The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (3 page)

Markal’s heart broke to think of the terrible ramifications of
Malorin’athgul
in Alorin. He wanted more than anything to track
them down, to stop them with any means available, even should it mean his life. But the First Lord had given him a different role to play, one just as important, or so Björn assured him. Yet this role his conscience—his heart—would never have chosen.

Order and method.

These cornerstones kept him aligned with a vital purpose, long disguised within a web of apparent treachery. They kept him primed through all the centuries for his most crucial of tasks. Thus he studied the fifth strand, observing its golden flows with a heavy heart and a troubled soul.

By midday, Markal had seen all he came to see. But as he began the weary process of focusing back on his surroundings, his
elae-
heightened senses perceived the near presence of another. 

Impossible! Here?

The shocking discovery nearly shattered his rapport with
elae
, but he was Markal Morrelaine, a man who counted an unshakable composure as one of his most famous attributes.

Markal released
elae
and turned to look behind him just as the man rounded a rise, climbing the narrow bluff with the ease Markal had always remembered of him. The man saw Markal looking and waved.

Dagmar Ranneskjöld
.

Markal sat rooted to the earth, his pulse quickening. The Second Vestal looked exactly as Markal remembered, and yet…more than he remembered. Dagmar also seemed to possess a certain weariness of spirit, one that Markal too often saw revealed in his own reflection. Strange to observe it now in a man he remembered as having an inexhaustible eagerness for confrontation.  

All these thoughts passed in a single moment, the space of an indrawn breath, and then Markal was on his feet and waving in return. He bent to retrieve his polished rowan staff and walked with long strides to greet Alorin’s Second Vestal.

They met near the edge of the high bluff, two tall silhouettes against the azure sky. Dagmar flashed his famous smile and opened his arms. “Markal, it has been a long time.”

Markal grabbed the Second Vestal in a rough embrace.
Incredible
to find Dagmar here, in Alorin. “What of Raine?” He pulled back to take Dagmar’s shoulders with both hands. “He will see you on the currents.”

“Raine is otherwise engaged.
” Dagmar winked one pale-green eye. “Besides, have a little faith, my old friend. Might not the First Lord have taught me some
few
things in our long years together?” 

Markal noted the dry humor in his tone, but his attention
shifted more to the Vestal’s oathring as it caught the sunlight, the jewel sparkling with blue fire. There was something ominous about seeing the ring and knowing what it meant that Dagmar wore it still, even as Björn no doubt did. Moreover, that the stone’s color remained as true as the day of its forging.

He suddenly felt again the urgency they’d all shared during those last days of the Adept Wars
. The frustration, the ineptitude, the guilt—the emotions welled up to claim him in one fierce moment, unprepared as he was for their return. He relived them now, prompted by the mere sight of a square blue stone set in a heavy silver band worn upon a man’s middle finger.

Perceptive to Markal’s state of mind, Dagmar placed a hand on his shoulder and captured his gaze with his own
. “What is it? What burdens you?”

Markal sho
ok his head. “Seeing your ring, remembering the time before, I wonder…”  He gave Dagmar a troubled look. “I wonder if I am the man I once was. If I am still the right man for the task assigned me. It has been three centuries since I commanded the lifeforce beyond a whisper.”

Dagmar laughed. “What’s this? The great Markal Morrelaine doubting his ability? By
Cephrael
’s Great Book, I never thought I’d see the day!”

Markal frowned at him. 

Dagmar just chuckled, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and said with a twinkle in his eye, “Come now, don’t begrudge my moment of gloating. Surely you remember how insufferable you were.”

Markal grunted. “Humility has a way of creeping in unannounced.” 

They started off together, walking the stony path toward Markal’s villa.

“It’s amazing to be back in Alorin,” Dagmar confessed after a moment. “Björn said it would be marvelous, that I would want to hold
elae
until I couldn’t breathe, until I exhausted myself trying to contain it…until it consumed me.”  He glanced Markal’s way, catching his gaze. “The lifeforce flows in T’khendar, but it never feels the same. To be so long away from Alorin…” His cheery smile faded. “It was difficult.”

They strolled away from the cliffs, trading the open vista of blue waters and sky for Markal’s orchard of olive and pear trees, the latter bare save for a few brown remnants, fodder for the east wind. Once they passed beyond the bluff, the wind died to a gentle breeze, as it always did, and other sounds returned: the distant brays of sheep and goats, the myriad chirping of birds, a quiet rustling of tiny animals in the underbrush. Dagmar grew quiet, as if relishing the harmony of nature.

Markal, however, was brimming with questions. Yet as they headed down a stony path bordered with long, silver-green grass, only one question mattered. “How long do we have?” 

A gusting breeze sent a cascade of golden-brown leaves sweeping across their path, and Dagmar caught a leaf as it fluttered down. He gazed at it pinned against his palm. “Events progress quickly.” He glanced Markal’s way as he closed the leaf in his fist. “We are pebbles of warning, you and I, announcing the avalanche that follows.”

“And Björn…?” He let the thought trail off, not really wanting to voice such questions.

“You wonder if time has changed him?”  Dagmar filled in the rest anyway, arching a flaxen brow. “Changed him, perhaps, as it changed Malachai?”

Markal looked away, shamed by his own doubts.

“Fret thee not.”  Dagmar could not have been more confident, nor his gaze more genuine. “Björn solved the mystery of
deyjiin.
It can be worked safely now by a select few, when due precaution is taken. And my oath-brother, your mentor…he is as immutable as the fifth
itself. But come, there is so much to tell you. Much has changed in T’khendar since Malachai’s day, and many we thought lost were spared in the end. So let us enjoy what time is given us here. At dawn we must depart, for you are needed in T’khendar.”

