Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Ean might’ve done much, said much to ameliorate her uncertainty surrounding his appearance, but he was being bombarded by memories—Isabel laughing, teaching him patterns, taunting him…kissing him. Her reflection watched him from the waters of every fountain. Vines and stems twined themselves in mimicry of her hair. Urns captured the curve of her hip; a statue, her inviting smile. Isabel was everywhere in that garden. Her energy had so permeated it that evidence of her thrived there still, three centuries later.

  Ean had expected to remember that place, but he hadn’t anticipated the feeling of the memories unfolding in his mind with fain recollection; as if they’d been building for centuries just waiting for the door to be reopened; favorite memories, moments of pleasure that Arion had clung to when all else had gone dark.

  Ean hadn’t expected that he would experience such aching loss at being in that place without Isabel, and he’d never imagined he hear his soul calling with desperate relief, At last I’m home!

  He knew where the path was leading long before they entered a walled courtyard where climbing roses were overtaking a pavilion. There, beneath a blossoming fragrance, a table draped in white linen had been set with a meal. A man seated there in the shadows. His shoulder-length dark hair draped his features, but even without seeing his face, Ean knew him from the way the currents made jagged ridges around his form.

  The Marquiin looked up as they arrived and quietly got to his feet. His well proportioned brow bore the Prophet’s dark tattoos.

  The prince came to a standstill.

  The Marquiin looked uncertainly to Nadia. She looked to Ean. “Your Highness…perhaps you remember the Marquiin who helped me in Tambarré. This is Caspar.”

  Ean forced himself through the energy of his own surprise. “Well met, Caspar.” He managed a smile and moved slowly towards him, his gaze fixed on the patterns curling across Caspar’s brow. “Are you aware that your tattoos are no longer active?”

  Caspar exchanged a look with Nadia and then returned his gaze to the prince. His eyes were nearly the same storm-grey shade as the prince’s own. Ean found this far more disturbing than the tattoos.

  “The Prophet did something to—well, in the end, he made me sane again.”

  “The Prophet made you sane.” Ean hadn’t meant for the statement to sound so choked with disbelief. He lifted an apologetic hand. “I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever he did, it still wasn’t enough.” The hollowness in his tone gave testimony to this truth.

  Nadia placed a hand on Caspar’s shoulder and lifted her gaze to Ean. “They live in a storm.” Consternation flickered across her brow. “A constant, maddening storm.”

  Ean observed the currents surrounding the two truthreaders. “The two of you are bonded?”

  Nadia nodded.

  “That was…valiant.”

  “Or foolish—according to my mother.” She tightened her hand on Caspar’s shoulder. “But she wasn’t there when…” but whatever when Nadia was referencing, the words never came in description of it.

  Caspar laid his hand over Nadia’s.

  Ean wondered what hope there was for Caspar if Darshan himself couldn’t undo the harm his patterns had caused. And patterns bound the Marquiin as a web cocooning a spider’s prey. Ean could unwork them, but not safely…not and still have much of Caspar left to speak of.

  Nadia donned a brave smile. “Would you join us, Your Highness?” She motioned to a chair across the table. Caspar rose to help the princess into her own seat, and she said as she was adjusting her skirts, “The Prophet sent Caspar to treat with me and answer my questions.”

  “It’s why he made me sane again.” The Marquiin said. “That much I understood from him. He didn’t want to frighten the princess. He wanted me to converse openly with her.”

  Nadia added portentously. “The Prophet told Caspar he would make no more Marquiin.”

  Ean slowly sank down in his chair and breathed more than spoke, “Why would he do that?”

  Caspar retook his chair. “Things were changing in the temple even before the princess arrived.” He settled his hands in his lap and held himself in a manner that seemed very formal for the setting, even somewhat antiquated. “Talk in the temple spoke of the Prophet having portentous dreams. Some of his acolytes spoke to me of how he’d changed, how they…desired his bed now, when ever before they’d feared being chosen for the duty.” He dropped his gaze to his lap. “Everyone feared being chosen.”

  Nadia shook her head. “There’s so much we don’t understand about the Prophet. Most everything, actually.”

