The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  A Warlock needed energy to make himself appear solid—the more power he commanded, the more solid he could appear. Such a one derived said energy within the Realms of Light by creating eidola to harvest elae. The revolting creatures engaged in a sort of predigestion that enabled the Warlock to work elae’s positively charged power.

  But the only harvesters Vleydis had at his disposal were the ones Shail had created for him.

  “My brethren are enjoying their time in Illume Belliel and are complimentary of your assistance,” Vleydis answered.

  “I noticed Baelfeir found his way to Alorin.” Without invitation. Shail eyed Vleydis tetchily. “Will he be stringing a new chain of virgins to his loins any time soon?”

  Vleydis’s features flickered in and out of form. “Lord Baelfeir does not share his mind with me.”

  “Well...moving on. As you know, I’ve been testing different combinations of patterns to determine which can be used most efficaciously to create eidola. My recent efforts, while intellectually fruitful, all required a fortnight or so for the necrotic conversion of flesh into Merdanti stone.”

  He turned onto a spiraling staircase and headed swiftly down, passing carved patterns in the obsidian walls that glowed faintly, even after thousands of years, even webbed with fractures.

  The temple’s lower levels were constructed of granite and basalt, designed to withstand the Quorum’s darkest subversions of the lifeforce. Shail found those deep places perfectly suited to his own pursuits, for the forces of violent change would find fewer fractures to exploit.

  Such is where he should’ve kept young Tanis, bound in goracrosta and a plethora of other torments, lost to the world. Had he known what the boy was capable of—had he known the destruction Tanis could wreak with a few misshapen thoughts—he never would’ve let him out of his grasp.

  But by now Sinárr had doubtless made the youth his concubine, which threw a lovely kink in the mortal tapestry and almost made up for the error of letting Tanis slip through his fingers.

  Shail led Vleydis into an octagonal room where a stone creature lay upon a plinth. He cast a hand towards it and his eyes towards Vleydis. “For your inspection, my friend.”

  The Warlock looked over the eidola body while the angled planes of his face shifted beneath subtle refractions.

  No, Shail determined, if Vleydis could have fully coalesced, he would have settled his features into a single countenance, not let them sputter like a candle.

  This pleased him. Keeping a tight rein on the Warlock’s power was important to his plans.

  After a moment, Vleydis lifted his raven gaze to Shail. “I fail to determine why this would be of interest to me, Shailabanáchtran.”

  “No?” Shail’s mocking smile held a daggered edge. “A harvester you do not yourself have to animate? I thought this was your primary dilemma.”

  The planes of Vleydis’s expression flickered through discomposure.

  Shail looked the Warlock over critically. “Come now. Be honest with me. You could not have thrived in Alorin beyond the twisting off of the welds to Shadow. How many decades passed before you found yourself fading? You deny it, Vleydis, but I think you were witness to the fall of the Quorum of the Sixth Truth.”

  Vleydis’s smoking wings riffled like a moth pinned to a specimen board. “I know you seek their secrets, Shailabanáchtran, but I’ve told you all that I recall.” He misted away from the Malorin’athgul. “Much memory was lost to me during those dry seasons of incongregation.”

  “Yes, so you continue to claim. But no matter.” Shail’s thin smile implied forgiveness...of a fashion. “It is to this grave infirmity of yours that I’ve addressed my efforts—what use to me is a Warlock who cannot harness his power, eh? And the making of harvesters is a double-edged sword: one must have the power to congregate them out of the aether and still have enough power left to invest them with life. I’ve gone to considerable trouble to address this problem on your behalf.”

  “Your benevolence honors me, Shailabanáchtran.”

  Shail leveled him an excoriating stare. “I trust you will make it worth my while once your power is fully restored.”

  Vleydis gestured to the thing on the table. “How will such as this be useful to me?”

  “To start with, they’re untraceable.” Shail leveled him a cool smile. “Eidola can be followed back to the mind of their master by those skilled in elae’s fourth strand. These pawns cannot.”

  “Yet they will draw power from me?”

  “They’ll draw it through you.”

