The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

Everyone looked to Loukas, who went suddenly dumb beneath their stares.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, n’Abraxis?” Raegus prodded.

  Loukas withered slightly beneath his gaze. “All I know is that Tannour used to be able to commune and then suddenly he couldn’t. Now it appears he can again.”

  “That’s all you know.” Rolan crossed arms and hitched an eyebrow in amused challenge.

  “And Inithiya is my lover,” Raegus grumbled. “I could build a ziggurat to rival a mountain out of the secrets the pair of you are concealing. What’s this thing called communing then?”

  Loukas closed his mouth and gazed back at Raegus, his green eyes hard.

  Rolan chuckled. “You’d get more joy squeezing siri from a stone than hoping for answers out of Yashar, there.”

  “I might get some joy out of beating him, though.”

  Lazar was meanwhile staring off into the trees. “Whatever the Vestian is doing, he’s taking Ha’viv’s ill time about it.”

  “He always takes his time about it,” Loukas muttered darkly.

  “Some things cannot be rushed, n’Abraxis.” Tannour abruptly reappeared in their midst, whole cloth, in a space that had been empty an instant before.

  Raegus nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Lazar hissed a curse and took a reflexive step backwards, knocking into Kalid.

  Rolan chuckled.

  Raegus quickly regrouped and rounded on Tannour. “Where the fethe have you been?”

  “Taking care of the archers.” Tannour spied his once-A’dal through half-lidded eyes, catlike and unperturbed. “Or did you expect the rain of arrows ceased because of your desperate prayers?”

  “I expected you to get back here and lend us your sword.”

  “The path must be paid, n’Harnalt.”

  Raegus shook his head. “Whatever that means. I hope you got something useful out of them at least.”

  Tannour smiled grimly. “They paid the price for that shoulder of yours, if that’s your point.”

  “My point—”

  “I like this new trick of yours, Valeri,” an admiring Rolan inserted before Raegus could rouse an argument with Tannour. He rested a hand on his scimitar and looked the Vestian up and down. “Teach me?”

  “In your dreams, Lamodaar.”

  “I would use the skill to eliminate that camel tick who calls himself our ruling prince, which would greatly please our gods.”

  “Jai’Gar willing,” Lazar amended disapprovingly.

  “May it please the gods...” Trell scanned a pensive gaze across his assembled commanders. They went quiet at his comment and looked at him expectantly. He added with a frown, “Under which mandate man commits the greatest atrocities against his fellow man.”

  Lazar regarded him oddly. “Isn’t a mandate from a god the very impetus behind this crusade of yours, Trell of the Tides?”

  “Yes,” Trell gave him an ironic smile, “and not a night passes when it doesn’t trouble me. Come.” He motioned them on. “We’d best be off before they return with more men.”

  “Return?” Loukas fell in beside Trell as they were all heading for the horses. “How is it you think they left, Trell?”

  “How did they make it past our lines at all?” Raegus demanded heatedly.

  “A leis.” Trell glanced back at the others trailing him. “A smaller access point to a node.”

  “True,” Tannour said.

  “They wanted me alive,” Trell told them, “and tried to draw me out while occupying the rest of you.”

  “Also true, according to the archer I questioned,” Tannour murmured, eyeing Trell.

  Trell looked to Loukas. “If we’d chased, it would only have served their aims.”

  “This seems...unlike the warlord,” Lazar observed.

  They reached the horses and Trell turned to face his friends. “The warlord didn’t launch this attack.”

  “Again, true.” Tannour was staring at Trell in open wonder.

  “Then who did?” Loukas asked.

  Trell scanned his gaze across the twilit forest, but in his mind he was seeing the field of the game, and a shadowy figure on the other side. “The man who’s the puppeteer behind all of this—that is, behind the warlord’s presence in Abu’dhan, the Saldarian marauders, the missing villagers...all of it.”

  Trell swung into Gendaia’s saddle and looked to the rest of them. A plan was rapidly taking shape in his thoughts. “At camp tonight, announce to the men that I’ve offered terms for the warlord’s surrender—and al-Amir, ensure that message gets to the warlord.”

  Lazar nodded to him. “As Qharp blows west, Trell of the Tides.”

