Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Like Isabel, but by way of a different gift, Arion could predict events. He could see beyond the curve of causation and posit an outcome, because he could see patterns in life as easily as he could see them in elae. Arion could observe myriad paths of cause and consequence and know how each of them would connect at some future point. He could predict outcomes in ways that others couldn’t fathom.

  Tanis had gained enormous respect for his father through the ideas and thoughts he’d penned in his journals. Now, knowing that his father lived anew…even with a different face and name…even without remembering all that he used to be…suddenly the Returning took on a grave new importance for Tanis. If any portion of that man remained, Tanis wanted to know him.

  He chose a coat from his armoire but paused as he slid his arms into the sleeves. It was one of the many coats Pelas had commissioned for him. Looking at it more closely now, something in the arabesques on the sleeve reminded him of the mercuric design etching his mother’s shoulder.

  Tanis exhaled a heavy sigh and slumped down on the edge of a chair. With Pelas claiming all responsibility and his mother claiming all responsibility, there didn’t seem to be anyone left to blame.

  He no longer wanted to blame either of them. He just wanted to walk his path, and he wanted to walk it with Pelas beside him and in the fullness of his mother’s approval.

  Odd that he could’ve felt so tormented just hours ago and now be able to put so much behind him. His mother’s wisdom had grounded and focused him in ways no one else’s could have.

  Tanis finished dressing and headed out of his rooms. He heard Nadia’s laughter while still on the stairs, and he rounded the dining room archway to see Pelas and the princess already seated at the dining table.

  Pelas looked up as Tanis arrived. Tanis had never seen him wear an expression so akin to fear as what he saw in his gaze in that moment.

  “Oh, Tanis, there you are! Immanuel and I have had a marvelous day—where have you been?” Nadia gave him a smile that only lightly chided his absence.

  Holding Tanis’s gaze, Pelas quickly pushed across the silent explanation that he’d kept Nadia occupied to give Tanis time with his thoughts. Tanis imagined that Pelas, aka Immanuel di Nostri, might’ve been the only personage in the entire realm capable of so distracting Nadia van Gelderan that she hardly noticed Tanis’s absence for an entire day.

  Nadia continued brightly, “Immanuel was just telling me about a fountain he sculpted for the Maharajah of Anhara-Dadra in Bemoth.”

  “Oh?” Tanis moved slowly on into the room.

  “He carved it from four blocks of travertine that were each as wide as this table and as tall as the ceiling.”

  Tanis rounded the table and started towards his chair. Pelas followed him with his gaze. “That is certainly impressive.”

  “It’s a famous fountain, Tanis.” Nadia’s tone implied his response had lacked an appropriate degree of appreciation.

  Tanis smiled at her as he reached his chair. “I’m sure the fountain is quite impressive, Nadia, but there’s just no way its beauty could compare to yours.”

  Nadia blinked. “Why, Lord Adonnai…” a faint flush brightened her cheeks.

  Tanis placed a hand on Pelas’s shoulder but said to Nadia, “You told me I could learn much from our host.” He squeezed Pelas’s shoulder and angled a look his way. “I intend to.”

  Pelas met his gaze in a heartbeat’s pause. In that breath of frozen time, he radiated immense relief, an almost desperate curiosity, bemused wonder…

  Tanis…you’ve forgiven me?

  Tanis held his gaze. We’re brothers now, and brothers we will always be.

  Something released in Tanis the moment he said this, as if an absolving wind had blown away the last of his angst and dismay. Logic, reason…these might’ve dictated a call for restitution, even atonement, but Tanis’s heart simply wanted to forgive. He saw nothing to be gained from holding onto the feelings that had plagued him since Pelas’s confession—they would only become chains around Tanis’s own ankles—and much to be gained by letting go of them.

  Perhaps even more importantly, he and Pelas were brothers now, eternally united through the Unbreakable Bond. But that binding was not merely the forging of a permanent connection; it was also a promise of devotion, one so complete that each might take on the other’s acts as though they had been their own. Tanis knew that had the situation been reversed, Pelas would not have hesitated—Pelas never would’ve turned his back on him, no matter what he’d done.

