The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (114 page)

Ean stared at him oddly, at the practiced pattern of loops and spins he was making with his weapon. It, too, was familiar to him. He tried to shake the feeling of kismet that held him inexplicably in thrall, but he felt as if he stood suddenly on a threshold…
nay
, on a precipice overlooking the valley of his future. He saw myriad branching paths extending from this very point.

“There can be no fair match between us,” the prince replied in a low voice, wishing he could understand how the man was doing this to him and why he felt such odd feelings of fate and connection.

Işak stilled at his reply. “That is true,” and his tone revealed of a well of bitter torment when he added, “for how can anything be fair when all have named you and forgotten?”

Chills striped Ean. Such words…in that voice…
Could it be possible?

He
had
to know.

Abruptly Ean started forward, intent now upon reaching the man, upon seeing his unmasked face and looking into his eyes
.
Now he cared not if he disturbed the patterns. Rather he leaped at all he could reach and started them rapidly unraveling, an outlet for the riotous energy that filled him.

Işak grew agitated at his approach. “Stay back!” He threatened with blade extended. “Stop or face your death, Ean!” and there was such rabid desperation in this last exclamation that Ean complied.     

He paused just beyond the circle of light while the dissolving energy of countless patterns showered down. Wondering what in nine hells was happening to him, Ean exhaled and murmured, “Then let us face it together.”

He rushed into the light.

Işak uttered a growl of fury and sprang to meet him. Their blades clashed, sparked and then separated roughly as each man pushed off the other. Ean’s blade sang as true as any black-bladed Merdanti weapon, and with his mind wrapped around it, he knew the thrill of rapport with a sentient blade. Even a world away, Phaedor was still protecting him.

Işak led the second attack, coming at Ean with his sword sweeping up from the left. Ean parried with a downward blow, and the subsequent clanging and scraping of their blades formed a rapid percussion. Ean drew upon the
cortata
, but he recognized at once that the wielder he battled also followed its dance, and as their fierce interplay continued, Ean noted that they were well matched.

What Işak’s limp lost him in coordination, he made up for in sheer strength, while Ean’s agility and alacrity with the lifeforce kept him apace. But most surprising was that their fighting styles were nearly identical—almost as if they’d shared the same swordmaster—and it was nigh impossible for one to get the upper hand. The fight might’ve continued for hours, with both of them using
elae
to fuel their blades, but Ean grew ever more disturbed. His instincts veritably shouted the wrongness of this course.

Finally, he spun out of the
cortata
, out and away from the other wielder, trying desperately to make sense of what he was experiencing. They stalked one another then with chests heaving, their steps circling the edge of the light.

To buy himself time to interpret the perceptions bombarding him, Ean posed, “My men. Release them, and I will spare your life.”

Işak laughed, but there was only despair in it. “By now your men are kingdoms away—did you think us so foolish as to keep them here?”

Again
the voice—it tormented him so! Ean tried to clear his mind of the man’s impossible voice, which was proving every bit as effective at incapacitating him as any pattern of the fourth. Worse was the feeling of misdoing that bit and clung like a viper, staying his hand when he should’ve been free to slay, to wreak vengeance. Instead, he found himself divided between his duty to his loyal soldiers and a desperate need to confirm his suspicions of the identity of the man before him. 

Suddenly Işak hissed a foul curse. His gaze darted around the hall, and Ean watched him grow more agitated still, the muscles in his arms and neck twitching. “
Ah Cephrael, no!
” he despaired, having now apparently realized that his patterns were disappearing. He pinned the prince with a frantic look, eye wild behind his mask. “
Shade and darkness,
don’t you see what you’ve
done
?”

His words and tone were perplexing. The man sounded horrified where anger should’ve ruled. Yet he was right in noting that the only patterns that remained in the room were those seeking use of the fifth, and Ean knew better than to risk touching them even in unworking—for he was an Adept of that elusive strand, and it was too likely that they would trigger at the merest whisper of his mental touch.

“You damn fool—
fool man!
” Işak nearly wept, turning from side to side as the last of his patterns dissolved away. “Those traps were all that protected you from me—” Suddenly he staggered, as if beneath a powerful force, seemed to haltingly recover, shook his head from side to side, and then—

Compulsion fell upon Ean like a cougar pouncing from above.

He fallen to one knee before he even realized that the pattern had hold of his mind, and it was a harrowing length more before he concluded that his body was not actually on fire.

Never was he so grateful for Markal’s brutal training than in that moment, as he watched the masked wielder coming ominously towards him across the circle. Still, ripping the pattern off of his mind felt like ripping out his own heart. He stared into the blazing inferno that was the compulsion pattern, risking its searing heat and blinding light both, and though the pattern told him he was already burning, already dying, still he wrapped a mental hand around it. Pain flared through his entire body as the pattern surged to engulf his mind, and Ean cried out.

Then he squeezed. Squeezed until the pattern bled
elae
through his mental fingers, until the flames dimmed…and were extinguished.

Just as Işak reached him wearing death’s grimace and his sword raised for a killing stroke.

Ean launched up under his guard and grabbed the man’s descending wrist with one hand. With the other, he ripped off his mask.

The face that stared at him in horror could not have been more stricken than Ean’s own.

The prince fell back, staggered by the sight.

Işak roared in return, and his eyes were murderous. His Merdanti blade swung for Ean’s neck, a slicing razor. The prince dove, rolled, scrambled for his sword—and simultaneously called
the fourth to form a wall between them. A band of energy rocketed upwards. The force of its eruption blasted Işak backwards through the air. He landed in a skid, and his sword clattered into the shadows.

