Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Suddenly Darshan pointed his scepter and launched a spear of light towards Pelas. The latter caught it above his head, and a net shimmered down—the same type of net that Ean had careened into earlier that night.

  Ean couldn’t free Pelas from the net, but he could possibly give him a chance to escape—for Nadia, for Tanis, for the sake of the Balance, which Pelas might be able to shift in their favor.

  He turned his attention to finding his sword. Somewhere among that chaos and ruin, it lay waiting for his call. Phaedor had crafted that sword for him, and Ean knew unequivocally that the zanthyr would’ve fashioned it to endure even the opposing polarities of Darshan’s deadly field.

  Ean pulled as much of the fifth as he could hold in preparation for what he meant to do. He made his fourth-strand shield more solid—if he lost that, he would lose everything—and compartmentalized his mind, all while mentally seeking his sword amid the rubble.

  Finally perceiving its Merdanti song, he lassoed it with the fifth, heard its vibrating whisper as it sailed through the air, and reached up to grab the weapon just as it flew above his head. His fingers closed around the hilt with a clap of leather. The blade sang a welcome in his mind.

  Ean lowered his arm and leveled his blade at Darshan.

  Darshan arched a brow. “So this is the path you choose?” He flipped his scepter in the air and caught it in its center. “Only a fool challenges his gods.”

  “You’re no god of mine.”

  “So be it.” Darshan extended his arm before him, aligning the scepter’s shaft parallel to Ean, and out of the blunt ends speared dual swords of deyjiin. They pulsed with a cold light and cast grimly flickering shadows across Darshan’s features and the surrounding hall.

  Ean swallowed in spite of himself.

  You sure don’t see one of those every day, Fynn’s voice remarked in the prince’s head. Ean wondered contentiously just how many people were going to be paying his head a visit before the day was done.

  Darshan advanced upon him with slow regard, reminding Ean unsettlingly of the Sundragon Ramuhárikhamáth in T’khendar’s Hall of Heroes, just after the drachwyr had apologized for what he meant to do.

  Quickening his approach, Darshan lifted his arm overhead and spun his scepter—nay, his dual-bladed staff—and then sliced it downwards. The saber of deyjiin struck a pillar, and a large portion of the stone dissolved into sand.

  Important safety note, Ean, Fynn’s voice observed. Don’t let it touch you.

  Ean just caught himself before snapping a reply—he would not be engaging in conversation with these mad voices, spawned of exhaustion and fatigue.

  But the moment served as a grim reminder of the very real danger he was facing in trying to work the lifeforce, for these voices were elae’s warning that his endurance was nearing its end.

  As Darshan neared, Ean lifted his blade to the ready, and they embarked upon a well-known prelude to the dance of swords, tracing each other’s steps in a predatory circle.

  Darshan held his gaze on Ean with an archer’s expert fix. He never once removed it while he spun his staff from one hand to the other, his deadly, polarized blades singing a discordant hum. He never once relented in his pounding mental assault, sending a constant barrage of compulsion to break against the ramparts of Ean’s mind.

  Verily, resisting the compulsion alone would’ve been contest enough for Ean—who knew if Darshan himself might’ve been content with it?—but Ean had thrown down the gauntlet, and now only a pool of blood would suffice to name the victor of their contest.

  Darshan spun his staff blindingly quick, brought it up spinning over his head, and advanced towards Ean. Ean put the fifth into his blade and spun into the cortata as he stepped to meet him.

  Blade and staff met-met-met-met, sang as they separated, and meeting again, rang in tympanic thunder. Every time Ean’s Merdanti blade touched Darshan’s sabers of deyjiin, static sparks flew, the currents rippled, and the hair stood up in needles on Ean’s arms.

  Darshan had long legs, long arms, and took lengthy steps. He flowed with the grace of a demigod and the power of one. His dark gaze never wavered from Ean. His every motion remained controlled, crafted with precision, certain of its placement. Around they danced, continuing their rapid cadence of staff and steel, deyjiin and elae. Rap-rap-rap-rap-rap, a frenzied connection of twirling staff and wielded blade.

