The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (88 page)

Hal’Jaitar…

The man seemed urgent to reach the Consul—just the sort Kjieran had been hoping to find. He latched onto the other’s mind and slipped through the shadows in silent pursuit.

But oh, he must be careful!

Hal’Jaitar was a known
raedan
, and any man who could read the currents posed a perilous threat. The pattern Kjieran worked to hide himself from view would leave its mark upon the tides of
elae
. If hal’Jaitar traced the working back to him, it would mean his certain end—yet Kjieran could ill afford to be
seen
following the man.

While Kjieran had been training for his mission back in Dannym, Raine had advised him of some few ways to hide a working from the currents, ways that did not require enormous skill with the lifeforce. Kjieran used these tactics now, skipping in and out of sight using real shadows when he could, creating the illusion of them when he could not, and allowing himself to be openly seen when the danger was not too great.

He hoped the pattern he was using would appear in such brief flashes upon the currents that it would be difficult to trace back to him. But he also knew
hope
was as likely to betray him as Fate already had, and in truth, only duty drove him on.

Kjieran’s hands twitched erratically beneath his cloak.

The lower half of his legs felt strange as he walked, heavy and…yet empty, solid but with the sensation of nothingness. If he didn’t know better, he would think he had no legs at all—

It was in that moment that he felt the Prophet’s attention open upon him. His presence suddenly flooded into Kjieran’s mind in a deluge of chill power and webbed heat, the bond a fiery seal between them. Kjieran gasped and released his pattern just an instant before the Prophet flayed his mind with the dagger of his attention, baring its tender places to his least inspection.

Kjieran forced himself to keep moving, to act as if nothing had changed in his own actions or thoughts. The Prophet had warned him that he might compel Kjieran at any moment, even as he had done upon his first arrival in Tal’Shira, and he was loath to give the man cause to do so again.

Bethamin gazed through his eyes for a time—a frightful few minutes, for Kjieran was forced to work no patterns in the Prophet’s presence lest he seal his certain doom. Eventually Bethamin concluded Kjieran was merely out for a walk and left him to it, his presence withdrawing, leviathan tentacles sliding back into their lightless lair.

Kjieran exhaled a tumultuous gasp and immediately called back his pattern, only feeling safe when he again felt
elae
infusing him, once he knew no one could see his twitching hands.

He clutched Raine’s amulet hidden beneath his shirt and squeezed shut his eyes. Desperation seized him, for the briefest of moments, he could barely breathe.

Then the feeling passed, and Kjieran opened his eyes to the night. His quarry had gained a wide lead while he’d been despairing, so he ran to close the distance.  

Heading into a narrow, arched tunnel, Kjieran nearly collided with a man coming from the opposite direction. He wore a black chequered
keffiyeh
wrapped by a red
agal
, a fringe of small tassels declaring his minor sheikdom amid the vast wealth of the Nadori princehoods—the larger the tassel, the greater the fortune. The nobility spoke of Radov’s grandiose tassels as boasting wealth in outrageous proportion, though it was whispered among less esteemed company that the unending war had drained the prince’s coffers, and now he merely boasted.

The sheik stopped between Kjieran and his quarry, barring access through the narrow tunnel, and Kjieran plastered himself against the wall with growing animosity while the sheik relit his stub of a
siyar
with a spark of flint and steel. Exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke, he pushed past Kjieran, never noticing him. Kjieran was tempted to plant within him the idea that he no longer liked the taste of
siyar
leaves but dared not risk such a working merely to assuage his annoyance.

Emerging from the tunnel, he cast his mind in a fan of perception and cast his gaze across yet another broad court
,
this one the Court of the Winds. He picked up hal’Jaitar’s man again on the far side of the square, just before he disappeared into another arched passage. He would not have recognized him by sight alone, for he wore a red chequered
keffiyeh
now and seemed one of a hundred others. Only the specific feel of his mind radiating his urgency to find hal’Jaitar made him visible to Kjieran.

