“Yes, my lord…” Dore licked his lips again, “but what to do…this is the issue. Ean val Lorian cannot be allowed to continue stealing in and out of Ivarnen. He’s disrupting your good work and destroying the eidola.”
Darshan turned a chill look over his shoulder. “Your work lies here at Ivarnen, not mine.”
“But they are your eidola he’s destroying, my lord.” Dore paced with his chin tucked low, as if to hide his eyes from the light.
Darshan turned back to the rain. The burning existential questions he was pondering were far more compelling to him than Dore’s obsessions. “Eidola promised to a putrefied prince whose rule is nearing its end. I have plenty of eidola in Tambarré. These treaties you made with Radov serve no purposes of mine.”
Dore shook his head from side to side, his manner quite at odds with his words as he replied, “You’re right of course, my lord. You needn’t concern yourself with Radov and his war, but Ean val Lorian…he is a thorn—nay an arrow shot from an errant bow that claims the king and wins the battle.”
Darshan misliked Dore’s analogy. “Ean val Lorian is no threat to me.”
Wind funneled through the arcade. Darshan followed its rain-drenched scent out onto the terrace to escape the smothering reek of Dore’s manipulative breath.
Dore scuttled after him. “The val Lorian prince is a threat to your plans, my lord. He would thwart your purpose, undermine your important work! He and his Isabel, bound with the Unbreakable Bond—he’s Arion Tavestra Returned, my lord, and Tavestra…” Dore shook his head emphatically. “Tavestra is no trifling enemy.”
Darshan had heard this rant countless times; Dore could spout it endlessly, the words recombined a thousand ways, never saying anything new nor offering any insight of value or consequence. Darshan’s interest was waning until he heard, “…found each other again in this life. Now she Awakens him to the powers he once had—”
“Found each other.” Darshan spied Dore over his shoulder. “Found each other how?”
Dore’s pink tongue trailed across his lips. “It’s the nature of the Unbreakable Bond, my lord. The two souls call to one another, they…they summon each other across time.”
Darshan considered this. “How does this Unbreakable Bond compare to the binding you advised me to work on Kjieran van Stone?”
“They are quite similar, my lord. It is what you asked me for—eternity with the man.” He watched Darshan with a dark light in his eyes. “I’ve only ever tried to give you exactly what you asked for.”
Darshan grunted dubiously at this.
“If only you had let me question Isabel van Gelderan.” When Darshan said nothing to this, Dore continued, “She could’ve told us much, my lord—oh, so much! She and her brother have been working for centuries to thwart you. Oh, if you had let me question her while I had her bound in goracrosta, what truths I could’ve uncovered—”
“How?”
Dore blinked. Then he reared his head back to look up at Darshan. “How what…my lord?”
Darshan leveled him a piercing stare. “How have Isabel and Björn van Gelderan been working to thwart my purpose?”
Dore ducked his head again and shifted agitatedly from side to side. “They…they have a vast network, my lord, contacts that span the globe. Ean val Lorian—”
“I did not ask about Ean val Lorian.” Darshan clasped hands behind his back and looked away again.
“But he is one of their agents, my lord, and you see what chaos he’s caused!”
“I see the chaos he has caused you, Dore Madden. I do not see how these others are a threat.” It wasn’t entirely true—Isabel had apparently orchestrated Pelas’s escape, but Dore didn’t know that.
Dore made a frustrated exhale. “The High Mage sees the future, my lord, and her brother, the Fifth Vestal…” he shuddered, and his eyes grew wider and wilder, “he wields powers that would shock the gods.”
“Not my gods.”
Dore gave a sort of quivering wince. The tip of his tongue flickered hesitatingly between his lips and then vanished, as if uncertain of its welcome. His face readjusted into that preening expression he assumed whenever he was trying to be coy.
“Björn knows of you, my lord.” Dore inched closer. “He knows your powers, your capabilities. His Sundragons have stalemated the war—”
“Radov’s war.”
