The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (77 page)

“Then what is?”

He grimaced. “Courage, perhaps?”

Creighton gave him a curious look. “What is there to fear in your memory, Ean? What’s done is done. Nothing you can do will change that. Why not just accept it?”

Ean shook his head. “It’s…complicated.”

“Is it? Or are you just making it seem so? Regret is our futile effort to change the past, but all we’re really doing is trying to exert control now to make up for our failure to control it at a time when we might’ve made a difference.”

Ean gave his friend a rueful grin. “If only I might’ve become a Shade, I could be wise like you.”

“Don’t tease. You have your life. Live it, don’t waste it.”

“I will if you will promise to do the same.”

The Shade turned him a startled look
. “And what do you mean by that?”

Ean eyed him speculatively. “I think you know.”

“Ahh…” Creighton did not sound pleased.

“If I can see past the shell, Creighton, so can she.”

“Katerine,” the Shade murmured. He turned Ean a grave look. “Do you really think so?”

“I do.”

The Shade sighed wistfully. “I would like to believe it.”

“I know this much,” the prince offered. “If the situation were reversed, and it was Isabel who waited in Calgaryn for news of me, I would not hesitate. So long as there was breath in me, I would seek to be at her side.”

“Wise words,” Creighton said, smiling. “Then we have a pact? We shall live our lives and not waste any more time on fear or regret.”

Ean turned and extended his hand to the Shade, and they shook on it. But as he took leave of his friend to seek out Isabel, whose presence ever called to him, Ean only hoped the oath would help him find the courage to follow through with his promise.

***

Raine left Dagmar and Carian to their working, exiting back into the hallway to find the Shade still waiting there—or else newly reappeared. It was hard to know for certain.

“My lord,” the Shade said, bowing.

Raine gave him an odd look as he closed the door to Gwynnleth’s room. There was something in his face perhaps, or at least in his presence, that called for recognition. “Do I…know you?”

“My name is Creighton,” the Shade replied. “Creighton Khelspath, once.”

“Creighton—” Raine did a double-take. Too well he remembered Prince Ean’s  letter describing his blood-brother’s death, as well as Morin d’Hain’s report of his missing body. “You’re…Ean val Lorian’s blood-brother?” The words sounded pathetically shrill.

“I was, once.”

Raine still had hold of the door handle and was suddenly grateful for it. He leaned back against the wood as the ramifications of this realization settled into a new pattern, collecting unto them disparate facts that altered it from its prior form. “Björn’s Shade didn’t slay you as Ean thought,” he surmised, reaching the logical conclusion.

“No. The Geishaiwyn assassin did. I was nearly dead when Reyd’s power called me forth. My body obeyed his command.”

“And there on the plain he made you into a Shade?”

“He claimed my soul for the First Lord,” Creighton corrected, “but the later choice to keep this form was my own.”

“You are bound to my oath-brother now,” Raine concluded. It was not a question, yet he hoped the Shade would answer him all the same.

“The bond with the First Lord anchors me to this body—my body, though its form has been altered with the fifth to resist the corrosive effects of
deyjiin.
”

Raine was fascinated. “Why
deyjiin
? Why not heal you?”

“It was too late for me for healing,” Creighton answered. “There was no one there to heal me in any case, only Reyd, and we Shades cannot work the first strand. There was no other choice available to my mentor if he meant to save my life. I am glad he did what he did. I wasn’t ready to move on, to pass through the Extian Doors and take my chances in the Returning.”

Raine pushed off the door and started walking down the hallway, and Creighton moved silently at his side. “But why
deyjiin
?” he asked again, deep in thought now. Raine was intensely curious to know why Björn had used
deyjiin
to create his Shades—those he’d created since the fall of Tiern’aval, Shades like Anglar. But for that matter, why had Malachai made them in the first place? Once, Raine had believed there was naught but evil motive behind the deed, but now he suspected else.

No,
he suspected better. Was he finally finding faith in his oath-brother after all this time, after all that had come before?

It was strange to think so.

Suddenly rousing from this stream of thought, which had occupied him for quite some time, Raine looked to the Shade who walked patiently at his side. “Were you waiting for me back there?”

“Indeed, my lord. I was asked to accompany you, but you seem to already know where to go.”

Raine looked up and found himself facing a pair of carved doors. Odd that his feet had found their own way to this new place. He felt a pang of anxiety, a premonition of what lay beyond. He thought of Ramu’s speech on courage and steeled himself for whatever Fate harbored for him.

The Shade opened the doors on his behalf and stood aside to let Raine pass. He noted that the creature did not follow him. He could feel the doors closing behind as he made his way through a gallery opening to various intersecting passages. He suspected that one of them would lead to the Hall of Games, but he sensed this wasn’t where he was meant to go that day. Passing a few other people, who nodded a silent hello, he made his way down the right-hand corridor, which eventually opened upon a cloistered garden.

He saw her then, sitting upon a bench with her back to him. Waiting.

Raine’s heart was suddenly beating too quickly, his breath coming shallow and fast.

Isabel.

He did not love her—no, it was nothing like that. But Isabel did this to a man. She claimed a piece of his soul as her own and never relinquished it, so that he saw a bit of himself like a mirage within her, compelling him to rescue it, to claim it back unto himself. Until such a man managed this impossible feat, that part of him that was caught within Isabel ever called him back to her, binding his soul in some indefinable yet entirely marvelous way.

Raine forced a deep breath and walked into the courtyard. The grass was soft under his boots, and the roses were still in bloom though midwinter had now passed. Raine imagined roses would bloom for Isabel no matter what time of year it was.

