Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “The Council of Realms.” Nadia looked to him. “My mother says Warlocks work inverteré patterns innately and can bind mortals to their will with a single glance. My mother says it’s a condition of inclusion in the Council of Realms that a world refuses to have any interaction with the Warlocks of Shadow.”

  “Yes,” Pelas fingered the rim of his goblet, “some Warlocks find this arrangement rather…unfashionable.”

  Tanis didn’t want to be reminded of arrangements with Warlocks. “If Shadow has neither where nor when,” he posed, returning them to the earlier topic, which was safer to his mental constitution, “how do you navigate it?”

  “Similar to the way we operate in the Void…” Pelas paused, frowned, managed an apologetic grin. “I’ve never tried to describe any of this before. I beg your forbearance.” Pelas rubbed at his chin with a furrowed brow.

  Whereupon Nadia said, somewhat awed, “Do you really unmake entire stars, Immanuel?” Pelas looked shifted his copper eyes to her. “It just seems so incredible. I mean, you seem like just a man.” Then she dropped her gaze and added blushingly, “I mean, not just any man…”

  Pelas chuckled. “In the Void, my brothers and I assume a different form, a much larger form. But no form we could assume would approximate the space occupied by a star. To unmake a star, we first have to…” he frowned again, “…it’s like we expand our minds to become bigger than the star, or perhaps to…” Pelas rubbed at one ear and winced slightly. “This is challenging to explain.”

  “No, I think I see.” Tanis gazed wonderingly at him, for a marvelous understanding was dawning. He recalled his mother’s lessons on Absolute Being—long dissertations on a wielder’s need to expand his awareness to encompass the space in which he intended to produce an effect; his father had written entire journals on the topic—and he connected this training with the images in Pelas’s mind. “Actually…I think what you’re trying to explain is covered in the Esoterics.”

  As keen to Tanis’s thoughts as the lad was to his, Pelas arched a brow and leaned back on one hand. “I really must spend more time learning your Laws and Esoterics. I well recall your mother saying to me…” but he fell silent upon this thought, and his mind became quiet.

  Tanis had learned that this quietude meant Pelas was closing off parts of his mind, concealing the thoughts harbored there—clearly thoughts about Tanis’s mother and Pelas’s mysterious relationship with her. The lad knew Pelas still had some confession to make to him about it, but neither of them had yet felt ready to broach the subject. Tanis laid his head back on the blanket, closed his eyes and tried to dull the swarming feeling that still edged his thoughts.

  Nadia meanwhile said to Pelas in a tone tinged with wonder, “Your illusions are so much more elaborate than any I’ve ever crafted.”

  “Your rose a bit ago was perfect and lovely, Princess.”

  “But that rose is something I studied long upon and worked hard to capture,” she returned. “You seem able to craft illusions more easily than either Tanis or me—and the gift comes to us innately.”

  “It is merely the product of an artistic eye.” Tanis heard the smile in Pelas’s voice. “Your talent is far more formidable.”

  “Tanis,” Nadia tapped him on the arm, “do you see how Signore di Nostri flatters me? You could learn from him.”

  Tanis opened one eye to peer at her. “You would have me learn more ways of making you blush?” He emphasized this question by placing certain images in the shared space of their minds.

  Nadia pressed fingers to her lips and tucked her chin into her shoulder, blushing vividly.

  Pelas chuckled. “I’ve had many years to hone the skill of illusions, Princess. When working on the Sormitáge’s Grand Passáge, I would craft the illusion first for my own eyes and then paint it as I saw it.”

  “Oh, that makes so much sense! Art historians have long praised the astonishing lack of error in your work.” Nadia brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled at him, but then her expression sobered, as if the breeze had blown a sudden solemnity into the conversation. “Immanuel…did no one ever know you were fifth strand?”

  Pelas settled his gaze on Tanis—the lad both felt his attention and sensed it emanating across the binding. “I didn’t know until Tanis showed this truth to me.”

  Nadia shook her head. “All those years at the Sormitáge and no one knew.”

  Tanis opened his eyes to meet Pelas’s gaze, both of them struck by the same thought—Shail had spent even longer at the Sormitáge in the guise of an Arcane Scholar.

