The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  A little hand bell alerted to the official beginning of the tour, whereupon a man’s voice announced, “If the Literato’s honored guests would follow me into the parlor...”

  Pelas cloaked himself in deyjiin and headed the other way.

  Tanis had told him about his ill-fated foray into Shail’s apartments, and of the laboratory at the end of the hall. Pelas found the illusion of a wall still in place. He scanned it for traps, and finding none he could see from that side of danger, slipped through unnoticed by the sightseers at the other end.

  Within the hidden room, wielder’s lamps cast unnatural light across two long workbenches. Further down, on Pelas’s right, an ash desk obscured the lower shelves of an over-crowded bookcase; while dimly in the back, a grouping of leather couches and chairs sat before a massive hearth, empty and dark. A glass-fronted apothecary cabinet ran the length of the left-hand wall, reflecting gloom.

  Pelas couldn’t see the floating patterns that Tanis had described—he didn’t have the lad’s variant trait—but he sensed the mold of Shail’s malice consuming the space.

  Pelas used a working he’d found in one of Björn van Gelderan’s books—would that he’d had more time to peruse the wielder’s library in Adonnai; no treasure in antiquity could compare to the riches upon those shelves!—and summoned elae.

  The currents washed into the room as waves deluged a sea cave at high tide. Pelas watched the room gradually filling with the lifeforce, and then...

  A spattering of extant patterns appeared as vortices sucking the fifth into their event horizons. Where the rosy hues of the first strand touched them, ash washed out. Other vortices spaced around the work benches repelled the currents into a tumult that spread its disruption in jagged ripples. Those would be the inverteré patterns Tanis had mentioned.

  Pelas gave renewed thanks that Tanis had the gift of Arion’s variant trait. He couldn’t imagine what would’ve become of the lad if he’d blindly fumbled into this room of spears.

  But Pelas saw nothing that would be a threat to him. Which meant there had to be many such threats still concealed.

  How then to find patterns created specifically to trap or harm—trap and harm, let’s be honest here—him specifically? If Pelas had learned anything about his brother in their recent dealings, it was that he must never underestimate the vehemence of Shail’s hatred of him.

  He placed himself in Shail’s shoes for a moment and considered himself from his brother’s point of view. Shail would expect him to summon deyjiin, so the patterns waiting to trap him were probably triggered by this power.

  But what if he didn’t summon deyjiin, so much as allow it to filter in? The same pattern he’d just used, reapplied to deyjiin and slightly modified in intent, could do just the trick. Shail certainly wouldn’t have expected Pelas to have learned Patterning from Björn van Gelderan.

  Smiling to himself, Pelas formed his intent.

  Unlike elae, which had specific affinities and moved across the realm in natural channels, deyjiin was formless—the air to elae’s water.

  Pelas’s working summoned the slightest amount of it, then required those same particles to expand to fill the space. In short order, a thimbleful became a deluge; yet any patterns seeking deyjiin’s particular spirit would still only find trace amounts. Not enough to set off any alarms—he hoped.

  As deyjiin slowly filtered in, Pelas began to see the outline of two ethereal cages taking shape where deyjiin bent around itself.

  The cage surrounding the workbenches incorporated static fields into its design. The cage surrounding Shail’s desk harbored an even darker intent. The way it sucked both deyjiin and elae into it reminded Pelas of the black holes that abounded in the Void. Into what nightmare that cage would deposit him—or what was left of him—was not an experience he wanted to explore.

  Keeping safely beyond the static cage surrounding the closest workbench, Pelas looked over the drawings and charts littering its top. Shail’s notes were written in the language of Chaos, represented logographically in symbolic characters that only Pelas or his brothers would recognize. Even so, Pelas couldn’t discern much from the notes, save that Shail was tracking a large number of projects.

  He slowly strolled the length of the second table. A chart showing the lands of Agasan and Daneland in the north had black dots marked all along the border of the two kingdoms. A larger map, pinned beneath other books and papers, showed both the entire western continent and Alorin’s Middle Kingdoms. Xs were marked across all the continents, including an X over Darshan’s city of Tambarré.

