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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Tanis blushed and dropped his eyes to his boots. “Thank you, Your Excellency.”

  “I do not lead Veneisea’s Brotherhood, young Tanis,” Raine answered then, “but I have many allies within its ranks.” Then he added, “Actually Lord Fynnlar is not unfamiliar with our network.”

  All eyes turned to Fynn, who belched gratuitously and then looked injured when everyone glared at him.

  “Indeed? How so?” Alyneri inquired. She seemed unconvinced that Fynn could have anything to do with a profession that didn’t include debauchery as its main pastime.

  “Yes, you are mistaken, my dear Vestal,” Fynn responded. His words were becoming slurred, which didn’t serve to improve his standing with present company. “The only dealings I’ve ever had with your Brotherhood of the Seven Spies—I mean,” he paused to belch again, “Stones—is the time they beat me unconscious and left me for dead in the streets of Cair Thessalonia.”

  “A shame they left the job unfinished,” Loran muttered into his wine.

  Fynn cast him a sooty look.

  “Alas, I fear that was a case of mistaken identity, Lord Fynnlar,” the Vestal apologized, though he sounded more amused than contrite. “Our operatives were seeking a certain scoundrel who was trading in Agasi artifacts stolen from a frigate that had been overtaken by pirates. Of course, an upstanding nobleman like yourself would brook no dealings with pirates. Once they learned of your identity, of course, they released you. The leadership was quite embarrassed over the entire affair.”

  Fynn grunted skeptically.

  Trumpeters sounding the imminent arrival of the king and queen quieted further conversation. The court herald walked to the edge of the balcony above the dais and announced: “His Royal Majesty, Gydryn val Lorian, High King of Dannym, Protector of the Northern Isles.” Tanis and the others made their way to their seats and stood attentively. The horns blew again, and the herald cried, “Her Royal Majesty, Errodan Renwyr n’Owain val Lorian, Queen of Dannym and the Northern Isles.” The trumpets sounded for the last time, and everyone bowed.

  Gydryn and Errodan, dressed in coordinating blue and silver, entered from opposite sides of the dais, followed by Rhys val Kincaide and Ysolde Remalkhen respectively, the latter with Franco Rohre in close tow. Servants appeared to help the queen sit, fanning her great robe of blue velvet trimmed in silver sable around her seat, but Gydryn remained standing and took up a sapphire-crusted goblet brimming with ruby wine from an attendant. This he held aloft to the assembled nobility, announcing, “To my son, and his long-awaited return!”

  The crowd took up their goblets and intoned, “To His Highness, Prince Ean!”

  Everyone drank.

  There followed a long succession of toasts from nearly all of the nobility present—or so it seemed to Tanis as toast after toast was offered to the prince’s return, to his continued well-being, to his health, to his prosperity, to his future, to the kingdom’s future, to the king, to the queen, and so on.

  Finally, the king drank the last of his wine and declared, “Let the feasting begin!”

  The room soon reverberated with the clink of china and crystal and thousands of individual conversations as everyone found their seats and the stewards began the immense process of serving the food. As Tanis took his own seat next to Fynn and smelled the amazing aromas wafting up from the table, he realized just how famished he was. His only focus became how to keep his hands in his lap until the king and queen and others higher up at the table had been served. When it was finally his turn, he pried a leg off a roasted turkey and couldn’t remember anything ever tasting better.

  Once he’d finished the fowl, a heap of apple-chestnut dressing, and two plum and pheasant tarts, Tanis felt sated enough to take a breath and look around. At some point during the meal, Prince Ean had changed places with Her Grace, such that she now sat between the prince and the king and the prince sat next to Fynn. At least Alyneri was speaking to His Highness again.

  As Tanis tried to listen in, he heard Her Grace saying in a low voice, “…something wrong about him, Ean, I’m telling you.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, Alyneri,” Ean repeated. “I simply asked why you thought so.”

  “I told you I don’t know,” she stressed in her courtly whisper. “It’s just a feeling I have about him. He knows too much about everything that’s going on.”

  “It’s Morin’s job to know things, Alyneri.”

