Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  To walk the path of ver’alir without a grounding tether was to forever disperse into the aether, to lose one’s humanity upon the airborne tides, absorbed by communion. A tether provided the airwalker with a purpose for living, a compelling reason to return to his mortal shell. Once, Loukas had been Tannour’s tether…long ago. He hadn’t dared commune with Air since losing him as such.

  But now he had Trell. It had shocked him, actually. After so many long months listening to Loukas’s nearly rapturous boasting of Trell of the Tides, to then discover that the man actually lived up to his reputation…

  Tannour had wanted to hate Trell. He’d expected all along that he would. Instead, to his immense surprise, the man had become his new tether, and a stronger grounding force than Loukas had ever provided him.

  ‘Air is caprice,’ Tannour’s instructors had explained. ‘Do not seek to confine or predict it, only to ken each new direction as it shifts.’

  Tannour certainly could not have predicted this shift—gaining a new tether in someone he barely knew; restored to his full ability by a man for whom he’d only ever known jealousy.

  Before him, Khor Taran heaved a bulging exhale and disgorged a flooding displacement. Tannour recognized the heartbeats of hundreds of men rushing out of the fortress. Enough, perhaps, to even their odds if Luck would carry her fair share.

  Tannour whispered down the mountain while the fortress was still exhaling men and breezed inside on Khor Taran’s inevitable inhale. He hovered just within the yard then, wrapped in a motionless whirlwind, himself the whirlwind. He was a trick of the light, if glimpsed at all then easily forgotten—a shadow cast by nothing, insubstantial.

  Now Khor Taran’s heartbeat reverberated in his consciousness. Tannour cast his awareness outwards on the thinner bands, higher wavelengths, listening—

  It was not the right word, listening. His ears had no part in it.

  —for the ratcheting reverberations of men’s language, repetitive and predictable impressions in the fabric, the invisible transcript of speech.

  As the educated blind could read with fingertips the studded impressions of letters, Tannour read similar impressions on the wavelengths of air, sifting through them for the one name he needed. He let all else dissolve around his perception as wet sand through his cupping fingers, washed away by the ebbing water to reveal the tiny prized shell beneath.

  Kifat…

  There was the name. Once…and again. The sparkling shell glimpsed among the sand, washed over and gently dragged off, but he had its location pinned.

  Tannour rode air’s currents then, letting the natural flows pull him towards his quarry as a raft floating upon the tides. He might’ve sped there, but he dared create no displacement himself, and riding the current gave him time to better discern his enemies.

  Shadows appeared before him, gossamer layers of minute motion—heartbeats, the trembling filaments of expanding lungs, blood’s radiating warmth—all of which cast the air into predictable waves. Tannour breezed past these men unseen, an inchoate shadow. Through the fortress he whispered, a feather caught and carried by the wind

  —if a feather was a deadly shadow that had its own will—

  into a tower, foremost of the five. Up a winding staircase, drawn now by the heartbeat of the man he sought. Its cadence was strong, steady. The man yet had no idea Tannour had come to claim him for the Ghost Kings.

  He rode air’s currents up the curving stairs and was reminded…

  —‘But why must you walk ver’alir?’ Loukas’s words were spoken in hushed tones on a dark tower stair, much like the one he was ascending then. ‘Why can you not walk the Path that Casts Infinite Reflections? Or at least the Mirror Path?’

  ‘I didn’t ask to walk ver’alir!’ Tannour had protested desperately. ‘I would walk hal’alir or chrys’alir if I could, but the path chooses you, Loukas. You don’t choose the path!’

  Loukas fell back against the stairway wall and slid down onto the step, wearing an expression of abject horror. He lifted his green eyes to meet Tannour’s. ‘Don’t you realize what this means?’—

  Tannour pushed away the memory with his jaw tight. He never could think about Loukas n’Abraxis without grinding resentment between his teeth. As often as Tannour found himself thinking of Loukas, it was a wonder he had any teeth left to grind. But walking ver’alir always opened windows into the darkest places of his soul. There was no hiding from the Blind Path.

