The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (50 page)

Until…at last, it faded.

Tanis might have blacked out. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he probably had, because there was a point where he felt no pain and then it seemed to detonate everywhere at once. When he opened his eyes, Pelas was standing over him.

This time, the mask he wore was of horror.

Suddenly he was on his knees and cradling Tanis’s head in his lap. The lad heard him swearing darkly, furiously, and though his curses were in another language, Tanis knew Pelas cursed himself.

The Healer’s blood was cold, the Healer herself was gone and the darkness had retreated, though now a different pain consumed the man. “
No
,
no
,
little spy
,” he whispered then, one hand caressing Tanis’s cheek. For once, the lad didn’t mind the chill of his flesh. “You should not have come down here! You should not have interrupted me!” 

Tanis couldn’t be sure, because he really couldn’t focus his eyes, but he thought Pelas was actually crying.

It took a long time for Tanis to make the thoughts in his head form into words, and longer still, it seemed, for his tongue to utter them. “No choice,” he whispered at last.

“No
choice?
You could’ve stayed where you were safe!” Pelas very nearly shouted at him.

“But
you
weren’t safe, Sir,” Tanis murmured.

With a groan of guilt, Pelas drew Tanis into his arms and cradled the lad’s body against his own. He said nothing, for it seemed words failed him.

Tanis blacked out again.

When he came to, Pelas was still holding him, but now they were beside a fire and he felt warmer and slightly less nauseated, though his body still trembled.

“Sir…” Tanis whispered. He found he could focus his eyes a bit better.

Pelas looked down at him, and his gaze was tragically tender. “You will live,” he murmured, “and I will have your hide for this tomorrow.”

Tanis managed a meek smile. But it was short-lived, for his concern for Pelas still sang inside him, that sense of duty stronger than ever. “You left,” he said. “What happened?”

Pelas drew Tanis closer to him, cradled like his own child, but Tanis wondered if Pelas didn’t hug him for his own comfort as well. He said in a low voice, his tone intense and shadowed, “I went to confront Darshan on some of my recent theories, formulated as a result of our conversations.” He added through clenched teeth, “It did not go well.”

“You…” Tanis was amazed—a mite dull-headed still and perhaps a little slow in forming his thoughts, but amazed all the same. “All those times,” he said weakly, feeling a semblance of lucidity at last returning, “…you really were thinking on all of the things you said you must think on?”

“Of course.”

Tanis felt such a rush of unexpected tenderness for him. He’d always thought Pelas’s remarks were glibly spoken, a means of moving the conversation along. Yet all this time he had been honestly considering everything Tanis said.

The lad realized something else. He wasn’t sure if he came to the conclusion on his own, or if Pelas unwittingly spoke to him through the force of his own thoughts, but it occurred to Tanis with a pang of compassion that Pelas wasn’t reveling in the darkness.

He was trapped by it.

“I should not have gone to him,” Pelas lamented then, his fury at himself all too clear in his tone. “I should have trusted my own reasoning, but I couldn’t…I wanted confirmation.”

“Of what, sir?”

Pelas shook his head, his gaze tormented. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.”

Pelas gave him an agonized look.

“Sir, you don’t have to be this way…no matter what you think,” Tanis managed weakly. “You don’t have to forever battle these forces that tear you in two.”

Clearly not trusting himself with a reply, Pelas laid Tanis down by the fire to better warm his trembling body and looked away with his jaw clenched so tightly…as if to draw back all of the fury he’d unleashed that night. He hugged his knees to chest and growled at last, “Yes, I do.”

Tanis watched him from an awkward position as he lay on the floor, loath to move his head for his brain throbbing so violently. “You can decide to walk a different path,” the lad offered, “just as I might have.”

“It is not the same!
You
had a choice. For me there is
none
.”

“Why not?”

Pelas shot him a desperate look. “It has already been made.”

“Who made it, if not you?”

He looked away again, and after a moment he answered bitterly, “There never was any choice. I am what I am.”

“If that is truly so, then change what you are.”

Pelas spun him a despairing look. “How?” 

Tanis had no real wisdom to offer, only what seemed obvious to him. “Decide to.”

Pelas exhaled a growl and fell backwards onto the floor. He shifted his body to align his head so it rested near Tanis’s own, so that they both gazed toward the far distant ceiling lost in shadows, their shoulders almost touching.

A long silence followed wherein the only sound was the fire’s crackling song and the crashing of the distant surf, and then Pelas said quietly, “When I realized that I’d hurt you, Tanis…when I finally surfaced through the blood haze of rage that had clouded my vision…” He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and confessed in a raw voice, “In that moment I questioned everything that I thought to be true—all of my brother’s doctrines, everything he’s ever taught us.”

Swallowing, Tanis gingerly turned to look into Pelas’s eyes, their bodies so close that their foreheads nearly touched. “Why, sir?”

Pelas gave him a tragic smile. “Because I did not want you to die.” 

Tanis could only image what such an earthshaking confession must’ve cost him.

Pelas grunted despondently and looked away to stare upwards into darkness. “It is so strange…I sense something of our Maker in you, little spy. You make me feel as if there could be something else for me, even though I know such is impossible.” He managed a soft smile, though there was infinite sadness in it. “I don’t know if that is a good thing to feel…but it
is
interesting. It is an experience. I like experiencing new things. This whole world was a new thing, once.” Tanis heard the anguished longing in his tone even as he heard hope shattering when Pelas finished, “And then my brothers came here, and I realized there was nothing for us but to continue that which we are.”

That sense of duty rang like tower bells inside Tanis’s head, and the lad finally knew what he was meant to say to help this man. “
Then
,” he whispered, “but not before?”

