Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 17

  The woman chuckled. Her voice was low, sultry. Exotic. “You have let me win again is more the truth,” she corrected. “Come here, Loghain.” She tossed both her dark blades into the grass and motioned him over. He went like an obedient child. She laid her hands upon his chest in an intimate manner, long fingers splayed, and closed her eyes. Trell drew in his breath, guessing at once that the woman was an Adept—that much at least, if not more. A Healer? And a warrior too? Trell decided he would have to be very careful in this woman’s company.

  A good rule all around, actually.

  The pair separated. “Dama, Vaile,” Loghain thanked her. Trell saw no difference in the cuts on his chest, but an Adept’s Healing worked on a deeper level, encouraging the body to heal itself. No doubt by tomorrow the welts would be gone.

  Vaile touched Loghain’s cheek endearingly. “Quor ito a’dama, Loghain,” she replied in a purring sort of way.

  The Wildling turned, nodded to Trell, and walked back toward camp, vanishing within the forest.

  The woman came toward Trell. She stood taller than him in her heeled boots. “I am Vaile,” she said in the Triad common tongue, extending her hand in a northern, and curiously masculine, fashion.

  Trell clasped wrists with her. “Trell,” he replied, trying very hard not to look directly at her breasts, or more specifically at the protrusion of her hearty nipples as they pressed wetly against the sheer silk of her bodice. She fights like a warrior, speaks like a Northman, and dresses like a sultan’s mistress…

  Vaile gave him a sly half-smile full of quiet amusement. Her eyes were unbelievably green, greener than the grass of the hillside, or the fir trees, or any green he’d ever encountered. She walked over to a boulder half covered in moss and picked up a bundle of cloth. As she let it unfold, Trell saw it was the bottom half of her dress. Re-affixing the skirt around her waist, she then retrieved her blades from the grass. Straightening with both in hand, she offered, “Walk with me?”

  Trell was happy to oblige.

  What strange company I’m keeping, he mused as they headed off together through the trees. Strange company the Mage keeps, too. There was something about these new acquaintances that made Trell very aware of his humanity—or at least of his mortality, which was an odd sort of thing.

  So, he decided, trusting his instincts more than he trusted his eyes, neither Balaji nor Vaile are human. What then? More Wildlings like the Whisper Lord? He began a running list of possibilities in his mind.

  One seemed to fit right away, and Trell turned to Vaile—only to find her watching him with an almost predatory look in her emerald eyes. Trell instinctively drew back a little. “My lady? Have I offended you?”

  The look vanished as Vaile laughed. Her voice was haunting in mirth, almost like a purr. “You take me for a lady,” she murmured. “How delightful!” She shifted her swords into one hand, then reached behind her head with the other and began unworking the knot at the nape of her neck. Soon her mass of raven hair tumbled down her back. “It seems the Mage has taken a liking to you, Trell,” she observed then. “You have the gods’ own luck it would seem.”

  Or at least the blessing of a god, Trell thought. He adjusted the strap of his pack across his shoulder and asked, “Why do you say that?”

  “Surviving cave-in and river and cold,” she answered, giving him a strange look. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Trell broke into a crooked grin. “Oh…yes, of course. I just thought for a moment you meant because—”

  “And now the Mage has taken a liking to you,” she repeated, grinning as she finished his sentence for him, “and that is lucky too.”

  They reached a running brook whose water seemed the color of the wet river stones that lined its basin. Vaile knelt at the creek’s edge and splashed some water on her face and neck, then cupped her hands and drank.

  Trell asked as he waited, “You are a Healer?”

  Between sips, she replied into her hands, “You saw me heal, Trell.” Lifting her eyes to him, she inquired with a knowing smile, “Why do you ask a question that has already been answered?”

  Trell regarded her with a pensive frown. “Perhaps I am not so quick-witted when I find myself in such…unusual company.”

  She stood and pinned him with a challenging gaze. “Do you mean to say I am unusual?” Her bodice was now fully soaked down the front, rendering it nearly translucent.

  Trell didn’t attempt to hide his eyes as they admired her, nor his approving smile. “I think you are most unusual, my lady.”

