They retreated to silence after this, for they each had much to ponder; but as Fynn thought back through the conversation, he couldn’t shake the sense that Raine was telling him only part of the truth.
He had that uneasy feeling again—the prescient one that warned of bad things to come—and it only intensified as the night deepened. Fool! Fool man! he scolded himself, gritting his teeth as he watched the warriors in the yard begin a group exercise. You should leave now. It may be your last chance!
But Fynn knew he could not.
Still, he lamented his choice with every breath. It was a prudent man who gave a wide berth to a Vestal’s activities, and especially when forewarned of them; for in Fynn’s experience, often enough it was the Vestal’s other plans—the ones he wasn’t telling you about—that bit the deepest and bled the longest.
Fynn cursed Ean silently. Cousin, if you live, I’m going to throttle you!
***
Ean tread upon misty moors through palls of drifting fog, seeing only the spectral shadows of others who walked the same interminable path. Beneath the sparse grass was only barren earth, and each step stirred a fine grey talc that clung to his bare feet. He felt neither breath nor heartbeat in his own chest, and heard no sound in the whole of that realm, only a suffocating veil of sorrow.
On he walked, bereft of hope, knowing in the half-awareness of dreams that someone grieved for him—grieving himself, though for what he was unsure. Memory was a haze into which his mind couldn’t travel, his life before a jumble of disjointed images too faint to be seen through the melancholy. Lost of time and self, Ean wandered among the endless plains certain of nothing save that this was his eternity.
Until, suddenly, he came upon a bridge.
It was incongruous. Its railings were opalescent, silver-pale and sparkling, and upon the bridge stood a man whose face remained in shadow.
Ean halted before him. This man had substance, he didn’t belong there.
“Will you cross this bridge with me, my friend?” asked the man.
Ean gazed indifferently at the bridge. “Why should I?”
“To regain your future and your past.”
A spark ignited at these words, a spark so faint it was but a pinprick of light in a vast darkness. Immediately a torrent of despair descended to attack the feeble light, and a spear of sorrow urged Ean to continue on, to leave the bridge and the unwelcome stranger. Why should his future or his past matter here?
But the spark merely fluttered beneath the onslaught of despair. It was the tiniest of flames, but it would not be ignored.
Hope, Ean realized. This man brings hope.
He looked back to him. “Where does the bridge lead?”
“To pain,” he answered with honest regret.
Ean dropped his head, and deep within, his consciousness shuddered. “I do not seek to know pain,” he whispered, sensing somehow that he had known it too intimately already.
“And yet without pain, we cannot know joy,” the stranger advised.
Joy. The word seemed so foreign, so unwelcome there among the grey mist of mourning, yet the spark that was hope grew brighter at the idea that joy could exist. Ean lifted his eyes to look upon the faceless stranger. “I am…afraid.”
“That is good. Out of fear sprout the roots of courage.”
Hope. Joy. Courage.
The spark grew brighter, stronger. Ean began to see colors in the bridge, rainbow hues licking the delicate filigree of its railings.
He swallowed and took a step closer to the bridge. The stair to reach its path was not high, yet Ean trembled before it. As he looked up again, he saw that the man’s face was now visible, an ageless, handsome face with eyes of vibrant blue. “What will I find on the other side?” he whispered.
The blue-eyed man smiled. “Yourself.”
Ean closed his eyes and dropped his head. Yes, whispered the tiny spark, we must cross. We are not supposed to be here.
But the mist enveloped him, gathered and embraced him. Stay, it coaxed. What is there for you across the bridge but pain? Here there is no pain.
Yes, there is no pain here, but nor was there any feeling save melancholy and sorrow. The stranger had awoken hope, joy and courage, and lost though he was, Ean had a sense that these things were worth enduring pain to experience again.
Looking up at the blue-eyed man, Ean took a deep breath and stepped upon the bridge. Slowly he lowered his hands to the pearlescent railings. They were smooth and cool. He knew his path now led across the bridge, but still he trembled in the knowing. “Can we…walk together?”
