Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One

by McPhail, Melissa

  “Yet Björn spared your mother,” the stranger pointed out.

  Julian’s heart fluttered. Dear Epiphany, who is this man to know such things?

  His mother had never admitted it to him, but Julian had discovered the truth unbeknownst to her. It had been several years ago, when he and his mother had been guests in Queen Indora’s court. The topic of the Citadel and his mother’s survival had come up in front of a visiting Agasi Truthreader. The lad was barely older than Julian at the time, and they’d struck up a friendship during their winter together in Tregarion. Before the Adept returned to Faroqhar in the Spring, he’d confessed the truth to Julian: that his mother had been lying that night about the circumstances of her survival; that it had been Björn, in fact, who spared her life.

  Now this blue-eyed stranger was no Truthreader, yet he spoke of truths no mortal could know. Which meant…

  Julian turned away from him feeling flustered and shaken. “What do you want with me?” he whispered. “Please…leave me be.”

  “I cannot, lad.” It was a strangely heartfelt admission. “Nor do you truly want me to.”

  Julian found himself trembling. He had no doubt in his mind now that this man—who was certainly an Adept—had discovered his terrible secret. It was a long moment before he mustered the courage to ask the question he most feared. “How…did you know?” His voice sounded meek and younger than his seventeen years.

  Björn considered him gently. “You were going to try to turn the aquamarines to opals, were you not? It was not so hard to guess. We all go through this period of fearful curiosity…that is until we accept ourselves for what we are.”

  And just that suddenly, Julian knew him. He knew him.

  Never had he seen his face, or even heard it described, but he knew the man’s identity with as much certainty as a Truthreader working his talent upon another.

  Perhaps sensing the boy’s thoughts, Björn walked to the empty pedestal and leaped atop it with fluid grace. “How should I stand?” He turned to face Julian with arms spread wide. “How stands the exterminator of an entire race, Julian d’Artenis? Would he stand proudly, unapologetic for his crimes?” and he placed hands on his hips, his immaculate boots planted firmly, his broad shoulders straight. “Or should he represent the incarnate of evil, with a pitiless sneer and a bolt of lightning aimed at the innocents?” and into his outstretched hand appeared a streak of sizzling brilliance, which he hurled over Julian’s head to vanish harmlessly somewhere behind the startled youth.

  Björn stepped off the pedestal again and took Julian squarely by the shoulders. “This is a vibrant gift, son!” He exuded a confidence that Julian found overwhelming. “I can teach you how to use it. I am the only one who can.”

  Julian stared at the man in front of him feeling confused and heartsick, and above all of these, terrified. To think he was standing face to face with the most heinous traitor that had ever lived, a man who his mother claimed had once tried to kill her. He wondered why he wasn’t quaking in his boots?

  Perhaps because in some convoluted way, it made sense. Though my own mother wouldn’t have me if she knew, it seems her enemy welcomes me with open arms. The irony was a bitter drink.

  “Go ahead and do it, lad,” Björn encouraged, releasing Julian. “Change the stones.” Julian flashed him a terrified look at the very idea. “I assure you…you can. At this early stage the power just comes—the less you think about it the better, in fact. The stage passes, as all stages do, and that’s when our trials truly begin: once we must understand what it is we do before we can command anything, once we can no longer simply will it so.”

  As if in a dream, Julian reached for the necklace. Everything seemed…hopeless now—as if in coming for him, Björn had confirmed his worst fears and now nothing mattered. He could think of nothing but the fear of what would become of him now that his awful suspicions had proven true.

  Holding the heavy necklace in one hand, Julian placed one palm over the other. How do I do it? His mind seemed suddenly void, as dark and empty as the heavens on a clouded night. He didn’t know how he’d managed it the other times.

  “Don’t think about it.” Björn’s voice came soft and close in his ear. There was something about the man’s nearness that filled Julian with an unexpected thrill, if yet colored with revulsion. This is a gift, he tried to convince himself in defiance of his mother’s rants. He squeezed shut his eyes so as to ignore the truth of the man beside him. Who else in the realm could do this?