  She laughed. “And you are charming—for a Northman.”

  Her statement unexpectedly pinned him fast. “A Northman,” he repeated, his surprise all too evident in his tone. “What makes you say that?”

  She settled him an assessing look, a very feline gaze through half-lidded eyes. Instead of answering his question, she offered her hand…and a smile. “Come.”

  Her very touch tingled on his skin. Images of the two of them entwined in the Mage’s massive ebony bed flashed to mind. Fast reining in his desires, Trell reminded himself of the things he’d already seen this Vaile do; if she was a wielder, she might be spell-casting him, which made him twice as wary as he held her hand.

  As soon as they were walking again, following the cool stream back toward the camp, Vaile pulled his hand in front of her and turned it to study his palm.

  “And what future do you read there, my lady?”

  She glanced over at him beneath a fall of her silken hair, a pair of intense green eyes staring among the strands. In fact, the image reminded Trell so strongly of a panther whose path he’d crossed in the jungles of Bemoth that he snatched his hand from her grip and reached for his sword all in the same reflexive instant.

  Vaile stopped at his side and cast him a quizzical look. “What do you fear?” she asked in that low voice so echoic of a purr. “Not me, surely.”

  Trell considered her. This was no mere woman to treat like a lady of the court. This woman was dangerous. She exuded threat with every graceful motion. “I think you are much to be feared,” he answered.

  “You are a guest here, Trell,” Vaile said, “just as I am, just as are Balaji and Loghain and the others you have yet to meet. Why would you think I intend you harm?”

  Trell kept his distance, his fingers wrapped firmly around the hilt of his sword. “Do you?”

  At first her eyes widened, but then she fell into quiet laughter. The sound was honey to his ears, making him want to taste the mouth that made such a sound, to press his mouth against the throat that produced it. Oh, she was bewitching all right.

  Vaile settled him a shadowy smile and tossed a silken strand of hair from her cheek. “Not at the moment.”

  Perhaps it was her candor that relaxed him, but Trell managed a slight smile and released his sword. “For some reason,” he observed as he fell back into step beside her, “that doesn’t reassure me.”

  “It would mean my life if I harmed you,” she told him quite seriously then. As they headed out of the trees back into the open field, she went on to explain, “Every guest is safe under the Mage’s roof. His rules are sacrosanct. None dare cross them.”

  “Rules? What do you mean?”

  She held her hand toward the campsite that was just in view, an amalgam of conjoined coppery tents. “This place is a sa’reyth. A sanctuary. Three hundred years ago, before Malachai’s terrible war, there were many such places where…” and here she paused, considered her words, “where those who were not welcome among human society could dwell in peace and safety. The sa’reyths were safe havens where enemies could meet on neutral ground, where the feuding races of Alorin could shelter together. The sanctuary rules were inviolate. This is the first of the sa’reyths to be restored, and we…we outcasts are grateful for its return.”

  They reached the stream and Vaile jumped its banks on light feet. Trell followed, asking then, “How long has this sanctuary been here?”

  She glanced over at him. “Since
the Mage’s return.”

  “Since his return? From where?”

  “I have not followed him in all of his travels,” she replied with amusement.

  “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just…”

  She gave him a tolerant sort of look. “It is understandable for you to be curious. But what of your history?” she asked then. “Where do you hail from—besides, most recently, a well?”

  Trell chuckled and shook his head. “That is a loaded question, my lady. And one I can’t answer to even my own satisfaction. Five years ago I awoke in the Emir’s palace in Duan’Bai with no memory of my former life or even my name. They called me Ama-Kai’alil or ‘man of the tides.’”

  “Man of the tides,” she mused as if tasting of the words. “Why this name?”

  “I’m not sure. There is a city named ‘The Tides’ on the Akkad’s southeast coast—called Kai’alil in the desert tongue—but…” and here he shrugged.

  She gazed at him with unexpected compassion. “And how did you come by your name today?”