“If you would have me at your side.”
“Yes,” Ean whispered. “Please.”
The blue-eyed man stood next to Ean, and though he did not offer his arm, and Ean did not ask to hold it, he felt strength just in knowing the other was there. Still, every step was a force of will; not merely the will to face what awaited, but the will to tear himself free of the clinging pall of hopelessness and regret that held him so firmly in its grasp. Step by step he moved further from the misty moors; step by step the blue-eyed stranger walked at his side, ever faithful, until at last they reached the end.
And there, Creighton awaited.
Ean drew up short, stricken immobile. The shock of seeing Creighton’s face with such clarity—his soulful brown eyes and his smile so full of eager life—brought memory crashing back. Wave upon wave tumbled over him, great billowing folds of the unending timeline of his life and all of his losses, mistakes and regrets.
Ean collapsed to his knees, covered his face with both hands, and wept. He wept for his grievous mistakes. He wept for his lost brothers. He wept for his parents’ sacrifices and his friends’ unfailing support and ill-founded trust. He wept for betraying their hopes, for the life he had squandered, for the future that was lost.
He wept until tears would come no longer.
“Courage,” Creighton advised once Ean had quieted, “comes in fully knowing the threat one faces and deciding to stand against it nonetheless. Until that moment of understanding, there is no courage, there is only haste. No bravery, merely recklessness.”
“I have failed you,” Ean whispered. He couldn’t bring himself to look upon his friend’s countenance though it was so dear to him. “My recklessness was my undoing, and now I cannot avenge your death.”
Creighton knelt to meet Ean eye to eye. “Ean,” he said, capturing the prince’s gaze with his own, “you are not dead.”
Ean lifted his head and looked forlornly upon him. “I am dead, and so are you. I see your face clearly now at last, but there is no justice in it, no atonement, only grief.”
“Ean,” Creighton repeated with a tinge of frustration, “you see my face because you stand upon the path of the dead. Step down from the bridge and reclaim your life.”
Ean looked behind him to where the bridge disappeared into the mist. “I don’t understand.” He turned back to Creighton. “I would rather stay here with you.”
“Ean, you cannot stay here.” Creighton‘s expression turned tense and worried. “Your body withers without the force of your will. It has healed in the days since your encounter, but it needs you to restore it life.”
Ean pushed palms to his eyes. “No, this is but a dream.”.
“Step off the bridge, and I will prove it is not.”
Ean dropped his hands and looked at him in wonder. “How?”
Creighton stood and held out his hand. “Do you trust me, Ean?”
“I trust my blood-brother with all that I am,” the prince replied miserably, “but…I am not sure that you are him.”
Creighton dropped his hand and frowned at his friend. “I have been afraid,” he confessed after a long, tense silence. “Afraid that if you knew me for what I am now, you would love me no more. But if flesh is what will prove my troth, then let it be thusly that we meet.”
The words were a raw wound. “Tell me of what chance you speak,” Ean whispered, fear and hope warring for purchase in his heart.
Creighton gave him a tragic smile and shook his head. “First, you must step down from the bridge.”
Holding Creighton’s gaze, Ean slowly got to his feet. He suspected that the pain the blue-eyed stranger spoke of was still awaiting him; that he’d only had the barest taste of it in his tears, and he knew suddenly why Creighton spoke to him of courage. He must find the courage to face life again, knowing its pain, knowing its heartache, knowing its dangers and losses and terrible cost.
With a swallow, Ean stepped off the bridge—
—And woke with a shuddering inhale, gasping the breath of a drowning man pitched suddenly to shore. Then followed the pain, pouncing with ferocity upon every muscle from eyelid to littlest toe. Ean moaned, and even that was painful.
A shadow befell him, and Ean focused to see the zanthyr approaching. The intensity of concern in Phaedor’s emerald eyes brought waves of gratitude, and for a moment Ean was silenced by the devastating emotions that overcame him. All the tears he’d shed in his dream paled next to what he felt upon seeing the zanthyr at his bedside. However could he repay such a debt? However could Phaedor forgive him for such utter foolishness?
