Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

Yes, Ean val Lorian had proven very informative.

  Darshan summoned his power.

  Long ages had passed since he’d last assumed the form he used in the Void—centuries of observing this world through the shell he’d poured his essence into as he’d first entered Alorin’s plane.

  Rinokh, while he’d been among them, had lived almost exclusively as a dragon, and all of Avatar had feared his notice. But Darshan had always considered it faintly abhorrent to imagine bringing his pure, innate form into this puny world.

  Now though…now he would claim his true shape again.

  Power channeled into him with his breath. Darshan let his head fall back, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the impulse to expand.

  Ever it seemed he fought to contain the immensity of his being in a fraction of its necessary space. Now he let himself unfold; his mind blended with a new form, his native form, interweaving thought and shape—becoming.

  Light and darkness blurred. Power pulsed. Opposing energies collided with violent reactivity and exploded into fragments. Charged particles magnetized into orbit around a dual nuclei of merged polarities—elae and deyjiin in perfect balance. Darshan seized these fragments of power and shaped his intent, and they reformed into a new combination.

  He surged into form.

  Liquid darkness undulated atop the tower, blocking out the stars. It rapidly spread along the length of the acropolis; it poured itself into wings and coalesced into a massive body.

  Before he could fully manifest, Darshan gave a powerful downward stroke and cast himself off the tower, lest it collapse beneath the weight of his congregating form.

  A mighty wind buffeted the city of Tambarré as he surged upwards and into the pregnant clouds. Icy particles clung and froze to his form, sheathing him in pinprick stars, while the massing mists parted in whorls. He left a tunnel a quarter-mile wide in his wake.

  Up, Darshan flew—higher, farther, until the storm appeared as a blanket across the marbling globe and the air became thin. Above him lay only the endless void of space, and a moon, strung low, as a fisherman’s globe bobbing upon the atmosphere sea.

  He hung there in that cold place of paucity, amid the blurred boundaries of worlds, and he waited…and he watched.

  In the Void, this was his way: to float on the endless tides of unraveling space, observing a star he was about to unmake, tasting—appreciating—its power before he drank in its essence and reduced it to a point of utter darkness so hungry for energy that it gravitated all else into its insatiable core; or, unmaking even this dense mass, until all that remained of the once bursting star were infinitesimal particles of magnetic dust.

  Now he hovered similarly within the confines of Alorin’s outer atmosphere as he might’ve if he’d been ripe to unmake this world. But even in his powerful Chaos form, he couldn’t unmake the realm from within its own aether.

  Oddly, he no longer wanted to.

  Oh, these were dangerous waters he was drifting upon, waiting for Balance’s tide or a decisive breeze to determine his direction! He gloomily suspected that both of his brothers had already traveled these same mercuric seas.

  Beneath him, the globe turned, and a crest of fire licked along the planet’s edge. Soon light bathed the land, bouncing color into his void-black eyes. He saw all from his high vantage.

  Darshan focused a dissecting gaze upon the rough crest of the Kutsamak Range, which lay as an abrasion against the smooth, pale Sand Sea of M’Nador. He studied miles of these lands with the smallest shifting of his eyes, watching for a particular glint, and in time…

  There.

  As if birthed from the aether they appeared, four gilded specks of sunlight, soaring stars in miniature. Sundragons.

  What else but these fabled drachwyr might capture the light unto their forms even as his form congealed the darkness?

  Hovering, buoyed by the planet’s magnetic tide, Darshan watched them.

  They dispersed upon compass lines, claiming territories for their daily inspections. Darshan noted an obvious symmetry and organization to the paths of their flight; some mowed their quadrants in straight lines, others flew a spiral of shrinking concentricity.

  The day still clung to the land when one of the females finished her inspection. Darshan watched her circle outward, ostensibly for one last view, and then fly back towards the point where he’d first seen the four of them appear.

  He cast his wings powerfully behind him and dove down into daylight’s languid sea.

  He hardly noticed the tearing wind or the ice that crystallized along his razor form. He descended thousands of feet in heartbeats of time. The drachwyr beneath him grew from a star into a bright comet, the comet into a dragon.

