Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Darshan let the curtains fall back in place and turned away from them. “That much was clear to me.”

  She shook her head. “Then perhaps I’m not—”

  “How does the Adept Return?” He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled the wall of bookshelves. “Death has claimed the Adept’s corporeal form and your angiel Epiphany his soul. Then what occurs?”

  Socotra smoothed a strand of hair back from her face. “We have only speculation.”

  Her leveled her an intense look. “I will accept your speculation.”

  She took a few moments to organize her thoughts while her heart found its natural rhythm again. Many of her colleagues feared treating with the immortal races, for their combined long history was riddled with tragedy—usually for the mortals. But Socotra had always found it thrilling. Not since Immanuel’s last visit had her heart worked so hard to keep afloat. She was rather enjoying it, in a suicidal sort of way.

  “If the mortal tapestry is woven of the energy of life,” Socotra began, “then it follows that Adepts are bound to the tapestry—in spirit, in essence…we can only infer this truth, yet the axioms support it.”

  She looked him over to gauge his reaction, but his gaze revealed nothing of his thoughts. “We believe that when an Adept dies, the tapestry pulls their spirit back into itself, and…” she opened palms in apology, “we can only assume that the tapestry restores the Adept to life when it is time for his thread to surface and begin weaving its path in the pattern anew.”

  Hearing this, Darshan turned to face her. His dark hair fell forward, draping angular cheekbones, softening his features but not the potency of his gaze. “What would prevent an Adept from Returning?”

  “Balance, I suppose?” She set down her empty cup and sat back heavily in her chair. “Our race is dying. We suspect the Adepts are still Returning but not Awakening.”

  He waved off this answer. “There is no mystery in this to me.” He took up his cane and started walking again, gesturing with it as he inquired, “What would prevent an Adept from returning to the tapestry after death? What could trap him here?”

  The concept startled her. She followed him with her gaze. “Do you speak of ghosts? Spirits held to this plane?”

  His gave her a voluminous look.

  Socotra sat stunned. Between breaths, she held up fascination in one hand and prudence in the other and allotted them careful consideration. Then she tossed prudence over one shoulder—it only ever served longevity, and what was the point of a long life without risk and the wonders it reaped?

  “Is this Adept by chance bound to you, Darshan?”

  He turned her a swift and penetrating stare. His words followed on danger’s breath, icy against the back of her neck. “Why do you ask me this?”

  She rallied her composure from where it had scurried to hide in the next room. “My eyes may be old, but they’re not blind,” her voice sounded embarrassingly weak, “and I know a vortice when I see one.”

  He studied her with a deep and meaningful stare. Then he released her from his pinioning gaze and returned to his chair with an immortal’s grace of movement. The cane he left standing on its point. “Tell me about these vortices.”

  Socotra let out her breath slowly. She still had her youthful temerity but not the physical resilience that had once held hands with it.

  As she looked at Darshan, remaining acutely aware of his power in a way that kept her walking the knife-edge of vigilance, it wasn’t lost on her that he could’ve been directed to any of a hundred different scholars, save that she alone happened to be in her office. That this man, who was somehow connected to—and certainly of the same ilk as—Immanuel di Nostri had found her…there had to be some kismet in this crossing of threads.

  That was the thing about the tapestry, though. So many times, you never knew the moment was important until you looked back upon it and saw how it connected to the rest of the pattern. Ironically, or perhaps by divine design, in the way that Healers couldn’t heal themselves, no mortal could see the long view of their own path. They could speculate, they could postulate, they could pray, decide, act with faith or without it, but no manner of postulation would give them an actual view of their path, only a view of its potential. Even Seers had difficulty looking down their own threads.

  Socotra cleared her throat and focused her thoughts. “Vortices weave no thread through the pattern; rather, they attract and bend the paths of others to suit their aims, forcing change in the tapestry’s design. They summon those they’ll need to accomplish their objectives, whether or not they know they’ll need those people at the time.”

  She looked him over speculatively, thinking of herself and how she’d clearly tumbled into his gravity. “You, Immanuel di Nostri…you’re both wells in the tapestry’s fabric. You attract other threads to yourselves as stars attract planets.”

  He considered her with a quiet and unsettling intensity. “You have assumed much about my nature, Socotra.” She couldn’t tell from his comment how he felt about this. His gaze narrowed slightly. “Did Immanuel speak to you of us?”

  Socotra gave a dubious laugh and pushed up from her chair. Talk of Adept ghosts bound to immortal vortices required stronger stuff than tea.

  “Immanuel di Nostri is the most close-mouthed man I’ve ever met.” She reached her sideboard and turned him a look over her shoulder. “More tightlipped than you by far.”

  He frowned at this.

  Socotra poured two glasses of brandy. “You’ve drawn me onto your path, Darshan. Let us speak candidly. You came here for answers. Take advantage of my expertise.” She returned to the table and offered him a glass and a smile. “That was something Immanuel was very skilled at.”

  Darshan accepted the brandy with an unreadable gaze. “I don’t doubt it.” He watched her as she retook her chair.

