The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (96 page)

If the young man had mentored with such filth as Viernan hal’Jaitar or Dore Madden, however, he was sure to have been taught the same falsehoods.

Rhakar smiled.

Then he summoned the second strand and crossed the node.

“Therein lies the challenge of the game—that men are free to choose. That you cannot always predict what a man will do.”

- Dhábu’balaji’şridanaí,

He Who Walks The Edge of The World

Kjieran lay
in the surf of dawn’s high tide. Powerful waves thundered down across his naked body, washing him repeatedly in scouring sand. While he lay at the edge of the Fire Sea, the sky had brightened from dusk to powder blue, clouds fading from rose-gold into downy white. The flesh of his hands was pruned, his shoulder-length dark hair a ragged, tangled mess of weeds and sand, but the crashing waves had scourged the necrotic flesh from his legs and hips, and now his lower body shone blackly each time the waves dissipated.

Kjieran gazed down at it in morbid fascination. Without the obscuring tissue, the ropy muscles of his thighs bulged grotesquely. What was he made of now that this stony flesh, dark as onyx, flexed and extended though no life ran through his veins? Had such monsters as he was becoming ever existed in legend, perhaps in the Age of Fable, when Warlocks from the Shadow Realms regularly made love to the dual-headed sorceresses of Vest? Looking at his legs and hips, now completely transformed, Kjieran could imagine himself a fortnight hence, once the rest of his body had succumbed to Dore’s Pattern of Changing. The vision made him shudder.

Deeming himself finally well-scrubbed, Kjieran stood and dove into the surf. He swam out past the rocks to let the deep water cleanse the sand from his hair and ears and cleanse his spirit of the gruesome foreboding that so often held him in thrall these days. His legs were heavy in the water, and he couldn’t float as once he’d done. But he didn’t tire of swimming, no matter how strong the current, and the enveloping water was a comfort to his battered soul.

Kjieran often thought of the Prophet now. The more his body succumbed to Dore’s pattern, the stronger he felt Bethamin’s bond clutching him. A
 perpetual awareness of the Prophet was growing within him, and though the man had so far honored his promise not to invade Kjieran’s thoughts, still Kjieran was constantly aware of him in subtle ways. Every day Kjieran grew to better understand the Prophet’s mind—
how
he thought, if not why—and every day Kjieran became more certain that there could be no escape from him.

As he swam in the cold sea, Kjieran marveled that he clung yet to life at all. If the Prophet’s theories were true, he should long ago have embraced death. Yet something within him drove him to survive, some strength of will that demanded he endure.

Purpose held him—the driving need to solve the mystery of Sebastian’s death and Trell’s disappearance, the resolute conviction that he must save his king. This purpose, this promise…these ideas chained Kjieran to life more surely than the Prophet’s binding ever could.

Finding himself far from shore, Kjieran dove beneath the waves and turned onto his back, letting his raven hair float freely around his face as he sank ever deeper. Looking up at the sparkling surface, he felt himself drifting slowly downwards until his feet struck the sandy bottom and the sun shone as a diffuse flame wavering far above. It felt strange to anchor in the sea floor and need no breath, hear no heartbeat, feel no painful burning in his chest nor any pressure in his ears. He might’ve stayed there forever with naught but the sound of the whispering sands for company, letting the tiny sea creatures make their homes in his hair, crustaceans attaching to his stone body—or at least until the Prophet claimed his will and drew him forth…until there was no other end but the death of his soul among Bethamin’s devouring lust.

Yet he could not bring himself to give in yet to death.

Always within him sparked the tiniest fear of leaving this life—even the horrific life left to him. Certainly the ability to embrace death would’ve come as a relief, and yet the contemplation of death was in itself more intensely terrifying than any pain he had yet endured.

One would think this proved that a man strove for survival, not death, as his ultimate end. Yet Kjieran knew, because he
knew
him now, that the Prophet would never see it that way.

The sun shone high by the time he walked out of the sea.