  Darshan speared through a grouping of thunderheads, and, emerging into the darkness beneath, flung open his wings and hauled to a hover in an instant. The force of his breaking flight cracked as thunder across the land, one more grumble among the rumbling storm.

  Still far beneath him, the dragon flew in serene silence. Angled afternoon sunlight bathed her form in gleaming light and cast her undulating shadow to chasing her as she flew over the mountains. Her bronzed and gilded wings dazzled, with the occasional glint of blue sparking from their iridescent tips.

  Staying within the shadow of the storm, Darshan followed her. He watched her alight on a mountain ridge and fold in her wings, and in that moment, he pinned a thread of attention to her form—barely a whisper of power, nothing she would notice.

  The dragon dissolved into shimmering light; while it lasted, a perpetual starfall.

  Interesting…

  The drachwyr, it appeared, did not have to cram one form into the shell of another, as he did. This raised questions for him, curiosities to be explored at a later time.

  Having observed them all throughout the day, however, he’d confirmed one truth: these drachwyr were beings of immense power, perhaps even the mirror opposites of himself and his brothers. That Dore said they were no threat to him could only be true if they weren’t standing in direct opposition to him.

  The curtain of stars finished its shimmering dance, and a woman wearing a blue dress stepped forth from the light. Darshan assured himself that his thread of attention remained secure upon her form.

  She took three steps and vanished.

  The spool of his attention unraveled in a furious stream as his thread was pulled across a vast distance in an instant. Mentally, Darshan traced the path of the drachwyr’s passing across the Pattern of the World to…elsewhere.

  Two surging flaps of his wings later, he alighted upon that same ridge.

  Blacker-than-black claws sank deep into the hard-packed earth. The land cracked and shifted with a terrestrial groan as he settled the fullness of his weight upon it.

  The long afternoon sun cast its rays upon his flesh, and his wings and body hungrily drank in its light. His immense form blocked most of the ridge, as though a great nothingness had overcome it. Darshan exhaled a thoughtful breath. An icy, barren wind scoured the mountainside.

  He cast his black gaze out across the scar of ochre-hued mountains, feeling an unusual solemnity. In his mind’s eye, he reviewed the drachwyr’s shifting of form. Clearly the light had embraced her in symbiosis, as though she was in fact an extension of itself. She had simply released one form and claimed another; while a part of him fought in every moment to keep himself in the shell he needed to interact with this world.

  The observation gave him more to think about, though one fact remained undeniably certain: How alien he was to this realm.

  And how naïve and unready it was to meet such as him.

  The darkness that had claimed the mountain closed its eyes. It seemed to explode into serpentine waves and then rapidly implode, sucked back within itself. The undulation subsided into the shape of a tall man, broad of shoulder, with a curtain of long hair as the only reminder of the darkness that was his true form.

  Darshan traced again the drachwyr’s path in his mind, chart
ing his own course across the Pattern of the World, to elsewhere.

  Then he stepped across the node.

  ***

  Amithaiya’geshwen, Bosom of God’s Nectar, lifted her blue silk skirts as she walked through the grass up a long hill.

  To her left, the sun was setting behind snow-capped mountains and casting long, striated rays between the peaks. Atop the far hill, the copper-hued tents of the First Lord’s sa’reyth were glowing.

  Mithaiya looked left, to the mountains and the too-bright outline of the ridge, the last effort of the falling sun to etch the world with its imprint. Soon the entire valley would lie beneath shadow-streaks drawn by night’s charcoal hand. At twilight, Balaji would light the lamps, and the sa’reyth would become a mirror of the glimmering stars.

  Mithaiya loved the gilded hour but not the twilight. Jaya, conversely, felt the latter a magical time. But in the twilight, Mithaiya sensed an overlapping of boundaries, a no man’s land where light and darkness mingled recklessly, as in a ribald fête whose revelers were too soaked with drink to keep their judgment dry. In the twilight, Mithaiya perceived a dangerous convergence of forces, a span of an hour’s falling sands where the hard substance of the daylight world grew porous. Who knew what malevolent sylphs might slip through the holes?

