Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Pelas pulled Ean up into a seated position. “Well, that was…interesting.” The Malorin’athgul crouched down in front of him and regarded him with amused copper eyes. “Suicidal, but definitely unexpected.”

  Ean gave him a pained smile. “I aim to please.”

  “It appeared more like you were aiming at self-immolation.” Pelas helped him up.

  The moment Ean regained his feet, the world became a spinning kaleidoscope trying to upend the contents of his stomach. Ean grabbed Pelas’s shoulder to steady himself. “On second thought…”

  “Yes, a break might do us both some good.” Pelas scooped up their swords and helped the prince towards the jungle trail.

  The sweat had dried on Ean’s skin by the time they emerged from beneath the mantle of palm trees onto a breezy beach, where black sand formed a crescent between high cliffs. Ean trudged down to the aqua water and fell in.

  The sea bottom angled sharply down so that deep waves immediately lifted and buoyed him, while a current drew him away from shore. Ean perceived the waves’ immensity, their dormant power, and beyond these closer perceptions, the tumultuous churning of the volcanoes, which were flooding the currents of the fifth with chaotic pulses.

  He must’ve floated there for half a turn of the hourglass, letting the fifth channel through him, sensing the elements…trying to encourage his head to stop pounding. When he finally swam back to shore, Pelas had a large fish and two lobsters cooking over a fire. Ean fell onto his back in the sand beside him.

  In the last few days, he’d made new connections to the things Isabel had been saying all along—that a wielder’s thoughts shaped his reality, that the Laws were a wielder’s surest security. He’d seen these truths in what had happened with Darshan, and proven them again that day.

  Ean still didn’t know the whole of Arion’s betrayal, but he saw already that Arion’s fixation on going forward to achieve the effect he’d intended despite all opposition had made a murderer of him in his last hours.

  The value of Arion’s outlook was that once you committed yourself to the path, you were committed to the path. You couldn’t give sway to any doubt. Yet this viewpoint had proven just as dangerous as it had been vital to Arion’s success.

  Ean exhaled a slow breath, mulling over these truths. It took a lot of courage to walk one’s path fully committed to the outcome. Doubts had a way speaking to your innate fears and cajoling your uncertainties, so that such voices felt like friends when in truth they were undermining your every action.

  How many doubts must Isabel have faced down while trapped in that tower with Pelas, cut off from elae and any aid, her only hope the certainty she placed in her path?

  And yet…where else did any real certainty come from save through the belief in one’s own ability?

  Ean blew out his breath and draped an arm across his eyes.

  “You know, you achieved a lot today, Ean.” Pelas angled him a look. “That trick you devised for rechanneling deyjiin…I don’t think anyone has ever intuited that—not even one of us.”

  Ean turned his head to meet Pelas’s gaze. He refrained from saying that it still might not be enough, since Pelas knew this as well as he did, and said instead, “Thank you.” He put earnest meaning into his words. For all he’d tried to unmake the Malorin’athgul’s shell barely seventy-two hours ago, Pelas had helped him achieve something even Arion had never managed.

  Pelas got to his feet, took up the spits in one hand and extended the other to the prince. “Come, Prince of Dannym. Dinner is ready, and we’ll be more comfortable eating at the house.”

  Ean let Pelas haul him to his feet. He extinguished the fire with a glance and followed the Malorin’athgul through the trees. “If that fish tastes as good as it smells, I could definitely be on the road to forgiving you.”

  Pelas angled an amused half-smile over his shoulder. “I imagine that’s a rather lengthy road.”

  “Well, that depends.”

  “On?”

  Ean nodded to the spits in Pelas’s hand. “On how good the fish is.”

  What Pelas called a ‘house’ was in actuality a mountain cliff that had been fashioned into a honeycomb of garden terraces and shaded rooms separated by volcanic glass shutters. As Pelas led Ean up a set of stairs hewn from the uneven rock, the prince perceived the currents permeating the space and intuited how the house had been constructed.

  He let out a low whistle. “You fashioned all of this with elae?”

