Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  “That’s true for women in general, I think, Rami.”

  The boy heaved a ponderous sigh. “Women are the Great Unknown.”

  Trell eyed him humorously. “Is that another of your mother’s proverbs?”

  “No. That one is my father’s. But he also says ‘be the last to the field and the first to the couch’ so I’m not sure I can always trust in his wisdom.”

  Rami led Trell on a beeline to wherever this problem existed, weaving quickly in and around tents, most of which appeared to be unoccupied, perhaps since the dinner bell had already been rung.

  Trell noted the problem the moment he arrived in the center of camp.

  The cook and his assistants were all lined up behind the cook pots, while a great cluster of men had gathered near the central fire, with a grumbling malcontent passing like wraiths among them. The head cook was fidgeting dyspeptically.

  Trell turned to Rami with a gaze that asked, what exactly do you expect me to do?

  The boy extended a soup bowl.

  Trell stared at it for an instant and then lifted him a smile. “You know…I don’t think Raegus realized what he had in you.” He took the wooden bowl determinedly and strode to the first of the pots, with Rami close on his heels.

  The cook’s assistant looked immensely relieved to see them. “May I serve you, A’dal?”

  “Please.”

  The assistant sloshed stew into his bowl and then into Rami’s.

  Trell moved to the next pot and its attending cook.

  The man brightened instantly. “May I serve you, A’dal?”

  “Please.” Trell extended his bowl.

  And so it went, down the line of pots, until Trell and Rami had been served a little from each.

  With every eye upon them, they crossed the no-man’s land between cooks and men, wordlessly seated themselves around the central fire, and set to eating. By the time they were halfway into their stew, long lines had formed before each cook pot.

  Trell and Rami shared a look and clicked their bowls together.

  Trell ate and drank with the men that night, pleased to get to know some of them better, warmed by the stories of their courage, and reassured by the passionate way so many of them described their lives since joining the Emir’s Converted.

  When all had eaten and the stars were out, someone called for a story. This quickly became a deluge of requests for Trell to tell them another tale, so of course he felt obliged to do so.

  Thus, the later evening saw Trell telling his men how the Emir had sent him to seek his name and his past. He spoke hauntingly of the cave-in at Naiadithine’s shrine, and recalled the names of those who’d been lost with gravity and a solemn prayer to Inithiya, which most of the men joined with him in offering.

  But then he had them laughing as he told of his experiences at the Mage’s sa’reyth, and how the Mage had made a gift of Gendaia and sent him west to the Cairs. And there were catcalls aplenty as he walked them through his meeting with the pirate Carian vran Lea in that blinding blizzard in Olivine.

  The moon was well to its zenith before he finished regaling them with his adventures traveling with the pirate. He went to sleep to the murmur of his princely name whispered in concert with those of Nodefinders and a dragon enchantress.

  The next morning as Trell was heading out, again before dawn, to run through the cortata before the others came, he noticed a peculiar quiet in the camp. His still-waking mind only partially registered this, in the way one recognizes sounds during a dozing sleep but doesn’t really connect them with action; or in the awareness of a conversation being carried on nearby while engrossed in one’s own business, listening without really hearing.

  He quickly forgot about the quiet camp, for the early morning had that crisp clarity only found in the mountains, where the sky is as blue-black glass, depthless and cold, and the air forms sharp crystals in a man’s lungs.

  As Trell neared the high meadow, a waxing moon was hovering low to the horizon, half-blocked by the immense, dark majesty of Mount Attarak, whose peak stood out, silver-limned against the sky.

  Trell emerged onto the meadow bathed in that same silver light, but where emptiness should’ve opened above him, shadows shifted. One of them separated itself from the whole. In time, Rolan’s form resolved.

  That’s when Trell realized that the camp hadn’t been quiet; it had been utterly silent. And the shifting mass of shadows before him was his entire company ranged across the meadow.

  Rolan rested his sword against his shoulder. “Ready when you are, A’dal.”

  Trell gazed in wonder upon the dark mass of men. “Is this…everyone?” He could hardly believe they would all rouse themselves before the dawn for this, for him.

