The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (40 page)

Trell gazed hard at her, his mind awhirl with these new facts. “You mean to say you think my ship was attacked?” he surmised. “Purposefully sunk? That I was the target?”

She held his gaze with her large brown eyes and nodded.

Trell arched brows. He drew in a deep breath and let it out again, frowning. “So this Lord Brantley who seeks you,” he mused, “a man sworn to the Duke of Morwyk. Do you think he might be seeking me now as well?”

“If he recognized you, it is possible. But more than this, Trell—” She stopped herself uncertainly, catching her lower lip between her teeth. “Well, it’s just that… assassins have been hunting Ean ever since he returned to the mainland. Morwyk was certainly behind some of these attacks…but…”

When she seemed reticent to say more, he leaned to capture her gaze. “But?”

She shook her head ruefully. “It will be very hard to believe this.”

Trell gave her a wry grin and sat back again. “You’d be surprised at the things that no longer surprise me, Alyneri.”

Holding his gaze, she let out a slow breath. “Very well…”

Alyneri told him then of his brother. Starting from what she knew of his kidnapping by the Shade and ending with his near death in Rethynnea. Trell sat in stunned silence when she finished. To have come this far, to finally learn he had a brother only to discover his life was in mortal danger…that indeed, he may not recover…Fate had never twisted a crueler thorn in his heart.

Alyneri reached a hand to rest upon his as he gripped one bent knee close to his chest. “Trell.” She drew his eye back to her. “I want you to know something, and I hope you can believe as I believe—that you can trust in what I’m about to tell you.”

“I do trust you, Alyneri.” 

“I have no way of proving this to you other than by my own conviction, but I swear to you—and I know this with everything that I am—there is no way…absolutely
no way
that the zanthyr will let Ean come to lasting harm.”  She caught her lip between her teeth again and implored him with her gaze. “If he must tread the paths of the dead to retrieve Ean, I assure you, Phaedor will. I don’t know why he is so sworn to Ean’s well-being, but I know that he most assuredly is, and—” Here she halted and closed her eyes for a moment, as if praying upon the words. When she met his gaze once more, there was an immutable glint of certainty in it. “And when the zanthyr is upon a mission,” she finished determinedly, “there is
nothing
he cannot do.”

Trell regarded her as he worked to make sense of all that she’d told him. He felt dazed. Odd pieces of his life seemed connected with Ean’s, yet he couldn’t quite grasp those connections. “Who is this zanthyr?”

“His name is Phaedor…” Again, she stopped herself, biting off the words even as she dropped her eyes, instantly disconcerted. It seemed Alyneri struggled with many aspects of his brother Ean’s activities.

Trell took her hand this time, enjoying the feel of their simple contact, of her skin against his. “We
must
trust each other,” he said quietly. “There is no other way to do this, Alyneri. As certain as you are of this zanthyr’s loyalty to Ean, I am certain that without trust between us, we won’t survive whatever is to come.”

Alyneri’s brown eyes were wide as she looked up at him, but she nodded. “Phaedor,” she said somewhat weakly, “is sworn to Björn van Gelderan. We know the Vestal has returned from T’khendar—he sent a Shade in search of Ean—and the zanthyr serves Björn, though he tries to be vague and ambiguous about it.”

Trell frowned at this news. He knew he was missing something important.

Alyneri hastened to fill in the rest. “You see, Ean has Returned—Returned and
Awakened
,” she added wondrously, “as impossible as it seems…”

Yet Trell no longer heard her, for his mind dwelled upon another’s words…

‘…so different in temperament, yet they are brothers to the core. One has the mind of a master tactician… The other has Returned, and has been long awaited… The time has come to hone them both, these, my kingdom blades. They can no longer go on being mere pieces; they must become players.’

“The Emir’s Mage,” Trell whispered, awestruck by the connections he was finally making.

Alyneri absently brushed a lock of hair out of her face, murmuring, “Fynn thinks Björn van Gelderan is masquerading as the Emir’s Ma—
oh!
” She clapped a hand across her mouth.

