The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (37 page)

“The veil of death occludes your past,” Björn said with immense compassion. “It was meant to be a mercy, this amnesia, to give us each a new start in the Returning. Most organisms learn through the process of death—their evolution through death and rebirth gives them sharper claws, tougher skin, stronger poison. But for the gift of immortal souls, humanity merely carries forward. We remain tied to the deeds of our past, still the unconditional effect of mistakes made ages ago.
We
haven’t evolved, you see, and we cannot escape our choices, in this life or the next.”

Ean looked up at him with his head still resting in his hands. “
Can
we remember?”

“Certainly.”

“How?”

“One merely must take ownership of—must claim, in effect—every action he has ever caused.”

“Oh, is that all?” Ean grunted derisively and rested his forehead in his palms again.
Might as well say I should just decide to spontaneously combust. That would be easier to manage.

“I did not say it would be easy,” Björn advised, blue eyes twinkling, “only that it is not impossible.”

Isabel arrived on the heels of this pronouncement, much to Ean’s immense pleasure and relief—for he had not realized until that moment the anxiety that clenched him in her absence, nor how the anticipation of her arrival had strung a tight thread of tension from heart to loins.

That night she wore a satin gown of the darkest sapphire, with a wide neckline that extended gracefully from shoulder to shoulder and revealed an enticing portion of her décolletage. Her luscious hair was embellished with twisting braids and caught up with sapphire pins.

As always, the black silk blindfold separated her from Ean in a way that was deeply profound to him. Though he didn’t understand how or why, he knew it represented an intimate connection—
their
connection, as unexplainable as this seemed—yet he got the sense she was wearing it
for
him. Even while it tormented and excited him, so also did it stand as a tribute, a troth. He knew this in the same way he’d known Björn was telling him the truth about having lived and died before…in the same way he’d recognized the Extian Doors. Yet he didn’t know
how
he knew this, and it wasn’t a subject he was ready to discuss with Isabel. The topic remained too raw and tender, their budding relationship too new.

Ean and Björn both stood to receive Isabel, the latter kissing her on both cheeks. “Sister,” Björn murmured as he took her hand and guided her to her chair. “A ravishing choice of gowns. You do us great honor.”

Isabel settled into her seat and smiled up at him as he released her hand. She looked to Ean, though how she knew so precisely where he was—how she saw at all with the blindfold constantly across her eyes—remained a mystery. “Feeling better, my lord?”

“Much, thanks to you,” Ean replied, feeling a warm flush suffusing him, the product of her attention.

Björn raised his goblet. “To my sister,” he said, “a woman of many talents.”

Ean clinked glasses with him as Isabel decorously received their admiration.

Björn waved an airy hand then, and servants appeared carrying silver trays emitting a tantalizing combination of spices and fragrances. Sensitive to Ean’s troubled state of mind, Isabel kept the dinner conversation light, chatting amiably of her work with Markal’s students or the ongoing Adendigaeth
festival in the cities. The courses were prepared and served perfectly, and Ean felt much restored when the meal was complete.

When the table had been cleared and everyone was well sated, Isabel stood, and both men rose with her. “Thank you for the lovely dinner, brother of my heart.”

Björn nodded, “As always, dear sister, your presence makes it more than remarkable.”

She smiled for his pleasure and announced then, “I wonder if I might have an escort through the gardens? It is too nice an evening to forego admiring them.”

Ean was quick to fulfill her need. “It would be my greatest pleasure, my lady.”

“Mmm,” she purred. “Why thank you, my lord.”  She held out her hand in that delicate way, and Ean moved swiftly around the table to place his arm beneath her fingers.

Down into the garden, they walked among towering acacia and their smaller counterparts, royal flame-trees with their brilliant orange-red flowers. The night was balmy, a warmth aided by the presence of the near hot springs, and the air came soft and fragrant with camellia, liliko’i fruit, and jasmine. Stars peeked here and there through the high canopy, but for Ean, nothing in the garden approached the glory of Isabel’s smile.

“You are thoughtful tonight, my lord,” she noted as they tread upon a path overgrown with tiny white flowers, each footstep releasing a flush of fragrance.

“I felt very…inadequate today.” It surprised him how easily he told her things—even the most personal and embarrassing things—without hesitation.

“In what way could you ever be inadequate?” she returned with a smile.

“No, I was quite a disappointment, even to myself. I knew what Markal wanted me to do, but I…I couldn’t make
anything
happen. In the end…well, in the end, I gave up.” He shook his head. “A poor showing all around.”

“You were working with the First Law?”

“KNOW the effect you intend to create,” he said despondently. “I tried so many different ways to make the rope stop the staff. Nothing worked. I don’t know the pattern—”

“The pattern has nothing to do with it.”

“So Markal pointed out.”

“Patterns are but one way, Ean,” she advised then, her tone gentle but firm. “An Adept of a particular strand rarely needs to ‘know’ the pattern because he inherently
knows
the pattern. As in
knowing
—a conceptual understanding of
all
that it is, its energy, its material composition, its exact form, even its placement in space and time. Do you understand?
Adepts think in the patterns of their strand.
When you have no inherent connection to a particular strand of
elae,
then you must learn the pattern in order to compel that thing or that strand.” She stopped and turned to him, placing her hand to cup his cheek tenderly. “But this is not the case for you.”

He desired so much to press his lips into her palm, to take her in his arms, but he stood as stone and breathed in the scent of her and let her touch be enough…almost.