Kjieran pinned his attention on the man more directly and sprinted across the courtyard to catch up, dangerously making his pattern solid that none might notice his passing.

He dove into the tunnel after the man but came to an abrupt, staggering halt. The arched passage was lit by a single lamp, and the man had stopped beneath it to search through the purse at his belt. Kjieran kept his pattern solid, drawing shadows as a cloak around him, and slipped into the darkness along a narrow overhang to watch and observe.

The Saldarian was an ordinary sort, nondescript, slightly arrogant—which trait seemed born into the Nadori as if bred for it—only… Kjieran realized the man wasn’t Saldarian at all. The thoughts that had led him to such a conclusion had been but one aspect of the other’s disguise, one which he’d discarded apparently when he donned the
keffiyeh
. Now his thoughts shrieked
spy
.

The man counted his coin until he was sure he was alone—Kjieran’s illusion being beyond even an assassin’s acute senses—and then he spun to the wall facing the iron sconce and worked a trace-seal in the air with both forefingers, a complex pattern that spiraled in opposite directions. If Kjieran had any doubts about the spy’s alliances, they were dispelled upon seeing this working, for only a wielder such as hal’Jaitar might’ve crafted a trace-seal of such complexity, and surely none but his Shamshir’im would’ve known it.

The stone wall swung inward with a nearly inaudible click, and the man slipped through the parting into the darkness. Kjieran darted after him before the seal reactivated itself.

The doorway opened into a narrow stone corridor. Wielder’s lamps called brighteyes were set into sconces every twenty paces. The oil-rubbed iron lamps depended upon the touch of
elae
to spring to light, but they were usually calibrated to recognize the lifeforce inherent in all living men, wielder or no. The brighteyes lit up like chimes struck by a passing hand the moment their pattern touched a living man’s, and they winked out again when a man moved beyond reach of the patterns that bound each lamp.

Kjieran’s spy had already reached the second brighteye, which blinked on just as the first extinguished, casting Kjieran into darkness. He rushed to close the distance lest the lights blink on and off behind the spy and alert him to his presence.  Had he been less focused upon the man, Kjieran might’ve wondered why the brighteye blinked to darkness at all, considering he stood so near. But Kjieran’s mind was too occupied with other worries, and the thought never occurred to him.

They descended a set of narrow, twisting stairs that the spy seemed to know by heart but which had Kjieran lightheaded by the time they reached the landing. They walked for a long time in the close corridor after that, and Kjieran was forced to maintain his illusion the entire way lest the man hear his footsteps echoing behind him upon the uneven stones. Finally, after walking for perhaps half the span of the hourglass, they reached another staircase, equally narrow, but this one a straight and steep ascent.

At the top a wooden door awaited, bound in iron. Another trace-seal opened this door—not nearly as complex as the first—and the spy and Kjieran were through.

They emerged into a vaulted antechamber, obviously subterranean. Three more doors opened into the room, while one long wall sported hundreds of pegs upon which hung loose black hoods cut with a narrow slot for the eyes. The spy grabbed a random hood and shoved it over his
keffiyeh
before heading for a pair of massive double doors at the chamber’s far end. Kjieran stole a hood and followed.  

The final portal stood at least thirty paces high and was carved with the raging face of the Wind God, Azerjaiman. The doors opened with a single touch of the spy’s finger upon a stylized golden plate. Kjieran made sure to slip through before the doors shut, for he’d seen such plates in use in Agasan. They were attuned to each spy’s life pattern, and no amount of Adept craft could impersonate it.

Just inside, Kjieran drew up short.

He faced a massive stone chamber whose vaulted ceiling disappeared in shadows. Two rows of square stone columns supported the ceiling beams, and each side of every column sported a different banner five times the length of a man. Gigantic hearths on each wall warmed the subterranean room, while ringed chandeliers illuminated the length of the great chamber.

