The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (63 page)

“He’s not like the others,” Tanis whispered with his cheek pressed against the zanthyr’s strong chest, his arms wrapped tightly around him. He felt choked with loss. He didn’t know how Pelas would choose, and the idea of never seeing him again was like losing a part of himself.

As ever, the zanthyr knew his mind. “Do not be disheartened, Tanis,” Phaedor advised gently. “Your paths do not end here. For good or ill, they will cross again.”

“What will happen when they do?” 

“That depends upon his choice.”

“My lord…how can I feel for him so? He’s done…monstrous things…”

“Love takes many forms,” the zanthyr consoled. “Sometimes is it the truest expression of compassion.”

Tanis pulled away, sniffing. “I do love him…”
Like I love you.
“He is the brother I never had.” 

The zanthyr must’ve known his tormented thoughts, for he took the lad tenderly by the back of the head and pulled him into the circle of his arms once more, holding him until Tanis felt a measure of hope restored.

That time when he pulled away, his outlook was a little brighter. Phaedor kept his arm around his shoulder as he called forth a portal—just as Pelas had. Tanis had never seen the zanthyr travel this way, but he knew Phaedor could work
deyjiin
and was somehow not surprised. The silver line split down, and then they were walking through Shadow and out onto a midnight field where two horses waited in the luminous fall of moonlight, one black, one silver-pale.

“Caldar?” Tanis asked, shooting the
zanthyr a look. 

“A distant cousin,” the zanthyr answered.
“This is Draanil, sire of his own line of noble Hallovian steeds. He will carry you, I think, if you will have him.”

“Of—of course!” Tanis exclaimed. He looked into the horse’s lambent brown eyes as he stroked his neck. “I am honored, Draanil.”

Phaedor took the leads of his midnight stallion, and they walked the horses side by side along the crest of a grassy hill. Tanis could see the golden lights of a city in the distance, but he didn’t know what city it was. Nor did he care. He was with the zanthyr, and that was all that mattered now.

“My lord,” he said, glancing at Phaedor. “Why did you say you were ‘mine’ back there?”

Phaedor gave him one of his decidedly disturbing looks, the kind that always drew chills out of the boy. “Because I am bound to you, Tanis.”

Tanis stopped dead in his tracks. “You
are?
” he croaked. “How?
When?
”

“When I made a promise to your mother to keep you safe,” he answered as if this wasn’t the most earth-shattering statement in Tanis’s entire existence.

“You
what?
” the lad veritably shrieked.

Phaedor cast him a sideways look full of shadowy amusement.

“And you didn’t think to tell me this until now?” Tanis protested shrilly.

“You didn’t ask.” 

Over the course of the next few minutes, Tanis muttered a steady stream of inhospitable things under his breath while wondering if perhaps Fynnlar wasn’t entirely wrong about the zanthyr. Sometimes he really could be insufferable.

Then something else occurred to him which cheered him somewhat. “So if you’re bound to me, my lord,” Tanis said, casting the zanthyr an imperious look, “does that mean you have to do what I tell you?”

The zanthyr eyed him dangerously. “Try it and find out, Truthreader.” 

Tanis went a little pale.

Phaedor grinned and flipped his dagger.

“Your g
ods are fickle, fustian creatures thriving on the inane worship of deluded men.”

-
Shailabhanáchtran
, Maker of Storms

Ean woke
to wondrous smells of breakfast. He rolled onto his side and found Isabel already at work in the kitchen. “My lady,” he sighed happily, “you look positively domestic.”

She shot him a grin ove
r her shoulder. “Why thank you, my lord. Would you like to join me? We could use more wood for the fire and some fresh water also.”

Ean rolled from the bed, which was still made if a bit rumpled, and happily set to the chores she assigned him. Housekeeping with Isabel felt intimate and familiar, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been together like this before. He dared not ask her, however, for fear she would answer him.

When breakfast was done and cleared and cleaned, Isabel pulled a cloak from her pack and took up her staff. Ean followed, bringing his navy cloak edged in silver, so like the one he’d worn that fateful night on a lonesome beach when his whole life had changed.

Together, they found the path once more.

The trail eventually led to a cave, where Isabel took up a torch. Ean offered to recall the working for summoning fire—he was quite sure he could remember the pattern if she commanded it of him—but Isabel just struck the provided flint against her staff and a spark caught upon the torch at once. As it flamed to life, Ean saw a narrow, arched corridor, smooth as black glass, vanishing into darkness.

“This is no natural cave.”

“No, Malachai made it.”

Ean frowned into the gloom. For some reason, the one man he wanted least to recall was Malachai. Though he understood better the tragedy of the wielder’s madness, an uncomfortable association still stirred at the man’s name. Ean now recognized such unsettling feelings as hidden truths—in this case, a painful one, long buried, that he did
not
wish to be unearthed.

He recalled suddenly another conversation, another dream that wasn’t a dream.

“Will you cross this bridge with me, my friend?”
Björn had invited him.

“Why should I?”

“To regain your future and your past.”

“Where does the bridge lead?”
Ean had asked.

“To pain,”
Björn answered with honest regret.

“What will I find on the other side?”

Björn had smiled
.
“Yourself.”

Even then, standing on the fringes of death, Ean had suspected that the pain Björn spoke of was still awaiting him, that he’d only had the barest taste of it. But now he was certain that the First Lord had been speaking of more than one moment, one life, one untimely mistake. When Ean accepted Björn’s invitation to return across the bridge, it wasn’t merely to regain the painful knowledge of the errors of one life and near death, but of three of them.

