The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (4 page)

“My lord, there is no way for me to know how it was done without inspecting the Marquiin who died or interrogating the perpetrator,” Dore said in a soothingly obsequious tone. He smoothed his white hair back from his wide forehead and licked his lips, which he had a habit of doing. Kjieran thought the man just one generation removed from the foulest of desert lizards. “You heard the testimony of your Ascendant as well as I, my lord,” Dore continued. “He saw this northern prince sully your Marquiin right before his own eyes, resulting in the untimely death of one of your most loyal servants. ‘Tis surely the divine grace that is upon you, my lord, that your Ascendant found his way back to us with the terrible news. We must send someone in search of this treacherous wielder who thinks himself above you and seeks to undo your great work. Such a man could cause all manner of mischief while sullying the purity of your name, my lord.”

The Prophet turned Dore a piercing look over his shoulder.

“But more importantly,” Dore continued, leaning toward the Prophet with a wild look in his reptilian gaze and dropping his voice to note, “this happenstance surely proves the validity of my concerns, my lord. We need stronger stock to carry your sigil.”  This issue was a bone of contention between Dore and the Prophet—Kjieran had overheard the argument many times. The Prophet turned away again, but Dore continued as his voice rose in pitch, “Wielders and men of the fifth are better suited to your Fire than these feeble fourth-stranders, my lord. Your power is too strong for them as are inborn of frail innocence. Only those born of the fifth might withstand the Fire’s brilliance. They would become beacons for its radiance, my lord! A far more fitting receptacle than a truthreader’s fragile shell.”

“This is not the first time you’ve expressed this sentiment, Dore Madden,” the Prophet observed uninterestedly. “The problem is the resources available.”

“Yes, but I may have solved that problem, my lord.” 

Kjieran could tell from the dreadful eagerness in Dore’s tone that the man had been waiting for just the right moment to reveal this new information. Kjieran loathed Dore Madden. Dore was the one who’d taught the Prophet what patterns could be twisted and snarled, perverted or adapted to host the power of his Fire. Every day the wielder brought Bethamin new patterns to try, having first tested them on the dungeons of doomed souls he kept as experimental rats scattered about Saldaria, many of them inexorably bound to him with the fifth.

Much to Kjieran’s chagrin, the Prophet took Dore’s bait. “Indeed? How?”

“There is a man—my most prized student—whom I’ve been working on for some years now. With the right compulsion patterns, I have succeeded in waking him to the currents of
elae.
”

“
Elae,
” the Prophet hissed. “An abomination.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Dore clucked, “but one must do things in their proper order, my lord. First my protégé had to learn to sense
elae
in its natural channels. Then he could be taught to work its patterns and
then
, my lord,” and here he leveled his snake-eyed gaze at the Prophet’s back, “then he could be taught to work
your
power.”

The Prophet turned to him. “A common man?”

“Yes, my lord,” Dore replied, eyes alight with fervor. “But we are yet in the early stages of this sequence. Still, I have succeeded in my use of compulsion. I have made a common man into a wielder.”

“A fine accomplishment,” the Prophet noted. “I do not see how he could be brought to work my Fire. A man is but a man.”

“Yes, my lord, but there
is
a way.” 

Dore had the Prophet’s full attention now. “Tell me how.” 

Dore’s black eyes veritably glowed with malice. He licked his lips and offered, “Long have we dreamed of a force of wielders, an army worthy of carrying your sigil, an army to spearhead our vital quest to rid this world of the offensive abomination that is
elae
and all of its accursed children.”

“Indeed,” remarked the Prophet in annoyance. “Do not sermonize to me on my own cause, Dore Madden.”

“My lord,” Dore continued unctuously, “such a force exists already, though they are small and of no use to us. Yet they work a similar power to your own—
deyjiin
it is called.”

The Prophet’s expression darkened. “What army is this?”

