The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (62 page)

The lad shuttered his excitement at this discovery, however, for he’d yet to do as Pelas had so humbly asked of him. Though it still frightened him immensely, Tanis mentally told Pelas where to direct his attention. No sooner did he have the thought than the man obediently looked there, and—

It was as though the night opened up, and huge billowing clouds of darkness came gushing out. It was so akin to the storm in Piper’s mind that Tanis had to grit his teeth and forcibly make himself stay in rapport to explore the darkness. He soon shook with the effort, and his head began to pound painfully, but though he tried as hard as he could, Tanis was unable to penetrate that darkness.

Finally he withdrew.

Pelas opened his eyes, and their gazes locked again.

“Did you see what I saw?” Tanis asked weakly. He was startled and excited, terrified, anguished and heartbroken all in the same moment.

“Yes…but you will have to explain to me what I saw.”

Tanis pushed palms to his eyes, willing himself to hold it together, to push through these many emotions that seemed likely to strangle him. “You saw the energy collecting,” he whispered.

“Is that what it was?”             

“What it was,” Tanis said, dropping his hands and leveling Pelas a tormented look, “was the fourth.”

Pelas sat back and regarded him. “The fourth,” he mused, frowning ponderously. His gaze flicked back to Tanis. “What was it doing?”

“Waiting,” Tanis groaned, for the knowledge nearly made him weep. “Pelas, sir,” the boy said as tears came to his eyes much against his will, for he understood too well now, and it was far more than he wanted to know. “You can work the fourth, and you
have
worked it, and that means you are like the zanthyr. You’re fifth-strand. You’re…” but he couldn’t say it, for it was too monumental to him.

“We are…like you?” Pelas asked gently.

Tanis nodded.

Wearing an unreadable expression, Pelas leaned across the table and held a finger to Tanis’s cheek to capture a single tear. “Little spy,” he murmured, staring marvelously at the boy, “I think perhaps you cannot be human.”

“I’m as human as you are,” Tanis protested without thinking, the words just tumbling out of him, for he was so overwhelmed. But once he’d said it, the lad wondered how he could’ve made such a claim. Moreover what did it actually meant that he
could
say it? Everyone knew truthreaders were incapable of lying, which meant…

“And what of the patterns you spoke of?” Pelas asked, sitting back again.

Tanis swallowed and shook his head. “I couldn’t see any patterns, but that darkness…did you see it?”

He frowned. “No, I sensed you moving on through my thoughts, but I was somehow unable to follow.” 

“I don’t know if this will make sense to you,” Tanis told him, “but the dark storm I saw was very close to what I witnessed when I worked a Telling upon a boy who’d been tested for Bethamin’s Fire.” Tanis dropped his gaze to his hands. “Piper went mad from the Fire, so there was much more of his own insanity clouding his mind, but…but they
were
similar. I don’t know if that helps you at all.”

Pelas was staring compellingly at him. “More than you could ever know,” he replied quietly after a moment.

The silence stretched, each occupied with his own thoughts, until Tanis could stand no longer the secret he harbored. When he looked back to Pelas, the other’s gaze was still focused on him. “Sir,” the lad whispered, terribly disheartened and fretful now, “I…think I’m going to be leaving soon.”

But Pelas merely smiled at him. “Then I suppose we shouldn’t keep sitting here or we will miss all of the fun.” He pushed out of his chair and spun to Tanis with a flourish, extending his hand toward the city at large. “Shall we away?”

Looking at Pelas frozen in such an extravagant bow, with his sparkling eyes and devastating smile, Tanis decided he really loved this man.

Thus they headed off together, with Pelas in surprisingly good spirits considering all they they’d just witnessed of each other’s minds. But Pelas wasn’t wont to dwell on things—this much Tanis knew of him—so he wasted no time on emotions that did not contribute to the gaiety he intended them to share that night.

As ever, he was a force to be reckoned with as they headed down the streets, for people were ever attracted to him such that he was always stopping to greet someone new or pausing to clasp wrists with a man who thought somehow they’d met before.

