The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Dagmar grunted to his point.

  “So that’s what changed.” Ean laid a hand on Tanis’s shoulder as if to convey his appreciation to Pelas via the contact. “It isn’t the storm, it’s the tear itself.”

  “He says it’s much smaller now.” Tanis looked to his uncle. “He says he tried to reason with his brother, but Rinokh won’t be turned from his efforts.”

  “I expected no less, but I’m grateful he tried.” Björn nodded farewell to all of them, then looked meaningfully to Dagmar and the two headed off together.

  “One last thing, my lord.” Ean called Björn’s eyes back to his. “That final topic we discussed...I can do it alone, but I can do it more quickly with your help.”

  “And you assuredly will have it.” Björn nodded once more. Then he and Dagmar vanished into the shadows of the pavilion.

  Pelas just then soared close.

  Not a one of them at the wall didn’t catch their breath as the slicing lines of his form flew past. Menacing didn’t begin to describe him. Tanis caught other descriptions from the Eltanese: awe-inspiring, nightmarish, terrifying...

  The wind of his passing buffeted them while still a mile distant.

  “Is he landing?” Jude’s tone implied they might need to move away from the wall to give Pelas more room—as if the entire southern desert wasn’t wide enough to contain his form.

  Jude is now my favorite of the three. Pelas had caught the echo of the Nodefinder’s comment across their bond.

  Tanis shook his head. It was bad enough with Nadia. After this, I truly fear that none of your hats will fit.

  It was time for new hats anyway. Pelas swooped around and came back towards them, low enough to the ground to rouse massive clouds of sand in his wake.

  “He’s definitely landing,” Mat said helpfully.

  Ean clapped a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. “Let’s go say hello. I want to see him up close.” He planted a hand on the wall and slung himself over the ledge. Tanis saw a pattern flash.

  Are you coming, Tanis?

  Tanis hesitated for the space of a breath, staring after his falling prince. Then he gave the Eltanese a smile that made all of them instantly lose theirs, climbed up on the wall and dove off after Ean.

  Because Tanis was sharing a bond with them, he easily heard Jude say, He just did that.

  Yep, Gadovan and Mathias answered.

  Without elae-enhanced armor.

  Yep.

  But he’s not fifth strand.

  Nope.

  So he’s using the second?

  I have no idea what he’s using, Mathias said.

  It has to be the second, Jude protested.

  I’ve never seen anyone attempt that with the second. Have you, Gad?

  Not from this high up. Not past terminal velocity.

  In all fairness, Tanis wasn’t sure that his idea would work, but he trusted Pelas would catch him if Ean didn’t. So he barely spared a thought for the fact that he was falling fifteen hundred feet at terminal velocity—which speed, as Gad had intimated, generally caused the second strand to go inert—and instead focused his intent.

  He’d seen Ean’s pattern, but he couldn’t work the fifth as his father could. Still, it gave him an idea of a way to use gravity’s kinetic force, despite exceeding terminal velocity.

  It was all about finding equilibrium.

  He’d just witnessed the same concept while flying with Pelas. There was a balance you had to find between the tension in your wings and the tension in the air, and until you found it, you got tossed around.

  Likewise with the second strand. The kinetic force of the Pattern of the World both pressed and pulled. In tapping into these pushing and pulling forces, Tanis could monitor how fast he fell and how hard he landed—theoretically.

  It took about three seconds for Tanis to fully tap into the Pattern’s energy, and five more to find equilibrium between its push and pull. The ground was coming up very fast by the time he hauled back on the pulling side and energized the pushing side enough to rapidly slow his descent, but he did find a balance of forces just before he landed inelegantly in an explosion of red sand.

  By the time the dust cloud settled, Ean was standing at his side, grinning broadly. “I never thought of using the second, Tanis. That was something to see.”

  Tanis spat sand from his mouth and tried to will the grains out of his tearing eyes. “I clearly need more practice at it.”

