The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (64 page)

The image of Rinokh wasn’t what upset him the most. Rather, it was the knowledge she’d given him as they walked back—that three more of these creatures dwelled now within Alorin, unmaking it by the malevolent force of their presence as much as by the dark mischief they were most certainly about.

“Am I meant to face them? Is this what he needs of me?” he’d asked her somewhat desperately.

But Isabel would not answer him in this.

She made dinner for them, and they ate in silence, for Ean struggled with his new understanding. Three times he’d battled these creatures and died, failing not merely himself but all who’d been counting on him. The Malorin’athgul need do nothing but exist within the realm and Alorin would eventually wither and die.
They
were the reason Alorin was out of Balance, why the Adept race was dying.

No wonder Markal treated Ean’s incompetency with such vehement disdain. Every moment such creatures were allowed to remain in Alorin, the realm itself moved one step closer to death. And each time Ean confronted them and failed, he only prolonged their tenancy.

He felt a black and explosive self-loathing, his guilt a lead weight plunging his soul into an abyss...
Might as well invite them to stay at their leisure for all the good I’ve done!

“Ean…” Isabel called his attention.

He looked up to find her sitting across from him with hands clasped on the table. The dishes were gone, cleaned. He didn’t even remember eating the meal.

“My brother thought it would be better if we kept this knowledge from you a little longer,” she said. “He feared that if you knew the threat we faced—if you knew how critical our position and how volatile their presence in our world…if you knew what failure meant to our future—that you would be stricken. He feared you would take these failures upon your own shoulders as a weight that only you might bear, as if you and you alone had failed the entire world.”

Ean stared at her with red-rimmed eyes, tearless but burning. “I…never imagined he knew me so completely.”

“
I
told my brother you would never be so ridiculous, so
egocentric
, as to imagine yourself the sole cause of the realm’s misfortune.”

Ean frowned at her.

“Whose game is this anyway?” she demanded brusquely then. “Yours?”

Her abrupt tone injured his already raw sensitivities. “Well…no, but—”

“Did you craft the rules? Did you choose the players? Is the game board of your design? Or maybe you were the one who established what parameters would be used to measure success or failure? Was
any
of this your creation, Ean?”

“No,” he admitted, “but—”

“And did
you
invite the damnable creatures into Alorin? Did you open a window into our realm that they might partake of the view and
desire
it?”

“No!” he hissed, revolted by the very thought.

She arched an imperious chestnut brow. “Well then. Like I told my brother, I cannot imagine any man I love being so foolish, so self-centered—so absurdly unintelligent as to suppose himself the sole cause of the realm’s misfortune and subsequent foundering.”

Ean stared at her—all thoughts of the Malorin’athgul had vanished the moment she’d said the words.

…the man I love…

“
Isabel
,” he managed, nearly choking over her name, his gaze hot upon her face. “You…love me?”

Her lips twitched with the shadow of a smile. “Is that what I said?” 

“I’m certain that you did,” he told her seriously.

She gave an inconsequential shrug, sighed. “Then I suppose it must be true. Epiphany’s Prophet never lies.”  

“Isabel!” he grabbed her hand and gazed imploringly at her. The blindfold was meaningless to him—arousing admittedly—but clearly no barrier to her vision. He knew she saw him, and he imagined he saw her behind its silken folds. “Do not torment me with simple teasing, I beg you. Not about this.”

“If I meant to torment you with teasing, my lord,” she returned in that velvet voice that nearly drove him insane with wanting her, “I assure you I would find better ways of doing so.”

Ean stood and swept the table out from between them. He grabbed her up into his arms, bound and close, his mouth just inches from hers, their gazes locked as if the blindfold did not exist. “I have never loved anyone but you,” he confessed hoarsely, his voice gruff with desire. He ran his lips along the graceful arch of her neck, feeling her shiver and wanting her all the more.

“Prove it,” she purred, sending a thrill of pleasure through him.

“How?” He could barely breathe for want of her.

“Bind yourself to me.”

“I am already bound to you, heart and soul!”  

“Not in this life. You know the pattern,” she murmured, and her velvet voice was an exquisite torture. “If you would have me in this life, my lord,
bind us now
.”

He had no thought but to comply. Guided by his need, by her command and his longing to please her, by the desire they so clearly shared, he looked, and the knowledge appeared. He called forth a pattern of the fifth layered with Form from the first strand, and the fourth—called it into being with a desperation driven by his craving to possess Isabel wholly, by the knowledge that she wanted nothing less than the same. And into the pattern he channeled this intention.

The binding was irreversible—this he also knew. It would link him to Isabel in a way that would become devastating should either of them fall into harm. But these latter ramifications paled next to her keen demand. He wanted only to prove his love to her.

The moment he had the pattern fully conceived, Isabel whispered, “Yes! Now we seal it…take me
,
my lord.”

He didn’t need to be asked twice.

Ean swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He pressed her down, his mouth sealed upon hers, his hands reaching to release her clothing. She worked in turn the laces of his pants.

“Isabel,” he moaned as she freed him into her hands.

“You must hold the pattern in place,” she breathed into his ear. Then she gasped as he penetrated her, himself uttering a charged exhalation, sweet ecstasy entwined with painful need. She clung to him as he drove into her, this their first union, an impassioned reunion propelled by wild desire.