“The Shades, my lord,” Dore whispered with dutiful awe. He licked his lips again. “Long have Shades dwelled in the anathematized realm of T’khendar, bound to the Fifth Vestal, Björn van Gelderan. We cannot use them for our purposes, no, but we can learn from the Fifth Vestal’s skill—indeed, indeed,” he added then, rubbing his hands together and gazing up at the Prophet with wild-eyed glee, “for three centuries I have been working to discover the patterns the Fifth Vestal used to bind the Shades to him—for make no mistake, my lord. They are not merely under compulsion, as your Marquiin, with only a small tendril of power available to do your great work. No, the Shades are bound to Björn van Gelderan
body and soul
. Through him, they are able to wield his dark power in all its fullness.”

“
Deyjiin
,” murmured the Prophet, and Kjieran shivered from the ominous interest in his eyes. Abruptly Bethamin focused his gaze upon Dore. “You have found these patterns?”

“Not entirely.” A momentary frown flickered across Dore’s cadaverous features. “But my work progresses at great speed.”  He licked his lips again. “It won’t be long now, my lord.”

The Prophet regarded him intently. “And the man who vilified my Marquiin?”

“
Yes
,” Dore said, drawing the word into a hiss. “This
Ean val Lorian
—he must be brought to face your justice, my lord. The job of retrieving him will be a most fitting quest for my star pupil—a
most
fitting quest—and a proving ground for his newfound skills. You will see, my lord.” Dore licked his lips and rubbed his hands with savage delight. “You will see then how our plans may finally be achieved!”

Kjieran inwardly swore, for the news was both baffling and grave. A host of faction already sought Ean’s death. Now to have Dore Madden after him as well?
And how in
Tiern’aval
did Ean unbind a Marquiin?
From what Kjieran knew of the young prince, he had no Adept talent.

I must get word to the Fourth Vestal at once.

Bethamin meanwhile was considering Dore with his darkly piercing eyes. At last, and much to Kjieran’s mounting horror, he said, “Let it be done.”

Dore’s expression came as close to ecstasy as a cadaver could look, as though death had claimed him in the last moments of coitus, just as release shuddered through him. “Thank you, my lord.” Dore bowed eagerly and headed off.

The Prophet turned to look directly at Kjieran then, and the truthreader had no doubt that the man had known he was there all the while. “Come, Kjieran,” he commanded.

Kjieran exited the vestry into the nave where the Prophet stood wreathed in haze. He seemed an unearthly creature with his braids like serpents and his bare chest as muscled as the finest marble statue, with his dark eyes and exotically handsome features. The Prophet was terrible and bewitching and darkly compelling, and Kjieran had never been so afraid of any living man. 

What disturbed him the most was that though he knew Bethamin to be wholly without compassion and intent upon the destruction of their world—Kjieran saw the corruptive influence of his Fire and the horrific anguish it caused—yet still he was drawn to the man in spite of these!

Yea, what terrified Kjieran van Stone the most about the Prophet Bethamin was the sure knowledge that he was no more immune to the Prophet’s seductive power than anyone else.

Kjieran knelt before the Prophet, head bowed. “My lord,” he whispered.

“Kjieran, you told me you were trained in Patterning,” said the Prophet.

Kjieran kept his eyes on the floor. The Prophet misliked the colorless eyes of a truthreader, yet he kept a few unsullied ones around to advise him, as if knowing that his Marquiin, once touched by his own fell power, were tainted and thereby useless for discerning the truth. The hypocrisy sickened Kjieran. “Yes, my lord. I trained in Agasan’s Sormitáge.”

“Dore would have me believe there is such a pattern as he describes. Is it so?”

“If there is, I do not know it.”

“And these Shades of which he spoke? They exist?”

“I have never seen one, my lord, but they were a terrifying force during the Adept Wars. Dore would know them better than I, my lord. He survived the fall of the Citadel and is one of the Fifty Companions.”