Markal spun him a concerned look
. “So soon?”

With sober acceptance in his green eyes, Dagmar nodded
. Then he flashed that famous smile and grabbed Markal around the shoulders again. “But that’s tomorrow, eh? For tonight, let’s you and I make a cavernous dent in your wine cellar!”

Markal could only smile and nod acquiescence, for in his heart, he had accepted the truth, and it was
precisely as he’d feared.

Tomorrow was no longer his own.

“Nobility is birthed not of blood but of the heart.”

- Gydryn val Lorian, King of Dannym

The temple
of
the Prophet Bethamin
in Tambarré was built upon the ruins of a much older structure, one that first belonged to the ancient, and ultimately corrupt, Quorum of the Sixth Truth. For two long millennia, the massive complex stood crumbling atop its lonely mountain, a stark reminder of the Adept race’s darkest days. During all the intervening years, none had seen fit to approach it, much less build something new from its ashes.

But time thins the cloth of memory. As the ages pass, its rich colors fade. Strong wool is beaten by the elements until the pattern of its lesson disintegrates, leaving holes in the truths it was meant to carry on. Even the stains of blood blend and bleed, leaving but faded blotches without meaning, mere shadows of lessons that came before, their warnings lost within the obscure impression that remains.

As the strong Saldarian sun dove westward, the Agasi
truthreader
Kjieran van Stone
stood upon the newly rebuilt walls of the Prophet’s temple, staring north. The wind blew his shoulder-length black hair into his eyes, so he held up a hand to hold it back that it might not distract him from the view. In the distance, the upper crescent of the Dhahari mountain range merged with the Iverness range of southeastern Dannym to form jutting, snowcapped peaks as impassible as they were forbidding. Only the Pass of Dharoym permitted travel between Dannym and Saldaria, and it was guarded day and night by hardened men sworn to the Duke of Morwyk.

Kjieran missed Dannym. He missed its green hills and misty grey mornings, its forbidding forests and charcoal seas. He missed the heavy snows of winter, and the north wind that scoured the land; and he missed the people—especially his king. In his years of service to
Gydryn val Lorian
, the monarch had become like a father to him, and his sons like the brothers Kjieran never had. In many ways, he missed Dannym more than his homeland of Agasan.

Though to be fair, he would’ve just as willingly served ten years before the mast on an Avataren slaver than spend even one more night in Tambarré.

At the behest of his king and the Fourth Vestal Raine D’Lacourte, Kjieran had been truth-bound to secrecy and sent to serve the Prophet as a spy for the north. He was afraid to do it—he’d nearly wept the night Raine truth-bound him—but they had no one better suited to go in his stead, and their need was dire.

The Fourth Vestal believed—they all believed—that the plot to end the val Lorian reign encompassed more than a single throne, and had not the king and queen already sacrificed enough with the loss of two of their sons? Kjieran could hardly refuse them, though he suspected that Tambarré would be his doom.

Little did he realize then that there were so many shades of grey within the spectrum of imminent death…that when a man might pluck any variety of poisoned fruit from the Tree of Dying and suffer the ending through myriad torments—drawing it out for months, even years—that death itself might become a mercy.

But he understood that much better now.

Kjieran had served the Prophet for six moons, and every day of it had been a waking horror. Every day he reminded himself of his vital purpose, of their desperate need—not just Dannym’s, but all of Alorin. For without this hope to ground him, to shore up his fortitude and replenish his courage, he knew he would long ago have fled. Instead, each night he warded his dreams before laying down his head, loath to close his eyes for fear of the visions that lurked beyond his sight. But despite his best efforts, when dawn broke each morning, he still woke with a stifled scream.

They all did, the occupants of Tambarré—that is, those who slept at all.

At the sound of a voice raised in anger, Kjieran turned from his wistful study of the mountains. The conversation floated to him on the stagnant air that came seeping out of the temple hall, where large copper braziers glowed day and night. The
Ascendants
burned incense on those coals, and the oily smoke stained the walls and filled the air with a foul, fetid haze. When he heard the Prophet’s voice, however, Kjieran hurried inside, for Bethamin misliked when his acolytes were not close to hand.

“Those patterns are bound with the fifth strand,” the Prophet was saying in a tone of cold censure as Kjieran crept soundlessly through the vestry. “My hold upon a
Marquiin
should’ve been impossible to break—unless you’ve been misleading me, Dore.”

“My lord, I wouldn’t dream of misleading you,” came the sycophantic voice of
Dore Madden
, an Adept wielder and advisor to the Prophet. Kjieran stifled a shudder as he drew up just short of the temple nave. Dore Madden made his skin crawl, and he would just as soon not have the man know he was there.

He inched his head around the archway to see Dore and the Prophet standing about ten paces away. Dore Madden’s cadaverous frame stood in profile to Kjieran, facing the Prophet as he continued, “The fifth strand acts as the sand in concrete, my lord. Any time one layers patterns of differing strands, they must be bound with the fifth if they are to endure. And like sand into the concrete mix, once bound, they cannot be separated.”

“Then you tell me how it was done!” the Prophet hissed. Kjieran had never seen him so infuriated. Usually Bethamin was all cold dispassion no matter the horrific deeds happening in his name…or in his midst. Bethamin turned away from Dore and stood with hands clasped behind his back, his stance conveying his ultimate displeasure.

The Prophet was a tall man and broad of shoulder. He wore his long black hair in hundreds of braids, each strand bound four times with tiny gold bands, the mass contained by more elaborate braids encircling the whole and again bound in gold. Bare-chested, he wore a tunic of white linen and loose desert pants, and the gold torc around his neck always stood out brightly against his caramel skin. He was imposing. He was coldly arrogant. And he was terrifying.