  Ean chuckled. “First attempts are rarely spectacular except in their degree of recklessness.” He lifted his gaze to the dark mountain before them—Pelas had landed. “Come. Let’s go admire this creature birthed at the fringes of the universe.”

  Tanis sighed. “He’s going to be as inflated as Rafael if everyone keeps this up.”

  Rafael would say, one can find no better company than his own healthy self-regard, Pelas offered cheekily.

  Yes, my point exactly.

  Ean worked the fifth and cleared the air of dust, whereupon a razor-edged wall of darkness suddenly loomed before them. They trudged through the sand together towards Pelas’s dragon form with the prince radiating incredulity and Tanis admiration.

  You really are something to see, he admitted warmly. There’s no challenging that.

  Tanis showed Pelas how he appeared in his eyes—a veritable mountain with deadly spires spearing off at every angle, all of them molting deyjiin as smoke; fiery copper eyes practically searing them from a mile distant; and every razor plane of his construction so dark as to fall into nothingness through it. Never mind the terrifying sense of world-ending doom his form engendered.

  A Malorin’athgul in the form was the kind of behemoth that every man ran away from—no matter how many strands of elae he commanded—immediately, and with devout determination to be elsewhere as swiftly as humanly possible.

  You honor me with your admiration, little spy.

  Pelas turned his head as they approached. The effect was like watching a mountain suddenly rear up and look at you.

  Ean walked right up to largest of the onyx-dark spires icicling down from Pelas’s chin. The center-most one was three times as long as Ean was tall. The spires were mirror smooth, like the glossy blackness of Shadow, and deyjiin’s violet-silver light encased them with a spectral glow.

  The prince slowly laid his hand on the spire. A tiny ripple spread outwards from his touch, quickly absorbed.

  “Pelas says to take care.” Tanis moved up beside the prince. “His form will drain you faster than you think.”

  “No, I feel it already.” Ean quickly withdrew his hand and shook it, wincing slightly. He opened and closed his fingers a few times, then tried to massage some life back into his hand. “It’s very like the feeling I had when Rinokh pressed his thumb to my forehead and left me for dead in Rethynnea...or as you saw in my memory, Tanis, when Shail did the same.”

  I am sorry for these events. Pelas’s thought bore the weight of deep apology.

  “Pelas regrets that you had to experience that,” Tanis told his prince. “Unmaking is not something someone should experience and remember.”

  Ean cast a culpable smile at the lad. “I tried to do the same to him in Tambarré. Neither of us should be casting stones.” He stepped back from the dragon to take in more of its form, but Pelas was so large, they couldn’t see anything above the stalactites hanging off his snout.

  Do you think you could...

  Catching Tanis’s thought, Pelas snorted an exhale that raised a cloud of sand an eighth of a mile long and accommodatingly lifted his head. It was like watching the entire imperial palace rise into the air. The great shadow of his snout fell long across the dunes.

  As more of his neck was revealed beneath, Tanis saw huge onyx plates banding Pelas’s hide, as upon a snake’s underbelly, but still so smooth as to be nearly indistinguishable from each other. Even standing there directly in front of him, Tanis was hard-pressed to conceive of the dragon’s size.

  Ean was shielding his thoug
hts from Tanis, but the lad could tell they were in a torrent.

  Tanis suspected where that river was dragging his prince. It was one thing to see Pelas standing there in front of you in his human shell, all charmingly urbane, and think to yourself, ‘He’s a Malorin’athgul,’ and quite another experience altogether to stare into his burning eyes when he was in his true form. You never could think of him the same way thereafter.

  And how has this changed your perception of me, Tanis? Pelas’s thought harbored the slightest hint of...perhaps not apprehension, but something similarly uneasy, an implication that while their bond might be eternal, it was also in some ways fragile.

  Tanis was working his tongue to loosen a tuft of roast beef that had gotten stuck between his back molars. Well...for one thing, I’m less inclined to tease you about your appetite.

  While his bond-brother was chuckling in his mind, Tanis looked to the prince. “Pelas says we should move back.” He tugged on Ean’s sleeve to draw him out of the dragon’s shadow. “He’s going to shift now.”

