The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  This brought a general stir, though silence still hovered, tentative and uneasy. The storm gusting beyond their tent billowed the outermost canvas walls, but even this ruckus seemed subdued by the heavy concern cloaking the room.

  Pelas placed a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. It seemed a gesture of solidarity, but Tanis perceived a strange undercurrent coursing through Pelas’s thoughts. The latter settled his gaze upon Dagmar and by the force of it alone gained the Vestal’s eye.

  When Dagmar met his gaze, Pelas said, “It’s not the disintegrating grid that’s affecting her.” His tone was deeply troubled. “There’s a tear in the realm’s aether.”

  “Aye.” Dagmar regarded him gravely, and with a nod acknowledged his implication. “You’ve struck the heart of it.”

  Ean turned a look between the two of them. “But why should that affect Is—”

  Then he suddened upon the understanding, and Tanis at the same time by reflection, for both Ean and Pelas now held the same perilous image in their thoughts:

  The Chaos patterns covering his mother’s body.

  Ean swore.

  Pelas tightened his grip on Tanis’s shoulder, and the lad felt him mentally brace for some sort of altercation, but Ean speared a look at Pelas that conveyed all of the injury and tragedy of their recent history, yet held no blame. Only regret, and the desperate wish that none of it had happened.

  The others in the room were alternating their stares between Ean and Pelas. It would’ve been impossible not to notice the riotous energy roused between a fifth strand Adept and a fifth strand immortal when both stood wrestling with their emotions. But the energy was compounded by the fact that Ean and Pelas were also each bound by cords of connection to Darshan, to Tanis, to Isabel—they had all become interwoven threads in a web of cause and consequence.

  Into this tempestuous whirlwind of currents, the Fifth Vestal appeared.

  He ducked through the parting of drapes, a tall man, leanly aristocratic, with eyes so impossibly blue they were the first thing Tanis noticed when he looked up. The second thing the lad noticed was the vibrant energy his uncle brought into the room. The third was his smile.

  Because even before he took note of Ean, Pelas, Dagmar or any of the others, Björn’s eyes found Tanis standing there, and the smile that overcame his features froze him in the opening...a smile of wonder and welcome, sorrow, longing and admiration. Love.

  He spared a brief glance to acknowledge the others—all of whom had risen to their feet—but he only had eyes for Tanis as he slowly crossed the room. Tanis had never felt so radiant beneath anyone’s inspection. The lad moved as if magnetized to Björn in return, and they met in the middle of the carpet.

  Björn took Tanis by the shoulders. A thousand thoughts reflected in his very blue eyes, in his marveling smile. “You look...so much like your father.” He flicked a brief glance, as of apology, to Ean before looking back to Tanis, as though his eyes couldn’t bear to look upon anyone else.

  The prince murmured, “I see it always.”

  Tanis beheld his uncle, feeling an ineffable sense of awe. How did a man say so much in a glance? Entire concepts conveyed in the brief flash of a smile, or the barest shadow in his expression that somehow bespoke his thoughts completely. Just standing there, Björn was emanating such self-assurance that Tanis became reassured, made confident even, in knowing with his whole heart that his uncle wouldn’t fail them.

  In that moment, Tanis understood why his mother stood unwaveringly at her brother’s side; why the zanthyr served his uncle so unquestioningly; and why so many others harbored such terrible fear of him.

  And he understood something else, too, which seemed more germane and poignant in that moment: that beyond all else—before all else—Björn van Gelderan was his uncle, and though they hadn’t met since Tanis was a toddler, he loved him as his own son.

  Björn studied Tanis’s expression quietly while all of these understandings settled, then he drew the lad into his strong embrace. “Welcome, Tanis.” He spoke low at his ear, yet Tanis felt the words reverberating in his soul. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this day.”

  Tanis held his uncle close in return, feeling unexpectedly choked. It took him a moment to dig his voice out of the glorious tension binding his throat. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for this day too, my lord,” he finally managed.