  Trell exhaled a measured breath. “We’ve a long night ahead of us. By morning, I want archery ranges set up in full view of the warlord’s walls. Tomorrow, the men will work the cortata in shifts and take turns with a special project during the afternoon. Outside of this, they are to do nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Lazar sounded taken aback.

  “Sleep. Eat. Rest. Bare their asses to the warlord’s sentries...but nothing remotely resembling preparation for battle.”

  Lazar took up his reins and leaned onto his pommel. “I will order my men to do this, Trell of the Tides, but I cannot see how it will serve you.”

  “Watch and learn, al-Amir.” Rolan flashed a brilliant smile, teeth very white against his caramel skin. “Watch and learn.”

  Eleven

  “Thoughts have feet. They travel far.”

  –An old Kandori proverb

  Gydryn val Lorian stood atop the walls of Raku Oasis, imagining that the hot wind was scouring the past from his soul, washing away years of misdoing—misguided journeys down false roads laid by falser allies—imagining the heat and the abrasive sand were cleaning away the scum of injustice that had been darkening his honor, letting it shine anew.

  It seemed just yesterday that he’d stared with burning eyes across the oasis city, with its onion domes and sparkling towers, lamenting the time it had taken him to recover from his injuries; torn between wanting to help Zafir fight their mutual enemies there in the desert and retrieving his own men to fight the enemy at home in Dannym. He’d had to sunder his honor no matter which choice he made.

  Then had come Radov’s attack, another near death, and rescue by an immortal falling out of the sky onto the back of the creature about to land a killing blow.

  Overnight, choices were made for Gydryn as if by the hand of his gods—or perhaps the Seventeen of the Akkad; these were Their lands, after all—and not only could he leave Zafir with his honor intact, he was heading home with a new outlook on life.

  “Your Majesty, she’s ready.”

  Gydryn turned to see Prince Farid standing further down Raku’s outer wall. Beyond Farid’s white-robed form, the rising heat from Mithaiya’s lake of boiling sand shimmered the air like a screen between Raku and the rest of M’Nador; the whiplash welt of a goddess’s flail.

  The king looked one more time to the east and south, where the mountains of Abu’dhan made a darkly jagged line. He pressed his fingers to his lips and offered a farewell to Trell, wherever he was in those distant mountains, along with a prayer for his safety and success. Then he looked purposefully to Farid. “I’m ready.”

  As they started off together along the wall, Gydryn eyed the Akkadian prince, who would’ve been Sebastian’s age had his eldest lived, but who harbored a solemn, sober air that Sebastian had never embraced. Gydryn found great irony in the moment, for the last time they’d attempted such an exodus, things hadn’t ended so well.

  Farid felt the king’s gaze and glanced his way. “I’m praying harder this time, so you know.”

  Gydryn chuckled. “I would join you if I knew the words.”

  “The gods listen to our hearts, Your Majesty. That language is universal.”

  “Besides which, they’re gods,” Gydryn pointed out reasonably, “which more or less implies omniscience.”

  Farid eyed him wi
th a hint of amusement. “Then you’ve no excuse, have you?”

  Gydryn smiled and turned his gaze off into the day. “Point taken.”

  At the far end of their section of wall, a gilded dragon perched atop a bastion, wrapping her spiked tail possessively around the pentagonal wall.

  Gydryn reflected it was odd to walk those ramparts and see neither soldier nor sentry. Stranger still to look out through the curtain of wavering heat and see only empty desert. But threat would never come from that quarter again; Mithaiya’s lake might as well have been the edge of the world.

  Most unsettling was the thought of climbing onto the dragon’s back and flying off into the day. Yet that was the road before him. The fastest road to Nahavand was no road at all.

  The dragon’s black claws were larger than the tower’s windows. As Gydryn and Farid neared, those claws lifted away—miraculously without damaging plaster or stone—and the dragon resettled herself upon the wall near a tall crate of supplies they would be taking for the Dannish troops. Her head shimmered with gleaming scales of bronze, copper and gold as she assessed them with one catlike, elliptical eye.