  Ean let Tanis tug him a safe distance away. A five-minute walk later, the lad sank down at the base of a dune and pulled his satchel between his legs.

  Ean settled down beside him. “What’s he saying now, Tanis?”

  “He’s just preparing the pattern of his shell in his thoughts. He’s only ever done this once before.”

  “When he came into Alorin?”

  “That’s right.” Tanis gazed somewhat tightly at the dragon. They were still close enough that Pelas might’ve accidentally stepped on them.

  I am acutely aware of spatial relatives.

  Tanis cast him a mental grin. Sure, whatever that means.

  It means I am not going to step on you. Pelas sounded minutely offended.

  In the next moment, the hulking darkness that had been a dragon became a massive wall of wavering energy, as of heat but without the...well, heat.

  Ean got quickly to his feet. “I’ve seen this before.” He looked like he wanted to approach the energy mass.

  Tanis took him by the arm. “You shouldn’t—”

  “No, I won’t. Trust me.” Ean flicked a wry glance at him. “In Tambarré, Darshan had Nadia contained behind a wall of energy exactly like this. I don’t know if you can see it as I do, Tanis. It’s formed of—”

  “Deyjiin and elae in balanced polarity.” Pelas simply appeared ten paces in front of them as the energy vanished.

  “And he’s naked.” Ean rapidly found something to inspect on the opposite horizon.

  Tanis walked over and handed Pelas his clothes.

  Pelas said as he was slipping on his pants, “That field of my brother’s which you destroyed so spectacularly in Tambarré, Ean, was one of several uses we have for our native composition. Similar fields can be conjured to surround a star. They’re capable of containing any energy, no matter how violent.”

  Ean turned a frown back to him. “I wonder why Shail didn’t use something like that on me?”

  Pelas looked up under his brows. “Darshan is fantastically adept with static fields. My younger brother, not so much.”

  Ean’s brow furrowed. “I really had the wrong impression of Darshan. He’s...” he shook his head, seeking the right descriptive, “considering the power he commands, he’s actually rather...restrained.”

  Pelas shoved one foot into a boot. “I count my blessings in that regard, believe me.” He received the other from Tanis and repeated the process. “That, and the fact that Darshan favors me over Shail.”

  Straightening, he reached for his shirt, which Tanis handed to him. “In the long unfolding of eternity, all we immortals can really do is irritate one another. But irritation can take many torturous forms, especially beneath my younger brother’s ingenuity.”

  Ean nodded vaguely to this. Tanis suspected he was still pondering Pelas’s transition from dragon to man. Knowing him, he was probably trying to extrapolate backwards to figure out how Pelas had done it.

  Pelas shifted his gaze to Tanis. “Well, little spy, was our foray into the desert worth the effort?”

  “That depends.”

  Pelas clearly hadn’t been expecting that response. He gave him a curious look. “On?”

  Tanis flashed a grin. “How quickly you can get us back again. I’m two meals short of today’s quota.”

  “Far be it from me to stand between your stomach and its demand for sustenance. Which one of us did you say needs to monitor his consumption?”

  “Not you. You eat stars for breakfast.”

  Pelas shook his head. “Stars are more of a light meal, really.”

  Tanis groaned. “The Lady save me from your terrible puns. Can you take us back now, please?”

  Smiling, Pelas reached for Tanis and Ean’s arms and simultaneously hooked a ley line—

  An instant later they were standing in the thick of the storm, protected from the swirling sands by Pelas’s shield.

  Ean flung a disbelieving stare at him. “How in Cephrael’s name did you do that?”

  “Magnetize to a ley line?” Pelas started them walking through the storm—much to Tanis’s relief, in the direction of the mess tent. “You haven’t tried that yet?”

  “Oh, sure,” Ean said flatly, “oldest trick in the book.”

  Pelas eyed him sidelong. “Actually, in a manner of speaking...it is. I learned the secret of the maneuver from reading a book.”

  “Seriously?” Tanis could have shielded himself with Ean’s dubiety.

