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

by McPhail, Melissa

  Ean turned away clenching his teeth. He knew the Vestal’s apology was heartfelt, yet he also suspected that Raine would make the same choices again if given the chance, that he wouldn’t hesitate to use Ean, or any other pawn when opportunity presented, if it meant gaining Björn van Gelderan.

  “You know, it’s ironic really,” the prince said bitterly as he gazed out over Rethynnea and its long stripes of twinkling lights that were the main boulevards, the pulse of the city day and night.

  “What is?”

  Ean glanced at him over his shoulder. “Ironic that the only one of my advisors I can trust is the one who warned me not to trust him.”

  Raine regarded him with concern marring his fair brow. “Ean,” he murmured, coming closer, “that zanthyr is Björn’s creature through and through. You must know that.”

  Ean turned him a furious glare. “The only reason I’m speaking with you at all is at ‘that creature’s’ behest!”

  “Indeed,” Raine murmured, sounding less than pleased. “The Healer mentioned that you’ve become quite appended to Phaedor. She seems somewhat taken within him herself. Ean…” he took another step toward the prince. “The zanthyr is adept at influencing the emotions of others, securing loyalties which otherwise would hold him suspect. It is what they do, how they manipulate others into their diverse and destructive games.”

  Ean had really had enough. “All you ever do is warn me against those who might help me,” he snapped. Then he grunted and looked away again, shaking his head. “You know, for all your vehemence against him, the Fifth Vestal is the only one of you whose every action has been to remove me from danger. He is the only one who hasn’t put me in harm’s way just to achieve his own ends.”

  “Perhaps not yet,” Raine noted soberly.

  But Ean was beyond listening to him. “And if Phaedor is Björn’s creature,” he continued, “it only affirms this truth, for the zanthyr has done nothing but help and protect me since ever he came into my life.”

  That you’re aware of, a little voice amended, but Ean wasn’t listening to his conscience either.

  Raine regarded the prince with stoic forbearance. “I would not see you come to harm, Ean. At every turn I have tried to protect you, given you companions who would help you—”

  “No longer,” Ean declared, turning him a defiant look. “I am your pawn in this game no longer.”

  “Phaedor fills your head with Björn’s philosophies,” Raine said exasperatedly, his composure momentarily shaken, “but you have no idea what it means to be a player in the Fifth Vestal’s game!”

  “And who’s going to teach me?” Ean demanded with a heated glare. “You? What will you tell me of my abilities? I’m certain you know much of them that you’re not saying.”

  “I would ask first how you came to work a petrification pattern?” Raine retorted.

  Ean laughed mirthlessly. “See. You take only, offering nothing in return.” Abruptly he spun to face the Vestal. “I don’t know the first thing about crafting a petrification pattern, but I know how to unwork one, and did, in Chalons-en-Les Trois.” He settled Raine a look of cold indifference. “And that, my lord, is the last explanation you will ever get from me for free.”

  He turned and walked swiftly toward a spiraling staircase that led down into the gardens.

  “Ean, please don’t do this!” Raine called after him. “You’re not ready to face your enemies unprotected!”

  But Ean barely heard him, for the tingling in the back of his neck had spread to his skull and was now a buzzing hive inside his head.

  ***

  As soon as he could slip away, Tanis went in search of the zanthyr. He found him at last in the gardens sitting on a boulder facing the bay. So still and dark, Tanis almost had to know he was there to be able to see him; the lad was quite surprised to have found him at all.

  “You should be asleep, Tanis,” Phaedor murmured without turning, somehow knowing it was the boy that approached from behind. In the still of the night, Phaedor’s manner seemed ever more distant and impenetrable. Tanis so admired this dark, mysterious creature, and he wished more than anything that he understood him better.

  The lad sat down on the rock next to the zanthyr and pulled out his dagger. He ran his fingers absently over the smooth stone blade that was yet sharp enough to slice his flesh at the merest pressure. Tanis found something calming about the feel of the dagger in his hand, and fondling it had become a habit of late.

  Phaedor eyed the boy out of the corner of his eye, taking note of the weapon in his hands. “Wondering why I gave you my dagger?” he asked softly.