  Björn released him to take his shoulders again, that he might gaze upon his face once more with the shadow of a wistful smile, as if he truly was seeing some image of his best friend standing before him anew. Then he nodded to the lad and turned to greet Ean.

  They embraced as brothers, exchanging muted words. Björn quickly scanned his gaze across the others in the room, that they might know his gratitude for their support. Then he looked to Pelas.

  The Malorin’athgul met Björn’s gaze evenly, but Tanis sensed regret scouring his bond-brother’s conscience. Pelas felt intimately responsible for everything that was amiss there.

  Tanis could only wonder what his uncle was feeling in that moment. Surely Pelas represented an adversary he’d been battling for centuries, yet one he’d never met face to face. But all Tanis saw in his uncle’s gaze was appreciation, and perhaps a hint of wary respect.

  His uncle extended his hand. “Björn van Gelderan.” This offering of hand and name set them as equals, there in a world where everyone called him lord.

  After a moment’s startled pause, Pelas clasped wrists firmly with him. “Pelas.” Not his full name, not the assignation their Maker had given him. His gaze made a desperate apology for what he’d done to Björn’s sister.

  “Yes...” Björn replied with a grave sort of smile, their hands still locked as in a binding troth, “this is quite the crossroads we’ve reached, isn’t it?” He shifted his gaze to Tanis, and the lad found warmth in it anew. Looking back to Pelas, Björn’s smile relaxed. “Be welcome, Pelas. My nephew could have no stouter protector at his side.”

  Pelas nodded wordlessly as they released hands. Tanis could tell that Björn’s offering of solidarity had profoundly affected him.

  His uncle finally gave the others his attention and the answer they’d all been seeking—shouting for—with their thoughts since he entered the room.

  “Isabel is conscious.” Björn pushed hands into his pockets and let his gaze travel across the host of concerned faces surrounding him. “Her pattern appears to be whole. She’s certainly strong enough to have cast me from her rooms that she might prepare herself properly to greet her husband and son.”

  The Eltanese gave a collective exhale.

  Dagmar came over and clapped Björn on the shoulder. “She said we’d know the moment when it came. Her Sight certainly isn’t failing her.” He grinned and headed off towards a wine cabinet at the far end of the room.

  The Eltanese approached as one. “Your Excellency,” Gadovan glanced to the others, “if you’ve no more need of us, we’ll call it a night.”

  “Yes, please.” Björn’s gaze said clearly they needn’t have asked his permission to depart. “It’s been too long since you’ve all seen your beds. My sister owes her life to you, and I a debt that can never be repaid.”

  The men looked uncomfortable beneath such praise. Gadovan nodded respectfully, and the Eltanese headed out.

  Björn looked to Tanis and Ean then, and a knowing smile blossomed. “My sister is asking me to escort both of you to her.”

  Whereupon Tanis’s feet suddenly and unexpectedly rooted themselves to the carpet. Never mind that they’d met in dreamscape, to see his mother in the flesh...

  Suddenly, with her welfare no longer in question and the moment of their reunion now imminent, the lad became instantly apprehensive and wound up with an energy he didn’t know how to channel. After all this time...he suddenly could not make himself move to actually go meet her.

  Then his uncle was wrapping an arm around his shoulders and encouraging him down the corridor, willing feet or no.

 
; “It occurs to me, nephew, that you have three immortals bound to you now,” he observed with a musing smile and something brightly mischievous dancing in his blue eyes. “Mayhap Cephrael should fear a new rival?”

  Tanis managed to hold his gaze, but he felt suddenly very uncertain about it. “Do you think He would be angered, sir?”

  “On the contrary,” Björn turned a wide, albeit secretive, smile back to the path ahead. “I think He would be immensely pleased by the prospect.”

  Twenty

  “There is no game in knowing everything.”

  –Baelfeir, Lord of all Warlocks

  Ean watched Tanis walking before him with Björn’s arm around his shoulders and saw Arion in every inch of the lad’s form.