  The briefest of startled pauses ensued. Then the Warlock gave a low chuckle, almost like a purr. “You make portals of them.” He looked Shail over with his iridescent violet-black eyes. “They draw power from Shadow.”

  “Through their bond with you, to then fuel their conversion of elae. The flow creates a closed circuit. No power is lost in the conversion.”

  The Warlock’s dark eyes gleamed. “Miraculous.”

  “Some complications have not yet been solved, but the method is promising.” He looked to the black-stone body lashed to the table. “This eidola I raised quickly from ash and blood.”

  Vleydis came closer to inspect it. “How will you animate it when you did not start with living flesh? This has been a necessary first step when constructing eidola in the Realms of Light.”

  “That is the very question I posed to myself.” Shail cast his awareness elsewhere, seeking a particular mind. When he found it, he raised a dark smile to the Warlock. “Soon you will better appreciate what I’ve achieved on your behalf.”

  Thirty-four

  “Bravery is knowing the enemy you face

  and facing him anyway.”

  –Errodan val Lorian, Queen of Dannym and the Shoring Isles

  Sebastian val Lorian, prince of Dannym, beloved of Princess Ehsan with-many-middle-names Haxamanis of Kandori, reined in his horse atop a hill overlooking the ruined city of Kyrrh, most of which lay beneath a dark lake of fog.

  Far, that fog spread, blanketing the ruins—verily, the entire valley of fifteen square miles—between Sebastian and the distant, glowing alcázar of the Prophet Bethamin, high on its acropolis in Tambarré.

  Above Sebastian, a gibbous moon watched languorously over the night, occasionally illuminating the lake of fog, but more often hiding behind scudding rainclouds whose recent showers had left still, dark pools between the broken pavement stones. The diamond points of Cephrael’s Hand hung like a crown over that moon, lording over the last piece of visible sky.

  Of late, Sebastian had seen the constellation every time he ventured out into the dark. Ehsan said the constellation’s presence meant Fate was watching over him, but Sebastian thought this an ambiguous harbinger at best. In his experience, Fate was often vindictive, occasionally ambivalent and rarely benevolent.

  Yet Fate all but dominated his thoughts these days: the fate of the First Lord’s game, of his brothers, of his father and mother, of the Eagle Throne, of his own path....

  ‘As your paths are interwoven, so accordingly are the workings of the wielders Dore Madden and Viernan hal’Jaitar, the Duke of Morwyk, and your father...’

  The Sundragon Rhakar’s words from months ago still rang in Sebastian’s head, chiming with portent.

  ‘Your father withdrew his forces from M’Nador and sent them to the fortress of Nahavand, where they await his return ere they all depart for Dannym...Your middle brother forges towards the fortress of Khor Taran to rescue a thousand of your father’s men...Ean’s thread is tangled among darker strands...’

  Sebastian practically felt the threads of the tapestry dragging upon him, too, binding tighter with his every step; yet for all he saw his brothers’ places in the game, he had no clear view of his own.

  Or perhaps, as Ehsan had said, he could see it but wasn’t willing to accept it.

  Swallowing the discomfort of this thought, he looked back to the valley. Sebastian had never yet seen it when it wasn’t covered in fog.
If he hadn’t known better of Dore Madden’s capabilities, he would’ve thought the wielder had summoned the fog to hide the Prophet’s dark work. Or perhaps it reflected the miasma of guilt that ought to be suffered by the inhabitants of Tambarré, a cloak for their shame at turning a blind eye to the evil propagating north of the Prophet’s mountain.

  ‘Plague has come to Tambarré...’

  Thus had written Dareios’s spies from within the Prophet’s temple, repeating the urgently whispered word supported by black flags flying atop Tambarré’s ramparts.

  The city had shut its gates to all, yet information continued pouring out of the Prophet’s temple almost daily—a rare paradox from a place usually so impermeable.

  The first of what was to become many startling revelations told of the Prophet’s abrupt departure from Tambarré. Then had followed a sordid story of unraveling discipline and madness, culminating in droves of Marquiin throwing themselves from the acropolis rim, finding their deaths on rooftops, walls, streets. The city had been in turmoil.

