Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)
Page 29
Even without access to elae, Nadia felt power radiating off of him. His gaze as it shifted between Shail and herself was very, very dark.
Shail and the tall man were speaking, but Nadia hardly heard them once she realized who the man was. Then, all too suddenly, Shail was gone and she was left staring up into the smoldering gaze of the Prophet Bethamin.
The Prophet…who made Adepts into monsters, whose Ascendants had taken Tanis and tried to do the same to him. The Prophet…whose doctrine sowed dissention among otherwise harmonious races. The Prophet, also known as Darshan, who’d placed on his brother Pelas a maliciously evil compulsion that had nearly ruined him.
Now he stood staring at her with those terrible eyes, so coldly compelling…so calculating.
Nadia swallowed.
The Prophet came towards her.
She felt a sudden desperate urge to run, to scream for help, to rebel against whatever he meant to do to her, but his gaze pinned her feet to the stones and her breath to her lungs and even forced her thoughts to freeze in whatever shape they’d assumed.
From the look in his eyes as he towered over her—near enough now to feel the chill emitting from his flesh—she felt certain he intended something terrible, but he only hooked a finger beneath the goracrosta that bound her wrists, and the rope whispered into ash.
Elae flooded into her.
Nadia inhaled a shuddering gasp. Then she caught her breath, for the full force of him descended on her too. His power wrapped around her, penetrated and entwined her as roses overtaking a statue. Stems of his binding will wound through her mind; sharp thorns sank in to mold it to a shape of their choosing.
He turned and started back towards the building. Nadia’s body automatically followed.
Time seemed to jump, for the next thing she knew, she was standing in a windowless octagonal chamber framed by a blind arcade. He sank into a low-slung iron chair in the middle of the room and extended his long legs in front of him, his arms on the leather-padded rests, fingers curled around the knobby ends. The room held no other furniture, no adornment beyond the arches carved into the walls, yet it felt almost too full—filled with the force of him.
Now he was just staring at her.
If every man in the Empire had been ogling her in stark nakedness, Nadia couldn’t have felt more self-conscious than she did standing before the Prophet Bethamin fully clothed. She knew what he did to truthreaders; she knew what he did to men. And if she’d had any question about his intent towards her, the riotous energy bombarding the room dispelled all doubt. She resisted the urge to cringe by shoving her hands behind her back.
‘Let nothing and no man shake your composure.’ Her mother’s instructions echoed in her mind. ‘An empress’s comportment is as critical to her success as alacritous thought and attention to detail.’
But Nadia was sure her mother had never faced off against anyone like Darshan.
Worse than the Prophet’s calculating gaze was the feeling of his mind sweeping through hers as a wind across an open plaza, leaving no space unexplored, no leaf of thought untouched.
Mostly to distract herself from the frightening sensation, she worked some moisture into her mouth and braved, “Why did you release my bonds?”
She wasn’t sure if he would answer, but after a moment he replied in a deep voice, “I don’t need magic rope to bind you.”
Whereupon she found herself kneeling on the floor with her arms splayed out in front of her and her forehead pressed low against the tiles. The marble was cold beneath her brow, but not nearly so cold as the feeling of his mind controlling hers.
Oh, to become so malleable beneath his will! She didn’t even have any awareness of the action until it was done!
Nadia could’ve found courage in defiance—in even attempting to defy him, in even imagining that she might—but he gave her no chance to think about defying him before compliance was achieved.
Nadia choked back a cry. It caught in her throat while she trembled. She pressed her forehead harder against the floor and bound in a sudden fear-spawned grief with a tight swallow. Is this what it had been like for Immanuel—Pelas—beneath his brother’s will? How had he ever resisted? The experience was unlike any compulsion she’d ever heard of.
“Stand up, Nadia.”
A heartbeat’s thoughtful pause, and then she moved shakily to her feet. He hadn’t compelled her. Perhaps he knew he’d made his point.
He tapped a finger against the chair. “What is your full name?”
She heard herself say, “Nadia van Gelderan, daughter of Valentina, heir to the Empire of Agasan,” and then she caught her breath as if to suck the words back in.
“What is your involvement with Shail?”
“We think he abducted one of our friends…” the words flowed as water across her lips. She could no more stop them than she might’ve stopped the selfsame fluid once it left her tongue. She didn’t even recall having a thought before the information crossed her tongue to be absorbed by his smoldering gaze.
Nadia had never experienced anything so terrifying. Her mother was a stacked truthreader with four Sormitáge rings, and even she hadn’t this kind of control. His was a power beyond her comprehension.
When he’d torn the whole story from her like an offending weed ripped out by the roots, the turbulent energy surrounding him settled, and he observed her in silence, his gaze taking every inch of her measure. Nadia felt like she was the weed ripped from all things familiar and tossed into the pail of the inexplicable.
‘An enemy is only an enemy while your purposes are misaligned.’ Her mother’s words became a bastion for her composure.
‘In negotiation, trust is a better commodity than pride.’ Her father’s advice helped her claim a foothold from which to view her position.
‘Whatever happens, I will find you.’ Immanuel’s words. If she trusted him, she had to keep faith with his promise, too.