“Come and sit beside me, Raine,” Isabel said when he was still far behind her.

He noticed she wore a blindfold, black as night against her fair skin and chestnut hair, and he wondered at it. But he also did as she bade him and sank down onto the bench beside her.

She took his hand, and Raine’s heart beat faster as he looked upon her face for the first time in three centuries. “Can you see me, Isabel?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “One does not blithely go blindfolded into the world.”

He smiled at her words, but the anguish he felt inside was unmatched by any that had come before. “Isabel…” He dropped his eyes. “When I first came to T’khendar and learned about Arion’s death, and then we witnessed that gruesome parade of heads, I thought…” but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words now.

It didn’t matter, for she knew his mind. “You thought I might’ve willingly embraced my end to join Arion in the Returning.”

His eyes flew to her, agonized and intense. “Yes.”

“You knew me better than that, I thought.”

Raine dropped his gaze, for there was no way he could look at her and give his next confession. “Worse was what we thought of your brother,” he whispered then.

“I thought you knew him better than that as well,” she chided gently.

“I thought I did, too,” he managed a hoarse reply. After a moment, he lifted his gaze to look upon her again, though it pained him greatly to do it. One could not sit in the presence of Epiphany’s Prophet and not have one’s soul laid bare, willingly or no. Yet it was always infinitely better to do so willingly.

“All this time…” he was appalled by the desperation his tone betrayed. He worked some moisture back into his mouth and forced a swallow, saying then, “You’ve been here helping Björn since Tiern’aval fell?”

“It has ever been so.” She squeezed his hand, which she still held. “We are bound to the same cause for all eternity, my brother and I. There can be no other game for me but my brother’s game, wherever it leads.”

Raine looked away, clenching his jaw. Hearing it from her lips…he could ill deny now how wrong they had been—about everything. “Alshiba mourned you more than any other,” he said after a moment, too weak-hearted to take up deeper matters.

“Wasted tears. Better they were shed over the years lost between what has been and what must be, or not shed at all and her attentions put to proper focus. My brother did not deny himself her company for three centuries that she might spend them mourning those who were neither lost nor in need of her compassion.” 

“Then why did he?” 

Her eyes were bound, yet still her gaze chastised him. “Because it was necessary, Raine.”

“For the good of the realm?” He heard the cynicism in his tone and inwardly cringed at it.

“If you deny still that my brother works for the good of all there is little hope for you,” she declared. Then she turned to face him and cupped his cheek with her hand, adding more kindly, “But I do not think that is so.”

Raine stared into her blindfolded eyes, knowing she saw him clearly, that the cloth was no barrier to their connection, and he tried to rein in the imminent sense of doom that threatened to send him spiraling out of control.

Raine D’Lacourte considered himself a good man. He tried to be fair and just, honest in his dealings. He tried to consider more than the good of a few. But what truly speared him—what had shaken him to the core and kept him lying awake in the bitter hours each night since coming to T’khendar—was that he did not know if he was a good enough man to admit that the Fifth Vestal was a better man still.

“Isabel,” he lamented in a fierce whisper, “how do you take a man who you felt had betrayed everything that you had between you, and whom you have consequently vilified for three hundred years…” He squeezed her hand tightly, drawing strength from her touch, took a deep breath and continued, “How do you reconcile such a thing once you learn it was…” —
gods above
it was so hard to say!— “…wrongfully done?”

She took his hand with both of hers then and leaned to kiss his cheek tenderly. “With a little faith, all else shall become clear.” 

“Faith,” he growled grimly. “It has never been my strong suit.”

“Yes, we’ve noticed that about you.”

“Isabel—” but he cut off his own words, for the force of another man’s thoughts suddenly silenced him.

In the same moment, Isabel’s lips spread in an exquisite smile that brought such a radiance to her face, it alone might have silenced Raine. “Come join us, Ean,” she called into the garden at large.

Raine turned on the bench as a man stepped around a column, and the Vestal recoiled at both recognizing Ean val Lorian and realizing it was he who exuded such fierce thoughts of protection and possessiveness toward Isabel.

More startling still was seeing how the fifth-strand currents surged toward Ean and collected around him, awaiting his command. These perceptions defied Raine’s comprehension. He could not be facing a youth newly born to his gift. These were the workings of a wielder in the prime of his understanding.

Raine stared, trying desperately to make sense of what he saw, and that’s when it registered…

“Oh gods above.” The knowledge sent him to his feet.

Suddenly it all made perfect sense. Björn sending a Shade and his zanthyr to protect an inconsequential prince was incomprehensible, but to do so in order to protect one of his generals newly Returned…

Of course he’d had to keep a long arm for the sake of Balance, but Björn would go to any lengths to reclaim one of his generals, and especially Arion Tavestra, the eternal soulmate of his sister Isabel.

Raine pushed both hands to his hair and stared at Ean.

As the tensely-charged moment seemed likely to draw out indefinitely, Isabel rose and extended her hand to Ean. He came obediently to her side and offered his arm that she might rest her hand upon it. “Ean, I believe you know Raine D’Lacourte,” Isabel murmured with benign amusement, all but laughing at the both of them. “Raine,” she said then, “I believe you know Ean as well. Perhaps I should leave the two of you to—”

“No!” they both exclaimed with equal heat.

Isabel attempted to suppress her smile and failed miserably, but Raine suspected she didn’t try very hard. “Hmm,” she said then, turning from one to the other of them. “This is…intriguing.”

Raine finally regained his composure. “Ean, it is good to see you well,” he managed, meaning it—much to his own surprise. “I see that you have reunited with Isabel, and…and I’m happy for you.”