Looking down at his onyx legs, he felt half sea-creature himself, some Wildling spawned in the darkling deep. His tunic and pants lay where he’d left them, warming on a rock. He’d taken to wearing the Nadori
shalwar-kameez
for their ease of movement as much as for the way the loose silk hid what he was becoming.

He faced a long walk back to the palace from his secluded beach, which was gained by way of a treacherous path no sane man would attempt. Time enough to decide upon his next course of action.

Since his foray into the Assassin’s Guild, Kjieran had barely dared venture forth into the palace. He’d stayed far from the Court of Fifty-Two Arches—which was now watched day and night by hal’Jaitar’s spies—and had spent much time in his rooms scratching and twitching and being generally miserable, worrying over Trell’s state and what would become of him once he fell into hal’Jaitar’s hands.

His inability to reach his king with any sort of warning greatly distressed him, and his visits to the Prophet’s mind were growing ever more unbearable. He’d received no notice from hal’Jaitar detailing when or where he was expected to perform the assassination of his king, and he wondered if he actually ever would get such a missive. More likely the man was preparing his forces to descend upon Kjieran at the first sign of aggression.

It bothered him most that he’d heard nothing from hal’Jaitar in any capacity—especially after the scene in the Hall. The wielder remained suspiciously silent, and his usual spies had been recalled from watching Kjieran. There was a chance, of course, that hal’Jaitar was still occupied searching for the man who’d infiltrated his sacred sanctum, that he didn’t know it had been Kjieran and had his forces deployed to this end. But somehow Kjieran didn’t think so. He feared that hal’Jaitar suspected him, that he was only lying in wait, the viper coiled for its retaliatory strike.

Kjieran’s hands twitched as he walked.

It was a stony path he followed along the arid cliffs north of the palace, and all the while he traveled, his right hand clutched his amulet, safe beneath his tunic. It was his only comfort, his last tie to a humanity that had abandoned him. He hardly noticed he was holding onto it until once he saw his shadow. After that, he forced his hands to his sides and kept them there lest he draw undue attention to the talisman.

He saw the Ascendant while still on the road leading down to the palace’s north gate. He couldn’t be sure if he could see so clearly due to a new sharpness of sight or merely because the man stood in the sun with the strong daylight glaring off his torc and wrist cuffs as brightly as across his shaved pate.

By the time Kjieran could make out the spiraling tattoo on the Ascendant’s forehead, the man had descended from the perch he’d been sharing with one of the pair of limestone lions gracing either side of the palace gates and was standing squarely in the middle of the road, forcing all others entering or exiting to veer around him and earning black looks from the palace guards.

Guessing that the Ascendant had been waiting for him but not the reason why, Kjieran took the man by the arm and pulled him from the road. The maneuver narrowly avoided their imminent collision with a wagon laden with carpets upon which sat four black-eyed Nadoriin in crimson-chequered
keffiyehs
. None of the men had seemed the least bit squeamish about running them down.

Standing at the side of the road, the Ascendant glared at Kjieran as if affronted by his attempt to save him from injury. “I’ve stood here for hours looking for you!” the man groused. He was hairy as a bear and slightly paunched, with a fold of tanned fat hanging over the heavy gold chain that secured his
shendyt,
that tri-folded kilt of linen that all Ascendants wore. His forehead shone with the spiraling tattoo of the
aggreitha
, the researchers and scholars who acted as the Prophet’s scribes.

“How did you know I would be coming this way, Ascendant?” Kjieran inquired uneasily. He clasped his twitching hands behind his back.

“Didn’t. The Brother Noll’s been watching for you at the South Gate, too. At least he’s standing in the shade.”  Settling Kjieran a suspicious glare, he demanded then, “What business for the Prophet possibly drew you north, Envoy? There’s nothing but rock and sea for miles.”

“When last I checked my business was not also yours, Ascendant. What is it you want?”