  Then, finally, the salt in the wound:

  ‘A terrible illness is spreading through the refugee camp beyond the walls...an unnatural affliction that blackens the flesh, making it hard as stone. The Prophet’s Advisor recommended quarantine in the ruins of Kyrrh. Tambarré’s elders jumped to oblige...’

  Upon reading this report, Sebastian had looked up beneath his brows at a brooding Dareios. “Dore is making eidola out of those refugees. You know it, and I know it—a bloody army of them, just as Isabel predicted.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  “What else could it be, Dareios?”

  The Kandori prince had sat back in his chair and opened bejeweled hands in supplication. “It could be plague.”

  Sebastian arched brows. “Dareios.”

  The truthreader sighed. “I admit it is a farfetched conclusion when circumstances are viewed as a whole.”

  “There’s only one way to be sure.”

  Dareios winced. He traced an angular eyebrow with one finger while studiously not looking at Sebastian. “I cannot be complicit in another jeopardous val Lorian scheme. Ehsan would have me drawn and quartered, and that would just be the first course she served to her retribution.”

  Sebastian leaned towards Dareios. “You know we need to test—”

  “Don’t speak it.” Dareios lifted a hand to quiet him. “It’s bad enough I can read your thoughts. Allow me at least the pretense of deniability...”

  Would that Sebastian had been able to deny his own suspicions, but three visits to the ruins of Kyrrh had proven them conclusively. Dore was making an army of eidola. How he was doing it with the Prophet gone from Tambarré was anyone’s guess, but as far as Sebastian and Dareios could tell, no one was doing a damned thing about it.

  Sitting his horse beneath the dripping trees, Sebastian gave a decisive exhale and dismounted.

  Soft footfalls behind him drew his gaze, whereupon Dareios’s Nodefinder cousin Bahman moved into the moonlight. Another towering shadow followed Bahman, a man whose visage brought a smile to Sebastian’s face every time he saw him: the Lord Captain Rhys val Kinkaide.

  The captain had shorn his russet locks and cut his beard close, and in recent weeks he’d regained much of his legendary strength. Sebastian only wished Ean might’ve been there to see Rhys so hale, that he might know his sacrifices had been worthwhile.

  Sebastian secured his horse to a branch and turned to meet the two men.

  “Here.” Bahman handed Sebastian a leather thigh sheath bristling with daggers. “There’s seven in there. Try not to lose them all this time—or anything else, for that matter. Ehsan specifically told me she would prefer you kept both of your arms and legs.”

  Sebastian gave him a blank look. “Could you possibly be referring to that tiny scratch I got last time?”

  “You bled all over my horse.”

  The Lord Captain rumbled, “This time I’m not letting him out of my sight.”

  Bahman clapped a hand on Rhys’s shoulder. “Good luck with that.” He flashed a don’t-die-tonight look at Sebastian and melted back into the dark.

  “He’s off to meet the others,” Rhys said, staring after him. Then he rested a hand on his sword hilt and turned his pale blue gaze out across the lake of fog. “What’s our plan this time, Your Highness?”

  Sebastian secured the sheath of black daggers around his thigh, then drew one and looked over its double-edged blade. Bahman, who was a gifted metallurgist and blacksmith in addition to being a talented Nodefinder, had woven into the folded steel-stone the necessary patterns to kill an eidola on contact.

  If Sebastian saw any silver lining to Dore’s dark work, it was in having nearly unlimited resources upon which to test their patterns. That they were granting release to these poor, doomed victims only marginally helped him sleep at night. It was a stone heart indeed that could witness all they’d seen and still enjoy a relaxing night’s rest.

  “Free as many as we can, Captain,” Sebastian answered quietly, “that’s our plan.” He had to think of their actions in those terms, lest the killing lay too heavily upon his conscience to bear the weight.

  ‘A Furie may see his fortune won or lost from an inability to adapt to the changing climate. Whether nature inclines him one way, or education, or faith, if the prince cannot deviate from the inclination of heart, honor or upbringing when circumstances require it, so is he ruined.’

