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

  Ean found his legs suddenly moving quite without his volition. More frightening still, he couldn’t even affect a jerking motion in the pretense of fighting against the stranger’s will; his legs simply no longer belonged to him.

  As Ean neared the horses, a man came forward with a moon-pale stallion in tow. The prince’s fine destrier had made the crossing with the Queen two moons ago, and the horse Caldar seemed so out of place among this strange night that Ean almost didn’t recognize him.

  Before he knew it, however, he’d sheathed his sword and had one foot in his stirrup and the other slung across Caldar’s back. Only as he settled into the saddle did he realize that he could now move his arms freely. His legs remained so leaden, however, that he marveled they were still attached to his body and actually caught himself looking down just to be certain.

  In all, the entire night seemed far too incredible to be believed. Struggling to make sense of it all, Ean looked to the heavens, to the constellation of Cephrael’s Hand gleaming brightly above him. It all felt so impossible that Ean held onto a desperate hope that this must be an elaborate deception, that a court magician had been solicited to create the illusion, or that they were all somehow made to hallucinate the same appalling vision. Everything had happened so unexpectedly—each unlikely moment opening onto the next, such that Ean felt he watched some disjointed farce populated by actors whose wild improvisation led the entire performance into appalling directions.

  The Queen’s men had just finished binding each other when the hounds began their unnatural keening again. This time an unmistakable hunger resonated in the whine.

  Ean shuddered reflexively.

  The Shade’s dark gaze flitted across the assembled soldiers, statues made of flesh and bone. “Spare none.”

  The darkhounds attacked with predation, and men screamed like children. Horribly, the Queen’s men alone were allowed their voices as the hounds swarmed in and around them, sating their deep hunger on those who’d meant Ean ill, leaving Eammon and his men untouched save by the blood that soon washed the clearing. Ean found something unbearable in that observance—to die such a death without being allowed even the grace of voice to give vent to the fear and pain in one’s last moments…

  The prince shuddered and looked away. Wicked they might be, and with malicious intent, but they were men. No man deserved such a fate.

  “Creighton Khelspath!” commanded the Shade, his clear voice rising above the ravening din. “Attend!”

  Ean swung his head to look for his blood-brother, for he had still not seen him among the group.

  At first he saw only the horrible hounds sating their hunger on the living, but then a form rose up from among the long grass bordering the scene. Creighton wore a horrified expression, as if death had already claimed him, and he walked with a staggering gait, clearly in pain. Ean wanted desperately to call out, to give words of encouragement and hope—even if they were impotent—but voice was still denied him. So he watched helplessly as his blood-brother crossed the distance, miraculously passing untouched amid the feasting darkhounds and their flailing prey.

  Tears came unbidden to Ean’s eyes, and he reached for his sword with sudden desperation that he might do anything to stop this, but his fingers couldn’t close upon the leathered steel. The sword hung encouragingly at his side, yet it might’ve been aboard the Sea Eagle for all he could use it.

  Creighton halted in front of the Shade. His face was ashen, his expression now void of emotion, as if already defeated. The Shade stared at him for a long moment, and then he shook his head. He slowly drew forth a sword from beneath his dark cloak. “Kneel,” he commanded.

  Creighton dropped to his knees.

  The Shade walked to stand behind Creighton, and Ean saw his sword gleaming with a silver-violet sheen. He placed the tip against the back of Creighton’s neck, and Ean thought he might lose his mind. No! No! Noooooooo!

  “It was not meant to be this way with you,” the Shade murmured. Then he spoke for a long moment in a language Ean didn’t understand. Creighton never looked up, never turned to Ean though, yet Ean imagined he heard his voice as clear as day in his mind.

  Tell Kat that I love her. Tell her I will always love her. Tell her I’m sor—

  The voice ended with the Shade’s two-handed thrust.

  And Ean found he could scream after all.

  “Reyd,” the leader of the horsemen called the Shade’s attention to where he stared anxiously toward the road. The rising thunder of horses said more soldiers would soon be upon them.