He leveled her a telling look
. “The Emir’s Mage…the First Lord…Björn van Gelderan.” He said each name slowly, significantly. “The same man.”

Her eyes
grew very large.

Thunde
r sounded, followed by the sudden fall of rain. A rising breeze brought a damp mist to wash over them, but neither moved to close the windows.

“
What do you know of him?” Trell asked, echoing his own question to Ware from so long ago.

She shook her head, wide-eyed. “I know only stories, and I trust them not.”

Trell arched brows. “Really? I would think…well, most people repeat the stories as truth.”

Alyneri exhaled a troubled sigh. “I did too, once, but now…”

“Yes?” 

Her eyes flew to his. “Now I don’t know.” She sighed dispiritedly. “Trell, I’ve seen Phaedor—I’ve seen the soul of this creature!” She dropped her eyes to confess in a bare whisper, “He is the closest I have ever come to gazing upon divinity.”

For some reason, Trell recalled
Vaile
and Jaya’s conversation about the First Lord’s zanthyr being older than the sun.

Alyneri meanwhile shook her head. She seemed close to tears, obviously deeply troubled by the matter. He could feel her tension through her hand, which he still held, and he wanted only to comfort her, to reassure her, to keep this treasured and fragile creature safe. “Come,” he whispered, pulling gently on her fingers.

At first hesitant, she moved to join him, turning to sit between his legs and leaning back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, resting his cheek upon her head as they gazed out at the storm together.

“Things are rarely as they seem, Alyneri,” he noted quietly. Then he added with a chuckle, “The more obvious they seem, the less true they are, I think. I, too, know fifth-strand creatures who are sworn to the First Lord—your Björn van Gelderan, my Emir’s Mage. They are powerful beings of great wisdom and purity. I cannot see them giving their oaths to a man unworthy of their loyalty.”

“No,” Alyneri agreed. She relaxed a little in his arms. “Phaedor wouldn’t either—I just know that he wouldn’t.”

“So we must simply agree that the Fifth Vestal is not what people say of him. We will base our conclusions not upon rumors but upon the verisimilitude of the men who serve him.”

She gave a little laugh at this, a release of the tension and grief she’d been holding back. “Trell,” she whispered, pushing a tear from her eye as she gazed into the rain, “you are such a gift. Words cannot begin to express it.”

He would’ve kissed her in that moment except it was entirely too perfect already. The rain fell quietly outside their window, and for a time the song of the rain and the accompanying thunder were all they heard. They just sat and listened, content to rest in each other’s arms and have that be enough…almost.  

After a long time where they kept their own thoughts, Alyneri lifted her head to look at him, and something in her gaze warned of a terrible truth. “Trell…the Emir had to know who you are.”

“I realize that,” he admitted. He’d decided this soon after learning his name. It made sense finally out of the long-standing mystery of why the Emir would’ve treated him from the outset as if Trell were his own son.

“For the longest time,” she told him, “we thought the Emir was behind your death. Many still believe he is to blame for Sebastian’s, but…” she sighed again, and he heard both concern and contentment in it. “But it mustn’t be true. It can’t be, can it?”

“No. As with most stories, I fear there is much more to my own that remains hidden.”

“But if it wasn’t the Emir…who?”

Neither had an answer to this. They let the silence come again, and in it Trell savored the connection he felt to this woman. Pieces of him remembered her, remembered caring for her and even desiring her. But they were young memories, full of the green eagerness of adolescence. What he felt for her now was somehow much stronger. It was not the fiery passion he’d had for Fhionna, which burned hot enough to scald him in unexpected moments. Rather than singeing and expiring capriciously, his feelings for Alyneri infused him. He felt a deep connection to her in a way that was quite profound to him, and he knew, above all, that this was a gift from Naiadithine too.

***

The thunder of horses preceded the five men as they galloped over the rise and stormed to a halt at the top of the hill overlooking a modest farm. The sun hung low on the horizon, burning beneath a building storm that cast long shadows over the little valley.

