The Sixth Strand

by Melissa McPhail

  Louder murmuring erupted as various classmates each tried to take hold of the rose and their hands passed through it.

  “An illusion, then,” Arion said, still smiling.

  He caught Cristien’s gaze across the way. The truthreader’s wide-eyed expression said, The maestro is going to flay you alive, but keep at it, you’re doing great!

  To the class, Arion posed, “So, earlier, why was it solid to the High Mage’s perception but not to all of yours?”

  “Absolute Being,” many replied again.

  “Yes but why?”

  Princess Valentina offered, “You were imposing Absolute Being to different degrees on the High Mage versus the audience at large.”

  “That’s true, Your Highness, but it’s a point more germane to the Twenty-first Esoteric,” Arion replied. Then he quoted, “Actuality is monitored by the wielder’s point of view. Reality is monitored by collective thought agreement.” He glanced over his shoulder to add, towards Isabel, “which is also the answer to the High Mage’s question.”

  After a sudden silence near to bursting with anticipation, the High Mage nodded. “Signore Tavestra is correct.” She was definitely suppressing a smile now. “Please explain why this is the case.”

  Arion bowed politely to her. “As the High Mage wills.”

  The audience was silent and hanging on his every word.

  Arion opened his arms. “It’s a matter of perspective. Of viewpoint—the watchword when crafting illusions. Hence the caution of the Ninth Esoteric: pure concept always overwhelms linear translation. Wielders tend to think too linearly when crafting illusions. Typically they begin crafting an illusion based on what they are themselves observing, but this violates the Ninth Esoteric.”

  “How are we to conceptualize something fully without first observing it linearly, Signore Tavestra?” Valentina inquired with a hint of dubiety in her sultry voice. “Our eyes do not see in three hundred and sixty degrees.”

  Chuckles drifted around the hall.

  “A valid question, Your Highness.” He nodded to acknowledge her. “I propose the answer again lies in Absolute Being—there’s rarely an answer that doesn’t, in fact.”

  Returning his attention to the audience, Arion told them, “A wielder must craft the illusion by assuming multiple viewpoints at once. Take the rose you all see before you. Creating it is not simply a matter of my imagining what the rose will look like from many possible angles. Rather, I must ask myself, how will another person see the rose from their perspective? and then assume Absolute Being to actually put myself in their viewpoint—”

  “Which you should be able to do,” Valentina inserted thoughtfully, “because those viewpoints lie within the space you’ve claimed as your own, through Absolute Being.”

  “Your Highness has the point exactly.” Arion nodded to her again. “Let me give you all a demonstration of my point, as promised. So...if I were to create an illusion of Arion Tavestra as I see myself, said illusion might look something like this.”

  Arion vanished the roses and formed his intent between himself and Isabel.

  This was another part of the demonstration he’d prepared for the Mages, only now Arion took it in a new direction, re-scripted for the High Mage’s amusement—he hoped.

  A copy of his likeness appeared on stage—dashingly attractive, if he said so himself, with his dark blond hair slightly disheveled, hands in pockets, blue eyes literally twinkling and offering the room his famous come-hither smile.

  His classmates murmured or laughed. A few made derogatory comments, probably well deserved.

  Isabel cleared her throat. “A bit overdone, wouldn’t you say, Signore Tavestra?”

  Arion bowed to her point, then flashed a self-deprecating smile at the audience and told his classmates, “Clearly I failed to assume all viewpoints within Absolute Being. So...if I were to create the illusion of myself as, say, the High Mage of the Citadel might see me...”

  Abruptly the illusion changed to a knight in shining, white-gold armor.

  Everyone laughed.

  Isabel cast him a look of veiled amusement. “The marauding black knight more suits you at present.”

  “Hmm,” Arion scrubbed at his chin. “I could’ve sworn...well, no matter.”

  Abruptly his knight bent a penitent knee and a bouquet of flowers appeared in his hands, which he held above his bowed head.

  More laughter from the audience.