Between each column, along the walls, faceless statues twice as tall as a man wore stylized, oversized armor representing a host of countries and kingdoms, each one sporting a different weapon frozen in its killing blow.

Closest to him, Kjieran saw a knight in gold plate armor with a red axe embedded in his helmet. Further down, a statue wearing a hauberk and surcoat emblazed with a kingly crest stood with a black-feathered bolt through his blank eye, while a statue resplendent in a gold lamellar cuirass under a violet desert robe stood with arms thrown back and three wicked, seven-pointed stars buried in its chest. Countless other suits of armor stood forever trapped in their own dramatic moment of death, but Kjieran lost interest in them the moment his eyes fell upon the tapestry at the end of the room.

Hanging from ceiling to floor, the tapestry covered the entire rear wall. Fifty horses might’ve stood upon its midnight-black wool with room to spare. In the center of the tapestry, sewn with millions of spools of thread-of-silver, shone the three-daggered crest of the Assassin’s Guild.

Kjieran managed a dry swallow.

Hooded men crowded the room. Notably, none of them wore weapons—at least none that could be seen—though Kjieran felt this only made them more dangerous. He gratefully released his pattern of illusion in favor of the simple hood—he feared he’d held the pattern too long as it was and worried hal’Jaitar would see the working upon the currents.

As he pulled the hood down around his face, it occurred to him that Dore had irrevocably changed his life pattern. With a grim smile, Kjieran realized he might not even
have
a life pattern any longer.

In any event, tracing the currents would take time. Kjieran merely prayed it would be enough.

At least two hundred guild members strolled the vast room, milling and talking in small groups as they drank their wine, perhaps making alliances, or breaking them. Yet for so many people, the hall remained eerily quiet. Kjieran kept one eye pinned on his spy, whose chequered
keffiyeh
peeked out from beneath his black hood, one corner and a line of white fringe just visible at his back. The man walked through the crowd intently, his thoughts a jumble of fractious censure.

Kjieran walked behind him listening intently to the room at large, both with ears and mind. Many men he passed had walled their thoughts behind strong patterns of protection, and Kjieran marked these men as wielders. Such men were trained to keep one eye on their back and another on the currents that they might perceive when someone was working
elae
nearby
.
He gave them a wide berth. 

Blue-robed servants in half-masks of dazzling silver carried trays offering an array of varied refreshments. One such bowed to him, and he felt obliged to take the crystal goblet of wine the man offered. But he did not drink from it, and he set it down again at the first opportunity, lest his twitching hands rouse the curiosity of this sharp-eyed congregation.

Very quickly, however, Kjieran realized he would have to work some kind of illusion to disguise himself. A truthreader would never be admitted into this company, and his eyes would give him away the moment he met another’s gaze. He grew ever more uneasy, his need to find out what the spy knew now urgent.

The man walked about ten paces ahead of Kjieran, looking relaxed now, even casual, often nodding to others he passed. He was one in two hundred black hoods, but Kjieran could not mistake him. Even had his
keffiyeh
remained hidden, his thoughts gave him away. This in itself told Kjieran much. Spies were trained to control their thoughts—even
na’turna
learned how to quiet their minds. For the man to shout loudly his master’s name into the aether, he must be agitated indeed.

Just then the spy stopped and turned to a man approaching from the other side of the room. It took a moment before Kjieran realized it was hal’Jaitar, for he was equally hooded, but his was a distinctive walk. It was the gait of a man who believe he owned the world.

Kjieran needed to get closed to hear their conversation, but they stood in the middle of the hall. He could not call upon his pattern of concealment, for there were no shadows to blend into.

Quickly summoning a different pattern, Kjieran joined a group of four men standing within earshot of hal’Jaitar and his spy. The fourth-strand pattern he used was layered with form and very difficult to hold in place. It made each of the four men think Kjieran was one of the others while never noticing a fifth had actually joined their number. Kjieran had not worked it in many years and had never been very good at it to begin with, but he could think of nothing else to conceal himself from hal’Jaitar’s piercing observation.