  With the cortata’s help, Ean held his own against his dangerous opponent, but every clash of their weapons sent lightning coursing along his bones. Ean only needed to hold Darshan’s attention long enough for Pelas to escape, and then he could make his own flight to freedom. But by Cephrael’s Great Book—what was taking the man so long?

  ***

  Pelas braced one hand on the floor and thrust the other overhead, holding off the hissing net of deyjiin with gritted teeth and a lot of silent cursing. The electrified net was cutting into his palm, and a painful current charged continuously down his arm and into his chest, fluttering his heart.

  Still, this was better than revenants.

  Beside him, Darshan’s Marquiin wasn’t faring as well. His hands and arms were covered in blood, a result of the net’s static bite, and his face was growing paler by the breath. Nadia seemed to care about him, which roused Pelas’s concern for him also.

  A quick self-assessment suggested he had just enough strength to summon a portal into Shadow and possibly enough to get them out again. That possibly struck a disturbingly chord. He had to turn it into a probably. Tanis wouldn’t take kindly to his losing Nadia in the void for all time.

  The trouble with this solution wasn’t how to call a portal while holding off the net, but how to get them all through the portal without letting the net close around them—or bringing the damnable thing along with them into Shadow, where it would become ten times stronger and mean their certain end.

  In their favor, Darshan had turned his ravenous attention towards a more interesting meal. Providing that Ean could keep Darshan occupied, Pelas at least didn’t have to worry about fighting his brother. Only his brother’s net.

  While the net sizzled above his head and that relentless, searing current electrified his body, making his muscles twitch erratically or even refuse to function as they should, Pelas thought through the possible scenarios for escape. Working the lifeforce would be impractical while holding a pulsating negative energy source—the net would only nullify elae—and the acrobatic feats he favored were quite beyond him at that point. He couldn’t push the net off of them because of its magnetic properties, which were trying to force it closed around them. However…he could still possibly put gravity to work on their behalf.

  Pelas looked to the grimacing Marquiin. “Can you hold it? Even for a few seconds? If I let go, can you hold it?”

  Dark shadows now combined with the tattoos beneath the Marquiin’s eyes. A tragedy, this youth; he was young to have had his future so befouled by Darshan’s appetites. The young man looked sickly, ready to collapse; his entire body was shaking. But he managed a nod.

  Pelas looked to Nadia. “Princess, come closer.”

  As Nadia was approaching, Pelas looked up beneath the net and assessed their line of fall. Then he looked to the Marquiin. “We have to get back on our feet.”

  He locked eyes with the youth to help synchronize their motion. Together they pressed back to both feet. Pelas swore beneath the effort. By the time he straightened, his entire body was alive with static.

  Looking at the situation newly, this was not that much better than revenants.

  “Nadia…” Pelas forced out her name between his clenched teeth. He felt like his teeth were the only thing truly supporting the weight of the damned net. “Come closer.”

  Nadia inched tentatively up to him. At the behest of his gaze, she slipped her arms around his chest and gasped when static sparked upon her touch.

  Pelas struggled to draw in enough breath to speak. His lungs felt petrified, frozen into one shape. He looked gri
mly to the Marquiin. By Chaos born, his timing would have to be perfect or this boy would singe into ash.

  “When we fall…” he managed, “you fall!”

  Pelas would’ve preferred that he went last to hold the net off of them all, but he couldn’t frame space while still standing on Alorin’s plane. He had to lead them into Shadow. He looked to Nadia. “Ready?”

  She swallowed, nodded once.

  Pelas summoned a portal an inch in front of their feet. A door-shaped hole seemed to open in the marble floor.

  It might’ve taken an extra two grains of sand through the hourglass for that portal to open far enough for the three of them to pass through it, but to Pelas, they seemed like the slowest two grains of sand that ever fell.

  “Now!” He threw himself and Nadia towards the portal. The Marquiin flung himself, too. That single second of fall was the longest moment of Pelas’s life.

