*—*
Tanis gently released elae and removed his hand from the prince’s brow. His own eyes were wet, but Ean’s were wetter. He met the lad’s gaze.
“Tanis…” Ean sucked in a shuddering breath. Then he hugged him fiercely.
***
Ean clutched his son close, reeling with the impossible course of their separate journeys, marveling at the pattern of cause and consequence that had resulted in their unlikely reunion, recognizing Isabel’s hand in its design.
That he’d held out hope of meeting his son—that he’d placed all of his faith in this potential—only to have his son personally answer that call… Ean blessed the choice that had placed him on that path and every choice thereafter. For the first time in his life, he regretted nothing.
How impossible it all seemed, and yet how correct. All of the connections fit—Isabel’s foretelling, Arion’s desperate gamble in sending his body forward in time, Phaedor taking Tanis to be raised close to where his father would resurface…and that body discovered in the Calgaryn catacombs, which had appeared on the same night Ean had returned to the mainland, the very night their paths had all connected—that had been Arion’s body, the catalyst for everything else that followed. Yes, it all made sense. And now with his memory no longer occluded, Ean perceived a desperately missed bond of awareness.
He cast gratitude and love upon it. Tanis.
The lad pulled back, his colorless eyes suddenly bright. Father.
Ean smiled wordlessly, wondrously, at him. Is it strange for you to call me that?
Tanis shook his head around a wide smile. Not at all. Your mind feels the same to me now as it did when I was a child. He searched Ean’s gaze. Is it strange for you?
Ean blew out an amazed breath. I never knew how much a part of me had missed our connection until this moment.
They sat smiling at one another, exploring the binding, letting it fill with the energy of their reconnection as a stream swelling in a sudden flood—only these were floodwaters of admiration, appreciation, joy, love. Tanis shared his own memories with Ean, glimpses from his childhood, moments of tenderness with his father eliciting emotions that made Ean’s eyes wet anew.
But in the wake of their reunion bobbed a terribly truth, one that darkened the waters of the prince’s joy. He held Tanis’s gaze for a moment longer and then stood, driven by a tumultuous energy that spiked the bond with charged particles.
As he walked to the railing, he tried to think of a way to apologize to his son for what Arion had done. Because of Arion’s choices, Tanis had grown up knowing neither of his parents.
Ean closed his hands around the railing and then pushed away from it, unsure how to even begin expressing his contrition.
Tanis rose tentatively behind him. “There was another place I wanted to show you…if you’d like to see it.”
Ean turned to face him. “Of course.” He swallowed around the tightness in his throat and managed a smile. “I’d go anywhere with you.”
Abruptly the world around Ean shifted.
He stood looking out upon a pebbled beach, a star-studded sky, a sea darkly luminous with moonlight. The soft roar of the waves churning the stones served as a reminder of Time’s inexorable march.
Ean felt a stab of recognition, deeply poignant. “I remember this place,” he breathed more than spoke. Verily, the scene struck a powerful chord in his soul. “Arion loved this beach.”
“I know.” Tanis aimed a smile at him and started off along the shoreline.
“You know?” Ean jogged to catch up with him. “How do you know?”
“I have memories, too.” Tanis gazed out to sea as if seeing some of those memories in the play of moonlight upon the waves. “They were dreams at first, like yours, but after I remembered my parents’ names, everything came back.”
Ean exhaled a slow breath. “So you knew about Arion.” He searched his son’s face. “Did you know about me?”
Tanis looked back to him. “I didn’t know you were him until I saw you in Wylde, but I suspected.” Tanis radiated solicitude over a lingering excitement, soothing Ean’s turmoil with his own calm energy. “When I realized that Phaedor had taken me forward in time, I started to wonder why he would’ve delivered me to Dannym in this specific time. Three hundred-something years?” He tossed a winsome smile at Ean. “It’s rather an unlikely number, you know? I spent a long time thinking it over, and the only rationale that made any sense was that Phaedor brought me to this time so that I could be with you.”
