The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (61 page)

“Give me that dagger of yours, little spy,” he whispered with his copper eyes darkly twinkling.

Tanis gave him a suspicious look.

“I’ll give it back!” he laughed. “Come now,” and he held out his hand. “I know you must have it.”

Reluctantly, Tanis withdrew Phaedor’s dagger from his boot and handed it over.

Pelas considered the Merdanti weapon with renewed appreciation. “A truly marvelous treasure,” he commented with a wistful sigh. Then he grinned at Tanis and proceeded to use his prized dagger for the lowly task of jiggering the lock. Tanis heard a click, Pelas flashed him a triumphant grin, and the door swung inward. He handed him back his dagger with a wink.

“Couldn’t you just have used your power to dissolve the lock, sir?” Tanis asked as he slipped the dagger back into its sheath—no point trying to hide it now—which he now wore on his belt beneath his coat.

Pelas gave him a lightly chastising look. “Now where would be the fun in that?”  And with a smile, he led Tanis inside. The corridor beyond the heavy door was dim, but Pelas clearly knew the place well.

“Where are we, sir?” Tanis asked in a low voice as they moved down the hall hugging the darkness.

“The Nodefinder’s Guild Hall,” he returned with a mischievous grin. “They’re fussy about intruders, so walk quietly and if anyone notices us, try to look important.”

Tanis thought that would be no trouble at all for Pelas to manage and quite a challenge for him. Fortunately, all the Guild’s members and administrators seemed to be out enjoying Carnivále, for they encountered no one as they swept through the wide halls and up a grand curving staircase to the second floor. Down another long hallway past what appeared to be libraries or archives of some kind, they reached the open gallery beneath the crystal dome. The ceiling soared upwards through five floors, and great works of art adorned the walls of the circular walkways at each level. Pelas took him up a flight of stairs to the third level and stopped before an oil painting at least twenty paces across. Tanis had to step back all the way to railing to appreciate its scope, but there, he gazed upon the work with amazement.

The base of the painting was full of color and light and even sound—if such could be said of the impression of its vibrant, ebullient motion. The story of this part of the painting depicted a party, but it was also so much more than this. Within each vignette, each collaboration of faces and people, there was a new revelation. Something discovered, something new, something expressed or admired. Some people danced, some ate and drank, some talked or argued, conspired or laughed. Every detail of their lives in that moment was captured in paint, each jewel in a woman’s necklace or a man’s ring fashioned with its own particular and unique sparkle.

The brilliance of the painting’s main focus was remarkable, but especially in contrast to the darkness that hovered above. The artist had expertly blended the colors of his fete into the blanket of a starry night, color sweeping upward to be captured by the heavens and reflected ever so subtly in the stars. But it was above the stars, in the darkness of the clouds, that Tanis saw them hovering. Watching. They were but shadows with eyes—yet not even that much of them was shown, not truly. It was more the impression of them, the way their eyes were stars that were yet sentient, celestial bodies of a different, darker nature.

When he saw them, he knew.

Tanis turned Pelas a swift look. “You painted this!”

Pelas grinned at him. “I hoped you would see. I thought you might.”  He looked back to the painting, assessing it critically, as only its own creator could. “There are many who do not notice us at all.”

The painting frightened Tanis more than he cared to admit. “Is it…is that what it’s like—what it’s like for all of you?”

Pelas cast him a sideways look that hinted at a smile. “Never fear. We’re not gods hovering in the clouds, little spy. This is just a metaphor for how I feel…felt… about your world.”

“Why is it here? I mean…”  Tanis looked around and then whispered, “Do they know you painted it?”

“It was painted by an imminently respectable artist named Immanuel di Nostri. My name, once.”  He gave the boy a conspiratorial smile. “I’ve had many identities, but Immanuel was always one of my favorites.”

Tanis looked back to the painting. “It’s…incredible.”

“Thank you,” Pelas returned, “but you need not praise it. I only wanted to show you because I thought you would appreciate its message. And I see that you do. That is enough, truly.”

Tanis gazed at Pelas in wonder. Cliff diver, sailor, courtier, artist, interrogator and intrepid explorer. He wondered how many other skills the man had mastered.

“But come,” Pelas said brightly then. “There is much still to see.”

He led Tanis through the gallery, explaining that it was actually an archive of masterworks from around the realm. He also told him that Immanuel di Nostri had many paintings in a gallery in the Sormitáge.

“Have you ever seen the Sormitáge, little spy?” he asked as they were walking past a series of paintings depicting famous bridges of the realm.

“No sir.”

“The Sormitáge’s great museum, the
Primär Insamling
, is five times the size of this guild hall. The Sormitáge encompasses thirty buildings this size or larger and is nearly a city unto itself. It is worth seeing, if you should find yourself in Faroqhar.”

Tanis noted the passion with which Pelas spoke of the famous university and wondered why it hadn’t been on their visiting list early on. He was savvy enough, however, to recognize there was probably a reason they’d stayed away, and it was one the man clearly did not want to speak upon.

Afternoon had come by the time they rejoined the festivities out in the streets of Rimaldi, and Tanis was famished. Pelas was ever amused at the size of the lad’s stomach, but he humored him and miraculously procured seats at a crowded café along one side of a square.

The large central fountain was jammed with people splashing in its waters, while further across the square a Kings tournament was being held, with men and women hovering intently over the black and white boards in three long rows while crowds of supporters watched and joked and drank and generally disrupted concentration for all involved. The rest of the square saw all manner of activity, from lovers to acrobats to good-natured brawlers.

The table Pelas had found for them was shaded by trees studded with tiny oranges, the limbs trained over a sprawling arbor that ran all along one side of the square. Pelas ordered food for Tanis in the Rimaldian dialect, and wine for both of them, and they sat for easily an hour just observing the unbelievable variety of revelry all around.