  Arion returned his attention to his classmates. “As our High Mage so adroitly pointed out, perhaps others don’t see me as quite as starry-eyed as I see myself, but the only way you’ll learn these kinds of truths is through application of the Twenty-first Esoteric.”

  He opened his palms towards the room at large. “Actuality is monitored by the wielder’s point of view. Reality is monitored by collective thought agreement.’ What is actual is what you make become. What is real is what others believe has become.

  “With any illusion, you adopt Absolute Being around the area you intend to influence—in my case, this hall—then create actuality through your intent. In my case, a rose, or a knight in shining armor. Finally, you influence the collective reality of everyone in the hall by overwriting their points of view, using the fourth strand.

  “Without first assuming another’s viewpoint to see what they see, however, your illusion will be lacking. The Twenty-first Esoteric provides the reason: reality is monitored by collective thought agreement. You cannot impinge across another’s reality—even within the auspices of Absolute Being—until you’ve first adopted that person’s viewpoint via Absolute Being. Adopted their viewpoint so that you can change it.

  “Reality and its counterpart, solidity, are achieved through agreement, which in our case, you’re trying to alter with your illusion. Thus, your illusion won’t be solid unless you can change the collective agreement of what is real in that moment.”

  During the interested murmur that followed, Arion vanished his kneeling knight and himself bent a knee before Isabel. He summoned a new rose into his hand, which he offered to the High Mage with a gallant, “My lady.”

  Isabel took it from him with veiled amusement. She pressed the petals to her nose, whereupon the smile Arion had been courting all afternoon finally manifested. “This one is real,” she told the audience.

  Laughter and applause met the revelation.

  Arion got back to his feet and acknowledged their applause with a modest smile.

  The High Mage said to the class, “Please thank Signore Tavestra for his informative demonstration.”

  Their applause grew in volume and intensity. Arion thanked them and hastened off the stage, lest what goodwill he’d gained be quickly lost again.

  As he was heading back up the steps to his seat, Isabel spoke into the space of his thoughts, Was it your intent all along to gain my attention today, Signore Tavestra?

  Arion froze.

  The docent finished her final remarks, and the class stood and started clapping for the High Mage. No one knew Isabel had asked Arion a question directly, mind to mind.

  He turned back to face her.

  Isabel’s gaze, passing across the audience, found his at the periphery. He saw in her eyes that she was waiting for an answer.

  Did I hope to gain the High Mage’s attention? he replied into the same space of his thoughts, all too aware that he was conversing with a truthreader who, like her brother, was rumored to have gained so many rows of rings that her fingers weren’t long enough to wear them all.

  Arion held her gaze across the distance. He smiled. No.

  No? He felt her puzzlement on the other end, though her serene expression betrayed nothing as she graciously accepted the continuing applause. You weren’t hoping to gain a ring here today?

  No, my lady. The maestro and I can battle that out fairly between us. But you haven’t asked—did I desire the woman Isabel’s attention? He posed this question with all the sincerity he could muster.

  Her roaming
gaze found its way back to his. And did you, Signore Tavestra?

  Arion gave her a meaningful smile. Without question, Lady Isabel.

  %

  Ean focused back on his illusion of himself, smiling with the memory. Then, with thoughts of Isabel still in his head, he moved to the roof’s edge and fixed his attention on the two men taking luncheon in the courtyard, four stories below.

  He’d claimed Absolute Being around their entire townhome, enabling him to adopt each of their points of view. It also helped him ensure they didn’t notice him watching them from the rooftop of the adjoining townhouse.

  Now, as he studied the man of his interest, Ean changed his intent and with it the facial structure of the copy standing near him. The illusion took on the countenance of the man sitting below.

  Wearing a look of intense concentration, Ean stepped into the static, fourth-strand energy that comprised the copy. He positioned his real arms to match the illusion’s, placed his head in the same position as his copy’s. Then he concentrated on a complexity of intent and willed both body and illusion to become.