  “The sentries maintain the watch, but they’ve worked out a rotation.”

  A wordless gratitude filled Trell as he looked upon them all. “Very well,” he lifted a hand to Rolan, “line them up and we’ll begin.”

  “You heard your A’dal!” Rolan waved his sword in circles over his head. “Form up!”

  Thus did a surprisingly cheerful dawn find two hundred men working slowly through the Adept dance of swords on a high meadow beneath a boundless sky. The wild lupine that dotted the hills seemed to trap the color from the roseate clouds in its petals of clustering pearls, so that for a time, the long grass and the heavens both wore a mantle of variegated rose.

  As Trell led his men through the sequence for the second time, he knew an uncommon satisfaction. Perhaps it was so many minds and bodies joined in forging the cortata’s pattern, or perhaps it was simply a glimpse of future and the limitless potential it held.

  The day followed as the dawn—bright, sanguine, possibility so crisp in the air that Trell could almost taste it. They followed the Taran River through a wide valley for most of the day and made up much ground lost in the days before.

  The hours seemed to pass quickly, and not just due to their ground-eating march. The men were talkative in a way that only bright sunshine and fair skies invokes—the sort of fluid, rambling conversation that accompanies a lope.

  Trell moved up and down the lines during the day, but no matter where he walked or rode, he overheard the same conversations spun together like a whirlwind of leaves: mutterings of the spy in their midst, wild conjecture about Loukas n’Abraxis, and perhaps loudest and foremost of all, bawdy speculation on what Trell and the lady dragon had been doing in his tent.

  At camp that night, Trell had barely begun his meal of stew, taken while standing and frowning over Jaya’s map of Khor Taran, when Rami rushed in, bursting to show him some new discovery. Trell let the boy drag him excitedly off, and then, for the rest of the night, as he’d tended to his duties and saw to the men, he kept thinking about what his valet had found.

  Finally, as the men were settling down and the moon was rising large in the east, its luminous orb glimpsed through limbs of fir and birch, Trell floated in a pool of liquid heat, listening to the song of the river while he let three days of mud and horse dissolve from his skin and the knots of hard riding melt out of his bones.

  The hot springs had indeed been a boon discovery, one he never would’ve known about if not for Rami’s proclivity for wandering off, but now that Trell knew such places existed along the River Taran, he would advise the boy to keep a devilish watch.

  Riversong sang loudly in his thoughts. Trell opened his heart to the river and sought Naiadithine. My Goddess…

  Trell of the Tides.

  Submerged as Trell was, Naiadithine’s harmonic voice permeated him. He felt her words, his name, chiming in molecule of his being. A current of cooler water threaded around him, siphoned off from the larger flow to cool the bubbling pool where he lay immersed. Without that flow, the water would’ve scalded instead of soothed, even as Naiadithine’s presence certainly would’ve scalded without the buffer of the river to disperse Her power.

  You have questions in your heart, Trell.

  Trell sighed beneath t
his truth. The things he wanted to ask Her were things he felt he never should—that even asking them would be an affront to Her goodwill.

  You’ve never withheld your heart from me. Why do you do so now?

  In a moment of misgiving, he asked himself the same question. Why did he fear asking Her? Because he feared offending Her, thus losing Her benevolence? Her graces were never his to begin with, only Hers to bestow.

  Trell tried to shape his thoughts with truth. I owe so much to you, my Goddess, I fear I can never repay the kindnesses you’ve shown me.

  Nay, Trell of the Tides, you’re afraid I will ask of you a price you cannot pay. Though free of anger, Her words carried a thunderous edge, as a waterfall’s churning roar.

  Trell blew out his breath and sank all the way beneath the water. Why did he imagine he could keep any truth from Her? Why did he try?

  Fear my will, fear me, she offered calmly but pointedly, they are the same—

  Suddenly her attention shifted. It was as palpable to him as a cold current threading among the warmer stream. And when her attention shifted back…

  A host is approaching from the south. Their thoughts are vile.

  Her words as much as the forceful intention beneath them cast him surging up out of the water. How far away? he asked as he climbed from the pool.

