The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (84 page)

“I seriously doubt that,” Kjieran muttered.

“Just tell me this,” he said, swaying like a drunkard, “did she come to you too?”

Kjieran shook his head. “She? Who?”

“Just tell me if it’s so!” Yveric snapped. “Tell me!”

Kjieran held up his hands in a placating manner. “Peace, Yveric. I swear to you in Epiphany’s name, no one came to me.”

The Marquiin grunted. “Then it’s true.” He closed his eyes and swayed like a young pine in a stiff wind.

Mystified, Kjieran picked up his goblet with both hands and slowly crossed the room toward him. “I’ll tell you what I was thinking,” he said after a moment.

“What?” asked the man through closed lids.

“I was thinking you seem impossibly…sane…for a Marquiin.”

This drew another gravelly laugh from the man. “Among my kind, there is a rumor that the end for the Prophet’s
blessed chosen,
”
and the words came out in a venomous snarl,
“comes in one of two ways.” Eyes still closed, he lifted his appalling face to the sun. “Either you go out stark raving mad…or you suddenly turn lucid, that you might know
every moment
of the horror that awaits you at the end.” He swayed dangerously in place before growling, “Seems I picked the short straw again.”

“I’m…sorry,” Kjieran said.

“Ha! You’re one to talk!” Yveric opened his necrotic eyes and looked at Kjieran, leaning close as he observed, “Something gives me the idea your fate will be worse, Envoy.”

Kjieran swallowed and looked down at the goblet gripped so tightly that his hands were white. Even with all his effort of concentration, still his fingers inadvertently jumped off the goblet. The muscles in his arms and hands twitched beneath his skin as the battle between
elae
and Bethamin’s fell power continued. He shook his head grimly. “I believe you may be right.”

Yveric turned in the doorway and leaned his other shoulder against the portal, letting the sun bake his wool-clad backside instead. “So…” he said, looking haggard. “What is it you want from me?” Before Kjieran could answer, he added, “You needn’t fear confession. The Prophet hasn’t haunted my dreams in many moons. He sees my infirmity and loathes me for it.”

Kjieran blinked at him. “Your dreams? The Prophet treads the path of your dreams?”

Yveric grunted sourly. “Dore Madden taught our master all manner of torments—I thought you must surely know.”

Kjieran shook his head, immensely grateful that his dreams, so far at least, had been his own. Yet now that he knew the Prophet cavorted in his subjects’ dreams, he knew such grace wouldn’t last.

“No matter,” Yveric meanwhile muttered. “You’re safe enough speaking to me. Epiphany be kind, I shall not wake tomorrow.” With this oath, his kissed his gloved thumb and held it to the sky.

Kjieran drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, ever perceptive to any shift that might alert him the Prophet was listening in. “I seek…” He pressed lips together and trusted to the moment, to this doomed man, and to Epiphany, that she would not forsake him entirely just yet. “I seek the truth behind the deaths of Sebastian and Trell val Lorian of Dannym.”

Yveric stared at him for a long time with those unsettling eyes. Finally he said, “Then you seek the Shamshir’im.”

“A free mind is infinitely more powerful than a captive one.”

- The Fourth Vestal Raine D’Lacourte

Işak’getirmek
brushed past the Saldarian mercenary as the latter threw the prisoner down at their campsite. Işak still had the man bound with the fourth, and he lay limply, his eyes unseeing. Işak’s fourth-strand working used the man’s own mind against him, claiming it as an unwilling participant, using his own thoughts to bind him.

The Saldarian leader, Raliax, joined Işak as the other prisoners were being dropped beside the first, their feet and hands bound with stout rope. Raliax assessed the line, frowning beneath heavy black brows, while Işak in turn assessed him.

An impatient man, and unforgiving, Raliax had flashing dark eyes and an insincere smile. He delighted in the spilling of blood, during which times he often caught his bottom lip between his teeth in a smile that bespoke of other gruesome amusements. Yet he fashioned himself a nobleman. He kept his jaw clean-shaven, and he wore his black hair in an intricate braided club, as was the fashion among the Nadori nobility—but his nails were dirty and his breath reeked of sour drink, and Işak wasn’t deluded by any part of his charade.

Among all of this pretense, something in Raliax whispered to Işak…a distant memory that quivered with warning. But its message was gossamer thin and too frail to convey any clear meaning. Still, he had n
ot a breath of trust for the man, and liked him even less.

Having looked over the assembled prisoners, Raliax demanded of his hirelings, “Where’s the cousin?”

“Isn’t he one of these?” a man named Joss returned.

“If he was, I wouldn’t have asked!” Abruptly Raliax hissed a curse and shouted, “Find Fynnlar val Lorian!”

“I put three darts in ‘im,” said a man Işak knew only as Sharpe. Raliax’s men hailed from Saldaria, but the province’s mountainous borders with Dannym were vague, and Sharpe spoke the Saldarian dialect with a harsh northern accent. “He willn’t get far w’my nails in ‘is belly.”

“Get after him, Joss,” Raliax growled, “lest I claim his value in your blood.”

“No,” said Işak in a low voice, commanding silence and stillness from the group. They knew him as a wielder and were suspicious and wary of him, but they listened when he spoke. “Are you certain you marked him, Sharpe?”

“Sure as silver.”

“Fine. He won’t get far, and in this darkness Joss would be as likely to walk past him as trip over his body. Better to search in the morning.”

“He’ll be dead by morning,” Sharpe pointed out.

“Then he’ll be especially easy to find.” Işak assessed the assembled prisoners from beneath the deep cowl of his cloak. He liked the sense of anonymity his hood gave, even if it was only a pretense. “So who
do
we have?”