  The three of them sat in silence for a time after this pronouncement, unsure how to proceed into conversation. Finally, Nadia straightened purposefully. “Forgive my impatience, Your Highness—”

  “Ean,” he said absently.

  “Ean,” she corrected with a slight smile, “but would you mind explaining what you’re doing here?”

  He met her gaze with his own troubled one. What could he tell her? What should he tell her? “I guess the simplicity is that I need your help.”

  She shook her head. “But how did you get here?”

  “The node—”

  “There is no node at Epiphany’s Altar.”

  “Regretfully, Princess—”

  “Nadia.”

  “Nadia,” he amended, “there is a node, or more accurately a weld, for the well of the second strand runs deep in that place. You won’t find the weld on any map, but it can be traveled by those who already know its location on the world grid.”

  Nadia drew back in her chair, staring at him. “And how by the Lady do you know its location?” Her words were crisp with startled unease.

  Ean cast a wistful gaze around the pavilion. He remembered luncheons taken there amid the autumn wind, and evening parties beneath strings of hanging globes. Arion had toasted Isabel numerous times beneath that dome—he recalled golden wine sparkling from dozens of upheld glasses. Even more often they’d danced in darkness beneath the stars to music playing in their minds alone. “I lived here for many years…long ago.”

  “You…” Nadia stared at him, clearly at a loss for words.

  After a moment, Ean focused upon her again. “Nadia,” he laid his hand flat upon the table, half expecting to see each finger bound by two gold rings, “I know all of this is unexpected and…strange, but our paths connected in Tambarré, and connected for a time they remain.”

  He looked down at the table again, his attention being caught by his bare fingers, thinking how fallacious it was to say his name was Ean val Lorian. “I don’t know what you know or how much you understand, Nadia, but you’re Tanis’s friend, and I’m Tanis’s friend…” he lifted his gaze and took a chance on her understanding, “and Tanis and I are both Players in the game against those who would see our world unmade.”

  “Malorin’athgul,” she whispered with wide, knowing eyes.

  “Pelas, Shail, Darshan, Rinokh.” Ean sat back in his chair with a heavy exhale. Suddenly he saw not the long light filtering through the pavilion roof but Rinokh’s great dragon eye staring at him through an obsidian wall in a valley that shook with unmaking. “The eldest is vanquished, the middle brother bound now to our side of the game,” he focused back on Nadia, “but the other two—”

  “Must be stopped.” Caspar’s words snapped as if with deyjiin’s static bite.

  The sun sank lower behind the trees. In the filtered light, motes illuminated as fireflies. A silence settled over the pavilion.

  “Everything is so upended.” Nadia seemed both somber and uncomfortable. “The High Lord, my father, left on a ship bound for the Dane’s city of Kjvngherad with Phaedor, and—”

  Ean’s pulse skipped a beat. “The zanthyr Phaedor?”

  “Yes. He brought Tanis to the Sormitáge. It’s how Tanis and I met…of a fashion.” She took up her wine but then only stared into it. “But Phaedor’s gone with my father to retaliate against the Da
nes, even though it was Shail—”

  “Shail.” Ean sat stiffly forward. “Nadia, I beg of you, start at the beginning.”

  While Caspar poured more wine, Nadia spoke to the prince in quiet words: everything she knew about Tanis, Felix and Malin van Drexel, the attack at the Quai game, the Warlock Sinárr, and Pelas and Tanis’s brave rescue at the temple.

  She told him how Pelas had pulled deyjiin from her veins to draw her back from death, and how Tanis had healed her of its deleterious effects at Pelas’s mansion.

  And she told him how Pelas had sworn himself to Tanis’s path, and how they’d worked the Unbreakable Bond together, the latter a truth which again speared Ean deeply.

  In the last, Nadia gazed pensively into her wine as she explained, “Pelas told Tanis that he would choose his own brothers this time. He said he would—”

  “Choose better for myself than our Maker chose for me.”

  Ean slowly turned his head to see Pelas ascending the steps of the pavilion.

  The Malorin’athgul wore a ruby-red coat over dark pants. His raven hair had been pulled into a queue, though a few loose strands framed his face, and he carried a cane with a ruby capstone the same exquisite color as his coat.

