The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (51 page)

Stopping in front of Ean, she smiled up at him for the sweetest breath of a moment and released her staff. It remained standing on end at his side. “Therefore,” she said, turning back to Markal, “
I
shall provide this need.”

Markal’s expression immediately darkened even as Ean declared, “Absolutely not!” They’d both perceived the image—the intent—of Isabel’s plan, and neither wanted anything to do with it.

Patently disregarding their protests, Isabel said, “Markal knows unequivocally that Ean possesses the knowledge to alter the rope, while Ean judges unquestionably that Markal will do as I require of him,” and she smiled at Markal at this. “To this end, we are all agreed of the danger inherent in this endeavor.”

“Isabel—” Ean said wretchedly, weakened by his own fear for her safety. “I don’t
know
that I can—”

“What you must know, my darling, is the effect you intend to create,” she returned with a smile so beautiful he felt his soul rending itself in homage to it. She added serenely, “I think you know quite well what effect that needs to be.” Isabel turned to Markal. “So…let us waste no more time with delays. Face your fears, gentlemen.”

“Isabel…” Markal growled, glaring at her fiercely from under his brows, “sometimes I deplore you for the things you make me do.”

“I forgive you, Markal,” she returned solemnly. Then she lifted her chin and stood at the ready, and Ean’s soul screamed so loudly in protest he thought his ears would burst.

Markal shifted his gaze to Ean, and the deadly warning in his glare was clear. Ean only stared helplessly back at him—what could he do? He would lose his own life before seeing Isabel come to harm.

Markal inhaled, drew himself tall, and let out his breath in a slow hiss, his eyes piercing Ean with their determination. He lifted his staff slowly, measuring the necessary force.

Mentally, the prince was frantic. He stood with his rope in hand, torn by uncertainty and despair. His mind was blank, frozen by dread. His eyes locked onto Markal with the same desperate protest in which he’d watched Reyd slay Creighton.

Markal drew back his staff—

Ean searched vainly in the blackness of his mind for any flicker of memory, even the slightest notion of how to prevent—

Markal swung—

The moment shocked Ean with pain and dread, fear of loss, anger, vivid protest and myriad emotions balled into one overpowering burst united within a single intent: 
NO!

Into the void flooded the knowledge.

Ean spun the rope overhead, hand to hand, whipping it fiercely as he launched forward. He slammed it down before Isabel with a thunderous
clap
, the stones cracking beneath it an instant before Markal’s wooden staff shattered across its beam.

In the silence that followed, both men stood with chests heaving, their eyes locked heatedly upon one another. Between them stood Ean’s granite staff, hovering an inch in front of Isabel’s nose, and Isabel herself, smiling beatifically.

She waited long enough for the men to calm, for the fiercely protective instinct roused in each of them to settle its wolfish nose once more upon its paws and retreat to watchful silence. Then she said, “Ean, restore your staff to rope.”

Ean did it easily, unworking the pattern he’d so unwittingly impelled upon it. The staff withered into rope again and fell impotently across his clenched fist.

“A perfect example of the First and Fifth Laws at work,” Isabel complimented as she turned to retrieve her own staff from its quiet respite. “Had Markal specified a pattern to use, it would’ve been merely
his
vision, his concept. You would only have used the pattern he chose, Ean, instead of creating your own.” She settled her Merdanti staff beside her as she finished, “As you saw, the patterns each of you picked were different, but the effect was essentially the same.”

Ean watched her with a confusing mixture of emotions. On the one hand, he was relieved beyond measure that her ruse had worked, and he wanted only to cradle her head safely to his chest and exhale his relief. On the other, he was quite desirous of forcefully strangling her for risking herself so readily.

Markal glared like a wolf cornered by a bear, resentful and determinedly unforgiving. “Thank you for that abject lesson, Isabel,” he grated. “Epiphany willing, we can find our own way from here.”

Isabel nodded to him, curtsied slightly by way of farewell, and made her stately way out of the yard. Ean suspected her of smiling the whole way.

Once she’d gone, Ean looked to Markal and swallowed, feeling the aftereffects of plunging adrenaline, that shaking sensation of what
almost
was. “I would rather sever my own throat than go through that again.” 

Markal nodded at him as he took up his broken staff and rejoined it with a look, the split-second firing of intense concentration, a connection of concept and intent forced into a single pulse of
become
. “Then let that be the driving force of your need, Ean val Lorian,” he said as he held the staff before him again at the ready, “and spare us both the dire contemplation of such deed as might’ve occurred this day.”

Thus in agreement did Ean continue the morning’s training.

The remainder of the day went much better. They continued their practice creating similar effects, working the First Law until it was second nature.

As they were breaking their fast at midday, Markal being satisfied with their progress thus far, the wielder set Ean upon the Second Law. “What applies to one applies to all,” Markal explained as they sat beneath the loggia overlooking the practice yard where a table had been placed for their meal, their view framed by draping boughs of bougainvillea. “The pattern that will change a rope to stone—or water, or wood—will equally change stone to sand or seawater to volcanic glass.”

“But not pure glass?” Ean asked as he ate a tart of roasted duck and cherries redolent with tarragon.

“No,” Markal confirmed. “The pattern we work changes the elemental construction of a thing—what it’s made of, but not its form. To change its form, to change the exact arrangement of its parts…that is a very different and far more complex working requiring the simultaneous compulsion of potentially many different patterns at once.”

“Tomorrow’s lesson then,” Ean quipped.

Markal arched a black brow at him. “The Esoterics you so blithely mentioned earlier deal with the form of things,” he advised. “This topic is not even contained in the Laws of Patterning.”