The tragedy of this anguished Kjieran no end. That
Dore Madden had survived while so many good men fell—it was a bitter irony how the treacherous walked unharmed while thousands of innocents went to their deaths.

The Prophet reached down and took Kjieran by the chin, guiding him to rise. His touch felt as deeply cold as a river stone long caressed by the glacial melt; achingly cold, like flesh held too long to the snow. Kjieran kept his eyes downcast while the Prophet considered him, only praying that whatever Bethamin found in his countenance would please him enough to let him be on his way again.

In the privacy of his chambers, the Prophet liked to experiment with the darkest of workings—bindings and compulsions and corrupted first-strand patterns that tormented rather than healed—and he maintained the utmost reserve throughout the process, no matter how insanely a man or woman screamed. Kjieran saw no rhyme or reason to who was chosen for these intervals, nor even any way to predict who would survive them. He merely prayed that Fate would close its eye to him while his heart beat frantically and he sipped his breath in tiny measures.

The Prophet at last released Kjieran’s chin. “Thank you, Kjieran. That will be all.”

“Your will be done, my lord,” Kjieran managed, barely able to mumble the words for the ache in his jaw. He retreated to the vestry as quickly as he dared and then raced down the hall and into a prayer alcove, pulling its curtain roughly into place. He collapsed against the wall then, shaking uncontrollably and fighting back the tension and fear that clenched his chest in a death-like vise. Sliding down to the floor, Kjieran hugged his knees to his chest and wept in silence. He wept in relief and he wept in despair.

For in that moment when the Prophet held him fast, an overpowering yearning to please his lord had possessed him. It felt wholly wrong—he
knew
this—a compulsion laid upon him so expertly that he couldn’t tell anything was being worked at all. Yet he had been unable to resist it—to resist
him
. Kjieran knew that had the Prophet asked him in that moment to do anything—
anything—
he would have done it willingly. So Kjieran wept in gratitude that Fate’s hand had passed him by, and he wept with the terrible understanding that the next time Fate’s eye fell upon him, he might not be so graced.

“Seek not to know where the path may lead,

only to keep your feet upon it.”

- Isabel van Gelderan,
Epiphany’s
Prophet

Several days ago…

As
Tanis
walked along Faring East following the man with the fiery eyes, the lad wondered if he was perhaps in a trance, if the dark-haired man in the amber cloak had somehow enchanted him and now he was spellcast to follow him without any determinism whatsoever, like those tales of
Fhorg
blood magic where people are possessed by demons under the command of the Fhorgs’ Red Priests.

Certainly it made no sense to be leaving his Lady Alyneri, still in the apothecary next door, without even a message to say where he was going, and he knew the Lord Captain Rhys would be furious. Yet these thoughts were but crumbs left behind on the café table where Tanis had been sitting, for the lad now knew only a driving sense of duty.

Whether or not it was fell magic that drove Tanis after the imposing stranger from the café, the lad did have enough sense to understand that following this man was dangerous. So he trailed a good half-block behind him, keeping him in sight through the crowd, but only just. Luckily the man was easy to spot with his striking black hair and elegant amber cloak, not to mention the way the crowd inexplicably parted before him as the seas gave way to the prow of a ship.

Tanis was keeping well back of him when four men emerged from a store and fell into step just behind the stranger, forming a phalanx. Their cloaks obscured the quivers on their backs, but the outline of them was clear enough, as were the blue tattoos that adorned their bald heads. Seeing them, the hair rose on the back of Tanis’s neck, and gooseflesh sprouted down his arms like an evil rash, for there could be no mystery as to their origins.

Fhorgs.

Tanis thought it an uncomfortable coincidence that he had just been thinking of Fhorgs and now here were four of them. The
Wildling
race was well known for exploring occult arts, and pieced with the visions Tanis had plucked from the stranger’s mind, it seemed they were all involved in evil work indeed. Suddenly frightened anew, Tanis knew there could be no wisdom to this decision, yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn back.