  Pelas hooked a smile at him. “It isn’t the Palazzo di Adonnai, but it will do for our purposes.”

  Ean cast a wondering gaze across the house. “What were you doing, living way out here?”

  Pelas set their dinner on a stone worktable and headed inside. He returned carrying a tray with glasses, a bottle of wine and other items. “There have been times during my venture here in Alorin when I needed to isolate myself from the world, Ean.” His pleasant smile made light of this statement, but his eyes conveyed a singular disquiet.

  Ean sank down on the edge of a stone chair, even as realization sunk into his understanding. After a moment of silence, acknowledgment of the import of his words, Ean asked quietly, “How did he do it?” He searched the Malorin’athgul’s gaze. “How did Darshan lay compulsion on you without your knowledge?”

  Pelas’s copper eyes narrowed speculatively. “Goracrosta, I suspect.” He handed Ean a glass of wine. “Anything can be done beneath its auspices—including erasing one’s memory of the violation.”

  Ean was all too aware of the vile acts that might be worked against an Adept bound in goracrosta. “Dore committed unforgivable crimes against my brother using that stuff. I can only imagine what…” he grimaced and shook his head. “I mean, with Dore Madden whispering in Darshan’s ear…”

  Pelas arched brows resignedly. “To be perfectly honest, Ean, I count myself lucky that Shail relegated the problem of me to Darshan to deal with.” He began filleting the fish. “You may find this hard to believe, but my brother Darshan actually operates with an inherent restraint—he only uses what force he needs to accomplish his intention.”

  Ean paused his goblet of wine just shy of his lips. “Surprisingly, I’ve had the same thought about him.”

  “So you understand my meaning then. Shail, in contrast, thrives on imbalance. He never feels so alive as when surrounded by chaos.” Pelas came over and handed Ean a plate.

  Ean started on his meal. It was very good fish.

  While Pelas settled onto a sofa across from Ean, the prince regarded his host quietly, thinking over the things they’d spoke of as well as the things left unsaid. “When you and I clashed at Tambarré…” he lifted his eyes to meet Pelas’s again, “I couldn’t have wrought such destruction on your life pattern. That was Shail who did that, wasn’t it?”

  Pelas pulled at one ear. “Indirectly.” He drank his wine and assumed a thoughtful repose, one arm draped along the back of the couch and an ankle propped across his knee. “Darshan and I both found order in unmaking, a sense of balance in the act, if you’ll forgive my unintended pun. We would hover on the edge of the Void and work in tandem to dissolve the unraveling aether. But Shail…” his gaze tightened, “my younger brother was forever putting himself in the center of exploding stars, where forces beyond your imagining were reacting against each other. Shail fed on that chaotic energy. It was like lifeblood to him.”

  He downed his wine and then settled his gaze firmly on the prince. “If Shail had been the one compelling me, he would’ve put me under his total, unrelenting control. I would’ve become his puppet, and he would’ve been able to channel the entire force of my ability towards his aims.”

  A cold foreboding settled over Ean upon hearing this, for it mirrored Arion’s own fears while he’d been battling Shail on the Pattern of the World. Ean cast a pained expression off into the night.

  Pelas rose to retrieve the bottle of wine and refilled Ean’s goblet and then his own. He sat down beside him with a slow ex
hale. “I’m starting to understand Phaedor’s reputation, his reticence to speak of the things he sees.”

  “Influence, not interference.” Ean angled him a sidelong look. “I’m well aware of his views on the matter.”

  Pelas considered him quietly. “There are things I would tell you, Ean. Events I see on your path, yet to speak them aloud…it would create a sense of permanence about them, when in truth, they’re merely shadows.”

  Ean set his empty plate aside, leaned back and crossed his arms. “What things?”

  Pelas scratched his head. “For example, I see the value to you in this undertaking with deyjiin, but at the same time I wonder…” Pausing, he took up his bottle and stood, smiling faintly by way of invitation, but also a clear request for a moment to marry his thoughts with safer words.