“I get it. It’s difficult.”  Ean grinned. He drank some wine and leveled Markal a thoughtful look. “So the patterns we’re using might change the elemental composition of a thing but not the arrangement of its parts—not its shape or form,” he summarized. “The rope can easily become a staff because the essential arrangement of its parts is already in that shape. Sand and water and stone can easily assume any shape. But blown glass, cloth I suspect—things crafted by human hands require the use of Form to create, which patterns are far more difficult to master and…” he added, as the memory resurfaced, “are therefore advanced concepts discussed in the Esoterics instead of the Laws.”

Markal eyed him critically over his empty plate. “I confess, I am relieved to see that you haven’t lost all your wits in the intervening centuries since our lessons.”

“Did you think dying would make me stupid?”

“You have given me reason to think so, yes,” and when Ean opened his mouth to demand indignantly to know when, Markal preempted him by answering, “
Many
times.”

The next day Markal introduced Ean to the Ninth Law.

Ean met the wielder in one of the palace’s larger gardens. When he arrived, Markal was waiting for him beside a reflecting pool a hundred paces long and twenty wide. Eyeing the pool curiously, he walked around it toward where Markal stood leaning on his staff. “Is one of us going to get wet today?” he asked suspiciously.

Markal gave him a look that implied he could answer this question by himself.

Ean looked down at his clothes and sighed. “Should I just undress now, do you think?”

Markal arched a brow. “Ye of little faith.”

“You’re the one who said I couldn’t change.”

“I never questioned your ability,” the wielder remarked critically, “just your intelligence in applying it.”

Ean let that one go—the man might have a point. “So what’s with the pool?” 

Markal drew himself tall. “The Ninth Law.”

“Which is?”

“What, no instant recitation?”

Ean gave him a sooty look. “I told you, the knowledge comes and goes.”

“Encourage it to linger, won’t you?” Using his staff, he motioned Ean to one end of the pool and himself headed toward the other. As he walked, he used
elae
to enhance his voice to carry across the distance, explaining, “The Ninth Law states:
Do not counter force with force; channel it
.”

“That seems far too simple,” Ean muttered as he took up a position at the narrow end of the pool. He suspected his understanding was lacking, for if he’d come to know one thing thus far about the Laws of Patterning, they were none of them as simple in application as they seemed in theory.

Markal gained his position at the other end of the long pool, which was aqua-clear in the bright sunlight. Then he swept his staff before him and the water surged into a twenty-foot wave.

The sight of the massive wall of water rushing toward him was enough to pierce the veil of Ean’s memory. The pattern appeared as it had in Dannym, as it had in Rethynnea, and he forced the fifth into it. The air solidified around him just as the wave crashed across its dome.

Ean’s heart raced as he watched the wave break around his protective shield. He couldn’t help cringing slightly as the water pounded down, though there was no way for it to reach him. Then it was over. Breathing hard, Ean released
elae
, straightened, and turned to Markal
.

The wielder looked immensely unimpressed.

“What?” Ean demanded with an injured glare.

“In what way,” remarked Markal, “did you apply the Ninth Law?”

“I didn’t counter it with force,” Ean pointed out petulantly.

“Nor did you channel it!” the wielder snapped. “You stood to be the
effect
of my force,
my
cause. You caused
nothing
in return. Even should you have cast the water back toward me in violation of the law, t’would have been preferable to such cowardly abdication of cause.”

His words stung Ean. “It wasn’t like you gave me any time to think about it!” he retorted.

Markal took but one step and was suddenly before him—truly, Ean hadn’t seen him begin forward before he was simply there, nose to nose and glaring fiercely, his dark eyes burning coals searing into Ean. “
What do you think we are playing at here?
” he hissed. “You expect the Malorin’athgul will warn you before they try to claim your life? That they’ll not take advantage of any ineptitude,
any
weakness,
any
hesitation? Think you, perhaps, to find
mercy
in their blade?”

Ean held Markal’s gaze with his own hot glare, though the wielder’s words shamed him with a painful truth. He forced back the wild protest raging to escape him, that desperate instinct toward battle, toward survival, that roused itself at the merest mention of the Malorin’athgul. Too many times had he fallen prey to them, even if remembered only in his dreams, and now instinct was a vicious predator ready to attack at the least provocation.

Perhaps sensing the disparate and tormented emotions warring for purchase in Ean’s heart, Markal said with slightly less criticism, “If I coddle you, if I demand anything less than that which I
know
you are capable of, do you think that will help you succeed?”  He shook his head and turned away, stating resolutely and with grievous regret, “This game is vicious and unyielding, and only the fiercest players survive.”

Ean watched him walk back to his end of the pool and take up his position once more. “Again.”

And onward came the wave.

That time it crashed over Ean, pummeling him into the grass. He pushed up on hands and knees, coughing and sputtering, but he didn’t cast any looks toward the wielder, no flippant remarks. He just got back onto his feet and tried again. And again.

And again.

Around the fifth time of being pounded by the wave, an idea at last came to him. Ean pushed to his feet, dripping and winded but still determined. When Markal again sent the crushing wave, Ean focused his pattern in response. The water met with a wall of force that sent it cascading back toward Markal.

Well, at least it didn’t flatten him.

“You are still thinking of this the wrong way, Ean,” Markal observed after the water had settled back into the pool.

Ean pushed wet hair out of his eyes and took off his dripping shirt, slinging it to the side. The sun felt good on his chilled skin, warming, renewing. “How?”