Dagmar came to every Nodefinder at some point in his life. The Great Master felt it immensely important to establish personal contact with all of his ‘sons’—for it was rare for a female to be born to the second strand. As rare as a male born to the first. In addition to his talent at nodefinding, the Great Master was blessed with the additional gift of dreamwalking, a rare trait found only among Adepts of the second strand.
“Do you miss him, Franco?” Franco turned Raine a swift look, but the Truthreader held aloft a reassuring hand. “I do not invade your privacy, I assure you. Your thoughts of my oath-brother were…very strong.”
Franco willed his beating heart to settle and nodded. “Yes, milord. I deeply miss his counsel.”
Raine gazed at him sadly. “Has he contacted you since…?”
“The Citadel?” Franco shrugged. “In my dreams only.” He was grateful to be able to tell the truth about it.
’Tis shameful how you take pride in finding anything to say that isn’t a boldfaced lie.
Franco gritted his teeth at what he was coming to call the mad voice of his conscience.
“I hear tales,” Raine said pensively. “Tales that he’s come to others in their dreams. They all say he claims to be a prisoner of my oath-brother, Björn. That he’s being held in T’khendar.” Raine turned him an inquiring look.
“He hasn’t said that to me.” Another truth.
Oh, well done.
“Has he come to you, my lord?” Franco asked. “Has he visited your dreams?”
Raine shook his head. “I believe the nature of our oath prevents us from contact in dreamscape.” The Vestal looked as if he wished to say more, but just then they rounded a curve in the road and exited the wood, reaching an open drive that circled in front of an immense manor the color of malachite. Gargoyles glared down accusingly from high parapets that edged a steep roof darkened with moss. The entire place looked tediously grim.
Franco was dismounting when he heard a raucous cry from high above. He craned his neck to spy a hawk soaring down out of the grey clouds. It flew in an arc across the drive, out over the near trees, and circled down toward the horses with wings outstretched, talons extended.
Suddenly gold-bronze flame erupted skyward, engulfing the bird completely. Franco instinctively cringed away, but the flames were quite without heat.
When the fire faded, a man stood upon the road.
Oh gods, I’m doomed.
Of all the Adepts in the world he least admired, foremost among them was Seth nach Davvies, called Seth Silverbow, leader of the Avieth Clans and Third Vestal of Alorin. They’d met numerous times, for one of Franco’s dearest friends was Seth’s great-nephew Mazur. Seth had disowned and disavowed Mazur after the events at the Citadel. Mazur’s fate was by far the worst of all.
Seth was a stocky man of average height with shoulders like small boulders and biceps you could bend horseshoes around. Like most Avieths, he had fiery red hair, tawny-gold eyes, and an aquiline nose that gave his countenance a hawkish ferocity. He wore garments of green leather and had a quiver of silver-tipped arrows strapped to his thigh. He took one look at Franco and scowled.
“What’s he doing here?” he demanded of Raine.
“Helping me to travel, Seth, or did you imagine I would float here on my magic carpet?”
Seth’s gaze flicked dismissively over Franco. “He looks terrible. What did you do to him?”
“Neither of us has slept since last you and I spoke.”
“That was a week ago.”
Raine sighed. “Precisely.”
“Well, did you at least find the bastard?”
“We found something unanticipated.”
“No kidding.”
Raine ignored his slighting tone. “And you, brother? How did you find this place?”
“Alshiba got an anonymous tip.”
“While in Illume Belliel?” Raine looked skeptical.
“No, she was in Agasan conferring with the Empress. But come,” the Avieth said, waving them off toward the staircase, “they’re waiting.”
Franco didn’t bother asking who ‘they’ were, knowing he’d find out soon enough. Such a question would only earn him a scowl from Seth anyway.
They headed into the manor following behind the Avieth, who navigated the maze of halls and adjoining rooms unerringly. The manor seemed long deserted save by spiders and bats; window treatments had been replaced by cobwebs, and a thick coat of dust covered everything.
