Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “But according to the Fourteenth Law,” Anglar cut in, “equal opposing forces will nullify structure, so solidity is still paramount to—”

  “You forget that the Fourteenth Esoteric says, ‘exact duplicating thought, with the same energy, in the same time, will nullify reality.’” Voss held up a lecturing finger. “So obviously solidity is only apparent, not absolute—”

  “Which is exactly to my point, Voss.”

  “Maestro,” Parsifal murmured as the two men continued debating, “hadn’t you best intervene?”

  “To what purpose?” Markal cast a mordant eye across the arguing pair and drank his wine. “They merely volley rules, not reason.”

  “Anglar, you both have it right.” Reclining on his back, Arion idly blew a wisp of the fifth into a puffy cloud floating overhead and instantly vaporized it. “Matter is far more malleable than most people realize; it’s merely energy particles that have become so compacted that they’ve solidified. The fifth strand, for example, takes this sluggish energy and mobilizes it. Patterning is just the ability to mold energy to our will in a new way, a method of imposing new thought to the agreed-upon physical laws that bind matter together.”

  “But the Seventh Esoteric—” Voss began.

  Arion rolled onto his side. “Yes, Voss. Too much energy in too little space results in solidity; but give that energy space to move again by creating new space through Absolute Being, and you can do anything with it.”

  Voss directed a triumphant look at Anglar.

  “But Anglar is on point when referencing laws governing the interaction of energy outside of Absolute Being. Solidity does determine what structure the elements can assume in that case, because of the associative properties of energy.”

  Anglar arched an imperious brow.

  “But within Absolute Being?” Arion cast a smile across the group, “within it, you can change the very laws that govern matter.”

  Into the thoughtful silence that followed this speech, Parsifal raised his wine and remarked, “And that’s why the Alorin Seat chose Arion Tavestra to sit upon his council.”

  “As if Björn would’ve invited Arion if he hadn’t been courting his sister,” Cristien teased with a wink. “Rowed wielders are a dime a dozen.”

  Arion regarded him amusedly. “Ah, but I have a row and five, Cristien, and I guarantee before this is over, I’ll have my second row.”

  “Oh sure,” Voss waved an airy hand, “they say once you have your first row, it’s all downhill from there.”

  Anglar was regarding Arion with a quiet intensity. “If you get your second row, he’ll make you one of his generals.”

  Parsifal grunted. “The Alorin Seat never would’ve overlooked Markal’s star pupil. Cristien’s just jealous because his lover, Raine, wasn’t also invited to sit on Björn’s council.”

  Cristien gave him a frustrated stare. “Raine and I are not lovers.”

  Parsifal winked at him. “But you would be if he would have you.”

  “What do you know of love, Parsifal?” Voss tossed a stem of long grass at him. “The closest you’ve ever come to it is with that mongrel beast you call a horse.”

  Parsifal lifted a finger off his goblet. “That’s true. Horses are more predictable than women—or vestals,” he added with a grin at Cristien. He raised his goblet to the sun and studied the liquid within it speculatively. “Women are much the same as wine, my friends. The bottle may be shapely, but you never really know if the vintage is sweet or sour until you pop the…cork…” his gaze strayed beyond Arion’s shoulder, and he murmured, “Speaking of eccentric vintages.”

  Arion turned to see Malachai ap’Kalien approaching—blonde, broad-shouldered and thin as a winter twig.

  “Lady’s light, man,” Voss shook his head resolutely. “Why don’t you eat something, for all our sakes? You’re as like to blow away with the next breeze.”

  “You’re one to talk.” Anglar eyed Voss disagreeably over the rim of his goblet. “An anorexic goat has more meat on its bones.”

  Voss looked down at his lanky frame, noticed a bit of something on his vest and scraped at it with a fingernail.

  “What? No comeback?” Cristien elbowed him.

  Voss tossed his hair from his eyes. “Anglar’s the one’s been intimate with anorexic goats. But hey, you know…” he lifted his goblet to Anglar, “to each his own, mate.”

