Darshan turned his gaze over his shoulder. Three acolytes lay sleeping in his bed.
Before Kjieran, he’d routinely woken to find bodies cold with death lying beside him, but it had been months since any of his lovers had pleased him enough to warrant his releasing them to the fulfillment of their purpose—a merciful end to the burning torment of life. Once, he’d granted his acolytes their ascension almost nightly. Now he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to draw a single one across the threshold.
No part of this world felt the same since Kjieran had sought death over eternity with him. This choice above all else disturbed Darshan, for as much as he wished to deny it, he recognized that it had been a choice.
It gravely confused him.
‘…If you ever left your ivory tower, perhaps you’d see what you’re missing…’
Pelas’s words were an arrowhead working its inexorable way beneath the armor of his conviction. His brother had goaded him many times to get out into the world, obvious attempts to entrap him into the same lust for experience that afflicted Pelas. Darshan had easily deflected his brother’s earlier taunts, but this latest one clung to his consciousness—not as enticement, but in warning.
His thoughts strayed back to the question which had been nagging at him: was all of this actually Pelas’s doing? Was he somehow influencing Darshan’s dreams, even from a remote tower in Myacene, even thinking his power lost?
He suddenly had to know.
Heading back through his bedchamber, Darshan brushed each of his acolytes’ minds to wake them—an odd impulse which Kjieran would’ve described as gentle. Increasingly he found himself meting to others what treatment he’d desired to give to Kjieran. While it didn’t ameliorate his loss, his acolytes didn’t seem to mind the change in treatment. They’d even ceased trembling in his presence, which made their lovemaking more fervent, if no more pleasurable to him.
The three young men rose and attended him, keeping their minds quiet and their gazes downcast. They combed his hair and brought him his garments, but the Prophet’s usual garb didn’t suit his purposes that day.
He chose instead a black coat that Pelas had given him years ago, before their variance of purpose had driven a wedge between them. The damask fabric held a subtle sheen, and its arabesque design reminded him of the swirling eddies of Chaos. It would cheer his brother to see him wearing it.
His acolytes brought him black pants and boots in the northern fashion. They spun his masses of hair into an ornamental knot and secured it with long pins carved of volcanic glass. The artistry pleased him.
He sent them away and summoned his power.
Chaos called endlessly to Darshan. He felt its pull in his every inhalation, in a tingling of his skin and a tugging upon his consciousness, which ever sought to return to that maelstrom place where the unraveling fringes met the infinite Void. Long years he’d ached to return there. The more his fervor to unmake this realm, the greater his frustration at Pelas’s dilettante comportment.
He’d placed Pelas in a tower in the remote north of Myacene, with its constant snowstorms and limited daylight, because it was the closest this world could come to approximating the Void. He thought it would please Pelas to be continuously reminded of their home.
Yet now…now the idea of leaving Alorin and returning to Chaos, of potentially losing what ethereal connection to Kjieran remained to him…
He couldn’t conceive of it.
Darshan sliced the fabric of existence and moved through the darkness of Shadow, traveling from Tambarré to Myacene with a step of thought. He emerged into Pelas’s tower room to a dim daylight made darker by a late spring storm. Snow was swirling madly against the windowpanes. Darshan turned with a darkness in his gaze but a lightness in his heart to greet his brother—
—and found the tower empty.
Rage pulsed through the currents. A violent flare of power splintered the swirling snowflakes into minute particles of ice and blasted the clouds into mist for miles in every direction. Sunlight flooded into the room from a suddenly clear sky.
“How?” The breath of Darshan’s incredulity formed a cloud of frost on the air. He spun in place, seeking any explanation for Pelas’s impossible escape.
Then he saw the note.
Darshan tore it free of the dagger pinning it to the wall and read the words written in Pelas’s hand.
My dear brother,
Thank you again for showing me definitively where I stand in your esteem. To make my position equally clear, know that I’ve selected my own path and will be walking it henceforth without your interference.