  It was so strange to know this duality of lives, to recognize Tanis as his son and another man’s in the same moment; to claim Arion’s misdeeds and triumphs equally, yet know they were not rightly his; to have Arion’s memories without himself having lived any of them...and to love the same woman Arion had loved every inch as desperately as he had.

  Isabel...

  By Cephrael’s Great Book, every time he thought upon it now, Ean felt choked by the enormity of what Isabel had sacrificed. Never mind her more recent interaction with Pelas—her earlier sacrifices reared just as monolithically before him.

  Because Arion couldn’t help but be Arion, Isabel had endured three hundred years without her true love at her side. But because Isabel had loved Arion so much, she had also lived those centuries without her son.

  She’d sacrificed so many precious years she might’ve had with Tanis just so that Ean could watch him grow up. For Tanis, it was the same lifetime—leapfrogged through the centuries to be raised in another woman’s home, that he might just be near the man who had once been his father. For Ean, it was the third lifetime of foolhardy trial and error.

  But Isabel...she had lived every one of those three hundred years without two of the souls who were closest to her heart. Ean couldn’t even conceive of what that sacrifice had cost her.

  He’d envisioned a hundred ways of approaching her in apology, countless scenarios for their long-overdue reconciliation; but none of those had taken into account coming to T’khendar with Tanis and Pelas only to find Isabel in peril and the world itself being torn apart at the seams.

  Björn stopped before a curtained opening and drew the drapes aside to let Tanis pass, but as Ean was following the lad inside, Björn caught his arm and his gaze. “Look hard, think hard, upon what you see.” Ean saw shades of conflict within Björn’s blue eyes. “This problem needs both our minds upon it.”

  Reading the meaning in Björn’s words, Ean nodded tersely and moved on inside.

  A sitting room awaited them, roughly pentagonal in shape, with tapestries covering the canvas walls and carpets several layers thick. If not for the howling wind, Ean could’ve forgotten they were in the midst of a perpetual storm.

  Tanis turned to him, radiating apprehension. He shook out his hands and exhaled a slow breath...flashed a sheepish smile. “I’m so nervous.”

  Ean took him by the shoulders. “You’ll take on Malorin’athgul and Warlocks, but seeing the woman who gave birth to you sends you all to pieces?”

  Tanis laughed. “I know. So silly, right?”

  “This is only because Tanis knows a mother can be far more formidable than Warlocks or Malorin’athgul,” Isabel observed amusedly from across the room.

  Ean and Tanis turned to her as one.

  Her unbound chestnut hair tumbled long across one shoulder, partially concealing the pearlescent silk of her robe. The patterns on her skin glowed a faint silver beneath the pale fabric.

  Ean felt Tanis inflate at the wonder that was his mother, and then the lad was flinging himself across the room and into her arms.

  Isabel laughed as she clutched him close. He was already half a head taller than her. “Oh, Tanis, my darling, darling son...”

  For a long time they held this embrace, long enough for Ean to feel the ache of his own separation from Isabel in every beat of his heart, but the pair were radiating such happiness and love that Ean would not have moved to part them—he hardly dared breathe for fear of disrupting their reunion.

  He sensed they were having a private conversation across their own binding, but Isabel had her son so cocooned within the sphere of her lifeforce that Ean perceived none of their thoughts. He didn’t begrudge them the intimacy; he just longed to restore his own with her.

  Eventually she took Tanis’s face in both hands and kissed him lovingly on each cheek. Then she studied his countenance with her colorless eyes, so bright with joy. Finally, she stroked a hand through his fair hair and gazed wistfully at him. She didn’t need to share her thoughts that time for Ean to know what was running through her mind.

  Her gaze shifted to him upon this thought. It was the first moment outside of Dreamscape that he’d looked into her eyes. His skin tingled as their gazes met.

  Tanis meanwhile stood before his mother wearing an expression of amazement. Now Ean caught the lad’s thoughts across their binding—how, despite knowing how beautiful his mother was, seeing her in the flesh...Tanis might’ve stared at her for hours, studied her for hours, just to notice the way her eyebrows arched, imparting a slightly fey appearance; or the way her lips curved upwards at the corners, even when she wasn’t smiling, but especially when she was. The lad wanted to memorize her face all over again.