  “What I would like to see you own, Voss di Alera, is a modicum of productivity,” Markal grumbled.

  “But a modicum would only leave you wanting more, Maestro.” Voss leaned on one elbow and crossed his long legs at the ankles. “I wouldn’t want to elevate your expectations.”

  “There’s little fear of that.”

  “Well…I did it.” Malachai dropped to his knees in the grass and sank back on his heels. His brown eyes were lambent, like polished pebbles, and his pale countenance held an uncommon light.

  Arion’s instincts roused instantly in alarm.

  “Did what?” Parsifal extended a goblet of wine towards Malachai.

  Malachai seemed not to notice it, for his eyes were pinned on Arion, as Arion’s were fixed on him while alarm bells of consequence sounded painfully in his head.

  Malachai tugged on his nose. “I told him I would do it.”

  Cristien must’ve caught something of Malachai’s thoughts, for he straightened and stared at him. “Malachai, you didn’t—”

  “I told him I would be the focal point for the working.” Malachai lifted his gaze to include the whole of the group. “I will be his talisman.”

  A startled silence marched in the train of their collective surprise.

  Then chaos erupted—multiple exclamations of “Are you insane?” from the others, voiced with varying degrees of civility.

  Arion saw a new pattern of cause and consequence spiraling forth, a crystalline design spreading before his vision, superimposed against his friend’s shining face and the others’ rather desperate ones. The vision filled him with foreboding.

  “If something goes wrong…” Arion placed a hand on his friend’s leg. “Malachai, you’ll be the first one to be hit.”

  Malachai pushed his long blonde hair back from his face with both hands. His gaze grew distant. “To be on the forefront of it, Arion…to ride the forward edge as life itself begins, the dawn of a new world…” a faint furrow creased his brow but vanished as he smiled and focused his gaze on Arion. “I would give anything to surf the breaking wave of that moment.”

  Markal’s grunt held a decided undertone of ironic skepticism.

  Arion cast him a reproachful stare.

  “Hold on, hold on!” Voss held up his hands to quiet the argument that had erupted between the others. “What are we saying here?” He turned his colorless eyes around to include everyone, his tone one of insistence more than inquiry. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. I mean…what could go wrong? The Alorin Seat has assembled the greatest minds in the realm,” Voss touched a hand to his heart and gave a humble nod, “my own included.”

  Markal shifted agitatedly. “If your mind displayed half as much talent as your ego, you might actually find something valuable to contribute to this council.”

  Voss clenched a long stem of grass between his teeth and angled a grin at Markal. “Technically, I’m only a consulting member of the Council of Nine.”

  “Praise Epiphany for small blessings.”

  Arion sat up and returned his journal to his satchel. His mind was spinning with new possibilities now. Malachai as the focal point changed everything. He lifted his gaze to Markal. “Maestro, you know Voss is right.”

  Voss grinned audaciously at this, earning a black stare from Markal.

  “But not in the sense that nothing can go wrong,” Arion added thoughtfully, more to himself than the group, “rather…that we won’t allow anything to prevent us from achieving the effect we’re intending to achieve.”

  Markal drank his wine mid a stormy contemplation. “Do you know wh
y he collected all of you?” He cast a challenging gaze around the assembly of Adepts, many of whom looked hardly more than twenty and eight, though most of them had seen sixty name days or more. “Why all of you? Why not maestros and scholars with established reputations in their field?”

  When even Voss offered no answer to this, Markal grunted dubiously. “You’re young for your accomplishments, too young yet to have learned that there are things you cannot do. He needs that idealism to have any hope of success.”

  “What does he need from you then, Maestro?” Voss inquired with a cheeky grin.

  “Doomsday warnings,” Cristien grumbled.

  “Practicality,” Anglar observed more soberly.

  Markal draped his arms over his bent knees and dangled his empty goblet beneath one hand. “Rest you assured: whatever hope we have, it is the slightest, barest thread of it. What he intends…the chances of success are so miniscule as to be nonexistent.” He cast a stern look across all of them. “Let me not hear you say nothing can go wrong. Everything can go wrong.”