At her command, he held the pattern ready, though this in itself was a thrilling torment, for the pattern kept trying to explode out of him, so charged it was with power. He felt her adding her own layers to the pattern, again of the fourth, the first, even—unexpectedly—the third. And when he could hold the pattern no longer, when he’d driven into her almost beyond his own endurance, sealing symbolically what he captured within the tides of
elae
… When they were both gasping for breath, Isabel cried out and thrust herself against him, trembling deep inside, and Ean shuddered with his own release, forcing the pattern into being along with his seed, the entire coupling carried now upon the tides of
elae
, inextricably united within the binding itself.

Ean collapsed atop Isabel, breathless and spent. Never had he known such a feeling. The binding lay heavy upon them now. Ean could sense it, almost as if tensing against a supportive membrane. The binding linked them, forging an awareness of her as acute as his knowledge of himself—in some ways more so. At last he understood why he’d felt that distance between them—this was the connection he’d been missing.

Isabel found his mouth once more. Her lips were satin, her tongue as sweet as any wine. He reached for her again as desire ignited once more. When it came to Isabel, his need was insatiable.

Laughing, she pulled away and sat up on the bed. A sweep of her arm gathered her luscious hair, and she tormented him with that hidden gaze. “Undress me, my lord, for I cannot do it myself.”

Ean dutifully sat up and examined the buttons along the back of her dress. “I believe I see the problem. They must be undone, each with a kiss.”

Her lips curled in a smile. “Is that so?”

His answer was the first of many kisses, long and deep. As his hands made their way down the buttons, she slipped her arms free and then the rest of her, each limb appearing long, lovely and perfect in his estimation. Ean pressed her backwards onto the bed. He trailed his fingers down each arm, feeling her shiver with pleasure and promise, and suddenly he could wait no longer. He grabbed her and rolled so she rose atop him, the perfect hourglass of her body as tantalizing as the feel of himself trapped beneath her.

Her long hair draped around her shoulders, and the blindfold…he found it even more arousing to see her straddling him and know there was still some part of her that remained beyond his reach. It made him want to possess her all the more.

“Isabel,” he moaned happily. Her smile concealed every secret he sought, her love the map to his own soul. He lifted himself to capture her mouth with his, and suddenly they were caught once more in the force of their need, as if passion alone might expunge the countless years that had stretched between them.

That time their release was longer in coming, a powerful deliverance for each of them. Isabel lay atop Ean when they were finished, their skin forming a seal between their bodies even as the magical bond connected their souls.

“I love you, Isabel,” Ean whispered with desperate conviction. He’d never known any truth so fervent as this one.

“I know,” she murmured, and though Ean’s eyes were closed, he could still see her smile.

“The well of his conviction is inexhaustible.”

- The Adept truthreader Cristien Tagliaferro,

on Björn van Gelderan

Raine and
Carian finally came in view of the grand alabaster city of Niyadbakir on the eve of the Solstice. For the longest time, Raine stood upon the wide cobbled road that led to the city just staring at the view, his throat strangely tight and his chest tense with emotion.

Niyadbakir
.

It had been naught but hostile basalt when last he saw it, the city’s hundreds of towers and spires scraping a red sky. Even knowing T’khendar had changed, Raine still somehow expected to see the same darkly menacing creation in Niyadbakir, a fitting representation of Malachai’s twisted end.

Instead, he found a city of…surpassing beauty.

Crowning the mountainside and flowing down into an emerald valley, the white city of bridges and towers seemed to capture the sunlight within it. Waterfalls fell like shafts of sunlight from Niyadbakir’s surrounding mountains, while east of the city fertile farmland spread, a chequerboard dotted with farmsteads and manor homes.

“I cannot believe it,” Raine muttered.

“Ah, the Alabaster City,” Balearic noted appreciatively, coming up beside Raine while the rest of the Iluminari wagons ambled by.

“How?” Raine managed, though he knew too well.

Balearic shoved hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Some stories proclaim the First Lord changed the city to alabaster during the weeks of Adendigaeth
two centuries ago,” he said, “while others claim it happened in a single night.” The gypsy shook his head and grinned at the truthreader, his blue eyes bright against the kohl that lined them. “Changing the makeup of a whole city…it must’ve been the longest day of his life.”

“I don’t know,” Raine murmured miserably, thinking of the creation of T’khendar itself and all that had followed. “I think he’s probably had longer ones.”

They finally said farewell to their Iluminari hosts just inside the majestic gates of the sprawling city. The gypsies had been generous beyond measure, and Raine wished he had more to offer them than his gratitude. He said as much to Balearic as they shook hands in parting, and in return the pirate-turned-gypsy held fast to his hand, calling Raine’s gaze to his own.

“Not for me, your Excellency…not for any of us,” he said in a low voice, casting a glance toward the pirate who was busy adjusting Gwynnleth’s unconscious form in the litter they’d procured to carry her. “But for Alorin, my lord, for those whose lives hang in the balance. For
them
,” he said, holding Raine’s gaze, “won’t you please try to see his side? I think something important is happening—you live long enough in T’khendar and the sense of it just permeates you—and I think he might be the only one who knows what to do about it.”

Raine held his gaze. “I would that we don’t make the same mistakes twice, Balearic,” he agreed, realizing the phrase might refer to any number of situations, but it was the best he could offer.

Balearic’s bright blue eyes seemed to understand, and he nodded. “Farewell, your excellence. The Lady’s blessing upon you all.”

Raine watched him go in silence. Balearic was taking his wagon to a predestined location to set up for the fire-candle display later that night. In some ways, Raine was sad to see him go, for he felt that he hadn’t done the gypsy justice in exchange for his hospitality…or for his words of wisdom. Yet while Balearic took his leave, the gypsy’s reminder of ‘the Lady’ stayed with Raine.