  A shift of perception, and the illusion of the stranger’s face melded to his living flesh—still illusion but pinned now to his lips, cheeks and eyes so that they moved as one.

  Satisfied, the prince walked to the roof’s walled edge again and peered down at the two men enjoying their luncheon. He now resembled the taller of the two down to his every eyelash, freckle and frown.

  Because Ean perceived both men’s awarenesses within Absolute Being, he knew they shared a close camaraderie. They spoke freely to one another and laughed often. Ean knew they were lovers. He knew everything about them. All day he’d been going through their thoughts with a fine-toothed comb, sifting the ones he needed to the forefront of their awareness, stirring conversation which he then heard with both mental and occasionally physical ears.

  He could’ve easily compelled their thoughts. He could’ve sent the second into their limbs to control their motion. He could’ve made dolls of them with barely any effort. They had but one Nodefinder’s ring between them. They had no protection from his power.

  These thoughts disturbed him as much as their truth surprised him.

  Was it being bound to a Warlock that had revealed so clearly the hair-thin line between humankind and the revenants made from the aether to populate a Warlock’s worlds?

  Ean found it too easy now to conceive of na’turna as puppets. And this was the way Warlocks thought of most creatures they encountered—even Adepts—for few were capable of resisting their power. They rarely troubled themselves to differentiate between their own constructs, like eidola, and living beings made by...some other. In the mind of a Warlock, no real difference existed.

  So the Warlocks of Shadow had made the Realms of Light their playground for millennia, treating the residents as if they thrived by their leave within the universes of their own construction rather than in a shared universe of many, and rarely bothering to notice that all entities subject to a Warlock’s power were not the same order of being.

  After many hours spent in discussion with Björn in T’khendar, Ean understood the balance the Warlocks provided to the cosmic structure of the lifeforce. But from his binding with Rafael, Ean also understood that a massive change of perspective would be necessary if everyone was going to learn to harmoniously coexist the way Björn envisioned.

  He felt Rafael coalescing behind him.

  As an Adept, Ean could no more perceive the massive cloud of power collecting itself into form than a na’turna could sense the thermal forces that produced actual clouds in the sky. But since Rafael rarely bothered to screen or shield his thoughts—not being used to sharing his mind with anyone—his every perception echoed back to Ean via their binding, pretty much all the time.

  Ean had spent the last few hours juggling intensely disparate planes of awareness. It had been an interesting morning.

  “Which do you prefer, Ean?” Rafael asked as he solidified.

  Ean turned to find the Warlock holding an outfit of men’s eveningwear in each hand.

  Upon coalescing, Rafael’s flaming hair assumed a pattern of soft, dark waves that teased at his collar and complemented his aqua-blue eyes. He’d kept the same attractive features he wore in Shadow, though now his complexion appeared more flaxen than gold.

  He was wearing a long topaz coat of shimmering silk, a stiff-collared white shirt, elegantly embroidered, with long cuffs that flared just above the large ruby he wore on his middle finger—a subtle replacement for the one usually adorning his brow. The garments on the hangers he was holding were of the same cut and design as his, but one outfit was predominantely eggplant in hue, and the other robin-egg blue.

  “These coats seem to be the height of fashion, Ean,” the Warlock said blithely. “Everyone is wearing them.”

  As he shifted his gaze between the outfits, Ean admitted a sense of wonder interwoven with immense unease. To be standing before a Warlock who appeared so incredibly human in their own world—from all accounts, Rafael should have at least been misting at the edges.

  “Focus, Ean.” Rafael held up one coat and then the next. “The aubergine or the cerulean? I think the blue suits Cristiano’s eyes better, but then our clothing might be too conspicuously similar. Admirable work on this illusion, by the way.” He smiled as he nodded towards the illusory face Ean was wearing. “You are Cristiano Sargazzo in everything but flesh.”