“Take the chemists of the Iluminari,” she said by way of example. “They work with complicated mathematical formulae to achieve the perfect combination of powders to create the Fire Candles we will see exploding on the Longest Night. Without those equations to guide the chemists, the powders would not ignite. Yet the
drachwyr
might cause the same explosions by merely envisioning their occurrence as a child daydreams of clouds in the sky.”

She placed her hand on Ean’s chest, and he covered it with his own as she continued, “If you were like Markal, with no inherent connection to the fifth, then yes, what he demands would be impossible without envisioning a pattern. But Ean…
you
work the fifth as an
Adept
. Like the
drachwyr
, fifth-strand patterns
are
ingrained in how you think. You need only remember how to think with them.” She put both hands to his face and chided tenderly, “Ean, you must let yourself remember this.”

Ean knew he couldn’t remain there with her like that and not try to kiss her. The tension he felt in response to her touch became an insatiable need to possess her. It pulsed through him, wakening and heightening every sense so that he felt too alive, as though his very skin was aflame. These emotions only throttled him when he already battled with so much.

Letting out a measured breath, Ean took Isabel’s hands from his face and held them between his own. Gazing at her hidden eyes, he confessed gravely, “Perhaps now that you have commanded it of me, Isabel, I can do so.”

Her lips curled in a smile. “I don’t remember you being this compliant the last time.”

Ean released her hands but returned one to his arm and started them walking again. “Me either,” he replied grimly.
For I remember nothing at all!

Isabel chuckled. “So morose! I do remember this dramatic display of emotion being an enduring aspect of your nature. But see now, I believe you’re going about it the wrong way,” she added, returning them to the first topic and the source of Ean’s angst. “The effect isn’t the rope stopping the staff. That’s the outcome. These are not interchangeable terms in Patterning.”

Ean gave her a curious look. “Then what is the effect?”

“It is simpler than you have imagined. The effect is what you must do to the rope to make it
capable
of stopping the staff. That is the effect you are creating. The rope then has its own effect, that of stopping the staff. One concept, one cause, one effect. Balance takes care of the rest.”

Her words stopped him in his tracks.

It’s the same as players and pieces
, he realized. He
had
been thinking about it the wrong way!

He imagined the game of Kings he’d been using so often to compare his experiences against.
To move one piece can create a ripple effect
. A player makes one effect on his piece—moving it. But the piece can thereafter have numerous effects on other pieces—one play that sets into motion an entirely new sequence of events and even potentially changes the balance of the game.

He settled her an intense look, his very being vibrating with the magnitude of his realization. “This is about making me into a player, isn’t it?”

Isabel nodded solemnly.

Ean felt his world shift back into place, the resounding impact of which shuddered through him. “I know why I am here,” he breathed aloud, heady with the discovery. Leveling Isabel a look that conveyed the force of his gratitude as much as his desire, Ean fastened his mouth upon hers and pulled her close.

The kiss was at once electrifying, a shock feeding through him to combust a thousand new passions, yet so also was it infinitely divine. The feel of her soft mouth, her tongue sweet against his, the taste of their combined desire…a moment at once passionate and delicious with promise. 

Too soon it ended, yet it felt an eternity shared in the brief joining.

Ean pulled back just far enough to look upon her face.

“Well…” she murmured, her lips curling in a seductive smile, her breath a warm caress upon his skin, “better late than never.”

“Beware the locked door isn’t keeping the dog in.”

- Bemothi proverb

Trell needed
time. Time to process what he’d learned, to fit the pieces into their proper order. Time to let the flood of emotions drain out of him and restore his sense of self within the framework of a new name.

Trell val Lorian, Prince of Dannym.

It was unbelievably shocking and…strange, though he knew it as truth, for it resonated in his soul. Yet as much as he needed time, it was the one thing he didn’t have, as he discovered all too soon.

He was still sitting on the bed beside Alyneri when Yara came in, took one look at them, and assessed from their expressions what had transpired in her absence. “So…” she said in the desert tongue, leveling each of them a shrewd look, “it’s time.”

Alyneri looked up at her. “Time for what?”

“A story. Come
khortdad
,
soraya
, we must talk.”

Trell lifted his head to look at her. A feeling beset him in that moment, a sense that what was about to come might be nearly as startling as all that came before. So he gave Alyneri a reassuring look and took her by the hand, and they followed Yara to the table. She poured
czai
for them and then sat down in her chair at the head, fixing her dark eyes upon Trell.

“I told you once that I would speak to you someday of how I came to possess a weldmap, did I not, Ama-Kai’alil?”

“Yes, I remember the moment,” Trell answered.

“Here then is the story: When I was a young woman not much older than you,
soraya
,” Yara began, nodding that time to Alyneri, “my father and I met a blind woman traveling on the road to Baiz. These were turbulent years in M’Nador, before the War of the Lakes, and Saldaria was already rising against the Hadorin princes. It wasn’t safe to travel the roads alone, even in Kandori—and especially for a woman. And this woman…”  Yara’s wily gaze grew wistful, as if remembering a dream. “Well…she was young and beautiful for all that she was blind,” the old woman said after a moment, “and we feared for her safety. I asked my father to stop, and I offered her my horse.”

Trell arched brows. “You offered to give her your horse—just like that?”

Yara flashed a grin, and for a moment Trell saw her in her youth—a wild and beautiful girl with a wide smile and eyes dark as loam. “There was something about this woman, Trell of the Tides,” she said, shaking her head with a rueful look. “You would’ve done anything for her too, I’ll wager. My father was just as surprised to hear my offer, but he was not unaffected by her spell, and he congratulated me for my generosity. She accepted the gift of my horse but begged me to ride with her into Baiz.”