The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) by Melissa McPhail

accept that death is your ultimate destination?”
    Tanis thought it a really strange question. “Everybody d-dies eventually,” he said by way of agreement, though his swollen lips caused him to stumble a bit over the words. Too, he couldn’t seem to stop shaking, and this was also affecting his speech.
    Pelas straightened. “Interesting.”  He peered down at him again, a vulture assessing a bit of carrion, deciding whether or not it was worth the effort to gain it. “I think when I have completed my mission with the Healers I shall investigate the truthreaders.”  He looked to the Fhorg beside him to note, “My brother Darshan has no monopoly upon them, after all. There are plenty to go around.”
    Tanis was dismayed by this news.
    “Well then,” Pelas said, looking back to him, “I suppose it is time to say our good-byes, young spy. I would’ve liked to know for whom you were spying, but I have more pressing business.”
    “Like slaughtering Healers,” Tanis offered bitterly.
    “Indeed,” he agreed. “Exactly that.”  Settling copper eyes quietly on Tanis, Pelas licked his thumb and pressed it to Tanis’s forehead.
    Tanis screwed up his eyes to watch the man’s thumb, wondering what this was all about. It seemed a crazy means of farewell.
    “What’d ye do wrong?” one of the Fhorgs asked after a moment of silence wherein they’d all just stood there staring at him.
    “Nothing!” Pelas sounded amazed. He grabbed Tanis by the neck and shoved his palm to the lad’s head, growling something in a strange language. Tanis never imagined he could get any colder, but when his teeth started chattering loud enough to echo in the empty room and his head starting hurting really bad, like after that one time he’d been swept off a rock into Mieryn Bay in the dead of winter and took far too long to swim back to shore, he realized how naïve he’d been to think he knew what it really felt like to be cold.
    “It’s nae working,” the Fhorg Riod eventually pointed out with a sneer. “Is yer power deserting ye, Pelas?”
    Pelas turned Riod a piercing look. Then he tore away from Tanis and slammed his palm into Riod’s chest. The Fhorg went sprawling ten paces through the air and landed roughly on his back, already convulsing. His head bashed repeatedly into the blood-soaked earth while a guttural moan escaped in ghastly cadence.
    “It would seem my power is not the issue,” Pelas noted. “Regretfully, my brother will have to send a new spy.”  He looked back to Tanis then, and there was both fury and intense curiosity in his gaze. “You are an anomaly.”  He pushed a finger under Tanis’s fragile chin while he looked him over. “I do believe you should not exist.”
    Tanis thought Pelas meant to say more, but something distracted him. He seemed to lose focus and for a long time looked for all the world to have completely vacated his body. Finally he blinked and released Tanis’s chin.
    “Well, it seems my investigation of you will have to wait. Watch him,” he ordered his men. Then he turned in a swirl of his cloak and vanished into the deep darkness beyond their circle of torchlight.
    The three remaining Fhorgs found seats on several upended crates and settled in to wait. After a while, Tanis tried asking a few questions of them, but when none of them answered, he gave up and sat down on the ground next to Camilla feeling heartsick and tormented and altogether rotten.
    Yet in the back of his mind something connected. The Marquiin’s power hadn’t worked on him. Pelas’s power hadn’t worked on him. Therefore, it could be the same power.
    But what power was it?

Three
     
    “Nothing of this world could be worthy of trust.”
     
    - The Prophet Bethamin
     
    Kjieran van Stone locked the door of his room and then leaned against it cautiously, listening for footsteps, for motion, for anyone who might be interested in his activities. While Bethamin saw fit to keep some unsullied truthreaders