  Pelas held Tanis’s gaze. I still do not know what my brother was doing there for so many years.

  Tanis swallowed. I expect we’ll find out sooner than we’d like.

  With the unease roused by this uncertainty still thrumming between them, Pelas said to Nadia, “When the great wielders of the Fourth Age roamed the halls of the Sormitáge—Markal Morrelaine, Arion Tavestra, Malachai ap’Kalien…your mother—” and he cast an unreadable look at Tanis, “I had to be careful to conceal my nature, but in truth, I was in little danger of being discovered. The greatest men of that Age walked past my scaffolding every day, and not a one ever thought to seek the fifth in my construction. I was but a lowly painter, a mouse among giants.”

  Nadia choked into her wine.

  Pelas cast her a quietly amused look. “The Sormitáge and its sister Citadel had their own aristocracy reigning above the blood of kings. Rowed wielders were the true royalty of that time. The art circles I traveled in were rich but decidedly less illustrious.”

  Tanis propped his head on his hand again. “Did you know my father?”

  Pelas shifted his eyes back to the lad with a look of gentle apology. “I knew of him, of course, but our interactions were limited. Your father walked in the highest circles, for he was the Alorin Seat’s closest friend and held the heart of the High Mage of the Citadel.” Pelas gave him another smile, reflective of admiration. “Your father was the envy of all who knew of him.”

  Nadia turned to Tanis, her eyes bright. “Do you know what an amazing secret you are, Tanis? No one knew that Isabel van Gelderan and Arion Tavestra had a son.”

  “Only the household staff in the valley,” Tanis offered by way of absent agreement, his thoughts elsewhere.

  “But oh—what a mystery.” Nadia looked him over as if he was suddenly very intriguing. “Centuries between your birth and now…surely you weren’t hidden in Adonnai all that time?”

  Tanis exhaled thoughtfully. “All I know is that the zanthyr brought me to Her Grace’s estate in Dannym when I was just a toddler.”

  Nadia squeezed his hand and grinned at him. “So mysterious.”

  “Yes, our Tanis is quite the undiscovered gem.” Pelas winked at the lad. “But I think it’s your turn to craft an illusion for our pleasure, Princess.” He lifted the decanter to fill her goblet again.

  “Please, no more!” Nadia laughingly waved away the wine. “My head is far too fuzzy. Tanis, you take my turn.”

  “Very well, Your Highness, if you insist.”

  Rolling onto his back again, Tanis clasped hands behind his head and let his mind wander, and as had happened ever since binding with Pelas, his free attention was immediately sucked into Pelas’s gravity.

  Soon, Tanis felt himself floating amid spiraling galaxies, passing through vast clouds of colorful gasses, sinking into a black sea studded with billions of stars…

  One particular section of stars captured his fascination. Tanis began fashioning the pattern of those stars with the fourth strand, positioning each star as he saw it in relation to the next, dotting the landscape of his illusion with points of light. He was so intent upon duplicating the exact relationships and relative distances of each star to its neighbor that he hardly noticed the larger picture he was forming until Pelas sucked in his breath.

  Tanis pushed up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  Pelas was staring at the illusion glowing in the space betwee
n them: myriad diamond dots forming multiple designs. “Tanis…” he looked extremely uncomfortable. “Where did you see this?”

  Tanis turned his gaze to the illusion. “It just sort of…came to me.”

  Nadia was peering intently at it. “Why, it almost looks like a wom—”

  “Tanis, please let this creation go.” Pelas sounded dismayed.

  Tanis banished the illusion at once, though its image remained vivid in his mind’s eye. He knew, too, what Nadia had intended to say. In the way one can draw imaginary lines among the stars of a constellation to outline a perceived shape, so had the patterns of the stars in his illusion seemed, when viewed as a whole, somehow reminiscent of a human form. What he didn’t know was why that form had caused Pelas such discomfort.

  “Well…it was lovely, whatever it was.” Nadia touched Tanis on the arm. “I think I should rest before dinner. Would you walk me back to the house, Lord Adonnai?”