  It was going to be close.

  Without their bodies forming a base to brace the net apart, its edges curled powerfully towards each other. Pelas released his hold on the net and grabbed Nadia into the circle of one arm and the Marquiin in the other.

  They fell through the portal.

  The net snapped closed.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  ***

  Pelas was gone. The net was gone.

  It had happened during Ean’s overhead parry Darshan’s staff. By the time Ean had beaten back the Malorin’athgul’s next three moves, Pelas, Nadia, the Marquiin—all had vanished.

  Ean was ready to vanish, too.

  His second-strand pattern had revealed that freedom lay just beyond the outer wall, and he’d been slowly working their fight closer to said wall in preparation for the next part of his plan. Only…he suspected he was going to need to make Darshan fairly angry to accomplish it.

  This idea posed its own challenge. For all Darshan was showing Ean how futile and audacious were his endeavors, the man’s tone had barely warmed above a cool indifference. What could he do to actually rile the man?

  Fynn’s voice snorted. Well...how bold can you be?

  Ean parried several more of Darshan’s strikes in quick succession, feeling each bone-jarring blow rattling his teeth. Bold enough to get myself killed.

  That was the short answer. He’d be treading a superfine line between audacity and blatant stupidity. It was the same line he walked between causation and collapse. But he’d been holding his own thus far.

  Ean drew in a deep breath of elae—This had better work!—and took a running leap. He threw the second beneath himself and launched over Darshan’s head, swinging his sword as he flipped upside down. The razor edge of his Merdanti blade just missed the man’s neck.

  The effort cost Ean. He landed dizzily, swooned, stumbled and only just got his footing in time to veer backwards and avoid Darshan’s whipping saber.

  The Malorin’athgul did not look amused by Ean’s acrobatics.

  Well and good. Let’s up the ante.

  The prince advanced anew—only he advanced upwards on steps of air, bringing his battle closer to Darshan’s own height. He only succeeded in driving the Malorin’athgul back a few steps, but he made large strides towards darkening Darshan’s mood.

  While enduring a dual bombardment of compulsion and Darshan’s whipping staff, Ean sought the fourth-strand channel of awareness the Malorin’athgul was using to attack his mind. That channel forged a link between their consciousnesses. By monitoring that channel, Ean might potentially perceive what Darshan was intending a fraction of a second before he cast the working. That split second might make all the difference.

  Ean drank in the fifth and then pushed it into the floor. As he forced thought to become, a warning weakness flickered, even as his consciousness flickered.

  The marble turned molten under Darshan’s feet. The Malorin’athgul wobbled, wavered, and solidified it again with a glare at Ean.

  Ean grinned at him.

  Darshan’s gaze smoldered. “What is it you think to do here, Prince of Dannym?” He swung his staff before Ean could answer.

  Ean dodged back, made the floor soft again, and ran up a crescent wall of air while Darshan foundered. That time the Malorin’athgul irritably slung the fifth off the end of his blade, and the floor rippled into ferrite.

  Not so easy to manipulate, that ferrite.

  Having put some distance between himself and the immortal, Ean was now trying to focus on the central-most version of the three Darshans blurring before his vision. Somewhat accomplishing this, he called up the most egregiously foolish working he could envision.

  The fifth, the fourth, the second—they all went into the pattern of his intent, which he layered with form.

  Well, here goes…everything.

  He threw the pattern at Darshan.

  The sphere of force hit the Malorin’athgul in the chest and drove him in a backwards skid across the mottled, brownish floor. A kinetic current glowed beneath his scraping feet.

  Darshan threw the fifth to stop himself—an innate working Ean couldn’t see but surmised from his slowing motion—and spun to face Ean.

  At least…he tried to, but his feet wouldn’t budge from their position.

  Or more properly, his shoes, which Ean’s pattern had changed into iron. The kinetic force of the slide across the ferrite floor had magnetized the shoes to it. Now Darshan was stuck.

  He leveled Ean a thunderous glare.

