The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  “Shailabanáchtran kens nothing of him beyond the myths. It would seem the one hasn’t made an appearance in Alorin during the long voyage of your absence. Unless, perhaps...if Shail could have mistaken him, been fooled by illusion?”

  “No. He would know the other in his primary aspect unquestionably.”

  “Then it is assured, my lord. No one has seen him.”

  Or at least no one capable of recognizing him, for no more could be ascertained from these few facts alone.

  Thinking upon this information, Baelfeir’s gaze tightened.

  His slight frown unexpectedly mirrored a small face staring out through one of the villa’s windows—as it happened, directly at himself. Within the window’s reflection, superimposed over the little girl who was staring out, Baelfeir imagined a male face, handsome in its aspect...and vital, even when buried under a mountain of rock.

  Could it be possible that the one whose visage he so clearly recalled had abandoned this world? As improbable as it sounded, he had to admit the possibility in light of their last altercation. Certainly the lack of evidence of his presence in the tapestry supported such a conclusion. And it would make his task easier...

  Yet he hoped for some other explanation. Because games, to be games, required barriers, and the greatest of all barriers was a worthy opponent.

  Vleydis’s earlier question still hung within Baelfeir’s thoughts. Had the tapestry assumed the shape he’d intended?

  How much of its current design was a result of his own causation—the seeds of his will allowed to germinate and grow through the eons of his absence—and how much of its pattern had been influenced by his opponent’s hand?

  These were truths he would have to unearth from the tapestry’s deepest furrows.

  Time held no context for him, but over the obvious millennia that had passed since last he’d stood within this realm, walked its hills, viewed the mortal tapestry... somewhere in those lost eternities, he recalled missing Alorin.

  Why did this alien world so overcrowded with individual universes harbor such allure for him? Oh, he knew why it interested him, but why did both Alorin’s harmony and its cacophony resonate so deeply in his core, as though the world pendulum swung from the cords of his own being?

  Cephrael had never explained this to his satisfaction.

  Baelfeir’s attention flickered through a host of improbable thoughts and finally landed on one that offered more fact than disbelief. He had much to consider now.

  But first, a little dalliance down in the valley, a delicious amuse-bouche to whet his appetites of old.

  How generous of them to throw a fête in his honor.

  ***

  Bea was named for her mother’s favorite flower. But nobody called her Begonia, just Bea. Or sometimes Little Bea or Sweet Bea, by the housemaids; Bea-bonnet, by the happy-faced head cook; Curious Bea, by the gardener; Bea-utiful, by her father; and Bea-be-mine, by the villa’s caretaker, who let her follow him about the sprawling estate whenever her mother went to bed with a headache.

  Bea usually had the run of her lord father’s manor, but that night His Lordship was hosting a special fête for some foreign lord—Bea could name all of the Great Houses of the Empire, but she couldn’t recall the name of the lord coming tonight, no matter how many times her tutor had made her repeat it—and all the local nobility had been invited to attend.

  With the preponderance of flowers, decorations, candles, food and guests in attendance, it ought to have been a gay affair, despite the murky autumn evening, but as Bea knelt on her window seat, staring out into the rain, she felt...frightened.

  It was a different fear from that tremulous-lip guilt of having been caught doing something forbidden, far afield of the decisive fear inspired by a wolf’s howl when alone in the woods. More like the fear that claimed her in the witching hour of a moonless night; a sort of formless fear that threaded worms through her belly and wove ill omens through her dreams; the fear of something unknown...something with needle teeth barely glimpsed beneath a razor-eyed smile.

  “What ye be a-staring at out there, Sweet Bea?” The chambermaid Cesa bent beside her at the window and cast an inquiring look out into the rain.

  Cesa was from northern Hallovia and had honey hair and large brown eyes as dark as a doe’s—so opposite to Bea’s own, which always looked to her like dull, colorless glass, despite her father’s claims that her eyes made her precious beyond compare, or her mother’s insistence that she was a lovely treasure.

  Bea’s hands shook on the windowsill as she gazed across the rain-swept hills. “There’s someone out there, Cesa.”

