Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Read online

  “Again, I must demur, Your Grace.” This from Morin d’Hain, who seemed no more than a fair-haired youth amid this gathering of weathered men. “The very idea that Emir Abdul-Basir would write such a letter is unthinkable. The Akkad’s Emir is a pious man. This war is his god’s missive—his mission. He would not surrender any sooner than he would denounce the Wind God Azerjaiman.”

  “Wind gods, desert gods, Azerja—whatever in Epiphany’s name their damnable deities are called—it’s all we’ve heard out of you, man! Have you nothing of consequence to offer this table?”

  “Somethin’ concrete would be helpful,” Loran val Whitney, Duke of Marion and General of the East, muttered in his unmistakable Highland lilt.

  “My lords,” Morin d’Hain returned, unflustered by their criticism, “the world of shadows rarely offers anything of substance, though much is of consequence, if only one is of a mind to assemble the pieces in their proper order.”

  “How dare you insinuate I am lack-witted!” Gareth snarled. He was a big man, completely bald and generally fierce, with a warrior’s build and all the patience of a grizzly roused early from hibernation.

  “It was no slight against you, Gareth,” Gydryn’s Chief Minister Donnal val Amrein muttered. Errodan thought Donnal had a sense of grave conscience about him that could calm even Gareth’s volatile temper. “Let us take a step back and summarize what we know from the reports heard today,” he said to the group. “Morin admits his people uncovered no plot of assassination at this parley—”

  “Which is not to say assuredly that one doesn’t exist,” Morin qualified, earning another black glare from Gareth val Mallonwey.

  “—and that indeed the seal upon the parchment is genuine.”

  “It is Abdul-Basir’s,” Morin confirmed.

  “We know that our ally, Prince Radov, also received a letter requesting parley, and that his, too, was proclaimed genuine by its seal.”

  “Quite so,” Morin admitted. “The seals were not forged—though I submit the prince’s signet could’ve been stolen.”

  “Raine’s truth,” Gareth grumbled with his eyes pinned on the fair-haired younger man, “you’re as duplicitous as that damned Basi, Abdul-Basir. ‘The seal is his, but the letter’s a fake,’” Gareth mimicked. “The letter’s real but it’s probably forged. There is no plot but there’s surely a plot—what use are you to us, man?”

  “Gareth.” The king’s deep contralto seemed the rumble of distant thunder alerting to a coming storm.

  Errodan’s pulse quickened upon hearing his voice. Countless times over the past five years, her loneliness had prodded her to lament—even curse—her love for her king, yet knowing with a pale certainty that she could no more empty her heart of Gydryn val Lorian than she could recall her dead sons from the grave. Betimes she wished she might tear the offending organ from her chest rather than feel such conflicting passions toward her king husband.

  “Morin has provided us with the information we sought of him,” the king told the Duke of Towermount. “It is not the province of the Intelligences to solve, merely to watch, to investigate, and to report. It is then, as Morin has accurately said, upon our shoulders what to make of the facts presented here.”

  “Few enough, those are,” Gareth grumbled.

  “So it may be, yet it is what we have to work with.” He looked to Morin. “Even a pious man may have motives beyond those of his god, Morin; that is, should his god’s needs be fortuitously aligned with his own desires. More importantly, let us not affix our discussion so permanently upon the authenticity of the letter, but rather upon inspecting the peculiarity of its origin.” At this, he looked expectantly to his General of the East, Loran val Whitney, who had only just returned from the front in M’Nador with the fateful letter from Emir Abdul-Basir.

  Errodan drew in her breath and let it out with measured patience. Raine’s truth, it all comes in waves—Ean and Creighton missing, this damnable war, the unexpected request for parley, the corpse in the tunnels…

  Loran’s blue eyes scanned those assembled. The few who had not spoken included two of his own men, both of them unknown to Errodan save that they looked battle-weary; two of Gydryn’s lesser ministers; Morin’s undersecretary; and Gareth’s favorite captain. The only advisor who hadn’t yet spoken—unsurprisingly—was the King’s Truthreader, Vitriam o’Reith.