  “So,” she settled in again, “this Adept, the dead one who hasn’t Returned…”

  His eyes tightened. “He is bound to me.”

  Even though she’d expected it, the truth was still thrilling to ponder. “With the fifth?”

  Darshan nodded.

  Socotra marveled at the territory they were heading into. “An unbreakable binding?”

  Again, he nodded.

  She took a drink of her brandy and schooled herself to sip instead of gulp. As the liquor warmed her stomach, she walked herself through what she understood. “You must still be in communication with him, else how would you know he hasn’t gone through the Extian Doors?”

  “It appears that we are still able to reach each other,” he agreed.

  Socotra stroked her chin. “I freely admit, these are uncharted waters. Only a handful of Adepts in recorded history have ever dared work the Unbreakable Bond—Isabel van Gelderan and Arion Tavestra being the most famous of them—but none of them were immortals.”

  Darshan paused his brandy halfway to his mouth. “That is a bold presumption, Socotra.”

  Socotra gave a low chuckle. “We’ve a saying in Malchiarr: because a leopard suffers a butterfly to land upon its nose doesn’t make the leopard appear a butterfly.”

  She lifted a finger from her glass to aim it at him. “Immanuel would never admit it to me, but I always knew he was fifth strand.” She set down her glass and spied her guest shrewdly. “I cannot say what race of immortality claims you both—none that I’ve ever heard of, to be sure—but only a fool imagines we know all there is to know of creation.”

  He arched a raven brow. “It doesn’t bother you, knowing you treat with something unknown?”

  “It intrigues me greatly, Darshan.”

  After a moment’s consideration, he lifted the brandy to his lips. “You are a fascinating woman. I can see why my brother enjoyed your company.”

  She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  His eyes explored her unapologetically as he drank. She got the distinct impression he was resculpting her flesh in his mind as perhaps it had once appeared. “You would’
ve provided a welcome escape for him.”

  “Your brother.” Socotra drew back in her chair with inquiry sharp in her gaze. “Do you…” —she’d dared suppose they were of the same ilk, now dare she ask it?— “speak to me of Immanuel di Nostri?”

  “He has another name which he answers to, but now I recall he mentioned you.” Darshan set down the brandy glass and sat back in his chair. “Your name becomes familiar to me in the way one refashions a lost memory after it’s been invoked by another.” He captured her eyes anew with his own dark and compelling gaze. “You were his lover for a time.”

  Only an immortal would think of a handful of decades as ‘for a time.’

  Darshan rose from his chair and walked to the windows again, his manner pensive, his thoughts reshaping the cosmic fabric before her very eyes. “I see where your logic would take us: a vortice, an unbreakable binding…I am indeed holding Kjieran on this plane.”

  Socotra couldn’t tell if he was pleased or distraught by this truth. “It does follow, I’m afraid,” she admitted.

  Darshan again lifted the sheers and gazed out into the piazza. In the distance, a crowd had gathered around a man who was speaking atop a protester’s plinth. Darshan rested one hand on the window and inquired without looking at her, his voice reflective, “How do I release him?”

  “I do not know.” He looked over at her, and she shook her head in apology. “However…” she wondered if she dared suggest it.

  The faintest lift to one raven brow encouraged her to continue.

  Socotra exhaled a slow breath. “I might suggest asking Epiphany’s Prophet.” She raised a placating hand before he could summon his ready suspicion. “Another presumption, I’ll admit, but you gave me the impression that you and she had crossed paths in recent months.”

  He drew back slightly. “I gave you this impression?”

  She smiled. “You leave deep footprints in the fabric, Darshan.”

  He tightened his gaze upon her. “Socotra—”

  But whatever he’d meant to say he abandoned, for something beyond the windows drew his gaze suddenly back to it. So riveted did he instantly become that she rose to discover for herself what he was observing.

  “Do not.” His tone alone pushed her back down in her chair. Darshan scraped the sheers fully aside and then stepped back from the windows. His extended hand summoned his cane through the air. It clapped as it struck his palm, and Merdanti stone remolded itself into a dual-ended scepter.

  He leveled a stare at her, dangerous and dark. “Stay away from the windows.” Then with the barest glance, he made the glass amorphous and stepped through.

  Socotra pushed out of her chair in an instant.

  She reached the reforming windows in time to see him leap down two stories and go striding across the piazza, dragging innumerable threads of the tapestry behind him.

  Sixty-one

  “I care not what becomes of me, only what becomes of it.”

  –The wielder Malachai ap’Kalien, on T’khendar

  Sleeping beneath a star-studded sky, lulled by the slosh of waves against the black sands, Ean dreamed of another life…

  Arion paced the path skirting the lake surrounding Epiphany’s Altar, electrified by the charged polarities of outrage and disbelief. The moon shone from high above to imbue the crystal gazebo with a luminous glow, while the lake lay still beneath sleeping fountains, a mirror of the heavens.

  Yet he couldn’t appreciate the glorious night, for his mind remained in the chamber where the attack had occurred. Too clearly he saw it still—inverteré patterns cob-webbing the air, others set to explode the moment she worked elae, innocuous shelves filled with atrophae to drain and enervate her. A cunning and deadly trap set for the Citadel’s High Mage.