The tunnel was long, and Isabel kept silent during the hours they traversed it, giving Ean time with his thoughts. He knew how deeply aware of him she was. Just like he knew she was leading him toward more than just Rinokh, that this tunnel, like Björn’s bridge, would eventually end in pain.

The smallest light at the far end gradually brightened, widened, until they emerged into daylight.

But it was a strange daylight, the light harsh beneath a grey-green overcast. The sky crackled with lightning that flared in huge sheets, blasting the turbulent clouds into sere white brilliance and then retreating defiantly, leaving a sickly greenish hue. The canyon before them lay barren, the basalt towers of the surrounding mountains standing black against the sky. A rough stairway led down to the canyon floor, and Isabel kept her torch as she led Ean down. As always the soft thud of her staff tapped a reassuring comfort, something normal among this place that twitched with unmaking.

Their descent took the better part of two hours, until at last Ean stepped off the final stair and set both feet somewhat reluctantly upon the canyon floor. A million rough stones rattled there every time the lightning cracked overhead. There was no bare earth upon which to safely tread, only the molting rocks. Isabel turned them to their right, and Ean saw that the towering basalt walls narrowed as they angled further into the canyon. Into this chasm they headed, unevenly, taking care on the volatile stones.

The further they went, the more the air became charged. Isabel’s hair floated away from her head in spidery strands, and as Ean felt the hairs rising on his arms, he realized his own hair was doing the same. The air crackled with static, which simply gathered there, building and amassing until the lightning released it into the upper atmosphere. Ean felt they were dangerously close to being electrocuted, that the lightning that flashed incessantly in the heavens could just as easily strike them down at any moment.

Finally they reached the narrowest point where the sheer sides of the canyon met at a soaring wall of black volcanic glass, which disappeared into the overcast far above.

“Obsidian,” Ean murmured, noting the glass’s telltale dark gleam.

Isabel set down her staff and took his hand in hers, sparking his fingers with her first touch. “This place is the furthest edge of the known realms of light,” she said gravely. “Here, the veil between worlds is very thin. Beyond this wall,” and she indicated the darkly translucent obsidian before them, “we look into the Unknown, the outer chaotic fringe of the cosmos itself. It is the place of unraveling where the Malorin’athgul reside, working their consumptive power to dissolve the edges of the ever-expanding universe,” and she added solemnly, “for there is Balance in all things.”

“What
are
the Malorin’athgul?” Ean asked, suddenly desperate to better understand their enemy.

“They were made in the Genesis along with the
angiel
,” she explained as they stared at the volcanic glass wall while the world crackled and shuddered around them. “They are as much the Maker’s children as Cephrael and Epiphany.”

Ean gaped at her, unable to believe such a startling truth. “But—” It was incomprehensible that their Maker would knowingly bring such evil creatures as Rinokh into being.

“They are the balance to creation, Ean,” she tried to tell him as lightning flared and thunder rumbled the stones beneath their feet, rippling the air even within their chests. “They are…complicated creatures.” 

A static wind charged down from the overcast, whipping Isabel’s hair into a frenzy of wild strands, each with a life of its own. She pulled up the hood of her cloak to contain it and continued, shouting to be heard above the din, “The Malorin’athgul were never meant to know of our world at all! Their only purpose for being is to unmake the unraveling fringes of our universe while at its core it is continuously self-creating.”

“Then how did—”

“A truth for another day!” she answered, shouting though they stood side by side.

Ean gazed into the madness surrounding him and wondered not for the first time why they were here. “Where is Rinokh?” 

“Here! Hold the light to the wall!”

Confused, Ean took the torch from her and released her hand to stagger closer to the towering obsidian wall. The static wind was monumental there, threatening to tear his cloak from his shoulders. It cast the heavy cloth snapping tautly behind him as he struggled forward, yet the light of Isabel’s torch remained steady.
So there is a little magic in it after all.

Not understanding why, only trusting Isabel, Ean held the fire to the depthless glass. The obsidian seemed to absorb the flame, to draw it deeply in and magnify it. He saw a blossoming gold reflection spreading far inside the deep, dense wall, widening as if a light-tower beacon, when suddenly—

Ean leapt back, stumbling on the uneven stones. A great eye pressed against the other side of the volcanic glass, magnified in turn from an immense, unknowable distance by the wall that was more than a wall. As Ean stared, the eye vanished to be replaced by the reptilian face of a monster.

Ean stared at the wall, chest heaving, knowing he faced his enemy but uncomprehending of what he saw.

“He is trapped now,” Isabel came up behind Ean. “Trapped beyond the veil of this world. His original means of entrance to the realms of light is now denied him, and he knows it, but still he searches, hovering at T’khendar’s edge, hoping…”

“It’s…he’s…” Ean turned to her, pointing hard at the glass. “He’s a
dragon!
”

“He is Malorin’athgul.”

Swallowing, Ean looked back to the creature. He could see it swimming beyond the veil that separated the worlds. Here a spiked tail raked the volcanic glass wall, there a great eye peered intently, maliciously, inward. A head appeared in full, turning from side to side, displaying a double row of teeth, and then the mouth opened violently, and Ean wondered if Rinokh played some fell power upon the wall, trying to unravel it as he had so nearly undone him. The thought brought a latent shudder.

“They cannot be unmade, Ean!” Isabel called over the roaring thunder and the shuddering rocks and the crackling, electric wind, “but they must not be allowed to unwork the living realms.
This
is our enemy! This is what we are sworn to fight!”

Much later, Ean sat in silence at the table back at the cottage, his mind still dwelling in that heavily charged canyon that so throbbed with unmaking. He’d barely said a word since returning from the mountain, only trusting that Isabel knew his mind.