The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  If he was lucky, they would just torture and kill him. Tannour was fairly certain he wouldn’t be so lucky.

  But if it came to that...

  Part of him would welcome an end—to the hiding, the secrets, the bitter ignobility and the ache of Loukas’s accusing gaze; an end to the constant fear of being found, of being caught, of doing anything that would alert the Sorceresy to his whereabouts.

  Yes, a part of him would welcome death...that part that was bound through despair and coercion and the biting sting of metallic ink burning in his thirteen-year-old skin for months. The fractured part of his soul that they held hostage with oaths indifferently compelled from his unwilling tongue. The part that sensed them even still, fifteen years later, from the far side of the world.

  The part Loukas could never understand.

  This despairing part used to be all that was left of Tannour. The Sorceresy had stripped everything that mattered from him, flaying his spirit to the bloodied bone that they might clothe it newly with flesh of their own devising. And when he’d still refused to do their bidding, they’d taken even that from him—

  “You said I was your tether.” Loukas was standing as far from Tannour as the space would allow. That in itself should’ve told him the path was proving false.

  “They severed it, Loukas.” Tannour could barely gasp out the words. Everything he was, everything he’d strived for—slaved for, been subjugated for—gone in a whisper of their will.

  “Can’t you just...reattach it or something?”

  “It doesn’t work like that.” He pushed a hand through his hair, catching sight of the tattoo on his wrist as it passed his eyes. The ink had been burning for three weeks. He wondered if it would ever stop.

  Tannour lifted an imploring look to Loukas, raw, and so vulnerable he immediately hated himself for it. “I don’t know how I constructed my tether the first time. There’s no hope of making a new one without their guidance.” And even if he did manage it, couldn’t they simply sever it anew? If the tattoos on his body gave them the power to do it once, he had to assume they could do it again.

  “So what...you can’t commune?”

  “I can’t do anything!” Tannour threw him a desperate look. “My power is lost!”

  For an instant as they stared at each other, he thought Loukas might’ve understood, that it might’ve changed things between them...that something good might still come of it.

  “So all of this was for nothing.” Loukas’s accusing gaze burned more painfully than any tattoo. He turned on his heel and shoved out of the room—

  “Watch out!”

  Tannour jerked his foot back from a crumbling edge and stabilized himself with Air, just as a large piece of the wall beneath him broke off and fell through the canopy of leaves, tracing a lengthy path of descent in the echo of clattering stone. He looked over his shoulder to Loukas, who’d warned him, and who was leveling him a wide-eyed stare of reproach.

  Tannour clenched his jaw and returned his gaze forward. But he took better care where he placed his feet after that.

  As few as two moons ago, he would’ve fallen along with the stones, lost without his ability to command and commune with Air.

  He knew he ought to be concentrating on the skeletal path they were following atop the bones of the city, but he repeatedly had to tear his thoughts away from the mystery of how he’d constructed a new tether in Trell val Lorian, or the fact that the A’dal was more reckless with his life than Tannour himself, which endangered both of them, or how he was sure that someone was still trying to kill the A’dal...and what it might mean to lose his tether a second time.

  He tried not to dwell too deeply on this last part, for he wasn’t sure he’d like what it would tell him about himself. And yet...Trell was his tether now, and the very fact of that connection meant something, despite what Loukas thought.

  Eventually the terrain presented enough challenge that Tannour had to focus even on where he put his hands. A final climb up a stone wall delivered them to a catwalk surrounding a crumbling dome and the top of the small mountain, where the view opened.

  The forest’s green canopy spread before them then, broken only by worn roofs and limestone towers making a last valiant struggle for the daylight. In this guise, the ruins dotted an undulating basin among a crescent of craggy peaks.

  Central to the half-moon of sheer cliffs jutted the bastions of a fortress. Its retaining wall curved around the mountain and was lost to view.

  Lazar came up on the A’dal’s left as they were all staring at the fortress. He cleared his throat. “In our favor, the building is as old as the rest of this city. The warlord has done little to fortify it.”

