The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (18 page)

“Lead on, Captain,” Raine murmured, his diamondine eyes as hard as their namesake.

Carian turned them west and headed off. With every step he sank up to his ankles in the sand. To pass the time, he started a stream of invective that only got more creative as the sun got higher.

It was a long morning.

Round about midday, they found a copse of withered looking date palms and stopped to rest in the meager shade they provided. They’d been taking turns carrying the avieth, but Carian’s back and shoulders were still aching. He was really starting to despise her. He took a swig from his flagon and handed it to Raine. It wasn’t smart to drink rum in the middle of the desert, but it sure as silver was smarter than drinking nothing at all.

Raine accepted the flagon and took a sip, somewhat gasping as the rum flamed his throat, “How many days did you say to cross this desert?”

“Six—more on foot.”

Raine looked around at the barren landscape and held his tongue. “Tell me about the node,” he said as he handed Carian’s flagon back.

They’d done little talking before Raine set off into the night to prove himself wrong. Mostly shouting, actually. Besides which, Carian hadn’t known how Franco had done it when they first arrived, but in the intervening hours he’d figured it out. He’d had all night to think about it, hadn’t he?

Carian laid his head in the small bit of shade and stretched out on his back. “Best I can tell, it was a doubleback.”

“Which is?”

“Well, to describe it in layman’s terms, you take two nodes and you pin them to the same nodepoint. Since a nodepoint can only ever open into one node at a time, there’s a switch that occurs as soon as one is traveled.”

Raine considered this. “So the minute Franco took Ean across the one node…”

“Righto, my handsome. As soon as he stepped off the node, the first one switched off and the second one switched on. Then, once we traveled the second node, it switched back to the first, which is why we’re trapped in this wretched hole of Belloth’s burning arse.”

Raine looked frustrated. “Then where did Franco take Ean?”

“Dunno, but they’re here somewhere.”  Probably enjoying a good meal and a smoke in Björn’s bloody palace.

“How do you know they’re here? In T’khendar?”

Carian closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself swimming in the sea caves of Jamaii with a hundred naked maidens waiting on the shore to attend to his pleasure. “The nodes have to be close together to start with,” he murmured. “At least in the same realm.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” Raine remarked. He wiped his brow with his forearm and looked up at the sky. Then he frowned. “When did it turn blue?”

“Ages ago,” the pirate muttered.

“Come to think of it,” Raine said, really frowning now, “how is it we’re still on our feet at all?”

“You’re quick, aren’t you?” Carian remarked with eyes still closed. “All night and you just figured out things are a bit different since you visited last?”

“Carian, your manner becomes tiresome.”

“Sarcasm is just one of my diverse talents,” the pirate returned unrepentantly. The man had made him wait all night in the damned sand. He could bloody well listen to him complaining about it for at least a commensurate amount of time.

Raine leveled him a long, steady stare.

Carian could feel his eyes like a hot lamp. “Oh, all right,” he growled. He sat up to give the Vestal an annoyed scowl. “Like I tried telling you last night. There’s elae here now. Go ahead, truthread me or something.” Then he grimaced. Who’d have thought he’d ever offer to endure such torture in the pursuit of truth?

But Raine clearly didn’t want to test his theory anyway. “But Gwynnleth…” the Vestal said.

“Yeah, there’s got to be some other explanation for what happened to her,” Carian muttered with an absent wave of his hand, “because I’m telling you, there’s elae all over the place. Not that it’ll help us much right now unless you can work the fifth and call the wind to carry us out of here.”

Raine still looked unconvinced.

Carian shrugged. “Suit yourself. Believe me, don’t believe me. I don’t give a rat’s arse. But you’re going to have to face it sometime, you know.”

Raine gave him a strange look. “Face what?”

“The truth,” Carian said. He climbed to his feet and grabbed the avieth’s arms again, getting her up onto his shoulders. “Fortune prick me,” he hissed as he shifted her dead weight across his back, “I vow she’s gained ten pounds just lying there.” He pushed his face close to where hers dangled below his shoulder and told her, “You’re going to owe me big time when this is over, birdie.” Then he smoothed a tangled strand of auburn hair away from her cheek and turned to Raine. “Ready?”