  “He knows about Adept things, Ean. I heard him talking about the strands as if he had personal experience with them.”

  “Lots of people are knowledgeable about elae, Alyneri,” Ean pointed out in a low voice. “Even my mother gives Morin her trust and begrudging respect.”

  “How can anyone trust a man who trades in lies for his living?” Alyneri demanded crossly.

  Ean grinned. “I submit to your point, Duchess. Maybe it’s just that he knows more than he can ever safely speak of. You could be sensing that.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending him, Ean. Have you heard nothing of what I’ve said—”

  “I’m not defending him, Alyneri,” Ean calmly interjected. “I merely require more than your ‘feeling’ to declare a man a traitor.”

  Alyneri settled him a frosty look. “Are you trying to get back on my bad side?”

  “I hadn’t realized I ever moved out of it.”

  “I didn’t think you had a good side, Your Grace,” Fynn chimed in from Ean’s right.

  She shot him an icy look. “Fear not, My Lord Fynnlar, you shall never have occasion to see it.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “So what’s your point, Alyneri?” Ean returned them to the subject at hand.

  Frustrated, Alyneri sat back in her chair. “I don’t know. I just don’t trust him.”

  Ean gazed at her for a long time. Then he declared, “You are the oddest woman I think I have ever met.”

  At that, Alyneri harrumphed indignantly and turned to engage in conversation with His Majesty instead.

  “She’s certainly got the royal dismissal down to an art,” Fynn observed from Ean’s right.

  Ean gazed at him wearing one of his famous half-smiles, just that quirk of a grin twitching the corners of his mouth. “For all her venom, cousin, she has several redeeming qualities.”

  Fynn looked unconvinced.

  “In fact, I’m thinking of courting her.”

  “That doesn’t seem in the best judgment to me.”

  “Good judgment comes from experience, cousin,” Ean observed sagaciously. Then he added with a crooked grin, “And a lot of experience comes from bad judgment.” He raised his wine to Fynn and finished with a wink, “Lead me to wisdom, I always say.”

  Twenty-eight

  ‘Ideas, not greed, drive men to war.’

  – Gydryn val Lorian, King of Dannym

  Morin d’Hain was troubled as he headed through the underbelly of Calgaryn palace toward the dungeons. His conversation with Ean had been unexpectedly illuminating. Knowing Geshaiwyn were involved was significant, but that fact alone engendered concerns over his latest prisoner.

  Geshaiwyn. The word was a hiss in Morin’s thoughts. He’d dealt with assassins aplenty in his long life, but Geshaiwyn were by far the most troublesome. He felt confident—as confident as one could ever feel in his line of work—that the Duke of Morwyk knew nothing of Geshaiwyn. If he’d known of their existence, he’d have long ago contracted with them. No, the Geshaiwyn had been sent by another, someone who wanted the prince quite definitively dead; someone with knowledge of Wildlings and their varied talents. That ruled out anyone in the North. Morin had never lived in a kingdom so cut off from elae. That Gydryn employed only two Truthreaders…well, it would’ve been unthinkable before the War.

  But fewer are Returning every year to fill the vacancies left by their ancestors.

  Morin knew it, most Adepts knew it, the Vestals knew it. What no one knew was why.

  ‘There is no afterlife, there
is only the Returning…’

  The Northmen repeated the sacred phrases glibly. What people like Gareth val Mallonwey didn’t understand was that Adepts were inextricably tied to their strand. For an Adept, death was yet another beginning, because every Adept Returned, reborn again as an Adept, always of the same strand. Their talents reawakened as early as their first childhood steps or as late as adolescence, but for millennia the Returned had always Awakened.

  Since the War, however, either they weren’t Returning—which begged the question of where they were going—or more likely, they weren’t Awakening. Morin rather suspected the latter. Either situation was equally grave. No one knew how to reawaken the Returned if their talent didn’t manifest in adolescence, and as for finding out where the dead went if they weren’t Returning…well, he certainly wasn’t volunteering to follow them into Annwn to find out.

