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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Curious, Ean rose and walked carefully toward the steps, picking his way around the dead assassin. Still in darkness, but seeing now a dim nimbus, he climbed to the third step and pressed his hand against the wall where the wood itself seemed to be emitting a pale haze. As his fingers touched the rough wood, Ean began to make out something like the beginning of a design inscribed there. The more he stared at it, the more he concentrated, the better he could see its diffuse glow.

  It was a simple, looping pattern that eventually appeared to him. Ean followed it with his finger, and as he watched himself tracing the line, he suddenly understood what he was seeing.

  “It’s trace-sealed,” he realized aloud, his voice a whisper in the dark.

  Even a layman like himself knew that trace-seals responded to their mirror-image if traced in the correct order, but something distracted him before he could follow that thought further—it was like a mental nudging, some deeper instinct that yet seemed recently familiar.

  Some part of his awareness was drawn to a particular point in the pattern, and instinctively knew this was both its beginning and its end. Mentally he concentrated on the pattern’s point of termination—which piece was the start and which was the finish was somehow indisputable. As he did this, he saw the pattern clearly in his mind—not the dim fuzzy glow that his eyes perceived from the wood, but a golden, clear rendition of the design. Leaning both hands upon the wall, Ean mentally took hold of the pattern’s concept, and with a firm grasp of it he…pulled.

  He felt something shift beneath his hand where it was splayed against the wall. Nearly imperceptible, yet he didn’t doubt that something had happened. Too intrigued to wonder, just going with his instincts, Ean sank into rapport with the pattern.

  It fit like a tailored glove.

  Completely absorbed now, he drew upon the thread of the pattern and watched it curiously with his mind’s eye as each strand lifted from the wood. The design might’ve been made of golden rope, which Ean peeled slowly away until only the end that was the beginning touched the wall, and then…he unwound this, too, and the whole thing dissipated until there was nothing—

  Ean pitched forward into the hallway, only just catching himself on knees and elbows.

  “Your Highness!” Bastian came running down the hall.

  Ean looked behind him toward the room he’d just left. A gaping hole remained where once a wall had been. Both puzzled and slightly disturbed by what had just happened, Ean turned to receive the lieutenant, who was bending over him with a nasty gash on his swelling forehead.

  Bastian looked immensely relieved as he helped Ean to stand. “I thought for sure—” he breathed, his terrible fears all too clear in his stifled confession. He seemed only just able to refrain from taking the prince into his arms. “After the man surprised me, Your Highness, I thought…well, I thought surely—”

  Ean put a reassuring hand on Bastian’s shoulder and nodded his understanding. Bastian returned a grateful look, thankful that nothing more need be said.

  “Are you all right?” Ean asked then. “Your head…”

  The lieutenant fingered his temple gingerly and shrugged. “I’ve had worse.” Then his expression became troubled. “There’s more. Young Tanis is missing, and I fear Her Grace as well.”

  Ean stiffened. “Missing?”

  “Dorin said she never returned from the bathhouse. He’s been out to check and there’s no sign of her—or the lad.”

  “Is Rhys back?”

  “Not yet, sire.”

  “What about Fynn?”

  “No sign of him either.”

  Ean pressed his lips together. After a tense silence, he ordered quietly, “Get Dorin. Gather everyone’s things and meet me in the stables.”

  Bastian nodded with a smart clicking of heels and rushed to comply.

  ***

  Rhys knew he had only moments before the governor’s men would arrive, for he’d called for them upon leaving the farrier’s. However, he was now certain that the proprietor of the Feathered Pheasant was complicit in the trick that sent him and Cayal half across town. What’s more, the reason for the diversion was evident. He wished he had Morin d’Hain’s skill at questioning rather than his own blunt but honest way. Still, it would have to do.

  He pressed the point of his blade into the innkeeper’s chest, just above his heart. “So,” he said in an ominous tone, “describe him to me.”

  The innkeeper cleared his throat hesitantly. “Describe whom, my lord?”

  “The Prince of Dannym.”