  “Yes, go.” The Shade still held the sword that impaled Creighton so horribly, the latter’s body slumped and twisted like a broken marionette. “Go!”

  The horsemen peeled away, and Caldar leaped into a canter, following the other horses without Ean’s prodding. Indeed, the prince was tumbling amid crushing waves of pain and loss and could barely conceive of anything else.

  Three brothers, was all he could think as his world spun and his gut twisted and his chest heaved with silent heart-wrenching sobs. Three brothers lost.

  Two

  ‘The eyes do not see what the mind does not want.’

  – Kandori proverb

  To Ean in retrospect, that wild night’s ride east seemed no more real than had the knife to his neck or the keening of the darkhounds; what memory remained with him was only the immense, crushing sense of loss.

  “There is no afterlife,” Ean began the Rite for the Departed as Caldar was cantering among the other horses, knuckles white as they gripped his reins. He stared through grey eyes that burned with unshed tears and clenched his teeth and as managed, “There is no afterlife, there is only the Returning; and there is the path of those who elevate to Knowledge, to corporeal immortality and immortality in essence. Of gods in the known, there remain only Cephrael and Epiphany, themselves immortal, the only true immortals, who were made in the Genesis to watch over this world. All who pass, pass into Annwn, the Now, for the Now is eternal. Cephrael willing, we shall meet them again someday in the Returning and know them by Epiphany’s grace.”

  Ean took some solace in repeating the familiar words, only wishing he’d had fewer occasions for their use in his brief years of life.

  They stopped at dawn to eat and rest the horses. By that time, the Shade had joined them. Ean glared hatefully at the man as he moved among his band of renegades, a tall figure dressed all in black with dark hair smoothed back from a widow’s peak, his chrome-like countenance mirroring his surroundings. The Shade’s mask of silver skin was so reflective, in fact, that at times he seemed unnervingly faceless, his features simply a reflection of the flora around him.

  The renegades allowed the prince some few moments off his horse to rest and relieve himself. Afterwards, he slouched against a tree trunk casting hateful glares at the Shade. Beneath the anger that warmed him despite the chill autumn air, he admitted a perverse fascination with the man. He told himself it was only that he needed to know his enemy if he hoped to overcome him, but in truth, the man drew his curiosity like lightning to the craggy heights. The Shade’s silver face unmistakably named his nature, and his fell magic of the night before left no choice but belief, yet Ean still recoiled against the truth.

  Dear Epiphany…what has happened that Shades return to our realm?

  The prince knew little of what had occurred during the Adept Wars three centuries ago, wherein the mad wielder Malachai ap’Kalien had nearly exterminated the Adept race, but he’d heard enough stories of Shades to make them a fearful enemy. Yet every tale spoke of Shades and their master Björn van Gelderan as having been banished from the realm. How then was this Shade standing before him?

  If Shades have returned…? Ean wondered if any of the tales about them held even a shred of truth. More puzzling still was what interest a Shade could have with him?

  Before the creature appeared, Ean had been certain that one of Dannym’s powerful families was behind the attack, perhaps the same group who’d tried
to claim the Eagle Throne seven years ago with his eldest brother’s death…but Shade could have no interest in gaining a simple throne.

  Ean grunted and shook his head.

  The more he thought about it, the more disjointed the facts became. First the fighting soldiers—clearly someone with powerful allies had infiltrated the palace guard. That much he followed, for it fit with his first hypothesis of a powerful noble family.

  Second, his capture by the madman with the dagger named Jeshuelle. He’d been dressed as a soldier, but he seemed quite too enthusiastic about killing Ean his own way. Was he part of the same group, or had he come with a different agenda from a different master?

  Third, the Shade who’d spared the Queen’s men but let his hounds devour the others…

  Ean shuddered at the memory and tried to push the images from mind, but the more he tried not to think about the grisly scene, the more he saw the vision of Creighton with the Shade’s sword impaled through the back of his neck. The feeling of desperation and loss that accompanied this memory scoured him, a heartache too near—and too-oft known in the last five years. Three brothers! Three brothers lost!