  Björn’s voice came again, “Don’t ponder it, lad. Just decide.”

  With a brave nod, Julian did.

  Be.

  That was the entirety of his thought as he envisioned the aquamarines as opals, yet it was an all-encompassing entirety, a conceptual postulate, a vision and an understanding of the existential composition of two things together in one split second. It was an understanding intrinsic to a fifth-strand Adept alone, for so much of the Adept’s very being came from the same existential strand of the lifeforce. In some way, he was the stones.

  When Julian opened his eyes, he found opals in his hand.

  Ah Cephrael, no! He forced a swallow as the truth struck him, struck so hard that there was no denying it. He was a fifth-strand Adept!

  Just like the man beside him.

  The realization made his skin crawl. Julian slung the necklace away with sudden disgust and shoved a forearm across his eyes as he staggered back. “No! No! I—” he groaned, pressing his face into the crook of his elbow so as not to look upon what he’d done. “I can’t have…I don’t even know how…”

  Björn extended his hand toward the necklace with an intent gaze, and the jewels flew up and into his palm with a clatter and jingle of links. He looked them over. “One need not always understand what one does in order to do, Julian,” he observed. Then he bade the youth look at him and settled his keen gaze on the boy. “Thus is the nature of an Adept’s early gift: to do without knowing how one does. But in not understanding, so lies the danger. There is Balance in all things.”

  Julian looked numbly at him, unsure what he was feeling.

  Björn held his gaze, held him fast. “Come with me. I will protect you from those who would harm you. I will teach you how to use your gift.”

  Julian dropped his eyes to stare forlornly at the floor.

  “You are not the only one,” Björn told him, to which the youth gave him a startled look. “There are others like you who are already being taught. You won’t be alone in your studies, Julian.” He walked over and placed a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “At last, you will have friends who understand you.”

  Julian looked stricken, for the truth of those words had speared him. Rickon, Liam and the others…he called them friends, but he had always felt an outsider among them, for he knew his true nature was something they couldn’t understand. And among the Adept teens who lived in Jeune—mostly Healers-in-training—he wasn’t included in their elite number either, for he was a man who could never understand their feminine gifts. So he had forever felt isolated, always caught between two worlds.

  Suddenly, he wanted more than anything to go with this man, this deadly and yet startlingly compelling traitor.

  But what will Liam and the others do without me? True friends or no, he couldn’t just leave them alone in the Cairs. “My friends—”

  “The other boys have already been provided an escort. You need have no fear for them foundering alone in the Free Cities.”

  Julian could think of no other reasons to deny him—he didn’t want to deny him, for the Fifth Vestal’s very presence was a commanding force. Björn van Gelderan seemed the kind of man that men fought each other for the right to follow, and Julian realized that he wanted very much to be one of those men. “I would follow you then, my lord,” he said bravely. “If you will have me.”

  With a look of extreme solemnity, the Fifth Vestal spread his arm before him, and a violet-silver line speared down through the air, widening into
a window of blackness that gleamed like polished onyx.

  At Björn’s behest, Julian walked forward into the darkness.

  Twenty-one

  ‘Greed makes murderers like love makes poets.’

  – A popular Malchiarri joke

  The Marchioness of Wynne was shown into Queen Errodan’s public rooms by her green-coated personal guards. One of her ladies-in-waiting escorted the Marchioness into a drawing room whose walls were papered with pale blue striped silk, the same color repeated in velvet upholstered chairs and settee, and there she waited.

  And waited.

  All the while, Ianthe’s disgruntlement grew until she was ready to get up and leave—the sheer effrontery of agreeing to an audience and then making a peeress of the court wait for such an interminable time!—yet she was far too polite, not to mention politically astute, to abandon an appointment once permission had been given. So she sat, and she drank the tea they offered her, though she didn’t touch the little biscuits, no matter how fresh the cream upon them. In Veneisea, the queen served honeyed pastries folded forty times and the rarest of candied fruits from Kroth.