  Ean studied him on the currents. This was not the same Pelas he’d fought beside in Tal’Afaq, for the currents were swirling about him now in very different patterns.

  The prince slowly got to his feet. He was careful not to summon the lifeforce.

  Pelas paused beneath the archway. His copper eyes looked Ean over. An undeniable tension claimed the space between them, and silence filled in everywhere else. Then the slightest of smiles hitched one corner of the Malorin’athgul’s mouth.

  Pelas looked down at the cane in his hand. “I wondered if you would come.” He glanced up at Ean as he moved slowly through that no man’s land buffering their mutual apprehensions. “I saw the possibility but not the rationale.”

  Ean’s gaze tracked Pelas’s progress around the table. “Saw the possibility… where?”

  Pelas took Nadia’s hand and kissed it. “Princess.” He nodded to Caspar and then opened his hand to indicate the one empty chair. “With your permission, Ean?”

  Ean slowly sank back down in his own seat. “I came here to find you, not fight you.”

  Pelas cast him the ghost of a smile. “Evidently.” He spread the folds of his coat to either side of his chair as he sat. The cane he set on its point beside him, letting the fifth brace it and reminding Ean with a discomfiting twinge of Isabel’s staff.

  Pelas poured some wine. “I only just returned here myself, in time to see the zanthyr off and thank him again for restoring me, and make more promises—” he glanced at Nadia with a rueful smile, “ones I hope to be able to keep this time.”

  Ean dropped his gaze and worked hard to keep his thoughts aligned with his new perspective. A month ago, he would’ve been enraged to hear that Phaedor had healed this man who’d brought such harm to Isabel. A week ago, he would’ve known a powerful resentment upon hearing Pelas say that he shared the zanthyr’s confidence. Now he only marveled at the connections that bound them all to the game and to each other.

  Nadia looked between the two of them uncertainly. “Should we…eat something?” But no one made a move towards any food.

  Ean stared out into the courtyard, which was quickly being overtaken by shadows. So many emotions and memories were pummeling him, he was finding it difficult to separate them. “It’s harder being here than I anticipated.” He flicked his gaze to Pelas and away again.

  “She is everywhere in this place,” Pelas murmured by way of understanding. Then he saw the look on Ean’s face and raised an apologetic hand. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

  “Truth is truth,” Ean replied tightly. “Why should it be any less clear to you?”

  Silence made its entrance again, dragging an unwilling tension across the stage.

  “Forgive me for interposing,” Nadia made a tentative advance into the silence, “but Ean…when were you here? Dannym’s ruling nobility haven’t visited the Imperial Palace in decades.”

  Ean shifted his eyes to meet Pelas’s. “You must know.” He hadn’t meant it to sound like such an accusation. “So tell her.”

  Pelas held Ean’s gaze with a slight furrow between his brows. “Princess…” he looked to Nadia, “when the prince walked these gardens before, his name was Arion Tavestra.”

  Nadia covered her mouth with both hands.

  Caspar looked around the table at all of them. “Who is Arion Tavestra?”

  “One of the greatest wielders of the Fourth Age.” Pelas regarded Ean steadily, his gaze conveying far more understanding than the prince ever imagined to see there. “And the eternal soulmate of Isabel van Gelderan.”

  Caspar let out a low whistle. “The High Mage of the Citadel.”

  Nadia collared her throat with one hand. “But aren’t they both…” Understanding flooded her expression, though Ean couldn’t imagine why the news so distressed her. “But the Lady Isabel isn’t alive…”

  Ean looked away again. He felt speared by every pair of eyes. “She lives, Nadia.”

  “By the Lady’s Light, where?”

  “For the last three centuries in T’khendar,” he looked resolutely back to her, “with her brother.”

  Nadia’s mouth fell open, and her hand slipped from her throat to cover her heart instead. She shifted her colorless eyes to Pelas, looking inexplicably stricken. “He knew…didn’t he? He knew that they lived?”

  Pelas nodded soberly.

  “But…” her bottom lip trembled slightly, “why didn’t he tell me? Tanis didn’t tell me anything about them!”

  Ean rubbed his forehead. “Why would Tanis know anything about Isabel van Gelderan or Arion Tavestra?”

