The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (73 page)

While Rhys was pondering that logic, the Espial Gerard opened his eyes and announced, “The node is prepared.
” He indicated the garnet circle with one hand. “Please begin.”

Having been upon many nodes in recent months, Trell was not surprised when he placed one foot upon the
vibrant red tiles and the next upon a grassy slope—he hardly even noticed the momentary disorientation—but the view that spread before him certainly came as a surprise.

He’d emerged upon a high mountainside overlooking
a great walled limestone city in the near distance. In the center of the city, two towering jade pillars stood higher than any other structure inside the walls, dwarfing even the glittering gold dome of a central palace.

Recognizing too well the skyline of that city, Trell spun a look behind him, knowing already what he would find. The
Assifiyah mountains reared startlingly close. Their craggy, snowbound peaks were just then shredding a bank of clouds into cotton-like strips. Turning back, Trell saw that the hill ended in a cliff. He knew what lay at the bottom of that chasm, too. Naiadithine and the Cry.

“It’s very beautiful here,” Alyneri noted as she led Draanil to a halt beside Gendaia. “Have you any idea where we might be?”

“I have an idea,” Trell muttered tightly. His grey eyes drank in the view, and it tasted strongly of foreboding with a heavy dose of nostalgia stirred in.

Sakkalaah.

To think, he might’ve managed a several week journey in a single hour had he known of such things as nodes and Espials for hire, but then he would never have met Carian vran Lea, or Yara, and who knows where he would be now? Trell supposed he still would’ve delivered the Mage’s missive, ensuring a similar inevitable end, but he couldn’t help thinking that the journey truly had been as important as his destination—perhaps more so.

“Trell…” Alyneri reached out to him with her eyes, with her tone.

“Not here, Alyneri,” he hissed under his breath. Then he mounted Gendaia and trotted over to join the Espial, who had just come through. 

“Our next node is found in the Guild Hall in the city,” Gerard announced. “Please follow me.”  He mounted up and led them away.

“How does a man respond to pain? How does it change his will, his drive, his urges, his obedience? These are questions worth pursuing.”

- The Adept Healer Taliah hal’Jaitar

Kjieran van Stone
stood upon a long balcony of Radov’s palace in Tal’Shira by the Sea searching the horizon for signs of a ship. He dressed as the locals did, wearing a beaded
kameez
tunic and loose
shalwar
pants bound at the ankle, both garments sewn from a shimmering silk that migrated from blue to lavender to grey. The color accentuated his dark hair and pale skin and made his colorless eyes seem as diamonds in the sunlight.

His hands were shaking.

Kjieran couldn’t stop them shaking anymore. His hands had begun to represent a no-man’s land, that ephemeral boundary between the living and the dead where the doomed souls wandered. His hands demarked a battleground of biological forces which met and clashed and exploded in violent antipathy. They twitched with the Prophet’s chilling, consumptive power, and they shook with
elae’s
life-giving, fiery warmth. Dore’s Pattern of Changing was working its fell magic upon him, and Kjieran was helpless to stop its progression.

It had taken days to recover from the initial working, days of fevered torment while his body raged against the malfeasance waged against it. During those days, he surely lingered in this life only because the Prophet’s will bound him there—for the sickness and horrors he endured would’ve driven even the most stalwart to seek the Returning. Now, part of him walked on the other side of death. Though his body outwardly yet seemed human, Kjieran knew it had crossed a threshold.

As yet,
elae
remained with him, but he didn’t know how long this would last. This impending loss frightened him the most. Death claimed all men in the end, but to be cut off from
elae
…even the evils already perpetrated against him paled next to this horrible thought.

That his mind was still his own, that the Pattern of Changing was so slow to claim him fully…for these graces he thanked Raine’s amulet. The tiny disc lay snug against his chest, and its influence remained strong. The amulet served as Kjieran’s sole source of warmth, for he could no longer feel his own heartbeat, so frail and intermittent was its rhythm. He didn’t hold out hope that the amulet would save him—he knew it merely slowed the inevitable end—but he prayed the amulet would give him enough time to do what he came to do.