  Tannour rounded a landing where the staccato of speech was rippling the air. He paused just shy of an iron-bound, wooden door—cold, slow waves melded with wood’s radiating warmth, the latter nearly indistinguishable from the ambient temperature, yet with a timber that bespoke of living origins, echoes of harmonic resonance…

  Air brought him the words—

  “…coming here even now.” A male voice, charged with friction. “If these Converted succeed in freeing the mutineers, five hundred Northmen will be hungering for the blood of those who imprisoned them.”

  “We bound them at your instruction,” came a reverberating growl.

  “I do not think they will note the distinction. Would you, Lazar?” A pause while waves of contention buffeted the air. “Despite your sentries’ claims, this band of Converted are coming—they may already be inside the walls. And now you’ve fallen for this diversion and sent more than half your men away—”

  “At last accounting, Kifat did not have command at Khor Taran,” growled the voice of Lazar.

  “Neither long will Lazar hal’Hamaadi, I suspect.”

  A scrape of steel made spines in the airwaves. “Hold your tongue, Shamshir’im, or I’ll cut it from your mouth.”

  “You’d take better aim to point your anger at our enemies.” Contempt underscored Kifat’s tone. “These Converted may have a wielder with them, Commander. I surely see the signs of a fearful working brewing in the aether.”

  Tannour knew these words were a lie, both because he was one of those Converted, and because of the disharmonic undertone that accompanied Kifat’s words. But he doubted the man called Lazar hal’Hamaadi could tell the truth from a lie when spoken off a wielder’s tongue.

  “I would act now if you mean to catch them before the moment is past you,” Kifat sneered.

  Lazar growled an oath. The speech impressions ended.

  The tower inhaled-exhaled a broad-chested figure that greatly displaced the air. He flung the door open and stormed out, followed by many others. Angry waves accompanied the clanking jingle of mail and the stomping of boots.

  They paused in the hall, inches from Tannour, their heart-rates elevated, rapid exhalations fueling fury.

  “Do you think he speaks true, al-Amir?” a soldier asked while waiting for the rest of the men.

  “He’s Shamshir’im,” growled the tallest of them—Lazar, if told from his voice. “What do you think?”

  Tannour whispered past their exiting forms into the tower room.

  Air claimed much of the hexagonal space inside. It spoke to Tannour of windows and walls, and of static energies casting waves into the aether. Some gathered in corners like floating vapors, traps with long tendrils flailing outwards, luring innocent death. Others hovered as wispy webs waiting for the fly to snare itself in treacherous strands. Myriad varying wavelengths reverberated, each one the melody of a different pattern.

  On the far side of the room, the wielder Kifat stood before a south-facing window. Air encased a dark-haired man with a hooked nose and bullish jaw. He was leaning on the window base seeping filaments of tension into the air.

  As the last exiting soldier slammed the door, Tannour retreated from communion with Air. Pulling out of communion always left him slightly disoriented, a pale version of himself, hollowed by ver’alir’s darkly scouring winds. The longer he walked the Blind Path, the longer it took to recall his own humanity.

  Bound again to solidity—

  Solidity…did he ever actually lose solidity? It was impossible to know. He wa
s not himself when he walked the path—

  Tannour stood in the shadows, waiting to see how long it would take before the wielder noticed him.

  Four beats of his heart later, Kifat spun. Surprise flared his nostrils. Air sucked sharply into his lungs. A fanged smile borne on crooked teeth slowly claimed the wielder’s face, but his quickening heart—and the host of new patterns that suddenly coalesced into being around him—betrayed his unease. So he’d recognized Tannour from his shroud—a telling clue to his identity for any who’d faced a ver’alir assassin… although few survived such encounters to speak of what they’d seen—if not from some other arcane means. Doubtless he still thought Tannour disabled, tetherless and unable to commune. That would explain why he wasn’t more afraid.

  “My, my…Tannour Valeri.” Kifat dragged the long folds of his robes away from his feet as he left the window. “I set a trap for a rabbit and caught a fox.”

  Tannour thought this statement a little premature.

