The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (2 page)

Even on cold days, like this one, the Hermit liked to come down to the bluffs where the easterly wind always blew, where the only sound was the call of the birds circling midway between cliff and sea. Peace dwelled in the wide-open spaces of the world, where freedom seemed a birthright to man and eagles alike. Only there, naked beneath the vast expanse of mountain and sky, did the Hermit’s overactive mind find rest.  

For he was a man possessed.

Possessed by demons of his own devising—as is so often true—tormented by the chains of obligation that weighed heavily upon his conscientious soul.
We are the sculptors of our destiny
, his mentor had often told him,
as much as the victims of it.

His mentor had taught him this truth, unpalatable as it might be, so many ages ago. The Hermit smiled at the thought of his mentor, his confidant…his friend, who was renowned as Alorin’s enemy yet remained its only hope of salvation. Could one man be so many things?

Yes,
he thought,
if his name is
Björn van Gelderan
.

And where are you now, my old friend? What role have you assigned yourself during these darkest of days?

The Hermit knew Björn had returned to Alorin, though he’d found only the briefest trace of him on the currents—Björn’s only card of calling to those who watched and waited for his coming. The Fifth
Vestal
had mastered the art of hiding his presence on the tides of
elae
—the most difficult of any undertaking with the lifeforce. Even
Raine D’Lacourte
would not find him on the currents unless Björn himself allowed it.

The Hermit closed his eyes and exhaled a sigh echoic of the ages he’d witnessed. Björn van Gelderan had forever changed the course of his life, and the Hermit was bound to him now, for good or for ill.

And you are
Markal Morrelaine
,
he reminded himself,
not some witless recluse gone mad in his old age. You have work to do.

He did, though he dreaded it—especially of late. The things he’d been seeing on
the currents were shocking enough to bring an agonizing sense of fear into his daily work. He should have felt a measure of vindication—were not their earliest suspicions now justified?—but his heart knew only a dire sense of unease and a nagging guilt that had been tormenting him for ages like an indigestible, poisonous root. That everything was proceeding according to plan offered no solace; after all, Alorin’s Fifth Vestal had devised it.

Our plan.

Markal too well remembered the days of its making; long days and even longer nights secluded in Björn’s tower with the few they could trust while the other Vestals played at being important. Björn’s
zanthyr
had both stood guard for their gathering and run Björn’s bidding, returning with meals, ancient texts,
weldmaps
…or Sundragons.

This memory brought a smile to Markal’s face, crinkling the deep lines at his eyes.

They had been so shocked—he and Malachai and the others—when the illustrious Ramuhárihkamáth walked into the room on the heels of the First Lord’s zanthyr—for no feat was too monumental that Phaedor would not accomplish it if such was Björn’s will—and ev
en more astonished when Ramu bent his knee to Björn and swore his oath in front of them all. So many centuries ago now, yet the memory still tasted of the excitement and promise they’d all felt in those days.

The memory brought sadness, also. Of those original nine, who remained? Malachai was vanquished, his madness a terrible sacrifice. As far as Markal knew, Cristien and Anglar fell with Arion at the Citadel, and Dunglei and Parcifal before them at Gimlalai. Their smiles, their sarcastic wit, their brilliant minds—all lost, casualties of the larger war. 

The best and the brightest of Alorin’s
wielders
had died defending the
realm
against the threat Malachai became. Would that any of them might’ve foreseen this most tragic consequence.

Of the other survivors now sworn to their cause, Dagmar was in
T’khendar
, reportedly held prisoner by Björn—though Markal knew that was none but fantasy. The First Lord’s zanthyr no doubt was off pursuing his own motives, as ever he did when not doing his master’s bidding. Of the rest, he knew nothing; he only suspected that, like him, they were waiting to be summoned. To be
Called.

And you’re still stalling
, he told himself while gazing off across the sparkling blue sea-lake toward the hazy mountains beyond. The Geborahs, they called them, named for the formless power that roamed the treacherous passes of Mount Ijssmarmöen. Far beyond, across the city-states of Navárre, nestled against the lush Caladrian Coast, lay the sacred city of Faroqhar, the Seat of the Empress Valentina van Gelderan, Björn’s great, great, many-times-great grand-niece.

Markal had hidden from the Empress as much as any other. He’d known she would seek him ruthlessly for questioning once the war ended. Isolation and anonymity had been his foremost priorities, so he’d chosen Talieri to house his retreat from the world, in no small part because of the disinclination of anyone from the Imperial Court to travel there. While heavy traffic clogged the sea-lakes along their southern coasts, only fishermen and traders found their way to the sparsely populated northern shores.

The Empress left the region alone due to its proximity to the highly-prized wineries of Solvayre, whose owning families wielded great political power and were touchy about over-governance. That meant few, if any, visits from the Imperial Guard to Talieri, and no visits from Agasan’s ruling class, who were far too important to pay a stop to an isolated fishing village with nothing to boast but an old hermit living atop their highest hill.

A foghorn sounded from afar, stirring Markal back to the present. The horn meant that Talieri was calling its fishermen home. The sea-lakes of Ijssmar became dangerous with the fall of night, and a ship caught on the lakes after sundown might never make it back to harbor. But the horn held a different meaning for Markal. Had he really been sitting there for so long, accomplishing nothing? Was he so afraid of what
the currents would show him?