Brother, your arrogance blinds you. That delicate bird you so generously left me to carve into pieces saw through your elaborate deception from the moment she awakened, and once I released her from the goracrosta, it took but a whisper of her power to overcome your foul illusion and restore me.
Don’t bother summoning, Darshan. I shan’t be attending you again. I shall be paying a visit to Shail upon his quest for dominion, however, for he has something of mine that I must retrieve, ere I set off in pursuit of a purpose of my own choosing.
He’d signed it with the flourished letter of his name.
Darshan clenched his jaw and incinerated the paper with a thought.
While ash fell from his fingers, he turned a dangerous gaze around the tower, seeking…what? He couldn’t say. Perhaps some clue to show Pelas was lying about his means of his escape, anything to disprove his impossible claims.
‘…I’ve selected my own path and will be walking it henceforth without your interference…’
Every word of his brother’s note held layers of meaning.
The first two lines clearly informed him that Pelas would be acting on his own agency. ‘Walking it henceforth without your interference’ could only mean that Pelas had found some way to escape Darshan’s compulsion.
Impossible! He’d bound that pattern with the elemental fifth. Pelas could not have removed it.
How then? Some new trick offered by Dore’s little bird, Isabel?
A little bird who was not so delicate after all, not if she could remove an illusion Darshan himself had crafted—and remove it easily, if Pelas’s account bore any truth.
So…Dore had not been lying to him about Isabel val Gelderan’s power, which meant that she’d somehow hidden the extent of her ability from him during his inspection of her mind.
Darshan’s gaze tightened.
Dore had told him much of Isabel van Gelderan, much he in turn had ascribed to the man’s unique paranoia. Now he questioned that disregard.
More germane to his immediate concerns, however, was who Pelas could have allied with against him? Isabel? This so-called Prophet of Epiphany, the once High Mage of a lost Citadel?
And what definitive path had Pelas chosen? It was clear in his brother’s words that he would be acting thereafter against their purpose. But Pelas could not be acting alone.
Had Dore been correct in his warnings that others were working against Darshan and his brothers? Could it be true, as Dore had so often and emphatically claimed, that this Björn van Gelderan was their avowed and knowing enemy, despite the abounding stories that indicated otherwise? Had the stories been a purposeful subterfuge?
Darshan worked the muscles of his jaw. It disturbed him to imagine he could’ve been so wrong…so deficient in his understanding.
Disturbed? No, this word did not begin to describe the rage coursing through him.
He walked to a window and looked out over an icebound landscape of jagged mountains and vast glaciers…and summoned his brother Shail. Then he obliged himself to wait.
This setback with Pelas roused a grave conflict in Darshan. Part of him willed that they should all return to the Void then and there. The headiest sensation one could experience in this pathetic world managed only to be a paltry approximation of the rush of unmaking. And while in the Void, he’d never conceived of such base emotions as what had coursed through him
in recent weeks—anger, frustration, loss, a hungering desire, and a sense of betrayal that roused a righteous fury. These feelings were so foreign to him that he hardly knew how to interpret them, much less how to craft their proper expression out of the clay of this shell.
Yes, the lure of the Void was strong, if only to escape the feeling of barrenness that currently held him in its grip. Yet to flee the realm without accomplishing their purpose…this failure would become a canker upon his conscience forevermore. This he knew and understood.
No, he must stay and see their duty done. Except…destroying this world meant destroying Kjieran.
That he felt at odds with this truth utterly infuriated him.
Darshan was still standing at the window when he felt a tremble in Alorin’s fabric and looked over his shoulder to see his brother Shail stepping out of Shadow.
Shail swept Darshan with his gaze, and a contemptuous smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “This is a new look for you.”
Darshan was unclear whether Shail’s was referencing his clothing or the boiling froth of power surrounding him. He turned to face his brother squarely. “You took your time getting here. Was my calling not clear enough?”