“No,” Pelas sighed. “Before Darshan took me in hand, everything was different.”

“Then perhaps that explains why he truly fears you, sir,” Tanis murmured, suddenly impossibly tired. He yawned prodigiously.

And before he could receive Pelas’s response, the lad was fast asleep.

“Experience is the name men give to their mistakes.”

- The Espial Franco Rohre

Dawn found
Ean on the practice yard with high hopes for the day. His talk with Isabel had been enlightening, and he stood to face Markal’s formidable lessons with a renewed sense of purpose.

But of his night with Isabel, the kiss remained most predominately on his thoughts, a pleasurable torment, for he only wanted more of her. All night, visions of Isabel had dominated his dreams, and he woke feeling agonized for lack of her body entwined with his own.

Markal arrived as the clouds above were shedding their rosy cast, once again with a rope in each hand. Like the day before, he pitched one to Ean and simultaneously slung the other one into a staff. Settling its tip onto the stones, he leaned upon it and cast Ean a challenging look. “I half expected to find you missing this morning, nursing wounds in your room.”

Ean held his dark gaze. “I am not the man you knew before—no matter what you say.”

“Oh, you’ve somehow evolved in death? The one exception?”

“No,” Ean returned, “but I’ve had about eighteen years to learn some new things since then. I don’t have to make the same choices.”

“You did yesterday,” Markal pointed out, but his tone was slightly less hostile, as if opening to new possibilities.

“And I learned from it.”

“We’ll see.” Without waiting for more, Markal lashed out with his staff, and Ean envisioned the rope becoming as stone as he swung to block it—that is until Markal swept his feet out from under him.

Ean bit back a curse and rolled to his feet, leveling Markal a heated look as he stood. “What am I doing wrong?”

“At this point I wonder if there is anything you’re doing right.”

Ean thought of punching him but decided it would set a poor precedent for the day. “Look,” he said, forcing patience, “if you were instructing someone who knew nothing about how to do this, what would you tell them?”

“To KNOW the effect they intend to create.”

“Yes, beyond that,” Ean grumbled. “What specifically?”

Markal gave him a wondrous look. “You really remember nothing at all.”

“
You
try dying three times for the First Lord and see how well you fare at remembering the Logics and Esoterics!” Ean snapped heatedly.

Markal arched a black brow at him. “So you do remember some things.”

Ean shook his head, frustrated with his own ineptitude. He had no idea whence the words had come or even what they meant. “Things come and go,” he grumbled, adding as he waved at his head, “My mind is a god-forsaken sieve, and what things I manage to accomplish, more than half the time it’s done without understanding it.”

Markal took pity on him for once. He leaned on his staff and deigned to reply, “Every wielder works the lifeforce differently, Ean. Even amongst Adepts, there may be some agreement as to how to identify and tap into their talent, but that’s as far as the commonality goes. It is because of the Fifth Law.”

As if to prove his own point, the law came to Ean without warning such that he answered automatically, “A wielder is limited by what he can envision.”

Markal eyed him circumspectly.

Ean opened palms to the sky with a helpless glare.

“A wielder is limited by what he can envision,” Markal repeated after a moment, still regarding Ean through a veil of suspicion. “A Healer can teach another Healer to find a man’s personal pattern, and may even describe how she goes about repairing it, but to do so potentially limits the vision of the student. It may prove workable as a means of teaching the precise craft of Healing, but it’s a poor way to instruct Patterning.”

Ean could see how this would prove true: the limits of the teacher become the limits of the student. He also had a sense that this fact had challenged instructors of Patterning for some time. “Then how do you teach it?”

Markal straightened. “To do it correctly takes time. Trial and error. The student’s personal exploration of basic concepts within a field that cannot harm him or others. Those that excel—those with the most potential—grasp the concepts quickly and advance to more difficult ideas. Those who don’t…well, those who cannot easily master the basics learn for themselves that Patterning is a poor choice of occupation for them.”

“So proper instruction also weeds out the weak and the inept.”

“Unquestionably. Patterning is not for the dilettante.”

Ean considered him and his explanation. “Time then,” he surmised. “That’s really my problem isn’t it? We don’t have time to allow an orderly revival of skill and knowledge through experimentation and exploration, as you said.”

“Just so,” Markal agreed, pinning his almost-black eyes on Ean compellingly.

“But this isn’t working either,” Ean pointed out, his tone betraying his aggravation. He wasn’t looking forward to another day of beating and bruising to no avail.

“Perhaps the stakes are not high enough,” came a chiming observation from behind Ean.

He spun at Isabel’s voice. She emerged from the loggia into the courtyard wearing a flowing linen dress. Her black staff shone dully as she walked, absorbing the morning light without reflecting it back, and Ean realized for the first time that the staff was Merdanti—the same enchanted black stone that the zanthyrs used to craft their infamous blades.

“My lady,” Markal said gravely, nodding to her.

“Good morning, my lords,” Isabel greeted. She wore a white silk blindfold that day, reminding Ean uncomfortably of a sacrificial virgin—an effect heightened by the simple if elegant linen gown. She stopped midway between Ean and Markal and rested her staff lightly upon the stones. “I know your methods are the most effective, General,” she began, nodding toward Markal, “and I know he is trying with everything that he is,” she added, nodding toward Ean, “yet the efforts pass unawares of each other, two ships in the mist.” 

She approached Ean as she explained, “It is
need
that drives the Awakening. Necessity that overcomes the veil of death. It must be more than mere desire to know. There must be a need so strong, so critical to survival, that it evokes the strength to pierce the veil.”