  Tanis glanced up to find the zanthyr’s emerald eyes pinned compellingly upon him. He forced a careless shrug, though he didn’t feel the least bit careless about it. “You said it was a gift,” he answered uneasily. “Something to remember you by.”

  The zanthyr smiled. “You remember our conversations well. I’m flattered.”

  Tanis broke into nervous laughter; the idea that the zanthyr could feel flattered by anything was hard to accept.

  Phaedor regarded the boy crookedly for a moment. “Tell me, Tanis,” he said as he returned to scanning the moonlit bay, “what do you think about the prince’s decision to have me travel as part of his company?”

  “I…I was—am glad for it, my lord,” Tanis admitted, because it was the truth.

  Phaedor cast him a suspicious look and said in his ominous purr-growl, “Tell me why.”

  It was one of those times when the zanthyr seemed truly frightening, a chilling reminder of just who and what he was. Tanis swallowed and tried to keep his voice from shaking. “You—you must know why, my lord,” he managed, glancing from his twitching fingers to the zanthyr and back again.

  Phaedor cocked a brow at him and murmured in an ominous tone, “Think you so?”

  Tanis felt flustered, and he stared hard at his hands. “Why did you give me the dagger then?”

  Phaedor waved offhandedly. “A gift. Nothing more.”

  Frustrated by his elliptical manner, Tanis asked, “Are you glad the prince has you travel with us?”

  Phaedor chuckled and cast him a curious eye. “Tanis, you are indeed odd. Care you really about the feelings of a zanthyr?”

  “Of course I do!” Tanis declared rather indignantly. “You’ve feelings just like the rest of us.”

  Phaedor really laughed at him then. “Oh, lad,” he sighed with obvious amusement, “I’ve told you before: you’ve imagined me attributes I don’t possess. Zanthyrs have little use for human emotion.”

  But Tanis wasn’t convinced. “You cannot lie to me, my lord,” he said, only hoping it was true.

  The faintest glimmer of surprise shown in Phaedor’s eyes, and he asked again, “Think you so, Truthreader?”

  Tanis nodded. “Your actions prove the falsehood of such words.” Then something else occurred to him, something far closer to the truth than he understood at the time. “I think, my lord, that you have loved greater than any of us. You would have us believe your heart is of stone, when really it burns with a passion that mankind cannot even imagine.”

  Phaedor turned profile to the boy. He stared straight ahead for a long moment of silence, sitting threateningly still. At last, he murmured in a tone of aching regret, “Tanis…I am not human. You cannot wish me so.”

  Tanis shook his head. “My lord, with Epiphany as my witness I do not wish you so. But I…I think you’re mistaken.”

  Phaedor glanced to him. “How so?”

  Tanis squeezed the hem of his cloak, which had become twined between fingers and blade, and braved, “I…I do not claim to understand your problems, my lord, but in my opinion, human is as human does. There are lots of men who seem no more human than…than the Marquiin!” and shuddering, the boy added, “and they are the furthest from human of any man I’ve ever seen!”

  Phaedor seemed to relax a little. He gave Tanis a gentle smile only slightly tinged with sorrow. “You are indeed an innocent, T
anis. It is little wonder so many among this company confide in you.”

  Embarrassed enough to look away lest the zanthyr see him blushing, Tanis gazed at the star-studded horizon and asked quietly, “Is that why you gave me your dagger, my lord? Because you knew you could trust me?”

  “No, Tanis.”

  Tanis turned to him with sudden overwhelming curiosity. “Then why?” it was almost a plea.

  Phaedor looked to him, and his gaze fell velvet soft upon the boy. “I gave you my dagger, lad,” he answered in a tone underscored by a lifetime of haunting sorrow, “because I knew you trusted me.”

  ***

  Alyneri woke to a tapping upon her window. It confused her at first, but when the tapping persisted, she sat up in bed and then got up, slipping into her dressing robe as she went quickly to the glass doors leading to her patio.