Kjieran’s hands twitched on the balustrade.

From his vantage, the city of Tal’Shira spread like the wings of a butterfly to either side of Radov’s palace, which crowned a massive hill at the butterfly’s oblong head. A crenellated limestone wall built upon a rough sandstone base enclosed the entire palace complex. Another great wall surrounding the city itself protected from invading Khurds as much as sandstorms, which were infrequent this far east but still a threat.

Tal’Shira was a bustling city, a thriving sea port, and the home of sultans and rich merchant princes alike. People went about their business as if the princedom hadn’t been at war for eons, effectively ignoring the ever-growing sea of refugee tents amassing outside the city walls. But this façade of normalcy was but a mass illusion mutually agreed-upon by the city’s elite that they might better perpetuate the lie amongst themselves. In truth, Tal’Shira was the sweet reflection upon a still pond, concealing the slime beneath.

Everyone blamed Radov for the city’s decline. Kjieran had recently learned that during the course of the last many moons, Radov’s infamous paranoia had crested perilous heights, and now the prince was rumored to be descending into madness. His advisors were cowed, the Congress of Princes was as fractious as a cockfight, and Saldarians ran rampant and unchecked, gleefully marauding in Radov’s own city—not to mention elsewhere in the kingdom.

Without Radov’s leadership—which while militant had at least been effective—the plug of lawfulness had been yanked from the city, and now Tal’Shira swirled lazily down the drain toward chaos.

Adding insult to injury, a host of Ascendants—ever the Prophet’s spies—had descended on Tal’Shira. They watched over Radov on their master’s behalf, reporting to Bethamin on the Nadori prince’s every order. They walked freely among the palace, often accompanied by one of the Prophet’s Marquiin, and the people of Tal’Shira shied away in their passing. These Ascendants fashioned themselves as kings. They thrived in the shadow of Radov’s disgusted indifference and meted punishment as readily as commands to all who fell beneath their notice.

They’d thought to order Kjieran as well when he’d first arrived, accosting Kjieran with threats and demands for explanation of his presence. No sooner did they take him in hand than a dark haze spread across Kjieran’s vision, and the Prophet’s viscous presence flooded into his mind, suffocating all thought but awareness of
him.

“DO NOT SEEK TO KNOW MY PURPOSE HERE.” Kjieran felt his tongue form the powerful words, heard the Prophet’s own resonant voice booming out of his chest, rumbling like thunder through the palace passage.

The Ascendants went white.

“BOW TO ME!”

They prostrated themselves at Kjieran’s feet in a scramble of clinking gold.

“WHEN YOU SEE THIS SHELL, KNOW
ME
, AND ACT ACCORDINGLY, OR KNOW MY WRATH.”

The Prophet left Kjieran then. Heavy, slippery tentacles withdrew from his consciousness, freeing his thoughts. As their cold weight receded, warmth spilled in, but it was the thin warmth of the winter sun upon a meadow many moons encased in ice. Kjieran’s sight was the last to return as that nimbus of shadows gradually withdrew and light was restored to the day.

He blinked painfully in the sudden brightness and looked around, feeling dazed and shocked and utterly violated. The Ascendants were still face-down at his feet, while a crowd had begun to gather down the passage, milling and pointing. Their whispers floated languidly across the distance, but their thoughts rolled in as pounding waves, shouting to his truthreader’s sensitive mind.

News that the Ascendants bowed to Kjieran had crossed every tongue in the palace that day, ripples spreading outward through the city until it seemed everyone he encountered had heard the tale. Not that anyone would speak of it to him, but their thoughts did.

Kjieran’s hands twitched on the balustrade, possessed of jumping beans, of a rampaging ill spirit…possessed.