  “His training with Phaedor took many forms, Ean.” Pelas cast a look at Nadia that Ean couldn’t interpret, but which made her face grow even paler. Then he leaned and refilled the prince’s goblet. “You haven’t seen him since you parted ways—in Rethynnea, I recall. You may be surprised by what he’s learned in the intervening months.”

  “I’m sure I would be.” Ean made an effort to push off the memories of himself and Isabel and focus instead on his purpose for coming there. He met Pelas’s gaze tensely. “Can we talk?”

  Pelas glanced to Nadia. “Princess, with your leave?”

  “By all means.” Nadia’s eyes were voluminous with some secret understanding that Ean was obviously missing.

  He downed his wine and stood. Pelas followed, and they exited the courtyard together into the open gardens, where the trees and every stem, leaf and bush were aglow.

  “The golden hour.” Pelas gave Ean a smile. “A painter’s favorite time of day. The light, you see.” He was walking with his hands behind his back and his cane clasped between them.

  “How well does Immanuel di Nostri know these gardens?”

  “I crafted marble for their fountains, but I never walked the imperial grounds with your familiarity.”

  “My familiarity.” Ean puffed a dubious exhale.

  Pelas glanced to him. “But you’ve come far in regaining your ability since Tal’Afaq, haven’t you, Ean? The currents embrace you differently. You’re not the same wielder I met in my brother’s fortress.”

  Ean looked him over soberly. “I had the same thought about you a few minutes ago.”

  And the truth was, they’d become friends at Tal’Afaq—uncommon friends, if Ean dared admit the immediate feeling of kinship he’d shared with Pelas; but that esteem he’d developed had only heightened his initial sense of betrayal. Had he never cared, never admired, he would’ve felt only a pressing need to avenge Isabel. But he’d fought side by side with Pelas. The man had carried Sebastian’s broken body in his arms. It had been personal, his betrayal.

  Pelas shifted his hold on his cane, adjusting course with the current of Ean’s thoughts. “Ean…if I could change the past—”

&nb
sp; “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m trying to let the past lie where it belongs—in the past.” If only Arion’s memories would let him. Ean pressed fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I’m trying very hard to maintain perspective. You cut Chaos patterns into my wife’s flesh…” he took a measured breath and let it out slowly, “but you also carried my brother’s naked form in your arms. Sebastian would not be free now without your aid.”

  “Nor I without Isabel’s.”

  Ean’s feet suddenly refused to take another step. He stared at his boots and clung to reason with what felt like his last effort. “Whatever else Isabel has chosen,” he said slowly, using the entire force of his will to ground himself and keep his voice calm, “she chose to help you and sacrifice her troth to me in the process. I thought…” he gave a powerful exhale and glanced to Pelas. “In the beginning I really thought it would destroy me, knowing this, but I can’t go on blaming her for it now, not knowing what I…”

  When only silence continued onward, Pelas dipped his head with quiet inquiry.

  The prince met his gaze soberly. “Isabel bound herself to Arion Tavestra, Pelas. She didn’t bind herself to me,” —Lady’s light, how that truth drained him in the knowing— “not really to me for me. The troth she made to Arion, the troth he made to her…” Ean let out his breath slowly. “What I’ve come to realize is that those promises haven’t changed, but they’re not the same troth I thought I was making. She sacrificed our troth for the game when she helped you, but I don’t think she betrayed her troth to Arion at all. I think Arion would’ve done the same…” Ean pressed his lips together and shook his head. “No, I’m certain Arion would’ve done the same—that he did do the same thing to her three hundred years ago.”

  Compassion colored Pelas’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Ean.”

  Ean regarded him feeling a conflict of guilt. That the immortal could stand there earnestly offering sympathy when Ean had tried to unmake him… Contrition tightened his throat. “I owe you the greater apology. What I did to you in Tambarré—”

  “Was justified. My brothers and I have done far worse things to one another.” Pelas thumbed the ruby knob on his cane and considered the prince with a furrowed brow. “I’m bound to the game now, Ean—at least for as long as Tanis is playing it. Whatever force of intent I bring with me, whatever skill or power I possess…it is yours for the asking.”