The Prophet tapped a finger on the end of his chair arm while his gaze roamed across her, making her feel no better than a slave standing disrobed on the block at auction. She could read nothing of his thoughts—even with full access to elae. And as for trying her talent on him in return? Well…there was courage, and there was stupidity.
“Tell me what you know about Pelas.”
Once again, the words flowed—everything she knew of Immanuel came pouring out. In the last, she finished, “…he promised Tanis he would protect him and said he would choose his own brother this time. They worked the Unbreakable Bond.”
His eyes grew darker than the void of a starless night. “My brother bound himself to a mortal boy?”
The cold fury in these words brought a dreadful edge to the currents, so that each wave crossing her felt razor sharp. Nadia hugged her arms around her chest, but bone and flesh offered ill protection against his reverberating anger.
“Tanis isn’t…mortal,” she forced out—so discomfiting to have him rip things so effortlessly off her tongue, but when she wanted to craft her own words, the muscle became as unmalleable as hardened clay, “not if he works the Pattern of Life. And even were death to separate them, now that they’ve worked the Unbreakable Bond, they would find each other again in the Returning. It is proven so.”
“Proven.” His tone held a leading edge, demanding explanation.
At least he hadn’t compelled her answer that time. “There are hundreds of works in the Sormitáge Archives on the Returning: personal accounts, memoirs, biographies and case studies specifically on the Unbreakable Bond. A special order of Sobra Scholars has spent centuries researching and documenting the subject.”
“Sobra Scholars…” his finger tapped, tapped…as if in time to his thoughts, “those who study the work you Adepts prize so highly, this Sobra I’ternin?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “It…speaks of you, actually.”
His head tilted almost imperceptibly to his right. “Of me.”
“Of all of the Malorin’athgul.”
“Speak to me of this.”
“A young Nodefinder named Malin van Drexel found your names in the Qhorith’quitara—these are apocryphal works kept in the Sormitáge Archives. We think that’s why N’abranaacht—I mean, Shail—took him. If he took him.” She dropped her gaze. “We still don’t know what happened to Malin.”
His finger tapped a cadence while his eyes considered her with a piercing scrutiny.
She swallowed and pressed on. “My mother said the Sobra speaks more of you. She didn’t divulge much to me, only that Malorin’athgul are the balance to creation, that you’re crafted of both fabrics—elae and deyjiin—and…” Nadia lifted her gaze back to his, “and that you shouldn’t be in our world at all.”
That finger lifted to point at her. “Echoes of Pelas’s words.”
Her gaze followed the line of his finger back along a muscled arm up to his very dark eyes. It was somehow worse that his features were so striking and yet his manner so chillingly indifferent.
“Imman—I mean, Pelas,” Nadia’s heart was fluttering, “he never spoke to me about your purpose here. I only know what my mother told me from the Sobra I’ternin.”
His finger resumed its tapping, his gaze its dark assessment of her. “How exactly have your scholars ‘researched and documented’ the Returning?”
It occurred to her to wonder why he was no longer compelling her answers, but whatever his reasons, Nadia was grateful for the chance to think her own thoughts and frame her own sentences. So she answered him as readily and honestly as she could.
“They…have followed certain Adepts through the centuries. Many Adepts don’t recall their past lives, but those who have worked the Pattern of Life and then…somehow…lost their life, these often can recall them. It’s the binding aspect of the Pattern—it holds open the doors of memory.”
Nadia was becoming more sure of herself the longer he let her speak. “Over the centuries, Sormitáge scholars have searched for and studied those Adepts. Truthreaders worked with them to recall their previous lives, while the researchers tried to discover things only those Adepts who died could’ve known, so as to test the veracity of their recollections.”
She hooked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “The laymen and the masses who believe in the Returning must take much on faith, but those Adepts who have studied discover there is little faith involved. The truths have been proven time and again.”
Upon this utterance, the Prophet retreated to his thoughts.
To Nadia, the slight lessening of his attention felt as perceptible as a cloud’s shading of the sun. She had no idea how well he’d accepted the information she’d given him or why the subject had intrigued him to begin with.
She pushed another strand of hair from her face and tried to collect herself, to straighten her shoulders and keep her hands from shaking. A moment of boldness struck her and she ventured, “Your brother Shail…” but then she stopped herself.
His finger paused its tapping, hovered, and then started again. “What of him?”
Nadia took a deep breath to fuel her courage. “He knows the Sobra. He’s been studying it for centuries—he admitted this to us. He said…” Again, she caught her tongue. Oh, if only she could read him better!
The Prophet arched a brow. “Continue, Nadia.”
Nadia chewed on her lip, regarding him uncertainly. “Shail…spoke of you when he was holding us in Shadow.” She searched his gaze at this, hoping to catch some hint as to how he was receiving her words. “He said that you spent all of your time dwelling in religious fantasy and…” despite herself, she had to drop her eyes to confess, “lecturing about purpose.”
“Those are unlikely to be the words he used.”
Did he sound faintly amused? By the Lady, he was so hard to read!
“Not exactly…no. But then he said that he had been studying and learning for centuries, piecing together Alorin’s history so that he could rule it and all of the Realms of Light.”