And yet, as Phaedor approached, Ean knew that the zanthyr had forgiven him, that nothing mattered to the creature save that Ean lived, the incident left behind them upon a long and twisting road.
Phaedor placed a hand on the prince’s shoulder, and Ean felt a cooling calm settle through him. The pain in his body gradually faded, and his breath came more easily. “I thought you said you were no Healer,” Ean whispered hoarsely, for gratitude choked him.
The zanthyr cracked a shadowy smile. “I also warned you not to trust me.”
Ean drew in a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled again slowly, feeling his body tingling with new life…life that had come within an inch of being lost—again. Among the knowledge he’d regained while crossing that ethereal bridge back from the beyond was the certainty that he’d fought this same fearsome power twice before, and both times he’d lost his life as the price for his hubris.
I am Rinokh!
Ean shuddered at the memory, drawing a curious eye from the zanthyr. “How long?” Ean whispered, dreading the answer.
“Five days.”
The knowledge came as a blow. After what had been done to his body—which even now was too unbearable to think upon—how could he possibly be alive? What had they done to save him? He remembered nothing of the Healing, but he knew unquestionably that Alyneri and the zanthyr were to thank for it.
“How is Alyneri?” he asked then, curious suddenly that she wasn’t also there to see him wake. “Is she…?”
“She endures,” the zanthyr said, and Ean realized he was trying to spare him the pain of more guilt. “She will no doubt return tonight to sleep in her chair,” and he nodded toward an armchair by the hearth, “as she has done every night while you slept.” He considered the prince for a moment then. “What do you remember?”
Ean grimaced. “Everything.”
Abruptly the zanthyr turned from his bedside. “And see that you do,” he growled, his manner turning suddenly gruff, “for the next time you pit yourself against a Malorin’athgul—untrained, untested—you won’t have Fortune’s grace upon you.”
Ean swallowed. “I know.” He cast a troubled look at the creature. “How…how bad was I…really?”
The zanthyr arched a warning brow. “It would only scare you to know.”
Ean believed him.
He was becoming aware of his body again now, feeling toes and thighs and shoulders stiff and sore, but it was a sweet pain, the kind that comes from healing. He watched the zanthyr walk to the window to gaze out through the glass-paned doors, a tall, statuesque figure backlit by the glow of sunset. “You said a name,” Ean whispered then. “Malorin’athgul. This is the creature Rinokh? Björn’s creature?”
“Björn van Gelderan does not command the Malorin’athgul,” Phaedor replied without looking at him. “They are your enemy, not the Vestal.”
How can you be so certain? Ean bit back the question, no matter how he ached to know the truth of it; but he knew, also, that such a question would only go unanswered. If Phaedor spoke it, so it must be true. Yet this was a truth Ean could not accept.
Even though a part of him truly wanted to.
For some reason he thought of the blue-eyed man who’d braved the Bridge of the Dead to find him, who spoke so honestly and candidly about the trials he would face. What kind of man was Björn van Gelderan really? Ean desperately wanted to know, but there was justice to be claimed in his blood-brother’s honor, and Ean would not forsake Creighton this retribution, no matter his own desires.
Creighton… Oh, Creighton! To have seen his blood-brother’s face so clearly in his dream at last…knowing now it was only a dream. It was agony anew. Ean clenched his teeth, protest welling, tightening his chest. “No,” he growled, his voice at last regaining its timbre. “The Vestal’s Shade slew my blood-brother. He must answer for the crime.”
Phaedor regarded him coolly for a long moment, during which time Ean slowly came to feel the fool. There was nothing quite like being stared down by the zanthyr to put a man in his place. “Raine will want to know of your recovery,” Phaedor said finally, and he left.
Ean stared after him, chagrined. Without warning, the vision of Rinokh pressing his thumb toward Ean’s forehead and the utter black agony that followed beset him. The memory brought a latent shudder and flashes of agonizing pain which twinged still-healing muscles. Ean quickly quashed the vision, walled it away behind curtains of unwillingness. But the memory alone had done its work, for Ean felt shaken anew, his healed muscles tense and trembling with anger.