  “Lots of someones, Sweet Bea. I cannae say when last I saw so many a-lords an’ ladies a-gathered, save to glimpse the Agasi Empress or her ilk.”

  But Bea wasn’t watching the guests. To her truthreader’s eyes, the shadows on the near hill vaguely resembled two men, if one had wings and the other was uncommonly tall. Just looking at them filled her with a sense of dread. She pointed a porcelain finger towards the hilltop. “No, Cesa. Out there. Don’t you see them?”

  Cesa laid a gentle hand on her cheek, drawing Bea’s gaze to meet hers. “I only see the mist, sweetling. I’ll wager that’s all your pretty eyes a-see, too.”

  Bea looked back to the figures. The mist swirled and eddied around them, but the two shadows kept their forms. Her voice sounded small to her own ears as she whispered, “You really don’t see them?”

  “I don’t have a truthreader’s eyes, Sweet Bea—or a little girl’s imagination. But I won’t be a-maginin’ yer lady mum’s irritation if I don’t have ye ready for the ball by the time she makes her entrance.” Cesa took her by the shoulders and drew her away from the window, saying, “Come ye now.”

  Bea let Cesa guide her back into the brighter light of her dressing chamber, but that feeling of dread lingered, lengthened even, in the way that the shadows clinging to the edges of her room grew longer with the dying candlelight. All the while Cesa prepared her for the fête, Bea kept expecting the shadows in her room to rear up and form one of the figures from the far hill.

  Bea tried to enjoy her lord father’s party. She knew she ought to enjoy it. There were sweetmeats to eat, and dancers to watch, and golden-clear punch that tickled her nose and filled her belly with a warm, fluttery anticipation. But no matter how hard she tried, that ill feeling clung to her, as though Cesa had dressed her in apprehension instead of gauzy pink tulle.

  Bea saw the form of the tallest shadow-man in everything: the curtain of melted chocolate pouring out of a fountain; the covering of powdery confectioner’s sugar on a velvet-dark cake; the silken folds of a lady’s rustling skirts; the shifting reflection of lamplight on the walls. Even the conglomerate of dancers in the waltz seemed to morph in and out of that imposing figure. Bea began to fear it had been permanently branded on the backs of her eyelids, burned by cold darkness and foreboding.

  She’d just sat down on a velvet-covered bench with another cup of punch held between faintly trembling hands—while the heady drink didn’t exactly calm the strange nervousness that had claimed her, at least it made her less aware of it—when the gilded ballroom doors opened to admit her father’s honored guest.

  A hubbub ensued as the crowd parted and her father’s chamberlain led the arriving lord along a channel formed of gracious bows, directly towards Bea’s lord father, and indirectly towards Bea herself. Bea got to her feet.

  She felt a chill upon first noting the arriving lord’s height, for he was tall like the figure across the valley. He wore a floor-length crimson coat, very fine, and his long black hair was drawn back into an elaborate queue. He stood broad in the shoulders and through the chest, and his cold-eyed gaze as it slid indifferently across her made Bea watery inside. She would’ve been afraid of him if she hadn’t in that moment been so much more afraid of the tall shadow-man.

  She couldn’t explain why the latter so frightened her. Bea just had the sense that something terrible was about to
happen and he was somehow part of it. She’d said as much to Cesa, but the maid had dismissed her worries, despite the fact that Bea couldn’t lie. Bea didn’t think her premonition was just ‘little girl jitters.’ It had the round wholeness of truth in her thoughts.

  Her father’s voice floated to her ears, rising above the general murmur of the party and the even louder dismay shouting in her head. “Lord Abanachtran, you do us great honor.”

  Bea raised her gaze to see her father and mother bowing to the lord.

  Abanachtran. Yes, that had been the name her tutor had tried to teach her. It still felt strange in her ears, even stranger on her tongue.

  The Lord Abanachtran murmured something in reply and offered her father a smile that left his eyes untouched. Bea couldn’t hear his words, only the glaze of his strange accent upon their language and the reverberation of his deep voice thrumming unease through her chest.