  “He would like us to think otherwise, but Radov is stalemated,” Loran told the group. He’d changed from his customary mail and armor to attend this gathering, but as he shifted in his chair, Errodan thought he moved as if still encumbered by it. “Abdul-Basir has a new Mage, whose fell power waged on the Khalim Plains sent Radov’s wielders scurryin’ for cover. Rumor has it that this Mage is responsible for the beasts that patrol the skies over the mountain passes and the Sand Sea alike. Between the Mage and those beasts, progress has come to a screamin’ halt.”

  Gareth harrumphed irritably at this, and Morin muttered as he shook his head, “Sundragons. Most unfortunate.”

  Loran cast him a rueful look. “Sending men into any of those venues now is sendin’ them to their deaths—and with nothin’ gained to show for it save well-fed dragons. We’re at an impasse that could go on indefinitely.” Loran exhaled his frustration and shook his head. “The loss of Raku Oasis is devastatin’—the stronghold was Radov’s claim on the Kutsamak Range. When Abdur-Basir took it, he castrated Radov’s forces. Battle remains pitched between Heziz and the Qar’imali, but to what end, I’m nae sure. It gains the prince nothin’ but attrition of the enemy forces.”

  “Radov must retake Raku!” Gareth declared.

  “An’ so he intends,” Loran replied, “but at what cost? While dragons rule the skies, any assault on the oasis is doomed before it begins.”

  “Then order a volley of arrows into the beasts!” Gareth remarked with due impatience, as if the solution was far too simple.

  Morin grunted dubiously, earning a smoldering glare from the Duke of Towermount. “Forgive my outburst, Your Grace,” he apologized then. “But you must understand. Sundragons are fifth-strand creatures.”

  “What of it? Wildlings bleed the same as men.”

  “Wildlings, yes. Avieths, Fhorgs, Whisper Lords, these and many other third-strand races. But Sundragons are not Wildlings, Duke. They are fifth-strand—”

  Gareth waved impatiently at him. “Third-strand, fifth-strand, what in the Maker’s name are you talking about, man?”

  Gydryn regarded his Master of Spies thoughtfully. “You speak of elae,” he said. “The Adept power, what fuels their unusual talents.”

  “Indeed,” Morin confirmed, and his gaze strayed to the only Adept among them, the Truthreader sitting beside his king.

  Vitriam met Morin’s gaze with his own colorless one. “Elae,” the Adept offered, “has five strands.” He raised a wrinkled hand to the group with his open palm facing them. “You understand, this five-stranded approach is merely a means of codifying, for our own purposes, a power which in many ways we Adepts still struggle to understand.” He placed palms together then and interlaced his fingers. “Each Adept is intricately, inherently, and inextricably bound to one particular aspect of elae, what aspect we call a strand. Each strand has its own properties and is governed by its own correlated patterns; and each Adept’s talent is derived from the patterns inherent in these respective strands.

  “Truthreaders, such as I, are bound to the fourth strand, Wildlings to the third, Espials to the second, and Healers to the first—that is, the patterns we work through our native talents are patterns specific to each of those aspects of elae. No strand is so powerful, nor so little understood, however, as the fifth.” He settled hands back in his lap then and fell into silence, looking for all the world as if he’d fallen asleep with this eyes open.

  Errodan frowned at him. The man was like a wind-up toy, doing his dance and then petering out. If you wound him up again, he would only repeat what he’d said the first time, clarifying nothing.

>   Gareth looked equally irritated. “Does any of this have a point?”

  Morin advised, “’Tis a peculiar characteristic of fifth-strand creatures—like the Sundragons that have caused Radov such strife—that they cannot be injured save by weapons of their own devising.”

  Now the light of understanding dawned on Gareth. “You mean like those damnable zanthyrs.”

  “Just so.”

  The Duke’s expression turned pinched. “I hate zanthyrs.”

  Morin continued, “We know so little about the fifth strand’s characteristics. Few living men know how to wield it anymore, and fewer still the number of living Adepts born with the ability to work the fifth strand. Zanthyrs are fifth-strand creatures, but as everyone knows, no one knows much at all about zanthyrs.”

  “But you just said Sundragons were fifth-strand creatures,” Gareth reminded him.

  To which Vitriam intoned in his methodical voice, “The Sundragons were banished to the fringes of the realm three centuries ago by the First Vestal Alshiba Torinin.”