  She pulled back the curtains to find Ean standing upon the landing. She quickly unlatched the door and let him enter, her mind a jumble of reasons for why he might’ve come, the most desired, of course, being the least likely.

  “Alyneri,” Ean breathed as she closed the door again behind him. He fell to his knees and took her hands in his, pressing them against his skull. “I am invaded,” he whispered miserably. “Please…”

  Concerned, Alyneri knelt before him and buried her fingers in his hair. She closed her eyes and sank quickly into rapport, but she found nothing—no torn strands, nothing untoward, and yet…his pattern does seem different. There was the faintest disturbance within it, the outermost ripple of a tiny pebble dropped into a still pond.

  She withdrew from rapport, but her hands lingered in his hair. “The good news is there’s nothing really wrong with you,” she told him. Dropping her hands, she sat back on her heels and frowned. “The bad news is something is definitely disturbing your aura; your pattern reflects it.” She searched his face with her eyes. “What are you experiencing?”

  “It feels like a hive of bees in my head,” he snarled, squeezing shut his eyes. “It won’t…stop.”

  “How long has this been happening?”

  “It started a few hours ago.”

  “Have you…have you spoken to Phaedor about it?”

  “No.”

  She reached out a hand and cupped his cheek, her gaze compassionate. “Perhaps you could try to get some sleep.”

  Ean turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. “Alyneri,” he whispered, his eyes closed, “I am so sorry that I’ve hurt you. I never meant to.”

  Alyneri felt tears come unbidden, and for once she didn’t try to stop them. “I know that, Ean.”

  “Everything is different now,” he confessed, opening his eyes to gaze tragically upon her, “so different from when we left Calgaryn. Remember joking about Morin’s rumors? Once I could still see the light in our journey. Now…” He lowered his lids to look at his hands and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Now I see nothing but darkness, even in my dreams.”

  “I have seen you after waking from such dreams,” she confessed. “What plagues you there?”

  “More than dreams,” he said without looking at her. “The man who came to our camp—or someone very like him—haunts me endlessly in them, but it’s more…it’s—” He glanced up, looking tormented. “You’ll think me more the fool if I tell you.”

  “Impossible,” she said, winking.

  He gave her a grateful smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes. “Fair enough. I have met Dagmar in my dreams, and Creighton too, or at least his…ghost.”

  Alyneri stared at him.

  “See.” He exhaled heavily. “I knew you would think me a fool.”

  But Alyneri’s astonishment had nothing to do with his dreams. “Ean…” she said, marveling that he didn’t also see what he’d just done.

  He gazed distantly into the night. “Whatever scolding you have for me for foolishly believing in dreams, I’m sure it’s deserved.”

  She grabbed his face and turned his eyes to meet hers. “Ean,” she repeated, staring hard at him, “forget your dreams—you just named the dead. You just named Creighton.”

  Ean did see it then, and his face drained of color.

  “What does that mean?” she whispered, her breath suddenly coming faster. “What does it mean that you named him?”

  Ean held her gaze looking thunderstruck. For a long time he simply stared at her. Then he shook his head. “…It means—oh, Epiphany deliver me from this wretched buzzing in my skull!” He pushed palms to temples and sank forward to rest elbows on his knees. Clenching his teeth, he finally growled, “I think I should find the zanthyr.”

  Alyneri rose at once. “I will send for him.”

  “No.” Ean released his arms to his sides and got to his feet. “I will find him. I’m sorry I bothered you. Goodnight, Your Grace.” He took her hands and kissed both palms, but then he hesitated, her fingers still in his. “You have always been the truest of friends to me, Alyneri. Would that I might’ve been as fair a friend to you.”

  And before she could form a reply, he was gone, slipping back out through her patio door into the night.

  ***

  Ean never made it to the zanthyr’s quarters.

  He’d barely made it off Alyneri’s patio before his head was zinging with such fervor that he had to stop every few staggering steps to get his bearings again. Long minutes would pass where he simply focused on placing one foot before the other with no attention to where he was heading. The insects swarming in his head left little room for thought.

