The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (87 page)

She spun a look at Fynn, who was slumped in his saddle, and grabbed for his wrist. After a harrowing few seconds, she detected a faint and feeble pulse, as well as the barest rise and fall of his chest.

Relieved that Fynn had stayed with her through the night, Alyneri looked around again, trying to get her bearings…trying to understand why Gendaia had inexplicably stopped. The trail looked much like any other they’d followed thus far, an arid expanse of sun-baked rocks and dry earth too long deprived of nourishment. Her eyes were just scanning an outcropping of rock when a shadow befell it. Alyneri shaded her eyes with one hand and lifted her gaze to the eastern sky.

An immense dragon flew between her and the sun—she wagered it must’ve boasted a hundred paces from nose to tail. Bathed in the backlight of the early morning sun, the outline of its hide flamed a brilliant gold nearly too bright to look upon.

Abruptly Alyneri dove for Trell’s blade. She understood now why he’d given her his horse, his weapon. Trell had told her once that the
drachwyr
could see the smallest details from great distances. She struggled to pull the weapon free of its scabbard and then used both hands to wave it back and forth in the air, murmuring, “Please…
oh please…
” 

At last the dragon flew toward her, passing close, a creature of grave beauty and ferocity both. It buffeted her with the rising tide of heat from its wings, banked in solitary silence, and headed back the way it had come.

Alyneri lowered Trell’s blade to her lap with shaking arms and exhaled a shuddering breath. A host of new fears sprouted as she watched the Sundragon flying away. But what had she expected? That the creature would relinquish the form, perhaps in a geyser of light as Gwynnleth was wont to do, and come to her immediate rescue?

Well…yes
. That’s apparently what she’d hoped for.

It was agonizing watching the dragon retreat into the distance. Her heart caught in her throat, her chest constricted with breath that refused to come...

“…dragon…” Fynn murmured.

Alyneri turned him a startled look.

Beneath a grimace of pain, Fynn was grinning.

Ever grateful for Fynn’s remarkable spirit, Alyneri pulled out her flagon and gave him another sip of water, which was all he could manage, and then laid her hands upon his head. She’d barely the energy even to find his pattern again.
Elae
felt slippery in her grasp. Every time she reached for it, stinging nettles speared her eyes and needles pierced her brain, but she forced herself to ignore these warning signs through sheer obstinacy and finally held
elae
again.

Once she had hold of the lifeforce, she searched for Fynn’s pattern and did what she could to smooth the frayed edges of his pattern, which was deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Releasing
elae
and Fynn’s head in the same moment, Alyneri paid painfully for her efforts. Her head exploded with a viselike throbbing, and she drew in a desperate gasp and swooned in the saddle. She caught both hands on the pommel, hunched over, until the violent, swimming blackness before her vision cleared and Gendaia’s mane came back into view. It was a frightening moment while her heart raced and her mind fought frantically to retain its hold on consciousness.

These were warning signs any Healer was trained to look for. She knew she neared a deadly boundary which, once crossed, would be her sure end.

Shaken by the experience, Alyneri swallowed back a sick feeling and the taste of bile and slowly looked up again.

A woman was approaching.

Tall and lithe, she wore her raven hair in a long braid and walked with dual swords strapped to her back, the hilts extending above each leather-clad shoulder. She was both beautiful and imposing, and Alyneri knew at once who she must be. She searched through the fog of exhaustion and mental sickness, and finally the name came to her.

“Vaile,” she gasped. Then louder, to be sure the zanthyr heard her, she pled desperately, “You are Vaile, aren’t you?
Please
, tell me you are!”

Vaile’s predatory green eyes took in Alyneri, Gendaia, and Fynn all in one sweep and seemed to deduce more in that single glance than Alyneri might ever explain in words. She took Gendaia by the bit, asking, “Where is Trell of the Tides?” 

Whereupon Alyneri burst into tears.