Not merely tapping now, his fingers curled, riffled and resettled on the padded arm of his chair.
Nadia watched him watching her and tried not to worry where his thoughts might be taking him, or where he might be later taking her. The only remotely heartening point was in recognizing that while he’d compelled her answers at first, he’d been surprisingly sedate in his treatment of her since…restrained even.
Her courage waxed as panic waned. “Do you enjoy our fear?”
His head tilted almost imperceptibly to the left. “It is merely the emotion I most often receive from your race.”
“Perhaps if you didn’t compel us against our will, we wouldn’t be so terrified of you.”
“A specious theory. Fear is innate to your kind.”
“So is boldness.”
“Especially with you, it would appear.”
She dropped her gaze to her hands and tried to think of some other entry into conversation. He instantly blunted her every advance.
“This unbreakable binding my brother worked with this truthreader…”
Nadia lifted her gaze back to him.
His fingers riffled. “Tell me about it.”
She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. “There are many types of fourth-strand bindings.” She suspected the Prophet himself knew most of them. “But the Unbreakable Bond is woven of all of the strands of elae. It is most often forged through blood and involves the weaving together of both Adepts’ life patterns. They become intimately and inextricably joined.”
Nadia glanced down at her hands and then back to him. He gave her no indication of how he’d received this truth. But talking was more comfortable than the deathly silence of his gaze.
“Most fourth-strand bindings are patterned so that they can be broken, but not the Unbreakable Bond. Elae’s fifth strand is woven throughout the other strands of the pattern—through the very life patterns of the persons involved. In the case of Tanis and your brother…” she searched his expression, but it remained as stone, “in Pelas’s case, because he’s natively of the fifth strand, he merely had to will that the binding would endure,” thus had Tanis described the experience to her, “and thereby bound them with the fifth, making the bond unbreakable.”
The Prophet’s fingers riffled as flickering thoughts to be inspected, evaluated and discarded. Abruptly he stood and strode out of the room.
Nadia was standing there wondering if she should follow him when a wall sizzled into being across the archway leading into the chamber. The energy glowed with a cold light unlike elae and yet also unlike what she’d witnessed of deyjiin. Nadia gazed after him with fear and uncertainty vying for purchase on her features.
The Prophet never looked back.
Eighteen
“The simplest way to control a man is to lie to him.”
–Shailabanáchtran, Maker of Storms
Pelas lingered in the interminable dark.
Hovering forms blanketed his vision; lassitude, his vigor. Every breath required an effort of will. A hundred revenants were piled atop him in a seething mass, every one of them leeching power from his form. He had become a dying star.
Caught in the timelessness of Shadow, Pelas yet remained aware of every grain of sand falling in Nadia’s hourglass, of the minute hand of destiny spinning apace with planetary rotation, time turning in inexorable synchronicity with the ever-weaving pattern. He’d promised Tanis to protect the princess. He couldn’t fail in that promise, but escape seemed far beyond his reach.
In the beginning, he’d felt the pain of the revenants’ touch. Now all he knew was a numb immobility…and darkness. What light might’ve once graced that icy place had vanished as a lamp extinguished—as his brother would have his life extinguished—and now the only light came through his memories of Tanis and the faint connection that bound them st
ill.
While the revenants fed, consciousness waned. When they abated, momentarily satisfied, it waxed. It was waxing then.
As Pelas regained awareness of his own mind, he began to fear how long he’d been lost that time. He felt an agonizing need to free himself—less for his own welfare than for Nadia and Tanis’s, though to be certain, he didn’t relish an eternity trapped in this, his younger brother’s well-devised hell.
The writhing conglomerate of bodies atop him shifted. The farthest golems began scrabbling down through the stacks of their brethren to take their turn at the trough of his lifeforce. Pelas wasted a few precious minutes of lucidity cursing his brother. Then he set his intention again towards finding a way out of there.
Minutes passed—or hours…days? It was impossible to say in a place that held no time. For all he knew, the entire game had played out back in Alorin and Nadia had already been lost, poor sacrifice to Shail’s enmity.
No.
He wouldn’t allow harm to come to Nadia—or to Tanis.
How then to depart this plane?
Bodies squirmed atop him, and the sludge of half-dead things assumed a new grotesque shape. Nameless pressures clung to him; revenant mouths reeking with want affixed themselves to every inch of his form, their minds radiating a gluttonous hunger. Even the tip of one black toe could leech its bit of life from his veins. They only needed an ounce of fleshly contact to suck him dry.
Eternity would pass before they were sated. Without a bond to the Warlock who’d created them, they became as sieves. For a time the energy of life would fill their forms, but it would only drain slowly out again, dissipating into the void, becoming nothingness, wasted.
And you’re wasting precious time…
That was the trouble with being drained by revenants. Concentration fled from the horror of it.
Pelas felt new teeth biting into his ear. New lips, fingers or even toes affixing to the back of his neck, his ankle, his stomach, his thigh…pressing or sucking his flesh taut. Everywhere his body knew such pressures. A tingling pain began anew, carrying him upon a rising wave of pain towards unconsciousness’s dark shores.