“Only the floor is clean,” Raine noted pensively, completing Franco’s thought. Indeed, the marble tiles shone immaculately, as if swept clear by a powerful wind.
They finally reached a gallery overlooking a courtyard gone to weed, and there Alshiba waited for them. She wore traveling leathers in supple white, and her golden hair was drawn into an elaborate braid down her back. She looked exceedingly ethereal. Beside her stood a tall soldier in chain mail and a white surcoat trimmed in silver. The hilt of a greatsword gleamed over his shoulder.
The First Vestal brightened at their entrance. “Raine.” She swept forward to embrace her oath-brother.
“Alshiba.” Raine pulled away and placed hands on her slim shoulders. “I have come. What have you found?”
She cast her grey eyes toward a dark doorway in the far wall. It looked to have once been obscured by a faded tapestry—probably by the very one that now lay crumpled in the corner. “Come,” she said grimly. “I will show you.”
It was the smell that hit Franco first. The stench was powerful, almost overwhelmingly so, an acrid, rotting stench that could only be death in all its viscous decay. Alshiba’s Espial and protector led them down the staircase which lay beyond the doorway, conjuring fire in his palm for light as much as to burn away the stench of evil that suffused the place.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs and moved aside. Raine walked further into the gloom and beheld. So did Franco, who saw more death in a single sweep of his gaze than he’d seen anywhere outside of Tiern’aval.
Gods, what has been done to them?
For once his conscience was silent, respecting the dead.
Torture, Franco knew then. What was worse, seeing the dead merely confirmed what he’d feared for months. The rumors were true. The time had come.
Soon I will be Called.
Raine looked stricken. “Is…is it all of the missing Companions?”
Alshiba shook her head. “No. All were Adepts, yes, but none were Companions.”
“They’re not?” Franco blurted, stunned that his suspicions had been wrong.
Alshiba arched a brow at him.
Raine said, “So Marc is still….”
“Missing, yes. And Rothen Landray, Cecile Andelaise, Sahne Paledyne, Pieter van der Tol... many others. Raine…” she called his gaze back to her. “I knew you’d never believe this without seeing it yourself. I fear this is but the first of many such places.”
Raine exhaled pensively as his gaze swept the ill-begotten room. “This is not like the others we’ve found murdered,” he observed. “Joseph and Kedar’s were clean deaths. All of the dead Companions we’ve found have been such. Nothing like this.”
“Why?” Seth demanded as he gazed angrily into the room. “Why did he do it?”
Raine turned him a severe look. “You think Björn did this?”
“Who else, brother?”
“Anyone else!” Raine retorted, incredulous. “I cannot believe he’s capable—”
“He slaughtered the Citadel Mages in cold blood,” Seth snarled. “He took up Malachai’s banner! He sent Shades across the world hunting for his own kindred! He’s capable of far worse than this!”
“But torture, Seth,” Alshiba said coldly, her blue eyes leveled on the dead. “It is hardly his style.”
“What then?” Raine asked her. “Who?”
She shook her head. “You will put your many resources to this task, no doubt, but I fear the things they won’t find.”
Raine pulled
a small flat stone from his pocket and began passing it through his fingers, rolling it between each with quick surety. “An anonymous tip,” he mused. “Do you think they wanted us to find their handiwork?”
“I suspect a different source,” she murmured, “though one no less culpable—if not for this, then other crimes.”
Raine looked at her as if knowing to whom she referred. Franco imagined he knew also.
Alshiba exhaled a troubled sigh. “Adepts kidnapped and murdered, others simply vanishing; unrest plagues the kingdoms of man. The Empress expects war in the spring.” She shook her head and pressed lips tightly together. “Alorin is out of Balance, and the realm is dying.”
Raine worked the muscles of his jaw, clenching and unclenching.
“We know when it began,” Seth said belligerently.
She turned him a swift look, her blue eyes hard as agates. “Do we? Or are we fooling ourselves, pouncing upon the first helpless ewe that strays from the herd?”
“Björn is hardly helpless, Alshiba,” Raine murmured, his gaze staring distantly as if seeing the man in question, “and far from innocent.”
