The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (22 page)

Alyneri admitted the fairness of this assertion. Her body went from slim to emaciated with naught but five pounds lost from her frame, and Ean’s ill condition had stolen her appetite long before her own accident…

Ean
.
Oh, Ean…

Thoughts of the prince necessarily brought thoughts of Tanis and the zanthyr, too, the three of them inextricably connected now in memory for reasons she didn’t fully comprehend. Seeing them in her mind’s eye constricted her throat and brought a tightness to her chest. Her dear friends…they must be so worried! She wished for the hundredth time since her own awakening that she might’ve known anything of Ean’s condition…of her friends and how they fared.  

“Alyneri?” Ama-Kai’alil’s voice was close, golden, full of concern. Images of the warm light of a Gandrel summer pierced through her grim thoughts. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was reminded suddenly of friends who are dear to me.”

He placed a hand upon hers. “Is there someone we should help you contact?”

The same question as before, but she shook her head. “There is no way to reach them,” she confessed, feeling suddenly the weight of all that had come to pass, of Ean’s quest and the kingdom’s dire fate. “For now…no.”

“As you will,” he remitted.

“Food then!” Yara said, all business, and she placed a bowl in front of Alyneri. She made to shoo him away from her side, but he said, “No, I’ll do it,” so gently that Alyneri’s heart fluttered. Being next to him wakened marvelous new feelings. Her breath always came a little faster when he was near.

Alyneri tingled from head to toe as he fed her with slow care, one hand holding hers, the other doling out Alyneri-size bites of Yara’s hearty porridge. She tasted cinnamon and clove, apple, plum and fig, all of it drenched with honey and churned butter, but none of them were as sweet as the feel of his hand on hers. Her heart quickened with anticipation every time she thought of looking upon him for the first time, every time he spoke to her—every moment she shared with him, in fact. How strange to be so appended to a man she barely knew…yet something in his voice spoke to her with the warmth of a childhood memory, one from a time before tragedy shattered her dreams.

The morning’s conversation concerned preparations for Yara’s impending trip, and not long after Yara began discussing the packing, Alyneri asked, “Where are you going, Yara?”

“To visit my grand-children in Agasan.”

“Rimaldi and then the Solvayre,” Ama-Kai’alil added with a smile in his voice.

“How wonderful!” Alyneri aimed a smile in her direction. “I have always wanted to see Agasan, especially the Rimaldi Coast. Will you be sad to leave Veneisea? It’s a beautiful kingdom, from what I saw of it.”

“
Pshaw
,” grunted the old woman. “There are plenty of lovely places in the world, and I’ve had enough of Veneisean ‘virtue’ to last me twelve lifetimes. Do you know where the word
virtue
comes from?” she posed as Alyneri opened her mouth to accept another bite of porridge—half listening to the old woman and half reflecting on how mortified she would’ve been if it had been Ean feeding her instead of Ama-Kai’alil, and how strange to find herself comparing them at all.

“No, Yara,” Alyneri mumbled through her mouthful.

Ama-Kai’alil supplied in a sardonic tone, “
Virtue
from the Veneisean root
vertu
from Old Cyrenaic,
vir,
meaning man.” 

“Man!” Yara grumbled. “Who generally exemplifies no virtues and countless vices! I guarantee you, a
man
devised the Veneisean Virtues and required
wo
man to follow them or be labeled a whore and a tramp.” 

“When I am king of Veneisea,” Ama-Kai’alil teased, “I will recommend that men follow the Virtues as well as women.”

Yara paused in her shuffling, and Alyneri got the sense she had pinned him with a wily eye. “When you are king, Ama-Kai’alil, you will do much greater things than that.”

“I was only making a jest, Yara,” he said, and Alyneri could tell the old woman’s praise had embarrassed him.

“Yes, but there is something about you, Ama-Kai’alil,” Yara insisted. “You are a man above men—a leader of men—not merely in deed and stature but in ideals…born to stand above others that they might aspire to greater themselves merely by walking in your shadow.”

He sat quietly beside Alyneri after this startling pronouncement, and she wondered what he was thinking and wished for the tenth time that morning alone that she could look upon him. After a moment, he remarked softly, “A selfless deed doesn’t make me royalty, Yara,” and he sounded both uncomfortable and tormented.

“Perhaps not,” she conceded, “but it does make you noble in the most vital of ways.”

Who
is
he?
Alyneri wondered, herself caught now in the mystery of his heritage. She believed Yara’s assessment of him. Even the gentle tone of his voice compelled one to listen, to follow. She quite believed she would do anything he asked of her and she barely knew him—by the Grace of Epiphany, she’d never even seen his face!

Too, something about conversing in the desert tongue added another level of…well, sensuality, to their talks. The Kandori dialect was complicated, but the complexity added a richness to their communication that deepened the connection she felt to him. Knowing that he spoke more languages than she did only heightened her admiration.

When Alyneri had eaten all she could, he helped her from the table and back to her room, where Yara took over to help her dress. “One of my daughter Habivi’s old dresses,” she advised as she did up the buttons of the frock. “A bit loose through the hips, but it’ll do.” 

“Do you think we can remove the bandage over my eyes?” Alyneri asked as she sat upon the edge of the bed.

Yara checked with a peek beneath the bandages. “Not yet,
soraya
. There is still some swelling.”  At Alyneri’s crestfallen sigh, Yara offered, “But we might do a little with your hair.”

Alyneri brightened.

Thus did she emerge from the bedroom with a new dress and her hair done up in a braid and a ribbon and feeling much restored, even if mainly in dignity.