“My lord…” a sort of desperation whined in Dore’s rising voice, “Björn still has the support of the other vestals—”
“I thought you and Shail controlled Alorin’s vestals.”
“Soon we shall have our candidates in place, but the Balance is delicate right now.”
“Balance bends to my will.”
“Precisely, my lord!” Dore shifted and waggled his body from side to side, like a dog pinned behind a fence. “If you mean to take no action against our enemies, my lord, at least…at least let me move forward with making your army.”
Darshan gazed off into the misty day. “I will make no more eidola.”
“But my lord!” Dore quivered with frustration. “How will we supply troops to fulfill Radov’s need if you have no army?”
“I am sure you will find a solution. The problem in either case is yours to solve.”
Dore whimpered unhappily. “But…but, my lord, if your enemies rise against you, you will need eidola to combat them, and now…but we have everything in place now in Tambarré to work the conversion. Think of it, my lord—multitudes bound to you…”
He continued talking, but Darshan had stopped listening. Dore had become his youngest brother’s mouthpiece, useful now only in revealing what new betrayals Shail had involved himself in.
“Take the eidola away from here.” Darshan gave the order without waiting for Dore to pause. “Keep their location hidden, or deliver them early to Radov, I care not which, only that you remove them from Ivarnen and other of my holdings.”
Dore’s mouth snapped shut. He furrowed his brow deeply and curled his upper lip towards his frowning nose, the two nearly touching.
“You may personally oversee the conversion of the last clutch of eidola, lending them your considerable protection. Thus this mortal prince who so plagues your efforts may not trouble you again.”
It wasn’t the solution Dore had wanted—he salivated over Ean val Lorian’s body trussed and bound on his table—but Darshan would no longer willingly supply fodder for Dore’s unwholesome appetites.
He had a different fate in mind for Prince Ean val Lorian…this prince who had so many times escaped their traps, who had mysteriously severed Darshan’s bond with his Marquiin, who feverishly attacked and destroyed his eidola, thumbing his nose at Darshan, mind to mind.
This prince who had worked the Unbreakable Bond and allegedly Returned and found his love anew.
In the many times their minds had brushed as Ean had been recklessly ripping the life out of an eidola, Darshan had gotten a sense of Ean val Lorian. He knew that the prince would not stop trying to find ways to destroy his creations. Ean would seek more of them to test his patterns. With the eidola gone from Ivarnen and the other castles hostile to him, the prince would be forced to come to Tambarré.
A dark light of intent burned in Darshan’s gaze. This time, Ean val Lorian shall come to me, and I will have many questions for him.
Twenty-two
“Come and find me. I’ll be waiting.”
–The Enemy, to Arion Tavestra
Ean walked a hallway in the Palace of Andorr hoeing vexation through the currents. With his every step, spiny stalks of frustration twined through tendrils of dismay, such that a deadly bramble of energy rose in his wake.
So close! They’d been so close, only to come to a staggering halt at what appeared to be an insurmountable barrier. How were they to test the effectiveness of their patterns without eidola to test them on?
The night had been a complete waste. He’d traveled all the way to Ivarnen only to discover the eidola gone. The worst part was
that Ean should’ve anticipated the move.
He and Dore were waging their own little game within the larger war, a skirmish of vendettas, heirlooms of vengeance hidden for centuries until time and circumstance might reveal them anew. The First Lord’s game whirled around them, carrying them towards a final confrontation, but somehow they managed to make moves and counter-moves and keep their own game alive within the broader field of action.
Ean knew Dore thought this way. Without ever speaking to the man in this life, he knew that Dore had been waiting for Arion’s Return for centuries—indeed, that their private feud was simply a continuation of one that had come to a precipitous halt at the Citadel on Tiern’aval, when a more powerful Player had stepped onto the field.
‘Come and find me. I’ll be waiting.’
Ean couldn’t shake those words from his head. He needed to know what had transpired between Arion and the Enemy in those lost moments of darkness. Where had Arion strayed from the path so as to bring Balance to bear against him? How had he betrayed Isabel and Björn? And why would he ever have done so?