Afraid
? No. Regretful perhaps, wary of the coming days, weary from his centuries of waiting for a time he now dreaded had arrived. Night would soon fall, and he could no longer count on the morning’s arrival; in such troubled times, tomorrow belonged to no man.

Thus setting himself to task, Markal formed the pattern in his mind that would reveal the currents to him
. Unlike
Adepts
, who might train themselves to see the currents
even as a swimmer trained his lungs to hold breath, Markal had no Adept gift. But few could match his skill at
Patterning
.

Releasing the pattern to compel its
intent
into
becoming
, the currents opened to his sight. He no longer focused on the high mountains across the sea; instead, he studied the swirling eddies that swept along in great rosy funnels from the sky, like cyclones stained a pastel pink. The Life currents of the first
strand
. These pale whirlwinds brought to him the stories of countless lives jumbled together in a vortex of confused moments, disjointed vignettes he would have to piece together to discern the whole.

From the second strand, which he identified as a burnished copper sheen upon the land, Markal pieced together the travels of
Nodefinders
in whose activities he took an interest. One caught his eye: the
Espial
Franco Rohre
. From Franco’s frequent travels, and from the other life pattern accompanying Franco’s upon the tides of the second strand, Markal inferred that Franco acted in the service of Raine D’Lacourte, taking the Vestal on a confusingly disjointed tour of the realm. Markal might’ve liked to delve deeper into their activities, for he felt it prudent to keep an eye on Raine D’Lacourte, but this was not his task for that day. 

Releasing a new pattern, the merest whisper of intent, Markal’s sight changed to view the fourth strand, the one comprising the patterns of thought. On these tides he learned of recent workings of
elae
, of twisted truth-patterns from the Prophet’s temple in Tambarré…of magical battles in the Kutsamak and the
balance
of power in M’Nador’s violent war.

All these varied strands of the lifeforce he studied and pondered, traced and deciphered. Night fell and the moon rose, but still he sat on the edge of his mountain. The night’s cold could not touch him. Even the rain, had it come, would have splashed well above his head, beading as if on glass to run in rivulets to the ground in a circle at least two paces from his crossed legs.

These small comforts he allowed himself, trifling patterns of little regard; they did nothing to ease his cramping muscles, dull the ache behind his eyes, or allay the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. To study the currents in the detail to which he was accustomed required rigor and determination. Days sometimes passed before Markal had learned all he must know.

For some, such study was a pleasurable task. In their time together, Markal had known Björn to spend a week or more sitting on his tower roof studying the currents. He would come back inside lean and hardened from his fast, his brilliant blue eyes even more dazzling than usual. For Björn, this undertaking provided a means of edification; for Markal, it felt more like torture. This was but one fundamental difference between them. Björn reveled in the laborious study of Patterning, while Markal endured it through iron-willed self-discipline and a passion for order and method. This variance evidenced the innate difference between an Adept, like Björn, and a wielder, like Markal. For Björn, the touch of
elae
came as life itself; for Markal, it was always a battle of will, a mental marathon.

Order and method
. This was his mantra.

He studied through the night, sitting without moving while the moon set and the stars fled the coming dawn. Soon the paling in the east became a glow, then a fire that burned in an orange-gold sky, flaming rose-hued clouds above a silver sea. And still he studied.

The townspeople called him
va dänstaty
, which meant ‘the statue man’ in the Talieri dialect. They’d called him other things, too, over the centuries: w
arlock,
s
orcerer, necromancer.
They didn’t know the difference between such words, or that in all his days, he would never have deigned even to acknowledge a necromancer’s dark delving. They knew only that he’d once orchestrated magical workings there upon his mountain, that he’d caused the earth itself to rise up into his current home, and that through all the generations, he never aged beyond his seeming fifty years.

At the end of the Adept Wars, in the early days of his retreat from the world, the township had been frightened of him, worried that his immortality came from the vampiric demons of myth. Children had thrown rocks at him, and the village people shut their doors whenever he came to town. Those children had long since grown and lived and died, telling their stories to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and he’d become a living legend.

Once they’d feared him; now they tolerated him—still a mystery, but no longer a threat.

He found none of this surprising. What did surprise him was how long he’d remained a subject of gossip and speculation. Had he made his home in the east, where few living wielders remained and magic was synonymous with myth, the people would long ago have forgotten him. Here, in an empire where the workings of
elae
were prevalent, even commonplace, where wielders walked the Imperial Court of the Sacred City with the status of nobility…here, people remembered his
one
long-ago working and feared it.

Perhaps a people who know magic know also to respect it,
he often reasoned.

Perhaps. Or perhaps he merely gave the people of this remote village something to talk about. He didn’t begrudge them their intrigues; if nothing else, they ensured his solitude.

Solitude indeed,
Markal mused. There was nothing like studying events elsewhere in the realm to reinforce one’s own sense of isolation.

He sighed and shifted his position. An annoying pebble had worked its way beneath his thigh, and he brushed it away before settling back to task. He’d learned all that he could from the first four strands. Time now to embark upon his most dreaded duty: the study of the fifth strand, the most ancient of elemental magics.

The fifth’s golden flows had begun to carry upon them a taint heretofore unknown to
elae’s
currents. Even when Malachai’s Shades had hunted Alorin with genocidal blood on their blades, the fifth strand had not carried such a stain upon its tides.

This evil was not unexpected—indeed, he’d been watching signs of it fomenting for the last three-hundred years. Yet his lack of surprise did nothing to quell his instinctual flinch each time he found evidence of it—evidence of
their
presence.