The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (99 page)

“I know only what the wielder Işak intimated,” Trell answered, giving hal’Jaitar a smile full of promised retribution, “but now you’ve confirmed it. Thank you.”

In the angry silence that followed, Viernan returned the twitch of a smile. “Well played, Prince of Dannym. You take the point.” He stared at Trell in silence then, holding the prince’s gaze, two players regarding each other across the King’s board. Eventually Viernan’s smile returned, wider this time, revealing long teeth yellowed with age. He indicated the tea service on the table between them. “Let us take tea together as allies are wont to do.”

“Allies who try to kill each other.” Trell eyed the tea skeptically. “I think I’ll pass.”

Viernan speared him with a narrow look full of venom. “You are too like your older brother. He, too, was insolent. He, too, thought himself beyond my reach.”

Trell stared back in silence, only the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching. He knew Viernan hal’Jaitar’s reputation—the Emir’s forces had been battling Viernan’s wielders for months. But in that moment, Trell didn’t care that the man was insanely dangerous, or that his gold rings spoke of untold powers. All he knew was that this man had stolen years of his life
and
apparently murdered his brother Sebastian. For that, he had to pay.

Trell bent to rest elbows on knees, the better to meet Viernan’s glare. “To think,” he remarked in a low voice, wolf-grey eyes pinned unerringly upon the wielder, his calm demeanor belying the shock he felt, “…all this time…everyone suspected the Khurds were to blame for our deaths, when it was you.” He shook his head as if with admiration, but he was dangerously angry. “Score a point for Viernan hal’Jaitar.” 

The wielder said nothing, but he didn’t need to, for Trell had barely begun to consider the matter when more pieces clicked into place. “Of course. Now I see,” he murmured, casting Viernan another appreciative nod full of rancor. “Let us return eight years into our mutual past. The lingering war with the Akkad has interrupted Radov’s mining operations in the Kutsamak, and the royal coffers are growing spare. The Congress of Princes is fractious and ever with an eye towards overthrow—Radov would never go to them for aid. He knows he can’t rouse a mercenary force large enough to defeat the Akkad, so he must call upon the Triad pact.” Trell pressed a finger to his lips, adding then, “But how to convince his neighborly monarchs to help? Radov needs more than a token force to defeat the Seventeen Tribes. He needs the bulk of Dannym’s army.” He raised his finger as if with sudden inspiration. “Of course! What better way to secure his allies’ support than by assassinating their children and blaming his enemy?” He cast Veirnan a look of merciless accusation. “The essence of war is deception, eh, Consul?”

Though the wielder’s gaze in reply to this speech was chill, he woul
d not be baited into another confession. Abruptly he stood and walked around the room, his hands locked behind his back. “Işak’getirmek,” he said then, glancing briefly at Trell. “What happened between the two of you? He defeats you in battle and suddenly you are compatriots, sharing secrets in the dark?”

“Işak?” Trell said, sitting back with a baffled frown. “What do you care about him?”

Viernan spun with a sharp glare. “You will answer my questions, Trell val Lorian, or be asked them again by his Highness’s Questioner, who is not so patient!”

Trell affected a careless shrug, but the effort cost him, as pain speared through his side. He growled through clenched teeth, “We barely spoke at all.”

“Yet you manage to uncover truths we’ve effectively hidden for half a decade!”  Viernan swung heatedly to face him. “You will tell me
now
,” he hissed, pointing a finger and stalking toward him, “where have you been these past years? How did you survive?”

Trell felt the compulsion impinge upon his mind, a fiery poker t
o his thoughts. It assaulted his stomach with a sickly heat, but as he’d been fed little for days, there was nothing to react to it. And he’d fought worse in Işak’s patterns. Much worse. “As I told your men,” he hissed, reflexively hunching his shoulders against the mental attack, “I remember nothing of my past.”  

“
Lies!
” Viernan waved an airy hand while his pattern deepened, becoming a fiery iron fist in Trell’s intestines, a forge consuming his brain. “
You
would have me believe you just appeared with the black-sheep cousin—what’s his name…Fynnlar—with no memory of your life? Why not claim you were in T’khendar and flew back here in the arms of a Shade!”

