centuries. “Can you see me, Isabel?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling. “One does not blithely go blindfolded into the world.”
He smiled at her words, but the anguish he felt inside was unmatched by any that had come before. “Isabel…” He dropped his eyes. “When I first came to T’khendar and learned about Arion’s death, and then we witnessed that gruesome parade of heads, I thought…” but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words now.
It didn’t matter, for she knew his mind. “You thought I might’ve willingly embraced my end to join Arion in the Returning.”
His eyes flew to her, agonized and intense. “Yes.”
“You knew me better than that, I thought.”
Raine dropped his gaze, for there was no way he could look at her and give his next confession. “Worse was what we thought of your brother,” he whispered then.
“I thought you knew him better than that as well,” she chided gently.
“I thought I did, too,” he managed a hoarse reply. After a moment, he lifted his gaze to look upon her again, though it pained him greatly to do it. One could not sit in the presence of Epiphany’s Prophet and not have one’s soul laid bare, willingly or no. Yet it was always infinitely better to do so willingly.
“All this time…” he was appalled by the desperation his tone betrayed. He worked some moisture back into his mouth and forced a swallow, saying then, “You’ve been here helping Björn since Tiern’aval fell?”
“It has ever been so.” She squeezed his hand, which she still held. “We are bound to the same cause for all eternity, my brother and I. There can be no other game for me but my brother’s game, wherever it leads.”
Raine looked away, clenching his jaw. Hearing it from her lips…he could ill deny now how wrong they had been—about everything. “Alshiba mourned you more than any other,” he said after a moment, too weak-hearted to take up deeper matters.
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 57