  The words from the Avataren treatise On the Politics of Princes were indelibly imprinted in Sebastian’s head, along with the voice of the Fire Princess Ysolde Remalkhen, who’d read the work to him a hundred times if it was once. Leave it to his mother’s Companion to teach him Avataren by way of the kingdom’s most controversial political discourse.

  Yet the concepts had found their place in his thoughts, as ideas are wont to do when presented to youths of a particular age, especially if those ideas happen to be polemical, disreputable or arcane. An adolescent mind soaks up contentious topics as readily as a dry sea sponge and thereafter refuses to expel them again.

  Pondering changing political climates and their relationship to ambiguous harbingers, Sebastian slung a quiver of Merdanti arrows diagonally across his chest and hooked a recurve bow on one shoulder. He wore the golden vest Dareios had made for him beneath his leather armor. Experience had proven it was anyone’s guess what enemies he would face down among that ruined city, but with the vest on, at least the craven bastards wouldn’t be able to stab or shoot him in the back.

  The ruins of Kyrrh hugged three high hills, but the lanterns demarking the quarantine area made it easy for Sebastian to spot—even without the necrotic sludge oozing out of the place on elae’s currents.

  Storm clouds moved across the moon, pitching the night into further darkness. Sebastian gathered his resolve. “Come, Captain.”

  A sullen drizzle was their only herald as Sebastian and Rhys threaded down through the ruins, passing silently among high, moss-eaten walls and over the uneven stones that had once been cobbled streets.

  As they drew nearer to the rearing wall of fog, Sebastian summoned the pattern of Ean’s variant trait, the one that enabled his brother to see patterns. Ean had derived the pattern for Sebastian’s use even while using it himself and had nearly given Dareios a heart attack in the process. Now Sebastian worked the pattern to ensure they didn’t fall prey to Dore Madden’s malice.

  The prince and Rhys had come that way several times. Sebastian knew well of the route’s hazards, yet Dore could birth more deviant tricks in a day than the whole of the Vestian Sorceresy in a dark month of colluding.

  They came upon the outermost sentry while the man was relieving himself against a wall. Sebastian let him finish and then speared him with compulsion—the same pattern he’d used in the Kutsamak, at the time never suspecting that the fierce fighter who’d been close to turning the tide of battle against Sebastian’s men was his own brother Trell.

  Trell had fo
ught Sebastian’s working all the way to his knees—it had felt like mentally wrestling a bear to the ground. The sentry merely collapsed.

  Sebastian and Rhys propped the sentry against the wall, where Sebastian bound him with the belief that he couldn’t move. It was only prudent. In the heat of battle, it was often difficult to ensure you left a man alive for questioning.

  Sebastian caught himself in this thought.

  Where had he gotten this idea? From Ysolde and her ruthless book? From his father or one of his tutors? ...From Dore?

  Sometimes he felt he had too many masters, that too much of what he knew had been bred into him—or lanced, beaten or otherwise tortured—without his own evaluation. He still couldn’t remember all of who he’d been before N’ghorra; he couldn’t separate much of what Dore had taught him from his innate responses. It made any instinctive decision suspect.

  So Sebastian took a moment to evaluate for himself this choice...and decided to leave the sentry safely pinned and out of sight.

  He and Rhys entered the fogbound city and headed east.

  ‘...Why are you doing this?’ Ehsan had asked him after his second trip to Kyrrh, when he’d returned with a slashed shoulder as the least of his wounds. ‘You’re free of Dore Madden now, if you choose to be. This isn’t your fight.’

  But it was his fight as much as it belonged to anyone. Dore was a necrotic sore on the body of humanity. If left untreated, that necrosis would spread until the entire host turned septic. It fell to Sebastian to do something about Dore Madden, merely because no one else was.

  Even so, the darkhounds of hypocrisy dogged his heels as he moved silently through the fog, using elae’s currents to guide his sight and Ean’s fifth-strand pattern as a headlamp to illuminate deadly wards. How often had he chastised his littlest brother for recklessly putting himself into danger? And here he was walking a similar course, answering to no one as he chased down his own demons.

  But he didn’t feel reckless. He knew his abilities. Irrespective of this, his honor simply demanded it.