  “I expected the val Lorian prince to seek me out.” Kifat ran his eyes across Tannour hungrily, as if already contemplating how to spend the bounty on his head. “But then, I didn’t know you were among this company of irritants. My master will be so pleased to finally have you in his hands. He’s been looking for you for a very long time…the one man who knows the true face of the traitor Thrace Weyland.”

  “Is that what hal’Jaitar told you?”

  “Don’t prevaricate with me!” Kifat speared him with a daggered glare. “You had Weyland under your knife. Every Shamshir’im felt the kiss of your blade upon his traitorous throat.”

  “You will know it soon yourself, Kifat.”

  “But you didn’t follow through,” the wielder snarled. “My master paid the Vestian Sorceresy an extravagant fee for your services—a prized airwalker, famous among the paths. But you…you did not do as they promised us. You didn’t kill Weyland.”

  Tannour stood remote upon ver’alir’s shadowed shores. “I will never kill for them.”

  “And you will die for it!”

  Kifat’s fervor became suddenly familiar. Tannour remembered meeting him; the wielder had been one of many Shamshir’im who’d fallen over themselves to tell Tannour everything they knew about Thrace Weyland, all but drooling at the chance to rid their brotherhood of Weyland’s interference.

  “I should’ve guessed you’d conceal yourself among Abdul-Basir’s kennel.” The wielder’s lip curled in a sneer, as though this affectation would somehow mask the stench of his unease, and he continued his slow circuit of the tower, as if Tannour would believe the air empty of danger.

  Tannour’s blind gaze followed the wielder via Air’s displacement. “Your spy, Kifat…tell me about him.”

  The fanged smile returned. “The spy, the spy—this spy you’ve been force-feeding lies. I knew Abdul-Basir couldn’t afford to send two thousand men against us when my master’s liege marches on Raku. I told the fortress commander as much. Soon, I think, he shall regret his deafness—”

  “The spy.” Tannour made air reverberate his voice through the room. “Tell me his name.”

  The wielder spun in a swirl of dark robes. Black fury flashed in his gaze. “I will tell you nothing.”

  “You’ll tell me everything,” Tannour’s liquid voice resonated with certainty, “and then beg to tell me more.”

  Kifat snarled a curse. He flung his arms wide, and furniture split away from the center of the tower, shrieking as it scraped across stone to bang against the walls. “How did Weyland turn you?” He slowly advanced on Tannour. “Compulsion? Bribery? Thrace Weyland was the least of us, but I am pleased to school you in a real wielder’s power.”

  He slung off his outer robe, revealing a molded breastplate, and pulled a serrated knife from its sheath at his belt. Tannour drew a black-bladed dagger—

  cold Merdanti steel beneath his form-fitting calfskin glove, so oddly solid

  —and approached the wielder in turn. He might’ve thrown one of his shuriken and ended the man with well-placed aim, but he wanted answers before he sacrificed Kifat to the Ghost Kings.

  “I accept your invitation of tutelage.” Tannour spun the dagger through his fingers. “Let us tread san’gu’alir together.” He struck with Air fuelling his strength.

  Kifat blocked with a vambraced forearm and slashed for Tannour’s throat. Air rippled in advance warning of his motion. Tannour slipped aside, simultaneously striking again. The wielder blocked him, more narrowly that time. Tannour struck high, low, high—his stabbing blade splitting air. The wielder dodged, blocked and flung a pattern at Tannour, displacing Air.

  Tannour sidestepped, and the pattern blasted the wall instead. Kifat growled and swung for Tannour’s throat. Tannour twisted and struck his knife backhanded, slicing through the meat of Kifat’s forearm. The wielder hissed and jumped out of range.

  So went their dance of flashing knives: retreat and advance, advance and retreat, the ebb and flow of razor edges splitting air into agitated waves, razor patterns aimed as arrows requiring Tannour to dodge.

  He stabbed high and found his weapon blocked, dropped his blade into his lower hand and slashed for the wielder’s gut. Kifat twisted wildly. Tannour advanced into his retreat, flipped his blade, caught it out of its spin and struck—muscle parted with flesh—tossed it back to his right hand and struck anew—more blood flowed—flipped his dagger into the air and spun beneath it, catching and stabbing at a stumbling Kifat, slicing along a rib.