  Pelas was leaning precariously far over the table, trying to read some of the notes hand-written on the map, when his left hand accidentally came too close to the static field.

  Pain sliced him, and he jerked back.

  Razor cuts appeared all over his palm, welling with blood. Pelas clenched his fist, his hand throbbing. He stood for a moment in the darkness of the laboratory, cursing his brother and his own clumsiness in equal measure.

  By Chaos born! Tanis must’ve been divinely guided to have made it out of this room without a scratch. Pelas thanked all of the gods in the known. Then he bade a rather hostile farewell to his brother’s workroom and left the way he’d come in.

  When he stepped back into the hallway, the tour was just emerging through the double doors leading out of the bedroom, with the white-robed Palmer saying, “Now, if you’ll follow me, we’ll visit the Literato’s study, where he made his first discovery of the pattern’s capabilities...”

  Pelas ducked down an adjoining hallway and into a modest kitchen. His hand was bleeding profusely.

  He searched the drawers for something to staunch the bleeding and had just found a linen cloth when a voice sneered in his thoughts, Find what you were looking for, brother?

  Oh...hello, Shailabanáchtran. Pelas let the full measure of his disregard find expression in his greeting. He wrapped the cloth tightly around his hand and pulled the knot tight with his teeth. As a matter of fact, yes. Let Shail chew on the meaning of that for a while.

  I recall your penchant for new experiences, Shail smirked across their bond. I didn’t want you to be disappointed when you came calling. I always want my guests feeling appropriately welcomed.

  Pelas clenched his jaw. You do think of everything. He pressed his throbbing hand to his chest and slipped down the hall past the last of the visitors, who were just then heading into the study.

  At the end of the hall, the other Palmer, who was the proctor of the museum, stood watch at the apartment doors.

  Leaving so soon, Pelas?

  Pelas halted, staring at the Palmer. The shape of the man’s eyes was foreign to him, but the mind looking out through them seemed lamentably familiar.

  Pelas gave the proctor a mincing smile. Seeking a new home for your corrupted soul, brother? Looking to trade up?

  Just a reminder that I’m watching you, Pelas. I’m always watching.

  Pelas was fairly certain that Shail had not been watching when the proctor had first let him inside the residence. He must’ve activated some kind of ward when he’d entered the laboratory.

  The proctor hissed low from beneath his hood, “Do you really think I would leave my plans just lying around for you to find?”

  Blood had already soaked through the cloth and was now dripping down Pelas’s arm. He stared hotly at his brother’s mouthpiece. “Didn’t you?”

  “Pelas, you always make it so easy. Nothing you found will help you in the least, but I hope you enjoy my little gift.” He nodded to Pelas’s hand. “Call again any time. Consider it an open invitation.” Then the man’s eyes clouded, and a second later he asked uncertainly, “May I help you with something, my lord?”

  Pelas worked the muscles of his jaw, wishing he could help the man but knowing he could do nothing just then. “Thank you, I was just leaving.”

  “Here, I’ll show you out.” The proctor opened one of the apartment doors for him. “I hope you enjoyed the
tour, my lord.”

  Pelas paused in the portal and met the man’s gaze again, but there was no guile behind his eyes this time. He nodded tightly to him. “It was educational.”

  By the time he emerged from the residential hall into the twilight, Pelas knew something was very wrong. His hand would not stop bleeding. His whole arm was now throbbing, and he could no longer feel his fingers. He had the cold suspicion that Shail had put more into that pattern than a few razor edges.

  Their physical shells were resilient—far more durable than humankind’s. He shouldn’t have been in this much pain. He should not have still been bleeding. And he certainly should not have felt as light-headed as he did, despite his blood-soaked sleeve.

  Pelas started down one of the paths leading between the residential halls, trying to get his bearings. The Sormitáge was a minotaur’s maze at the best of times, and he’d never ventured to this part of the scholars’ residences. Likely the disorientation he was experiencing was also a result of his brother’s ill working.