For Ean was sure that Arion had.
He felt it now…that sort of grim inevitability that descends upon a man when he finally faces the spears of his misdeeds without justification’s shield. He knew Arion had committed some betrayal. He just didn’t know how or why it had come to pass. And until he did…until he dug into the grave of Arion’s conscience and beheld that truth, until he could face that moment, he would never again be whole.
By all the gods!
Frustration and regret tolled endlessly in Ean’s head. His every failure resonated foully against each of his earlier ones, setting them all to a dissonant clanging, announcing his misdeeds like a chorus of plague bells warning everyone away. Balance was shouting; Ean just couldn’t understand its roar.
He pushed a hand through his hair as he climbed a long staircase towards his brother’s rooms. Weariness haunted his every step. His nights, he spent hunting eidola, for they were a kinder adversary than sleep; his days, he spent dreading the nights.
Perhaps it was just weariness that had caused him to miss the most obvious repercussion of his actions: that if Ean couldn’t be stopped, Darshan and Dore would simply move their eidola elsewhere, out of his reach. Perhaps his muddled brain held too much kindling and not enough sparks to ignite it properly, but he couldn’t help worrying that he’d somehow attracted Cephrael’s blighting eye and drawn Balance to bear against himself again.
How galling to think that Dore Madden played the game better than he did.
This unexpected thought speared him deeply, dragging his feet to a halt on the landing of Sebastian’s floor. Yet how could he deny it? Since Björn had reclaimed him from the paths of the dead, Ean had been guided, ordered, prodded and jostled about, no less a marionette than he’d been while still running for the Cairs, with Raine D’Lacourte pulling the strings on one side and the zanthyr on the other.
‘…Players make their moves at will, reassured only by their own resolve, facing dire consequences, protected by no one, and shielded by nothing but the force of their conviction…’ These were the zanthyr’s words, spoken all those months ago.
Perhaps he had claimed some place on the field…but then he’d just stood there letting everyone bash and batter him, making no moves save ones that had nearly cost them everything.
Oh…he’d made so many mistakes! What successes he’d gained had come at a heavy cost. Even in freeing Sebastian and rescuing Rhys, he’d still only been reacting to another Player’s actions.
Ean leaned back against the wall and braced his hands on his knees, letting the truth claim him as he claimed it—though Raine’s truth, it felt like bitter bile on his breath.
But in this soul-searching, he saw something important, a vital difference between himself and Arion: Arion had trusted his instincts, while Ean grudgingly held in suspicion even the decisions he hadn’t decided on yet. But if he couldn’t trust his instincts to lead him, he was never going to be a Player.
Somehow he had to learn to trust himself again.
A bright dawn had claimed the world by the time Ean reached his brother’s apartments and sought him inside, expecting he would just be waking. To his surprise, he found Sebastian and the Princess Ehsan standing close together out on the terrace.
Looking exotically lovely in a beaded turquoise sari, Ehsan was the first to notice Ean’s arrival. She turned with a demure smile, pressed her palms together and bowed politely to him. “Sobh bekheir, Prince of Dannym.”
“And a good morning to you also, Princess.” Ean leaned a shoulder against one of the loggia’s arches and crossed his arms. The currents were calm, but with the energy obviously circulating between Sebastian and Ehsan, they should’ve been electrified. He suppressed a smile. “Am I interrupting something?”
Sebastian tugged at one ear and held a hand to the princess. “Ehsan was just…”
“Leaving.” She gave Sebastian a decorous look that said one thing, beneath an arched eyebrow that suggested quite another, and nodded once more to Ean as she departed. “Prince Ean.”
“Princess Ehsan.” Ean looked over his shoulder to watch her glide away. Then he noticed his brother doing the same and grinned openly at him.
Sebastian cast him a sidelong glance. “What?” He returned his admiring gaze to Ehsan’s curves.
Ean’s grin widened. “How long are you two going to keep this up?”