He was veritably accosted by anyone with something to sell, from street vendors to restaurateurs, courtesans to fortune tellers. He did stop to buy a handful of lovely flowers from a woman on a corner, and because she blushed so prettily and smiled so chastely though she was clearly no maiden, he blessed her with a piece of Agasi silver that would’ve bought her entire wagonload and more besides.

By the time night fell, Tanis was heady from the sights and experiences as much as from the steady supply of wine that Pelas kept feeding him. Eventually they reached the central city square where the largest celebration was ongoing. A huge orchestra played atop a stage lit by iron braziers, and the entire plaza was alive with people dancing. Pelas laughed at Tanis’s marveling expression and pulled him across the pavement toward the center of the fabulous melee. The musicians finished a song, and as they were preparing for the next, everyone broke into four lines. Pelas pulled Tanis into line with him, and they faced two rosy-cheeked maidens across the way.

“Do you dance, little spy?” Pelas asked into his ear, for it was quite loud in the square even without the musicians playing.

“It’s a little late to ask me that, isn’t it?” Tanis protested, but he was giddy and excited and had all but forgotten that the zanthyr was very probably coming for him even then.

As if by some unspoken command, the male line walked forward and bowed to the women. As Pelas was bowing to the two girls across from him and Tanis, he conjured flowers out of nowhere and handed one to each lass before their line retreated.

The girls beamed at him.

Tanis cast him a wondrous look
. “Where did those come from?” he laughed. “You weren’t holding any flowers!”

Pelas cast him a sideways grin. “The flower-seller. Remember?”

“Yes, but I don’t recall your pushing flowers up your sleeve,” Tanis told him.

Pelas gave him a peculiar look. “Why in heaven above would I put flowers up my sleeve?”

Then the music started and the dance began, and Tanis added magician to Pelas’s ever growing list of talents.

The men skipped forward and back, then the women did the same. The next time they met in the middle and linked arms, and so did the courtship of the dance begin. Forward and back, spinning and turning, linking arms and swapping imaginary kisses, on and on. And when that dance was done, another began.

Pelas knew all of the dances.

Whenever Tanis faltered upon a step, Pelas was there to encourage him on, and when the orchestra moved to playing music for partnered dances, he taught Tanis the steps with laughter and patience.

So did they spend the Longest Night, and always when the dance led them to new partners, Pelas produced two new flowers, seemingly more lovely than the last. Tanis suspected that more than half the females in the plaza had a flower from him by the time the moon started falling in the west. He also imagined any one of them would have offered more than their hands for a dance had Pelas shown the least interest, but he only had eyes for dancing—and for keeping Tanis at his side whilst they did.

The boy was happily struggling through the fairly difficult steps of a partnered jig when a flash of raven hair snared his eye. Tanis caught his breath and spun a look around, but the plaza was awash with dancers in an undulating sea—heads bobbing, twisting, turning… Pelas had spun his most recent partner off onto a fast-turning caper that had the girl giggling hysterically as she tried to keep up. He was gazing kindly into her eyes but was relentlessly turning, turning...

“Is something wrong, milord?” Tanis’s partner asked him. She was a sweet-tempered girl, and it was their second dance.

“I’m sorry,” he told her as he gazed over her shoulder. His heart was racing for a different reason than the dance, and he knew he hadn’t imagined what he saw. Tanis met her gaze and squeezed her hands. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

She gave him a shy smile and then stood on tiptoes to plant a feather-light kiss upon his cheek. She blushed demurely as she pulled back, saying, “Thank you, milord, for the dance.”

Tanis nodded to her, but then he was pushing through the crowd chasing after that flash of raven hair. It was almost as if Phaedor’s near presence pulled him unerringly forth, for he could not be averted from his path even if it meant breaking through the middle of a dancing pair.