  “My lord?” Pelas heard a woman calling. It took a moment to process that she was addressing him. “My lord, are you injured?”

  She wore green robes—for the life of him, Pelas couldn’t recall what Sormitáge specialty that signified—and came rushing towards him down an adjoining pathway. “Lord and the Lady!” she exclaimed as her gaze found his hand. “What happened? Were you—”

  Pelas saw a dagger flash and only just caught her wrist in time. His eyes stabbed into hers over the blade poised between them.

  Her gentle face he’d never seen before, but the malice burning in her eyes was all too familiar. She gave him an unnervingly Shail-esque smile. “Hello, brother. Something wrong with your hand?”

  A singular oddity to hear his brother’s condescension in feminine tones.

  “Nothing at all.” Pelas sent a pulse of the fourth into her mind and knocked her cold. He left her collapsed on the sidewalk.

  He needed to get somewhere private where he could summon a portal—and fast, before he became too weak to frame Shadow—but it was the dinner hour. Scholars and students were going about their evening in the university’s usual frenetic fashion, and privacy was in short supply.

  Now, now, Pelas, Shail chuckled darkly into his mind, leaving so soon? I’ve arranged so many gifts for you.

  Pelas thought of a few gifts he’d like to give to his brother in return. I’m touched by your care. He turned down another pathway towards a building he recognized. Then he sent a mental chuckle of his own. I bet you’re just seething in your little pit, wondering what I found.

  I told you, Shail snapped, nothing there was of consequence.

  Of course it wasn’t. I protect the chests holding my underclothes with negative-polarity fields.

  “You would do well to realize that meddling in my affairs has consequences.”

  The voice came from a maestro heading towards Pelas down an intersecting path.

  “And not simply consequences to you,” said a woman coming up behind him.

  “But to all of these trifling playthings who hold such meaning to you,” announced another woman arriving on his left.

  The three converged on Pelas even as others appeared on the intersecting paths, all of them staring with his brother’s malevolent gaze.

  “Do you see, Pelas?” Shail asked through the maestro. “The Sormitáge is my domain. I have eyes everywhere. And I am always watching.”

  Pelas admitted it was chilling to look around at so many innocent minds claimed by his brother’s compulsion. It was testimony to his impaired condition that he did nothing to help them in that moment, but he would not be forever impaired.

  He cast a shadowy smile across them all. “Seems a little paranoid, brother.”

  “Pelas—”

  But the maestro’s snarl was cut short by a screaming siren that accosted ears and minds alike. The lifeforce flared in time with the siren, pulsing warning on the currents of the fourth, casting magic across the city.

  The puppet heads turned as one to look in the direction of the siren.

  The Sormitáge residents froze. Then chaos broke out. People were suddenly running every which way.

  “Oh, is that the alarm?” The woman’s tone implied Shail already knew all about it. She pressed a forefinger innocently to her chin.

  Pelas perceived an ever-compounding wrongness building in the tapestry. He spun to the nearest face, feeling like the world was tilting off its axis. “What have you done?”

  “Oh, this is nothing I did,” replied a teenage boy with a wide, sinister smile. “Just naughty Baelfeir refusing to stay in his play yard. So I alerted the Empress’s illustrious order of spies that he was back.”

  Pelas did a double-take. “I’m sorry—did you say back?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied a different woman using a perfect rendition of Shail’s tone of poisoned sugar. “Didn’t you know? Warlocks have returned to the Realms of Light.”

  The teenager’s smile grew even wider, even more horrible. “Now that was me.”

  Blood had soaked through Pelas’s coat sleeve and was dripping onto the sidewalk. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He cast a pulse of the second—not too hard, just to get them out of harm’s way. Shail’s puppets flew backwards, tumbling into one another.

  Pelas sliced the fabric of the realm and dove into Shadow.

  Nine

  “It’s a keening...a keening. I cannot make it stop.”