  Ean followed him onto a patio on the north side of the house, facing the line of volcanoes. That pillar of smoke that had been belching from the central peak all day had finally waned to a thin spire, while three adjacent islands were now rimmed in flame. The sky wore twilight’s depthless cobalt, with a sprinkling of bright stars.

  “When I was in Adonnai, I read extensively of Björn van Gelderan’s library, even of his own writings.” Pelas turned to sit on the terrace wall, facing Ean. “The more glimpses I get of Björn’s vision, the more I want to meet the man who could see so far around the curve of consequence.” He set the bottle down and looked Ean over with the slightest challenge in his gaze. “But Björn van Gelderan is your brother by Isabel, and surely you recall the route to Adonnai.”

  Ean flicked a glance at him. “What’s your point?”

  Pelas made an expansive gesture with his goblet. “Why haven’t you availed yourself of the same wisdoms?”

  The question struck Ean with a powerful and unexpected sense of loss. He’d never thought much on it before, but the idea of returning to Adonnai after all that Arion had done there, after all of their magnificent planning, the dreams devised, the hopes and ideals explored…and after the appalling tragedies that had come to pass… It had been hard enough returning to the Sormitáge. To think of going back to Adonnai? He shuddered to imagine the emotional cost.

  Ean gave a slow exhale and turned a tight gaze off into the night. “I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “You don’t want to know?”

  Ean speared an anguished look at him.

  “Ah…I see.” Compassion threaded Pelas’s exhale. “It’s not that you don’t want to know, it’s that you don’t want to remember.” He arched brows resignedly. “This I understand.”

  Ean frowned. “How could you possibly understand that?”

  Pelas arched a brow, challenging his dubiety. “For countless years I resisted the truth of my brother’s compulsion—refused to believe he could’ve done something so vile to me. I wasn’t willing to accept that truth—I didn’t want to know such a thing, especially if it was true. I fought the knowing tooth and claw.” He looked off over the darkening sea, contemplatively, as if his memories were a ship sailing the horizon, capturing his attention with their passing. “I understand now that the only way to overcome the compulsion was to accept it.” He shifted his gaze back to Ean. “Not to accept and succumb, but to treat it as if it was my own creation. Rather than resisting it, I had to let it permeate me. Do not counter force with force; channel it. This was the lesson your Isabel taught me.”

  “I’m learning the value of the Ninth Law myself.” Ean aimed a rueful smile down into his wine. “I suppose I have come a long way since Markal’s repeated attempts to drown me.”

  Pelas set down his goblet. “Speaking of, I think a night swim would do us both good. What say you?”

  Ean gazed at him, keen to the peaceful silence emanating from the shared space of their minds, wishing he could find a similar quietude in his own thoughts. That pattern of consequence still extended before him looking exactly the same as it had yesterday, as if he’d spent every moment since then caught out of time. Making his peace with Pelas, setting his intention upon a path—even learning to better combat deyjiin—none of these had advanced him along that road. What choice had he missed that he remained stranded there, oddly unable to make any headway? What should he have been doing instead?

  “It seems like such a fallacy.” The prince shifted a tight gaze out over the mercuric sea. “This day, this place, our solidarity, this strangely idyllic escape when the realm is on the verge of—” He pressed his lips together, feeling the weight of the game and a driving need to find and understand his own role in it.

  Pelas pushed hands in his pockets. “You take your respites where you can find them, Ean. Memories of those moments are sometimes all you have to get you through the long stretches where there is no light to be found by purchase or prayer.”

  Ean shifted his gaze to meet Pelas’s, having perceived the raw feeling that had threaded the immortal’s words. Yes, they understood each other far more than they had any right to. For some inconceivable reason, Cephrael had thrown them together at Tal’Afaq. Looking at all that had happened since, Ean couldn’t now imagine that their meeting had been merely chance.

  Who was he to challenge a pattern his gods had seen fit to weave?

  He took another drink of his wine. “A swim…in the dead of night?”