Trell doubled over from the force of Viernan’s compulsion, but he wouldn’t submit. “Can they do that?” he inquired tightly, fiercely, fighting the pattern that sought to own his thoughts with everything that he was. He cast the wielder a sharp smile through gritted teeth.

Viernan gazed broodingly at him in silence—possibly not a good sign. Abruptly the compulsion ceased, and the pain vanished as instantly as it had come. “So you will not easily divulge the truth,” the wielder surmised. He started pacing again. “Therefore you must be protecting someone. But is it yourself…or another?”

Trell found he’d been nearly flat on the sofa and pushed himself up again somewhat shakily. He fixed his gaze on the wielder and reflected on the irony in this situation.

Had he been defeated on the lines, abducted in battle, this confrontation would’ve had its place in his life…but he was not there as a leader of the Converted, hostage of war—they knew nothing of that. No, he was there but for the happenstance of a royal birth.

And yet, Trell recognized that Viernan hal’Jaitar
was
his enemy in every way—it wasn’t the Nadoriin at large, nor the Saldarians…perhaps not even Radov. Viernan stood behind this conflict.

Trell shook his head, amazed at the path of Fate. All of his years…years of amnesia, years of battle, his recent quest…everything that had come before—all of his conflicts and choices—they had still brought him to this seemingly inevitable confrontation. The real kicker was that the Mage had foreseen it—of this, Trell was certain. He’d glimpsed but a shadow of what the Mage knew in that moment before parting with Alyneri, but the section of the pattern he had seen…  

“The truth is coming, Viernan,” Trell said quietly. Somehow he knew that events continued to unfold in the world around him, the Mage’s leviathan plan moving inexorably forward. “How long do you think you can keep up this charade? My father must be in Tal’Shira by now. Care to wager on whether he’ll keep his army in Taj al’Jahanna once he learns of your betrayal?”

The wielder arched a brow. “What makes you think he will?”

Trell barked a laugh. “How can you imagine he won’t?” He leaned back slowly on the couch, the better to support his aching side. “That will be a problem, won’t it?” He  pressed a thoughtful finger to his lips. “How will you ever retake Raku without the Dannish army? Radov’s forces are spread too thin. The Emir has too many, and his Converted fight like banshees—unlike those Saldarians.” He clicked his tongue in mock sympathy. “Not turning out so well is it, that pact with the Prophet? Maniacs
can
be unpredictable—”

“As amusing as this conversation is, prince of Dannym,” the wielder interrupted with a withering smile, “we grow short on time.”

“Yes, I suppose
you
do,” Trell agreed, and all pretence vanished from his manner, revealing only the solid core of determination beneath.

Viernan’s dark eyes were coldly calculating. “You are too intelligent for your own good, Trell val Lorian.” 

“So it would seem,” Trell agreed soberly. For all his cavalier demeanor, he knew what would be awaiting him in the shadowed, soundproof cells of Radov’s dungeon.

Viernan waved his hand, and the doors at the back of the room opened. Trell guessed their meeting was over. As the Saldarian approached with clinking irons in hand, Viernan cast Trell one final look of searing curiosity. “How
did
you survive?” he asked again, shaking his head.

The Saldarian grabbed Trell’s arms and wrenched them behind his back.

Bent nearly double as the big man clasped the irons once more around his wrists, the prince looked up under his brows. “Fate chose a different role for me.” 

“Strange,” the wielder remarked, his eyes black orbs of malice. “For a favored child of Fate, Cephrael’s hand seems to have dropped you right back where you started.”

The Saldarian jerked Trell upright, and he tossed his dark hair from his eyes as he replied with a wry smile, “If it was Cephrael returned me to your doorstep, Viernan, you can be certain He had his reasons.” 

Then the Saldarian was shoving the hood over Trell’s head and dragging him away, but not before he noted with deep satisfaction the shocked expression on Viernan’s face.

“If you want a pattern to be eternal, unbreakable, irreversible, you bind it with the fifth. Love often feels the same.”