“Tell me of your life, Tanis,” Pelas said after a while. He was sitting crosswise in his chair with long legs extended, one arm draped over the back and the other idly holding his goblet of wine. “What do you do when you are not following incredibly dangerous men about the realm?”

“I was training as a truthreader before my lady and I left Calgaryn,” the lad said. “We’d been traveling lately with Prince Ean, as I told you.”

“Upon a perilous quest as he ran for his life,” Pelas supplied with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

Tanis gave him a wary look, because he’d never said such as that.

Pelas held his gaze. “I asked my brother Shail about Ean val Lorian,” he explained, and then he added darkly, “He had much to say.”

Tanis was suddenly dry-mouthed and apprehensive.

Pelas laughed at his frightened expression and reached over to muss his hair. “Fear not, little spy!” he declared, still laughing. “If any of my brothers speak vehemently against a man, he is most certainly a man I want to meet.”

Tanis looked at his hands still feeling unnerved. “I think it was one of your brothers who came to our camp one night. We saw him, but…but he didn’t see us.”

Pelas arched brows. “That would be something indeed. However did your prince accomplish such a feat?”

“He had help.”

“Ah…” Pelas gave him a curious look, but there was also something deeply knowing in his gaze. Tanis worried he was beginning to suspect Phaedor’s nature, and then he wondered why that worried him.

“So what does one study as a truthreader?” Pelas asked, returning them to safer waters.

“A lot of endless rules,” Tanis grumbled. Then he grinned sheepishly. “I’ve only been studying for a year or so. I’ve learned my Truths and the basics of our craft, how to do Readings and Tellings and such.”

“Which are?”

“When you enter rapport with another’s mind and…and well, you look for stuff—memories and the like.”

“I see.” He smiled. “Anything else you’ve learned, oh truthreader-in-training?”

“Well…Master O’reith had begun training me in Truth-bindings.”

Pelas latched onto this. “What bindings are these?”

“Fourth-strand patterns can be used to keep a man from speaking about certain things,” Tanis explained.

“These fourth-strand patterns,” Pelas mused, “they compel the energy of thought, do they not?”

“Yes, sir. From everything I understand about them.” 

“Are these the same kind of patterns you mentioned in use upon the Marquiin?”

“They could be, I suppose. I really understood so little about what happened to that man—but the fourth
can
be used to compel people against their will. It’s…” he dropped his gaze, suddenly embarrassed.

Pelas leaned forward and gave him a shadowy look, suspecting his hesitation. “It’s what?”

Tanis looked back to him and braved, “Well…it’s just that I think you work the fourth yourself sometimes and just don’t know it.”

Pelas sat back in his chair looking amazed. “You think
I
work the fourth?”

“The feeling is the same, sir. I’ve been under compulsion many times from Master O’reith as part of my training, and I’ve…well, I’ve been under compulsion from you. It felt the same, except…well…”

Pelas waved at him, grinning. “Go on then. You can’t stop now.”

Tanis managed a sheepish look. “Well, yours was somehow…darker.”

Pelas shook his head thoughtfully. “How very,
very
interesting.”  He sipped his wine in pensive silence for a while, and Tanis was just beginning to think he’d escaped the conversation when Pelas leaned toward him again and placed a hand over his. “Tanis,” he said, using the intimacy of his name to draw the lad’s gaze to meet his own, “might you be able to work a Telling upon me?”

Tanis naturally found this idea dismaying, for he knew the deadly power lurking in Pelas’s mind; yet how could he deny him something which clearly took such courage to ask? “I could try, sir,” he managed weakly.

“And within this Telling,” Pelas continued intently, pinning the lad with his coppery gaze, “might you be able to see if someone had worked a compulsion pattern upon me?”

Tanis went cold, and not because of Pelas’s icy hand holding so tightly to his.  

“Yes…” Pelas murmured and their eyes locked upon one another even as their minds met upon a single thought.

Tanis forced a swallow, for two things became clear in that moment. First, he
had
to do this for Pelas; and second, this kind of a working would cause a shift in the currents of
elae,
and as soon as he did that…

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. Yet the duplicity in this action made the boy heartsick—even though Pelas had asked it of him, even though Tanis
had
to do it, it would also act as his card of calling upon the currents of
elae
, shouting his presence to the zanthyr.

Suddenly overcome with sorrow, Tanis murmured, “Close your eyes, sir.”

Pelas did.

Tanis lifted his hand to find the handhold, but for a moment he just froze. Here was this man—this powerful, wonderful and decidedly deadly man—who was submitting wholly to his will, who was trusting to him so completely as to place his entire mind within Tanis’s full control.

The lad felt such a weight of responsibility in that moment that for a brief time he didn’t know if he could go through with it. But then he reminded himself of all of the good that was in Pelas and how important this was, and he placed his fingers across his face and temples as he’d been taught.

It was surprisingly simple to find rapport with Pelas, and not merely because the man was so easily and willingly allowing him into his mind. No, it was like…like they were somehow of the same cloth—as outrageous as that was, for Tanis knew they were not even of the same race. Yet there it was.

Sinking deeper into rapport, Tanis was about to tell Pelas what to look for when he felt his mind opening yet again.

He heard me
, the boy realized, startled that they were already so deep in rapport as to share their thoughts.

But when Pelas opened his mind fully to Tanis…

The boy started as if a static shock had just thrilled through him, for he saw what he knew had been true all along. There was no other way to describe the way
elae
collected around Pelas’s mental energy, around his thoughts, ready to comply to his intent. He
was
able to use the fourth strand, and that could only mean one thing.