“Crimes he has to answer for, yes,” she agreed, “and some of them, like the murders of the Mages, are indeed unforgivable. But Seth would have us chase the first hare startled from the brush. All of our actions would be based on wrong assumptions. Raine, what if he isn’t behind—”
Seth suddenly raged incredulously, “You are still besotted with him! Three centuries and you remain faithful! He made you his whore, Alshi—”
She struck him across the mouth with an openhanded blow that silenced him even as it drew blood. The moment was shocking—Franco never imagined she was capable of such cool dispassion and crude violence in the same motion, or that she dared strike the Third Vestal. That he took it without retribution… Franco realized Alshiba was more of a force than he ever gave her credit for.
“Calm yourself, Seth,” she meanwhile warned in a low voice as he glared venomously at her, dabbing his lip with the back of his hand. “You shout your own crimes.”
Silence descended. Franco wished he could’ve been anywhere else. In the quiet of the gruesome chamber, his fears were given too much voice.
“Would that I could find Markal Morrelaine,” Raine finally grumbled as if following his own thoughts in a different direction.
“You won’t, brother,” Seth remarked after a moment. He spat blood onto the floor, but he seemed calmer. Perhaps brute force was the only way to handle his volatile temper. “Face it, please, for all our sakes. Three centuries you’ve searched for the bloody man. He obviously doesn’t want to be found.”
Alshiba grunted. “Markal is too simple a solution to this complexity, Raine. He won’t tell you what you want to know, even should you find him and delve deeply into his mind. He and Björn were thick as stones. You’re foolish to think Markal will share their plans with you—that he could speak of them, even under coercion.”
Foolish indeed, Franco thought. He hadn’t known that Raine searched for the Agasi wielder, and he thanked Epiphany that he didn’t know where Markal had gone to ground, awaiting his Calling.
Seth added grumblingly, “Might as well ask that damned zanthyr. He knows all—I guarantee you that!”
Raine cast him a weary look, appealing to what modicum of decorum he might possess.
“I have long ago given you leave to try questioning Phaedor, Seth,” Alshiba said, glancing his way coolly.
“As if the creature would deign to speak to me.”
Franco had begun gazing morbidly at the floor of the room, which looked darkly polished in the muted torchlight. “It’s blood,” he whispered, not realizing he said the words aloud, calling all of their attention back to the terrible scene they’d come to witness. “The floor is covered in blood.”
“Two fingers thick,” Alshiba said, and there was such powerful fury in her voice that he felt his heart quiver from the force of her wrath. “They bled them all, bled them dry.”
“Dear Epiphany, why?”
“I cannot fathom.”
Raine flicked the stone through his fingers and then caught it with finality. He observed quietly, “There is one shadowed corner into which we haven’t peered for answers. A legend we all know well…”
She turned him a sharp look and pressed fingers to his lips. “We will not name them here,” she whispered. “They do not exist.”
Franco suspected that in this, too, he knew of whom and what they spoke. What little effort it would take to tell her how wrong she was, how indeed, malorin’athgul truly existed, how they walked the realm, how the First Lord had known of them for eons… He wanted to tell her the truth, but he suspected that even should he try, he would choke on the words. There was nothing so binding as an oath to the Fifth Vestal.
“I have said the rights for the dead already,” Alshiba said quietly. “I don’t know what more to do.”
“Fire the room,” Raine replied, at once emphatic. “Incinerate everything in this place. You know the working as well as I.”
Wordlessly, she nodded.
“What?” Seth protested, grabbing Raine’s arm. “We can’t destroy the evidence! We must investigate! Find out who’s behind this heinous craft since you’re so bloody certain it wasn’t Björn!”
Raine turned to him impatiently. “If the currents tell us nothing, Seth, then you can rest assured that the villains will not have left behind a note proclaiming their names and whereabouts.”
“Nothing is certain, Seth,” Alshiba added. “I mean only to keep our vision wide and not limit ourselves to foregone conclusions.”