Ean folded his fingers behind his head and walked with his head tilted back and self-abasement dragging his steps. “Tanis…this is my third time through the Returning, but for you—Tanis, for you it’s the same lifetime!” Abruptly he dropped to his knees in the sand. “How can you ever forgive me for something like this?” He searched his son’s face. “How can I ever make it right?”
Tanis knelt down before him and met his gaze soberly. “Because dying like that isn’t penance enough?”
For a moment, Ean stared at him. Then he gave an explosive exhale and fell back in the sand.
Tanis laid down beside his father and joined him in staring up at the stars. “Arion believed that all of his postulated effects were aligned to achieve the game’s purpose, and because he believed unequivocally that his and my uncle’s game served the greater good, he truly believed all of his decisions were aligned to serve the greater good as well. He had to go forward and achieve them…he had no choice but to do that.”
Ean turned him a swift stare. “You speak as though you truly knew him…me…Arion.” Confusion threaded his tone, astonishment his gaze.
Tanis cast a soft smile into the sky. “Do you remember the journals?”
Ean pushed up on one elbow. “Don’t tell me you have those journals!”
Tanis grinned. “My mother left them for me at our home in Caladria, protected from time by the patterns that preserved the house—your patterns. I’ve read every one of the journals, most of them several times.” He folded an arm behind his head and smiled up into the starry night. “I have your Sormitáge rings, too. I imagine if you try them on, you’ll find they fit.”
“Blessed Epiphany.” Ean fell back in the sand. After a moment, he took Tanis’s hand and gripped it tightly, feeling relief, joy and an impossible sense of hope humming through every thread of his soul.
Tanis…Ean’s thought sounded choked with wonder, even to his own ears, she really did keep her promise.
Tanis squeezed his hand in return, radiating happiness. She always does.
Epilogue
“You want me to do what?”
Raegus n’Harnalt’s disbelief hit Loukas in the chest with the force of a blunt-tipped arrow. Either that, or the dull burn in his esophagus came from trying to stomach Trell’s indigestible expectations.
To their right, the gushing waterfall was pouring down from the aqueduct. The eastern ridgeline burned with the sun’s morning light, but dark clouds were blowing in fast from the south. When the storm hit them, the rain would make a deluge of the waterfall and a three-tiered fountain of the fortress.
They all had to be out of there before the storm hit.
This presented Loukas with a unique challenge. Though all of the men were working side by side—Dannish soldier, Converted, Nadoriin—they still hadn’t found a way out of the fortress.
The portcullis was too heavy and clogged with mud to be lifted by its chains, but Loukas thought if they could find a way to brace the portcullis in the center, they could make a fulcrum of the braced point and the thing would hinge and fall across the top of the mud. It might even make a lattice of sorts for helping them tread over the worst of the sludge.
Loukas called down from the high wall to Raegus and his men, who were sitting their horses on the far side of the mud slide. “Use the ropes and the horses to create a fulcrum…” but he bit off his own words. Trying to explain physics by shouting from a forty foot wall over a hundred feet of mud
to a man who had never studied mathematics was about as useful as cursing at the clouds for raining on you.
Loukas thought of two people he would really like to be cursing at just then, but neither of them were available to receive his complaints. Trell was on the lower wall with Lazar hal’Hamaadi; and Tannour…well, shortly after floating Trell and the Nadori commander out of the caverns—and if that hadn’t raised a thousand words of speculation, Loukas didn’t know what would—Tannour had collapsed. Trell had sent him off to be looked after.
But Loukas really didn’t want to think about Tannour just then.
“What did he say?” Raegus called from across the scar of mud.
“Are you all right, Loukas?” Gideon val Mallonwey placed a hand on his arm.
Loukas shook himself back to the moment. “Yes. Sorry.” He gave an apologetic wince. “I was just…wishing we had someone down there who could explain my idea to Raegus.”
The Shi’ma warrior Nyongo Kutaata sauntered up with his sword caught behind his massive shoulders like a beam for hauling buckets. “And what is it you need explained, Chamagi’tiito?”