The man glared daggers at him. Ascendants were ill used to being challenged—the best of them were naught but low-breed peasants whose innate hatred of authority led to its inexcusable abuse as soon as they were given any. These were men who
chose
to embrace Bethamin’s doctrine, and Kjieran had yet to meet a one with some redeeming quality. “Marquiin Yveric sent us in search of you,” the Ascendant grumbled by way of particular complaint. “That was ere dawn, and it’s been hours since. I expect he may be dead by now—
Lo but the Prophet sayeth it so!
”

Kjieran’s hands twitched behind his back, this time with a violent desire to choke the insolent man, but he replied only, “Take me to him at once.”

The Ascendant gave him a doleful look and remarked under his breath, “Tis a fool to order twice what a man’s already been sent to do.”  He turned and stalked back through the palace gates.

Kjieran followed, feeling turbulent and fractious now. Yveric’s possible deterioration concerned him as much as the constant fear of hal’Jaitar’s spies. He remained ever conscious of the thoughts of others, too, knowing that happenstance alone might put him near someone who had information of Trell’s whereabouts.

But even with so many swirling concerns clamoring for attention, Kjieran’s concentration was repeatedly interrupted by the brand on the Ascendant’s back.

They all had them, and Kjieran had seen its like many times. It was a twisting, thorny pattern as like unto darkness as billowing curls of smoke or the plunge of Black Krinling oil into clear water, a malevolent yet meaningless pattern—at least in its lack of ability to harness
elae.

Yet looking at it now through eyes seasoned by a bond to the pattern’s maker, Kjieran saw something new in its construction. Far from meaningless, the pattern encapsulated what seemed the Prophet’s entire doctrine. Within its swirls were tomes of knowledge, yet the truth it concealed—or revealed to those who understood its language—was so antipathetic to
elae
that Kjieran’s Adept mind had been incapable of recognizing even a shadow of its existence until now.

Suddenly the darkness of the pattern chilled him, and he forced his eyes to look away and not return to it.

Kjieran was humming with agitation by the time they reached Yveric’s room. He felt an unexpected kinship with the Marquiin, and though he’d known the man was near death’s door the last time they spoke, he didn’t want him to pass into the beyond without saying goodbye.

It was to his great relief when he knocked and after an uneasy moment heard Yveric call for entrance. Kjieran opened the door and saw Yveric lying on the floor before the open screens, his body covered in blankets. The sun had not yet fully reached his room, but Yveric clearly lay in wait for it. His back lay to Kjieran, and the Marquiin didn’t turn but said only in a hoarse whisper, “Soon, Truthreader. Soon I am gone.”

Kjieran came slowly inside and closed the door. “Is there anything I can get you?” he asked. Then he grimaced at the wretched futility of the question.

Yveric laughed wetly, a whetstone grinding against itself. “What could you get me?” As Kjieran neared, he saw the man’s lips and teeth were stained with blood.

Sitting down in view of Yveric’s gaze, Kjieran leaned against the wall and hugged knees to his chest. His legs were stone beneath the silk of his pants, like the Prophet’s marble flesh, and inside he felt barren and cold. “I don’t know what you believe, Yveric,” Kjieran observed tonelessly, disheartened by the man’s deteriorating condition. “Would you be offended if I prayed that we should meet again in the Returning?”

Yveric coughed violently, a spasm that lasted many minutes and brought a surge of blood into the cloth he held to his mouth. When he had recovered but shallow breath, the Marquiin pinned his unsettling ebon eyes on Kjieran. They were alert and lucid and immensely disturbing. “You don’t see it, even still?” 

Kjieran shook his head. “See what?”

“Once the Fire cuts you off from
elae,
the line is severed forever. There
is no Returning
, Truthreader. There is no new life as an Adept.”  

Never had Kjieran imagined such an incomprehensibly vicious end. Always in the back of his mind he’d believed there would be some future life for him…for whatever part of him moved on. But Yveric’s words resonated with too much truth to doubt.