Shail’s upper lip twitched. He began wandering about the room. “Would that I could’ve rid myself of your incessant braying sooner. I do have my own matters to attend to. Oddly, time continues its inexorable march, completely indifferent to your permission.” A condescending smile smeared him up and down. “How galling that must be for you.”
Darshan regarded him levelly. “Where is Pelas?”
Shail laid fingertips on Pelas’s table of knives. “I thought you had him in hand. Wasn’t that how you described his position when last we spoke?”
“Don’t bandy words with me, Shailabanáchtran. I know Pelas came to you.”
“I’m not hiding him beneath my waistcoat like a stolen timepiece, Darshan. Do you think I would willingly leave him to his own devices when his every breath is taken in action against us?”
Darshan worked the muscles of his jaw. “How long ago did you see him?”
Shail shrugged. “A few days.”
Darshan studied his youngest sibling with a critical eye, wondering what possession he’d stolen from Pelas, and how Pelas had managed to steal it back—for it was obvious from the tightness of Shail’s gaze and his general distempered demeanor that he did not possess this treasure still. Of course, he was trying to hide this fact from Darshan.
Shail turned a look around. “So this is where you imprisoned our brother?”
“You find it too remote?”
His lip lifted in a sneer. “Too humane.” He wandered the room disinterestedly.
“You have some plan for retrieving whatever it was Pelas took back from you?”
Shail shot a piercing look over his shoulder. “You had your chance to take our recalcitrant brother in hand,” the words came out in a fractious hiss. “I assure you, my methods will be more effective.”
“Yes. I deeply wonder what those methods will involve.” For any method you would use to discipline Pelas, you would surely use against me as well.
Darshan plucked a blade from Pelas’s table and thumbed the razor edge while his mind assessed, evaluated, deduced. He looked up under his brows at his brother. “And what affairs of yours has Pelas interrupted, Shailabanáchtran?”
Shail straightened a candle in a sconce. “Why do you care?”
“Call it curiosity.”
Shail arched a dismissive brow. “Your interest would be better aimed at the boy Pelas has taken as his paramour.” He picked up a silver cup from the mantel and sniffed inside it. “A truthreader, coincidentally, and powerful.” He eyed Darshan askance and flicked his gaze up and down his form. “Just the way you like them.”
“Such lures away from my question—you fear so much what I’ll find if I inspect your activities?”
Upon this utterance, the currents went dangerously still. Shail turned to him with a decidedly unfavorable gleam in his dark eyes. “The moment you step out of that temple of yours, you’ll be far out of your depth. Take care of deep water, brother.”
“An intriguing warning, coming from you.” Darshan set the dagger back in its place. “Did you have anything to do with Pelas’s escape?”
Shail snorted. He returned the cup to the mantel. “You think me a fool.”
“Yet he went straight to your location.”
Shail shrugged. “I had summoned him.”
“I assume for the purposes of reclaiming from you this truthreader he’s infatuated with? And doubtless which you now intend to steal back again. An inane and childish interplay of ‘his and mine.’ How exactly is our purpose served by these games?”
“You have your diversions, we have ours.”
Diversions indeed. Darshan knew perfectly well that Shail had never taken a single step that didn’t somehow serve his own agenda. This tête-à-tête with Pelas would be no exception.
‘…I’ll be attending Shail upon his quest for dominion…’
Pelas had specifically said dominion in his letter, but if Shail had been acting upon their purpose, destruction would have been a better suited description.
Darshan considered his youngest brother with a dark suspicion forming.
He’d always known that following their purpose was simply a game to Shail. He’d assumed it was a more interesting game than the one Shail had been playing in Chaos, and when this game was done—their purpose accomplished, and the Realms of Light unmade—Shail would simply find another game to play in pursuit of their purpose.
But now Darshan wondered if Shail was pursuing their purpose at all. He traced his fingers along another of Pelas’s knives. “I find myself suddenly curious to see how you’re filling your days, brother.”