  Even knowing the dragon was the same being who’d fallen out of the sky to save him from a demon and heal him of his injuries, Gydryn drew up short as her great eye fixed upon him.

  Then she was lowering her head below the wall, that they might use the merlon and crenel as steps to climb onto her broad neck, which they did. Gydryn was not ashamed to let Farid go first.

  They settled into a flat space of broad plate at her shoulders, behind the single row of massive horns that made a mane behind her skull and between the dual rows of spines that traced the line of her muscular back.

  Gydryn spared a glance for Farid as he slowly lowered his body down beside the prince. Farid seemed far more at ease than Gydryn felt. “You do this often, do you?”

  The Akkadian cracked a smile. “Only once, with Lord Rhakar. It was—”

  The dragon dropped away from the wall with a dramatic lifting of Gydryn’s stomach and then flung herself up-up-up in a steep climb that pressed the king against the invisible field holding him to her body, until finally she was speeding north above the line of arid mountains and Gydryn could breathe again.

  “—unsettling,” Farid croaked out, finishing his thought.

  Soon they were soaring at a stable altitude. Gydryn recognized that the dragon was holding him with her power, so he risked getting to his feet, filled with wonder. The vantage allowed him to better see between the two smallest spikes at the base of her neck.

  The speed with which she flew was unimaginable. Astonishment threatened to take his breath anew.

  They were higher than any mountain Gydryn had ever climbed. The view was staggering. Dunes looked like waves in an ochre sea. In the east, a long line of dark ants was winding its way through the trough between those waves—the stragglers of M’Nador’s army. They seemed hardly more than a mirage in the distance.

  “Prince Farid,” Gydyn said breathlessly.

  Farid got to his feet. The safety field Mithaiya was holding around them prevented the wind from blowing them off her back but didn’t stop it altogether. The prince’s white robes fluttered as he joined Gydryn’s side, mingling with Gydryn’s own garments of sapphire blue.

  He nodded towards the snaking line of men. “Where do you think they’ll go?”

  Farid’s dark-eyed gaze assessed the army on the march. “Back to Taj to lick their wounds, curse our names and plot anew.” He turned the king a look. “They surely haven’t given up, though they may have given up on Raku.”

  “Zafir told me that Radov fled the scene.”

  Farid exhaled. “This beast has many heads, Your Majesty. Ours is a never-ending war.”

  “Surely the feud itself is not eternal. Could it not die with Radov?”

  “Different men, identical agendas, Your Majesty.” Farid tucked the scarf of his turban behind his head to secure it from the wind. His dark hair, curling just below his ears, alternately flew back and clung to his close-shorn beard. “The Council of Princes wants the Kutsamak. So does the Akkad. These mountains are sacred to all who worship the Seventeen, though M’Nador and the Akkad have different traditions for honoring that sanctity.”

  “I often hear the conflict spoken of in terms of Nadori greed.”

  Farid clasped hands behind his back and rested his dark eyes on the king. “Perhaps the princes would want to exploit the sacred shrines for profit, as many believe. Perhaps in that exploitation the shrines would become better protected, better preserved. It is difficult to walk in another man’s shoes while standing in your own.”

  Gydryn nodded soberly to this truth. Farid often spoke in aphorisms, wisdom gained from his studies of the scriptures of Jai’Gar.

  Gydryn admired in Zafir’s middle son many of the same qualities he’d recently admired in Trell: wisdom applied to the greater good, acting true to himself and his own sense of honor, a demonstrated kindness and appreciation for the life he’d been granted, a practical but unjaded view of the world...all of these shaped by the principles that comprised the faith of the Seventeen Tribes.

  For all Gydryn had done his part in raising Trell to be a good man and a strong leader, Zafir and the beliefs he’d taught Trell had polished his son into a shining pinnacle, the best representation of himself. Gydryn could see now why Trell wouldn’t change any part of his life.

  A soft smile found its way to his lips.

  How miraculous that moment, to be ruminating on his son’s growth while standing on the back of a flying dragon alongside Prince Farid—Farid, who’d retrieved him from the burning sands where Kjieran van Stone had immolated himself; Farid, who’d saved him anew during the battle at Raku; Farid, who’d pledged himself to seeing Gydryn and his entire army safely home. Gydryn owed an uncountable debt to Zafir’s Adept son.