  Pelas placed a hand over his heart. “On my honor, Ean. A book, in a library, in a lovely little chateau called Adonnai.” He winked at him.

  Some understanding passed between their locked gazes then that quite eluded Tanis, but Ean seemed suddenly intensely intrigued. “What else did you read in that library?”

  Pelas grinned. “Oh, I am pleased to tell you...”

  Thirty-two

  “Action is what drives the game forward. Even if you’re

  unsure what action to take, taking any action in the direction

  of purpose will cause life to align beneath your intent.”

  –Náeb’nabdurin’náiir, Chaser of the Dawn

  The rosy skies of dawn saw Loukas n’Abraxis standing on the highest point of their camp. The vantage overlooked scorched moors and the glimmering armor of nearly five hundred men marching in formation towards the warlord’s fortress.

  Irresistible lines of soldier after soldier striping a hillside that the lieutenant Jasper val Renly had made his stumbling way down in the empty dark.

  ‘...they have to make an irresistible target, Loukas...’

  Trell’s every order haunted Loukas on multiple levels.

  As instructed, he’d spent most of the night calculating the lines of drift, those paths across the terrain that offered the least resistance and thereby became natural channels of flow down the steep hillside.

  But he’d hardly had time to conduct a proper survey of the hillside’s topography. His calculations were all estimates, and too close to guesses for comfort when the lives of hundreds of men weighed in the balance.

  Trell’s plan was brilliant...and terrifying. The prince was wagering his entire fortune on a hand of guesswork and had thrown the lot of them into the pot for good measure.

  ‘A plan only lasts until the first arrow is fired, Loukas.’

  Trell’s words made a round in Loukas’s head, somehow still echoic of the prince’s unassailable dry humor despite the hundreds of times the phrase had replayed itself to his memory. Trell ever stood equally unafraid of Fate’s interest or disinterest, constantly playing his hand against Chance as if there were no better opponent.

  It was enough to give Loukas ulcers.

  He chewed ginger root that morning, but there was no settling his tempestuous stomach, which had an overabundance of trepidation still noxiously mixing with last night’s meager repast.

  He stared at the lines of men and hoped they’d all been listening when he’d exp
lained what to do and where to go when the proverbial walls came tumbling down.

  He watched with a thumping heart and a dry throat as a lone figure emerged from the soldiery to make the final climb up the last part of the road alone. The man walked tall in a glinting helmet and armor, his dark blue cloak skimming his heels on that breezeless morn. He carried neither sword nor shield, only his courage—and a fethen mountain-load of faith.

  Fiera’s ashes! Loukas wondered if he could ever be that brave.

  Somewhere among the helmeted heads of the five hundred men of the honor guard stood Rolan and Raegus. Loukas consoled himself that they, at least, had been listening when he spoke of the lines of drift. They understood what was at stake.

  This was always the worst part for him, when he’d done his work to the best of his skill and turned it over to others to put into action, standing by while better men than him risked their lives on the front lines of conflict, all to protect the prize of his educated brain.

  ‘You’re in charge if I don’t return, Loukas. I trust no one better to see Naiadithine’s mandate accomplished.’

  Trell had never before said something that even remotely hinted that he might not return from a mission. Apprehension clenched Loukas’s entire body as a result. He felt a stick figure bound together with spider silk, apt to fall to clattering pieces at the slightest ill turn of the breeze.

  Ahead on the hillside, the lone figure had reached the barricade. The same platform that had disgorged Jasper val Renly was being lowered down the wall.

  The long rays of the rising sun hit the fortress at just the right angle to make a play of wavering light above the walls, as of heat rising from the stones, though it was too early yet for even the dew to have burned off.

  Something about the sight roused Loukas’s hackles in alarm.

  He suddenly knew deep in his core that things were not going to go as planned.

  ***

  The warlord called Raliax, once a nobleman of Saldaria, stood atop the walls of his fortress, staring down at the lines of enemy soldiers growing clearer in the coming dawn, and grinning a black-gummed smile. This was going to go exactly as planned.