  –Malachai ap’Kalien, on the sound of deyjiin in his head

  Isabel dreamed a true memory.

  She stood at the rain-spattered windows of her brother’s villa in Adonnai, staring out into the storm while Arion, the truthreader Cristien Tagliaferro and the Nodefinder Voss di Alera tackled one another on the rain-drenched lawn. Somehow their orderly discussion on the terrace had devolved into a wrestling match.

  “I thought they were supposed to be solving the weld differentiation.” The Nodefinder Parsifal d’Marre came up beside her at the windows, looking much the bemused satyr with his rangy brown hair, scraggly chin beard and bushy brows.

  “They’re due this release, don’t you think?” Isabel murmured with a smile. They were all due a respite, though Epiphany knew if they’d see a real one any time soon. “Are you thinking of joining them?”

  “I prefer to nurse my grief with a bottle.” He leaned his forehead against the window and exhaled an exhausted sigh.

  Isabel brushed a strand of hair off his shoulders and gazed quietly at him. “All isn’t lost, Parsifal.”

  “Forgive me, Isabel, but you more or less have to say that.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less true.”

  He grunted.

  Voices floated to them from across the room—Malachai, Markal and Anglar respectively angry, obstinate and resolute. But from her brother, she heard not a whisper; even his thoughts were disturbingly silent.

  Isabel looked over to where the others stood arguing around Björn’s desk. Malachai ap’Kalien, too tall for his rail-thin frame, his face growing more gaunt and pale by the day; Anglar Tempest, the dark temple to Malachai’s light, ever a pyramid of stoic determination; and Markal with his shock of white hair and warrior’s build, more immovable even than Anglar once the foundation of his opinion had been laid.

  End-cap to the other three, her brother sat broodingly in his chair, chin propped in hand and a finger bracing his temple. He shifted his gaze subtly to meet hers, and she saw in his expression that things were not going well.

  “Lord and the Lady,” Parsifal muttered beside her. Isabel looked back to the three muddied men on the lawn. They were now forming a tangled knot and tumbling down the hill towards the lake. “They’re going to kill each other at this rate.”

  “You should go out with them.” Isabel gently prodded Parsifal while relieving him of his empty bottle. “You’ll come in smelling better, at the very least.”

  That pulled the hint of a smile from him as he r
eluctantly slipped through the doors out onto the terrace. Isabel watched him go splashing across the marble tiles and onto the lawn. He dove atop the others with a howl only partially diffused by the rain.

  A hard clap of power drew her attention swiftly back to the group surrounding her brother.

  Malachai now posed a livid figure between Markal and Anglar, his age-old friends but more recent caretakers....and wardens. The power-clap had come from him.

  Anglar stood braced for impact, his long face severe. Markal had summoned the fifth. Björn sat stone still in his chair.

  “Malachai,” her brother said slowly, “please...let it go.”

  Around Malachai, the currents seethed.

  “How can you in conscience accept this?” Malachai had made fists of his hands, and his brown eyes held a terrible light. Isabel couldn’t see him holding deyjiin, but she could see its effects well enough on the currents. “We accomplished an incredible feat! We made something truly new, something beautiful! And the Council of Realms wants to destroy it?”

  “Malachai—” Markal began, but Björn silenced him with a warning look.

  “Just hear what the Vestal has to say, brother,” Anglar said soothingly, though by the tension in his form, he looked ready to meet a charging bear head-on.

  Björn held his gaze on Malachai until the Adept finally, belligerently, looked back to him. Her brother said then, “I’m not accepting it, my friend, but none of our decisions up to now have been rash. We’re only asking that you let us think this through.”

  “We’re not your enemy,” Anglar reminded Malachai, low but with the same indomitability he infused into everything he said and did.

  Malachai’s chest was heaving, the telltale of a furious man, but Isabel knew he in fact required two breaths now for their every one. Malachai waged a bullish stance, head forward, chin tucked, jaw clenched tightly around his ire and deyjiin ready to unmake them all. He ground out, “I won’t let them destroy it, my lord.”