Joss grabbed the prisoners, one by one, and yanked them to their knees. Işak was pleased to note the last one, the one he still had bound with the fourth, was by far the most docile of the group—though to be certain he’d fought the fiercest from what Işak had seen of him back in the canyon.

“You heard him,” Joss said, kicking at the one on the end. “Give the man your name.”

When none of them immediately replied, Raliax sighed dramatically and remarked, “You can give us your names and live, or keep them and die. Choose quickly.”

Joss kicked the first man in the gut this time, and he doubled over, snarling through gritted teeth, “Cayal val Oren.”

Joss kicked at the next man. He spun a defiant glare at Joss and earned a fist to his jaw in reward. “Lots more where that came from if you’re hungry for it,” Joss told him. “Give the man your name.” When the prisoner didn’t respond, Joss slammed his boot into his back, and he went sprawling face down into the dirt. Joss hauled him up again with a sigh. “Your
name
.”

“Brody,” he said in a voice like gravel.

“And you?” Joss addressed a fierce looking man who sat taller than the other two. Işak had noticed him fighting and was impressed with his competence with a blade. The man said nothing, so Joss battered him into the dirt and hauled him up again. This continued twice more until the last man, the one Işak had under compulsion, said in a quiet voice, tightly controlled, “Rhys…do what he asks. They have our names already.”

Işak arched a brow. He knew his prisoner must be suffering beneath the working he held up
on him, and it suited him to continue it—the better to keep him docile, as Dore had so viciously taught him—but he would not have imagined the man capable of thought with such compulsion capturing his consciousness. His intelligence shone equally through, for he’d accurately estimated their situation.

The soldier named Rhys
shot the other prisoner a sideways glance. Işak could see him deliberating, but he finally growled, “Lord Captain Rhys val Kincaide.”

“Excellent,” Raliax rubbed his hands together. “We’ve the Nodefinder and the other injured soldier, and the dead cousin, once found, makes seven. They will provide
a fine incentive to draw out our missing prince.” He spun away and headed to his tent, calling upon another of his men to follow.

“But who is the last?” Işak asked then, his curiosity piqued. He peered intently down upon his prisoner from the depths of hi
s hood. 

With an obvious force of will, the man lifted grey eyes to look up at Işak. It must’ve cost him greatly, but he managed a hoarse reply, “Trell…val Lorian.”

Trell val Lorian!

Işak barely concealed his shock. “
Impossible!
Trell val Lorian died… years ago.” Strange that he could not now remember how many years that was meant to be, but his days since N’ghorra were naught but a solid span of living hell. Was it truly surprising that time lost all meaning?

The prisoner dropped his head again, succumbin
g perhaps to Işak’s compulsion upon him, and yet…something did seem familiar about the man. If it really was Trell, he would’ve been but a teen when Işak last gazed upon him.

Yet if Trell val Lorian wasn’t dead, then
why
—

Something wormed inside Işak at this question, something both vile and treacherous. It leaped from the deep darkness of Dore’s web of spells to entangle Işak with shards of memory.

His head burst with a pain so violent as to momentarily blind him, so powerful that Işak nearly lost his hold on the patterns binding Trell, but he retained them in the last, gritting his teeth against the inexplicable explosion in his skull.

What is happening to me
?

He felt as if a door had been cleaved, one he’d never known existed, and now he gaped in horror at the filth seeping out through the cracks—filth that he realized had been thriving in his mind.

Only as he recovered did Işak note the avid whispering among Raliax’s men. The man himself emerged from his tent just moments later. He came stalking across the camp to grab up Trell by the hair and stare into his face, searching his features. “It
is
you!” he hissed after a breath of time. He slung the prince to the dirt, pointing and shouting madly,
“But I watched you die! I saw you die!”

Işak had never seen the man so insane with fury. He stalked around an incapacitated Trell, snarling and spitting curse
s, mad as a cornered snake. After a few savage moments of this, he kicked the prince several times, screaming, “
I put
you into the Fire Sea five years ago roped to an accursed
trunk
! You could
not
have survived!”

This wild, unadvised outburst earned the fury of the other prisoners, all of whom had to be forcefully subdued—the Lord Captain alone taking two men to hold him down whilst a third made a pulp of his face.

Still lying on his side in the throes of Işak’s compulsion, Trell gave Raliax a humorless smile reminiscent of torments unknown. “It seemed Fate had…a different end…in mind for me.” 

Raliax roared in fury and stalked off, hissing and cursing foully. Joss and several others rushed after him,
and a heated argument soon erupted between them at the edge of camp.

The enormous implications of Raliax’s confession had Işak reeling.

“I put you into the Fire Sea five years ago…”

Learning that Raliax was the man responsible for Trell’s purported death was shocking enough—but Işak couldn’t understand how the king could’ve blamed
him
for Trell’s death if he was
already
in N’ghorra?  

For as long as he could remembered, Işak had believed the king blamed him for the death of his two eldest sons, but now h
e realized that couldn’t be true. And why couldn’t he remember the moment of his actual banishment, when they’d surely laid the dreadful sentence upon him?

Once, he’d been so certain of the vendetta he held against King Gydryn. Now the memories that had been writ in a heart of stone were bleeding into streaks of painful color
. Işak felt unglued, unhinged.

Things no longer fit. He
knew
this. He just didn’t know what pieces had fallen away and caused the foundations of his consciousness to tremble so.

As Işak stared uncomprehendingly at the prince, Trell slowly pushed back to his knees and pinned his grey eyes upon him in return. Even possessed by compulsion, the prince’s gaze speared Işak. “Why are you…trying to…find…my brother?” 

What power of concentration to form thought around such treacherous patterns as Işak had thrust upon him. Yet Işak was hardly faring better, for he battled his own demons now.
Ironic
, he thought as he stared at Trell, that while he bound Trell’s mind, the prince had somehow found a way of binding his in return.