  Fighting a sudden sense of protest and fury so fervent they threatened to choke him, Ean closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the tree where the Shade’s power had pinned him, and did breathing exercises to calm his anger. Never before had he been so grateful for the painstaking hours he’d spent in tutelage with his mother’s Master at Arms, learning to calm his mind and control his thoughts before ever picking up a sword. Mastering the art of distancing himself from his emotions had seemed an eternity in the coming, but now he found it so easily…

  It seemed only moments later that someone kicked at his boot, yet when Ean opened his eyes, the sun stood midway to its zenith. The prince looked up to find the Shade staring down at him.

  “Time to ride, Prince of Dannym.”

  An immediate and visceral hatred for the man lodged in his throat. He spat his anger in the Shade’s face, the damning oath coming out in a hiss.

  The phlegm stopped a hair’s breadth from the Shade’s nose and hung in space yellowly, as if caught out of time.

  The Shade stared down at him with obsidian eyes—they were truly and fully black to the core, yet like obsidian, a golden glint sparked deep within their depths. “’Tis a foolish man who makes a liege lord of pride,” he said evenly. As he spoke the words, the phlegm evaporated with a hiss, leaving only a puff of mist. “I give you this warning once, as a courtesy: Do not think to challenge me. Do not plot escape. Dare not hope for rescue. You live or die by my grace now, Prince of Dannym.”

  The Shade’s polished silver features reflected the clouds and the grass, but his obsidian-black gaze revealed only unearthly indifference. Ean felt the first caress of dread as he looked into those depthless eyes, as if staring into the very heart of despair.

  The Shade spun on his heel, cloak billowing out behind him, and shouted to his men, “Move out!”

  They traveled all through the next day beneath an overcast sky, stopping here and there for a few hours’ rest in the blustery wind, but mostly moving rapidly southeast. They were well into the foothills of the snowcapped Eidenglass range when they finally broke ranks and set up what seemed a more permanent camp, erecting tents, carving out clearings for cooking fires, and picketing the horses near the forest edge.

  The Shade gave Ean full use of his body for the first time as one of the men thrust a shovel into the prince’s hands. Ean spent most of the afternoon and well into the night digging a pit deeper than he was tall. When he was done, he handed up the shovel, expecting them to pull him out, only to learn that he’d been digging his own bed.

  “You can’t keep me like this!” Ean shouted after the retreating guards, whose jeering laughter burned like salt in a wound. He kicked the earthen wall and spun angrily around, wishing he’d done a lesser job of the task, or that he’d even half wondered why they wanted the damnable hole, so that he might’ve made provisions for his own escape! He shouted obscenities at them until his throat was raw in spite of the futility, knowing they only laughed at his impotence.

  Once the chill night air had drained the greater part of his anger, Ean finally threw himself down on the ground, smoldering. This latest mistake taught him the truth of something his grandfather, the Queen’s Admiral, had been telling him for years: anger, fear, grief—these emotions dulled the senses, weakened the warrior, turned a thinking man into a frenzied man, and ultimately, into a dead man. His bitterness and loss over Creighton’s death had immobilized him as effectively as the Shade’s mysterious power.

  I’ve been so stupid! Had he been thinking clearly—had he been thinking at all instead of trading vengeful thoughts with the host of lesser emotions that had been keeping him company—he might’ve been able to leave some mark of his passing.

  Exhaling a ragged sigh, the prince rested his head against the earthen wall and looked to the heavens…and there, as if to mock him, seven stars glowed brightly between a break in the overcast.

  Cephrael’s Hand.

  “Are you following me?” Ean snarled. “Have you some plan for me?”

  But if the angiel Cephrael was listening with the ears of Fate, he deigned no response.

  It happened in the early morning, still several hours before daybreak. Ean sat shivering beneath a cold drizzle when something startled him fully alert, but not fast enough. The man landed atop him like a leopard, knees pressing into his shoulders, muscular legs pinning Ean’s arms at his sides—

  Not again! The prince kicked and struggled against the man, but the assassin had him pinned just as solidly as before.