  Oh, how truly his mother had known the feelings residing in his heart, even before Tanis had recognized them himself!

  Tanis, I am overcome. Pelas’s eyes were vivid with gratitude, yet his admiration glowed more brightly still.

  Smiling softly, Tanis took his seat.

  And the world started again.

  Pelas reached to pour Tanis some wine. Tanis settled his napkin in his lap and lifted a smile to Nadia. “So tell me more about this fountain.”

  Nine

  “Sorrows come not as single raindrops but as showers.”

  –Jayachándranáptra, Rival of the Sun

  Ean crouched in the shadow of a gargoyle guarding a tower roof at the Fortress of Ivarnen. A icy wind was whining through the shingles and tearing at his cloak, numbing his fingers as they gripped the gargoyle’s stone arm. A capricious moon blinked in and out of view behind scudding clouds, but even when shining it offered an indifferent light. To distant eyes, Ean’s hooded form would’ve seemed but the gargoyle’s ill-cast shadow.

  A host of eidola milled in the courtyard far below him. Their clattering voices raised in agitation sounded like a chorus of angry cicadas. The chittering outcry was a result of a dozen or so of their brethren lying inanimate amid the larger congress. No amount of pushing or cajoling would rouse their fallen comrades. Ean had made sure of that.

  Now he readied the last of the patterns he intended to test that night.

  The more he observed the eidola, the more he pitied them. Men, whether noble or base, should still live and die as men, not as the unnatural incarnations of a madman’s perverted imagination. Though it didn’t lessen his loss over his loyal men, Cayal, Brody and Dorin, seeing this truth at least helped to mitigate some of the guilt Ean felt at having destroyed them in his effort to rescue Rhys. Surely death was a kinder master than the golem half-life of the creatures milling in the yard below.

  As he watched the eidola crawling over each other, angry ants with no queen to guide and coordinate their action, he wondered why he kept coming there…why he kept trying to do anything Isabel had tasked him with. He’d told Sebastian he only wanted to be free of the game, and he’d meant it, yet night after night he found himself back at Ivarnen, attempting to find a way to accomplish the job Isabel had assigned to him.

  An innate sense of duty rooted Ean to the game. No matter his personal disagreements, he understood that winning it meant survival for the race and losing meant the end of everything; yet he felt just like those eidola ants, acting on the queen’s impetus—barely more than a golem himself.

  So many of Arion’s memories had returned now that Ean no longer knew where Arion ended and he began. The picture of his life had become an outline colored in by another man’s experiences. He’d become as Arion’s ghost, rather than the other way around; merely the receptacle of Arion’s essence, Ean’s body overtaken and possessed by Arion’s memories and thoughts.

  Yet even this hadn’t been enough for Isabel.

  Ean couldn’t help but wonder…would she have allowed a Malorin’athgul to mutilate her flesh if Arion had still been alive? Would she have forsaken their bond and given herself to Pelas if Arion had been waiting at the other end of that road? And if Arion had been alive to comfort her, would she still have called Phaedor to her rescue?

  None of this matters, Ean. His brother’s voice echoed back to him from an earlier confrontation, one of many. Sebastian’s was always the voice of reason trying to reac
h him through the noise of his outrage. You and Isabel are bound, now and forever. Somehow you’ve got to find a way to forgive her.

  Yes…bound, the prince thought while the eidola clattered anxiously over their fallen comrades and a cloud passed before the moon, dripping darkness onto the night. Bound like these poor creatures who were once men but now are just remnants of themselves. Had Darshan given them a choice to become as they were?

  Ean remembered those early days with Isabel and wondered if he’d even had as much choice as the eidola. He’d been bound to Isabel from the moment he first laid eyes upon her, even though he couldn’t recognize the feeling for what it was at the time. The secondary binding he’d worked in this life was as gauze tied around a statue’s marble leg: an odd and ultimately unnecessary embellishment. Arion and Isabel had worked the Unbreakable Bond. Ean had merely opened one more sluice onto a water wheel already turning.