  When at last the door opened and Ianthe stood, it was not to receive the queen at all, but her companion. This, too, chafed at her.

  Ysolde crossed the room in another flowing silk gown, this one the color of dawn, and clasped hands with Ianthe, exchanging a kiss on both cheeks. Still holding hands, both women sat upon the settee, knees close.

  Ysolde said, “Her Majesty apologizes for this deplorable wait upon her audience, Marchioness, but she is most bereaved about the late arrival of her son and begs your understanding.”

  “Of course,” Ianthe replied, affecting her most sympathetic tone. “What mother would not fear for her child under such uncertain circumstances?”

  “I’m so relieved you understand the fullness of the situation,” Ysolde told her with a silken smile. “Do inform me then of the nature and specifics upon which you were hoping discourse with Her Majesty, and I shall perforce pass on the information to her.”

  The truth could not have been plainer if Ysolde had spoken it aloud: Ianthe was never going to receive a direct audience with the queen. She might be a grand-niece of Queen Indora of Veneisea and married to one of the richest merchant-princes in Dannym, but she was still only a Marchioness holding a courtesy peerage. Ianthe kept up her polished smile, but her eyes hardened indignantly behind it. “Of course,” she concurred with a smile quite lacking for warmth. “I would be most indebted for the opportunity to share my thoughts with the Queen’s Companion—indeed, it is befitting that we speak, you and I, for you were witness to the conversation of several mornings ago.”

  “More tea?” Ysolde inquired.

  “No, thank you. I came to speak on what can only be described as the perplexing matter of the Duchess of Aracine.”

  “I see,” Ysolde murmured as she sipped her tea from a delicate gilded cup. “Perplexing in what nature?”

  “What to do about her, of course.”

  Ysolde set down her teacup and regarded the Marchioness steadily. “And what do you propose to do about her, Lady Wynne?”

  “I’m sure you agree that it is simply intolerable for the girl to run around the kingdom unchaperoned. She is no longer a child of thirteen but a woman of birthing age who should be being readied for marriage to a suitable gentleman.”

  “Her Majesty is considering that matter already.”

  “Indeed, she would be,” Ianthe admitted with an approving nod. “One cannot expect His Majesty to ponder such trivialities, but now that Her Majesty has returned to court, ’tis only seemly that she would…well,” and here she made a little chiming laugh, “tie up these loose ends.”

  Ysolde smiled politely, but the Marchioness was unable to read anything in the smile. “As to the matter of a suitable chaperone for the duchess’s mentorship,” Ysolde inquired, “did you have someone in mind?”

  Ianthe drew herself up regally. “Why, I was going to offer myself for the position, of course. While it is a monumental task to ensure the proper upbringing of a young lady of the court, I feel that someone must assume the responsibility, lest the poor girl fall into an even more disgraceful state.” Ianthe smoothed the skirt of her golden gown across her lap and continued seriously, her fair brow furrowed with obvious concern, “Questionable habits, once ingrained within an impressionable young mind, are difficult to reverse and with dour consequences. She must be educated in the Cardinal Virtues that the Gods of Virtue may look kindly upon her in her childbearing years. In Tregarion, a girl her age would have already chosen a patron virtue and made weekly offerings in the god’s temple. I fear it may already be too late for the girl, but I am willing—indeed, I do see this as a service I feel compelled to offer Her Majesty—to put forth my gravest efforts to restore the duchess with some measure of self-respect.”

  “That is most thoughtful of you, Lady Wynne,” Ysolde murmured. “I will be certain to relay all of your charitable concerns and your noble expression of service to Her Majesty, who will undoubtedly be grateful.”

  Ianthe nodded gracefully. “Of course. And thank you, Highness.”

  The ladies rose and Ianthe departed with a private smile of satisfaction. As she was leaving, one of the queen’s men entered in a rush to announce, “Princess, this steward has news…” and on his heels came a thin-nosed steward of middle years nearly bursting at the seams as he held aloft a parchment.