  Cristien muttered into his wine, “Doom and gloom, as I said.”

  Malachai shook his head, his gaze distant but luminous. “Even if I die in the attempt, Maestro…to have lived to see such a momentous event, to have laid my name upon it, made my mark; to even be associated with this illustrious cause, my legacy assured…” He gave him a vivid smile. “Nothing is more meaningful to me.”

  Markal growled, “The immortal delusions of youth.”

  Arion frowned at him. “A wielder is limited by what he can envision, Maestro.” He handed his goblet to a brooding Parsifal, who absently refilled it. “The Alorin Seat needs us because you cannot envision the creation of a world without also conceiving of thousands of possible catastrophic ramifications. The simplicity is that we must have the courage to push through any obstacle to achieve the effect we intend to create. There’s nothing else to consider.”

  “Only the thousands of possible catastrophic ramifications,” Cristien grumbled.

  “There will be ramifications.” Markal aimed a pointed stare at Cristien. “The waves of our pebble cast into Alorin’s aether will permeate far. There may come a point when we have to consider not can it be done, but should it be done?”

  Arion shook his head. “I disagree, Maestro.”

  “Of course you do, Arion. Wielders always disagree with caution when they’ve never faced a force bigger than themselves.”

  Arion accepted his goblet, now refilled, back from Parsifal and drank from it. Caution versus courage was an old argument between himself and the maestro. He fingered his goblet contemplatively. “There is no excuse for failure once the First Law has been observed.”

  Markal exhaled malcontent in a forceful breath. “While wielding the lifeforce, things can change, Arion. A wielder must be constantly assessing and reassessing against Balance to determine if the effect he intended is actually the effect he’s achieving. Occasionally there comes a time when you have to decide that the effect you intended will not be achieved.”

  Arion shook his head. “A wielder who fails to achieve the effect he intended just didn’t display enough fortitude, courage, or conviction to see it through.”

  Markal pelted him with a black agate gaze. “One day you may come up against a force that even you cannot overcome. Then you may talk to me of fortitude, courage and conviction…”

  —the dream shifted—

  Arion clenched his teeth as a blast of deyjiin exploded against his fifth-strand shield. A sizzling chill speared his mind, numbing his edge, while the exhaustion of battle, of working elae constantly for untold hours, had begun to bring a sluggishness to his thoughts.

  Arion spun and slammed his sword against the Enemy’s again. A geyser of sparks erupted as blades charged with opposing energies scraped and separated, elae’s fire meeting deyjiin’s ice. The eruption illuminated the weld chamber’s crumbling ceiling.

  Arion pivoted and lunged. The Enemy sidestepped and slung Arion’s blade off his own in another flaming eruption of sparks.

  A constant barrage of compulsion battered Arion’s consciousness. He channeled it into his blade and back at the Enemy as needle-sharp threads, but the latter’s mental shields were viscous on the surface and bedrock beneath. Arion’s threads found little purchase there.

  The Enemy threw a new pattern at him, an explosive combination of the second and fourth. Arion split it with the arrow of his intention and the pieces fell in twain. The air was choked with fractured patterns.

  Choked as well by dust and smoke and deyjiin’s acrid ash. As Arion parried another advance, a huge section of the ceiling fell and shattered on the floor. Shards of stone pelted Arion’s shields, and a cloud of marble dust engulfed him. The entire chamber was coming down around their battling forms. The walls had become webbed with cracks. Even as Arion watched, a section of plaster crumbled down upon itself, leaving a cottage-sized pock in the wall.

  Arion split another of the Enemy’s patterns before it was fully formed and brought up his blade to meet the man’s next powerful swing. Sparks geysered.

  Arion wiped his brow with his upper arm, pushed the hair and sweat from his eyes and tried to maintain his focus. Is this what Isabel had foreseen so long ago? That he would face an immortal there at the last, when all else was falling into an abyss—Malachai gone mad from deyjiin, the best of them lost, T’khendar a wasteland unable to support elae—and perhaps amid such despairing times, he would falter?