  Ean could barely make out the assassin’s face in the darkness, but he recognized the voice that spoke as he pulled out a bundle of cloth. “This is Jeshuelle,” the man crooned.

  Thirteen bloody hells!

  Ean tried to call out, but the assassin stuffed a foul-smelling cloth into his mouth and covered it with his free hand. “Now, now,” he chided, clicking his tongue. All Ean could see of him was that same hungry look in his dark eyes. “No one’s nearby to hear you scream, princeling. I took care of that.”

  Ean kicked and bucked, moving what parts of him he could to try to dislodge the assassin. He had no doubt that this lunatic meant to kill him, but he’d be damned if he gave him an easy go of it.

  Smiling sublimely, the assassin raised Jeshuelle and brought it down into Ean’s chest. The blade hit a rib and Ean screamed. Fire shot down the entire left side of his body.

  Cursing, the assassin pulled Jeshuelle free, yet another agony, and the prince thrashed and yelled at the top of his lungs, his cries never more than a muffled whine around the foul gag. The man raised his dagger for another go of it, and Ean thought desperately, NO!

  The assassin struck—

  His knife…stuck inexplicably in the air just inches above Ean’s bleeding wound. The assassin cursed in a foreign tongue and took two hands to the hilt. With teeth bared, he grunted and hacked as Ean struggled, but no matter how he thrust, he could not make the blade move a hair closer to Ean’s chest.

  Ean observed all this just as astonished as the assassin.

  “You there!” a man shouted from above. The wavering glow of torchlight grew in strength. “What’s going on?”

  “Shite!” The assassin scrambled off Ean, and the prince rolled onto his side and spat out the foul gag.

  “I’m wounded!” Ean gasped. “I’m…” but faintness beset him, and the world spun. He heard the assassin scrambling in the dirt, trying making his escape, but he could do little more than lie there drawing labored breath while pain and vertigo ran their course.

  More sounds of others climbing down into the pit, and soon a form appeared over him. “Bloody hells,” the guard growled. “Hurry—fetch the Shade!”

  “No,” a second voice responded with authority, “the other, who arrived tonight.”

  Strong hands lifted Ean then. Soon he felt
wind and mist on his face as he barely clung to consciousness. A maelstrom was trying to suck him down, down…past the flames of a torch sensed through closed eyes. Dizziness kept him company while events of the world came and went; the throbbing ache in his chest somehow became mingled with the beating of his heart, the fiery threads of pain and life interminably intertwined. Ean opened his eyes once to a sea of swimming faces…and then he knew only darkness.

  Sometime later, the prince swam back toward wakefulness, ascending through twilit waves of disorientation until he hovered just below the surface of consciousness. He tread water there, unable to quite open his eyes to the daylight; but listening, hearing the conversation taking place nearby.

  “…then it’s done,” said a man. It might’ve been the Shade.

  “So it would seem,” replied another voice, melodious and fluid, akin to a purr but echoic of a growl. “He is now present on the currents.”

  “And so the danger to him grows,” said the first, almost regretfully.

  “An inevitable consequence. But tell me of the assassin.”

  “Caught and beheaded.”

  “Unfortunate. I would’ve liked to question him.”

  “It would’ve proven futile. He was a Geshaiwyn Wildling.”

  “Geshaiwyn,” repeated that deep voice, sounding somewhat mollified in the stating. “That would explain how he fled you before.”

  “Yes, but another will come. They always contract in pairs.”

  “And so die by the dozens. Geshaiwyn bleed like any other.” Motion followed, as a man’s steps across the carpet of earth. Then: “What of your crew? The Wildling compromised your security. I hope—”

  “None were spared,” the Shade answered. “The time for mercy has long passed.”

  “Death is a mercy if your master fails,” replied the second voice.

  Silence followed, lingered. Ean began to wonder if the conversation was over and thought of swimming back into the beckoning depths. The dark waters were inviting of oblivion, and he was beginning to feel the pain again this close to wakefulness. Then he heard them speaking once more and told the deep waters, Not yet…