He walked her out to the barn with one arm around her waist, their bodies pulled in close to keep her stable, and her free hand in his. His touch both soothed and electrified her, at times reminding her unnervingly of the zanthyr’s kiss. Being close to him roused intense feelings, and walking with his body warm and hard against hers, his strong arm holding her so firmly…all of it served to bring a heady sense to the day.

Inside the barn, they stopped in front of a stall where a horse was already attentive to his arrival. “Alyneri,” he said, still using the desert tongue, “this is Gendaia.” 

“Oh, what a lovely name,” Alyneri said. She extended her hand toward the horse.

“It means daybreak in Old Alæic,” he offered.

“You speak the Old Tongue?”

“No, but those who named her do.”

Gendaia placed her nose into Alyneri’s outstretched palm, and she asked, “Have you owned her long?”

“A Hallovian is owned by no man,” he corrected with a smile in his voice, that particular tone golden Alyneri had come to love, “but she has been my companion for several moons now.”

“A Hallovian,” Alyneri repeated with a sigh, thinking at once of Caldar’s noble form.

He chuckled. “You’ve known one yourself, I take it.” 

“They’re incredible animals. Can you let me inside with her?”

“Sure.”  He opened the stall and guided Alyneri within.

She reached out, and he guided her hand to the horse’s flank. Then he stood close to her holding one hand protectively against the small of her back—the quiet assurance of his near presence—and his other hand across Gendaia’s nose. Thus connected within this tactile circle, Alyneri sank into rapport.

The sudden light of
elae
dazzled her. She’d never before realized how much light
elae
encompassed—she’d never endured multiple days without sight—but it both astonished and enlivened her. Within Gendaia’s energy she gained a clear sense of her surroundings and of the three of them connected in their circle of touch.

She healed animals before, but even if she hadn’t the theory was the same:
All things are formed of patterns
. She need only gain Gendaia’s pattern to heal her. Except…the horse’s pattern hid from her—perhaps some aspect of her Hallovian nature caused this. She went deeper into
elae,
deeper into the horse’s own lifeforce, and found something truly astonishing.

Within the rushing, rosy stream of animal life, she saw a faint and distant pattern—a
human
pattern—and beyond it, the shadow of another. She spent a moment trying to understand these visions, and yet once she did, the shock sent her reeling. One level of her awareness felt Ama-Kai’alil stiffen in worry beside her, and he pressed his hand tighter against her back.

Suddenly the most distant pattern flared.

“Ama-Kai’alil,” she managed, breathless and barely keeping herself in rapport for the force of her excitement, “place your left hand upon mine.”

He did so, and his pattern came into clear focus.

So, too, did the one beyond it.

Her own.

Stunned beyond measure, she remained immobile, unable at first even to process the enormity of her discovery. Finally, she gathered her wits about her and returned to the task at hand. A brief foray into uninspected corners of Gendaia’s lifeforce resulted in the animal’s pattern at last surfacing. Alyneri saw at once where Gendaia’s pattern had been frayed, an injury so minimal that it took just the slightest gift of her own energy to mend it.

Gendaia nickered softly, and Alyneri smiled, unknowingly reassuring the man beside her, who had grown quite tense in the intervening minutes.

But she didn’t release
elae
. Two tasks she had yet to do, so long as her energy held up. First to study his pattern, then to memorize her own.

His pattern she saw easily, for she had direct contact with him and could’ve looked upon it even without Gendaia’s presence, but she dared not change anything about their configuration. Thus, Ama-Kai’alil’s pattern remained distant but still within view. It shone with integrity, uncompromised, though it had clearly been mended not too long ago. Yet whoever had Healed him had not simply rewoven the frayed strands. He or she had shored up Ama-Kai’alil’s entire pattern. Beside her stood a man who had not merely been mended but whose entire constitution had been
improved
—made stronger, sturdier, more completely whole than nature herself had managed.

Alyneri didn’t know how it had been done—how it
could
have been done.

Feeling her own energy draining, she pushed on, now turning her attentions to herself. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to look upon her own pattern, to see its weaknesses and frayed strands, to see it—even so distantly—as its vitality ebbed even from her use of her own energy in viewing it.

She felt herself failing, felt the faintness coming on, and she knew she had to hurry. Using the last of her strength, she committed the pattern to memory.

Then she withdrew from rapport, just as her legs buckled beneath her.

He caught her around the waist with a muttered oath and lowered her gently to the straw. “I’m—it’s fine,” she managed, barely a whisper.

“I shouldn’t have let you do this! You shouldn’t have risked your health this way. It’s not—”

She pushed a hand feebly toward his lips to silence him. “It’s done,” she whispered. “Gendaia is healed. It’s only that I discovered something while in rapport, and I…I had to stay longer to study it. I had to know.”

“She’s…she’s well?”  Hope and amazement warred for purchase in his tone. “Truly?”

“Truly.” Alyneri smiled. “See for yourself.”  When he hesitated to release her, she laughed, adding, “Go on, then.”

Reluctantly he moved to the horse. After a moment, he said, “You’re right. The swelling is already abating.”

“By tomorrow I should be surprised if she is not ready to run again and quite fighting you to do so.”

“Alyneri…” She felt him kneel once more at her side, and her heart took a little leap. He drew her hand into his own. “Alyneri, how can I ever thank you?”

“Thank me?” she laughed. “Did you not save my own life, Ama-Kai’alil? I fear I am still very much in your debt.”

“No,” he returned, his tone quite serious and sincere. “There is no gift you might’ve given greater than this.”

She smiled softly. She wished she could look upon him, this man who was so incredibly sincere, who made her feel at once safe and cherished and whose mere presence filled her with such excitement. It amazed her to admit it, but she realized with not a little apprehension that she might just be falling in love with a man she’d never laid eyes upon.

But why am I surprised? I’m doomed to love men who can never love me in return.