The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (104 page)

“That’s…odd,” Trell answered in a voice betraying of his exhaustion. “I’m not.”

Hal’Jaitar gave him a surprised look. “No?”

Trell leaned back against the wall with a grimace. “No,” he answered then, pinning the wielder with a defiant look. “See, it’s not me He’s coming to claim.”

Hal’Jaitar’s face fell, and Kjieran saw the malice in his eyes deepen and take root in punishments as yet unimagined. Kjieran feared for his prince, and he railed against his own unforgivable failures. All the world seemed to totter at the edge of that sliding cliff.

“Kjieran van Stone,” hal’Jaitar remarked, and Kjieran turned to find his black gaze pinned upon him. “Your time has come.”

Kjieran wanted desperately to unleash the
other’s
wrath, but he dared not do so again—not with Taliah so close and Trell in harm’s way. Not with hal’Jaitar and Kedar still holding
elae.
“Release Trell,” he demanded. “Then I will do what you ask.”

Hal’Jaitar laughed at him. “I will do what I will with my own prisoner, Kjieran van Stone,” he declared with a piercing glare, “and you will comply with my desires without question or defiance, or
this prisoner of mine, with whom you so tragically and impotently concern yourself, will meet his end via the most gruesome and ignoble means imaginable.”

Kjieran gritted his teeth. “And what is your will, Consul?”

“Ah, but you know that already. The time has come to carry out your master’s order and eliminate Dannym’s king. Oh, yes,” hal’Jaitar returned Trell’s burning gaze with a supremely triumphant look, “your dear father has become a stump in the marching path of progress. But you needn’t dwell too long upon his fate, Prince of Dannym, for if I know my daughter, it will soon require all of your attention just to stay alive.” 

A brusque wave from hal’Jaitar, and Kedar’s two thugs moved to take Trell in hand. Hal’Jaitar turned back to Kjieran. “Kedar waits to escort you, Kjieran van Stone,” and he motioned to his wielder. “You will be told what to do when the moment is nigh. You
will
do this, Kjieran,” he emphasized then, holding him in the thrall of his terrible gaze, holding him by the threat in his tone and the fourth wielded in binding, “or I give you my solemn oath that your dear Trell will live a
very
long life in my daughter’s care and suffer grievously during every moment of it.”

Kjieran knew then that he would have to choose. He could not save both his prince and his king—Raine’s truth, he might not be able to save either of them. He turned a stricken look to Trell, whom the men had in hand, and though Kjieran’s talent had nearly vanished, still he heard Trell’s powerful thought as their gazes locked, the sentiment offered this time in consolation.
I am upon my path, Kjieran…

For a desperate moment as Kjieran held Trell’s gaze, understanding passed as wine between them.
Share with me this drink to fate,
Trell’s grey eyes seemed to say while the men roughly bound his hands behind him,
that we might face it bravely and with honor, and never fear our road.

Grief settled as a heavy stone deep in his heart, and Kjieran knew he would never see his prince again.

Then they were carting Trell away with Taliah in the lead.

When they were gone, Kjieran looked back to hal’Jaitar. “And once I’ve done as you ask?”

The wielder’s lip curled in a sneer.  “You think to bargain again?”

“No, Consul. Only to caution you.” 

“And what would be this warning, Truthreader? Another dire prophecy like the ones your prince so glibly spouts?”

Kjieran glanced to the broken doorway where the wielder Kedar awaited him. “No,” he answered, bowing his head, “only…lest we forget, Consul,” and here
he lifted hal’Jaitar a look of dreadful sincerity, “there is Balance in all things.”

“He is not the captain nor the helmsman nor even the rudder that steers our ship. He is the compass.”

– The Second Vestal Dagmar Ranneskjöld,

on Björn van Gelderan

Grydryn val Lorian
pressed fists to the marble desk in his chambers and stared down at the pale stone. In his mind, the conversation he’d just had with Viernan hal’Jaitar replayed endlessly, while in his heart, grief and hope warred for purchase…

“Your Majesty, we have news of your son.”