  Oddly, it didn’t bother him so much that another man had made the choice to bind himself and all his future selves to Isabel van Gelderan; only that he now didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

  A gust of wind whipped around the tower, tearing at his cloak and threatening his stability on the ledge. Ean held his hood in place against the wind and wrinkled his nose at the eidola stench it carried—a tangy, metallic musk akin to the odor of stones pulled from a rancid creek. The wind cut through his heavy woolen cloak to spread a layer of ice along his flesh, but its chill was a reminder of what he’d come there to do—and it wasn’t to brood.

  At least…that wasn’t the primary purpose for his visit.

  Ean called up the last group of patterns Dareios had given him to test and formed them into a matrix in his mind. The eidola were notoriously impervious to elae and gave off no life signature on the currents. It had been challenging coming up with patterns that would work on them.

  Assembling the matrix as a three-dimensional puzzle in his mind, Ean made his intent encompass the entire mass of eidola and then poured elae into it.

  As elae’s warmth was flooding his consciousness, Ean wondered what the eidola thought…that is, if they had any thoughts of their own. Were they stubbornly clinging to life, even as he was, not really knowing why living was preferable to dying, only fearing more the darkness beyond? Was he granting them mercy, or severing their last lifeline of hope? He would never know.

  Ean released the pattern. A noxious cocktail flew on an arrow of the first strand.

  The prince watched dispassionately from his tower vantage as his matrix hit the eidola in the courtyard and spread upon impact like a gaseous explosion. A score of the creatures fell and started convulsing while their brethren shrieked clattering eidola shrieks and went into a frenzy.

  At last.

  They’d finally found a way to make patterns cling to the eidola.

  Sebastian would be pleased. It had been his idea to try using the first strand. He’d posed the theory that even though the eidola showed no life signature on the currents, the first strand might remain within them as a sort of dormant connective tissue. Dareios had designed a pattern that latched onto the first strand and used it as a grappling hook for the rest of their working to cling to.

  Having achieved their first goal, Ean now watched to see if his patterns—the ones comprising the inner layer of the matrix—would be effective in severing the eidola’s connection to their master.

  If nothing else, the patterns were certainly incapacitating the creatures. Those afflicted had fallen and were flailing about, while a host of others argued in rattling complaint. Ean had noticed that without a stronger mind actively directing them, the eidola were uncoordinated and incapable of reason. This made them more dangerous rather than less.

  Come on—work, damn you…

  He had only minutes before a sentry spotted him or one of the eidola lucids appeared to coordinate a retaliatory action. The lucids were nearly always linked directly to Darshan and often wielded deyjiin. Ean preferred to avoid them.

  Indifferent to his impatience, the creatures continued convulsing, turning the courtyard into a seething mass of molten—

  A rattlesnake hiss sibilated behind him.

  Ean spun in a low crouch.

  An eidola was spidering head-first towards him down the steep roof. Its cold eyes were leveled on him, luminous with deyjiin. “You are the one.” Its voice sounded like stones tumbling in an urn.

  “So you can talk.” Ean slowly backed away as the lucid advanced. “That’s… horrifying.”

  The eidola reached the ledge where Ean was retreating and straightened to its full height. It was a good deal taller than himself and considerably broader. Darshan had claimed a mountain of a man for this minion.

  Violet-silver glinted in the eidola’s obsidian eyes. “My master wants to speak with you,” it advanced dangerously towards Ean, “the Him Who Would Unmake His Children.”

  Ean took another backwards step and bumped up against a second gargoyle. There was nowhere to go but over the edge.

  “Yes, I’ll bet he does.” The idea of ‘speaking’ with Darshan felt like worms writhing in Ean’s gut. “Sadly, my dance card is full tonight. Do give your master my regards.”