  How many of the Hundred Mages had been directly involved, and how many were simply complicit? Of course they’d all pled their innocence, but this hardly constituted proof; they all knew enough to evade fourth-strand readings.

  If Arion had been allowed his way, every one of them would’ve been summoned before a truthreader tribunal—to Shadow with their indignant protests and attempts to hide behind their offices!—on pain of death, if needed, and dragged in chains if he had to.

  How could this have happened? How could he have failed to see a pattern of such deadly cause and consequence? How could Isabel have failed to see it? The one thing he was sure of was that Dore Madden had orchestrated the entire affair. That much he’d seen in the pattern. If only it had shown him direct action instead of ambiguous intent!

  Arion shoved a hand through his hair and turned to pace in the other direction. One would think a man as depraved and despicable as Dore Madden couldn’t be so bloody successful. But he was incredibly successful. And Arion knew why: Dore simply didn’t conceive that there was anything he couldn’t or shouldn’t do.

  That was the essence of success as a wielder. But in the case of a man like Dore Madden, with a moral compass attuned solely to self-interest, it made him unpredictable, and immensely dangerous.

  Isabel’s imminent arrival pulled Arion’s attention back to the moment. He rushed to meet her at the bottom of the stairs and took her hands in his.

  For a moment, words failed him. The horror of almost losing her felt too raw. Then he pressed a kiss to each of her palms and enfolded her in his arms. “By Cephrael’s Great Book, Isabel, if I hadn’t been there—”

  “But you were.” Her breath fell softly across his ear; her mind caressed his with reassurance.

  Arion took her by the shoulders. “I’m supposed to leave for Adonnai, but I cannot think of—”

  “No, you must go. What you do there is too important.” Her colorless eyes were as luminous as the gazebo, her manner radiating a similar calm, much in contrast to the agitation coursing through Arion. “We can’t let these things distract us from the higher purpose.”

  “An attempt on your life is hardly a distraction, Isabel, and you and I both know they’ll try again.”

  “It seems likely.” She kissed him and ran her nose lightly along his. “But I will never again allow myself to be blinded to the truth.”

  Arion frowned at this. Blinded was exactly the reason they were there. “Isabel…” he looked her over uncertainly, “are you sure about this?”

  She took his hand and drew him towards the lake. “If memory serves, this was your idea.”

  “Metaphorically. A show of strength.” He put the fifth beneath his steps and followed her out across the water. “To walk not only unafraid but blindfolded against their evil, proof that you stand remote from their treasons—untouchable, incorruptible.”

  “And I agreed with the value of this metaphor.”

  “But Isabel, this—”

  She stepped from lake to gazebo. Light erupted in a dance of spiraling, prismatic patterns. Arion followed her beneath the crystal dome, frowning deeply.

  Isabel took his hand and wove her fingers through his, even as her mind was interwoven with his mind, their life patterns forever entwined. “Arion, I looked into Dore’s eyes and let myself be deceived.” She sought understanding in his gaze. “I wanted to believe he could be redeemed. I wanted to think some good remained in him.”

  Concern and his own reservations sharpened Arion’s unease. He traced his thumb across her cheek. “Compassion is a Healer’s curse.”

  “Even so, you warned me.”

  He shook his head. “I hardly understood what I saw. You were right to challenge my conclusions.”

  “Was I? Events would convince me otherwise.” She took his hand from her face and opened his palm. Her thumb traced his lifeline, while her mind traced a path backwards through choice. “I couldn’t see anything on Dore’s path to prove his deception, so I denied your instincts—I denied my own instincts.” Isabel squeezed his hand in hers, the slightest emphasis of her fury. “Now we have no idea how far the corruption has spread, how many Adepts were allowed to purchase their rings, how deeply the Mages’ misinforma
tion has penetrated the Sormitáge Orders. I have much work ahead of me in restoring truth.” She fixed her colorless gaze upon him. “This was a necessary lesson, Arion, and this…” she exhaled a slow breath, “this is a necessary sacrifice.”

  Arion pressed his lips together. There was nothing to be done for it. She’d decided, and in that decision, she’d chosen her path. The most he could do now was support her in her choice.

  Isabel held out a long strip of cloth to him.

  Frowning deeply, Arion took the cloth while she turned and readied herself. The idea of never again looking into her eyes summoned a knot to his throat, but he lifted the strip and draped it across her eyes. She adjusted the blindfold into place.

  “You will become a symbol to all of us,” Arion forced the words through an ache in his chest, “an icon representative of hope and truth, elae embodied.” He tied the cloth behind her head and lowered his hands to her shoulders. The crystal gazebo was blazing so brightly he had to squint. “You will become—”

  She turned in his arms and lifted her blindfolded gaze to him. “Epiphany’s Prophet.”

  *—*

  Ean woke to Pelas’s hand on his shoulder. Beyond the open wall of his room, sunlight was glaring off the sea. “Gah…” His head felt like someone had been kicking it all night. “What time is it?”

  Pelas straightened above him. “Early afternoon. You seemed to need the sleep.”

  But definitely not the dreams.