When the lad at last cleared the main celebration, he stood with his back to the sea of dancers and looked hurriedly around. There was a courtyard that branched off the plaza across the way, and somehow Tanis knew this was where he must go. He ran then, his excitement growing until he was sprinting flat out to reach the courtyard, and when he did…

The zanthyr stood beside a gazebo in its center, an imposing shadow with emerald eyes.

Tanis stormed into his arms. “You came!” he exclaimed, so impossibly elated to see him that all other thoughts and emotions were the flat shadows of midday beneath the dazzling sun.

The zanthyr’s chuckle was the rumble of a lion’s purr, echoic of a growl. “I was just waiting for your call, lad,” he murmured, holding the boy close in his arms.

Tanis was suddenly laughing and crying all at once. He’d never known such impossible joy as this reunion. Though they’d spent but a few weeks apart, it felt like years. But when the zanthyr patted him on the back in a certain meaningful way, Tanis felt the crushing weight of a hundred other emotions come barreling in upon him.

He turned to find Pelas at the courtyard’s entrance.

“Ah, so…” the Malorin’athgul said, slowing his approach with his copper eyes pinned unerringly on the zanthyr. “Some things at last become clear.”

Seeing him, knowing it was time to leave him, Tanis felt his heart tearing in two. He cast a tentative mental probe that he might know the other man’s mind in that moment, but Pelas’s thoughts were suddenly closed to him.

Pelas stopped about ten paces away, and Tanis wanted so much to go to him, to try to explain…

Pelas’s gaze was fixed on the zanthyr. “The lad is yours then?” he asked, and Tanis could read nothing in his tone. It was agonizing to be shut out of his thoughts after sharing the space of his mind for so very long.

“No,” replied the zanthyr in his deeply compelling voice. “I am his.”

“Ah,” Pelas returned, thoughtful now. “Yes…that makes sense.”

What?
thought Tanis,
how does that make any sense at all?

“Then he
is
—”

“
Pelasommáyurek
,” the zanthyr growled in sudden warning, shaking his he
ad. “Not here. Not like this.”

Pelas looked taken aback. “I’m…sorry, I didn’t…” His gaze locked with the zanthyr’s, and they exchanged a long moment of silence wherein much was communicated beyond Tanis’s understanding. Finally Pelas tore his eyes from Phaedor’s to give Tanis a troubled frown. “This then is your farewell, eh, little spy?” For all that he’d closed his mind to the lad, Tanis heard the heartbreak in his tone.

The lad left the comfort of Phaedor’s warm and heavy hand upon his shoulder to join Pelas. He stopped before him and looked up into his copper eyes, so different from the zanthyr’s and yet beautiful too, in their way. “I have to leave you,” he said, hearing his own voice break with the confession.

Pelas gave him a gentle look. “I know.”

Tanis understood now why he had to go. Pelas had to make a choice, and Tanis was somehow connected to that choice. The lad knew Pelas couldn’t do it if he stayed. He reached into his coat and withdrew his dagger. “Here,” he said, handing it to him.

Pelas took the dagger, but he lifted his gaze to observe the zanthyr as he did. Looking back to Tanis then, he asked in confusion, “Why are you giving me this?”

“You have to make a choice.” Tanis pushed a tear roughly from his eye. “Maybe the dagger will help you find me once you’ve decided—that is, if…if you want to find me. I mean…if that’s the choice you make.”

Holding his gaze intently, Pelas spun the dagger through his fingers and made it disappear.

Tanis couldn’t stand his distance anymore. He threw his arms around him in a fierce hug. “Please,” he whispered. “Please…”

“I know, Tanis,” Pelas returned, his breath a cool breeze across his cheek.

Then Tanis pulled himself away and rejoined the zanthyr. When he turned back with a last parting glance, however, Pelas was gone.

Phaedor looked down upon him, his emerald eyes aglow beneath his raven curls. He was so impressive.
So
imposing. Taller than Pelas and broader still.

Next to the brilliant force that was the zanthyr, even giants became as men.

Tanis let out a tremulous sigh and hugged him again, but it was not joy that drove him into the zanthyr’s embrace this time.