“You’re both mad,” Seth snarled, out-voted and hating them for it. “Wool-brained and fool-witted!” He spun on his heel and stalked up the stairs.
Franco watched him go and wished he could follow.
There was a time—a span of decades, in fact—when Franco had doubted his mission. That day, that first fateful day when he’d groveled at Björn’s feet and pled for mercy…it was upon that day that the great battle still before them had been explained in no uncertain terms. He’d been given a task to complete ere the time when he would be Called upon for greater contribution; but all of it was so outrageous, so implausible, that at the time, his misguided conscience simply could not accept it. Oh he took the oath, to be certain—it was that or face a grisly death—but he didn’t actually believe a word of it. Not then.
Oh, to be so naïve again, he lamented, to live in blissful ignorance, sheltered from the world’s tragedies and treasons.
“Franco Rohre.”
He looked up to find her watching him. He’d always thought Alshiba too Avataren for his tastes, with her pale hair and foreign-looking features, but since meeting Ysolde Remalkhen, he realized there was great beauty in Alorin’s First Vestal, as well as great strength. “Yes?”
“You need not remain for this, Franco.”
“Bless you, my lady, but I would all the same.”
She nodded, accepting his answer without needing a reason, and reached for Raine’s hand. “I know the working,” she murmured, and set to it.
Twenty
‘The quest for truth is man’s greatest adventure.’
– The Adept Valentina van Gelderan, Empress of Agasan
“Ho Julian! Look at this one!”
Julian d’Artenis looked up from the gold necklace he was studying to peer through the sea of heads in search of his friend Liam. It was no easy task. Cair Rethynnea’s Avenue of the Gods was packed with travelers seeking the perfect prayer beads, crystals or colored glass for meditation, or just the right sized miniature replica of their chosen god carved from the appropriate stone. City law prohibited solicitation beyond the Pillars of Jai’Gar, the prime desert god, so the merchants had positioned their stands of jewelry, polished prayer stones, figurines, and crystals along the boulevard from Palladium Park right up to the edge of the green jade Pillars.
Julian at last spotted Liam’s red h
ead and pushed his way over to him. “What’ve you got?” he asked hopefully.
Liam held out the necklace to his friend. It was a stunning configuration of cabochon aquamarines set in a chain of delicate platinum roses—very expensive. Which the seller soon confirmed. “Fifty crown!” the merchant barked at Julian.
Shocked, the teen lifted his pale green eyes to the man, only then noticing that the latter was a heavyset, black-bearded Khurd from the Akkad. Julian shot Liam a quarrelsome look that spoke volumes. Everyone knew that bargaining with a Khurd was like trying to bleed wine from a stone. But the necklace was what he was looking for…There’s nothing to be done for this, I suppose, save to try, he decided, whereupon he protested, “That’s an outrageous price!”
The merchant harrumphed. “Fifty crown!” he barked again.
Julian eyed the man irritably, then turned and glared at Liam. “Why’d you go and pick his stand, bungleboy?” he accused.
Liam was unrepentant. “You said you wanted the prettiest stones for your mom, and the Khurds have the prettiest stones—everyone knows. The Bemothi traders give them first pick at the Bashir’Khazaaz—”
“I know,” Julian grumbled. He turned and stared at the stones again. They really were beautiful, like the clearest water captured in flawless perfection. But it was their shape that was important. Exactly what I needed.
Just then, his friends the triplets Rickon, Dickon and Rod arrived in a rush and announced in unison, “Julian! We saw the Keeper of the Bones! He gave us each a shard of the—”
“Put those down!” Julian slapped all three of their outstretched hands, knocking loose the shards of white bone to disappear beneath a dozen feet. The black-haired triplets glared at him. “Do you want to call the eye of the Fhorg Demon God to yourselves, you idiots!” Julian scolded. Walking around with enchanted bones! Julian inwardly groaned. Everyone knew how the ebony-skinned Keepers tricked people into converting to their dark worship by handing out bones laced with magic.
Rickon was quick to recover from his petulance when he saw the necklace in Julian’s hands. “Wow! Are those sapphires?”
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 28