It all came out in a rush then—hysterically,
disjointed, the story following as a flock of frenzied birds, flying everywhere and nowhere in the telling. Yet she managed the most fearful points: the attack, their urgent flight, Trell’s promise to meet her at the sa’reyth, Fynn’s desperate state…

The air felt charged when she was done, as in the moments before a thunderstorm breaks, when the storm is yet rising and the world has gone dark. Alyneri realized it was the fifth strand she sensed, that Vaile had summoned it with her fury, and now it hummed in static impatience, desirous to be spent. Vaile’s expression was as dark as the endless void of space. “Come with me.”

She set off at a rapid pace, and Alyneri followed in numb silence—or rather, she clung, as she had done the entire journey, to Gendaia’s saddle as Vaile led Gendaia into the shadow of the Point. The one time Alyneri thought to say something to the zanthyr, Vaile silenced her with a sharp look.

The moment they crossed the node, the landscape changed abruptly from arid trail and sere skies to open hills of grass bordered by violet-hued mountains bathed in the shadows of passing clouds.

In the haze of exhaustion, Alyneri found herself wondering if all zanthyrs could travel the nodes so easily. At the same time, she fretted over Fynn’s condition and simultaneously refused to think about why Trell hadn’t come yet couldn’t stop thinking about it. All of these worries seemed to swirl in her brain, a poisonous mix of conflicting fears that refused to blend.

As they rounded a rise and came in view of a large compound of conjoined coppery tents further lower on the hillside, two men were ascending through the long grass to meet them.    

“Vaile, what have you?” asked the taller and older-looking of the two men, whose golden eyes seemed to reflect the desert wheat.

“
The Healer Alyneri d’Giverny,” Vaile replied, “betrothed of Trell of the Tides, and Trell’s cousin Fynnlar, also a friend of the pirate Carian vran Lea, and in dire need of Healing.” Then she added with some heat, “Náiir, they have taken Trell.”

Alyneri was amazed Vaile had gleaned all of that information from her hysterical ramblings, for she remembered saying
little of it.

Náiir’s expression
darkened like a sudden cloud interrupting the sun—no, not a cloud, a hurricane. “
Who
has taken Trell?”

“Saldarians, I
gather.”

This was news to Alyneri—terrible news, from all Trell had told her of the mercenaries and their violent tendencies
. Yet she’d no idea how the woman could’ve reached this conclusion when she herself knew nothing of it.

Náiir returned Vaile a telling stare
, fiery and fierce. “I will notify Rhakar to search for them.” He spun and rushed away.

Vaile spoke to the other male then
, whose sapphire tunic stood out brilliantly against his youthful caramel skin. “Balaji, the cousin is in desperate need of Healing and I must see what I can do to help him. Take Alyneri to Jaya, who will be of better comfort to her than you or I. And someone had best contact the Mage.” This last she added in a tone that brooked no argument.

Balaji gave her a quiet look in return
. There was much of wisdom in his gaze for all he seemed barely ten and six. “Are you certain of this course, Vaile? If you take it upon yourself to heal this man—”

Vaile’s eyes flashed.
“He is
Trell’s
cousin, Balaji. That makes him one of us!”

Unruffled,
Balaji’s gaze hinted of warning and amusement in one. “You know what it is you declare?” 

S
he snarled her reply in a language that sounded as old as the bedrock of the realm, her tone uncannily like the affronted growl of a cat. Then she spun and headed off, leading Fynn’s horse.

Gazing after her, Balaji smiled a faint smile. “Apparently you do.” He looked to Alyneri then, and his expression fell into concern. “Come,
soraya
.” 

Thus,
Alyneri followed the youth named Balaji, and the next hour became a blur. She remembered being handed over to a lovely woman with citrine-colored eyes and given something hot and spicy to drink. She remembered weeping desperately on a sofa while the lovely woman comforted her with kind words, and then…nothing.

“I do not believe in failure. I simply will not stop until I succeed.”