Shail moved a candlestick on the mantel a fraction of an inch to the left. “I fear you would find the hours mundane, what with no truthreaders to corrupt or acolytes to compel to your bed…”
“Yet my interest is piqued to see the many ingenious ways you must be acting towards the accomplishment of our purpose.”
Shail’s hand stilled on the mantel. He turned Darshan a portentous stare. “Meddle in my affairs at your peril, Darshan.”
And there it was, as plain a confession as he would likely ever get from his youngest brother.
So Pelas was right. Darshan felt more disappointed than surprised.
He lowered his gaze back to Pelas’s table of knives and selected a black-bladed stiletto from among the collection. He observed quietly as he examined its edge, “If you’ve abandoned our purpose, Shailabanáchtran…nothing can protect you.” Then he lashed out with a net of deyjiin.
Shail snarled a curse and just caught the upper edge of the net in his upraised fist. The net expanded into a sizzling curtain of silver-violet energy pulsing with intent. Shail’s face twisted as he strained his own power to keep the net from closing around him. “You let…Pelas turn your mind against me!” he gasped while his fist grew white and his face red and veins bulged in his neck. “Why?”
Darshan approached his brother steadily. In his mind he held firm his intent, so that with each step, he pushed the net more forcefully to close around Shail. “Curiously, I think Pelas is telling the truth.”
“So what if he is?” Shail shoved his other hand up to help hold off Darshan’s confining net. The flickering power cast ill reflections on his features. “Why should we not act as gods to these creatures? We’ve only to align our will and this world prostrates itself across our path!”
Darshan continued his approach, eyeing his brother inscrutably, his thumb running casually along the sharp edge of the stiletto. “So you choose to become as they would fashion you? A god by a mortal’s standard? No less and no more than what their minds can envision?”
Shail snarled venomously, “Isn’t that what you do every day?”
Rivulets of blood were running down Shail’s arms, darkening the silk of his r
obes. Darshan pushed a little harder on his net, and Shail staggered backwards. He sucked in his breath and glared venomously at him.
“It is our intent that determines our effect, Shailabanáchtran.” Darshan thumbed his blade—Pelas’s blade. It was delightfully sharp. “My every action has been in pursuit of our purpose. What can be said of yours?”
He shifted the intent in his working, and the blood on Shail’s hands sputtered and burst into flames. Shail snarled a furious curse. Darshan caught a glimpse of his intent with the glare in his eye, and—
Power ripped through the room. The tower walls exploded, the roof disintegrated, furniture flew away with screams of rending wood, and the wind came swirling violently through, scattering the deadly detritus of the explosion.
Darshan seared the air clean with a thought.
When stillness settled an instant later, the ravaged tower lay open to the elements, and Darshan stood alone.
Twelve
“To succeed as a wielder requires a passionate and inconsolable obsession.”
–The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra
Tanis stood with Nadia on Pelas’s rooftop terrace watching the sun rising between a molten sea and a stormy sky. The lad thought the storm a fitting portent, for they were any moment due to depart for Faroqhar.
Hallovia was famous for its torrential weather. The approaching storm already had the sea white-capped and the waves in a high fury; yet Tanis had the sense that this storm wouldn’t come close to approximating the fury he was sure to face from the Empress of Agasan upon their arrival back in the Sacred City.
A thread of tension bound Tanis, cords of consequence reaching out from a far distant Faroqhar. He already felt chained, as if his past choices had placed the manacles on wrists and ankles, only waiting on time and conscience to draw them tight. Men claimed to be shackled by circumstance, but Tanis felt jailed by yesterday’s decisions.
Exhaling a measured breath, trying to ease the apprehension that had his insides knotted up and his hands all twitchy, Tanis moved up behind Nadia, wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. He breathed in her scent and rested his head against hers. He didn’t know what would happen once they returned to Agasan, but he doubted very much that he’d be given an opportunity to be alone with her again.
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 20