- The First Vestal Alshiba Torinin

His Majesty
Gydryn val Lorian paced at one end of the soapstone-paneled hall with hands clasped behind his back. Six of the king’s remaining knights—those who hadn’t gone with Duke val Whitney—stood near the wall with gauntleted hands resting on the hilts of their swords. They had all been waiting for far too long, which only helped the king to summon real heat behind his tone when at last Viernan hal’Jaitar walked through the doors.

“I will stand for no more of this, hal’Jaitar,” Gydryn growled, turning at once to face the wielder as the latter strode sinuously across the hall, each step stirring the voluminous silk of his ebon robes.

“Pray tell, no more of what, Majesty?” asked the wielder, smiling benignly.

“Of Radov’s stalling,” the king answered with blunt disapproval. “And where
is
your prince? He is conspicuously absent to a meeting called with him directly.”

“A touch of fever, Majesty. He sends his gravest regards…and me…to attend your needs.”

“My
needs?
I’ve been here for a score of days and still there is no word from your prince on when this parley shall commence. My kingdom suffers constant threat of danger, Viernan—
grave
threat from Stefan, Duke of Morwyk. I came at Radov’s urgent request, only to sit and await his pleasure. My men endure this stifling heat and the ever-corrosive effects of boredom while you and your prince
deliberate
?” Gydryn brandished his hand with outright fury. “I will not abide it, Viernan hal’Jaitar!”

“Your Majesty, I must confess his Highness, too, is most aggrieved by the delay,” Viernan returned, though his dark eyes were all too reminiscent of a predator’s watchful gaze. He motioned to a low table surrounded by four low-backed chairs, where a tea service had been set. “Won’t you take tea while I explain what little I know?”

The King eyed him disagreeably. “Very well.” He walked to join the wielder and took a seat across from him. Viernan poured tea into two glass cups rimmed in gold, and raised his to the king. “May this war find a swift and sure end upon the blade of our alliance.”

Gydryn took up his cup to make the toast, but he lowered it again as Viernan drank. “Speak then,” rumbled the king. “I would know what keeps us from pursuing the purpose of my journey.”

If Viernan noticed the king’s untouched tea, he did not remark upon it. “Whispers, your Majesty,” he advised warily instead. He set down his glass and sat back in his seat, crossing one knee and clasping hands around its bony protrusion. “Whispers of plots and intrigues, of assassination.”

Gydryn frowned. “Threats against your prince?”

“We are unsure as yet of the target,” Viernan murmured, “but it forestalls progress while we investigate. However, preparations for the parley continue. I myself was not too long ago upon the site inspecting the progress. Tents have been erected, supplies loaded in…all stands ready but for any and all possible steps to ensure the safety of the parley’s members.” Though he smiled at this utterance, there was ne’er a shadow of amiable intent in Viernan hal’Jaitar. His repertoire of smiles was but a cache of deadly needles, each focused to draw the blood of a different emotion through the veins of conversation. “Too well does my prince remember how ill-prepared we were when last we attempted to reason with Abdul-Basir,” Viernan noted then, his smile sharp and cutting, “…and how much was lost as a result.”

Gydryn’s expression darkened at the reference to his first-born son, Sebastian, whose life had been claimed by Basi assassins in the aforementioned meeting—or so hal’Jaitar certainly expected him to believe.

Rather than rising to this taunt—for it was surely an attempt to rouse his ire, that hal’Jaitar might learn something of the king—Gydryn stared fixedly at the wielder. “I mislike the ills I find in your prince’s domain, hal’Jaitar,” he observed, his wolf-grey eyes fierce in accusation. “Saldarians running rampant, Ascendants spreading their doctrine of filth uncensored and unchecked.”  He leaned toward hal’Jaitar, setting his untouched tea upon the table as he remarked, “If I didn’t know better, Viernan, I might be inclined to imagine your prince has formed a pact with the Prophet Bethamin.”

Viernan’s smile was unkind. “How foolish you must think us. Naught but dull-witted heathens lacking in couth and culture.”