  “What need, when no army can get to it?” Loukas muttered. He was staring across the valley, green eyes narrowed, making that face he always assumed when he was thinking in nine languages. His hands of their own accord were assembling a spyglass with quick precision.

  The forest ended a few miles shy of the fortress, where it changed to moorland that offered little cover to an invading army. A steep road hugged the hillside in a single sweep from valley floor to summit, but some sort of barricade blocked the route where it reached the fortress’s base. And the walls...

  “Are those what I think they are?” Raegus was squinting to make out the dark splotches on the walls.

  Loukas wordlessly handed Trell his spyglass.

  Tannour had already surmised what they were seeing, but the spyglass brought the scene into gruesome focus for the A’dal. He gripped the leather tightly as he surveyed the score of naked men hanging from their ankles along the outer wall. They were armless from the elbow down. The doomed souls must’ve been tossed over the walls just after their arms were severed, for long, crimson trails spread beneath their hanging forms, painting macabre designs across the fortress foundation.

  Upon their bare torsos, each man bore a letter, carved deep. The message read:

  HAIL, PRINCE OF DANNYM

  Trell handed the spyglass to Raegus, who placed it to his eye and promptly cursed. He passed it on to Rolan. The latter growled, “By Ha’viv’s ill eye, he slew a man for a damned comma.”

  Lazar lowered his own glass and looked ominously to Trell. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Yes...” a furrow notched Trell’s brow. “That’s what troubles me.”

  Tannour shared the A’dal’s concern. Clearly the spy had been informing the warlord on their progress towards the fortress. But how much had he told the warlord of their strengths and weaknesses? How vulnerable had he made them to attack?

  They’d been conducting quiet inquiries since passing through the burned forest, trying to narrow in on the spy without causing a general state of alarm among the troops—and without spooking the spy himself—but they’d little to go on.

  When Tannour had questioned the wielder Kifat back in Khor Taran, the man had admitted the spy’s existence but had no clue to his identity. The A’dal suspected the spy was someone close to one of them, a soldier or another retainer perhaps, but the man was clever and careful.

  Not for the first time, Tannour wished they’d had a lightbender among them, like his uncle, who walked the Mirror Path and could influence and read the thoughts of men.

  Loukas exchanged a look with Trell. “Well...it’s not the most impregnable place we’ve ever considered attacking.”

  “No, that would’ve been my fortress.” Lazar still sounded disgruntled about this for some inexplicable reason.

  “Lazar,” Trell looked to the Nadori commander, “can your scouts get a message to the warlord?”

  Lazar quirked a wary look his way. “Possibly.”

  “Let it be known to him that if he surrenders now, I will allow his men to live. If he delays, I will kill them all, slowly. If he fights me, I will prolong their suffering until he begs me to end their lives. His will be the last life I take.”

  Lazar blinked at him. “That’s...bold.”

  “We have to
force his hand, al-Amir, push things into our timetable.”

  “Jai’Gar willing it will be so.” Lazar whistled for one of his scouts to deliver the message.

  Trell pointed to a hill a few miles south of the fortress, at the dividing edge between forest and moors. “We’ll establish camp on that high ground, well clear of the forest and out of range of the warlord’s archers, and in full view of his walls. Let him see that his brutality won’t intimidate us. In the meantime, I want to get a better look at that barricade.”

  “Your will, A’dal,” Raegus said.

  “It’s odd though,” Loukas added as if still musing on an earlier thought. From the way he was frowning at the fortress, with his bottom lip caught just so, Tannour could tell he was calculating probabilities.

  Raegus looked to him. “What’s odd?”

  Loukas shook his head, still frowning. “Just that everything the warlord did before seemed designed to push us away, but this message seems to be inviting us in.”

  Trell nodded. “Something’s changed.”

  Loukas looked to him. “But what? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

  Rolan handed the spyglass back to Loukas and rested his hand on the hilt of his scimitar. “Why the arms, by Inanna’s blood?”