  “Oh,” said the man, regaining some of his color. “Well, he was handsome—yes, very handsome. I believe I said before, he looked the image of His Majesty.”

  “Go on,” Rhys murmured.

  “Yes, go on,” said a voice from the stable’s entrance. Recognizing it with immense relief, Rhys’ lips spread in a feral sort of grin, which he leveled on the man cowering at the end of his blade.

  The innkeeper saw the smile, and from the way his face paled, he’d rightfully concluded that he was suddenly in grave danger. He wet his lips. “Well, he… uh…had dark hair.”

  Ean came to a halt beside Rhys, and in their brief glance of greeting, the captain saw something in his prince’s eyes that he hadn’t seen before. Ean seemed…different, like a darkness had lifted from him. His countenance was brighter, though his gaze just then was wolf-grey and fierce. He pinned the innkeeper with a predatory stare. “Dark hair,” the prince repeated, a soft challenge. “Like mine?”

  The man looked hesitant. “I…I suppose, yes.”

  “And his eyes,” said the prince, “were they also like mine then?”

  “Well…uh…yes, now that you mention it, they were grey—like His Majesty’s,” he added helpfully.

  “And his sword,” Ean murmured softly, drawing his blade. He pressed it into the hollow of the man’s throat. Rhys and Cayal backed off but still stood at the ready. “Was it also like mine?” he whispered.

  The man looked at him frantically then, for even had he not finally recognized his prince, there was no mistaking a kingdom blade. Ean raised the hilt, angling the weapon downward, giving him a clear view of the large sapphire pommelstone that pronounced him a member of the royal family of Dannym. The innkeeper licked his lips again, and his eyes darted across all three men. He opened his mouth—

  “Don’t,” Ean warned, his gaze now inexorable. “Your death can still be swift. Tell us what truly happened and where to find the duchess, and I will ensure you don’t suffer…overmuch.”

  Just then the sound of galloping horses interrupted further questioning, and it was only moments before a host of armored men drew rein in the stable yard. Fynn and Brody preceded them inside, the former coming up short as he arrived upon the scene.

  “Oh,” Fynn said, looking crestfallen. “So you’ve heard.”

  “Rhys,” Ean murmured, and the captain took the proprietor roughly in hand as the prince withdrew and turned to Fynn. The governor’s men rushed inside just behind, and Rhys thrust the man into their ranks as he launched into a report.

  Ean pulled Fynn aside. “What did you learn, cousin?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Brantley has your betrothed,” the royal cousin said.

  Rhys joined them with the captain of the city guard at his side.

  “We saw Lord Brantley leave the city not long ago, my lords,” the captain of the city guard reported. “He was riding hard for the hills with the duke’s men. Likely heading to his estate.”

  Ean nodded his thanks. “Then so shall we. I trust you have the innkeeper in hand?”

  “He’ll be taken for questioning, my lord.”

  “Make sure to ask him about a certain hidden chamber on the third floor,” Ean suggested, “as well as the dead man you’ll find there.”

  The city captain’s gaze hardened. “Oh, a murderer eh? Well then. We’ll be sure to treat him with due regard. Thank you, my lord.”

  Fynn looked to Ean curiously, but the
prince shook his head. “Let’s be off,” he murmured. And upon gathering their remaining companions, they were.

  ***

  Alyneri’s resolve lasted all the way to Duke val Torlen’s estates, down the winding drive and until they turned off the road onto a cart path that took them down by the river. There, she admitted, her resolve somewhat fizzled.

  Does he mean to take us to ship? she thought with a gulp. This was not a scenario she’d envisioned. She wasn’t sure how Ean would ever find her if the evil man took her away aboard an unnamed vessel. But her fears were mollified somewhat when the earl led them instead into the circular drive of a river house of modest size. There her suspicions were proved true.

  “Does the duke know anything of your treacherous machinations, Lord Brantley?” she inquired as they halted in the drive.

  The earl gave her a wan smile. “Sadly, the old duke is no longer a man of vision, Your Grace.”

  “But you are?”