He had not yet seen Radov—not that he expected to. The prince was notoriously wary of truthreaders and refused to allow them in his presence. Kjieran wondered if Radov really harbored so many wretched secrets, or if this was just one more facet of his ever-growing madness.

In any case, Radov had only just arrived back in Tal’Shira. The prince and his advisors had been investigating the site where the parley was to be held. Tents were being erected in the midst of the Sand Sea, miles from the lines of either side, the proverbial middle ground. Radov and the others had returned from the desert only the night before, ostensibly to welcome Gydryn val Lorian, whose ship was expected any day.

Kjieran still did not know what he was going to do.

That he held out hope stood as testimony to his nature as a truthreader, for there was an incorruptible innocence and goodness in all such Adepts. Kjieran suspected that even the Marquiin harbored a kernel of it in the depths of their blackened souls, a secret dream that one day a man would succeed in putting a blade through their hearts and end the eternal torture of Bethamin’s Fire.

The most twisted part of this truth was that even were the Marquiin to express this sentiment to the Prophet, their master, he would only believe it proof of his doctrine, evidence that all men craved death. In the Prophet’s view, hope and denial were two sides of the same coin.

“Envoy van Stone?” 

Kjieran turned to find a palace servant facing him, his eyes and skin dark against a turban of orange silk. He, too, wore the traditional Nadori
shalwar-kameez
, but Kjieran could not immediately place his position within the servant hierarchy. Kjieran was still learning the differences in status and station among the palace servants, which was determined by the color and style of intricate embroidery around the tunic’s slit neck and hem. “My lord, you are needed,” the man said with a slight deferential bow.

The palace staff were uncertain of Kjieran’s position in the court, and until Radov declared otherwise, they treated him with at least as much deference and discomfort as they would a Marquiin, and possibly a bit more.

This did not bode well for Kjieran’s actual mission—that is, learning who was really behind the assassinations of Trell and
Sebastian val Lorian
, though now he had to somehow impossibly save his king as well. The Prophet had told him that Radov’s ‘duplicity had spilled royal blood,’ hinting that Radov may have played some role in the treacheries leveled against the Eagle throne’s heirs, and Prince Sebastian
had
been murdered in M’Nador. Kjieran had to believe someone in Tal’Shira knew the truth of Sebastian’s death, even eight years later.

He’d been days in the palace, however, and still no one would speak to him—people hardly dared look at him, much less converse. If he couldn’t develop any alliances, how would he gain the knowledge he sought? 

Ever battling a disheartening gloom and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, Kjieran nodded for the servant to lead the way, wondering who had called for him at last. He followed the servant through the sprawling palace, cognizant of the eyes that shied from his passing, aware of the looks and glances and whispers that stirred in his wake. Oaths fluttered as moths mingling in the night, speculation the hiss of pale wings singed by fire, each thought collecting upon Kjieran until he felt smothered by gossamer, battered by each feather-light touch of minds.

The Palace of Tal’Shira was a city unto itself. Fashioned after the Sacred City of Faroqhar—which encapsulated the seats of Agasan’s government, the vast Sormitáge University and the Empress’s palace, not to mention parks and plazas beyond compare—Radov’s palace was a collection of immense, empty courts and ornate temples; of impressive buildings for a government barely allowed to function, of fifty-two royal mini-palaces not a single prince would deign to occupy. It was a pretentious display of wealth and grandeur without a shred of taste.

Kjieran was at last escorted into a grand, circular room. Mosaic tiles lined the outer walls, while inner columns supported a soapstone dome. Both columns and dome were elaborately carved with intricate arabesques. Vaulted windows along the base of the dome shed light through artful wooden screens, casting complex shadows upon the dizzyingly colorful walls.

There was but one vast door, its multitude of panels carved of interlocking flowers, and the servant closed it behind Kjieran. In the room’s center, down five rings of pale travertine steps, two low-backed couches curved toward one another across an iron-footed table of etched glass.