  Trell held a low branch aside for her, then followed behind, answering, “I dreamed of it upon waking in the palace. It was an…odd dream. Now they call me ‘Trell of the Tides.’ I guess once a name has stuck…”

  She nodded, looking sympathetic. Vaile took her blades in two hands again and began twirling them absently. Trell watched with appreciation for her skill. He added as an afterthought, “It’s funny, but I don’t even know how old I am.”

  She turned and looked him up and down with one raised eyebrow. “Twenty and one, I would say,” she decided. “I have an eye for the passing of years.”

  “You cannot have passed much more than that yourself, milady,” Trell noted, somewhat unconvinced by her pronouncement.

  She laughed uproariously over this. “You do not have an eye, Trell of the Tides!” She gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder so he would know she was not offended. Then she shook her head, repeating through another bout of laughter, “No eye at all!”

  Trell gazed at her, at her unlined face, her smooth complexion, the line of her hip, the lift of her breasts. Impossible! he thought. She cannot be more than a few years older than me. At the same time, he decided she could be correct about his own age, give or take a year or so. He had been a youth like Balaji when he awoke in Duan’Bai—ten and five, perhaps, or ten and six? The desert aged a man beyond his days, though Trell had spent most of his time attending the Emir instead of riding the patrols like Ware and Gray. He’d watched his friends lose their fair skin and their city-bred softness to the hardened lines of hard labor and battle.

  Trell was smiling at dear memories when he felt eyes upon him and turned to find Vaile watching him again. “Do you regard everyone with such candor?” he asked by way of mild complaint.

  “You are a handsome man, Trell of the Tides,” Vaile replied as they walked up the grassy hillside. She shifted her blades into her left hand and placed a finger at the corner of his eye. “You have the brooding gaze of a poet.” She took his hand and held it up for him to view. “You have the hands of a priest but the shoulders of a soldier and you speak with the wisdom of a scholar—when you are not acting the fool in front of beauty.” She dropped his hand, adding, “But this is hardly a fault. A man who can appreciate beauty has a soft heart, unjaded as yet by life and loss.”

  “You flatter me, my lady.”

  “I speak things as I see them,” she disagreed. Then she flashed a devious look. “Were I not already paired, I might take you for a pet—a paramour to please my desires.”

  “I doubt I’d enjoy being your pet,” Trell returned in amusement, and he added suggestively, “but pleasing you wouldn’t be too terrible at all.”

  She reached and cupped his cheek. “Careful what words you speak to a woman who never forgets, Trell of the Tides,” she whispered. “Men come and go, but I…” and here she dropped her hand and turned her gaze away. “I endure.”

  It was the first hint Trell had of the woman beneath; her intimations of heartache weren’t lost on him.

  “Come,” she said then, glancing his way with that elusive smile back in her eyes. The wall around her true emotions had returned, as impenetrable as ever. “Tonight is Loghain’s last evening with us, and Balaji has prepared a feast in celebration of his departure. We must see what the little one with the bold name has conjured up for dinner.” Catching Trell’s curious look, Vaile was quick to add, “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  Twelve

  ‘Cephrael knows no mercy. His will is absolute.’

  – D’Nofrio of Rogue, Sormitáge Scholar, circa 323aV

  Balaji’s banquet for Loghain was a feast suited for the Emir’s palace. It took place on the highest point of the hill in a tent open on three sides to let in the cool evening breeze as much as the view. It was attended by many, but Trell met few of the others, for he was seated between Vaile and Balaji, and the youth kept him occupied with questions of his time in Duan’Bai. Throughout the meal, there were a number of toasts to Loghain, which Trell participated in by way of an upraised goblet, but otherwise, he was kept quite unaware of the conversation beyond his circle of candlelight. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was Balaji’s intent.

  The banquet seemed to end without warning, as if the result of some clandestine signal that Trell missed, and everyone dispersed like nocturnal crawlers fleeing the light of day. Vaile was the last to leave, leaning around Trell’s chair to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek and bid him goodnight, and then Trell found himself alone, still seated at the table and wondering how so many people had vanished so completely in such a short span of time.