  Tanis stood and bent to help her stand up. “You’re really going to keep calling me that, aren’t you?”

  She gave him an arch look as she took his hands. “The title is your birthright.” Nadia shook out her skirts and then looked him up and down archly. “You’re not just Arion’s heir, you know. You’re Björn van Gelderan’s also.”

  Tanis looped her arm through his. “Are you trying to help me feel more comfortable with the idea or less?”

  Nadia grinned impishly. Then she turned to Pelas, who had also risen, and bobbed a curtsy. “Signore di Nostri, thank you for the lovely afternoon.”

  Pelas gave her a lavish bow. “The pleasure was all mine, Princess.” His tone sounded light, but he met Tanis’s gaze as he straightened, and the lad saw a shadowed concern lingering there, its source concealed in the sudden immense quiet of his mind.

  Tanis escorted Nadia back to the manor feeling a welling unease. He attributed it to a perception that had been growing throughout the day, one that he’d come to associate with a calling on his path.

  As he saw Nadia into her bed chamber, the unease grew so strong that he feared she would perceive it in his thoughts and wonder at it. He realized then that it wasn’t his own feeling but Pelas’s, the latter’s rising disconcertion overflowing across their binding.

  Tanis helped Nadia prepare for her nap, doting on her because he enjoyed it and because she let him. After she’d finished the tea he’d prepared for her—one of his lady’s recipes—he sat on the bed at her side until her lids grew heavy and she sank into sleep with a soft smile gracing her lips.

  Then he went in search of Pelas.

  He found him on the terrace. The early evening sky remained clear, but the ocean breeze was tossing Pelas’s long hair into wild designs, even as it had on the night Tanis had met him, free from the influence of his brother’s compulsion.

  Tanis halted at the Malorin’athgul’s side and joined him in gazing out over the sea, whose waters had assumed twilight’s mercuric hue. Tanis no longer perceived the darkness that had so often overtaken and possessed his bond-brother in the early days of their relationship, but a grave disquiet thrummed within Pelas now, much in contrast to his mind, which had gone completely still.

  After a time, Tanis glanced to him. “It’s still there, isn’t it?”

  Pelas kept his gaze on the distant sea and his hands clasped behind his back. “Yes.”

  “But you’re no longer subject to Darshan’s compulsion. That’s what you meant before, when you said that acts beneath his compulsion would no longer plague your conscience?”

  Pelas exhaled a slow breath and turned to meet Tanis’s gaze. The lad had never seen him look so troubled. “I think it’s time I explained to you how I learned to overcome it.”

  Both his expression and the turmoil of his thoughts, which suddenly tumbled forth upon an avalanche of disconcertion, unsettled Tanis greatly. He sought to reassure him. “Whatever it is…I promise I will hear it.”

  Pelas turned back to face out across the sea. “From the instant of our reunion, I’ve sought a way to tell you. Now the moment is here…I still don’t know how to shape the words.”

  “It has something to do with my mother, doesn’t it?” Tanis didn’t need to be sharing Pelas’s mind to have gleaned that much. For all the world, it looked like Pelas was bracing himself. “What is it?” Tanis took hold of his bond-brother’s arm and made him look at him. “What do you feel so desperately unable to tell me?”

  Grave apology darkened Pelas’s gaze. He slipped free of Tanis’s touch and wandered further along the terrace. When he spoke, his voice was low and tightly controlled. “You know what Darshan’s compulsion required of me.”

  Tanis felt an immediate ill apprehension descend upon him. “Yes.” He watched Pelas working the muscles of his jaw, clenching and unclenching, even as his thoughts seemed to alternately clench and slip around the secret he was holding so close, yet was so clearly desperate to confess.

  “I don’t know how it came to be…perhaps she simply willed it so, after we crossed paths at Tal’Afaq,” Pelas spoke as if each word was slicing a piece of flesh from his soul through its utterance, “but your mother and my brother Darshan…”

  Tanis suddenly couldn’t breathe, his chest was so bound by foreboding. “What about them?”