- The Adept wielder Arion Tavestra

Long after
night had claimed Tal’Shira and sleep had claimed the Marquiin Yveric, Kjieran stood in the shadows of an arcade that opened onto one of the many stone-paved courtyards in the palace complex. This one, called the Court of Fifty-Two Arches, was built in honor of the original fifty-two Nadori princes who’d paid tribute to the Hadorin rule, centuries past. Accordingly, the coat of arms of each prince had been carved into one of the arcade’s pillars. Kjieran couldn’t imagine life in a kingdom of fifty-two princes who each believed himself of equal right to rule. No wonder M’Nador was always at war.

Draped in shadows, Kjieran watched all who came and went in the night and listened to the thoughts of careless passersby who did not know how to think in whispers. To any who glanced his way, he would’ve seemed but one more shadow among many, for this much of the fourth-strand patterns of illusion he had mastered before leaving the Sormitáge, and as yet,
elae
remained his to command. 

The vast courtyard bustled even at this late hour, for it stood nearest the south gate of the palace and was a gathering place for anyone with legal business inside its high walls. But Kjieran watched the square for another purpose: it held the only node in Tal’Shira not guarded by blood-thirsty Saldarians. Dore had used this same node to bring Kjieran from the Prophet’s temple in Tambarré to Tal’Shira. Yet his own travel notwithstanding, the node otherwise boasted exclusive use by men upon business for Radov or hal’Jaitar. If ever he hoped to cross paths with one of the Shamshir’im, it would be in the Court of Fifty-Two Arches.

According to Yveric, the Shamshir’im were hal’Jaitar’s men. Wielders, some of them, assassins, spies…capable of any manner of treachery in the name of princedom or by mere warrant of their leader’s will—for hal’Jaitar surely needed no further justification for ordering men upon perfidious deeds than because it suited his aims. Yveric had pressed Kjieran to investigate among the Shamshir’im, for they would certainly know the truth if it was to be found in Tal’Shira.

Kjieran knew the chance of a Shamshir’im openly confessing culpability in Sebastian or Trell’s death was about as likely as Radov doing it. Yet there were ways of encouraging men upon a subject. A truthreader might use any manner of subtle mental prodding to bring a topic to light. How many times had his own Sormitáge master elicited whispering among a group of malcontents that he might learn of their allegiances? Or introduced a revolutionary idea into a meeting of young idealists by the merest thought placed within the aether and made to linger, floating among them like a bright candle, until one of them picked it up thinking it his own? A trained truthreader knew a host of subtle, delicate ways to elicit information without anyone becoming aware of it. Tellings and Readings were the blunt mallets of children compared to this fine craft.

Such mastery was gained only by way of a truthreader’s second ring. Before the Adept Wars, there had been hundreds of Adepts with multiple rings—one on each finger, even as hal’Jaitar wore, and more besides.

Swapping tales of the ringed wielders of the Fourth Age was a favorite pastime of Sormitáge students—especially tales of Markal Morrelaine and his most famous pupil, Arion Tavestra, both of whom were rumored to have worn two rows of rings on all ten fingers.  Such investiture demonstrated both an advanced understanding of the Laws of Patterning as well as expert application of the Esoterics. Of course, the Fifth Vestal was said to have worn five such “rows”—ten fingers, five rings upon each—but Kjieran had always believed those tales laughably exaggerated.

Now, tragically, most truthreaders never tested for their rings—to wear even one was a rarity. As these fears for his dying race were accosting him like bats flapping blindly in a brightly lit room, Kjieran saw two men suddenly appear in the middle of the court. One looked injured and clung to the other as they stepped off the node into the Tal’Shira night. Even as Kjieran watched, the taller, haler man turned to his damaged companion. Kjieran saw steel flash in the moonlight, and the slouching man fell backwards to the stones, his throat severed from ear to ear.

Kjieran reached quickly for their thoughts, gleaning but little from the dying man, who had been mostly dead before he crossed the node. The other set off purposefully, but not before Kjieran plucked a whispered name from his thoughts.