  “Have you ever seen the ocean lit by elae’s currents, Ean? It’s a sight unlike any other this side of Shadow.”

  “Shadow?” Ean focused more sharply upon him. “What do you know about Shadow?”

  Pelas’s eyes fairly danced. “I know much.” He headed off, trailing that comment as a dangling carrot.

  Ean downed his wine, set down his glass and followed him. “Like what?”

  Already headed down a set of steps, Pelas shot a grin over his shoulder. “Let me tell you about a friend of mine named Rafael…”

  Fifty-eight

  “War is only profitable for bankers and blacksmiths.”

  –Marius di L'Arlesé, High Lord of Agasan

  Trell inched forward on elbows and stomach to join Loukas at the edge of the cliff. The combat engineer had found a perfect vantage from which to study the Fortress of Khor Taran. Reaching it had only required scaling a rope down a hundred feet of sheer rock and then shimmying lengthwise across a thin spire of ledge over a five hundred foot chasm.

  But having gained the point, Trell realized why it had to be this spot from which they studied Khor Taran, for while the vantage offered a detailed view of several sides of the pentagonal fortress, more importantly, the cliff extending above them kept them shaded from the morning sun. The soldiers upon the fortress walls would only see shadows on that side of the cliff, while the sun’s rising rays were angled to miss the lens of their spyglass, preventing any telltale glint.

  Stretched out beside him on the ledge, Loukas wordlessly handed said spyglass back to Trell. He closed one eye and peered through the tube. The fortress came into stark definition. Having studied maps and diagrams until he knew every twist of the fortress’s layout, as well as the surrounding topography, Trell was now getting his first real look at the place.

  Built into the end of Mount Attarak’s lengthy southern arm, the fortress consisted of three tiers, each separated by a crenellated wall boasting wide ramparts and mounted crossbows. In case anyone was bold or foolish enough to attempt scaling those cliffs and walls, arrowslits marked intervals all along the fortress’s exterior. The only approach for an army of any size would have to be from the north, where an unassailable wall would dishearten even the most stalwart siege engine.

  Yes, if you were going to hold a thousand men captive, you could hardly dream up a more perfectly impregnable place.

  “So…there’s the problem of getting in,” Loukas ticked off their challenges on his fingers while Trell studied the fortress, “and once we’re inside, there’s the problem of finding your father’s men, freeing them from whatever spell has been cast over them, as well as from the prison itself, and then finding a way
out. Then there’s the problem of escaping with a thousand men, who may or may not be in any condition to fight or flee, down a winding mountain road, probably pursued by five hundred Nadoriin and any remaining Saldarian hounds.”

  “Don’t forget the wielder,” Trell murmured with his magnified gaze on the winding mountain road leading to the fortress.

  “Right,” Loukas blew out his breath. “There’s the problem of the wielder, who exponentially magnifies the severity of the other problems.” He looked to Trell vexedly. “Your propensity for attracting insurmountable obstacles defies logic.”

  Trell cast him a sidelong grin. “Admit it. You missed me.”

  A half-smile teased on Loukas’s lips. His mood had much improved since leaving the camp, even though the shadows under his eyes had deepened. But sleep was a luxury neither of them could afford until solutions were found and their plans determined.

  And Loukas had spoken sooth. How were two hundred men going to get into a fortress that would only yawn at an attack from five thousand? Trell’s every waking moment had been directed towards this question—many of his sleeping moments, too. The one thing he knew for certain was that it couldn’t be through open confrontation.

  Loukas looked back across the gorge. “So…what are you thinking?”

  Trell studied the cliffs above the mountain road. “Two days.”

  Loukas turned him a look. “Two days…to ponder our misfortune? To make sacrifices to the gods…?”

  “Two days to prepare an avalanche for our egress.” He handed the spyglass back to Loukas. “There. My part is done.”

  Loukas frowned at him.

  “You get us in, I get us out. That’s the deal.”

  Loukas lifted the spyglass and resumed his study of the fortress. “Somehow I always get shorted on this deal of ours.”