  “Indeed. I am a visionary of the highest order.” He helped her from her mount somewhat forcefully and held her arm in a viselike grip as he steered her toward the house. “I see where the kingdom is heading.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Into stagnation, my dear duchess. The val Lorian line has withered. What was once puissant now shrivels with impotence. The three heirs provided by that island wench were none of them fit for the throne. Soon enough, we will be free of the last of her get, and a stronger line will take its rightful place.”

  This was sounding all too familiar. “I’ve heard this seditious speech before, Lord Brantley,” Alyneri remarked critically.

  He cast her a curious eye, his interest piqued. “Indeed, Your Grace?”

  “Why yes,” she said, jerking her arm free of his hold at last. She turned to look him full in the eye. “Morwyk’s sycophants all spout the same inane drivel. For insurgents, they’ve a singular lack of imagination. Perhaps the commonality is what attracts them to the duke as well.” She smiled sweetly at him, though there was nothing but poison in her tone. “I’ve never met so many people who haven’t a single inventive thought of their own—”

  “Enough, Your Grace,” the earl warned, bristling. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her up the stairs into the manor. “I would be loath to hurt you to gain your silence.”

  “I seriously doubt that, Lord Brantley,” she returned, to which he gripped her arm all the harder.

  The earl veritably dragged her through the manor after that, his irritation apparent. The place looked deserted, with linens draped over furniture and paintings alike, so it seemed a house of ghosts. Alyneri was not without fear; but while she trembled inside, so also did she hold hope close. Ean and the others would come. They would find her and Tanis, and all would be made right again. She’d almost convinced herself that nothing untoward would happen at all until the earl shoved her through a door into a large room.

  When she saw what awaited there, however, her resolve failed her completely.

  Thirty-six

  ‘People who claim something cannot be done should not get in the

  way of the ones who are doing it.’

  – The Second Vestal Dagmar Ranneskjöld

  A bubble of silence floated over the table in the corner of the tavern where five men sat hunched over a game of Eastern Trumps, a far different game from the less commonly played Western Trumps. Two of the men had been trumped out of the game, and the remaining players held three cards each.

  The pirate Carian vran Lea’s head was only partially in the game. He could play Eastern Trumps with his eyes closed, and the pot was uninteresting to him, nothing like the games played on his home island of Jamaii, where a man could lose a hand—or worse, his ship—if his attention wavered. Still, it was something to do.

  Stifling a yawn while his opponent sweated over his next move, Carian lifted his brown eyes to the window across the room. Snow continued to fall outside, bringing a scowl to the pirate’s angular features, the lower half of which were shaded beneath a perpetual five-day scruff. Carian hated snow even more than he hated the Agasi Imperial Navy and Whisper Lords. He wouldn’t be anywhere near a climate that allowed for snow if not for his grave need. It was some kind of curse that necessity could drive a man to uncharacteristic action—bravery or foolishness, brashness or chivalry, absurd trips to the edge of civilization, all quite against his nature.

  The Khurds probably have a god named for necessity, Carian thought churlishly. Raine’s truth, they had a god for everything else—wind, water, mud, pigs…

  The man across from the pirate was a local miner. He didn’t have a head for Trumps, and he frowned indecisively at his cards.

  Carian inwardly sighed. It wasn’t like he was snowed in with the rest of these back-country yokels—he was a Nodefinder, by Epiphany’s Grace. He could leave whenever he wanted! Carian kept reminding himself of this, for the raging snowstorm outside disturbed his sense of rightness.

  Precipitation was not meant to be white.

  It was slate-grey, accompanied by whipping wind and charcoal thunderheads over raging waves three times the height of a man; or it was misty blue, drifting down in the early morning hours to caress a glassy sea; sometimes it was even silver-clear, pouring in great sheets from a tropical sky mottled with storm clouds, sun, and azure blue, rainbows as jewels alighting on dappled waves that spanned from shadowed cobalt to sapphire to warm, aqua-green.

  But it wasn’t white.

  If only he’d learned to speak the damned desert tongue, he might be on his way to Veneisea by now.