  Ean couldn’t quite find comfort in the compliment. He pressed a hand to his face, cognizant that a part of his awareness was holding the illusion solidly in place at all times. “Do you think it will fool Shail? That’s the test I have to pass.”

  Rafael grunted deprecatingly.

  Ean perceived this was in reference to Shail.

  The Warlock held up the aubergine coat in front of Ean’s body and then removed it and held up the blue coat instead, back and forth. He caught one corner of his bottom lip between perfect teeth while his aqua eyes studied the damask fabric with a concentration as complete as if he was inspecting the divine constitution of the cosmos.

  “Aubergine it is,” he finally decided. He placed the outfit in Ean’s hands. “It’s less ostentatious. And Signore Sargazzo doesn’t strike me as ostentatious anywhere but on the—what’s it called, this game he’s so famous for?”

  “Quai.”

  Rafael snapped his fingers. “That’s it. The Quai field.”

  Thus decided, he did something with the blue outfit—Ean couldn’t quite determine if he’d disintegrated it into minute energy particles, or somehow returned it intact to an unseen closet, or effaced it into nothingness as if its energy had never existed. All he knew for sure was that the clothing vanished.

  Some part of Ean just screamed with wrongness at this.

  Maybe it was the child who’d listened with horrified awe to the terrible tales of Warlocks from the Age of Fable. Or maybe it was just the present surreality of being bound to one.

  Ean would’ve had to work half a dozen patterns to banish those clothes. The Warlock had simply gathered deyjiin beneath his will and focused it through his intent—innately, much as Ean worked the fifth—and poof.

  Perhaps Ean would’ve seen inverteré patterns associated with the working if deyjiin had flowed in channels as elae did, but the negative power was closer to air than water. It filled and surrounded everything, yet was completely invisible to almost everyone’s perception. Like Shadow, it existed everywhere yet nowhere.

  Rafael used deyjiin exclusively; and deyjiin was boundless, formless, without the restrictions of codification and thus absent even the restrictions of expectation. It could be anything, do anything.

  It occurred to Ean in that moment that there was a whole other side to the magic of their realm that no one had ever studied because no human could produce it or compel its action. Deyjiin was considered evil mainly because no one could do anything with it.

  Yet the more he witnessed Rafael’s power, the mor
e Ean felt like he had a dragon leashed by the toe with fraying twine; the more he felt the weight of his responsibility in having brought a Warlock into his fragile realm, and through their binding given him free access to his own power; the more he knew an urgent duty to engender a mutual future they could all survive.

  Trying to settle his own spiraling thoughts, Ean set the clothing on the low wall and looked down at Cristiano Sargazzo and his lover, Roberto di Castronicci. The two Quai players were just then rising from their table, still animatedly discussing yesterday’s championship game in which Cristiano had scored the winning goal for Faroqhar.

  Verily, wearing Cristiano Sargazzo’s face, Ean would be welcome in any ballroom, gala or fête in the city.

  And a gala was their destination that evening.

  The party of his interest was being held in the building that had once housed the residence of the Literato N’abranaacht, but which had, in the space of a recent fortnight, been renovated into a two-story museum displaying the many artifacts the Literato had discovered in his searches of crumbling Cyrene temples, Myacenean pyramids and Avataren lava caves.

  From what Ean could tell, the renovations had begun shortly after Pelas’s unwelcome visit to Shail’s laboratory.

  Ean suspected this new museum expansion was less about honoring the literato than about extending a safety perimeter around Shail’s private quarters; said perimeter being the double-floored museum, at the center of which remained the literato’s original residence, undisturbed, and around which Shail had placed warding patterns as thick as stars in a galaxy core.

  This of course suggested to Ean that Shail was still using the hidden laboratory—or at least storing something important there—hence his own determination to snoop around, despite Pelas’s unfortunate accident.

  But the galaxy of warding patterns meant Ean had to get inside, unnoticed, without using the fifth. Which is where Cristiano’s face came into play.

  Below him, the two unsuspecting men went inside the house.

  Ean bound every door and window with the fifth.