  Minutes, as the river runs.

  Trell ran for his clothes.

  Forty-eight

  “Our thoughts shape our reality. Our thoughts shape all the world.”

  –The Adept wielder Malachai ap’Kalien

  Pelasommáyurek woke to silence. Utter silence. A silence that could exist only beyond the unraveling fringes of the cosmos where nothingness became allness. The unmitigated silence of Shadow. For a dazed moment, he wondered if he’d been taken there and the bed and room were but constructs.

  Absent was the distant yet omnipresent cosmic roar that usually underpinned his every thought. He could no longer perceive gravity’s thundering timpani, the screaming whir of planets flying around their suns, or the fiery static of the solar wind. His mind felt…lighter.

  Pelas looked down at his chest and arms, which lay bare against the soft sheets. The injuries he’d sustained battling Darshan’s net had been healed; but more significant than this, he sensed that his native energies had been replenished, the pattern of his shell made whole again. This was no small feat after a bout with revenants. And he perceived, too, that his connection with Tanis had been restored—yet…that wasn’t the only connection he perceived.

  Pelas exhaled a slow breath. Tanis, what’ve you done to me?

  Thinking through the things he’d done on the lad’s behalf, it was hard to believe that any one being could’ve had such an impact on him. Yet for Tanis, he’d promised to protect a world from unmaking and forsworn his brothers in the process. He’d even fought them in pursuit of this cause and undoubtedly would again. For Tanis, he’d bound himself to the mortal tapestry…and he wasn’t the only immortal to do so.

  Pelas lifted his gaze to a dark form standing before a parting of the room’s heavy drapes. It took a moment to focus words through the veil of healing sleep that was still enveloping his consciousness. “He’s bound with the Warlock, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Phaedor’s purr-growl resonated in the silent room.

  By Chaos born, Tanis. That made three immortals bound now to the lad, and through him, to each other. Pelas could barely wrap his mind around the potential ramifications, and his was a mind skilled at wrapping itself around the vastness of stars.

  He let his gaze explore Phaedor’s shadowed form while ruminating on the unique experience of that moment—to be sharing that oddly silent space in solidarity with Tanis’s zanthyr… And yet, to refer to Phaedor in this fashion anymore—should the latter now refer to him as Tanis’s Malorin’athgul? The thought made him smile.

  When last they’d met, they’d been rivals, or so it had seemed to Pelas at the time, when he’d followed Tanis into an abandoned courtyard on the night of the solstice and found the lad clutching the zanthyr, much the lost son embracing his father.

  But he and Phaedor were rivals no longer, if ever they had been. The river of Pelas’s bond with Tanis ran strong in his mind, anchoring him to the Realms of Light in ways constantly new and intriguing; but Pelas also now kenned a distant connection to Sinárr, as two men knowing a meeting of gazes across a wide river, yet too far to actually focus on each other’s eyes.

  And between Pelas and Sinárr, somehow present but not, like a shifting stream of sunlight that appeared and vanished, yet always with the sure understanding that its source remained constant…Phaedor’s linked presence.

  “Is Tanis…”

  “With Sinárr, for a time yet.”

  “Yes, I sensed that somehow.” Pelas frowned slightly. “A new perception.” He contemplated the zanthyr quietly. “Your influence, perhaps?”

  Phaedor cast him an unreadable look over one shoulder. “Perhaps.”

  Pelas pushed himself upright and then sank back against the pillows at the head of the bed. He was finding it difficult to push off the lingering effects of the Healing sleep; his eyelids felt too heavy at their corners. He lifted his gaze back to the zanthyr, who was standing in profile to him. “This was your Healing, I presume?”

  The slightest wry curl lifted one corner of the zanthyr’s mouth. “There were few others qualified to repair a Malorin’athgul’s shell.”

  That’s a certain text. Pelas nodded to him earnestly. “Thank you.”

  The shadow of a smile teased upon the zanthyr’s lips. “You’re welcome.”