  Higher up the hill, Vaile appeared above a rise, striding towards her. “Trath’na maeth, faelle.” Good evening, sister.

  Mithaiya answered her, also in Old Alaeic, “And to you, Vaile, sister of my heart.”

  They met halfway on the hillside and exchanged kisses on each cheek. As they both turned to head back up the hill together, Vaile drew her shawl closer about her shoulders and looked Mithaiya over. Mithaiya in turn frowned at Vaile’s shawl.

  “You’re the first to return.” The zanthyr’s green-eyed gaze moved past Mithaiya, searching the darkening valley. “Where are the others?”

  Mithaiya exhaled a slow breath. “Sweeping their territories twice.”

  Vaile arched a brow. “What news is this?”

  “Radov’s army is on the march through the Sand Sea towards Raku.”

  Vaile arched a disbelieving brow. “The prince thinks to mount an attack on the oasis with all of you on patrol?”

  “Would that his intentions were less apparent.” Mithaiya blew out her breath.

  “There is little enough satisfaction in slaying a lunatic, and even less in slaying a lunatic’s army.” She swept a curtain of dark hair back from her shoulder and looked to the sky. It was nearing twilight—

  Vaile stiffened.

  With her next breath, Mithaiya perceived him too.

  Her eyes flew to Vaile’s. Everything that needed to be said passed in that sudden locking of eyes. Then the zanthyr was reaching over her shoulder for her sword and Mithaiya was bolting for the node to warn the others.

  A net of deyjiin sizzled into being in front of her.

  Mithaiya hissed a curse—every natural sense recoiled from the foul energy—but she drove through it nonetheless. It felt like smothering herself in icy, electric jelly.

  Beyond the net, she shrugged off the vile sensation of its touch and kept running.

  Fractions of a second later, something cold and very sharp hooked into her back. No, two somethings.

  Mithaiya cried out, stumbled on her long skirts, and fell to hands and knees in the grass. Liquid fire was burning up and down her spine. She could barely breathe for the pain. It felt like her wings were being ripped away—no, sliced away with knives of ice.

  Whatever he’d thrown at her was pushing its way deeper inside and spreading a throbbing chill. It must’ve been some working of deyjiin. Nothing else could feel so antithetic to her very essence.

  Incredulity claimed the moment.

  How had he found them? Why had he come here?

  She tried to stand again, but just lifting a hand from the earth made her cry out with pain. She stayed there then, sucking in short gasps, trying to find her breath, tears clinging to her lashes, her ears listening urgently for an expected scraping of steel…

  Vaile…?

  Footsteps through the long grass. Not Vaile.

  Preceded by a radiating chill, he halted above her.

  Mithaiya slowly turned her head to look up at him. He might’ve been taller than Ramu.

  He bent and hooked his fingers under her arm. She sucked in her breath as he drew her to her feet. Pain exploded; likewise her disbelief.

  They’d expected and planned for so many scenarios, but a Malorin’athgul striding up to the First Lord’s sa’reyth had been utterly inconceivable.

  He set her, gasping, on her feet and supported her elbow with iron fingers. His hold wasn’t rough, but nor was it gentle. And his eyes were very, very dark.

  Mithaiya wanted to call her brothers, but reaching their minds across the realms required more concentration than she could muster; she wanted to turn her head to see what had become of Vaile, but movement of any kind brought debilitating pain; and then there was his radiating presence…

  Focus, Amithaiya’geshwen! You’re not some mortal girl spellbound and awed by an immortal’s gaze. It’s all up to you now!

  Mithaiya pushed away her incredulity, her desire to deny, and concentrated instead on what he might want and what she could do about it.

  Power was radiating off of him in waves. She drew upon her own to balance it.

  This had an unexpected effect on both of them.

  His hold on her arm tightened, but not in anger.

  Power pulsed–flared…pulsed–flared…

  With each pulse, the air popped, the grass rippled in circular waves—no, the land rippled.