  But her father smiled in reply, laughed lightly, and motioned the tall lord further into the gathering, ostensibly to introduce him to the many others thronging for his attention.

  Bea gripped her cup with both hands.

  She felt taut, like a spindle wound too tightly. Any moment she worried someone would speak to her and she’d snap and violently unravel, with strings of herself flying hither and yon.

  “Bea...” A resonant male voice spoke suddenly from behind her. “Is that short for Beatrix or Beauty?”

  Bea turned slowly, little feet taking little steps. Something in the way he’d said her name...

  She looked up-up-up until her gaze finally met his. She’d never seen eyes so charged with blue, bright as sapphires flashing in the sun. The stranger was even more handsome than her father, with full, dark hair swept smoothly back to curl just below his ears. He wore a velvet coat and had a calculating smile.

  Bea’s breath scraped into her lungs and froze there.

  “Sweet Bea. Bea-bonnet.” Her nicknames sounded threatening crossing his lips. “Curious Bea.” He fixed her intently with a dangerous gaze. “That one seems most appropriate.”

  Bea swallowed. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

  “But I’m no stranger, am I, Curious Bea?” He shifted those lightning eyes to look over the gathering. “In fact, I think you know me quite well already.”

  Bea dropped her gaze to the cup in her hands. The golden punch was rippling. She felt his power traveling on, casting waves through the lake of thought. She didn’t know him, but she knew what he intended.

  Then the whispers began.

  “Demon Lord...”

  “Lord of Shadows...”

  “Ba’alen...”

  “Belloth the Beguiler...”

  Throughout the hall, his many epithets became effervescent, bubbling up through the drink of conversation, crossing everyone’s tongues in conspiratorial tones or with animated expression, fervent curses bespeaking legendary deeds...whispers rife with awe.

  Within moments, the murmurs changed, as gossip will, from dubiety to possibility, and eventually crystallized into certainty. Everyone began speaking as though it had long been true: the Warlocks of Shadow had returned to the Realms of Light.

  Far across the wide room, the Lord Abanachtran spun his head and pinned a razor-eyed gaze unerringly on the man standing beside Bea.

  The latter gave the lord a trifling smile.

  Bea’s hands were shaking. “Please...” The cup slipped from her fingers. Glass shattered with a splash of golden liquid that quickly soaked through her velvet slippers. She tangled her fingers in the stranger’s dark coat and lifted desperate eyes to him. “Please...”

  A half-smile curled one corner of his mouth, but it wasn’t humor that burned in his gaze. “Please what, Curious Bea?”

  “Please...” she could barely form the thought for the fear shouting in her head. “Don’t hurt them.”

  “Ah.” He shifted those lightning eyes back to the fête. “What would you give to save them?”

  Bea withdrew her hand as though from a shock.

  “Would you revolt against your birth? Deny your nature, your...truth?” He seemed chillingly amused at the idea. “Would you lie to save them, Sweet Bea?”

  Bea’s mouth went dry.

  Couples were waltzing, but suddenly she couldn’t hear the music playing or the happy chatter of her father’s guests, only a violent buzzing in her ears.

  He hooked a long finger beneath her chin and tilted her head up to meet his gaze, so far back that it hurt her neck. His perfect lips formed a perfect smile.

  Tell me a lie, truthreader. The fiery command flamed through Bea’s thoughts, while his eyes searched hers. Come now. Not so brave, after all?

  Bea thought frantically for anything to say, but her mind felt on fire. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a frosted breath emerged.

  Bea’s bladder involuntarily loosed itself.

  He set off through the crowd as wet warmth flooded down her legs.

  ***

  Change unfolded with Baelfeir’s passing. A smile, a nod of greeting, merely a chance meeting of his gaze—such was enough to turn the shape of the design. What was light became dark; straight, erratic. If the pattern began one way, Baelfeir ensured it would end another.

  Across the long ballroom, Shailabanáchtran posed a fuming pillar in the well he made in the tapestry, but Baelfeir easily contained his chaos within a space he’d set aside for him. He could paint over any trace of the Malorin’athgul’s presence later if he chose.