  Because he wasn’t tired, and because the hills and the starry sky and the sweet-smelling breeze called to him, he decided to take a walk, naturally gravitating to the highest point in order to gain the best view.

  It was there, much to his surprise, that he found Loghain. Indeed, the man startled the wits out of him when he moved suddenly, for Trell had rather thought him a misshapen rock, what with his black skin and dark clothes and his golden eyes turned in the opposite direction.

  “Nice view, isn’t it,” Loghain observed after first apologizing for startling Trell. He bade Trell take a seat on the boulder beside him and offered him a sip from his flagon.

  Trell sat and accepted the proffered drink with his thanks, thinking it odd to find such gentility in this deadly Wildling. Trell had seen the man fight—he’d no doubt that Loghain could disarm and disembowel him faster than he could envision it—yet here he was inviting Trell to sit and drink with him on his last night in sanctuary.

  “It’s beautiful,” Trell agreed as the liquor flamed his throat.

  He joined the Whisper Lord in gazing at the starry sky, leaning forward to rest elbows on knees. Even in the desert, Trell had never seen so many stars at once or a vista so broad and endless. He spotted the constellations of Cavval’s Ladle and Gorion the Archer with ease, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could detect the first few stars that were Adrennai’s Harp, the rest of her constellation still hidden beyond the hills. The five stars of Nefdini’s crown were high in the north, and he found Sepheune’s Trident glittering low in the southern sky.

  “Sometimes,” Loghain said softly, “…sometimes, I come here to the First Lord’s sa’reyth just to see the world like this. You can almost forget the troubles of these times when you’re here…for a little while anyway.”

  Trell turned to watch Loghain, who was staring distantly out across the hills, his fierce, hooked nose and prominent chin in profile against the stars. “Do you follow the constellations?”

  “Some of them. Once I could name them all. Once…long ago. They’ve been renamed since, and I haven’t bothered to relearn them—all, that is, save one.”

  “Which one?”

  Loghain pointed. “That one. There.” Then he added darkly, “The only one that matters.”

  He was pointing to Cephrael’s Hand. It was resti
ng low in the northeastern sky, just above the hills.

  “I’ll be damned,” Trell remarked, scratching his head. “The bloody thing seems to move in leaps and bounds, doesn’t it? I could swear it was midlevel to the western horizon when I last saw it from the ramparts of Raku.”

  Loghain turned his golden eyes to Trell, and there was a look of approval there. “It does seem to move,” he agreed.

  Trell was frowning at the constellation. “A bevy of trouble, that one,” he muttered. “Is there a race on Alorin that doesn’t have a superstition or a prophecy surrounding it? But when all is said and done, it’s just a bunch of stars.”

  “Prophecy is rarely worth its weight in coin,” Loghain agreed in his quiet way. “There is an old saying that a fake fortuneteller can be tolerated, but an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight.”

  Trell smiled. “Strange isn’t it? People want answers from the gods, but when they get ones they don’t like, they blame the messenger.”

  Still gazing at the constellation, Loghain sighed. “Would that Cephrael’s Hand was simple superstition,” he remarked.

  Trell arched a brow. “Surely you don’t put faith in it?”

  Loghain gave him a wry look. “’Tis wise not to blindly follow the blind sheep,” he agreed, quoting the common adage, “…but wiser yet to see where the sheep go before dismissing them out of hand. Sometimes the blind have no need of their eyes and know better where they are going than those of us who are deceived by what is plainly in sight.” All humor faded from his golden gaze. “You understand….what everyone sees may have been put there to be seen for a reason.”

  “To mislead, you mean.”

  “Indeed,” Loghain confirmed with a heavy sigh. “In these times, ’tis wiser to trust your soul’s perception, Trell of the Tides, before you trust your eyes.”

  The phrasing seemed all too familiar. ‘You must learn to see with your three eyes,’ Istalar had told him. ‘The eyes of your mind…the eyes of your heart…the eyes of your spirit…’ It was the first time Trell had remembered the holy man’s admonishment since that fateful eve. Hearing the words echoed from a Wildling’s mouth gave them an altogether unnatural and resounding truth.