  Wearing a brooding expression that mirrored his thoughts, Morin passed a palace soldier heading the opposite way in the tunnels. The man didn’t meet his eye, and Morin made a mental note to have him investigated. He might be hiding nothing of consequence, but Morin hadn’t ascended to his position by giving people the benefit of the doubt. Suspicion, a keen eye and a shrewd intellect were all that kept him alive.

  Well…almost all.

  And great many years longer than most, at that. Spies had a short life expectancy—even Adept ones—and Morin was no stranger to certain patterns…the kind that extended a man’s life long beyond his natural span of years. The list was few who had tread the world of shadows longer than Morin d’Hain.

  Which brought his thoughts back around to Ean val Lorian.

  Morwyk’s plotting notwithstanding, that Geshaiwyn, Shades and zanthyrs could be named in association with the prince made Ean just about the most interesting case that had ever crossed Morin’s desk. The prince had made no mention in his letter of Björn van Gelderan, but Shades made no move except at his bidding. It was clear the prince didn’t understand why the Fifth Vestal was interested in him—and for that matter, neither did Morin.

  Oh, he’d instantly recognized Ean’s pattern for what it was—no doubt Raine had also—but Morin couldn’t fathom why the Fifth Vestal would be intrigued by it, nor why he’d sent a Shade and his zanthyr to protect Prince Ean from Morwyk’s trap and then abandoned him again knowing a Geshaiwyn assassin followed.

  But Morin had his hands full enough with the things he did understand about Ean’s situation, and those were threats such that he didn’t bother to concern himself with Björn van Gelderan’s involvement as well. If there was one thing as certain in their realm as the Law of Balance, it was that no mere mortal could understand why Björn van Gelderan did the things he did.

  Morin swept through the double-barred doors that opened into the dungeons and descended a flight of steps with quick surety. His keen gaze missed nothing—from the neat state of the two guards who jumped to attention at his entrance, to the single lamp that had gone out above a dungeon door, to the faint odor of sickness wafting out from deeper within the hallway. So it was that upon entering the cell block where his prisoner was being kept, he noticed immediately what had changed.

  “Duncan! Caol!” he shouted for the guards without breaking stride—in fact, picking up speed as he headed down the long, narrow passageway toward a cell at its end.

  The guards Duncan and Caol came running to attend. “Milord?”

  “Why was the Bemothi thief moved from his cell?”

  “Didn’t Farris find you, milord?” Duncan asked as he fell into step to Morin’s left. “We sent him to report—”

  “No, obviously he did not find me or I wouldn’t have asked you. Now why was he moved?”

  Duncan and Caol exchanged a troubled look, and the former said, “It was because of the flooding, milord.”

  Morin drew up short. “Flooding? We’re a hundred paces below solid rock, man. What flooding?”

  “In the cells at the end of the hall, milord,” Caol reported.

  “It was the damnedest thing,” Duncan said, looking mystified. “When we opened the door to move the prisoner, it was near up to the man’s chin, and him chained to the floor and all.”

  Morin grabbed the guard by his surcoat, chain mail clinking within his fist. “You moved my prisoner?”

  “We had to, milord!” Caol insisted at the same time that Duncan said, “The man would’ve drowned in there, though where in Tiern’aval all that water came fr—”

  Aghast, Morin gripped Duncan’s shoulders with both hands. “Where did you put him?”

  “He’s chained safe and sound, milord,” Duncan insisted, though Morin’s expression was clearly making him uneasy. “Just two cells further down, on the left there—”

  Morin dashed for it. “Open it! Hurry!”

  Caol rushed to comply, hastily pulling the key ring from his belt as he exchanged a frantic look with Duncan. Clearly neither man relished landing on the bad side of Morin d’Hain. Caol got the door unlocked and Morin threw it open.

  “See, mi—” Duncan began.

  But the cell was empty.

  “Yes,” Morin said, turning on him with a sudden dangerous calm. “I see quite clearly.”

  ***

  It was well into the wee hours of the morning before Ean escaped the banquet in his honor. The guests would continue through the night, toasting him every hour as was tradition, but Ean had too much on his mind to enjoy such revelry.