Gideon tilted his head at him. “I’m afraid I don’t know this word.”
Nyongo flashed a grin of very white teeth, bright against his ebony skin. “It means ‘little-mouse-who-doesn’t-know-his-own-strength.’”
“It’s not my favorite sobriquet,” Loukas muttered.
“Ah…I see.” Gideon smiled amusedly at Loukas before returning his gaze to Nyongo. “Well, you see, the Avataren and I are not entirely in agreement on the best way to clear the portcullis. Loukas thinks we need to brace the portcullis near its center hinge, attach ropes to the top and use the horses to pull it down across the mud.”
Gideon leaned out over the crenel to view the massive slope of mud piled up against the portcullis, blocking them in. “My feeling is that even if we got the portcullis off somehow, we’d still never out get through all of that. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps we can jump…make a sort of slide of the mud.”
“Is that all?” Nyongo shoved his sword into the hands of a nearby Converted. While Loukas gazed at him perplexedly, he looped a rope about his substantial girth, handed one end of the rope to a bewildered Gideon, and promptly launched himself over the wall.
Gideon uttered an oath, grabbed for him and missed.
Loukas flung himself partway over the crenel in time to see Nyongo vanishing deep into the mud. “Haul him back up!” He grabbed the trailing end of the rope along with Gideon and the others.
“Shadow take me if he don’t outweigh a bear,” one of the Converted hissed between clenched teeth. Too slowly the rope scraped back across the crenel’s stone edge.
Loukas knew Nyongo had risen from the mud when he heard Raegus shout, “Are you out of your fethen mind?”
When Loukas looked out over the crenel again, Nyongo was swim-sliding through the mud towards Raegus. He reached the edge of the mud field, got to his feet and waved up at them. Raegus launched into a rife scolding liberally peppered with fethe and fethen.
Loukas looked pointedly to Gideon.
“Right.” The captain scrubbed at the back of his head. “So…we should pull down the portcullis then.”
“That’s a marvelous idea, Captain. Can you get them started?”
“Yes,” Gideon said through a sigh. He looked disappointed that his idea hadn’t proven the better one. “Nyongo!” he called down to the Shi’man. “Tell him Loukas’s plan!”
Nyongo waved an acknowledgment and started explaining to a frowning Raegus how they were going to pull down the portcullis to get the men out.
Loukas headed off to see to other tasks.
Most of seven hundred men were atop the walls industriously going about whatever business Gideon or Lazar had set them to—searching for the missing, salvaging what they could of the fortress’s arms and supplies, helping to restore each other to rights. Many of the Dannish soldiers were lined up along the west ramparts taking turns burning off their cuffs and collars.
As Loukas walked the wall, the only thing more constant than the buffeting wind was the talk among the men of Trell and how the Goddess Naiadithine had spoken to him. Unfailingly he saw questions in their eyes as they watched him go by. But Gideon had commanded his soldiers to ask no questions and stay alert to ways they could ‘assist the prince’s men in securing our departure.’ So no one stopped Loukas, though he could tell many of them wanted to.
It was odd walking among so many unknown faces, himself unknown to them save perhaps to those who’d seen him standing at Trell’s side. He could always tell which ones they were, for they’d give him a nod or some other acknowledgment, subtle if potent—a definite recognition of his status as their prince’s friend.
He reached a bastion at the joining of walls and climbed five stairs to its elevated rooftop, which gave him an unimpeded view of the river valley. Earlier in the morning, they’d spotted a dark swath coming up from the south—the Nadoriin host returning. Lazar had signaled them to wait there, and the soldiers had paused their march where the valley split eastwards around the mountain’s arm.
“Do you think they can see us?”
Tannour’s unexpected voice made everything inside Loukas clench up. He looked to him, reflecting that Tannour made his chest ache far more painfully than anything Trell had ever tasked him to do. “I suppose. It’s probably a sight, all these strangers crowding the walls of their fortress. What must they be thinking?”