Immensely shaken, Ean pushed to his feet. It was not for his own safety that he’d raised the shield. There was a terrible truth hiding in the room, and he would brook its concealment no longer. Holding his blade low, Ean approached the shimmering barrier. His eyes were glued to the man just beyond—how could they not be? “It
is
you, isn’t it?” Looking upon the man’s face was impossibly painful.

Işak was on hands and knees now and struggling to recover.

Ean made the shield move before him as he advanced. His entire focus had shifted. He was no longer there to seek vengeance upon a kidnapper; he wondered now if he ever truly had been. “
Dear Epiphany
,” Ean breathed, pinning the other with his gaze. “
Sebastian?
Where have you been all this time?”

Işak choked back a despairing cry. He hung his head, and his voice was hoarse with grief as he answered, “N’ghorra.” 

But he gave Ean no time to compute this dreadful truth, for in the same moment he launched to his feet and flung an eruption of the fourth toward Ean’s barrier. The blast exploded in a blaze of sizzling light.

The blast reverberate against Ean’s pattern, and he struggled to keep his shield in place. “
N’ghorra
,” he repeated, horrified. “They did
this
to you there?”

With both fury and desolation in his gaze, Işak threw a cascading barrage of raw power towards Ean, the harvested energy of the fourth. The prince altered his pattern to absorb it, lest they both go flying. Yet the forceful reverberation of his own working cast Işak stumbling, and Ean watched him trip over his sword and fall.

“
Sebastian
…” Ean pressed forward with pity and fury both in his tone. “
Who
did this to you?”  

“Stop calling me that!” Işak screamed. He turned and fled into the shadows, dragging his bad leg.

Ean rushed after him. “Wait—let me
help
you!”

He chased Işak down a wedge of darkness that lurked between a row of towering columns and the tall, stained-glass windows. He could hear the man limping ahead of him but moving swiftly, possibly heading for the doors. Only then did Ean notice the shouting of men from elsewhere in the castle.

Needing to protect their solitude in the hall, Ean cast an illusion before the doors that any who approached might find them locked. Finishing this, he scanned the darkness for Işak and—

The man crashed into Ean from behind, taking him down with a painful crushing of shoulder and hip into immutable stone. They struggled, with Işak grappling for Ean’s sword and he in turn trying not to injure the other man—for Raine’s truth, he’d been harmed enough already. But their tactile contact gave Ean what he’d been wanting all along—a clear view of Işak’s life pattern.

Ean could see now the hundreds of spiny tendrils sinking into the flesh of the other man’s mind, see how they speared and stabbed and bled him mercilessly; how they held him captive to another’s will. He saw, too, that many of these patterns were bound with the fifth, and this was a more devastating truth to learn than any that had come before.

But those patterns that weren’t so bound… Ean didn’t bother trying to discern what they were doing—it was enough to know they were malicious and parasitic and Işak their innocent host. Ean grabbed a mental handful and ripped them out like weeds, casting them forth into unraveling. Still, it was like digging for the man in a pit of quicksand, and the stuff was already far above his head.

Işak cried out and rolled off of Ean. He snatched up his sword as he staggered to his feet and backed away, blade extended in a shaking hand. His eyes were wild, and his head jerked sporadically, alarmingly, not unlike a maddened animal.

Overcome by the terrible understanding he now held, Ean also regained his feet. He held his blade at his side and looked Işak in the eye. “I will not fight you.”

“Then you are a fool,” Işak hissed. His eyes bore into Ean’s while the ropy muscles of his neck twitched and jerked. “I am bound to my course. You cannot stop it.”

“We don’t know that.” At least Ean willed it so. Surely there was providence in his coming here, in this meeting. It couldn’t be by chance. “Even now you
must
sense something of what I’ve just done to help you,” he said in a low voice, trying not himself to despair at being able to do so little. “Do you remember nothing of me?
By Cephrael’s Great Book
, I—”

“Don’t you see it doesn’t matter, Ean?” Işak very nearly wept in speaking the words. “I am
bound
to him with the
fifth
!”

“But I can
help
you—”

“THERE IS NO HELP FOR ME!” Işak launched at Ean once more.

The prince met him blade to blade, and the match again drew out the best in both of them—but now Ean would not risk harming Işak. He called up another pattern of the fourth, this time layered with form—a difficult and artful working to accomplish with the vast, formless energy of that strand while also engaged in battle. When he had it ready, Ean threw himself roughly back, and a shimmering veil speared up to enclose Işak in a ring of power.

The wielder spun furiously around, trapped by the crackling energy. Işak tried a desperate counterattack, but Ean saw the pattern in Işak’s mind before he had it fully formed and ripped it out of his consciousness.

Işak shouted a slew of curses then, vituperative and fierce.

Ean approached the barrier. He lifted one hand in entreaty, his gaze pleading, begging understanding. He had to make Işak somehow see what he knew already to be true—that theirs was not a chance encounter, that this reunion must serve some purpose, even should that purpose be the undoing of too many years of violent injustice. “Can we not…talk?” 

The other man hung his head, but his shoulders and arms still twitched as violently as lightning within the violet-dark clouds of a storm. “If I cannot compel you,” Işak churned out through gritted teeth, not looking at Ean, “I
must
kill you.” He raised his head, and his eyes were vivid with pain as he hissed, “
This too is bound with the fifth!
”

Then he released his pattern.

He’d hidden it well as he crafted it that time. The volcanic force seared through Ean’s shield. The prince threw up a desperate pattern to protect himself as Işak’s working raged like a hurricane through the great hall. The massive doors burst in a splintering staccato. The chandeliers ripped from the ceiling, and the hall went dark as the heavy iron rings crashed resoundingly to the floor.