“As ever,” remarked the Vestal, sounding anything but.

Perhaps an hour of walking later, something caught Carian’s eye. He paused, hitched the avieth higher on his shoulders, and squinted toward the horizon. He could just make out a dark spec moving across the sky. It would have to be as big as a galleon ship for him to see it from that distance. As the spec gradually grew in substance and shape, Carian arched brows. “Is that what I think it is?”

Following Carian’s gaze, Raine sighed resignedly. “Very likely.”

“Winds blow me proper,” the pirate muttered.

“The drachwyr have always served my oath-brother,” Raine noted unhappily. “He’ll know we’re here now.”

Carian grinned sardonically. “Poppet, I hate to break this to you, but I’m sure he’s known from the beginning. We came through
his trap, remember?”

Raine looked wearily to him and then back to the
drachwyr soaring in the far distance. He sighed. “No doubt he’ll have us walk all the way to Niyadbakir just to make his point.”  

“And what point would that be?”

“Whatever his point is in bringing us here,” Raine replied, leveling him a heated look, “because rest you assured, Carian vran Lea, there is a reason we’re here.”

“Yep,” the pirate agreed, “there sure is—because you refused to let me travel the goddamned node.” He hitched Gwynnleth up on his shoulders, hitched his britches up over his butt, and started off in the direction of the flying dragon. “At least we’ve got a heading now.”

Wearing a black scowl, Raine followed.

They made steady but slow progress through the deep sand, seeing nothing and no one until the sun became a disk in the western sky and Carian vowed he would go no farther. The wind had picked up as the sun fell, and now a steady furnace breeze accosted them. They’d trudged to the top of a dune to get a feel for the lay of things, and Carian decided that was as good a place as any to stop for the night. He slung the avieth off his shoulders somewhat ungently, trusting the soft sand to be more of a friend to her than it had been to his aching legs and ankles, and threw himself down beside her.

“Shade and bloody darkness, but do you owe me big-time, birdie,” he muttered as he rolled in exhaustion onto his back, flinging his arms to either side.

Raine stood at the edge of the dune gazing at the line of mountains on the horizon. They didn’t seem even one inch closer.

“I’ve been putting some thought to what you’ve told me, Carian,” Raine observed while the wind tossed his brown hair into his eyes.

He’d been quiet for most of the afternoon and seemed to have regained his composure. Perhaps realizing he wasn’t about to keel over and die had something to do with it. Carian could see how facing imminent death by elae-denial could impact a man’s disposition—especially a man like Raine.

“Mmm-hmm?” Carian murmured. 

“If you were truthful in telling me how many people are living here…”

Carian felt the tiniest touch of Raine’s power in his head and smiled. “There are five cities the size of Rethynnea,” he returned with eyes still closed, “and Niyadbakir is easily as large as the Sacred City of Faroqhar.”

Raine eyed him cynically. “Why weren’t you forthcoming with this knowledge before, Carian? A man like you…I would’ve thought at least the Guild would know about it.”

Carian grimaced, said a few silent curses and returned peevishly, “It’s because of that damned zanthyr.”

“Ah…” Raine seemed to need little else by way of explanation.

But Carian still grumbled, “We had a bit of a misunderstanding the last time I was here,” feeling like the words were being scraped out of his pride with a dull-edged spoon, “and he—well…he was in a position to demand a certain measure of discretion that I wouldn’t usually agree to.”

“I see.”

“Yeah.” 

“Considering the number of people living here now,” Raine observed then, blessedly not pushing Carian for more details about his prior interaction with Phaedor, “it would only follow that there would be elae. I decided to trust you and looked, and the currents have formed a natural pattern, though it is quite different from Alorin’s…which I suppose is to be expected.
” Wearing a thoughtful frown, the Vestal sat down and draped elbows over knees. “There is much I do not understand about all of this.”