  “What are you on about now?” Raegus asked.

  Rolan flicked a jeweled hand at the fortress. “Why’d the yellow bastard cut off their arms?”

  “There is no logic behind his depravity save to inspire fear,” Lazar rumbled. “In our skirmishes with the warlord, he has occasionally unleashed maddened ghouls upon us—or so these decaying men appeared to us at first, screaming and wailing as they hobbled towards us wielding little but despair, clutching at us with rotting limbs, begging us to take their lives.

  “What few men survived their own madness told us the story of their maiming: when the warlord becomes bored, he pulls prisoners from their cells and makes them pick between losing a hand or a foot. Whichever they chose, they usually die from the black rot—but not quickly and in terrible sickness and pain. It is said Inithiya cannot reach the dying within those walls. They must walk the death march onto the moors before She will claim their spirits for Jai’Gar. The foulness of the place offends Her.”

  He looked to Trell with concern clearly in his gaze. “This man will not be easily intimidated, Trell of the Tides.”

  “No, intimidation is his tactic. Honor requires I give him warning all the same.”

  A twinge of displacement yanked Tannour’s perception to the left.

  Air had spoken of motion but then had quickly fallen silent again. There were ways for men to move with minimal displacement, as through a still pond, making barely a ripple.

  Tannour cast his perception as wide as he could, but even he had limits—far more limits than he wanted to think about just then. But whatever had disturbed Air’s equilibrium had either stopped moving or was moving too slowly now to be perceived.

  Tannour looked to Trell. “We should rejoin the army as soon as possible, A’dal.”

  Trell glanced to him. “What are you sensing?”

  “I don’t know.” Tannour scanned the view, gaze narrowed. “Displacement of some kind.”

  “Could be nothing,” Loukas offered.

  Tannour flashed him a look. “Could be something.” By the Two Paths, but Loukas was always doubting him, even knowing better than anyone what he could do. “We’re exposed here.”

  Trell frowned slightly. Then he nodded. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Trell spent the descent through the ruins thinking about Tal’Shira, mostly because he already had an idea how to take the warlord’s stronghold; while in contrast, invading Tal’Shira with only his small force presented a much more consuming problem.

  Hardly an hour in the waking day passed when he wasn’t strategizing ways to invade the seaside city and seat of Radov abin’Hadorin, Ruling Prince of M’Nador.

  The city itself posed a problem, with its warrens of labyrinthine alleyways to navigate before they even made it to the broad boulevards of the inner elite. Then there were the Shamshir’im, who would likely not take kindly to their city being overthrown, never mind the opinion of their spymaster, Viernan hal’Jaitar.

  The palace itself would be heavily defended by Radov’s Talien Knights, and if Radov was himself in residence, the force there would be massive.

  All of this presumed that Trell’s army would make it past the city walls, when even the daftest of guards could usually conclude that a large force of armed men marching towards one’s city was a good time to bar the gates.

  With his head spinning around plans and probabilities, Trell crouched at the edge of a crumbling roof, grabbed the rim and swung over the edge. He hung for a moment with his arms extended, then dropped five feet or so to the level below, where the scout Kalid was waiting. Their path through the ruins was necessarily following a birds-eye jigsaw of flat rooftops and crumbling walls, for the forest had long ago overtaken the city’s streets.

  Tannour dropped almost soundlessly behind Trell, ever his shadow these days. The others followed with more noise and less grace.

  Loukas was debating the city’s name with Lazar again. Trell supposed that after everything they’d seen of late, levity was the safest refuge for a conscientious soul.

  While they waited for the others to descend the ledge, Tannour walked to the edge of the arcade roof and stood, still and silent, appearing almost ghostly with the breeze stirring the grey silk of his headscarf, and emanating elae.

  Trell wondered if Tannour knew that he could perceive his power. And he wondered how much of that power Tannour would be willing to wield for him, for their cause, and what it would cost the Vestian to do so.