  Pelas turned to him. “For a time, your mother and I were both Darshan’s prisoners…together. My brother tortured me into unconsciousness and then worked an illusion to deceive me, so that when I awoke, I was convinced he’d taken away my power. He locked me in a tower from which I had no escape—thinking my power lost—and after a time, he…gave me your mother, bound to the same poles as he’d used to electrocute me—his humorous idea of a gift.” Contrition made a storm of Pelas’s features as he held the lad’s gaze. “Darshan meant me to…he had compelled me to…”

  Tanis stared at him with the terrible realization and all of its ramifications taking horrifying shape in his thoughts.

  My mother? You had my mother bound and—

  Pelas took him by the shoulders. “I didn’t harm her like the others you’ve witnessed. For days, I tried to resist harming her at all, but the force of Darshan’s compulsion bearing against my will—Tanis…I couldn’t stop myself—”

  Tanis sank his head into his hands. This was so much worse than he’d ever imagined. He didn’t know how to respond to it—mentally, emotionally…rationally…

  “Isabel said she was there to help me.” Pelas was begging his forgiveness with his thoughts and his tone and his every breath. “She was my prisoner, yet she said I was her path. Tanis…”

  Tanis, please…

  Tanis felt sick. He pressed his palms to his forehead and tried to breathe around the clenching feeling in his chest. After a time, he managed grimly, “What’s the rest of it?”

  Pelas exhaled a slow breath. “I harmed her, Tanis. By Chaos born, I wish I’d been stronger! She…” Pelas braced his hands on his knees as if to support the weight of his confession. “She said to use patterns, and I—I…penned them into her flesh with a razor stylus—”

  Tanis couldn’t hear any more—didn’t want to know any more, for he saw too deeply into Pelas’s thoughts and couldn’t endure the images he found there.

  The swarming feeling in his brain made his legs unstable. The lad staggered to the closest urn and braced a hand against it while the world spun dangerously. He wanted to flee, to run, to lash out in horror and protest, but he stole some breath back from his incredulity to gasp instead, “How did she free you?”

  Pelas remained behind him, radiating dismay. “She taught me how to sublimate the compulsion, how to claim its power as my own.”

  Tanis, I beg you, please forgive me!

  Tanis spun him a stricken look. “Just…” He really thought it might destroy him, knowing this had happened. “I need…some time,” and he flung himself into a desperate sprint, running as far and as fast out of Pelas’s company as his legs would carry him.

  Five

  ‘Better to b
e the wind of change than a leaf blown down the path.’

  –An old Kandori proverb

  The pirate Carian vran Lea whistled tunelessly as he walked a quiet street of Cair Rethynnea with the royal cousin Fynnlar val Lorian at his side. The afternoon sun pushed their shadows in front of them, so that Carian’s, with his wild wavy hair, dual cutlasses, and britches bunched up around his cuffed boots, looked reminiscent of a giant fanged beetle; and Fynn, with his Agasi-styled coat flaring above his knees, appeared a tasty mushroom.

  “You know,” Fynn remarked while Carian was smirking over this comparison, “left to their own devices, things always go from bad to worse. I don’t get why you feel such a need to help them along.”

  “The Nodefinder Rebellion is an act of conscience, Fynnlar.”

  Fynn grunted sourly. “Conscience and I get along best when I let it go one way while I go another.”

  Carian pulled out his pouch of tobacco and started rolling himself a smoke. “You and your gold are gonna be parting ways a lot faster if Niko van Amstel becomes the Second Vestal. How does your conscience feel about that?”

  Fynn sucked on a tooth and eyed him unappreciatively.

  “You think I’m just in this for the fun of the fight?” Carian looked up under his bushy eyebrows and tongued the edge of the paper to seal it. “Niko would make it so that Jamaiians like myself can’t even travel freely on the nodes on our own bloody islands. If he has his way, the Espial’s Guild will control every node in the bloody realm. That means blokes like you will be paying Guild rates for an Espial to move your stolen merchandise, and blokes like me’ll be slicing off a cut of our profits every time we use our Maker-given talent.”

  Fynn veritably gasped. “That’s piracy!”

  “You bet your pretty silk knickers.” Carian puffed his roll alive and exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke towards Fynn. “And not even a code to rule ’em right, or keep ’em on the straight and narrow.”