  Arion still couldn’t comprehend what she’d foreseen, couldn’t fathom the truths she’d told him, the years they would be apart because of a choice he’d already made. He didn’t believe he was destined to the path she’d seen him walking, not when every step was still his to choose.

  The ground shook, tossing Arion and the Enemy apart. Arion used the fifth to right himself just as a pillar fell, carrying the last of the light. Iron crashed into stone and pitched the chamber into darkness.

  Arion let the currents show him what was true.

  The weld appeared as a swirling whirlpool of liquid bronze webbed with lightning streaks of darkness. Unstable, but he had few choices left. The paths spiraling before him were diminishing with every clash of his and the Enemy’s blades, with every piece of stone tumbled from the crumbling walls.

  Another pillar rocked on its base and then started falling directly towards them. Arion dove half a dozen steps to the chamber floor while simultaneously wrapping the fifth around the monolith of stone. A thought drove it towards the Enemy.

  The Enemy dove for Arion and cast deyjiin off his blade at the pillar.

  It exploded into marble ash.

  The floor shook again, and a fissure split the weld.

  Arion rolled to his feet and sprinted through clouds of choking dust to engage the Enemy before the man could regain the advantage. He drove him back, back towards the weld—

  He summoned the second strand in a pivotal instant.

  Light sprang into being as Arion moved their battle onto the Pattern of the World.

  Forty-six

  “When vindictiveness and gall meet prudence on the battlefield, prudence ever proves the weaker opponent.”

  –Nadori Commander Nassar abin Ahram, al-Amir of Ramala

  At camp that night, the Converted celebrated in honor of Raegus n’Harnalt. The cooks slew several lambs for the occasion and made a stew with olives that had the men licking their bowls, but the biggest highlight of the evening—much to Trell’s surprise—was his promised story about how the kingdoms of Dannym and the Akkad became unlikely allies.

  From his father’s daring attempt to remove his forces from under the nose of Viernan hal’Jaitar, through hal’Jaitar’s plot to assassinate King Gydryn and his rescue by Prince Farid, to the Dannish soldiers finding their way behind ‘enemy’ lines to Nahavand and the subsequent peace between their kingdoms, Trell told the story in heroic fashion. If he filled in a few details here and there that he wasn’t entirely cert
ain about, surely he could be forgiven under the right of poetic license. Certainly the cheering that followed his tale sounded approving.

  Much later, after Trell had made his rounds through camp and visited Gendaia bearing apple gifts, he lay in his tent courting sleep while listening to the murmur of his princely name flowing across the lips of his men.

  Too soon, he woke again, or so it felt to him as he lay there sensing morning’s approach, yet knowing darkness still held the world in thrall. Discipline alone drove him from the warmth of his bed.

  He dressed and moved silently through the camp, past still-smoking firepits and the folded shadows of tents, walking unnoticed amid the susurrant currents of two hundred sleeping men. His body would have happily rejoined their slumbering flow, but his mind had awoken and was too active to allow sleep to find him again.

  Something Alyneri had said was still troubling him. He’d contacted her via their bond and shared what had happened so far on his journey. But after he spoke of the flood and jumping in after Loukas, a sort of stillness had overcome her thoughts, the mental equivalent of silence settling upon their conversation.

  What is it? What did I say? The last thing he wanted was to become estranged from her while they were apart, and he sensed that something he’d said had upset her.

  Trell…he perceived more than heard her mental sigh, you did promise that you wouldn’t take needless risks with your life.

  This was needful, Alyneri.

  Was it? Her tone chided him lightly, but there was plenty of challenge in it, too. Because the way you described it to me, you might’ve simply stayed on the raft, asked the River Goddess to send a boat to your friend, and accomplished the same end.

  Trell had initially frowned at this. Now he frowned again while he walked the camp.

  I know heroics are in your nature, she’d put a soft smile in her voice as she’d said this, but it requires far more bravery to allow others to risk their lives when you would rather risk your own. It takes a strong leader to make a knowing sacrifice.