  Though Tannour remained truthbound about his talent and his past, Trell had gleaned from conversations with both the Vestian and Loukas that the Sorceresy had taken Tannour’s powers once, that he had no idea how he’d gotten them back, and that he lived in a state of constant unease that they would learn of his returning abilities and take them away anew.

  They’d barely spoken of Tannour’s improbable rescue of Trell and Lazar in the caves of Khor Taran, though tales and speculation abounded among the troops. Tannour seemed disinclined to speak of the event. He acted as if the entire affair had simply been his duty; yet nothing in the Converted’s oath required him to repeatedly put himself in harm’s way for Trell, or to take Trell’s personal protection upon himself as though a divine calling.

  It troubled Trell, the nascent design of the path he saw unfolding.

  Here was a man whose skills he desperately needed. The man himself seemed devoted to Trell for reasons unknown, to the point where Trell suspected Tannour would do almost anything for him. How willing, then, was he to use Tannour as a weapon of agency? If it meant the difference between ending the war or failing in their mission, could he demand Tannour use his talent, even knowing it might lead to the man’s own ruin?

  ‘There are pieces and there are players in this game, Trell of the Tides,’ Balaji had told him once. ‘Only one of these has a say in his destiny. Only one influences the tapestry’s design.’

  The drachwyr’s words haunted Trell every time he thought of making a piece of Tannour.

  They were all risking their lives in this endeavor, and of course they knew what they’d signed up for in serving in the Emir’s forces. Yet Trell’s father had ingrained in him that there was a definite line dividing what a man could and couldn’t be asked to sacrifice for his king. Trell worried that what he would need to ask of Tannour would cross that line, and he feared that he might have to ask it anyway.

  Pieces and players...Trell knew he was a Player in the First Lord’s game, but while he was still learning all of what it truly meant to assume that role, one fact suddenly crystallized before him:

  The warlord absolutely was not.

  He couldn’t be a Player, not out there in the wilds of Abu’dhan, so isolated from the
larger conflict. Which meant the warlord was not Trell’s actual opponent, only another Player’s piece.

  It framed the current situation with an entirely new perspective.

  Trell moved to stand beside Tannour at the edge of the arcade roof. “Do you still sense something?”

  “It’s gone silent.” Tannour glanced at him sidelong. “I can tell you the location of every deer and rabbit within a mile of us, down to fractions of an inch.”

  Trell smiled. “I doubt the deer are plotting our demise.”

  “But someone is.” Tannour turned his head to look seriously at Trell. His gaze was always striking, the way his ice-pale eyes were rimmed in darkest blue, but when he held his power about himself, the faintest nimbus—as of wavering heat—surrounded him also. It made him seem otherworldly, like a djinn straddling the planes of two realities.

  “Displacement like what I perceived can only be explained by motion of a large force.”

  “How would a large force have gotten past our perimeter?” The placement of his army was strategic. They had the mountain ruins on one side and the river bordering the other. Had an attack occurred, Trell would’ve heard the horns.

  “I cannot say.” Tannour returned his gaze to the view of ruins, forested mountains and sky. “But they’re out there, A’dal. I just can’t tell where. Someone is hiding them from my perception.”

  “It’s possible to do that?”

  “A wielder could.” He shook his head, then gave Trell a troubled frown. “I would that I could tell you more, but we speak different languages, Adepts and me. The Sorceresy never spoke of elae. Their only mention of Adepts was to warn that we would be at odds with Adepts from the west.”

  Tannour shifted his weight slightly, and the nimbus surrounding him refracted. For an instant, Trell saw two of him.

  “From speaking with you, A’dal, I see that it must be the same power we both use,” Tannour admitted, seemingly unaware of the planes of reality shifting around him. “When fully invested in my own power, Air shows me wielders’ patterns, so I’ve learned to recognize and read them. But to save myself from the Ghost Kings, I couldn’t tell you what a wielder does to hide from my perception—only that I know it’s possible.”