  Ean gave a debonair bow. Then he turned and ran towards the wall. He barely had the strength to lift his legs, he was barely managing to hold onto his blade, but he had to look like he had some plan to escape…

  A tiny spark pulsed along the channel of thought Ean was monitoring. The prince dove to the floor, landing painfully on his stomach with an arm pinned beneath him. He rolled fast aside.

  Thunder without sound shattered the wall in a deafening explosion, opening a hole to freedom.

  Ears ringing, Ean struggled to his feet, shoved his sword into its scabbard and launched himself through that hole. He didn’t look back.

  Only…he hadn’t anticipated the drop.

  A sheer and lengthy drop, as it turned out—at least five hundred feet straight down into the city below.

  Well played, Ean val Lorian. Darshan’s thought pierced through Ean’s mental shield—nay, it disintegrated the entire shield.

  But Ean had larger problems. He couldn’t worry about Darshan’s compulsion if he was dead.

  Falling backwards through the rushing air, Ean threw a rope of the fifth…

  He threw a rope of the fifth…

  He threw a rope of the fifth!

  The fifth yawned at him and returned its obdurate attention to the motion of the world.

  The fourth gazed concernedly at his falling form but made no attempt to aid him.

  The third called boldly, Death is only the beginning!

  The first snatched her hand from his discourteous fingers with a gasp.

  He reached desperately for the second. It clapped him on the shoulder with a jovial, Good luck, mate!

  Ean scrambled to look down.

  Then he hit.

  Forty

  “Betimes, the greatest courage a man can display is to admit he does not know.”

  –The Adept truthreader Giancarlo of Caladria

  Darshan stood upon the broken stones of his tower, gazing south into the night while the wind whipped his long hair into his eyes and the electrified currents pulled a static comb across his flesh. A storm was coming towards him, shedding darkness over the Saldarian moors where they met the Nadori desert in estuarial convergence.

  Neither province nor kingdom sought to claim those lands. They offered only sparse grass and burning sand in ample measure. The lines thus overlapped, blended, melded one into the other so that none could easily discern where Saldaria ended and M’Nador began. Yet Darshan felt that it ought to be easy to lift one land from the other, to watch the desert stream away in falls of sand as th
e moors reemerged from beneath the burying earth.

  It ought to have been that easy for him to separate truth from falsity, true purpose from delusion.

  But it wasn’t.

  After the events of earlier that day, Darshan’s smoldering thoughts had churned endlessly around Ean val Lorian, this Adept who unmade patterns as Malorin’athgul unmade worlds…this being who had supposedly lived and died three lifetimes, sworn to a single cause throughout.

  Darshan had learned much from the Prince of Dannym before he’d escaped both his presence and his will. Ingenious, Ean’s tricks with the lifeforce. Darshan had never met an Adept who could mold the elements as easily as himself and his brothers.

  ‘The fifth…a fabled strand.’ He recalled declaring this to Ean, to which the prince had replied with bold intimation, ‘As fabled as you and me.’

  Darshan’s eyes narrowed.

  Pelas had come to him once, claiming that their innate composition included elae’s fifth strand. The conversation had rapidly devolved into another of their combustive arguments. But Darshan well remembered his brother’s message: that while they were not children of this world, an essential part of them was connected to it.

  Now Ean val Lorian claimed the same.

  Darshan considered this with a black and introspective malcontent.

  And what of this Björn van Gelderan? Another Adept who could purportedly shape the world to his will—who indeed, had created an entirely new world to prevent Darshan and his brothers from unmaking Alorin…at least if Ean val Lorian was to be believed.

  What kind of mortal possessed such power? The antithesis, it would appear, of their own?

  Darshan’s gaze darkened measurably. Too many questions had been thrown into this cauldron of mischief. It was boiling over from a tumult of conflicting truths.

  Well…there was one way to resolve some of his questions.

  ‘…Sundragons are Björn’s peacekeepers, monitoring Balance in the game. They come and go via the First Lord’s sa’reyth. It is a way-station between Alorin and T’khendar…’