  He struck again, dodged again…back and forth, tossing his blade from hand to hand, twisting, spinning to avoid the wielder’s patterns, his footsteps marking a dance led by Air’s pulsing displacement.

  Kifat finally backed away, breathing hard, his clothing bloodied. Bravado told one tale, but the wielder’s pounding heart bespoke another. The Blind Path brooked no dissembling.

  Always the uninitiated underestimated the Blind Path. Always they thought Tannour’s shrouded eyes a hindrance. They assumed he was walking blind, fighting blind. Always, they learned the error of these assumptions.

  Tannour had chased the wielder deep into the thick of his extant patterns. Invisible energies surrounded him now, frenzied moths casting choppy waves. He perceived the vibrating patterns and kenned each one’s intent by the frequency of its energies.

  Kifat swiped at his jaw where a jagged red line was seeping blood down his neck. Tannour knew the wielder entertained many similar wounds, love-bites of their embittered dance.

  He flipped his dagger and caught it, flipped and caught it, the millwheel of his intent. Air bound tension between them…bound them both to opposite ends of an inevitable outcome. The Blind Path demanded sacrifice.

  “The spy…” Tannour’s dagger flipped-spun-sealed loudly against his gloved palm while ver’alir hummed its song of blood in his consciousness, “tell me about him.”

  Kifat ground hatred between his crooked teeth. “This is barely begun, Valeri.”

  Tannour hooked a half-smile beneath his shroud. “I agree.”

  “You will get nothing from me!” The wielder threw his power—

  ***

  Trell led his men down a narrow road in Khor Taran’s lower fortress. The stars cast indifferent light on the narrow passage of hard-packed clay and dirt. The high walls of outbuildings loomed on both sides. Their feet met uneven stones and their eyes sought substance from shadow.

  The alley road ended at a granary, a structure Trell remembered from Jaya’s diagram, where he suspected he would find his father’s men. Just shy of that intersection of lanes, he held up his hand to pause the group.

  Diagonal to their position, across the broken stones of a rutted road, the granary jutted two stories, its roof falling just shy of the battlements of the lower fortress wall. Five men stood watch before the granary’s barred doors.

  “Security seems a little excessive for a grain house,” Loukas remarked low and droll in Trell’s ear. “Must be some very unruly wheat.”

  �
�Or very big rats,” offered another man, which spawned low chuckling.

  Above the granary, Nadori soldiers policed the ramparts and manned a large, mounted crossbow that could just as easily be aimed down into the fortress proper as outside of it. The distance too great and the moon too bright to risk crossing there.

  Trell motioned his men to fall back. They hugged the darkest shadows while a patrol wandered past. Then they slipped back the way they’d come.

  Threads of tension bound the night so tightly that Trell felt like he was running through webs of coarse muslin. Every passing second dragged at his awareness, for each anticipated an alarm sounding in the next.

  Having studied Jaya’s map until he knew it blind, Trell led the men on a winding route through the alleys of the lower fortress until they’d circled around to approach the granary from the north, out of view of the men guarding the doors. Trell had tossed the dice against Chance that there would be an entrance on that side of the building. To his relief, a staircase led up to a second floor landing.

  They eliminated the sentries in skilled silence and then forced the door. Trell’s men slipped inside, one by one. The smell of excrement and unwashed bodies assaulted them.

  ‘Beware entering the space yourself…for you will become prey to whatever malicious working holds the rest in thrall…’

  Náiir’s warning added another layer to Trell’s apprehension. He motioned to his men to spread out. Most took the stairs leading down to the main floor, while Trell and Loukas crossed the loft to a railing overlooking the warehouse. Beneath them, the shadowed outlines of men formed an undulating sea.

  “Trell, there’s not—” but Loukas smothered the rest of it in a curse.

  Trell clenched his jaw, knowing well what Loukas had observed. There couldn’t be more than five hundred men in that space, a far cry from the thousand he’d been expecting.

  But whether one thousand or five hundred, the soldiers sat in utter stillness, eyes open but obviously unseeing. Their hands lay dully in their laps. Most wore soiled tunics and britches, but some still wore their swords. A particularly cruel taunt, perhaps?