“I think they’re probably thinking, ‘Where’d that bloody waterfall come from?’”
A faint smile manifested on Loukas’s lips.
Tannour seated himself on the crenel and propped up one booted foot. The wind tossed his dark hair about his shoulders in a way that accentuated the sharp angles of his face. Loukas rarely saw him bare-headed, for he always wore his head scarf as the Vestian nobility wore it—which was his right.
Tannour leaned back against the merlon and caught his knee between interwoven fingers. He could make any position look comfortable, even as a twelve-year-old hanging a hundred feet above a fall to his death.
Loukas looked back to the valley, feeling hollow. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been worse. I’ve been thinking about how you saved my life down in the water.”
Loukas swallowed. “And?”
“I don’t know,” a dark smile hinted on Tannour’s lips, “maybe that makes us even.”
Loukas cast him a look. “It makes us far from even.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He cocked a raven brow. “Depends on who’s counting, doesn’t it?”
Loukas turned away from him. He was determined not to let Tannour rile him that morning, especially not when Trell was depending on him to remain focused. “I saw the wielder’s body. Did you learn anything from him?”
“He told me all, as they all do.” His smile grew chilling. “The man was undone long before the tower fell on him.”
Loukas clenched his jaw. “Do you have to be so fethen pleased about the grim things you do?”
“Sorry…” Tannour regarded him with a quiet intensity. “I never did master the art of Avataren dissembling, as you have. I suppose I just didn’t recognize your lessons at the time for what they were.”
Loukas turned him an even stare. “Have you come just to torment me, or for some fruitful purpose?”
“Tormenting you bears fruit,” Tannour looked him over with a shadowy gaze, “just not the kind you find particularly palatable.”
Loukas cast him a spiked glare. “Stop it.”
Tannour made the Avataren sign of obeisance, which only frustrated Loukas more. Grinning then, he spied a look around. “Where’s the A’dal?”
Loukas let out his breath. “Meeting with Lazar about how to keep the entire fortress from flooding.”
Tannour abruptly straightened. “Fethe, you might’ve led with that.”
“And deny myself the immense pleasure of your barbed l
ashes?” The rebuke struck from his lips before he could stop it.
Tannour’s expression sobered, proof that he’d taken well enough both of Loukas’s meanings—the less obvious striking the deeper cut. “Where is he, then?” Tannour’s voice had assumed that cold distance which Loukas had come to know so well.
Loukas returned his gaze to the valley, but all he saw was regret. “Down on the lower wall.”
Tannour started off without another word.
Loukas called after him, “What can you do?”
Tannour paused on the steps and looked over his shoulder, his pale gaze full of accusation and injury. “You always doubt me.” Then he simply vanished.
Loukas stared at the space where he’d been for a long time, but it was even longer before he murmured through a tightness in his chest, “I never doubt you.”
***
As a thunderstorm was raging outside Trell’s command tent and his camp was playing host to hundreds of guests, Trell sat behind his desk listening to a different kind of storm raging inside—ideologies and ideals battling for agency amid the convex scales of morality, honor and obligation. Men once at cross-purposes had been forced into unity, not by king or country but by the undeniable will of a god who cared nothing for bindings of blood or oath. The men argued now as much with their own consciences as with each other.
Trell observed those collected there and thought of their strengths—Raegus n’Harnalt and Rolan Lamodaar: able men, competent leaders; the Nadori Commander Lazar hal’Hamaadi, whom Trell had learned to be a man of reason and rationality, though their initial meeting might’ve led him to assume otherwise; Gideon val Mallonwey: bright and capable, and already so loyal to him; Loukas n’Abraxis: his closest friend among that group, and brilliant beyond his own estimation.
Had Loukas not solved their escape from the fortress with minimal effort? Such a simple solution, pulling down the portcullis and using it as a lattice, a sort of snowshoe across the worst of the mud, allowing upwards of seven hundred men to walk out of the fortress unscathed.
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 124