Grydryn had barely entered the salon of Viernan hal’Jaitar before the consul was coming toward him with this declaration. The king frowned. “News of Ean?”

“Of Trell.”

Gydryn blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your Majesty, he lives.”

The king’s expression darkened. “First these claims of Radov’s ill health, and now you insult me by naming my dead son? Each of your lies is less plausible than the first, Consul.” 

“I assure you, it is true, your Majesty.” The Consul affected a level of compassion which Gydryn suspected he was quite incapable of actually feeling. Hal’Jaitar motioned the king toward a grouping of low-backed chairs as he explained, “We have long followed whispers that your son lived as a hostage in Duan’Bai.
How
, we yet wondered. If he survived the shipwreck, why have we seen naught of him?”  Viernan sat as the king did and leaned in to confide, “And then the Emir’s Mage made his presence known, and the stormy skies of mystery cleared. Powerful and cunning, the Emir’s Mage has only recently revealed himself, but we suspect he’s been advising the Emir for many years.”

“What does this have to do with my son, Viernan hal’Jaitar?” Gydryn growled. “My patience grows thin.”

“The Emir’s Mage is the reason your son remains lost to you, your majesty,” Viernan explained. “He worked a terrible pattern upon Trell to make him forget his identity. Majesty…your son Trell remembers nothing of his life before the shipwreck. He has been hiding in plain view these many years among the Emir’s Converted
.
Only recently was he positively identified, a simple soldier in the ranks.”

Gydryn stared at the man, searching for words that wouldn’t come. If even a fraction of it were true…

“I dared not speak of this before,” hal’Jaitar continued, leaning slowly back and crossing his knee, his dark eyes regarding Gydryn with well-crafted concern, “not without confirming the reports, but at last we have eye-witnesses who have identified Trell—witnesses who will hold up even to a truthreader’s incontrovertible inspection.”

Gydryn stood speechless. 

“Your Majesty, this is the reason we have been holding off on the parley. Now, having confirmed the reports, his Grace hopes to use the meeting as a means of demanding your son’s return to you. Abdul-Basir requested the truce never anticipating we knew of this treason, and while Prince Radov would hear his terms, yet we will grant the Emir nothing unless it includes your son’s immediate return…”

That had been less than an hour ago, and now Gydryn found himself much at odds.

Was
it possible?

The king straightened and walked slowly toward the doors, which stood open to admit the afternoon breeze. As usual, his knights kept watch upon the balcony and in the hall, letting not servant, page nor counselor enter without inspection. In the palace of a foreign prince, it was safest to assume that everyone was a spy.

With a heavy heart, the king walked to the stone railing, leaned elbows on the balustrade and gazed out over the azure bay.
Could
it be true? Could Trell be alive?

For all he could be trusted no more than a viper in a rabbit warren, Viernan hal’Jaitar was far too savvy to make such a claim without an truth beneath it. How much truth was the question Gydryn now battled with, and whether it was enough to warrant delving deep into the well of his sorrow and attempting to salvage something of hope from the depths.

His heart wanted desperately to investigate this claim, to contact Morin d’Hain’s local contacts, as well as Raine D’Lacourte’s people in Tal’Shira, and demand their assistance in tracking down the truth of things. But this would cause further delay and introduce potential new complications. It would give Viernan hal’Jaitar more time to gather intelligence on Gydryn’s true activities.

They faced off across a King’s board, he and hal’Jaitar, and while their strategies varied, the end they sought was the same: survival for their respective kingdoms, for their long-standing ways of life. The king had made his initial feint in approaching hal’Jaitar with threats of evacuation. Hal’Jaitar had taken the bait. This was merely the wielder’s next play.

So while his heart bled at the possibility, his head knew that a game of Kings was rarely won by reacting to an opponent’s single move. No, any strategy of Kings encompassed the entire game and took into account a multitude of moves and counter-strokes. And once set into motion, it must be played out to its end. 