  The man across from the pirate finally threw down a knave. Carian rolled his eyes, heaved a disgusted sigh, and tossed his cards into the pot dispiritedly. It really wasn’t worth playing the game—if the stakes weren’t high enough to get your blood boiling in your veins, what was the point?

  The map. Remember the map.

  Yes, the map. This entire Maker-forsaken trip to nowhere was about the damned map.

  And Carian’s interest in the map, in turn, was really for a noble purpose. If only the woman who owned it could understand that.

  Not that it would matter to the accursed woman!

  In his own mind, Carian vran Lea was the second-most talented Nodefinder ever to walk the pathways of the second strand. Besides Carian, only one man in known history had ever traveled to T’khendar and lived to speak of it. That the same man had never returned was no reflection on his skills, however, for Dagmar Ranneskjöld, Second Vestal of Alorin, was the undisputed Great Master to which all other Nodefinders aspired.

  That Carian had been forced to say nothing of his own successful—in the sense that he’d actually returned—journey to T’khendar rankled him no end. He bloody deserved a damned medal from the Guild for that feat. Countless times he’d had half a mind to forego his promise to silence and boast of his adventure, but thinking of the consequences of a loose tongue always left him slightly ill—a strange feeling to a man raised on the sea—and each time he’d somehow kept his temper in check. Quite against his nature.

  Carian had gone to T’khendar originally intent on finding the Great Master and releasing him from the Fifth Vestal’s basalt prison, but things hadn’t exactly gone as planned.

  That time. But with a weld map…

  Shadow take the infernal woman! Carian abruptly cursed his current nemesis for the countless time. Doesn’t she understand how valuable that map is?

  Apparently she did. That was the bloody problem.

  ***

  Trell reached the outskirts of the mountain township of Olivine five days after he left his companions behind in Sakkalaah. He’d traded Sakkalaah’s grassy, sun-warmed plateau for the wind-whipped passes and rough trails of the Assifiyahs, and by the time he and Gendaia arrived in Olivine, both wore a coat of snow. Trell was infinitely grateful for his ermine cloak, one of the many unexpected gifts from the Mage who’d saved his life, but he was more grateful still to see the town come into view wit
h its smoking chimneys and golden windows boasting of warmth.

  The road from Sakkalaah had been long and surprisingly lonesome after his days with Fhionna, his mind filled with lingering thoughts of her. His body still yearned for her touch, for the singular feel of her skin against his, her hair soft across his face, her lips…

  Gendaia nickered beneath him and shook her coat, dislodging an explosion of snow.

  Thanks, Trell thought wryly as he wiped snow from his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. Whether the horse perceived his thoughts or just his pensive shift in mood, Gendaia had an uncanny sense for when Trell was reminiscing over the nymphae. For a female of the equine variety, she was surprisingly adept at returning him to reality in gentle but effective ways.

  There was but one main road through Olivine, which followed along a cold running river that split the town in half. Its banks were edged by a cobbled wall covered in snow, and its waters ran charcoal-dark.

  The storm concerned him, because Prosperity Pass was the only crossing in this part of the Assifiyahs. If the storm didn’t soon let up, it might be days before the pass was clear enough for travel.

  Prosperity Pass, Trell thought, tasting of the name. And beyond it…Xanthe.

  Technically, he was already in Xanthe, but these outlying mining towns were mostly self-governed, imposing their own laws as they saw fit to protect their mineral interests. Olivine was known for its peridot. The gemstones were often mined at night, since it was said that sunlight made them invisible. But no one was mining that evening, not in a storm such as what squatted over these mountains.

  Trell easily found an inn on the main road. As he dismounted in the yard, he looked up at its three stories of glowing windows with anticipation of warm relief. The snow was relentless, huge flakes swirling and tossing, a whirlwind of ethereal moths. He was gathering his saddlebags when a boy came running up. The lad was bundled like a babe in swaddling with layer upon layer of wools. Trell could just see a pair of green eyes peering out between the gnarled knitted scarf that enwrapped his head and neck. He reminded Trell of the mummified remains of a Cyrene king that Krystos had brought back from one of his expeditions to the deep desert.