“Really? It’s seems pretty obvious to me.”

Raine gave him a heated look. “Indeed, Carian vran Lea? Tell me then: why did Malachai beseech the Council of Realms for their help in bringing life to T’khendar if merely populating the place would’ve accomplished the deed?” He exhaled heavily and shook his head. “No…my oath-brother still has much to explain.”

Carian left that one alone. He knew his boundaries, and Raine knew he had elae back now. You didn’t taunt a cornered skunk unless you wanted to walk around reeking for a week with your eyes and throat half-burned out.

“Carian…” Raine said after a moment. When the pirate didn’t respond, Raine said again, more insistently, “Carian,” and knocked the pirate on the leg—hard. “What is that?”

Carian opened one eye to look. Then he bolted upright. “I’ll be scuppered and sunk if that ain’t—” He jumped to his feet.

A vessel was approaching in the distance. At first, all he could see of it was the long tail of sand rising in its wake, but as it neared, Carian recognized it as a sailcraft. He whooped a shout and clapped Raine on the shoulder. “We’re saved, poppet! I won’t have to eat you after all.”  

“I’m so relieved,” the Vestal remarked bleakly.

Soon the craft had sailed close enough to make out the details of its construction. Its hull was slightly curved across the beam but more so along the keel, though the bottom was flat and smooth to allow for quick slippage across the sand. The gaff-rigged mainsail looked massive by comparison. But it was the man standing at the helm that had Carian grinning from ear to ear.

The captain turned his sailcraft into the wind and eased off the sails, and the vessel slowed before them.

Instantly Carian grabbed Gwynnleth up into his arms and went skipping and sliding down the dune. The captain slung himself out of the boat and landed in the deep sand just as Carian reached him. The pirate shoved the avieth into the other man’s large arms, let out a whooping holler and grabbed the both of them into a bear hug.

“Balearic de Parma!
What in Tiern’aval are you doing in T’khendar? Last I heard, half the Imperial Armada was in pursuit of the Black Gryphon! I thought I’d surely seen the last of you!”

Balearic was such a beast of a man—broad-chested and thick armed—that the long-limbed avieth seemed frail in his grasp. He boasted wild black hair as long as Carian’s and more earrings than flesh in his ears. “We’ll get to that later,” he answered with a grin that jingled the charms braided into his beard. He hefted Gwynnleth in his arms and arched an unruly black eyebrow as he looked at her unconscious form. “Who’s this then?” 

“That’s Gwynnleth.” Carian gave her a sooty look for good measure. “She’s a pain in the arse apparently in any state of consciousness.” 

“And your friend?” Balearic inquired, lifting kohl-lined blue eyes to Raine, who was finally descending the dune.

“Oh. That’s Raine D’Lacourte.”

Balearic really arched brows at that. “Ah so…” He eyed Raine speculatively.

“You gonna invite us on board, Balearic, or did you just stop to gloat like the gypsy you are?”

“To be sure, to be sure,” Balearic returned. “Climb aboard and I’ll hand your lass up to ye. What did ye do to her anyway?”

Carian clambered into the sailcraft and then reached down to take Gwynnleth from the captain. “I think she’s allergic to your lovely realm,” he answered. “Soon as we got here she started screaming.” Carian exhaled a grunt of protest as he lifted the avieth and laid her carefully down again on a bench to one side of the helm. “I thought that was annoying,” he added as he straightened, brushing hands against his britches, “but I’d willingly trade a ranting and screaming Gwynnleth for this one. At least the other version could walk.”

Raine reached the bottom of the dune and approached Balearic. “Thank you for stopping for us, Captain,” he said solemnly, extending his hand. “I am Raine D’Lacourte.”

“Balearic de Parma, your Excellence,” the gypsy returned, clasping wrists with the Vestal. “Welcome aboard.” He motioned toward his ship.

Raine jumped up, grabbed the railing and easily swung his legs up and over the side to land gracefully on the deck.