The king exhaled a sigh and stared at the shimmering waters, wondering if, as his wife often claimed, there truly was some divine plan that justified so many sacrifices. Errodan believed strongly in the idea that a greater purpose guided the tragedies of life, as if each chain of cause and consequence was somehow woven into the fabric of a larger pattern. She believed an individual was beholden to discover his purpose, his part to play in the great pattern, and to have faith until such time as this purpose became clear.

Gydryn saw the value in this ideal…how it could give a man hope when all the world seemed winter-bleak and the future held naught but empty despair—but he couldn’t live that way.

So long as men were free to do ill or good to their peril or success, terrible things would happen in the world. There was no larger pattern in Gydryn’s view—the Maker did not sit in the clouds playing with their lives as if upon a King’s board, all of the trials and betrayals somehow part of his master strategy. No, if there was a purpose to be found in living beyond the tragedies and grave consequences of life, it was only what purpose a man made for himself.

Gydryn bowed his head and closed his eyes for a grieving moment, knowing what he must do. Whether or not his son lived, whether Trell knew anything of his past or had walked away from it knowingly—whatever had happened in the intervening years—he would be a man now. He would’ve made his own choices to live by or regret. He walked his own road. Gydryn couldn’t allow the possibility of Trell’s survival to alter the course already set.

If
his son lived, he was on his own.

So decided, the king straightened and turned to his knights. “Prepare for departure to the parley. We leave with Radov at dusk.”

The party gathered inside the palace yard and left in stages, with Radov in the lead surrounded by his Talien Knights, then later the King of Dannym and his remaining knights, followed in the last by a score of cavalry. They traveled during the night hours, for the scalding desert sun struck an armored soldier as deadly as any archer’s arrow.

Gydryn could barely see the Ruling Prince of M’Nador now at the head of the column, nearly a mile distant, though the prince had made a riotous ceremony of their departure. Fire-juggling acrobats, dancing girls, and sword-swallowing performers had entertained the troops while Gydryn was forced to take ceremonial tea with the prince beneath the blowing tassels of a colorful domed tent.

Then had come numerous speeches from Radov’s puppet council, each alternately praising his leadership through the trials of a long and difficult war and toasting the end of the hostilities by means of a diplomatic solution, which would be gained solely through Radov’s skilled political maneuvering. Finally, the ceremony ended with a tedious prayer led in sections by the priests of five fractious sects. All of them looked resentful at having to either precede or follow their brethren, and each attempted to surpass the one before with litanies of pious quotations and lengthy prayers.

Finally, it was somehow determined that Jai’Gar had given his blessing and all were allowed to leave.

As the king had emerged from the tent to return to his men, hal’Jaitar had approached through the mass of councilmen and courtiers, nobles and aides. Falling into step beside the king, he clasped his gold-ringed fingers before him and murmured, “Prince Radov and his knights will leave ahead to secure the way, your Majesty.”

Gydryn spared him a sideways glance. “I understood we would all be traveling together.”

“The prince is concerned for your safety, Majesty,” hal’Jaitar murmured, “especially with so few knights remaining at your side.” 

Gydryn turned him a look,
for he’d noted the disharmonic strains of contempt underlying hal’Jaitar’s tone. Yet he replied only, “I appreciate his thoughtful regard.”

Hal’Jaitar nodded in acknowledgement of the prince’s greatness. “We are sending men along to augment your remaining guard, as it can be a dangerous journey. The treacherous Basi ever seek an opening to attack. Whatever happens, your Majesty,” he said as Radov’s Council looked on that they might later bear witness, “do not leave the road.”

Now the sun had fallen behind the Kutsamak. The air wore a golden sheen, the cloudless sky flamed red, and night’s shadows crept forth, freed from their places of hiding. If Gydryn squinted, he could just make out Radov’s colorful, multi-tasseled
keffiyeh
heading the column as the latter snaked westward through the twilit hills. Torches carried along the line bobbed and shimmered, leaving trails of their own wavering heat to challenge that of the dying day, while the cavalrymen riding behind the king wore black upon black and seemed already to be draped in the curtain of darkness that rapidly chased from the east.