  Suddenly she felt his mind in her mind, her mind in his mind. A cold wind swept through the chambers of her thoughts.

  He gave her an unsettling smile.

  Amithaiya’geshwen.

  ***

  Darshan stepped off the node into a new realm.

  In the distance, the little drachwyr was climbing a hill. He moved after her.

  His fingers undulated at his sides without his awareness. They were the vestigial filaments of his mighty wings, which in the Void would expand to receive the solar winds, magnetic storms, radiation from a glowing nebula…and translate these perceptions into means of unmaking.

  This realm tasted as different from Alorin as salt from sugar, as an orange from a sage plant…as a planet from a star. Perceptions beyond counting brought to him their offerings—gravity’s varied inclination, a difference in lunar pull, the air holding a slightly altered combination of gasses; many others. Each new awareness laid itself before the throne of his perception as a gift for him to sample. Here was a smorgasbord for his senses.

  Was every realm of light so different from every other? The idea intrigued him mightily.

  Abruptly his radiating senses brushed the mind of another. A new kind of mind.

  His gaze flew back up the hill towards his prey. The drachwyr had vanished over the rise.

  Darshan broke into a run.

  He regained view of her in time to see two women separating. The drachwyr broke for the trees, while the raven-haired woman reached over her back, ostensibly for a weapon he couldn’t see, yet did perceive.

  He threw a net of deyjiin to trap his dragon.

  She burst right through it.

  With an admiring smile, Darshan cast an anchor of intent along the thread he still had pinned to his drachwyr and dragged her instantly to the ground.

  He shifted his attention back to the other immortal.

  She was coming towards him carrying Merdanti blades in each hand.

  His scepter was strapped to his thigh, but this woman…

  To his eyes, she appeared as a dark star…a dying star. She might’ve once offered him some challenge, but he perceived her core eroding from within, as a tree that appeared outwardly strong but inside had been hollowed by parasites. She was weak and brittle now. She posed no threat.

  At least…not a physical one.<
br />
  The woman scraped her blades along each other with her green gaze pinned upon him. She maintained a steady approach, her manner deliberate and deadly.

  The smallest tightening of his gaze betrayed his wonder. Surely she was cognizant of the pestilence eroding her core?

  He didn’t know what other powers she possessed. He hadn’t been able to study her as he’d studied the drachwyr. So he summoned a different kind of net, boundlessly pliable, one he often cast around a star he was intending to unmake.

  He flung this doughy platelet at the female. Made to absorb the riotous energy of a star, the field would absorb anything this immortal tried to throw at him.

  Which she did, even as the field was closing around her. A webbed net of energy blossomed outwards into a sphere of iridescent color, violently charged, deadly with trapped force; but the pliable platelet quickly absorbed and metabolized whatever energy she’d thrown into it. The field shrank in around her again.

  Satisfied, Darshan turned to look for his drachwyr.

  She was on her hands and knees in the grass.

  He barely had the tips of two mental claws in her back, but to his perception, the gashes ran nearly from her shoulder blades to her waist. They were bleeding radiance.

  He stopped over her, and she slowly turned her head to look up at him. Blue eyes like the sparkling iridescence he’d seen upon her wings met his gaze in defiance. Darshan hooked his fingers under her arm and drew her to her feet.

  She sucked in her breath with a hiss. Then she drew upon her power.

  Perception shifted—wondrously, startlingly.

  With her power radiating against his, equal and opposing, the space of their minds intercepted. Suddenly they were as colliding stars, one burning cold, the other hot, their outer atmospheres dangerously interacting, combusting…merging.

  He swirled his awareness through the space of her mind and tasted of her name.

  It tasted…good.

  A hungering smile parted his lips. Amithaiya’geshwen.

  Darshanvenkhátraman, she returned with furious rebuke. Then she added with a mental hiss, I know who you are.

  His smile widened. “Then you know that you cannot defeat me.” He looked her over, seeing a trapped dove rather than the caged lion she pretended. “Not alone. Not without your brothers.”