  “Yes,” Isabel said laughingly, shifting her gaze back to him, “I feel the same way.” She squeezed his shoulders.

  Tanis ran his hands along her arms. “Mama, my uncle said you’re well, but...” his eyes darted to the tattoos, “but Pelas’s patterns—”

  “Will still be glowing in my skin tomorrow, barring some miracle.” She cupped his cheek and kissed him warmly again. “Remember what I told you. If you still want to discuss them then, we may, but I have a feeling if you sleep on my words, you’ll find them true.”

  Tanis gave her a look that said he didn’t need to go to sleep to know that. His brow furrowed as he looked at her. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You’re not leaving,” she laughed lightly. “Your rooms are right across the corridor. I only asked that you go bathe.” She cupped his cheek again adoringly. “And maybe take a razor to this scruff. How long did you say you were in Shadow?”

  “I don’t really know. A few months, maybe.”

  “Exactly.” She winked at him. “Even a mother’s adoration can only go so far.”

  Tanis dropped a smile to his toes. “I take your point.”

  Isabel cupped his face. Then she said something into his ear that brought color to his cheeks, and he left wearing a smile.

  As he passed Ean on his way out, Tanis gave him an encouraging look.

  Then the drapes were closing again, and Ean stood alone, facing Isabel.

  Holding her colorless gaze, feeling their bond throbbing in his core and contrition tight in his chest, Ean had no idea where to begin, despite his countless mental recitations.

  How could he ever apologize enough for Arion’s tragic misdeeds? And where did he begin to say how desperately sorry he was for the way he’d treated her?

  When Ean seemed disinclined to speak, Isabel took a tentative step into their silence. “You’ve been out of touch for so long...I wasn’t sure where your thoughts had taken you.”

  “To the edge and back again.” Ean clenched his jaw. He was trying to find some equilibrium between the pressure of his remorse holding him back and the magnetic attraction of their binding, which was practically hauling him across the room. He’d forgotten what it was like to share the same space with Isabel van Gelderan, what an overpowering force she became in his consciousness.

  “After the way I treated you...” Ean shook his head. “I couldn’t just intrude on your thoughts. I had no right to expect that intimacy.”

  Isabel took another step towards him, still tentative. He didn’t doubt she re
called their last altercation, where he’d run from her every advance, too furious at her and all the world to be near her without erupting. Her gaze then had wounded him deeply. Now it melted him.

  “You had every right to be upset, Ean.”

  “Did I?” He looked back to her tightly. “Prince Ean val Lorian might’ve had that right,” he winced and exhaled slowly as he held her gaze, “but Prince Ean val Lorian never would’ve become bound to the High Mage of the Citadel—”

  His throat constricted around all of the things he didn’t know how to say. And then, suddenly, the need to be united was simply too much.

  He took four swift steps and dragged her into his arms.

  Isabel clutched him tightly in return.

  Ean pressed his lips to her hair, closed his eyes and breathed in her scent. “Isabel,” he murmured against her hair, “please...” he laid his forehead against hers and pushed through the contrition choking his voice, “please forgive me.”

  “I do—” she hugged him closer, “if you will grant me the same?”

  Ean sighed as he held her close, grateful beyond measure just to feel her body in his arms after so long. He dared to hope that all of this might really be behind them.

  It seemed all but impossible that after enduring so much, they could simply forgive each other and move on; yet he wanted only this simplicity from her. It followed she would want the same from him.

  Ean ran his nose along hers, channeled the flood of his relief into clearing the torment from his heart, and whispered, “Should we each make a list to be sure we know what we’re forgiving? I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you.”

  “That’s a shame,” she replied, brushing her lips lightly across his. “I was hoping you would absolutely take advantage of me.”

  Ean tightened his arms around her.

  Isabel exhaled a sigh, redolent of her own heartache, now fading. “I feared, Ean...” She rested her head against his shoulder. “After what I did, I feared you no longer desired our binding.”