  And now, thanks to Prince Farid—and by the grace of the dragon flying him—he was finally on his way to reunite with his men.

  By all that was holy, what would they think when they saw him?

  ***

  Loran val Whitney, Duke of Marion, tightened his gaze and stifled a wince while his officers and knights argued around him.

  The courtyard where they were meeting inside the fortress of Nahavand maintained an ancient elegance. Even after years of abandonment, detailed carvings adorned the peaked archways of the four-walled arcade surrounding them, imparting a sense of timelessness. A makeshift shade screen pieced together from tent canvases and wagon coverings hung from lines strung high above the courtyard. Thus, daylight became a motley diffusion in dun shades, but it kept the strong Nadori sun off their necks.

  Loran would’ve given his left testicle for a breeze. Or a dancing girl with a palm frond. Hell, he would’ve welcomed a bloody Shamshir’im if he came armed with a fan capable of cooling the sweat from his skin.

  Loran had spent most of the campaign in Tal’Shira or Taj al’Jahanna, in palaces with many comforts, while his officers had been posted to the front lines—Abu’dhan, the Qar’imali, Ramala and other outposts off the map of civilization. Many of the latter wore desert thawbs beneath their sword belts, and patterned scarves to keep the sun off their heads. They seemed far more adapted to sweating their balls off than he was. Case in point, he hardly found the breath to raise his voice while his officers maintained a heated debate.

  “...Ness and Boyd reported Radov’s army is on the march back to Taj,” said Captain Lachlan val Reith. With his darkly tanned skin and sun-bleached hair, he barely resembled the pale-skinned highlander who’d sailed south with Loran so many moons ago.

  “I submit we still should’ve gone to their aid,” said Rafferty Makenna, another captain who’d known a long campaign in the Qar’imali. With his dark hair and eyes, and now his deeply tanned skin, he resembled a Nadoriin more than a Northman. Only the straight line of his nose hinted that his heritage was miles from any desert.

  “And do what, Makenna?” prot
ested Tavon val Forbes, their finest combat engineer and one of Duke Gareth val Mallonwey’s officers. Tavon had that lean, hardened look that most of Gareth’s men shared. “Which side are we supposed to support?”

  “Don’t play the fool, Tavon.” Ramsay val Baran was sucking the nut out of half a pistachio shell. Flecks of earlier nuts had lodged in his thick black beard. “You heard Jasper val Renly’s letter from our king as surely as the rest of us did. That bastard Radov is in league with Morwyk. It’s why we’re here and not fighting at Raku. And I vow our departure is what sent Radov begging Morwyk for more troops to bring the whole sordid collusion out into the open.”

  Tavon gave him a frustrated look. “Traitor or not, it hardly means we should rush to the enemy’s aid.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” murmured Rafferty.

  “Unless he isn’t,” Tavon shot him a hard look.

  “They’ve known we were here since the beginning.” Rafferty sank back in his chair. “You’ve seen the dragons in the sky. Those are thinking beasts. They report to the Emir’s Mage. Al-Basir knows we’re squatting on his side of the lines. Why hasn’t he come for us if he’s our enemy?”

  “We’re not a threat to him,” Lachlan muttered.

  “Seven thousand men are a threat, Lachlan. Al-Basir doesn’t know our motives. So why hasn’t he attacked?”

  “It’s neither here nor there,” Tavon said. “The dragon turned the Khalim Plains into a boiling lake and the Nadoriin are rushing back to Taj with their tails between their legs. It’s time we headed home.”

  “Without His Majesty?” protested Rafferty. “Are you daft, man?”

  “He said he’d meet us here, and he will.” Ramsay calmly broke open another pistachio. He had a pile of shells on the table in front of him and a smaller pile of the nuts. Loran didn’t know how he could eat anything at all in that heat.

  “Radov tried to have His Majesty killed—and may have succeeded,” murmured the heretofore silent Sir Kendrick Perry, commander of His Majesty’s knights. He shared the laconic speech common to all of the king’s royal guard, as if every man selected had to fit the same mold that Rhys val Kincaide had first climbed out of.