  Pelas looked around again, trying to understand what he was perceiving…and not perceiving. The bedchamber wore opulence as a matter of course. Interestingly, when he tried to perceive the energy of the luxurious items that filled the room, they resonated predictably; yet they might’ve existed in the vacuum of Shadow for all the supportive energies that should’ve resonated along with them.

  He looked back to the zanthyr. “There is a peculiar silence here.”

  “The room is warded.”

  “Against the very turning of the cosmos?” Pelas layered an amused skepticism into his tone.

  Phaedor turned to him. “In a sense.” He pushed the fifth into the curtains and sent the folds of heavy silk scraping back. Light poured in from three walls, revealing a vista of blue water, steep green hills, and forbidding, snowcapped mountains. Phaedor came towards him. “To heal you properly, I needed time’s effects to pass us by unnoticed.”

  Pelas arched appreciative brows. “So this entire room is caught out of time?”

  Phaedor shook his head. “The whole palazzo.”

  Pelas’s brows rose another half inch. “That’s a nice trick.” He looked the zanthyr over carefully. “Your working?”

  Phaedor smiled. “Another’s. The patterns are layered into the palazzo stones. You will see.” He took up a robe from a bench at the foot of the bed. He must’ve withdrawn his veil of Healing sleep at the same time, for Pelas finally felt a wakeful resurgence. “The staff will be here soon with your meal.”

  Pelas eyed him contemplatively as he reached to take the robe. “The palazzo staff…just where have you brought me?”

  “The Palazzo di Adonnai.”

  A slow smile claimed Pelas’s features. “So the fabled place is real.”

  “Most legends have their source in truth.”

  “Including your own.” Pelas shook his head, still grinning. “Björn van Gelderan’s infamous zanthyr, protector of the Vestal’s nephew.” He eyed Phaedor intently. “What a marvelous new experience this is going to prove.”

  “You would have it no other way.”

  This statement of truth caught Pelas by surprise. “I suppose you’re right.” He narrowed his brows slightly as he held the zanthyr’s gaze. An understanding was dawning. “Just how long have you been watching me?”

  The zanthyr cast him a shadowy smile. “Long enough. Come,”
he moved towards the bedchamber’s double doors, “your breakfast is arriving.”

  Pelas wrapped himself in the robe just as Phaedor was opening the doors to admit a woman with grey hair in a meticulous bun.

  “Ah! Thank you, my lord.” She nodded to Phaedor as she swept inside carrying a silver tray laden with domes and made a beeline for a linen-draped table positioned before the windows. Another woman, plumper and younger, followed in her wake carrying the tea service. She eyed Pelas coquettishly as she passed.

  Pelas smiled at her.

  The older woman set down her tray on the table and looked up in time to see the blush on the younger woman’s cheeks. She looked to Pelas, whereupon her eyes went a little rounder, and she promptly turned back to Phaedor. “My lord, you can’t bring the likes of him here and not have the maids all in a fuss. They’re too long away from the society of handsome men.” She ran her eyes over Pelas once more and added faintly, “But the Lady shame me if this one doesn’t give Náiir a run for his money.”

  “I do apologize, Madaé Lisbeth,” Phaedor said.

  Her creased blue eyes softened upon him. “I suppose you shall be forgiven. First you bring young Tanis back to his mother’s beloved Villa Serafina, and now…” she glanced to a still smiling Pelas and seemed to lose her thought. “Well…” she briskly pressed out her skirts and made a point of composing her expression to a suitably unremarkable equanimity, “I suppose a little excitement never hurt anyone. The Lady knows we haven’t had much since the drachwyr left the palazzo to rejoin His Lordship in the east.”

  Phaedor extended a hand to the older woman and told Pelas, “Madaé Lisbeth is the seneschal of Palazzo di Adonnai. Madaé, may I present Pelasommáyurek.”

  Pelas took Madaé Lisbeth’s hand and gazed into her eyes as he kissed the back of it. “Surely the elegance of this room reflects your influence, Madaé Lisbeth.”

  She stared at him for a startled moment. “My goodness…” a faint flush came to her cheeks. “Whoever would’ve thought that when His Lordship was here plotting against you four that one of you would be sleeping between his linens and bound to his treasured nephew?”