  Ysolde Remalkhen moved swiftly down the passageway. Though no one was allowed into the queen’s private wing without invitation, and at present the halls were quite deserted, Ysolde would never be seen to rush. She was, however, moving as fast as her long legs would carry her, and she pushed through the doors and into an arched gallery without pause. “Errodan,” she said in a breathless rush. “We’ve a letter from Ean.”

  Errodan dropped her teacup with a clatter of china and stood from her escritoire so quickly that her chair overturned. She let it lie and rushed to meet Ysolde. “Let me see! Dear Epiphany let me see it!”

  Ysoldehanded the parchment to the queen, and she read quickly. As Ean’s words recounted Creighton’s death, Errodan gripped Ysolde’s hand and read on. Only when she’d finished did her tension lessen, and she spun to embrace her dearest friend, hugging her close. “He’s alive!” she whispered fervently, her face wet with tears. “He’s safe!”

  ***

  It was evening in Calgaryn when Franco and Raine emerged from the weld in the pool of the divining chamber. To Franco’s surprise, the Lieutenant Bastian val Renly was waiting for them as they sloshed through the iron doors as patiently as if he’d never left.

  He roused himself from the far wall and approached smartly. “Your Excellency, welcome back.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Raine said, settling the man an inquiring look.

  He smiled. “Uh, yes, I’ve been sent to wait for your return. Her Majesty has news and has requested audience with you.”

  “Lead on then, Lieutenant.”

  After a ridiculously long trek through Calgaryn Palace, Franco arrived in the queen’s chambers to find a host of others already assembled. Errodan’s drawing room seemed a staging area for half the palace, what with green-coated soldiers receiving orders from an older man who could only be the queen’s Admiral-father, a score of palace officials hastily discussing plans to resurrect parades and banquets in the prince’s honor, a number of King’s Own Guard milling about looking out of place, and servants and pages fussing among the melee trying to refresh cups or goblets or fetch a sudden immediately necessary item from elsewhere.

  Raine spotted the queen on the far side of the room and made his way over to her, and Franco followed him closely. As he neared, he saw Errodan press hands to her cheeks and heard her lament, “I should’ve had daughters. I’m certain daughters would not have caused me such intolerable strife!”

  “I would be no trouble at all, auntie,” said a man lounging in a nearby armchair. Grey
-eyed and black-haired, with a close-shorn beard and a sardonic grin, he seemed a smaller replica of the king. “Why don’t you adopt me?”

  She eyed him warily. “I’m afraid I couldn’t afford you, nephew.”

  This must be Fynnlar val Lorian, Franco determined. The black sheep of the family and only son of Prince Ryan, Gydryn’s younger brother, Fynnlar had made quite a name for himself in the Cairs bartering for the pirates of Jamaii. Franco reckoned they’d even crossed paths once or twice, though they’d never formally met.

  Sipping wine from a goblet, Fynn noted pleasantly, “My latest venture is quite affordable, I assure you, auntie.”

  She grunted skeptically and settled her gaze instead on a man standing behind Fynn’s chair. Morin d’Hain stood with a letter in hand, his brown eyes moving quickly over the flowing script. The queen eyed him quietly. “Do you think to uncover some new meaning from my son’s words, Morin?”

  “I mean only to read them for myself, Your Majesty,” he replied without looking up. He frowned several times, and then handed the letter back to her.

  “Well, what do you think of it?”

  He pushed a hand through his blond hair. “If you will forgive my saying so, My Queen, it seems fantastical. Shades, assassins, fell magic, poisoned daggers, and a zanthyr? The Immortal Bard, Drake DiMatteo, could not have fashioned a more outrageous tale.”

  “I think I could’ve come up with something far more creative,” Fynn offered. “Really, Morin. Shades are so passé.”

  “Are you saying my son is lying?” Errodan returned, ignoring Fynn. There was a hard edge to her tone, and her eyes were flinty. “His story fully corroborates that of my men.”

  “I imply nothing of the sort, Your Majesty,” Morin soothed. “I would not presume to question the prince’s veracity. I only wonder that he hasn’t been through a terrible, trying time and perhaps his recollection has become…exaggerated in the retelling.”