  “If we could move this discussion back from the fringes of legend and myth…” Gydryn remarked at the same time that Gareth demanded, “Then who is this Mage to recall the damnable creatures?”

  After a moment’s pause and a hesitant glance at his king, Loran took up his report again. “’Tis obvious that to remove the Sundragons, we must eliminate the man who controls them,” he said wearily. “As one can surmise, however, this endeavor poses its own set of…challenges.”

  “What of Veneisea?” Gareth pressed. “Where in bloody Tiern’aval is General d’Lacourte and his Maker-forsaken army?”

  “Trapped on the far side of the River Cry,” Loran answered.

  “Still?” Gareth protested incredulously.

  Morin leaned back in his chair and folded hands in his lap. He frowned as he noted, “There are rumors that Abdul-Basir has a Converted among his elite staff, a brilliant tactician who thinks like a Northman.”

  Loran shrugged. “So t’would seem.”

  Donnal val Amrein inquired then, “Loran, is it accurate in any way to say that our forces have the upper hand?”

  Loran exhaled heavily as he shook his head. “No—assuredly not.”

  “Am I wrong in thinking that under current circumstances, the Akkad could hold Raku—and thereby the Kutsamak—indefinitely?”

  “No. ’Tis Raine’s truth.” This time Loran sounded bitter.

  Donnal glanced at his king before slowly remarking, “I believe I understand His Majesty’s mind, then, in asking: if for all intents and purposes the Akkad has the upper hand in this war, why is Emir Abdul-Basir requesting parley instead of demanding Radov’s surrender?”

  Gydryn lifted his gaze to Errodan upon this utterance, as if putting the question to her directly. The look in his eyes made her grow cold.

  Her firstborn son had been murdered at just such a parley, some seven years ago. At the time, Dannym wasn’t even involved in Radov’s war. The mystery of her firstborn son’s death still haunted her, plaguing her dreams as frequently as his loss consumed her heart.

  Whyever indeed, she wondered, knowing they had good cause to suspect anything that came from Abdul-Basir.

  The door opened to admit Gydryn’s secretary Quinn, who walked quickly to the king’s side, bent and delivered a message. Gydryn rose and pressed palms flat upon the table. “Whatever the letter’s intent, we must decide today how to respond to it. I leave that task to you, gentlemen.” With that he followed Quinn out of the room.

  Errodan watched him go, wondering what could’ve pulled him from this task, only knowing it was not news of Ean. The men at the table resumed their circular debate, and Errodan, in the quiet of her turbulent thoughts, resumed her own chant, fueled by fear.

  Three sons! Three sons lost!

  M’Nador & The Akkad Emirates

  Ten

  ‘Failure is the province of the craven and the dead.’

  – The Vestal Björn van Gelderan to one of his generals during the Sunset Battle of Gimlalai, circa 597aV

  Trell’s horse snorted and shifted beneath him as a gust of hot wind surged up from the desert valley, flattening the sparse grass that grew like wisps of hair between jagged, sun-scorched rocks. The wind brought with it the smell of heat, baked earth and sand, and a gnawing apprehension that was as unwelcome as it was strange.

  Trell turned in the saddle and focused grey eyes on the ridge at his back. The view reminded him of another ridge, this one lording over the rushing, charcoal waters of the River Cry; a lonesome ridge where he and Graeme, his second-in-command, had held off the entire Veneisean army with little more than fifty men. That had been two moons ago. Now Graeme was dead, the Emir’s forces occupied Raku Oasis, and Trell was a celebrated hero.

  Gentling his stallion with a pat on the neck, Trell looked back to the view of the desert valley and the creatures flying above its vast sea of dunes—sleek, golden creatures with hides like molten bronze. He squinted at them beneath the duck-billed brim of a dun cap, which was making a valiant attempt to shade his eyes from the sun. But this was the M’Nador desert; the sands were as bright as the day, the blue sky as parched as the land, and an ever-present glare made a man’s eyes tired before their time.

  If only you were here to see this, Graeme… Trell thought as he watched the gilded beasts soaring high above the sands. They flew with sublime grace, their enormous shadows floating across the dunes in unworldly silence. Trell stood in awe at the breadth of their wingspan, at the golden-fire hue of their hides and the way their scales glinted in the long rays of the afternoon, sparkling so brightly as to leave spots before his eyes.