The neat farmstead looked abandoned. The pens stood empty, the barn closed up, and though it would’ve been time for an evening meal, no smoke rose from the chimney.

“Looks like they’ve gone, Earl,” one of the five men remarked, speaking the northern common tongue. “You sure this is the place?”

Lord Brantley, Earl of Pent, smoothed his longish moustache and beard several times as he frowned down the hill. “It has to be,” he said after a moment. “For all that tavern keeper is daft as a goat, he knew the man by description and was certain he’d been staying here.”

“You want us to check it out?”

The earl gave him bland look. “No, I would like us all to remain atop this rise wondering whether or not they have gone.”

The man shrugged and nudged his horse down the hill, and the others followed. “Langdon,” called the earl to the last of the men. “Scout around. See what you can find.”

The man named Langdon reined his horse in a circle and headed back up toward the road.

The earl stroked his moustache again, lamenting the episodes of ill-luck which had befallen him. No doubt had he come but one day earlier…

Of course he’d been suspicious of the bearded man he met in town that day when he saw him carrying a kingdom blade. It was too unusual a circumstance to let it pass without investigation. Brantley couldn’t be certain of the stone in the pommel—such stones could tell a man much about the lord he faced, if such a man was well-versed in the stones and their meaning—but he’d never gotten a decent look at the stone. Too, the same afternoon he’d encountered the stranger, they’d finally learned the whereabouts of Lord Everly, who’d been charged with bringing Alyneri d’Giverny to Morwyk, and he necessarily had to leave town. Two days wasted on the road only to discover that the man had been dead a week…it did not serve to improve the earl’s disposition.

And now that mongrel desert bitch and her nameless knight had eluded him yet again. How had they known?

Lord Brantley considered himself a man of quality as well as a man of vision. It was, for example, only good business to deal with Bethamin. The Prophet was on the up and up, and his followers kept growing exponentially. He would become a powerful force—anyone with vision could see that. That’s why his lord, the Duke of Morwyk, was dealing with the man despite his being a low-blood primitive. It wasn’t as though they planned to socialize with the barbarian, but Bethamin had his uses.

This was also why the Duke wanted Alyneri d’Giverny on a short leash before he launched his coup on Calgaryn. Having an heir to the Kandori fortune within his retinue would ensure the financial backing he needed to move his plans forward in a timely fashion and would also keep those Kandori savages in their place in the unlikely event they found the balls to rise against him.

Morwyk would be displeased if Brantley failed to retrieve the duchess. In fact, if he failed, Lord Brantley knew he’d best not return to Dannym at all.

Lord Brantley often bemoaned his plight in life, to be constantly surrounded by men of low intelligence and breeding. However could he be expected to accomplish acts of greatness when saddled with such incompetent underlings?

The sun had nearly set by the time his men reconvened upon the rise. The scout Langdon was the first to return.

“Well?” Brantley demanded irritably. If the man saw anything beyond the tip of his overly large nose it would be a fair miracle.

“Tracks look recent heading away from the farm, milord,” Langdon reported. “Heavy wagon heading west.”

“Any others?”

Langdon shrugged. “Hard to say. The road’s fair packed and lots of traffic along it.”

The other men soon reconvened, and the foremost of them reported, “It’s abandoned, milord, to be sure. Recent though, even in the last day. Earlier today there were horses in the stalls, and the manure is fresh.”

Brantley wrinkled his nose, making his longish moustache tremble and twitch, and frowned at the farmstead. Could any one of these middling men have escaped the clutches of that insufferable Captain Gerard back in Acacia? Could they have so long outwitted old Duke Thane val Torlen? The impotent old fool never knew how many of his men were aching for strong leadership and how easy it had been for Brantley to turn them to Morwyk’s cause. And now here he, Brantley, Earl of Pent, was relegated to chasing down a damned woman like naught but a barnyard goon and her a prized pig gone astray.