Sebastian exhaled a slow breath. “As long as possible.” He watched Ehsan until she vanished around a corner. Then he shifted his gaze to Ean, whereupon a frown overtook his expression. “Forgive my asking, Ean, but did you sleep at all?” He walked to a sideboard and poured wine into two fresh goblets.
“Not really.” Ean gratefully accepted the wine his brother offered him. “Look that good, do I?”
Sebastian grunted dubiously. “Slightly better than death warmed over.”
“Sleep isn’t much of a friend to me these days.” Ean lowered himself into a chair at the table, whereupon his weary, wandering gaze noted breakfast dishes not yet cleared from a meal set for two. He lifted a smile back to his brother. “Should I be asking if you slept last night?”
“No, you definitely should not.” Sebastian swept him with his gaze as he sat down across from him. “Something’s different about you. What happened last night?”
Ean fingered his goblet, frowning. Then he drank his wine and collapsed backwards into the cushion of his seat. “I should’ve seen it coming.” He rolled his head around on the back of his chair. “It was an obvious play.”
Sebastian’s expression narrowed. “Seen what coming?”
“The eidola are gone from Ivarnen.”
Sebastian halted his goblet at his lips and lowered it again. “Gone? How gone? Where gone?”
Ean shook his head. “Moved, I suspect. I don’t know where, but without them I have no way of testing our patterns. No way of knowing if they will work.”
“Shadow take Dore Madden.” Sebastian glared into his goblet and then drank deeply of it. Staring into the cup as he lowered it again, he muttered, “Would that the Demon Lord had seen fit to claim him at birth.”
Ean grunted. “Dore would probably have corrupted Belloth, too.”
Sebastian lifted his gaze back to him. “So…what do you suggest?”
Ean rolled his head around on the back of his chair again and stared off to the side, over the broad vista of a hazy Kandori morning. Like Arion when he’d faced the Mages, Ean perceived numerous paths spiraling out before him, roads to a new future; also like Arion, he knew there was only one he would choose.
He exhaled a sigh. “What else can we do? We have to find another colony of eidola.”
Sebastian scrubbed at the back of his head. “Tal’Afaq is out of the question—they’ll be on the lookout for you there. Likewise Tyr’kharta…Ivarnen. You’ve shortened the list of possible strongholds considerably.”
Ean had already
reached the same conclusion. He arched resigned brows. “Save one.”
Sebastian gave him a portentous look of alarm. “Surely you don’t mean Tambarré.”
“Whatever else Dore and Darshan are planning—moving the eidola, probably expecting me to seek them out again and laying some trap in wait—I guarantee they won’t be expecting me to come to Tambarré.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened. “Because no one in the realm would be that stupid!”
Ean met his brother’s gaze and held it while he drank more of his wine. “It occurred to me, Sebastian, that the only way I can possibly win against them is to do the unexpected.”
“Ean…” Sebastian shifted discontentedly in his chair. “Isabel sacrificed herself so Darshan wouldn’t find you. Now you mean to walk right up—not to his doorstep, nay, but like as into his damned privy chamber—and announce yourself?”
“All I mean to do is get in, throw the pattern, see that it works, and get out as fast as I can.”
Sebastian grunted and shook his head. “If you work the lifeforce in the Prophet’s temple—verily, anywhere in Tambarré—the Prophet will know.”
Ean frowned at this. “I can do much with my talent innately without causing a disturbance on the currents.”
“It’s not the currents.” Sebastian refilled his wine rather agitatedly. “Dore Madden has linked wards set all around the Tambarré acropolis like a chain of bells. Even with your skill, Ean, you’d never be able to unwork them all. By Cephrael’s Great Book—half of them are carved into the very stones. And the Prophet…” he sat back again with a forceful exhale, “I can’t even begin to describe him to you. Just let me assure you, he will know if you work elae near his temple. You can’t risk it.”
“Yet…there may be a way,” a new voice said.
Ean turned his head to see Dareios leaning against a column, arms crossed. Their host nodded in greeting. “Sobh bekheir, Ean, Sebastian.”
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 34