  He’d stopped to lean upon a statue while the swarming in his head subsided enough to press on, when a shadow fell across the lawn before him. It might’ve been but a trick of the light, but sudden lucidity snapped on like dry brush catching a spark, and Ean spun toward the familiar shadow even yet knowing that Creighton couldn’t be standing there in the flesh.

  No one was behind him, in fact, but the shadow had served its purpose, for Ean realized that if nothing was physically wrong with him, then the noise and vertigo accosting his mind and body must be the result of some spell; and if it was the result of a spell, Ean should be able to block it.

  It hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment, until a vision of Creighton reminded him of the pattern he’d worked so many times in his friend’s company.

  Ean began to envision the pattern of protection, the pattern the zanthyr had taught him. He focused on it and nothing else, pushing aside all of the noise, ignoring his body’s confused signals. He concentrated on the pattern until he saw it clearly in mind, until it glowed. He felt elae surge into him, into the pattern he held in close control; maintaining this focus then, he used the power of the pattern to build a wall around his mind, his glowing golden ring. From the smallest, innermost point, he extended his ring of protection, pushing all else outward, clearing from the center. Relief flooded him as he began to feel the buzzing dissipate, and it strengthened his certainty of action. Outward, Ean pressed the ring, pushing all else before it, until he once again felt his conscious awareness within the space of that glowing sphere. Safe, secure, controlled.

  Ean looked around then as if for the first time. He found himself on a long expanse of lawn that ended in a cliff and the villa’s wide-open view. That’s when Ean heard the thumping. Distant at first, the sound slowly gained in intensity. Ean lifted his gaze to the night sky, and there, low to the far horizon, he saw the creature approaching.

  Yes, come, he thought, his gaze steely. Your enchantment has failed. I am ready to fight you.

  Long moments grew into longer minutes as the creature made its distant approach, but Ean did not remove his eyes from his enemy. It flew through the night as a spectral shadow, reflecting neither moonlight nor starlight nor lights from the near city, and as it neared, Ean clearly saw two fiery golden orbs peering out from the utter darkness of its elongated head.

  Wings whipped and buffeted the night, and the creature settled on the lawn near the cliff, blocking a huge swath of
both starry sky and city lights. Then, suddenly, the darkness simply vanished, and a man was walking up the hill toward Ean.

  Ean opened himself to the flow of elae and drew a long draft of it into the image of his pattern until the pattern was sated and full and he could hold no more without bursting. He was ready.

  “I do not like looking the fool before my brethren,” said the man as he approached, “but ego is the province of cowards and fools. I would teach my brother there are uses for your kind, but you are proving me sadly flawed in that assessment.”

  It was a strange déjà vu to face the man in the flesh—though he soon saw that this man was not the same man from his earlier dreams. “Because I would not be turned to your twisted doctrines?” he challenged.

  “Because you refuse to see truth,” the stranger returned as he continued his steady advance. “Any creature that lives in such denial not does deserve what grace is given to it, for what life is it living then but a fiction—a fantasy? The only purpose for your kind’s living at all is to know your end and embrace it—and to help others embrace their ends.”

  “To live for death alone seems like no kind of life to me,” Ean retorted.

  “Because you refuse to understand that there is nothing else for you,” the stranger finished angrily. “All else is but illusion, a fiction invented by craven, mortal creatures terrified of facing the beyond.”

  Ean kept firm hold of his pattern in mind as the man stopped five paces away from him, close enough to see the yellow in his eyes. He refused to fall prey to his twisted truths this time. “If that were so,” the prince challenged, “what point of birth at all?”

  “Yes, you see the futility,” the stranger agreed, eyeing the prince with that terrible, malevolent gaze.

  Ean had the feeling that he’d stood upon this crossroads before, and the words that followed seemed foreign upon his tongue. “We will prevail in the end. We are many, and you are few.”

  The man laughed. “We are legion,” he hissed. “You cannot hope to defeat us! We hold sway in every corner of your existence. We weave our webs over every exit, for there is no exit but one. Death awaits you. Unless…” His gaze was electrifying as he offered, “Join us. Join our crusade to bring the truth to those who wallow, blinded by lies invented to obscure them from their purpose.”