  For on this evening commemorating his return to Alorin, the Lord of all Warlocks was an artist intent upon his canvas, and the pattern was singularly his to fashion.

  ***

  “It cannot be so,” the contessa declared to the circle of women surrounding her. They were all making slow progress in the line to meet the Lord Abanachtran.

  “But it is, Contessa,” said the dark-haired beauty standing in front of her. “They say he’s come back—everyone is speaking of it.”

  “A Warlock of Shadow,” another lady murmured, shaking her head.

  “Preposterous,” clucked an older woman who was wearing a dress that had clearly been tailored when she possessed a more youthful figure. “Everyone knows those are just stories.”

  “I’m more interested in the lord from Myacene,” said one of the younger ladies, whose gaze was pinned on the Lord Abanachtran. She ducked an impish grin towards her shoulder. “Does anyone else wonder what he looks like beneath that coat?”

  “Never mind him,” said a red-haired woman whose eyes were fixed in the opposite direction. “Who is that?”

  The contessa turned to see a striking figure crossing the dance floor. Just looking at him made her think of indiscretions she hadn’t dreamed of since taking her marital vows. She felt her cheeks growing warm and turned quickly away. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Contessa,” whispered the redhead, eyes wide, “he’s coming right towards you.”

  “My, but if he doesn’t have Ba’alen’s own good looks,” remarked the older woman, whose face, the contessa noted, had become indecently flushed.

  The contessa felt flushed herself, and even more so when she perceived the stranger stop close behind her.

  “Ba’alen, is it, ladies?” Amusement hinted in his voice, which was as deep and liquid as the night.

  The contessa turned her head to see the stranger offering a courtly bow, slight yet appropriate for one of his obvious station. He looked them all over with gloriously blue eyes....dangerous eyes, the kind of eyes that set a girl to dreaming of intimate liaisons with such a man...the kind of eyes a girl could spend her entire life gazing into.

  He settled those dreamy eyes mercilessly on the contessa. “Surely the Lord of Shadows is an unseemly topic for such well-bred ladies as yourselves.”

  “Everyone is speaking of him, my lord,” replied the redhead, looking as flushed as the contessa felt.

  “Is that so?” The stranger took her hand in his and captu
red her gaze with his own. He asked more softly, “And what is everyone saying?”

  The redhead’s breath came faster. She darted a glance at the other ladies. “They speak of Belloth’s enchantments,” she was staring fixedly at his mouth and his slow lifting of her hand towards it, “...and of his ways of beguiling humankind.”

  “They say he’s returned to the realm,” offered the dark-haired beauty, somewhat more decorously than her companion, “and they warn of his many guises.”

  “A different name and face in every kingdom.” The older woman in the ill-fitting dress looked the stranger boldly up and down. “And a different lover in every town.” She didn’t even try to hide the invitation in her gaze.

  The stranger finally pressed the redhead’s hand to his lips. Her bosom was rising and falling so passionately that the contessa feared the woman’s breasts would spill out of her gown. She forced herself to look away.

  “The myths warn of him,” the dark-haired beauty added raptly. “Children are taught to fear him.”

  “Stealing babes in the night?” He smiled devilishly across the redhead’s fingers, still held close to his lips.

  “I heard he chained men just as easily as maidens to his loins,” the older woman said, as if eager to fill the requirement herself.

  “Were those chains literal,” he inquired amusedly, “or figurative, do you think?”

  “Myths have more basis in exaggeration than fact,” the contessa remarked. She hadn’t meant it to, but her tone sounded as brittle as she felt.

  The contessa tried not to look at him. She didn’t understand the feelings he was eliciting from herself and the others, or why she’d begun trembling like a vibrating string deep along her core. She suspected she’d had too much wine; she recalled drinking but one glass, yet her increasingly woolen thoughts bespoke a rare intemperance. She feared embarrassing herself like the redhead, and she sought an opening to escape the unsettling effect of his company.

  “They say he could bind entire armies to his will,” the dark-haired beauty meanwhile continued with desire now glistening her eyes, “and even once marched ten thousand men right off the edge of the world.”