  He dove off the roof.

  The wind sang in his ears while the eidola in the courtyard below roused a clattering roar. Ean made a rope of the fifth and swung himself towards a shallow balcony on the next tower. Unfortunately his aim was off. He hit the balcony railing with a grunted exhale and had to haul himself up and over the stone. Not exactly the graceful escape he’d envisioned.

  A bolt of deyjiin missed his ear by a hair and disintegrated the balcony doors instead.

  Ean threw up a shield of the fifth and spun a glare over his shoulder at the lucid, who was standing beside the gargoyle on the opposite tower. “I thought you said your master wanted to speak with me!”

  The creature flung another bolt at Ean.

  The prince threw himself to the stones, just as the balcony disintegrated under him. He tumbled into empty air.

  Ean hissed a curse and flung the matrix he’d just used on the other eidola towards the lucid on the tower. Then he somersaulted backwards and made the air solid beneath his feet.

  He landed in a jarring crouch that reverberated from toes to teeth. He could make the air solid at will; he hadn’t quite figured out how to make it squishy.

  Heart pounding, Ean slowly straightened. He was righting his hood and cloak when arrows began pelting his shield of the fifth. He resisted the urge to flinch and cast his gaze upwards to find archers appearing in windows and balconies and men with spears running atop the fortress walls. But unless they were firing arrows cast in the fifth, they wouldn’t stand a…

  Arrows cast in the fifth.

  Ean stared as the solution they’d been searching for suddenly presented itself to him. Only these arrows wouldn’t be bound to the fifth, but to the patterns that severed the eidola’s connection to their master. With his love for pattern-smithing, Dareios would welcome the challenge.

  Ignoring the pelting arrows, which could no more penetrate his shield than a bee could a bottle, Ean made stairs of the air and trudged back up to the shattered doors of the tower, where a leis and his escape awaited.

  On the opposite roof, the lucid was regaining himself—Ean had suspected that matrix wouldn’t be strong enough to incapacitate a lucid for long.

  Reaching the shattered balcony, the prince stepped onto the crumbling edge, grabbed hold of the wall and leaned out to better view the lucid. He saluted it in farewell. “Give your master my regards!” Then he swung himself inside and took his leave of Ivarnen.

  Night’s blanket still draped Kandori when Ean stepped off the node in the Palace of Andorr. He went in search of Dareios and his brother, just in case either of them were still awake, but finding their laboratory dark, made his way to Sebastian’s old chambers instead.

  The shattered space still bore the material wounds of their brotherly battle on the night Ean had
finally freed Sebastian from Dore’s matrix. Ean had spent many recent evenings in those rooms, when sleep either wouldn’t come, or when he feared that it would.

  He ducked through the drapery cordoning off the rooms and walked across dusty tiles towards the broken outer wall. This he’d begun recreating—regrowing—using patterns from Arion’s memories. He might’ve repaired the room more quickly by simply molding the fifth to his intent, but he was using the place instead to test his recollection of Arion’s theories and learn anew the individual patterns that Arion had long ago mastered.

  Arion Tavestra’s knowledge of elae had been extensive. He’d trained for centuries to gain the understanding and skill he’d possessed.

  It had never been more apparent to Ean why he didn’t have time to relearn what Arion had known, how remembering offered his only hope. They were in the last quarter of the game—ready or not, he had to play his position.

  Almost harder to face was recognizing how his own nature had brought him to this woeful place of ignorance. Had he simply died as Arion and been reborn into the next life, he might’ve had ample time to study Patterning between that moment and today.

  But he’d died again and again—likely due to the same brash stupidity Ean had so many times seen in himself, and which Rinokh had so easily capitalized on. Thus, those intervening decades, which might’ve been spent in study, had been wasted growing to adulthood two times over.

  Oh, Markal… Ean shook his head, I finally understand you.

  No wonder the man had been so brusque and uncompromising, so insistent that Ean had to remember—because Arion had been brilliant. And they needed Ean to be brilliant again.