  And are Nadori soldiers standing upon the walls of Taj al’Jahanna on the far side of the Sand Sea watching you also? Surely my enemies are no less entranced than I.

  Though no doubt, the Nadoriin would be working feverishly to find a means of destroying the creatures rather than appreciating them for their mystique and purity.

  Sundragons.

  They’d been summoned back from the icy, dark corners of the realm by the Emir’s Mage, summoned to do his bidding and eager to please—if the stories were true—in exchange for their reprieve.

  “Ghastly things aren’t they?” a familiar voice commented from behind.

  Trell glanced over his shoulder to find his friend Ware reining in his stallion. A tall Agasi, Ware lost no height sitting the saddle of his lean desert horse. He was darkly bearded and generally hairy, but his blue eyes displayed an intelligence Trell had found common in men of the Empire; the Agasi were an educated people, be them prince, blacksmith or sellsword.

  Looking past Ware, Trell noted that the rest of his men, a dozen Converted in all, had descended the ridge and were dismounting now. Soon it would be time.

  “They’re beautiful.” Trell turned back to the distant dragons with a look of appreciation on his sharp-featured face. “I wish Graeme could’ve seen them.”

  Ware grunted skeptically and flicked at a horsefly with his reins. “I don’t know. They’re fierce creatures. Sheik Am’aal was nearly bitten by one of the things when he got too close to its tail. The creature snapped its head around with the speed of a striking viper, and if it weren’t for the Sheik’s agility at ducking—no doubt from all those arrows he’s made a habit of avoiding—he’d have made the beast a tasty snack.”

  “Reasons not to get too curious, I suppose.” Trell had never cared for Sheik Am’aal. The man was a consummate philanderer; all those arrows he’d avoided tended to be from well and rightly-offended husbands. “A fierce beauty then,” he conceded, “but beauty nonetheless.”

  Wearing a look of curiosity mixed with amusement, Ware broke into a crooked grin. “What are you doing among us lowbreeds, Trell of the Tides? You ought to be composing poetry in a white tower somewhere, you and your ‘beauty’ this and ‘glorious’ that and general high-minded musings—oh, don’t think I’m criticizing you.” He grinned at Trell’s faintly indignant
look. “Not a one of us would challenge your tactical brains, but you seem to me a learned man, a man of philosophy, not one of blunt violence and greed like so many of these Converted,” and he jerked his head toward the company of mercenaries chatting rakishly behind him.

  Hearing this, said men offered several scatological culinary recommendations, to which Ware returned his ideas of what they could do with their suggestions. It was a friendly exchange.

  Ignoring the banter, Trell allowed a slight smile. I do, do I? All of his men knew that he remembered nothing of his past prior to awaking in the Emir’s palace five years ago, and friends and acquaintances alike were often sharing their opinions of his origins—sometimes in jest, sometimes in sincerity. Trell didn’t mind either way. On a rare occasion, someone made a comment that almost triggered a memory, and he lived for those almost moments—yearned for them, in fact.

  Ware was watching him with a keen look in his blue eyes, as if Trell was far more intriguing than Sundragons. “You could’ve been a nobleman’s son sent from Tregarion or Calgaryn to study abroad, but tragedy struck and you wound up here.”

  Trell smiled ruefully. “Triad cities, those two. But am I from a Triad kingdom, do you think?” He turned to Ware with a hint of torment in his grey eyes. “The Emir likes to say I floated in from the Fire Sea, a gift from the Wind God.” He gave Ware a dubious look. “Even if it is true, the Fire Sea borders many kingdoms. I’ve the same dark hair and coloring as that Barian Stormborn of the Forsaken Lands, and the height and features like those merchants you and I dealt with in Kroth. Some say I even have the look of your own blood: Agasi—a moonchild.”

  “Just so,” Ware admitted with his eyes pinned on his younger friend. “You could be any of these, Trell of the Tides.”

  The Emir’s men had named him Man of the Tides until he woke from the fever that had nearly claimed his life remembering little more than his given name. After that, they’d tacked on Trell to humor him.