Rinokh, he thought with a swallow. Just the word seemed sharp against his mind.
Malorin’athgul.
The two names seemed to have an intimate connection, as if formed from the same dark matter. But who or what are they?
“Ean…” Ean spun his head with a startled intake of breath, but that same breath abandoned him as his mind fought to understand the vision before his eyes.
It cannot be!
The silhouette of the man who stood across the room was unmistakable, even if his face was masked by shadows. Gaping at the figure, Ean pushed up in bed, his face stricken with bewilderment and shock.
“Your eyes do not lie,” said Creighton, and his voice was as unmistakable as the regret that infused it.
“No,” Ean gasped hoarsely. “You were slain!”
“I promised you I would come.”
Ean stared for one brief moment. Then he scrambled out of bed and lunged for his sword on a near dresser. His muscles shook violently as he ripped the weapon from its scabbard and attempted to level it at the intruder across the room. “I know my blood-brother died that night. I won’t be twice a fool!”
The figure held up a black-gloved hand in entreaty. “Please, Ean,” he whispered, the ache in his voice palpable. “Permit me a token as proof of my troth.” When Ean made no motion, the man glided across the room to lay something small in the center of Ean’s bed. All the while his head was bowed, his face unseen, yet Ean did not deny that everything about him, from the manner of his movement to the set of his shoulders, was exactly like that of his lost friend and blood-brother.
Once the man had retreated to his shadowed corner, Ean moved closer to the bed. Keeping his sword upraised, though his arm trembled beneath its weight after so many days abed, he lowered his eyes to espy what lay upon the covers.
His breath caught in his throat.
A woman’s ring lay against the pale coverlet, a single ruby set in silver filigree carved in the shape of a rose.
It was as if the ring pierced an arrow into Ean’s heart. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees, staring at the ring. His vision blurred as he recalled Creighton’s sheepish grin as he’d proudly displayed the engagement ring he meant to give to Katerine. The ring, like his blood-brother’s body, had vanished t
hat fateful night.
Tears flowed freely across Ean’s cheeks as he slowly picked up the delicate ring and studied it. After a moment, he gripped it tightly against his palm, pressed fist to his heart, and lifted a tormented gaze to the man standing across the room. “I’m listening.”
“You are correct, Ean.” Creighton sounded infinitely apologetic, as if this moment felt as dreadful to him as it did to Ean. “I died that night, but it was not the Shade who claimed my life. There was another.”
With startling clarity, Ean recalled the exchange that had preceded the battle upon the cliff.
I am Prince Ean! Creighton had claimed, a claim that had confused their enemies and provided the chance for escape. But the Geshaiwyn assassin would’ve left nothing to chance; the man would’ve found and killed both of them just to be certain he’d found the right mark. Ean couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized this truth before. The Shade had arrived in time to save the real prince from a lunatic’s blade named Jeshuelle, but the false prince—brave though he was—had not been so lucky.
Sickened by the sudden understanding, Ean whispered wretchedly, “It was the Geshaiwyn…wasn’t it? He found you first.”
“Yes,” Creighton confirmed, and Ean felt the pain of his death all over again. “As I lay dying,” Creighton confessed then, “the Shade called me to him. Even drenched in my own blood, while there was life within me, I could not but comply with his command.”
“I remember,” Ean whispered. He closed his eyes and forced a swallow. “I remember you walked strangely. It was…horrible.”
“Ean,” his blood-brother’s voice drew his gaze. “Ean, the Shade saved my life that night, though the means by which it occurred was…unimaginable.”
It was not meant to be this way with you…
The Shade’s words took on a terrifying new meaning.
Afraid now to look away lest Creighton’s specter vanish, Ean cast him an anguished look. “Are you truth…or illusion?”
“I live,” Creighton whispered out of the shadows that concealed his face, his own voice charged with his emotion, “but I am…not as you remember me.”
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 97