  Morin had said if he found the beginning, things would become clearer. Well, Ean was fairly sure his pattern was central to the beginning of his troubles, but no matter what steps he took—no matter the direction in which he tried to seek answers—the mystery only deepened.

  Ean felt somewhat like his other self, the one in his dream that faced the darkness knowing only death awaited him at the end of every avenue. He was trapped in a maze fashioned of Shades, zanthyrs, assassins and mysterious forces apparently more dangerous than all these—lest we forget! There were a half-dozen paths leading away from him, but follow all or none, he met only with a dead-end confusion.

  “Ean!”

  The prince paused and turned over his shoulder to find Morin approaching from the other end of the hall, looking uncharacteristically excited. Morin waved Ean leave his bodyguards behind, and Ean gave them a curious look before walking to meet Morin further down the wide corridor.

  “What is it, Minister?” Ean asked as he neared.

  Suddenly Morin’s face turned ashen, and he pointed urgently at something behind Ean. Ean spun, but he saw only his guards, who were now running urgently toward him—

  And Ean understood. In the split second that was all he had to react, he dove forward, tumbling into a roll, the dagger missing him by mere hairs. He kept rolling as the Geshaiwyn assassin made another stab for him, striking the marble floor with a metallic scrape as he dove after Ean like a butcher in the hen yard.

  Ean scrambled for his footing but the assassin was fast on his heels, so Ean spun onto his back and brought up both feet. He smashed the man in the chest, sending him sprawling, but the assassin catapulted himself off his shoulders and back onto his feet, landing catlike with bent knees. No longer wearing Morin’s features, the Geshaiwyn grinned at Ean with a face the prince recognized too well.

  Ean’s bodyguards were footsteps away when the assassin jumped over Ean’s head and sprinted away down the hall.

  “Not this time!” Ean growled. He scrambled to his feet after the man and yelled to the near guards, “If he makes it to his node we’ll never catch him!”

  Ean pushed his legs to new lengths as he chased. He was quickly well out in front of his armored bodyguards, and he took a flying leap, only just snagging the Geshaiwyn by his ankles. They both tumbled to the floor with legs and arms akimbo.

  The assassin wriggled like a fish while flailing maniacally with his dagger. Ean managed to save his thigh from obliteration but the blade took a chunk of flesh out of his palm before he finally grabbed hold of t
he offending dagger and wrestled the Geshaiwyn for ownership. They fought, rolled and kicked, and then, finally, Ean’s bodyguards arrived and the Geshaiwyn was pulled off him hissing and spitting belligerently as he squirmed.

  Panting from the brief but frenzied fight as much as from fury, his hand and clothes bloody, Ean got to his feet and glared at the assassin. “Who hired you to kill me?”

  The assassin struggled against his captors, glaring at Ean, but Ean’s bodyguards had his hands and arms pinned behind him and were already binding them.

  “Ean!”

  The prince turned heatedly, once again to find Morin d’Hain running to meet him. Wary now, he held his sword in a threatening stance. “Stay back!”

  Morin slowed and raised his hands.

  Ean’s blade was a slice of deadly silver poised for a strike. “What advice did you give me today when we spoke?”

  “I told you to seek the beginning,” Morin replied without hesitation. “That in doing so the rest might become clearer.”

  Ean lowered his blade and exhaled.

  Morin’s gaze swept the scene as he approached. “I accept full responsibility for this terrible mistake, Your Highness. I made a grave error in judgment allowing this man to be imprisoned inside the palace walls. Perhaps it was ego, though I would take more comfort in believing that my skills are becoming rusty.”

  “You didn’t know he was Geshaiwyn, Morin,” Ean said.

  “The fact remains, I should’ve been more thorough.”

  Ean looked back to the assassin. “Who sent you?”

  “I’m just the messenger,” the man replied with a poisonous grin.

  “Ah, so he does speak our tongue,” Morin noted critically. “And what is your message?”

  The Geshaiwyn leered. “Your days are numbered, Prince of Dannym.”

  “Was that all?” Morin inquired with a steely gaze.

  “No, your lordship,” the man replied tartly. “My daggers have a message too.”

  “Indeed,” Morin murmured. He drew his sword and ran the man through in one swift and startling motion.